sign language doesn't work over the radio

Well, I have resurfaced at the tail end of a dizzying-ly busy December!  Had to pay for Christmas presents so it’s been a lot of flying (8-10 hours a day, 6 days a week ya’ll!) with a lot of parties and events sprinkled in between.  Best news of the month is that I finally got all the credit card debt that I incurred during the times I was earning -$300 (yeah that’s a negative) a week between the slow season of flight instructing and flushing money down the Toilet of Apartment Rental… all paid off!  No more, my friends, no more!

 I did jet-set back over to La…not “LA”, but Louisiana…for the holidays.  Had a nice time hanging out with the family and brought back some nasty allergies.  I blame the weather- the sun did not even come out until I was on my way to the airport to come back to Florida, and even then I only saw it because my flight got delayed 2 hours to “mid-morning” instead of “ass-crack of dawn.”  Surprisingly, the delay was not for bad weather in Atlanta, but for required airline crew rest.  I’m okay with that, I’d rather be late than a statistic- know what I’m sayin’?

 Anyway, this throat crud I brought back with me yesterday is still around and this morning it decided to completely ignore the fact that I pretty much talk for a living so when I woke up, my voice was gone.  Barely a whisper.  This made it interesting when I had to teach one of my Private students to fly a traffic pattern today.  We did brief everything beforehand, but the whispering was catching on.  I’m whispering to him, drawing out stuff on the board, and he’s whispering his questions back to me.  Same thing with, oh, pretty much everyone I talked to.  Isn’t it true that research has shown that we mirror people we’re talking to in order to connect with them?  Yeah, the office today sounded like a library.  My student did a real nice job talking on the radios in the airplane today- he’s still new at it but he only missed one minor radio call (thank god!), which I had to pick up.  To make myself heard, I had to try to amplify my voice through the back of my throat somehow and now I’m wondering if the Orlando tower controllers think Roz from “Monsters Inc” is working at Flight Training Professionals.

 If I get well by the weekend, Scot and I have big plans.  It’s time to start the new floors!  We’re going to bust up all the tile in the kitchen and entryway and pull up the carpet in the rest of the house and install some wood laminate.  After doing 2 full bathroom renovations, we are pros at tile-destroying.  Which reminds me- if you’re in to light reading (or just like funny stuff), download or get the hard copy of the book “If You Were Here” by Jen Lancaster (this is not a paid endorsement)  It’s near and dear to my heart these days-subject is a couple (he a not-so-handy-man, she an author who writes about Amish teenage zombies in love-I know!) who buys a “fixer-upper” and the ridiculousness that endues.  It cracked me up and made glad that when we re-did our bathrooms, it never rained toilets on ME.

 Anyway, have a great New Year and all…I got 4 cookbooks for Christmas this year (set for life now, thanks!) so in addition to the ones I have I’m a step away from appearing on “Hoarders.”  Hey!  New Year’s Resolution- organize cookbook closet.

when crafternoons attack

When I was in 2nd grade, I got a knitting kit.  The whole idea of it was to be able to knit a rope to sew into a little winter cap for one of my dolls.  This thing became an obsession, a perfect escape for any obsessive-compulsive tendencies I might have had.  I knitted the appropriate length of rope for the doll hat, then decided (IDIOT!) that hey, I may as well keep going and make a hat for me instead.  Well, I got the lengh I needed for a Maggie-sized cap and decided (IDIOT!) that I really didn't want to make that either.  So I kept knitting.  I'd put my little project away every now and then for a few months at a time when I got interested in other things, but, like a toxic ex-boyfriend, I'd always go back.  It stayed in my life and I hauled this mass of knitted rope off to college eventually.  I think I touched it once during those 4 years.  I hauled it to Florida with me, in a box.  It became my thing.  A shame box, of sorts- I was hoarding almost 100 feet of knitted rope in a box under my bed, for which I had no purpose whatsoever.  Last month, I got on this kick to finish it.  22 years after I started, I sewed 122 feet of psychadelic, rainbow-colored rope into a (suprisingly small) area rug.  It should feel cathartic or something, but I'm just glad to get the damn thing done.  I'd started calling my project Operation: Knit That Shit, in my quest to push forward and conquer.  This is what I'm now stuck with:

Wait.  That's the thing in progress.  With a damn fine bottle of Riesling to carry me through.  (Seriously, I got it at World Market just because I liked the cat bottle and have every intention of setting it on the windowsill with a Gerber daisy in it, in a bright pretty color like pink or red.  But i digress...)







All together now: "Oooooh, ahhhh..."  Yeah, it makes me fucking dizzy.  I think if you stare at it long enough you'll see a picture of puppies and angel babies or something.  I snapped this picture quick because I can't even look at it without getting nauseous.  Not 5 minutes after I put it on the floor, the cat came over and parked her furry ass on it and didn't move for the rest of the night.  Maybe she was hypnotized?  Sleeeeeeep, sleeeeeeeep....    

Fast forward to this week- I was excited to finish the rug because (get this) I intended to teach myself to crochet.  By watching a video YouTube.  Hey, my momma can NEVER say I had no ambition!  I bought the appropriate yarn (in a little more adult, but equally psychadelic, color.  I know, i know.  What's wrong with me?)  So I watched the video and pretty much spent the first 15 minutes pretty much crocheting a noose with which to hang myself.  That and the cat was being so freacking cliche and attacking the yarn.  (Seriously, Bella, I thought your holier-than-thou cattitude ass was better than that.)  Finally, though, it clicked!  I got on a roll!  I was going to crochet a dishcloth!  A perfect, 20 loop by 20 loop square that I could proudly display on the kitchen wall and save for all prosperity so that my grandchildren could see it one day and understand where all their fabulous homemade blankets and sweaters started from!  The pride I would feel upon finishing my very first crochet project! 

What the fuck?!?  I've made a dress for Stay-At-Home Barbie!  Something went very, very wrong.  This...whatever it is...started at the bottom and went up.  The first 2 rows are alright, and then...well.  Apparantly, I DID get the hang of it because the top is sort of square-ish.  When I finally held it up and wondered what the hell I just created, it was sort of like a domestic version of The Hangover- I came out of a post-crochet frenzied fog with no concept of time, my muscles were sore, and I'm not sure how I ended up with someone else's (really tiny!) clothes.  So, I made a little loop at the top and hung that shit on the Christmas tree.  Yeah, it's totally intentional.  The colors work. 

Hey, Christmas gift idea!  Everyone gets Barbie clothes!  Kidding.  Maybe.  I started working on a scarf earlier this week, which is coming along much, much better now.  It's currently a foot or so long...if I have any friends from back in Louisiana come visit me in the spring, please ask to see it.  If I can produce it to show to you, it will probably be 75 feet long and you have my permission to strangle me with it.

so THAT'S what non-slip rubber tastes like...

I'll get right to the point on this one- it's shockingly bad, yet I was laughing hysterically 24 hours later retelling this story about my incident at work (Am I evil for doing so?  Form your own opinions.)

In short, I was de-briefing one of my customers, a college-age African American male, after our flight.  I was hounding on him a little bit to get ahead on his ground school work because he was at risk of falling behind.  My boss piped in and jokingly said "Man, she sure is a slave driver, isn't she?!?"

Uh...

Awkward.

There's no recovering from that, I don't care who you are.

"felis thugus", or... "the cat rap"

I discovered something else new that happened when I turned 30 today- I developed the ability to spit out horrible Cat Poetry.  Don’t think I’m bragging, but get a load of this jewel of verbal diarrhea that I (sort of) rapped while watching the cat watch me on the other side of the shower door tonight…

“Kitty sittin pretty on all the different rugs (bath rugs)

Kitty don’t want none of mama’s kitty hugs

Counter top wet with the water kitty drunk

Watch out looks like kitty getting crunk”

Seriously???  Even I had to shut up and ask myself when the last time was that I actually HEARD the word “crunk.”  Freshman year of college, I think, and it didn’t make sense then either.  Let it also be known that during this embarrassing display of my (insert name of your least favorite female rapper here) impression, “Kitty” gave me a blank, wide-eyed stare and then promptly ran out of the bathroom.  Probably to go bleach her own brain.  Not that I blame her. 

Yeah, and by the way, by the time I finished documenting this humiliating piece of information for ya'll, I had the song below stuck in my head.  And now so do you.  There.  Ha.

the who, the what, the why

So yesterday I turned 30.  We’d spent the weekend up in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee- Scot likes to take me on surprise trips for occasions so he told me to pack warm clothes then put me in the car for 10 hours at 6am last Friday morning.  We went hiking and I kept my camera glued to my hand the whole time.  You should understand I'm heavily addicted to those home redecorating shows and I know that design is all about proper "staging."  Which is why I had to ask him to hold up for me on the trail because I wanted to take a picture of an interesting piece of fungus on a log (it was pretty!) but first, "Babe, can you take that bright red leaf right there and set it over on this log?  I need to stage this fungus!"  (him: "you're kidding, right?")  Anyway, it’s a beautiful place up there- if you’ve never been I highly recommend it.  Especially this time of year if you’re a southerner like me who never gets to see the autumn leaves change!  Palm trees are-and always will be-green.  Bleh.

Anyway, about the whole “turning thirty” thing…it’s sort of the reason I started this blog.  I can go on about how it’s a “new me” entering a new stage of life or some such bullshit but, no.  It’s not menopause, it’s the end of the 20s for crying out loud.  I remember not really caring all that much when I turned 20.  No new privileges, no new situations, just another day in college that was pretty much like any other.  I think I was ready for it.  Thirty, however, is a grown-up number.  People in their 30s are ADULTS.  As far as I’ve always known, people in their 30s have houses, are married with kids, drive the types of cars that can hold all those kids, work 40 hours a week, and meet a bunch of other mundane stereotypes.  Of course, I know that there’s no standard lifestyle of a person in their 30s (the world is full of eff’d up people and I know that- Thank you, reality TV!)  I started this blog to keep track of and share what I discover about being a new “30-something.”

So here we go- Official Day One (yesterday doesn’t count because all we did was lay around recovering from the weekend trip and whine about our sore muscles) of the next decade (also, no need for some cheesy Tim McGraw song about the next 30 years- yeah, you know the one.  Hell-to-the-no).  When I get home tonight I’m gonna cook something, have a glass of wine, and watch some trashy TV instead of the news.  Baby steps…   

  

my boyfriend's friends probably think i'm a dominatrix

Hi. Let me start out by saying if you're my mother, grandmother, or anyone who sees me once a year, think again whether or not you really want to read this.

Alrighty then.

It's really not THAT bad, but I have a lot of what I call "Welcome to my life" moments. I'm almost done with the long, labor-intensive, muscle cramp-inducing move out of my apartment into my dear, loving, and patient boyfriend’s house a whopping 8 miles away.  Between the two of us, we’re purging enough furniture to furnish a whole other house.  I’ve managed to get most of my crap boxed up and most of it has bypassed the trunk of the car and gone straight into the garbage, lest I actually have to transfer it and unpack it all.  So anyway, I was at work yesterday and Scot (the boyfriend) and two of his friends took a truck over to the old apartment to pack up my mattress and a bookshelf.  They moved the bed out and underneath found this:

Wait, I can explain.

 This particular item was acquired in what we call a “Pirate Christmas” or “White Elephant” gift exchange.  God knows how long ago.  Years.  Anyway, I’m out at the airport and get a text with the above photo and nothing else.  No question, no comment, no nothing.  After I finished laughing and wiped the tears out of my eyes (the mental image of him discovering this supposedly hidden side of me in front of the guys left me in stitches), I explained the game’s origins.  Yes, I opened it at one point and hot damn if it didn’t look way to freaking complicated.  Last thing I’d want to do is have to pause and read the instructions again, right?  I don’t think I can keep 1,000, uh, games(?) straight.  Pass.  Under the bed it went until Indiana Freaking Jones and his crew discovered it. 

(By the way, this particular item did NOT go in the trash- someone’s getting it for Christmas, I just don’t know who yet.  Don’t worry mom, it’s not you.  I’m impressed if you made it down this far!)

Anyway folks, this was Episode 1.  More background info next time, see you then.