L.A. Theatre Works

Dear L.A. Theatre Works,

I love you and I am so happy to have found you on Saturday night NPR. I am even more excited that your fabulous work is available in podcast form so I can listen to it on iTunes. "La Bete" so far is fantastic and I can't wait to hear the end!

Love,
Kristen

How Not to Go Down a Waterslide

• Step 1: Fall off your floating chair in the deep end of the pool, getting water up your nose and turning you into a sputtering, flailing mess.

• Step 2: Give in to taunting by 9 year olds who find it hilarious that you are sputtering because of a little water up your nose and who start making chicken noises at you when you tell them there is no way in hell you are going down a waterslide.

• Step 3: Exit the pool but first trip on the step and skin your knee. Do not pay attention to the foreshadowing of said knee scrape.

• Step 4: Walk up the rock steps to the top of the waterslide, not paying a bit of attention to how high up it really is.

• Step 5: Prepare yourself to slide down the slide by sitting down at the lip of the slide, then slip on the wet rocks and begin careening down the tube slide, completely unprepared for what is to come.

• Step 6: Spend the entire time in the slide getting plastic-burn on the back of your legs because the slide is completely dry, swearing because of said plastic-burn, and trying to figure out how best to enter the water to avoid a) losing the top to your swim suit which has somehow come loose b) smashing yourself on the rocks on either side of the slide exit c) drowning in the deep end of the pool.

• Step 7: Fail at the first two of the goals listed in step 6.

• Step 8: Make the 9 year olds promise not to mock you for eternity for failing spectacularly at something as simple as going down a water slide.

• Step 9: Swim over to the swim-up-bar and pour yourself a drink.

• Step 10: Repeat starting with Step 1 if you did not learn your lesson the first time.

Extreme Gym Class for Kids, or How My Vacation Made Me Feel Out of Shape

So the family I was visiting in NJ is the family that once upon a time I worked for as a nanny. The family is comprised of 2 awesome parents (more on them in a future post) 4 fabulously fun girls, and 3 dogs of various yappy-ness. The girls range in ages from 9 to 18 and all are tremendously talented athletes. All 4 girls are training hard this summer for their respective fall sports (college, high school, middle school, & elementary school) at a local gym whose mission statement is something to the effect of "making your children into professional athletes in just 3 easy steps"*

I drove the carpool to the gym bright and early one morning and let me tell you, I got a workout just watching these kids. I was amazed to see the sprint trials the 9 year old's group was doing that day: ladders back and forth across the gym with almost alarming speed. And let me tell you, those 9 year olds were FAST! The 13 and 15 year old's classes overlapped a bit and watching them do squats and chest presses with not much less weight than I lift was definitely a reality check. I am in better shape now than I was in high school, which I am tremendously proud of, but I felt like such an out of shape soccer mom watching these kids pump iron, hard, for 90 minutes.

So after gym class, I went home, had half a donut in consolation, and swam in the pool the rest of the day. Swimming counts as exercise, right??

*ok I made up the 3 easy steps part, but the mission statement does involve making children into "professional athletes."

More to come

So I'm back from my week long vacation to the always lovely New Jersey (no really, it's beautiful there) and I have lots of things to blog about. Unfortunately, I have to work the next 5 days in a row so I'm not sure when said blogging will occur. I'll try to throw something up when I get home tonight or first thing tomorrow so be sure to check back to read all about the following:

1- extreme gym class for kids
2- how not to go down a water slide
3- why my pseudo family in New Jersey rocks
4- a brief outline of my next adventure

Ew

Dear brown, smelly sewage water leaking down my bathroom wall and through to the common room floor below me,

Why, oh why, did you have to grace me with your presence at midnight on a Saturday instead of noon on a Thursday, when the maintenance guy is in the building? I mean, could you have at least given me a few hours notice so I could move my toiletries out of the impending flood? I know I can just boil them all to remove the traces of feces but think about it...would YOU want to wear a retainer to bed that you knew was previously dripped upon with poo water? I thought not. Ew. For real. Just...ew.

unhappily yours,
Kristen

Re:

Recently a friend of mine mentioned that there aren't very many pictures of me on this blog. In response to her comment, I give you an entire post of pictures:

Re-enacting a picture from our wedding day at the Central PA Bride Fair.
(September 2008)
The husband and I doing our best impression of a WASP-y couple with an adopted "Asian" baby girl. Her name is Maureen or Mo for short.
(December 2008)
Us being totally geeked out by our shiny new Field Museum Membership. Hooray!
(December 2008)

With my family in Vegas for my brother's 30th birthday party.
(February 2009)

Surveying the battlefield at Gettysburg, PA.
(March 2009)

Me wearing a dog face headband that was on sale at the Gettysburg National Battlefield Gift Shop. I have no idea why they were selling said item of randomness, which is most certainly why I had to try it on.
(March 2009)

Celebrating my very first loaf of Challah bread. Yum!

(April 2009)

Us on the double decker carousel at Six Flags Over Chicago.
(June 2009)

So there you have it...photographic evidence of the last 10 months of my life. :)

A Haiku

fifty-seventh street
has a beach of which I'm fond
water, sand, and sun.

...

So the husband left yesterday for Istanbul, Turkey. He'll be there for 2.5 months and I'll be here in Chicago. I feel lame for missing him so much already...it's almost 4 a.m. and not only can I not sleep, but I can't even bring myself to get into our bed because I know it just won't be the same without him there, snuggling up to me, stealing all the blankets and then complaining that I'm a bed hog (which is totally true).

It's going to be a long summer.

Round 2: FIGHT!

Dear ivory duvet cover that I love so much,

Please learn how to be blood* resistant.

Love,
Kristen

*Not that kind of blood...ew. It's the husband's blood actually. He's got a sizeable cut on his knee that keeps ripping open and twice now this week he's knelt on the bed gotten blood drops on the duvet (he never thinks use bandaids). On Friday night, the first time it happened, we were just getting in bed after a long night and I was super annoyed that I had to peel the duvet off the comforter, spray it with Spray-n-Wash & wash it before going to bed so the stain wouldn't set. This time he's all upset with himself and all I can do is laugh. We literally just put it back on the bed last night. My husband is hilarious.

It's not all bunnies and rainbows...

Recently my sister-in-law and I had an argument of sorts. She asked me for some advice, I gave it to her, she didn't like what I had to say and freaked out which led to angry facebook messages and texts (because god forbid she pick up her effing phone when the husband or I called her to actually talk). In the end, I told her that sometimes the truth hurts and her response was to make a comment to the effect of "I know, but I'm happy and that's all that really matters," which got me thinking about the ridiculousness of that statement and the sense of entitlement I see in my generation and the current tween/teen generation.

Don't get me wrong, happiness is important...no one should have to live their life unhappily, BUT, part of being a responsible adult is being able to say "You know what? XYZ would make me really happy, but I realize that it's illegal/immoral/stupid/would hurt the people I love and who love me, so I'm not going to do it." This is the lesson that I think our generation and the one after it have missed entirely. Being happy does not mean getting everything you want. It does not mean that people should always cater to your whims. And it certainly does not mean that you have the right to be rude and inconsiderate to people who tell you things you don't want to hear. The real world isn't all bunnies and rainbows and you have to be able to recognize and understand that for people to take you seriously as an adult. Being happy is a choice. If you want to be seen as an adult you've got to stop bitching about not getting what you want/not being able to manipulate people into doing what you want and make the choice to be happy regardless.