Do I need these shoes?

I think I do. Can they be worn with skirts? Like a black skirt with tights and then these shoes? And how cute would they be with black slacks. Cute, right?

Jparks and I are having a tivo standoff. The tivo in our bedroom (also known as my tivo since it records Gossip Girl, 90210, and Project Runway. All vital to my existence) has been crapping out this week. It records shows with no problems, but will not let you watch them. When you hit the tivo button on the remote, it takes about 15 minutes to respond. And lately its typical response is just to freeze up. It has only been doing this since jparks messed with our internet settings and I want him to fix it. For the love of all things holy, make the tivo let my Gossip Girl go, jparks! His solution is that we buy a new tivo. He claims this one is old. I claim he’s crazy.

This is the tivo we got after Katrina so it’s only three years old. Jparks insists that “OMG THREE YEARS OLD! Take it behind the barn and put a bullet in its head!” I insist that he’s fucking crazy and I’m not shelling out for another tivo after only three years. Doesn’t that seem like a short lifespan for a tivo? Shouldn’t it last at least five years? Dammit tivo, I signed up for a long time relationship, not a quick fling where you have your way with me in our bedroom and then leave without saying goodbye. I feel so cheap and used.

And now a question (has this post been all questions? I think it might be. It’s because I respect you guys so much that I want your input. And because I am dumb. dumbdumbdumb) What would you wear on a ten hour, overnight flight? I know not pajamas because ew, but what? I want to be comfortable and plan on sleeping, even if it means taking something to knock me out. Normally I don’t sleep on planes because I can’t get comfortable to save my life, so what can I do to boost my relaxation level up a notch? Would you wear shoes that you can kick off in your seat? Like crocs? (I know, shut up) Should I skip the pants and wear a skirt? I should I change into a bathrobe in the bathroom and walk back out to my seat like it’s nothing? (how awesome would that be?) Help me!

Jparks and I leave for Ireland on Tuesday. Yay! But also, crap! I looked at the forecast for Ireland about two weeks ago and haven’t looked since then. I’m expecting cool temps and rain, but how cool? Don’t know. And how rainy? Uh, some. Yeah, I’m on the ball. I haven’t even started packing and jparks doesn’t even have something to pack. As in, he has no piece of luggage because the duffel bag he likes to travel with broke. No way can we pack for a two week vacation with one piece of luggage between the two of us. Where would my shoes go?

When we return from Ireland we will be heading directly from the airport to a wedding in San Francisco. I almost feel bad for saying we would go to this wedding, because the jet lag? It will not be pretty. But it’s good friends getting hitched and other good friends will be guests and we are honestly really excited to celebrate with these amazing people. But again, the jet lag might make us crazy. I was also supposed to book us a hotel room so we don’t have to drive home that night, but I haven’t yet. Because why take care of it when we first got the invite when taking care of it at the last minute is so much fun.

A more puzzling situation than booking the hotel room is how will we get our wedding clothes? I’m not traveling with jparks’ suit and my fancy dress and heels, so do I fedex them to the hotel? Do I leave them in our car? Ugh, but then we have to pay for long term parking. I am incapable of figuring this out. Seriously, I’ve been thinking about that problem for over a month now and the solution is still not clear. Maybe jparks and I should just head over to Union Square and buy new clothes before the wedding. Now if I can only guarantee that Banana Republic will have outfits for both of us, in our sizes and lengths, that look good together but are not too matchy-matchy, along with accessories and shoes. What are my chances of this all falling into place?

And I’m still not really sleeping. Bring on the frying pans.

In our household typically jparks is the insomniac. He’ll stay awake all night if I let him, playing on the computer or on the wii. His internal clock seems to be set to be nocturnal and I have to beat it into submission to get him to come to bed with me. But for some reason, for the past few days, our clocks seemed to have switched places in some Freaky Friday move that has me staying up all night and letting that bastard jparks sleep soundly.

It started on Thursday when I had a nightmare that I had gotten shot in the head and jparks wouldn’t take me to the hospital. Except I wasn’t really shot in the head so much as I woke up, in my dream, with a hole in the back of my head and I assumed I had been shot. Jparks told me that “No, if you wake up with a hole in your head you haven’t been shot. You’re fine and you just have to live with it.” I spent the rest of the dream poking at the hole and suggesting that maybe I should you know, have someone like a doctor look at it. It’s safe to say that I woke up in a cold sweat and pissed off at jparks.

Since then my nights have only gotten worse. Friday night I had dreams of earthquakes (no doubt because we had one that night). From Saturday night I don’t remember specific dreams, just that I tossed and turned all night and never seemed to really sleep. Finally we hit Sunday and I thought for sure I would sleep like a rock.

On Sunday I went for my long run and, to motivate myself during it, I kept chanting “You’ll finally sleep tonight.” I got home that evening and was exhausted. I showered, ate dinner (and then a cinnamon roll and maybe part of a cookie. stop judging me), and headed to bed. Yes, I know all that sugar couldn’t have helped the no sleeping situation, but shouldn’t a day of running and not much sleep in the three prior days cancel out the sugar?!? Apparently not.

Last night was the same situation, jparks and I got in bed and I listened as he fell asleep. After 30 minutes I honestly thought about waking him up, but figured why bother; I was too tired to have sex and too cranky to have a conversation, so I let him be. God, I should have woken him up just so he could suffer too.

Today I have bags under my eyes. Big, black bags that are so attractive I don’t know how random strangers are resisting approaching me to make out with them. My head feels like it’s in a fog and I would slap a puppy if it meant I could take a nap. I’m hoping tonight my body finally cries “uncle!” and I get to sleep. To stack the odds a bit more in my favor, I’m going running this evening. I’m going to run until I can’t take another step, in the hopes that the extra bit of exercise will guarantee tiredness. And so help me, if this doesn’t work I might just hit myself in the head with a frying pan.

Or do you have some sleep inducing trick that works like a charm and that you’re willing to share? Please, save me from one more sleepless night and from the pain of a frying pan slap. And by sharing it, you save yourself from one more rambling post where I whine incoherently about not sleeping. See, we all win.

Not to beat a dead horse, (or a dead chicken in this case) but roasting that chicken on Monday was the best idea ever. It served as dinner for jparks and myself on Monday and Tuesday. Then on Wednesday I ate it again, while jparks had a fancy dinner at Google. After I was done eating, I was going to dump the body, but then I took a good look at the poorly carved remains and realized that there was meat left. Like a lot of it. Because my carving skillz are not mad.

What happened next is not for the faint of heart or vegetarian. I thought about taking pictures, because it was so entertaining to me, but then I decided against it. I mean, do you really need to see a torn apart chicken body? Probably not, and I will openly admit right here and now, that this will probably not entertain anyone but me. Sorry

I didn’t grow up in a roasted chicken kind of house. We lived with my grandmother from when I was four until I was in second grade and she cooked dinner every night. I seriously don’t think we ever went out to eat, including McDonald’s (there is no good reason for why I like McDonald’s as an adult. It does not remind me of being a kid, it was not served to me as a “stop your crying now” comfort food. I like it now because I am a freak with an unrefined palate). But we never had anything like roasted chicken. Sure we had fried chicken, but never anything that actually had the shape of a real bird. (We also had fried cauliflower, fried salmon croquettes, fried eggplant, and fried okra. Were we a southern stereotype or what?)

After leaving my grandparents’ house, I survived on a steady diet of tv dinners. Kid Cuisine was my drug of choice and I swear I had one every single night. My mom worked a lot and there wasn’t time for home cooked meals, and I don’t blame her, but this is probably why it’s so hard for me to understand how to fit cooking into my daily life. I didn’t envy friends that had dinners cooked by their mom’s nightly. I felt sorry for them, they never had a say in what they ate, where as once a week, I got to go to the store and pick out my own dinners! That was so very exciting to 8 year-old me.

So, when faced with my very first roasted chicken not only did I not know how to crave it, but I also didn’t know that there is meat hidden all over that thing. Tasty little bits of meat ripe for the picking. Not knowing how to get at it, I first grabbed a fork. Jabbing at it yielded really poor results; I pulled out a little meat, but could see that I was missing quite a bit. My next step was to roll up my sleeves and attack the chicken with my hands.

Dude! SOME. MUCH. MEAT. It was extremely satisfying to watch my pyrex bowl fill up with little shards of chicken. I did a once over on the carcass and realized that if I popped off the wings then I could get to more meat. After a moment’s hesitation (I am an ex-vegetarian after all) the body was wingless and I had a whole new bounty of meat.

I honestly had to make myself stop hunting for more meat. When I stepped back my hands were covers in meat and chicken juices and the bird was just a heap of bones. At this point I considered boiling the remains for chicken stock, but I am not that Martha Stewart-y so I just pitched it into the trash. Tangi then circled the trash can for the next hour plotting how to topple it.

Thursday I ate my chicken shards on a gordita shell with some refried beans and it was the best meal ever because it was sprinkled with my success over the chicken carcass. Take that you dead chicken! Your tasty, tasty meat was pulled from your bones with my bare hands and I consumed it with some beans. nom nom nom.

I’m digging my place at the top of the food chain and my new found chicken picking apart skillz.

OMG, the Peach Pit! The theme song! The campy-ness! 90210, I am only 32 minutes into you and yet, I think I love you! You’re not Gossip Girl, but I saw a blowjob in your first ten minutes, so points for that! And you ran jparks off in 9 minutes, so bonus points for that.

Hey looky, here’s jparks after biking 24 miles and me after running 18 miles. The Golden Gate Bridge was behind us, but our big heads cover it.

So I roasted that chicken yesterday then realized that I have no idea how to carve it. Jparks and I basically hacked at it and it’s not yielding the best results. Seeing as how I planned on roasted more chickens in the future (it’s going to be a chicken genocide over here at Parks Place) I should probably learn. Any suggestions or tips?

Speaking of roasted chicken, the other day there was a guy on CalTrain eating a roasted chicken. Not a plate of roast chicken, not a sandwich, but a whole roasted chicken. With his fingers. I know we’ve been through this before, but dude, why? How do you walk into a grocery store, knowing that whatever you buy will need to be eaten on public transit, and pick out something totally ridiculous? A sandwich from the deli is acceptable. A whole chicken is not. Disgusting person. Sorry this is blurry, but a flash would have been too obvious.

Remember awhile back I twittered about the very expensive whiskey I was sipping? Here’s what it looked like:

Doesn’t it look extra fancy? No? I know. Shouldn’t it have gold flakes in it for that price? Oh, but then it would be Goldschlager and only 16-year-olds would drink it. For the record, the right glass is the $1000 per bottle whiskey and the left is the cheap $750 bottle. Bitches, that’s how I roll.

You can all probably guess that I didn’t have a relaxing weekend. I stayed tied to my computer, as much as possible, constantly refreshing two sites, trying to get the most up to date information available. It seems Gustav was bad, but not as devastating as we were all expecting. Don’t get me wrong, things are not great in New Orleans and it’s surrounding areas, but we’re far from the worst possible outcome of a hurricane Gustav’s size.

And while I did stay online way more than necassary, I knew that I had to cut the cord occasionally or else jparks would be dealing with post-Katrina freaked out Regan, and that’s not good for anyone. So, in order to distract myself some, jparks and I had a movie marathon weekend. On Saturday we were the last two people in the world to go see The Dark Night. And while it was good, it made me nervous. Like, not able to watch the screen, tapping my foot, poking at jparks nervous. After the movie we walked around Great Mall, which is so much fun because jparks can’t stand all the people that are there not shopping, but just aimlessly wandering around, cutting each other off, and generally being pains in the asses. He so can not handle these people and his reaction to them is free entertainment at it’s finest.

On Sunday we went to San Francisco and I ran 18 miles while jparks rode his bike. On the way home I ate a chipotle burrito in record time. Seriously, I killed the burrito in less than 10 minutes. I knew I would be hungry post-run, but I didn’t really expect to be that hungry. Also, it was the best burrito I have ever consumed and I’ve consumed a hell of a a lot of burritos. After digesting the burrito we went and saw Tropic Thunder, which I had my doubts about, but really, go see it. Right now. That was followed by tapas with friends and, if you’re judging me for the amount of food I ate on Sunday, let me remind you that I ran EIGHTEEN (18) ((10 plus another 8)) (a whole butt load) miles. I could have eaten a whole cake and it would have been acceptable.

Today jparks and I finally got updates from our families back home and they are all out of power but generally okay. Our friends that evacuated haven’t been able to go home yet, but from the news reports, I’m betting their houses will be okay. I spent the afternoon roasting a chicken and making a cake because I am Martha Stewart and Betty Crocker in one body. I had no idea that roasting a chicken was so easy because I am dumb. I shoved a couple of lemons up the chicken’s butt, stuck it in the oven, and less than an hour later we had some good eats. It’s safe to say that roasted chicken has earned a spot in the regular cooking rotation.

And now it’s time for bed. Because that much running really does leave you tired for at least two days and honestly, I didn’t sleep that well last night. I felt compelled to stay up hitting refresh for half the night. You know, because that accomplishes so much.

The third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is this weekend and Mother Nature seems to think that the best way to celebrate this is to throw another hurricane at New Orleans. I’ve been watching this storm probably just as much as the actual residents of New Orleans, and other than the fact that I haven’t run to WalMart in a frenzy to stock up on candles and tuna, I feel exactly the same as I did when I lived there and had to make the big decision of to evacuate or not to evacuate.

When I meet people and they find out that I left NOLA because of Katrina, many ask why so many people didn’t evacuate. “If they knew it could be bad, why didn’t they leave?” “Isn’t it just irresponsible to stay?” “How could they just not go?” These are all valid questions and, honestly, I would rather people ask and get answers rather than just assuming that folks in NOLA are stupid and that’s why they didn’t leave. And trust me, some people do believe that NOLA residents are just dumb and have no problem telling me that. They usually follow this sentiment up with “People shouldn’t be allowed to live in New Orleans in the first place.” I usually follow this up with a polite “Fuck you, you arrogant asshat. I hope your hometown falls into a sinkhole soon.” Bonus points to me for saying it with a big shit-eating grin on my face.

But honestly, deciding to evacuate is a huge decision. One I’ve wrestled with many times as an adult and I can say that coming to a decision never is easy. Yes, evacuating for every hurricane that is even a mild threat to NOLA would be the correct move, but in reality that will never happen. Evacuating is a huge expense. It’s a hassle. It’s time consuming. And a lot of the times it’s totally pointless. Katrina has been the one time in my life that evacuating was the correct decision. Every other hurricane I experienced in my 25 years in NOLA either missed the city at the last minute or didn’t bring with it more than a heavy rain and some wind. You can imagine how this would make you think twice about evacuating for every hurricane gunning towards the city.

The other problem with evacuating is the expense. Hurricanes can happen multiple times a summer, seriously there is no limit. If you evacuated for every one you’re looking at huge amounts of money spent on all kinds of things: hotels, gas, food, and many other various expenses along the way. And let’s not overlook the fact that if the hurricane misses the city, you could be out a day or more of work. That’s money lost for many residents, especially ones that work on hourly pay scales. And for many of those people, that’s money they can’t afford to not make.

But losing a couple of days of work is really a small concern, considering that you could lose your job for evacuating. Many retail stores and restaurants are not sympathetic to people’s needs to flee. If the business does not shut down for evacuations, you could be faulted as a “no show” for any shift that you’re scheduled for. Same thing after evacuating; if the business opens and you’re on your way back from Houston and can’t make your Tuesday morning shift then you could be out a job. It’s not fair, but it happens. I worked at a business that said we would be fired for not showing up if we chose to evacuate and didn’t make our shifts. And when you need that income desperately, sometimes the easy decision is not to head out of town. Or to send your family and stay behind, hoping for the best.

Has this become an unfun blog post about a depressing topic? ding ding ding, we have a winner! Yes it has! Sorry. Go get a cookie if you’ve read this far. And go get me a drink because, dude, I neeeed one. And I swear I only have like one more point to make.

Right now Hurricane Gustav is just entering the Gulf of Mexico but if you started to call hotels in the typical cities people evacuate towards (Houston, Baton Rouge, Shreveport, etc) I bet you couldn’t get a room anywhere. And if you could get a room, I bet they would only hold it for you for a couple of hours. One time, before Katrina, a hurricane was heading our way. I called Houston and booked a room, but the hotel told me they would only hold my room until 6pm on the day of the reservation. Problem was, I was not going to make it to Houston in that time frame. I offered to pay for the whole reservation up front, but they wouldn’t allow it. The hotel staff told me that they can’t hold reservations during times of evacuation because of such high demand. If I couldn’t be there by 6pm, my room would go to someone standing in the lobby. I called a few other hotels, but no one else had rooms open. I decided not to evacuate because where would I go? I would have had to sleep in my car in Houston and that wasn’t an option. And going past Houston wasn’t an option because I needed to be able to get back to the city quickly to get back to work if the hurricane didn’t do much damage. For many people that don’t have family willing to take them in, leaving is hard. You don’t know where you’ll end up, you don’t know if there will be room for you. You just don’t know and sometimes that stops people dead in their tracks.

For Katrina jparks and I went back and forth about evacuating. We had friends in Houston to stay with if needed (and we ended up doing just that), and we had the money to evacuate, but still we thought long and hard about it. At first we weren’t going to leave our house. Then we were going to stay with my mom in the suburbs. Finally we decided to get the hell out. Had we stayed in our house, bad things would have happened to us. Had we stayed at my mom’s, we would have physically been fine, but without power or water and we would have been forced to leave anyway. Getting out for Katrina was the right decision and one that many people just couldn’t make.

I hope that people continue to watch Gustav and take the hard lessons from Katrina into account when making their plans. It’s not an easy decision to leave, but if Gustav stays on it’s path (which it might not. there’s plenty of time for it to turn. turn, you bastard TURN), it will be the correct one.

But what do I know? I’m just a New Orleans girl stuck in California.

At the beginning of this month I was going to write a post about how much I hate August, but I never could come up with the reason for the hate. Sure August is hot, there’s not a holiday in it, and it’s back to school time (which means Girl Scouts is starting up soon), but those aren’t reasons to really hate the month the way I do. I’ve spent the past 26 days trying to put my finger on where my hatred for it comes from and all I’ve got is that August sucks.

I could take the easy route and say that Hurricane Katrina happened in August and yeah, that did suck and so damn you August! But I’m not convinced it’s that. The hurricane hit so late in the month that my life didn’t really turn to shit until September. And I have no ill feeling about September. If anything, I like September more because it means August is gone. Goodbye August, don’t let September hit you in the ass on the way out!

Last August jparks and I moved into our house, and I feel like I should be able to look back on it and remember August of 07 fondly. We bought a house! It’s the ultimate adult purchase! It’s the foundation I needed to start building my family! And yet, it doesn’t make me like August any more than I did previously. In fact, when I look back on August of last year all I can remember is getting really frustrated with various painters and puking while movers slowly packed my apartment into a van. I bet none of that would have happened if I had moved in October. (which is my favorite month. Yay October! I love you like a fat kid I love cake)

The moral of the story is that August just sucks. It sucks for no good reason, other than the fact that some month has to be my least favorite and August won that title. I guess I better starting planning now to not get pregnant in December because dammit, I will not have an August baby. That child would be a cross between Damien, Rosemary’s Baby, and The Problem Child and, seeing as how it’s going to have some of jparks DNA, my child will not need any extra help being a handful.

On Sunday I set out to run 18 miles. Unfortunately I did not actually complete the full 18 miles. At mile 10 my knee started to hurt but I was about 4 miles from my car. My options were either I plow through the pain and run back to the car or die on a bench on the side of the road. I can honestly say that the bench might have been the smarter option but I’m dumb so I ran back to my car. I ended up finishing the day with only 14 miles completed and, since I had set out to do more than that, I wasn’t allowed to have a post run doughnut. My running rules suck. I think I need a backup treat for days when I don’t run as far as I had wanted. Something as tasty as a doughnut, but not as indulgent. Does such a thing exist?

After my morning of running, jparks and I headed to a birthday dinner for a friend’s daughter. I warned our hosts that I might eat them out of house and home and I don’t think I let them down. They had a lovely heirloom tomato salad and I think I ate about half of it. And it was meant for 9 people. I probably should have been embarrassed by my rapid consumption of all the food but HUNGRY.

After eating myself sick, the hunger was replaced by TIRED. Not like, “gee, I could take a nap” tired, it was more like “I can’t function as a human, please come lower me onto the toilet and then lift me off of it, because that much work is too much” tired. Once we got home I resisted sleep as much as possible and, like a toddler, I got myself all worked up about something and started the irrational kind of crying that jparks can’t help but laugh at. I’m fairly certain I was all worked up because I realized I had been giving Lily exactly half as much medicine as she was supposed to get and that’s why she’s still sick. Hi, I suck as a dog mom, imagine how awesome I’m going to be as a human mom. And that thought was enough to make me cry big, wet, can’t catch my breath tears.

After much sobbing and “waaaa, I suck! Dog protective services is going to come take Lily away!” jparks knocked me out with some tylenol with codeine (my prescription is about to run out and it is seriously good for the night after a long run. How do I get more without seeming like a junkie? I mean, you can’t really ask a doctor for more tylenol with codeine, can you?) I slept a full night, dead to the world, but still woke up this morning feeling like I could sleep some more. I got through my day at work with no additional caffeine, but it was a long, tedious day and I routinely felt like I was about to fall asleep on my keyboard.

I’m home now and, after about two sips of wine, I feel like I’m about to pass out on the couch. I’ve given Lily her correct dose of medicine and cleaned up the dinner dishes so I see no reason not to go to bed, even thought it’s still early. (8:30 early to be exact) This is definitely the one side effect of running I never saw coming, the constant exhaustion. Who would have thought long distance running would take so damn much out of you.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Here’s what happens when you’re too busy to put the dog treats into the pet treat jar:

jparks: “Those cookies you bought don’t taste good.”

me: “What cookies?”

“The ones in the plastic bag on the counter”

“Hon, those aren’t cookies. They’re dog treats for Lily.”

“Oh, well that explains why it tasted so gross”

“Are you still hungry? Should I grab Lily’s kibble, put it in a Cocoa Puffs box and let you have some cereal?”

“Leave me alone!”

“If I put a frilly toothpick in a Snausage will you eat it for an appetizer?”

“Ugh”