Easily influenced

I know, I know... It's been a really long time. See, I used to email my in-laws really often to keep them up to date about our lives and stay close to them considering we live so far away. But the injustice was, my poor parents - who live only one hour away and who I rarely email and almost never call - hear about us much less than my in-laws! So I started another blog intended for family only. That way they can all be equal.

The problem has been, of course, to update both blogs frequently, essentially doubling over night the amount of writing I need to do (and the amount of time spent writing). Obviously, since I haven't updated this blog in 2 weeks, I'm doing a terrible job at balancing the two. I will try harder!

The subject for today? TV.

No, I won't say anything about violence and sex on TV. I won't say anything about it's debilitating effect on the brain. I'm talking about how it so easily influences me in the weirdest way.

We don't have cable so we usually rent a whole season of a TV show on DVD from Netflix. That means that instead of having a balanced variety in our TV diet like most cable-watchers, we obsess over one show then move one to the next. When I first met Captain Awesome, he had never watched "House". I was like "are you crazy, it's the BEST show EVER. I have the first season on DVD, wanna watch it?". There started our first few dates, eating donuts at 3AM watching 7 episodes in a row.

I haven't gotten to the weird part yet. The weird influence is that while I watched a lot of House, I wanted to become a doctor. You get where this is going.

"House"/"Scrubs" = Doctor
"True Calling" = Pathologist
"Numbers" = Mathematician
"Grey's Anatomy" = Surgeon
"Pushing Daisies" = Baker/Bakery shop owner
"Worst Week" = Vet
"Bones" = Anthropologist

It's seriously a problem, because I've thought so many times "aww, I'm just going to quit my job and go back to school to become a {job matching the show of the hour}". And I'm not kidding, I very seriously considerd a few of those options. When in reality, I really do love what I do. I think part of problem is, I love doing a lot of different things and it's hard for me to be tied down to just ONE field.

Or ok, maybe I'm just easily influenced.

Anyway, the principle also applies to things outside of work...

"How I Met Your Mother" = Drink more
"Cowbow Bepop"/"Azumanga Daioh" = Learn Japanese
"Life" = Become more zen
"Lie to Me" = Eat more kid-appropriate food
"What not to wear" = Put more effort on my appearance
"Cashmere Mafia"/"Lipstick Jungle" = Have more girl friends
"Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" = volunteer
"Dr. 90210" = Get a boob job
"Extras" = Talk with a british accent (I'm the worst person in the world at doing accents)
"Girlmore Girls" = Make more cultural references that no one gets
"Private Practive" = I should dye my hair red again...

How about you, has a show ever made you wish you were something else/did something more or less?

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

So shortly after I posted my last blog entry about the betcha-didn't-knows, I received a comment from drollgirl who said she thought it was really funny. Well flattered as I was, I bragged to Captain Awesome that someone thought I was funny, and he asked to read my post!

Captain Awesome never reads my blog. It's not that he doesn't care, it's just that he figured I needed some privacy. Which I probably do, even though I keep no secrets from him, it's nice to have this little space to vent.

Anyway, so he gets to the part about him never closing cupboard doors, and he starts laughing. Then I realize why he's laughing and yell "shit, no! You weren't supposed to read that!!"

But too late!

He said he had NO idea. I explained that opened cupboard doors give me the eebie jeebies, it's like something bad is going to happen, it's unfinished business, it's just plain scary. And my argument is this: Remember in The Sixth Sense the mom walks away from the kitchen and then comes back two seconds later and ALL the cupboard doors are open?! See, everyone thinks opened cupboard doors are scary! Opened cupboard doors made the movie scary. QED motherfuckers, QED.

Anyway, he promised he'd be more careful about it. On the other hand, he did gently reminded me that he finds dental floss everywhere and I should be more careful too. Yeah well so I floss while I watch TV, and yeah I'm too lazy to get up and put the used floss in the garbage can right away, so leave it on a tissue or a dirty plate or an empty glass, and yeah I may - sometimes - forget it there. Hey, there's a price to pay for proper dental hygiene!

Betcha Didn't Know

Wow, here I am barely getting started with my crazy Twilight addiction (only read the first book so far) and I'm already talking about Edward this and Edward that... It's driving Captain Awesome crazy. But he's having a great time making fun of me about it, so we're even.

Anywho, "Barking Mad" is hosting a Twilight contest! So I have to enter it, to feed my Edward-o-mania madness. All you have to do is post something your readers didn't know. As it turns out, Captain Awesome vetoed the plans to paint the second bedroom today. So now I have totally have time to submit a post for the contest!

I was rummaging for a really juicy story... But I'm pretty much an open book of boring, being the good girl that I am (if you substract the sailor mouth). So I'll give you little tidbits of unknown information instead:

1. I'm obsessed with flossing and utterly outraged at the price of dental floss. $4 for a little bit of string, seriously?! I'm honestly considering buying dental floss from an online dental supplier (case of 144 for $110, score!)... My only concern: storage space.

2. The only kind of dental floss I will use is waxed and unflavored, which is fucking impossible to find. Am I really the only person out there who hates mint-flavored dental floss?!

(sorry for the dental floss theme so far)

3. Muscular forearms are a huge turn on for me. It's what attracted me to Captain Awesome in the first place. Forearms. Weird, I know.

(On a side note, I bet Edward would have fantastic forearms)

4. I hate lying. My boss always gives me random suggestions (check your 401k, have buttermilk for stomach ache, have tumeric for sore throat) and he won't stop harassing me until I do it. I know I could lie and say that I did it and he'd leave me alone. But I can't.

5. It drives me nuts that Captain Awesome leaves cupboard/pantry/closet doors open. All. The. Time. He gets a plate, doesn't close the cupboard door. Gets a sweatshirt, doesn't close the closet door. But I figured I have enough OCD issues that he already has to deal with, I don't want to bother him with yet another one. So I walk behind him and close them. Pick your battles.

6. I dated a huge pothead for almost 5 years. When I broke up with him and moved to Santa Barbara, I accepted the first room for rent where the potential roomie didn't ask during the walk-through "are you cool about me smoking weed?", which sadly took a while. I never wanted to see the stuff again. And thankfully, I haven't.

7. I keep buying carrots cause you can snack on them and it's healthy. But I don't actually like carrots and usually never eat them. Just toss 'em when they're bad and buy more.

8. I'm a huge mimicker. It's not voluntary. I just absorb the speech patterns and expressions of the people I see most often. I know most people do that involuntarily to a certain extent, but it's 10 times worst with me.

9. In high school, I was a huge skater punk girl. Punk clothes. Punk music. Punk green hair. I had promotional poster of skateboard wheels on my walls for god's sake. Wheels! You'd never believe I'm the same person now, all in pink. (Arguably, I only had to change one letter. And also everyone makes stupid choices when they're teenagers, so I shouldn't be too embarassed.)

10. I cry from pure unadultered joy at the sight of baby animals.

Six Word Saturday

Because I won't have time for a wordy post today... Six Word Saturday!

Fabric Shopping. Painting walls. Buying Twilight!

For more six word saturday, visit Show My Face.

I need....

I saw one blogger (sorry, don't remember who!) recently do a meme where you search "{your name} needs" in Google and see what comes up. Because I have time to kill and I'm too tired to come up with anything intelligent, I will do the meme! Super fun!

I used my real name in the google search, but here I'll just write Smalls instead. Of course you could do some reverse engineering to figure my name but I'm assuming no one cares.

On to the meme. My search results:

1) {Smalls} needs {CaptainAwesome}'s help again, and when he complies, he is the target of revenge.
This is actually pretty cool. Apparently there's a romance novel out there with the lead characters are woman with my name and a man with my husband's name!

2) Fudgemagiggers! No, that's not something "my name needs", it's my swear word of the day. My problem is some other blogger with my name did this meme already and their results are my result #2! I could basically copy and paste her list. Grunts. I will ignore her and do the work myself.

3) {Smalls} needs my help with hat shopping. How could she wear that in front of Martha?
Apparently I needs lots of help from lots of people. And yes, how COULD I wear THAT in front of Martha?! Sounds like I'm a slut.

4) {Smalls} needs a Pandore library or any other program library.
I had to look up what a Pandore library was. Google says it's "a standardized library of image processing operators". Cool, the other girl with my name is also a programmer!

5) {Smalls} needs java version 1.5.0.
Once again, we are both programmers!

6) {Smalls} needs a SmARTIST Facebook page.
The other girl with my name is clearly much cooler than me, cause I have no idea what that is.

7) {Smalls} needs a page turner.
Yes, I would love someone to turn my pages!

8) {Smalls} needs to go! She sucks!
I'm going to go cry now :(

9) {Smalls} needs water, there is one tiny hotspot in the river about the size of her hand from which she is allowed to fetch some.
Aww, so sad.

10) {Smalls} needs to go buy a lottery ticket.
Wait, is this a sign? Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket.

A St. Patrick's day miracle

Well it's a St. Patrick's miracle. St. Patrick himself came down and did me a little St-Patrick's day favor. I started my period this morning! Yes, St Patrick would be proud I correlated him to my period. Another religion no-no, I guess I'm going to hell. Sorry, maybe the whole thing is TMI and I'm sure no one wants the 411 on my uterus status, but heck, you got it anyway. Afterall, it's the only obvious way I can convincingly convey that I'm officially not pregnant (bummer!) and definitively drinking tonight (yay!). Of course I'd a thousand time rather be pregnant and sober (both of which I am not) than drunk (which I am), but if there's any day to find out that you're not pregnant it's St Patrick's day.

Anyway, since you all saw my post yesterday I thought you'd be glad to know all my pregnancy symptoms were 100% fake. Not that I was purposefully faking it of course, but simply completely and utterly imagining it. And my mind believed it too. Believed it so much that today I had to buy "sanitary products" for the bathroom vending machine thing-in-the-wall cause I was not at all prepared for this outcome. Of course, for those of you who have experienced the thing-in-the-wall's product, you'd know it's so thick I might as well have shoved a whole roll of paper towels in my panties. Ridiculous, right?

In any case, it's Tuesday and I'd love to participate in Tova's Totally Awkward Tuesdays. Except of course I either have no awkward moments or I have no sense of shame, cause I am fresh out of stories eventhough I participated only twice. Of the two, I'm assuming the second one is dead-on.

In other news, I received today my Kraft "Food & Family" magazine. I started a blog before this one but my family got access to it so I shut it down. I wanted my blog to be my venting space, not my watch-what-you-say place. So anyway, back to the Kraft magazine, here are my superb words about it, copied and pasted by yours truely from my previous blog.

The dream of simpler days

There are very few days when I get excited about mail. On a daily basis, I get about 3 credit card offers, a few catalogs for stores I've never shopped at, and possibly a few bills. Every day, I flip through the envelops, but nothing gets opened. I toss it in our mail wicker basket. We open our mail about 3 times a year. Now, I am known for exaggerating, I exaggerate like 5 billion times a day, but this I kid you not. 3 times a year. I get all my usual bills online, I pay them online, I have no use for paper. I canceled all my paper bills and statements (and yet they keep coming in, of course).

But I get very very excited about mail 5 times a year - the beginning of each new season, plus one holiday special - when I receive my free Kraft Food & Family magazine. I read the recipes and hear ka-ching ka-ching sounds (use OSCAR MAYER bacon, RITZ crackers, PHLADELPHIA cream cheese, KRAFT salad dressing), but that doesn't matter. My healthy self wants to throw up when someone suggests "to stretch my food dollars, we stock up on hot dogs and mac and cheese!", I mean seriously, you feed that shit to your kids on a frequent basis?! But that doesn't matter either. There's just something about it that makes me feel happy. Maybe it's the glossy pages. Maybe it's the pretty pictures. Or maybe it's the part of it that gives me a taste of what being a stay-at-home mom could be like.

I live in California. I love California, I wouldn't move anywhere else, no way no how, not for any sizeable yard, not for any affordable house, not for the dream of a 10k downpayment, not for the changing of the leaves, not for the look of a white Christmas. But living in SoCal, we will never be able to afford me becoming a stay-at-home mom. Like always, anything you can't have becomes desirable. So there's a part of me who enjoy stay-at-home moms submitting ideas in a Kraft magazine on how to stretch a dollar, how to keep your whites white, how to feed a family for under $10 a meal, how to get the bathroom to shine. But sadly (and fortunately), I will - kids or not - continue to answer these life dilemmas with the following solutions: forget saving it's what is most convenient that matters, buy new white clothes and toss stained clothes away, it's impossible, and get a maid. I don't mean to sound spoiled. It's just that I don't have time or brain power left at the end of my long days of programming/problem solving to be a good wife (in a 1950s conotation), and kids are not going to make my housekeeping skills any easier.

But 5 times a year, I get to dream. Dream about spending my days taking care of the house and kids. Dream of planning meals and going to the grocery store only once a week (instead of once a day, post "what do you want for dinner honey? ok, I'll stop by the grocery store after work"). Dream about a clean house - no more dust bunnies bigger than our cats, no more counters full of crusty dishes, no more showers that haven't been cleaned in 3 months, no more piles of laundry covering 95% of our bedroom floor (where's my yellow shirt honey? oh, I remember walking on it a few times, I think it's by the bottom left corner of the bed, yeah, next to the earphones and the aquarium cleaning thingy).

So today, I received my Kraft magazine, poured myself a glass a wine, and allowed myself to dream. If only my bath tub was clean, I'd have done all of those while in a hot bath.

Yeppers, off to go enjoy my magazine. In my dirty bed. Where I will dream of parallel universe where I don't work and might honesly have the time to care about how long it's been since I changed the sheets.

working on a theory

I was getting kind of sick of the pink and green pattern thingy... you like the new colors? Looks like I overdosed on sunshine and puked it all up on the screen. It's atrocious and loud and I love it.

Mostly I wanted to change the layout so that I've have more horizontal room.

You may also notice a new Twitter feed! I'm officially following suit and twittering it up. If you're on Twitter, you can follow me "MrsAnxious" and I can follow you too and we can be friends, eat gum drops, play games, sing songs, have pillow fights, do each other's hair, or whatever Twitter is supposed to be all about. Fuck, I don't know.

Jeeze, what's with my mood tonight. Truth is, I haven't been sleeping. Also, I feel nauseous. And my boobs are sore. Pregnant you say? Well that what I think. I also have headaches, really dark cirles under my eyes, shortness of breathe, back pain, sensitivity to smells. But I've also got serious hypocondriac tendencies, so give me 5 minutes on the internet and I will find a new pregnancy symptom that I totally have.

For those of you who don't know.... I also have a B6 deficiency (headaches, irritability, extreme nervousness, why yes, I have those!). And iron deficiency anemia (fatigue, pale skin, rapid heartbeat, lightheaded, why yes, I have those!). And tachycardia (lightheadedness when getting up too fast, yes I have that!). And I'm hypoglycemic (trembling, heart palpitations, anxiety (see blog title, duh!), difficulty thinking, totally have those when I haven't eaten!). And general anxiety disorder (excessive nervousness and anxiety over everyday matters, restlessness, muscle tension, difficulty concentrating, fatigue, panick attacks, borderline social phobia, yes I have those!). And I have TMJ (you should hear my jaw: snap crackle AND pop).

I also claim to have athritis. This is the one that throws Captain Awesome over the edge. Yes, I am aware that I am 26. But it's totally true! (Not it's not, he says) My joints hurt when it's suddenly humid or cold outside! (Uh-huh, he says) Thankfully I have a good friend, also a 20-something, who also claims to totally have arthritis too, so the fact that there's 2 of us makes it true. (You're both crazy, he says) Pshhh.

Oh, I'm also working on a nice explanation for my serious bad teeth. I floss and brush like 2 or 3 times a day and I still have a ridiculous amount of cavities. I was thinking calcium absorption problem... Maybe not enough vitamin D? Or maybe simply not enough calcium, I don't drink milk cause I think I'm a little bit allergic (of course!).

How about you, any of you down with a serious (imaginary, he says!) syndrome?