An award! Finally!

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . February 28, 2010 . 11:16AM

My friend Natalie, over at Boingerhead, has been one of my very best friends (and favorite people) for over 10 years now. You can see her over at the post I wrote about our kids growing up too fast. She and I have supported each other through everything and there isn’t anything she could say or do that I don’t have her back.

When she decided to start her blog, I was incredibly excited. I love her children desperately and couldn’t wait to hear about her life on a regular basis. She and I don’t get to talk enough and this was a great way for me to stay in touch when we don’t get to talk on the phone. She has awarded me the Sugar Doll award that I now get to pass on to some ladies who make me happy! As part of the award, I have to tell you 10 things you don’t know about me. Eep!

I’m passing the award onto two of the first bloggers I read. I don’t do favoritism, but these two have kept me in stitches for almost a year now, so it’s only fair that I send it their way. So, to Barefoot Foodie and Happy Meals and Happy Hour, thank you for making me so happy. I am passing on the torch. Thanks, again!

10 things you don’t know about me:

1/There are times my eyes look green, even though they are clearly brown. It is because the iris is green surrounded by brown. My mom’s eyes are greenish.

2/I hate to have lotion on the palms of my hands. I hate the way it feels and would rather have nasty, ashy, flakey skin than apply lotion.

3/I also hate to have anything on the pads of my feet. I wear socks almost constantly because we have wood floors in our house.

4/I met Bryan, my male best friend, in my masters degree program. We look like siblings, are both German, brown hair, brown curly haired and grew up 90 minutes apart. There is no way that we know of that we are related. However, we can sit in a room with each other quietly for hours and just chill and be happy. Friendships should all be like that.

5/I can’t grow out my fingernails. I bite them when I’m nervous AND when I’m happy AND when I’m thoughtful. They have no shot.

6/I have played instruments including the flute, piano, trumpet and trombone. I have played none of them very well.

7/I don’t have any tattoos, but I think they are incredibly sexy-hot.

8/When I was little, I had a dream about a house with small pond and a weeping willow tree. I have it in my head and I want to live there someday. I have no doubt it is in the town where I live now, I just have to find it.

9/Fall is my favorite season mainly because the trees in Nashville are amazing in the fall. I love Halloween, I love the scents of the season and I love the way everything seems to come together in the fall.

10/Fart jokes make me laugh. Harder than anything else. But I refuse to fart in front of others. Including my husband.

Now you know WAY too much about me.

Vague memories of an Irish pub

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . February 26, 2010 . 8:19PM

When we last left our heroine, she was at an Irish pub in the awful land of Washington, D.C.: a land full of people with agendas and horribly arranged streets…

We’d moved to a larger room in the back of The Dubliner and our group was gaining people like crazy. By this time, many in the group were inebriated. I was drinking my Coca-Cola (yeah, yeah, I’m drinking caffeine again–I’ll pay for it later) and enjoying the show.

It’s not my job to tell you everything that they did or said. It’s really not fair to them. Truly. They desperately need to be tattled on, but they all have their own blogs and if they can remember, more power to them. What I remember most keenly was our waiter. In an Irish pub, anyone with any kind of European accent sounds Irish. This is particularly true when everyone in the room is inebriated. What happens is that everything is much funnier than it really is.

Because of this situation, when it came to conversing with the waiter, I thought that it was hysterical that he wasn’t really Irish (look, he SOUNDED IRISH–if it looks like a Lucky Charm and walks like a Lucky Charm–yep, I’m kidding and yep, someone is gonna take that personally and yep, someone is gonna call me names). If you’d like to call me sauerkraut, go ahead.

Anyway, I made it my mission to discover the heritage of our waiter. As such, I refused to give him my order until he would disclose. What? I was in Washington. Disclosure is the name of the game. You can’t live there and not carry around your birth certificate, right?

Eventually, he gave it up to me and my friend Sarah that he was English and French. Sarah is French so this was an incredibly delightful conversation that ended with us holding our waiter up for ten minutes while we compared family histories and had a new best friend who was now required to serve all of our food “with love” because it was inevitable that we were somehow related (me being 1/4 English and Sarah being French).

And yes, I required him to say that everything had love in it.

This was much better than the experience we had at a bar later in the week where they wouldn’t allow us in because Caleb’s license had expired and they refused to believe he was over 21 even though he was supporting a full logger beard and it was clearly him on the license. And then when the guy who refused to let us in mouthed off to Caleb and Ben and made the situation ten times worse… Oh, you want to hear about that, too?

It was a long weekend. And I met a girl named Beer.

On the Road Again

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . February 23, 2010 . 11:30PM

As an introvert, I just don’t travel well. I need a lot of sleep and a lot of time to myself. By that, I mean I need copious amounts of quiet time or I turn into a raging witch who will poke your eyes out if she doesn’t eat on time or stay warm or get enough entertainment…you get the picture.

However, there are times that even the thought of travel isn’t so daunting that I feel like I need to avoid trips. This is especially true when I know that I will see many of my friends and that the people I’m spending time with are those that have similar belief systems to mine. Well, that and I LOVE a good hotel room. Don’t you? All the little soaps and clean towels and beds that are made and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Leon and I had been looking forward to our trip last weekend for months. We were heading to CPAC and it was our first real trip ever without AJ. The plan was to be gone for 5 days and to leave AJ with our friend Bryan. AJ was thrilled because for him this meant: No bedtime, all the soda he could drink, video games and hanging out with the coolest person he knows. For me this meant: coming home to a spoiled child, worrying about whether he was getting enough to eat and wondering if his eyes were going to rot out of his head from playing video games.

I got over it and we went to D.C. There are so many things to blog about and they overrun everything I truly want to say. What this means is that you are going to have to deal with me blogging about it in spurts, as it comes to me, instead of a nice block of cohesive posts.

Washington D.C., from the point of view of someone whose city has little traffic issue, is a beast. I have never had to pay so much money to go such a little distance in my life. I will never, ever live there. Luckily, both Leon and I decided that there will be no politicians in this family. For the first two nights, we stayed outside of the city in a complicated little place called Silver Spring, Maryland. It was full of older homes and streets that are similar to something a 12-year old Sims player might put together. The goal was to make it to the Dubliner in D.C. Even the Jesus phone that our friend Allen had was confused as to how to get there from where we were. The miles of snow piled upon the cars and on the sides of the street didn’t aid in getting us to food any faster.

Remember when I said I don’t travel well and I get angry like the Hulk if things aren’t perfect? I was hungry. And I’d just realized I left my phone charger at home. My driving companions were fearful, but Allen is very laid back and Leon was looking forward to seeing his friends at The Dubliner. I’m pretty certain both of them were ignoring me because I was in the back seat, too, but neither would cop to this.

When we arrived, around 8pm on a Wednesday night, the place was packed. Luckily, a friend of ours thinks ahead and had reserved a whole area for our large group. Unfortunately, the staff at the Dubliner didn’t take us seriously because we had about 5 stools for 20 or so people. This led to copious time at the bar.

Which means no one remembers what happened the rest of the night.

I kid!

Or do I?

To be continued…

Point taken! Here I am.

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . February 23, 2010 . 10:35AM

After a highly exciting weekend at CPAC, and by highly exciting weekend I mean that it will take me a week to get back my sleep, I returned home and am ready to talk about it. But first, I have to do all of the things that people do when they get home.

Take care of my crops on Farmville.

Read my twitter feed.

Check my email.

Go through my Google Reader.

Eat some chocolate.

Blip some songs.

Instant message.

Call my friends.

Ignore my statistics homework.

Cuddle my pets.

Love on my son.

And not in that order. But don’t think for a minute that those crops on Farmville weren’t taken care of immediately. My watermelons are in top condition, thank you.

A lot of my blogger friends have, at some point, expressed remorse at taking a blogging break due to life events. I’m not that girl. I’m just not. My online life is important to me, but it’s not my only gig. Yet, I understand that there are certain expectations and that maybe I’m not fulfilling them for everyone. It’s cool. I came across a review of my site on my Google Reader (still have over 500 posts to read on that baby). Overall, it was quite complimentary and I wanted to say thank you for that.

To be quite honest, I don’t think anyone buys my blog on Amazon.com to read on their Kindle, but the fact that you would endorse me truly means a lot to me. The fact that you want me to write more means even more. Sometimes people need to be told they are missed to be motivated. I appreciate it.

I’ll see what I can do. Thanks again. You made my day.

Even Stevens, do you hear me?

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . February 16, 2010 . 10:10PM

So, my karma has been on the evil side of bad lately.

Frankly, I knew it was coming. I’ve been a bad girl and I was due. When it came, it came and hit me horribly. Without going into all the details, life came crashing down and the effects are long-lasting and hard. Sickness and horror upon friends and acquaintances, hard times, school frustration, you name it. The business of life has been quite a lot to bear lately.

However, I’ve taken my licks like a woman and not a child and I think that I have just about had enough. Tonight, we’re in the black, karma. In. the. black.

I just went to take a shower. I was stank. Truly. My hair was greasy. I have been inside with the dogs all day due to snow and I just needed to feel clean. I leave tomorrow for a conference and if I don’t shower tonight, my long, thick, wavy hair will never dry in time for me to make my flight. It’s why I take my showers at night unless I want to have a bad 80s perm all day.

After making my way upstairs, I gathered my pajamas and went to the bathroom where I noticed that one of my two major sources of light was out. This wouldn’t be a problem but I needed to shave my legs. I know this is too much information, but bear with me. You have to know this part of the story. I’m 5’11″ and my body is all legs. I need that light to see and, quite frankly, I’d been waiting to shave until the night before the trip so I’d be silky smooth. Ladies, you know what I mean.

With a dubious look to the light, I started the water and figured I’d soldier on. How difficult could shaving be in the semi-dark? I could still see the legs, just not the hair.

This is the part where karma laughs at me loud and long.

We’re all good until the shaving part. I’ve put my conditioner in to set while I shave. With the first stroke, I know I’m in trouble. My blade is dull. It’s the last blade I have left before a trip I’m going on tomorrow and all I have is a dull blade, hairy legs and a dark bathroom. I make the unwise decision that if I shave MORE SLOWLY the blade will still do the work of a sharp blade.

I’m a smart person. This was not a smart moment.

I cannot see the leg, so I shave some areas and not others and then shave over some parts and make them sensitive and tender to touch. Nicks are everywhere.

This is when karma and I become even.

Someone in my house, either the 9-year-old or the 32-year-old, makes the unwitting decision that I need to be put in my place once and for all: They turn the water on. As I’m sliding the dull blade up my leg, yet again, the water goes from luke warm to scalding in about 2 seconds. I jump, the blade skips up my leg and…you can see where this is going.

I still have conditioner in my hair.

I’m hurt.

I’m angry.

And this is not funny.

Eventually the water turns lukewarm and I throw the razor across the bathroom and wash my hair out.

We are even, karma. Even Stevens. Do you hear me? It’s over.