Tag That

You know how everyone says that they, "I don't normally do this," but then go ahead and tag people to their hearts content anyway? Well, I'm no different.

Here's how it works: For each question, look up the answer on Google image search. Then choose your favorite image from the FIRST PAGE OF RESULTS ONLY.

My Name (and my husband.....if wishing made it so)

Favorite Food

First Job (and you wonder why I was fat in high school)

Nickname (It's mostly my Aunt Marty who calls me Jillibean, but after nearly 30 years...I notice that it is catching on.)

Born (I'm kind of thinking that this is PVMC, not really sure what they are cleaning, but it seems like a typical sight 'round Pomona)

Bad Habit (I've never contemplated killing anyone, but I think I know that walrus)

College Degree

Want to go

Favorite Place (Quite possibly the most beautiful beach I have stumbled upon in my life. Unreal.)


Favorite Color

Favorite Animal (But mine is way cuter)

Past Love (At any given point in time I am/may have been infatuated with one/more/most of these players...and I'm playin it kind of fast and lose with the whole 'Past' thing. I prefer tocall them "The Ones That Got Away")

Doing Now (And knowing my luck, still will be doing it from here to eternity...barring some divine intervention by way of a kind, loaded, hot, rich, husband, the lottery, inheritance, accident payoff. I'm not picky.)

Where I Live (The photogs are tricky buggers, at sunset it doesn't look so bad)

Favorite Object (I Guess)

Grandma's Name (But don't call her Baby)

Age (25-ish days to go!)


Oh Gosh, that was very complicated. I have no idea who even reads this...so tagging anyone else is kind of a risky venture. If you have read this, then yes, consider the gauntlet thrown your way.

Tuesday's a Good Day for a Life Altering Realization

Today I conducted a very serious experiment and came to a life altering conclusion.

My ears are lopsided.

I bought a pair of earrings while on a trip in Chiang Mai. The first time I wore them was on the ridiculously long flight back from Thailand to Los Angeles, via Hong Kong. I noticed that one was dangling a little lower and brushing my collar bone occasionally, while the other was not. Granted, this would have driven me crazy on a normal day, but after two weeks of traveling, being blessed with the shoulders of a lineman and being squeezed into the center seat of an airplane for a 14 hour flight with possibly some of the most annoying people on the planet, and absentmindedly running out of Ambien a day before we ran out of trip, the earring issue put me right over the edge. I was flirting with some seriously suicidal tendencies.

I took them off, tossed them in my carry on, cursed under my breath and attempted forget about it...until today. I put them on this morning and immediately remembered my humiliating deformity. In the manner of scientific inquiry, I tried on every other pair of earrings that I own in order to determine if it was my ears that were uneven or the earrings. I am very sad to report that it is, in fact, my ears.

I can't even begin to tell you how, in just a matter of hours, this has dramatically changed my life. IT'S. ALL. I. CAN. THINK. ABOUT. The earrings are like flaming hot daggers stabbing into my collarbones with every lopsided step I take. I have a debilitating crick in my neck from trying to hold my head to the side in a futile attempt to even out my ears. And I am fairly certain that each and every one of my students left my classroom giggling and snickering about it.

I'm not sure what the appropriate road to take is from here. I'm thinking that surgery is the only answer....or perhaps therapy.

I'm Calling Father Time

That old guy is really starting to tick me off. The first thing I am telling him is that he needs to freaking just relax for a minute. He must be spinning in overtime or something. It is already Aug 14th and I have been back at work for an entire WEEK!

What. The. Hell.

Three months of summer vacation? The reason I became a teacher? All gone. Smashed into 9 weeks with the promise of a longer winterbreak. Bleh. That's lame. I need summer! Getting up to come to work every morning makes me want to cry. I think that's a sign....a sign that I need to be a little more serious in my lottery ticket purchasing.

Is That A Sunburn?

So I got a massage today and the first question was, "Thai massage or oil massage?"

In the spirit of experimentation I decided on a Thai massage, not really knowing what that was. As it turns out Thai massage is code for menthol. Why so much menthol in Thailand? I will never know. Menthol gum, menthol candy, and menthol rubbed into just about every crack and crevice of my ever expanding body. And not the wimpy kind of American Vick's VapoRub Menthol, but the bad ass Tiger Balm stuff that the jocks slapped into nerds jock straps.

All in all, the massage was pretty nice, but now my whole body is burning and tingling so badly, I can't tell if it is a sunburn or the Menthol. Probably a lethal combination of both.

Operation Asia

If anyone is keeping track, Operation Asia commences in approx 4 days. Whoot, Whoot.

Considering my current state of boredom...this swelling excitement may cause my head to literally burst. Most of the necessary preparations have been made. My veins are coursing with all sorts of vaccines, my lonely planet guide is highlighted and tabbed (like a true ocd sociopath), and I have watched Bridget Jones, Edge of Reason and taken copious notes. Short of shaving my legs and having an international diplomat ex boyfriend waiting in the wings to bail me out of a Thai prison....I'm ready.

Dear Heavens, I wish it was Saturday.

And I wish I could bring my dog.

Is That a Rug?

I have a whole mess of hair. An exact metric ton, I believe. And it's curly. Getting up and just running a brush thru it is not an option. I take it like a trooper. Heaven knows I'm not one to complain. In fact, people who constantly gripe, "I wish my hair was_____ or ______. It would be so easy. My hair is just so straight," kind of get on my nerves.

Since I have to start from freshly washed in order to do my hair, I have mastered the art of pulling it up...or so I thought. This morning I took my dog to the park, but of course, was not about to shower and blow dry my hair to go sit there. The minute I got to the park some lady said to me, "Wow your hair looks great like that. It looks like one of those hair pieces."

I'm not sure if anyone but a curly haired girl can fully understands the indignity of that comment, but by no means was I flattered. It looks like a hair piece? Are you kidding me? Who says that? That's not a compliment.

Rest assured I went right home, washed my hair and immediatley began the process of fixing my rug.

Officially Dumped

I should have seen it coming, but I was completely blindsided. I didn't even really want a personal trainer to begin with, but that didn't take any of the sting out of being dumped by him. Looking back, I may have played a pretty large part in being dumped, but I think my excuses for cancelling were more than reasonable.

"My dog swallowed a corn cob and I have to take him to the vet."

"I have to go to the doctor and get a typhoid shot."

And my personal favorite, which, I believe was the straw that broke the trainers back, "I just got a pedicure."

Monday, with all of my excuses exhausted, I went to the gym and ended up getting "the talk." I got all of the standard dump lines. "I think this is for the best," followed up with, "I'm no good for you," blah blah blah. He swears that he wasn't dumping me. As he put it, he was setting me up with someone who would be better for me.

Basically, I find the entire concept of personal training wildly awkward. It doesn't matter who the trainer is. I am a chubby girl at heart. Always have been, always will be. Being the center of attention is not my cup of tea. The idea of a person just standing around watching and commenting on my workout is horrifying. Fictitious or not, all I can hear is the trainers interior monologue, "Man this chick is a mess. I can't believe she is so out of shape. Does squishy have a mascot?"

Anyhow- The first couple of half hour workouts with Newby weren't that bad. Then came the first of our one hour sessions. Newby knows how I feel about working out, and is aware of my self consciousness whilst at the gym...and yet still he had some ridiculous new ideas that he tried to trot out and see how they would fly.

I really think that he came up with the most humiliating and demoralizing exercises possible, just for kicks and giggles. First thing I had to do was jump rope with the SHORTEST rope in todo el mundo. Newby, while he is cute as a bugs ear, is about 2 inches shorter than I am and fit as a fiddle, so he had no problem demonstrating how this all should go. That made the hunched over, sweaty, uncoordinated, bouncing boob fiasco all the more humiliating.

Then we moved on to crab-walking, followed that up with bear crawls, with push-up's every couple of steps, and the cherry on top of the humiliation sundae was WHEELBARROW'S!!

My interior monologue went a little something like this, "Seriously, does this fool not know how much I weigh? Has he no soul? This is precisely why I nearly got an F in jr high PE. I can remember exactly, to the day, when it was that I last did wheelbarrow races. I was in 3rd grade with Danior Martin and that didn't end well. I have successfully avoided any semblance of such activities since then, and that is by no means of chance. There is no freaking damn way I am doing this."

What this train of thought translated into was me sitting Indian style on the floor of the aerobics room with my arms folded and shaking my head, "Absolutely not. I refuse to do this. With all do respect, you have got to be eff-ing kidding me. Under no circumstance am I doing wheelbarrow's with you. No way."

Yeah-I didn't win that battle and it was every bit as horrible as I thought it would be. If I didn't remember why I stopped going to the gym in the first place...I can kind of remember now.