Two years ago today, I squeezed a watermelon out of a hole the size of a lemon. So, that was fun. This was that watermelon then.
She’s all wrinkly and cute.
That seems like such a long time ago now. And the point at the top of her head has gone away…I promise. There have been quite a few sleepless nights. A lot of giggling. In depth conversations about lions and gorillas. Don’t laugh. It’s true. Between then and now, Scarlett has grown into the most adorable little girl.
And this picture proves it! So, to celebrate. Today, I’m spending the day with her for Mommy/Scarlett fun time. Be jealous! There are playgrounds and a breakfast out in our future.
If you know anything about me, you know that March is my jam. I love the NCAA Tournament to an unhealthy level. Every year, Ross and I take the first Thursday and Friday off to sit at a bar and watch all the games. We drink. We swear. We make both intelligent and unintelligent conversation about what’s going on. Basically, in a group of our friends all consisting of men, I’m the only woman sitting at the bar. I’m usually the most vocal. This is what love is. Although, Ross refuses to go to a live game with me. He objects to my behavior. I say, if you don’t want your children to hear that type of language, don’t bring them to a sporting event. If nothing else, they’ll learn how to use swear words properly.
If you’re my friend, you’d also know that I love Buckeye basketball. Behind Walt Disney, Thad Matta is God. However, they sucked this year. SUCKED! Sucked to the point that I couldn’t watch them. It depressed me. I’m an angry fan. I expect the best and I get upset when my teams fall short of that expectation. Harsh? Perhaps. But that’s the way I roll. No apologies and no settling. My Buckeyes are not in the Tournament this year. That makes me sad but the reality of the situation is that I’d rather not be in it than be embarrassed.
So, regardless if my team is in the Big Dance or not, I’ve filled out my brackets (3 to be exact), I’m excited to hang out with my friends this week, and I’m excited for basketball.
I love my daughter. I do. More than anything in this world. But there are times where I just want to throw my hands up and say “fuck it”. Last night was one of those nights. After her bath, she jumped all the way to her bedroom with the duckie towel sitting on her head. At some point, she looked up at me and the following conversation took place:
Scarlett: Mommy, cold.
Me: Of course, you’re cold. You didn’t want to wear the Minnie robe. You wanted the duckie towel and it’s not even wrapped around you.
Scarlett: Mommy, cold.
Me: I know. Let’s put on jammies and you won’t be cold anymore.
Scarlett: Cold
Me: I get it. Let’s put on jammies. But this was your decision.
She proceeded to hop into her room, giggling, creating more wind – thereby exposing more skin to the air which – in turn – MADE HER COLD.
I got a diaper on her then the epic decision of pajammas began. I went through all of the available pajammas getting a resounding “no” from her each time. When I got to the end, I asked, “Do you want to go naked?” So I put on the pink bow pajammas and called it a day. She, of course, upset that I had chosen for her, cried. Then we started the whole process again with the socks.
She drives me insane but she might also be the cutest thing ever.I mean really. The cutest thing ever.
Even given that, I wasn’t looking forward to my weekend alone taking care of my toddler. I have so much to do to get ready for her party next weekend that the thought of being alone while Ross is in New Hampshire was kinda stressing me out.
Then, while scrolling through my feed this morning I found this…
It made me feel so much better! Also, the nanny wiping out is amazing. I feel your pain lady!
Okay, I’ve heard some stupid shit uttered on House Hunters. I know we’ve talked about HGTV before but last night’s episode was particularly ridiculous. I often feel bad for the narrator who has to repeat this shit. I often wonder if she reads the copy and then just rolls her eyes.
Let’s look at a few gems from the episode last night.
The dude was a fan of “a dramatically pitched roof”
Just because it has an A-frame does not make it a Tudor.
Just because it’s a big room, doesn’t make it an open floor plan. If you see walls and doorways leading to other…rooms, that’s not an open floor plan.
Also, don’t call your realtor “braw”. You’re not that cool.
After the second instance of the open floor plan comment, I had to turn it off and go to sleep. However, over the last few days, there have been some doozies. Like the kid who kept saying he liked the craftsman touches. Nope, it’s just wood paneling. Not even like shiplap or actual wood planks (1 x 6 or 1 x 8 planks) nailed to the wall as a design element. If you’d like an actual description of what is and is not shiplap check out The Craftsman Blog. This was actual wood paneling ( from the the 70’s that someone had painted over, cause we all know that wood paneling is a bitch.
Can we talk about how this picture might as well be my living room…sigh
Anyway…
I particularly loved the couple who said, and I’m paraphrasing here, We want the large spaces we’re used to. We’re afraid that moving to Europe will mean we have to downsize. YES! Yes, you will have to downsize. Everything in Europe is smaller. It just is. You can’t get a 4000 square foot house in the middle of Amsterdam. That’s not how that works.
Part of the fun of watching House Hunters, at least for Ross and I, is the betting on which house they’ll choose and then the debate on if the choice was a good one. If you’re stupid about your search and don’t actually know what you’re talking about, we all know your choice is a bad one and therefore, takes all the fun out of it.
I know there are a shit ton (that’s a technical term) of people out there that ADORE time travel. Stories. Books. Movies. Television shows. Whatever they can get their hands on. They eat up time travel in all forms. I’m not one of those people. I watch/read a few time travels In Spite of them being time travel based. Two to be exact. I watch/read Outlander, cause Jamie Fraser and The Flash, cause I was already watching Arrow – which is awesome, by the way. I ♥♥♥♥ Arrow.
Time travel is dangerous. We’ve seen Barry Allen cause ripple effects to the point that people are dead/alive when they weren’t before. Where the gender of a particular person is different than it was in the timeline previously. Every decision we make creates something entirely new, presenting others with decisions that they were not faced with in previous incarnations. Also, can we just talk for a moment about how The Flash’s identity and his secret lair is the worst kept secret in the history of the world. Everybody on Earth 1, hell, everyone on all the Earths knows where The Flash hangs his damned suit. People just walk in there like there’s no security at all. #WorstSecretEVER
The question then becomes, is time circular, linear, or neither? If you change something in one time line, does the original time line still exist or does it vanish? This is the problem I run into with Terminator 2.
Let’s refresh…
Okay. If all the hardware and the chip is destroyed, that damned kid should disappear. There’s no reason for the dude to go back in time and no way for Sarah Conner to get knocked up.
Where Terminator is concerned, Ross likes to argue that the future is inevitable and no amount of destruction of the Terminator would alter the course. Skynet was going to happen, no matter what. BULLSHIT. I call bullshit. You can’t argue that point and then watch The Flash and expect the exact opposite to occur. I get that Barry Allen is a superhero and we expect our superheros to persevere against all odds, but JFC, come on. We are talking about the fundamentals of the space-time continuum here.
I also understand that there is no small amount of suspended disbelief here, because – time travel. But this is not something that can be explained away with magic. #Magic
I like to throw that argument up to Ross all the time because there is no counter argument to magic.
I also understand that I’ve completely left Outlander out of this discussion and that’s not an accident. There is quite a bit of suspended disbelief in that one – independent of the time travel aspect of it. Christ-on-crutches, Jamie Fraser fights a bear with his bare hands in the middle of precolonial North Carolina in his mid-fifties and WINS! HE. WINS. Just let that one sink in for a moment. There are a few more instances that require your willingness to just believe. Clare and Jamie are on two different ships in the middle of the Caribbean (not close, by the way). Both get shipwrecked and find each other in the middle of the FUCKING ocean. Nope. Just no. Doesn’t matter though. #JamieFraserLove
There were plenty of half-naked pics of Sam Heughan out there and they’re worth a peek but this is just as good. I swear. It might be better. #KiltLove
We’ve gotten off topic from my epic time travel rant. Anyway, I won’t read time travel. It just pisses me off. An example is The Time Traveler’s Wife. I’m not going to include a synopsis. You can find that at the link above. Long story short, this guy keeps going back to visit his wife through her life beginning when she was five. He keeps telling her how much she’s going to love him. This is, of course, super creepy and really a little stalkerish. Anyway, by the time I finished this book, I was pissed. I couldn’t tell if she actually loved him or if she’d been conditioned to believe she did. There was a bit of Stolkholm syndrome or brainwashing going on there. I’m not even sure which at this point.
So, this is my basic issue. Time travel creates more problems than it solves. More questions. More circular paradox possibilities. And, just downright confusion. So, in conclusion, I live by the statement that time travel is stupid.
You may disagree. I know plenty of people who do. Ross is one of them. Time travel has caused more than one lively debate in my house. I’m sure it will cause more in the future.
If you’re on twitter, you have to follow this person/persons. This is an amazing feed that will not only put Buffy in a new light but make you remember all the horrible things you both wore and adored back in the 90’s and early 2000’s.
The really horrible part about going through that feed was that I could identify the season by the outfits. Ross and I scrolled through (thanks Ross for pointing it out!) and had ourselves a really good chuckle. That’s right. He follows them. He didn’t even watch Buffy but this feed is so amazing, my husband is following them.
God, there were so many things during that time period that were just fashionably wrong. And we thought they were awesome. Flood flare pants for instance. Why? Why was that a good look? I have no idea. Let’s make the ends of our pants really wide but then end just at or worse, above the ankle. I don’t really understand what the hell we were doing. I say we because I am not immune. I absolutely did some of these horrible things. There will not be pictures to prove it.
Also, I get that Cordelia was supposed to be preppy but why did she always look like a housewife in the Hamptons that had too many martinis. What was with the tennis skirts and sweaters tied around her shoulders. Did girls in California EVER dress like that?
Let’s talk about Xander for a minute. I get that he and Willow were supposed to be on the fringe and outcasts but come on. What was with the weird Hawaiian shirts? ALL. THE. TIME. In no universe in the 90’s was that even trying to be cool. Most people in high school at least tried.
This is one of the most AMAZING twitter accounts. Follow them if you are so incline.
I’m 38 and I’m way too excited for this movie. Way too excited. Let’s be honest, I was 13 when the original cartoon came out in 1991. Just old enough to have been indoctrinated with the lovable characters and remember all the songs by heart. Still singing them today, by the way. The Little Mermaid (which I can also sing by heart, btw) and Beauty and the Beast were the first Disney movies set up like a Broadway show. It’s effective! Just look at the opening number.
This is amazing and told little girls everywhere that it was okay to read and be smart. There’s something about this movie that resonates with me and has carved a place in my psyche that I’m not sure can be replaced.
Ross keeps asking why Disney feels the need to make live action movies of their classic cartoons. My simple answer is – because they can. If you could make a bazillion dollars off of an already known commodity, wouldn’t you? The simple answer is yes.
There’s something else though. You have an entire generation of women who didn’t get this movie rooted into their brains like the a tapeworm that just won’t let go. You do, however, have that same generation which has grown up with Emma Watson and Hermoine Granger. Harry Potter influenced an entirely new generation of young girls. Thank you J.K. Rowling for showing an entirely new generation that smart, pushy women were cool. That’s right, I’m giving her a shout out. And combining the two into one movie, is frankly, GENIUS.
Not to mention, the trailer looks amazing. That’s all I have to say.
Why do we need a tour bus full of people to come through and slow this train wreck down? The answer is, we don’t. That took at least 10 minutes. A wasted 10 minutes.
Why do we need any of the shenanigans that transpired over the course of the Oscars? We don’t. Just give out the awards.
Why did Jimmy Kimmel need to do two minutes of material after every commercial break? He didn’t. That alone, took up 15 to 20 minutes of air time.
Second – For the love of God, feed these people and stop making a spectacle of it!
Why did they have to make a point of dropping snacks on the crowd? Why can’t this thing just run like a baseball game? At intermissions, pass out granola bars, popcorn, and hot dogs. I would like to point out that they didn’t drop anything on the seats in the balcony and I bet they were just as hungry.
Third – 11pm is a hard deadline!
What the hell are you doing running this thing beyond 11pm on a Sunday night. Don’t you know that people – namely me – has to get up and go to work in the morning? I missed my favorite part (the Parade of Death, aka In Memoriam) because it was too late. I’m not waiting around through all the shenanigans until you get your act together. Either start earlier or cut out some of the ridiculous shit you have going on.
Luckily, someone sent me the link today…So, there’s that, at least.
Fourth – Seriously? Who’s getting fired for that snafu???
Is that the accounting firm’s fault? If so, doesn’t that call into question the integrity of the entire process. Is it the poor kid’s who brought out the card? Don’t blame the kids, they’re just doing what they’re told. Is it the fault of Warren Beatty and/or Faye Dunaway because they’re 100? Well, they are.
Again, I didn’t even see it because, like I said, I was asleep.
Although, Steve Harvey’s year is looking better and better.
At least they’ve asked Steve Harvey back. Do you think they’ll ask back Warren Beatty or Faye Dunaway again?
I’ve heard some REALLY stupid things come out of peoples’ mouths on this campus. I’ve worked here for 12.5 years, so there have been many. One of my favorites is when I walked by a student who asked her friends, “Is Italy still in Europe?” Like it was going to get up and move! I fought not to laugh out loud when her friend answered, “I think so.” No one in the group was sure.
I particularly like the one uttered by my workstudy student. “So, if it’s a forever stamp, why doesn’t the post office send it back to me? I should be able to use it forever!” He was actually very indignant about it. I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard.
There was another good one yesterday. Sitting in my office, I heard the front door open. A student asked where the stairs were. I’m not sure who answered (I didn’t recognize the voice) but the response was “Are you going up or down?”
UP or DOWN? Why does it matter? Would the answer have been different depending on which way the student was going? Is one set of stairs only for going up and the other for going down? This was amazing to me. The best part was that no one paused or thought the exchange was strange. The student simply answered, “up”. I, however, stopped everything I was doing in my office to listen. Cause why wouldn’t you?
Let’s talk about management styles and how effective and ineffective some can be.
As an example, I work in two different offices for two different bosses (kinda). Thankfully, I only report to one person.
In one office, I am respected. My opinions matter and are valued. I am encouraged to engage in policy and my experience is recognized, lending weight to my input.
This is not the case in the other office. That particular environment is toxic. I am routinely marginalized, talked down to, and even left out of decision making where I have direct knowledge and experience. I am singled out and the disparity of how I’m treated versus the others in the office is glaring. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with being the only woman in the room or that my confidence in myself and my job rubs him the wrong way. I don’t really know and speculation is irrelevant. When you’re having a conversation and others are averting their eyes because they’re trying to shy away from the situation, that isn’t a healthy environment. Or even a healthy form of conflict (which is possible). I will admit that I do not shut down or avert my eyes when I am talked down to. I have never been afraid of conflict. I engage completely which escalates the tension.
Here’s the thing. I’ve been a manager for almost 16 years now. That makes me sound really old. I’m not. I’m only 38. Stop judging. Anyway, I’ve managed a spectrum of people, running the gambit of diversity from race, ethnicity, economic station, age, and gender. I understand how you get the best out of people. As a participant in the interactions in the 2nd office, I can say it is a prime example of how not to manage people.
We’ve talked about my personality before. I am driven and hardworking. I hold myself to an almost impossible standard. When I start thinking – hey, I don’t really give a shit – that’s a problem.
People, in general, want to do their best and will go above and beyond for you if they feel respected. If they think that their ideas matter and that they are treated fairly, an employee will be the best they can be. There’s a great article in Fortune that outlines perfectly what people need to be happy in their jobs. I’ve taken my fair share of organizational development courses, Human Resources/Management courses, and professional development seminars in my time. The instances where I’ve learned the most, however, have been in real time experience and the conversations I’ve had with my employees and my own supervisors. Mentoring is important. Listening and actually hearing someone is a hard skill to master but it is vital when managing others.
I love half my job. Is that enough? Can I suffer through the other half? I don’t know. What I do know is that I only apply for jobs and review the postings internally when i’m unhappy. I’ve been looking every week for a month.
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