Poppy Cedes

To everyone who voted for me for Hot Blogger Calendar: Thank you.

It’s more about your support than it is about the win. I have no idea if I did win, since voting is through today, I just want you to know that I genuinely appreciate your efforts.

Life is good when good friends and family surround me. :)

Today is my mommy’s birthday.
Tomorrow is my stepdad’s birthday.

But I’m the one who gets the present.

They’re both showing up tomorrow to Dawg’s parents’ house and staying in Queens for Thanksgiving.

I can’t even put into words how much it means to me that they’re joining us for Thanksgiving. I am so thankful for their willingness to make the trip, to hang out with the entire gang (me, Dawg, Hollywood, Mama Dawg, Mr. Clean, Pudding, Pudding’s Wife, The Wolves, Gwennie the dog, Soco and Coco the cats), and to celebrate their birthdays with us in the chaos of Queens instead of the calm quiet of Tennessee. :)

I am the luckiest girl int he woooooorld.

I guess I’ve turned into someone who perpetually needs a line-up. Right now I have events for more weekends between now and the new year than I have free weekends, and I’m pretty sure all the free weekends will fill up shortly. And one of those events came about today when my aunt emailed me saying the next time I was in town she hoped to at least have coffee with me.

I thought it through, and I am technically keeping my word that I am not returning to Vermont for the remainder of 2009, so instead? Instead I’m showing up there on Friday, January 1, 2010 on a plane, renting a big 4WD vehicle, and crashing on couches. Right now my brother’s couch is confirmed, waiting on that second night’s couch, and then I fly back on Sunday, January 3. And right before I fly back I’m having lunch with my aunt, uncle, cousins, and their two doggies, Daisy and Chester.

Yay. :)

My aunt and uncle rarely send me emails, so when they do send me one, even if it’s spammy, I read it. All the way through. Makes me feel closer to them. I love them very much, they provide sound life advice, and I believe two things in my heart:

Say what you want about the title, but read it to the end.

Women have strengths that amaze men…..

IT IS THAT THEY FORGET THEIR WORTH.

Yes, I’m now a geriatric chainmailer, bite me. But I love what my aunt and uncle did for my heart today. <3

I am so excited about RenYC tomorrow. Looks like it will be a smallish crowd of us, but that’s totally fine because it’s easier for everyone to feel included in the conversation. I will be bringing the Red camera. :) And drinking. :) :)

I went to the lady doctor on Thursday afternoon. It was an incredibly wonderful experience in which I learned that rapid HIV tests are now done with a mouth swab (so I had one done by a super nice woman who I am guessing is 12 years younger than I am… wow), and that I have to get poked four times with four different sticks of doom in order to check for everything that needs to be checked for. I was also prescribed a different birth control pill after being told the one I have been on specifically causes mood swings in a lot of women. If this new pill stops the crazies I will be praising it to the world.

The office I went to is in the area neighboring Chinatown so I got to walk around Chinatown a little bit afterward and noticed I had a voicemail from Verizon. Apparently my personal phone contract had expired in September. I emailed them a nastygram earlier in the week saying “OMG MY CAT THREW AWAY MY PHONE AND I WAS WAITING FOR MY CONTRACT TO EXPIRE AND YOU NEVER TOLD ME IT EXPIRED AND YOU SUCK” so despite having just continued my plan without consulting me they have now cancelled my account/plan/phone with no penalty to me. Which is a very good thing, because I think the people of Chinatown don’t need to hear me be psycho.

Things at work are going well. The people upstairs adore me and the salespeople I care at all about sing my praises loudly across my floor through the cubicles and into the ears of the evil salespeople. I was very productive, knocking several important projects off my whiteboard list this week, and that’s even with taking time off for professional development (the Apple certification studies continue) and with taking a half day for the aforementioned appointment.

Speaking of work, I was having a pretty rough day today physically because my cervix is bruised from my doctor’s appointment. At 3pm Dawg called me to ask me what I was doing… because he was downstairs with a piece of red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting from Make My Cake. I ran down to him (ok, ok, took the elevator down, whatever!) and grabbed the cake from him then gave him lots of kisses before he drove off to go back to work until he had to work the event at the Garden (FDNY vs. NYPD boxing). I was actually headed upstairs to disinfect a computer, so I had to just hold onto the cake until after I was done with that then I went to my desk and started eating the cake… and apparently was making inappropriate sounds so loudly while eating this DELICIOUS cake that the guy in the cube next to me stated something to that effect. (Thanks for the cake, babe! :)

I’ve done a lot of crying, headaching, nauseating, sleeping, worrying, hoping, and being really sad since Friday.

I heard words I wanted to hear today that make the headache, nausea, worrying, and sadness go away. It’s something I’ve wondered and worried about for a long time (so long, that I actually started worrying about it before it was my place to worry) but never said anything. Turns out, words between people who love each other enough to be honest are very powerful and very healing.

This weekend Dawg, The Terrorist, and I drove to the Tropicana in Atlantic City, NJ for a little R&R.

I offer you the trip in photos and video, along with a little explication.

Ladies, if you want to be hit on constantly then you go on a trip with The Terrorist. I warn you: He also hit on a crack addict prostitute (elaborated on at the end of this post). His standards for flirting are: anything with a vagina, and sometimes he’ll hit on men for practice.

(Side note of seriousness: I adore The Terrorist, he is a great friend. I feel bad if I let you think he isn’t an awesome guy because he truly is. But if you ever get to meet him and he flirts with you just to get in your pants then you’re not meeting the real man behind the one night stand. Just sayin’.)

As soon as we got there we did pre-check-in where we stood on line to reserve our hotel rooms then we played a couple of slots while we waited for Pajamas and his Girl of the Day to show up. I know Pajamas from the vollies corps, but the guys who aren’t at the stage of life to settle down typically bring a girl to have fun with while they’re there, and that’s the type of girl Pajamas brought so I shook her hand and could pick her out in a line-up, but I didn’t get to know her. (If I see her 4 more times I’ll ask her what she does for a living, if that makes you happy.) Pajamas and his flavor of the weekend were on their way back home so we said goodbye to them and I played my Enchanted Unicorn game until I lost my $20.

(Side note of seriousness: Pajamas is a great guy from what I personally know about him. NYC is just a weird beast of a place where guys don’t seem to settle down until they’re “old” so in the meantime they are essentially perceived as woman grinders, as in they go through a lot of them. And Pajamas is young enough where he’s still grinding through the ladies. Some day I’m going to sit Pajamas and all the other young’uns down and tell them what it’s like in Vermont, how the “game” is played, and all their minds will be blown to bits.)

Terror, Dawg, and I went to The Fiesta buffet to eat a lot of food. I had carving station flank steak and roast turkey, corn on the cob, a baked potato, salad with blue cheese dressing, and a chocolate mousse with a Coke to drink. I tried a cheese ravioli with lobster sauce, but as happens EVERY time I try seafood I hated it so I gave the ravioli to Dawg who was very much enjoying the seafood with Terror.

After food we went back on line to get our room keys, at which point I used my newly acquired Diamond Club card coupon for a free room upgrade to get us one of the newly renovated rooms in the South tower of the Trop.

That photo is of him sitting on his hotel bed, watching the Sex and the City movie rather than going downstairs to play the slots with me and Dawg. Yes, he came all the way to a hotel to watch TV. But his room was comped, so what the hell does he care if he’d rather cry over Carrie’s wedding dress? He agreed to make a reservation for us all to have dinner at Red Square at 7:30pm then Dawg and I strolled the boardwalk and I snapped a few photos:

…but the sound of the ocean is what I needed to take home with me so I took this video:

…and cried the whole time. The ocean is a very bittersweet experience for me.

We sat down on the boardwalk and just people watched until dinner time then we met up with Terror and went to Red Square for salad, steak, and Russian vodkaaaaaa:

After dinner we walked back to the casino area to put $20 at a time into colorful, musical machines of fun.

[INSERT PHOTO OF CASINO FLOOR HERE USING YOUR IMAGINATION SINCE PHOTOS OF THE CASINO FLOOR ARE FORBIDDEN.]

I got hit on by a crack addict who ordered a Midori sour with a cherry from one of the MANY waitresses who never, ever gave me the time of day (note to self: next time wear a hat that says “I want a free drink and I tip better than the old pervy guys”) even though I dropped $250-$300 overall into their shiny machines that night, then the guys decided to play the tables so I brought Rebel back up to the hotel room then played some slots on my own and wandered back over to The Quarter to see what other trouble I could find, but Dawg called me to tell me he and Terror were done losing at the tables so I went back up to the room with Dawg and we had fanfuckingtastic sex on the edge of a tall bed and went to sleep. (Yes, Finn, apparently it always is. I apologize to you.) (No photos of that either. :)

The next day I got all dressed up in my next day outfit, including my Bongo jeans I hafta squeeeeeeeeeeze into then found out that we weren’t playing any more casino games, but in fact were leaving the hotel. After we were all packed up Dawg tried his hardest to get Terror to answer his damn hotel door then Dawg and I went downstairs:

and I shopped at James’s for taffy and chocolates to take home then got a yummy bacon, egg, and cheese on a Kaiser and a small hot coffee at Adam’s deli (SUPER GOOD). After we left the hotel Dawg drove us left onto Atlantic…

People in Atlantic City are kinda crazy. The tourists, sure, but the locals definitely. Some prostitute was screaming on Atlantic Avenue then came over to the Dunkin’ Donuts the 3 of us were in and started screaming for a cab driver because no cab had driven by in a half hour to pick her up and she had $500 in her titties and she was sober and somebody better drive her to where she needed to go, and everyone just laughed at her and called her a crazy bitch so she left and wandered into traffic, almost getting hit by more than one car, then sat at the bus stop instead of getting on the bus that was at the bus stop. Only on Atlantic Avenue… (We have an Atlantic Avenue near us in Queens, and the same savory crazy people hang out on it! :)

And that’s the trip, folks!

Full photo set is here. Dawg will have his own photos up eventually. :)

“Smart impresses me; strength of character impresses me. But most of all, I’m impressed by kindness. Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives its many flaws and quirks. When I see that in someone, it fills me with admiration.” — Ridley, lead character in Lisa Unger’s Beautiful Lies

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a more perfect passage in a piece of fiction not based on someone’s life. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the only great part of this particular New York Time’s Bestseller, but whatevs. These words are my words. I might as well have written them, because they precisely state who I am as a person. If you need to know how I think about human beings, how I’m able to show the compassion I have for other people, these words tell you how I am programmed to think, to feel.

In completely unrelated news, I ordered my Halloween costume from a company that really wants the person who is indicated on the SHIP TO label to actually sign for the US Postal Service package that arrives, but I foolishly put my own name on the SHIP TO of Mama Dawg’s house. I tracked the package yesterday and realized that the USPS had indeed tried to get a signature for the package on (Saturday? I don’t recall, a day I wasn’t sitting on the bench outside the house waiting for a package to arrive in my name, anyway) but left a slip that said “pick up your package at the post office, LADY.” Well, fat chance of that happening considering my Manhattan-bound status during the week, and I actually have to *gasp* work this coming Saturday so everyone devised the plan that I would sign the slip then Hollywood would take it to the post office on Monday and say that I just married into the family (I did not) and that I am his daughter-in-law (well, ya know, I think I am despite the lack of legality, but I don’t think the USPS would necessarily agree), and that I live with him and please oh please give me her package cuz, look, she wrote down the same address as is on my license!

This morning Dawg called me at work… in the morning… on a MONDAY… a very rare occasion, having now happened all of ONE TIME.

Poppy: (cheery but inquisitive voice) Hey, Babe!
Dawg: (serious, stern voice) Hey Babe. Listen. I just got off the phone with my mom and I have to head down to the 104th precinct. My dad went to pick up your package and got arrested…
Poppy: (thinking in my head, “now why would it be the 104? I didn’t go to the 104 when my car got broken into on their block…” and then “OH HOLY FUCK SHIT DAMN I GOT DAD ARRESTED!”)
Poppy (continued): “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!??!!?!??!?!”
Dawg: (chuckling) Yes, he got the package. I’ll pick it up on the way home.
Poppy: (hysterically laughing but pissed) You know if that REALLY happened I would have to exit all aspects of your life out of complete embarrassment.
Dawg: (continuing to laugh)
Poppy: *sigh* Good one, though.

I would try to be witty with some pithy comment about OMFG I DID EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK THIS WEEKEND but instead I’ll just tell you what I did in short sentences.

Friday is completely lost in my memory.

And so ends the short sentences.

Saturday I went to Longggg Island to meet up with the always adorable, funny, insightful, and entertaining Bella so we could see Extract. We talked about Bella’s work picnic before the movie, then were accosted by old ladies at the movie who didn’t get why any of it was funny. After the movie we went to Chipotle! My first time! I had the braised beef (barbacoa) burrito with the extra hot salsa, rice, black beans, cheese, sour cream, and the tomato/onion mixture and have fallen madly in love with this chain. I got to see photos of and hear more about Bella’s incredibly successful picnic! Then I drove back to Queens and took Dawg to the Georgia Diner where I ordered Disco Fries, hold the cheese and gravy (I didn’t see just fries on the menu) and Dawg had the Romanian steak sandwich dinner, then we drove to drop off the laundry and to 7-11 for sundries, including 6 pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. At home we watched the EXCELLENT-to-me film The Wrestler on DVD while eating ice cream then had some of the most fantastic sex. (We very often have that, just for frame of reference.)

Sunday we had some mid-day lovin’ then left the apt for Five Guys where I had a bacon cheese hot dog (EFFING A, DUDE), then we walked to Staples to get a $40 USB cable, then we went to Mama Dawg’s to wait for The New Jersey Crew to show up. When they arrived we went to Shiro of Japan (all 11 of us, including Hollywood and Mr. Clean) and when we arrived there was a reservation for “Stephanie” for 11 people at 5pm, the time we arrived, with phone number of 917. I happened to be the person letting the staff know we were there for a reservation and was pretty sure no one called in a reservation for my misspelled name. Just coincidence, and a habachi table for 11 of us was set within minutes. My given name is Stefanie (with an F, yo), in case the irony is lost on you. Fantastic waitstaff (Stephanie and Daniel served us) and a fantastic tableside chef whose name I don’t remember. We were laughing so hard that other tables were looking on and would start cheering when we cheered at the chef, it was great. After food we went to the Atlas Park carnival, where I promptly watched Blinky ride the Zipper (it’s a caged ferris wheel where you flip upside-down) and The Professor ride The Scrambler, and all the kids ride the Round-Up, then I got cold so Dawg walked me over to the cart to pick up a funnel cake, zeppoles, and fried Oreos which I took back to Mama Dawg’s where I hung out with her and Hollywood and just chatted. I love talking to them. :) And then eventually the whole crew came back from the carnival and we had brownies that Dawg and Mama Dawg had made earlier, as well as all the fair food, and just talked for a while. When it was time for everyone to go we slipped out into the night, back to 7-11 for a few more sundries, then it was home to order my Avitaween costume then off to bed.

Monday we woke up too early then decided what we would do for the day: See Final Destination 3D! It was a ridiculous movie, but fun to go see a horror movie in the theaters, especially in 3D. I ate sooooo much popcorn, cuz I ordered the large by mistake, which comes in a tub, and I was eating it like a ferocious animal while I sucked down my fountain soda Coke. After the movie we picked up the laundry and then I was soooo not hungry so we grabbed Chinese restaurant Mexican food for later — got my regular 2 crispy chili beef tacos and order of chili beef nachos with extra japeno peppers — then grabbed Dunkin’ Donuts beverages and went home. A nap ensued. Ohhhh, do I adore my naps or do I adore my naps?! And here we are to current where I just ordered the last item of my Avitaween costume and now I’m about to watch last night’s ABDC while eating my Chinese-Mexican dindin then maybe a movie and it’s back to bed, mebbe with a little hot and steamy sex. ;)

A perfect weekend. Better than perfect.

Update: Apparently we had really hot sex on Friday, too! YAY, ME! And I’ve been guaranteed more hot sex tonight! YAY, ME AGAIN! I am a lucky girl…

Yesterday I made some personal decisions for myself that set me up for success rather than the failure spiral I was starting to feel. One of them was that I’m just going to accept my own words that people come and go in your life. Another is to just be happy and not try to analyze everything into a bad situation. Another is to be nice if you want others to be nice to you (then if they aren’t nice you can tear them a newwwwww asshole :). And one more: books aren’t my reality and other people’s situations aren’t my reality, just my reality is mine. It feels like I’ve come to all of these conclusions before but then I sheep out, letting others lead, and in the process I become a zombie computer, doing what others are doing just cuz, not making careful choices for myself when they need to be made, and being really confused and defensive when my brain checks back in and sees the mess I let in.

So, that’s that.

There’s a really interesting article on Macworld about the AppleTalk protocol finally being laid to rest in Snow Leopard/OS X 10.6 and how if your 10-year-old network printer can’t do IP printing you’re SOL. … First of all, that’s a mother fucking AWESOME printer to have lasted 10 years. Second of all, they’re still making ink for it?!!? Wow! Third of all, you got your money’s worth, now go buy a new printer for probably 1/2 to 1/4 what you paid for that one and let your niece and nephew tinker with and marvel at your ancient technology.

I’ve decided I probably won’t go back to VT until next year. Lack of vacation days plus coming to terms with being a New Yorker, plus it taking 7 hours just to get there if there’s any traffic at all allowed me to cut the ties. This means I will shop for EZA’s Aug 25 bday presents then send them to him in a box with a letter that apologizes for not being there to hand deliver it like I had hoped.

I’ve changed my mind about Karin Slaughter’s Triptych. You should read it.

Happy Friday, friends and family! >> I’m sitting on the patio. [Update] *giggle* <– easily amused.