is it just me?

several months ago I was trying to get out the door with my dog and my kid to go for a walk. this is not that easy. I managed to get the leash on the dog, but as soon as I opened the door he bolted and ran down the driveway and across the street straight at another dog. fortunately, my dog is not ferocious. nutty, yes. but not mean. so I hustle out there after him, and hope that once the people see the kid on my back they will feel sorry for me. I especially think this once I see that it is two parents and a child walking this dog. by the time I get there, the husband is holding their dog in his arms (with a kid on his back) and standing on the leash of my dog (very considerate). the woman is giving me the look of death. I apologize, grab my dog, scold him entirely for their benefit and get walking. They do not give me any indication that they are feeling understanding or sympathetic, and this makes me mad.

We start seeing these people all the time. They cross the street away from us every time we pass them. I feel they should be our new best friends, because look! they are just like us! they live in our neighborhood, they have a dog, their kid is the same size as ours. But no. Instead I brand them my arch enemy. This starts to be a fun game. I have completely demonized them. I hoped when we moved to our new house, which is walking distance from our old house, we had moved just far enough that we wouldn't see them. But, we did. They pass by our new house all the time. My dog barks out the window at their dog. But I stopped looking closely at them a while ago. Until Sunday. I was returning home and they were right in front of my house. I looked at the kid and thought "that kid looks exactly the same age as Baby Lizard" again lamenting that they were foe not friend. And all of a sudden, the woman looks up and it's Charo! Not THE Charo, but Charo mom of little kid at Baby Lizard's new school. Ha. I immediately wonder if she has figured out that I am the irresponsible mom whose dog came running at her months ago. Did she recognize me at the picnic? If so, she didn't say anything. Anyway, her dog was pulling in to my driveway so I went to say hi, which is what I do to all dogs. I'm a dog person. And she pulls him away and says "he's not friendly". Now I get it! That is what was at the root of the whole thing! She was terrified of what her mean little dog would do to my dog or me or my kid. I mean, she probably also thinks I am an irresponsible mess but the real problem is her mean terrier. It's not even friendly enough to let a stranger come within ten feet! But now I need to find a new arch enemy. There's just too much friendliness in the world.

bad: burning your toast
worse: burning your toast so badly that it sets off the fire alarm and the whole building is evacuated
even worse than that: having someone send an email to the whole building telling them that it ws your burning toast that set off the alarm, and that the university is charged every time the fire department comes. email also included instructions for what to do if you have "smoking food"
worse yet: the follow up email that says that even though the guy hates this building he doesn't think we should burn it down, so we should just get a new toaster.

fun exciting times. fortunately I do not use the death trap toaster and therefore have not caused any fire alarms.

I'm your first friend!
a totally random person from high school looked me up on facebook. She has no friends, and we have no friends in common (on facebook that is, in real life I am sure she is very popular). Weird. Did she go looking for me? How did she find me? And of course being friends has led to no meaningful reconnecting or anything like that. Basically I saw that she had no pictures posted and therefore I had no facebook use for her.

on another facebook note, a "friend" of mine on there posts some weird rant every day about the corrupted duopoly of our political system and how if we really care about anything we will vote Ron Paul. Who, um, isn't on the ballot. But we should shun the establishment and vote for him anyway! I don't doubt that Ron Paul has some great ideas but this guy is starting to sound like a real wackjob.

p.s. the election has me terrified.

how many chances?
I received an email from 'Jackpot Chances' with the subject '12 chances at a new life!' Ten minutes later I received another message from 'Jackpot Chances' with the subject '112 chances at a new life!' Look at that - in just 10 minutes I got 100 more chances at a better life. I am totally waiting until tomorrow to see how many chances I have by then. I figure by Christmas I will be a guaranteed winner. So, do you think they had a meeting and someone said "I just don't think 12 chances is enough. If we really want to suck people in we need to give them 112 chances." Or perhaps it was just a typo. In any case, I still have to wonder who the suckers are who actually read those messages (for something other than blogging sport). I opened it and it said "Are you dreaming of being a millionaire?" And had a picture of someone sleeping on a little loveseat. I thought - hell, she doesn't need to be a millionaire, she just needs a full size couch so she can spread out and get some REST.

that's me. I can't believe I went a whole month again. bleh.

the same post over and over
I kind of feel like that is what this is, but seriously. this is my life, people. Several weeks ago I walked in to the lounge on my way out of work, and the cleaning lady was in there. as I was walking out I could tell she was giving me that 'is she pregnant?' look, so I turned around and said I was pregnant. then she says "I was thinking - is she pregnant AGAIN?" Nice. But the funny part is, this woman all of a sudden was off work a couple of years ago because she had a baby, but allegedly did not know she was pregnant. That's right, I am getting flack about being pregnant from someone who had a baby and had no idea she was knocked up, despite the fact that she already had TWO CHILDREN. So, she knows the deal. The big belly? The kicking? The weird pains? Not ringing any bells, lady? I defended her at the time, and said she probably just said she didn't know because she didn't want to tell anyone so she wouldn't lose her job or something. BUT, on this night a few weeks back she decided to tell me the story, and according to her she really had no idea. None. At all. For nine months. She had even been to doctors in that time period for something, and none of them figured it out. I have no idea how this is possible, and I still kind of refuse to believe it. But, whatever. And yet she is in a position to judge my procreating habits. Honestly.

olympics
I know, the Olympics are SO August and everyone is over it, but I just have one thing I want to discuss: trampoline. So, I caught it on an airport tv, and I have to say it's pretty cool. But, am I the only person that had absolutely no idea that this was a competitive sport? I watch a lot of sports. I read Sports Illustrated. I know most things that people do competitively. But I was watching and they said that trampoline was relatively new in some country, they had only been doing it "for ten years" which implies other places have been doing it much longer. Talk about complete lack of glory, I had no idea trampolines weren't just for hyper kids in their backyards. On a side note, I hope that my parents' neighbor is starting to practice RIGHT NOW for 2012, because that girl loves to jump on a trampoline. Much more than your average kid. But anyway, this was total news to me.

And I find it hilarious that BMX is an olympic sport. What I like even better is that some guy from Latvia got the gold and everyone was all "yeah, we knew he'd win." BMX in Latvia. I can honestly say I had no idea.

ricaraga
I went to Nicaragua for work a couple of weeks ago. It was my first trip out of the country in a long time, and probably my last for a while. Managua is kind of a strange place but the people are nice and the food is pretty good and overall I can't complain. Mostly I just went there, worked for three days and came home but it was still nice to get my passport stamped. Our first night we stayed at a place called Hotel La Pyramide which is, as you might guess even if you don't speak Spanish, shaped like a pyramid. As in Egypt. It's a nice place, once you get over the whole triangle thing. Anyway, I was staying in the Nefertitti Suite (not kidding) and I don't know if it was the tiny twin bed that was about 2 feet off the ground and 6 inches too short or the electric shower, but I sure felt like a queen! In the bathroom all the fixtures, including the toilet, were black. I do not recommend this. Sometimes you need some information about the contents of the toilet, and if it is black you can't see anything. Just something to consider for your next remodel. (It's funny, I am not sure I have ever noticed a black toilet anywhere, but since I came home I have seen two in the homes of people I know. Apparently it is more common than I realized, making this warning all that much more important.)

while I was gone mr. lizard taught baby lizard to say Nicaragua, which comes out Ricaraga and is, of course, exceedingly adorable. The funny thing is that now if you ask her where I am going the two choices are yoga (known as noga) and Nicaragua. Interesting. I think this is a sign that I need to get out more.

no more dishpan hands
our old house did not have a dishwasher. This was kind of tedious, but after a while we got over it. However, I was very enthusiastic about the fact that my new house had one. I glossed right over the part of the property condition report that said it worked 'intermittently' and promptly filled it with dishes. Apparently 'intermittently' means 'does not work when full of dishes' which is obviously a problem for something like a dishwasher. So, I demanded that we purchase a new one. We went to the appliance store and the guy asked us what we were looking for, you know, did we need all the bells and whistles? I said 'I haven't had a dishwasher in five years, so pretty much any machine that washes dishes for me is pretty impressive in my book.' Of course I still walked out of there with a fancy dishwasher, and I was super excited. Someone told me that getting excited about appliances is a sure sign you are getting old, but people: I just magically got back a half hour a day. Seriously. And it still feels like a miracle every time I open that baby up and the dishes are clean. ALL BY THEMSELVES. WITH NO HELP FROM ME. It's so great.

nice to meet you
Baby Liz started a new school. Since we sort of pretend to be social we attended the back to school potluck. First of all, bah to potlucks. My hatred for them is well documented here. I completely forgot about the event until the night before, so I went to the store that day and bought some deli items. I figured hey - it's a lot of working parents. We're all in the same boat. But NO. I arrived to a wide array of freshly made items including casseroles, sandwich platters, macaroni and cheese and all other kinds of stuff. Oi. I felt terrible about my store bought cookies and pasta salad. Until...until...someone brought McDonald's. To a potluck. For overeducated parents and their over-parented offspring. HAHA. I am not the worst one. I am second to last in the lazy mom category, but I did not bring chicken mcnuggets to her potluck. So, yay for me.

I am really not very good at mingling at places where I don't know anyone, and Mr. Lizard had to work late so I was there alone. Eventually I kind of sidled up to teh family of this kid who I am pretty sure is in my kid's class (hey, it's only been a week) and the mom says to me "Hi, I'm Charo." HAHA. I almost died. Because this woman is so very much unlike THE Charo I can't even tell you. She is a Japanese scholar, but not even modern japanese. Medieval japanese texts or something. gotta love university towns. I certainly cannot picture her in some ridiculous get up saying cuchi cuchi. Just the idea of it gives me fits. But of course she was given this name before Charo was Charo, so it's just her bizarre misfortune. Interestingly, this prompted me to go to Charo's wikipedia page, and here for your reading pleasure is the first paragraph:

María del Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza Rasten (born March 13, 1951, though other sources state 1941), better known as Charo, is a Spanish and American singer, dancer, comedian, actress and classical guitarist. She is known for her flamboyant stage presence, provocative outfits, and her trademark phrase ("cuchi-cuchi").

Can you believe that name? No wonder she goes by Charo. heh.

John Edwards
In other hopelessly outdated news: holy fall from grace, Batman. I cannot believe he was having an affair. But don't worry, it was while his wife was "in remission". Which makes it totally okay. And the woman he had it with is kind of horrifying. She voluntarily changed her name to Rielle. It's as if she was always hoping to be someone's trashy affair.

And to prove that my belief that perhaps Sarah Palin should not run for VP while her family is in a state of mild disarray is not sexist, I also did not think John Edwards should run when his wife was probably dying. This is because I sincerely hope that they would find their family lives very distracting at this moment in time, and let's be honest: running the country is not really a job you can get distracted from. I'm just saying.

round and round
baby liz: mama light on
mama: *turns light on because she is a dutiful mama*
baby liz: why light on?
mama: because you asked me to turn it on
baby liz: why mama light on?
mama: because you asked me to turn it on, and I did
baby liz: why mama ask you?
mama: *blink*
baby liz: *collapses in a fit because the light is on*
mama: *turns light off*
baby liz: why light off? NO LIGHT OFF! NO MAMA LIGHT OFF!
mama: *collapses in heap due to exhaustion*

welcome to my world. it's nice here. just don't touch the lights.