She is such a Loser

My sister Jenny has lost her cell phone...again.

She is always wrecking or losing her cell phones. Three years ago, she let an elderly man at the nursing home she volunteered at spill water all over a VERY expensive cell phone - a phone that I used up my "every 2-years get a $100 upgrade credit" to purchase because she wanted to TEXT MESSAGE. A credit that I was planning on using for my husband's new cell phone. A credit that I had been dangling in front of his nose so that he wouldn't spend a gagillion dollars on a new cell phone. When I came home that night and told him I had given the credit to my sister, steam practically hissed out of his ears.

Last year she lost her cell phone for close to a week before telling anyone. Someone could have been charging calls to shady businesses in Guam for a few days, but she was afraid of getting yelled at by our parents and myself to concern herself with what would happen to me if a million dollars got charged to my phone bill.

She lost that phone because she was at a crazy Amherst College party located in a stairwell(?!) and for some reason, everyone stampeded out and she lost her cell phone, her shoe, and got banged around.

How could she have lost her cell phone and her shoe?

I don't know if I really believe that story - but she's sticking to it, and our parents have a policy of "Don't ask. Don't tell."

Luckily, campus police found it and called my Dad, who then emailed her so she got that one back...until she lost it today.

She went for a make-up application workshop(?!) and walked around Fort Lee. According to Jenny, she put the cell phone in her bag and POOF! it disappeared.

Yeah. Right.

I Hope I Won't Ever Have to Shave

Peter went to his mom's house a few days ago and noticed that she had two cans of shaving cream in the bathroom. When he asked his mother what she needed shaving cream for, she pointed to her face.

No Christmas Tree, No Christmas Tree

This always happens:

1. I get excited about an event
a. wedding
b. Thanksgiving
c. Parties

2. In my head I plan all sorts of things I am going to do for said event
a. design beautiful programs for my wedding
b. make little butter pats shaped like leaves for Thanksgiving dinner
c. clean up the house

3. Time gets away

4. Before I know it, it is a week before the event and I realize that I will never
a. have time to make the programs
b. find the butter pat molds
c. clean up the house

This year, I planned to have a very elaborate Christmas tree, which will be the first Christmas tree I've shared with Peter (and yes, we've known each other more than 9 years - sad? yes!) - and in fact, the second Christmas tree I will have purchased myself, the first being the Christmas tree I got for my sisters when I was in college. My parents decided to go away on a lovely trip to Taiwan, leaving me to handle Christmas.

My sisters were 12 and 6 at the time - prime ages in which Christmas is still full of magic and unrealistic expectations. I was assaulted by a tremendous feeling of anxiety because not only did my sisters have to face Christmas without my parents, but I had to fulfill all wishes and desires.

I got them a tree on a very snowy and bitter cold day while running a 103 degree fever. I wasn't even going to get a tree, since we don't usually, but the six-year-old put on such a sad face that I went out and got a tree. I was so freaking happy and so proud of myself. I remember reaching the door, and being ridiculously excited to show the tree to the girls.

When the little one saw the tree she wrinkled her nose and said:

"That tree is too small."

I felt as if she had yanked out my heart and stomped on it with her teeny-tiny feet. All I could remember is that I screamed some jibberish at her (it was the fever talking) and collapsed on the sofa, where I passed out.

When I woke up a few hours later, the tree was completely decorated (albeit badly). My sisters had felt so bad that they wanted me to wake up to a decorated tree.

I cleaned up the condo yesterday, and Peter asked me why.

"I'm clearing out space for the tree," I said.

"You do realize that Christmas is next week," Peter said. "And we don't even own any decorations."

The Hummingman

When you go apartment-hunting or house-hunting, there are always a thousand different things that you can never know about a building until you live in it.

For instance, our new condo has central air-conditioning vents that enable us to hear our downstairs neighbor. We can never make out what she's saying, exactly - it kind of sounds like what Charlie Brown's teachers say during a Peanuts cartoon show.

These past few months, our neighbor has been renovating her bathroom. Her handyman hums bad R&B while he tiles her bathroom, and it's been driving the dogs a bit batty. I think that they believe the humming noises belong to a puppy who is being tortured in the downstairs bathroom. My dogs run around in circles and whine. Occasionally, they will come up to me with a look of concern on their faces and I can almost hear them say, "Well, aren't you going to DO something about that?"

The thing is, that today the handyman was talking to my neighbor in the bathroom and I could hear EVERY WORD CLEAR AS A BELL.

Because she is a single mom lady, and I've never heard her talk to anyone while she's been in the bathroom before, I never realized that the vents in the bathroom are completely un-sound-proof. Which got me to thinking - that she hears me every time Peter's in there and I shout, "HEY! Are you POOPING in there?"

Ugg

Are Ugg boots really that comfortable?

A Beautiful Mind

The scariest scene in the movie "A Beautiful Mind" is when Jennifer Connelly walks into the shed and she discovers that her husband has been filling up the room with reams and reams of writing that covers every square inch of space and is wallpapered all over the shed.

I think that every couple has a secret fear that their better half will one day go bonkers.

Sometimes when I have my crazy insomnia, I will try to work out a game of Sudoku. I find that it occupies my brain in a minimal way - if I read a book, I will want to get to the end - and then I can just kiss sleep good-bye.

Of course, I'm too lazy and cheap to go out an buy a Sudoku book. Instead, I will go to websudoku and copy a game on a sheet of printer paper.

The other day, Peter found my Sudoku papers scattered on my bedside table and he came into the livingroom, thrust them at me and said in a voice that was trying to sound calm and soothing, but you could tell that there was an underlining panic riding just under the surface: "What is this?"

I told him it was Sudoku.

"Thank God, when I saw them, I thought - oh no, she's gone crazy."

Yet Another Way The Office is Morphing into Lost

Just like Lost, The Office is killing off characters one by one. First the tailies, and now this. I'm wondering when they're going to get their own doomsday button.