merry christmas and happy new year!

The holidays get a little nutty around here, and I have lots of funnies to share.

Like how at my Grandparents' house on Christmas Eve we all gathered to read the birth story of Christ, and my uncle kept reading beyond the whole manger scene to circumcision story... specifically, he explained that when the penis was snipped the baby was named... "Oh Jesus." 

Or like how at my work Christmas party, my sister asked my coworker's (15 year junior) girlfriend if her "Daddy" was a good Santa Claus. In her defense, it was an honest mistake ;-)

But for now, I'll leave you with the holiday cards we scored from Shutterfly!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

hello, december!

Wowzas, November was gone in the blink of an eye!

We spent last week with my family in Cabo, narrowly escaping the blizzard 4" of snow that shut down Seattle.

Seriously... schools closed, cars abandoned on the freeway, city on lock down. Yeah, we don't get a lot of snow in these parts...

When we touched down in Seattle on Monday night, sun burnt and clad in shorts and flip-flops, I was greeted by freezing rain. To offset this major kick in the ass, I had to immediately do a switcharoo to Christmas mode.

So I was very productive Christmas shopping online at work on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then yesterday my computer got a nasty virus, requiring me to take the day off.

So while my computer was being poked and prodded by the computer doctor, I was playing domestic diva, shopping for Christmas decorations, tidying up the house, and even shaving my legs!!

Oh, and Bondi and Homie and I picked out our very own Christmas tree!!! (This certainly beats last year, when Joe tried to pass off a Rosemary Bush as a Douglas Fir... Now, I'm no Martha Stewart, but when after dinner half our "Christmas Tree" was gone, I started to wonder...)

Once we got the tree into the house, though, the pups and I had to have a little discussion. I told them:

IF you lift your leg on mama's tree, 
you're getting COAL in your stockings.

Good talk.

Today, the pups were very sweet to me...They obviously must know it's my birthday (woohoo... more grey hairs) because they got me the BEST PRESENT EVER.


The gift of humiliation.

Oh, pups. You made my (birth)day!!!

Before I go back to refreshing my Facebook wall every 2 minutes to see if anyone else has left me a birthday message work, I want to leave you with something I heard on the radio this morning:

• 25% of women say their dog is a better listener than their spouse
• 13% of women would rather talk to their dog than their spouse

Thoughts? :-)

ceiling fans are the new crack!

This past weekend, when Joe and I were in Idaho for the notorious BSU game (more on that later), Homie made many friends. Among them, his most favorite was by far this ceiling fan.

The ceiling fan and Homie spent many special hours together.

As you can see, ceiling fan plays hard to get. 

And Homie longs for ceiling fan. 

Craves it... like CRACK.  

In all seriousness, this craziness had been going on for about 20 minutes before I finally got out my camera to document.

Please excuse my snorting on the video. 

I'm not proud of it. 

Or my neurotic dog.

Thinking it may be time to call in Cesar, because this most definitely is not "balanced" behavior.

UPDATE: I'm saved!

You know that horrible dilemma I was having earlier today?

Well don't you worry! I will not have a lidocained labia, after all!

I've been SAVED (from the horror or having to go buy tampons) by my amazing mom, *~*the tampon fairy*~*

Yes, the tampon fairy delivered a grocery store sized bag of tampons to her full grown daughter at work. Discretely, of course, lest anyone know said daughter had any need for such thing. 

(And yes, I recognize I'm talking about myself in the third person here. Cut me some slack... this is a touchy subject!)

Apparently mom has accepted that she no longer has any use for these felt really sorry for her 26 year old daughter who, according to some, "seriously need[s] to seek help regarding [her] reticence to purchase feminine products in (gasp!) a store!"

Yeah, I'll get right on that! Swearsies. 

But for now, it looks like I'll be good for the next year or so... and Joe's off the hook!

HELP: WebMD doesn't cover this...

I have a BIG PROBLEM.

My last two tampons are covered in Nyquil. See?

I mean, just a little bit of NyQuil...

It apparently leaked in my suitcase (which I still haven't unpacked from Orlando - for shame!) and spilled onto my last two tampons.

So... I just need to know if it's still safe to use them? Seriously... (kindove)

Because there is NOTHING worse than going to the store to buy just tampons. 

(Except that one time my ex came to visit me in Australia and he came down with a terrible case of diarrhea and implored me to go buy him Immodium and so I did and then my credit card was rejected. That may have been worse.)

I mean, I can handle buying tampons at Costco because there at least it's not like the cashier is sitting there thinking about how your bleeding out of your lady parts.

But a trip to the mini mart for tampons... I CAN'T DO IT.

If I can just make it through today with a little bit of NyQuil-laced coverage... (What's the worst that can happen???) I can make a detour to mom's to restock after work.

Thankfully, my mom hasn't yet come to the terms with the fact that she's going through menopause and still stocks her cupboards with tampons. So I just "shop" there when I must.

And then, tonight Joe and I can have a talk about progressing our relationship.

We already live together, have a dog together, and have a joint credit card. So, if we're not going to get engaged... I feel like the obvious next step is him buying me tampons. Right?

If he disagrees, I guess we'll be making a trip to Costco tonight!

merry christmas (don't kill wolves!)

If you hang around these parts, you probably know I'm a huge animal lover. Well, awhile back I made the mistake of making a small donation to one of my favorite charities, Defenders of Wildlife.  They apparently sold my information to every NPO from here to Djibouti (thanks for that) and now my mailbox overflows with a plethora of junk from every conceivable organization.

Most of it goes straight into the fireplace while I consider the irony of all the resources these (mostly) environmental organizations waste in their solicitations. But the other night I held onto an offer for personalized Holiday cards featuring endangered wolves.

The Gray Wolf is like my kindred spirit.
(Don't laugh. I love them.)

So I was pretty pretty devastated when I learned that wolf hunting was legalized in Idaho and Montana in 2009.

It was a controversial topic of conversation during visits to Idaho with the boyfriend. His friends and family had mixed opinions, but I knew it would be bad... and it was. It decimated the wolf population and thankfully this year they are back on the protected list.

No more hunting wolves!!!

Anyway, I talked with the boyfriend and he was super excited about the prospect of sending Save the Wolves holiday cards out to all his friends and family in Idaho.

I kid... I kid. He thought it was not very *in the holiday spirit* and suggested I look for something else.

Well the Universe must be on his side, because the very next day I stumbled upon this post by Miss DSS. Apparently, Shutterfly is doing a fabulous promotion giving away 50 free holiday cards to bloggers! Seriously.

While I don't think Shutterfly has any sexy "Save the Wolves" cards, they have something maybe even better: Personalized Christmas Photo Cards!

So instead of showcasing Canis lupis, I think boyfriend and I are going to go with Canis bondi and Canis homie.

Shutterfly has an amazing selection of Christmas Cards to choose from. Two of my favorites:

Of course, photos of these cute little kiddos would be replaced with ones of my *cuter* little pups.

And no worries... if you're Jewish, Muslim, atheist, politically correct, etc. Shutterfly has a wonderful selection of Holiday Cards to choose from as well!

To get 50 free cards from Shutterfly with your own blog, go here.

lowering expectations

I've been getting shit from some of my blog lovelies about how I never post anymore (though in my defense I'm an avid reader). Usually after not posting for several days weeks, I make a whole lot of excuses about how busy I've been - blah. blah. blah. 

Well, I have been busy. But after thoughtful consideration, I've decided I'm just going to skip the BS acting like I actually post regularly and just say why don't y'all expect to hear from me about once a month or so.. that why when/if I post more frequently you will be all jumping for joy and throwing a party and what have ya!

See what I'm doing? I'm lowering your expectations. I always feel it's better to set expectations low and be pleasantly surprised when they're exceeded than to have high expectations and be disappointed.

That's why birthdays and New Years Eve always suck. Expectations are way too high.

I have been trying to communicate this point to Joe lately, since he's gotten in the habit of setting my expectations too high.

One (PG-rated) example is the subject of when he's going to be home. Say, he tells me he's going to some "networking event" (aka Happy Hour) after work, and he'll be home by 7:00. So, I plan to be home around then so we can catch up, have dinner, relax, etc.

Well, say (hypothetically, of course) that 8:15 comes and he's still not home. At this point I am defintiely a cranky pants.  Actually, in truth, I'm a cranky pants by about 7:30. Come 8:15, the whole "etc." is definitely not going to be happening.

Best to just say "Honey, don't expect me until midnight." That way if he saunters in around 9:00 I'd be so excited I might just do a little jig... nakey...

Probably not, but you never know! Excitement is a funny emotion :-)

Anyway, now that your expectations of my blogging are much lower, let me share with you what I meant to a while back: Adventures in Pumpkin Carving.

It was a good time... minus a little weirdness over the whole - host is a recovering alcoholic and everyone else likes to enjoy a few adult beverages at a "party" - thing.

So obviously it was BYOB. No big deal.

But it was also BYOWG... yes that is BYO wine glass.

Now it's awkward enough bringing your own alcohol to a sober dude's pad... but your own wine glass??? Thank God for keg cups. (Did you know, by the way, that you can fit almost an entire bottle of wine into a keg cup? Just kidding. Kindove.)

There are benefits to this whole scenario too, though, like getting to take home all the leftover pumpkin beer if you're the last people to leave. Wouldn't want to leave any temptations lying around!

Here's the whole group of us...

...and here are our creations... Can you guess which pumpkin is mine??

YES... yes I did.

I wanted to leave my special pumpkin out for the Trick-or-Treaters, but it started to get moldy and collapse on itself. So, what started as a risque pumpkin featuring a sexy (albeit big-chinned) girl engaged in some sexytime turned into a pumpkin featuring a diseased dude sucking leper cock. (I hope I didn't just lose any readers... but seriously that's what it looked like.) 

After the pumpkin carving party, I had no time to mourn the transformation of my love-child because I was off to Orlando for the Ace Hardware convention.

The highlight of this tradeshow is always the Ace Party with a Purpose. I've blogged about it before (remember my Tina Turner wannabe performance at the Mardi Gras party?) but I've been looking forward to this fall's at Universal Studios Island of Adventure sooo stinkin' much I wasn't even (that) sad about missing Halloween celebrations last Saturday.

Given the theme of this post, I probably should not have set my expectations for Island of Adventure so high... but seriously, it was AMAZING beyond expectations. (Universal Studios 1-Boyfriend 0).

Unlimited access to all the coolest rides with NO LINES... AND and open bar! Soooo FUN!

(Sidenote: Rollercoasters + Open Bar = NOT FUN for the 8 year old boy who got puked on by some drunk guy.)

But the BEST PART (besides the open bar, of course) was... OH HELLO the NEW Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Actually, who am I kidding, Harry Potter World was TOTALLY better than the free drinks. I know, I'm a HUGE nerd. Just call me POTTERPHILE..

Of course, after all my talk of Hogwarts and Hippograffs and Wingardium Leviosa spells and Dementors and Gillyweed and Butterbeer my dad and coworker/friend thought I was a bit loopy. Fair assumption. But if you haven't obsessed over read the books, don't judge.

I assume I wasn't the only one who devoured the books and waited for hours in line for every new movie release because a midnight Harry Potter showing was a rare opportunity to hold hands slash thighs with your Mormon crush in 9th grade.

Just me? Weird.

Seriously, if you have the chance to go, GooOOO!!!!

Flying on a broomstick drunky through a magical world is un-freakin-believably AMAZING.

That is, of course, until the next day if you have to be up by 6AM and in a booth HUNGOVER for 11 hours dressed up on Halloween Eve. Of course, I set my expectations low so it wasn't too terrible. Actually, after a few bottles of water it was kinda fun... as fun as wearing nylons, fishnets, spankies, and a wig in 90 degree weather can be, anyway.

See? That's me, totally having fun. With a crooked wig. I may have still been cross-eyed when I put it on. I hope no one expected us to look really good or anything :-)