25 Random things about me

So on Facebook, everyone is doing this Note thing where they write 25 random things about themselves. I for some reason can't figure out how to do it, so I'm blogging it instead.

1. I have 4 pairs of pajama pants with monkeys on them. No, I don't need anymore.
2. I will one day write a musical based on Pat Benatar's songbook
3. I will have dreams of starring in said musical but will sadly be beaten out by Natalie Portman
4. I still feel guilt about having to give away my first cat Linus
5. I'm a really bad liar, I think it's because a person is only allotted a certain number in their lifetime and I ran out when I was about 22.
6. I wish I were either 3 inches taller or 3 inches shorter
7. My legs are longer than the other half of my body by a lot. LD is 3 inches shorter than me and we're the same height sitting down
8. I should be working in publishing because I can edit in my sleep (not my own stuff though)
9. I used to get drunk and read people's palms accurately
10. I hate hype. So much so that I never saw the Matrix in the theatre
11. I can't have a dirty plate in front of me for more than 30 seconds without going nuts, pre-bussing will get you great tips from me
12. I still read Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume books and I have an English degree
13. I would like to name my first son Ulysses S. Camp
14. I used to have fantasies about being Boris Becker's wife and watching him win Wimbledon
15. I no longer have a thing for British accents
16. I listened to U2 everyday of my life for 10 years. I even had a U2 bathroom that had a poster of Larry Mullen Jr and Adam Clayton that stated "Mission Accomplished" as you were leaving.
17. On our first meeting I thought my husband was the most arrogant man I'd ever met. Now, he's just my arrogant man and I love him for it.
18. I got into SMU for my undergrad, but didn't go. My husband went to SMU for grad school and wrote a paper with a man named "Prabhu"
19. I will play Trivial Pursuit with anyone, anytime, anywhere
20. I started off at my job as a temp and now I'm a manager
21. Half of the Shakespeare I read was through Cliff's notes
22. When I was a kid, we had a bunch of movies back to back on several videotapes and I always watched them in sequence. Which is why I always relate Wizard of Oz and the Ten Commandments. And I can't watch Rocky IV without thinking of Goonies, Sleeping Beauty and SpaceCamp
23. I never got "INXS" until a few years ago
24. I never thought DVDs would catch on and didn't own a player for 3 years after it came out
25. I worry about everything all the time. It's to the point that if I don't have something to worry about, I don't feel like myself.

Dinner and Dancing?

I was on the website for the Rainbow Room the other day after watching Sleepless in Seattle. You know the scene where Meg Ryan and Bill Pullman are having dinner and you can see the Empire State Building in the background? It's the Rainbow Room. A restaurant in the sky that apparently has both dinner and dancing on Friday/Saturday nights. They have a big band on those nights and play things that grown ups can dance to, and look classy at the same time. If there's dipping involved, it's classy right?

So for some reason I had this idea that our holiday party on Saturday would be the same thing. It was casino night and we were to be served hors d'ouerves with a open beer/wine bar. Aaron and I were both excited about it and thought we were going to be treated to a night of class (albeit the class that involves faux gambling).

We arrived at 7:45 at the Hyatt Regency after spending 20 minutes in line to pay for parking. Incidentally, the parking was $7 and not $5 (listed on the invitation) which was causing some ruckus from our cheaper colleagues. I'm sure there will be complaints to the social committee on Monday.

The ballroom was half filled with gambling tables and the other half had seating and a dancefloor. We were both looking rather hot. I had help with some spanx and Aaron always looks good in a suit. After a glass of cab and a bite of a unidentifiabley stuffed quesadilla, we decided to hit the tables.

Apparently gambling is not fun when you're not winning or losing real money. We tried roulette and then tried to go for broke 20 times at the blackjack table in the hopes of losing our plastic coins. The dealer was so bored, she kept pretending she busted to get us to stay.

All the while, I was waiting for the grown up dancing to begin, but I guess these days office parties are not complete without having to watch directors shake their junk-in-the-trunk to Beyonce. Seriously? When the second song they played was "Wild Thang" (not the version from Major League), I knew my dreams of a once classy night had been obliterated. We talked to some co-workers and Aaron's boss and then decided we just needed to go. They didn't even have a photographer to take our prom picture, which was also very disappointing.

So, back to the whole "dancing" thing.. Is the Rainbox Room in NYC the only place where I can feel like I'm in a Billy Wilder movie now? Is it that old fashioned to want my partner to hold me gracefully, or is grinding up against your partner's leg now the standard? A few years back, I would have been okay with some 80s dancing, you know, some Molly Ringwald white girl moves from Breakfast Club.. but now, I don't know. I would have liked some old Otis Redding, maybe a little Sinatra.. I mean, we were there for an hour, and they didn't play any slow songs. I would have dragged Aaron on the floor for some Bryan Adams, just so I could pretend I was in 8th grade again and had someone to dance with. But it didn't happen.

Aaron, being the sweet guy that I know (and most of you have yet to see), decided to live with the excrutiating pain of wearing stuffy shoes with his recently removed toenails to treat us to a grown up dinner. I suggested Sullivan's which I had been to one other time in my life, but was too trashed to remember any of it. We ordered a half bottle of wine (it was an actual little bottle!), some escargots and french onion soup. The escargot even had the little shells like in Pretty Woman, I kept thinking "It happens all the time, Miss" in my head. Vivien was right though, they are slippery suckers, I kept shooting them across the plate! Aaron had the filet and I had lobster. And guess what? We had the grown up night I had been craving, valet parking to boot! The only thing missing was the dancing. It turns out that Sullivans usually has a big band or some jazzy thing at their bar next door, but won't start up again until May.

So if any of you out there are interested in a night of dinner and some actual cheek to cheek (the non-butt kind), let me know and we can all make a night of it in May, maybe for Aaron's birthday.

Idol Chatter

I remember when I was 12, I had this friend named Jennifer Harrington. She was in the 6th grade with me and she had entered this pageant. She was thin and pretty, with a goofy smile and glasses. I remember going with her when she was looking for pageanty dresses and she asked me why I didn't enter too. Then we could both get pretty dresses and wear makeup and be stars.
She and her mom gave me the paperwork to enter and I brought it home to my mom. I'm sure my mom has no recollection of this and if she sees this blog, she'll probably call me up and tell me it never happened. Even if it didn't, it's a good story, so save the minutes Ma.
I came home with my paperwork and pitched the idea to my mom with my sister listening as well. They exchanged glances, but not the kind I was hoping for. In my head, I was imagining their reaction: both were dumbfounded at the fact that they hadn't thought of it before. They were chatting it up talking about what my dresses would look like and my beautiful three tier updo. They would look at me and say "you missy, will be the next Miss pre-teen Dutchess county".
My daydream was popped open by my sister who was furiously reading through the pamphlet, she looked up and said "It says here you have to be poised".
My mom: "She's not poised"
My sister: "We have to make you take showers still!"

True. I was not poised and I was still in my "every third day is still not that bad" showering schedule of my life. And all of what they were saying had truth to it, they went on about reasons I can't remember.

I was not pageant material, I was pushing 115 and hadn't hit puberty, my sister who is 7 years older than me was my same size, maybe a bit smaller. I had greasy hair and bangs that matted my chubby cheeks and swollen eyes. Sometimes I was a bit smelly. And sometimes a bit more smelly.

And yet, I never even imagined my family would point out my inherent flaws to me. What I've realized now is that did a great deal of service. Although the brief shattering of my hopes probably caused me to whine and cry, lock myself in my room, all the while thinking I was too ugly to live, I'm really thankful that they did this.

If they had pampered the idea and spent the money to make me into this pageant queen wannabe, you know where I would have ended up 12 years later?

Auditions for American Idol.

Watching those horrible people this week actually believe that they are stars makes me guffaw and simultaneously want to smack them. Hard. I blame the parents. If you're child is not good at something, TELL THEM. Of course you can encourage them to try harder, get better. But dear god, if they still suck, STOP THEM. It is your duty as a parent to make sure your child understands and accepts their own limitations. You don't have to be mean about it. Be honest with them and shatter the dream slowly and delicately. Like after 2 years of being struck out at every at bat and still not hitting the cutoff man from right field, you should say, "Hey kid, why don't we blow off the little league game and go to a movie?" At this point, they've already learned about being a team player, the rest of the team hates them and they've started to develop a keen sense of humor to compensate for their lack of production.

I'm not saying that you can't let your child make their own decisions. Sure they can. When they're 18 and you don't have to pay for it anymore.

And of course I'm going to get hate mail from you parents reading this. Yes, I am not a parent. But guess what? I'm also not a douchebag parent that lets their child get their 90 seconds of fame by way of humiliation and a Simon smackdown.

I'm not going to talk about work

This title says it all, huh? You know from that title the only thing I want to do is vent about work, but I'm not gonna do it.
No.

Instead let's talk about weight loss. I now weigh about 50 lbs more than I did in highschool. I know, effing gross. I'm not sure how I got here, no I do know.. Cheeseburgers. And pasta. And large portions of biryani and chicken tikka masala. Gorging at Sushi Sake. But it all comes down to one thing. And it's not carbs.

I'm happy, and when I'm happy I love eating. I don't understand people that eat when they're depressed or lonely or hurting in some way. When I'm going through something bad, I don't ever think about food. So I guess I am an emotional eater, but I eat when I'm not depressed or lonely or hurting.

Dear God someone give me some bad news so I can drop some pounds!
That was thoughtless and selfish, forgive me. Or be mad at me and say something mean in response so I can ruminate on it instead of heating up some leftover sausage.

All joking aside, Aaron and I are making a go of this healthy eating/working out thing. And although it's only been 10 days or so, I'm pretty confident that we'll be a much hotter version of ourselves in the months to come.

We've been eating between 1500-2000 calories a day and exercising. Although the exercise will be taking a brief hiatus for me (see 2 blogs ago) and Aaron has bandaged big toes that are not allowed to get squished into sneakers for at least a week.

We're saving a lot of money eating at home and buying weight watchers lunches for work (I'll miss you Wendy's). The master plan is to be hot for Mar's wedding in July because it's on a Cruiseship and this means there will be bathing suits involved and of course pictures. I'm also trying to strengthen my core b/c of my back and at some point this year I'd like to consider the possibility of gaining weight for a little Camp-er. I'm not sure how long it will take for it to happen but I'd like to be able to gain weight during that period. I would not only like to be able to carry a child in my womb, but I would also like to be able to pick it up when the little person is born! I can't keep throwing my back out.

I've lost 3 pounds so far and it's probably all water weight, but I'm hoping I can report back with some more results each month.

I hope not

In my last year at UT, I had to take a capstone English course where I had to write a journal everyday for the entire semester. The entries had to be in the morning preferably before you had spoken to anyone. It had to do with this little book called the Artist's Way. I'm sure if you've ever taken a Creative Writing class you've heard of it. It's got a lot of froo-froo arty stuff, but the best part is that it's a 12 step program for artist's block.

Isn't that great? So, if I'm a writer (stop laughing), and I somehow am blocked, this book equates my lack of writing to an addiction. I did wish that one of the steps was to apologize to all the people you have sent bad stories/ideas/poetry to.

Anyway, my point was that when I had to keep this journal, I only lasted about 6 weeks. I remember accosting my professor after class one day. I was having a bad, bad week. I told her that my journal became these "to-do" lists and it was driving me crazy. At first, it was a daily recap of events from the day before. Then I started working in all the studying I was doing. And then I began to work through my demons (one being my 9th grade English teacher). And then it was just these lists. Long ass lists about what I was going to do that day. What I wanted to accomplish. Well, it was all going okay and then I started to melt down that 6th week.

After my confession to my professor I had realized that the reason I was getting so depressed and couldn't write in my journal is that I wasn't getting my to-do lists done -- ever. I was used to being disappointed in other people (tiny violin), and disappointing myself (just not every day). Sure I had failed tests, hell even a class. I had pissed off many people. I had almost not gotten into UT. But all of that stuff passed, because although it was on my mind for sometime, it was never staring me in the face every morning before I even wiped my eye-bogeys.

I mean I wrote these lists down, all I needed to do was do it. It's not like the list had "Meet the man of my dreams" or "Get into law school" or "Be white". They were things like "Read book about semen transactions in Sambia", "don't blow off studying for Met game", "Only have 2 beers". So when I woke up with no clue about cultural relativism in remote African locations, and my head was banging just like Mike Piazza's homerun the night before, I knew I was failing me. Repeatedly.

Those are the things I was failing at -- regular stuff. Things I had to make simple choices about. So each morning, I was faced with the inevitable failure of my doings from the day before.

And I was beginning to hate myself, but still didn't have the real desire to change anything, but it's funny how this story ends.

After my teary diatribe about how this exercise was showing me what a real loser I was and that I was addicted to my own laziness and apathy, my professor spoke up.

She said "Same thing happens to me. It's not for posterity you know. Just stop. It's clearly affecting you negatively."

Her PhD is in English remember, not Psych. We English majors stick together.

Where does this leave me? I'm picking up where I left off almost 10 years ago, and although there have been so many changes in my life, two things remain - the laziness and of course, the Mets.

In an effort to save you from boredom and to save me from stabbing myself in the eye for my utter failures, I vow to never post to-do lists. And if I inevitably forget this rule, please do three things -- 1)Stop reading the blog 2) Tell me I'm pretty 3) Call my husband and tell him to make me an appointment with a licensed therapist

Or maybe just take me out for a couple beers, watch a Met game and don't talk about semen with me.

My first blog day

So I hurt my back over the weekend (shocker). I think it was from vacuuming the stairs, but who knows. To add insult to injury when I got to the top of the stairs, I realized that the belt had broken on the vacuum and it was probably only sucking up 1/4 of what I thought it was.

Next big buy -- Dyson!

I worked from home today so I could nurse my back and get some sympathy from my pets. The Chairman especially knows when something like this is going on and will frequently sit and stare at me waiting for the bottom to drop out.

He has a sense for these things, I think it's his long evil whiskers.

I started feeling better about 3:30 and decided I would go to the gym to maybe have a swim and sit in the glorious hottub. When I got in the pool, I felt really good and thought I would swim some laps. It was working out, although I have to remind myself to keep kicking my legs (long story). I was just about to start my eighth lap when I almost swallowed a mouthful of water. I was able to spit most of it out but some of it ended up going down the wrong pipe. Needless to say I started hacking..

And I threw my back out again. Even the glorious hottub could not save me.