Why Owning a Black Car in New England Can Be Totally Bogus

Because once the first real snow of the season hits, your car is bound to look like a filthbox unless you go to the car wash pretty much every day.

And it's kind of incongruous, but in the summer when there is NOT salt and grime and grey slush all over the roads, I get my car washed every two weeks. Yet in the winter when these conditions and worse exist and coat my car daily...I am lucky if I go at all because I feel so defeatist about it all.

What's the point?

The minute I leave the car wash it will be covered in salty dirt again.

It's going to snow again in a few days anyway.

WAH.

Of Course!

This is typical for me.

I decided to pop out of the office around 11AM to go to Stop and Shop and pick up what I need to make cookies for a party I am going to on Saturday night (they involve Fluff, marschino cherries and melted white chocolate….jealous?). I was also going to pick up a few frozen meals since this sista will have no time to cook anytime soon and also pick up a bag of frozen fries for the much aggrieved Adam who could NOT believe I bought chicken nuggets for him last week but no fries. Chicken nuggets with fries, he says, are a meal. Chicken nuggets with no fries, are just a snack. Who knew?

Anyway this whole shopping trip was to take 10-15 minutes. Wham Bam Here’s my Stop and Shop Card Thank You Ma’am. But of course this time of year? No shopping trip is an easy venture no matter how innocent at first it may seem.

For one thing, when I arrived the parking lot was PACKED! Which struck me as odd for 11AM on a Thursday but hey, maybe smart minds think alike. I didn’t pay as much attention to the three white busses parked out front as I should have but alas, it was apparently field trip day for a few local nursing homes. That is fine, I am glad they get out to get their groceries. But it does make quickly maneuvering around a supermarket difficult as a lot of these folks just park their carts in the middles of the aisle and meander up and down. Yikes. And since there was already an abnormally high number of shoppers, slowed me down quite a bit. But I summoned my holiday spirit, smiled, and was even able to smile and power through. No big deal.

Then I get to the check out and the lines are obscene, except for the self checkout which is empty. Which makes sense since I don’t think anyone over 75 even knows what self check out is. So I swing over there and begin scanning my 8 or so items through. Beep! Beep! ERROR A STORE EMPLOYEE WILL BE WITH YOU MOMENTARILY”. Ah technical difficulties, how I love you. So a store employee comes over to help me with the persnickety self checkout scanner and within a few seconds of her leaving it starts happening again BEEP! ERROR! A STORE EMPLOYEE WILL BE WITH YOU MOMENTARILY”. And every time I scan something I have to run down and bag it since this machine is clearly not having me. But the lines in the other checkout spots are so long it seems worth it just to deal with it although I get the impression the people waiting in the long lines are watching my ordeal thinking “That right there is why I don’t use self checkout!”.

So once I get everything scanned I swipe my card and punch in my pin and so on and it doesn’t even occur to me that the amount seems kind of high until I am all paid and on my way out. I double check my receipt and lo, I was charged twice for about half of the things in my bag.

Now, a person more aware of the way their luck is going might have just eaten the $6 but I could just not stomach it so, seeing there was only one person in line at Customer Service, I made my way over their receipt in hand.

The fellow in front of me was there to pick up his paycheck and was (of course!) having a very tough time with it. He had a difficult to pronounce last name, and no ability to write it out for the customer service attendant. Which resulted in her thumbing threw her bin of paychecks several times in a row, holding up different ones asking him if that was his check. Seriously. And the fellow is getting more and more irate, the woman more flustered, and me? I am on my blackberry texting Adam to kill me now but maintaining a quite serene outward appearance if I do say so myself.

After five minutes of waiting, I reached the threshold. DO you know this threshold? You are waiting in line for something and it’s the point when you have to weigh how much longer you are willing to wait in line with how long you have already BEEN waiting in line, taking into consideration what exactly you are waiting for. Was waiting in line more than 5 minutes worth $6?

I pondered this as the man waiting for his check started yelling and decided, heck yeah it was. His yelling brought forth a manager. And with that manager, a resolution (for the curious, his paycheck was filled out first name, last name instead of last name, first name as all the others were. Sweet resolution!!! With that I skipped up to the desk gleefully to claim my $6……and was told I was only getting $3 back since I had miscalculated.

D’oh! That would only have been worth it if I had waited 2.5 minutes..if you do my math correctly.

Bottle of White, Bottle of Red. If I Don't Get My Security Deposit Back I'm Dead

Sometimes I feel like I have a guardian angel watching over me. Someone making sure I have what I need right when I need it the most.

And this guardian angel comes to me in different forms. Once it came to me in the form of a relative who sent me a $100 check for my high school graduation six months after I graduated…and it arrived on the very day I went to my parents to ask them to borrow $100 to go to a concert(I was 18 at the time and can only assume my meager paycheck at Contempo Casuals). Another time I was driving home late at night from an ex boyfriend’s home on an empty highway and for some reason randomly moved into the fast lane of the highway (I had been traveling for some time in the middle lane). A few moments after I drifted into that lane, I saw a dead deer sprawled across the middle and right lane that I would have surely hit had I not unexpectedly and for no feasible reason switched lanes. And these weird little coincidences have happened my whole life.

The most recent one happened a few weeks ago at work. A coworker who I hardly ever see sat next to me at a meeting and told me a story about how the night before he had been enjoying a glass of red wine in his living room and when he set it down, his 2 year old son immediately knocked it over spilling it all over their white carpet. Acting quickly, his wife remembered hearing that if you poured white wine on a red wine stain, it lifts right out. So she grabbed a ½ bottle of Pinot Grigio from the fridge and dumped it all over the red wine spatters. Within five minutes where there had looked like a blood bath occurred, was just a wet spot that dried to leave NO STAIN.

This is red wine on white carpet people, every hostess’s biggest nightmare! And NO STAIN.

So fast forward to that weekend. We are decorating the living room for the holidays, and as I reach behind an end table to plug in the garland I knock over my FULL glass of Beaujolais nouveau ALL OVER the white carpet in our living room. And truth be told all over the white wall too. It looked like a massacre and it was! The worst massacre of all. The massacre that results in wasted wine.

In an instant I recalled my coworker’s story and ran into the kitchen. There on the first shelf of the fridge was a somewhat forgotten half bottle of pinot grigio. I grabbed it and sprinted back into the living room. As Adam pondered aloud “UM WTF ARE YOU DOING” I sprinkled liberally that white wine all over the red wine spatters and once it was soaked I dabbed with a towel. And dabbed and dabbed some more. Within ten minutes, I had a cramp in my wrist, our apartment smelled like a booze lodge (not that it doesn’t always kind of smell like that especially over the holidays) but the red wine stains? DISAPPEARED!!

It was a Christmas Miracle. The kind that will be spoken of for years to come. I would not be surprised if whoever wrote “The Red Shoes” penned this into another Christmas classic, The Red Wine Stain.

Of course it is entirely possible that this episode was less the work of a guardian angel and more the inevitability of me spilling an entire wine glass on the white carpet, regardless of what story I may have heard a few days before. But it is the holiday season and I am feeling sentimental!

So the next time you are at a soiree and make the mistake of sloshing your red wine onto the carpet. Grab the glass of the nearest guest driniking white wine and pour it on the stain. Then hand it to the hostess and say "You're welcome".

She will thank you, I assure you.

Spreading Good Cheer

We interrupt this blog hiatus for something very important. Something no holiday season would be complete without.

The perfect party appetizer!

I had an impromptu Christmas party on Friday (started out as inviting a few friends over for cocktails, then a few more, etc) and had literally no time during the week to do any kind of party prep. On Thursday I was lamenting to a coworker that I needed a few great new recipes to try out and she interrupted me to say she had what I was looking for. Her boss had given her a recipe for Garlic Feta Spread last year when she was in a similar situation and it had been the hit of that party, and many other parties since them. And it met my requirements: easy, mostly ingredients you already have at home, and involving some kind of cheese.

So without further adieu, my new favorite party app:

Garlic Feta Spread
4 oz reduced fat cream cheese
1/3 cup mayo
4 oz feta cheese, crumbled
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/8 tsp oregano
1/8 tsp basil
1/8 tsp thyme
1/8 tsp dill

Combine every ingredient but the feta in a food processor and blend until smooth.
Fold in feta with a spoon.
Serve with pita chips.

Couldn't be easier, right? And you can use all dried herbs. I left out the dill because I didn't have any and it was still delicious. It was the only thing to get completely cleaned out at the party. So if you are in search of something to bring to a party or serve at your own, give it a whirl! I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Christmas Blog-cation

So if you haven't already noticed, there are tumbleweeds rolling across my blog.

Between being buried by and with work and keeping up with social commitments and general insanity I am going to go ahead say I'm going on a little hiatus.

Don't you hate that word? Sors!

I may pop in from time to time with an "Oh hai" but in general don't expect too much from me until 2010 when I have Big Blog Things in store. Hopefully. If I am able to extricate myself from my Hoarders-esque office.

Don't worry you can still catch me on Twitter (holla at me!) or Facebook (feel free to message me and I will add you as a friend!) or Flickr (I finally have a decent camera phone!) or anything else that only requires a minute's worth of attention here and there.

Happy December!!

Holiday Brain!

I have holiday brain.

Every year around this time of year two things happen: Work gets INSANE and most of my mental energy goes towards that. And what little mental energy I have leftover gets so pre-occupied with the holiday season and parties and cooking and decorating that my brain cannot handle other essential non-holiday and non-work tasks. This is including but not limited to making and remembering plans (Hey why don't I invite you to a party as my guest, then not even go to the party and not tell you I'm not going!), turning the stove off when not using it (Sorry I burned the place down, Adam but I found THE perfect wrapping paper today!)and more recently, not letting my car battery die.

Let me back up: my coworker had texted me Saturday night while I was at dinner, frantic that she forgot the power cord for her laptop and wanted to borrow mine. Sure I said! So she said she would be there first thing in the morning on Sunday. Fine. Happy to help.

I awake bright and early on Sunday (and by bright and early I mean bleary and hungover) and search for the cord. Once located, I begin making tea when my phone buzzes "I'm here", she says.

I make my way downstairs and out back and notice, lo, the trunk of my car is open. Hmmmm. I know I had unloaded our Best Buy purchases last night before coming in so I guess I just didn't close it all the way. Stupid, but it was empty so it's not like anyone could have taken anything. Unless they wanted 3 or 4 windshield fluid bottles that had about a 1/4 cup of the fluid each in them. Whenever I get windshield fluid, I am not able to pour it all in at once so I save the little bit left over in my trunk and think "Next time I will remember to use this when I run out" And I never do and so, yeah. Though that is neither here nor there I suppose.

ANYWAY My coworker saw me close my trunk and said "You should make sure your car will start, having the roof open can kill your battery". Nah it's fine I said, SEE? As I clicked my keyless entry button and the headlights flashed. The battery must be okay because the headlights flashed. Heaven forbid I actually get in my car and turn it on to check.

Cue to this morning, at 6:30AM I am making my way to my car to leave for work and I click the keyless entry button and....nothing. No lights flashing. No click of my car unlocking. Hmmmm. I press it again and again with the futility known by people who think pressing an elevator button will make it come faster. But of course, nothing. Then I manually locked it and put the actual key in the ignition to start it and of course it was DEAD. Of course. Had I bothered to check it yesterday I would have known that and called AAA then and not been late for work.

So the morale of the story is I have holiday brain and am a forgotten appointment away from wearing a tag on my jacket that has my name, address and emergency contact number on it for if I am found wandering the streets.

Ain't No Sporty Spice

It is well established that I am not exactly a professional sports fanatic. I mean I am not trying to be all "I don't know nothin' about nothin' about sports? I need a strong man to teach me!" nor do I begrudge others their mania, it's more like, watching hockey is boring to me. I don't find baseball at all entertaining. Football is passable because of the butt factor but other than that, don't really care for it.

Of course I am not saying a night of malternatives and fenway franks with good friends can't be a really good time! Or that sipping Sutter Home from a plastic cup while checking out the Bruins from the nosebleed seats can't take the sting out of a Monday night. Please note that both of these circumstances involve alcohol. But that is neither here nor there.

People sometimes assume, because Adam is such a huge hockey fan, that I am as well. This is REALLY not the case. But I respect his passion for the Bruins and I am happy to send him off to the Fleet Center* weekly with various friends to watch the games and have a good time and hoot and holler et cetera. (Well until recently of course).

But despite my lack of interest, when it comes to the sport, there are pretty basic things that I don't know.

A classic example of my lack of knowledge occurred today in a conversation with a coworker

Him: Are you going to the game tonight?
Me: God no.
Him: Oh right, Adam's leg. Did he manage to sell them
Me: He did!
Him: Oh good it's going to be an awesome game
Me: I know, against the Pirates right?
Him: starts to crack up
Other female coworker: I think that's a baseball team
Me: OHHHH right. Dur. The Penguins then.
Him: No..that was Monday's nights game
Me: Oh well I know it starts with P
Him: Think of something that lives in the rain forest
Me: Parrot?
Him Why would a hockey team be named after parrots?
Me: What else do you expect me to say when you say "starts with P" and "lives in the rain forest"!
Him. Uh, how about the PANTHERS
Me: Panthers don't live in the Rain Forest!
Him: Don't they?
Other female coworker: What about Bagheera?
Me and Him in Unison: OH THE JUNGLE BOOK
Me: You know I don't think the jungle and the rain forest are the same thing.

end scene

What was a casual question, turned into a source of great delight to the coworkers who overheard this exchange. And to me who was psyched that all of us about to be or well into our thirties still recall who Bagheera is!

So maybe I don't know a ton about the NHL, at least I know the Bare Necessities.

Nurse Kevorkian

Well I think it is safe to say I have failed at NaBloPoMo but hey, I gave it the old college try! Things like broken bones and vomiting marathons tend to get in the way of such things.

Things are going ok Chez Broken Leg. I brought Adam home on Saturday and he was in great spirits! We stopped at CVS to pick up his prescriptions (Percoset and Valium, what what) and even stopped by Starbucks for a Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato. Is it sad that this is becoming a ritual when one of us breaks a bone? The day you come home you get one of these delicious concoctions from Starbucks. It takes the sting out of a bonecrushing injury, if you ask me!

Anyway Saturday he mostly dozed and Sunday was much of the same. I did my duty as his private nurse: pling him with ginger ale and crackers, dosing out the pain killers ever 3 hours, the Valium every 4 hours, the Extra Strength Tylenol every 6 hours, and an Aspirin once a day.

And also what turned out to be an overdose of laxatives. Oops.

Sunday night he started feeling pretty sick, couldn't really eat dinner. Felt "gross". And that "pretty sick" became "really very sick" from Sunday night and all day Monday. He couldn't keep anything down. Kept telling me how dizzy he felt. And it was weird since the 2 days after his surgery he felt so good. I was perturbed. Had my kickass nursing skills failed?

I went into the bathroom cabinet to re-read the restrictions on his meds to see if there was some kind of bad interaction happening. It was then that I noticed that I had somehow switched my muscle relaxers (from my car accident over the summer) on the bottom shelf with his pain killers on the top shelf.

Oh crap!!!

Can you imagine? If instead of giving him 3 pain killers I gave him 3 muscle relaxers? No wonder he was dizzy!

But no, as it turns out I wasn't quite THAT dumb, as a quick pill count revealed that there was only 1 pill missing from the bottle muscle relaxers and that was the 1 pill I took when they were prescribed. Phew.

Then what is it?

Adam's contention is that I overdosed him with laxatives. As you may know, they usually advise picking up some laxatives after a surgery since pain meds can have an undesired effect, colonically speaking (how is that for a euphemism?). And you may take one or two each day after your surgery. And I took this to mean, lets give him 3 maximum doses over two days and see what happens.

What happens, as it turns out, is violent illness.

Yikes. Not what one wants to go through when one is laid up with a broken leg. A sprint to the bathroom is somewhat hampered by crutches.

TMI? Perhaps. But suffice it to say after a very blue Monday, he is feeling much much better today and the sooner we put my poisoning attempt behind us the better! In the meantime maybe it's better that he doles out his own meds.

Ready to go Again?

There are many things in life worth repeating: weekend trips to a favorite B&B, a cherished recipe, a mistake that is too fun to learn from, a bone breaking hockey accident.

Wait, what?

The call came late last night, as all calls carrying bad news do.

As a rule, Adam calls me after his hockey games, when he is on the highway heading home. I may not always answer as sometimes these calls come quite late on weeknights but I hear the phone and know it means he is on his way home. So last night when the phone rang and startled me from being half asleep I thought "Oh it's Adam on his way home" and turned over to get back to sleep. But my eye caught the clock and the time struck me as odd. 11:20PM. His game started at 10:45PM so there is no way it's over and he is already on the highway. And he never calls me DURING a game. Unless.....

Oh hell no.

As the phone started buzzing again I knew before I even answered. "Whats wrong" I asked immediately. "Don't freak out" he said "But I think I broke my leg. I am on my way to Newton Wellesley Hospital".

And my gut reaction was probably not the response most people would want to hear from their loved ones in a time of need. "Are you F-ing kidding me!?".

Seriously though. Are. You. F-ing. Kidding. Me.

If you are new to this blog you may think "My god what a beast". But if you are not new you will recall two years ago the EXACT SAME THING HAPPENING . Feet first into the boards during a hockey game, shattered his ankle, snapped his tibia and fibula in one of the worst breaks the surgeon had ever seen which led to weeks in an external fixator and visiting nurses and me getting a crash course in "pin care" and pain management and him being in the worst pain of his life.

Not cute!

This time it was pretty much the same exact thing, hooked by a stick, went feet first into the boards. Only this time he broke his OTHER leg. Same bones as the previous accident, just higher up and luckily not as severe. No accolades from the orthopedists this time for having an impressive injury, which I am thankful for. But still, a broken leg is no one's idea of a good time.

So I spent the day at the hospital with my favorite patient and he was in surprisingly good spirits given his pain and then I read an entire Danielle Steel novel during his surgery and the man now has more titanium in him than the Bionic man. The surgery was a success and there is every indication he can come home tomorrow.

And you know, after the last accident I was very very against Adam returning to hockey. But he was insistent and boys will be boys. I distinctly remember when he was packing up his equipment to hit the rink for his first practice after the shattering of bones I was vocally angry about it. Eventually that anger cooled to tolerance laced with mild hatred. But now? Holy hell. Let's just say when we were in pre-op a nurse remarked "Oh you're a hockey player? My son plays hockey too!" and I turned to her and said "You better break him of that habit NOW! Please! If you want him to be without metal rods and plates in his legs later in life, tell him to find another sport NOW". She giggled like I was kidding.

If only she knew!

10-10-10

My experience at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast yesterday made a big impression on me. I am not speaking of my kickass burn (the blister of which has doubled in size and is quite awe inspiring and hypo that I am I revel in it), but of Suzy Welch's speech. Much of which was based on her new book 10-10-10 which is kind of handbook of self awareness and decision making wherin before making decisions you ask yourself, how will this choice affect me in 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years? It sounds cheesy I know but as someone who has scoffed that self awareness is for hippies, it made an impact on me.

As part of her speech Suzy had three questions she asked of us, questions that everyone should ask themselves and they were
1) On your 70th birthday what would make you look back on your life and cry with regret?
2) When you are not in the room, what do you want people to say about you.
3) What is something you loved about your childhood and something you hated.

I think these are really thought provoking questions. I shared them with some of my friends last night and was surprised that others were equally introspective about them. Maybe I am not becoming a hippie after all.

The first one really made me think long and hard and I am still not sure I have an answer. But even knowing that as of now I don't have an answer to that question feels like an answer in and of itself. I at some point am going to have to figure out what I really want out of life. Besides a decent blow out and a well made martini.

So I wonder of others out there, do you have immediate answers to those questions? You dont have to share what those answers are but I wonder if other people find those questions difficult to answer!