CostcoWarrior

Strawberry Disgustingness 12 May 2010

Today for lunch I decided to venture out and try something new.  I’d participate in the green smoothie revolution sweeping the nation!  It was great! It was healthy!  It was GOOD FOR ME!

Um.  I fail.  I started with yogurt (soy, since my nursing infant is allergic to dairy), added some spinach, and then asked the dangerous question: “What else?”  Oh my fridge provided, yes it provided plentifully.  I dumped in fresh strawberries, baby carrots, sprouts, and a roma tomato.  Yes.  Yes, I did get a bit carried away.  Okay, fine.  A LOT carried away.  I was distracted by this romantic notion that my green smoothie was going to be a bit more V-8 like, and give me all my veggie servings for the day!  Hooray!

Sadly, it was disgusting.  Strawberry Disgusting in smoothie form.  Adding a bunch of sugar didn’t even help, and that’s saying something.

What a waste of strawberries and yogurt.  I’m sticking to regular smoothies from now on.  I LIKE the NON-GREEN!

They even cleaned up! 4 August 2009

I just want to rave a bit about the plumbing company we hired to replace the water line to our house.

The bid was free.  The quote was a firm fixed price.

They showed up on time.

They didn’t look like creepy blue-collar workers who swear and spit tobacco everywhere.  Instead they looked like educated and experienced plumbers who were good solid guys.

They got to work within 60 seconds of pulling up to the house.

They called to tell us when they had finished and that they would mail us the bill.

And then–to top everything and totally make my day–when we pulled up to the house after work we saw that they had CLEANED UP!  I was totally expecting to have to come home from work and clean up the yard.  NOPE!  No extra piles of dirt.  They had rolled up the tarps and gathered our tools.  They had even taken all the cardboard we’d used as “extra tarps” and put it in the garbage can.  They’d unhooked our hose line from the neighbors and COILED IT UP on the side of our house.  They’d even REATTACHED all of our connections to the washing machine (where we’d hooked up the rigging to use the neighbor’s water).  They had the main water line to the house turned on AND they had run the water long enough to get past those initial chug-hiss-spurts of repressurization!  They had even sprayed down the sidewalk to clean the mud off of it.

And while I can’t say it looked as if nothing happened (our front lawn DOES have a strip of new sod down the middle as evidence of SOMETHING) I can say it was SO NICE to come home to a repair job that had been FULLY completed!  So often, the clean up phase gets the half-baked effort, but NOT this time.  They pushed right through the end and finished it right.  Thank you, Hillcrest Plumbing!

It’s so nice to have a good experience with a contractor.  It’s so often NOT the case, and believe me, we’ve dealt with A LOT of them in the last two years!

To sum up the good news: WE HAVE WATER!  And it’s not make-do-garden-hose-water-from-the-neighbor!  And we didn’t have to do ANY of the clean up!

Today I feel fat… 17 July 2009

Not the teenage girl “I weigh 78.23 lbs, but I’m so fat” kind of feeling…

Instead I feel like the indulgent adult “I just ate 3 Thanksgiving dinners and there’s no way my skin can hold it all in” kind of fat feeling.

The kind of fat feeling where you’re sure you’re going to explode so you lie down and moan while holding your abdomen hoping that it just might stop the ache.

But I didn’t eat 3 Thanksgiving dinners, I ate a bowl of cereal.

And I definitely weigh more than a teenage girl.

And I’ve learned that moaning and holding my abdomen doesn’t alleviate the pain.

And PLEASE before all you experienced pregnant people out there go off on me, I KNOW it’s only going to get worse.  Ugh.  It doesn’t help to know that or to hear that.

And all you blog readers keep asking me to post pregnancy pictures.  Do you see the struggle I face?  In the first place, who wants a picture of that fat feeling?  And I’m concentrating so hard on trying not to explode that I’ve just not had the opportunity to post any pics…However, for those patient few of you, we just got back from vacation, so I will work on posting some of those pics this next week.  All your pregnancy picture dreams really will come true…

Until then, since I can’t do it myself, regardless of your weight or your waist size, please feel a little less fat for me.

Public Bathroom Rants & Raves 24 June 2009

Perhaps you think I’m weird.  I whole-heartedly agree.

There are some things that I just want to rave about when it comes to public restrooms, though, and perhaps you’ll agree:

Baby powder air-freshener!

Touchless paper towel dispensers!

Entering a stall in the morning to find the toilet seat standing up meaning that the toilet was cleaned the night before and you are the FIRST to use it!

Yes…all of these make my heart flutter and bring a smile to my face and make me feel as if I’ve somehow got to be the luckiest public restroom user ever.  BUT then there is the most horrible public bathroom trend that I just want to rant about. 

Automatic flush toilets! 

There are some things in life that just shouldn’t be automated.

Back to Posting and New Pregnancy Symptom 27 May 2009

I just realized that it’s been nearly two weeks since I’ve posted anything.  So much for my goal to post at least every other day.  I’ve decide to place the blame for this writing drought squarely on the shoulders a new pregnancy symptom:  Rage.

Well, it might not be RAGE in all it’s true Hollywood glory, but it’s definitely more in that neighborhood than any of my normal emotions.  In the last two weeks I have noticed my fuse is shorter.  Okay. Fine.  In all honestly, “shorter” is a generous description: My fuse is pretty much non-existant. 

Someone says the wrong thing = irritation extreme. 

Someone coughs in the wrong way = total annoyance. 

Someone “looks” in the wrong way = complete infuriation.

Someone is incompetent or inconsiderate = eternal frustration.

Someone drives stupidly = broiling anger.

Someone interrupts me = bulging eyes and steaming ears.

Someone questions my wise and niavely glorious opinion = death to all.

Our birthing class instructor’s son recently injured his tongue pretty badly by falling and biting it.  I did that when I was 2 or 3 too.  I’ve done it again and again in the last two weeks.  It’s pretty much an hourly occurance nowadays, and kind of amazing that I have any tastebuds left.  I’ve also relearned the child-like teeth-clamped-shut-eyes-smooshed-closed defense mechanism…not really in my defense, but in defense of all living things around me.

And I tell you, this Rage Frustration Irritation Impatience Want-to-Kill-’Em symptom is just as strenuous as all the other physical pregnancy symptoms I’ve dealt with so far. 

**It’s tiring to always be thinking the meanest, most clever, most horrible, most true comments, and then to have to restrain myself from using them…most of the time. 

**It’s wearing to reign in the lightning quick backlash reactions to the idiots that surround you.  And sadly, these days, the idiots have multiplied exponentially.

**It’s arduous to keep from rolling my eyes 10,000 times a day, worrying that if I roll ‘em once more they might actually get stuck. 

**It’s demanding to have to keep apologizing for all those times the raging reaction takes out those around me that I love.

**It’s exhausting to have to make up fake apologies for all those people I DON’T love that the irritation offends.

And so, the blame:  I haven’t been posting because I’m sure none of you really want to read day-in and day-out rants and rages and generally negative material.  I haven’t been posting because I’ve been busy trying not to kill everyone and everything around me.  And I haven’t been posting because I’ve been tired from the exertions so associated with this new pregnancy symptom.

I do have some fun posts brewing, though, so stay tuned…especially if you’re interested in baby name bashing…