With stories like this, kat's lil sis should start her own blog...

I lived in an apartment a few years ago that had a Polish couple living above it (their nationality isn’t important except for the fact that they fought a lot– loudly– and while I had to listen to their fights, I didn’t even get the gossipy goodness of knowing what they were about). Anyway, the guy worked the midnight shift and the woman would wait for his phone call around midnight (at least this is what I deduced from years of living below them without understanding a word they said). Then she would clean for hours afterward.

I was woken up by vacuuming right above my head at 1 a.m. I listened to her wash dishes and do other things that required hours of walking around her apartment (I once mentioned the early morning vacuuming to the super, who was kind of incredulous because he said they had a tiny apartment with stuff everywhere so he wasn’t sure what space they would even have to vacuum). When she wasn’t alone cleaning, they were together fighting or– on two separate occasions– allowing their toilet to overflow long enough that it seeped into my living room. Good times.

We have friends who live in a very nice neighborhood with huge, newly-built homes. But they seem to have lost the neighbor lottery. They live next door to a family with a bunch of young kids who are usually running around half-dressed, dirty and completely unsupervised. My friends arrived at their house, which was only a cement foundation at the time, to find the 2-year-old half-naked and playing alone, walking along the edge of the foundation (which had a 20-foot drop to a concrete floor on one side!) and generally amusing herself among the nails and other construction stuff. The friends were also witness to the kids having a bonfire in their backyard with minimal supervision by Dad (they watched the 2-year-old walk right up to the fire and throw various objects in without Dad batting an eye).

The bad neighbor stories came to mind this week when I got another call from kat’s lil sis that began with, “I have a funny story for the blog.” She and kat’s lil brother-in-law live next door to an odd couple that rarely said hello and who kept their children hidden from view (lil sis said she didn’t know they even had kids for the longest time). Anyway, kat’s lil bil saw a “For Sale” sign in front of the house one day and the husband packing things up. He tried to chat with the guy, but he would only give one-word answers.

Well, kat’s lil sis was walking through the neighborhood a few days later and saw the family’s vehicles at another house in the same neighborhood. A few days after that, lil sis and lil bil were walking their dogs when the family’s van came up the street and quickly turned into a (dead end) side street to avoid going by them. A few moments later, the van came back and turned away from them and took off.

Lil sis and lil bil recognized their former neighbor at the wheel and realized that she didn’t want them to know she still lives in the neighborhood. Well, they continued walking and after they had returned to their own street, lil sis turned around and watched the van drive by again, this time going to the street where the former neighbors live. They think the woman parked on a street a block over and waited for them to go down a side street before coming back to again avoid having to pass them.

This has left lil sis and lil bil a little paranoid about why the neighbors seem to be avoiding them at all costs. And, because she is my sister and has the family’s wicked sense of humor, it has also left lil sis scheming about ways to mess with these people. Ideas include lil bro asking the husband tons of questions about where they moved to, etc. (they work for the same company) and leaving a note in the new mailbox that says, “I know where you live” (OK, that one’s a little creepy). My idea was to leave an invitation addressed to them to a BBQ at lil sis and lil bil’s. That way, it’s not illegal or anything, but lets those weirdos know they aren’t getting away with anything. Either that, or put their own house up for sale and move next door to the former neighbors’ new house. Any other ideas?

what? it's not like i have matching bags for all of them.

we've talked a little bit about my shoes... so during a recent cleaning binge, i decided to lay them out and take a kind of inventory of what i have and shed out some pairs that i kept despite the fact that the heel was chipped, or the leather was cracked, etc.

granted, i have since purchased.. um... my granny shoes, a really cute reddish blackish pair of mary janes, and some bone and black slingbacks so perhaps this isn't a complete inventory.

i've also "found" a pair of brown and pink flat sling backs, a pair of olive green rounded toed pumps with cute little rhinestone buckle and my favorite kenneth cole pointy toed kitten heeled pumps -- all of which were buried under a pile of winter clothes that I haven't moved in about a year.

and there are a few pairs in my car that i keep "just in case" - a pair of peep toe black heels, and a pair of sexy bronze pumps with lacey cut outs on the side, and of course, a pair of sensible (but very cute!) ballet black flats.

and then there are some boots that i have for winter time that *of course* don't get put with the rest of my shoes.

none of these are pictured here, so the rest of my collection kind of looks like this....


the bronzy ones with the tassels and turquoise linings, are, btw, my favorites. via spigas with little kitten heels that make every outfit i own feel fabulous.



and here are my absolute favorites - my strappy enzo angiolini sandals. they're about six years old now -- i bought them prior to a weekend in boston with j when we were first dating. these are my go to shoes i tend to put on when i need a little confidence booster. i probably should get rid of them, but i just can't part with them.




so call me crazy, but i do really love my shoes.

Rug burn and groping-- just another night on the soccer field!

What's this? The knee of a 10-year-old boy?


Oh no, my friends. That's actually the knee of a 30-something-year-old woman who is too old for skinned knees. But I have one anyway.

An exciting night on the soccer field this week-- I was trying to stop a guy from shooting the ball and we hit the ball at the same time, then hit the ground at about the same time.

It was bad enough that I scraped my knee on the artificial turf as I went down, but I realized as we landed that I had my hand on a very high place on the guy's thigh. It was one of those things where I realized where my hand was, but could do nothing about it for a few seconds because we were both still kind of landing and then trying to get up.

I moved my hand as quickly as I could and I don't know if the guy realized what was happening (i.e. he was being felt up by a girl from the other team), but it was a little embarrassing nonetheless.

And for my next post, I will try to find a topic that DOESN'T make me sound like a whore!

not so much notes as ways to remember when you've had too many martinis...

we celebrated this weekend. we celebrated molly, we celebrated KAT's new job and we celebrated because that's what we do and who we are.

we are silly tipsy women who wear similar trench coats and rock star shades and drink chocolate martinis wee into the hours of 10 p.m. on a Saturday night. and make our husbands take 5 pictures of us until we have one we approve of.



and it's true. i took notes. more like -- quotes. but mostly because i was too tipsy to remember them if i didn't write them down. and rather than give you the details of the conversations, i've decided instead to give you just the quotes themselves:

KAT to j: "Go ahead. Make me cry."

the PH to j after j asking an inappropriate question: "We tried it once. Never again."

PH: "She grabbed my penis at the Easter table!"
KAT: "I didn't know it was his..."

SJ: "Are you going to outbid me, chaimp?
KAT: "What? Did you just call him a champ or a chimp?"
SJ: "It was a cross between champ and sailor."

the best story of the night, however, involved the PH's revelation that in his quest for condoms on the first night that he and KAT were spending together, he stopped by McDonald's to grab something to eat. Which he stopped to eat there.

PH: "I gave her up for a cheeseburger."

You KNOW it was a good weekend...

... when it involves one of the dogs looking like this:



I would tell you more about it, but some parts are a little hazy. And SJ was the one who took notes (yeah, I know, what a dork, huh?) so I'm going to let her fill in the details.