Branching Out

Mike's parents got me some really nice, really thoughtful things for my birthday (can you say, "going above and beyond?"), but one of the funnest was a Wendy's gift card. There's an inside joke there that you JUST WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND, OKAY?, so I'll spare you.

My usual order at Wendy's is a five-piece nugget (99 cents), a junior hamburger (89 cents), and a small pop (99 cents). It is a filling lunch, though not really very healthy, but at least I didn't break the bank.

But I had a gift card this time. FREE MONEY, you guys! So instead of spending as little money as possible in order to stay in the black in my checking account, I thought that I would splurge and get something different.

I got a chicken sandwich. And it was nice. Wendy's wanted to make sure that I understood that I was getting THE BEST from them, and they put it right on the label:

BREAST.
Hee hee!

Well-rounded meal.

Actually, it was a free well-rounded meal. It tasted better that way, I swear.

OLD.

Thirty years ago to the minute, I was born.

August 17, 1980, I am told, was the day of my baby shower. My original due date was mid-September. As the irritating party games piled up next to the pastel wrapping paper, my mom went into labor. Apparently my grandmothers entertained people as my dad and aunt rushed around getting her ready for the hospital. This makes me smile. My grandmas were awesome.

So I'm guessing that I didn't want to wait anymore - I wanted to party with my grandmas! There were complications during the labor, and I was born by Caesarian section at 1:06 a.m. at Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital. I weighed five pounds.

My parents had grabbed a party gift as they left the house - my Teddy. He was much larger than me. (P.S. I just re-read that post, and man! I used to be a good writer!)

Sentimental stuff aside, I really can't believe that I've been on this planet for thirty years!

What major events happened on my birthday? I AM HERE TO TELL YOU. YAY HISTORY!

~1227 - Genghis Khan died. All I know about him I learned from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

~1587 - The first English child was born in what would become the United States. You know, after all of the smallpox.

~1598 - The Roanoke Colony is found deserted. Perhaps... smallpox?

~1914 - Germany declares war on Russia; President Wilson issues his Proclamation of Neutrality. Good timing!

~1920 - The nineteenth amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, granting women the right to vote. You're welcome.

~1939 - The Wizard of Oz premieres in New York City.

~1966 - The first pictures of the Earth, taken from the moon, were sent to NASA.

~1992 - Larry Bird retires.

And now, you might be wondering, who else shares my birthday? YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO KNOW:

Antonio Salieri - 1750
Meriweather Lewis - 1774
Shelley Winters - 1920
Robert Redford - 1936
Martin Mull - 1943
Patrick Swayze - 1952
Denis Leary - 1957
Bob Woodruff - 1961
Christian Slater - 1969
Edward Norton - 1969
Andy "Chronic-WHAT-cles of Narnia" Samberg - 1978

I'm most excited about sharing a birthday with SWAYZE and Edward Norton. What does that say about me?

Thirty!

Goodbye, Twenties!

'Tis the last day of my twenties. I went to work today, but I took tomorrow off. It's kind of a big deal, you guys. Thirty. Big deal.

I have the most ridiculous day planned tomorrow. My mom is coming up and we are gallivanting around Ann Arbor getting free shit and eating way too much food.

Breakfast at Angelo's (an Ann Arbor tradition), followed by free bagels and gelato at Zingerman's. There are free birthday candles to be had at Found, free tea at the Tea Haus, and a free cupcake at Cake Nouveau.

Restaurants cover me for lunch and dinner (but I haven't decided on which ones, yet!) and then coffee at Caribou or Biggby.

I realize that this makes me a bit of a freebies whore (I said this, verbatim, to several clerks I encountered at several establishments), but I don't care! I'm fucking thirty! THIRTY, BITCHES!

And we have to do some shopping for this ridiculous party we're throwing, so that will be fun. I have to remember to get those butter mint things. I don't even care if people eat them. I freaking love them and I'll eat the whole damn container of them myself.

Oh my God, look at them. GET IN MY BELLY.

Oh, and Mike gave me my present last night. No big deal:

P.S. I went outside to try some practice swings with these foam golf balls he got for me, and... Well, I'm not very good. To say the least. So now I have a whole new thing to obsess over! Wheeeee!

Brain? Are You Listening to Me? LISTEN TO ME!

It was fucking HOT today. HOT.

I got to my morning job at 7:45, and since it was Friday, I was wearing jeans. I love this dress-down rule, especially in the summer. Since the majority of the college students are rarely better dressed than the panhandlers, I still look slightly official.

I was fine throughout the morning in the overly air-conditioned building, and when I left at 11:45 to stop home to grab some lunch, I changed out of my jeans into a skirt. But THEN, my brain decided that there was no reason to change into something cooler. I replaced the skirt with my jeans.

That was all well and good, until I missed the bus by half of a block (DAMN YOU, EARLY BUS), and had to hoof it into campus. That's two miles, baby.

And I was wrong about the temperature. WRONG. It was 89 degrees at this point. The humidity was relatively low, however - at a nice 70 percent.

By the time I made it downtown, I was dying. I stepped into my favorite shop for some air conditioning, but that only seemed to make it worse.

As I was waiting to cross Main Street, wiping the sweat out of my eyes, and trying to keep my glasses from sliding off of my face, a hippie chick asked me for thirty cents. As I handed over the only change in my wallet, I think that she decided I was crazy (or possibly high), what with the exorbitant sweating, and backed away slowly.

But not before calling me "sweetie."

The closer I got to campus, my thoughts of dying increased. I had on a black tap top (but not hooker-ish. Classy, you know? Classy.) with the jeans, and my flip flops. Black was clearly an inspired choice. Sure, I was sweating like a crack addict, but at least you couldn't see the sweat.

I was a block away from Orchid Lane, a total hippie store (lots of hippie talk today, eh?) that just happens to stock one of my favorite lines of clothing. I could see skirts flowing in the breeze as they hung on racks on the sidewalk. I was practically halfway out of my jeans by the time I got to the shop, and into the dressing room before I could count to ten.

I wore it to the register and they removed the anti-theft device and price tag (cost for a linen wrap skirt? $12. I LOVE THE HIPPIES). The relief was immediate and amazing.

But I'm still an idiot.

Feast Your Eyes on That Which I Have Not Killed! Yet.

You guys, I like tomatoes. I really, really like them. I eat them all the damn time, and I always seems to have grape tomatoes on my kitchen counter. Grape tomatoes are sweet and awesome year-round, so I tend to buy them more often than any other kind, but summer brings massive garden-grown tomatoes, and those taste better than most any other thing that I can imagine.

Besides popcorn. I really love popcorn.

So my mom bought two grape tomato plants for me, probably secretly realizing that I would kill them with neglect, but happily placing them into the cart at the farmer's market.

I killed the first one within the week. I don't know how, but it happened. Okay, I do know how. Apparently plants like water. You'd think that I would have known that.

The other one, the "sweet million" grape tomato, was different. It was a fighter. I would leave for Mike's for the weekend, go out after work on Monday, and eventually remember the poor thing on Tuesday. It would be helplessly limp on the ground. I would drench it with water, sometimes remembering to add fertilizer, and within a day or two, it would be back to fighting shape.

But then the weekend would come around, and I would be gone for two days.

Well, I finally committed myself to the care of the poor plant, and there are BABY GRAPE TOMATOES growing. Like, I helped to not kill create life! But look! See for yourself!

Okay, so it's a bit droopy, and I had to tie the damn thing to a plant hook-thing that I actually bought for use with a bird feeder but my landlord wouldn't let me because the last time I had a bird feeder, the birds pooped everywhere and the thistle seeds fell through my upper deck onto her lower deck, and she was none too pleased. So because my poor tomato plant was pretty much as tall as me, and the hook was all I could find in my storage room, and it was that or a bunch of hangers, and I didn't know how that would actually work, I used the hook thing.

Look at that which I have cultivated!
FOOD!

Oh, and these were the casualties. Oops.

And I Am Not Ashamed!

A few weekends ago, Mike and I were just hanging out at his house, minding our business, when the power went out. It was about 6:30 pm on a Friday. We avoided opening the fridge, lit some candles, and relished in the fact that we had set the air conditioner to 62 degrees.

When Saturday morning arrived, the power had not.

Major dilemma here. Food? Not to be had. Air conditioning? Non-existent. Electricity in order to get ready for a wedding later that day? Not so much.

We had crap for breakfast - McDonald's, I think. Then we settled on Taco Bell for lunch, because we are classy, and I got this:

It was five bucks, and it was delicious. There was something called a "chalupa" in there, along with a taco, a bean burrito, and cinnamon twists! And a pop! Brilliant, Taco Bell. Brilliant.

I liked the cinnamon twists the best.

The power came back on eventually, which was slightly disappointing, since I was sort of looking forward to walking into a fast food restaurant with a hair dryer in tow.

The wedding was insane, though. And by "insane," I mean "completely over-the-top." Three-hundred guests, towering flowers, and a freaking photo booth. It was gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but it just wasn't my style.

At least my hair was dry.

Fruit Frenzy INDEED

Holy crap, you guys know how I adore Trader Joe's? Well, I just discovered another reason to marry Joe. Fruit Frenzy Bars:

Three different fruits! Oh my!

Frozen nutrition on a stick, really... when you think about it.

Right, so I love ice cream. I love it. I also love fruit bars (I think that Dole makes a lovely strawberry version), and I love fresh fruit. But what makes Trader Joe's so deliciously brilliant is that the company does not add preservatives and their products only contain natural products (I'm sure that there are exceptions, but I've never encountered a product like that).

Raspberry starts off the popsicle and it's lovely! A little tart but nicely sweet, it blends perfectly with the next flavor: lemon. And the lemon? Nice! Not overly intense, and then, before you know it? Strawberry. So good. So very good.

Anyway, if you have a TJ's near you, and you have the means, I highly suggest picking these up. They are so choice.

To Be Honest, I Don't Really Know Who She Is, Either

BF: Who's Ashley Tisdale?
Me: She was in all kinds of Disney stuff.
BF: She looks like the Joker.

As I was about to post this, Mike glanced over and asked, "Who's that?" I scrolled down and he re-read his musings.

"She does look like the Joker. I stand by my original statement."

Whales in the Sky

Or sharks. I'm not sure. All I know is that these clouds look like sea creatures, and there is no arguing with me.

I think that the big one is trying to eat the little one.

I took the picture with my phone, thinking that there was no way it would be a clear shot, and then there it was, sitting absolutely gloriously, on the screen. Kelly and I were driving to Potbelly for dinner, with plans to also get cookies (obviously), and I thought that maybe, in my pressing hunger, the whale clouds were merely figments of my imagination.

But they weren't. They were there. And they were awesome.

August is Here, Y'All!

And you know what that means...

It's almost my birthday!

Sure, I know that I go on and on about my birthday every year, but this year I have an excuse. This year, I am turning THIRTY and am looking forward to it very much, thank you.

Now, you might think, "Heather, that's insane. Thirty is the year that marks the death of your youth! Thirty is the year that your metabolism slows down and you gain weight and look like a heifer trying to squeeze into clothes from college! Thirty is the year that you really, really, really have to start using face cream!"

And to you, I say, "Yes, my youth is dead now. But I never really much cared for leaving for the bar at 11:30 p.m. anyway. Oh, and remember how I was in bed at 10:30 on New Year's Eve? Yeah."

And then I continue to say, "My metabolism is already fighting me, but I can still wear jeans from my senior year of high school, so suck it! Of course, I have to make sure that I am wearing a large t-shirt to hide any hint of muffin top, and there are enormous holes in the inner thighs and back pockets, but they STILL FIT, BITCHES."

And lastly, I say, "I've been using face cream for years, and I don't see it as a bad thing. I see it as preparing for the future and not having to get botox. Not that I would do that, anyway, but still. STILL."

And while those are not the only reasons that I should be dreading thirty, I have pretty much made peace with the fact that I will now be in a different age bracket. Besides, I know that I will continue to get carded when buying beer, and I know that I will continue to be considered a college student at the campus on which I work, and those are good things!

Also, I know that I will not lose my insanity or my humor with my old age. Hell, I just have to look to my own mother for proof of that.

Anyway, August the 18th cannot come soon enough! Neither, coincidentally, can the 21st, as I will be having a sweet ass party at my house ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT. If you happen to be planning on being in Ann Arbor that Saturday, do let me know, because you are therefore INVITED.