Calling his bluff

I don’t eat red meat. And I certainly don’t touch red meat.

I do eat chicken, but still have a hard time handling it before it’s been cooked.

Which is how this neat little deal was put together…

The other morning, I made the Pretend Husband a roast beef sandwich for lunch. He was pleasantly shocked that I had and said, “Were you grossed out touching the roast beef?” I said yes, which led to a discussion of how I don’t mind cooking dinner, but I do get very squeamish about touching raw meat.

But the PH loooooves red meat, especially steak. So, he struck a deal, using leverage that I think he knew would definitely work on me.

“If you make me a steak dinner every night for a month, I’ll impregnate you.” Ha ha, we laughed it off and moved on because we've agreed that the whole having sex for anything other than pleasure will not happen until next year (although I’m thinking spring-ish of next year, while I think the PH is looking forward to some post-Thanksgiving fun…)

Anyway, I called the PH this morning and said, “You remember our deal? It’s on.”

Suddenly, the PH isn’t such a big fan of steak.

a pictorial diary of sj's hair-capades

A recent posting by my bloggy buddy Ray made me think long and hard about all of my hair-rors throughout the years. mostly, i shook my head in fear at the recollections, but there were a few good moments (2000-2005 were all good years.)

While you may recall some of my more recent follies, there have been some other moments of hair-raising bad decisions (to be honest, i really liked my bangs. dying my hair black may not have been my best choice ever, but it wasn't terrible.)

i've done much worse. like the perm I got my freshmen year of high school. or the super short pixie do i sported immediately after the perm (i really, really thought i could look like demi moore in ghost. alas, i could not.)

there were also some trying times back in the late 90s when i was *really* into tori amos and the cure that I'm not really that proud of. for example:


and of course, i'm not afraid to reveal my bad hair days.

and now where do we stand? well, we stand half red, half black, not long, not short. but i think it's about time for a change. so let's vote! long or short, keep it dark, or get highlights?

nothing like a weekend with friends and family for stories for the blog

some highlights:

- e may be better at pilates than me. else, he's a fantastic motivator. as i pulled myself into the jackknife position, he proceeded to slap my elevated bottom, as if to say, "you've got a long way to go, auntie sj. keep it up! i expect you to carry me all around disney and give a piggy back ride to goofy!" (we're headed to disneyworld as a *family* including anonymous and her husband sometime soon -- ray, you may expect me *nightly* at jellyrolls).

- e did not inherit his musical talents from our mother. or, well, maybe he did. but really, it seems e may have a better sense of rhythm than our mother. but then, her rhythm may have been affected by the highball glass of wine anonymous gave her when she first walked in -- which i find ironic, because my musicality gets way better once i've had a few glasses of wine. after a half bottle of pinot noir, i'm barbra freakin' streisand. one thing's for sure -- mom was probably asleep by the time dad pulled in the driveway. and e was probably up way past 10.

- happy birthday, anonymous! my sis turned.. um.. 30-something yesterday, but still doesn't look (4,5,6 or 7- take a guess) years older than me. which is great news for her, but bad news for me and my 235 look-alikes on blogger. j and i went to cabela's and found her a worthy reel for the great fishing derby of 2008 (when our family vacations in upstate vermont in a beautiful cabin in the middle of nowhere on a lake, and about 40 minutes from montreal.) my oldest sis and i have had our share of giggles and squabbles over the years, but i'm particularly happy that we have grown closer over the past 5 years or so. the fact that we could make a sitcom out of our family is made a little easier knowing that my sister and i would absolutely be able to commiserate at the end of every episode.

- saturday night we went to dinner with KAT and the PH (just like old times! except that it was at 5 p.m.... but still similar to the old days when we'd stay up till 2 playing cards).

we went to one of our favorite connecticut restaurants that sits in the middle of the state in the same town where i happened to spend my childhood at 4-H camp. (which has *nothing* to do with this story, but how often have i mentioned that i went to 4-H camp growing up, eh?)

first, KAT and I may have gotten off to a bad start with the hostess when she asked us if we wanted to hang our coats in the coatroom downstairs ("No, thanks.") She pressed on to tell us "but it's really warm in there. there's a fireplace, so it gets toasty." Still, we preferred to keep our coats *with* us, but had no intention of keeping them on. but apparently to this girl, it's a one way street. either let us take your coats or you wear them. no taking it off at the table! this probably wouldn't have been an odd exchange for anyone else but the two of us, i realize.

second, j ordered a salad for dinner -- with no tomatoes and no onions. which we thought was fine. good for him, being healthy and all. and the rest of us ordered various entrees, that apparently, come with a small salad. so imagine our surprise when the waitress came back to the table to find out if he didn't want tomatoes and onions on his dinner salad - "I kind of picked up that you didn't like them..." she said. Really? What gave that away -- the fact that he ordered a salad without them? even more odd- was he going to get a warm up salad to his dinner salad?

he very nearly did, although KAT had to ask for hers. the moral of the story for KAT: you need to build your upper body. that waitress had eyes for j.

oh - and one more thing. how do you think we could best recreate the dessert KAT nad I shared: a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich (or as i like to call it: 58 extra minutes of folding myself in ungodly directions)?

This may only be funny to me because I'm a grammar dork

Setting: a going-away party for a coworker who is moving to another state with his girlfriend of three months and the gf’s kid. The gf had the kid with a drug addict then spent another couple years living with a different heroin addict. Now, she doesn’t work and is supported by the boyfriend of three months. Nice!

Anyway, she’s not the sharpest crayon in the box, as the Pretend Husband would say. The quote o’ the night was during a conversation about tattoos (she has a bunch of them).

“I don’t regret getting any of my tattoos, but there’s one I wish I didn’t get.”

I think I’ll send them a thesaurus as a housewarming gift.

i am such a stereotype

i've started to recognize myself more and more at the mall, when i'm at work, on television commercials, and even within the blogosphere.

what i mean by this is: i am such a freakin' stereo type. i am a 30 year old woman who works outside the city, uses her macbook when there, and drives her volkswagen to work while listening to her ipod. i get my news online and wear plastic frame "nerdy" glasses and lots of black clothing (because it's easier to match when i wake up at ungodly hours to get to my job outside of the city).

in short, i look like the stereotypical demographic that every marketer tries to appeal to. according to my co-workers, and a few friends from high school, i'm starting to most closely resemble lisa loeb.

this became apparent to me yesterday when i updated my profile and just to see how many folks like me there are out there, i clicked on some of my music interests, and much to my surprise, saw several different versions of me looking back.

am i so cliche? sheesh i should hope not. but just in case, i'm wearing bright colors tomorrow. and contacts. and i'll leave my mac at home. and i will *not* shop at whole foods during lunch time. (but i may run there today to pick up some organic yogurt and granola.... and maybe some free-range chicken breasts.)

curses on Mari Windsor and her crazy letter formations

i've been doing pilates religiously for two weeks now. more religiously in fact than i have been treating regular religion, in that i practice pilates daily and attend church services every other year.

i was feeling pretty confident in my ability to do fly through the basic work out and thought - hey- why not, let's just move on to the bun and thigh and then ab work outs. i can do a few more leg lifts, etc.

i was not, however, prepared to fold myself into the letter V. that is, lift my upper buddy off of the floor and my legs at the same time. to literally spell out a V. V for victory! V for Vampish long lean muscles! V for vitality!

V for viciously sore abs the next day.

today i am nursing my sore obliques and abs with lots of tea and healthy granola and fruit and lots of water to flush out the impurities. like the ones that were telling my mind "you can do it!" yesterday when i was halfway through that painful, painful DVD.

granted, i do have better posture than i did two weeks ago. and my jeans are literally falling off of me (which doesn't count when you buy them too big anyway, i realize). but still. until the day comes when i need to escape from a burning building and can only do this by... folding myself into a V? i'll continue to marvel at the contortionists in my pilates dvds.

music to make you move

i really love music, and that said, i really, *really* love my ipod as it can be easily played through my car stereo with a simple little cable. that said, i do still enjoy listening to CDs from time to time -- but i tend to copy them onto my ipod and create playlists with titles such as "driving to work", "driving home from work", "pilates short", "pilates long", "i hate everyone", "music to get funky", etc.

i do have a very varied collection, and often put my music on shuffle when i ride in, which means i will be listening to kanye west, and then comes tim mcgraw, followed by feist and then the barenaked ladies. it's fun! particularly when my few 80s hip hop tunes are intermingled with, say, enya.

but today, i have a new playlist with some new (well, probably not new, but new to me) artists. i have a collection of great original music by the piano players at Jellyrolls in Orlando (on the Boardwalk at Disney), but also, some very fun, happy upbeat music by the kilwein family tree-o.

i'd highly recommend it if you like music from say.. BNL or the mighty mighty bosstones (which is who they remind me of, although that could just be because of the great horns). check them out here or here. their lyrics are clever and fun and their music is great up-tempo beats that are really original.

"why thank you... i love my shoes too"

it's true that i have a rather unnatural obsession for footwear (although, i should mention that it is NOT a footwear fetish, not unlike something KAT has gone through -- and now we're coming up when people search on foot fetish... nice...).

i do love shoes. i'm no carrie bradshaw or anything, but i do love a great cute pair of shoes. i cringe at practical loafers and wouldn't be caught dead in things i would have worn 8 years ago or so. this love of shoes, however, sadly, has not been easy because i have not yet learned to walk in heels. although i have them, and make many attempts to wear them. so far, the best i can do is 2 inches.

which brings me to my most recent footwear mishap. today i'm wearing happy little purple ballet flats (that i bought for $7 when i was shopping with KAT), but Monday, i thought i'd get all crazy and wear my lovely bill blass pointy toe black pumps. i don't know what made me think I could wear them without incident for 10 hours.

somewhere in the mid afternoon, i was standing there, speaking with a colleague when my boss walked by. he paused to join us when suddenly, my brain told my leg to move without telling my feet. and there i was. suddenly lop-sided. a rather common phenomenon in SJ world that's commonly referred to "I fell off of my shoes." he looked at me, first with concern, then with parental supervision.

"are you okay?"
"yes..."
"did you just fall..?"
"... off of my shoes, yes."
"are you okay?"
"every once in a while, i get a little afraid of heights."

Whatever brings you this way, sit and stay awhile

From time to time, I will read other people’s blogs. And I love when they give a list of the searches that brought people to their blog (which usually have nothing to do with what they wrote about). Speaking of being led to blogs by search terms, I just want to say hello to all the perverts visiting today after they Googled “blow job” and were brought to my last post. Welcome!

In any case, the top 10 (most recent) search terms that led people to FunnyGals are:

10. Snow tubing injury rate (we have SJ to thank for that one, as well as for “head trauma” “accident prone” and “frequent visitors to the ER”)

9. Vomit gals (uh, thanks? I guess we do have a lot of stories about vomit, some about the dogs and some where KAT is the unfortunate star)

8. Salute cannons (Ah, the cannon story… a favorite around here)

7. Funny gals (yup, you found ‘em!)

6. Catch the clap (uh, I have no idea how that got anyone here… nor do I ever want to meet that person!)

5. Hacking cough with fever (again, thanks SJ… I think that was even the subject of one of her posts)

4. Funny gals, KAT (I’m a little concerned someone from work is onto this blog or something…)

3. Vomit gals (Yes, vomit is a theme around here. But we’re also funny! Funny gals!)

2. Two funny gals (that pretty much sums it up)

1. Funnygals (again, pretty self-explanatory)


Another cool fact about FunnyGals: we’ve gone international (yes, yes, we know Mollymoo has been British this whole time, but her computer is within the U.S. so it doesn't count). Our stats show we’ve had two visitors from Spain (but, um, one of them searched for “vomit gals” and was probably pretty disappointed when the story was about my puppy) and five were from the UK. Hola and hello!

Sex education at our dining room table

I haven't hung around with a 13-year-old since... um, I was about 15. I've kind of forgotten what is appropriate and what is, well, less than appropriate to talk about with that age group. And, if I had given it any thought, I probably would have figured that those young whippersnappers today probably know much more about sex and drugs and rock n' roll than I did (or, let's be honest, do right now).

So, it's only fate that made me not be the main character in this tale. The other night, we had some friends over to dinner, one of whom brought her 13-year-old sister. Who, although she could easily pass for 17, leads a bit of a sheltered life and is home-schooled by a mom with some very conservative religious convictions (which didn't stop our friend from discussing abortion in front of her, which may have led to the rest of us forgetting the girl's age, by the way).

Anyway, we all started talking about random things and one of our friends told the story about how, the first time she met her boyfriend's family, they started talking about blow jobs over the dinner table (um, they were talking while sitting at the table, not talking about giving them while sitting on the dinner table. does that make sense? never mind). In any case, there was a moment of awkward silence until the conversation moved on... until I once again said "blow job" in referring to the previous story. D'oh!

The other part of the story is that, if the 13-year-old goes home and asks her mom about anything, it's not going to be the definition of "blow job." It's definitely going to be about the story the girl's older sister let slip about how the mom (who is now part of a chastity group that thinks a person's first kiss should take place during their wedding) got knocked up at 18, married a few months later and divorced six months after that. Yeah, that's much worse.

All three couples had separate discussions that night about what is not appropriate to talk about in front of 13-year-olds (blow jobs) and what is appropriate (um, still not sure about that one... My Little Pony? Hannah Montana? What do kids that age like?!?) The conclusion in the House of KAT & the PH was that 13-year-old girls do not belong in the House of KAT & the PH. We're just not ready.

Save the drama for yo' baby mama

I just had a coworker in my office bellyaching about his relationship of about four months. He wanted to go out for a beer tonight and his gf got really upset. The arguing went on... and on... and on, from what I can ascertain from his side of things. She even threw in, "When we're lying on the couch together each night, I know all you're thinking about is how much you want a beer!" And, seeing as how this guy isn't an alcoholic, that's kind of an odd statement, as well as completely not true.

It's a relationship between two people in their early 20s (remember those days?), the kind where he hasn't seen his friends in the four months they've been dating because he wants to spend every waking minute with her, but then isn't "allowed" to go out for an hour one night without the drama.

Then it got me thinking about what dating was like in my early 20s (and, let's be honest, even in my late 20s). The Pretend Husband was picking on me the other day for some of the men I dated in the past and, I have to admit, I deserve it. Among the gems...

- The dude who invited me over to his place for the first time, then fell asleep with his head in my lap. I couldn't move, couldn't reach the remote to watch TV and still sat there like an idiot waiting for him to wake up. And yet, I kept dating him...

- That was the same guy who invited me to his sister's wedding after we had been dating only a month. I sat at the head table NEXT TO THE BRIDE and am in a bunch of the photos. We broke up a few days later. I can't remember what he looks like, but his family has those nice wedding photos to remember me by.

- How about the- ahem- older guy who I suspect was a closet alcoholic. His night stand next to his bed? A mini fridge stocked with beer so he wouldn't have to get up and walk allll the way to the kitchen to get one (it was a condo... the kitchen was about 10 steps from the bedroom).

- Or the 30-year-old who still lived in his mom's basement? He had a good story about moving home to help her after his dad died, but his dad had passed away like, five years earlier, and I almost never saw his mom there so I don't think she needed much help. She finally had to move away and sell the condo out from under him to get him out on his own!

Thinking about the winners from my past just makes me all the more thankful for the PH who, although not perfect, is a lot closer than those dudes! And hearing the drama from my coworker makes me all the happier I'm not dating a 23-year-old drama queen.

How about you? Any good stories?

And the big news is....

... the Pretend Husband was hungry!

And he says he's never going to do anything nice for me again because I blow it out of proportion. And more people read the blog than comment (you know who you are!) because we had a couple of phone calls and comments this weekend wondering why the fancy dinner out and the PH's response was, "Why is it such a big deal that I wanted to spend some time with my wife?"

I do think it was nice of him to make a reservation and take me out to dinner, but I always want to point out that it's a place the PH is always asking to go and I always say no because we're trying to be frugal. While I probably would have said no to a request to go out to dinner, it was impossible to turn down an invitation that had a reservation and everything.

So yeah, dinner with my husband. No big announcements. We save those for Taco Bell.

I may have some exciting news...

The Pretend Husband just called me and, out of the blue, told me we have dinner reservations tonight. Going out to dinner. Just the two of us. At the fancy schmancy restaurant where we had our first date.

I'm touched, but also a little suspicious. It sounds like the kind of thing you do when you have big news to share, or a proposal to make or something.

We already got engaged. We bought a house. We had our wedding.

Do you think he's going to tell me I'm pregnant?

If yesterday was any indication, 2008 should be a very restful year...

We welcomed in the new year with relish the other night, dedicating ourselves to multiple chocolate martinis, an ice luge (I thought it was weird that a bunch of 30-year-olds would have one, but a girl in her twenties assured me her neighbors had one too and they are-- *gasp!*-- in their 40s!) and finishing numerous bottles of champagne. One woman was going around telling everyone they might be pregnant next New Year's Eve so they should make the most of this one. (The Pretend Husband assured me I will be able to have just as much to drink next year as this year).

So, we fell into bed around 2:30 a.m. yesterday and except for poking the PH a couple of times around 7:30 so he could feed the dogs and take them outside, I slept right on through.... to noon. (Noon! I don't think I've slept 'til noon since college. I thought the power had gone out and re-started my clock at 12:00 or something).

So the PH and I got up at noon, had some breakfast, watched a few minutes of the Rose Bowl Parade... then went back to bed at 1. I slept a sleep full of crazy dreams until about 3:30 p.m., when we decided to start the day. We ran some errands (yay for 75 percent off Christmas stuff!), picked up the car we left at our friends' house, reminisced about the party and who passed out where, then came home to make macaroni and cheese for dinner (yum, hangover food). We made a valiant effort to watch a movie, but discovered we were too tired. So we headed to bed around 10 p.m.

Thus, sleeping 21 of the last 29 hours. Zzzzzzzzzz!