While vacuuming...

Maniacally rubbing my kitchen counters

2011-07-27T01:29:00.000-07:00

I cleaned and organized the kitchen yesterday in a fit of pique. So I am hoping I can channel the cleanliness into bathrooms and bedrooms today, which is a wonderful plan, since mom in law and dad in law will be here in 48 hours. At this point the room in which they are going to sleep has exploded with papers to file and massage equipment for my LMT business which would be more off the ground if the state board would get off their hindquarters and "Give me an L!". I wrote that cheerleader style since the lockout is over and we'll have football now.

This post reads a little like it was written at 4:30 in the morning; mostly because it was written at 4:30 in the morning. You'd think if I didn't write a post but every 6 months I would put a little thought into it as if it would be worth waiting for.

So it's less of a post and more of a slap in the face.

Ouch.

My blog is rarely written upon and makes your face hurt. Subscribe, won't you? This time I promise to post 3x a week.

Bombproof your horse

2011-02-13T11:15:00.000-08:00

I found an ad on craigslist by searching the word "massage", which is really not so sketchy since I am in school for massage therapy. It linked to a post listing four books for sale. One of them was interesting:

Since I am a big fan of David Thorne and all of his wonderful email exchanges, I was driven to try my own....

To the anonymous craigslister:
I am interested in the book on equine massage. I'm in massage school, so that one really makes sense as a part of my library.

I am also intellectually interested in the book, "Bombproof Your Horse". Out of a sense of fair play, I feel that I should tell you that I intend to resell the secrets therein to the defense department so that when the cavalry division of the army hits Afghanistan they will be all good. I think I will probably make a profit of approximately 1000 percent with this venture. Possibly more if the bombproofing technology can be adapted for humvees.

But if you could tell me whether these books are still available, we can make an arrangement for payment and exchange.

Lady V

Reply to me

Yes, Both books are still available. Where are you located?

My reply to the craigslister:

I am located in Apollo Beach, but every day I drive to Pinellas Park for school. If either of those locations are convenient for you, that's great. Otherwise we can meet somewhere or I can pay extra through paypal or send you a check and you can mail them to me.

I feel that the possible profit margin from selling bombproofing secrets to the Pentagon would warrant the extra expense. Or perhaps it would be smarter to go contractor and send out some feelers to Halliburton instead? Nevermind. The bombproofing marketing is my responsibility - if you were in the market for managing a bidding war, you would certainly not be selling Bombproof Your Horse for less than half the cover price on craigslist.

Lady V

Reply to me:

I will get the shipping costs for the two books and let you know what the charge will be. I will then let you know and we can go through paypal and I will ship the books to you. I feel that would be best. PLease give me an address I can mail them to. Thanks for your interest.

At this point I would have to give this oblivious idiot my banking info (NO THANKS) and my address (little scary), so I chickened out and stopped emailing. Or, there is the fact that he was unwilling to meet me, so perhaps he thought I was crazy.

Not too far off the mark, there....

An obsessive letter to a soup company

2010-06-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

So I am so taken with the Escarole vegetable classic soup! I found some randomly at a scratch and dent supermarket, and then scoured the areas actual grocery stores looking for more. To no avail, I might add. Although I am sure you are aware of that, since when I came to look at your website to find out where I might buy some or print a screenshot to prove something to that snide stuck up grocery store manager who I thought had it in for me and my unreasonable requests... it wasn't there. So not only have you eliminated the product, but that mean lady isn't mean after all. So basically my day is kind of wrecked.

If you want to make it up to me, you could unload any spare Escarole soup you have sitting in a warehouse by sending it directly to my house. Obviously I'm not fussy about dates and such, since I was in a scratch and dent supermarket when this whole thing started. I'd pay a reasonable market price, which I figure would be pretty low since if there was a market for the stuff you'd probably still be making it. So if you do have some soup laying around to make my day, please contact me via email and I will forward you my mailing address.

Hurry, since the last can from the scratch and dent supermarket is heating up on the stove now.

I actually sent the above letter. I'll keep you posted

Checking in on the blog

2010-06-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

I've been quite busy since Mr V went away. Me and the little guy have been wildly dashing from one activity to another and basically trying to distract each other from the fact that daddy isn't here right now. Mr. V is sort of taken aback by my activity level and depressed that I'm not more depressed and despondent from his absence. I'm a bit sad, it's true, but considering I'm trying to accomplish so much and have so many activities going on, it's not too bad so my strategy is working. I am doing things that Mr V would never never never consider doing, like home improvement projects, and the crowning triumph is the outrageous plan for this Sunday, which is father's day and sure to make me sad unless I take DRASTIC STEPS.

So I am, and my parents are helping, which officially makes them the coolest EVER. We are going to see the "Who's Yo Daddy Father's Day Brunch and All-Star Drag Show" at Streetcar Charlie's.

AWESOME.

Your Tax Dollars At Work - Census Haiku

2010-05-15T11:04:00.001-07:00

An empty meadow.
Time to find a neighbor for
enumeration.

Tales of A Florida Census Worker.... A Haiku

2010-05-13T20:55:00.001-07:00

I knock; no answer...
A seasonal resident
Winter birds flew home.

He's a lumberjack and it's NOT okay.

2010-05-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is a secret post that I am not supposed to be writing, for a number of reasons. First of all, I should be paying attention to my training. I have taken a temporary job as an enumerator for the decennial census. I'm going to be one of those people who comes to your door and asks about who lived there on April 1st. Assuming that you missed the billboards, census forms that came to your house, ads in the paper, discussions on the radio, blockbuster ads during the Superbowl, and other valuable uses of our tax dollars.

So I am in training. How is it?

Boring. It turns out we are going out in the field tomorrow so that
is a relief. This joker is reading directly out of a manual and he is
not a talented reader. I am going to stab myself in the eye with a
number 2 pencil. Also, he is a slight dialect speaker, and since
every sixth word is about a question during a hypothetical interview,
this man is standing up there with a giant double edged blade wildly
swinging it from side to side....

"so after you axe mr burns if he lived in unit d, you need to axe him
about the status of unit a. Then you will fill out a d-225, and start
a blank EQ by axing question S1."

I Got All Excited And Cleaned and Organized

2010-04-30T02:39:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately it was at a friends house. We worked hard, we moved furniture, we reinvisioned and recreated some of the rooms of her house. Meanwhile, I still have an empty and lonely vacuum sitting in the middle of my kitchen and crap ALL OVER. It's not that I did nothing here - I have a mostly crossed off to do list to show for my week, but when I get these bursts of organizational energy, I would love it if they happened in my own house occasionally.

Please.

Thank you for listening oh gods of the vacuum.

Oh, and the eat at home challenge continues - I haven't touched a restaurant - but when I went to the friends house who is SUPPOSED to be doing this with me, I was quite shocked to see a Panera Bread cup full of apparently fresh lemonade, which isn't proof of cheating but is highly suspicious. But weight actually went UP half a pound, which sucked. I am considering joining a gym. Preferably one I would actually go to this time.

So my weight is at 1*0 - a number which looks quite a lot better on a blog with that little asterisk to sanitize and privatize it than it looks hanging out on MY ASS.

Eat at home doesn't mean eat crap?

2010-04-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

So I have been successful so far in resisting the allure of the local Dunkin Donuts, but not in losing any weight. I remember (well do I remember) being told that the day to day fluctuations of the scale don't matter - Weight Watchers recommends only being weighed once a week. On their scales, no less, so I am forced to toss out their conclusions as somewhat biased. At any rate, if I can move the scales drastically just by moving my bowels, it may not be a 100% accurate number.

Still, I was hoping to also lose some weight here on the Eat At Home challenge, and here we are 36 hours in and I'm up .5 pounds. True, that was before I went potty (I have a toddler, excuse me) and 36 hours isn't very much of a benchmark but I am still somewhat bummed.

Perhaps I shouldn't have attempted to keep myself out of restaurants by making myself theirresistible homemade chex mix . I love it, and am helpless before it. The shitty thing is that I knew that before I made the damn stuff.

Big Guns in the Dirty South

2010-04-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

So the V family took a trip to Fort DeSoto today. It's a beautiful beach, voted best in the country in 2005 by Dr Beach, and best beach in the country by Trip Advisor in 2008 and 2009...

And that was on a cloudy day. There is also a historic fort there, one that was scouted by Robert E Lee, used as a Union encampment, and actually constructed in 1898 to guard the harbor from invasion. Since Tampa has never been invadedthese guns were only fired when shooting practice rounds.

But that is a lot of heavy artillery and some special rules will have to be set:

But the people of Florida say screw you:Let there be gun climbing!

Actually, some representatives of the people of Florida were a bit more scary than that:

Or there was this:

The most frightening thing there was probably the unzipped fly, which leads us to the most important rule of all....

Oh, and the eat at home challenge begins TOMORROW. Right now my weight is unchanged - 1*9.5 (* is # of shame and privacy again....)

The eat at home challenge begins on Monday!

2010-04-24T06:21:00.000-07:00

I went and hung out with a friend of mine on Thursday and we were both complaining about our weight and our finances. Pretty typical day, I guess. I had just gotten a glimpse at my account on Mint.comand was a bit shocked at how much money went to Restaurants and Fast food. If you haven't checked out that budgeting software, I recommend it and it's free and I'm not being compensated in any way for saying so. But since as far as I can tell no one is reading this yet :(, I'm not sure why I'm worried about what people think.

At any rate, she and I are both supposed to be advocates of eating at home because of our side businesses but neither of us do it nearly enough because of myriad reasons including but not limited to; time constraints, laziness, lack of imagination, possession of toddlers, possession of food fussy spouses, having cash in our pockets, laziness, not having run the dishwasher yet today, and Big Mac Attacks. But we had been to a meeting and were more fired up about our responsibilities than usual, plus we felt poor and fat (at least me on the weight thing because she may be poor but she is super hot) so we devised this challenge.

For two weeks, we will not eat in restaurants. At all. We will plan, cook at home, buy convenience foods at the grocery store for times when that is harder and plan ahead and DO IT. Chances are that we will make smarter food choices, and that we will also save $ and lose weight as a result. Feel free to come along with us.

As of right now, my weight stands at 1*9.5 (the * represents a number indicating shame and privacy). I will put my daily weight in each post until the challenge is done. Anyone want to play along? Leave a comment if you want to try it!

I don't want your nasty friends in my house!

2010-04-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

There is one member of our family that is not allowed to bring friends home. I don't mean to discriminate, but I don't like the friends she chooses and I don't want to share my home with them - even for a little while. She's very insistent, however, and keeps sneaking them in. Especially in the middle of the night. And this isn't the friend I want to see, or to step on, in the morning before I've had coffee.

Image Citation: Johnny N. Dell, , Bugwood.org

Shelby's "friends" aren't welcome. Shelby is the dog, and she's very cute and sweet and all, but she keeps digging ankle killing holes in the yard just to unearth one of these suckers so that she can gently take it in her mouth, relocate it to the rug inside the house, and spit it out. Then sometimes she will bark at it - because she has carefully preserved its life...and these things will start to move after playing dead for a while and the family must be alerted that there is an intruder in the house at 2:37 in the morning.

They first started to appear last year and after the 4th or 5th one came inside via my dog, I stopped obsessively smooshing and flushing and finally wondered what the hell it was. So I scooped it into a yogurt container and took it to Home Depot, to the nearest pimply or crotchety person wearing an orange apron in the Lawn and Garden department. The conversation, to the best of my recollection, went as follows:

"What the hell is this?"
chuckling. "Is your grass dead yet?"
"It's been more weeds than grass for a while. But what the hell is it?"
"That is a Mole-Cricket"
"Is there any way I can get the dog to stop digging them up and bringing them inside?"
"You could kill them."
"Okay, we'll go with that. Where do you keep the mole-cricket poison?"
"Oh, it's too late for a poison now. That's an adult - you have to poison the nymphs. Early April."
"Well, I'll just buy the poison now and give it a try anyway."
"You can't. We don't sell that poison."

I'm still not sure what sort of who's on first thing was going on at the Home Depot that day, but I ended up leaving and frustrated and certainly never using that container again. So this month Shelby started again with the "friends" and I promptly got online and ordered some heavy duty mole-cricket ass kicking poison, thereby getting myself on several federal watch lists I'm sure, and have started going out into the middle of the night, cackling and killing.

I'll let you know how it goes.

While vacuuming....

2010-04-21T14:16:00.001-07:00

Hmm, what a strange name for a blog. Why should you care about vacuuming? Why do I care enough about it to start a blog, for the love of God? What kind of stupid crap is this?

Okay, those of you who know me, or get to know me, will realize that I don't give a crap about vacuuming. Or general housekeeping, if you listen to my mom. But the word, the act itself fascinates me. The word is a lovely scrabble winner - it's perennially misspelled. The definition of the word vacuum: to draw or take in by or as if by suction. As I'm hoping readers will be eventually drawn to me and this blog.

I use vacuum time to think - I can't watch tv, talk to my kid, listen to music, or have any input at all while vacuuming. That makes it a rare time for me, because I'm always doing around 5 things at once. And when I went to do a bit of research about blogging and what to do to keep posts coming, I thought - I can always come up with new posts while vacuuming.

And here we are.