overwhelmed.

sometimes i just feel like there is WAY too much to do.

and just when i start thinking there's no way i could feel any worse -- i read mommy blogs of women who are preparing meals for their families which involve words like "artisan" and "ginger cilantro" and "sweet potatoes" and i just start feeling overwhelmed all over again. there are so many things i'm not good at.

when will life slow down?

in brief

tonight i killed a spider. i haven't done that since i got married [that's what husbands are for, right? killing spiders] because i HATE spiders. but i was really brave tonight and did it.

maybe i was just trying to atone for the fact that the spider was lurking around a bag of grapefruit i snuck over the arizona border yesterday -- i'm pretty sure that's illegal because why else do they have the agriculture inspection when you come into california? whoops. my environmental science teacher would be so disgusted -- i am contributing to non-native invasive insect growth.

also two hours ago i almost threw up at the gym. mental note: lactose intolerant people should not eat ice cream before running three miles.

also every time i see the previews for the hannah montana movie and/or 17 again [i think that's what it's called -- you know, with zac efron] i get really excited. first american idol, now this? i think i am mentally stunted at the age of 14.

and for the miracle of the day: b left his wallet at my parents' house this weekend. his train pass was in it. this morning we decided to buy him a one-way pass here in pasadena instead of just breezing through the station hoping we wouldn't get caught before buying our april passes. what do we see when de-boarding the train at pershing square? cops checking tickets. oy. so glad we were legit today -- thats a $200 fee [and, allegedly, 40 hours of community service] we just avoided. yesss.

is anyone else shocked that april starts in one day?

arizona dreaming

last thursday was my grammie's 75th birthday. so to celebrate such a monumental event for a great lady (whom you may remember her from posts like this), my grandad and the rest of the fam threw her a surprise party on friday night. my big contribution was making the invitations to the party, which you can see on my stationery blog.

i drove out with my mom, my aunt flew in from colorado, my other aunt came from her home in phoenix near my grandparents, and grammie's two sisters came from the phoenix area as well. the ploy was a dinner with a few friend-couples who live near my grandparents in their "retirement community" (aka resort paradise) so we met up with all of them and waited for the birthday girl to arrive.

me & momma waiting for the party to start:



finally it was showtime. here's gram and grandad upon arrival -- please note the look of delighted shock. she was totally surprised. i felt so sneaky -- i love surprises :)



the party was fun -- we had mexican food [after i'd eaten cafe rio for lunch just five hours earlier...mmm. one can never have too much mexi, in my opinion.] and everyone got to tell their favorite memories of grammie. not only did i learn she dated someone named "harvey the marine" before meeting grandad, i found out she used to deliver doggie droppings to neighbors she didnt like when she was in elementary school.

here's me and gram [she's not really THAT much shorter than me, just fyi -- i was wearing giant heels]:



grammie and her three girls (l-r my mom, aunt susan, gram and aunt nancy) -- um, i think maybe they're related because they look like quadruplets:



fun times. saturday we all hopped in the car for a marathon day of coleman-woman shopping. you can never go wrong when shopping with grammie; she gets the BEST deals and takes you to the funnest places.

we started out at the queen creek olive mill -- totally fun place with all sorts of yummy olive oils, spreads and dips to try. it was in such a picturesque, pretty setting -- reminded me of europe:





we ran a few more errands and got to eat THIS sucker at lunch. behold, the biggest frozen cream puff on the planet, bigger than my face [complete with neon mutant cherries. i skipped those]. you know i can't leave out dessert:



one of our last stops of the day was at a bosch kitchen center, filled with the most delightful cooking supplies you can imagine. as if that wasn't good enough, they were doing a cooking class! i got to watch a bosch mixer in action [helpful because i've had a bosch for two years and have only used it twice] AND learn how to make delicious food items such as scalloped potatoes [gallon of cream included], pepper steak, and peach cobbler with a pecan-roll crust. they gave me a loaf of homemade wheat bread because it was my first visit, and then we got to sample everything they made! so fun...and it was all free. my arteries are clogging just thinking about it.

and thennnn... they did a raffle drawing. me, the girl who never wins ANYTHING, won knives! that's a $60 value, thank you very much. they are sort of weird -- they're swiss and brightly colored and non-stick but i love them because they are FREE.

this is my thrilled face [and the knives clutched tightly in-hand]:



woot. free bread, free snacks AND free knives. doesn't get much better.

after that we went to home goods and i remembered i had a $42 gift card leftover from my wedding. so i bought a bunch of junk all for free. saturday was a great day.

that night we cooked dinner and chatted and read books. it was a fun relaxing night. sunday we went to church with grammie and met all her friends, and then mom and i packed up our car and drove home.

i must say, arizona is fabulous. i love everything about it -- the sun, the desert, the palm trees. or maybe i'm just captivated by all the billboards advertising new homes for $120K. regardless, i want to move there. b and i may just be headed to the greater phoenix area in approximately three years :)

still alive.

i think this is the longest i've gone without blogging in a loooong time. sorry to my two aunts, who both separately informed me today that they are disappointed in my blogging absence. apparently i have two fans! yay.

hmm...what has happened in the past 10 days? let's see...i've been grocery shopping x4, got a new phone, went back to blond hair, ran 9 miles, made my acting debut, drove to rancho x3. yeah, not so exciting.

this week was definitely a corporate week for me, which also took time away from blogging. i feel like an official businesswoman when i:

a. eat out for 6 out of 9 meals in a three-day timeframe [though, granted, i didn't pay for any of it]
b. work a 40 hour workweek...in only four days
c. dream about media relations
d. all of the above were this week's occurrences. oh well, at least i'm working on fun projects and feeling fulfilled. and at least my husband works in the same office so we can see each other for lunch and occasional train rides.

i'm currently in arizona for a rocking surprise party. can't say too much about it as i'm not positive the birthday person won't read this blog before the party happens, but i'll be back with plenty of photos.


viva la cactus...i love arizona.

baked good weekend

so we had a great weekend. but now that it's tuesday i don't much feel like regurgitating the whole thing for you on the blog.

suffice it to say our two-day break involved the americana, girl scout cookie ice cream, waiting for guffman, sleeping in, pretending it's summer, spending our tax refund, wii, friends, and cupcakes:





and a side note. i was supposed to bake a cake for a ladies-only church luncheon on saturday. the cakes were to be the centerpieces so i had pressure to make it look pretty. however, i procrastinated my planning, and then couldn't bring myself to frost a cake, so i decided to go the good old bundt cake route. and then i found out my oven doesn't work.

not so bad from the side:



but from the top it was a train wreck:



not even frosting and sprinkles could salvage it. i almost bailed on the activity all together but decided to go anyway. and when i got there i got to listen to amazing music from some very talented pianists and singers and a violinist, and hear some talks about ways i can be a better, more loving, more giving person, and i got to see real charity in action: when i walked in with a distraught look on my face and a tragically damaged cake in my hands, a mid-sixties-ish woman who had recruited me for the cake baking took one look at me and said "turns out a lot of people brought extra cakes -- so we can leave yours in the back room and you can take it home!" i laughed out loud and gratefully agreed.

she found me after the program, on my way to lunch, just to reassure me that she loves lemon cake and didn't want mine to go to waste and she had eaten a piece of the cake and LOVED it. [of course she ate the most damaged looking section of the cake so i could take home and cut up the rest for a better presentation.] the next day at church she found me again just to tell me she was still thinking about my delicious cake and she was so glad i had made an effort.

moral of the story: sometimes i suck at baking. and sometimes kind, motherly older women warm my heart right up.

green day

i posted this last year, but it STILL brings me unequivocal, delirious happiness. so i'm sharing it once again. enjoy!



happy st patricks day :)

[and p.s. -- if you REALLY want a treat...check out the remix here.]

the return of bella

for some odd reason, b and i have the eternal privilege of living below cat ladies wherever we go. the l.a. apartment came complete with a pretty good one. and now, in pasadena, we have another cat lady directly above us. we hear her talking to her cats all the time but never see her out and about. she also scoots a rolling chair around the floor above us, sounding mysteriously similar to the "roller cat" noises we discovered with the l.a. lady.

i've never met this one, but for weeks and weeks we heard her out on the balcony directly above our bedroom window calling for her cat, bella. almost every night around midnight we'd hear "bella!.......bella!" [imagine that being yelled in a high-pitched whiny accented voice.] it was incessant. b started yelling it back to her after a few months of that, but she still never shut up [nor found her cat].

on sunday, we were sitting on the counch watching tv when i heard something in our building hallway. at first i thought it was a baby crying but we muted the tv and it sounded like a CAT. b snuck over to the door and peered out the peephole -- there was a cat sitting right in front of our door, meowing. i hate cats. i am allergic to them, but i also think they have major attitude and plus they are not cuddly in the least. and this cat only had part of a tail! gross.

b opened the door [to my complete horror. i could just imagine some rabid cat running into our apartment and wedging itself beneath our couch. i'd have to move out if that happened!] and tried to shoo it away but it held its ground. we figured it was bella -- she must have thought she was one floor up and probably couldn't understand why we wouldn't let her in. b shut the door and we went back to our show.

a couple hours later we went to bed and just as we laid down -- we heard meowing right outside our window. freaking cat was following us around! we started snickering at the attentive cat and then heard the sliding door above us open...and guess who came out. the cat lady! she said "bella! where have you been!" and i assume the cat jumped up into her waiting arms. we thought it was hilarious. we solved the case of the missing cat.