Honestly.

I don’t know how anyone tolerated texting in the old days. And by “old days,” I mean last year.

You know the way, don’t you?

Press the number 8 key on your phone once to get a letter “T.”

Press the number 4 key on your phone twice to get a letter “h.”

Press the number 4 key on your phone thrice to get a letter “i.”

Press the number 7 key on your phone four times to get a letter “s.”

Press the number 4 key on your phone thrice to get a letter “i.”

Press the number 7 key on your phone four times to get a letter “s.”

Press the number 2 key on your phone twice to get a letter “b.”

Press the number 8 key on your phone twice to get a letter “u.”

Press the number 5 key on your phone thrice to get a letter “l.”

Press the number 5 key on your phone thrice to get a letter “l.”

Press the number 7 key on your phone four times to get a letter “s.”

Press the number 4 key on your phone twice to get a letter “h.”

Press the number 4 key on your phone thrice to get a letter “i.”

Press the number 8 key on your phone once to get a letter “t.”

Press the star key to get to the punctuation menu for a “.”

Today I texted with the contractor we hired to work on a bathroom. I set out to tell him to arrive at my house at 11:30 and I would leave work and meet him there.

It took me so long to type that message, I had to change the time to 11:40.

I hate texting with my Playskool phone because not only does it take me forever to tap out letters, I must use proper punctuation, spelling and capitalization. I also don’t use “2” for “to” or “u” for “you.”

Shut up. I know I’m making it harder than it has to be, but you gotta admit it’s pretty ludicrous to begin with. Now somebody buy me an iPhone with a data plan and make it snappy.

Happy Thanksgiving blessings to everyone! May your house be full of fun and laughter, your plates be overflowing and your pants be all stretchy like.

Amen.

I just experienced both the best and worst clothes shopping trip in the span of two hours.

The best experience was jeans shopping. You read that right. It is possible to shop for jeans and not cry the whole time.

I was delighted to find that because of my weight loss, I can now move down another size in my jeans. I know exactly the style to buy that fits my freak body. Lee “Relaxed Straight Leg – At the Waist” medium length jeans are made for me.

Ladies, if you carry more weight on your bottom than on the top, try those. And don’t let the “straight leg” worry you. In reality, they’re more a boot cut, which is a better style for women shaped like us. You won’t get the dreaded peg leg look.

So I’m sifting through the wall of Lee jeans looking for my size and I can’t find them. Why? Because every other woman where I live is my size, apparently.

I take the style I want in a different size to the counter and ask the saleswoman to order my size in that exact cut, length and wash.

She enters the information in the register and determines that she can’t order the wash I want, dark stone, because it’s not available.

Poo.

She tells me she’ll try several different search methods to find them, but I’m sensing I’ll be out of luck the longer this process continues.

But then. Then! She says “Wait right here. I have one last place to check.” She returns a couple minutes later with my exact size, cut, and wash that I want, telling me there was a single pair in the back room.

Thank you, JCPenney’s Clarissa! You made my day.

High from my successful jeans shopping excursion, I went on the hunt for some summer tops. And then my world crumbled around me.

I hate shopping for tops because I dislike my arms and need something to accentuate my smallish waist, so I tend to stick with one style that is structured enough to lay well on the hip, give me shape and form and cover most of my beastly arms.

I found one such top after looking through hundreds. Hundreds, I tell you.

I try it on and love it immediately. But I notice it’s had its price tag ripped off. Why? Why, God, must you let me find the one top I love that will give me trouble at the register?

And trouble I got.

The saleswoman sees it’s missing its price tag and she looks at the manufacturer’s label, thinking she can look it up at the register.

She cannot.

Why?

Because, she says, “This isn’t ours.”

“What?”

“This isn’t our merchandise. We don’t sell this brand.”

“But I found it on a rack in the store.”

“But it’s not ours. Where did you get it?”

“You mean out of the hundreds of tops I looked at? Uh. How ‘bout over there in Kansas. I have no idea where I got it.”

She checks with another saleswoman, who agrees they cannot sell it to me because it’s not theirs.

BUT I FOUND IT IN YOUR STORE!!!

I am flabbergasted. It takes me months to find clothing that I like and that flatters me and I’m standing there holding the perfect garment and yet I cannot buy it.

I consider for a moment asking if the three of us can make up a reasonable price and just call it a day.

But they are not budging. They will not sell me the top.

I was so tired and disgusted by then, all I could ask was “How do I get out of here?”

They pointed the way out of the store that sells clothes you can’t buy and left in a huff.

Without the pretty turquoise, structured top with the lovely neck line.

Tell me, Boscovs salesladies. What are you going to do with that? Throw it out? Because you probably could have charged me a made-up price of eighty bucks, pocketed it between yourselves and I wouldn’t have said a word.

For now, I’ll have to keep wearing the crappy clothes I hate and think about the top that could have been.

Honestly. Have you ever heard of something so stupid?

At least I won the jeans war. And I didn’t cry once.

Length of time in tree: Six weeks

Approximate height in tree: 25 feet

Store of origin: PathMark

Yes, it’s in Windy’s tree.

No, I’m not happy about it.

Yes, I want to get it out.

No, I don’t know how.

Yes, it’s really twisted up on there.

No, you can’t knock it down with a rock.

Yes, I hate PathMark now.

No, you can’t name it.

Really, we’re not getting cozy with this thing. I might contact a guy in New York City who’s aware of the Windy saga.

He owns a company that makes and sells extension poles with a grappling hook on the end, made specifically to extract bags from trees.

Nevermind. I just checked the price of the poles and I can’t afford one.

I guess we’re getting cozy with this thing.

God help me.

Today I had an ear lavage. The word lavage is derived from the French verb laver “to wash.”

An ear lavage thus means “to drown through an opening where only a Q-tip should go, if that.”

Last weekend I developed what at first seemed like a cold, but turned out to be only a cold wannabee. Some sniffles for a day, some sneezing, no cough. In the end, just clogged ears.

My doctor says “Could be allergies. You might be one of us now.”

Yeah, me.

She recommended I have my ears irrigated to eliminate wax build-up as an issue and I agreed.

A nurse came into the room with what can best be described as Thanksgiving dinner supplies.

A huge turkey baster, some plastic mixing bowls and a tablecloth.

In one bowl was what I thought must be a gallon of water, the other one empty.

The turkey baster kinda scared me because I know this woman had plans to squirt all that water into my ears until my brains came out.

“Have you ever had an ear lavage?” she asked.

“Yes. Once. And I didn’t like it.”

“Most people find it enjoyable,” she countered.

“I’m not most people. Something must be wrong with most people.”

First she prepped the equipment, then she asked if I could pull my hair back so it didn’t get wet.

“Uh. I really can’t because once it’s shellacked like this, it doesn’t move. But I’ll braid it.”

Done. The back is braided, but the top is not and now my head looks like cotton candy on a stick.

The nurse cloaks me with the plastic tablecloth to keep the water from spilling on my clothes. I’m asked to hold the empty container up to my ear to catch my brains as they fall out.

Then instead of asking me to sit on a chair that’s way lower than the elevated exam table, she climbs up on the table with me and leans in with the turkey baster.

I find this positively medieval and tell her so. She either doesn’t know what the word means or she’s heard it all before because she totally ignored the remark and continued on with Death by Lavage.

Very quickly she starts shooting warm water into my right ear and I want to scream because it’s a freaky feeling and ME NO LIKEY!

But I put my big girl panties on and made it to the end of six or so injections of water where water shouldn’t go.

After each gusher, she looks inside my ear with yet another medieval device and proclaims it “really bad in there” and continues with the torture treatment.

Each time, more of the same. Nothing but clear water dribbling into the giant cup I hold to my ear.

Where’s all the wax she sees in there? Maybe it’s not wax at all! Maybe it’s a T-U-M-O-R! It’s always a tumor! I have a tumor!

After the last treatment, she looks again and says wax is still “way back there.”

I disagree that what she’s seeing is really wax, because all of a sudden my ear pops, a little water comes out and I’m almost totally clear now.

I believe what the nurse saw was the part of my brain that’s suspicious of nurses who stick turkey basters in people’s ears.

She does the other ear and this time, and after 7 or 8 tries, some gross globs of wax come out and she shows it to me as if I might want to confirm that it is, in fact, not brain matter.

See? Not brain!

We’re done now. I’m happy it’s over and I’m pleased my ears are much clearer than they’ve been. I can hear all the voices in my head much better now.

Maybe I have allergies. Maybe I don’t. I got a prescription for a nasal spray because apparently I also have sinusitis. Or a tumor.

So.

Ever had an ear irrigation? Did you like it? Maybe like it a little too much? What’s wrong with you people?

So we have a leak that found its way to our master bathroom and roofers are coming to check it out next week.

The worst thing about that is not that we may find we need a new roof.

No.

The worst thing is that strangers will see my bathroom and so I was forced to clean it, because we all know roofers care deeply about how many hair tumbleweeds are hugging the toilet.

After my mad, spastic cleaning frenzy, I discovered:

1. I would rather be locked in a room for 72 hours with a coke-jacked, no-sleep, machete-wielding Charlie Sheen than clean a toilet again. I hold a lot of respect for people who do this as their day job.

I want to give a medal to the person who had to clean the ladies room where I work when I saw a Tootsie Roll (not the kind you eat) resting on the back of a toilet seat. Some filthy woman either doesn’t know how to sit on a toilet or a key opening on her anatomy is in the completely wrong place. How do you get that on the seat???

2. All those months I collected not-quite-empty shampoo and conditioner bottles and threw them in a pile in the corner was a bad idea. They drained completely. Scrubbing a floor that’s already soapy just makes it soapier and takes hella long to finish. Also, I’m a slob or a bottle hoarder. There were four on the floor.

3. Scrubbing a tub hurts every cell in my body. I will not be able to do this when I’m 80. I’m just going to stop showering. People forgive 80-year-olds who don’t bathe, right? Wait. Would they forgive a 45-year-old, too?

4. I found something unidentifiable stuck to the shower wall. It was bright orange. I don’t use orange products in the shower. I may need to see a doctor.

5. The Dyson doesn’t like it when you suck up half a plush bath mat and then try to pull it out when it’s still turned on. I groaned. It groaned. Also, I dumb.

6. Curious cats who investigate when a bathroom’s getting cleaned, and get in the annoyed cleaner’s way, are wet when they leave. But they take a good lesson with them.

7. Shampooing the carpets in three rooms after cleaning a bathroom, when your body is already cracked in half, is completely moronic, unreasoned and possibly dangerous, but damn if the upstairs doesn’t look like The Ritz.

Let’s see Charlie Sheen do that. Who’s the winner now?

Some bloggers put a headshot of themselves on their blogs, and like me, did so when they started blogging.

Years later, that same picture is still there. For some, they still resemble that old photo.

But not me.

I’m many pounds heavier now than when this picture was taken.

I want to look like my headshot again.

Which is why I joined a health & fitness center last Sunday. Sure, I should have joined long ago for the health benefits, but I admit it was more vanity that got me there.

That’s because I’m speaking at a blog conference at the end of June. I’ll be meeting fellow bloggers who’ve only known me visually by that picture.

When I registered for the conference, I realized I didn’t want to show up and have no one recognize me. Worse, I imagined them huddled in a corner whispering, “Wow. She doesn’t look like I thought she would. Is that really her?”

So I’m doing something about it. Finally.

Every day at 5:30AM, I show up at the gym, shove my stuff in a locker and look in a mirror that faces another and another. The dreaded 360.

I don’t know who that woman is because that’s not who I see when I think of myself.

But the hard reality is that it’s what people see when they look at me and it nearly brings me to tears.

Somehow I’ve managed to look in mirrors past and ignore the obvious. That extra junk in my trunk, the double chin, the tree trunk legs.

You get used to it. I fell into a dangerous habit of thinking “It’s not so bad. I’m not that fat. There are people heavier than me. It could be worse.”

But I’m already worse.

Fifty pounds worse than my perfect weight of 2004.

And so there in the locker room, I reacquaint myself with those extra pounds. Face them. Hate them. Mark their last days.

I do an about face and head through those doors.

I stretch, I strain, I slog, I sweat.

I smile, too.

Because I imagine my old self emerging. A stronger, healthier, thinner me. Pound by pound, I’ll get there.

And then when I reach my goal, people will say “She’s just like I pictured.”

Maybe better.

Wait and see.

I have eyebrow OCD.

No, I’m not one of those women who plucks her eyebrows until there’s no hair left and then have to pencil in new ones. That’s just freaky and wrong.

I will, however, obsess over a wayward, disobedient hair and won’t be able to function until it’s plucked and gone.

You know that hair, right? The one that sticks out so long it starts to curl like a question mark, when all the other hairs are lying down flat like good little hyphens? Yeah, that one.

I did find this, though. It’s a Swiss Army card. I think you use it if your office gets hit by an avalanche and you have to MacGyver your way out.

Lookie here. We have scissors, a letter opener/blade, a pressurized ballpoint pen, a magnifying glass, an LED light, four screwdriver tips and TWEEZERS.

Score!

When I get home to a normal pair of tweezers, I even out and shape up my brows like I should have done sooner.

I make a mental note to buy a spare pair of tweezers so I can keep one at work because I’m pretty sure I’ll see another question mark – or worse, an ampersand – and I want to be ready for that bad boy.

&

Yeah. It could happen.

People, people, people. It’s so simple.

When you stand behind me in the grocery store checkout and you inch your way ever closer to the cashier, and in the process kick my feet, you can avoid having to say “Excuse me” and I would not have to burn a hole through your skull with my angry stare.

I promise you, you will get through the line with all your stuff quickly enough, whether you’ve hopped on my back or not. I prefer you not get all up in my grill and then have to apologize for it.

Here’s today’s lesson: There is an comfortable distance that you should stand behind a person before that person gets decidedly uncomfortable. For me, that’s two feet, not two inches.

You’re not running a marathon, there is no prize for getting to the end of the line faster and all it does is make me want to squeeze your bread until it looks like one giant matzo ball.

Two feet. Not two inches. Got it?

I don’t understand the resistance, really. It’s not like I asked him to shave my legs.

I’ve asked my husband repeatedly if he would help me do something that is impossible for me to do by myself.

When we took our wedding vows, I’m sure there was something in there about helping your wife in her times of need — whether it’s when she’s sick, needs moral support, or if there’s a clog of some horrific magnitude in the shower drain.

But most especially – I’m pretty sure I heard it, right before the death part – he’s supposed to pull gray hairs out of the back of my head where I can’t see to pluck them myself.

Yes. I’m sure I heard it.

Listen. I’m not gray enough to start getting my hair colored, or maybe it’s that I’m too cheap to start laying out fifty bucks every six weeks.

I just want those few suckers gone. I know they’re there, and I need someone to do it for me.

He won’t do it because it’s “weird.” Weird shmeird. Pull ‘em out!

Maybe I should remind him that when we were bride and groom, the operative word there was groom.

Photo credit: Alex Clayton

I used to say the one thing I can’t live without was Internet access. That’s true most of the time, but as of 1:42PM today, the new thing I can’t do without is quick-drying clothes.

Our Kenmore up and died today. Rest in peace, 19-yr-old heavy duty front-loader, model #96273800. You served us well.

The panic didn’t set in right away. For an hour I thought I could manage. Maybe try to dry clothes in it with just cool air. We get cool air. But a single blanket we ran through a full cycle didn’t even get half dry.

I have two options: 1) Buy a new dryer and pray it gets delivered within 24 hours, or 2) Go to a laundromat until it does.

Option #2 is not a happy option. I would rather scoop my eyes out with a melon baller than sit in a laundromat watching my pants dry. And I’m not one of those people who puts their stuff in the machines and leaves to run errands. I have clothing separation anxiety. No, I don’t actually think someone will steal my clothes, but I kind of do.

Also, I feel so weird exposing my clothes in a public setting. Yes, yes, I know I wear them in public. I just don’t want to wash them in public.

This leaves Option #1. And that means I’m taking my sister’s advice and going to the same family-run store where she bought her washer/dryer and got them delivered the same day.

I will be there when they open Monday morning. Waiting with a credit card in hand. I will step inside, point at the first dryer I see and buy it. I will ask if I can have it that day and hug them if they say yes.

If they don’t, then it’s to the laundromat, where random people doing there laundry run the risk of seeing my clothes, and that includes these shorts. Don’t judge me. You know you have something that looks just like it.

Any cashiers out there? Gather ‘round for class. Today’s lesson is brief and simple.

What I’m about to tell you is something you should have learned in cashier kindergarten, but bears repeating.

Ready?

When giving change to customers, always, always, always give them coins first, then place bills on top.

Why?

Because the customer only has so many hands. They need to put the coins in a pocket or wallet. By putting the coins on top of bills, the customer risks spilling coins as they attempt to drop them in whatever coin-carrying vessel they have on their person.

They are likely trying to do this with the other hand holding the thing, let’s say Lay’s Salt & Vinegar potato chips, that they just bought.

I repeat. Do not try to balance coins on bills as you extend them to customers. If you’re having problems balancing coins, what will the customer do?

The customer will spill them all over the counter and the floor, watch a dime and a quarter roll away spastically under a refrigerator, curse you under her breath and wonder why you thought that handing her a shaky pile of bills and coins as though you were passing her plutonium would end well.

So, to recap.

Coins in the palm.

Bills on the top.

Receipt when customer has deposited her change in her wallet.

Class dismissed.

p.s. For an insider’s look at the other side of the equation, check out the most excellent Confessions of a Cashier blog for insight into what it’s like dealing with the general public. This woman has all my pity.

So remember when I was interviewed about Windy on NPR’s All Things Considered program? Yeah, good times baby!

Well, what you don’t know is the day the Windy interview aired, I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal for an entirely different story. I was pinching myself all over because I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

That morning I received an email from a marketing reporter, asking if she could interview me about the YouTube video I made about the very loud Sun Chips bag, a bag that’s so loud husbands can’t eat out of it near a sleeping baby or their wives will kill them dead.

The reporter found my video online and was putting together a story about the bags and all the people who can’t stand them.

She took some vitals from me, my name, town and blog information and then asked me some questions.

When did you realize the bag was so loud?

As soon as I got it home and opened it. My husband and I irritated each other for a week. You can hear it on different floors of the house.

How do you feel about Frito-Lay’s efforts to improve the environment by making 100% compostable bags?

Great, except I’ll never buy them again. I thought of writing the Frito-Lay people and telling them that they’re losing sales because the bag’s so loud.

[This turned out to be untrue, because I recently purchased a bag, but only to give to a colleague so he could hear for himself how loud they were. When I drove to work with it and went over some bumps, the bag made a noise. Just sitting there, it made a noise. God.]

Do you write companies about products you dislike?

Oh, yes. In fact, I just wrote the Glad Wrap people to tell them they need to help consumers find the end of a new roll. The thin plastic is clear and sometimes you can’t see or feel where the end of it is. They can fix the problem by tinting the end of the roll in some color or attaching a little pull tab.

I went on to say that companies should hire me as a product tester to let them know what will work and what won’t. I would make an excellent focus group participant and they should want me full-time because I would never shut up.

Do you hate a lot of things?

Oh, no! I’m in love with my Dyson vacuum cleaner. In a really unhealthy way. I told her that vacuuming was a joy now, and despite the high cost, it’s worth every penny and she should go buy one. Like right now.

We touched on a couple other things and then the interview was over. She thanked me for my time and said the article would appear soon, but it’s been six weeks and still no story. I think I scared her.

What a loss. Just think of all the people who won’t get the chance to leave comments on the WSJ site, saying how certifiably mental I am.

So that leaves just you guys to tell me so on the blog. But I’m a lovable certifiable, right?

The good thing about carrying a purse is that I have everything I need in a day whenever I need it. The bad thing is that I have everything I need in a day whenever I need it. It’s freaking heavy.

Granted, I’m not one of those suitcase purse kinds of women. That’s just crazy. Nor am I like the Sherpa woman I work with who walks into the office a few times a week carrying no less than four kinds of bundles: her laptop case, her regular purse, her knitting materials bag and usually some books. She’s a librarian Sherpa, so I can make a concession for the books.

That’s not me. I need exactly one bag and I’m thoroughly annoyed if I have to grab a bigger sack to put the purse and other things in. I want to be a minimalist, like my husband, who gets to walk around earth carrying a five ounce wallet.

Anyway, I’ve got a bag big enough to hold my wallet, a digital camera, my sunglasses case and about a thousand envelopes with what I think are important papers in them, but never find the time to actually check. At least they’re all rubber-banded together so that I look some measure less disorganized when I go hunting for something.

Even though I don’t think I have too many items in my purse, the weight of it all means that everything is laying at the bottom of it and I still need to dig around. Since I have nothing unnecessary in my purse, this annoys me to no end.

Tonight when I went to the vet’s to pick up medicine for one of my cats, I got in line behind a woman who had her purse slung over her shoulder and in that purse sat a dog.

Cute little thing. Really little. About the size of the turkey sandwich I had for lunch today.

The woman was trying to check out, pay her bill and be on her way. But she just could not get to her wallet. Dig, dig, dig. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

She says “I don’t know why I can never get at anything in here!”

I’ll tell you why.

Because there’s a dog in your purse.

So tell me, ladies, do you hate your purse? Love your purse? Do you wish you could walk around with only a wallet? Do you wish you could carry a teeny-tiny dog around in it, ignoring the snickers of people like me who think that’s hysterical?

I give up.

This is a picture of our living room “entertainment center,” which I prefer to call the “Ain’t gonna figure any of that out, even if you make me take a class on it center.”

All I want to do is watch TV. Regular TV. With one remote that has power, channel-changing and volume buttons.

Instead, we have:

1. An HDTV set.

2. A surround sound audio system with four speakers and two subwoofers that will shake your teeth and rip your face off.

3. A DVD player.

4. A Wii.

5. Wireless headphones.

6. A DVR.

7. Three remotes, all unfortunately necessary.

I’ve long since stopped trying to figure out how to watch DVDs. I don’t even know if I remember how to operate the Wii. The wireless headphones are a new addition, but luckily, they’re not for me. My husband Dave wears them so I can have some peace and quiet while blogging in the kitchen, which is feet away from this monstrosity.

I hate having to use two remotes just to watch TV, one for sound, another for channel-changing.

Sometimes I think I want to pop in a DVD, but I would need kindergarten instructions and by the time I figure it out, the movie will be free on regular cable.

All I’m saying is that if my husband gets hit by a bus, there’s gonna be one big ass yard sale at my house. I would sell everything for a dollar and not look back.

Do the men in your house have toys like this? Do you know how to operate it all? Do you need an assistant like me? Or does your house have a man cave where all this stuff lives and you don’t have to think about it?