My good friend E came this weekend from New York to visit. I’ve known E since I was in the 7th grade. Back then I had such a massive crush on him that I was unable to do or say anything cool. He’s the star of my John Hughes movie. The one where my two best friends are dating and I’m the girl who follows them around with butterfly clips in my hair, completely oblivious to how painfully awkward I am. Eventually I do something stupid like drink an Ozarka bottle of vodka and go all Custer’s last stand in my bra and underwear before jumping in the pool. That’s where the movie goes from Breakfast Club to that terrible one with Jennifer Love Hewitt, only I’m not her. I’m some extra. And the boy I have a crush on loves her. Good thing we grow up…

The moral of the story is that eventually life righted itself. Turns out my attraction to E was shallow and based solely on his looks. He’s now happily dating my dearest friend in the whole world, and while I still feel like the girl with the blue glitter eye shadow and butterfly clips, I’m married and that makes me look all secure and wise. (Plus I’m fairly certain they’re the forever kind, and I don’t want to be a home wrecker.) This marriage-induced objectivity is allowing me to learn all sorts of things about E. Things he probably told me when I was 14, but I was too busy trying to keep my shit together.

Unlike my husband, E does appreciate a good yoga class. My favorite yoga teacher Marc was kind enough to teach a class for the two of us. It was awesome and intense. Since E is part of the “Because of London” half marathon group, hips were a focus. I could have focused the yoga high into smoothie drinking and wheat grass chewing, but instead I channeled it into bread sticks and CoCos at Bistro du Midi, corn gratin and Pinot Noir at Petit Robert, Duvels at Coda, Julius Etchers at Post 390, and a little Matilda at my apartment at 3AM. Thank god I have that problem with making sandwiches when I’m inebriated. I can’t even begin to imagine how much worse I would have felt without it. As it was, I spent 90% of my day looking like a Williamsburg lesbian/bag lady and popping into every public restroom in the city. It would have been foolish to pass up a perfectly available toilet.

I was unable to eat anything in the latter half of the day. I laid on the couch moaning about my life while the hubs repeatedly told me that I had already told him how bad I felt and continuing to do so would not make me better. I never liked him anyway.

To add insult to injury, sometime during the course of our evening E was talking about the octuple points he gets when he uses his JetBlue credit card to purchase JetBlue flights online. Someone (I believe it was the hubs) thought it would be a good idea to purchase my plane ticket to Texas on E’s credit card so that he could have the points. So we did. At 3:30AM. After eating drunk sandwiches. I was going to pop over to Texas for a long weekend in July to help my cousin celebrate her 21st birthday and maybe spend some time with my parents. You know, go to dinner or something.

I bought a plane ticket to go home for eleven days.

Big, huge RSS button. Push it. It will keep me from having to whore myself on Facebook. You’ll get the blog without even thinking about it. Or googling “bitches fuck shit”…. which is actually what led someone to my blog yesterday.

Blogging can be stressful, especially blogging in the style that I do. Without really meaning to, I’ve set a standard for at least trying to be entertaining. Trying. When it’s not, I hear about it. (Like tonight, when the hubs told me that yesterday’s blog post was terrible. Thanks, dearie.)

But today, blogging wasn’t stressful at all. Why, you ask? Because at 11:47 PM a blog post fell out of the sky and landed in my lap. Let’s start at the beginning…

As you know, we divide the task of decorating into rooms. I thought it was my turn to be decorating the bedroom, but I was wrong. We’re in the midst of decorating the “sitting room” to be a little bit more guest friendly. (Apparently it’s a sign of growth and maturation that your abode be guest friendly. We even have extra linens and towels.) Since the hubs is an architect he’s all into mid-century furniture from far away lands. He recently scored a designer chair on ebay for a steal of a price because it needed some new screws or something. It was also decided upon delivery that it needed to be reupholstered. In cowhide.

As it turns out, cowhide is not free. Nor is it very cheap. According to the hubs, who I assume researched it on Google, it was going to cost around $300 for the little bit we needed. I’m from Texas. No way I’m paying that much money for anything cow.

So I called my mom to inquire.

Me: Mother, I’m looking for a cowhide to cover a chair.
Mother: Does it need to be cow?
Me: I guess it could be pony.
Mother: What about deer?
Me: No, no deer. Deer isn’t the right color. And the hair is too short.
Mother: Hmm. One second. Let me ask Kenneth.

(Kenneth is my step dad. He’s a farmer/rancher. They live on a farm.)

After some muffled chit chat my mom returns to the phone.

Mother: Kenneth says there is a dead cow in the pasture.
Me: Hmm. And it’s not rotten?
Mother: Kenneth? I’m asking Kenneth. Kenneth, do you think the buzzards have gotten it? No, he thinks it will be fine. Hold on. Kenneth, she’s in Boston. It’s going to cost her hundreds of dollars. What will it cost us to get the hide off that cow?
Me: I don’t want y’all to peel the hide off some cow and send it to me. Can you have it tanned? I mean, I was actually just thinking there was some fair or rodeo that would sell these things.
Mother: No no. We’re going to have Jeff do it. Do you know Jeff? You know Jeff. He just loves you. He’s the best taxidermist in Caldwell. We’ll have him do it. Kenneth, we need to make sure the buzzards don’t get it. Don’t worry, Bunny, Kenneth is going to take care of it tomorrow.
Me: All right. But don’t go crazy. I can always look online.

And that is the true story of how a Texas girl living in Boston gets some cowhide to recover her chair.

First things first, BF-H has reported that my blog is making her computer crash. I haven’t heard that from anyone else, but if you’re having that problem, let me know. I don’t know CSS at all, but I’ll google some shit and see what I come up with.

As you may know (if you’ve been a reader of Half Truth for a while) last year was weight loss year. I spent about three years getting to the size of an orca and then finally decided I wanted to return to my life as a nimble dolphin. Last year I was a machine: up at six am, working out for two hours, going to work, going to yoga after work, signing up for races, runs, groups. I think I even earned groupie status at the gym. It was the Year of the Rat, and not to sound like a nut job, but I’m a rat and I’ve exhausted every other reason as to why, now that it’s the year of the Tiger, I can’t find the mojo to work out. It’s lost. I can’t find it. If you’ve seen it, let me know.

I used to believe that Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays were off limits. If you plan a social outing for any of those days you are doomed. You set the wrong tone for your week, get out of the zone, and within six weeks you’re back to looking like a baby whale. I lived and died by that rule last year. At the very least I could count on losing that pound that I gained while binge drinking and ordering Pizza Pier at 1:46 AM on both Friday and Saturday nights. (Which reminds me… for about a year I had this weird obsession with making grilled eggplant sandwiches when I was drunk. It’s actually absurd the way I would come home from a bar and make a gourmet panini from fresh mozzarella, eggplant, pesto, and foccacia. I’m pretty sure there is a television pilot in there somewhere.)

But this year, this 2010, the Year of the Tiger, I have decided that youth and revelry are far more important than fitness and well being. I sit at my desk on Tuesdays hoping that someone will call me to get a cocktail or go to dinner so that I can skip out on yoga and go dine al fresco and drink beer on tap. I’m still doing the naked mirror dance, I’m still trying on bathing suits to torture myself, but rather than get excited to go for a jog or hit up a yoga class, I find myself shrugging and thinking “ehh… could be worse.”

And it’s gonna be worse. If I don’t get a handle on my new Hershey’s Kiss habit it’s going to be the only action I’m getting. Not to mention my gay is moving to New York which means I have to jump back into the fabulous but frightening shark tank that is the gay scene to try to find a new gay. Ain’t nobody gonna take on a fag hag who looks like she has a Bump-It on her ass.

Oh. sigh.

There are a lot of things in life that make a lot of sense in my head, but when I try to explain them they don’t make very much sense at all. Like why I need to have three sticks of deodorant in my apartment at all times, all in different locations. In my mind it’s perfectly normal, in fact I think it’s downright genius, but the lengthy explanation makes me sound like a hoarder and we all know how petrified I am of being a hoarder.

So, despite knowing this is going to go poorly, I am going to attempt to explain why I hate certain types of commercials. I refer to these as the “funny you should ask” commercials, namely because in order to make the product relevant there is always some completely non sequitur comment that allows the product to be introduced into otherwise completely irrelevant scenario. Up until this week, the most painful example was the PAD (peripheral artery disease) commercials. The one that makes me want to break my computer screen involves a man sitting out of a softball game when a friend/teammate who just happens to be a doctor comes over and diagnosis him with this obscure disease that requires a random drug with no generic– all from a lawn chair. Every time I see it I want to look at the hubs and say something like, “You’re blinking more than usual? You could have Maximized Ocular Retinal Overacted Nerves . A condition that affects more than 1,000 universally. Good news, though, there is a new drop Urasucka that can stop that obnoxious blinking.” It would only be worth it though if someone we’re videotaping it and it would later be used as a real life example of the kinds of people affected by MORON.

Moving on. Now that I spend most of my TV time watching networks like ION, I am lucky enough to catch commercials about all sorts of products that have no relevance to my life. So replacing the PAD commercial as the most ridiculous “funny you should ask” commercial is the new Depends commercial. I searched for it on YouTube and didn’t get anything so I’ll attempt to recreate if for you.

Woman sitting in dressing room with a huge box of Depends.
Cut to members of an orchestra talking about what an open, amazing woman the Depends wearer is.
More sound bites.
A visual of that amazing, confident Depends wearer taking her place as conductor.
Curtain opens.
The world is righted.
Amazing Depends wearer says something like, “My orchestra knows everything about me, but no one needs to know about my problem with wetting myself.”
End commercial.

Perhaps you’re thinking to yourself, “well, that’s not terrible.” YES IT IS. It’s terrible because a group of creative people sat in a room with a creative brief trying to target a niche audience of successful normal people who’s confidence is contributed to their adult diapers. The true market message is that wetting yourself, though natural, is not normal. So if you have this problem, get yourself some diapers. Instead there’s a whole Depends metaphor about success and normality. Depends will not make you more successful. It will make your butt look a little lumpy and keep your pants dry.

What’s most interesting for me is that the target is, by definition, a captive audience. It’s not like potato chips where you have to both convince someone they want chips and then convince them to choose your chips. If you’re peeing yourself you do not have a choice in the matter. You need a diaper. Now go pick one.

Le sigh.

Now, the reason this is even relevant to my life right now is because I have a problem that could, perhaps, be solved by Depends. My new trampoline arrived and as expected it is marvelous. Except that I have Trampoline Incontinence. (A condition that my husband/faux doctor was able to diagnose.) I can’t decide if the trampoline is worth keeping if every time I go for a bounce I have to change my clothes.

But maybe Depends could give me the confidence to bounce like I’ve always wanted to.

you. cannot. even. imagine.

I may or may not have peed myself a little on that little cheerleader move…

The key to the hub’s and my enviable marriage is actually quite simple: we agree that compromise is just two people losing. When you compromise on a restaurant, neither person is getting what they want. If you compromise on the temperature of your bath, you’re sitting in tepid filth like a leper. The only way to find true happiness is to oscillate between bliss and misery, and blame everything else on an inconsiderate third party.

Now, there is a caveat. A very, very, very important caveat. The hubs is a solid, and necessary, 36% gay. This degree of heteromosexuality is advisable for any potential eternal partner. It guarantees his aptitude at necessary tasks like trash taking out, light bulb fixing, as well as more intense jobs, like those involving power tools; however it also guarantees that I won’t come home ten minutes before a night out to find him on the couch in a Bruins jersey with one hand six inches down his crack-exposing loose fit jeans. The hubs is clean, has a hair style that he contemplates, clothing that’s more expensive than mine, shoes for every outfit, a superior design sense, and when I come home ten minutes before a night out he is dressed and ready (usually in layers), save his leather “house slippers” that he insists on wearing anytime he is in the house (in much the same way that Hefner wears that gay red silk robe).

Ultimately what it boils down to is that having a heteromosexual husband means that we don’t have to compromise; we divide. Take the apartment. There’s none of that yuppie furniture shopping and arguing over where to put the man chair and studded leather bar. We divide. I am in charge of the bedroom, kitchen, dining room, and bathroom, while the hubs gets the two main living spaces. (That would be the living room, the office, and the sitting room.) Much like he has no say in the bedroom, I’m not to peep about the furniture choices, paint colors, wall art, or rugs in his rooms. It sounds dangerous, when in fact it’s genius.

Much like the great Utopian philosophers, we’ve discovered that humanities genuine distrust of their fellowman is the driver of all human behavior. It’s not love that keeps us moving forward; its the simple fact that no one trusts anyone. We’re all a bunch of back stabbing sissies, panicked that if we don’t cover our tails, someone is out to get us. While I’m absolutely allowed to paint the Vagina Monologues on the wall of the bathroom, my fear of retribution keeps that urge in check. Should the hubs ever decide to bring Red Sox paraphernalia into our home, he would soon find a full suite of Laura Ashley bedding customized to our white wicker bedroom set. Antlers on the walls? Tampon cup in the bathroom. Laz-e-Boy in the sitting room? Two words: embroidered pillows. As Newton predicted, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Since I know you’re taking notes, I’ll continue. As I mentioned before, what cannot be divided must be blamed on a third party. (Or, in the case of laziness, the rule of “if you’re not willing to do it yourself, we’re going to do it my way” applies.) The former is the policy that we’ve adapted for handling the finances. After some rough financial years, we were all-to-familiar with why nearly every divorced couple blames their problems on money. That shit is no joke. Nothing pisses a spouse off like being told no by their significant other. Because I’m sick in the head, being told no immediately made me want to run out and charge one million dollars to our credit card and then cut all the tags off my purchases. One. By. One.

Sicko.

We learned in short order that fighting over money is the quick trip to D-town, or the Federal Pen serving a life sentence for first degree murder. So we got The Spreadsheet. The Spreadsheet is an evil little bastard who lives in the living room. Silent and unassuming, he is constantly telling me no. Dinner out? Sorry. The Spreadsheet says no. New shoes!? No shoes for you! The Spreadsheet says no. Gruel and generic brand Oreos? I’m sure The Spreadsheet would be happy to allow that. But that makes me want to kill myself.

The Spreadsheet is a tricky little bugger, though. Just when you think The Spreadsheet is the shittiest little fucker you’ve ever met, he does something nice. He buys you a birthday dress, or takes you to London. Sometimes The Spreadsheet even buys us dinner when I’m too tired…err…lazy to cook. Recently The Spreadsheet even loaned me money when I had too many cocktails and couldn’t pay my bill.

Now, let’s be clear. I’m not giving anyone marriage advice. The last thing I need is to tell the world (at least the 30 people in it who read this) the key to a lasting and happy marriage and then end up at the same Vegas chapel for my second quickie to a man 25 years my junior. Life is a funny and unexpected thing. The things we think we’re sure about evolve into the things we have no idea about, and the things we have no idea about become questions that lead us to finding ourselves. What I do know is this: every relationship is unique. What works for you won’t work for everybody. Relationships are not a competition, nor are they fodder for comparison. The way that two people show their love and adoration for one another is no one’s business but their own. I’ve watched the most loving couples crumble and the most dysfunctional prove that it’s what we don’t see that matters most. Start by finding someone you’re crazy about. Then start thinking about how to make it work.

I’m pretty sure you’ll find your stride. Even if you have to alienate a few spreadsheets.

On Sundays we only blog to blog about not blogging. See you tomorrow.

(And this post counts for Saturday.)

After my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day today at work I was weary that I would accidentally get mind numbingly drunk before seven. Now, before you start having an internal dialogue about how I self medicate and don’t realize my own problems I’d like to be very clear that I am very–painfully in fact– aware of my problems. I don’t have a drinking problem, I have a dealing with other people problem. It’s their fault, not mine.

Good news was that I had standing plans with one of my very favorite people and my goes-with-out-saying favorite person. Drinks–sans men parts, and maybe even some dinner. I agreed to have a cocktail with the coworkers after work to kill some time before meeting my friends. (Much to the dismay/disappointment/judgment of others, I have moral objections to crossing work and pleasure too much. I love the folks I work with, but for some reason I’ve always felt really strongly about it… ) I had an Allagash White on draft and it was super tasty.

I was trying really, really hard to shake the crushing pressure of my day, but I was having a very hard time. (If you don’t live in Boston, or watch the national weather, it’s raining again here. That may not matter to you, but you should know that we’re all about a quarter inch from some sort of Heaven’s Gate shit.) I couldn’t bring myself to trek across town in the horrifying weather so I decided to take the commuter rail to my hood (it’s free if they don’t catch you) and then walk to The Butcher Shop for drinks.

Well, it was during the train ride that I caught a gander in a reflective train surface and realized that in the course of my bad day, which included crying so hard I actually got the hiccups, I had also managed to run makeup all the way down my face. Couple that with the rain and I looked like I was vying for the lead in a community theater revival of Fatal Attraction. I decided that I would run into Neiman Marcus before going to dinner and beg someone to make me look better. If possible, I’d do it without having to buy something I didn’t need.

I should mention I had about ten minutes. One zero. Ten.

And I ask the one makeup artist in the whole world who has one arm. As in, she was missing the other one. Since birth, actually, as I found out after my ten minutes was up and we were still on my foundational coat.

Don’t misunderstand me; she was extraordinary, but really, what are the chances? I then proceeded to make the mistake of asking her about her arm and learned, over the course of forty-five or so minutes, about her life, her attempt at a prosthetic, overcoming the misconceptions of others, and her ultimate decision to give her prosthetic to a vet who could appreciate it. An incredible story, yes, but I could not believe that I was going to have to explain to my friends that I was late because of a one armed makeup artist.

If you’re wondering how I didn’t notice the absence of arm before asking for assistance, you should know that she had perfected the art of leaning on her stub against surfaces in a way that prevented the brain from registering the lack of… arm.

That title is code for “it’s Friday and I’m having a terrible day at work, I’m not going to make it to the UPS store before my package gets sent back to Texas, my hair looks terrible, it’s raining, my best friend is moving to New York and I’m a silent emotional wreck, and the stress of thinking of something to write that will make you all like me is too much.” So, we’re going to declare today “Suggestion Friday.”

My suggestion: watch Little Miss Perfect.

Since the cable company forced the hubs and I to get all those channels, we’ve been tumbling down a dark TV hole. I copped to my Ghost Whisperer addiction a few posts ago, but I need to be honest… that’s merely the tip of the iceberg. We watch all sorts of lame awesome stuff. The hubs watches the DIY network a lot which is actually really funny since he doesn’t DIH–ever. (Unless I force him to, say, build a light fixture for the dining room.) But I would allow the cable company to strip me of every start-up station on the whole roster as long as I got to keep whatever channel Little Miss Perfect appears.

I’ve heard that it’s similar to a show called “Toddlers in Tiaras”, but even without seeing that version, I can promise you it is the red headed step child. Little Miss Perfect follows the LMP pageant all around the country as it stops to hold beauty competitions for little girls in po-dunk towns and the brother/sister couples who parented them. It is magnificent. I am so deliciously mortified every time I watch it. Layer on to that “Mr.Micheal” the creeptastic pageant director and Mario Lopez of the teenie pageant circuit and you’ve got yourself a lawsuit in the making. He even sings a song to the girls at the end. (This is why I can only watch it on DVR. The song is so creepy and the way he uses the little girls as props is a big red flag for me, so I have to fast forward through it. But who cares. It is such good television.)

In one episode a little girl was so sick to her stomach she had to bow out of the pageant. (She was about to toss it on stage.) After the pageant Mr. Michael pulled her aside, not to tell her he hoped she felt better, but to tell her that true Little Miss Perfects would have finished the pageant at all costs. Yup, no chance you’ve scared her for life, PeeWee.

If you have onDemand, you can watch it whenever you want.

Let me know if you’d like to stop by and watch a few episodes.