an Easter ham(mock)

On Sunday, I made my final student loan payment.

Hallelujah.

And on Monday, I quit my job.

JUST KIDDING.

But wait until you hear what we did do on Monday.  For a long time we've had our eye on something, and finally decided to pull the trigger (or press the 'buy now' button) on the item this week after the last loan was paid off.  

The item?  A hammock.  I know, so fancy.

I had dreams of lying out in the yard on a warm afternoon with a book and a glass of iced tea and eating a tomato picked right off the vine, still warm from the sun, swinging away in my hammock.

We've actually discussed the hammock purchase since last summer, and at first we thought maybe we would put two concrete posts in the yard to hang the hammock from, since we don't have any conveniently spaced trees.  I can't tell you how many evenings Matt and I wandered around the backyard while he said, "So, where do you want me to put you?  I could you put you over there by the raspberry bushes so you can get some sun.  Or if you want part shade I'll put you over by the bird feeder."  I don't know why but that always cracked me up.

Anyway, the following morning I still riding high on the loan payoff and decided to treat myself to a celebratory Starbucks like I was a Rockefeller or something.  While I was in line, Matt texted me that the hammock had been delivered.

I was working from home, so I my iced cinnamon almondmilk macchiato and I drove home excitedly to see the hammock.  But, it wasn't there.  A search of the tracking number showed that it had been delivered and placed under the mailbox, but the only thing I could see under the mailbox was a hydrangea that I'm hoping will come back to life this year with a little hope and a lot of Miracle Gro.

I ended up calling the good old United States Postal Service, only to feel like I was about to incur more student debt because you practically need a Ph.D. to figure out how to speak to an actual person.

Finally, I just kept yelling "AGENT! AGENT! AGENT!" to all of the voice prompts until I got a human.  The woman I spoke with said, "Hmm.  I hope this is all just a big mistake.  But you should know that sometimes the postal carrier marks the item delivered before it is actually delivered."

Well, that makes complete sense.

She gave me an incident number and told me to call back in three days if the hammock hadn't shown up, so that was 43 minutes well spent.

Lo and behold, around 3:00, the hammock arrived.

Damaged.

I hoped for the best and summoned all my herculean strength and took that bad boy out to the yard and put it together.  I only got about 90% finished because I could not get the rope to stretch to the other side.

Matt stretched it when he got home, and I set to work tying on the cushion and pillow.

And then the tie for the pillow came right off.

HAMMOCKS ARE SO RELAXING.

Finally we got it all set up and I went for an inaugural swing.  Despite the rocky start, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

i wrote this whole post while on hold with the USPS

I have a lot of vacation time I have to use up by the end of June, so I took Friday off and went to visit my niece.  I picked her up from daycare before lunch and we spent the rest of the day together.  I know I’m biased but she is the cutest thing ever.  She talks a little bit, but what I really wish she could tell me is how she gets so much volume in her hair.

We did a LOT of reading, and I love this picture because the book is as big as she is and she’s holding it up with her feet.

One of my good friends got married on Saturday and the ceremony wasn’t until 5:30.  When we got the invitation I said, “Awesome, a 5:30 wedding means we can still be super productive and get a lot done that day before we have to leave.”

Do you know what I did before the wedding?

Laid around, read my book, laid around, painted my nails, laid around. 

So it wasn’t exactly productive, but it was relaxing.

The wedding was a blast.  We had a fun table and the food was amazing.  The bride is one of the most genuine, kind people I’ve ever known, and the groom is hilarious, and everyone was just so happy for them. 

All of my wedding dreams came true (aside from marrying Matt, obviously) when halfway through the night, the DJ said, “I didn’t know this until I walked around and his buddies told me, but the groom is a closet Meatloaf fan!” and then proceeded to play a Meatloaf medley.

AM I AT A WEDDING RECEPTION OR IN HEAVEN?

The icing on the cake was when we were driving home and the radio DJ said “stay tuned, we will be giving away Zac Brown Band tickets in the upcoming future.”

The upcoming future.  

As opposed to what?  The past future?

It sounds something the Department of Redundancy Department would say, and it cracked me up.  If I ever start a band, I'm going to name it The Upcoming Future.

I felt like Cinderella because before the clock struck midnight I’d traded my fancy dress and makeup and pearls for sweatpants and my nighttime mouth guard and I woke up on Sunday morning with a slightly swollen and infected eye.

My eye has improved slightly, but I'm hoping it's completely healed sometime in the upcoming future.

case in point

Yes, like proofreading the subject line of a mass email.

tomorrow, matt gets tasered voluntarily

I thought I'd give an update on our last few sessions of Citizen's Police Academy, now that we are halfway through.  I'll start with this.  At the end of the last class, the officer said, "Next week we're going to learn about tasers.  Anyone willing to volunteer to be tasered?  How about you, Matt?"

And Matt said, "Yea, sure, I'll do it."  

I whispered to him, "Are you crazy? Why would you want to be tasered?" and he said, "Think about it.  What other time in your life will you ever be shot with a taser?"

Well, my goal is hopefully never.

The topic last week was use of force, and our speaker was an officer who was shot in the line of duty in 2008 trying to protect a family during a domestic dispute.  He recovered from his injury, still works for our police department, and was promoted to detective a few years later, but the incident still affects him.  He shared the circumstances of that night and then played the dispatch recording, and his fellow officers suddenly shouting "Shots fired! Shots fired! Officer shot! Officer down! We need an ambulance!"  To listen to that recording while the officer who was shot was standing in front of all us still wearing that badge was sobering.

Two weeks ago, the class focused on the K-9 units.

 There are five K-9 units in the department, but the pair that came to class was the first female officer and first female canine.  Learning about the training and what it takes to become a K-9 unit was fascinating.  The dog was imported from the Netherlands as a puppy, has been by her handler's side every minute of every day since, runs 30 miles per hour, can locate the scent of 19 different drugs, explosive material, and just that week she had been taken out to a bank robbery and located a pair of headphones that the suspect had thrown a few blocks away from the bank.

We got to see exactly how strong the dog was when another officer came out wearing a thick sleeve on his arm and canine handler sent the dog after him.

She locked her jaw on his arm and did not let go, until her officer yelled BREAK.  As soon as she said it, the dog immediately released his arm and ran right back to her.  I spent the rest of the night wondering why any criminal would continue to put up a fight after hearing an officer say, "I'm sending in my dog!"

And then, star student Matt was selected to play tug of war with the dog.  He said that even on the tile floor, where she had no grip and was sliding around, she was incredibly strong.

The week before that was traffic safety which I found to be kind of a snoozer but Matt loved.  I was not at all surprised because as he drives around town he gives out hypothetical moving violations to fellow motorists.

"That Camry didn't signal their lane change."

"Not supposed to turn left across a double yellow, sir."

"Wipers on? Lights on."

What I did find incredibly terrifying was the number of trucks and tractor trailers JUST IN OUR TOWN that are taken off the road each year because their mechanical and/or structural deficiencies are so significant they are not safe to drive one more mile.

That was all I could think about as I drove to work the next morning, and I am here to tell you I spent all 12 miles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike trying to get away from the trucks.

It meant a lot of lane changing, but don't worry, I signaled every time.

cesar millan, what do you think of this pearl?

My mom has always liked to share her "pearls of wisdom" with my siblings and me, little life tips that she wants to pass along to us.  Some of her classic pearls are: don't put wooden salad bowls in the dishwasher or you will ruin them, don't ever buy store brand mayonnaise, you gotta look out for number one, and nothing good happens after 11 pm on a Tuesday.

Now, Mom (and Dad) have a different kind of Pearl in their life.

My dad was traveling yesterday so I stopped home to let Pearl out for a bit, and I got to see firsthand their current attempts at keeping Pearl off of the furniture: balloons and chafing trays.

(Pearl looks totally unimpressed.)

This particular Pearl of mom's is a bit of a challenge.

But she sure is cute.

day in the life - prepare to be underwhelmed

Some of my favorite posts to read are day in the life posts, because I guess I'm nosy.  At work a few weeks ago we had to do a time study exercise and record our day in 15 minute increments and I LOVED IT.  So I figured I'd do a day in the life post, even though no one except maybe my sister will find it interesting.

I picked a day and took photos a few weeks ago, forgot about it, and when I got around to writing the post, I could not remember one thing I did that day.  Did you listen to the first season of the Serial podcast, when Sarah Koenig asks high school students to account for their whereabouts on a day in the recent past?

That was me.  I hadn't the foggiest recollection.

So, I decided to do a second take on Thursday.

I should start by saying that my job is unique in that I have a home-based position, but I supervise 12 people in three different offices, so I travel to those offices 3-4 times a week, and work from home the other days.  I can make my own schedule, which I like, but last Thursday I unintentionally scheduled three different meetings in three different offices, so it was a busier day than most.

Matt usually leaves for work before me, and kisses me goodbye and always says something when he leaves-- I just never know what it's going to be.  Sometimes it's a joke, sometimes it's sweet, sometimes it's "you kind of hogged the bed last night and kicked your socks off on my side."  On this day it was the inspirational message to "cherish today, live for tomorrow," said in a very dramatic voice.

I always say "Have a great day" in as cheerful a voice as I can muster at that hour and act like I'm going to hop right out of bed but then I continue to lay there/go back to sleep for anywhere from 2-60 minutes.

On this day it was only 2 minutes because I had an early morning.  I showered and then drank my coffee while I did my makeup, listened to a podcast, and made the bed.


(Side note, we got new coffee this week and when Matt was making it the night before, he looked at the bag and said,  "Well I guess I like my coffee like I like my women - rich, complex, and full-bodied."  I laughed for ten hours at that.)

Then I headed to the kitchen to make a smoothie and pack my lunch.  My smoothie doesn't ever look one bit appetizing but it tasted good and made me feel healthy and I suppose it's better than the Oreo and peanut butter I regularly enjoyed for "breakfast" from the years of 2011-2014.

I left my house at 7:30 and got to the office at 8:15.  The meeting was at 8:30, and was only about 20 minutes, so I chatted with the paralegals there for a few minutes and hit the road for my next meeting at about 9:15.  I also stopped for gas because why get gas in advance when you can wait for that handy light to come on?

I got to that office around 10:00.  Please meet my favorite elevator.

I left there at 12:30, ate my lunch quickly in my car in the parking lot, and headed to the third office.  I got there at 1:30, met with two paralegals, and did a little work in an empty cubicle before leaving at 4:00.



I'd filled my water bottle up before I left the office, put it in my cup holder, and evidently made a wild turn out of the parking garage because it went flying across the car, totally soaked the passenger seat, and despite the fact that I grab handfuls of napkins whenever I stop for food, all I could find was one measly paper towel.

On the way home I got a call from a paralegal at the first office and had to pull over and make a few phone calls regarding that, so I got back on the road at 4:20.

Luckily traffic wasn't too bad, and I got home around 5:20.  Since I spend so much time in the car I listen to podcasts and talk radio in addition to music, and the evening drive talk radio host is my favorite.  I got the red light at my favorite tree, so that was a nice treat.  I love this tree.  Does everyone have a favorite tree on their commute?  No?  Just me?

If you're keeping track that was 3.5 hours in the car, so I was happy to get home and OUT OF IT.  Although I went back out with a towel and tried to sop up what I could of the water.

For dinner I made this Hello Fresh recipe.  We ordered Hello Fresh for a few weeks using some coupons and a free trial, and we LOVED it, but it was too expensive to keep up.  So last week, I discovered that they post all of their recipes on their website.  I picked five for the week, bought ingredients at the grocery store, and we still had a delicious dinner every night for a fraction of the price!

We ate dinner when Matt got home, let the chickens out, and went for a walk.  The rest of the night was rather uneventful - I did some laundry, read my book, and we watched a documentary on string theory.  Believe it or not I felt dumber at the end of the documentary than I did at the beginning.

 I'm glad there are people in the world who understand string theory, but I'm going to stick to other challenging things like remembering to put the lid on my water bottle.

would anyone like a martini? or several hundred feet of cable?

Matt texted me on Friday morning and asked if I wanted to go to Bonefish Grill for dinner to use a gift card we got for Christmas, and I told him I was all in.

He texted back, "Okay, I'll make a reservation. Is 6:00 too late?"

We're old.

After work we headed out, and as we drove around the corner, Matt slowed the truck down and pulled over to where a Comcast workman was standing by a telephone pole.  He rolled the window down and called out to the workman, "Let me ask you a question, do you guys get rid of those wooden cable spools when you're done?"

The workman paused for a few minutes, sized us up, and then said, "Yeah.  You want this one?"

Comcast has been working in our neighborhood for about a month installing new cable lines, and Matt said he'd been eyeing up the cable spools for weeks because he thought it would be cool to make one into an outdoor table.  

Before I knew it, Matt was out of the truck, the man was showing us the new wires, and then the two of them were loading the giant wooden spool, CABLE AND ALL, into the bed of the pickup.   

The workman asked us if we lived in the neighborhood and when we said yes, just a few houses down, he said, "Good.  Let's get this in, and then get out."

I've never felt more daring as we drove the 1000 feet back to our house to unload the cable spool, which is now on our back patio and looking a whole lot bigger than it did when it was laying next to the telephone pole.

We made it back to Bonefish for dinner and had a delicious meal and a wonderful time.  I ordered a Wild Orchid Hawaiian martini, and it came with an actual orchid in it.  As I admired the cocktail, Matt said, "You know, my grandfather is responsible for bringing edible orchids to the area."

Matt's grandfather, and later his dad, owned a produce business for many years.  Every morning they would fill their trucks with fruits and veggies from the produce market in South Philadelphia, and then deliver the produce to restaurants all over the area.  For this reason Matt is very particular about produce and I will never forget the first time we went grocery shopping together and he began enthusiastically slapping the watermelons.

Anyway, he told me that his grandfather was the one who encouraged restaurants to start using edible orchids in drinks and on cakes, and therefore deserves full credit for the popularity of the edible orchid in the Philadelphia culinary scene.

I'm not so sure I completely believe that, but what I am sure about is that the first cocktail I have at the new cable spool patio table better have an orchid in it.

(They see me rollin'...)

i hope this doesn't go on my performance review

Happy Friday.  May everyone's weekend start with a cocktail with a flower in it.

I'm always ready for the work week to end, but some weeks more than others.  This week was a good one, with one small exception.

I am on the newsletter committee for my company, which basically means that my English degree is pretty much paying for itself once per quarter.

The newsletter is called The Resource.  I had been communicating about my article with the woman in charge, who happens to be an executive at our company, via an email thread with the subject "March The Resource" Assignments.

Several emails in, I got a response back from her with a rather shocking subject line.  I couldn't believe it when I saw it, and thought, wow, I can't believe she used AY-ESS-ESS in the subject line.

And then I scrolled down to see the last email that I sent, and realized that I WAS THE ONE WHO CHANGED THE SUBJECT LINE.

To this:

I can only blame that unfortunate typo to a new laptop and a keyboard I am still getting the hang of.  After I died of embarrassment, I decided that the next step was to do what any professional woman would do.

I changed the subject line back, pretended like it never happened, and requested PTO for Monday.

things around here are just ducky

I work in an office a few days a week that I share with three other people.  There are two desks and one computer, and while the math doesn't really add up, it works out because we are all in and out on various days and are hardly ever all there at the same time.

My office mates are lawyers.  I am not a lawyer.  I just play one at work.  That is a joke!  I do not play a lawyer at work!  As a paralegal I've been through enough ethics classes to know that there is an entire section in the Crimes Code dedicated to non-lawyers practicing law.  I also know that I prefer to live in my house and not the county jail so I do not ever give legal advice.

But, because the four of us are in and out, and because lawyers review lots of paperwork, other staff in our office leave things on the desks all the time.  When we come in we either (a) don't know what is meant for us, or (b) assume someone else has already dealt with it.  That highly efficient process meant that by yesterday the office was in major need of some spring cleaning.

I organized a bunch of paper, and also found the following:

- A box of Thin Mints Girl Scout cookies from last year 

- An old Saladworks container, with, I'm sorry to say, what used to be salad in it

- Rubber bands that were so old and dry that they lost all rubbery qualities and fell apart.

- A strand of Christmas lights

- A luggage tag

- A 2015 calendar

- This fork

After I cleared out all the random junk, I decided that I would make piles on the floor for the paperwork, and separate it by categories.  As I knelt down to add some things to the "can this be shredded?" pile, I felt something go awry on my left side, from the top of my hip to the tips of my toes.  I didn't notice it much the rest of the day as I moved around and organized, but when I sat down in my car to drive home, well, I NOTICED IT.

I've been noticing it since then and let's just say I contemplated bringing my very own seat cushion to Citizen's Police Academy last night.

I left the office yesterday and hit quite a bit of traffic because the EZ-Pass express lanes at a busy turnpike interchange are closed for a few weeks.  Even though I get on at the previous entrance, traffic has still been slower than usual this week.  

Traffic was inching along and then suddenly came to a complete stop, and I heard a lot of honking up ahead.  There was a tractor trailer ahead of me in the center lane and one beside me, so I couldn't see what was causing the problem.  After a few minutes, my lane started moving, and I saw a red Honda Civic in the right lane, in park, with no driver in the car.  And then I noticed a man in a suit running back to the Civic from the shoulder.  His car looked fine, aka not on fire, which is the only reason I'd get out of my car on arguably the busiest stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike during heavy rush hour traffic.  

And it was then that I noticed a duck waddling down the shoulder of the turnpike.  And not just any duck, but a HUGE white duck.

It was like a real life Aflac commercial.

Maybe I should've pulled over and asked about worker's comp options for my on the job leg injury.

sibling rivalry

Let's kick the new week off with a little competition.  My brother and I followed the photo prompts from this photographer's website all week, and now we're going to put our photos to a vote.  Check out the pics below and vote for your favorite, 1 or 2.  

Winner gets all the money I make from this blog.  

So, absolutely nothing.

Horizon

 1

2

In Motion

 1

2

Over

 1

2

Key

 1

2

Off Center

 1

2

Daily

 1

2

Here's the wrap-up.  What do you think, 1 or 2?

1

2

coming to you live from the place where winter never ends

Well the theme of the last few days around here is snow.  Emily was home on spring break last week and I took Friday off so that we could hang out.  Unfortunately, we had a little morning snowstorm.  If there is even a hint of winter precipitation in the air, I don't like to drive, but luckily the storm ended around lunchtime.  Because Mother Nature is crazy and it was  60 degrees the day before, the roads were warm enough that the snow didn't even stick.

I picked Emily up and we went to Corner Bakery for lunch, and then decided to do some shopping at Primark.  I decided that despite the snowy weather, I was in the mood for some springtime accessories and picked out this baseball cap and sunglasses for LESS THAN FOUR AMERICAN DOLLARS.

I tried them on and asked Em to take a photo discreetly, and she looked at me and said, "Well, there is NOTHING discreet about you right now."

We wandered to the shoe department and these caught my eye.  "I might get a pair," I said to Emily, "aren't they cute?" "Well," she said, "they're...leopard." In Emily's terms that's a hard no, so I passed.

Instead I picked out a pair of sporty sneakers, and she said, "Well, there is no way your othotics will ever fit in those."

So, we walked over to the makeup section and I said I'd like to find a new lip gloss. "Ehh," Emily said, "lip gloss really isn't 'in' anymore."

The moral of this story is, if you want to simultaneously feel very old while not spending any money, go shopping with Emily.

Just when Friday's snow started to melt, we got hit with another storm Monday night.

There is nothing Matt likes more than a snowstorm.  He tracked the radar all weekend long and kept me posted with periodic updates.  He knows the names of all the radar models and throws around terms like the NAM and the Euro like he's Jim Cantore.  When he got home on Monday evening, he walked straight to the big back window in the kitchen, looked out, and said, "Yep, there they are.  Just as I expected."

"There what are?"  I asked.

"The high level clouds I've been waiting for."

After dinner Matt did some snow prep, which involved bringing wood inside for the fireplace and using the word "rations" in conversation and without irony. He also did some work on the chicken coop that involved tarps, plywood, and a nail gun.  We are officially those neighbors.

The meteorologists predicted a foot and a half of snow, and, true to form, we ended up with about 7 inches due to the snow "underperforming."

Whatever the storm's performance, I got a snow day out of it, and an out of town work trip was canceled, so I was a happy camper this week.

And now, I'm ready for spring.

I even have the appropriate accessories.

what i read this month

I'm linking up with Steph and Jana today for their monthly book post.  It's a fun way to share what you've been reading and get ideas to add to your list!

First up for me this month is In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware.  

I feel like I'm the last person on earth to read this book, but in case anyone hasn't read it, I don't want to spoil it.  So I will just say this: I couldn't go to bed on Saturday night until I'd finished it, which meant I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning reading.  Our kitchen is an addition off the back of our house, with a LOT of windows, and when I went up to bed I was too scared to walk into the kitchen and past all those dark windows to turn the dishwasher on.  Read it, but not late at night.  Because then you might not have any clean plates or coffee cups the next morning.

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Next up is a book by Aimee Bender, called An Invisible Sign of My Own.  

This book was good, but in a weird way.  Or weird, but in a good way.  Either way I felt like I knew what to expect because I'd read another book by this author, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which was also a good-weird.  I know this type of book isn't for everyone, but give it a try if you like slight suspension of disbelief, unique plots, and quirky but troubled characters.     

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I also read another thriller, No One Knows by J.T. Ellison. 

 I really liked it. The book was 368 pages long, and on about page 362 I still had no idea how the author was going to manage to tie everything together by the end.

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The last book I read was Spring Fever by Marykay Andrews.  

This was the second book I read by her, and I LOVED it.  It was lighter than the thrillers for sure, but not so cheesy that it didn't make me think.  I loved the main character, there were some interesting twists and turns and the end was a total shocker.  The thrift store was having the 25 cent book sale a few weeks ago and I got several more Marykay Andrews books and I can't wait to read them!

That's it for me this month!  Have you read any of these, or do you have anything I should add to my library list?