Lists and Panty Hose

The other day, I was looking through my "notes" on my phone and found one from three months ago labeled, "Stuff I Hate." Intrigued, I opened it and found this:

First, it's "viola," people. It's French. Google that shit. Second, I don't even sort of remember writing this note, but it's completely me. I'm the type of person that hates so many things that I feel the need to make a list. So, I figured I'd continue the list and make a mini-series of sorts. First up: cheaply made panty hose. 

I love panty hose in the winter. With them, I can look cute in a dress and not freeze my ass off. However, I'm a cheapskate. I loathe paying six bucks for panty hose, so I'll go with the cheaper, less durable option. Not any more. 

New Years Eve, I had just the right amount of fun and ruined my good pair of panty hose. So, I had to buy some new ones, but I didn't want to spend "a lot" of cheddar. I found some at Ross for $3. Score! 

I wore them for the first time on Wednesday and within 10 minutes, they were ruined. Literally. I walked out of my apartment and got into my car and somewhere in between there, a huge run found its way onto my panty hose. 

By the end of the day, it was down to my ankle. This kind of stuff only seems to happen to me. Needless to say, I'll start buying the good stuff. 

I hate cheaply made panty hose. 

Sincerely,

The Average Person

Scales

It's January, so everyone is working on their New Years resolutions, right? At least for a few more weeks? Today, I heard a group of women talking about the pounds they would like to shed this year. It was the normal discussion of fad diets and diet pills that really work, when I heard something that struck me. This woman was telling her friends about how she was going to start tracking her weight so she could see her progress at the end. This is reasonable. Then one friend said, "Make sure you weigh yourself in the morning!" And another piped up with, "And do it naked!" The first friend added, "Yeah, you'll weigh the least." The whole group agreed.

I've heard this before. People always talk (and write) about your "real weight" being what you weigh in your birthday suit right when you wake up. This makes absolutely no sense to me. In my opinion, a person's "real weight" is what they weigh on a normal day, eating normal food, in their normal clothes (minus shoes because come on, those things add at least 3 unnecessary pounds). Whose bright idea was it to use the part of the day that you are basically starving as an indicator of what a person really weighs? Granted, anyone is going to feel skinny (or dead) after not eating for 12 hours, but you don't go out and buy clothes based on this absurd "real weight" concept. You try on clothes at any part of the day and buy them for how they fit you at that time. Can you imagine buying a pair of pants a size too small because, "Oh, these will fit me awesomely before I eat breakfast." NO. As a little experiment, I weighed myself at 8AM and again at 8PM. Want to know the difference??

8AM

There was none.

8PM

If you can tear your eyes away from my awkward feet (I put on socks just for you in the second picture), you can see the giant difference in my weight. This actually surprised me because I've done this before and there usually is at least a couple ounces of difference, but nothing really dramatic. The health "experts" make it seem like you are going to throw off your entire weight loss plan if you don't do what they say. Now, notice I also didn't weigh myself naked.

 

1. I'm not ready for the internet to see me naked yet.

2. I'm wearing something I normally wear! On a normal day! For my normal weight!

 

The hair bow adds at least a pound.

See? After tracking your weight like this for a few days, you'll start to have an idea of what you normally weigh with your normal wardrobe. It's so much nicer to have realistic expectations rather than stressing over how soon you'll reach the weight that your body is when it is starving first thing in the morning.



Sincerely,


The Average Person

In the Average Kitchen

 

 

You always see blogs that have these beautiful, elaborate, "easy peasy" meals that their writers create for their readers, but what about the epic failures in the kitchen? You never see those. I want to see more kitchen goof-ups. I mean, total bombs that make you fake a smile for your family while you eat it and your kid gags it up before the end of the meal. That is the picture I want to create here.

 

I made a bomb of a meal last night. I'm a woman, not superwoman. I'm also a mom, and though my son may call me "Batmom," I'm no superhero. That being said, I have no time to screw around in the kitchen and all my meals are either easy, ugly and edible, or total goofs that no one will touch. 

This particular piece-of-shit recipe was a new one. I've never cooked with Spaghetti Squash before, so I thought, hey, I'll give this a shot. The recipe only had 5 ingredients, so there's no fucking that up, right? Wrong. Total failure. 

First, it started out with this mess. You poke holes in the squash and bake it for something like an hour. Then, you cut it open, scoop out the seeds and "easily scrape the insides out with a fork."

 

It got a little ridiculous.

Bullshit. It took a fork, a spoon and a fucking knife to get this shit out. At this point, my son looked at it and said, "What's that?" in a very, "there's no way I'm eating that" tone of voice. In the end, I finally got the squash's guts out and decided that I didn't cook it long enough. 

Next, all you had to do was melt butter in a sauce pan, add garlic, basil and the spaghetti squash.

How delicious....not.

If by the second step you can see how terrible a meal is going to be, common sense says, "just stop." But, obviously, I have little to no common sense. 

 

This doesn't look very appetizing. Let me taste it...yeah, not very appetizing. Whatever, I'll serve it anyway.

And I did. To horrible reviews. I think the exact words my son used were "yuck" and "disgusting." 

Then, the last step of the recipe is to look at your empty plate after you forced down the terrible meal as a good example for your child and realize....you forgot to add the most important ingredient.

So...wait, this meal MIGHT have actually been delicious??

Well, shit.

 

 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

The Average Person

The Average Resolutions

WHOA, the new year got here fast. Amiright? Although I'm actually facing some pretty huge changes in 2014 (i.e. a semi cross country move), I'm not going to make any promises of new beginnings or any of that shit.

Instead, here is my little list resolutions, if you care to know:

I'll be 25 this next year and I feel like it's a good time to start taking care of myself.
Since I already run frequently, I need to focus on what I'm putting into this hot bod.

So....
 

1. No more soda

2. No more red meat

3. More veggies

 

THE end.

Happy New Year, followers :) Do some living this year.

 

Sincerely,

The Average Person

Ketchup

Cute title, right? But, for real, let's catch up.

First, I want to brag on my mad skills. 

This is my hurricane son's bedroom about 30 minutes ago.

This is my son's room NOW.

I even made a redhead materialize.

Who's the boss? I'M the boss. That's a work of art right there.

Back to business, I recently took a couple of kidless road trips and I remembered that they actually aren't torturous trips designed by the devil. I delighted in the fact that I could drive all 5 hours without stopping to pee once and that I could buy snacks and didn't have to share with anyone. 

The first trip I took, I went to see Justin Timberlake in concert. I went with one of my dearest friends and had an absolute blast. We stayed in a HOTEL. I felt like the Queen of the world; my bed had FOUR pillows on it. Heaven, obviously. Aside from the absolutely incredible performance by JT (if you haven't seen him live yet, bucket list that shit NOW), the most notable part of the trip was when my friend's gay intuition took us to dinner in one of the gay strips of Dallas. 

So, we arrived at the hotel room and immediately lounged on our beds and talked about what to eat for dinner. My friend looked at surrounding places to eat on his phone and mentioned an Italian place close by that looked tasty and cheap. Those are my two favorite adjectives when describing food, so of course I jumped on board. We got ready to go and when we arrived in the neighborhood, I immediately sensed something different. For one, the only people I saw on the street were men. Two, one or more of the shops we passed displayed more risqué clothing than I've seen in other neighborhoods. But, what definitely sealed it for me was the framed pictures of drag queens and a poster for The Bridegroom in the Italian restaurant. I looked at my friend and we both realized what had happened. It was awesome. There was even an amazing, two story gay bar across the street that, of course, we went to after eating pizza slices the size of our faces. In short, that trip was awesome.

He sings to my SOUL

My next trip was this past weekend to see an old friend graduate from college. This trip was so nice and so much fun. My friend lives in an insanely small town and I met some great new people. We drove around town, blaring Miley, giving no fucks, held hands at the mall, and danced to Katy Perry's Dark Horse at a local bar like nobody's business. It was a perfect, relaxing trip. 

On the way home, I stopped at Baby Head Cemetary because I'd been dying to ever since I passed it on my way to see Justin Timberlake.

It's exactly as creepy as it sounds. Apparently, a child in the 1850s was killed by Indians and its remains were left on the mountain near here - thus it was known as Baby Head Mountain. Later on, a community formed near the mountain and took the name Baby Head as well. I know, that got morbid fast, right?? I'm really into history and cemeteries always fascinate the fuck out of me. Anyway, the oldest grave in this cemetery was from the 1850s! So, obviously, I spent almost 45 minutes in this tiny graveyard. 

And now, we're caught up. I'm going to go drink a beer in celebration of my mad cleaning skills.

Sincerely,

The Average Person

Me + Christmas Music = No.

I had a great Thanksgiving; but, after the usual amount of family drama, exhausted and overstimulated toddlers, and fierce loathing of my family's city, I'm happy to be curled up in my bed, writing to you all.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it's socially acceptable to play Christmas music. Although, my sweet mother doesn't quite understand the whole "socially acceptable" thing and forced me to listen to her favorite CDs on the 4 hour ride to see our family the day before Thanksgiving. If there's anything you should learn from reading this blog, it's that I hate Christmas music. Of course, I'm not a total Scrooge, but I literally enjoy about 5 Christmas songs and there are literally 800,000 of them, with more being written each year! Why don't I like Christmas music? I can't really tell you. Maybe it's because there are 500 versions of all 800,000 songs and every public place you enter in December seems to be playing the exact same loop of them. Or maybe it's because songs like Santa, Baby and I Saw Mama Kissing Santa Claus exist. I mean, really. One is about flirting with an old, fat guy to get nice shit and the other depicts a potentially ruined marriage. WTF, Christmas? Obviously, there are a number of reasons why I hate Christmas music.

One of the albums I was lovingly forced to be exposed to was Michael Buble's Christmas.

Even he looks uncomfortable with his rendition of Santa, Baby.

 

This album is at least 2 hours long. It's like Michael Buble decided that he was going to sing every Christmas song ever written, which, as I said earlier, is a lot. Congratulations, Michael Buble. Your Christmas masterpiece is longer than a book on tape. Wait, do they even call them that any more? Whatever.

All that being said, Fate thought it'd be super hilarious to bless me with a child who loves Christmas music. Of course.

Sincerely,

The Average Person

Average Christmas shopping

Yes, I know. It's not even Thanksgiving, yet. Why are you posting about Christmas shopping? Because Christmas shopping in December is panicked, stressful, and crowded. That's why.

Anyway, last weekend I finished my Christmas shopping. That's right; I'm that good. Even though I was shopping for Christmas gifts early, there were still tons of people in the stores. It was like everyone had my idea, but almost everyone had their kids with them. I thought this was strange, then I realized, they didn't have my idea - they were pre-Christmas shopping.

This is literally the stupidest idea any parent has ever had. These parents were leisurely walking through the toy department with their kids (while I, cool, determined, and, of course, prepared, knew exactly what I was looking for and had to struggle getting around their leisurely asses) asking them to point out things that they wanted. Now, try to imagine that you are one of these kids:

My parents are letting me explore the toy section. They never let me do this. They're telling me to pick stuff out?! I'm getting a new toy today!? AWESOME!

Oh, you poor, unfortunate soul (cue Little Mermaid music). They're only trying to get an idea of what to get you for Christmas; no treats for you today. This obviously (and rightly so) did not compute with the kids. One in particular threw himself on the floor and wailed that he wanted the toy "right nooooow" while his parents frantically hushed him and told him that they just wanted to make sure that they told Santa the right toy to get him. I sat there, thinking, he's not going to buy that. HE BOUGHT IT. He got up, wiped the snot off his face and walked out of the store with his liars for parents.

This brings me to another point: kids are stupid. We take them to stores where you can obviously buy the toys that you want, but then tell them that every Christmas, a big, fat guy brings them the exact presents that they wanted. Hell, in this case, this kid's parents showed him the toy that he is going to be getting for Christmas and then convinced him that they were Santa's personal shoppers when he tried to catch on. Any person in their right mind would see right through this bullshit, but not kids. Kids will believe anything. I once made my kid believe that our asshole tortoise was really a Ninja Turtle on vacation.

I made the decision to not create the Santa Claus illusion for my son mostly because I want the credit for the hours, people shoving, and sitting in traffic it took to get him all these badass toys.

Which goes to say, my Christmas shopping adventure was successful. My kid's going to love me in a month. Me, not some fat guy.


Sincerely,


The Average Person