It Must Be Nice to Be a Cat

 

Ludo here says that it’s a good day to be a cat when you can just lounge about in the sunshine for hours on end. I sometime envy cats and dogs and their simple pleasures. I mean, really. Give a cat a sunbeam and he’s content for hours. They don’t have to stress out about work or what size of jeans they wear. Or about Maybelline discontinuing their color of eyebrow liner.

Yes, that has been my latest lament. My eyebrows are still suffering from the Unfortunate Plucking Incident of ’07. Sadly, I knew nothing of how to correctly pluck or shape brows at the time, so I ended up maiming them horribly for life. Tragedy has prevented them from ever growing back properly. And it sucketh.

I discovered the joy of Maybelline’s Eyebrow Liner a few years back, and suddenly realized that I could cover up my mistake and fool the world into thinking that they were actually normal. Ish.

Then even MORE tragedy struck.

Low and behold, in recent months Maybelline fiendishly decided to discontinue my particular shade of brow liner. (Foul devils! Do they not realize that I have crappy eyebrows without them?! Blaargghrawr.) I was in complete despair. I had so trusted dear Maybelline and their products. I had even specifically used their smokey eye shadow on my wedding day, because it was my favorite. Heck, they should be paying me to be a spokesperson here.

So you can imagine my utter distress. After trying what felt like a TON of other brow liners, I had finally found one that worked perfectly. It went on smooth. It matched my hair color. It was precise and self-sharpening. IT. WAS. BEAUTIFUL. And it was gone so quickly, I never saw it coming. After going to five, count ’em, FIVE different stores in search of this particular color, I finally went to their web site and realized the awful truth. The color was gone and it wasn’t coming back.

In a fit of desperation, I tried their next-darkest shade. Low and behold, it mostly matched. No, it was not quite as good as my original, but beggars and the eyebrowly-challenged can’t afford to be choosers, I suppose.

“Perhaps,” I thought to myself, “if I just walk around and act super happy, they’ll be distracted and won’t even notice my newly-colored eyebrows!”

It mostly worked.

Diet? What diet?

I had been doing so good. For the past month, I had faithfully worked out almost every day, watched every calorie that I put in my mouth, and even logged when I exercised and how much I ate each day online. Thanks to the encouragement and accountability of my faithful friend, I managed to lose a pound and a half and felt very proud of myself. I had limited my precious soda [Preeeciousssssss….] and was starting to see some results in my stomach and legs.

Then Husband decided to fall off a roof yesterday at work.

Apparently he was trying out for the plywood surfing event and hasn’t quite nailed the landing. Yup, you guessed it. Rain + plywood + roof + husband = big ouchie. Suddenly, our week became about a million times busier. (The fact that I’m writing this now means that he’s actually sleeping and not pestering me because he’s bored out of his mind. Bored Husband makes KC the Cruel emerge from her usual state of hiding.) Thankfully, Husband is just fine and will need to rest for a couple of weeks, but he does have a compression fracture in his upper back and is off work this week. Poor Husband.

After all of the stress and worry of the last day or so, I threw out my diet with a hearty “Screw it!” We shall see if it will decide to grace us once again with its presence. I’ve even allowed myself the pleasure of Pepsi [Preeeeciousssss….]. Because when I drink Pepsi, the world as I know it stops turning and I feel like this:

I know I look like that, too. I take this as proof that its carbonated, sugary goodness will give me lovely, toned legs, buff arms and a slender, willowy waist. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I’m sure I’ll get back to the grindstone diet-wise once things quiet down a little bit, but in the meantime I’m going to have my cake and eat it, too, darn it. Husband-pampering is tough work.

Happy Star Wars Day!

Ah, dear Star Wars. How I love thee. I remember the first time that my dear father asked me if I had ever watched Star Wars. When I replied no, he gave me a look of horror and immediately went to the video store (back when we actually had video stores and not Netflix) to get the entire original trilogy. (That was back when there was only one trilogy as well.) I was probably eleven or twelve around that time, which meant that the original movies had been out for a quite a while, probably a good ten years or so. But they were still awesome, just as they are now.

I think what makes Star Wars so endearing to my heart is the memories of getting to spend time with my dad. My dad was (and is) totally awesome about these. Some of my favorite memories of all time come from “father-daughter dates” to movies. We watched all of the new Star Wars movies that came out, eagerly waiting in anticipation for the next release. We watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Patriot, the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy; he even suffered through Titanic with me. He used those times to teach me the qualities that I needed to look for in a guy, what to expect on a date, etc. Because the nearest movie theater at the time was a good half hour to forty minutes away from our small town, we got to spend that time talking about life in general.

But Star Wars brought it about, from the very beginning. We sat down that afternoon and watched the entire original trilogy in its full glory and I fell in love with it. Darth Vader was my new favorite misunderstood villain, I had to re-watch the scene with the Death Star at least a couple more times to get the full effect of its awesomeness, and my dad and I had yet one more thing to gab about into the wee hours of the evening.

So here’s to you, Dad. Thanks for introducing me to what is perhaps one of the greatest series of all time, and for teaching me how to respect myself and others. I appreciate all that you’ve done for me and all that you’ve inspired. Have a Happy Birthday this coming Monday, and Happy Star Wars Day.

I don’t own Star Wars. Obviously.

Eastern Oregon…More than just desert.

While I love to travel, I don’t always get a chance to do so as often as I’d like. (You know, that whole “not-having-money-unless-I-go-to-work” thing.) But every once in a blue moon, we get to go on a fun road trip and see something new. We went to a leadership conference put on by the Calvary Chapel in Boise, Idaho last year and it was really good. So when we were offered a chance to go again this year (for free, no less!) we said “Heck, yeah!”

Honestly, it was the first time that I’d ever been to Idaho. I’d never driven that far east before. I’ve traveled all over Oregon, my home state. I’m probably a bit biased since I was born and raised here, but I do happen to think we have one of the most beautiful states out there. (I mention that I’m biased because I’ve only ever visited 5 states here in the U.S. in my entire 27 years of existence. Sad, I know.) Other states have beautiful attributes, but Oregon has something special. It goes from the dry, high desert to the fertile, lush valley. It has a coastline that’s almost always worthy of photographing. There are plains, mountains, valleys, beaches and even large(ish) cities, for those who don’t care for nature. Of course, to see all of this you have to drive several hours, but the views are worth it.

Everything’s so green right now! Fields and grass aplenty! I actually hadn’t traveled through Eastern Oregon hardly at all. North, south, central, west…those I know pretty darn well. But east? Not so much.

We spent two nights there. The hotel was pretty nice, though I have decided that hotels in general don’t regard short people who have to put on makeup in the morning. They are notorious for installing large, obnoxious counters that helpless 5’2″ shorties like myself have a most difficult time reaching across. I can’t see what I’m doing from five feet away, so I have lean over, using all of the muscles in my lower back to hold myself upright whilst I line my eyes, lengthen my lashes, etc. Not to mention the lighting always sucketh. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put on my makeup in a bathroom not my own and thought that I was looking okay, only to step out into the harsh sunlight and realize the error of my judgment. What was hidden by bad lighting is now horribly exposed in the unforgiving sun.

But I digress. Apart from a slight pain in my lower back from too much counter leaning, the trip was most pleasant and quite fun.