My secret boyfriend Jake

So, I’ve got this boyfriend. Don’t worry, Jeff knows about him … oh, does he know …


See, my boyfriend’s name is Jake Roo. And while I’ve been a little bit underwhelmed with what Jake’s done for me recently, overall our relationship is quite fabulous. He’s always trying new things and he always makes me feel pretty.

But here’s my secret. I’m not just Jake Roo’s girlfriend. I’m more like his … mistress. That’s right. ::hangs head:: Sometimes, I work for Jake Roo. But he’s super private, and made me sign this lame-ass contract that I wouldn’t blog or facebook about that part of our relationship. Seems a little controlling to me, but whatever.

Alright, dropping the metaphor … getting annoyed.

But yeah. Lemme tell ya … it’s a really good gig. Jeff always laughs at me because we have no idea why they keep me. Since May, I’ve never opened a single credit card. I am like a chimpanzee smashing buttons behind the register. I’ve worked (this is not a joke) 5.5 hours in the past 6 weeks.

But I can re-arrange the shelves like a champ, fold Jackie twinsets like a champ, and am surprisingly good in the Men’s department. And the discount … oh, the discount. ::Swoon:: I hardly bring in any money, but (in my logical mind) I’m really SAVING quite a bit by working there … even though I’m buying more than I would otherwise.

I was there on Sunday, and it was slow, so I had Jeff come in and I dressed him up like a Ken doll in various outfits, including the following:

I die. Okay, so it was super fratty/60-year-old-on-a-cruise kind way, but he did actually look cute. The not-in-public kind of cute. I should have taken a picture.

Anyway, I’m going to keep my relationship with Jake semi-secret on this blog, because I’d like it to continue. But at the same time, if I can ever help you out with anything – questions, comments, looking for something … let me know! I do what I can for the people.

What I'm Reading: The Time Traveler's Wife

I just re-read this last week for my book club (aka – eat, drink wine, talk books for 30 minutes and gossip for 90 minutes club). It had been a few years since I’d picked it up, and I remembered love, love, loving it the first time around. It was a perfect mix for me – I’m something of a sci-fi/fantasy nerd, and time travel books and movies are like my favorite EVER, plus it had the emotion of a well-done chick lit book. I was immediately sold.


This time around, I still loved it. Not everyone in my book club did, however. A few ladies flat-out hated it, in fact. As I listened to their reasons, I tried to refute them in my head – I wasn’t going to try to get them to change their opinions, but I was curious how my rationale held up against some common criticisms:

-Too confusing . Well … umm … sorry. I don’t think any of my book club friends are idiots or anything, but I think maybe they just weren’t paying that much attention. There were very few instances in this book where I felt ‘lost’. For long, anyway. Sure, sometimes you have to go a few pages to remind yourself of what year the characters are in and how old they are, but this wasn’t really too cumbersome for me.

-Too gross. Some people were really disturbed by the concepts of Henry getting sexy with himself, Henry having sex with Claire while ‘another Henry’ lay there sleeping, and of Claire miscarrying her babies outside of her body. Any they were right … these concepts were disturbing. But the weirdness of these scenes were far overshadowed for me by the overwhelming cleverness of it all – regarding the babies, especially. It was disturbing, obviously. But I was really impressed with the thought Niffenegger put into this concept – it made total sense, but wasn’t immediately obvious. If Henry’s disease is genetic, and he can’t control his time travelling, it follows that his children would suffer the same fate. Basically, yeah – it was gross. But it wasn’t just an unnecessary plot device.

-The language. Here’s the one I can get on board with. I’ve never uttered the c-u-next-Tuesday word as far as I know, but it doesn’t really bother me on a fundamental level. I’m not a prude, I guess is what I’m saying. HOWEVER, an upper-crust 21-year old woman doesn’t refer to her vajay-jay that way. She just doesn’t. When Henry said it, maybe I could buy it. Maybe. But it just felt forced, along with some of the obscure punk references, etc. that the author peppered the book with.

But really, I don’t care. This story fascinates me and makes me bawl near the end every damn time. I still highly recommend it. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but plan to when it comes out on DVD next week … it’ll be interesting to see how my girlfriend Rachel McAdams performs.

Lemme in!! I want to play face science too!

I'm such a follower. But hey, every shepherd needs some lambs, right? So when MODG and Sarah and all of facebook got their mugs calibrated by the scientists over at myheritage, I knew I needed in on that action. Can I be Asian??!? Maybe a man??!?

I trolled all the thousands of pictures in our iPhoto to try to find some pictures where it would recognize my face, and I figured out 3 things. Number 1 - there are very few photos of me facing frontwards. Number 2 - there are very few pictures of me where I'm not making an idiot face. With as much money as I spend on clothes and face products, I don't put very much effort into myself. Number 3 - God, I do some weird shit.

I plugged in my face, let the scientists analyze it ... and I got the lame-ass normals that people always tell me I look like.



I know I shouldn't complain, really. And I know I'm setting myself up because I've been hearing that I look like Jennifer Love Hewitt since 1999 ... but I don't really think she's hot. Still ... I'm bored with this selection. Bring on George Takai or someone equally as awesome, please.  Next!



Yawn!

FINE FACE SCIENTISTS. You wanna play me like that? I'll bring out the big guns. Let's see what you got. RECOGNIZE THIS.



Sigh. You know what? That's fine. I give the fuck up. Beyond thinking my double chin is wrinkles and giving me a slew of old biddies, apparently there's nothing funny about face science. Unless ... wait.



Jeff, you look like Eddie Murphy. And Ibraham Tatlises (...?). A small victory.

I'd like them to make a sandwich of my body.

OHMIGOD. You guys, I have the biggest crush on Elton John. I know, there are like 42 things wrong with that statement, but I just can't help it.

And I was ambivalent about Gaga until I saw that video of her performing at NYU, then I was smitten with her whole thing too. And I couldn't stop grinning at my TV. They're just SO COOL.

J Crew's new rollout

Oh, J Crew. You've been good to me. (Really, really good. More on that later). But I'm underwhelmed with this Spring rollout, honestly. Everything's pretty, but there's very little that I feel like I need, with a few exceptions:

And you guys, this scarf? Is so much more beautiful IRL than it is in this picture, which is really blah. I saw this and immediately made the cutest fucking outfit in my mind to wear to my best friend's surprise b-day party in a few weeks. I will make it my precious.

And now, a major whatthefuck. This ruffly, zip-up vest? That they have categorized as beach and loungewear? I'm sorry, but number one this is fugly. And number two, even if I could see some cuteness in it ... WHY would I wear this to the freaking beach?? Like, how? Over a swimsuit? I can't even fathom it, so FAIL, J. Crew.

Oh, also, my location has a super-cute printed strapless dress that I couldn't find online. I'll have to try it on this weekend and post a picture, a la Gigi.

I call a do-over on this week.

 I’m sick. Achy muscles, hot flashes and chills, watery eyes, stuffy/runny nose (sidebar: is there ANYTHING worse than this?? When your nose is stuffed up way in the back, but it’s still running like a faucet in front, but you can’t do a damn thing about it? And I haven’t quite built up the confidence to just plug the offending the nostril with a tissue so I can get some damn sleep like I used to do when I slept alone), headache … yuck.

Normally I welcome one illness per year because I get to stay home from work and my husband dotes on me ridiculously. HOWEVER, I’m about out of sick/vacation days for the year (they run April-April for me … lame) and I feel like I’ve already used up my marital sympathies for a while, what with the vag needle earlier this week. I got a card, flowers, and 2 pints of Ben and Jerry’s on Wednesday, so I feel bad pulling the sick card 2 days later. He’s gonna think I’m faking just to get some. (“Some” meaning food in bed and license to not get up and change a DVD all weekend, of course, not “some” like “some ass” because very little sounds worse right now.)

We’re staying in tonight for some quality house-time, which means wine, Scrabble, movies and Guitar Hero. And yeah, probably more ice cream. And I’ll probably make him tickle the backs of my legs (omg my favorite) without any promise of nookie in return. Ah, marriage …

Did they teach you THIS in sex ed? AKA, all about my box.

This post is totally TMI. But I can't be the only one this has ever happened to, and I'd like someone to bitch with, if you're out there.

First, I feel like I should disclaim that to an outsider, my situation is quite admirable. I am always fresh and clean, and always usually keep the landing strip well-maintained. I suppose it's true that I’ve yet to vajazzle, but gotta save something for a marital dry spell, ya know? Anyway. Point is, it’s like an episode of Hoarders in my box. Looks like a respectable abode from the outside, with all hell breaking loose inside.

Surgery number one. 2004. (Which is how I always know what year Friends ended. I’m an awesome teammate at bar trivia, if you're ever lookin.) Drunk sexing with the ex-bf (actually, I’m pretty sure we were already broken up, but I went through a pathetic phase.) I feel like I’ve been stabbed through the abdomen with a pencil. Cue 6 hours of writhing on the kitchen floor in horror, drinking 12 juice boxes because I thought maybe I was just constipated (it hurt behind my butthole, seriously) while the douche just SLEPT. In my bed. I finally called my dad at 7am when I pulled myself onto the toilet and fainted. And fell off and hit my head on the bathtub.

So, emergency room, metal dildo liquid injection into my anus, MRI, an abdomen so full of blood I looked 6 months pregnant and it went ‘glug glug’ when I moved … it was a softball-sized ovarian cyst that had ruptured.

Surgery number two, 2005, when Jeff and I first started dating. Bartholin’s Gland Cyst – hold that thought.

Surgery number three, 2009. LEEP for pre-cancerous cells on my cervix. That one’s boring because it wasn’t an emergency and so far I don’t have cancer, so I’ll leave it alone. The thing to note is that THESE ARE THREE TOTALLY SEPARATE PARTS. Ovaries, cervix, Bartholin’s gland. Are all the suck. (The doctors tell me these things "shouldn't" affect my fertility, and I know they shouldn't, but seeing as the only way to know if I can get pregnant is to ... get pregnant, I really have no way of knowing.)

So, now it's 2010. I have another Bartholin’s Gland cyst. Bartholin’s glands: small glands on either side of the vaginal opening that produce arousal fluid. OR get plugged up somehow and swell to the size of a golf ball and hurt like a whore. BALLS! So I’ve been having a problem with pants and underwear for about 5 days now, but since most places I go require me to wear at least one of the two, I’ve been in hell.

Now, here is my dilemma. My doctor isn’t in the office until Wednesday, but I want to wait for her, because she’s awesome. My best friend is also a doctor. And also awesome, but she’s not my doctor. So we’re going to this party on Saturday night, and sitting around drinking wine and eating spin dip beforehand, and I’m rocking a dress with houses on it and blue tights. (That’s not important, I just wanted to set the scene of how hot-quirky I looked. Because that’s my favorite kind of hot.) And she says, well I could drain it. Just let me know and I’ll bring stuff home from the hospital tomorrow and just do it. It’s a really easy procedure.

And I just stared at her for probably 20 minutes, imagining how I'd feel laying spread-legged in front of her. Every time I thought I was fine with it, another side-eye snuck up onto my face.

Honestly, It was more that I felt bad making her stare into my box than that I was afraid of a scalpel/syringe/catheter combo in her living room. That’s a true friend, I think. She’s lucky. She tells me it doesn’t matter, that she’s seen hundreds of vaginas, that she’s already seen me naked. I’m sure both of those things are true.

We got drunk and I was like "Yeah! Let's do it! It will be a fun bonding experience, and free! YAY!!!"

Yeeeaaaaah ... I decided not to do it. Honestly, I did get over the fact that she’d have her hands on my box. It just came down to the fact that a fucking golf ball in my vagina isn’t worth a friendship, and I was afraid that if something WERE to go wrong, and we’d done this thing undocumented, that I’d basically either have to shell out a bunch of cash to get it fixed or, like, sue my best friend? I mean, I don’t really know how medical suits work but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be involved in one with my BFF.

But every hour that I’m counting down to farking Wednesday, I kinda wish I hadn’t erred on the side of caution.