I just made my very first call to my very first bridal shop for my very first wedding dress appointment.  And now I need to go grab a paper bag to breathe into because people, even though my appointment isn’t until tomorrow?  I am freaking out.

Freaking. Out.

Here is the thing:  shopping for normal clothes stresses me out (especially trying to find pants that fit but this is not that blog entry).  I do not like dressing rooms.  I do not like trying on a bunch of stuff.  I do not like getting all overheated and sweaty and teary because they turn the heat up to a zillion degrees in those tiny booths and nothing ever effing fits correctly.  Never. Ever.

I am five feet tall and weigh around 95 pounds.  I have a belly that sticks out no matter what I do, a bum that is getting jiggly and I’m starting to develop matronly upper arms (If you could somehow transplant the squishy ness of my upper arms into my breastular area might solve quite a few problems when it comes to finding a wedding dress seeing as how it looks like 95% of them are strapless)  My insides know that they are thirty and are starting to behave that way while my outside still thinks that its twelve and has no idea how to handle the various sagging and bagging that is beginning to happen.   I have yet to find any clothing in the women’s sections of stores that is not too big or too “wow, that looks like it used to be someone’s living room curtain set” (or both).  The petite section seems to be made for people who are wider around than they are tall and shopping in the children’s section is just plain humiliating (nevermind that the clothing in that section is not constructed to accommodate any sort of curve at all).   I flat out refuse to wear anything adorned with Miley Cyrus. Or Dora the Explorer.

Added to that stress, I will be doing this all by myself.

One one level this is comforting: I will be able to look mostly on my own without having to patiently listen to input that might, while well intentioned, will most likely make me stabby and self conscious after a while.  Plus, if I’m going to have an emotional breakdown over my freakish body, it’s better to be able to do so without worrying about somebody having to wait for you to control yourself.   I also think better when I’m by myself.

On another level this is disappointing because isn’t it kind of a rite of passage to go shopping for your wedding dress with your friends/female relatives?  Aren’t you supposed to have someone there to help you convince the sales clerk that no, actually you don’t want to accentuate your butt with a giant bow or to try to talk you into getting the one dress that everybody agrees looks the best but that you would secretly rather use to scrub your floor for reasons you cannot quite explain?  I feel kind of like I’m missing out on something important.

Also? I am not a big fan of dresses.  But I still want to wear a pretty white dress on my wedding day.  But I do not want to spend so much money that I could have resolved a small country’s national debt crisis.  Yarg.

I am probably just reading too much into this and getting too worked up over something that won’t matter much even a few weeks from now but for right now I’m fairly convinced that tomorrow afternoon you will find me sitting in a fitting room bawling to some stranger about how “I hate everything and nothing ever fits and why can’t designers make stuff for people like meeeeeeee?  Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Yesterday when the duck family came to visit I tossed out a bunch of torn up bread as a sort of bribe to get them to hang out in front of my balcony so that I could get a few pictures of the cuteness:

And, thanks to the wonder of photoshop, I have this to offer you:

I enlarged this portion from another photo.  He/she’s a little blurry but the cute factor is obvious.

So there Mr, Mrs and Babies Mallard were, chomping away on bread bits when all of a sudden the entire family took off for the creek.  This is not new.  The other day this happened and the nutria showed up (he came back with a buddy yesterday but those photos did not turn out so well) but today, this guy decided to make his debut:

Poppy has never seen a raccoon before and, well… let’s just say that she was very curious about the “not quite a cat” looking creature hanging out in the yard:

I’m kind of wondering who will show up today!

Can I just say right now that I am very proud of the amount of stuff that I have gotten done today?  I feel perfectly justified in lying on the couch for the rest of the afternoon, especially since my whole self just went “okay, that’s enough. Let’s take a nap.”

So the weekend?  Was an awesome lazy weekend.  Seriously?  I did exactly nothing.  I watched Numb3rs on Netflix (did you know that it has the current season on there as well?!?), lay on the couch and did a little bit of crochet.  I took a bunch of pictures of the nutria who sometimes hangs out in the side yard.  That varmint is a total model.  I swear there were a couple of times when I thought he was posing.  Check it out:

I just cannot get enough of this guy (or gal)

I also fed the baby ducks but the duck family ran away before I could get the camera out.

blurry baby duck running away!

The geese were, mercifully, absent (damn bullies) though a couple of them seem to be back today:

Wow.  It sounds/looks like I live way out in the country, doesn’t it? From these pictures you would never know that I live a five minute walk from a freeway on-ramp in a major metropolitan area.

Oh and I made pulled pork for Will.  Which sounds vaguely dirty.

Today is the exact antithesis of the weekend.  I was almost up early but went back to sleep for an hour once Will left for Work (it’s a wake up early every day week for us) but then, then! There was writing and marketing and online networking and cooking lunch oh my!  And some cleaning and more writing and now a blog post! With pictures! I rule!

I am very happy that today is Friday even though you could argue that, because I work at home, most of my days could be Fridays if I wanted them to be.  But anyway…

There is this awesome window at Winco–after most people have done their grocery shopping but before all of the restocking starts.  Last night we went to Winco hoping to hit that awesome window–but we were too late.  At 11:30 PM, the forklifts and palates have come out.  This did not stop us from getting our grocery shopping done, it just presented a new challenge.

Can I just say? Thank GOD we did our grocery shopping last night.  We were down to (no kidding) 3 packages of top ramen, some vanilla ice cream and an unopened bag of tater tots.  We went on a major re-stocking spree (yay Winco prices that kept us from bankrupting ourselves!) and it felt so good today to stand in front of crammed full cupboards and think “what should I eat for lunch today” instead of “ew, look at what I have to choose from for lunch today.”

I don’t know if this makes me weird, but honestly? I feel a lot better when my fridge, freezer and cupboards are stocked.  I could feel my muscles relax last night as I was putting the food away.  Sure going to the store so late at night meant that I missed out on some sleep, but I will happily get a couple less hours of sleep if it means that my apartment has food in it.

In other news, we have baby ducks!  Today I spotted a female duck and a male duck leading a trail of six ducklings around the yard outside of our apartment.  They walked them right up to our balcony and I had a squee-fit.  Six ducklings looking like six small loaves of marbled bread wandering around outside! I wanted to get a picture, but the Canadian geese that have taken up residence for the late spring scared them off before I could get the camera out and set up.  Damn those Canadian geese, they really are terrible bullies.  I like to think I’m a fan of most creatures (especially the cute, fuzzy and baby) but I do not like those Canadian geese.  At all.

Finally–have a good weekend!  I have no idea what I will be doing (besides diving into Dust and Shadow) but whatever you end up doing, I hope it’s fun!

Today, when I made mac and cheese for lunch?  And it started to overboil the way it always does (I always put in too much water)?  It’s possible that I yelled “Goddammit!  Stop boiling over you mass produced macaroni motherfucker!” and then kicked my oven.

I think that, if nothing else, I should get points for alliteration.

I have officially finished Pretty in Plaid…and started it again.  Because I’m a giant geek like that.  The book arrived yesterday and I did my best to not rip open the package and start reading, which is what I wanted to do.  Instead I carefully set aside the cardboard Amazon shipping package and went to the store because I? Was out of Pepsi and Doritos and, as we all know, Pepsi and Doritos are required munchables for a really fun reading experience.  And when I got home I kind of had to do some work, which killed me because my book!  The book that was guaranteed to make me laugh myself into a coughing fit!  The book I’d been waiting for for, like, a year!  It was waiting for me! Arrrggggh!

But I did the work.  And I am kind of proud of my growned-upness that I put off instant gratification in the name of getting stuff done.  Look at me, I’m maturing! (Kind of)

Finally, finally, I picked up my book at four thirtyish.  And I read.  And read. And read.  And then we went to the drive through at Wendy’s because we were starving.  And then I read.  And read.  And slept.  And woke up and read.

And finished the book.

Pretty in Plaid is just as awesome as everything else Jen Lancaster has written.  I am not sure if it knocks out Bright Lights Big Ass as my favorite, but it’s a pretty sweet read.  There were parts that made me laugh myself into stomach knots–parts that when I read them out loud to Will he laughed so hard he might have cried.  Or something else that’s manly and involves the tear ducts being activated.  He still refuses to go see her in person in a few weeks when she does a booksigning at Powells but maybe he’ll come around for the next book.  And I have a while to work on him.

So today I finished Pretty in Plaid and flipped it back to the very beginning to start it all over again.  But not before seeing another favorite blogger, Ms. Kristabella mentioned in the Acknowledgements section (which was all kinds of cool.  Blogging is such a weird medium–I’ve never met her but when I read her name I was all “eee! Someone I read is being acknowledged by someone else I read!”).

I’m afraid that I’m being kind of a bad friend because, while I have started Lyndsay’s book, I haven’t yet finished it (though I plan to devour it this weekend).  With all of the stress of the sucky-client-stravaganza last week and the feeling like poo over the weekend, I really need to laugh this week and the new Jen Lancaster is just the ticket.

But enough fan geeking out.  I’m sure I’ll do plenty more of that in a week and a half after her booksigning.

Speaking of which, Will keeps telling me that I “NEED” to meet her and wait in line to have my book signed when she comes to Powell’s in a week and a half.  But I? I’m okay with the sitting in the audience and geeking out and listening to her talk and then quickly fleeing the scene.  Jen writes about the time she meets Augusten Burroughs near the end of the book and that? Is nothing compared to what I fear I will become if I wait in that line. Seriously. I like to think I’m all cool and stuff but really? I’m just as slobbering as everyone else.  Possibly more so.

Okay, off to read.  Or watch tv and crochet (I haven’t yet given up on the idea of an esty shop, but wanting to keep everything I make is kind of getting in the way of getting the thing started).

In case you were not aware, this book comes out today:

For those of you who do not know (hello new people who have never ever read me before!), I am quite a fan of  Jen Lancaster.  You might even go so far as to call me a fan geek for the woman because she? Is teh hawesome-est. Seriously.  She has Moxy Balls the size of…you get the idea.

I first got turned on to her writing when I ran my sad and pathetic little review blog a few years ago.  Her publisher sent me a copy of her book to review and after the first reading I was in lurve.  I bought her next books as soon as they came out and last year I went to her booksigning at Powells.  And it rocked.  A lot.

According to FedEx Tracking my book is on the delivery truck right! this! minute! and it will be here before 4:30.  So, um, sorry clients, everything else is getting put away as soon as Fed Ex arrives so that I can read this book.

Handy Note That I Learned Last Year:  It is probably not a good idea to read her books for the first time while taking public transit.  Such a Pretty Fat made me laugh so hard that four people asked me if I was having some kind of fit.

Go buy this book!  Right now!

This weekend was largely uneventful, mostly because I woke up with that vague “uh-oh, I might have the swine flu” feeling on Saturday which quickly progressed into a “yeah, I’m not going anywhere today” ugginess.  So, with the exception of when we left the house to see Wolverine (um.  yeah.), I spent my weekend wrapped up in a blanket nest on the couch and streaming Numb3rs episodes on Netflix.

A word of wisdom:  I do not care how awesome your internet connection is, it will slow the eff down when one person in your house is playing effing World of Warcraft on two computers (god I wish I was kidding) and the other person is trying to stream entire seasons of television shows on her laptop.  Some of the episodes I watched felt more like an audio stream set to a slideshow.  That’s okay though, because I was crocheting and knitting (I finished my first knitted scarf ever!) a lot and wasn’t paying too much attention to the visual anyway.

Also?  Can I just say?  That David Krumholtz can play charming really well.  I quite possibly might have gotten swoony over Charlie by the end of the weekend (the actor has come a long way since playing the Cereal King!).  Don’t tell Will or he’ll try to talk about his homework even more to me and my eyes can only glaze over from “I’m trying to be supportive but I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about”ness so much.

I felt mostly better today–enough to go downtown so I could go to the library (where I only checked out five books thank you very much). Now it is early afternoon and while I have the motivation to work I kind of…lack the brain power.  You would think that, after two years, I would have learned that my circadian rhythms completely deplete my ability to string coherent sentences together (see: this blog post) and that I would save things like library trips for the afternoon and get the work done in the morning when I’m ready and alert and  gung-ho about getting stuff done.

Speaking of… two years!  TWO.

Yep, last Friday was the two year anniversary of me flipping off my former day job and heading out into the freelance world.  I am quite happy to say that I have managed to keep myself afloat this entire time and have not yet had to resort to part time coffee slinging to make ends meet.  Sometimes I do miss having a “regular” job but that is mostly because I can only have so many conversations with the cat before someone locks me up for thinking that Poppy can actually respond to what I’m saying.  While I do not miss being forced to spend time with people I find, for the most part, odious, I do kind of miss being out and among other humans.

I have found, however, that I am MUCH friendlier (usually) when I am out and about than I used to be when I had a regular job.  Maybe its because leaving the house is a choice now and I’m a lot happier about being in the world.

This does not mean that I do not have my moments.  This weekend, when two teenage girls sat down next to us at the movies I told Will that I reserved the right to mock them loudly if they said anything worth mocking.  And. Wow. I just.  I just don’t understand.

WARNING:  If you care at all about not having Wolverine spoiled for you, don’t read this part.

Teenage Girl One:  I really hate that Ryan Reynolds died.  He’s too hot to kill.

Teenage Girl Two: Yeah but, like, they probably had to kill him because, like, his character wasn’t in any of the original stories.

Teenage Girl One: Yeah, you’re probably right.  They totally need to make another X-Men story and just tell Ryan Reynolds’ story.

Teenage Girl Two: X-Men Four would be awesome.  They could totally keep the stories going for a long time.

Teenage Girl One:  Don’t you think that Hot Rod is just, like, the best movie ever?

Teenage Girl Two:  Totally.  I love movies about real people.  You can, like, learn so much about them!

Me:  Will, my brain is imploding.

Will: Let’s get out of here before you make them cry.

Me: Promise me that our kids–

Will: Yep, let’s go before you make them cry.

Look, I said quite a few things as a teenager that would now boggle my brain in their stupidity.  I know this.  But…just…wow.  WOW.  This scares me a lot.  Not because I think my own kids will be this clueless (not going to let it happen) but because my kids might hang out with kids like this.

Other than these girls, the movie was…okay.  Charlie gets killed (I don’t care what his name really is, he will always be Charlie to me) which pissed me off even though I knew it was coming and there is quite a lot of shirtless Hugh Jackman (you might find that drooly, I’m more of a Daniel Craig girl) and, Ryan Reynolds kicked some ass.  My absolute favorite part of the entire movie, however, was watching Kevin Durand play The Blob.  I am going to buy this movie when it comes out on DVD just to watch him play The Blog again.  Because that was awesome.  There is something about watching a guy  fully commit to the fat suit and oogieness that is The Blob (he was also in an episode of Dead Like Me that I watched last week and made me laugh really hard) that really gets my respect juice flowing.

In other words, I have had “You Just Got Slapped” in my head for days and can’t get it out!

I mentioned a little while ago that I was thinking about doing more paid posting on this here blog.  In light of my recent client “adventures” I started looking around at a variety of social media sites in an effort to find paid posting stuff that I would actually enjoy doing and that wouldn’t take away from the content of my site.  I looked at sites that I used to belong to and you know-things have really changed since the fall of 2007, which is when I last did any sort of paid posts or sponsored postings.  PayPerPost (remember them?) has partnered with Izea and Social Spark to create a kind of trifecta of sponsorship opportunities, blog promotion and community.

Look, I know that you guys are like “oh god, I remember the days of 7 posts-6 of them paid” and I don’t want to do that this time.  I do not want to promote sites or causes that I cannot get behind or that do not intrigue me.  I figure this way I can find the best of both worlds:  I can get paid from time to time for doing something I already love to do: blog.  On my own blog.  About stuff I think is cool.   And because I get asked quite a bit about how to utilize social media (like the Izea link I just posted), this will help me in my “business world” too.

You understand, right?  Right?  Hello?  Bueller? Is this thing on?

It took me until this afternoon but I finally picked a winner for the Pepsi Throwback Giveaway! The awesome Reva Skie is the winner of all of that awesome Pepsi stuff! Yay!

I’ve spent most of the week wrestling with a lame client.  These guys pop up every once in a while.  Dealing with the lameness is never fun but such is freelance life.

Speaking of freelance life–this my two year freelanciversary!

I would like to write a big ol’ thing about how the last year was different from the first year and what I’ve learned and yadda yadda yadda but you know what?  It’s been a long week and I’d rather knit and crochet for a while.  Maybe I’ll have more energy tomorrow.

Congratulations Reva!