Arianna Georgi

We threw Nathan a b-day party with our favorite things.  It’s Always Sunny Season Premiere, Scotch, Meatballs, Beer.  Here’s how you too can have this much fun…

Step 1.  Evite:

Step 2:  The Details:

“Your finest Jelly Beans… Raw”

“Pears weird me out. Where do you start? The top? The bottom? It’s a weird looking thing”

Step 3:  Are you taking me to a spaghetti day?

“What’s your spaghetti policy?”

Step 4: Urinal Cakes

“I happen to think this bathroom is pristine because I work very hard cleaning it. In fact it’s so clean, I would say you could eat out of these urinals.”

Step 5:

Happy People

Tags: evite, It's Always Sunny, jelly beans, meatballs, pears, urine cakes, ziplocs

So of course I have to preface this entire thing by saying how much I love my mom and how well she does actually know me since we talk constantly and she’s one of the best friends I could ask for…

… and then I have to go ahead and ruin all the goodwill and niceness that was created by that statement by saying that if you looked around my house at the things she has given me you would think that she knows one thing, and one thing only: I like cats. 

In all fairness, I do like cats.  I have a cat, I spend my weekend volunteering with a cat rescue organization, and when I was about 10 I used to collect various cat paraphernalia (but let’s not talk about that).   All of this, however, just makes me more painfully aware of the thin line I walk between really liking cats (and animals in general), and becoming an insane cat lady that buys litter in bulk at Costco.  I volunteer with quite a few women that actually wear cat jewelry and sign emails “purrs and pets,” and I recently considered getting a new cat, but had to weigh very heavily the fact that it would be mean that cats would outnumber humans at my house.   Currently, I have one cat, I’m young, I’m attractive, I do talk about things other than cats, but this is how it starts I think.  I mean, crazy old cat ladies weren’t born that way I would think, once upon the time they were young and attractive and not reeking of cat urine too, right?  Then they got that second cat, and the third and the house filled with cat related goodies and it was all over.

So you can see why I am nervous, at any moment the scale could be tipped and I could head down the cat lady path towards my destiny.  And helping to tip that scale is the massive amount of cat-stuff my mom buys me. 

It’s sort of like my mom just met me, and she likes me, but she was only told one thing about my entire personality: that I like cats.  It’s similar to when you work at a job and people only really know a few things about you, like that you always eat a tuna fish sandwich for lunch and so they then comment on this almost every single day.  “Hey, tuna fish again, eh?”  They’re being friendly, but it’s also sad because they really only know one thing about you.  I once worked at a job all summer where the only thing people seemed to figure out about me was that I liked elephants, which I think I mentioned once.  When I then left the job, almost every single card I received included an elephant in some form (if those people had really asked me, they could have determined that in addition to elephants I also liked beer and (at the time) smokes).  Anyway, this is what my mom knows about me.  I like cats.  So she buys me a completely ridiculous amount of cat stuff. 

Lest you think I am exaggerating, I have selected below a few key cat items to show off.  Enjoy, and if you ever come to my house, please keep this post in mind and do not judge…

1.  The Porcelain Cat Teapot

When my mom gave this to me, my first reaction was that it would be the perfect thing to set out if I never want a boy to come in my bedroom ever, ever again.  I picture it going something like this:

Boy:  Want to go in your room?

Me: Sure.

Boy:  Wait, is that a porcelain teapot?

Me: Yes.

Boy:  With cats having tea on it?

Me: It appears so.

Boy:  Let’s just go watch TV instead.

Perhaps this was my mom’s intent, to protect my innocence, but more likely this teapot was on sale at Marshall’s.

2.  Cat Oven Mitts

At this point, the fact that my mom buys me cat stuff has become sort of a joke, so I think she was kidding with this one.  Still if you can avoid anthropomorphizing, these oven mitts are handy AND adorable!

3.  Very Large Fall Looking Cat

My mom got me this cat, also from Marshall’s I think, because it looks sort of like Rotten Ralph who was my favorite when I was a kid.  That’s pretty sweet mom, and it also shows that you know something about me other than the fact that I like cats (I also like books about cats).  Nonetheless, the fall looking cat is sort of terrifying.  And as you can see below, my actual cat is not a fan.

4.  This Thing

Um.  If you know what this is, please tell me.

5.  Cat Stationary

“Hold on a second, let me take down that crucial number on my cat stationary here…”  I say that nearly every single day.   

The cat stationary is in some ways the worst offender because I think overall it is the subtle cat lady things that really send you off the deep end, like when you start having cat pens, and cat stationary.  Anyway, another reason I posted this picture is so that everyone could see I use my cat stationary to play Scrabble and this is a game where I very obviously had a bingo and kicked ass. 

Maybe my mom wiill read this blog and see this particular part and realize I like Scrabble too.  Maybe then I could get some sweet Scrabble cufflinks or a new board…

PS: I love you mom!

Tags: cat stuff, Cats, My Mom

 I belong to 24 hour fitness because I joined when I first moved back here with the misguided notion that I might get a trainer.  And I belong to the Frog’s down the street because my work offered me a really nice cheap membership and I was already swimming in the pool once or twice a week to get ready for my first triathlon.  On top of that, I live in sunny San Diego, which means the outside is essentially one big gym.  Also, I have a gym at my apartment complex.  This means, that a ridiculous variety of gyms and fitness activities are at my finger tips whenever I decide to work out but, of course, I generally work in my apartment complex’s gym since it is the closest (and worst).

I am not even really sure it is fair to call my apartment complex’s gym, and “gym.”  It’s actually more of an unventilated room with a TV, a bike, an elliptical trainer, and weight machine.  It has little to no lighting, and smells pretty terrible.  If there’s an exercise room in hell, it probably looks slightly nicer than this and at least has a water machine.  Anyway, there is pretty much no reason you would work out there (especially if you belong to like 5 other gyms) unless you are incredibly lazy or, you have something to hide.

Let’s call it the Curves effect.  Curves is a nice idea and all, but the blacked out windows and “no men allowed” policy means that at least some of the women going there are going because they really don’t want anyone to see them.  The gym at my complex is similar, and since it has very little traffic it attracts a large number of people whose bizarre and/or obsessive compulsive behavior would be noted and probably mocked at 24 hour fitness or Frogs.  A few examples:

1. Guy that wears a large fishing hat and walks on the treadmill at a pace of about 1.2 mph for 3 hours every day while reading mystery novels.

2. Obsessed with stair-stepper in an unhealthy way girl- who works for hours on the stair-stepper, all the while looking utterly miserable and watching Food Network (probably just to torture herself). Since I started living here, I personally have seen her lose about 15 pounds.

3. Crazy southern man with a bowl hair cut that is incredibly ripped and lifts weights for hours in the gym while making various screaming noises.

Now, it’s that last one that really was at the source of this post.  I don’t know what crazy southern man’s deal is, but I like to make up various back stories about him in my head while I exercise to pass the time.  He’s in the gym constantly, and he looks exactly how I would picture a serial killer to look while working out.  He wears black jeans, no shirt, and has glossy black hair in a bowl cut ala Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men.  He makes terrifying noises while he lifts weights and then will ask me in a quiet Southern voice if it’s okay that he wants to change the TV to FoxNews.  Occasionally a Lolita-like girl of indeterminate age (I don’t want to know what’s going on there), shows up and mocks him for a while he exercises which he largely seems to ignore.  In short, he’s completely bizarre and would never cut it at a normal gym. 

Crazy Southern Weightlifter is so weird that sometimes I have to wonder if he’s not even a real person, but instead some sort of bizarre social experiment put in the gym to amaze and confound me.  Seriously, how does someone like this exsist?  What is the deal wih the bowl cut?  Why does he scream like that?  While my gym is semi-disgusting, smelly, and dark, it does give me questions like this to ponder while I sweat, which just may make it better than all the other gyms I have at my disposal combined. 

Apparently today was Bring Your Child to Work Day.  Fortunately, this did not really seem to take place at my current work, but I guess it did at my old job at Mitchell 1 because my friend Misty told me about it during out multiple daily emails.  I have never really gotten the point of the whole exercise of bring your child to work, unless you are trying to convince them NOT to go to college and become a delinquent so they don’t have to work at a job.  First of all, if your child is at work you aren’t really going to do real work so its not particularly informative for them.  In fact, I would argue that having a child is actually an advantage for once because you basically get to goof off all day with your kid while people with no children have to do actual work.  I should ask to bring my cat to work and then play with it all day to make things even.  It’s stupid.  Second of all, why would your child want to come to your work in the first place?  Here’s what the Bring Your Child to Work Website has to say about it:

“Designed to be more than a career day, the Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work^® program goes beyond the average “shadow” an adult. Exposing girls and boys to what a parent or mentor in their lives do during the work day is important, but showing them the value of their education, helping them discover the power and possibilities associated with a balanced work and family life, providing them an opportunity to share how they envision the future and begin steps toward their end goals in a hands-on and interactive environment is key to their achieving success. Each year, development of new interactive activities and partnerships will assist us in taking girls and boys to the future they dream of.”

Yeah, because most children really dream of going to work everyday 9-5 in an office and filing things.  I’m sorry, but unless you’re an astronaut or a cowboy, your job is probably not the future your child dreams of.  It may not even be the future YOU dream of.  Dangling the possibility of having your shitty job in front of a child as a reward for working hard is sort of like offering them some stale crackers as a treat after they finish their dinner.  I don’t remember anyone ever taking me to work, but if they had I probably would have thought “holy shit, I have to go to boring school for 20 years so I can go to boring work?  No thanks, I think I’ll just drop out and rob banks instead.”

Ashley is whining, Misty emailed me towards the end of the day.  She says its boring. 

In her defense, I wrote back, it sort of is.

          I went to the dentist this week because my mom made me an appointment.  I am 26 years old.  Let me explain.  When my mom gets something in her head (this idea being that my teeth are incredibly dirty, but previous ideas being that my carpet is filthy and should be professionally cleaned, my cat looks like it is feral, and my friends in high school were all bad influences) it is very hard to dissuade her.  She will hold on to this opinion and bring it up with the same sort of single-mindedness a bulldog has when in snaps its jaws down on a toddler.  This happens until something is done or everyone agrees with her.  A few months ago, she became obsessed with my teeth.               

“Your teeth need to be whitened” she said repeatedly, every single time she saw me. 

            “Are you saying my teeth look bad?” I asked.  I thought that taking this tactic would immediately cause my mom to withdraw in fear of damaging my fragile self-confidence.  No such luck.  

            “I just think if you are going to be going to job interviews and meeting people you should have white teeth, it looks nice when they are clean.”  This was the nicest this argument got.  It then dissolved into her pleading with me every time I got on the phone with her to get my teeth cleaned and saying things like, “You don’t want to have to wear dentures or have your teeth fall out when you are 40, right?”  I tried to ignore her, the same way I do when she goes on and on about me wearing a headset while driving because it is not safe otherwise.  Eventually she quieted down on the topic, and I assumed I had weathered the storm.

            It was just the eye of the hurricane.  After a few days of no mention of the teeth, I received an email.  “DENTAL CLEANING” was the title. 

            I made an appointment for you to get your teeth cleaned on Tuesday, April 15^th. At 4PM.    Love, MOM

April 15^th was about 3 days away.  “Mom,” I tried, on the phone, “I just started the new job.  I will have dental insurance in 2 weeks.  I will make my own appointment then…” 

            “Stop yelling at me,” my mom said.  I examined the volume level on the phone.  It was normal.   “It’s too late to cancel the appointment.” I was informed.

            The truth was, I had been avoiding a dentist appoint.  At my previous job I didn’t have dental insurance (they, apparently, were not very concerned about me having dentures at 30), and so it had been a while.  Like since 2005, a while.  It’s not so bad, I reasoned with myself while I sat in the waiting room, people got around for 1,000s of years before dentist showed up and started insisting we floss and come in annually, what could possibly be wrong?  In fact, I continued to mentally dialogue, this whole dentist thing is just a big racket.  They’re in cohots with the floss people.  It’s BS!  I bet my teeth would be just fine if I didn’t go for 10 years!!!

            My dentist stuck her head out to say “hi.”  I gave her a sheepish wave like she was an ex-boyfriend I was seeing around. 

            “What’s up?” I yelled. 

            “It’s been a while,” she said, “you look good.”  It was awkward. 

            “Uh, you look good too” I said. 

            By the time the hygienist called my name it was sort of a relief.  She studied my chart.      “It’s been a while,” I said, making small talk with her.   I was nervous and I was waiting for her to launch into a “better late than never, or a well you’re here now, it’s all going to be fine” type deal.  No such luck. 

            “It  has been a while,” she stated grimly.  “Are you scared?”  I stared at her with my mouth open which was good since she was already starting to put things in it.  I was hoping that what I was experiencing was similar to when you hike a mountain and get almost to the top and start getting passed by people coming down.  “Am I almost there?” you ask them, hoping for a little reassurance.  “Oh, it’s about 5 more miles and it is ROUGH” they exclaim.  They have been on the mountain for like 2 hours longer than you, but they are experts on how hard the mountain is since they have been to the top.  It’s an annoying phenomenon. 

            Anyway, this lady was like that, but with my teeth.  She made her way around to my side of the table and lowered the chair.  The ceiling at my dentist’s office has a picture of a giant hippo with its mouth open which I find disturbing since I recently watch a special on how hippos are really mean-spirited and kill tons of people in Africa each year. 

            “Well, you have gingivitis…, that’s to be expected,” the hygienist began poking around “who know what else we will find…”  Throughout the 30 minute cleaning she proceeded to berate my teeth until I was sure that when I looked in the mirror I would be confronted with a mouth full of brown stumps “Some decay here,” she said,  spraying water. “Now suck”  No wonder my mom wanted me to have an appointment, my teeth where horrific!  When she was finally done, she brought in the x-rays. 

            “How do they look?” I asked grimly.

            “Well, I’m no doctor, but I see a LOT of decay,” she said.  “We’ll see.”  And then she left and I sat like a death row prisoner until she came back with my dentist.  My dentist examined the x-ray.  Then she started poking around. 

            “You teeth look beautiful!” she exclaimed.  I shoot a look at the hygienist. 

            “I saw some decay on number 23, 31, and 24,” she stuttered.

            “No, they’re fine” my dentist said.  How could I have ever doubted myself?  Of course my teeth were awesome.  How could I doubt that I would have the most awesome teeth ever.  This hygienist was obviously just jealous of how great they are.  The dentist warned me to floss, which I assured her I do (I don’t), and told me to come in another few months for another cleaning (I probably won’t).  The whole thing came to 202 dollars I would not have to pay in two weeks when I have insurance.  Don’t ask me what the 2 dollars are for. 

In conclusion, I never should have doubted my teeth.