Emotional Breakdown Two, Electric Bugaloo

So yesterday afternoon was not good.

I was burnt out and tired and I have had A LOT of solo baby time lately and buying a house is mega super uber stressful.  Everyone and their mailman has an opinion for me and I alternate between thinking “Oh dear god, please let them not agree to move the water heater so we can get out now and buy a bigger house” and “Dear god if they won’t agree to move the water heater we are so so so effed and I won’t get my house and it’s the only house we can afford in a semi decent neighborhood oh gawd where will we live.”

I thought I was handling the stress really well, but then the numbers on the scale starting going up and all of a sudden it got much hotter and I was forced to admit that I have only one pair of shorts that fit me.  And I couldn’t find those.  And I went and looked at Target this weekend for more shorts and there was NOTHING. Just nothing.  It was like a bargain hunting maniac in my exact size had swept through and left nothing but crumbs and elastic waisted gauchos in her wake.

So then yesterday it got hot and Neurotically Clean Co Worker was coming over to my dirty ass house for after work beers and I had just spent 24 hours working on Etsy and I had gotten essentially nowhere and all the stuff left to pack in the house was too high for me to reach and I could not find my one effing pair of shorts.  I have stuff packed up in my closet to take with me if my best friend ever goes into labor and I have stuff packed up in the garage that doesn’t fit me and I have duffel bags full of stuff to take to the new house and I started out methodically poking through them and then I am not sure what happened but I was filled with this hot prickly rage and I just started to whip clothes out of bags and drawers and bins and suitcases until both bedrooms were filled with a huge mound of clothes and Eli was sliding around on all of them and I was crying and shaking and red hot mad and then I emailed Mr. E  a raging email because his phone was out of batteries again and then he called me and I told him I was experiencing a Britney style break with reality and he LAUGHED at me and told me to buy some shorts.

The good news is that I went through all the clothes in the giant heap and I got rid of a bunch of them and as I was going through everything I had the realization that because of my childhood when I never got any new clothes, when I was chronically uncool and sported pink elastic waist corduroys,  I am a bit of a clothes hoarder. I don’t feel right unless I have drawers jammed full of t shirts and my closets are bursting, but the sad truth is that I wear about a sixteenth of that stuff and most of it doesn’t fit or doesn’t look right or just doesn’t do it for me.  And so yesterday I got rid of anything and everything that doesn’t make me feel GREAT when I wear it.  Out it went. And I won’t lie - I do still have a bin of great size 4 and size 6 clothes that I love, and I’m not ready to get rid of that yet and if I am ever ready to work that hard again to be that size again I am going to have a kick ass wardrobe ready to go.

BUt in the meantime, I need some shorts. So this morning I got online and due to my extreme awesomeness and the power of the internet coupon I managed to get four pairs of underpants, five t shirts, 4 tank tops, and 3 pairs of shorts for a squidge over 200 bucks. Not  bad, not bad at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I would much rather have been buying a purse or this kick ass skirt I just found at Anthropologie but if you knew how many skirts I have compared to the amount of skirts I wear you would agree, I just don’t need skirts.  For some reason I have been putting off buying regular old clothes that actually fit me for quite some time and now it’s done and when I return half this stuff I am so buying that anthropologie skirt, you guys, it’s just super gorgeous.

Now. Does anyone have a J Crew coupon code? I could use a few more t shirts.

The Great Plant Escape

If I could change any one thing about myself - if I could keep any one thing from being passed on to my children, it wouldn’t be my fat thighs or my brown hair or my height (I’m 5′2″ on a good day). I wouldn’t change my stubborness or my proclivity for bad teen dramas or my love of green beans from the can. But I just recently realized that I really really wish I cared less, much less, about what other people think of me. I worry way way way too much about impressing people. I am much too concerned about whether people think my house is clean or that I look fatter than the last time they saw me or if they think my shoes cost a lot or my purse is cute or I have good taste in couches or baby clothes. Very Fastidious Co Worker is coming over tonight and my house is NOT clean and I have neither the time nor the energy to scrape bananas and waffles off the kitchen floor and it is kiling me. The bug person just arrived and I answered the door so NOT wearing a bra and that wasn’t the greatest impression ever made either. But do any of these things really make a difference in the long run? I’ll never see either of these two people ever again. Who cares what they think of me and my dirty house and my lady bazzers?

Sadly, I care. Way way way way too much.

So you will excuse the obvious disconnect occuring here today when I tell you that because I am psychotic, it stresses me out to no end when I ask for opinions about things on this here blog and I don’t get the answer I want to hear. I assume that I simply haven’t explained it properly and you must not be understanding things because otherwise, duh, you’d agree with me.

So let me be perfectly clear. I live in a rented house. I am moving out at the end of the month. We have always paid our rent on time. Did I mention we are RENTERS? I am not breaking my lease. I am not sneaking out without giving notice. I am not welching on rent or stealing light fixtures or subletting. I am not selling anything to anyone. I RENT MY HOUSE.

When we moved in here, there were three empty brick planters in the backyard. I cleaned them up, I added dirt, I broke up the dirt that was there already, I bought some dahlias with my own money and planted them myself. They were not here when I got here, no one else paid for them. I watered them and weeded them and fed them and cut them back for the winter. When I leave my RENTED house, I want to take MY flowers, that were not here before, that I PAID FOR WITH MY OWN MONEY, with me. I am not going to leave gaping holes in the yard, I am not going to steal trees or dirt or planters or anything that was here when I moved in. I’m thinking this isn’t a big deal, and that maybe if you told me before that you thought this was illegal that you might have been confused?

Feel free to leave me a comment and agree with me on this, because if you don’t I’m just going to steal take the flowers with me anyway, but I’ll be consumed with paralyzing doubt while I do it.

God, I Do Love A Bargain

Remember when I posted about how much my skin was pissing me off?

Since then I decided I would take a radical step that I had been considering for some time and I decided I would stop slathering my skin with various drying agents and acids and I would just wash it twice a day with mild soap and then put some kind of moisturizing lotion on it.  No stripping, drying, scrubbing, oil free, oil drying, acid, zapping, or blasting.

It has totally worked.  Well, sort of.

I went and visited the Clinique counter and I got some face wash and some moisturizing lotion and as long as I wash my face twice a day and then put the lotion on, things are MUCH better.

I have a lot of breakouts right now because I get lazy and I don’t shower (I know, gross!) or I don’t wash my face at night and all hell breaks out.

But when I use it I am very happy with the Clinique.

It’s phthalate free, which is super important to me, and if you join the Club Clinique thingee online, they send you emails to let you know about free shipping specials. Today I got one such email and ended up ordering some lotion I needed, and I got free shipping and FIVE free samples. Two because I was ordering part of the Three Step line, and two because I am a Clinique Club person and one because I am awesome. OK, maybe I only got four free samples, whatever.  Free samples = awesome.

Also, I would love to give you a review of the Mario Badescu drying lotion I finally caved and ordered but it’s not freaking here yet. What gives, Mr. Badescu?

Also, is this weird? I can’t get the taste of eggnog out of my mouth. I don’t even like eggnog. Good God.

Also, I just signed and initialed seventy baziliion documents relating to my mortgage and I have a question. Am I supposed to actually read this shit? Because I so did not, and I am totally seeing myself marching up the steps to the poorhouse, swathed in gray rags, holding a tin cup and a scrap of bread, muttering “I guess I should have read those mortgage documents.”

For You, Before You Are Born

I met your mother a life time ago, sitting on the sidelines of gym class.

And now, you are almost here.

( You might want to get a move on with that, by the way. Just a suggestion.)

I almost never think of you as a baby.  I’ve got no idea what you will look like on the day you are born.

Instead, I see a 15 year old Elena, an astonishing creature none of us could have imagined, beautiful, freckled, tall, with your mother’s long skinny legs, and gray eyes and dark hair, sitting on my front porch, wearing flip flops and shorts, eating my cookies and asking me about boys, telling me how your mom has messed up something again, complaining that she won’t let you bleach your hair or do your oral report on Hitler.

And I’ll tell you today what I’ll always tell you, about what I’ve learned in my life so far.  About how your  mother has been hurt in the same ways I have been hurt. How I understand her, next to myself, better than most anyone in the world.  She’s not perfect. She’s not an angel.  But she already loves you, will love you, will always love with you, with the fiercest kind of love a person can hope for.  It’s a fiery determined intensely loyal kind of love and it never goes out and the women who are lucky enough to earn it and to live up to it are the luckiest people in the world.

I know because I am one of those women.  And now you are too.

I hope and pray that you have an extraordinary life, but I know above all else that you will have an extraordinary mother.

And also?

I will always have gum.

Million Dollar Ideas

I am a little crazed with Etsy right now so I am just stopping in to say hi.

And also to announce that I have had so many million dollar ideas lately it’s not even funny.

For example, why don’t they get off their asses already and make some all pink bags of Starbursts? I would so buy those.

Also, there so should be an organic latte at Starbucks.  I can’t believe that’s not an option yet considering the wave of obsesso organic green freakitude that appears to be sweeping the nation. They do have a special web site where you can send your “coffee ideas” but I am so sure. I am not giving them my million dollar idea for FREE.

I got a gift certificate for a massage for mother;s day and I have to admit I have NEVER HAD A MASSAGE! Isn’t that the craziness?  So here is my question I am wondering about which is should I be nervous about all of the naked touching?  I mean, can leave my underpants on?

Speaking of which, panties is one of my top ten hated words and I refuse to use it ever. My other top ten hated words are moist, crotch, lips, and budding. I know that isn’t ten words but I like to have room to grow. Also, I think Mr. E likes to use all of these words together as often as possible just to annoy me. Who says romance is dead?

So I can’t stop thinking about last week’s Gossip Girl ending and how effing awesome it was.  Then I was forced to admit that I have a HUGE girl crush on Blake Lively.  Not like I want to make out with her though, more like I wish I was her and I think she is the bees knees.  At times past I have also  had girl crushes on Keri Russell, Katie Holmes, whoever it is that plays Sam on General Hospital, Kate Bosworth, Ali Larter, Michelle Rodriguez, and the one, the only, Queen Latifah. I will admit I still love the Queen. She just seems so cool and awesome. I actually saw Last Holiday in the theater and if that’s not a sign of a girl crush I don’t know what is.

So anyone out there have any good girl crushes? Or million dollar ideas? Or Top Ten Most Hated Words? I’ll just be sitting here frantically sewing and picking all the pink starbursts out of the bag.

Orange = blech.

ETA Flickr Link - If The Table Fits…

Apparently they’ll sell houses to just about anybody these days.

Anyway, they took our second offer, and although it could still all fall apart when they refuse to move the water heater out of the kitchen, it looks like we’re on our way to owning a house.

Pictures on Flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/e_and_e/

Happy Friday! I am so excited that I don’t have to go look at more filthy ranch houses this weekend, you don’t even know.

E.F.F.

Yesterday someone at work told my mom that she was her new BFF, and my mom had to get on the horn and call up all of her kids because she had no idea what the heck a BFF was, and I didn’t answer the phone and my brother didn’t answer the phone, and so my mom called Annie and asked her if she knew what it meant when someone calls you their BFF, and my sister said, solemnly

“Mom, I can’t help you, I have no idea what an EFF is.”

Apparently, though, once my mom cleared things up and enunciated Annie said “Oh!!!!!!!!!!! Sheesh, MOM! Everyone knows what a BFF is! It’s best friends forever!”

Thank goodness we got that cleared up.

Also, are there people in the world who don’t just google these things?

Dear Google, Should I buy a very tiny house?

Hmmm. Google was…noncommital. Maybe I should ask my sister.

Happiness Is…

watching 27 Dresses while Janssen’s cake bakes in the oven and the baby takes a nap.

Best Diet Ever

Cripes, what’s new?

The other day on Flickr I accidentally posted a picture of my ta tas, so that was fun. Don’t bother looking over there now, perverts, I deleted it, but not before half of Mr. E’s family saw it. Awesome! Whatever. We live in California now, they’re lucky I even wear clothes. Peace and free love and hits from the bong and all that, man, you know.

PS I am not really doing bong hits right now, I totally promise. I am way way way waaaaaaay too uptight to do any kind of drugs and I canceled my subscription to High Times many years ago, if you get my drift. I am also so boring that I rarely drink. Well, maybe it’s not that I am too boring to drink, I think it’s more like my rampant ADD gets in the way of me actually drinking enough for it to matter. Sometimes I feel like I could really use a drink and I’ll pour myself a glass of wine or a nice vodka tonic and then I’ll have two sips of it and get distracted by laundry or the J Crew catalog or the internets and I’ll put the glass down somewhere and forget about it and that’s that. Most of the time Mr. E ends up drinking whatever I end up leaving lying around. Pretty much the only thing he ever cleans up is left over wine. Nice.

We’re going back to look at the tiny midget house on Thursday. I’m going to bring my measuring tape so I can measure the hall nook area thingee and if my $50 table from Target fits in there I’m totally taking it as a sign. For some reason I am unconcerned about buying a house with only two bedrooms or whether or not there’s a spot for a tv in the living room. My main concerns are actually whether or not there’s going to be a spot for all the crap we have in our bathroom and whether or not my Target hall table will fit in the hallway and yes, I am prepared to make a gajillion dollar decision based totally around furniture from Target.

In all fairness, it is a really nice $50 table.

I also just found out that the person who owns the house we are talking ourselves into and out of on an hourly basis is kind of a total pain in the ass, so that should be fun.

I guess because Dooce went on some crappy morning show we’re all having the conversation about mommybloggers again and whether they suck or whether they are awesome or whether we hate them or love them or blah blah blah. These conversations really don’t interest me because I could care less, pretty much, other than the fact that the term “mommy” anything makes me want barf, but also because honestly, I don’t give a shit what label you put on yourself or what you write about. If you’re funny and interesting and you’re a good writer, I’ll read your blog, and I don’t care if you have ads or pictures of your kids or if you have a partial feed or you write about woodchucks or going to prison or taking pictures of flowers or whatever. I just don’t care.

I never once thought about not writing about my child because I write about my life and he’s part of my life, and honestly if he is someday horrified by my blog, well, he can get in line. I write for one reason and one reason only, and that’s because I have these words in me and if I don’t get them out something inside me dies. That’s it. So who cares about the rest, really? I certainly do not.

Also, assuming we crack the facade of this bizitch who owns the house we might buy and assuming my coffee table fits, is it shady for me to dig up the dahlias I planted when we moved into this house and bring them with me and replant them? I’ve been coaxing these bastards along for two years and they’re finally coming into their own and also I will be so poor (see house payment) I won’t be able to afford anything else to plant in the front yard and I need to impress my future neighbors so they don’t hate me and so I can foist my child off on them and go to the movies.

Stress makes me feel really sick to my stomach and my appetite goes to hell. Buying a house has turned out to be the best diet ever. I just threw out!!!! two thirds of an ICE CREAM SANDWICH. I know. I know! Sign of the apocalypse, right here.

I ordered that Mario Badescu drying lotion business after my skin decided to just totally completely freak out last weekend. I had to take some kind of action, and the kind with the credit card is the kind I am best at. I expect to hate it, but I’ll let you know.

The Secret of Real Estate, Revealed

So we maybe maybe maybe maybe found a house to buy, I’m not sure. It’s still all very much in the “what if” planning phase and unfortunately part of the “what if planning phase” is turning out to be the “What if we can only afford a 940 square foot house built for elves - what do we do with our couches and our tv and our baby?” phase. So there’s that.

Part of me thinks it could be kind of fun to re learn how to live in a very small space. I enjoy thinking of life’s challenges as marvelous adventures. But another part of me is remembering the house as built for midgets and wondering if we’ll feel closed in and cramped the whole time we live there. I don’t want to marvelous adventure myself into a hideous divorce causing nightmare.

We’ll see. We have some things we’d have to work out anyway, so perhaps the fates will decide. Although I do have to ask, who here thinks a water heater IN THE KITCHEN is a good idea? Yeah, me neither.

This weekend was intense - we saw houses so dirty that we all had to clean our hands off with wet wipes after we got back in the car - but I love my realtor, so that helps, and I was so so so so proud of my husband and my son and also myself. We maintained such an even keel that I barely recognized us. There was that brief incident when I really had to pee and the Starbucks bathroom was broken and the Jamba Juice person LIED to my face and told me they had no bathroom and then Mr. E told me to buy something from the mexican restaurant so I could use their bathroom even though I didn’t want anything from the mexican restaurant, but overall, I maintained. At times it was actually kind of…fun.

I am sure you all are laughing your asses off at me and predicting (likely correctly) that in four weeks I will once again be the Debbie Downer you all know and love as I simultaneously curse real estate, sacramento, all men, escrow, and life as we know it, but for now I am enjoying not being a constant arbiter of doom, so I’m going to go with it.

Also, it turns out I am ready to make mah millions, because I have totally cracked the secret of the real estate business! Are you ready? Here it is:

location, location, location.

Also, in case that wasn’t enough for you, I also think it just might be a good idea, just maybe? To buy low, and sell high.

I know. Am genius. Must write book. Must patent system. Will make bajillions.

Will buy groceries with gold dubloons.

If you live in a small house, feel free to email me and tell me awesome and lovely it is. If you live in a large house, just keep it to yourself. Nobody likes a show off.