12 Reasons Why I'm Awesome: 2011 In Review

Tomorrow is the last day of 2011 and frankly, I cannot wait for this shitty year to be over. Let's just say it's been a rough one and I'm looking forward to a hopefully better, more prosperous and happy 2012.

And now we move on to my annual year end tradition of listing my favorite posts from each month because yes, I am just that self-involved. I didn't write as much this year (see the above paragraph for my reason), so the pickings were a bit thin. BUT STILL AWESOME.


JANUARY

• The one with the dead body

FEBRUARY

• The one where I continue to stalk Harry Connick Jr.

MARCH

• The one with the frozen grapes

APRIL

• The one with the shoe song

MAY

• The one with the broken motel toilet

JUNE

• The one with my crazy coupon face

JULY

• The one with my Boo Boo

AUGUST

• The one with all the dicks

SEPTEMBER

• The one with the deleted talk show

OCTOBER

• The one with the Snatch Attack

NOVEMBER

• The one with the crab legs

DECEMBER

• The one with mother fucking ravioli night

Well, that's it for this year. Happy New Year to all you bad asses. Here's to a better year to come and me finally meeting Harry Connick Jr. It's like the man is purposely avoiding me or something, for Christ's sake.

I'm Pretty Sure I Had This Doll. Which Explains A Lot About Me.

I found this 1970's commercial on YouTube today. I'm almost positive someone gave me this doll for Christmas one year because I vaguely remember being terrified of it and refusing to sleep in my room until my mom got rid of it.



I don't know what scares me more...the doll or the creepy Exorcist head turns those kids are making. The only way this toy could have been worse is if they painted a clown face on it.



Oh shit.

Mother F’ing Ravioli Night

Since I haven’t been in much of a festive mood this year, I decided to force myself into holiday joviality by drinking. A lot. A real lot. Basically, I’ve been bombed two weekends in a row, with plans to make it a trifecta of drunkenness this weekend.

Two weekends ago, Captain Carl decided to have a ravioli dinner party at the house. His cool aunt was here along with her son, his girlfriend, my brother-in-law, Mailman Mike, and his girlfriend. If you knew this family, then you would know this was a recipe for insane amounts of alcoholic beverages and amazing food.

The Captain began preparations Saturday morning by MAKING HIS OWN RAVIOLI DOUGH. Oh yes…homemade pasta. It is as fantastic as it sounds, but let me tell you the downside of homemade pasta. The mess. Ohmygod the mess. See the Captain doesn’t just cook. He explodes. The kitchen is torn apart for even a simple meal for just the two of us. It puts me on edge to watch him. He says I’m too obsessive about things being neat and tidy. He is probably right. But still…gah.

Imagine the kind of mess making your own dough creates. Now multiple that by 50 and you’ll get the state of my kitchen that Saturday. Luckily for everyone involved, I had an appointment to get my hair cut that morning. So the Captain made his dough while I was gone. His aunt tried to keep up with the clean up so that I wouldn’t have a coronary when I got home. Have I mentioned how much I love her? So it wasn’t too bad when I got back. A little messy, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

Since I know my husband, I knew the mess was going to get worse before it got better. I decided to start drinking. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.

Best. Idea. Ever.

His aunt made us pomegranate martinis. Have I mentioned how much I love her? By this time, Mailman Mike and his girlfriend had arrived and they joined in on the drinking.

I forgot to mention that I had agreed to judge Christmas lights in our neighborhood for our HOA contest that night. For some reason, the Captain decided he should not drink because something something the only sober person in the house blah blah blah a bunch of drunk asses.

Flash forward to 5:30 and I’ve had six martinis, aka 9.5 shots of vodka, and I’m completed smashed. Mailman Mike has drank who the hell knows how many glasses of wine/rum/whiskey. The Captain's aunt and Mike's girlfriend look to be quite tipsy. It was a loud, obnoxious get-together. Every 10 minutes, one of us would get mad at someone for whatever drunk people get mad about and I would yell “Mother fucking ravioli night!!” for some reason. I have no idea why.

But because I was so sloshed, I had not been paying any attention to what was going on in the kitchen. The Captain had been busy working in there all afternoon making sauce, rolling out the little ravioli’s, etc. By about 6:00, I wandered into the kitchen and saw through my drunken haze what appeared to be every single mixing bowl, pot and pan strewn around the counters. This would normally give me a mild panic attack and I would have to get in there and start cleaning. But instead I just yelled “OMG I have to take a picture of this! Mother fucking ravioli night!”.

So we ate and it was amazing and totally worth the mess. Then we cleaned up the kitchen and headed out to judge Christmas lights. All 7 of us in one SUV. This meant the Captain's cousin and his girlfriend had to half sit, half lay down in the back cargo area of the vehicle. I sat in the backseat with Mailman Mike and his girlfriend. Mailman Mike and I were still completely drunk.

So. Imagine how awesome the Christmas light judging went. Especially for everyone else in the car who had to listen to the two drunk asses yelling out their windows “Not good enough!” and “Seriously, a giant snow globe? How unoriginal!” and “It’s like you’re not even TRYING!” at the houses that were lit up.

I had a fucking great time. The Captain, however, did not. He was tired from cooking all day and completely sober. So I guess he didn’t find it as funny as I did when Mailman Mike started singing Carol of the Bells in a falsetto with his own lyrics.

Here come the bells
Gay silver bells
See all the bells
Gay silver bells

And I guess he especially didn’t find it funny when Mailman Mike suggested that he could play the baby Jesus in the nativity scene on one person’s lawn and I yelled “Do it! Get out! Take off your clothes!”. Captain Carl was all “Knock it off, Marcy” and I was all “What? We’re having fun.” and he was all “Just STOP.”

Party pooper.

I found out later that he drove around the rest of the neighborhood with his finger on the door lock button.

Needless to say, I had a hangover the next morning. But hot damn did I have a good time.

Mother fucking ravioli night!

p.s. Merry Christmas, y'all. I won't be writing again before the 25th on account of celebrating with the Captain's family and most likely getting drunk again. A lot. A whole lot.

Here's To Less Zingers And More Birthdays

I don't write much here about my family, except for my husband and my kid. I like this blog to mainly be about stupid stuff. Things to hopefully make you laugh and probably to make you think I'm super weird. *cough* the frozen grapes post *cough* I like it that way. I don't like being all serious about shit. But lately I've been feeling pretty down in the dumps and serious faced.

But I've been thinking a lot about my Grandma this month. She loved Christmas. Every year when I was a kid, we would go to her house to celebrate. When I was little, I loved it. I had cousins to play with and presents to open and Hy-Vee brand grape soda to drink. When I was a teenager, I dreaded it. Because I was an asshole, just like every other teenager. I wanted to stay home and have sex with my boyfriend in the rumpus room. I did not want to hang out with all my old relatives and my stupid cousins that I had nothing in common with and drink stupid off-brand soda.

I wasted too many years with that attitude. Because now my Grandma is gone and I would do anything to get another Christmas with her. Granted, I lost the attitude long before she passed away and I had a very close relationship with her. In fact, I was probably closer to her than any of her other grandchildren (In your face, Mitchell).

But it still hurts when I pull out her recipe for Christmas cookies, or remember how she always sent me a Christmas card with $20 in it and signed it "Love you, honey". I miss her so much.

My Grandma had breast cancer. Twice. The first time, she beat it into remission with sheer willpower and faith in God. She had a mastectomy and then had radiation. She called her radiation treatments her "zingers". She would tell me not to worry because if it was her time, she was ready. She had an amazing attitude.

And then a couple years later, the cancer came back. But this time she was older and other problems with her aging body made it more difficult for her to fight. But she did fight. She fought for her husband, my Grandpa, who was terrified to be without her. She fought for her sons, who cried like little boys when they had to put her back in the hospital.

But in the end, breast cancer was just too much for a 92 year old woman to fight. And even though I was grateful for her long, beautiful life and her precious spirit and the gift of faith she gave all of us, I was angry. Angry that she had to spend so many years fighting a disease that ravaged her body. Her cancer was not a tragedy in the way that it is for the young men and women who have lost their own fights with the disease. She was able to see her children, her grandchildren and even some great-grandchildren grow up. But she did suffer. And that is reason enough for me to hope for a cure.

So Merry Christmas to my Grandma, who I absolutely know is an angel up there somewhere. And here's to less "zingers" and more birthdays for everyone.



This post is sponsored by American Cancer Society.

Wendy's Be Bawlin', Yo

You know how when you're having a really shitty week and feeling like life just general sucks and then your friend emails you something completely random and totally awesome and it makes you laugh so hard that a little pee comes out?

Yeah, that was me yesterday. After reading some of the comments on my last post that a lot of you need a little pick me up too.

I present to you...the best restaurant review of all time.


You're welcome.

‘Tis The Season To Be Those Relatives

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know that Captain Carl and I are pretty strapped for cash these days. I don’t care what the politicians and polls say, the economy in our world is not recovering yet. I have a good job and the Captain is doing okay with his business, but we are just barely making ends meet. So he continues to job search and I continue to kick ass at work in the hopes of getting another pay raise and a promotion. And of course we still have Huey, who basically pays the Kiddo’s allowance with his rent each month.

I’m not going to complain about having less than other people. Mainly because we used to be the “other people” and we completely fucked it up by being arrogant and dumb about jobs and money. We’ve learned our lesson and now we’re just trying to hang on until we can pad the savings account again.

But in the meantime, the Christmas season has arrived. And damn, but it came faster this year than other years for some reason. I wasn’t prepared for it like I was last year. Last year I set aside a fair amount of cash for presents early on. I had most of my shopping done by the end of October. But not this year. This year, I completely put it off and now I’m paying for it. Well, our families are paying for it actually.

See, we just don’t have enough money to buy everyone nice presents. It’s just not possible. We now live credit card free, so we must have the money up front for everything we need. It’s a hard lifestyle when you are on a budget, especially after using credit for everything under the sun like we used to do. Sometimes we have to get creative, but so far we’ve made it work and I’m pretty proud of that.

Except it leaves very little for gifts. So we had to tell our families that gifts will be small. They understood, of course, but we still feel bad. I’ve shopped sales, something I’m really good at anyway, and have managed to find something for everyone. And we are making homemade candy to supplement our paltry offerings.

It’s not about how much you spend. It’s the thought that counts. Remember the real reason for the season.

That’s what I keep telling myself. And I’ve been quite proud of us, actually. Everyone will get something nice and it will be a heartfelt gift.

But then I talk to other people and hear about all the things they’ve bought over the weekend for their relatives. A laptop, a wool coat, a flat screen tv, an iPad 2...

And I start to feel like an asshole.

My stupid little gifts…a scarf, some lotion, a book…are now super lame and sad. They scream “Merry Christmas. We can’t afford to buy you anything awesome.” And now I want to call everyone and beg them to please please please not buy us anything expensive. Not because I don’t think they can afford it, but because it will make me feel bad when I open their gifts. I don’t want anyone to spend $100 on me when I can only spend $10 on them.

But it’s hard to tell your family that. Especially when you know they’ll just say “Oh, don’t worry! It makes me feel good to buy you things!”. And there’s just no Christmas-y way to say “Well it makes me feel like shit when you do.”

We’re tired of being “those relatives”. The ones that everyone knows are broke and can’t go on trips and can’t go out to eat every weekend and can’t buy the things they really want to give their family at Christmas. Not that it really matters. Because what’s most important is that our family is healthy and happy and blah blah blah.

Whatever. Maybe next year we will get rich and buy everyone an iPad3 and a 3D tv and then we can be all “Jesus is the reason for the season, but who cares because I’m totally wearing 3D glasses!”.