It has been a bumpy ride with moments of total roller-coaster riding

Do you know what this is?  

Trying it on for size

 It’s now my official age for the next 365 days.. YIKES!  

Yesterday I celebrated my 41st birthday.  I’m still raddled a bit that I’m FORTY-ONE YEARS OLD… where in the hell has the time gone? Because, I don’t remember living FORTY-ONE years.  All I remember is that it has been a bumpy ride with moments of total roller-coaster riding.But, it’s there, it all is glory… and I’m planning on trying it on and seeing if my forty-one will treat me better than my forty did.

In order to maximize the day, the NYBoys and BFF took to the sky full of snowstorms, and mini-hurricane wings and dropped in my backyard to eat, drink and be merry (very merry!) for 3 whole days.

I spent the better part of the week preparing for their visit as well as prepping my house and cooking up a storm to feed 12 hungry grown adults on Saturday night.  I decided since it was my birthday I was going to go all out and take out the china, and use the nice silverware and dress up the table with a centerpiece and all the jazz that goes along – I was going to Martha Stewart my guest to death!

After numerous ideas and revisions we decided on simple, and earthy-looking… And with the help of Tom and BFF and various editing and discussions, the creative juices started flowing, and we ended up with this as our dinner table:

Simple, Clean lines and lovely

I was totally in love with it.  And everyone else did too – score one!

And the food! oh boy the food. Cooking up for 3 days straight paid off! My mother was kind enough to make her pork stew, and let me tell you it’s out of this world, and the weather could not have cooperated more, since that night it was nice and cold outside, perfect weather for that hearty menu I had come up with.

This year, I also decided not to have cake, I wanted something to remind me of my younger years and I choose my favorite dessert: Zuppa Inglesa, which is basically a trifle made with chocolate and vanilla cream in between layers of sponge cake soaked in run. And yes, it taste as divine as it sounds.

After much eating and major discussions, the evening ended with everyone agreeing that it be a hoot appropiate to have me sit and open presents. And after much pulling, and ripping I found gift cards! Flower arrangements! Jewelry, and the best surprise of all? A brand new Sony Cyber-Shot Digital Camera.  And that present alone made a believer in me that wish list are the best invention by man since the calculator.

So there you go, another birthday down the hatchet and this one was the best one yet, because nothing beats having your friends and family remind you that you are FORTY-ONE YEARS OLD.

 

This past week needs only two words to describe itself.

So today the first of many people will be coming through our house during this coming birthday weekend bash.

First up is the BFF, who arrives today, god willing on time, because that girl has an ongoing jinx with the travel industry… every time she has to be somewhere there is a delay. And no I just did not jinx her, she does that all on her own.

True to form, today we woke up to heavy rains and looking at the weather, she is getting most of it on her side of the state, so AA, yes I’m looking at you, you better be ON TIME on your flight over tonight, because seriously, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY WEEKEND and you CAN’T TOUCH THAT!

Then tomorrow we have the NYBoys who will be HOPEFULLY arriving in the afternoon. And I say hopefully, because as I was writing this, I received an email giving me an update that NYC woke up to 16 degrees (DAMN IT’S COLD!) and an expected snowstorm is due to descend on their asses tomorrow. Which can mean the inevitable: they may be delayed as well.

And this folks is the reason that most of the time I curse myself for being born in December! Because, December is just INSANE.

Anyone want to disagree with me there? Yeah? No? Aha! Did not think so.

And so with the impending visits, it all boils down to a furry of activity prepping the house.  Apparently I have entered a contest called “Who can be the best host”, and hell if I’m not going to win it. (Of course all of this happens in my internal mind – which TOTALLY COUNTS!). But back to the house, we (because Tom got sucked into this madness as well) have steamed clean all of the floor carpets (not JUST vacuum, oh no, but STEAMED), bed duvets have been aired out, rooms have been scrubbed, bathrooms totally bleached out. All towels, bed lines have been laundered and iron out (I don’t even iron my work clothes!) and while I was on it, why not re-organized the linen closet – yeah, WHY THE HELL NOT!

For most folks that would be the end of that.

For me? No so fast.

Because, my inner type-A personality made an appearance (during the crazy) and whispered that more needed to be done. So, I jumped and started to make a make a list – because you guys know how much I LOVE A LIST… and now the following task have been placed on Tom’s side of the list: Change A/C filter, Hang new lamps in kitchen, Mow the lawn. And a couple of more things are in there, but to write them all, is confirming that I’m a total freak.

Which I’m TOTALLY NOT.

And for those (like the very little male readership that I have on this blog) wondering if Tom’s list if THAT full, what’s on my side of the list? Well I tell you. It’s mostly cooking dips and tarts and tantalizing appetizers. As well as desserts, side dishes and anything else I think 12 people will need to feel welcome and well feed. In addition to all the cooking frenzy, let’s not forget the buying of flowers and strings and stock paper and ironing napkins and tablecloths and making sure that Tom does not kill me in the process.  So you see I have MORE on my side of the list.

But you know what has happen during my full-on birthday-planning dervish frenzy?

I have completely forgotten that I will be turning FORTY-ONE years old in less than 72 hours!

And there are only two words to that realization: HOLY.SHIT!

The.end.

And its Christmas time, and birthday time and crazy time!

I have slacked off AGAIN with the blog, because well people its Christmas time (yes, political correctness be damn. I call it Christmas and if you don’t like it, pretend that it say’s “Holiday”, ‘k.) so we have been a bit busy trying to get our shit in order over here, and at least be prepare for the gazillions things that need to be done in the next couple of weeks.

This Christmas is a bit special, since it will be our actual official first Christmas. (yes, we had the first one last year, but it does not count) So, we decided to bite the bullet of Christmas overload and actually make an effort by decorating the bazooka out of our house. And that is what we did this past weekend…

We first bought a tree. We wanted to give our money to those Tree placed in the corner of each street, but then decided they were way to rich for our blood, so we headed to our local Home Depot to find the perfect tree.

A bit of background on the tree picking activities: I’m super anal about this step, I’m usually “that” customer has the tree attendant pull the entire tree inventory in the lot, in order to find THE tree, the one that is “the chosen one” to sit in my living room and die a slow death.

Going in, I warned Tom about this neurosis of mine And since this was the first time Tom and I were doing this, I knew I needed to keep it on the down low, as to not scare the shit out of him when I would go all postal on the tree lot.  Luckily, it took us 3 tries before we settle on a 6 footer at $29.99 CHA-CHING!

 We started with the tree:

Tree decorating 101

The final product, after I got my hands on it:

Sparkling and very, very red!

The outside was a bit more labor intensive, We then spend about 4 hours directing, pointing, getting feedback from his mother, the neighbor, the dogs and the cats, before it all came together. Lesson learned? Less is more. And the highlight? Tom got to use the electric staple gun that has been sitting pretty much unused for over a year (so there is a plus in that).

We look like the total dorks we are

In addition to the decoration prep, I’m also busy making arrangements for my upcoming birthday, which will be in 5 days. This year, I decided to give back to all of the people that put up with my crazy the other 365 days of the year – my friends and family. So, I’m planning to go all out and have a dinner birthday bash full of liquor, food and the good dinner plates and cloth napkins, I’m going ALL.OUT.

So there you have it, I been busy, busy like a bee. The next couple of weeks there will be less posting and more living… with maybe a couple of other post thrown in there to remind you that yes, I’m still alive and enjoying the fruit of my labor.

An ER moment, except George Clooney was not there to save me. Instead my boyfriend showed up and showed me he can kick ass.

I been gone for a bit, but I have a perfectly good excuse.

I been super sick, because well, I brought back SOMETHING from NC, and that something was not saltwater Taffy or Smoky Mountain Snack Mix, or even Chocobilly Cookies.

No, sir, NC awarded me with a nice cold, one full of complimentary coughs, and chills and runny nose and oh, let’s not forget the splitting headaches due to congestion.

So after a 12 hour drive back to Florida on Sunday, I was out for the count and put my ass down in bed, under the covers, holding the Klennex box and my Teraflu bottle for dear life.  Because, people I WAS GOING TO DIE – the end.

By Tuesday, I had enough and I knew I needed to step up the game.  So I called my doctors office, did major begging and got myself an appoitment to which I then dragged myself to and proceeded  to DIE THERE so they could give me enough drugs to forget my impending fate.  After an hour wait and having my nose, ears, and throat checked, the good doctor gave me the a-okey and wrote me a prescription for antibiotics and strong cough medicine (I had graduated to the big league people!).

I dragged my ass back home and took the first two pills of the antibiotic and then waited until it was dark outside in order to drink up the HEAVY-DUTY cough medicine and finally fall asleep and dream of rainbows and unicorns while BREATHING THROUGH MY NOSE, like a normal person.

Except we hit a itzy-bitsy snag.

After 20 minutes of drinking up and waiting to go off to la-la-land… I started to feel a bit of discomfort, as in pain below my breast bones and this would have been fine except that in less than a minute it tuned into a oh-my-fucking-gawd-will-someone-please-stab-me-in-the-eye-with-a-pencil-to-distract-me-from-the-pain from hell.

And folks, I’m really good about my pain threshold and have a very high pain tolerance, I can hold onto A LOT of pain before I fall and cry like a baby waiting my mommy, or take narcotics.

But, in this case it happen way faster, because as soon as I started having trouble breathing, as in gulping huge amounts of air and nothing, and I mean NOTHING was getting through I knew I had reached the unsurvivable hell in pain-time. And there was nothing I could do about it.

Anyway, on pain scale from 1-to-childbirth (which I have yet to experience but, I have plenty of reference points from friends and mommyblogs), this was about a 9.5 and climbing fast, because this was not one of those that you can “breathe through”, but those that you can only recall later as blurry, red-tinged moments of sweating-panting-teeth-grinding waves of oh-my-baby jesus-pain punctuated by increasingly shorter periods of blessed respite – except there was no intermission followed by liquor and tiny hors d’oeuver.

Where was I? Oh yeah, in agonizing pain so debilitating that I could barely unfurl from the fetal position.  It was time for the big guns: so I shouted out to Tom to come and save me.

Except it was more like a baby whimper, because yeah, I could not even come up for air to scream that I was DYING DAMN IT! and that I was wearing underwear with a hole and that’s how I was going to end up in the coroner office, totally embarrassing. (note to self: I need to stop watching so many CSI’s)

I was taking a shit worried

Tom, thank god hears things and when he shouted back if I was ok and never got a confirmation ran to my side (The good, good man – he gets so many brownie points its bananas!) to investigate and instead of finding me all nice and drugged out-of-my-mind, he found me doubled-over, whimpering, quivering mass of hell, holding to dear life unto the floor and taking big, gulps of breath with a crazy look (at least that is how he describe me later on. I was to busy trying to NOT DIED to notice this tiny detail, plus, truth be told, I was way more worry about the hole in my underwear than I care to admit).

Anyway back to the saga story.

Tom, decided at that moment to play Columbo and start to interrogate the shit out of me, while I’m trying to respond and breathe at the same time, and Internet, I tell you this…IT CANNOT BE DONE — YOU CANNOT DO IT AT THE SAME TIME.  But, somehow, through my panic and reading the medicine information sheet that the pharmacy gives you, but we throw away as soon as we get home (YES YOU DO, DON’T YOU LIE) he was able to play doctor and conclude that I needed medical assistance FAST (it’s what the paper said).

ER here we come.

And let me tell you it takes about 12 minutes from our house to the nearest Hospital ER. But let me assure you folks, those 12 minutes in pain-time equal 10,000 years.

By the time we arrived I was totally out of my mind with pain, scare and about to loose my shit and pass out, because I knew that I wanted to be in total denial at the point of death.

Fortunately, Tom had things under control while people continue to ask me questions and totally ignore the fact that a) HELLO I CANNOT BREATHE and b) I WANTED MY MOMMY BECAUSE I WAS GOING TO DIE!

The next couple of hours, all  I remember was bits and pieces. I was given stuff, which I promptly threw up, I was poked, probed and told to relax and to swallow more stuff, which I proptly keep hurling it right back at them.  They may the decision to insert an IV, which followed with dosages of wonderful narcotics, which relaxed me enough to rejoin the living, in an anesthetized coma.

Which was fine with me.

During all this drama, Tom held his own, answered questions about my medical health (who knew the boy was paying attention all this time?) called my mother and was able to stay calm enough to avoid having another crazy female to deal with and held my hand and told me it was going to be ok, and that they did not see my underwear.

I could not have loved that man more than right there and then.

After all is said and done, we learned to put this in under my already expanding medical history – I’m officially allergic to codeine, which was the culprit of this long saga.

But I also learn one important thing: Tom totally ROCKS IT when it comes to the emergency department.

And if you are still reading this, Holy shit, I think you earned a prize.

Better late, than never

If you follow me in tweeter or facebook, you probably know the reason why this post is almost a week late!  I been sick, apparently North Carolina wanted to give me a present and send me back with to Florida full of germs so strong that I ended up in the ER on this past Tuesday – but that is coming on a post all by itself.

I could give you a full recap, but I’m too hike up on drugs and I don’t trust myself to write anything that will make sense, so I give you our trip in pictures!

The trip up was without any incidents.  The dogs behaved so well, that for a moment we thought they were not ours and they had switched them on us while we were not looking.

Family, at the end of the day, they mean everything

Who enjoy the trip more? They did!

Specially with all that land to run around with.  Tom and I are not looking to move there, we just have to talk to the weather faeries in order to take care of that thing called winter, plus the fact that Rufus looks PROPORTION there.

Quick Recap

The trip was a success. Dogs, Kids, Adults all behave. The road – not to much.
Thanksgiving was great. Family, Food, Food, Food and god more FOOD.
NC weather, perfectly cold, sunny and fully cooperated
Returned Trip, once word: LONG!
Why I have not posted?
I’m sick as in everything you can have in a cold, I have right now – The end.

I will post as soon as I can stay up without snot coming out of my nose and cough up a lung.

Better than a thanksgiving spread!

Since I’m off and I will probably not post from NC – dude, its going to be in the 30’s – my fingers will probably freeze off!!!

Then I will leave you with this (if you already seen it, then see it again, its well worth it) – you are welcome.

File this under: Things we’ve always wanted, but never knew it until it was dropped on our foreheads.

 

I think I’m ready to hear Things That Don’t Suck!

We are down to the wire.

Tomorrow we will all pile up in a car and set out for our first leg of our trip to North Carolina.

Am I ready for this?

According to everything that has been done so far by me, this trip is so planned out it’s actually a bit ridiculous.

Hotel reservations have been made, the best possible routes have been loaded on the iPhone GPS application. Schedule stops have been pre-determined and I have not one, but TWO packing list to make sure we don’t forget the most important things – like you know

… the DOGS!

Tom will be hunting down the winter clothes in the spooky nook under the stairs today and I have a couple of other things we need to gather and place by the door to load up in the car tomorrow.

So, yes, I say, we are pretty DAMN ready for this road trip.  NC here we come!

But,

no matter how many list I have done, and reservations, and planned routes, it has not prepared me for waking up today with my head pounding, my throat sore, my ears all echo-y, my eyes watering, and my nose completely plugged up. Both nostrils. HOW IS THAT EVEN ALLOWED!?

Cue in the sound effects… (Preferably of a mad woman screaming!) NOW!

Fine, universe, way to be a douche bag.

Time for a bit of begging, because Dude!, I need you [universe] to be nice and to pat me in the back and tell me that “hey, it’s ok, you will be fine, and I will take care of you”

Seeing as I’m not the self-medicating sort, right now I’m thinking I may need a Xanax, or possibly more than one – two? three? maybe four?… You know, to make those rough edges seem smooth and manageable.  And I figure the only way I was going to come as close to taking four one xanax was to start with a healthy dose of the recomended 4  2 tablespoons of cold medicine this morning.

Except

…that now I’m at work and I trying very hard to make an effort to distract myself from considering all of the many different ways I might commit suicide with a five-dollar stapler.

I think I’m ready to hear Things.That.Don’t.Suck!

Ready?

Set

GO!

The secret word for today is: CAREFUL!!! (yes, with that many exclamation points – here is another one for good measure!)

That is the word that I have to use today, because people, today the universe has shown me a couple of times that I need to be very, very careful today.

Case in point:

Coming out of my house, driving towards the main intersection, I need to pass two streets that have stops signs. I have the right away.

Apparently the guy that ran the stop sign and ALMOST HIT ME did not get the memo!

Accident avoided – barely
(Point for me, suck it up universe!)

The cafeteria lady finally and I mean FINALLY (after months and months) got my café con leche order RIGHT.

There is hope for her yet  
(Point for me, suck it up universe!)

But then, then… I must have used up my points because at work the following events happen – ON REPEAT!

I usually take the café con leche from their container and pour it in my favorite work cup. While I was doing this, my coordination nerve ending decided to go haywire and I spilled half of the thing on me, soaking up my jeans.
(Point for the universe, suck it up me)

I’m presently walking around with a coffee stain on my jeans – Pretty! and sticky!

Then, THEN, by mid morning I wanted a coke. Walked over to the vending machine, put the money, press the COKE button and out comes out an orange soda. WTF?
(Point for the universe, suck it up me)

Decided to let it ride, and served my soda in my work glass, with tons of ice and place it inside my coffee cup (always do this). Waited a little (for the soda to get ice-cold) and when I grabbed the soda glass, out it comes dripping of coffee. ALL OVER THE PLACE, my desk, my pants (AGAIN) and my beloved iPod

DUH!! MOMENT (Slap forehead HERE)

Looked over the mess to the coffee cup and realized that I had not washed the cup and thus place the soda glass inside with the liquid STILL IN IT.
(Point for the universe, suck it up me)

Wiped up the mess on my desk and then went to the kitchen to wipe up the mess on my glass cozy, which sucked up most of the coffee liquid.

Now walking around with a BIGGER coffee stain on my jeans – ON A ROLL PEOPLE, ON.A.ROLL!

Came back to my desk with the soda glass, freshly washed cozy and place the glass inside the coffee cup

AGAIN….Which was STILL FILLED UP WITH liquid!
(Extra points for the universe, FAILED! FAILED for me)

I decided that I need to now find an excuse to get my ass home and hide in the corner, because the universe is up by 4 and coming up to bat

I’m screwed.

Things I’m thinking about

By this time next week we should be arriving in North Carolina in order to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with Tom’s family.

This is going to be interesting, at least for me, since this will be a bonofied thanksgiving for me.  Those that know me, know that I never celebrated Thanksgiving.  Past Thanksgiving were spent doing some major marathon watching on TV.

In the meantime these are the things that are in my mind and I need to worry about until we set off next week for the 10 hour drive:

I still want to watch a lot of marathon TV next week.

Sadly, I don’t see that happening.

Instead, I will be doing, god-knows what.  Since I’m not a host, but a “guest” and that term  is basically non-existent to me, since 99.9% of the time, I’m the host.

I’m going to be like a lost soul.

A lost soul freezing it’s ass, because I just checked the weather and that weekend is suppose to rain, and be in the low 40’s, with highs in the 50’s

HELL  NO!

Now, I have to look for the winter clothes

Where in the hell are the winter clothes?

Oh yeah, under the stairs, which totally freaks me out

its dark under there

and spooky

I wonder if I can still hide and watch a lot of marathon TV?

Damn it, the dogs need a bath before we go anywhere

Crap, its almost 5pm

what in the hell am I doing still at work?

Oh, yeah writting this post!

Not anymore, I need to go so I can think of ways to get Tom to tackled the task of getting to our winter clothes from under the dark stairs.

Because, I DID mention its spooky under there

Right?