Proud member of the itty bitty booty committee

So here I am. Posting from our new place. And it hurts, ya'll. Not emotionally, I mean it literally fucking hurts - our chair is too short for the built in "office center" aka a desk with some shelves, and my wrists are elevated and resting on the hard wood molding of the desk. We need a new chair before I have the bruised wrists of an emo chick.

So many things are different here. We moved from an older place, built in the 50's, with exposed brick and other charming little details, to new construction with beautiful accents like brushed nickle hardware and chair rails. The benefits of the new place far outweigh the old - we have a massive walk in closet, an extra bedroom, a bathtub that could double as a wading pool and a lovely kitchen big enough for all of us to fit in. The one thing though, that doesn't sit well with me, is the design of the toilet. Or the toilet seat, to be more exact.

You guys, its huge. I cant even sit back fully or else I'll fall in. If I wasn't already insecure enough about my tiny butt, a stupid toilet seat has to come along and engulf my whole ass. I know big butts are back and I am envious mine isn't more bootylicious, but this is insane. I cant fill out jeans anymore, I am the only one who doesnt complain about airline seats being too small, and now a stupid toilet seat has made me begin to consider butt implants. What do you think?



Uh, I think I'll just buy a new toilet seat.

The joys of suburbia

So, we finally did it. We scoured the 'burbs, we cased the neighborhoods, we checked rottenneighbor.com, and finally signed a lease. Signed our life away to suburban hell. Goodbye, skyline, hello outlet mall.


Half our house is in boxes, which makes living here for the next 6 days like a maddening scavenger hunt, and bubblewrap is fun to play with, so theres that. I know that moving to the suburbs have some benefits, though. I cant think of what they are, but I know it does. I just cant find the silver lining. This is how I envision our first year:

Month one: Move into neighborhood, find amenities near by, restaurants, shopping, marvel how close we are to every retail chain ever built.
Month two: Complain that everyone else is close to all that stuff, too.
Month three: Meet neighbors, plan game night, introduce our kids, tentative excitement towards meeting new people begins to grow.
Month four: Attempt to enroll daughter into good school. Good school will not accept application because of "over crowding" (aka we be poor folk) and place us on the never ending waiting list, settle for zoned public school.
Month five: Shunned by neighbors after declining the invitation to neighbor's wife's tupperware party.
Month six: Nearby lot gets bought for new hospital, commence construction till 2013.
Month seven: Lanes on the main road get widened, commence construction till 2020.
Month eight: Daughter gets shunned by children for not speaking French, Latin, Russian or Mandarin.
Month nine: Car gets keyed with cryptic message, "Should've gone plastic!"
Month ten: Patio furniture mysteriously goes missing, lawn gets TP'd.
Month eleven: Start to understand why everyone is on drugs, get a prescription for Xanax and instate nightly cocktail hour
Month twelve: Full on drug and alcohol addiction, admit self into rehab, find neighbor in as well, bond over horror stories of nearly burning down the house with lit cigarette while passed out from too many Cosmo's and re-pledge friendship.
Month thirteen: Backstabbed by newly sober neighbor, start process all over again.

You can see why I'm so excited. Suburbia or bust!

Slingin' sandwiches

So in our (seemingly) never ending quest to move to la suburbia (what I'm calling it in an obviously desperate attempt to make it seem more hip), it has been decided that I should get a job. A job outside of the home, that pays in actual cash money not just life experiences and colored pictures of Wall*E.

I've been searching for a job for a while now, without much luck. Because I'm picky and I don't want to spend 3 hours of my day commuting back and forth like the rest of this god forsaken city. My background is something along the lines of administrative work, so you may ask yourself how I ended up getting a job waiting tables.



Sigh. Desperate times call for desperate measures, no? I waited tables for years and years before my little kidlet came along, and once she did I decided that I needed a grown up job with better hours. Nearly 5 years have gone by since I laid my delicate hands on a server tray, and I basically got so frustrated that no one wanted to hire me that I went somewhere where I was assured to get hired - a restaurant.

Pros about waiting tables
Quick, easy money
Flexible hours
Tasty food within reach
Will definitely provide me with bizarre and probably gross stuff to tell you guys about

Cons about waiting tables
Waitstaff drama
I am a huge klutz and I break stuff a lot
Tasty food within reach
Sidework and tipouts
Bitchy customers
Cheap customers
Grueling work with no hope for positive reinforcement since everyone knows waitstaff are slaves to the community
Totally demoralizing

I am SO above this, people. The only reason I decided to even entertain the thought of waitressing is because we need to speed up the process of moving out of the city. I'm doing it for my family to better our situation. So really, I'm like a hero. AND NOT LIKE THE SANDWICH.

You down with WOPHLL?

So, as you know soon we'll be moving out of the city and into the burbs.
Depressing, but necessary. Instead of hiring a locater like any other normal and sane family, I am determined to find our new place myself. Not that I'm a control freak, I just like the idea of being a real estate agent. I briefly entertained the thought for a while, until I started watching HGTV and realizing what a bitch it would be to drag the un-educated, condescending assholes around and endure the demands they placed upon me. It would be very hard for me to resist a good bitch slapping. This is also why I cant be a teacher. Bitch slapping my students would definitely land me in jail, and jail is a place I do not want to be. People, they make you drink out of water fountains attatched to the back of TOILETS.
Dont ask me how I know.

So, aiding me in the search for a new (rented) home is the website for the Houston Associaton of Realtors, aka HAR.com. They have a good search engine thingy that lets you choose the area, property type, price, if you want a tennis court, pool, even sprinklers! Unfortunately, the listings dont change that often, and recently I've found myself looking at extravagantly ridiculous homes. The price listing goes up to 10 MILLION DOLLARS. What would you do if you had 10 million dollars to blow on a home? And furthermore, would you be posting it on a website? Hell no, that shit would be on appointment only, pay by the hour home tour basis. Pimp your home! Damn, now thats a million dollar real estate idea right there.

Since I'm one of those people that's kind of obsessed with WOPHLL (what other people's homes look like) this is pretty sweet. Especially since I'll never know anyone with a 10 million dollar house that I can look inside of. Yet sadly, most of them are pretty ugly on the inside. Look at this one:

Stuffy, much? Like sitting inside of a hotel room lobby. Do you think anyone has ever sat in those chairs? Those things probably cost 10K apeice.
I do like the chandeliers, I think. Or atleast the color of them, and they look easy to swing around from.

And look at this bedroom:
This is where Laura Ashely came to die, unfortunately. That wallpaper is ATROCIOUS. The frilly valance thingy on the top of the bed is sickeningly sweet, along with that painting above the (awesome) fireplace. Actually, I wouldn't mind having an exact replica of this bedroom in my house to be honest with you. It would be the Punishment Room, where I will send Calista in her teen years for skipping curfew, being promiscuous or underage drinking.

Now this is what I'm talking about right here. I'd set up a few tables, maybe stick a LCD somewhere and rock this room out. How much fun would it be to host a Mary Kay Party in a WINE CELLER! This is perfect, since you can get your clients drunk and make them buy more microdermabraison kits or something. Not that I sell Mary Kay products, but I know a bunch of ladies that do and I'd demand a 12% cut for renting out my wine cellar.

Unfortunately, all of this voyeuristic looking at millionaire's home shit just reminds me that I can not afford a 1,000 sq foot wine room, glass pool, 10 bedroom hacienda in Montego Bay, but something more along the lines of this:

From the city to the suburbs

So, this is where I live:
The lovely and wonderful Houston, Texas. Home of BBQ lovers, sports fans, homeless dudes, lots of illegal aliens and Beyonce. To be more specific, I live in an artsy little neighborhood inside the loop where the houses look like this:







And people drive scooters and art cars around. Behind my house is a wonderful BYOB restaurant that serves some of the best burgers I've ever had in my life, within a 5 minute walk to boot. The reason I love this neighborhood so much (other than the burgers) is mainly because of its history. Its been around since 1891 and its full of character. And coffee shops. And restaurants not owned by Pappas. However, I have a 4 year old daughter and while the culture is good for her, the school districts are not. So much like a Beverly Hillbillies episode in reverse, we are packing up and moving out of the city into the suburbs:

Where I'll have my pick of Wal-Mart or Super-Walmart, Target or Super-Target and I wont be more than 2 miles from a Starbucks at any given moment. I know this, because I once called it home. Thats right. I'm originally a 'burb girl. The only plus to moving back (oh yeah, the schools, too, yeah yeah) is that most of my friends and all of my family live out there. And since it takes $70 to fill up a fucking 4 cylinder gas tank now, this is a big plus. Living here has taught me a few things, and mainly: You can take the girl out of the burbs, and you can damn well take the burbs out of her, as well. I plan to keep it that way.