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.

ya. i almost forgot der.

i almost forgot. last night was like an almost homage to my half german forefathers and my polish-sounding last name. we thought we'd catch up with some people at gausthaf's and despite my germanness, i didn't make the connection between german bar and october.

what does that get you?...oktoberfest. (or, if you're feeling all englishy, octoberfest.)

and what did that get me?...tipsy and without at jagermeister hat. which looked awesome. and apparently could only get from said jagermeister girls who we missed. and i wasn't even feeling beery, so i didn't get a mug. because i just couldn't justify drinking rum and coke out of a beer stein. i know. i let great-grandpa ferdinand* and the rest of the fam down.

in case you're having a hard time, here's some stereotypical octoberfest crap to put you in the mood:


ah. because nothing says "october" like short shorty-type jumpsuits and busty blondes.

so once we decided we were done feeling german, we traipsed (yes, traipsed) across town to nye's. oh how i dig nye's.
here's an idea of what i'm talking about...



now, in the daylight, it looks kinda shady, but at nighttime, it's a veritable polish paradise, complete with jumbo sized drinks, sparkly gold plastic booths and pierogies. not to mention on the weekends, they have a piano bar AND a polish polka band complete with accordion. it's so cool, my cousin met her husband there and they lived happily sodium-free ever after. it's kitschy, it's deeelightful. i don't think we go there quite enough. all that enthusiasm and we were even late for pierogies.

it was all good in the hood though, as they say.

all in all, i felt it was a decent eastern european themed saturday night. even my fake polish relatives would be proud.

wow. two posts in a day. that's an AP record if we ever saw one. now i'm really done.

*ps: for the record, i really did have a great-grandpa ferdinand. he had awesome eyebrows. and my grandparents thought it would be a really awesome idea to pay tribute to ol' ferd with me. yup, the grandparents pio wanted yours truly to be named ferdinand if i was a boy fetus. just imagine...if officer dad and the jane were easily-convinced individuals and i was a boy, you all would not be friends with amanda piotraschke, but ferdinand piotraschke. it does have a nice ring to it though, maybe the dog will have to be named ferdinand instead of henry, or perhaps i will purchase a bull of some sort.

please stop oogling my croissant.

no. "croissant" isn't another one of my terms for body parts that shouldn't be a part of normal public conversation (unless one or all parties are intoxicated. because sometimes using the word "boobies" when you're drunk brings a preschool-level of entertainment. and a large case of the giggles.)

with that being said, yes, my croissant was oogled today. by a big ol' burly dude while i was working on stuff at bread and chocolate. there i was, just workin' on my flash cards, reasoning that due to my extensive private school education, i had words like "devout", "pious" and "dogmatic" in the bag, when i look up and this mister is staring at my ham and cheese croissant. i had half left and i didn't know how to proceed. do i eat and rub it in his face? or do i jump ship all together and cease the eating? it was beyond creepy. but i'm trying to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and think that maybe he's not allowed to eat croissants, whether dictated by his doctor or something. so it was merely longing at the fact that he wanted one, but couldn't. because if i think of it anyway else, it just gets creepy.

i could have put a picture of a similar looking croissant. but i didn't. that takes far too much energy.

in other AP-centric news, i went to an interview today. found out that if they hire me, i get 40% off stuff. i like the sound of le crueset cookware at a generous discount. tomorrow i have my interview at what some people view as the evil empire, but i view as the mothership. complete with overpriced umbrellas. yes, they do sell umbrellas now. i'm getting mine in purple.

watched the godfather on bravo. we all know how much i enjoy a good godfather screening. however, i don't so much dig it on cable. the dubbing over offensive words and the cuts to commercial right after all the good parts just don't do it for me. while watching however, we learned three things.
1.) i have not been following my slipper pattern for roughly two weeks. that's one fugly looking slipper to rip apart, let me tell you.

2.) the all american recreation girls a.) aren't very telegenic, b.) shouldn't really be singing on tv and b.) should lay off the white, sparkly eyeshadow

and finally 3.) every time i see the commercial for cameron crowe's elizabethtown, orlando bloom gets a little bit cuter and i have the urge to see it more and more, despite that i read that it's waaay too long. (ooh. i almost felt like a movie snob there. shiver me timbers.)

aaaalllright. i'm out. there are pants that need to be ironed.