New Year, Same garbage

Yesterday, as I was lovingly making dinner for my husband and me, I put the potato peels down the garbage disposal. Not long after that it sort of died, but not quite yet, and now we don't know what to do. I was in hopes that all would be remedied by this evening, but it looks like we'll be without a little while longer. grr. This means we can't run our dishwasher, and therefore I will be required to do all the stinking dishes that I used to make dinner, and all the ones that weren't cleaned in the dishwasher prior to the breakdown by hand. arrgh. My hands are dry and craking. I feel like I was washing dishes for like half an hour. Sometimes I think that our "great advances" in technology are awesome, except when you suddenly need to fix them. That can be such a pain. Sorry for this lousy post, but that's been about all of the excitement for this week.

Tagged by Kim

I've never heard of being tagged before. As I was reading my best friends blog, she inquired about me, so I decided to answer some of her questions. Here goes.

Seven things I would like to do before I die
1. Go to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower and all the touristy places
2. Have at least one child
3. Go to Ireland
4. Own a St. Bernard
5. Live out west somewhere
6. Move out of this house
7. Impact peoples' lives in a positive way

Seven things I can't do
1. Hammer a nail into the wall correctly to save my life.
2. Just throw the Victoria's Secret catalog away without looking at it.
3. Maintain control of the beast that is my dog.
4. Fix a computer.
5. Beat my husband in any video game.
6. Make a truly mouthwatering feast that my husband fanatically loves.
7. Change my family.

Seven things that attracted me to my spouse.
1. His faith
2. The fact that he is 1,000x smarter than I ever will be
3. His innate sexiness
4. The way he always knows exactly what to say when I'm in crisis mode
5. His voice
6. His artistic abilities
7. His mad game

Seven things I say most often
1. Stupid
2. BABY! in this really high obnoxious voice when I'm talking to my dog.
3. Yeah, okay. Full of sarcasm
4. I love you
5. Hey babe
6. Hi, how are you?
7. Is there anything you would like fixed? (talking to my clients)

Seven books I love
1. The Notebook
2. Girl Interrupted
3. The Promise
4. This present darkness
5. Redeeming Love
6. The Great Divorce
7. The Bible

Seven movies I watch over and over
1. The Notebook
2. Empire Records
3. Clueless
4. Ten things I hate about you
5. Can't hardly wait
6. Love Actually
7. Garden State

Seven people I'm curious about
1. My husband
2. Ben
3. Laura
4. mason
5. ?
6.?
7.?

Animals as Humans

I have a really hard time not treating our little Boston terrier like a baby. I love to cuddle him and squeeze him. Everytime I pick him up he gets this look in his eye that says "Not again. Can I get down now?" I remember as kids, how hard you can hug something equates to how much you love that particular thing. I don't think that tendency ever left me, especially when I hug my dog. (sad isn't it?) Kuzko (my dog) has definitely added color to our lives. Though he drives us crazy most of the time, I love him. Whether my husband will say the same is another story all together. Though he isn't a baby (my dog, not my husband) sometimes it's hard not to treat him like one and discipline him like you would a child. He has no freaking clue what I'm saying. His human traits are undeniable though.
Take for instance, his insane flagulance. Our best friends can attest to this: there are few things of a fouler odor. It literally smells like something died in there. He also whines when he doesn't get his way. If we won't throw his ball for him to fetch, he gets mad. And this morning I took him out as I was getting ready for work. Wet hair, no coat, in 15 degree weather and four inches of snow on the ground, I let him out to "do his business" if you will. He peed and then sniffed around frantically to finish the other matter. I kept trying to prompt him by saying "go potty" in the most pleasant voice possible. As the seconds, then minutes go by, I keep repeating myself getting impatient. Kuzko is still running around and looking for the perfect mark. Finally, he runs back to me and looks up as if to say "screw it, it's freaking freezing out here". He was shivering like I was.
I find it quite amusing that despite being a dog, he still thinks it's too stinking cold outside.

Reflections
I can't believe that 2005 will be over in four weeks. I've always somewhat hated endings. Whenever my husband used to have to go home at the end of the night while we were dating, I used to drag it out into the longest possible ritual. He looked forward to them with absolute dread. For me this year has been different.
It's not that I'm not looking forward to the close of another year of my life. It's not that at all. The years seem to go by faster and faster. But for the first time ever I think I'm just content to be where I am. I don't wish I was married, or that I had a real job, a dog, a house. I have all of those things and they are perfect. I'm just glad that I finally stopped wishing to be at the "next phase" of everything. I'm just enjoying the moments that are going on right in front of my eyes. I'm so lucky that I get to spend my life with my husband and the cutest terror of a dog there is. And I have the most amazing best friend in the whole world. I can turn into the biggest mess of a person in front of her, and it's okay. I love that.
Maybe it comes with getting older, but I'm starting to settle in this skin of mine. It's not so bad.

More melodrama

Sweet mother does the horror ever end? I'm so sick of family drama that I think I might actually throw up. Follow me along this nut house sequence of events if you will. 1. Sister takes handfull of
Tylenol and 83 Ibuprofen. 2. She enters ER for night. 3. Proceeds to hospital to make sure that there is no damage to her system. 4. Goes to a "behavioral health hospital" to undergo treatment. 5. Gets put on prozac. 6. She is discharged ljust four days later. That's an awfully short stay for someone who tried to "end it" three times. I got the pleasure of staying four days just for considering it.
So what happens now?
I would love nothing more than to say that it's over. Nothing is that simply done when you are fifteen and have 5 year old parents arguing over who sucks more. I think sometimes to have to get a little loopy to find your way back to the straight and narrow. Some people miss that exit. In this situation, my parents are not an exception.
My parents love to fly off the handle and pick at every little detail of every little thing that the other one could've done to screw us up. It might not be as bad if they bickered amongst themselves. However, they put us in the middle. Getting back to my sister: her life is so awful right? From what all of us in the family can gather, nothing more is wrong with her than your typical "I hate my parents" teenage angst. She's not getting beaten, raped, starved, neglected, or mutilated by my mom and step-dad. It's just your normal upper middle class white suburban drama. And what does my dad decide to do you may ask? "Kidnap" her after school to take her to live with him at a "better place" (aka his house). It's not really kidnapping because my sister consented to it. She was supposed to go live with him after this school semester was over with, but my dad really thinks she'd do better with him. Isn't that mature? That gives him 20 more points on the stupidity scale!

Who wrote this tragedy?

No one wants to relive their teenage years. I doubt there are many parents who would wish that on themselves. Raising a teenager again? No thanks. At fourteen, I was no exception. Everyday I was getting grounded from the phone, friends, tv, etc. As the oldest, you are more or less, the test rat. Yeah, that's a great feeling. The thing that really sucks though is by the time my parents were done with my emotional hurricanes blowing through, they were pretty much done with the whole "discipline" thing. At least that's how I perceived it.
My baby sister has reached that special age. Ah, the nightmare that is fifteen. These past few weeks have been touch and go. She's recently decided to be suicidal. I don't have to tell you that it's a really freaking scary thing. I went through the same thing around her age. I'd come home from school and hold knives to my wrist. I would daydream about what everyone would do if I were to collapse from an overdose in the middle of class. When in actuality, I never really wanted to die. I just wanted to go away for awhile so I could see how everyone really felt about me. I really wish it was the same situation for my sister. As I perceive it, she is more or less, doing this as a way to get my parents' attention, and trying to figure out how she can manipulate their system to get what she wants. I don't know how to help her. I know that she thinks things are horrible for her right now, and she's suffering. I have a hard time believing that she's being genuine and true about such a serious thing.

wigging out

Being a girl, it has taken me literally years to learn how to "control my emotions". I'd like to consider myself still a padawan in this area. Simply because, I find it difficult to let that voice of reason in when I'm in the middle of a meltdown. My husband, God bless him, can attest to this. He is my voice of reason. Last night was no exception.
As we're attempting to watch one of my new found favorite tv shows, "CSI", one of my little melodramas begins for no apparent good reason. When that happens, my husband has no forwarning whatsoever. (poor guy) Then, I start in with something like "you don't support me enough". The low point hit when I think I compared him to not being my little cheerleader. (yeah, it was that ridiculous.) At that particular juncture one of two things can happen. My husband can take offense and get mad, or give me a look that more or less says "you're not thinking straight, you silly woman". Then he waits. Usually the look works. I then realize that I have just acted like a complete idiot and get embarrassed. Being a girl rules.
I love being married. It's so hard sometimes, but it's totally worth it. My husband is not perfect. (obiously neither am I.) But somehow, he always knows how to get through to me. That blows my mind. He's amazing. I know there isn't another person in the world that could do his magic.