August Update

OK so I know it seems like I've been neglecting the blogging world for a bit. I actually haven't. There were several posts that I gave birth to, then quickly abandoned in the dumpster or at best gave up for adoption. I just haven't had the attention span to actually finish a post. But now I have pictures piling up on my phone, using up all the precious memory, so I have to do something with them. And with that, my friends, you have my past week or so, in a nutshell, in photos.

In a very random order.

This is my arm.

A few people at work saw it and immediately assumed I fell on the treadmill again. Jeez, guess I'm going to have a hard time living that one down. I actually did it somehow on the fence while mowing the lawn last night.

Yes, I said mowing the lawn. I get very pissed off at The Man if he even suggests he do it one week. When I was young, my brother and I had chores assigned to each of us. Being two years older, and the boy, one of his chores was to mow the lawn, once he got old enough. I had stupid stuff like cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming the living room, etc. But the chore that I absolutely couldn't stand doing was emptying the dishwasher. I still hate it. There's just something about the taking stuff out of the washer to put it away in strategically designated spots that are of the utmost efficiency since all the cabinets were jam-packed, only to have to take the stuff out again in a few hours to use at dinner. I hated it.

So I traded mowing the lawn for emptying the dishwasher. I think my brother was glad to get that off his plate, since he's a computer geek who shrinks away from the sun and the outdoors, and stays up all hours of the night on Face Book doing crap on his computer. But that's another post in and of itself.

And I've been mowing ever since. When I was pregnant, I tried to mow the lawn once or twice at the beginning of the summer. SB was born in September, so in May I was about 5 months pregnant? Just beginning to show, I guess. I didn't think it was a big deal. Besides the twisting to start the mower, all I had to do was push it in front of me. It's a self-propelled mower. When my husband found out, he went completely ballistic on me, and finally begged me not to mow since he felt that having his pregnant wife mow our lawn would make him look bad to the neighbors. I gave in but took it up again the following spring. I really like doing it because not only does it offer instant gratification, which we all know I'm a huge fan of, but it gives me something mindless to do with my body and let my mind wander all over the place.

Anyway, so that was the result of me mowing the lawn. This is what kept me at work for about 10 minutes this evening. I was already irritated because some nitwit decided to go into the locker room just at 7:30, which is when we close (in case you didn't already know that from previous rants) and he's done it before and I consider it flat-out rude. So I'm still grumbling about his audacity and I walk up to my car and notice this little guy hanging out underneath.

Call me a treehugger, bunny lover, animal freak, whatever you want, I've heard it all. But I am a complete and utter fool when it comes to animals. I will do stupid things that potentially could put my own life in danger to save a spider from being sucked up the vacuum, or to avoid mowing over a bee. So there's no way in heck I was going to just get in my car and leave with him sitting there. So I stomped really loudly to startle him into flying away, but he just walked to the other side of the car and settled down again. So I went around to the other side and stomped again. I kneeled down and took a peek to see that he hadn't budged. At this point, he was sitting just inside, next to the tire. So I slapped my palms onto the ground (ow!) loudly (which is very difficult when you're talking human palms and concrete) and he just kind of looked at me. I swear he looked a little pissed. I stood up and kicked the tire and he just got up and walked back over to where he was to begin with.

So back and forth we went, probably about 5 times, no joke. Finally I kneeled down one time and I didn't see him. I went around to the other side of the car and looked, but he was nowhere to be found. I started to get in the car, thankful he had finally taken the hint, then realized that he might have flown up into the car. Like where the engine was.

Great. I got out of the car and started banging on all the doors. Security was probably doubled up laughing in their little Big Brother headquarters. I looked like a total nut and glanced over at the entrance of the garage to make sure no one was around. As I did, I noticed my little feathered friend about 30 yards away, slowly walking away. So he was nowhere near the car the whole time- I was banging away for nothing. Too relieved the whole ordeal was over to feel stupid, I got into my car and drove home- almost getting a ticket. For those of you who work where I do, if you pass the Hilton, beware. Apparently its entrance is the new location for a speedtrap.

So.......what else? Oh! Here's how my weekend began: My mother was born in Iran. (Actually, that happened way before this weekend. But I felt the need to give you a little history lesson first. So just bear with me.) Her parents were Armenian and Syrian. My father's mother and father were from Italy and Poland, respectively. You can probably guess that I'm a pretty dark person. No, I mean physically. I have really dark hair. And a lot of it. In some places, that's a good thing. In some places, it's not so good.

Get your mind out of the gutter, I'm talking about my eyebrows. Some time between middle school and high school, I realized that most of the girls in my class had 2 eyebrows, while I just seemed to have one that kind of meshed into my hairline anyway. Some might call it a unibrow. I called it hideous. So I begged my mom to let me start plucking my eyebrows. She agreed and I holed myself in her bathroom one afternoon and plucked away.

Now for those of you who have never had to do this, it's not as easy as it sounds. There's a natural arch that you actually have to stick to. If you don't, you could end up looking like Jafar. Or, if you overpluck from the inside arch, then you could end up with an eternal look of surprise on your face, like this.


I was lucky enough to be blessed with not only the Look of Eternal Surprise, but also the uneven look. It was quite hot. I guess you could say it was kind of a combination of the above two looks, but with one brow the thickness of my pinky finger and the other the size of a string. Those were some tough years for me.

But some time in college I got smart and decided to let someone else tame the locks for me. So for the past 10 years I've been getting my eyebrows waxed, or "ripped out of my head" as I like to call it. In my defense, the many ladies that I have seen over the years all agree that I have problem brows. Not only are the hairs very thick and curly, but each brow has a cowlick in it (did you know eyebrows could have cowlicks?) and one has a scar just on top of it from when I walked into a coffee table (give me a break, I was just learning how to walk). So it's not my fault I looked awful for a good part of my teenage life.

Anyway, getting back to this weekend. So on Thursday I had a waxing appointment. I've been to this lady before and she's pretty good. Nothing unusual happened, everything seemed to go well. Friday morning, if anyone tried to make eye contact with me, they would have seen this:

This photo actually doesn't do it justice. (And actually, the eyebrow looks better than in this shot, too.) It was horribly bright and red and scabbed over. Luckily, I didn't have to go too many places on Friday that I couldn't hide behind sunglasses. Then Saturday I just had to get through work with this hideousness. I put Neosporin on all weekend and Saturday night it just kind of peeled off. It's still kind of pink now but not as noticeable.

OK I think that's about all I have to report for now. It's been an interesting coupla days. Hopefully the next few will be as interesting, but with less injury involved!