Giddy Girlie

The problem with working too much is that you don't have enough time to do the things you need to do. The problem with taking time off from work is that you have too much time to do things that you don't want to do.

Oh sure, I had all these great plans for my 12 days of Christmas Vacation at Home (tm), but I have accomplished none of them. Well, technically, I did some laundry so I can cross one tiny thing off my list. Clean underpants are nice, but it's a small offering to the Laundry Gods who are angered by my piles of clothes in the bottom of the closet. I also was supposed to re-organize Ryan's studio (he got a new desk, so the old one needs to go) and post a bunch of crap on Craigslist. Make space for the bikes in the garage (they've been living on the patio too long and hogging valuable real estate) and weed the planters on the patio. And by "weed", I mean "dig up everything that currently is growing in there because it's ALL weeds". Except for a jalapeno plant that just showed up out of nowhere -- who knew?

I also wanted to mop the floors, clean the bathroom, organize the office, clear out the fridge (I wish I was kidding that the egg carton says to sell by November 26), and wash my car. None of these things will actually happen, of course, but it's nice to say "I was gonna..."

If you decide to drop in (please don't!), you are welcome to wrinkle your nose in disgust. Just make your way around the laundry piles (I'm gonna put them away later) and through the random debris that is my life. And if I'm sleeping, don't wake me up. The TiVo remote is somewhere on the side of the couch. You're welcome.

RANDOM NOTE: on a (starvation) whim the other day, I bought a bag of TGI Friday's potato skin chips and they are SO GOOD. Way better than expected. Which isn't saying much, considering that I bought them at a gas station, but still!

Posted by giddygirlie at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

She and I used to write notes to each other on a daily basis and pass them between classes. I saved hundreds of them (and probably a thousand more from everyone else who ever scribbled me a note on 3-hole punch paper) until I moved to my first apartment and didn't have space to keep 4 shoe boxes full of high school letters. On the margins of the paper, we used to draw cartoons of ourselves or our friends, acting out some fantastical (read: nerdy) conversation that we'd had previously at lunch, at the peak of the sugar rush. Like picking up a fictitious biker named Ron Pachon at a dive bar and going camping with him in his tent that he bought with Marlboro Miles. Or being serenaded by the school principal, singing "Just a Friend" by BizMarkie.

She always used to misspell it "o-ways".

Posted by giddygirlie at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Danielle suggested that I read "Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians" which is brought to you by the same creative mind who started "People I No Longer Talk To" which inspired ME to start a new category thread: People I Don't Talk To Anymore.

While I enjoy the next few days (12!!) off from work, I am going to start the series. I have so many bits floating around in my brains that I need to commit to paper electronic reading format so that I don't forget.

Posted by giddygirlie at 11:00 PM | Permalink

The weather has been spotty around here lately, raining buckets of cats and dogs for about an hour then jumping directly to warm sun. It's making everyone crazy, because no matter how hard you try to plan, you're wearing the wrong clothes. I tend to under-dress (short sleeves, open-toed shoes, etc.) while everyone else around me looks like eskimos.

So it wasn't totally shocking, although an admitted surprise, to see a girl laying out by the pool in a bikini. It was probably 70 degrees, maybe more in the direct sunlight, but still... I wrinkled my forehead thinking what the hell is wrong with THAT girl? Of course, I have done the exact same thing MANY times. And in thinking of the times when I layed out in the backyard to get a tan, I realized that nearly all of them were 1) in the winter and 2) with Jennifer. Both of these things are significant in that 1) it was winter and 2) Jennifer is whiter than a klansman and burns like a duraflame.

Obviously, this was before I learned about how I live in North America, and winter is when the earth is furthest from the sun (yesterday) and during winter the direct sunlight isn't as strong as, say, the summer months when temperatures are warm and the ability to get a tan increases a jillion-fold.

And somehow, I agreed to this "laying out" with Jennifer. Every instance I can think of, we are in her backyard. We're all decked out, ready to make us some tan (!) with oils and lotions and potions and a stack of trashy magazines and a jumbo bag of sunflower seeds and iced tea with fresh mint. And then we sit. And we wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. For the tan that never seems to come (see above). Even fair-skinned Jenn who once got a 3rd degree burn from a glow stick doesn't have a tint of pink to her. And so we resign ourselves to either going through winter pale and fat (another by-product of the winter sun, in case you don't know) or we'll have roast like chickens in a tanning booth. We pack up our towels and stereo and Us Weeklys and grease up the doorknobs with our oily hands before going to the bedroom to peel off whatever embarrassment of a bathing suit we've been wearing (in the privacy of your own backyard, the Z-List garments come out), again trying to limit the grease transfer.

Staring at my pale legs, glistening with coconut fat, I can't for the life of me think of how I got here. Who am I? And why am I trying to lay out, in December, with Jennifer?! This has to be some kind of bad dream. Or at least a dumb dream. A dumb dream that's doomed to be repeated.

Posted by giddygirlie at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After posting daily during NaBloPoMo, I had all these big ideas about posting every day (even contemplating signing up for a 365 challenge). And then... well... Since I posted last, so many things have happened. So many great stories and fun places. And now comes the catch-up task (bleh).

Fortunately, I am better at posting to Flickr than I am here, so if you're on my contacts list, you'll see the results of another exciting girl's day at Disneyland with Bliss and Kate. And also the Christmas costume party (pirates!). This weekend, I had an AWESOME day of shopping (well chronicled by Kate) with Kate and Adam. The highlight of which, was passing the mall Information Booth and there was a corral made of "mall security" barricades next to it with 3 young girls inside. They were all kind of defeated looking, somewhere around 10 years old. I whispered to Adam "Oh my god! Mall jail!" and he leaned over to one of the girls "psst! Are you in mall jail?" and the girl got very offended and said "NO! I lost my family!"

Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances (including the fact that I am a lazy jerk who needs to lay on the couch for several hours at a stretch), we delayed getting our Christmas tree until yesterday (Sunday). We were so excited because our living room has very high ceilings (20+ feet in some places) and kept yapping about how we could get THE BIGGEST TREE IN THE WORLD and it would fit in our living room. We even declared (a la Jurassic Park) that we would spare no expense! So we trotted over to the local Target (best place for trees, BTW) to discover that there were exactly 4 trees left. And three of them were "tagged" by families who left a kid to hold the branch (lest anyone else claim it) while they dashed across the street to the last tree lot in town. We laughed and laughed and laughed and then claimed the last tree -- better safe than sorry! And were especially glad when other shoppers reported that the lot across the street only had 3-4' flocked trees.

So, we came home with our tree -- laughing all the way. Our tree is barely 5 feet tall. Even on the little square table, it's no where near the ceiling. We crammed it way in the shortest corner, and it still looks wee. Which is ok. Just no one tell my mother. She'd smack me once for waiting so long and smack me twice for not driving 100 miles to a tree farm to get a 15 foot tree because GOD KNOWS WE HAVE THE CEILING SPACE. Pictures forthcoming.

Posted by giddygirlie at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As is the natural order of things in my life, everything happens ALL AT ONCE. Which means that this weekend:

Friday
* get hair/nails done (been procrastinating that for a MONTH)
* clean garage (par-tay!)
* potentially buy and set up Christmas tree (depending on the deluge we get)
* return library books
* post garage junk on Craigslist

Saturday
* clean house and pretend that I am not a total slob
* prepare costume
* go to Christmas costume party. Theme: pirates!

Sunday
* Disneyland with Bliss and Kate - wooooOOOoooooOOOO!! I can't wait to have these girlies to myself ALL DAY LONG, and also to see all the cool Christmas decorations. Squeee!!

Posted by giddygirlie at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On Saturday, Ryan and I abandoned our plans to... uh... do NOTHING and instead went out with Pete and his friend to downtown Huntington Beach. It was exciting to be doing SOMETHING. We showed up all giggles and sunshine until we got ID'ed at the bar and then: HA! Ryan's driver's license is expired and they wouldn't accept it. HA HA HA. We're totally OLD and still get carded. Plus Ryan was the designated driver, so he wasn't going to drink at all, he just wanted to come inside out of the cold. Pete has some clout at the bar, so the bartender vouched for Ryan and let him in, but only until Pete and his friend finished their beers, then we had to hit the bricks.

So we went down the street to a dive bar spot, where they don't card so everyone was either 19 or 50. And man! The Cougar watching was amazing. There were very few young guys and the ladies were fighting hard for their attention. One couple in particular made for great play-by-play commentary... the lady separated him from the herd early and he was plying her with drinks. They were slow dancing (to fast songs) and grinding and getting all explicit. It was hilarious. I nearly fell off my chair when they got caught sneaking off to the bathroom together.

I was in the mood to be cheesy, so I had myself a couple of girlie drinkies. And they were gooooood.

But here's the thing: if you don't eat, those girlie drinks become GRIZZLY drinks. I woke up early the next morning with the worst stomach ache EVER and puked my (empty) guts up. Ryan was the one who finally realized that I wasn't even hungover, I was just over-sugared. I was sipping tea and rubbing my stomach and howling like a chihuahua and when he put me through the inquisition, we realized that I only ate a cheese on a stick for the whole day. So as I am moaning and miserable, Ryan is clucking his tongue saying helpful things like "You might as well have had 2 Slurpees. You'd be just as sick."

Basically, in the long view, I probably would have been better off staying home, watching Freaks & Geeks and eating popcorn. Although fake butter makes me blorch, so...

Posted by giddygirlie at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)