Happy Monday everyone, and welcome to a brand new week!
I found this, and simply must share it with you. It’s a movie mash-up…Between The Muppets Movie and Ocean’s 11. It. Is. Awesome.
Watch, enjoy, soldier on! Monday is but one day, and it’s followed by Tuesday, which is the day of the week that’s as far away from Monday as possible! So really, you’re almost there!
You know how when you’re on vacation, you eat more than you should of things you should never really eat at all because hey, you’re on vacation? And then you get home from vacation and your pants don’t fit and you want to shame-eat a box of brownies but then the self-loathing kicks in and you throw the brownies in the trash and then briefly consider eating them out of the trash before covering them in dish soap and forcing yourself to exit the kitchen?
Yeah. Let’s just say that I had a love affair with Crunch bars and Cashew Clusters last week and my stomach is loudly protesting the lack of snack food right now. I’m going to attempt to drown out my gastrointestinal outrage by sharing some nonsense with you.
Specifically, the nonsense that leads people to my blog when they search for these things on the Internet. I have this nifty thing called Google Analytics that enables me to spy on how many people come hang out on my blog, how they find me, which posts they like most, etc. It also tells me what keyword searches people do that lead them to wash up on the shores here.
I did a post like this a long time ago, so here’s the updated version. I now present to you the top ten most ridiculous search queries that lead people to my blog:
For those of you who have gotten married, you know how, in the weeks leading up to your wedding, you plan and anticipate and dream and it feels like the day takes on the gravity of a small sun because it’s imbued with all the thoughts you heap onto it in the weeks and months beforehand?
And then the big day is upon you, and you keep telling yourself to slow down and savor the moments but it’s nigh impossible and before you know it you’re getting dressed and kissing friends and family members and walking down the aisle and then it’s mazel tov and cake and riding away into the sunset? And you’re so tired you can barely keep your eyes open? And then you wake up the next morning feeling like a tidal wave deposited you in bed the night before?
That’s kind of how I feel about Wesley’s birthday party last weekend. On a much smaller scale than a wedding, but it did take a lot of planning and scheming, and it feels like it was over so quickly! For however quickly it felt like it was over, though, I know Wes had an excellent time.
There was beer (featuring custom beer labels printed by my awesome company, naturally). All company pimp-age aside, the custom beer labels I had printed for Wes’ party were a lot of fun. There were four labels, and each featured a Wes Fact, such as:
-Wes can kill a housefly using only a dishtowel…And his mind powers.
-Wes once faced off against Jimi Hendrix…Jimi Hendrix wept.
-Wes killed a dinosaur in hand-to-claw combat…And then carved it up for dinner.
I also had custom water bottle labels printed featuring Yoda and Malcolm Reynolds (from Firefly, for the uninitiated), and those were silly and fun. At the very least, it gave unintroduced people at the party something to chat about!
I also made sure Wes got to pulverize a pinata with a samurai sword. He’d heard about a party where this was done (albeit the adults were fully trashed when it happened, thereby making it awesome and life-threatening) and declared it a fantastic idea, so I knew I had to arrange for it to happen at his party.
Sure, a few people might think it’s ridiculous for a full-grown 30 year old man to beat the crap out of a pinata with a sword, but those people are obviously not the kind of people who would understand Yoda water bottles either. Needless to say, the pinata was felled and Wes felt like quite the conquering hero.
My friend Nicole took a picture of Wes holding the decapitated head of the dragon pinata and looking completely insane, so that’ll be fun to use for blackmail later.
What was really incredible to me, though, was the way all our family and friends helped make the day happen for Wes. Throughout the day, I looked around and constantly saw someone grilling or cleaning up or setting up, and it made me feel so humbled and grateful to have so many people in my life who are willing to work hard on a Sunday afternoon to make my husband’s birthday the best day possible.
So that’s that. Wes is 30, he won four games of volleyball, vanquished a dragon, and ate the world’s biggest cupcake:
Game, set, match. He’s officially been inducted into his 30’s, and who knows what could happen when the induction itself is so silly? He met and married his wife, started and flourished at two careers, bought a home, bought three cars, and had his first child during his 20’s. The bar’s been set pretty high, but as long as he doesn’t meet any other future wives in his 30’s I reckon they’ll be just as if not more awesome.
I love watching people dance. Ballet, tap, hip-hop, breakdancing, ballroom, I really don’t care as long as the person’s decent. I was on a huge Dancing With the Stars kick for awhile there, and because I was freshly postpartum and breastfeeding I spent a goodly portion of my viewing time crying.
I used to watch the Classical Arts Showcase (I’m not sure if they have that in your area. It was on channel 80-something and was 24 hours a day of classical arts programming. Operas, ballets, that kind of thing) and look forward to the ballets. I still enjoy dance movies like Save the Last Dance and Center Stage. I just like watching people dance, and as long as the storyline’s not too hideous I guess I’m not too picky.
Anyway, that was 100+ words all to lead up to my new thing, which is called The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers. It’s only on Hulu (which, if you don’t know what Hulu is, it’s only TV on the Internet, which is to say it’s awesome), and it’s essentially a story broken into short episodes. I’ve watched a few episodes, and from what I can glean, there are bad guys and good guys.
The story’s not the important part, though. What’s important is the dancing. The dancing is incredible! I’ve seen three episodes, and each episode features dancers who can do extraordinary things (hence the name I guess). They have a guy who can do The Robot in such a way that he barely even looks human, and breakdancers who do things I had no idea a human body could do without benefit of wires and pulleys.
Definitely check it out if you want a short break and find yourself on the computer with some spare time. If you hate it, you never have to take a recommendation from me again.
Inspired by all that dancing, I rented a few workout DVD’s and tried one of them out yesterday. It was, and I quote, a “Fat Blasting Dance Workout” and I’m fairly certain the only thing that got blasted was my self esteem. They just go so freaking fast through the instructions, how is a barely coordinated, long-limbed, rarely mobile person like myself supposed to keep up?
There was one move I mastered, however, which involved throwing both my hands in the air. You better believe I mastered that one.
It looked a lot like this, only I was bigger.
All this to say, you won’t be seeing me on featured among The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers any time soon. I’m good at a lot of things, but my rug cutting abilities are only extraordinary in that they are exceptionally clumsy and funny-looking.
I don’t do drugs. Never have (not even the seemingly obligatory toke in college), never will, it’s just not my cup of tea. My world is colorful and ludicrous enough without chemical enhancement, thankssomuch.
Why then, did I almost get arrested for drug possession this weekend?
Because I’m a bad driver, that’s why. I was driving home from the grocery store on Saturday, my trunk full of food and my head full of fatigue thanks to a few sleepless nights with an inexplicably fussy baby (teething? growth spurt? the vapors?). I was stopped at an intersection, first in line, when an ambulance came squealing up behind me.
Seeing as how I was in a position to free up the intersection so the ambulance could go through, I scooted into the intersection and pulled over to the side. The ambulance went by in a flurry of lights, and I checked my blind spot and pulled back into traffic.
Apparently I pulled right ahead of a police officer, cutting him off and forcing him to slam on his brakes. To my infinite chagrin, I didn’t even know he was there until he flashed his lights and pulled me over. As I pulled over, I realized I had my cell phone in my hand, having been interrupted in the act of putting it back in my purse by the ambulance.
Uh oh. I was fairly certain he was going to give me a ticket for texting while driving, even though I wasn’t doing anything of the sort.
He approached my window and I handed over my license. I explained that I was wasn’t texting, he explained that that didn’t necessarily mean I wasn’t a bad driver, I agreed, and he asked for my insurance and registration. I was driving Wes’ car, so it took me awhile to find the requested materials.
Just as I found them, someone smoking weed drove by and suddenly the officer’s asking me whether he smells something he shouldn’t.
To be honest, at first I thought he was asking whether I was flatulent. Then, dawning horror gave way to incredulity as I sputtered something like, “No. Um, NO! I’m a mother! I’m breastfeeding! I have a baby! I would never do drugs!”
He smirked, and replied that since it was my husband’s car, maybe he had something in there that maybe he shouldn’t.
At this point I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. On the one hand, I know my husband and I know he doesn’t do drugs, nor does he ferry them around. On the other hand, if everyone knew their husbands as well as they thought they did, there wouldn’t be so many Lifetime movies with sad, crying wives, would there?
I assured him there were no drugs in the car, and he said he’d go run my license and that the smell had better be gone by the time he got back. Suffice it to say, the smell was gone and he let me go with a warning to be less harebrained.
And that’s the story of how I almost got arrested for drug possession.
