Episode Eighteen : Introducing the Househusband

Dear Bloggy

I’m sorry I haven’t written to you recently.  I can offer a thousand excuses that I had pre-prepared, but I know that you know me too well to believe anything I might throw at you other than the absolute truth.  So, I am sorry.  For some reason, in society people value a hard days work, and paychecks.  Don’t ask me why.  The husband just seems happier knowing that I’m stretching my brain while sitting under florescent lighting rather than when I was basking in the ability to nap anytime I want.  I.just.dont.get.it!

So, my job is pretty interesting.  I am solely responsible for marketing and branding a ridiculously wealthy company.  I don’t know why they picked me but I think I can handle it.  I was just watching ‘How its Made’ with the Husband and they showed an assembly line of people making lockers for a school.  Can you imagine being in the same place for 8 hours a day doing the same teeny meaningless task?  I said this to the husband, and he simply replied ‘people want those jobs right now, they’re secure and they don’t require you to think.’  Really?  Bloggy, I ask you, WHO doesn’t want to think?!  I am on the other side of the spectrum, thinking almost too much with this new job.  I think my brain is about to explode in technology-input-overload (hence me not blogging for a week).  I couldn’t manage to produce a single clear thought in sentence form, let alone make it interesting and witty.  Who knows if I’ve ever been able to do that, but last week, it was ridiculous.  I’m pretty sure I was talking in Acronyms.  On Easter, I may have actually said el-oh-el instead of laughing.

However, the lack of posting doesn’t mean that I wasn’t thinking of you, dear bloggy.  I began to compose about 4 blogs in the last week.  I even used you as motivation for a grueling task that I had to perform.  You see, I made a lemon cake, filled with home made strawberry/cream cheese and topped with homemade cream cheese frosting and fresh strawberry slices.  It was a masterpiece.  I took pictures of the whole act, but we can’t seem to find the Canon cord, alas, you do not get to see the pictures.  All for the better though.  We had Easter lunch down in Connecticut, a nice hour away, where the whole cake melted all over itself.  It was delicious nonetheless, but wasn’t as pretty as I had hoped.  If I had to look at the pictures today to post here, I would probably just cry. 

I also wrote a blog about my Friday confessions.  But the only semi-interesting confession was that while I sat responding to a weeks worth of blog postings, I ate half a bag of Salt and Vinegar potato chips.  I didn’t even realize I did it. To my own defense, I think the bag was full of air upon opening it.  But that’s not the confession.  After I finally realizing that I devoured half the bag of chips, I looked at my manicure, only to realize that somehow in that 30 minutes, half of my nail polish chipped.  I never found evidence of the chipping… but I continued to eat chips anyway.  Ha!  Oops. 

As I mentioned a week or so back, the House-o-Belmont is now without a fulltime housewife.  The husband and I worked out a clean-as-you-go plan that lasted about a day, but luckily, he’s on vacation this week, so the house has been staying fairly clean.  I shutter at the thought of what it will look like when my househusband starts back at school in 2 weeks.  For some reason, I don’t think I’m going to be able to train the dog to vacuum. 

OK, this is crazy long, and I don’t really have any fun pictures to put in, so Ill end it here.  Dear Bloggy, thank you for being a great follower and allowing me to know that you will always be here for me-even when I take a week away from you due to my brain leaking out of my ears. 

Xoxox.  Shell

PS, I just politely asked my Househusband NOT to do my laundry anymore.  What's worse, shrunken clothes, or doing laundry?  I'll let you know...

Episode Seventeen : When disaster strikes, mid-blog

Hey All. So, I took a couple days off because, lets face it, I needed a few lazy days to prepare for my upcoming J-O-B.  My dream career starts tomorrow!  I’m so excited, and nervous to start……..

HOLY CRAP!!!!!!  You will not believe what just happened!  I am sitting in bed and just looked down at the floor, only to find see my beloved Goopie mid-squat.  IN slow motion, I yell Goopie NNNOOOOO……  as a bunch of gooey brown poo comes spewing out of his bum.  Yes, Spewing.  I calmly tried not to scream as I didn't want to scare him under the bed to finish his business.  By the time I get the laptop and blankets off me, the Husband has come in from the office to see what’s going on.  Oh man, that’s diarrhea.  Thanks, like I needed it to be identified.

We have a kinda ‘smelt-it-dealt it’ way of selecting who cleans up the dog poo.  He who sees/smells it first has to clean it.  Crap!  Why does the dog always have to poo in the privacy of my personal bubble?  He wouldn’t dare do it in front of the Husband.  This leaves me cleaning a lot of poo.  But this time, it was particularly gross and gooey.  Yes, Gooey.  It smelled like last nights Pork Chops.  If you remember, I don’t eat meat.  Someone else fed the dog off their plate, and I was stuck with cleaning it up.  SO NOT COOL!  The husband, of course, insists it smells like salad.  Like the dog would go near anything green.    

That’s it!  When we’re old and senile, I’m not cleaning the husbands poo stained butt when he’s too old to clean it himself.  IN FACT, I’m older that him, so chances are, I’m going to reach that milestone in life before him, so I’m going to take advantage as much as possible just to make up for moments like these.  UGH! 

OH MY GOSH!  To make matters worse, as I was sanitizing the floor, Goop jumped on the bed and curled up on my pillow.  WHY, I ask you, does he love ME so much?  I feel bad.  He’s obviously sick, but AHH, it smells in my bedroom and I just had to clean up really icky POO!  Good thing I don’t have kids!  I have a lot of practice to do before that comes around.  I cant exactly lock the kids in their club house for the night because they poo’d my pillow. 

AHHHH!  OK, no more blogging today.  I have to go clean and sanitize.  Ugh!  By the way, you are all welcome for me not sharing pictures today.

Just a reminder, tomorrow is Tuesday.  And incase you haven’t seen her blog yet; Live what you Love does a Tuesday blog about your Tail Wagging Friends.  Tomorrow’s topic is bling bling.   Stop by her blog to see her doggies bling, then back to mine to see the Poopers Coopers Bling. 

Episode sixteen : Its a Saturday...

I just got a job!  Yay Me!  You know what that means?  The House of Belmont will be without a Housewife.  I mean, I’m still going to live here, the Husband isn’t looking for someone else, but I wont be doing all those fun housewife duties – at least not as much as I was use to.  On Thursday, while we were celebrating with champagne, I brought this dilemma up to the Husband.  You know, now that I will be working 40-60 hours a week, I wont have time to cook, clean, shop, walk the dog, pick up dry cleaning, and all that other stuff that’s been keeping me busy for the last three months.  And let me tell you, I HAVE been busy.  But now, I’m bringing home the bacon, and I’m not gonna fry it up as well (especially considering I don’t even eat bacon!)  He insisted that we try something new.   Lets CLEAN AS WE GO.  Oh yeah, ok.  We’ll see how long this lasts.  He’s gone three months without touching the washer, and I’m pretty certain his hands are aren’t dishwater-safe. 

Last night (one day later), I opened a bottle of wine and left the tin and cork on the counter while I took a big swig as I wanted back into the office.  He so kindly called me into the kitchen and pointed to the trash and reminded me that we were going to clean as we go.  Oops, I figured you forgot about that, thanks for the reminder.  Damnit.  See, here’s the thing about me.  If we live together, and YOU clean, I will clean.  But if YOU are a slob, I will be a slob.  I’ve been that way with all of my roommates of the past.  I even warn them about it before hand.  It’s me, and to know me is to love me.  I can’t change.  I’ve tried. 

Fast forward to today.  I went into the kitchen to make lunch, only to find the sink full of dishes (somehow I was oblivious to them last night.  You see, I have that talent, its called selective-observation).  As I began to rinse and load the dishes, I found a lot of coffee cups.  Hmm, that’s strange, I stopped drinking coffee a few months ago, so that means…….  AH HA!!  MY TURN!!  I called the Husband up at his conference (After all, this was important!)

    Husband: Hello

    Me: Hi Stinks (pet name)

    H: Hey Whats up?  I cant talk for too long..

    M: That’s ok; I just wanted to tell you something.  Remember our Clean-as-you-Go rule? 

    H: Yeah?

    M: Well, I just found some coffee cups in the sink under the pans from last night’s dinner that you    

          made. 

    H: Oh…  Well…  the dishwasher needed to be emptied. 

    M: Nope, it was empty. 

    H: Oh.....

    M: But don’t worry; Ill put them in there for you. 

I just have one (over-used, obnoxious, cliché) word for this situation.

#Winning!

On a complete different note.  Remember that Manicure I got on Tuesday?  Gels, promised to last two weeks.  Its been 5 days, how do you recommend I go show the manicurist my boo boo?

pls excuse crappy photo quality, I was too lazy to turn on another light.

Episode Fourteen : Seeking Advice from My Bestie

Do you ever have those moments when you need to talk to someone, but no one ever seems to be around?  Or there are those opposite moments when your phone is blowing up so much with email/fb/twitter/text notifications that you cant even hear what the person on the other side of the phone is saying? 

Well, both of those moments are bouncing around in my mind right now.  I always pride myself on being there when a friend needs me.  There are few people who I don’t screen when they call me.  Granted, if they call me at an obnoxious time of the night, Ill likely be asleep and wont answer their drunk dial, but for the most part, IM THERE FOR THEM. 

I’m happy to say that my Bestie is too.  This morning I called her in need of a pep talk (she’s my go-to girl for a pep-talk and for venting sessions, hence, Bestie), and she tiredly answered the phone (HELLO, why are you asleep, its 11am!!  Its only 8am here, I only answered it because I saw it was  you on the caller ID!!).   She quickly pepped up to give me encouragement.  I gave her the quick details : You see, the guy I interviewed with yesterday called and left a voicemail.  Being me, I screened the call.  I was nervous.  He sounded positive on the voicemail, so this had to be good news.  We had yet to discuss compensation, and I am a horrible negotiator.  I wanted to job so badly that I would have accepted anything, but companies always tend to ASK me first what salary I want.  Arg, that’s so hard.  I don’t want to lowball myself, but at the same time, I wont was to oversell myself, taking me out of consideration.  There is no right answer to this question.  Help, what do I say!?   So, Bestie calmed me down and gave me excellent advice (sorry, she’s MY Bestie, so I’m not sharing her words of wisdom). 

Turns out, I didn’t even need to take her advice because he MADE THE OFFER FIRST!!  Yup, that’s right, I GOT THE JOB!!  I am STOKED.  I called the Bestie back first to thank her for the advice, then to give her the good news.  She shared her excitement with me (from 3000 miles away, it was like we were in the same room squealing like teenagers.  Love her). 

OK, this was us dancing at my wedding, but we WOULD
be dancing and drinking champagne if we werent
3000 miles away from eachother.

So, after talking to Bestie, then the Husband (THRILLED, even canceling his golf game tonight to take me out to celebrate), I posted it on Facebook.  Wow, I’m getting an exurbanite amount of love, quickly. My phone does a cute little double-beep when I get a facebook comments, and it was playing a little quartet of tunes.  So much that I couldn’t even keep up.  While I was on the phone with various fans, I had a handful of voicemails by the time I hung up.  First, my old Roommate who’s now in Australia (Yup, Australia is now celebrating my new job), My Dad (Its about time that degree paid off – Just kidding, he didn’t say that), my Aunt/Mentor (What about Grad School, might they pay for it??) and so on with a bunch of excited people sharing my happiness.  Yay me!

So here is where I am overwhelmed with communication (ok, I love it).  But now I’m thinking, for the last three months, while playing housewife (By choice!  After being laid off from a job I hated, I refused to apply for a job I wouldn’t LOVE {cap, bold, italicize and underlined}), I have been constantly available to those most important to me (even from 3000 miles away) whenever they need me.  It’s a good feeling.  But now I have to go back to work, and Boobie wont have my undivided attention.  Now I feel horrible.. 

Ok, never mind.  Forget I said any of that.  At every single job in the past, I’ve text/email/called the Bestie and we’ve shared our Poo Stories on the clock.  I suppose this wont ever change.  It wouldn’t be a dream job if it did.  

Ugh, she had perfect hair.  I hate her.  

Disclaimer : I know this post appeared to be an ode to my bestie, but she’s already had another post dedicated to her in the last month.  So until she fulfils her obligations of writing a guest post for me, she will not receive anymore head-blowing-up (whatdoyoucallit?).  Although, she’s not the kinda person to get a big head.   If you want to know more about her, clik the linky link above.

PS, I love my Bestie.