Letter to a friend

Dear Taradise,

I hear there are fires in California right now. I hear lot's of people have had to leave their homes and go elsewhere.

I know they are probably not close to you but can you smell the fire? Does it make all your clothes smell like you've been camping? Do you find yourself constantly wanting hotdogs and grilled onions? Whenever you go outside do you have to do the human rotisserie move where you rotate your body to keep warm while one side stays frigid - except you are the reverse and you try and keep one side cool while the other one threatens to singe?

Is all the smoke headed to Calabasas because smoke follows beauty? Have you done an FHE yet where everyone competes to see who can get closest to the fire? Are you blaming it all on the Governator? Or how about BP?

I'm worried about you. Mostly because I hear that flame retardant kills birds too. Do you see any dead birds?

Also, I'm very curious what 5 things you would grab on your way out the door if you had to evacuate.

Let me know how you are.

Love me

A hot mess

I just got back from vacation last night. A vacation that I truly needed to save my soul even though the vacation itself almost cost me the very soul I needed to save.

It's true.

Every trainwreck of a human being deserves a break every once in a while. I can't even begin to go into detail about all of the terrible things I did to myself in the span of a week. But I can give you a condensed version.

-I realized 30 minutes before my Young Women's class that I had to teach the lesson because I read the calendar wrong.

-I forgot to do all manner of things at work during the week which included forgetting to wear a bra to work one day - a day that I had to go with the CEO to meet the head of Bank of America in Seattle. And honestly, I went through a whole hour of work before I even noticed. And then I didn't do anything about it.

-I accidentally cancelled everyone's hotel rooms for the first night of the vacation 3 days before we were supposed to leave. That's right, 5 rooms cancelled in a resort town. Awesome. I felt really good about that one.

-On the morning of the trip I awoke to find that I had set my alarm for 7 PM instead of 7 AM and had to scramble to get ready and run to the airport.

I can't remember anything else because I think I don't want to. But mostly I think I can't remember anything else because I lost SO much sleep from being terrorized by my neighbors cat.

That's right. Literally being terrorized by the feline next door. That story comes next time.

But let me report that post-vacation I'm glowing and I totally remembered to wear a bra to work today.

Up top!

Housekeeping...want me fluff your pillow?

For over a week now I've been hoping to come home and open the toilet seat in my bathroom and see nothing but sparkling clean water that I would be proud to have anyone drink out of.

But alas, stay away from my toilet.

Have you ever toyed with the idea of having someone come and clean your house? Well I have. I do, actually. I'm toying with it right now. I'm just dying to take a sip of my toilet water already, alright?

But I couldn't actually do it. Even though mentally I have nothing bad to say about it. I'd be stimulating the economy and someone else's wallet. I wouldn't have to do anything myself and I'm great at word of mouth advertising if I've tried the product and love it. But I just. can't. spend the money.

I grew up in a regular house with an irregular mother who was a neat freak. Really. In fact, when she broke her foot almost 2 years ago we all said it was karma because she broke it while vacuuming a flat surface. Ha. Even though the foot-break was no laughing matter.

We had our chores and we knew them very well. Every saturday morning we had to change the sheets on our bed, clean our rooms and then tackle our respectively assigned house duties before we could do anything. That's right, no bed change and double stair vacuuming and waxing? No friends or fun. That's right, I said stair waxing once a week (I had that injustice).

I hated it. But like it or not it became a routine. A routine that stuck with me, although very loosely in college. And when I got married and really had my own place it came back full force. And I like that I kept a clean house. And up until this last move I was dutifully carrying out my saturday duties every saturday.

Then we moved. Now we have levels. Levels man. They are a whole new ball game. You clean one and then you have two more to go. What gives? My levels aren't even that spacious, they are just stacked on one another. Which means that for me my saturday cleaning rituals have been relegated to one level a week. Which means that the others stay neglected for two weeks at a time. No bueno.

But I think my toilet level is getting preferential treatment this weekend and jumping the line.