Speak French to me...

No Girls Allowed! I have just been rejected, generous charitable help refused, turned away at the door, shoo-shooed. I offered enthusiastically to help my boyfriend and his roommate paint the living room walls of their apartment. “I have painted a room before,” I informed him.
“Um, nah, it’s okay. We got it.” was his reply. I assured him it would be to my enjoyment and he assured me right back that my help was not only unneeded but unwanted (in only slightly kinder words.) Meaning, he and his roommate were going to have some quality beer drinking, grunting, burping, and spitting time; no place for a gal like myself. Instead, I reluctantly returned home in my ready-to-paint outfit, darling Geraldine Doyle hair band ‘n all, and comforted myself with a bowl of mint-chip ice cream and fun French music. Tisk, tisk, those boys!

But you shall reap the benefit. Here are a few songs, so fun and lovely, they make it impossible not to feel quite splendid while listening to them:

*So Nice (Summer Samba) - Astrud Gilberto
*Samba De Mon Coeur Qui Bat - Coralie Clement
*Que Reste-T’il De Nos Amour - Charles Trenet
*Assedic - Les Escrocs
*Je Cherche Un Homme - Eartha Kitt
*C’est Si Bon - Eartha Kitt
*Brazil - Django Reinhardt
*La Vie En Rose - Louis Armstrong
*Remember Me - Heitor Pereira

These songs are actually all from the movie “Something’s Gotta Give.” It seems I am the only person that loves that movie. Most people laugh at me when I share that nugget of info. Still, it currently holds a spot on my Christmas list.

Sincerely, Puzzled Roommate

Maybe some of you could help me out with this. I mentioned in the last post that my mom and I recently rented out a bedroom. We love our new roommate, she is sweet, friendly and seemingly normal. Since I am the adult child that won’t move out, this is my first roommate experience and I am realizing there may be some roomie dynamics I have yet to learn. Take the latest episode for example:

Our roommate has been gone all weekend, I'm not sure where she went or when she is coming back. It is Monday morning and I am getting ready for work. The minutes remaining for me to drive to work and arrive on time are quickly dwindling and the last thing left to do is brush my teeth. Right as I put on my second shoe, about to head into the bathroom, I hear my roommate walk through the front door, into the bathroom, lock the door and start the shower. Hmm. I definitely don’t have time to wait for her to get out of the shower, but the garlicky pizza I had last night, I fear, is still with me. I remember I have a toothbrush and toothpaste at work, phew! But what if I didn’t…? I ponder this for a minute sitting on the edge of my bed. How does that work exactly? Should there be a rule that you check in with the household before occupying the bathroom for long periods of time? If it had been my mom that snuck in the shower I would simply pound on the door and demand that my teeth have priority, but I don’t want to scare my new roommate away. So tell me, is this something, as a housemate, I just have to deal with? Maybe everyday there are people like me, walking around unshowered, unbrushed or unshaven because their co-resident claimed the bathroom first. What are we to do?

My life not moving meets 20 Things

My hands are sticky and citrus smelling from eating an orange. I bought a pomegranate for the first time yesterday but I'm afraid to open it. I'm not sure how to tell if it's ripe. It looks so strange and foreign on my kitchen counter next to the oranges and peaches, like an alien pod. The temperature outside is creeping towards about a gazillion degrees Fahrenheit and the difference in temperature inside my house is negligible. I am sitting underneath the fan, moving as little as possible, trying to stay cool. I have struggled with feeling as though my life is not moving lately. A couple factors have attributed to this: I still live with my mother and I don't really know what to do with my career. These have been my boulders to jump for the past five years or so. I have gone back and forth, sideways and straight about initiating change and have yet to follow through. Of course, there are ways I justify my life choices, or maybe lack there of. It is definitely cheaper living with my mom, although at times emotionally draining. We've gotten a roommate recently who is balancing out our mother/daughter madhouse. And, who really knows what they're doing at 24... and 8 months??? But I feel I am drastically behind and picture myself a crumpled old woman sharing a bed with my slightly more crumpled mother. My foresight is telling. It's time to try something more than... this.

Since I am notoriously indecisive, especially in regards to bigger things like moving out or a career change I am starting with baby steps. I have compiled a list of goals that are accomplishable at this time in my life to enrich my experiences and open new doors. I tried to come up with 25 goals but I am a bit short so 20 will do. I will add to it as I come up with more.

1. Sew - eventually a wearable article of clothing

2. Learn to play Tennis

3. Take a Salsa/Ballroom dance class

4. Run a marathon or 1/2 marathon

5. Cook at least one meal a month

6. Read all the books I own

7. Join/start a book club

8. Start a blog - yeayah! Check!

9. Start a happy hour club

10. Pick up guitar again

11. Take an acting class

12. Teach myself the piano

13. Make music mixes for friends

14. Paint something I like enough to hang in my room

15. Enter an essay contest

16. Become better at small talk

17. Finish my photo albums

18. Take a self defense class

19. Edit some of my home movies

20. Take a writing class

I am going to ask that you please refrain from mocking my list. I know many of you may have lists that include items such as living with a bush tribe for three years or going sky diving. This is not that type of list. This is my attempt to better myself at things I enjoy, things I want to try and things I know I will actually do. I don't want to feel burdened by a list of extremes. The purpose of my list is to encourage every day inspiration. I have already started on several items on the list and will update my progress regularly. I feel good about it. I feel inspired already. I realize this may not get me out of my moms house, but at least it could distract me.

Is It Steamy in Here???

It is late. I worked out. I am tired! I tried to write an interesting post but I didn't like the end result. Par for the course.

Instead I will inform you that on Saturday I had dinner just two tables away from THE McSteamy of Grey's Anatomy!!! Lemme tell you, he is every bit as steamy, maybe even more so, in person. Not only that, but he looked right at me! I looked pretty good too.

I was at San Ysidro Ranch's Plow & Angel restaurant for a friends birthday. One of my favorite spots and a celeb hot spot. "Dr. Sloan" was there with his wife, probably trying to find some privacy from his threesome tape scandal. Our table of six girls nearly peed our pants when we saw him, but we were able to play it cool.

To the left is his infamous McSteamy moment. As you can see it is difficult to determine if the steam is from the bathroom he's just stepped out of or if it is radiating off his body...

On another note, the Plow & Angel restaurant is incredibly beautiful and the baked Macaroni & Cheese and Blood Orange Margeritas are delish!

Bedroom Ponderings...

I am sitting in my room. It looks like a closet. There is almost no path from one side of the room to the other. My suitcase from a family trip last weekend is overflowing with crumpled clothing. Some of the oddities among the rubble would be a shoe box full of flower hair clips from Fiesta, a lone flip flop sitting atop my dresser that I used to kill bugs, and- ooh! I just spotted a bag of dark chocolate kisses!
I intended to clean my room last weekend, and again on Monday; I considered it again on Tuesday and by Wednesday I just embraced it. I trasitioned from being stressed about the clutter to being comforted by the clutter. I am surrounded by my stuff. It's kinda cozy. Should I hang up that top? Nah, just throw it onto one of the piles! So easy! I figure I will have to tidy up this weekend. But in the meantime I'm loving the life of a slob.

This probably doesn't look so good being the only follow up to the previous post...

To take care of a cat...

I woke up this morning to find a flea bite on my eyelid. Some of you might not know how to identify a flea bite, but for me, I see them daily. We have one cat hanging onto life with quite a spring in her step despite her age. The only sign of her aging is that she seems to have gone completely senile. She meows all night long for no purpose and sits in our driveway refusing to move even if you pull the car right up to her. I actually have to get out of the car, move her, and then continue up the driveway. I must, however, claim some fault with the flea epidemic we currently endure. I skipped a few months of her flea meds, maybe like 24 months, or something. If you stand on my carpet for just one minute you are almost gauranteed to find a couple fleas attaching themselves to your ankles. Sick, right? This is my life.

I also never had a litter box for my cat until this year. She was trained to go outside and we never had an issue with it, quite proud of that actually, until about a year and a half ago. My mom and I noticed what looked like a little tootsie roll graveyard in the back corner of our fireplace. Believe it or not, we didn't deal with the issue for sometime. On occaission my boyfriend and I would be watching a movie on the couch and a breeze would blow outside and the living room would be filled with the smell of old, musty poo. Still, months continued to go by in this fashion. It wasn't until a particular evening when we realized change needed to be initiated. My mom's friend came by one night to pick her up for dinner, I had been told this woman is meticulously tidy. I had completely forgotten about our poo ridden fireplace until the woman sat in a chair beside the fireplace while waiting for my mom to finish getting ready (lateness can be expected in our household.) I was praying she wouldn't notice while we kindly made small talk. But eventually, she started looking around the room from her seat until her eyes stopped on the fireplace. She peered for a moment or two, trying to decipher if it was, in fact, what she suspected. Probably then determining by the looks of it that it must have been there for a while. "It looks like there's a little turd back there," she said, as though she was notifying us of news. I should have corrected her, "Turds, actually." It was then up to me to defend our reputation. I made up an explanation of how our cat is losing her mind and just "recently" started doing this. I hurriedly cleaned it up pretending to be so appalled. I should be.

If you saw my mom or I, or came over for dinner, most likely you would never believe we have these sorts of ill things going on. Our home appears tidy, my room is decorated particularly cute, and my personal hygiene is exquitsite. But before we knew it, we were that house Ben Stiller walks into in "There's Something About Mary" where there's a pile of poop in the corner, just sittin' there.

The Culprit

The Alchemist - International bestseller, in my opinion, a skip

I just finished reading "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho, the first book chosen for a brand-spanking-new book club I joined. I had seen and heard of this book for quite a while and always intended to read it someday way down the line. If you've been thinking the same, consider yourself liberated of that mental note. For being named an international bestseller I was quite disappointed. The book is similar to a folk tale chalk-full of your grandmother's pearls of wisdom about a boy and his journey to fulfill his Personal Legend. It contains plenty of inspiring advice, but new? Definitely not. There is a lot of boy becoming one with nature stuff and communicating with the wind and sun and so on. Personally, I can't stand that stuff. I found it redundant and better suited for children. Maybe that is how it is intended to be, but it did not hold my interest. If you read it, feel free to comment.

Tonight we are having our bookclub meeting, at which I will share just as I did here. The biggest disappointment is that the girl who suggested our first read didn't even read it!!! Bah! I'll be wary of her next choice.