Operation Tubetop

Well hello everybody! I hope you all had an amazing Christmas! I definitely did but if you heard wailing coming from the 4th district this morning, that was me, getting on the scale. I don't really beat myself up for putting weight on over Christmas but I seem to treat Christmas eating as an Olympic sport... and yes, the games last over 2 weeks. As of yesterday, I am back to the grind in terms of working out and I am definitely not throwing my face into a bag of chocolate or melting cheese on everything... right now. I figured I had my time of nutso eating and now I need to focus on making better life choices. Also, in exactly a month I will be heading to the Science Ball and I do not want to look like I ate me in the pictures. Speaking of the ball, my dress arrived and it does seem to fit but I would like it to make me look fit so there's a goal. Or I think about Spanx... full body Spanx. Christmas was definitely lovely this year. On the 21st was my last day of work. The p...

Well hello Friday! FINALLY! It's been a bit of a busy week and we are coming up to the last weekend before Christmas. CRAZY! I still have a little bit of shopping to do but otherwise I am done! Hurray! Of course, I am nervously awaiting some gifts being mailed but I have faith in ye olde postal service. I am also incredibly naive. This weekend is going to be another crazy one filled with Christmas joy. Tonight I am going to a Bulgarian restaurant for a friend's birthday. I don't think I have ever had Bulgarian food but based on the menu online, there seems to be a lot of meat and I will be fine. Tomorrow morning is the Santa event at Hard Rock Cafe for kids with special needs. It should be pretty amazing and I am so happy that we could do this again this year. I did, however, on Wednesday night have had a bit of break down due to a last minute cancellation. I cannot go into details but I did not sleep most of the night and the word "vengeance" may or may not have ...

Well I had a whole thing written out about politics but we just had a talk at work about avoiding politics so I decided to delete my paragraphs. But... I think it is pretty clear about how I feel about a certain vote that happened somewhere yesterday. I think that a marginalized group of people should receive incredible praise for doing what they are doing and for dealing with so much crap and so, here is a gif to sum it all up. Thank you. You will be changing the world. And I will do my best to support you. So... what's new? Well you can hear all about my cray cray weekend of yore on the latest podcast episode which you can find  here . A huge huge thank you to C.B. for one of the biggest surprises of my life. Here is the picture of the card (if you didn't see it online) and as I said, I totally cried. It was amazing. I have decided that in the new year I will try and set it up and kind of put everything that I do together on one site: my blog, my merch, my adventures ...

Well hello Wednesday! If you listened to last week's podcast, you would have heard about my 24 day challenge. I am happy to say that I have already completed a couple of them and tonight I will be checking off Bridget Jones off my list. I am trying my darndest to get into the holiday spirit and it is kind of working. Below is the list and if you want more of an explanation of each challenge, you are going to have to check out my podcast. Sorrryyyy... There is still a lot to do and I have more presents to buy. I am about to ship a big old box off to Canada for my family. I did decide to not ship a bazillion books as I usually do at Christmas time. Books are heavy, mail is expensive so it is not a good idea, Tova. In other news, we had a parent teacher conference on Monday night and it wasn't great but it wasn't bad. Let's just say that one of his after school providers showed up with a bandaged arm. Our hearts broke a little. You can hear all about it tomorrow on th...

Hello hello! I am sick again but hopefully on the mend. It's frustrating but at least this is just a cold and nothing worse. It started last week on Friday and I am so glad it held off for the craziest week of the year and now I can kind of take it easy for the next little while. You probably heard on Facebook (because I wouldn't stop posting about it) that I gave a talk for the American Women's Association on Tuesday night. I talked about it on the podcast which you can listen to  here . But if you didn't hear about it, let's just say it was a pretty amazing moment. I was absolutely terrified and I still am not sure what I actually said but I know that I talked for about 20 minutes and nobody rolled their eyes so all is good in the hood. I also think that I would totally do it again and if are looking for a speaker, I'm available. My rate (until it changes) is a glass or two of bubbly and praise... always praise. Before the talk I did a half day at work and...

Well, hello there! Wow! Do I feel absolutely reborn! I am not sure but I think it has a little to do with the fact that I took it very very easy this morning. I was up at 5:40 as usual to make the Kid's lunch and have a good 10 minutes of silent coffee drinking time and then woke the Kid up. The routine is to get him out of bed, get him on the sofa with some milk and breakfast, then I place a blanket on the ground and drag him to his room so I can get him dressed for school. Usually by 6:30 he is completely awake and then we just put his shoes and coat on and he heads downstairs with the Husband to wait for the bus. Usually after this, I go for a run but since I had the terrifying incident on Monday morning, I have decided to take a couple of days off and it is kind of driving me batty. So instead of going for a run, I crawled back into bed and slept for another hour and a half and it was complete and utter bliss. I got out of bed after my early morning nap, took a long showe...

Wow. So um, apologies about that last podcast. I totally did not expect to cry. If you want to not hear that, please skip ahead by about 6 minutes. Um. Yeah. That came out of nowhere so apologies again. This morning, when I woke up, I debated whether I should delete that podcast or not but I decided to keep it up. It is a real moment that I recorded and as embarrassing as it was, I think it is important for people to know that my life isn't always fake skulls and dead flowers. Heh. I was greeted by a hug this morning from a friend and it was really sweet and so many people wrote wonderful things and reached out. I am so so so lucky to have such awesome people in my life like my family and friends. So thank you again to everybody. It was a very raw moment but I am touched by all the love. I think (I know) what kicked it off is that the Kid had had a freak out just before he went to bed. It was actually a very minor one and he managed to calm down within a minute or two but it ju...

Hello Tuesday afternoon! I am now home because we just got back from getting the Kid shots at the hospital. For the past couple of years we have been unable to get him up to date on his shots due to his doctor being unable to guarantee getting the shot actually into him. Of course, with luck on our side, the Kid's stomach doctor offered to do it for us at the hospital he works at. This doctor has been a real blessing in our lives and now I shall name my next purse after him.. Incredible man! We made an appointment at the St. Anna hospital and at 1:30, we dragged the Kid in  (he was a little grumpy but otherwise fine) and by 1:50, he was fully vaccinated. And I could not be prouder. When we entered the room, there were 2 doctors and 2 nurses and 2 parents about to pass out. We took the Kid's shirt off, one nurse sat on the gurney and told him to sit in her lap, facing her (and he listened which shocked me. She was bosomy, I get it now) and then each doctor had a needle and jabbe...

Hello Wednesday! Hello hump day... not like that. I'm a lady. I am definitely feeling better save for a terrible cough still. The Kid is unfortunately sick now and has been home for the last couple of days. He is being a champ but just has a hacking cough. The Kid also has a scratch under his eye... On Monday when I got home, the Nanny told me that he had gotten scratched at school and when I opened his notebook, I saw a note from the teacher (I talked about this in my podcast which you can find a link to here  and then compliment me extensively) that said he got to close to another child eating. She apologized and I wasn't mad. Listen Kid, you should know this by now. You get close to Mommy while she is eating, she will growl. Really. The Husband has learned not to touch me or make eye contact with me when I start to eat or it will just get ugly. Life lessons. And yes, when the Kid is sleeping, I am putting cream on that scratch. We will probably keep him home tomorrow as well...

Back to work tomorrow! I can't believe I was off for the whole week. I have so much to catch up on! I am still stuffed up but at least not as exhausted as before. That was a rough week for me and I know how lucky I am to have been able to have had time to sleep. But I am going to really try and stay as healthy as possible because I don't do sick well... as you could all probably tell. I also have to apologize for my ranty podcast on Friday. It started off good and then I got a little off track and got all venty and that really wasn't my intent. And while there is a lot of truth to it, I probably should have written down my thoughts before going rogue. So apologies if I sounded a little off. I blame the cold and probably a couple of messages I was not amused by. Friday afternoon I ventured outside. It was sunny but kind of cool but of course I had the weird flu sweats. Lovely. I decided to check out Humana which is a charity shop chain in Vienna. I wasn't sure what I...

Sup? Happy Jewish New Year! I said that to Office Twin this morning and he was like "In September?" and I was like "Yeah, we have a different calendar that we don't tell you about." Apparently it is year 5778. It's the future, guys! What is Jewish New Year? Well, we Jews usually celebrate it with apples and honey but because I am irreverent and not super religious, I will probably be taking a shot of apple cider this evening and maybe adding some honey to my tea. But I am having a bagel for dinner so that's pretty symbolic. Jewish New Year is a time to reflect and to plan the next year ahead. I think the past year has been quite amazing with some lows and highs and I just know that this next year is going to be the best one yet... well... it better be. Next Friday is the not so fun holiday of Yom Kippur. It's like one day of Ramadan and you can't eat until the sun goes down. I think they made it only one day of fasting because if you have ever me...

Sup? So I am technically not online today. I decided on Saturday as of 9 p.m., to take a little break from social media. Nothing dramatic, I just wanted a little break. It is so easy to pass time when there are a bazillion updates to read, private messages to respond to, and of course, Instagram pictures to fawn over. I am writing this on a Sunday but won't be posting it until Monday morning. When I told the Husband that I had announced on Facebook that I was going offline he scoffed and asked "Why would you even have to do that?!" and I exclaimed "BECAUSE OTHERWISE PEOPLE WOULD THINK THAT I HAD DIED! THAT'S WHY!!" Obviously he just doesn't understand social media... or he is correctly pointing out my addiction to it. Cough. Anyway.. Let's get started. Saturday morning, the Kid came tearing into bed at 5:40 and then slept for another hour or so. The last few days this has become his new schedule and that is o.k. As long as we can get him up by 6...

Hello Wednesday! Well, this is a cozy mother loving morning! We are halfway through week 2 of the Kid going to school and I could not be prouder. He has been in a tremendous mood and full of energy. I don't know what is happening at school but so far, I am happy. The early morning wake ups have been difficult. Getting up just before 6, getting the Kid's snack box ready, getting him dressed while he is half asleep and keeping a smile plastered on our faces the whole damn time is definitely exhausting. The bus comes around 6:35 and I look out the window and yell "THE BUS IS HERE! GO GO GO!" and the three of us traipse down the steps, two of us hoping that the third person in our party is still excited about getting on the bus. He is. So far. This morning the Kid woke up in a giggly mood and I chased him around with socks and a sweater while trying to get him to have some milk and a fruit bar. I'll take giggly and wild over cranky and volatile any day. Wednesday ...