So, I officially cancelled my gym membership yesterday. Not because I am in such good shape that I no longer need to work out or because I have learned every exercise known to man and have nothing left to learn. It's more like, I haven't actually stepped foot in the gym in probably 3 months, maybe more, and before that one week experience I think there was another 3 or so month hiatus so you know what? I need to stop lying to myself that I will get in there "one day" and just stop shoveling money out that I don't have every month for something I don't use. Right? RIGHT! Plus, like my hubby stated so accurately the other day, "You don't like working out" - Exactly! I'm glad someone knows the truth. I mean, I always feel good afterward but I'm just too lazy to actually get there in the first place. I would rather ride my bike or swim or take the dog out for a walk. So, bye bye gym. You won't be missed...

In other news...I just found out that I may be going to a conference for work in a couple of weeks in NYC! I am so excited. I think the hotel room block is all booked up so I will get to stay with one of my bestest friends (my preference but don't tell the company that!) and then we can go out to dinner and play and go to work cocktail parties and shop! Woo Hoo! I just hope it's not 900 degrees that week. The muggy, hot weather in NYC in the summer is unbearable sometimes, even in the shade of the skyscrapers. Actually, I think the tall buildings keep all the smog and heat in the city and it's pretty rough!

Anyway, that's all I got...back to work!

flushy

So...my company is getting on the "green" wagon these days. In doing so they've installed these water saving toilet handles in the bathrooms but they are so weird and confusing - yes, I have a small brain!

Anyway, the idea is to use only the water that you "need" in terms of what you have "produced" in the bathroom. So, when you have just liquid waste, you pull the handle upward. When your waste is "solid" you push down on the handle. Do you know how hard it is to train a woman that has been pushing/stepping down on public toilet handles for 30 years to make a conscious effort to either pull it up or push it down? And, don't you think that since the most common extraction is urine that you would do the most natural flushing technique, which to me is downward? I mean, could they make it any more difficult? I swear I have a panic attack every time I go to the bathroom now trying to figure out which way I'm supposed to flush. The whole thing is just yucky! I mean, the most I've ever had to think about in the bathroom is "The Cast of Dirty Dancing, Where are they Now?" in my People magazine. I can't take this kind of pressure in the bathroom, I just can't!

Well, let me tell you, and I'm sure all of you US peeps will agree, this was a much needed long weekend. It was great. The hubby and I only had one invitation that was "mandatory" and spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and picking and choosing what we felt like doing. And that is a great feeling! That and waking up late on Sunday and thinking, Ahhhh...we have one more whole day before we have to go to work.

Friday we all got off early from work and met up with some friends at our favorite Mexican joint and proceeded to sit outside and drink margaritas from about 5pm - 11:30pm. It was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Saturday, you know, my day off from taking care of the dog, we stayed in bed until almost noon BUT, somehow I am the only one who hears the pooch. So, the morning consisted of:

7am
Me: Baaaabe, the dog needs to go out
TSO: huh? (shuffle, turn, snore)

7:08am
Me: Babe, the dog is crying. She needs to go out!
TSO: uuhggh mumble mumble...(gets up, takes dog out)

7:30am
Me: Babe, the dog is eating something - is the bathroom door closed?
TSO: (gets up, removes toilet paper roll from puppy's mouth, closes bathroom door)

8am
Me: HUBBY! The dog is crying at the door, SHE NEEDS TO GO OUT!
TSO: takes dog out, mumbles some expletives under his breath...

9am
Me: please turn over and STOP SNORING! (probably about 10 times)
TSO: goes to the living room and crashes on the couch

9am - 12pm
and so on and so forth...

Isn't it funny that even though it was my "day off" I was the ONLY one who heard every damn thing the dog did, wanted, cried, whatever? I guess women are just instinctively mothers, huh?

We went down to the waterfront in Georgetown on Saturday night after stopping by my parent's house to see my two youngest sisters off to the PROM! OY, I feel old. But, the ladies looked lovely and the boys were all gentlemen, even though I am really surprised to see how short the dresses have become.

Sunday we relaxed for a while until our one mandatory event, which by the way was not too shabby! We had dinner at the in-laws and I'm just glad we didn't make any other plans! On the menu, steaks and lobster tails on the grill...how can you beat that? It was great.

Monday the dog slept until 9am. I could have kissed her. Oh wait, I did. For some reason she doesn't love it when I kiss her on the lips yet she makes it a habit of sticking her tongue in my mouth when I'm not expecting it...weird. And by the way, I don't care how many times you tell me that dog's mouths are cleaner than humans and blah, blah, blah - my dog licks her ass and her vagina on a regular basis. I don't EVER feel the need for her tongue to touch mine. EVER!

Yesterday we went to visit my mom and run the dog ragged in her yard then to a cookout. Life is good.

How great is it that it's Tuesday? Only 3 more days 'til the weekend!

Oh holy lord I'm so glad that it's Friday and that it's a LONG weekend! And the fine managers at my place of employment are letting us leave early so that makes it even sweeter! AND, AND, AND...we're done with Puppy School so I don't have to get up at the butt crack of dawn on Saturday morning. As a matter of fact, I might not get out of bed at all...(Hubby, if you're reading this - The dog needs to go out, and I'm not taking her)

The weather is supposed to be spectacular this weekend and for the first time in maybe 10 years or more we're not going to the beach for the long weekend. It's usually rainy and cold this weekend every year when we go to the beach. Figures! But, it's okay. Hopefully we'll get lots of stuff done around the house and be able to relax a little. We have some cook-outs to go to and I'm sure there's plenty of drinking to be done.

The pup is doing great. Taking Pepcid two times a day and keeping all of her food down. Next time she starts puking I'll try not to freak out so much...I'll TRY!

Does anyone have any special plans for this weekend? Whatever you do, I hope you enjoy it! Happy Memorial Day Weekend (for the US peeps at least), for you others - have a great "short" weekend, he he...

Nola

The pup is sick. She's been sick for a few days now and I'm so worried about her. It's crazy how much you love and worry about these little monsters once they're in your life!

Anyway, the little angel hasn't been able to keep food down in a couple of days. I had to call the emergency animal hospital at 4am on Tuesday and they told us to call the vet in the AM. I called the vet and she told us to keep an eye on her. Then we fed her Tuesday evening and it happened again. I called the emergency line and they told us to not give her food or water over night then in the morning give her boiled rice and/or chicken and then call the vet. well our little picky eater put her nose up at the rice so I gave her some potato rolls which she promptly threw up. But I know the poor thing is hungry. Well, when I finally called the vet she told us to get her some Pepcid and give it to her 2 times a day before meals and to give her a few smaller meals throughout the day. Weird huh?

The good thing is she is totally in good spirits. She's running around, tail wagging, high energy, wants to play like usual. And it's odd but I guess the hospital and my vet don't really see this as a huge emergency. I guess they see this all the time but it's the first time for us so we're freaking out. I just hope our baby gets better soon. Being a parent is scary!

Cake Bake Attempt #1

So this Saturday we went to Wine in the Woods, a wine festival in Maryland. It was a blast. It was perfect weather, great bands and lots and lots of wine...It was a lot of fun. Afterward our whole crew went back to one of our friend's houses that lives close by and drank more, because we really needed more alcohol, cooked out and danced our little butts off. Well, the girls did anyway. We had a great time.

On Sunday it was time for the cake tasting. I am including pictures but please keep in mind, all of these are just practice. I was trying out different icings, textures, flavors, decorations and I didn't even really go nuts. I kept it pretty simple. So, without further ado, here are the cakes:

1) Chocolate cake with a cream cheese and raspberry jam filling. A Cream cheese icing covering the cake and fresh flowers.

2) A fluffy white cake with a lemon curd and fresh raspberry filling. A whipped vanilla flavored icing. Fresh Raspberries on top. Black ribbon around bottom

3) A dark chocolate cake with a chocolate ganache and cream cheese filling, layer of chocolate ganache on top covered with white fondant. Whipped vanilla icing piped along bottom.

So, none of them looked quite professional but I think I did a pretty good job for my first attempt. They all tasted pretty good and I think we're going with the dark chocolate cake and a raspberry filling. The cream cheese icing was my favorite. I swear I think I gained back the 10 pounds I lost this weekend "sampling" the icing as I was making the cake. It just mysteriously kept getting on my fingers and I had to lick it off...over and over again! I think we're going to go with white fondant and then my cousins fiance wants a cool fondant design we saw in a bridal magazine. I'm going to practice and pray that I can make it look nice for the wedding day. I was surprised at how well I did with the fondant on my first try.

Anyway, it was a great weekend. I hope everyone else had a nice weekend too!

So, I'm taking on a project that I may very well regret. Well, isn't that true with everything?

Anyway, my cousin and his fiance are getting married in September. It will be kind of low key, probably outside, tents, that whole deal. And I've agreed to make the wedding cake...YIKES! Am I crazy? I don't know yet...

I've never made a wedding cake. Actually, I've never made a cake from scratch so this could be interesting. As some of you may know I do have a bit of a creative vibe going on and I do really love to cook/bake so I can't imagine that it will be that horrible, right? Ahhhh!

This weekend we are having a "tasting". I plan to make 3 mini wedding cakes that will each vary slightly. I am making a Lemon-Raspberry wedding cake that is basically a fluffy white cake with lemon curd (i hate the word "curd") and fresh raspberries in between the layers and then I think I'll try a buttercream icing topped with fondant. The second I plan to attempt will be a chocolate cake with maybe a raspberry jam type filling between layers and either buttercream or cream cheese icing. And lastly I am going to do a dark chocolate wedding cake with a chocolate orange ganache in between layers and then probably fondant icing.

I hope I'm not getting in too deep but I think I can handle it. I have NO idea what I'll do to make them look nice but that has got to be the most fun part. Wish me luck! I'll take pic's of the mini cakes this weekend and let you know which one, if any, becomes the chosen cake for the wedding...

WARNING! Rant ahead...get out while you can...

For those of you that DO have children, did you wonder what kind of parent you would turn out to be? Do you think you succeeded? Do you think your children reflect the values that you wanted to and continue to teach them? Did you want to raise your children like your parents raised you?

And for those of you that do NOT have children, do you ever wonder what kind of parent you'll be? Do you have a plan? Do you know certain things that you absolutely want to instill in your children and things that are not as important? Do you think you'll be successful? Do you want to raise your children the way your parents raised you?

I'm not asking these questions because I'm planning to have children. Well, not yet, in the future perhaps but not yet. I'm asking these questions for a couple of reasons. One is an "incident" that happened with my MIL last week, well, more like reoccurring behavior of my mother in law, and the other is kind of an inspiration from reading this week's Mother's Day themed Post Secrets.

I will preface the next paragraph by saying that I don't in any way think that my parents or my upbringing was perfect and of course anything different than the way we know them is considered "wrong". I also want to say that I truly love my mother in law. I think she is a wonderful woman and I don't know if I could have picked a better MIL or family to marry into.

With that said, she is a very calculated, manipulative woman. But in a very sweet, smile in your face, stab you in the back kind of way...(I'm sure the hubby's gonna love this post). Anyway, the MIL is the mother of 3 boys. She has always been the matriarch. She has always been the ONLY woman in the house, and she's used to her boys doing whatever she wants, whenever she wants. And when she doesn't, she'll make you feel guilt you almost didn't think you were capable of feeling and often she'll throw in a "punishment" to go along with it. As you can imagine this must have made it almost impossible to say no to her growing up.

Well, as adults her children STILL don't say no to her and when they do the consequences are so childish and fucked up that you almost want to puke. Now, I won't say I didn't grow up with some guilt. First of all I'm Catholic, that should speak for itself. Second, I come from a divorced family and I feel bad when I don't spend time with or do things for my parents/families. I also put this guilt on myself, they don't try to make me feel bad as punishment.

Now ALL THIS just to get to the bottom line...My MIL decided to go away for Mother's Day. The thing is, she just expected everyone to drop everything with no warning and come with her. Well, hubby and I had a wedding to go to on Saturday night so traveling last weekend was not an option. This was unacceptable to her. She was not only pissed, making my husband guilty and in turn so pleasant to be around, but she threw in a couple of "punishments" for him. Things like taking a half day off work to drive to another town and help his family load things in their car and driving an hour away at 9 o'clock on Sunday evening to pick someone up for her. And believe me, I'm sure there's more to come and the hubby can not say no to any of it.

The problem is, this is how this woman operates. I don't know if I'll be able to handle incidents like this for years to come without one day losing it, confronting her and causing world war 3. She tends to not realize that her boys are grown up now and they have WIVES that unfortunately come first now. For as generous and loving as this woman is, she is also childish and vindictive.

Does anyone else have anyone like this in their lives? Are you like this? God, I hope I'm not coming off as a spoiled bitch. I can say it a million times but I really do love this woman as if she were my own blood relative - I think that's why I can see the good and the bad in her....There are a lot of things that I want to repeat when it comes to raising my own children like my husband and I were raised and with some very important values that our parents have taught us. But I know for sure that I will never make my children feel guilty for not doing things with me, having a different opinion than mine or punish them for having a life of their own as they become adults.

Well, I hope everyone had a lovely Mother's Day. I know it was a perfect day here. The weather was absolutely beautiful and we were outside all day long. Even the pup got to enjoy the beautiful day. I went with flowers from Trader Joe's for the mom's. They were beautiful and cheap, which never seems like a possibility but it worked out this year!

Saturday night we had one of the million weddings of the year to go to. So far this year we've been to one in New Orleans, one in Florida and this one that was thankfully local. We still have one in Baltimore, and two others in Maryland this summer/fall. It's wedding season I presume.

The wedding on Saturday was a lot of fun. The bride and groom looked great and we got to hang with a lot of old friends. Some that live close by and some that came from as far as Asia!

In "lighter" news, I think I've lost 10 pounds! Woo Hoo!! I've been dieting and the scale we have at home is a mystery to me so I might be wrong but I think it's somewhere in the 10 lb range. I'm going to the doc's next week so hopefully I'll know for sure then. Why is it so damn hard for women to lost weight? Life is so unfair sometimes...I swear, the hubby could look at a salad and lose 10 pounds.

Anyway, it's Monday and well, nothing exciting about that. Hope everyone has a good one...

So, I try not to ever talk about or mention my "work" on this blog because I don't want to be one of those people that gets fired because someone at work happens upon it and figures out who I am and decides it's inappropriate. Although, I'm fairly certain almost everyone I work with has some type of blog or on-line journal going on. I actually visit one of my co-worker's blogs regularly.

Anyway, I'm talking about work now.

So we got a new GM. The new GM is based out of the opposite side of the country with no intentions of moving here which is fine and better for business I presume. GM also probably comes with a posse of peeps that she employs wherever she goes. Her "team" as it were. And that's fine too. I mean, that's how the world works. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Especially in the line of work that I'm in. Bottom line, I think I will be out a job in a few months.

I'm not worried or scared. I mean, I have been here for, wow, probably close to 8 years now, but I am a firm believer that things happen for a reason and that things always seem to work themselves out. I think what I am is just shocked. I mean, the reality of this and the fact that it most likely will happen is just weird. Maybe I'll find another position within the company or maybe they'll offer me a package to leave. Now THAT would be awesome. I would take the package and then take some time off and then scramble to find a new job, kidding. But, we'll see what happens. I think I just need to talk about it and not with the people that I work with and that are nervous and freaking out.

So basically, I will probably be losing my job here soon unless there is some kind of miracle that I'm not betting on. That is all...

Today is Tuesday and I feel like I've been here all week already. Yesterday I worked from 8:30am until 8:30pm and was back in again today at 8:30am. It's a busy, busy week here at the ole' office!

Sunday the hubby and I had my parents and sisters over to thank them for watching our pooch while we were away in Florida. We made a KICK ASS dinner. Beautifully marbled rib eye steaks on the grill, lobster tails with cumin and lime butter on the grill, avocado and mango salad with a lime, mint vinaigrette a rice dish and for desert La Bete Noir (The Black Beast) - a flourless chocolate cake with chocolate ganache accompanied by vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries and blackberries. Everything turned out so well!! So - if anyone wants to volunteer to watch our dog for us in the future, you know what you'll get in return. Kind of sweetens the deal, huh?

So this Sunday is Mother's day and I have no idea what to get my multiple mothers. I mean, I don't really go all out for Mom's day as it is b/c I have no money and really, at this age, what the hell do you get your mom? It was cute when I was little and macaroni art was sufficient but now I'm all out of ideas. I'm thinking a nice bouquet of flowers for the MIL, Step-mom and mom. Can't go wrong with that. Anyone have any other inexpensive gift ideas?

Well, back to work. Hope Everyone is having a great week so far!

Yayyy! It's Friday and I think this may be my busiest day at work this week, YUCK!

One of my best friends is in town from Manhattan so all the girls are going out tonight, if I ever get out of here!

So, I took the pooch to my softball game last night and I can't believe I ever questioned why we got her! She did so well. She used to be so shy and timid around people but last night she was so friendly. She let people pet her, she walked up to people on her own, she was so cute. She made me proud. She sat when I told her to, she didn't pee anywhere inappropriate and she reassured me why I love her so much. She's my baby and I'll deal with my selfishness somehow. I'll just have to drug her and stuff her into my luggage when we travel, or I'll owe a lot of people some major favors for being so nice and watching her for me...The hubby thinks she's been reading this blog because literally since yesterday she is a changed dog. She has just been behaving so well.

Anyway, nothing too exciting going on this weekend. Hopefully the weather stays nice for us. Hope you all have a great weekend!

I went and saw Hot Fuzz on Tuesday night. If you're considering seeing it go. It was quite funny. It started a little slow. Well, not slow. It just seemed very "serious" at the beginning and I caught myself thinking, isn't this movie supposed to be funny? But it didn't disappoint.

Did anyone watch LOST last night? It was delicious! Another great show and next week looks like it's gonna be a great one too!

So I have to admit something that I am really embarrassed about...I think I'm having puppy regret. Don't get me wrong, I love this damn dog. She is the cutest little thing and every time she looks at me with those sweet little puppy eyes or comes and wakes me up in the morning with a sloppy wet kiss I love her even more. But...this morning on the way to work I started thinking of last summer and then how different this summer is going to be. No more picking up and going to the beach for the weekend. No more running to Manhattan to visit friends on a whim. We have to plan our trips and even just our normal outings around the dog and whether or not we have someone to watch her. My parents/sisters already watched her when we went away to Florida a few weeks ago and we have a couple of other options in terms of family/friends watching her but you can only rely on those resources so much and you can only call on people so many times before they're sick of you and your dog.

I don't know. We'd never get rid of the dog, I don't think we could handle that, but I'm just feeling a little conflicted. I know soon enough she won't be such a puppy anymore and she won't be so needy, waking up at 5 and 6am to go pee. She'll stop chewing on socks and we'll be able to leave her for longer periods of time making life a little easier. It's also hard because I want to take her everywhere with us but it's just not possible and then I feel guilty. Most places are just not pet friendly. I guess I'm just kind of mourning the loss of our freedom.

Is this gonna get any easier? What the hell will I do if I have kids? I guess you can take those little animals with you most places, unlike a dog...