53 posts tagged “sex and the single girl”

During dinner with GH the other night we were discussing commitment. Merriam-Webster lists the act of being committed (e.g., to a mental institution or some other form of legal encumbrance) first, and then the more romantic and/or trust-related version second. It's that second one we were discussing.

Granted, we've only been seeing eachother 10 months and further that has been sporadic thanks to my schedule with the C. But for me, it's a hell of a long time to be romantically entwined and not get into an argument. Not one.

There seems to be this pervasive opinion that, because we do not intend to live together (pretty much ever), we are not in a "real" relationship and/or do not present a sufficiently high level of commitment. We apparently have some sort of commitment deficiency. Further detouring us from Commitment Success is the fact that we are not going to be married. So now we are not only not planning to comingle our selves, we are also not going to comingle our legal interests or fiscal ones.

I'm not sure I agree that milestone-based-relationship-defining is applicable to me. As much as I love Excel spreadsheets and MS Project (ok, I don't love MS Project, but I heart checklists!) I am certain I have reached the end goal of my personal relationships. Go me!

The second definition of commitment is:

2 a: an agreement or pledge to do something in the future ; especially : an engagement to assume a financial obligation at a future date b: something pledged c: the state or an instance of being obligated or emotionally impelled <a commitment to a cause>

I think we can strike out definition a, as there is no financial obligation on either my or GH's part. I make my own money, he makes his. Definition b is a little sketchy: something "pledged" means we have to go look up and see what that technically means as well. I think definition C is what I'm getting to, though: the state or instance of being obligated or emotionally impelled.

It's that emotional impelling part that defines what sort of commitment I have and/or desire. I do not need to have him on a leash (in fact it's fun to keep him off it) and so what I get is the perks and bonuses of having a partner without the worry of conflicting OCD (there are two separate vacuuming methods, for example), keeping track of who did what chore, or being taken for granted. I am with him (and I think he with me) because I am emotionally impelled to, it makes me feel mellower than any wine and happier than any other experience; the time we get to spend together is special and yet requires no "best behavior" or "effort" or really any sort of maintenance.  It's much like being a mistress, but on equal footing. I can be committed to that.

Although I wouldn't mind having a padded room...

On Saturday, at brunch, one of GH's friends (well, I suppose she's one of mine now too so I'll have to give her a name -- let's call her Melissa) debuted her "list". The idea of a "list", you will recall, is to identify your deal-breakers and nice-to-haves in a partner, and then that helps you weed through the masses of potential suitors. I have my own list (geek hint: use "list" as my tags to see!) and it worked fairly well, GH meets at least 90% of the requirements (and all of the mandatory ones). It's not so much the idea that "if you build it they will come" but more "if you build it you will easily identify choads and give them the bird rather than the bed".

So the Ladies Who Brunch assessed Melissa's list and identified one or two addendums but nothing to remove, Melissa's got her shizzle together and doesn't have unrealistic expectations. I fully expect her to go into dating and have her swath of crappy dates, because it's a bonding thing with her girlfriends and she needs to have them, but once she's over that she'll find Mr. Right, or at least Mr. Pretty Darned Close and that, my friends, is the bird in hand over the two in the bush. No pun intended.

Filtration is good.

Think about all the things you filter: news (you either go Fox News or CNN, usually), data, information, your water, incoming work, outgoing work, the things you say, the things you do, etc. Everything goes through some sort of sieve-cum-processing system wherein you don't simply regurgitate what you've had in: GIGO may apply but not really with humans.

Filtration happens a lot in data.

There are, in the geek world, a lot of ways you can filter your data: going only to certain tables, inner joining (rather than left or right or outer joining), and then the ever-popular 'where' statement. "Where" is where it's at: the one line in db development where you get to say "I want chocolate and fudge and not almonds", because almonds kill me. 

(Yes, I'm getting my epi pen. I digress... still!)

There are many, many, many, many, many many ways you can filter stuff using that 'where' statement.

Before I start a treatise on this, please understand it's about to be all about DB's and no longer about relationships, and is useful if you like.. um... SQL.

Ok -- So you have your data set and you want to filter it by churches or very small rocks. First, find the field you want to filter. Let's use that initial example: "Things that Float".

Your select statement may look like this:

Select ThingsName

from MyDatabase.dbo.TableOfThings T**

Which gets you a  list of all the things in your TableOfThings. Now, a perfectly normalized database would have a boolean -- a field whose sole purpose is to have a 1 or a 0 -- that lists whether or not they "float". It may be called the "FloatBool" or somesuch, 1 means YesItFloats and 0 means NoItDoesn'tFloat. But let's say your db was built by the same sort of mentality that suggested "churches" float in water, and you'd have just the name to go on.

When watching Python, you see that things that float are suggested as "churches", "very small rocks", "cider", "gravy", "lead", "witches","cherries", "wood", and, finally, a "duck". Being rational, reasonable humans as we(?) are, we can say that we know for sure that witches, wood, and a duck float. I have doubts about the rest, please submit your scientific process and I will critique in light of the results.

So, if your TableOfThings includes Churches, VerySmallRocks,Cider,Gravy,Lead,Witches,Cherries,Wood, and a Duck, you could disseminate things that float (without that handy FloatBool) thusly:

select

ThingsName

from

MyDatabase.dbo.TableOfThings T

where

T.ThingsName like '%Witches%'

or

T.ThingsName='Wood'

or

T.ThingsName>='Duck%'

or

T.ThingsName in ('Cider','Gravy','VerySmallRocks') 

Wait, wait, what's with the %?? I don't want a percent of a witch, I want a real, honesstoGod, wart on the nose Witch!

Aha! But what if the person who put the "Things" in put in Duck: Mallard? Or Witches That Kick Ass? You would need your filter to be smart! Yesiree, Bob, a smart filter can make your life easy.

Using the "Like" statement says, "find anything like this. Like meaning EXACTLY LIKE this, unless there's a %, which means do everything exactly like the actual words and then use this % as a wild card for one or more letters".

So the statement, Like '%Wart%' can catch 'Wart' and 'Warts' and 'Warts Are Sucky' and 'Warts mean you need to go swing a dead cat in a cemetary, you know'; or it can mean 'I love Warts' and 'I love warts that are on hairy palms'. Because the % is on the fore and aft, as it were, it only cares that *somewhere* in thingname is the string of characters that spells 'wart'.

Ok, what about that>=? What the ?#@?$ is >=?

That, my friends, is an easier way to do the "like" thing, *if* you don't need it to be flexible on the first part.

For example, thingsname>='Deb%' will get you anything that is equivalent to 'Deb' (uh...'Deb' is pretty much it) and anything that starts with 'Deb' that is alphabetically past that. So it won't get you anything that starts with 'Dea' but it will get you things like 'Debutante' and 'Debater' and 'Deb is the meanest beeyotch ever'. 

Lastly, the "In" statement: it's good if you know what you're dealing with (e.g., I know the db dev and he would never put in I love Warts but only Warts) and you want to give it a list to look "in".  

Ok, you say, so if I have a table of say, sales in dollars by person name, and I want to filter by anyone whose sold more than 1000 bucks, I'd just do >='1000 bucks', right?

Whoa, nelly. Not so fast.

Those little '%%' things, and 'like', work great with text. Not so much with the numbers. If your field is based on an int, decimal, float, money, double, etc. (any numeric type value) you will want to use numeric qualifiers. In that case, you are limited to:

=. e.g., where fieldname=200.

>. 'greater than', e.g. where fieldname>200. Yields 201 and up, but not 200.

>=. 'greater than or equal to'. e.g., where fieldname>= 200. Yields 200 and up.

and then of course < for less than and <= for less than and equal to. "In" also works here: in (200,300,400). But again, you have to know what you're looking for exactly.

But perhaps the really coolest thing about filtration is you can compound it. No, you are not limited to picking just one thing and having done with it! Like Melissa's list, you can pick a bunch of things: and the more you do, the narrower your results set is likely to be.

So for example,

where

chestmuscles='defined'

and

iq>=130

and

dentalhygeine='good'

and

hasoverbearingmotherbool=0

will yield you less results than, say,

where chestmuscles='defined'

and

iq>100

and

dentalygeine>='g%' (cuz this will get you grand, great, good, but may also get you grotesque)

and

hasoverbearingmotherbool>=0

Just sayin'. Keep your where statements loose.

** What is that weird T doing there? It's called an alias. When later you have to refer to that table, you don't want to carve AAAAARRHG -- I mean, "mydatabase.dbo.tableofthings". It's unweildly, and it gives headaches when you've had too much caffeine and want to refer to things easily. By putting the T there (or an M, or a X, or Tot, or Tomt, or MyFancyAlias, which really defeats the purpose but illustrates the intent) you can shorthand it.

As I was fretting in the back of Christine's car about the status of my household, Ali suggested that yesterday would be the premier of two Big Events in my life: one, the C would meet my boyfriend just mano a mano; two, the boyfriend would see my unvacuumed house.

I would rather be seen in unshaven, unmadeup, fresh-from-an-8-mile-run glory than have anyone see my house unvacuumed.

Fortuantely for me, I got to experience both of those conditions, as after Christine and Ali generously dropped me off at home as quickly as humanly possible, with a promise to retrieve my child and car (which were at Ali's house), there was GH looking relaxed and reading the Sammamish Reporter, which heretofore had the sole obligation of laying forlornly in my driveway. I don't read the Reporter.

As it happens, the house didn't get vacuumed until this morning, because I have this other weird *thing* where I can't vacuum with an audience.

We did however have a late brunch and went off to Jubilee farms, where we missed the trebuchet action on a pumpkin that was roughly the size of my son. We did wait around for the next one only to see that the pumpkin for *that* period was about the size of a softball. In the meantime, though, we had managed to procure two greenish pumpkins for ourselves and a truly perfectly round and orange one for GH, who is apparently a pumpkin traditionalist. I am happy to report that both of my young men sat on the hayride and did not stand up, per the instructions of the driver. They also succeeded in figuring out about chickens and this egglaying business and the whole purpose of a rooster.

Pumpkins procured, we sauntered off to the store, and then home to have dinner. The C decreed that the perfect accompaniment to steak was, in fact, macaroni and cheese. And the vegetable shall be green beans. So it was spoken, so it was done. Dinner was a reasonable success and the night ended, for the C, as he fell asleep watching a movie at 8pm. Running through a pumpkin patch, jumping on furniture (when he thought I wasn't looking), running through a hay maze, and 14 hours of on-the-go equaled a very tired boy.

Naturally, the big question is, but how did it go? I think it went well. The C did his usual trick of testing absolutely everything in site, like a Raptor at the fence, on the off chance that mom was going to let him get away with something just because a New Person was there. But he cottoned to GH as a man's man, a guy who would help him cut his breakfast sausage but let him hold the clippers at the pumpkin patch; a guy who respected his macaroni and cheese choice and could possibly facilitate hooking up his XO laptop to the wifi (TBD). I can't answer as to GH but I do know that he didn't once tell me I had a disgusting, annoying child so that's good, right? :) I mean, he even stayed for pie...

You can hang my gutters anytime, dear.

I am sitting here with my office door open (in 2 months I will have no door and will be in the Land Of Cubicles, but that's another story) and listening, unapologetically, to the projected voice of the graphic designer down the hall. She insists on having full-volume personal telephone conversations with her door open, so here I sit and I have discovered that:

• There's only one credit card they're worried about is the appliances one. The BofA one is paid automatically. So is the Alaska Airlines one. And they have three more months on the appliances one.
• They need to sit down this weekend and budget, because he needs to work that overtime, so he can take paternity leave.
• Oh, she's going to a party on Saturday. In Tacoma. at 6:30.
• Why did he pretend he couldn't go when it actually was that he forgot about it? Why would he say that?
• They're getting the furniture from Ikea. On Sunday. He was going to go at noon on Saturday, but she has a massage tomorrow at 10:30, so it will be hard to go at noon. But then they could ba back by 2 or 3 and...
• They need to paint the baby's room.  No, that needs to get done this weekend.

 She doesn't say she loves him when she hangs up.

What strikes me as weird about this is that the entire conversation is fraught with stress, irk, and a hefty share of apathy. She wants her husband to do all of these thing and its clear they aren't on the same page about many things. The fact that she's about 6 months along makes it hard on them both, I'm sure.

I do not miss being married. I think it works very much for some people -- and I think those people are the ones who are pretty much on the same page, by default, all the time. They are either go-with-the-flow or they have an accepted scheduler/organizer, or they are aware enough of things that they don't step in it.

This last weekend I was with GH at his brother's destination wedding in Oregon. But for about 6 people (his brothers, their wives, his mother, and a couple of family friends) I knew no one there.  I was there very much as GH's girlfriend, introduced as such; the fact that GH is now the only single one of the three brothers added a shade of weirdness. It's not that his family expects us to be 'next' -- we kind of tested for that and mercifully the tests came negative -- it's that I'm the one he brought to the wedding, and he is apparently getting a lot of looks like (as he puts it), "don't screw this up".

I think cohabitating or marriage would screw it up royally.

We spent four days together, with decent pockets of me sending him off with his brothers and hiding in the bar, and that worked out pretty well (the bar was the only place with interwebs). But nothing brought it home like the time I had my surgery: after a pre-surgery Wednesday, then all-day Thursday, then all-day Friday, we looked at each other and said, "yeah, that was nice. you can go home now." I have discovered that I like my personal space, I like my privacy, I like hogging the entire bed, and (weirdly enough) I am liking being a morning person. These are all counter-productive to cohabitating with a man who likes his space, privacy, hogging the bed, and is a die-hard night person.

To say nothing of the fiscal roller-coaster that is marriage. I cannot imagine having to account for any expenditures I make other than to myself, and I cannot imagine being requiring anyone else to account to me. I *did* that, for 12 years; and when he left I still coached him through the fine points of budgeting, fiscal responsibility, ATM statements, what APR is, and how to intelligently borrow money. I fell like I've raised one kid and I'm on the next one, but like pancakes this one will be better.  I cannot imagine the shared use of a credit card with anyone -- especially one that had to be reminded of *which one* was the one to worry about. I cannot imagine living in a circumstance where you plan and expect and budget overtime. I know many do -- because they HAVE to, and in the current economic times they're probably very grateful they have the luxury of expectant overtime.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ragging on this girl (she's under 30. Girl.) She's young, she is starting a new family, she's been married a couple of years, they just bought a house: the formula for the upwardly mobile young couple. They will probably be fine.

I just don't envy them :)

Being an ENTJ, a Field Marshal, means I am excellent at getting shit complete. I do it myself and I get other people to do it. Charge me with shit, shit gets done.

Except when said shit is out of my control. I have encountered a terrible lot of uncontrolled poo in the last 24 hours.

I went into surgery, semi-upbeat and cajoled out of my fear of GA by GH. I went in, I was jovial, I woke up, I was equally jovial, albeit with a sore throat from the inevitable intubation that happens during GA. I called the parents, the X, let everyone know how well I was doing. I had a note to call my doctor.

An hour later she was patiently explaining to me that my innards are so messed up with scar tissue and endometriosis that there is just no way she can get to my tubes to tie them. My options include going for a surgery where they stick coils in my fallopian tubes (um, no) or... ah... do without.

I really, really despise waste and inefficiency. I spent $100 in copay and a full day's time and I still have a horrible bruise about my bellybutton and weird pains in my shoulder thanks to the laparoscopy, and I have NOTHING to show for it. The single bright, shining star in this whole thing is that GH took such very good care of me before and after surgery.

To add insult to injury (bruised belly people!), before you go into surgery, you need to take out piercings. Like the ones I got in February. Which promptly closed up by the time I got home. So off to Slave To the Needle I go tomorrow, to see if they can tweak them open and/or repierce. Oh! The Joy! I am determined to make lemonade out of these lemons: if I cannot find a surgical grade plastic that can be extruded into placeholders, I will find an alternative solution; I am determined to make it such that people do not lose their piercing investment going into surgery.

The angst was abated by a lovely, relaxing drive up to Winthrop, WA today. I did not have to concentrate on anything but pretty scenery, I didn't have to drive or fret or code or listen to a doctor tell me my insides make spaghetti look neat and orderly. I got a hamburger. I got ice cream (mint chocolate chip!). I got to see several people other than GH and I get pulled over because ticket$ mean fund$ for $mall town$. Aside from the fiscal philandering, the drive was unmarred and I am reminded how lucky I am to live in a state like Washington.

Despite my messy insides and unmarshaled fields.

Pop quiz!

It's 10am the Saturday you are destined to have your single solitary individual instance of date-ness time with your GH for a 2 week period. It has already been 10 days since you've seen him. You have a sitter lined up (and have had for some time now). You have your outfit planned.  You have the SC psyched. You shaved and procured exciting underwear.

Your sitter is a flake and TEXTS YOU: Oh, family emergency, can't make it. (I'd buy it except the last 4 times I asked her this sort of thing has happened. I wonder why she keeps accepting jobs; I wonder why I keep asking).

The text arrived as I was going out with the SC to do his back to school shopping; not wanting to sully the mood I texted "thanks" and forwarded to GH. I will have to make it up to him Wednesday. Thusly was the determined mindset that ventured forth into Fred Myer for Back To School Shopping.

In Harry Potter, there's this charming little scene where Harry finds himself in Diagon Alley, having just discovered his lot in life and being amazed at every turn. He's reading his school supplies list, which starts with, "All students will bring one number two pewter cauldron..."

I am firmly believing his back to school list was more enjoyable than the SC's.

Oh, wait. I forgot. As the SC is going into Kindergarten, and he is no longer really all that Small, he is now the C. (Later on he will be the YM). I digress...

Eighteen. Elmers (not Ross not Avery not sixteen other brands specified). Glue. Sticks.

I cleaned out Freddy's of the Elmer's glue sticks, hopefully other parents had their shit together and got theirs. I procured crayons (3 boxes of 24), paper (2 reams of 20pound), notebooks (1 subject), pencils (2 packs), markers (1 pack skinny, one pack thick), scissors (Friskars only!), headphones, wipes, kleenex, purell, pencil grips, folios, a backpack, 3 outfits, and a new socket wrench and hex set for mommy.

You see, mommy changed her oil Saturday morning, before she discovered she would not be getting come-to-Mommy time; and managed to break her 1/4-3/8 adjustor for her socket wrench set while using a 10mm Allen attachment. It seems that whomever read the torque requirements for her transmission pan bolt (yes, having changed the oil in the engine I figured I'd just change out the trans filter) must have confused his Newton-Metres with Foot-Pounds (or more likely vice-versa): the damned thing is practically FUSED. This was vexing. Breaking tools is Not Nice, and so I went to replace said tools.

Then I gave myself a decent interval of relaxation with the C, watching movies and ordering a pizza, on Saturday evening. This morning at 8:30 I got under that @#$(%#$* car and for the life of me could not get the Q#$(%*#$%( pan bolt out.

Fine. There's more than one way to split an infinitive.

I proceeded to unscrew each of the 10mm bolts along the pan perimiter, putting a big pan under it to catch the gallon or so of ATF I was expecting, and took the whole damned thing off. Yes, I got trans fluid up to my elbows and in my new socket wrench: tools are made to be USED, and girls are made to get dirty!

Having removed the pan everything worked great: Cleaned it all up, replaced the gasket, cleaned off the magnets, replaced the filter, tightened it all up (not confusing my foot pounds and newton metres, thank you very much). Put synthetic in so I don't have to worry about it for a good long time and I was done!

Except for the shelf paper, you see. 

A few weeks back I was at Target and they had a special on shelf paper that looks like white granite, which I rather liked, at least more than my current crayola-beige shelf paper. So I bought a few rolls and there they rested on my kitchen counter until today.

When I reorganized (again) all of my cabinets while replacing the shelf paper.

This is what happens when DD is denied her date night. But now I am paying for it, my back hurts fiercely and while it provided me the opportunity to bemoan aging with my Dad, who turns 68 tomorrow but had his party today (yay parties), I wish I hadn't been so frustrated.

Did I mention I'm going to color code the garage shelving when my parents get their stuff out of it? Green for the garden shelves, purple for automotive, blue for household, red for sporting and play... 

There is an old adage that you never, ever craft something for a boyfriend because he will quickly become your ex boyfriend. The logic is thus: you will make him that sweater vest or argyle socks set or golf club cozy that you think is just perfect. You will spend hours fussing with it, unstitching and restitching because you want him to Have The Very Best. He will proclaim his love of it, naturally, when he unwraps it.

And you will never, ever, see him use it. It will remain, probably in its original tissue-paper wrapping, in a disused section of his closet. He will have forty-two excellent excuses to not use it (why, the clubs were wet and it's wool! he wouldn't want to felt it up!). Eventually, though, he will run out of those excellent excuses and the cold hard truth will come to pass: he didn't like it, doesn't like it, and therefore he didn't/doesn't like you, and the relationship implodes.

I may be oversimplifying, but you get the gist.

You can, in fact, knit/craft/sew something for your husband, your children, your parents, your best friend, your best friends' husband, the random dude down at the bus stop; you will not care if, for example, that quilt you made for your parents stays so neatly folded at the end of their couch that you wonder if it's ever been UNfolded. You don't care because they are Sure Things, they cannot leave you (or at least, not easily, or via voicemail) and you know that your relationship is stronger than a woven tea cosy.

Knit/craft/sew something for your unmarried male person, however, and you take Your Relationship To New Lows. I always thought it was because of the  "Presentation/Disuse" method, but I am quickly finding out (in my attempt to ensure the "Presentation/Disuse" method does not come to pass) that there is one surefire additional way to PhuQ it Up.

You involve him in the process from the beginning.

That's right, you make EVERY DECISION HIS. Get his input on colors, schema, fabrics, metrics, dimensions, application, measurements, medium, use case, and SWOT analysis. Ask him the same question repeatedly, just phrased slightly differently each time; provide copious links to samples that have nothing to do with the actual project. Attempt to render craft topics into man-friendly-speak and watch him try to defer to your Higher Judgement. Thwart said deferral by asking him more questions. Repeat. Redundantly, even.

Then wonder why he doesn't want to talk about it anymore. Worry that he doesn't like YOU, and start obsessing about that.

So very, very healthy indeed. 

Yesterday evening I warped physics and got into a corset. The damn thing was so tight I could barely breathe and it managed to shove every free bit of non-bone-me up above it or below it, in consequence I had heaving bosoms and so forth. It wasn't comfortable but it looked good. As a result, I had half of a piece of pizza (Talarico's pizza, which is about the size of my laptop screen and I have a big laptop screen) and waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much wine. Way way way. Ok, it was a bachelorette party, and yes, I'm only slightly hungover, but the knowledge that I'm making the same "not paying attention to how much I drink" mistake over and over again is a bit annoying.

We went to see The Bedroom Club: Burning Hearts Burlesque which has 2 remainig shows in West Seattle this summer and while I can't make it to the next one, I am absolutely going to the last one. It was fabulous! The women ranged from kinda on the too-thin side to zaftig, the routines traditional to inventive to just plain whaaaa? (My favorite was Lucky Lucy O'Rebel's, my least favorite was the woman who looked like Susan Powter doing a workout routine).

After the show we were invited to go to a bar with some of the show patrons and performers, which is where I ran into my lack of ability to keep track of my alcohol intake, and by the grace of a man named Ken we got home to GH's house. (A cab would've been a 45 minute wait -- Ken was sweet enough to take Alixito home and then CC and myself, we gave him gas money because it's nearly $5/gallon out there and none of us was putting anything out for Ken. As much as men like to be gentlemen and heroic, there needs to be some sort of fitting thanks or reciprocation. Then again, Alixito was dressed as a naughty schoolgirl and CC and I were pulling the corset/bustier move, so maybe the visual would've been enough.)

This morning found me mildly hungover and, once I got home, in need of a shower. To understand the problem I face each time I shower you need to know that my house is 1800 square feet of rambler, just over twice as long as it is wide, so hot water needs to travel south about 70 feet from the hot water heater to said shower. As a consequence, when I start the shower, I have to let the water run to get the water from heater to shower. It takes about 5 minutes or so, which is a tremendous waste, and I try to do things to use it in the meantime. Either brave through it, or use it as an opportunity to clean the shower, or use the sink to get water down the pipe and do things like brush teeth and wash the face.

Today, with hangover receding and small child approaching (his father delivered him, bless that man, when he heard of my state), I turned on the water and waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

About 10 minutes into this one part of my fuzzy brain reported to the other part of my fuzzy brain that the water was not hot and therefore perhaps I should shut off the water and go investigate.

My pilot light was out on my hot water heater. 

The panel above the pilot is loaded with very admonishing red letters about turning all gas sources off and all sorts of things that made me scared to think, so I called McGuyver who coached me through the process.

The stubborn pilot light did not want to play, the bastard.

14 matches and 40 minutes after I started, I was able to get the bloody thing lit and another half hour later took the hottest shower of my life. The vestiges of the night before's felicitations (including glitter in my hair) washed away, I added "lighting the water heater pilot light" to my personal triumphs in physics for the weekend.

Tomorrow I go back to work after having stayed home ill on Friday; the SC starts swim lessons, and life goes back to suburban normality for me.  

..and then, the Oral....

oh, wait, wrong movie.

I'm getting spanked, however, in the stock bet. Thoroughly, completely, and brutally spanked. This is not mommy's hand spanking, this is go-get-the-belt spanking.  FSLR is up $30 since I predicted its demise (hell, all of the senior shareholders were selling it like hotcakes) (come to think of it, has anyone seen a run on hotcakes? Do people absolutely need hotcakes and will purchase them at any price? I'm pretty good at making them, maybe I should do that instead of stock bets...)

In other fi$cal observances, my other stuff seems to be surviving and beating the index, so that's nice. I also finally got all of my accounts talking to each other and managed to get all of them to quit sending me paper statements. You'd think its' easy but trust me, it isn't. You click "online statements" or "paperless statements" and they keep right on sending them to you, or my personal favorite, decide you're their favoritest most awesomest person and they upgrade you to the superdy-dooper-card and reissue you a new card with a new number and summarily chuck all of your billing mandates. I very much do not heart the online world of finance sometimes.

I've also eliminated my poop scoop service, for reasons I won't get into because people *like* keeping food in their stomach. Suffice it to say that one egregious act of irresponsibility on THEIR part has lost them bucks and gained me a new biweekly hobby. I no longer recommend the people I was using, in the event you want a service, and I highly recommend you talk to people who have had them for more than, say, 8 months before being convinced. Trust me.

Speaking of spankings, yours truly will be at a Burlesque show (not in it, @ it) with CC and assorted other tarted up girlies, in local celebration of the upcoming nuppage. I will be wearing a short skirt and a corset and fishnets and black boots, and I'm really debating on the accessory whip. I mean really, why stop there? I *do* have a kick @ss pair of pink handcuffs... they really should get seen :)

Also, in completely unrelated but similar yayness news, the SC got off the waiting list and into the cool after school program at his new Big! Kid! Kindergarten!, starting in September.

Maybe I should wear the pink handcuffs and fishnets and boots to the first PTA meeting...