For the past month or so I’ve been telling anyone that will listen that jparks and I are becoming a one car family at the end of May. While it might have seemed like I was bragging because I am so green with my one car and you’re not, you Earth killer, really I was just trying to get myself excited about the idea of sharing a car, which is something I have never had to do before. Because I am a spoiled brat I got my own car at 15 and have had my own car since then. Throughout our relationship jparks and I have each had our own cars and we’ve never had to plan ahead to make sure the other person has transportation. So basically having one car is going to be quite the lifestyle change for us and that change is finally here.

Up until yesterday I was pretty okay with the idea of having one car. The lease was ending on my car in May and in February, when we made the decision to only have one car, that was hella far away. Tonight my car goes back to the dealership and we attempt to walk away without Volvo pushing another car on us. I think it’s safe to say that I would be the easy sell on a new car and jparks might actually end up being the sensible one in this situation. My plan is to bring a book and stick my nose in it, only looking up to explain why my rims are scraped to the point of unrecognizable (I love nothing more than running them into curbs) and to sign the paperwork.

While I would like to claim we are dropping one car to be more environmentally friendly, the truth is that since getting laid off we’ve been looking for small ways to spend less and ditching a car seems like the easiest way to go. We’re also not saying that we will never again have two cars because honestly I think this can only last so long before one of us (read as me) loses their mind trying to juggle our schedules. My goal is to make it until January with one car and if I haven’t lost my mind by then, we’ll reassess and try to continue for a few more months. If I have lost my mind, we’ll start the debate over what kind of car to get. That’s when everyone will see that I’m not really the spoiled brat in this house, and that jparks, Mr. I Want A Tesla, is and all will be right in the world again.

This might come as a surprise, but I am not a chipper person by nature. I can fake it when I need to, like at work meetings or family events so I don’t scare my relatives, but my general temperament is kind of pissy. Not to point fingers, but I blame my grandfather on my father’s side for this. He was a piss and vinegar old man, but in a nice way, which is also a pretty accurate description of me. While most would say I run closer to sarcastic than cranky old man, I will be the first to correct them by admitting the sarcasm is just my way of softening the crankiness. And besides if I were to go full cranky old man at the age of 29, what will I have to look forward to when I’m 80? I mean other than pooping in a diaper because woohoo! nothing says good times like crapping yourself.

My pissiness was something I was always able to control and dial back as needed, but lately I have been mad at the world and I can’t make it stop. I’ll see something in my google reader and I won’t even be able to finish reading the post because OMG, MY HEAD WILL EXPLODE FROM ANGER. Or Twitter, I probably shouldn’t even start about Twitter. I’ve had to remove certain twitter-ers from being sent to my phone because I am certain if I didn’t, I would throw my phone down the garbage disposal. (Of course I didn’t remove you. And your blog never makes me angry. I love you, you are awesome)

I don’t want to be all “ha, one more crappy thing about pregnancy!” but honestly this is one more crappy thing I wasn’t expecting. I can feel that my hormones are all over the damn placel and yet I can’t take the reigns and control them. One minute I’m fine and the next I’m crying, complete with big, air sucking sobs. And then I’m immediately fiery mad and poor jparks is the one crying because holy crap who is this hellbeast that claims to be his wife?

Here’s a list of things that I’ve gotten incredibly mad about lately:

I am truly a ball of sunshine.

This weekend jparks and I were in Austin for his best friend’s Valentine’s Day wedding. At first I wasn’t really excited about a Valentine’s Wedding (not that we do anything special for VDay) but then I realized that we would have a night of dinner and dancing and we wouldn’t have to plan for it at all. That’s a winning situation for two people that usually stay home to avoid the crowds on the 14th. In the future I plan on crashing other VDay weddings.

While the wedding was lovely, I do have one major complaint about this trip. In an effort to save money jparks and I booked the hotel room through hotwire. You know, hotwire where you don’t learn your hotel room until you complete the booking process. Hotwire, where the star ratings are wrong. Hotwire, who wants you to die in your hotel room, so you can’t complain about the crappy hotel they stuck you with.

Hotwire booked us at the La Quinta Inn off MoPac. Please keep in mind that I am a bit of a hotel snob, but I wasn’t always. I can lower my standards in certain situations and this was one time when I was really trying to be open minded about the La Quinta Inn, mostly because no refunds were given for cancellations.

Thursday night was our first night at the La Quinta and I had to check in alone because jparks was off getting shitfaced at the bachelor party. I checked into my room and was happily settling in to watch 30 Rock, when I noticed that one of the two doors leading out looked like it had been kicked in. This particular door supposedly faced a courtyard, but since I was in the last room in the wing the door actually faced the parking lot. The top lock, which was one of these, was totally broken. The part that attaches to the door frame was missing, as well as a chunk of the frame. How in the hell much brute force does it take to break one of those locks? Seeing as I was alone until jparks drunkenly stumbled in, I figured it was not the best idea to push my luck and find out.

I asked the front desk to move me, and they happily did. I was settling into my new room when I walked into the bathroom to find a tub that looked scarier than most gym showers. The bottom of it was gray and gross and I could feel my toes rotting off just from looking at it. At this point what were my options? Go complain again? Move to another freaking room only to find out that the toilet was home to ass biting piranhas? Or that the sink only dispensed flesh melting acid? I decided to suck it up and deal with the tub. But not before letting slynnro and whitney know that should they never hear from me again please come claim my body at the lovely La Quinta Inn.

Did I mention that the room only had two double beds and that jparks was forced to not sleep with me? Because seriously, you can’t go from sharing a king sized bed with a person to sharing a double bed. Life does not work like that. Or that out of boredom I started looking up reviews of the hotel and found some gems that included “Hotel was nice until police started knocking on doors in the middle of the night. Never found out what was going on.” Or “Four cars were vandalized in the parking lot. Hotel took no responsibility for this.”

When all was said and done I did survive the weekend (obviously). We put a towel down on the floor of the tub every day and stood on that when we showered. I’m sure housekeeping loved us, but whatever. And to make up for the crappy room, I got jparks to upgrade us to first class for the flight home. Which was the best and the worst idea ever. First class is seriously awesome. So awesome I will never be able to fly coach again without a lot of whining about how I should be in first class. Where they hand out real silverware and hot towels. And your drinks come in real glasses. And the stewardess even knows your name and calls you Ms. Parks. Holy crap, first class is the land of milk and honey.

At some point in the past two years I have become an angry, letter writing, cranky old woman. It started when Whole Foods sold me some foul tuna. Jparks and I had planned a meal around this tuna and when we opened the pack, I wanted to vomit. It smelled horrible, beyond fishy, and we decided that even if we covered it in some kind of sauce, there was no way we could eat it. So we threw away $15 worth of tuna and I was not happy about it. We probably had cereal for dinner that night because once I’m home, there is no leaving the house again.

The next day I wrote a letter to the manager of my local Whole Foods and felt much better. Letter writing was awesome! I got to complain, without actually having to go to the store, ask for the manager, wait for him to drag his ass up front, explain the situation, explain it again when he just stares at me blankly, and then accept his weak apology while being able to see just how much he doesn’t care about me and my tuna issues. Viva la letter writing!

I had been happy in my letter writing ways up until this morning. See, our Christmas tree is officially dead. I can no longer deny it, nor can I do anything to save it, that sucker is DEAD. And I am pissed. I mean, Christmas trees usually last forever. Okay, maybe not forever, but longer than two weeks. I immediatly wanted to write a letter complaining to Lowe’s, but I also want a new tree. And while a letter might yield a gift card from them at some point down the road, I need that new tree now. So I called the store this morning and then swallowed some broken glass bits just for comparative purposes. In the end I decided that the glass swallowing was the more pleasant experience.

I asked to speak to a manager and I’m fairly certain I was put through to a bored employee pretending to be a manager. I told her my tree had died, that I thought it was unusual, and asked if anyone else has complained about trees purchased from them. She responded with “Well, you have to water it.” “Yeah I understand that, which is why I water it every morning.” “Well, I don’t know what to tell you.”

She then offered to transfer me to the gardening center because “they might have more information for you regarding tree care” but I hung up before the transfer went through. The last thing I need is to be told to water the tree again. Unfortunately the phone call left me mad enough to still want to write a letter and to publicly shame Lowe’s with a blog post.

Shame on you Lowe’s! You suck! Now I have to go buy another tree (which, yes I will be doing this weekend because I must have a tree) which will just make me bitter and angry, because I have already bought and paid for one tree this year. (For the record, the second tree will not come from Lowe’s).

Lowe’s, I’m giving you the virtual stink eye. You should expect my letter shortly.

I’m having a sort of “woe is me” type day today and you people out there in internetland will just have to suffer through it. Am sorry. But, WOE IS ME.

Some switch was flipped in me last night and I woke up this morning feeling an awful lot of disconnect between how my life is and how I think my life should be. I know it’s normal to feel like your life should be more fabulous than it actually is and while I normally say “yes, please more fabulous!” this time it’s not that.

It started when, over the weekend, Lily got sick. She seems to have some sort of cold complete with sneezing and spraying jparks’ laptop screen with doggie snot which is way cute, but needs to be stopped. I want to take her to the vet, but when do I have time for it? Oh yeah, that’s right, I don’t. I could take her to the emergency vet after work, but really, for a cold? I don’t even want to think about how much that would cost. I went ahead and made her an appointment for tomorrow morning, which yay she’s going to get medical treatment, but boo my boss isn’t going to be happy when I come in late and then leave early for my doctor appointment that afternoon.

Today I had a hair appointment during lunch. I wanted to get to work on time so I wouldn’t feel guilty about taking a long lunch (hair stylist is 45 minutes, round trip away, from my office) but of course, I overslept and was late to work. Now I have to work late to make up the time I was gone, which means that I’ll be late getting home, which means that I’ll be so hungry when I get home that I’ll end up getting take out instead of cooking.

Which brings me right to my next complaint: I am so sick of take out. Since buying our house, jparks and I have been strapped for cash. One thing that would really help us save money is if we cooked at home, but I don’t have time for it. I’m sure someone outside of my mind and body could look at my schedule and tell me how I can fit in cooking (hello, crock pot) but right now it seems impossible. This take out thing has been gnawing away at me for some time, but I keep my mouth shut because sometimes the internal gnawing is easier than fixing the problem. Jparks will only eat sit down restaurant take out; fast food is out of the question. And while I see his point, fast food = big ass, I can’t help but cringe every time we spend $20 to $40 on dinner. It should not cost this much to feed two people.

Some other little things that I feel like I should have time for but I just don’t are: having the carpets cleaned, putting away the laundry (the pile is currently worse than ever before), taking the dog for a walk that lasts more than 5 minutes, watching the three netflix movies that we’ve had at our house since April, moving the pictures from the sd card to the computer, actually opening Photoshop, going to Costco to buy toilet paper, and, oh my god, so many more.

I am just feeling overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by how much time work takes and how little time I have left over for my life. Overwhelmed that I want to have a kidlet, but how am I supposed to do that when I can’t even find time to take the dog to the vet? Overwhelmed because I feel like I’m some how mismanaging my time, when I don’t honestly think I am. Overwhelmed that I’m not getting to enjoy life, that I’m just trudging through it, working for a prize that I won’t ever win.

Right now, I’ll pass on the fabulousness if I could just have some success. Something that could confirm that all of this time spent at work isn’t pointless. Something that makes the growing pile of laundry worthwhile. Something that tells me I shouldn’t just come to work tomorrow and quit. “Hi bosses, I need to turn in my two weeks’ notice. The reason? Well, my life, it sucks and I blame you. Also, this job is a joke.” And I’ll take a small success, even just a week’s worth of home cooked meals. Or some clean underwear in my drawer.

I don’t need more fabulous, I just need more manageable. Is that an unreasonable request?

Please don’t get the wrong idea about jparks. Yes, he could cook, clean, and walk the dog but he works more than me. And if one of us really needs to be focused on work, it’s him because he is our family cash cow. Moo, honey, MOO. Also, in a month you’ll be all “wasn’t she just whining about how her life sucks? I quit this blog!” I apologize now for it. I am lame. Regular broadcasting will return tomorrow.

While packing for BlogHer it occurred to me that my pajamas are beyond ratty. Knowing that I was rooming with Whitney and not jparks, who is very used to my scrubs that are so old they are basically transparent, prompted me to think “I should go buy some new pajamas.” But I didn’t actually go buy new pajamas, I simply dug out some yoga pants and a tee shirt and called it a day, because that’s how much I respect Whitney, enough to cover my naughty bits around her, but not with the proper garments (on a side note, at one point over the weekend I did fall asleep naked but wrapped in a towel. So that thing about respecting Whitney? It just jumped out the window)

I honestly hate buying pajamas. And underwear. And right now I desperately need both. I know some people hate the shopping for underwear portion of the experience but I actually like that. I don’t mind bra fittings, even really touchy feely ones. I don’t mind that I’m one size in regular clothing and the next size bigger in pajamas and underwear. Nothing about the experience bothers me expect for paying for the items I need. I hate shelling out money for pajamas. I hate paying for bras. And I will spend a stupid amount of money of shoes, but then go cheap cheap cheap for underwear. (Although I draw the line at CostCo underwear. That’s just wrong)

And the fact that bras can easily be the most expensive item of clothing I’m wearing on any given day just pisses me off. No one (except maybe jparks if I’m feeling giving) is going to see it, so why should I have to spend a crapload on them? I’m not trying to make a fashion statement with pajamas, I’m just trying to comfortably sleep in them, so why can’t they be cheaper? GAW, this really pisses me off.

Maybe if I make a day our of the pajama and underwear shopping that’ll ease the pain of spending the money. Who’s up for a champagne brunch and an afternoon of shopping? Anyone? Bueller?

I am in a MOOD. Mess with me right now and you might lose an eye. Or a testicle. Probably just an eye if you’re a girl. But if you’re that guy that’s pregnant, then you lose an eye AND a testicle.

not that there’s anything wrong with the pregnant guy, he just gets the male and female punishment for messing with me