"if you lived in chicago, you'd have the clap."

yes, that means exactly what you think it does. no, "the clap" is not a nifty new word for anything mundane, which i'm not gonna lie, i totally thought (like maybe saying to someone "you have the clap" means "you rock"? admit it, it works.)

anywho, i was supposed to take it as compliment. it was given to me by a fellow who had just fallen off the sidewalk, not after proclaiming that he was the the king of said sidewalk. he may or may not have been in a wheelchair and he may or may not have been intoxicated.

now, in the interest of clairfication, i'm not giving this story up because i think it's funny. i'm merely retelling due to the fact that it was interesting. i mean, how many times does a person get complimented with the useage of an STD?

not many, i'm pretty sure.

point being, i'm not making fun of the fact that he was in a wheelchair. i'm a snot, but i'm not completely cruel and void of feeling. come on, folks.

now on to more important matters...

as everybody knows, i come from the ssp. the land of unuseable stockyards (due to the animal uh...stuff in the ground) and hockey. we like hockey in south saint paul. and livestock. that's why every team based out of here are the packers. not because we feel comeraderie with wisconsin.

one of the awesome things i do enjoy about life in the ssp, besides the cow smell that tells you that some sort of precipitation is on the way, is the choices my neighbors make in lawn decorations.

we all know thanksgiving is drawing nigh. and in case we forgot, my neighbors on wentworth avenue decided to remind us with this:



yes, that my friends, is an gigantic inflatable turkey, just chillin. i found it accidentally a couple of weeks ago and it's sheer stupidity brings me daily joy like no get out. except on saturday, when it was so windy that it got knocked down.

i actually yelped. i think it might have been the only "yelp" i've emitted in 24 years.

but don't worry. i drove by today on my way to work tonight and terry (the turkey, duh)is up and completely functional once again.

phew.

well now, that's the opposite of good.

monday was going to be turkeytastic.

but then monday night happened, involving the following events:
1.) the lil' dude i watch on monday nights had a bad day. which resulted in him trying to kick my butt for 20 minutes after i said "no spongebob, parent-appointed bedtime!"

in all fairness to owen, he had a very valid point. he hadn't seen the rest of the episode. however, not so valid that it made him hitting me repeatedly with a pillow acceptable.

it was totally one of those times when you realize that a.) no matter how bad, you would never spank your own kid, much less someone else's and b.) what else works besides "ow. owen, you just hit my sunburn. please quit it."?

lucky for me, owen wants to be a police officer when he grows up...so i called former chief dad. they had a nice little convo about how police officers don't hit.

who knew copdad would come in so handy other than extracting one from legal situations?


should i be concerned that the 5 and 3 year old and i all like patrick because of the butt jokes?...'cause i'm starting to be.
so after that, i went home. hung out with the fam. listened to the jane accidentally call kate a gnome. then felt kate slap me in the eyeball.

she and i fully admit it was a case of mistaken identity, so we were cool. it just meant that my throbbing eyeball didn't feel like trying to make a pretty/witty blog entry about blown up turkeys.

ps: in no way, shape or form do i endorse the jane getting the eyeball slap. if anything, i think the eyeball slap should be avoided by any and all. that includes givers and receivers.


david=gnome. kate(does not equal)gnome.

eh, i've been up since 6. and while my disco nap at 8:30 has gotten me this far, i think it's time to pop myself in the tub and try to finish the crappy book. (which is a conversation for another day.)

is is really november?...that's bad news.

i thought the last time i posted was last week.

turns out it was, dare i say, three weeks ago? boo.

because while i haven't been off doing anything groundbreaking, i have come to some interesting conclusions lately. and by interesting, i mean interesting solely to myself. and might i add that most of the time they come to me on my lunch break, in front of nordstrom's, which only adds to the theory that no good, solid, productive thinking can come from the mall.

beauts like the everpresent "man, reese witherspoon makes me think i too can be brunette." and the new "walk the line" doesn't help the anti-side of that argument much.

for those dying of suspence right now, it always comes back to the same point that you know if you're a girl who reads too many magazines: she had brown hair to begin with. that's why it works.

see? this is the crap i get entangled in. no wonder why people think i'm a monkey. while i could choose to talk about the five books i read in the month of october and engage in intriguing prose, i choose to wax philsophical about the pros and cons of playing "make your head look like barf" with some hair dye.

anywho, i'm now working at the mall. however, as people were waiting for me to do, i realized that it's not so much the pile of awesomeness i thought. so i'm currently waiting to hear back from the historical society in the hopes that they give me my first chance to truly be the professional nerd i deserve to be.

at least i'll be well dressed.

in other news, my last check came from the old job. and yes, i say "old job" because i'm viewing my bonus as a severance check of sorts. when you get that much freakin' money at once, it's like a sign to get the heck out because i don't really think anyone will have the poor judgement to give almost 700 dollars again.

and...i went to lunch with my dad on last monday.

he works on university...by the egg and i...across from norm coleman.

as i was walking out, i pulled myself a geriatric move and shook my first at the window. very a la the oldest golden girl.

he was not there. he did not see my fist shaking. and i think the hmong family in the waiting room of the office thought there was something horribly wrong with me.
i almost felt like a political activist...then i remembered that i was wearing a puffy vest. there's nothing really "let's fight the government" about a bright green puffy vest from american eagle. even i know that and i live in the mall.

luckily, my dad just pointed out that while well intentioned, senator coleman probably is never there. then he bought me a cupcake. i thought it to be a very patient showing for conservodad. except the cupcake. that i feel i fully deserved.



the person who came up with the idea to create a bakery with 30 kinds of cupcakes is pretty much my hero. and to make matters even better, the spot is called, duh, cupcake (and i even think it has an exclamation mark, perhaps like "cupcake!: the musical"?)

but yeah, that's pretty much it.

tomorrow we'll talk about the inflatable turkey down the street and the very serious reason why i need my own ipod.

it's like a cow's opinion.

i slept until 12:15 today. no, i'm not sick. no, i'm not hungover. just one of your good ol' fashioned "i'm sleeping in because i can". i exercised it like it was my right to vote.

so yeah. that's pretty much it.

i'm done nannying this week. monday was my last day and it wasn't the most ideal situation because the parents didn't tell the lil' dude that i was done. he was bummed. it made me sad. then we ate fruit snacks.

so as we know sunday was familybirthdaypalooza. sunday also was an evening devoted to my relatives asking me the following questions repeatedly:

- "did you get into grad school yet?"
- "so are you working at that retail crew store for like, a job?"

so after explaining again that no, i won't find out until this spring and no, the crew is not my career, i gave myself a present and bought myself some booty from cheapo (not the hooker kind, the pirate kind, but in the form of cds.)

in other news, i still don't know when i start my job AND my family has kind of unofficially adopted a cat that lives two streets away but apparently likes our garage. she is cute. i call her biscuit.

that's all i's gots today.

i didn't even know that could happen.

i have side stitch. from doing nothing. maybe the birthday cake i ate at my cousin's 2nd birthday party did it, for that is the most exhausting thing i have done. i don't know. it did have trucks on it. or maybe it was my nap that tuckered me out. either way. it hurts when i breathe and i'm slightly concerned/irritated.

now i have to go wish my grandmother a very happy "hey grandma, you're 365 days older. good job." if you know me and have heard stories about my grandma, trust me it makes sense.

i'll write more after i eat more cake.

and while you're at it, go jump in some leaves.

in some countries, they consider that a talent.

after i got done talking to jen tonight, i realized that the thumping inside my ear had returned. now i realize that it's not normal for one's inner ear to thump wildly at random intervals, and once it started happening a number of times in one day, it lead me to this conclusion:

i have ruptured my own eardrum.




yup. that's my ear.

in other news, i thought i'd bring everyone up to brief speed of the life of the pio.
- i no longer work at el clubo. due largely in part to two points down, but point being...no more.

- one could call me a "pseudo-nanny". yup, i watch one family of kiddles two nights a week. they're 5 and 3. they eat chicken nuggets and toast like it's fine cuisine and can be easily bribed with kit kats. in turn, i make lincoln log towers and they're in awe.

- this week i'm not just "pseudo-nanny", i'm THE nanny. i'm hanging out with a four year old as an emergency au pair replacement. it basically means i correct people when they ask if i'm the new nanny, avoid questions about the whereabouts of the old one and spend more time that deemed necessary outside. is was this job that made my time at the club kaput. not only my choice, but my boss was none too pleased, so i think i'm done.

- i'm only the emergency nanny for a week because...the mothership called me home and gave me a job. if you know me, you know where that is. i start my paperwork today. training on tuesday. some view a job working at jcrew fulltime slightly less than awesome (some even may call it the evil empire...), however, i call it heaven with a discount. ahh.

- on a bummer note, bob is no longer in the building. he just got too old. he had to go to the cow-print bed in the sky. it's sad, but it was "time", as those folks say.

enough of that. yeah, that pretty much covers it. other than that, i'm studying for the GRE. trying to motivate myself to sign up for it. somehow i think that by delaying signing up, i can delay taking it, thus delaying taking it the inevitable second time. i think it's stellar. however, i know a handful of folks who don't necessarily agree, so that's why you see me studying at bread and chocolate every saturday. hence last week's croissant story. yup, it's all a circle.

on that note, i'm out. i typed too late. now i can't take my tub and read before i go to bed because i have to get up early to answer more four year old questions about why the back of my car has no paint on it. (when i told him that it was because it got "scratched"...his response: "bummer.")

see what i do for you people? i sacrifice my tub time. and we all know how much i love my tub time. sheesh.

tomorrow, we blog...but tonight...we bathe.

yeah, i was all ambitious to write something tonight (and trust me, i have a lot. while it may not be quality, there will be a larger quantity.) but then i thought about how much nicer it would be to read while i take a tub.

(to those of you who aren't familiar with the pio vernacular, "take a tub" is translated as "taking a bath")

so yeah, tomorrow we will have tales of employment, haircuts and why i have a carseat in the backseat of leon.

till then.