A long overdue up date.

OMG, two months (ish). And so much freaking stuff happened.

October:

24th: David received a call from this web design firm for a job he really wanted, requesting an interview. He floated about on cloud nine for a while

November:

1st: David was transferred from the deli (that he hated) to the Starbucks (that he loved) in Target (where he worked).

2nd: Interview with Firefly. Nailed it.

9th: Second interview with Firefly, this time the Owners and not the GM. Hashed out salary, but was not actually offered the job.

11th: Firefly did not call back as expected. We pig out in a pity party.

13th: David called Firefly to see where he stood. The GM apologized for not getting back to him sooner and offered him the job. Woot, woot!

During all THIS nonsense:

David's grandfather had his knee replaced, his brother had his gallbladder removed and spent three weeks in two different hospitals due to still unknown complications, and his mother had a breakdown due to exhaustion. He spent and week in Jackson with them, right across Thanksgiving. So I spent Thanksgiving with Oliver and Daisy and my pjs. Score.

Everyone is better now, healthy and home. But now we have to contend with the pooh that this whole thing stirred. And I've been asked to keep my explanations as vague as possible. Grumble. The one time I'm willing and prepared to expound upon the details is the ONE TIME I can't.

Damn.

He started his first real grown-up job at Firefly and loves every minute of it. And... we're not broke and poor anymore. Bonus!

So, that's what's happened in our little corner of the world since I fell off the radar.

A Train Wreck, or Something Like It.

Internet rubbernecking.

I'm guilty of it.

You might be too.

Just like real life, driving along the highway, traffic slows to a crawl, and you find yourself decrying those nosy, nosy fuckers 18 cars in front of you who insist on oogling the vehicular carnage as they pass. Then comes your turn to creep by, and instead of maintaining a constant speed out of courtesy for the bazillion drivers behind you, you do it. Right foot shifts from gas to brake-tap, tap, tap- eyes drift to the left (or right), and the rest of your face follows slowly. Before you realize the crime you've committed, you become one of those nosy, nosy fuckers oogling the vehicular carnage.

Same rules apply to the internet, and all this blog lurking of which we are so heinously guilty. Yes, yes you too, because if you're reading this, and haven't made known your presence, than you too my friend, are a lurker.

But I digress.

What started as a simple plea for pray has become this clusterfuck of unadulterated adoration, bordering on celebrity for the internet's favorite Jesus-Loving, organic-eating, sometimes-cloth-diapering mommy blogger. You know who I'm talking about. And I'm guilty of it too, don't get me wrong.

I just wanna know how it happened. I mean, I'm sucked in same as you, and I only have a furbaby. Recipes - meh, good but could be found almost anywhere. Photography lessons - again, easily accessible on the web. Her cute kids with their ridiculous nicknames - okay, I'll give you that. You can ONLY find adorable children with fast food internet names over there.

She's preachy, and commercial. She's still funky, fresh, and lets face it, really fucking cool - most of the time. But her Old testament devotion to her husband, her nauseating use of alliteration, advert-saturated homepage, and utter insistence of use of those Godforsaken nicknames drive me up a wall, as I'm sure it does you.

Yet, I get her blog updates everyday. I read them everyday. I'm addicted, and I can't help myself.

So I ask, what's the appeal? Why do we keep going back for more? What is with this voyeuristic tendency, Blogshpere?

Don't all speak up at once now.

Food Addiction.

You know you're a food addict when:

The thought of a chocolate cupcake from the break room make you positively salivate.

Or does that just make me a chocoholic?

Better than an alcoholic I suppose.

Uuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhggggggggggggggggggerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

Real names, real people, real places.

So, it's hard work keeping up with nicknames. I have a lot of people in my life, and even more about whom I talk.

And this nickname crap is getting old.

So, without further ado...

Names and Faces!

Charlie Browne = David, my fiance'. (I know, I know, how the EFF did THAT happen? I don't really know either.)


Hannigan = My mom. Her name is Susan, but I've called her Hannigan or Moooooommmaaaaaa for years.

Grasshopper = Thomas, my big little brother. He's six feet tall. I've called him Grasshopper since he was in jr. high. Still do.

This is the two of them after Grasshopper graduated.
I'll let you guess who's who


This is Jessica. She's the batshit insane one. I never really have reason to talk about her.



Pooh = Becca, my youngest sister. She's the hot one.
Except right here. Here, she's the hungover, partied-out one.



Bonus = Beau-ness, my baby brother extraordinaire.
He's kind of a nut. He's also eleven...I think.




Last but not least, this is Dad. He's name is Ray. He's technically my stepfather, but he's so good at it, so I claim him as the real thing. The other guy in the picture is Gary, our neighbor, and of course, Becca, working on her tan. She does that at random intervals.




And, that's it for now.

Almost getting caught.

IT was up for 24 hours before he asked about my blog.
Hmmmm, while he says he didn't read it, I think he might have. I don't know if I care or not yet.

If you really wanna read it, because obviously it's not up anymore, just e-mail me.

If, of course, you're not a figment of my imagination.

The cat in the bag...

Or out of the bag as the case may be.

Seems not only does Charlie Browne know about this little blog of mine, but he's been reading it since effing October.

Excuse me, do you have a towel for the egg on my face?

Oh, and as usual, I have plenty of expounding to do, all of it about dear ol' Charlie Browne and giving in.

It's been awesome. And a relief. Total, fucking relief.

My Don't-Give-A-Fuck

(This will make a little more since if you read this, and maybe this.)

Has turned into downright mutiny.

I-don't-wanna, I-ain't-gonna, You-can't-make-me, Just-fire-me-already, Caine-style M.U.T.I.N.Y.

We got a game plan e-mail today. I have to be at work two hours earlier than usual on Monday, at freaking 8:30 in the morning on Tuesday and Wednesday, ad then at 2 "until further notice."

The 8:30 days are for training purposes. Watch me and my subversion. Just you watch.

I don't want to "learn" a "new" way of doing things, just so we can revert back to the old in six to eight weeks. I don't want to listen to that balding bitch-witch babble on and on about inconsequential, bureaucratic bullshit at 8:30 in the effing morning for four effing hours.

I have never felt such animosity for a job, or a boss, in my life.

Urg, grr, grumble, piss, moan, dig in the heels, and then beat the fists on the floor.

(And no, I can't just quit and move back to Houston tomorrow. I have a freaking lease.)
(did I mention I'm moving back in with my parents in August. Parents and batshit-fucking insane sister. Joy and rapture.)

My Give-a-fuck

Six months ago, if you had asked me how excited I was about The Big Move, I could not have vocalized an answer. Just nod and smile in overwhelming exhilaration.

Ask me that today, or maybe tomorrow, and I might shrug my shoulders. Meh.

And that makes me so very, very angry.

Hustle and bustle saturate my work environment. The shelves are nearly bare and overfilled boxes abound. In two weeks, and at the very most by this time next month, we (my co-hortsworkers and I) will be livin' it up in the new digs, with literally thousands of brand new, spine unbroken, possibly shiny, fresh-from-the-publisher books around every corner, and enough space so that I never have to see, hear or smell the Train Wreck.

Eric is practically drooling at the thought of this place and that guy doesn't get excited about anything. Okay, anything of remote importance.

Gregk, were he not so mired with the actually moving mudanities, would be shivering he tight little ass off in anticipation.

Bill can't wait, neither can Crystal, or Whitney.

But try as I might, I can't give a shit. I've dug deep, too. I really worked at it. But since all this crap hit the fan, I've been too busy trying to pry the eight inch serrated blade out of my spine to care about much else.

There are work place politics, and then there's my job. See, when they can't fire you, they have to get very creative in how they make you leave. And by creative I mean dirty, underhanded, two-faced, backstabbing techniques and slight of hand. And just the slightest little thing, sometimes one may not even know what one did, can set off a chain reaction that would make Mount St. Helens look like a fucking sneeze.

See, I don't know how this got started. Okay, I do know. But it's not really important anymore. It's happened. It's over.

And I just don't give a fuck.

sigh.

You. Whoever you are. Again.

Well I came out of hiding over on Brianna's blog sometime last week. She asked her readers about their names, and since my name is not only cool and unique, but has a nice little (okay, really looong) story behind it, I decided to share.

And as of today, two hundred, eighty-nine of you have at least pit stopped here in the pursuit of something (ah-HA see what I did there?).

I have triple digit visitors!!! Woot-woot (little dance).

God I'm lame.

No I'm not. I'm excited! Now, no one's bothered to say anything, but that's okay. Nothing I say really warrants response, as in "Please, please, please, PLEASE do NOT respond to anything I have to say about David, puh-leeeeeeeeeze?" Unless, you know, I ask.

And to those of you lurking around, searching for the meaning of the "J," you won't find it here. My anonymity allows me to talk about my life without having to answer for it. So I've purposefully eliminated as much identifying material as possibly from this little corner of the web. I do promise to post an explanatory blog identifying the nicknames I employ. But there's no answer to the J question here.

If you really, really, really must know, like it's-killing-me must know, shoot me any email. I'll tell. There's little in this world I won't share about myself with others. You just have to ask.

My priorities.

So much happened last week (history, my 25th birthday, really deep moving thoughts about my relationship to my stillborn brother and my mother's acknowledgement of said brother, or lack thereof) and yet the ONLY thing I talked about for TWO weeks is my freaking idiot roommate and his unreciprocated (probably not a word) crush on me.

I hate that. I'm not a romance reader, and I vary rarely watch soap operas. As a matter of fact, I only go out of my way to watch one and it's been cancelled since 1989. AND the only reason I watch it is because it starred Kate Mulgrew for the first five years and I'm a humongous effing nerd.

And yet, somehow, my life is a teenage drama mongers dreamland. Double You. Tea. Eff.


My excuse for not catching up this week: sheer laziness. That's it. I only worked a few days this week, and spent the rest of my time devouring Dr. Who series 4 and Torchwood series 2 (awesome, FYI).

So my goal for this week, well next week because this week is over, is to blog about all the things I meant to blog about for the past two weeks.

And I promise, scouts' honor here, not to discuss Charlie Browne. Unless he does something blog worthy, but only the ONCE, I swear!

The name I've given Myself.

As seen in Brianna's comments section:

I'm named for my grandmother. I come from a large, Southern, French, Catholic family. Repeating names is a hobby we have. I was the four grandchild born and the fourth girl. According to my mother, my name was Melissa until the day I was born. Then, my dad had this brilliant idea to name me after my grandmother "because no one's done it yet." So, I left the hospital with this beautiful, difficult French name, off to live my life in equally beautiful Acadian Louisiana.

Until the age of three months, at which point my parents relocated to Houston, TX, the least "French" place on Earth. I spent the next eighteen-ish years educated the general population on the proper pronunciation of both my first and last names. I gave up in college and just went with Elizabeth, my middle and only remotely pronounceable moniker.

Now people have to ask what the J stands for, and honestly I like it. It make me even more intriguing (or maybe that's just the ego talking).

My resolutions

Shape up (why should this year be different from every other year of my adult life?).

Fix my problem with "da Benjamins."

Blog at least once a week.

Meet Him. (No, not that Him. I'm not ready for Him. I mean Mr. Right.)

Become something meaningful.

Do something substantial.

Love myself a little better (So that He can love me at all).

Not break a heart.

Find patience.

Find happiness.

Not roll my eyes when someone (anyone) reads this and mentions my relationship with that Him.

Hone my wordsmithing skills. (Not a word, I know.)

Some Satisfaction

I've got sex on the brain.

Sex and the inevitable circumstance that follows.

Little know fact about Me: Pregnancy is damn sexy. My own (hypothetical, of course), those of other women. Not so much of other men. In my funky little mind, sex and all that it entails "in the heat of the moment" (yes, go on, hum the melody. I'll wait.) almost always accompanies ideals of expanding bellies.

And it's always a turn on, or an amplification of my already turned-on state of mind.

The real twist in my noodle right now concerns my current state of unsatisfied fits. I don't know from where it's wandered, nor when perhaps it may wander back...

Wwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll...

That's not entirely true. I may have some passing infatuation with my "new" roommate.

He's not bad looking. Hell, in the face he's down right adorable, what with his clear, water-blue eyes, dark brown hair, and just dashing smile. He's well read, has a fan-effing-tastic voice(deep and rich), he's worldly (ish), sweet as can be, and can cook as well as if not (dare I say) better than my mother. He's a breath of fresh air after a month of crass and cigar smoke.

However...

He's three years younger than I am (HUMONGOUS STICKING POINT). He's uptight (There was this thing, about his facebook... blah blah blah). He's got NO self confidence. He might be the clingy type (I get the vibe). He's NOT well versed in his pop culture...like, at all. He's huh-AIRY (humongous turnoff), and a total doughboy. He's admitted he's not well-endowed, and he's not well practiced, if you know what I mean. Last, but not least, he's apposed to surrogacy. Total deal breaker, that one (as if the other points were merely fence posts).

But he is cute, and he is there, and I haven't had a semi decent adult relationship in a year (some may argue ever), and I'm edging in on forty-two months celibate.

So, to recap, I've got sex on the brain...

Ooo, and an appointment at nine in the morning to have my eyes done...
Good lawd, what was I thinking?!

Go to bed, go to bed, go to bed.