Tuesday, March 01, 2005

 
Considering that I haven't played golf in about a year, I'm going to retire GolfGirl. But I'm not throwing her away -- there are just too many good posts and great comments on there to replace her. Not to mention, it's a great design by J Skaines. So I'll continue to keep her alive and link to her on the new blog.

For those of you who link to me, please update with: http://granolagirl.blogspot.com

See you there.

posted at 12:12 PM

Friday, February 25, 2005

 
Today, I've been faced with a few too many things that make me gag. Literally, gag. Eyes watering, choking, that type of thing.

Jack's poop. For some reason, today it made me gag like madness. And it was outside, not inside.

The sponge in the company kitchen. Now, I have an issue with dirty sponges altogether. In my home, the brush is used to clean the dishes, and those brushes are cleaned every time I run the dishwasher. The sponge is used for wiping the counters. And it, too, is cleaned in the dishwasher and usually replaced every few months. Regardless of "where I got this" habit, it's the way it is. Well, a dirty sponge shared by 1.5 people can get nasty -- one shared by an entire company is revolting and repulsive. Ughhh. I just got the shivers.

Phlegm. If I cough up one more snotwad I think I will vomit my guts up. I'm not one of those people who can hurl a loogie from their chest to their throat to the pavement in a matter of seconds. I have to go into a full body dry heave and yack that shit up and into the toilet. It has to be the toilet, because there's a pretty good chance that I'm going to vomit soon thereafter.

And no, I'm not pregnant. These things are just making me vomicky today.

posted at 3:13 PM

Thursday, February 24, 2005

 
My brother sent this to me. With an intro of, "Get a load of this."

CHICAGO - An appeals court said a man can press a claim for emotional distress after learning a former lover had used his sperm to have a baby. But he can't claim theft, the ruling said, because the sperm were hers to keep.

The ruling Wednesday by the Illinois Appellate Court sends Dr. Richard O. Phillips' distress case back to trial court. Phillips accuses Dr. Sharon Irons of a "calculated, profound personal betrayal" after their affair six years ago, saying she secretly kept semen after they had oral sex, then used it to get pregnant. He said he didn't find out about the child for nearly two years, when Irons filed a paternity lawsuit. DNA tests confirmed Phillips was the father, the court papers state. Phillips was ordered to pay about $800 a month in child support, said Irons' attorney, Enrico Mirabelli. Phillips sued Irons, claiming he has had trouble sleeping and eating and has been haunted by "feelings of being trapped in a nightmare," court papers state.

Irons responded that her alleged actions weren't "truly extreme and outrageous" and that Phillips' pain wasn't bad enough to merit a lawsuit. The circuit court agreed and dismissed Phillips' lawsuit in 2003. But the higher court ruled that, if Phillips' story is true, Irons "deceitfully engaged in sexual acts, which no reasonable person would expect could result in pregnancy, to use plaintiff's sperm in an unorthodox, unanticipated manner yielding extreme consequences." The judges backed the lower court decision to dismiss the fraud and theft claims, agreeing with Irons that she didn't steal the sperm.

"She asserts that when plaintiff 'delivered' his sperm, it was a gift — an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee," the decision said. "There was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request."

Phillips is representing himself in the case. He could not be reached for comment Thursday. "There's a 5-year-old child here," Mirabelli said. "Imagine how a child feels when your father says he feels emotionally damaged by your birth."



Uhhh...there was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request? Now, that's sexy.

posted at 9:50 PM

 
I have to get my engagement ring sized. I've been wearing it on my middle finger.

At lunch, I got my oil changed and purchased a handheld cordless carpet cleaner. Bissell. I get back to the office and tell the cube farm about it, and am told that I shouldn't have wasted my money on the carpet cleaner. I can smell dog pee. It could be all in my mind (Todd couldn't smell it the other night), so I'm hoping that by going through the exercise of doing some carpet cleaning, it will convince my mind that I don't smell the pee.

I've gotten to the point where fixing or styling my hair in the mornings is completely optional, and rarely exercised. My hair is wet and in a wanna-be pony tail every day. It's about as ugly as it gets.

Anything to distract from the pregnancy talk. I'm just not pregnant, no matter what everyone wants to believe. I can barely adequately care for my dog and cat. I'm not ready for children.

posted at 1:52 PM

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

 
You know how Christ was fully man and fully God? Well I dreamed last night that the Pope was fully man and fully woman, and that he/she went with me to pick up my wedding dress and ride rollercoasters. Also, I picked up a liquid measuring cup at the end of the rollercoaster and my wedding dress was pink and white.

They told me at the doctor's office that some of the meds might make me dream crazy and pee a lot.

I had a phone interview for a job in San Francisco last night. It went well. Really well, actually. I've always wanted to move to San Fran, but could the timing be more wheels off right now?

When I got off work yesterday, I was starving. So I rolled up some lunch meat and corn tortillas and threw them in the microwave. I ate a few of those. Then I went to the corn tortilla package to grab another one and noticed they had mold all over them. Great! My stomach started turning, and I thought I was going to vomit.

It's Wednesday, which means it's almost Saturday. I love the weekends.

posted at 9:21 AM

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

 
There's just so much to do.

I have a head full of snot, I swear it is endless.

I can't quit biting my nails, and I gave that habit up years ago.

I made the best pasta last night, from "remnants" in my cupboard and fridge -- artichokes, pine nuts, garlic, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, wine, olive oil, crushed red pepper, fresh black pepper, a little vegetable stock. It was tasty. And I have more room in the kitchen now.

I need to sign Jack up for some formal training. I really shouldn't have giggled so much when he followed me into the bathroom and started peeing all over the floor. Poor baby couldn't hold it and looked so relieved.

Jack also ate two of my "staple" pairs of black shoes that I wear everywhere. So I bought two new pairs, to replace them. I wore one pair to church on Sunday. I came in, took them off but did not put them up, came back into the living room and they were ruined. I still love him very much, though.

I hope my nephew, B, gets better! He's sick. Poor little thing.

Have I ever mentioned that my mother, my sister, and I are all engaged right now? Isn't that crazy? As my sister says, it's been a 'banner year" for the Brian girls.

I decided to make this post right now so that I could distract myself even further from the work I need to be doing. I better get back to it.

posted at 2:00 PM

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

 
I took the fact that the newspaper man accidentally dropped my neighbor's newspaper at my door as a sign that I need to discipline my dog with something more than a "No, Jackie, that's a bad boy," in the sweet voice. He is scared of a rolled-up newspaper. And we've only "tapped" him with it a couple of times during potty-training.

Now he's biting at Lily. Playing with her, but he is still a biter. He had her ear in his mouth the other morning...and was snapping at her cheek. I didn't know cats had cheeks until he had hers in his mouth.

I hate yelling at him. I hate when I get upset with him. But it's time to start working with him a little more than my usual "That's okay Jack baby...that's okay" sweet voice talk.

posted at 10:36 AM

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

 
"I think I'm going to vomit."

That's what I said. When he asked me to marry him. That, and "Mary, stop crying. Please stop crying."

And this is how it all went down...

He planned an entire day of Valentines. Surprise after surprise. Of course, when I got to my car yesterday morning, there were gifts in my seat and the sweetest homemade Valentine you've ever seen, with the most beautiful words, a beautiful poem. And sitting there by myself, I cried, pulled myself together, and drove in to work.

I get to work and my boss had scheduled a meeting last week for yesterday afternoon. He stopped by to let me know that he'd be out of the office for the day, but that he'd still call in for our meeting. I explained to him that that wasn't necessary, that we could just meet tomorrow. "Oh no, it'll be a good excuse to step away from the conference, I think we really need to meet." "Okay," I thought. There were other meetings all afternoon, for which I was thankful, because I needed something to pass the time. I was completely distracted and not wanting to work, excited about Todd and I spending our first Valentine's Day together that evening. I knew he had surprise plans for dinner, but I wasn't sure where we were going.

Surprises...That's the funny part. Todd and I have a running joke that he can never surprise me. He's done some really sweet things for me throughout our relationship, but many of them I've figured out ahead of time. On Saturday I was cleaning out my car -- I brought everything in and dumped it on the island in the kitchen. Later that day, I picked up a receipt from the stack and noticed it was from World Market. I go to World Market for one thing -- my favorite wine (I usually leave with about $80 or so worth of other merchandise, but this is why I go to World Market.) I looked at the receipt and noticed there was one bottle of my favorite wine on it...and it was purchased last Saturday. I knew I hadn't purchased it, so I thought to myself, "He bought my favorite wine for Valentine's Day...and left the receipt on accident. ANOTHER surprise I know about!" The next day, we're sitting in church and I can't stand it. I lean over and ask him about it. And he says, "Yeah, I really can't surprise you. I'm such an idiot! Where did you find that receipt??"

So back to yesterday...while at work, I get e-mails or instant messages from friends asking, "Do you have anything to tell me?" "Any good Valentine's Day news??" People have been asking me for months about this engagement so I thought nothing of it. Little did I know, they already knew, and they were just waiting...

So I go to lunch with Vincent and Mary. We haven't gone to lunch in weeks, and while I already had plans to go home and put Todd's Valentine's Day gifts together at lunch, I thought, "I can just do it quickly when I get home after work," and we headed to California Pizza Kitchen.

I overeat. And we get back to the office and I start doing more non-work stuff like downloading music from iTunes. I'm sitting there, cross-legged in my chair with headphones on, right in the middle of downloading "Bennie and the Jets", when I get a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and Todd is standing in my cube, holding a beautiful bouquet of red roses. I think to myself, "How sweet...he hand delivered my Valentine's day flowers..." Then I see Mary, peeking behind him, face red and swollen, tears draining from her eyes like crazy, and I realize what is happening. Oh yeah, and she was holding a camera. Immediately I start covering my face with my flowers, I'm shaking, and I think I'm going to vomit. I remember this only because people in the cube farm reminded me minutes later of my lovely, romantic proclamation, "Oh my God, I think I'm going to vomit..." Nice.

Next thing I knew, there he was on one knee, and I'm still blabbering sentences that don't make sense, asking Mary to please stop crying, I'm shaking, it's all happening so fast, and he says, "Okay, I kind of have to ask you something here..." And he asks me. And I allow him no time to give the beautiful speech he prepared, I grab him up and hug him and tell him yes, and that I love him and that oh my God he finally surprised me, and then I remember...the ring. "Let me see it!" And it's beautiful. And it's perfect.

And he tells me all my meetings for the afternoon are fake, that we have an entire day and night ahead of us. And I'm worried because all those things I was supposed to be doing while I was downloading music will not get done and well fuck it, I'm engaged.

We go to the car (on the way out someone yells, "Glad you didn't vomit!"...nice) and he has the car packed with all kinds of stuff. We drive to Turtle Creek where we had the most wonderful picnic in the park. We couldn't have asked for better weather, and he bought the nicest little picnic basket and filled it with all kinds of yummy cheese, crackers, grapes, etc. I wouldn't know how yummy it actually was, as I was still a little nauseous. I spent half the time on the phone -- either people calling me or me calling people. The other time we spent there together, coming down from our high.

And it doesn't end there...as I'm mentioning to Todd that I'm having chest pains and heart palpitations, he says that it's a good time to go for our next surprise. Two one hour massages at the neatest little spa off McKinney. Not two for me, one for him, one for me. But we had some time to kill so we did some shopping and stopped by Mary's (we were in the neighborhood) so that we could talk about and re-live the moment from a few hours ago again and again and again.

I've never needed a massage so badly in my life. When we get there, we're waiting with an older African-American man who, poor thing, made eye contact with me, which meant that I needed to tell him that I was recently engaged and what a wonderful day it has been and oh how perfect this man beside me is. We go in for the massages, and well, you know how perfect that is.

We've got a little time to kill, so we go to Todd's parents' house. They haven't seen the ring yet, but they knew about the surprise. We had a glass of wine with them, hugs all around, and we were off to my final surprise. (After stopping off at my office, of course, to get Todd's Valentine which I abandoned in sheer excitement and joy.) We get to my apartment and there's a table set with beautiful linens and candles for a nice romantic dinner. Pork tenderloin, twice baked potatoes, green beans with almonds, and the surprise bottle of wine. While Todd was preparing the meal I tried to quickly put Todd's Valentine's Day present together -- lots of new panties (he needed them), framed pictures of Jack and I for his office, and tickets to a hockey game this weekend. I gave it to him, then threw my hands in the air and acknowledged what a sucky gift it was compared to his day-long romantic slice of heaven perfection.

It all worked out so perfectly. While he had help, there was plenty of room for slip-ups to happen. I could have said no to lunch (while I was at lunch he was setting up the table and getting dinner in the fridge). If I'd said no and they still tried to persuade me, I would have known something was up. Miraculously, I shaved my legs this morning. I would never get a massage with my legs not shaven...something just told me to do it. For the past couple of weeks, he's been running around, forced to tell lies about going to work out or taking his younger brother somewhere...and I never thought twice about any of it. He even went with me to a jeweler a couple of weeks ago to look at rings...and he'd already ordered mine. He played the part so well...all the while I'm telling my friends and family, "I know him. He can't hide things from me. He can't surprise me." And there at the Vision, he taps me on the shoulder, gets down on one knee in my cube, and surprises the hell out of me...all day long.

Later, when we were alone and breathing again, he told me what he wanted to say in his proposal. It's all a little personal, reminiscent of our meeting in Mexico, that kind of thing. But he quoted a very simple line from one of my favorite authors, Hermann Hesse, "I know what love is, it is because of you."

It is because of the grace of God that I am able to feel this kind of love. I wake up every morning and feel in my heart that I don't deserve a love like this, that I don't deserve a man like Todd. He loves me unconditionally, with all of his heart and all of his soul. And it's only God's grace that can make something like that possible. What's even more special is that he knows that, too.

I love you, Todd.

posted at 7:13 AM