The Parking Spot Controversy

Ever since we moved into this condo complex, we've noticed how small the parking spots are and we're constantly getting dinked on the left side, since it's a guest parking spot and there's no specific person to blame for dinks.

The thing is, Peter and I are ultra-sensitive about dinking other cars. Sometimes, I literally have to hold open the door so it doesn't swing open because, of course, the parking lot is on a little bit of a hill, so it's easy for the door to just careen out and dink the next car.

I'm super-nervous about this because our neighbor is CRAZY. Okay, she may not be crazy, but she hates us, and by us, I mean me. I'm a friendly person, so whenever I see her outside, I say, (in a super-cheerful voice), "HI!" She pretends she didn't hear me and continues on her way.

This may have something to do with the fact that right before we moved in, we had painters and carpenters and floor installers fixing up this place. Oh, and our mover's truck whacked into her car bumper trying to get into our parking spot. And yes, one last thing, we have two dogs, and they sometimes decide that 2 a.m. is the ideal time to start wrestling. But I feel that none of these things are reasons to hate your new neighbor.

The other day, Peter said, "I think our spot is smaller than other people's."

Of course, this is exactly the sort of injustice that I WILL get worked up about, so yesterday, I got out the tape measure. Here is the finding:

Parking Spot # -- Width of Parking Spot in inches

13 -- 151
12 -- 103
11 -- 102
10 -- 103
9 -- 102
8 -- 102
7 -- 102
6 -- 102
Guest Spot -- 102
Guest Spot -- 105
Guest Spot -- 94
5 (OUR Spot) -- 93.5
4 -- 115

As you can see, our spot, and the guest spot next to ours is teeny-tiny. Why? Did the parking spot line painters just decide that the people in Apartment #2 just didn't deserve to have a decent sized spot?

We wouldn't have made a stink about it, but there is a substantial difference. Why should spot 13 get a huge palatial parking spot? Their spot is practically double ours. So we've written the management company. Peter doesn't think that they're going to do anything about it, but I'm optimistic that they will.

I guess the problem is that Peter's a realist (I call him a pessimist, but he says it's realist) and I'm an optimist. I always think that people will do the right thing, and then when they don't, I get angry about it. So we'll see. If the management company doesn't do the right thing, I'll probably buy a cheap-o motorcycle and park it in the guest spot next to ours. Permanently.

Is that really spiteful? Will that send me to Parking Karma Hell?

A Strange New Growth

Married people share a lot of things, and one of those things requires having your spouse check out something on your body that you can't really see, and give you their opinion on it.

Many such conversations in our house start out with:

Me: Is that a mosquito bite, or a pimple?

Me: Is that a pimple or an ingrown hair?

Me: Is that an ingrown hair or a tumor?

Whenever I say, "Can you take a look at this?" Peter instantly freezes, pretends he didn't hear me, and walks slowly out of the room. Much the way Rocky, the Siberian Husky, acts when he sees me heading toward him with the doghair brush.

Today Peter said, "I have a bump in my mouth."

Me: So floss!

Peter: I did NOT say I had something in MY TEETH. I SAID I had something in MY MOUTH. I think it's some sort of bump.

So we go into the bathroom where the light is better, and he uses his fingers to hold his upper lips and gets down on bended knee so I can see. And even though he's in this ridiculously precarious position, I crack up and say, "Of course I'll marry you!"

He starts laughing and said, "I was going to say 'Whii yuh mawrrehh meh'?"

When a couple gets married, the priest should really say, "Do you take this person, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, and will you check out any strange new growths that will appear on his body?"

No, Not Pregnant!

Every time I talk to someone I haven't spoken to in awhile, they ask me if I'm pregnant.

The other day, I was telling someone a story, about how my mother is FREAKING Out over the fact that I'm not pregnant yet, and I said:

"The funny thing, is that there's something that happened last month that I haven't told her about..."

Before I could finish my sentence, I heard through the telephone, loud enough to shake the plaster down on the walls of my apartment:

"You GOT PREGNANT!"

After a long pause, I said, "Uhm...NOOOOOOOOOOOO..."

I mean, that doesn't even make any sense. I feel like all people hear from me these days is, "blah blah blah, blah, blah blah blah blah." They're just waiting to hear the "P" word.

Kind of like my dogs, except their magic word is "food."

10 Years!!

September 5th marked the tenth anniversary of the day I first sat down next to Peter and said, "Hi! I like your glasses!"

I heard a report on 20/20 that our bodies regenerate all the cells on our bodies every ten years - at this point, Peter and I are walking around with an entirely new set of cells. So I guess that makes us entirely different people now.

The very first time I met Peter, I was wearing green cargo pants, a nylon neon-orange-and-neon-yellow camouflage tank top, and the extremely ugly Mephisto sandals my mother bought me because the salesperson at Nordstrom told her that they would mold to my feet, which was apparently something he convinced my mother was VERY IMPORTANT.

I know NOW that this is a hideous outfit, but for some reason, I looked at myself in the mirror and went, "I look TERRIFIC!" (Keep in mind, I had just spent a year in Ann Arbor, Michigan. For over there, anything not pre-worn by someone else was high fashion.)

A friend of mine brought me to see a coworker play guitar at a bar/club in the city. He pointed Peter out to me and said, "That's the guy who knows Beck."

At the time, I had just moved back to NYC from Ann Arbor, and I would take the 18-hour train ride every month or so to visit my family. On my portable CD player (remember those, guys?), I listened to Beck's Odelay over and over - my theme song for that summer was "New Pollution." So of course, anyone who knew Beck would be instantly cooler than anyone I had ever met before in my entire life. And boy, I was so right.

Did I Say a Million?

Peter's nephew Tony came over to visit us to print out business cards on our color laser printer that sits in our living room. Yes, in our home, instead of a pretty curio cabinet or a funky side table, we use pieces of computer equipment as decorative items.

So Tony came over with his packet of print-it-yourself business cards and instead of the 200 the box claimed it would print out, we only managed to get about 170 cards due to the falling apart of the business cards in the eventual paper jam.

First we were manually feeding them in, which we felt was a waste of time, so we tried putting one, then two sheets at a time, which worked, at which point I said:

"Hey, why don't you put ALL of them in."


"No," Tony said. "That might piss the printer off."

So we fed three-at-a-time, four-at-a-time and then, since there were only six left, we threw caution to the wind and put them all in - at which point the printer spitefully spat out a mangled last page.

"See," Tony said. "We were pushing our luck."

This took far too long, and I told him about designyourowncard.com, where I printed up my tutoring cards. For the $20 box, he only got 170 cards and I told him that this website will print out 1000 cards for $40.

"That way, you can print out 1000 cards and hand them out to A MILLION people! Uhm, or, you can print out 1000 cards and hand them out to 1000 people.

Camouflage

Peter and I went to Florida this past week and the very first day, I managed to scrape my foot on the bottom of the pool. Luckily, I found a Band-Aid in my bag and put it on.

Later, at the Boma buffet restaurant in the Animal Kingdom Lodge, otherwise known as "The Place Where You Should Put Down Those French Fries and Chicken Fingers and Get Some of That POT ROAST and RIBS and Potatoes with AFRITUDE," Peter looks down at my foot and said:

"Why did you take off your Band-Aid?"

I told him that it was still on and he looked at my foot closely and said:

"Wow. I think you're the first person I've ever known who actually has Band-Aid-colored skin."

I'm Special

I took my sister to get Jamba Juice today and ordered two small juices. She got hers and then when it was my turn, the juice-maker guy handed me a medium size, which is practically double the size that I ordered. I looked at it, then looked at my sister's, then looked at my receipt.

The juice-maker guy smiles at me and says:

I know you ordered the small, but you're special!

When we left the store, Jenny said:

I loved your reaction to that, it was like, "Thanks for noticing!"

Bathroom Conversation

Why are there two tubes of toothpaste in the medicine cabinet?

Because one of them is finished.

Why didn't you throw out the old tube of toothpaste?

I saved it for you.

...why?

You're a squeezer of greater patience and capacity than I am.

A Normal Person

We are going to Florida in about two weeks and we're trying to find a new dog kennel in the area to house the dogs. There are several places near Mt. Kisco, but they all want to charge you two arms and a leg to board. So, during an investigative internet search, I came across this place called Carmel Country Kennels. The price was attractive, but it is about thirty minutes away according to Mapquest. Today, we traveled to Carmel to check it out.

It was sort of a nightmare trip, complete with crazy downpours of rain, arguments with the Garmin (We did not go where she told us to go and for revenge, she picked every non-paved dirt road for us to navigate. Garmina is SUCH a bitch), and about ONE HOUR later, we finally arrive at the kennel.

Peter drives up to what we think is the office, and there's lettering on the door that says HONK YOU CAR HORN. I'm wondering, do we honk? Where's the front desk? Also, he's driven a bit too far in, and the bit of pavement is a bit narrow so he tries to U turn.

A lady appears at the doorway and Peter lowers our windshield to say to her:

"It just took us a solid hour to get here!"

She says in her ratty chain-smoker voice:

"Instead of trying to make a U, why don't you back out LIKE A NORMAL PERSON."

Of course, we are already having reservations about making this terrible drive ever again, the place looked kind of unkempt and now there's this rude lady.

Peter, like a NORMAL PERSON, backs out of the little paved area, drives down the gravel road...all the way home.

Fletch Lives Around Mount Kisco

For the 4th of July, Peter and I invited my parents, my grandmother, and my sisters to our home. We spend every 4th of July with my parents for the simple fact that - for some reason - it's the one day that they close down the restaurant.

It was also the first time I had anyone in my family besides my sister Jenny over at the new place. I was a bit embarrassed because there are cable wires masking taped all over the condo and three huge server machines in the dining room. I almost didn't want them to come over, because I wanted to wait until the place looked perfect.

But the funny thing was that my parents didn't even seem to notice them. It's like when you have a glaring pimple on your forehead, and you are convinced that everyone is grossed out, but when you mention it, they just go, "Oh, I didn't even see it."

For dinner, we went over to La Camelia, a restaurant that is literally around the corner from where we live.

I've been wanting to try it for quite some time, but the last time Peter and I walked over there, it was crazy packed and when I asked them if they had any vegetarian meals, the host said, "Of course, we have vegetarian paella, salmon..."

Right, since salmon is our favorite VEGETABLE. Peter turned tail and ran out of the place.

As it turned out, on July 4th, they did have a couple of vegetarian things and Peter ate and was very happy. The food was really good and everyone had a good time.

Toward the end of the meal, I look up and I see a tall guy and I say to myself, "Wow, that guy looks a lot like Chevy Chase, except he's really old. I mean, he's even wearing a safari vest just like in his movies."

I look over at Peter and he whispers in my ear, "That's Chevy Chase."

I tell him that the guy looks way too old and Peter says, "Chevy Chase IS old."

It was funny, because Chevy Chase walked around the restaurant, scoping out the diners, to see if there would be anyone who would hassle him before letting the waiter show him to a table.

My sister Jenny said, "Well, if he didn't want to be recognized, he shouldn't wear his safari vest, because then he's just ASKING FOR IT."

A Bad News First Person

I bought two seedless watermelons from Costco last week and the other day I opened one up. It was one of those over-ripe ones, no crispness, just a mouthful of what we called in my family, "whoo whoo," which means something that makes your mouth feel like it's full of wet sand.

Two days after the unfortunate watermelon incident, I opened up the other one, which was as sweet as the other one was "whoo whoo."

I told Peter that we should have opened this one first, and he said that would have been worse.

"Because then we would be looking forward to opening up the other watermelon, thinking that it was going to be as good as this one, and we would have been WAY MORE DISAPPOINTED."

The Greatest Movies

Last night Peter and I watched the AFI special on the 100 Greatest Movies of all time. We love shows like this, with film clips and people talking about their favorite movies.

When the list got to 50, Peter suggested that we try to predict the first 50 movies - which is something we like to do. A few weeks ago, while watching a Friends episode where Ross had to name all fifty states, we decided to take on that challenge (and we were almost defeated by IDAHO!!).

We predicted so many movies that were NOT on the list including:

Witness
The Untouchables
Field of Dreams
Dances With Wolves
(I say Diehard should be on this list, but I know it would never be)
Fight Club
Malcolm X
Reservoir Dogs

We decided that we are going to create our own list of the greatest films of all time.

Cheating on My Garmin

Yesterday I drove my mother's Pilot, which has a different gps than the wonderful device that is our Garmin. It kept tripping me up because the navigational lady didn't tell me when to turn until it was too late. Our Garmin lady tells me about 0.2 miles before the turn, and once more at the turn, so I kept missing crucial turns. I turned to my sister and said, "My gps lady is so much better than yours."

She said, "What? Just because she isn't constantly jabbering away?"

A Good Example of a Bad Example

My sister was over this weekend and we've been keeping up with the whole Paris Hilton thing. The one thing that we don't understand is why Paris Hilton's attorney is so indignant about the fact that she is being used as an example.

"Isn't that the whole purpose of a justice system?" Jenny said. "Someone does something illegal, everyone sees what happens to him. Everyone is now too too scared to do the same thing."

J Mascis = Saruman

We went to the Dinosaur Jr. concert the other day and I discovered something. J Mascis is Saruman!!

Breaking New Ground

I recently watched the movie "The Brothers Grimm" starring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. The movie was so terrible that it was a pioneer in terribleness, breaking new ground in the field of terrible.

I mean, the funding of this movie could have fed starving Sudanese children for weeks. My sister said that there were some movies that warrant the obscene operating expense of Hollywood, but this one is just ridiculous.

The producers must have gotten their hands on a steamy sex tape featuring Matt Damon and Heath Ledger. That would be the only explanation.

Everyone who watches DVDs with me knows that I am a sucker for the Special Features of any DVD I watch, and when I clicked on the screen, we saw that this DVD contained DELETED SCENES.

I can't even imagine how bad those deleted scenes might be, I'm afraid to see them.

Teenage Drinking Isn't Just About Teenage Drinking

While watching the news the other day, there was a report on teens drinking at the prom. There are a lot of proms taking place in catering halls in New Rochelle and the New Rochelle police departments are inspecting limos and confiscating any alcohol they find.

A police officer was interviewed saying:

"Teenage drinking isn't just about teenage drinking; it's about teenage drinking, date rape..."

That'll Teach Them

Peter and I watched an episode of Cheaters today and this show horrifies me, not because the show is about cheaters who get caught on television, because THAT would entertain me.

This show does not fool me. Most of the couples are completely staged, with the fake crying and the hidden cameras placed just where the action is. As punishment, I told Peter that he should call them so that they can waste a few days tailing me.

The report would look like this:

"Here's your wife sitting on the sofa watching T.V. and eating Terra Chips."

"Here she is taking out the dogs."

"Here's your wife going to Target and arguing with the customer service people...again."

You Aren't Going To Eat That Are You?

Peter and I finally brought his mother to my dad's Japanese restaurant. She looked completely uncomfortable, but wouldn't do anything to fix the situation. The is like what my sister Judy used to do in the wintertime when she was eight. She NEVER took her coat off, so we would be in a nice, well-heated place like my mom's friend's house and beads of sweat would be collecting on her forehead and sliding down her face, but if you even mildly suggested the she take off her coat, she would throw a tantrum.

Anyway, Peter's mother looked incredibly stiff and every time we gave her something to eat, she made a face as if we were suggesting she place the sushi into another orifice.

So for Mother's Day, I suggested that we could spend the day together with both mothers at the restaurant because my mom had to be there that day. Since Peter's mother refused to go again, we decided to go to her house first before going to the restaurant.

When we got there, Peter told her that we weren't going to be eating a lot because we were going to eat at the restaurant. Plus, she only ever makes two things and now we are sick of ravioli and manicotti.

Her response was, "You have to eat here, that isn't REAL food."

Nice, right?

Of course, right in the middle of the meal, my mother called and when I went to answer the phone, I saw a MOUSE!!!!

So it took Peter about a half-hour to trap the mouse into a bucket and tape the bottom of the bucket to a piece of cardboard. Why did he do this when it's much easier to just whack the mouse over the head with a broom? Well, if you're asking this question, you just don't know my husband.

After the mouse incident, we didn't have much of an appetite. We couldn't really eat the whole rest of the day, so the discovery is that seeing a mouse at your mother-in-law's house is really great for the new diet we're both on.

And the food at my mom's is way more appetizing. At least MY MOM doesn't have mice at HER PLACE.

Lives Are Changed

On my Digital Video Recorder, last night's Oprah show was:

Wishes are granted, dreams come true and lives are changed.

Whew! That's some show!