YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA

Lauren's coming up from Baltimore on Friday to spend the weekend. I haven't seen her since last October and frankly, I'm more excited to see her than I am to eat turkey tomorrow. (and if I'm being honest, I really don't love the turkey all that much, just the sides. I do however love turkey, mayo, and cranberry on white bread sandwiches, but when I suggested that perhaps I'd have tomorrow instead Kyle looked at me horrified).

so enjoy the holiday, I know I'll enjoy mine!!!
YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!

Really really really wanna zigazigAH!

While at work I decided to do one of my typical activities - email my friend from law school about random things. It passes the time and makes us feel better about our jobs. Today since I haven’t heard from him I assumed he was busy and therefore set out to think of a topic that I could send a bunch of emails on just to annoy him and make his Blackberry go off repeatedly in a meeting thus increasing his chances of getting fired or at least yelled at (this is how I deal with my inner jealousy that he has a job as an associate in Manhattan and I don’t).
So I decided to send him lyrics from cheesy pop songs in the hopes that one of them would stick in his head and stay there (don’t you HATE that?) And as I’m typing out lyrics I realized how ridiculous some of the words in these #1, chart topping hits are.
For example: “I know that I can’t take no more, it ain’t no lie, I want to see you out that door baby bye,bye,bye..” We ate this song up as teenagers. Learned the arm waving dance moves, all the words, loved the guys with their crazy hairdos… what was wrong with us? This is a bad song! When have you ever broken off a relation ship by telling a person to leave your house, goodbye that’s it, all over? Never. No breakup is that easy. First you need to tell the person every single thing you can’t stand about them anymore, then you have the “take your crap” roundup where you run around the house trying to gather up all their DVDs and clothes, then you fight in the doorway for another 20 minutes, THEN they leave. If you’re lucky.
What about: “My loneliness is killing me, and I, I must confess, I still believe (still believe) when I’m not with you I lose my mind, give me a sign, hit me baby one more time”. Now let’s just stop and think about this for a second. What exactly does “hit me” mean here? If it’s being used in the urban slang use as in “to hit that” then our parents should have never let us listen to this tart. So that’s not it. And surely she isn’t asking to be physically beaten, sooo? The song makes no sense. But did we care when we were 16? NO! Ever girl I knew, including me immediately bought a plaid skirt and experimented with putting her hair in pigtails. (And let’s be honest, they don’t look good on everyone) I still have that skirt.
My personal favorite in the “makes no sense” song genre is Candy Rain by Soul4Real. Remember? “My love, do you ever dream of, candy coated raindrops, you’re the same my candy rain.” What does it mean?! No idea. Either he’s comparing her to the rain (weird)or they played Candyland and now he had a dream about it… I don’t know, but those words made that group millionaires.
I’m sure I could go on with many more songs that make no sense whatsoever yet managed to be monster hits, but I need to stop because I can’t think straight- I keep hearing,“If you want to be my lover, you gotta get with my friends…”

Nom Nom Nom

Sorry for the delay between posts, but work has been very hectic lately so posting has been impossible.

You know what I HATE? I hate it when desserts don't live up to their expectations. Like when you go to the store and you see this cake that looks so gooey and covered in sweet frosting, and then when you eat it the frosting is just that cheap whipped cream stuff that tasted like sugared nothing. It happens most often to me with supermarket bakery stuff. It looks good, and I should know better by now, but every now and then I fall for the trick of how it looks and I buy it hoping the quality has improved and it has not.Shame on me.
Or when you go to a restaurant and the picture of the dessert looks life changing, and then you order it and not only does the actual dish looks nothing like what's in front of you, but it tastes just so-so and you've been charged $6.95 for it.
The obvious answer I know is to just bake the yummy things myself and then I know it will be good because I'm a great baker (yes mom, I know I leave the kitchen a mess, but the FOOD tastes great and that's the real point). But if I take the time to bake it, I have all that time to think about how unhealthy the goodies are, and that can sometimes give me Eater's Guilt when munching, which is no fun. I prefer my chocolate brownies to be full fat and low guilt (actually in a dream world I'd prefer them to be full taste, no fat, no guilt, but you get what I mean).
But what's even worse than ordering or buying a bad dessert is planning on a certain dessert and then being disappointed. That is hands down the WORST. You've had hours and hours to build up this image of sugar heaven in you head and with one bite- deflated.
Case in point- last night Kyle and I went out to dinner at this place that advertised Godiva tiramisu. I'll pause here to let that image sink in. GODIVA. It's the Holy Grail of chocolate. We picked this place last week (part of the New Haven Restaurant week deal) and we've been talking about the upcoming desert ever since. Frankly, I think I was more excited for the dessert than dinner itself. Although the calamari was really good.... But really I wanted that dessert.
And when it came, it was a major let down. Mostly a mound of whipped cream with a trickle of chocolate sauce over the top and 5 bites of cake underneath with 2 dry ladyfingers on the side. It tasted mainly of almond flavoring and whipped cream. No chocolate wonderland here :(
I should explain something. While I talk about food a lot, I'm not a fatty. We eat pretty healthy during the week and try to let ourselves have 1 "bad meal" with dessert a week. That's why I get so upset over dessert, because I have a whole 6 days to fantasize about what I'm going to eat, so it stinks when it doesn't live up to my expectations.
And that's why tonight I'm taking a stand. Ky and I were dying for this dessert, and we just weren't satisfied, so tonight I'm breaking my once a week rule and my not making dessert rule and I'm going to make tiramisu at home. Out of Twinkies. It's going to be awesome. At least it better be!

What’s so great about the Truth?

When you ask your partner “Do I look fat?” or “Is my hair thinner?” do you really want an honest answer? “Yup, you look like you’re pregnant.” or “Hair? What hair? All I see is my reflection.” Of course you don’t. You want to be told how skinny you look, or how your hair looks like McDreamy’s. In short, you want to be lied to by the person you love. But how can that be? Aren’t we always supposed to tell and want to be told the truth in our relationships?
Love songs don’t talk about the truth. Try to name a single well known love song that talks about honesty. Can’t do it right? But I bet you CAN sing the chorus to Shaggy’s, “It Wasn’t me”.
Honesty isn’t even in the marriage vows. To have and to hold, for richer of for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, love honor and obey, till death do us part… Nope, not a single mention of the truth.
The only time I hear people talk about truth is when I give the oath in court to have people tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”, and that’s usually right before the Judge grants them a divorce. Yup, the truth will set you free all right, as in free agent, because your butt will get dumped and then you’re single.
I don’t think this is accidental. People have been getting married for centuries; surely I am not the first person to notice this seeming oversight. I’d like to think that honesty was somewhere in the original wedding vows, but then we as a people got smart and took them out. Because love is not about being honest. Love is about seeing the very best in someone and ignoring their flaws. It’s about supporting someone, being there for them for whatever they need, and getting the same in return.
Being in love is like being and having your own personal cheerleader. And while that’s very nice, it’s not very honest. Cheerleaders still say “You can do it!” when there’s actually no chance of winning. But no one gets mad at the cheerleaders for lying. They understand that it’s done out of care and concern for the players, or in short-out of love.
You don’t want the truth from your loved one. That’s what your friends are for. What your loved one is for is to call you svelte and hand you ice cream when your friends tell you how your butt REALLY looks. And that’s why you love him.

My Dream Job

My friend Elyse just bought a new couch and there's a problem with it, so the store is sending a Couch Specialist over to fix it. that's right- this job title actual exists. Screw practicing law, opening a bakery, or going into the crafts business. I WANT TO BE A COUCH SPECIALIST!Just think about it:

A- I'm assuming the job is to test couches for comfort and softness by sitting and napping on them. Maybe I'd have to plump the occasional accent pillow.

B- A couch doesn't talk back or give you an attitude. It's the perfect client/co-worker.

C- If someone tries to talk to me about an ottoman, or an armchair, I'd get to look sympathetic and say, "Oh, I'm so sorry I can't help you with that, but I only do couches." And then I get to hand them this awesome business card.

HOW COOL WOULD IT BE???!!

I wonder if that phone number is actually the number to anything...

Wedding Ring and Staying Calm

I wanted a nice wedding band. Not something too flashy, or too wide. I wanted to to complement my engagement ring, but not compete with it. So I went searching. I looked online for days, dragged Kyle into every single jewelry store we passed, and ogled the rings of every woman I saw for inspiration. (Some of them gave we weird looks like I was going to mug) I decided I wanted a white gold channel set diamond band that was 3mm or less to match my ring. (for any male readers, I'm sure that last sentence made your eyes glaze over so : Football, Bikini, Tacos, Britney Spears. There, that should bring your focus back)
I finally found my dream ring at Walmart. I had serious reservations about getting it because, well, it's Walmart. I love them for things like cat litter and cough medicine, but do I really trust them with the piece of jewelry that I will wear for the next 70 years? Plus, wedding magazines make it seem like your marriage will instantly disintegrate if your ring doesn't cost the same as a mortgage payment. But this ring was exactly what I wanted, so I decided to throw caution to the wind, cross my fingers and order it. Kyle was really excited for me. I want to pretend that was because we were getting this symbol of undying love, but I think he was just excited that we were still going to have money for groceries after buying it.
They said the ring would be in on the 1st, but I never heard from them. We happened to be there last night (I needed pantyhose and didn't feel like doing laundry) and we decided to stop in and check on the status of my ring. Low and behold, it was in, but they didn't call me because my cell phone is out of area code and "Walmart won't pay for a long distance call". Which gave me slight pause because 1- Then how would I ever know when it was ready? and 2- If that is the policy shouldn't the workers be trained when they take a contact number to make sure it's local?
But I didn't let it get me down. After all, I was going to see my WEDDING RING! This was it! I got ready to be dazzled and slide the ring on my finger. And frowned. It fit like a dream, but when they resized it, the thinner, "custom fit" area that should be directly underneath the top diamonds on the ring is off to the side. Because this thinner area is naturally supposed to rest on the underneath of your finger it makes the whole band rotate so that the band is off center and the diamond part is sliding down the side of my finger. And when I try to put it the right way, it fights me and slides back sideways.
I tried to politely point all of this out to the lady behind the counter. I say tried because I have just a teeny tiny bit of an attitude issue towards working people sometimes. I SWEAR I don't mean to be rude, I really don't realize that I'm doing it, it just comes across as snotty. My friends yell at me about it in restaurants, Kyle tells me to behave myself, my Mom hisses at me to cut it out... only Lauren doesn't say anything I think it's because she has the same attitude as I do. Basically I'm a type A personality and I have no tolerance for other people's stupidity. But I'm working on it. I do yoga on Wednesdays to calm me. I take deep yoga breathes when I feel stressed out. Om, Namaste and all that good stuff.
But anyway, my point is that I tried really hard to be nice ans sweet to the lady behind the counter. She didn't care. She just said "I can't do anything" like 9 times. So then I asked her what my options were she told me to talk to the department manager, who was not there on weekends or after 4 pm.
So I took a deep breathe, walked away and called this morning at 8:52 . It took Walmart almost 40 rings to answer the main number.I did 5 Om breathes while waiting. I was transferred to jewelry by a snotty woman, where the phone rang and rang and after 50 rings no one picked up. 13 Oms. I hung up, had an internal scream at the number of cell phone minutes I was wasting, took another calming yoga breathe and called the main number again. This time they picked up after 10 rings and a nicer sounding women told me the department manager was in a meeting and could I please call back in 20 minutes. I was happy to finally get some information, and that my Oms and positive energy seemed to be paying off.
Kyle quickly killed me joy by telling me the department manager probably wasn't even there and they were likely lying to me. I retaliated by ignoring him while doing a pretend yoga mediation.
I called back 1/2 hour later armed with my nicest manners and aligned chakras. I talked to the department manager who sounded very nice. I explained the problem to her, and she said she would look at the ring and have ir sent back out for repair if need be and would call me this afternoon and let me know what was happening. I hung up pleased and proud of myself for not losing my cool. Namaste to me!
And then I had to call her back to give her a local number so that she could actually call me.

For the Record

I'm getting sworn in on Friday. For all you non-law people, that will be the official, "I am now a lawyer" moment. The 3 years of never seeing my friends, the insane student loans, the neck aches from carrying 94 lbs of books, learning the federal tax code, my crazy intership experiences, the entire wasted summer of studying and that hellish Bar Exam have all lead up to this Friday.
I know that it's a honor to be admitted to the Bar. That I should be humble about this. In fact, the Rules of Professional Conduct basically tell us to not be bigheaded. Really, they do. I can summarize the Rules in 3 points:
1. Don't steal money from your clients.
2- Don't lie to the Court.
3*- Don't be a jerk.
I get all that. And I try really hard to be a graceful person. It's one of my life goals. That and meeting Matt Damon. I know I should just smile and nod, and downplay the whole swearing in thing. I know I should be modest. But I don't want to.
I have literally poured my blood (papercuts), sweat (hiking the hill up to the law school) and tears (Margulies's Con law class) into this moment. I've sacrificed for this, I've worked my tail off for it. So I don't want to be polite and gracious. I want to stand up there and when they announce me as an attorney yell "RESPECT MY AUTHORITY!!" like Cartman. I want to strut into Walmart and when the checkout people are rude to me say," DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" I want to have people treat me nicely because they're afraid of being sued. I want the power.
But they take away your liscence to practice for being a jerk like that.Not Good. So nice and polite and modest it will be. It's a little like being Frodo in Lord Of The Ring. You've got this insanely powerful object, you really really want to use it, but you know you shouldn't. Well, if a little Hobbit can be strongand resist, so can I.
But if you ever see me muttering "my precious...." under my breathe, now you'll know why.

Maybe the Yalie is onto Something

YAY for Obama!

We were really excited as last night was election night- a.k.a Kyle's SuperBowl (yes, I'm marrying a political nerd, but I love him anyway :) ) I made special election night chicken soup and Victory extra fudgy brownies. I also managed to get Kyle to the gym early in the evening, since most of the polls were still open and there wasn't a lot going on yet. Plus the cardio machines at the gym have individual televisions, so he didn't miss a minute of coverage.
Personally, I loved Obama's speech. Hats off to the writers, and to Obama for great delivery. I'll admit it, we cried. It was that moving (sorry to completely rat you out on the crying Ky, but I had to!) It was quite possibly the best speech I've ever heard. Kyle said it was the perfect blend of JFK and MLK Jr.- inspiring and uplifting but also reassuring and calming. I said he was a genius for coming up with that analogy on his own.
No matter which way you voted, Kudos to all for voting in the first place. I'm proud of all of us in our late teens/ twenties who decided to voice our opinions about how we want this country to function.
But I never did get my free starbucks.

I want my free starbucks!

I voted already. Kyle practically jumped out of bed in excitement at 7:45 this morning, dragged me out of bed and into the shower and gleefully skipped to the car to drive us to the Thompson School to avoid what he told me would be a "really really long line." He was so excited that he misheard the helper lady and tried to get in the Z line for his last name instead of the E line for our street name. He also almost went running down the hall to the wrong room before I dragged him into the correct gymnasium.
where I want to point out there was NO line. NONE. We walked right up to get crossed off, walked right into the privacy booths and then right to the scanner to complete our civic duty. NO LINE. I could have slept for another 15 minutes. But I'm happy we got it done early, because then we had time to get breakfast :)
The only bummer- No "I voted" stickers! Now people won't know all day that I'm a savvy American who rocked the vote. They'll think I'm an uncaring idiot. And Krispy Kreme won't give me my free doughnut. But I voted people, I DID! And I don't need a little blue sticker to tell me that. But still... it would have been nice to have one....