Winter Oreos

Winter Oreos just appeared at the office. Explain to me why the filling is red? I mean, if they were Christmas oreos, I could see red and green. Or the good ole generic “holiday” oreos. But winter? Shouldn’t they, of all oreos, actually HAVE the white filling?

Besides, the red dye makes them taste funny. Unfortuanately, it won’t keep me from eating them.

Something Missing

Something Graphic is on a break while I desperately try to crank out 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. That’s National Novel Writing Month–go to http://www.nanowrimo.org for more information. I can’t waste any words here–I’m only about 3,000 words into the novel.

This is my 4th year doing NaNo thanks to my friend, ME, who introduced me to the site. The first two years I completed “$hitty rough drafts” (I mean, what else would I have in 30 days). Last year was a fail–simply couldn’t manage to complete it by the deadline. So this year is make or break. I may post little notes here that I want to expound on later–because we all know I have an opinion about everything and really have an overwhelming desire to share that opinion with the world.

If you want to stop by nano and see my progress, here’s my page. I also have a short intro to my novel there.

Peace.

The Silver Year

I’m really discovering that if I skip writing here–even a day or two–I really start losing ideas. It gets harder. I start thinking that I can’t do it. That I’ve lost my mojo. Which is really funny because I don’t think of myself as actually having any mojo. If I did, it would probably be the wrong version or the wrong size. According to my girlfriends, it’s a freakin miracle that I managed to get dressed correctly, let alone do it with any mojo.

Personally, I think that mojo is for wimps. Just get up, put your feet on the floor and start moving. Some days, that’s the best I can do. And some days, that’s more than enough.

So, Saturday was mine and Dear Husband’s 16th wedding anniversary. We celebrated by going to Minado and eating our weight in sushi. Wouldn’t it be great if this is how we celebrated?

Wouldn't it be great if it had been like this?

This was my first serving. And no, I don't share.

But in reality, it really looked more like this. I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m glad. If it had been like the above picture, I would have likely had to shave and probably needed to get a new pedicure. I take that back. I don’t think Dear Husband would have been paying attention to my pedicure.

We finished having a direct impact on the ocean wildlife shortage in the world around 6 pm and I will be damned if I’m going home at 6:30 on my 16th wedding anniversary. No way.

This is not a kitten heel

Because I’m trying to follow some of the dressing instructions that my girlfriends had given me, I had decided it would be a good thing to wear a cute pair of kitten heels on date night. I was a little worried when I first was told about kitten heels, but was more reassured when I found out they actually weren’t made from kittens. In actuality, I think they are called that because after a few hours it feels like tiny little kitten claws are digging into all your toes and that the small furry, evil mammal is actually chewing on your ankle. Now I had been smart enough to wear elastic-waisted pants–it is all-you-can-eat sushi, but the kitten heels slowed me down. Next time–sneakers. Another downside was I hadn’t been smart enough to wear socks with my shoes–apparently that’s a fashion “no”, so we couldn’t even go across the street and bowl. Yes, bowling. For our anniversary.

Being that Saturday was POURING down rain–I mean, torrential, end-of-the-world, build an ark kind of rain, we didn’t want to do too much driving. We needed to do something local. So we decided to go Walmart and walked around.

Stop laughing.

Dear Husband and I have survived the salad days–heck we’ve survived the ramen noodle days. Lord, he’s survived my cooking. When we were “almost” married, Dear Husband-To-Be came home for dinner. I think it was during one of the many times I was unemployed and I was making my attempt at being both domestic and frugal. I didn’t do either well back then and I’m not much better now. But I was making an effort and cooking the first of our 5,000+ future pasta dinners. The spaghetti was done and I was getting ready to reheat some of the sauce in the refrigerator. When I opened the jar, it was a little bit, uhm…fuzzy? Sort of like one of those science experiments gone terribly wrong. Being young and well, young–the contents in my refrigerator was rather limited. Oh, right, like YOU haven’t ever eaten cereal for dinner. I’m thinking it likely contained a lemon (that in hindsight, was probably as moldy as the spaghetti), a jar of pickles and a stick or two of butter.

I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t do anything with the lemon or pickles, but I did  think, “Great, butter. I’ll do some garlic, butter noodles. Aren’t I the smartest future wife in the universe? Dear Husband will be so impressed to see that I can still whip up a dinner with such limited options.”

In reality, he was likely impressed that I hadn’t managed to burn down the apartment while I was boiling the noodles. So I’m busy making witty banter while I toss the noodles with the butter and garlic. I decide to make it all fancy by adding some other spices–a little bit of oregano, some white pepper, some onion powder, some cloves.

Oops. Cloves? Did I say cloves? Okay….maybe a little more garlic and pepper will cover up the taste of cloves.

Or not.

Maybe a lot of garlic and pepper will work.

I tried everything. I think I probably added the lemon and pickles in an effort to make it edible. You know what? Nothing worked, it still tasted like spaghetti and cloves.

And Dear Husband-To-Be sat there and ate the whole thing.

I learned something that night. I learned that Dear Husband WAY more forgiving and generous than I am. We quickly decided that my numerous skills did not extend to the kitchen and Dear Husband has taken over most of the cooking duties. Whenever I get tempted to try my hand at a meal, DH reminds me that the smoke detector is not a kitchen timer.

Now, some 16 years later, we are walking the Walmart aisles, shopping through the dredges of Halloween costumes (already being pushed aside for the Christmas ornaments, but that’s another blog entry) for our offspring. The Boy wants to be Hades–not exactly something you can pick up at the Halloween store. Okay, you probably can get some version of Hades there, but not the version that lives in my son’s head. In the past he’s been the Loch Ness monster (in the lake), a minotaur, a space cop (again, a version from his brain, not reality), and an alien coming out of a vat of toxic waste. Believe it or not, we were actually able to reuse some of the Nessie costume for the toxic waste costume. And, he wasn’t the only alien coming out of a vat of toxic waste at his school parade. Go figure.

After 16 years, Dear Husband has seen me at my best and my worst–and not just when I’m making dinner. He’s made me a better person while still accepting the person that I already am. He appreciates my sense of humor and sense of style. He’s learned I would rather have more computer RAM than flowers or jewelry, and that my favorite gifts have been a vacuum (well, it IS a Dyson), and a frying pan.

Our humor was evident even on our wedding day

It really doesn’t matter where we are or what we are doing. I’d pick shopping in a Walmart with Dear Husband than doing anything else in the world. In the 16 years, we’ve buried family and created our own. We’ve pulled apart and pulled together. We’ve lost our jobs, and our minds, but never our sense of humor. We are successful partly because we secretly suspect that no one else will tolerate our kind of crazy. In another 16 years, we’ll likely have lost more jobs, more minds and sadly, more family, but hopefully we will have been raised to grandparent status, where apparently we will be able to do no wrong (in just 16 years–that can’t be right). And even though we’ll be slower and older, I’ll still want to go to shopping at Walmart with my best friend.

Don't we look so young?!

What in the world is an “E?”

So, The Boy brought home his midterm report and his grades were….interesting. I get the regular ones–he snagged a couple of A’s and B’s–he had a veritable alphabet soup of grades. Right down to an E. Excuse me? An E? What the heck is an E? And when did they change these grades on us? Granted, they didn’t give F’s in elementary school–something about scaring Johnny’s psyche or something. Quite frankly, if Johnny can’t read or do basic math, he should be getting Fs. And what about the “needs improvement” rating? Talk about damaging. Like don’t we all need improvement? There making success seem so unobtainable. I find “needs improvement” more demeaning and insidious than just FAIL.

Actually, in elementary school, E stood for Excellent so it took a bit of explaining to The Boy that, no, having a ZERO in a class and receiving an E is NOT A GOOD THING. At least FAIL might get you here:

I have no idea how to answer this one

Now I never brought an F home because I knew my father would have beat me within an inch of my life. Even bringing home a C meant no outside activities. Once, I got a D in typing. I was grounded for the entire summer of my Senior year. The teacher had actually averaged my grade the first two times and it’d come out as an F. When she saw the tears well up in my eyes, she suddenly “rounded up” and suggested I not look for a career that involved typing. We’ll just leave that comment alone, okay?

But an E seems so…wimpy. Its going along with the whole, “we don’t want to damage their esteem.” I’m sure that someone, somewhere decided that if we didn’t change it to an E, we would confuse children as to what the alphabet is: A, B, C, D, F…but teacher? Where’s the E?

I warned The Boy that I was going to blog about this–I warned him that since I was no longer able to spank (thanks Child Protective Services) and time-outs were no longer effective, that I had one tool left in my parenting arsenal: humiliation. It wasn’t like he got the E in something academic, something challenging. Heck, he even made an A in gym and I don’t know he accomplished that one. Nope, he got his E in Health.

When I was in college–my Southern Baptist college (Go Eagles–and not the ones from PA), I took a Sex Ed class. Don’t get excited, I did say we were SB. The course was only offered as Pass/Fail and the ONLY way you could fail was if you didn’t come to class on Fridays to take the quiz. The quiz was about as basic as could be. You could skip all week and still score 100 on the quiz. So one day I asked my professor why he offered the course as Pass/Fail and he replied that it felt wrong to fail anyone in Sex Ed, and at the same time, he didn’t want to have to deal with any parents if he gave a student an A.

When I questioned The Boy about his E, he claimed that he did the work and “lost” it. A quick call to the teacher revealed that it isn’t homework that is brought home–it’s done in the classroom. HOW the heck do you lose work IN THE CLASSROOM?

I did a little Googling to see if I could find a good humiliating word for E–like elegy, eradicate, or edentulous. Believe it or not, I actually found that there is a word for it in the academic arena: échec. It’s pronounced “ay shek” which, personally, sounds a little vulgar.

“EY, shek you.”

“No, shek you.”

“Yo’ mamma.”

Surprise. It’s French.

It means…fail.

Why I’m Not Leaving Verizon

So, as some of you might have read, I had a bit of an, uhm, issue with Verizon Wireless. Okay, it was sort of a big issue–lasting hours. On multiple occasions. So I did the only thing I could think of doing–I blogged about it. Then I decided to post my rantings on Daily Kos–it’s a little liberal blog that a few (thousand) people read.

I actually got quite a few hits. Nothing like Dooce gets when she complains about her washing machine. Maybe because she has a few thousand followers on Twitter and her blog, but SHE complains about a stupid Maytag washing machine and Bosch contacts her to give her a free one. So she convinces them to throw in a dryer and give it to a woman’s shelter. Yeah, maybe in my next life my blog will reach more than–say–seven. But posting my rant on Daily Kos had me pulling in double digits! And the first digit was more than 5! Of course, several were complaining that I was complaining but hey, feedback is feedback. The fact that I got 100 people all complaining about their wireless service was sorta neat. Nationwide bitching about lousy customer service.

Then–Bosch called. Well, not really–but a customer service rep from Credo contacted me. He urged me not to pull out my eye with a fork and offered to let me switch! For a limited time, Credo will buy out your contract! SOLD! And–and–I was going to get 5% off my bill for two years–so I’d actually be paying LESS than what I’m paying now.

I logged onto their web site and started checking out Credo’s services. They had the same number of minutes that I currently have with Verizon. I could add 5 numbers that I call most–which would relieve me from worrying about minutes spent with T and H. They are Verizon and switching could cost me a lot if I don’t add them to my “5.” And don’t worry, I’ll add you to my “5″ too.

Isn't this just adorable!?

Next, I started looking at phones. Beautiful phones–a pink phone! With a keyboard. For texting. Which I could do for a very small $4.99/month for 300 text messages. I might even be able to do it without looking like I’m having a seizure. I’m hooked.

And, of course, because I have this great smart phone, I can mobile web–surfing! Checking Facebook! Sweet. And the cost, a low $4.99/month

I had the three phones picked out. The service. I was leaving Verizon and this was going to feel good!

And then I decided to take a step back.

What was I doing?

What I just finished doing, was reading 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea, by Suzy Welch. Suzy suggests, that instead of being paralyzed with decisions, or constantly evaluating and reevaluating, and then feeling guilty about the decision, that you employ this 10-10-10 process.

Take a situation and look at it 10 minutes into the future, 10 months into the future, and 10 years into the future. The idea is, that decisions that may look good in the now, look less attractive a year later and positively terrible in 10 years. Other decisions may seem terrible in the short-term and even mid-term, but are much more attractive a decade later. The other thing it lets you do is to look at an issue with less emotion than you might if you just decide to do what “feels” right. Plus, you have a solid argument to back up your decision that are stronger than just “because.”

So I decided to 10-10-10 Verizon.

In ten minutes–it would feel great to leave them. I could call them back and basically say, “Bite me–I’m leaving. Even with your cancellation fee I’m STILL going to leave you because your customer service it terrible and I’m convinced that you cause a phone to fail once it’s out of warranty. So THERE! I will pay my $90 activation fee and be gone with you Verizon Wireless. Defriend!

In ten months–Dear Husband, my mother, and I would have some sweet looking phones. I probably would be just about at the point that I finally understood everything about my little computer and more than likely, would be surfing and texting all the time. I mean, it’s so easy with that keyboard. Did you look at how cute it is?

Call me.

Ten years–who cares? was my initial thought. Ten years? In ten years we’ll have phone tattooed into our brains. We’ll all look like Seven of Nine. I really can’t analyze cell phone service ten years from now. And really, why should I. Okay, I am signing up for that plan right—-

But I decided to push myself a little. What difference would switching matter in 10 years. In reality? Nothing. That doesn’t mean I should switch–it means it really won’t make any difference.

Yes, but—the phone is so cute. Yes, but–Verizon is a big meanie. Yes, but.

BUT is really an acronym. It should be spelled as B.U.T Behold Underlying Truth. Whenever you hear, “I want X but blah, blah blah.” Get rid of everything before the but and you will hear the truth. “I wanted to study for the test, but I fell asleep.” “I wanted to lose weight but I like junk food too much.”

And my but’s were costly–$90 activation fee, the realization I would probably spend even MORE money because of all the new cool texting and surfing, not to mention all the time I will spend tethered to the Internet, and Verizon wouldn’t care in the slightest.

In ten years, I will be poorer. I will have bought into the idea that I need more–a better phone, a faster phone. And while we’re at it–let’s add some Internet access. And some cool accessories. Of course, I have to be safe, so give me that bluetooth earpiece. And some games and ringtones that match my cool phone. And the color coordinated case to protect its pink-ness. And in ten years, my KIDS won’t even want that phone. Right now, The Boy is playing minesweeper on my old Palm. I bought it for a lot of money–1o years ago. The Girl is using Dear Husband’s old iPod because, of course, he needed the new (at the time) nano. And my Shuffle (it was so cute!) is sitting in my desk drawer.

It’s hard to not buy something or want something. Everyone has such cool things! It is difficult to understand that wants and needs are two different things. What do I need? Really need? A phone that works for more than 20 minutes. I can reactive my old phone (for free) and use it for another three months when I’m eligible for a new Verizon phone.

Plus, I’m holding out for an iPhone and there’s a rumor they are coming to Verizon in 2010. And, if Verizon wants to drop me a line and offer me one (or Jobs), I’d be glad to write nice things about it in my blog.