Being an Adult

Do you know what's truly sad? When you get a birthday check (yes, it's my 35th birthday tomorrow - I'll pause so everyone can run out and get me a present) from your father and instead of thinking of the all the indulgent things you want to get you instead think the following:

• Boy I need new tires
• There can never be enough diapers in the house
• Maybe I'll save it for the oil bill

You know what?? Being an adult SUCKS!!! I miss my carefree blow all of it on a gorgeous pair of shoes and a facial days. Sigh...

Need for New Books to Read

So I have pretty eclectic taste when it comes to book. I read everything from classic literature to poetry to fantasy to biography to trash. Right now though I've been reading mostly baby and toddler books. Things like "Baby 411" and books on sleep habits and the such. Also, most of my favorite authors are working on their books and as such I don't have a whole lot new to read. Sometimes I go through the Amazon "if you liked this.. than you'll like this" recommendation list and buy them super cheap and used on the Marketplace, but nothing is really floating my book so to speak. Right now Amazon is recommending a lot of children's books (but I want books for ME not for Nathan's library), they are recommending parenting books (I already have quite a few and would like something a little more "fun"), or they are recommending some truly horrible and poorly written trashy books.

I need help.

Please feel free to let me know what you guys are reading. Favorite authors, titles.. help me out people and give me something new to read!

Newest Idea

There's a video on CNN.com about this family that is not grocery shopping for a month and instead is going to eat what they already have. The rules were no grocery shopping unless for milk, and eating out once a week. The woman estimates she's saving $800 a month. Very interesting. I'm tempted to try it since Jeff and I, while having cut down on our eating out quite a bit, still eat out way too much. Also, we're not that great about planning meals ahead of time. In fact, we suck at planning out our meals ahead of time. Maybe instead of a month, we'll do something a little easier, like two weeks?? Or is that just silly??? The woman on the video made a very good point of saying that we all have things in our freezer that we just forget are there... and that's certainly true for Jeff and I. In fact, maybe tomorrow I'll go through our freezer and cabinets and take stock of what we do have and throw out what has been in there since the earth cooled. From there I can kind of get an idea of what we eat and what we would need to stock up on.

I'm actually kind of excited about this.. which is kind of sad in a way... but excited regardless. Feel free to leave me any tips you might have - I'm going to need them!

New Annnoyance

I'm just curious why it is if you mention to someone that a particular topic bothers/disturbs/makes you sick to your stomach, and that seems to signal some sort of trigger in the person to tell you a story ABOUT THE VERY THING YOU MENTIONED MADE YOU WANT TO RUN TO THE BATHROOM TO GET VIOLENTLY ILL.

I mention this because my birthday is coming up and my father is treating me to lobster. I love lobster but I hate, hate, hate the way they are killed. I actually didn't eat lobster for 29 years because I was traumatized at a young age by the whole lobster killing thing. See, my mother one day brought home live lobsters for dinner. A treat for the family, right? Well her mistake was letting the lobsters crawl around on the floor before sending them to the big lobster pot in the sky. My sister and I were delighted with the lobsters. We NAMED THEM. We seriously thought they were going to be our new pets and would live in our bathtub. Needless to say when my mother served them for DINNER we were not happy. My sister and I buried them in the backyard. We were NOT HAPPY. So I never ate lobster after that. But I met Jeff. Jeff LOVES lobster, loves it and eventually I tried it and got to like it. But I still don't like the whole boiled alive thing, and I refuse to pick out my own lobster since the whole idea seems so cruel. Lobster is a treat. Lobster can be killed by other people, and sometimes I make a suggestion that perhaps the lobster can be killed humanely by driving a knife through his little head. Of course people look at me like I am NUTS when I make this suggestion, but I still try.

The point of the story is that when I mention how upset the boiling alive thing makes me, someone will tell me how they saw some horrible other form of killing an animal in GRAPHIC DETAIL. Why?? Didn't I already mention that topics like that bother me? That I stopped eating pork for 5 years after watching "Babe"? Still the stories come.

Which also reminds me of something my Grandmother said to me once. In an effort to be nice, she gave me her old, vintage, and quite beautiful fur coat. Why did she give this to me? According to my grandmother giving me a fur coat was perfect because I "love animals". I shit you not people... I love animals = fur coat. I gave it to my sister and it looks fabulous on her.

Sugar Intake

I was reading this article on MSNBC that stated that Americans eat 22 teaspoons of sugar a day (not including natural sugar as found in fruit and such) and it got me thinking. According to MSNBC and this study, one of the biggest culprits of added sugar is soda. Now if you all recall, I lusted after Diet Coke with an unholy obsession when I was pregnant. And as soon as I had Nathan I started drinking it again, a LOT. We're talking almost three cans a DAY! That's a lot of soda! Now I adore my Diet Coke, but going so long without it and then guzzling it down like it was the fountain of youth made my tummy less than happy. So I cut back. WAY back. I rarely buy it anymore for the house and instead switched to Crystal Light. My tummy is a little happier, and I still get my beloved Diet Coke when we go out to eat. What you say?? WE go OUT TO EAT?? Well you've got me there. Our going out to eat experiences tend to be along the lines of Bickford's or Chili's and they are always planned out ahead of time. Not so much for money reasons, but because we have a baby that can morph into Dr. Jekyl in the span of a second. It's just no fun to scarf down a meal in a restaurant when you are doing the following:

Staring at your child to see if he's about to start screaming

Holding your child in one hand while you attempt to eat with other (something you have to do because your child DID start screaming and this is the only way to calm him down).

Venture into the ladies' room to change a diaper and discover there is no changing table and instead have to take over the entire sink area forcing other patrons to just FREAKIN' WAIT TWO MINUTES WHILE I CHANGE MY HYSTERICAL BABY! Don't think there haven't been times where I've wished Nathan would pee on someone who was impatiently pushing past me to wash their hands.

So restaurants are not super easy for us right now and we tend to eat more take out if we do splurge. But back to the sugar, I was thinking that now that I have a child I should be more selective in my eating habits. You know, to model some good behavior for him and somehow I don't think my previous lunch of Diet Coke and Mint Milano cookies is something he should be duplicating. Right?? I mean, daycare probably would frown on that if I packed it for his lunch. Anyone else have any other suggestions for cutting down on their sugar consumption??

Morning

I'm just curious, has anyone ever come downstairs and found that their husband has left his underwear on the kitchen counter?

Anyone? Anyone at all?

No???

I guess it's just me.

Book Recommendations

This is for people who loved the Twilight series - I have some recommendations for books that are still easy to read, actually well WRITTEN, contain romance and/or hot sex, and something paranormal.

Whenever I rant about these books invariably someone will ask me about what I think are GOOD books. So here I go:

Looking for a vampire love story? Try the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. I haven't seen the show "True Blood" that its based on, but I love the series. Sookie is a strong heroine. She saves her vampire boyfriend more than once, she is an ADULT and there are actually sex scenes rather than a fade to black (though not so insanely graphic that you're embarrassed to read them on the train!). I've read all the way up to book 8, and I confess I'm not as thrilled with the series now but that's all my issue. I tend to lose interest in a series after awhile.. I feel like the author runs out of ideas.

Looking for a paranormal story that includes vampire and werewolves and the such? Two authors that I love are Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews.
For Patricia Briggs there is the Mercy series which is about a werecoyote and how she solves mysteries and is friends with werewolves and vampires and all sorts of cool magical entities. She's also a mechanic and supports herself and there's tons of sexual tension between her and two other werewolves, but not sex. It's a harder series to read in the sense that its not lighthearted, it's very REAL but it's extremely well written. There is also the Alpah and Omega series which is about two werewolves Anna and Charles and it's very good. It carries on with with the werewolf side of things that is started in the Mercy series. Excellent!

Ilona Andrews writes about a bad ass Mercenary named Kate who also happens to be the daughter of an incredibly evil man. She can do magic and she's strong, takes no BS and has a running romance with the alpha of the shifter clan. It's a completely alternate world but its well done, and while there is no sex (yet), there's enough sexual tension to keep things moving along. There are three books in the series so far and they are all excellent.. I already have the fourth on my list for Amazon even though it won't be published for a LONG time.

Okay, so you're looking for hot sex. I can help here as well! There's the Dark Hunter series written by Sherrilyn Kenyon. It's all about vampire hunters called Dark Hunters (natch!) and they hunt Daimons (who are like vampires, but not) and these Dark Hunters are immortal. They also have a soul mate and the books usually focus on the whole standard romance idea which is this scary ass, insanely good looking guy is scarred from the past and learns to trust and love and blah, blah.. the stories aren't that original to be honest, and after reading two books you've basically read them all so I stopped buying them, but the sex scenes are pretty hot. No cut aways here!

Next up is the Riley Jensen series by Keri Arthur. Riley is a half werewolf and half vampire and she works for an elite security like CIA place where they police and solve supernatural crimes. In this world werewolves are insanely promiscuous and its refreshing to read a heroine who has NO QUALMS about recreational sex. In the werewolf world here monogamy is not something they practice until they meet their "mate". And at that point they are monogamous. So the sex is hot and frequent but by book 4 I'm a little frustrated with her insanely awful choices in bedroom department. You would think that for someone who has so much sex, she would be better able to weed out the potential assholes. Not so. You can bet that if there's a controlling, two faced bastard out there she will have sex with him in about two seconds flat. I also get a little tired of the author continuously telling me about Riley's need for sex and why. I get it, I don't need it hammered over my head all the time. But they are a fun series even if you will be embarrassed reading it on the train!

So that's it for now, I'll write another entry about other books I enjoy that are not fantasy based but I thought this might help you all out for now!