Random thoughts...

1. I quit my job and have taken a new one for next year. The schools are about as different as two schools could be. It seems like a good idea to do something completely different, I guess, since this year totally kicked my ass. But Husband says he has never known me when I liked my job, so we'll see.

2. My period is three days late. This is what I get after the last post. But I took two pregnancy tests and they were both negative. Whew! I hope.

3. Husband and I are attempting to landscape our yard. We have decided, I think, to stay in the 'burbs till next summer. So I decided that if we are going to live here we might as well make it look like the house doesn't belong to an 80 year-old shut in on a fixed income.

4. Husband brought me cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery in NYC lat week. And now I love him a little more.

5. We are going to Hawaii in six weeks. Ack! I am not at all bikini ready (see #4).

Oh, baby! ... Oh. Baby?

This is a hot topic in the Bliss household lately. We have been married about two years, I am hurtling towards 30, and my mother makes a face kind of like this whenever I give any hint of bearing her grandchildren:

We have been back and forth about impending parenthood, Husband and I. At first it was that I wanted a baby and he wasn't sure it was the right time, but now we are both rather schizophrenic in our baby lust/fear. It seems we are incapable of ever making a simple decision, and this tendency is only amplified when we are talking about the most momentous decision of our lives. I mean, marrying Husband was kind of a big deal, but if we get sick of each other we can always get divorced with really very little social stigma. It doesn't seem to work that way with kids. I don't think you are allowed to say, "My toddler and I just kind of grew apart. I don't like who I am when we are together. I just become this naggy bitch, telling him what to do all the time, and I'll do anything to keep him happy. We want different things from life, and we both agreed it would be best if we parted ways."

Nope, once sperm meets egg you have that sucker for the rest of your life. My brother is 32 and he still shows up at my parents' house for a free meal at least once a week. Honestly, some nights I can barely feed myself. I don't think I am ready to sign up for 30+ years of someone else wanting stuff from me. And yet that sounds so selfish and immature.

Also, I am not happy about the mammalian task that lies ahead of me. I don't want to feel barfy for weeks on end, be so swollen with parasitic offspring that I literally cannot breath, and then, as Kirstie Alley says in Look Who's Talking, I have to push something to size of a watermelon out of a hole the size of a lemon. I don't think your girl parts are ever the same after that. After that you get to spend the next year lactating contstantly, like Belle the Blue Bell cow, but I would imagine much less chipper. I was really happy to hear that Oprah dug up a pregnant man until I found out he was a transsexual. Man, I wish my husband was a tranny.

All this baby talk started because I hate my current job, so I would tell Husband things like, "You have to knock me up so I can quit this horrible job!" Having a baby was kind of like a fresh career opportunity without the hassle of sending out resumes. But now that I will almost certainly have a different job next year, I'm reevaluating my options. We were both on board to start trying for a baby this summer. I even started taking prenatal vitamins and told my mom to cheer her up when my dad was in the hospital a few weeks back. Now I think the current plan is to wait another year. Apparently "next year" is always our ideal time to start a family. I am really starting to think that a broken condom will be our route to parenthood. Either that or I will be one of those women who turns 38 and realizes she forgot to have children.

Living the Effin' Dream

So I hear that certain of Husband's college friends are jealous that we own a home here in Awesome City (or close by, at least) while they are renting somewhere cold and foggy. Well, don't be.

I HATE having a house. Houses are for families with handy men with lots of time to putter, i.e. my parents and probably yours. Husband is not handy nor does he have time or the inclination to wander around fixing stuff. This is where home ownership becomes a giant, expensive pain in the ass. For example, we spent about four hours and $60 fixing our shower so our shower doesn't drip incessantly. And that was with the borrowed tools and expertise of my dad.

Also, our house smells awful. I spilled a giant bucket of water in the living room and I think it has mildewed. Now we will have to live here forever. People will walk out of our open house and say, "That was a really cute house, but what WAS that smell?"

No wonder she's so annoying...

Family ties: Candidates' ancestry makes for strange bedfellows

Turns out Hilary is French Canadian. And since the most famous French Canadian ever is Celine Dian, I will go ahead and assume that they are all just as grating.

Alanis Morrissette is the exception that proves my French Canadian rule. I still look back fondly on the period when I was 14 or 15 and Jagged Little Pill gave a voice to my young womanly angst. And then, of course, she released this last year...

Pray Hard, The Jesus Christ Story

Last week some senior citizens from the church next door to my school brought all the teachers Easter gift bags. They included some Post-its, markers, cookies, and a fingertip towel embroidered with eggs that I would put out in my guest bathroom if I were my mother-in-law. Oh yeah, they also gave us all an index card that said "God is great!" in shaky grandma handwriting and a book called Pray Big, which apparently outlines the scriptural support for making specific and large requests in prayer. I say apparently because that is what I have learned from the back cover, which is all I will ever read of the book.

I can't give a specific reason why, but it bothers me that it is acceptable to pass out a book about Christianity at a public school. So I told several friends and family about the gift to gauge their reaction. Except in doing so I kept accidentally calling the book Pray Hard, which sounds like it could be a new movie starring Will Farrell as Jesus and maybe Rachel Dratch as a skanky Mary Magdelene.

Stand by your man

Eliot Spitzer and his out of control man parts are all over the news lately. In general the story kind of bores me, as I am not nearly as interested in the seedy details as your average cable news anchor. When I saw the picture of "Kristen" on the front page of CNN.com I had the same reaction I always have to thin girls in bikinis, namely wondering why her thighs look like that and mine are all pasty and fat. I have bad thigh karma and am clearly paying for something horrible my thighs did in a former life.

Naturally, being a wife these days, I am fascinated by that poor Silda Spitzer. Here's a picture of her standing supportively a step behind her husband while he tells the world that he betrayed her.


I don't really care where old Eliot stuck it, but I am dying to know what is going on between those two right now. I've heard a lot of references to "standing by your man" in the media lately, but I think it is not accurate to assume that she is standing by her man just because she is, you know, standing right there by him. That facial expression could be interpreted a variety of ways. For example, "Where did this all go so wrong? I will do anything to save our broken marriage." Or maybe, "Eh, better her than me." My money's on, "Should I stop by the divorce lawyer's office before or after I pick up the dry cleaning?"

Really, it's not my place to judge because I don't think you can ever truly know how you would react until you are in such a situation. Except that I do. I would react just like this lady from China.



Cheating husband outed on Chinese Olympic TV

Her husband was in the middle of a news conference announcing a new Olympics network in China. She hopped on stage an announced to the world the the bastard was cheating on her. I love it! Husband would never let me near the stage if he were in the position of publicly announcing his infidelities. He knows I would channel my inner Strong Black Woman, steal the microphone, and say something like this:

"Girlfriend! Let me tell you what this fool did. He spent eighty goddamn thousand dollars on hos! Can you effin' believe it?! Me neither. And then he brings me up here like I'm just gonna smile and hold his hand. I don't owe that fool a thing. He owes me. Eighty. Thousand. Dollars."

But see, Husband knows this, and that's why he keeps it in his pants. Or maybe that's why he will never seek public office. Hopefully not just the latter.

Spring Break, Day 4 of 9

So I am four days into my nine days off from school. Here's what I have accomplished so far:

1. Mopped the kitchen and guest bathroom
2. Finally ordered our wedding album
3. Went to the gym zero times
4. Bought three pairs of shoes

Here's what I still have left on my to do list:

1. Do something about the crap growing in our shower
2. Catch up on laundry
3. Put away the laundry I did two weeks ago
4. Go to the gym everyday
5. Reorganize the office
6. Grade a file box full of papers
7. Clean out my closet, as I do not need daily access to both size 4 and size 10 pants
8. Organize our CD collection
9. Take my wedding rings to get appraised so I can renew the insurance
10. Talk to a realtor about selling the house
    
11. Spend at least two days working up at school
12. Steam the new curtains, whose wrinkles continue to taunt me
13. Spend some time with Husband
14. Take the dog to the park
15. Clean out the garage in hopes of finding whatever is living in there
16. File our taxes

Hrumph.