What if I win?

The Mister and I got early ballots in the mail today for a county council election.

There's only one race, and the candidate is running unopposed, so theoretically filling out the ballot shouldn't be too hard.

But The Mister didn't like the candidate. At all. So, he informed me, he was voting for a write-in candidate that he thought he would like better.

Then he wrote my name. MY name. Mine.

My first vote for public office.

Tee hee.

If I were a Tweeter

So I’ve thought about joining Twitter. I think I’d like to just join so that I could follow all my friends and chat with each other like they do. But then I think about all the people trumpeting the narcissistic, inane quality of Twitter and I think twice. I don’t know. My friends that use Twitter are really cool as a group, and I haven’t known any of them to start growing multiple personalities just so they can tweet to themselves or anything like that. They seem pretty normal.

But the jury’s still out. Mostly it’s just another thing that I don’t know if I need. Although I get bored at work sometimes. But what should I do if I have sound-byte-sized thoughts of 140 characters or less I have no outlet for them? And then I think, you have a blog, dummy. Just post them on there.

Here, a collection of my “tweetables” as they are affectionately know by others who’ve had this thought before me:

Why, oh why, is traffic heavier on cloudy days? Arizona drivers = sense of entitlement.

I wonder if I would eat shrimp less often if they came with the creepy black eye stalks still on.

There is a cricket family that has taken up residence behind our dishwasher. We call the biggest one “Jiminy”.

I just read Pride and Prejudice again. I think I shall start referring to Ron as "The Mister"

Note to self: if you live in a place where you have a yard, there is a high probability that you will have neighbors with barking dogs. Not worth it.

Sometimes I wish I could just pay someone money to download Spanish into my brain. Only, if you could do that, would you speak with the same accuracy as a machine translation? Like “my pulsing aortic valve” instead of “my beating heart”?

@mybigsister: I’m wearing your clothes today. Again.

@mylittlesister: I will get a forlorn text from you if I tweet about Hannah and not you. So let it be said that I also steal your clothes occasionally. That white skirt I took from you in high school I still wear. It’s still cute. I don’t regret my thievery.

The Mister just IMed me : "I have a mint in my mouth and I just coughed and it flew out onto my keyboard. Gross." I'm positively drowning in romance, folks.

Previews. Or Lack Thereof.

Sometimes (okay, often), R and I get asked when we plan on having kids. We usually just smile and politely say that we aren't sure, although it isn't anytime soon if things go our way. But I secretly start to hyperventilate a little bit.

The thing that scares me about parenthood is that there are no previews. I like previews. I can decide whether I want to fully commit or not. The thing is, this parenting thing is pretty hard to get a good grasp on. Some people love being parents and you can see it in their faces and the way they talk about and interact with their kids. Then other equally cool people seem pretty depressed by the turn their life has taken and even though they of course love their kids, they give off this general air of desperation and "stuck"ness.

So the part that I'd like to know ahead of time is, which one will I be? I'm pretty optimistic usually, so I'd think I'd be in the A group. But does anybody ever really think they'll be in the B category? Of course not - or they wouldn't have produced offspring in the first place.

Scaaary!
(sung in high soprano)

The "Well Done" Award for Services Rendered to Humanity

How Many Selves Do You Have?

I’d like to write beautiful, wistful, nostalgic prose.

But I’d also just like to write about what makes me laugh.

I’d like to be at a Jay-Z concert.

But I’d also love to be in the presence of Yo-Yo Ma.

I’d love to be a classy, minimalist decorator.

I also think a home should be a living, breathing thing that is bursting with life and love and color and messiness and good fun.

I’d like to be able to make killer hummus, homemade granola, and fresh salad dressings.

But I’d also like to make killer biscuits and gravy.

I believe in God.

But some days I believe less than others.

I want to be one of those people who always know where I’m going and why.

But I kind of like not knowing.

I’d like to have a to-do list to keep me efficient, which is neatly checked off by the end of the day.

But I also like not having my worth tied to how much I produce.

I love good literature like Pride and Prejudice.

But I liked Twilight too.

I like sunshine and palm trees.

But I also love rainy days and the smell of evergreens.

They say that an understanding and appreciation of the benefits of complexity and diversity are what is going to keep the world going and society moving.

I say that we each have a little complexity and diversity in ourselves - within our own internal community – all of our “selves” that are different yet the same, fragments and yet wholes.

Ode to Andrea

My dear friend Andrea is my most faithful blog reader. She makes me feel like a million bucks when she tells me she likes my writing.

Andrea is beautiful (gorgeous actually), and has one of the sunniest souls I know. She always leaves the room a little brighter when she left than when she came in. In her case, it's really not a cliche. She radiates warmth and good feelings and sunshine and rainbows and butterflies and the hope of the first flowers of spring.

And today is her birthday.

Happy birthday, sweet friend.

My life is better because you're in it.

Gas vs. Diesel

Sometimes it's a little hard to tell which is the gas pump and which is the diesel.

Which is why, when Ron accidentally put diesel in my car last week, I couldn't really do anything other than laugh. And then breathe a sigh of relief that he did it and not me (selfish, I know).

The tow truck came, and a couple hundred bucks later, I'm still bemused.

I figure that this story will be really funny in 20 years - so why not just skip the part where it makes us mad and go straight to the fun stuff.

C'est la vie.