After our warm weekend, it was supposed to be almost 50 today. After last Friday when I was sweating bullets on the bus and train in my scarf and down coat, I thought I’d be smarter today. So I opted for a lighter wool coat and went sans hat. I traded the fake Uggs for tennis shoes. Fifty degrees in January, UR DOIN IT RITE!

Except, dumbass, it’s January. In Chicago. Yes, it is mild, but it is still January in Chicago. Which means it is still butt-ass cold in the mornings. And still hat weather. And down coat weather. And not thin sweater weather. (Seriously self. A thin, 3/4 sleeve sweater in January? What the fuck were you thinking?)

Guess who was freezing at the bus stop this morning? Go on, guess!

I figured by the time 5 PM rolled around, we would have some warmer weather and some nice-for-January temps. This was especially important because I had to work outside for two hours after work handing out information to commuters. I figured I was just properly dressed enough for 50 degrees in January so I wouldn’t be too hot or too cold.

Oh boy how wrong I was.

I’ve been home for like an hour and I still can’t feel my toes. This post has taken me an hour to write because my fingertips are still numb, so if I try to type at a normal speed, it comes out like this – nvr0[vd ak jr3i vd;hgri0e[o.

I’m not complaining. It could be so much worse. I am pissed at my stupidity. I know better. I’m a Chicagoan! Once you bring out the down coat, it really needs to stay out. Better to be too hot in this weather than too cold. Trust me. (HEAR THAT, SELF??!?)

The problem with this mild winter is that my body is not used to the cold. It hasn’t gotten a chance to acclimate. Yeah, we’ve had a day or two of some cold temps (i.e. normal for this time of year), but nothing like it could be. So when those days come, so few and far between, it knocks me on my ass. I want to eat all the things and then sleep for days. And then I don’t get a chance to toughen up and get used to it because then tomorrow? A high of 52. No. REALLY.

Again, not complaining. Except if it means it will be 60 and cloudy in July. Then we’re taking this outside, Mother Nature. Mano y mano.

See, this morning, I had to get into work earlier to work an event. I had to be downtown, butt in seat, coffee and breakfast in hand, at Union Station, no later than 7:30 AM. And in case you didn’t know, 7:30 AM is really fucking EARLY.

We don’t change the clocks until this coming weekend. Which means that when I got up at 5:30 and then left the house to walk the streets of my hood to the bus stop at 6:30, it was pitch black. Oh! And when I got off the train downtown and walked into Starbucks it was also still dark.

Is it just me, or does it feel like we should have changed clocks like three weeks ago? I don’t know why it feels like this. On most days I’m surprised it is already November and I wonder where the time went. On top of that, we’ve had an actual fall this year and have had pretty decent weather overall. Shit, it’s going to be in the mid-60s this weekend. In November. IN CHICAGO! We didn’t even get a lick of snow that the East Coast got last weekend!

(Oh how Mother Nature is going to smite me for those sentences.)

I’m sure part of this feeling about the time change is because I get up earlier now than I used to at my old job. And since I started new job at the end of March when the weather is making another turn, but this time for the warmer and sunnier, I’ve never done this commute to work at this time of day at this time of year.

At my last job, I got up at 8, left at 8:30 and was in at 9. I slept until 8! On weekdays! How awesome is that? Well, not awesome when you hated the job you had as much as I did.

But now! I like my job! I still get in at 9, but since it takes longer to get in, I’m up before 7. Well, most days. The days I don’t have to wash my hair I push the snooze a few more times. But even for the last month the sun hasn’t been rising until after 7 AM. And that is just unacceptable.

Yes, yes, I’m aware that in a month it will be dark when I get up and dark when I get home. And that SUCKS. I do hate leaving the office when it is dark. But I’m still looking forward to the time change because it really does feel like my internal clock is all messed up.

In sunshiney news, I found out that I’ll be moving to a different floor at work in two weeks. And with that move, I’m getting a cube along the wall. The wall of WINDOWS. So while it will be dark in the morning and night, and we’ll have a lot of dreary days coming up in winter, I get to come in every day and look outside at the Chicago skyline.

And that’s definitely worth getting up in the dark for.

And this ends the stream of consciousness portion of this week’s NaBloPoMo posts.

But regardless, our warm temps from just last week are long gone and it’s only going to get colder. To me, this is one of the worst parts of the year. It’s such a shock to the system and there is nothing you can do about it. No amount of extra clothing, scarves, jackets and socks seem to help. It’s just COLD. But as I pointed out on Twitter this morning, in two months, this weather will seem balmy.

I realized last night that the weather has permanently shifted because of my cats.

See, I let them sleep with me. It’s hard to forbid them to do anything in my house when they have the run of it all day long while I’m at work. They may humor me when I’m home and get off the table/counter/stove when I yell, but they know that once I leave, they can go anywhere they want. Neener, neener, neener.

I don’t mind sleeping with them, for the most part. I have a queen-sized bed and there is room for the three of us. If I even think about closing my bedroom door and locking them out, they just scratch and whine until I let them in. They have realized I have no power over them. They rule the roost. I bet I have the best reputation at the school playground as being the coolest mom ever!

Anyway, in the summer, they don’t sleep very close to me. It’s more of a “well, since you’re sleeping and not going to pet me, I suppose I will sleep too. And I’ll stay in your vicinity so you can not think I’m dead. Meow.”

It’s like this:

Now Simba, he’s just naturally up in your personal space at ALL TIMES. He doesn’t just sit on your lap, he climbs up your chest so that he is lying on you, with his face near yours.

If he just sat like a normal cat, I’d let him on my lap more. That and he likes to lick you, and it’s no wonder why I shove him out of the way so often. And it’s no wonder why he pukes on my carpet.

So no matter the season, he’s sleeping close to me. He also likes to have a paw touching me, which would be cute if it wasn’t so annoying.

But come fall/winter, they realize I keep the heat on low in the house, especially at night, and that the lovely hardwood floors aren’t going to provide them any amount of warmth. I’m it. So my bed then looks like this:

The biggest problem with this is that I am used to my bed and sleeping alone. I sleep right down the middle. I use the whole bed for myself. Because it is my bed. So there are a lot of sprawled out sleeping positions. Positions that get hindered when cats are sleeping, literally, under my nose. Especially when I go to roll over and squash a cat.

I realize this isn’t an issue since they are cats and I pay the rent and I can kick them out. But this requires giving up precious sleep. So I just deal with it.

And pretty much succumb to the realization that if I ever date/marry someone, I’ll just need a king-sized bed. Especially in the winter.

#spinstertweets

(And now as I write this, I’ll be singing this song. “ooh, wah, ooh…let me whisper in your ear…ooh, wah, ooh”)

(I think Twitter has made me lose my ability to write one post about a single topic, without wanting to interject other thoughts in 140 characters or less.)

(I mean, I haven’t even gotten to the point of this post and we’re four paragraphs deep.)

(I blame the heat. Because yesterday, as I stood on the platform waiting for my train, talking on the phone with my brother, I was dripping sweat from my elbow crease. My elbow was sweating! DRIPPING.)

(MY ELBOW!)

Ahem.

Speaking of the heat, I have a secret to share with you. This heat, and the sweatiness and all that it entails, has given me an embarrassing affliction (besides elbow, boob and ass sweat) – it has given me stinky feet and stinky shoes!

I know! GROSS!

I’ve never really had this problem before. And in the past, I guess it wasn’t a problem because I was awful sedentary. I got up to go to the bathroom and that was about it. Also, it was always, always cold in there and I had my space heater on, even in the middle of July. So any kind of perspiration was non-existent.

Now it’s different. I work for a large company. I have to get up and walk to the bathroom, to talk to co-workers and my boss, have to go upstairs to discuss things with other departments. That, plus sometimes I leave work to go grab lunch. All this activity and movement makes a girl perspire. Which apparently means my feet sweat and then I wear the same few pairs of shoes and they start to get smelly.

I went out to the store to buy some Odor Eaters foot powder. I thought this would be a good solution. Except, I don’t wear the shoes that need the powder until I get to work. So if I put powder in them, and then throw them in my bag, I get to work with foot powder covering everything, including my lunch.

So I need suggestions, people! I’m afraid no one will talk to me at work because of my foot odor problem!

This morning on Twitter, Dunkin Donuts asked whether we would prefer, at that moment, the current weather or something along the lines of the blizzard we had in February. At that moment, as I was sweating profusely on an air conditioned bus, sharing sweat with my neighbor, since we were jammed in like sardines, I am not sure which is worse.

I love summer and warm weather and flip flops and beer gardens and patio dining. But when it is like it is currently? It’s no worse than a snow storm because you can’t do much outside. You just take less showers. I really need it to just be like 80-85 and sunny every day. With no humidity. That would be nice.

The heat makes me tired too. I get home, like on nights like tonight, after being jammed in a stuffy train for an hour, and I’m ready for bed. In fact, as I type this, it isn’t even 9 PM and I’ve already brushed my teeth and taken out my contacts. Sleep is not too far behind.

It also makes me do stupid things. Like drink too many vodka drinks and act like a fool in front of people. (Although, let’s be honest, that happens no matter the weather.)

It also makes me forgetful. Seeing as I noticed this evening, oh at about 8 PM, that my flat iron was left on in the bathroom ALL DAY.

(The heat also dehydrates me which is why I was home for two hours and didn’t have to go pee once.)

I am always so good about checking to make sure it is off. I mean, we’ve all see the Friends episode, yes? Where Phoebe’s place gets burned down by a straightner? (“My hair is straight. Straight, straight, straight.”) I KNOW the dangers of those heating devices. Which was why I spent MORE on one that I THOUGHT had an auto-shut-off! Because I’m forgetful and lazy and sometimes stupid! I like to buck the system off the bat and ASSUME I’m going to be stupid and prepare for it!

(DID I MENTION IT WAS ON THE COUNTER RIGHT NEXT TO THE SHOWER CURTAIN???!?!??)

Turns out, spending $80 on a flat iron doesn’t guarantee that it has auto-shut off. I cannot thank whomever enough for making sure there was a house to come home to tonight. I am so, so, so, so thankful. And LUCKY. And I will be even more vigilant about making sure I turn it off every morning. This will not happen again.

Trust me.

Hopefully this should also remind me to shave OFF! my leg hair.

I went to visit Ali. But this time, I had others with me. Slynnro and Metalia also were in town and it was like a BlohHer 2009 reunion! And it was fantastic! And also too short and I already miss those guys terribly.

I’m not generally a nervous traveler. I’ve actually gotten really blase about the whole traveling thing and have had the habit of showing up to the airport with just enough time to check my bag, head through security and grab a bottle of water before final boarding call. It’s not intentional, but something generally happens that makes me later than I want and then I panic until I’m sitting in the seat, knowing I WILL NOT miss my flight.

For instance, this past Thursday when I left, we had a bit of a snow storm. I was incessantly checking the weather like a fiend the days leading up to my flight because I didn’t want to be delayed. I was only going to be in Atlanta for a few short days and I didn’t want flight delays to cut into that time. The weather forecast the night before I left was for 6-10 inches of snow in Chicago and up to 2 inches of snow in Atlanta. I went to bed figuring I wasn’t going to make it to Atlanta because when it snows there, the city shuts down. (I HAVE NOW WITNESSED IT FIRST HAND, TRUST ME.)

The forecast in Chicago was for an inch or two overnight Wednesday (nothing to us Chicagoans) and then the heavy stuff was going to start falling Thursday afternoon. This left a PERFECT window for me to leave on time for my 11 AM flight. But when I woke up to pee early Thursday morning around 2 AM and didn’t see one snowflake on the ground, I knew that I wasn’t going to be so lucky.

When I finally got up around 7:30 Thursday morning, I looked out and saw a lot of snow and it was still coming down. The traffic lady on the radio was all “so, be prepared to just keep sitting in your car. You ain’t going anywhere any time soon.”

All I thought was “GREEEEAT.”

My original plan to drive and park near an EL station was blown out of the water when I saw and heard what the roads were like. Plan B was to walk to the bus and then bus to the EL and then transfer to the Orange line and take it to Midway. In my head, I gave myself a little over an hour. My head apparently forgot that the roads were slow, hence, the BUSES WOULDN’T BE MOVING SO FAST.

Thankfully I made it to the airport an hour before my flight. I went through security, walked and got something to eat and headed to my gate. As I got there, they said they were boarding everyone now to try and get out of Chicago earlier before the BAD snow came. Thank God I didn’t stop to take a dump.

We didn’t actually leave early. But we left sooner than we should have, seeing as they not only had to de-ice the plane, they had to de-snow it.

That is not just a white wing. It is a wing of an airplane with two inches of snow on it.

Thankfully in all my Atlanta travels, I’ve learned they pad about 40 minutes onto the flight time, since you’re flying into the world’s busiest airport. So even though we left late, we still landed on time.

Just in time for it to start snowing in Atlanta. That white shit follows me EVERYWHERE!

The snow wasn’t too bad in Atlanta, but since it is Atlanta and they have hills and no plows or salt, it was bad. They had a snow/ice day on Friday, which didn’t please Ali so much since the kids had just gone back to school after two weeks off for the holidays. (Even though it is a Jewish school.) So the plans of spending the day leisurely shopping and lunching and sipping cocktails were thwarted since we’d have three kids in tow.

Not that I mind. I love Ali’s kids as if they were my own, or at least related to me. It just makes Ali’s life a little more stressful. I’m sure she enjoys her days to herself so she can do things like her job and other stuff.

But we had a fabulous weekend. We went shopping. We had good food. I became addicted to Words With Friends on the iPhone, sitting around the table playing games with each other and laughing at our choice of words. (Jill is acceptable, but android is not. And apparently I am not familiar at all with most of the words in the English language that are more than two letters.) We laughed so much our stomachs hurt and then we just kept laughing.

Emily entertained us with her damn good modeling skills (she is 8 and better than most Top Model contestants. She can SMISE!). Josh was spending just another day surrounded by ALL WOMEN and has perfected the girl tune-out at a very young age. And Bella was well, Bella.

Dear internet, this is what I teach your kids when you let me around them. But this led to Ali showing her kids clips of Monty Python, so I’m pretty sure I am a genius.

I was sad to come home. It’s been over 24 hours and I’m still sad and missing everyone. I know I say this every time I come back from Atlanta, or when I hang out with my friends from the interweb, but there is nothing like the friendships I have made through blogging. I came home OVERJOYED at the friends I am lucky enough to have from writing a silly little blog. I don’t know how I could have ever had a complete life without some of these people in it.

Thankfully Bella gave me something to remind me of all this, and it is hanging proudly on my fridge.

Anyway, in that post, I basically pissed off Spring. Because she was a big fucking tease and never came around. And then a funny thing happened, some time around the end of May, Spring came. But see, usually in Chicago, the end of May is when we see our first 90-degree days. And from Memorial Day on, it’s summer. Hot, sweaty, change-your-shirt-three-times-a-day, stock-up-on-deodorant summer. People are turning on the A/C, breaking out the bathing suits and complaining and wishing for the days when it was cool and you didn’t sweat through your clothes blow drying your hair first thing in the morning.

But that hasn’t happened. Not even close. Right now, on the evening of June 10, it is in the 50s. Last night? I had to close all the windows and put on a sweatshirt because it was chilly! ON JUNE FUCKING 10!

I’ve been back in Chicago since 2005, so this will be my fifth summer back in the Land of Humidity. And every summer I’ve lived in the city, by this time, I’ve installed the window A/C unit and have turned it on at least once. I actually remember buying my window A/C unit on Memorial Day about three years ago because it was too fucking hot and I just couldn’t take it any more. This year on Memorial Day? It was rainy and barely got up to 65 degrees.

So clearly, my post about Spring really set off Mother Nature. She is not having any of my insubordination. And she’s going to make me pay. By wearing sweaters and fleece jackets in June. DURING THE DAY. And hiding the sun from us just long enough that we forget where we put our damn sunglasses. And then have to drive home from work all squinty.

This is either payback for that post or she saw me trying on those 2 new bathing suits I bought and just put out a preemptive strike for all of the world. She saw the display of massive chunks of pasty white skin, riddled in cellulite and said “Nuh, uh. No way. NO ONE needs to see that.” And she cranked down the thermostat.

Lest you think Mother Nature is fucking around,  remember that I was living in a third-floor walk-up with only a small window air conditioner that I couldn’t run all the time because I don’t have piles of gold in my closets, and it was HOT all the time. Living in that apartment, I would have KILLED for it to be this cool for as long as possible. All I dreamt about was the day I would live some place that I had central air. Now that I have central A/C and do not have to worry about the SUFFOCATING HEAT INSIDE MY HOUSE anymore, now that bitch Mother Nature turns the weather cool and I can’t even turn the A/C on because it’s too cold outside for it to even kick on. Oh, the irony! I HEAR YOU CACKLING, MOTHER NATURE!

YOU WIN THIS ROUND! NOW WARM THIS BITCH UP! A-SAP!

I bet she can’t wait for us to all start complaining about the heat and humidity once she gives up this little game of hers. We get it Mother Nature! You’re powerful! GAH. We totally get it. You win. Now give us summer, for the love of God!

I decided I kind of hate Spring. I mean, Spring is kind of a moody bitch. She’s got some severe mood swings that are hard to take. Only in Spring in Chicago can you have a day that is in the 70s followed by fucking six inches of snow. Oh yeah, you heard me. We had snow in Chicago this past weekend. I got to miss it because oddly enough, I think this was the only instance in the history of weather that it snowed in Chicago and yet it was sunny and mild in Minneapolis.

When Spring first peeks her head around the corner, you love her. You want to marry her and tongue-kiss her in front of a Priest! Because you love her that much and you WANT EVERYONE TO KNOW, no matter if they are grossed out by your displays of affection!

But then Spring gets scared. Because all of a sudden, overnight, Spring is an instant celebrity. And people are chasing her and the paparazzi are trying to snap photos of her drunk in the club, so then Spring goes away. She freaks the fuck out, loses her shit everywhere and forces Winter back on us. And Winter is a protective asshole. And he doesn’t like people who upset Spring, so he reminds you that YOU MUST BE NICE TO SPRING, OR I WILL MAKE IT SNOW IN JULY.

And we listen. Oh boy do we listen. But then we forget. Because a few days/weeks/months later, Spring comes back. And we start pulling out the short-sleeved tops and the lighter jackets. We pack away the wool coats and the scarves and the mittens. We lock our fake Uggs away, hoping to never wear them again. We are happy! We are sunny! We are optimistic! The world is our oyster! And we have Spring to thank! Yay Spring!

But then shy little Spring acts like a bitch again and runs and hides and whines about how we all love her. Oh, poor you, Spring. It must be so hard to be loved by millions. Cry me a fucking river. And play me a tune on this tiny violin here.

So Winter comes back. But not as bad. He just cools it down a bit. Even Winter has a heart and knows extended periods of bitter cold and snow will make people stabby. And Winter doesn’t like to be responsible for people turning into cold-blooded killers. Winter is still upset that they pinned that Seasonal Affective Disorder on him. Like it’s his fault people are SAD. “Eat some vegetables, people!” Winter says. But he comes back to protect Spring the pussy and reminds us that we are not out of the woods yet and if we do not change our ways, Spring will never be sprung again. We’re so on notice, Winter tells us.

And then we’re all like “fuck this rollercoaster!” Because we know eventually Summer will be here. And Summer is one confident bitch and she loves the attention. She can also be mean and horrible with her heat and humidity when she’s PMSing, but she knows that we will always love her. She loves Winter more than anyone because everyone is always talking about HER in Winter! Because they can’t wait for her to arrive in style! She’s a famewhore and damn proud of it! We love you Summer! Squeee!

So finally Spring will come around again, slowly but surely, a little at a time. And she might be here to stay, she might not. It all depends on if she took her meds. But eventually we get to the point where we’re all meh about it because we’re not playing her fucking games anymore. Which is exactly what she wants because the less attention Spring gets, the more likely she is to stick around and not go cry like a whiny bitch to Winter.

Until then I’ll just fucking bitch about it because I never have the right coat for this weather. So make up your mind Spring! I’m tired of the extremes. But I mean that in a nice way! I don’t want to upset you! We don’t need snow in April, right Winter?

So all the snow we got over the weekend is going to freeze, which means my car is probably going to be stuck. So I’m not even going to try and get it out and just take public transportation to work every day this week. It gives me some exercise, but also makes me want to crawl into the carcass of a dead animal to keep warm.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I never wrote about any resolutions this new year. I didn’t really make any. Mostly because whenever I do, it ends up being a big FAIL WHALE. So I figured if I didn’t make any and didn’t write them down, I couldn’t go back a year later and be all “oh, well, um yeah, I didn’t do any of those things.” And then I dwell on the failure, which hi! Not productive!

This year I made little goals. Nothing big. The main was that I need to get back into the habit of washing my face every night before bed. Some time, months ago, I got out of the habit because unless you’re new here, it’s not a fucking newsflash that I AM LAZY.

Thankfully, my skin hasn’t been really effected noticeably. I haven’t really broken out too bad or anything. But I battled acne REALLY bad when I graduated college, so bad I have the scars to prove it, and I don’t want to go through that again. So I need to wash my damn face. Plus, I’m old now and I am getting wrinkles and I think I read somewhere that not washing your face makes it all settle into fine lines or something and it is just bad. I don’t need reasons to wash my face. I need to just wash my damn face.

I didn’t start out 2009 on the best foot on the face-washing front. I mean I got drunk on NYE and wasn’t about to waste precious passing out time on washing my face. Especially since I was just going to drool all over it anyway. But I’ve gotten better. I’m at least doing it every weekday, so far. (It is only the 13th.) The weekends are my next step.

My other goal was to finally get healthy. I’m making a goal to get back to eating healthy and not inhaling burritos the size of my femur on a near daily basis. This isn’t a new thing. I was very successful at Weight Watchers back in 2003. So I know what it takes. I also want to get back in shape. Because now that I’m over 30, I’ve noticed that just eating right doesn’t make the pounds melt off. I actually have to be active and make my belly shake like a bowl full of jelly to help burn some calories.

So I’ve joined Weight Watchers again. I know the rules. I don’t need the program for the rules. I can do it on my own. I need it to make myself keep track of everything I eat during the day. It’s very easy to fudge when you aren’t writing it down or logging it online. I started last Thursday and I’m doing pretty well. But I’m not patting myself on the back yet, because it hasn’t even been 7 days.

I also am getting shredded with Jillian Michaels. I’m doing her 30 Day Shred DVD and hoping all her promises will come true and I’ll be dropping inches and pounds in 30 days. It’s a good time to start when my car will be stuck on the street until March, so I won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. What else to I have to be doing?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My final goal of 2009 is to become a homeowner. (OK, this is a BIG goal.) Which translates to BECOMING AN ADULT! OMG! The world might stop spinning on its axis!

Obviously the buyer’s market is good right now. And I’m thankful for that. And with some of my extra severance left over, I paid down some of my debt, so financially, I think I’m in good place to buy. But overall, I’m freaking the fuck out.

This economy is scary. I mean, I don’t feel like anyone’s job is secure. Except Barack Obama. He’s pretty set. Unless he pulls a Blagojevich and sinks himself. WHICH HE WILL NOT. (How much do I love that Blago’s name is in the WordPress dictionary. Because clearly no one is talking about him.) So I’m scared that I will make this ginormous purchase and then I’ll lose my job. And then how will I pay my mortgage? Where will I live? Where will the cats throw up at?

I know that you can really lose your job at any time. If anyone knows that, it’s the girl who has lost her job three times. But this whole economy situation we are in right now, it is scary. And since the cats don’t even pull their own damn weight, I’ve got no one to lean on if that does happen. Seriously cats, get a job.

But I’m going to take the plunge anyway. For no other reason than to get away from the pot heads who live below me that I would like to strangle with a hemp necklace. (Another reason I like doing the Shred? Jumping jacks. It has to annoy them.)

I want my own place. I want to own something. And I doubt we’ll have a market like this again for a long time. Not with our man Barack in office. I don’t want to have to climb three flights of stairs to do laundry. I don’t want to have to call the apartment office THREE TIMES to have something fixed. I don’t want to deal with waiting for someone to decide to turn on the heat when clearly it is cold because my lips are blue. I want to be an adult and own a condo in the city.

I don’t know much about any of this house stuff. Which means if you know me and you own a residence, I will be bombarding you with questions. But at least I have a realtor. That’s step one, right?

First off, I am not a morning person. Not in the least. I need a longer commute in the morning just to get my wits about me and not snap your head off. I also need coffee to help this along. A former co-worker at the 49ers would not talk to me until I had been at work for at least an hour. Because the odds of me being a normal person and not a seven-headed monster would greatly increase the longer I had been at my desk. So needless to say, if unexpected things happen to me first thing in the morning, I CANNOT DEAL WITH THEM VERY WELL. It is why I don’t put my clothes on until right before I leave for the day. I have had many mornings ruined with drippings of toothpaste or a splash of make-up. If something like that happens to me that early in the morning, I would prefer to curl up in the fetal position on the floor of the bathroom and sleep the day away.

Unfortunately, I am not ever allowed to do that.

Which brings us to this morning. Everything was going fine and I was even running a bit early, which was good because I had to lug 140 holiday cards to the mail box. I had decided to drive to work today for a whole host of reasons that don’t even matter now. Mostly it was because my wine shipment is currently sitting in some UPS warehouse and I need to pick it up!

I need to pick up my wine club wine before Wednesday, when they send it back to the wine people. Which, insert pouty sad face here. We are supposed to get like 5 inches of snow on Tuesday, so I figured Monday was the best day to attempt the pick-up.

I consulted the weather on my iPhone and knew it was going to be a bit icy. We had like a 40-degree temperature drop from Sunday night to Monday morning. All that rain and melted snow was going to freeze. But I figured that leaving at 7:45 AM would be plenty of time for the salt trucks to at least cover the main drags.

What I wasn’t expecting was MUTANT ICE. This ice was not insanely thick or anything, but it had alien properties. For one, it sealed the doors of my car closed so tight I had to put my entire weight into pulling my car door open. And no, I don’t know what I would have done had it not opened. I will tell you that curling into the fetal position on the frozen sidewalk in minus 20 degree wind chill temperatures crossed my mind!

I got the door open and went about scraping the windows. That is when the mutants had their big, belly laugh at my expense. My scraper did NOTHING to the ice. It was if these mutants had sprayed a layer of glue down over my car and then put ice on top of it. IT WAS NOT GOING ANYWHERE.

So I had nothing to do but wait until the car warmed up and started to melt it. If MUTANT ICE even melted.

I scraped as much as I could off (read: NOTHING) and figured I should un-stick the wipersbecause maybe they will help get rid of the MUTANT ICE faster. So I turned on the wipers and nothing. “Hmmm,” I thought. “I must not have gotten that one blade unstuck.”

So I went back out to unstick it and heard some loud noise. I figured it was the MUTANT ICE attacking me and quickly got back in the car. I turned on the wipers and nothing. I tried again. Nothing. I heard the motor whirring but no blades moving. I went back out and tried to make them move myself. That does not work, for your information.

Commence MELTDOWN OF EPIC PROPORTIONS.

At this point, I’ve already been thawing this MUTANT ICE for damn near 30 minutes. I could finally see well enough out the windshield and I took off. It was slow going, even though I live but 11 miles from work. None of the side streets were salted and my tires spun a lot. I think those tires are still dizzy.

On my way to work, I called my mom crying because WAH! I’m going to be late! And I’m new! And I have no windshield wipers! She calmed me down and then I called my brother because he knows a little about cars. He suggested it might be a fuse (which I knew it wasn’t because the whirring, I could hear it.) Then he’s all “you busted it FOOL!” (No he didn’t really say that. He listened to me whine and continue melting down. And then sent me links to tell me what the issue probably was. Verdict? I busted it, either stripped the gears or broke something or other.)

I finally got to work, late, all cried out. I researched mechanics because I’ve not had any issues (knock on wood) with my car since moving back to Chicago. Well, no issues that my brother couldn’t fix. (Those brothers are nice to have around.) The mechanic with good reviews on Yelp said it would be more than a day because he was swamped and he’d probably have to order the part. So I went to a dealer (*shudder*) because odds are they might have the part there.

So now with the 100 million things I already had to do this week, I have to pray my car is fixed by tomorrow evening. The guy at the dealer didn’t seem shocked and was pretty sure he could have it back to me on Tuesday. So I’m hoping he’s right and doesn’t realize I was totally lying to him when I told him I had my 120,000 mile check-up done. Because I do NOT need to spend any more money at the service department of a car dealer.

On top of all this that happened, I found out that the stupid UPS place that I was rushing to get to by 6 PM before it closed is actually open until 9 PM this week. This will teach me to be lazy and NOT take public transportation. (YES, this would have ALL been avoided if I had just taken the bus and train.)

And now I will go curl up in the fetal position and go to bed, just like I’ve wanted to do since 8 AM. Well, as much curling as I can do after Jillian Michaels shredded my muscles tonight.