Sunday Favorites: Gettin' a Big Head for No Reason at All

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on February 4, 2011.

A weekend trip to San Jose, Costa Rica offered my beach-town friends and I a rare opportunity to get fancy and go out for Indian food.  And by "fancy", I mean that since San Jose's climate is so much cooler than Huacas, we could take showers and NOT be immediately drenched in sweat from the humidity -- making it possible for makeup and long sleeves and pants.  Fancy!

I had been living out of a backpack for several months and didn't really have anything I wanted to wear "out".  My roommate Nicole came to the rescue and lent me a few things.  It felt so nice to get dressed up!  I was quite happy with the result.  I might have even held my head high and strutted a bit.  I must have projected my inner monologue onto one of our male friends who had been patiently waiting for all of us to get ready.  I was almost certain that I heard him say to me:

"Wow, you look SO good."

I responded with a surprised, "thanks!"

He looked totally confused, so I rewound the scenario in my head. He wasn't looking at me. He had a candy bar in his hand. His mouth was full. I recalled my sense memory of his voice and replayed it. I was horrified. Here's what he really said:

"Wow, that is SO good."

The outfit

The candy-bar-eater-unintentional-feelings-hurter

Shash-age Links

HAHA Pharell's hat on Tumblr.

I'm pretty obsessed with this song. It's either because I'm dying for a garden this summer or because she uses the word "emphysemin'", I'm not sure.

NPR's timeline of Minnesota winter snow rage is pretty accurate and cute.

OMG what an idiot. Dad, I've never done anything this dumb as a daughter have I?

And: Dad. I certainly haven't ever done anything THIS DUMB as a daughter, have I? P.S. If she wins this case it sets a precedent and that makes it possible for me to come after you and mom. It seems you owe me a college education! Also, I feel entitled to an expensive juicer. I'll send you the link.

Haha. Travoltify your name. Some people are saying "leave him alone! he has dyslexia!" (which is unconfirmed) I still think it would behoove him and his responsibility as a presenter in front of a billion people to memorize the name of the one woman he had to introduce. What a silly! Anyway, please just call me "Kirsty Hazeems" from now on. 

Baby Blues. Cured.

I think I've been pretty open about my hormones and being 36 and how logically my brain wants no babies but emotionally my uterus wants all of the babies right now! It keeps getting worse the closer I get to menopause (which my three older sisters keep lovingly reminding me is just a few years away).

Recently, my nephew Miles accidentally got two months behind on his homework in five of his classes. I volunteered to help him catch up. Remember I'm the Auntie who is mean mean mean and makes kids do their homework for hours and hours and hours and hours?? Miles and I so far have put in about 13 hours on this project over the course of three weeks. He's done most of the work while I just sort of keep him on task (except I really love Algebra so I accidentally kept doing the problems before he got them done instead of teaching him how to do them, but that's neither here nor there).

Anyway, one of our five-hour homework sessions happened on a rare warm day in Minnesota February and everybody got to go outside and play in the snow except for me and Miles. Because I am a responsible adult who knows when to skip the fun and help the kid. Which means I can never have any babies. Because babies grow up to be kids who have homework and I never ever want to skip the fun ever again! I'm 100% cured. 

Ask me anything you ever wanted to know about Copernicus.

Well I Guess It Was Bound to Happen Sooner or Later...

I have attended the same Pilates class with the same instructor off-and-on for something like the past 14 years. More "off" than "on", but that's neither here nor there. The gym and the class is directly across from my old office building, which isn't far from my new office building and these days I'm under Doctor's orders to do Pilates as often as possible to strengthen my core and back muscles since that dumb PIZZA MAN rear-ended me, so I've gotten regular about going again. 

My point in telling you all of that is that after all this time, I just sort of assumed that the instructor recognized me in some way. I always sit near the front and we always make lots of eye contact and stuff...you know how you have to face each other while you're in a birthing position or some such embarrassing thing and you try not to make eye contact but you can't help it because the only other place to look is her boobs or crotch and God help you if you're busted doing that!

Anyway the other day, I was facing away from her and laying on my stomach doing the breast stroke prep. When she called out "how ya doin' up there?" it totally sounded like she was aiming her voice at me and so I said, "good" and then right away she said, "and how's baby?" and then I felt SO embarrassed because obviously she was talking to somebody else. 

I forgot about it until class was over and I was getting up to leave and she looked right into my eyes and asked how it was going for me. To let her know if anything was too strenuous. For the baby.

I wanted to just say "FINE!" and get the heck out of there, but I knew if I did I was going to have to endure questions about my pregnancy for the next several months. I had no choice. So instead I said the most awful thing I have ever had to say to a woman, an old friend (or so I thought), so happy for me, so willing to offer up prenatal Pilates advice:

"I'm not pregnant." 

I mean...do I look pregnant to you?

*Please tell me your "somebody asked if I was pregnant and I totally wasn't" story. Somehow it will make me feel better.




Photo Credit

Move Over Bette Midler, I've Seen Beaches One Million TIMES

Move over Bette Midler!

Literally. Move over. You're in my scene.

The Worst Kind of Turd is an Honest One

Miyo and a girl in her class had a disagreement. The girl ended it with, "Well at least I don't have to have glasses!" 

Miyo's response? "Well at least my last name isn't Domunguz."

The glasses are cute. I would have gone for the dirt beard and Kool-aid mustache myself.

Sunday Favorites: The Ugly Ones

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on May 24, 2010.

Back in New Zealand, I was walking down the street when I witnessed an exchange between a scraggly-haired older gentleman and a crazy no teeth crackhead lady. She was waiving a ticket of some sort in the air, yelling something at him as she walked towards him. I couldn't make it all out, but from what I gathered, she had won like $20 on her lottery ticket. She turned around and walked the other direction, presumably to cash it in. When she rounded the corner, he threw up his arms, turned to me and yelled from across the street:

"SEE? EVEN THE UGLY ONES ARE HAPPY!"

Shashage Links

What happens when Asian Grandkids exchange clothes with a Grandparent? I LOVE IT, that's what.

Haha Onion, you've done it again!

Hilarious first date story out of my friend Sarah from So...What Else?

My imaginary daughter is so cool! Just like this little girl.

Hahaha this is hilarious. Somebody dubbed over raver-music with the Benny Hill music and it looks like they're dancing to it.

Well, kids. I guess math actually does come in handy in real life.

UGH. I keep telling you, who cares about expiration dates on food? We are so embarrassingly gosh darn wasteful.

Oh man, everybody needs to dig up their backyards RIGHT NOW!

Conversations With Miyo

Miyo: "What did the chopsticks say to the Mongolians?"

Kasey: "I don't know. What?" 

Miyo: "I don't know. You tell me."

Elevators, Again

These are the elevators in the P2 parking level of my building. As you can see the flooring has a repeating pattern of "granite-carpet-granite-carpet".

The other day I came into the building to hear the elevator ding and so I began to run so that I could catch it. I came around that corner and my boots must still have been a little bit wet from the snow and so I SLIPPED! on the granite, but caught myself on the carpet before I fell down and also before the attractive business-y type man who was getting onto the elevator saw me. I slowed my pace but still briskly walked toward the elevator so he wouldn't have to wait long.

And then I SLIPPED! again on the next set of granite. This time I let out a loud "WHOOP!" and now the attracitve business-y type man saw everything and I still didn't fall down but it was a whole body slip and a loud "WHOOP!" so naturally I was very embarrassed.

And so.

I spent the entire 10-floor ride up the elevator explaining loudly and out-of-breath-style that I had "ALREADY SLIPPED BUT YOU DIDN'T SEE ME AAHAHAHAHAHA I THOUGHT I GOT AWAY WITH IT AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA AND THEN I SLIPPED AGAIN!!! HAHA!!!!! AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA"

Sunday Favorites: The Rollover

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on November 14, 2012.

So my dad rolled his truck while running an errand before taking my mom to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester to have her lung cancer removed. No joke. Here's the photographic evidence:

Not my dad.

Apparently somebody slid through a stop sign on the icy, icy roads and my dad hit them. Both vehicles went into opposite ditches. My dad's truck rolled over, the airbag deployed, and he had to cut himself out of the seatbelt and escape the flaming, exploding* wreckage. As pictured above, the trailer landed in a foot of water; the truck miraculously did not.

The funny thing is that after my dad landed upside-down in the ditch and oriented his disoriented self and then cut himself from the seatbelt by which he was hanging, and then escaped the flaming, exploding* wreckage by wedging the door open, which took several minutes as you can imagine (and BTW my dad is severely claustrophobic and being trapped like that is like his WORST fear), he rushed to the aid of the people in the other vehicle. He found them completely unharmed, upright and gabbing away on their cell phones, obviously completely uninterested in the other car or its driver.

Kelly assures me he's totally fine.

Hal-ism: "I shoulda chewed them out. I didn't even lose my cool."

*the words flaming and exploding were added for dramatic purposes. Neither are true or accurate depictions of the scene.

Giving Up on my Dreams

On November 23rd, I was feeling nostalgic for those times as a kid when we'd make plants out of other plants! or seeds! and sometimes there were milk cartons! and so I stuck some toothpicks into an avocado pit, and hovered it over some water in a jar (we haven't talked about me and my jars yet. Oh well, that's another story) and dreamed of the crack and sprout that would happen in six short weeks if I could just be patient. PATIENT! It was gonna be so worth it. I set up the little pit in the sunniest place in my apartment and changed the water religiously. I sang to it. (I mean, I didn't really sing "to it" but I'm constantly singing so it should have heard me, you know?) I hired a housesitter to take care of it while I was on my vacation. I'm not kidding.

Well, yesterday, after almost three months of this crap I realized I'm never going to be happy and that all dreams are futile and what's the point of living anyway and then I deep-sixed the whole thing.

We could have been so happy.

Jewess Jeans

When we were just young teenage girls, Kasey, Shanna, Tara and I made a copy of an old favorite Gilda Radner SNL commercial, "Jewess Jeans".

Sorry for the poor quality. This was recorded on VHS in 1992, then with an iPhone.

I'm kind of embarrassed (no, not by the fact that I was rubbing my butt and pulling my pants up high, high, high) but because this video has 5,573 views on Youtube. It's hard to find the original commercial and people are probably sorely disappointed when they find ours.

Still Got It

The other day I was on my way to meet some friends for happy hour after work. While driving down the freeway, I noticed a gigantic beautiful SUV and the only reason I noticed it at all was because it was the only car on the road that had recently been washed. If you live north of the Mason-Dixon line during January you'll know what I mean - but those of you that don't, most cars look like this:

Anyway, this SUV was clean as a whistle! I accidentally noticed that it's driver was pretty cute too. As I passed it, I yawned. I felt like he was staying right next to me, not letting me fully pass him on purpose and so I looked over. The attractive (bald, but bald-on-purpose-good-looking-Bic-razor-shaved-before-actually-going-bald-bald) business-y man was looking at me! He was trying to get my attention! The exchange went something like this (I tried my best to help you to determine which character I was playing by using some gender-stereotypical props. And a dinner plate for a steering wheel, obviously):

I got nervous and tried to speed up and get away from him a couple of times but he kept on pulling up next to me making the "let's get a drink" motion and "can I call you?" motion and I must say we played quite an adorable game of cat-and-mouse down the freeway but it sort of ended like this:

And then I finally took my exit. And let him and my future happiness and all those bald babies slip right through my fingers. I played it cool, real cool. Like I do.

Of course I was confused because nobody ever hits on me and especially not at 70mph. BUT I have to say I was more than a little flattered.

Sunday Favorites: Toughen Up, Old Friend

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on May 16, 2012.


Last night I went on my first training ride with my MS150 team. We biked 25 miles! I met a new friend named Laura and we rode together and got to talking about how expensive it can be to get into biking and running. Suddenly you need all this gear. Take, for example, padded butt biking shorts. I'm one of the few that has the good sense to cover up that shame with my famous pajama pants, but I wear the padded butt shorts underneath. Anyway, mine are actually "tri shorts", which means I bought them for a triathlon I did a few years back and they aren't as maxi padded as bike shorts, to make drying easier. Think mini pad. I was telling her all of this, and how I refuse to pony up the $50+ it's going to take to get the extra maxi padded butt shorts.

At that EXACT moment in time, we crossed paths with a man who had no legs, and was laying down on one of those cool bikes that is powered by a hand crank. I guess I was staring at him in sheer awe and pride as I told her all about my butt padding, and at the moment of contact as we rode by this man, and I was looking right at him, I concluded my story by saying, and I quote: 

"So, I guess now it's 'toughen up, old friend'", referring of course to my crotch.

I cringed when I realized what had just happened and how all this poor brave awesome athletic disabled man probably heard me say as we whizzed by each other was, 

"Toughen up, Old Friend."

"Not you, Sir! My crotch! I was telling my CROTCH to toughen up!"

Miyo, We Hardly Knew Ye'

I am very sorry to report that my seven-year-old niece Miyo has run away. It seems she just wasn't "right" for my sister Kasey and had to take her leave. 

She left nothing behind, save for this note:

I'm relieved that she did it in such a dignified way. Not laying blame -- or taking any, for that matter. Rather, she just made it clear that it was time to part ways. No hard feelings. 

I suppose it's for the best, really. I'm not sure how she'll manage in such cold weather, but, better not to think about it. I prefer to recall the happier moments, though I'm sure that with time we'll all forget her completely.

"You know what? We tried. We really did. It's just not working out."

Shash-age Links

I like it when people have snarky senses of humor.

I can't believe I'm linking to this. But there's an Australian lady craftsy artist who knits scarves made from wool she first shoved up inside her no-no-special-place. Cozy!

These are cool but there's way too many to try to implement them into my life.

Health benefits of whiskey!

Did you hear about the eight Corvettes that fell into a sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky?


I wonder if anybody will ever love me like this:

Sunday Favorites: Seguaro National Monument

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on November 11, 2011.

You may recall that about a year ago I met my Annie Wilkes.  My number one fan, just like from the movie Misery.  Well, the one, the only, the fabulous Blog fan Lisa* (names have not been changed) lives in Tucson, Arizona!

So when I heard that I would be working there for a water meter assignment, I contacted Lisa, who helped Summer and I secure the house we're renting.  We arranged everything days before arriving, so we needed somebody in Tucson to receive the Fed-ex package with the keys, etc., and Lisa was our girl!

We were driving from Albuquerque, Summer had a paper due and we were late getting into town, so we didn't have any time to waste picking up the keys.  Lisa understood and offered to meet us on the side of the freeway.

If I hadn't already met and fallen in love with her, if she weren't a friend of a very good friend of my sister's...it might have been a very strange and scary scene:

• Blog stalker offers to help find housing
• Blog stalker offers to receive keys to new apartment
• Blog stalker in fact receives and has possession of keys to new apartment
• Blog stalker offers to meet late at night on the side of the road next to a highway
• Blog stalker distracts Blogger with praise for blog
• Blog stalker stabs Blogger 37 times in chest and abdomen
• Blog stalker leaves Blogger to bleed out on side of highway
• Blog goes unupdated from that point on, leaving tens of other fans disappointed and confused     

But that's not how it went.  We met, we hugged, we laughed, we got Summer involved, we got the keys...and settled in to Oro Valley.

A few days later Lisa hooked us up with her good friend Roxanne* (names have not been changed) who graciously brought us to the Seguaro (pronounced Seh-wah-roh) National Monument just minutes from our town.

Those are saguaros.  There are millions of them in this National Forest.  Millions.  

Roxanne is hilarious.  She has a story of how she had told her husband that the reason she was putting on her nice underwear/bra combo was because she was going to the dermatologist.  He was confused, because it was for an above-the-neck skin appointment.  "And you have to undress for that?"  "Yes," she said, "he has me completely undress and lay on the table and then he looks at the skin on my face.  What?  Is that weird?"

This is the only photo I have of her, as she prefers to be photographed from behind:

I knew I loved her when she told me that she also likes to pretend to use a tampon for chapstick....but I really, really, really love people who participate when I have a ridiculous photo idea.

Conversation Between Me and My Dad

Hal: "I don't think you should travel anymore. I was watching this movie and this guy's daughter was killed 25 years ago and they were pursuing her boyfriend as a suspect and it turns out it was her boyfriend's dad!"

Me: "Does this mean I got a boyfriend? I mean at least if my boyfriend's dad killed me that means I ended up getting a boyfriend!"

Hal: "Look. Just don't travel. OK? I'll let you check my five coyote traps I set today."

Me: "Oh. Dad. I don't know if we can be friends anymore, I became a vegetarian two weeks ago."

Hal: "Well we ain't gonna eat the coyotes Kady."

Finally, Science Comes Around to My Way of Thinking

I have extremely dry skin and so I don't shower every day. OK - I don't like getting wet and so I don't shower every day. OK, OK! I am extremely lazy and so I don't shower every day. Truth be told, I get really irritated, yes annoyed when I get to a point when I better take a shower finally. 

But look! Nerdy-cute scientists agree that I probably should continue as I am:

1:40 -- "Hot water softens the lipids and undermines natural oils...not only does it cause the skin to dry out but can allow a path for invading cells...showering can often ruin the healthy balance of your skin." 

You say so what? That's gross. I say I'm doing it for YOU!

2:04 -- "Showering and bathing increases disbursement of skin bacteria into the air, this allows the spread of micro-colonies from your skin onto other people's..."

This is just like that time they said we shouldn't be using anti-bacterial soap and I was like, "DUH".

"Get Thee to a Sunset!"

Whenever I've been traveling in a location that has a western coast it has been an unspoken rule that at day's end, I'll position myself somewhere so that I can watch the sunset.

Nicole and I made our way to the beach almost nightly to walk for miles along the beaches of Costa Rica, sometimes speeding dangerously down the highway so that we wouldn't miss that last sliver of light. We learned to time it -- about an inch in the sky was ten minutes. In South Africa, they call it "sundowners" and most often Mineska and I would view it from blankets with wine at Llandudno Beach. When my friends and I visited Sarah in San Diego we made a fire at Oceanside and illegally drank wine from coffee mugs. In Hawaii, every night without exception I and my friends made a plan as to where we would be watching the sunset. 

Sometimes orange. Sometimes pink. Sometimes blue and even white. Every night it's different. It never gets old. There's no sense whatever that you can skip it because you've "been there done that". 

Costa Rica

Maui

South Africa

San Diego

And the location doesn't have to be exotic. Even in Roosevelt, Minnesota, at the lodge where I worked we had rows of west-facing windows that overlooked gigantic Lake of the Woods. I'd stop running for a few moments to join our guests and watch the sun silently slip below the horizon.

Minnesota, 9:20pm

You know what though? I don't do sunsets in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's not even on my radar here. Perhaps because there are too many trees and buildings to block it? I don't know. But that stops now. 

In my quest for post-vacation-similar-to-New-Year's-resolution-self-betterment, I vow this summer to make sunsets part of my day. I won't even have to go far. Here's the view right out of my apartment window:

Minneapolis

NOT TOO SHABBY, EH?

Home!

"She who has good friends will come home after three weeks to find a clean house, alcohol, balsamic vinegar, and a bamboo plant."

-I just made that up.

I do have good friends.

Lahaina, Hawaii

 

Japan Photo Special

 

Old

As I age, I have a new mantra that I chant to myself. It's "don't act old".

This week I'm staying at a hostel in Hawaii that has a wide range of guests from all over the world and fortunately for me there is no maximum age limit. Hostels suck in a lot of ways (uncomfortable bunk beds, shared bathrooms, wads of hair in showers, lots of wet food in the shared kitchen sink) but are great in a lot of other ways (cheap). Here, although mostly young 20-somethings pace the halls in tiny little bikinis and envy-worthy tans, there are a lot of people even older than me! Everybody's hanging out together and even 72-year-old Perverted Guy joins us on the daily free tours of the island.

Yesterday, on the free shuttle ride to the beach, the driver explained the itinerary, and that she would not be drinking or "partying" so we should all feel free to smoke as much weed and do as many 'shrooms as we wanted on the beach. She'd get us back to the hostel safe. My prude self was horrified to imagine that anybody on that shuttle or in my hostel would ever "do a drug", (hadn't we all just innocently made pancakes and drank coffee together?) but I remembered my mantra and kept my mouth shut. I cringed, uncomfortable for myself but mostly for the two 50-something ladies who sat next to me on the shuttle.

Finally one of them muttered:

"Does this van have enough seatbelts for everybody?"

Is there sun on my face? Because I don't want any sun on my face!!

For Larry

There always has to be one of these guys:

 

 

 

Broken Blood Vessel

Several years ago I had a gigantic zit on my face but it was totally an undergrounder, and so when I pinched and pinched and squeezed and mutilated, nothing came out. So unfair. But forever after that, I had this weird red-dot of a broken blood vessel in its place.

 

You can see it in the photo below, just to the left (my right) of my lower lip. No big deal. I lived with it for many years. But every so often I would bump it or accidentally or on purpose scratch it, or think that if I popped it like a zit and just "let it bleed" for a while it would bleed so much that it would dry up and go away. Ha! Silly! (It never did.)

 

 

 

Once, on a bus in Sri Lanka, I scratched it. I think accidentally on purpose. And it bled FOREVER. Thank goodness Summer had Kleenex and a Band-Aid.

 

(Who took all these photos? Chamudi and Sapna, of course! the two cutest little girls in Sri Lanka:)

 

 

 

The point of this story (there's a point of this story?) is that I finally got it cauterized! Problems have solutions!! I paid a guy $100 to stick a burnt match in my face and then he put a Band-Aid on there. I mean, he was a Doctor. He wasn't just a guy.

 

 

 

Anyway you can hardly see it anymore!