My special friend

Lately, after I put my kids in bed I rummage through the cupboards for comfort food. I'm usually cranky -  grumbling internally about my zits, the cost of gas, Democrats who voted in the Michigan Republican primaries, the cost of gas, etc. I'm a real treat. And then suddenly I find what I'm looking for. My worries melt away and I can hear Neil Diamond singing softly in the background...

Helloooo, my friend, hello...

Just called to let you know


I think about you every night


And I know it's late


But I couldn't wait


Hello...
Interestingly, the Nutella sings a Lionel Richie song back to me...
 
Hellooo!


Is it me you're looking for?


I can see it in your eyes


I can see it in your smile


You're all I've ever wanted


And my arms are open wide


'cause you know just what to say


And you know just what to do


And I want to tell you so much


I love you...

We have a unique relationship - Nutella and I. You can tell by the 80s music. Sometimes my friend Nutella is the only thing that gets me through the day.

I love you, my friend. See you tonight.

And really, this is worth watching...
(So many questions...do blind people really use lamps to read Braille? How does the ballet thing work? Just how creepy is Lionel in this video on a scale from one to five? Discuss.)


(Oh yeah, I wrote another humor thingie this week. Read it. Maybe I quoted you.)

Allow me to introduce my friends...

I've always named my blemishes, of course, but I've never envisioned myself displaying them on the World Wide Web for all to see. I haven't had a chin like this since Bill Clinton's first presidential term. In fact, that's what inspired their names. Ron - he's the little guy. He's just hanging in there. Newt - he won't go away, no matter how I try. Rick - he's a contender. He's right up there with Mitt. Speaking of Mitt, he's our top pick. Things are really coming to a head now for Mitt.

I think it's the stress. I was discussing this with my sister this morning. I think I'm a stress sponge lately. I've been stressing out about everything from genetically modified produce to the Republican primaries to Dr. Seuss Week. Usually I hear stressful things and I either think about them for a minute or I immediately deflect them. Not now. Now I internalize them and allow them to affect my blood pressure and manifest themselves on my own personal face. My chin looks like the handle of the big dipper.

Sorry to be gross. I hope you weren't eating. I will be ladylike again tomorrow.

This garbage brought to you by: Elise, with the assistance of Editor Lady Joyce

Because I promised: a link to this week's column.

I am warning you - even I didn't like what I wrote this week, and I'm usually my own best friend. The saying usually goes "you're your own worst critic." Not me. I'm way too nice to myself in this department. I am shocked that Editor Lady Joyce (that's her official title) even published this trash. She's too nice to me.

Enjoy?

I want to kill my dog.

Did you guys know that Winston Churchill suffered from depression? He called it his "black dog." It followed him around. If he was having a particularly down day he would say he "had a black dog on his back."

Guys, I think I have a black dog following me around. It's not a big dog - kind of a yippy little Scottish terrier. In the morning, it follows me around barking: "You can't do this anymore!" "You're failing as a mother!" "Your pants wouldn't be so tight if you would stop eating chocolate chip cookies!" And when I collapse into bed at the end of the day and close my eyes, I can hear him yipping at the foot of my bed: "You didn't do enough today!" "You are ruining your kids!" "You are thirty-one and you still have zits?!"

I hate this freaking dog.

He has been a particular nuisance of late. During the day I can drown him out with friends and children and running and housework and cracking jokes. But when the house is quiet in the morning or when I'm falling asleep he's still there, barking away.

I don't know why my metaphorical depression dog is male, but there it is.

I'm not trying to get sympathy from you guys. We both know that there are plenty of people in the world who are much more deserving of your sympathy. I'm just trying to figure out a way to kill this dog once and for all so that I can spend less time focused on myself and more time focused on other people.

I'm reminded of the time that DJ threw a frozen block of elk meat at our barking neighbor dog one night a few years back. He hit it in the head, the dog ate the meat (freezer paper and all), and we finally got to sleep. I guess what I need is a metaphorical frozen chunk of elk meat.

Memory of Warmer Times Lane

Raise your hand if you love St. George. 

Say what you will about St. George not having a Chick-fil-A, but I don't want to hear any complaints about the weather. 

That little warm spell we enjoyed last week reminded me of a trip that DJ and I took a few years back.  We went to Hawaii when it was January on the mainland.  I think it's perpetually June in Hawaii.  I was in the throes of pregnancy, dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder, and overall feeling crappy.  The trip was heavenly.  Care to join me for a stroll down Memory Lane, where we can all live vicariously through myself five years ago only without the morning sickness?

 

Words cannot describe how much I love this picture.  But I will try anyway.  This was taken at the Polynesian Cultural Center, where I began my career as a semi-professional hula dancer.  This was my first lesson.  The best part of the picture?  The old other people in the picture with me.  They are so happy.  And their outfits are so festive.  Most people scuba dive or sky dive or some other form of diving when they vacation.  Not me.  I kick it with the AARP.

Speaking of the AARP, feast your eyes on this fellow:

I love that guy. Besides the obvious satisfaction he derives from photobombing unsuspecting tourists, I just appreciate his overall attitude. You know, "Screw it, I'm retired. You don't like my back hair, that's your problem." 

One more comment on this picture. If you will, please take a moment to compare my hairdo in the hula dancing photo to my hairdon't in the photobombed picture.  Are you guys like me--do you make really bad decisions when you're pregnant?  And very ill-thought-out decisions when you're on vacation?  We all knew going into this trip that something bad was going to happen to my hair.  That hairdon't is both the worst and most expensive haircut I've ever received.

Thanks for joining me on my trip down Memory of Warmer Times Lane.  Only three months until summer!

P.S.  Like I threatened last week, here is a link to what I wrote for St. George News this week.  I didn't really care for it, but I didn't have anything else to write about and I didn't think they'd appreciate vacation pictures from five years ago.  Not like you guys.  En. Joy.

The Great and Powerful Oz

A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from a guy, who for privacy purposes we will call The Wizard of Oz (since I've never met him and I'm not entirely sure he really exists), asking if I'd be interested in writing a humor column for a local news website every week.  Since he didn't ask me for my credit card information and the website appeared legitimate I said, "What the hey."  Actually, I wrote something else.  I don't remember what I replied, except that it was almost physically painful for me not to use emoticons in the e-mail.

So...I started writing a "humor" column.  Please note my liberal use of the term "humor."  Being asked to write humorously is a lot of pressure.  It's one thing to write about current events--you just write about stuff that happens and hope that you get your facts straight.  Writing humorously is kind of the opposite.  The facts aren't so much an issue (or they are and I just don't give a crap), but being witty is something that is difficult to do on command.  I feel like I have a guy shooting a gun at my feet and yelling, "DANCE!"  I feel like I was a decent dancer before, but the gun's making me nervous.  Is this simile too complex?

Anyhoo.

You guys oughta see what I wrote this week.  I'll probably put a link on here when I write for the website, since every week my mom asks me how to find it.  (Just trying to make things easier for you, Mom!)

How I Almost Died This Weekend

Yeah, I know it's Tuesday. I was crazy busy yesterday wiping the dust off of my baseboards and eating DJ's birthday Twinkies. (Amusing sidenote: My husband doesn't necessarily care for Twinkies, but for some reason his sisters think that he loves them. Every year he receives a box for his birthday. I eat them. The end.)

On Saturday our friends invited us to go rock climbing with them. I've only rock climbed a few times in my life, most recently in 2001. Let's do the math...that was eleven years, four kids, and one husband ago. I've been in the mood to test my fear and anxiety threshold lately--I also tried Zumba last week--so we agreed to go.

DJ was a trooper. He came straight from work in his Levis and gave it a shot. For those who've never climbed before, usually you wear these tight little climbing shoes that make you look like a nerd. We don't know anyone who wears a size 13 climbing shoe, so DJ went in his nice work shoes.

Macey and Olivia tried it out, too:

I didn't get really great pictures of Olivia, because while she was climbing my other kids were taking pictures like this one:

At one point it was my turn. I borrowed my friend's tight little shoes, strapped into the Climbing Girdle of Joy and Flatteringness (TM), and deliberately made my way up the cliff face. I climbed for what felt like hours. Eventually my arms began to weaken.

"I don't think I can do this," I told my friend.

"Everyone says that. You've got it," my friend replied calmly from the rocky desert floor hundreds of feet below.

My legs began to quiver with fatigue. The bones in my arms liquified until my entire upper body had the consistency of Jell-o. "No really, I can't do this. I don't want to die today."

"See that crevice about seven feet above your head?" my friend asked. "See if you can reach that with your right arm."

I reached, but couldn't make it. I lost my footing. The world spun around me. My life flashed before my eyes just like a bad cliche. I plunged down to my waiting death...

...five feet below.

I climbed five feet before I fell. It felt a lot higher. Given the right shoes I could've jumped from five feet up and been okay.

You're probably wondering how I almost died this weekend. It wasn't the rock climbing. It was the Twinkies. Roll credits.

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"Little" Red Dress

This dress weighs one hundred and ten pounds.  It was premiered a week or two ago at Couture Week in Paris. (Yeah, I missed it, too.  I don't know how these things slip past my radar.  Or, raise your hand if you didn't know Couture Week existed until reading that sentence.  High five!)

Doesn't this seem like a step in the wrong direction, ladies?  Doesn't this dress seem like a hearty slap in the makeup-less face of feminism?  We've managed to get rid of the whalebone corsets.  We can wear pants now.  Nylons are on their way out.  I have some serious beef with these Parisian fashion designers, I'll tell you what.  Give me something I can work with, guys. 

Just something on my mind today.  As you were.

The Day My Phone Got Dropped in the Toidie, By Elise Haynes

We have had a day, let me tell you, and it's all that chubby little baby's fault.  It all started with me needing to write this thing for this website.  I wrote it and then I didn't like what I wrote, so I rewrote it.  And then I didn't like the rewrite so I went with the original anyway.  Argh.  I was preoccupied.  During this writing and rewriting process, Chancho was playing Angry Birds on my phone. 

I'm too pooped [rimshot!] to tell the whole story, but suffice it to say that my phone got dropped into an unflushed toilet.  And then wiped clean and placed back in my purse by an incredibly penitent four-year-old. 

Fortunately for me, I selected my husband based on his expertise in two areas--pyrotechnics and fixing phones that have been dropped into sewage water.  He put my phone into a Ziploc bag of rice, which will supposedly draw the moisture out of the phone.  (I would've thought this was a job for the jasmine rice--it's kind of Asian, Asians make electronics.  DJ went with the long grain white rice.  He's the expert, I guess.)

Pray for my phone, guys.  I need it to see all of the stuff on Pinterest that I could do if I didn't spend all of my time on Pinterest.

Wheatgrass Juice in the Privacy of My Kitchen

Someone. I need victory music, something in the vein of "We Are the Champions" by Queen. Crank up your ghetto blasters. Behold:

I know, I know...it looks like a plastic cup full of bile. What if I told you that that single fluid ounce of liquid is the result of eight days of the painstaking sprouting and watering and nurturing of THIS:

You would feel pity for me, wouldn't you? Or at least you would humor me in the same way I humor my children when they surprise me with their unique sense of fashion:



(Wheatgrass-growing resolution? Check! And it's only January 19th. I wonder what I'll do for the rest of the year.)

For the record, I have tasted wheatgrass juice before. I used to buy it at the crunchy smoothie store for like three bucks a shot. Drinking it in the privacy of my own kitchen is an entirely different ball of wax. You know what? Wheatgrass juice tastes super nasty when you're not surrounded by a bunch of Chacos-wearing hippies. Today, I was about two grassy burps away from upchucking. Just ask my mom. She watched the entire thing, laughing at me the whole time. Clearly she has moved on from the humoring-her-children phase.

(Guys. Can I just tell you how happy I am with the results of our recent family photo shoot? I am. So happy.)

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