Not proud of it, but

Here are the excuses I came up with to put off starting running today:

• Can't find headphones 
• Headphones I could find were huge and uncomfortable; also didn't fit well around the mohawk
• There were three dogs who would want to go, but I could only really take two and would have preferred to take one
• It's 38° outside
• I don't own any pants for running. I have running shorts and flannel pants that are too long, but I'd have to make do with some capris or something
• I had just enough time to DO ANYTHING ELSE
• Andy's computer (the one that has iTunes on it) died when I was making a playlist
• I didn't want to have to shower before heading to my friend's house

Obviously, I didn't go. I have an eye doctor appointment tomorrow afternoon, but if it's still light out, I'll go then. Unless I can come up with eight brand-new excuses. And the headphones don't count, because Andy brought me a pair just for running today.

Any excuse suggestions for tomorrow?

Weekend in Brooklyn

These stupid glasses were everywhere.

I had a great time visiting NYC, you guys. My friend lives in Williamsburg, which is neat for me because it means I'm never the person wearing the weirdest clothes. We hung out and ate awesome food (hello, cheese plate and wine for dinner) and stuff.

Some highlights:

• Cheese. There was a lot of cheese, adn I love cheese, so that was great.
• Knitting. I knit a whole baby sweater and most of a second one! We went to a great yarn shop that wasn't any more expensive than the non-chain yarn shops around here. And the sweaters are so fucking precious.
• In fact, they're so fucking precious that a biker dude told me how sweet it was. The sweater I was showing him was pink. And he cooed a little bit. (Brooklyn is weird.)
• Tequila. Lots of tequila, which led to me getting into a heated conversation with the bartender (a friend of the friend I was visiting) and some poor bystander, who happened to be Canadian, about what the game Oregon Trail means about American psyche and stuff. The Canadian guy may have tried to remove himself from the conversation when I told him that one of the best parts of the game was naming people in your party after people you hate and then letting them die.
• Delicious homemade brunch, which cost so, so much less than going out to brunch.
• We went out to dinner with my friend's husband, from whom she is separated but with whom she is working on reconciling, which was really nice. Hooray for people working hard on relationships instead of giving up!
• I got a chance to wander about by myself for a while yesterday while my friend worked, which was neat. I walked A LOT. 
• I partially completed Resolution Number 8!

Lowlights:

• I fucking hate standing around, and there is a ton of that in NYC, particularly when waiting for or on the subway. 
• I always spend significantly more than I plan to, because everything in the city is more expensive than it needs to be.
• Hangover.

How was y'all's weekend? Do you heart New York?

On tattoos

Heraldic crest with labels via

So I'm starting to work in earnest on planning my next tattoo. I'm designing my own heraldic device, often incorrectly referred to as a coat of arms. Heraldic symbols are pretty fascinating, and I have a lot of work to do before I'll be satisfied with the design. Technically, as I don't belong to an arms-bearing family, I have no right to a crest, at least according to the British government, but as I'm an American and as I don't give a shit, I'm going to go ahead with the idea.

Did you know that there's really no such thing as a "family" crest or coat of arms? Sorry to break it to you, but each design was specific to a particular person - they were originally used as a means to immediately identify someone, so it would be kind of dumb to have a dad and all three of his sons on a battlefield with the same design. A typical way to work it was for a coat of arms to stay mostly the same for the first son, but have a minor change, like color, to differentiate. A child might have the coat of his father and his mother smashed together into a new design. There were all sorts of ways to personalize a crest. But if you've got a keychain with the ancient Whatever Family Crest, you really lay no more claim to it than any stranger.

I've been checking books out of the library like crazy on the subject of heraldry and arms. It's so interesting! Some of the choices, like which helmet you have over the shield, is very meaningful and each choice signifies something different. Some of the choices, like what kind of mantling you have behind and around the whole shebang, means nothing in particular and you can pick whatever you feel like. There are all sorts of websites that will tell you what your choice of charge or color signifies, but that's all certified bullshit because there is no accepted meaning for the very vast majority of that stuff, so even if there was you could be like, "No, mine means this," and no one could contradict you. It's crazy.

So I'm trying to decide what to do with the final product. I know where I want it, and I know that I want to commission the tattoo artist to make me a few copies of the design, in color, so I can get myself some stationery and/or a blazer bearing the design, but I don't know what I want to do about the internets.

Tattoos are just such a personal thing, and it would kill me if someone happened upon a picture of my tattoo and was like, "Bingo! I'm getting that!" I mean, once you put a picture out there, on Facebook or a blog or wherever, it's a battle to maintain control, right? And I know that I'll be thrilled with the final result, but I don't know that I want other people to have the option of stealing my awesome.

What say you, Internets? Do you have pictures of your art or tattoos or whatever online? Any bad experiences? Any AWESOME experiences?

Three quick things.

1. It's no secret that I'm a knitter, so occasionally people think of me when they have extra yarn. This week at work, one of my coworkers brought me a giant shopping bag full of yarn of all colors, mostly in full skeins, that she found in her house! The problem is, I'm kind of a snot about the yarn I like using, and the bag's full of acrylic stuff that I wouldn't have picked out for myself. So I thanked her graciously and told her I'd share the wealth. I'm going to offer it to my mom to see if her youth group could use it for anything, and if they don't want it, I'll donate it to a local women's shelter. The residents at the shelter I worked at really liked having something to keep their hands busy. Wasn't that nice of my coworker to think of me, though?

2. The upstairs bathroom is coming along pretty well. Tonight there will be spackling and sanding, repeatedly in thin coats, so that next weekend we can tackle the painting! You better believe I will be spending some time this weekend at Lowe's, finalizing paint colors and daydreaming about fixtures.

3. I'm almost done with The Hunger Games trilogy, and I almost forgot how much I really like young adult fiction. Any recommendations for a new series when I finish this one? (PLEASE?)

On why I hate driving stick

Or, In which I sound conceited and maybe sort of bitchy

I had my first lesson in how to drive a standard yesterday. When I first started driving, I learned on a standard, but then haven't driven one in eight years. But now my lovely little car is gone and Andy's truck is a manual, so it's time for me to relearn. It doesn't hurt that it's one of my goals for the year, either.

Here's why I really don't like driving stick: I'M NOT GOOD AT IT. I know that this applies to pretty much anyone who doesn't know how, but the thing is, I'm usually pretty good at whatever I try to do. I know my strengths, and I tend to stick to them. I'm an educated, intelligent person, so I can usually figure new stuff out pretty well. But I'm not great at physical/spatial stuff, so learning standard is like asking me to learn Irish dancing in a few hours. I can get the car to start moving from a stop maybe an eighth of the time, but it feels like I'm doing the same thing both when I'm successful and when I'm unsuccessful. I can't just feel it a few times and then know what I'm doing right or wrong.

I also don't typically stick to doing stuff I'm not good at. I can do easy-level sudoku, but I can't do the really hard ones, so I don't bother trying. But with this, I have to stick with it, and I have to keep failing, over and over again. I really hate it every single time I stall the car out, but I can't just be like, okay, tell me the secret, and I'll get it right every time. It's something I have to learn slowly and painfully.

Add to this the complicated emotional issues that came with learning it the first time from my mom. My mom is a lovely lady, and a lot of fun to hang out with, but I have no idea what made my parents decide she should be the one to teach us to drive. Often she would wait till the last second to give an instruction, then yell it, so the whole time I was behind the wheel I felt nervous, waiting for Andy to yell something, even though he's not that kind of communicator. The only huge, blow-up, multiday fight I got in with my mother was a direct result of her teaching me to drive. So I hate feeling like every time I stall the car (which was a lot, you guys), I failed a little more, and I feel anxious on top of it because of bad memories.

But! I'm smart and I'm strong and I'm going to get the hang of it! We're going back out later for another lesson, and I'm hoping that by the end of the week, with a few more practice sessions, I'll be good to go.

Can you drive a standard? Who taught you? Please share any secrets you may have that will lead to my success.

On camping

Image via Keewaydin State Park, where we have camped.

One of my goals for the year is to find a way to enjoy camping. Before I start planning this thing, I'm going to share why I hate camping.

First, I pay a goddamn mortgage. I pay a lot of money every month in order to NOT have to sleep outside. I don't like being outside that much anyway, so sleeping in dirt near bugs and poisonous plants is not my idea of relaxing.

Our first camping trip was probably formative in my hating the whole shebang. We got home from our honeymoon, wherein we had pools and maids and beaches and a maitre d' we called Sideburns, spent one night at home, then went to join some friends for a long weekend of camping. In tents. Near rock cliffs. With food in coolers. With no maids, or origami swans made from towels, or Sideburns. Really, camping didn't have a chance.

The friends we camp with don't really help. The dude is a good friend of Andy's, but neither of us are crazy about his girl. She means well, usually, but she just isn't terribly easy to get along with. On more than one occasion, she has started fights with her fiance - yelling and crying fights - when the four of us were stuck in close quarters, like on a boat or in a car. She has particular ways she likes to do things when camping, which means that she spends large amounts of time bossing people around and acting put-upon because she insists on doing everything that needs doing because only she can do it right.

I also don't like camping in the Thousand Islands, where we've gone. We always manage to set up our tent in a place that will get full sun starting at 7:00 am, so sleeping late is out. My first experience with snorkeling was in Jamaica, in 30 feet of crystal-clear water above a coral reef, so snorkeling in the cold, polluted St. Lawrence just isn't terribly appealing. There are no actual beaches, just rock cliffs and ledges. There are a lot of gorgeous mansions but they all come with snotty dudes zooming around on jet-skis. It's pretty, sure, but it could be better.

But Andy really loves camping, and it bums him out when I have a miserable time. We also have lots of friends who swear up and down that they like it, so I assume there must be a way I can do it without hating every second of it. So to be able to cross this thing off for the year, I'm going to think about what it would take to help me like the outdoors. I could spend all day laying on a beach, but only if it's near the ocean, so maybe I'll start looking for sites on the Atlantic. I'll start talking to friends who have proven to be good company for multiple days. I'll start reading up on what makes for an awesome time camping. I'll borrow my parents' big tent (ours is a seven-foot square, with sides that start sloping immediately, which means that my tall husband has to sleep diagonally across the middle of the damn thing). And, possibly most important, I won't mention a word of it to the friends we usually go with.

Do you camp? Any tips to help me learn to like it? Any readers out there agree that camping's the worst??

Hello, 2011.

As I discussed yesterday, we got a lot done around the house yesterday. I'd say the house is 80% tidier than it was when we got up yesterday morning, and the laundry is about 65% done. Because I'm sure you're wondering, we didn't end up going to see Marky Mark looking hot and shirtless, because while we were out to dinner the dog decided to eat 3/4 of a chocolate orange. This resulted in a panicked phone call to the Kid, who said he'd probably be fine (especially after considering that he ate a whole Easter basket one year with no ill effect), but if it made us feel better we could force-feed him a tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide to make him barf it up. We didn't go that route, but we stayed home and kept a close eye on him. He is 100% fine, but I"m glad we stayed home because I would have worried the whole time we were out.

Today we made pancakes and bacon for breakfast and are sitting around reading the paper. This afternoon I'm planning to start scouring Craigslist so I can cross off Resolution #3. I really don't care if they match, as long as they're tall enough!

Tonight we'll probably be going to dinner at Andy's parents' house, which is always a joy. If you want you can suggest new topics of conversation for me to introduce to Rodger.

How's 2011 treating you so far? Are you going with "two-thousand-eleven" or "twenty-eleven"? (I think I'm a "twenty-eleven" kind of girl.)