My New Bunny

Remember this?

That's right, it's the bunny eating a cookie that makes me laugh. I've got a new "bunny with a cookie", by which I mean something that I laugh about every time I think about it and I keep thinking that I'm going to get over it and the next time I think about it, it won't make me laugh, so I keep testing it and so far, still laughing.

My New Bunny

At work, we have weekly meetings between myself, the Saint, the Queen of All (aka my boss) and Fargo (the lone boy in our group of misfits). We talk about how it's going, what we're working on and any complaints or awesome stuff that's happened. Mostly.

Sometimes, we gossip. Sometimes.

Fargo: I wonder when S is supposed to be due?

(S is the head of our division)

The Saint & myself: S is pregnant?
Queen of All: <>

The Saint: Are you sure?

Fargo: Either she's pregnant, or she got really fat in one particular area. Seriously, she's either pregnant or it's time for Weight Watchers!

The Saint: -gasp-

(Can you tell who the nice one is in our group?)

The Saint: Have her boobs gotten any bigger?

(Being nice doesn't preclude you from asking the practical question.)

We all turn to Fargo, who gives us a blank stare in return that I take to mean, either he hasn't noticed, hasn't looked or doesn't want to admit that he has noticed or looked.

Queen of All: Well, she did just get married not that long ago. She had 1200 people at her wedding.

Me: I guess it's possible she got married and just decided to let herself go. I don't know how you can tell she's got a belly. She's always wearing a sari when I see her lately.

Fargo: Well yeah, if she's pregnant she's going to be wearing looser clothes.

Queen of All: Yeah, but I saw her bend over last week. If you're pregnant and you bend over, you can't just bend in half. The baby doesn't bend, right?

We all look to the Saint, since she's the only one of us who has been pregnant.

The Saint: Well, the baby doesn't really bend.

Me: Well I can't say really, I've never had the occasion to see S bend over and I don't know that I would have noticed if she had.

Fargo: I see S a lot. I'll have to pay attention if she bends over.

Me: Really? You're going follow S around and watch if she bends over?

The rest of us starting laughing hysterically while Fargo turned bright red and stammered that that was not what he meant AT ALL for a few minutes.

Later that day, I was at the gym and I was kind of in a pissy mood for no particular reason. I randomly thought about Fargo following S around waiting for her to bend over and I laughed. Out loud. At the gym.

It's possible that the people there think I'm insane now, laughing to myself (if they didn't already), but what do they know?

I've got a new bunny.

Father's Day

I bought my grandfather, Poppie, a Father's Day card. It's very pretty and brown. It looks handmade with fancy paper and a ribbon on the front. It says "Love You, Grandpa" on the front.

It's too bad that I'm greeting card illiterate, otherwise I might have read the inscription before I bought it. It says:

You're a wonderful person grandfather,

a great person, 

and an inspiration to the family. 

Happy Father's Day

Just in case he didn't know it before, he's a wonderful person AND a great person. In a comma delimited list TOGETHER. 

Sigh.

I know he probably won't even notice. He's a sweet, darling man who will just be glad I sent him a card, but still, I would rather send him a card that didn't read like a raging, insipid moron wrote it. 

I guess most greeting cards sound that way anyway, so I probably didn't really move that far down the greeting card food chain. 

That Was Unexpected!

Today was my first real yoga class. Sist-A and I went to a Yoga 101 seminar on Saturday where you learn some of the positions, vocabulary and philosophy, but that was nothing like today.

I have to admit, going into it, I thought it would be easy. I thought it would be a lot of stretching and flexibility stuff, but I didn't think it was going to be a challenge. I'm utterly delighted to find it otherwise. It's exactly what I was looking for when I took that failure of a water aerobics class. 

Things that made me pretty happy about this yoga class:

• To my surprise, I actually broke a sweat
• At one point, my thighs were only holding me up through sheer force of will
• Despite how hard it was, I was still able to go running afterwards
• Turns out that zen hoo-hah stuff actually works. I thought it was kind of crap as she started out with it, but as she talked us through visualizing our stress being released, I felt little pockets of stress in my back give way. Honestly, I didn't even realize they were they until I relaxed.

All in all, I'm calling it a win...

... hopefully, I'm still going to be able to walk tomorrow. 

Times are a changing

Changing is hard. 

This week, I'm going to try to change my schedule so that I can fit yoga into my daily routine. There is a yoga studio near where I work (Bliss Flow Yoga), so I can go during the day or early afternoon. The good thing about where I work is that it's very flexible, so if I want to step out for an hour to practice yoga, no big deal. 

The key is that I have to get up earlier to do it. 

To say that I'm not a morning person is the understatement of the century. 

Imagine a cranky, salty, curmudgeon who likes to rampantly curse about really small offenses. Yeah, that's basically me in the morning. 

So, it's going to be interesting to see how easily I adjust to getting up an hour earlier so that I can afford the time to go do this. 

It takes 21 days to create a habit, so this should only be a pain in the ass until it becomes a habit. I'm just not looking forward to trying to get to bed by 10, so that I can get a decent amount of sleep.

It's day one, and I've already missed 10 o'clock. 

Inner peace here I come? 

The More Things Change...

I saw an old friend, MCool, this weekend. I haven't seen him in almost three years. 

With some people, no matter how long you've been apart, you just fall back together like time and distance don't really matter. Some people require a period of adjustment before you remember the patterns of your friendship, how they relate to you and how you relate to them. Don't underestimate the latter. 

MCool and I were talking about weight lifting, he's been really into because of a contest he's doing with his friends. 

Apparently, I've been doing it wrong. He wouldn't really pin down what I was doing wrong, but suffice it to say, I was definitely doing it wrong. 

I have to admit, this initially rubbed me the wrong way. 

I mean, WTF!?! Who is he to tell me I'm not lifting correctly? Seriously, we haven't see each other in three years and one of the first things he does is to tell me what I'm doing wrong!

Then I remembered. I'm talking to MCool, not a normal person.

I think he was just nostalgic for the very first time we met. 

We met in high school, both of us were on the track team. I was a sophomore and he was a junior (although it was his first year in track, due to playing baseball for two years), and I was teaching the freshman girls to use the blocks. 

Ready. Set. Go.

Ready. Set. Go.

MCool walked up behind me and his first words to me were exactly this, "You're doing that wrong." In his (not so humble) opinion, I was holding the girls in their blocks too long before I said "Go."

... Aaaand just for the record, I was not doing it wrong. There is no correct amount of time to hold them in their blocks. 

I remembered this story of our first meeting, and suddenly I wasn't annoyed anymore. It was like hitting the valve on a steam cooker. The steam was released and along with it any bad feelings. All that was left was love and affection for MCool. That crazy kid hasn't changed at all. 

He's the boy who used to be too lazy to walk across the dorm to my room, so we would both watch the Simpson's over the phone together.

He's the boy who used to come over to my apartment every Tuesday to help me with my math homework and watch Buffy: The Vampire Slayer with me. 

He's the boy who used to go out for walks with me in the wee hours of the morning when I would get restless because he didn't think I should be wandering around by myself.

Sometimes it takes awhile to get the memories flowing, but then I remembered: my boy's got some excellent qualities, even if he (erroneously) believes that I do lots of stuff wrong. 

Quandary

When I was a kid, I asked my mother if it was better to be the kind of person who thought nice things and did good things or the kind who thought bad things, but usually did good things in spite of that. 

She thought for a moment and said it was better to think and do nice things.

I think about that occasionally, because I think the same thing now that I thought then.

I'm fucked. 

You Know You're Not Fooling Anyone, Right?

I don't watch Jon and Kate + 8.
She's bossy and mean. He's weak and boring.
Together they produced a hell of a lot of kids.
Snooze.

But, how can you stay away from the media storm the break up of their marriage is creating? It's salacious. It's fame, sex, money and lies. It's awesome.
In an, 'oh those poor children' kind of way, but awesome, nonetheless.

They're trying to convince us they're still together.
Yet, they spent her birthday apart. His trip out to Utah "just happened" to fall on her birthday?
I call bullshit on that one. You don't just happen to make other plans on your wife's birthday. This is a major relationship no-no. You especially don't make other plans to hang out with a girl you got tabloid busted for possibly having an affair.
There is trying to convince us that you're still together for the sake of the show and blah, blah, blah, whatever. Then, there is insulting.

Really, the hard part to believe is that someone would want to have an affair with either one of them. They've got 8 kids. If I were single, I don't think that kids would be a deal breaker. One or two little steps running around seems like it would be manageable. But, eight? That's a whole lot of baggage. I guess you can never really underestimate how low people are willing to sink for a little bit of fame-whore action.

Who's ya daddy?