snap! crackle! pop!

Am I talking about some old-fashioned breakfast cereal?  Oh, how I wish!  No, dear reader, these words are the sounds that my body has started making when I move.  I never used to make uncontrollable cracking sounds when I walked.  In fact, I used to make fun of my husband for not being able to sneak up on someone because his knees were constantly cracking.  Now he can make fun of me too - there's nothing right about that.

Within the past year or so, I've noticed strange cracks coming from my right foot as I walked across the office.  Those were followed a few months ago by the crackling, grinding sound of my left knee as I go up or down stairs.  (It's especially lovely first thing in the morning when I'm heading down my apartment stairs to our garage.)  Then, yesterday morning as I was putting on my pantyhose (a task I despise anyway), I noticed a popping sound coming from my left elbow as I was using my thumb to roll them up.  My body has become a symphony of the sounds of tendon erosion.

Seriously?  Have I aged so much in the past year that now my joints are cursing me?  Come on!  Remember a few posts ago, I started talking about how I'm losing weight and feeling better about myself?  Yeah, well now I'm feeling self-conscious about all of the unexpected and unwelcome noises that I make when I move.  Maybe if I just stand still when flirting, I'll be okay...

where does the pollen go?

Why is it that every time I see bees pollenating flowers, this song comes to mind?



Maybe it's a good thing as it reminds me about the different parts of the flower and the things I learned about in 6th grade science class. Of course, I don't know why I would need to know those terms for any practical purposes. I don't have conversations about stamens and pistils at the office or while hanging out with my friends - well, not the ones on flowers anyway. 

Here's another thought regarding this video - why didn't we ever break out into song and dance in high school?  (Well, some of us sang New Kids on the Block songs in homeroom, but that's just a whole different beast.)   And I don't mean some Glee-esque irritating auto-tuned harmonies, I mean a good, raunchy, belt it out high school hormone-filled romp. I think this kind of scene would have been quite appropriate for my French 4 class when our teacher would teach us all the curse words we needed to know.  A little ditty with "merde" and "salope" in it could have been lots of fun.  I mean, we listened to a French rock opera in that class, why not have our own impromptu performance?   Now that would have been something to liven up the class.

time, time, time...see what's become of me

When I was in kindergarten, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I answered a ballerina, a policewoman, and a singer.  (I only know this because my parents kept it and gave it to me.)  When I was in 5th grade, I decided I wanted to become an archaeologist or Egyptologist.  In 8th grade, my passion was animals, so I decided I wanted to be a veterinarian in a zoo.  In high school, my head went back into the clouds that it had visited in kindergarten and I again wanted to be a singer. 

I also fell in love in high school right when I was starting to make decisions regarding colleges, what I wanted to pursue, where I wanted to live, etc.  So, I decided to go to a liberal arts college about 2 hours away from me where I would be in a big city, but still be able to come home on the weekends to see my honey.  (Ick, I can't believe I just called him that.  That was way too girly for me.)  It was a great choice, my best friend also went there, so we roomed together for the first semester, I hung out at museums during my off time and took the train home every weekend.  The only problem was that all of the vocal classes took place on the weekends.  Oh no, that wasn't going to do.  I ended up taking classes in drawing, English, poetry, advertising, art history, and my favorite, "biology of human sexuality."  After two semesters, I realized that I had no idea what direction I wanted to take in pursuit of a major.  I didn't want to spend my parents' money in order to figure it out either, so I decided to leave after my second semester.

Jump ahead 6 or 7 years and I'm married to that aforementioned "honey" and have a baby.  After having said offspring, I do a little soul searching - wanting to be the best role model I could possibly be for him by being a happy, well-adjusted grown up.  One thing I realized was that I knew what I wanted to be.  I finally had it figured out!  I wanted to be one of the fortunate few who got to design exhibits for museums.  I wanted to put my love of learning together with my little bit of creativity and desire to be in museums, wrap them all together, and have my dream job! 

Yes!  Wait...no! 

I do not live close enough to a city to commute daily, and I'm not going to uproot the family in order to get closer.  I don't have any money for school - Yes, I know there's financial aid, but I'd also want to cut back on my hours at work in order to be able to focus on school work.  And to top it all off...there's not a big job market in the museum exhibit design field.  I do not want to go through 4-8 years of schooling to get a dream job that isn't feasible.

Do I regret any of the decisions I've made?  Oh, hell no!  I do think that everyone wonders from time to time where they would be if they had turned left instead of right or said yes instead of no.  I can't imagine my life without my husband or my son and am perfectly content with small town life.  I'm not very content with my job, but I'm working on that.  If / when I do find another job, I know it won't be my dream job, but how would we have a functioning society if most of the kindergartners in the world grew up to be ballerinas, singers or princesses?

some thoughts on cankles

Cankles: The area in affected female legs where the calf meets the foot in an abrupt, nontapering terminus; medical cause: adipose tissue surrounding the soleus tendon, probably congenital, worsened by weight gain and improved in appearance only by boots. From the English "calf" meaning wide portion of the lower leg, and "ankle" meaning slender joint of leg with foot.
(From urbandictionary.com)













As I was walking through my local Wal-Mart this evening, I happened past the pharmacy where there was a line of about 5 people. 4 of those people were terribly afflicted with some pretty nasty cankles. I wondered to myself if the drug companies had just recently released some sort of new anti-cankle pill, or if it was just coincidence.  If there isn't a pill, will there be one soon? Are they hereditary? Are they contagious? Eek! Sure, they're cute on babies, but everything is cute on a baby. (A bowl of spaghetti is cute on a baby's head, but not on a 40-year-old's.)

Have cankles always been around?  Did cavewomen have to sit a spell and rest their swollen hairy feet?  Did Cleopatra suffer not only from some really bad facial features, but also a nasty case of cankles?  What in the world did they do in the Victorian era with those high laced boots? I can't imaging cankles hiding under those, or did they just lace the boots so tight that the fat was pushed up into their calves creating some sort of mushroom cloud effect?  Or is this some new affliction in the era of fast food and remote controls?

Well, whatever the case may be, I do not want them. I enjoy wearing socks without the elastic burrowing into my skin.  I want to be able to wear shoes without having my puffy feet pushing out of the tops of them like bread dough rising out of the pan.  I shall now add that to my list of things that I would like to see cures for: heart disease, cancer, AIDS, diabetes, mental disorders and cankles.

fare thee well, henry

I'm in a small mourning period over the end of The Tudors on Showtime.  (Not as large of a mourning period as I had for HBO's Rome though. I'm still mourning that one.)  Four great seasons, six wives, three children (well, four if you count the one he didn't), tons of illicit affairs, numerous religious reforms and temper tantrums, all wrapped up in one amazing hour.  This was the best series finale that I have ever seen.  No disappointments, no big bangs, no reason to scratch your head afterwards.  It was satisfying, sad and beautiful.  If you haven't watched the show, I highly suggest you go out and rent the DVD's. 

I found a clip of my favorite line from the night.  Because of recent events in my own life, I've found this to be very poignant.

*Editing note: The previous video had been removed by Showtime, so here's another of the same line. Hopefully this one stays.

a public service announcement

I'm taking a moment away from my normal fun and entertaining posts and giving y'all a bit of education. I might do this again from time to time just to make myself feel like I'm contributing a little something to the world. This topic, however, is very near and dear to me at the moment.

What comes to mind when you think of the symptoms of a heart attack? Most likely it's what you see on tv or in the movies: chest pain radiating out into the shoulders or arm, shortness of breath, etc. People clutching their chest, gasping for air and then falling to the ground, right? Well, yes, those are certainly symptoms, but did you know that you might just feel like you have heartburn?

I had never heard of it until that and fatigue were the only symptoms that my dad had on Monday night when he had his heart attack. Unfortunately, because he didn't know it was a sign (and none of us had a clue either), he put off going to the doctor for two days and it went untreated, killing some of his heart muscle. When he was admitted, the doctors and nurses told him that 3 out of 5 times, when someone comes in for heartburn it turns out to be a heart attack. If that's the case, don't you think there should be a little more education about that? Well...I'm doing my part. :)

I'm not usually one to post anything from WebMD (mainly because my borderline hypochondriac husband reads it far too often), but HERE is a great page giving the list of symptoms of heart-related events. Read it, remember it.

lion luvin'

I took a field trip with my son yesterday to one of our local zoos. It was a rainy day, but it got me away from work and I was able to spend time with the kid while it's still okay for him to be seen with his mom. We hit every exhibit, dodged strollers and wagons filled with cranky kids and junk food, and I took plenty of pictures. Why I bring up a family event in this blog is for one simple thing...feline fornication.

So there we are, in the big cat habitat, watching the tigers and the massive lions, secretly wishing we could pet them or snuggle up close with them, things were so innocent... We had both been gazing at the gorgeous male lion that was staring off into the distance...so majestic, so powerful.

My son went off to look at the jaguar down the way, but I stood there mesmerized at the sight of the king of the jungle. Then...movement. The male got up from his rocky perch, walked over to his mate, and gently groomed her back. Awwww. And then he mounted her. No...really? He's doing that now? The female never moved, but the male was certainly moving. Then the gaggle of young children around me started asking their mortified mothers, "Mommy, what are they doing?" "Uhhhh...they're...playing. Yeah, they're just playing. Oh look, cheetahs!" the moms responded and quickly made their exits from the scene out of a Discovery Channel show. The female still never moved. I walked over a little closer to the...uh.. action to see if I was mistaking the activity for something else. Another mom was standing over there and said, "Yeah, that's what they're doing." Apparently she had the same curiosity as I had. The male bit the female's neck and dismounted, walking back over to the rock to stare into space again. And again...the female didn't move, to which I observed to the mom next to me, "She didn't seem to get much out of that."

In that moment, the small group of mothers around me that had remained started nodding and laughing in agreement and understanding. I got the feeling they'd all been that female lion at one point or another. Ah, romance!

i enjoy being a girl

I don't know what's been in the water lately, but I've been enjoying my femininity again. My necklines are a little lower, heels a little higher, I've been wearing more skirts and dresses and the hemlines are a little shorter. I have been appreciating the males of the species even more...from a distance of course. And yes, the amount of flirting has risen. I forgot how much fun it is. Okay, it's probably the 20 lbs that I've lost making me feel better about myself, but still. Oh dear, what happens when I lose even more weight? I'm going to get myself into trouble. The world better watch out!

death by coffee

As I finished pouring my coffee this morning at work, I glanced down to find that there was something floating in it. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was a spider - not a teeny tiny spider, but about the size where I would quickly brush it off of me if I had found it crawling on me. This one small moment made me think of a few things:

1. There was a good-sized spider in my mug that, first of all, was in my office on my desk to begin with, then was carried all the way down to the cafeteria with me. Ick. (Though it's a good thing I didn't see it on my way down because I probably would have dropped the mug out of shock and broken it. This would be a bad thing as I'd have to go back to New Mexico to get another one. Hmmm....maybe not such a bad thing.)

2. What a way to go, huh? Here you are, minding your own business, hanging out in a place that seems like it will be a nice new home for you, when all of the sudden you're scalded by steaming hot liquid - so not only are you drowning, you're also burning. It wasn't even good coffee, it was more like coffee-flavored water. Eh - hopefully it was quick.

3. It was a good thing I looked in my mug before I took a sip. That's all I'm going to say about that. *shiver*

I said a couple of mantras for the floating arachnid and poured the carcass and it's beverage grave down the drain, washed out my mug, and poured another cup. It might be crappy coffee, but it's still needed. From now on, I'll just be sure to check the mug before picking it up to go anywhere.