Kristabella: Full of Snark Since 1977

Posted By Kristabella on February 16, 2010

I’m sure most of you will be reading this on Wednesday, but I posted it Tuesday night so the title still works.

Speaking of Fat Tuesday, do people in New Orleans get Ash Wednesday off? Because really, that would be the only way I could go out and party. I went out on Fat Tuesday once, probably about four years ago, at a bar that had QUARTER BEERS! Granted they were smaller cups, but still! FOUR BEERS FOR A DOLLAR! And all I can recall from that night is making out with some guy on a pool table. And I think I went to work the next day. I couldn’t hang now. Am old.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing about Fat Tuesday is because that is what today is. Which means tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. Which means the start of Lent for those of us Christian-types. And the tradition is to give up something for Lent. Or do something good. Basically the idea is to make a sacrifice and be like Jesus on the cross or something. Oh, and don’t eat meat. (Who has two thumbs and knows nothing about Christianity? THIS GIRL!)

I don’t do the meat thing. Because it is stupid. And the Bible just says “hoofed” animals, which means turkey and chicken are OK. I mean, if fish are OK then so is poultry, so says the Book of Kristabella. (Clearly I am not much of a practicing Catholic. What with the birth control and the pre-marital sex and all.)

But I do generally participate in the whole Lenten thing. I try to give something up, or aim to be a better person by doing SOMETHING for those 40 days. Last year I attempted to give up the snooze button. It went OK, but didn’t last too long. I hit the snooze button about 4 times each morning still to this day.

This year I’ve decided to do something a little different. I have decided to give up BEING LAZY. See, I’m President of the Lazy Club. I’ve mentioned this before. I prefer sedentary activities to just about anything. But lately, it’s reached a new level. Part of it is winter. I always seem to get this way because my only instinct is to hunker down and hibernate. I AM A CHICAGO BEAR, YOU KNOW! But the level of laziness I have reached recently is off the charts. And it is time to change.

So my Lent resolution (what is it even called? Lent sacrifice?) is to stop being so lazy in many areas of my life, but namely with this here blog. I have gotten into a really bad habit of not posting here. I went from posting five days a week to one, maybe two, days a week. And I don’t like that. But since I’ve gotten out of the habit, it is really easy to talk myself out of writing each night and talk myself into watching yet another episode of Intervention.

My goal isn’t to blog every day. Because that is ridiculous. If I can’t even come up with  topics once a week, there is no need to bore you every single day. So the plan is to blog 5 days a week for the next however many weeks until Easter. That way if I go out on a weeknight and am too drunk to post, I don’t have to feel guilty. Although I will because Catholics are good at that. Drinking and guilt.

There you have it. And now it is off to bed to think of millions of hilarious post ideas. Otherwise we’re going to get a lot of cat posts.

So how about you? Are you giving anything up for Lent? What is your Lent resolution, or Lensolution, if you will?

Category: A Day in the Life of Me, All Things Blogging, Lensolution 2010 | 14 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on February 9, 2010

This title really has a double meaning. (It also is because I was just going to title it Overwhelmed and what do you know? I’ve already titled a blog post that. That’s what I get for uncreative blog titles over the last 3 1/2 years.)

Firstly, I am overwhelmed by the response I had on my last post. So many people have reached out to offer to help out my nephew with his traveling bear project. I know it isn’t a contest, but if there is some sort of grade or bragging rights attached to this project, Noah is going to be the winner hands down. Noah the Bear is going to travel the whole world. He’s going to see so many things, all thanks to you guys.

In fact, he has already visited USA Gymnastics and Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis with TMC from Return to Rural.

And then my friend Carri took him around the 49ers facility in Santa Clara, CA. There aren’t any players around because it is the offseason, but he got a tour and got to see the locker room.

Honestly, I cannot thank you guys enough. I am so excited to see all the other places Noah will travel.

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This title is fitting because I’m also overwhelmed by life. It’s many things that are making me feel a bit down, a lot has to do with the weather and some of it has to do with work (that I’m not going to get into here, of course.) But I’m just generally feeling blah and like I could just sleep for days. I think I might be coming down with something since I felt really flushed all day and just didn’t feel right.

Or maybe it is because I am STILL wearing my glasses because my contacts still haven’t come in. I talked to the eye place today and they expect them early next week, so she ordered me one trial pair to tide me over until the shipment arrives. I’m pretty sure this is the longest I’ve gone with wearing my glasses since I was in eight grade and not allowed to wear contacts. And since these glasses are about four years old, I’m pretty sure once I actually start wearing contacts again, regularly, I will probably get really dizzy, vomit and then fall down into a pile of my own puke.

That should only last a few days, hopefully.

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I had to wear my glasses out, in public, at a bar, on Saturday night. We went out to celebrate my friend Jessica’s birthday and I wasn’t going to let my glasses keep me from going. (I originally typed that “me glasses” and I was wondering when Popeye took over writing this blog post.) So to compensate, I wore a dress and knee-high boots to make myself feel like a sexy librarian in my glasses.

I also decided to drink many GLASSES (it’s a theme) of wine and not really remember most of the evening. All I know is that I woke up at 5 AM, still in my dress, most of the lights on in the house, my tights strewn about by the front door and my glasses still on. So it must have been a good night.

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And since I haven’t had a cab story in awhile, I figured that I should tell you about Otus, my cab driver that gave me his number. (I don’t know HOW I got out of giving him mine, but apparently I’m learning.) The funny thing is that I took a cab to and from the bar with my friend Melissa. On both cab rides, I was a chatty Cathy. And at one point Melissa says to me “I see now why you get into the situations you do with cab drivers.”

AH HA!

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And now I’m going to end this lame post because I really don’t need to take up any more of your time. Plus I really need to get to bed. But I needed to do something after Lost ended so I didn’t just sit and stare at my TV with my mouth agape wondering what the fuck just happened.

This blog post is so boring it did just the trick to calm me down and bore me out. You’re welcome!

Category: A Day in the Life of Me, All Things Blogging, Taxicab Confessions | 12 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on February 4, 2010

You all know my nephew Noah, right? He’s this adorable little chap.

Anyway, Noah has a project at school right now where he has a travelling bear (also named Noah) and he needs to have his bear go all over the world. He’s been in Chicago to a Bulls game, he’s been to Mexico, he’s been to Atlanta, but he has so many more wonderful places that he needs to go visit.

And that is where you all come in.

Would you be willing to print out this adorable bear and take a photo of him in your city or town? Or have him do fun things like attend events? Anything to enlighten his boring, bear life?

You can even write a little story of his adventures while he was visiting with you and then mail them to Noah the person so he can show his classmates how awesome of an Auntie he has, and all the exciting places Noah the Bear got to go!

And, Noah would really like Noah the Bear to go to China, so if anyone knows anyone in China, let me know.

If you would be interested in participating, either leave a comment or send me an email at fullofsnark (at) gmail (dot) com and I can email you a photo of Noah the Bear to print out with the instructions.

The Noahs and I would be super grateful to all of you that are willing to help. All people who participate will be entered into a drawing for a $10 Amazon gift card. And I’d be more than willing to repay the favor if your kids ever have this project. I mean, what kid doesn’t want a photo of his bear with a drunk lady, a cat and an empty bottle of wine?

Thanks for all your help!

Category: All in the Family, All Things Blogging, Halp, Noah the Bear | 53 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on February 2, 2010

This past weekend I went to visit my brother and his family. I hadn’t seen them since Christmas and I needed some good Auntie time with Noah and Skyler. Plus, on Sunday Noah had his annual Pinewood Derby Race for Cub Scouts.

Since Noah’s race took all of five minutes and we stayed the whole day, we had a lot of down time. So I decided to take photos of Skyler and show her the magic of the self-portrait.

And then Auntie got involved in the fun.

And then at the end of the day, we tried to get Noah to join us. He was reluctant at first.

But it took him little convincing to play along with us!

Is it any wonder why I’m their favorite Auntie?

Category: All in the Family | 12 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on February 1, 2010

Do you have any irrational fears? I have a few. One, I’m afraid one time I’ll step out of bed and someone will have been hiding under my bed and they will slice my Achilles tendon and I won’t be able to move! Two, I have an irrational fear of pink eye.

I know, right?

See, my last job was located on the South Side of Chicago, not in the best part of the city. The most convenient Dunkin Donuts was not the cleanest facility. It was part of a gas station/Burger King. I always went to this one because it was close to the prison and a lot of the cops and sheriffs would get breakfast there, so I always felt safe-ish. But there were also some shady characters, homeless people, etc. that visited this establishment as well. So much so that the place was just dirty. And I would convince myself that by touching the door handles to get in and out of the building, I was going to get pink eye. I made a POINT to wash my hands as soon as I got to work because I was afraid I would touch my eyes later and totally get pink eye. Why pink eye and not anything else? I have no idea. But I was always CONVINCED.

I never got pink eye. In fact, I haven’t had pink eye since I was a senior in high school. I only remember having pink eye then because I got it right before we were going to Puerto Vallarta for spring break with my dad. And they specifically tell you NOT to go in the sun when you’re on the antibiotic eye drops, so I had to convince the doctor to give me special eye drops so I didn’t spend a week in Mexico SITTING INSIDE.

Well, that was the last time I had pink eye until this past week.

Last Wednesday my eye was really itchy. So if it itches, I scratch it. Most of the time I don’t think about door handles and light switches and a host of other things that I touch with my hands before touching my eyeball. I have no idea why my brain thinks the Dunkin Donuts is dirtier than doors in a parking garage, but there you have it.

So before I went to bed Wednesday night, my eye was really bothering me. I went to take out my contacts and I noticed that the whole right part of my right eye was red. “Hmmm,” I thought. “This can’t be good. Maybe I scratched too hard?”

Of course I Googled pink eye and asked Twitter if pink eye itched. Because if you ever have a question, odds are someone on Twitter will have an answer for you. The consensus was that it could be pink eye and that if I woke up in the morning with an oozy, crusty eye, it was pink eye. So I went to bed.

When I woke up, my eye was a bit crusty and kind of oozy and the red had spread (hey! Thanks rhymes!). I decided in the interest of not spreading it to my co-workers, that I would work from home and keep the plague contained in my house. And then secretly wondered if cats get pink eye. And maybe thought about touching their eyes just to experiment. Thankfully my cats have lived with me long enough to know that they shouldn’t ever let me touch their eyes.

Since it had been like 15 years since my last bout with pink eye, I was a little fuzzy on the details. I was pretty sure it was SOMETHING and not just regular eye irritation. So to be sure, I decided to touch the infected eye and then touch my good eye to see if it spread. Worst case is that it would spread and I wouldn’t have like 2 weeks of pink eye.

I finally made it to the CVS Minute Clinic (which is actually kind of awesome and so quick!) and as soon as I walked in the doctor was all “oh yeah, you have pink eye. And it spread to the other eye.” Whoops.

I got my eye drops and have been using them ever since. When I remember. Because every 4 hours can slip by, especially when you’re in a movie and wearing 3D glasses over your glasses because you can’t wear contacts because you have the PLAGUE OF THE EYEBALLS! Not that you could wear any contacts anyway because you have no more left! The last pair you had, you threw out because it was INFECTED!

Basically I hate wearing my glasses. So the end of this infection (and my contacts order) cannot come quickly enough.

This is apparently my grumpy old man/I-hate-pink-eye-and-having-to-wear-glasses face. Also, apparently my neck has gone missing. Can anyone help me find it?

Category: A Dash of the Crazy, A Day in the Life of Me, Medical Mishaps | 25 Comments »
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