Who Are You?

I happen to love Pottery Barn. Ok, I love everything except for the fact that it is really overpriced for cheaply made furniture, but I've never purchased furniture from PB so I really can't use that as a reason not to love them can I? Anyway, I love them. We get their magazines for PB and PB Kids. Let me just say, I would never pay their price for some of that kid stuff and the people who do need to get off their high horse and stop playing "keeping up with the joneses."

So what do I love more than looking at goods and ideas in the catalogs? Looking at the personal touches. STAY WITH ME HERE! I love to see what has been written on the calendars or on the to-do lists or on the refrigerator shopping list. According to the stagers at PB, the average family's calender should look something like this:

Feb 1 - Order invitations for dinner party (because they're probably so broke they can't pay their phone bill because they're ordering dinner party invitations)
Feb 4 - Dad leaves for Tokyo (every upper-middle class bread winner works abroad - duh!)
Feb 8 - Wine and cheese party at the Smiths
Feb 9 - Lolita's dance recital (or whatever other name is ultra trendy at the moment)
Feb 12 - Tennis lessons with Drake at "the club" (and they always use the quotes)
Feb 14 - Dinner at (enter French Bistro name here) - 7:00 PM
Feb 20 - Shopping with the girls
Feb 21 - Book tickets to Aspen
Feb 22 - Cancel hot stone massage
Feb 23 - Buy standing rib roast for dinner party
Feb 25 - Order flower arrangement for dinner party

My question is......Who are you? Who is the person who has this life? I know, I know, it's the same lady that vacuums the house in wool gabardine trousers, a cashmere cardigan set, grandmother's pearls and patent pumps. She has perfect hair, perfect makeup and perfect kids named Chauncey and Abigail.

So, my absolute favorite thing about PB is looking at these stupid details. Wanna know the second? Looking at the titles of the books and magazines they decorate with. Let me stop and say how OVER the use of books as decorative accessories I am. However, I love to look at their titles. It's always crap like:

• The Louvre
• Dali
• Post Modernists
• Fashion of Coco Chanel
• Yachts and Other Things Rich People Own
• Botticelli and the other great Italian Artists

It sorta makes me crazy. Can't you just picture yourself in your local SAM's Club. "Hey Honey, there's that new coffee table book about all the works of Botticelli. Wanna get it to add to the collection or should we just stick to the list and buy diapers and chicken?" It's so annoying to me.

I've decided these people do not exist. Perhaps they do, but I don't know any of them. If you're my friend and you think you're one of these people and are now a tiny bit irritated that I said I didn't know any of them, get over yourself.

If you are this person or clean your house this way, please leave a comment and tell me. I know you're probably too busy with your riding lessons to look at web blogs, but please let me know you're out there. Otherwise, there's about 350 gay men working for PB who are really upset right about now.

A New Year, A New You!

I love this quote. Well, I love it in a, "this is the most ridiculously cheesy quote in the world" kinda way. It reminds me of something that Denise Austin would say. Remember her? The aerobic instructor extraordinaire that used to be on the discovery channel when that channel was so new? I remember her and the "revised" version of the Galloping Gourmet with Graham Kerr, I think his name was.

Anyway.....

I truly can't believe it's 2009. Blows me away to really think about it. I was thinking about the New Year's celebration from the year 2000. This is such a funny story to me. I was living in Pensacola and hanging out with my dear friends Ash and Char. This was before I was married and way before anyone had children, well, we weren't 100% sold that Ash didn't have a kid somewhere - LOL - totally kidding Ash (partially). Anyway, this was the year of the "new millennium." The year all our computers were going to crash. The year we were supposed to go get all our money out of the banks and hide it in a hole in the backyard and stockpile our pantries with canned goods so we could live.

Didn't happen.

But what did happen was the biggest countdown in all of history. All I remember was watching the television and seeing all the "renowned" reporters stationed all over the world. Peter Jennings in Paris, Charlie Gibson in New York, Diane Sawyer in Tokyo, and then there was Connie Chung. God bless her. I remember her being a bit delirious during the telecast. I don't remember where she was stationed, but I just remember making this joke because they kept cutting back to different reporters and they were never ready for the shot. Like, the reporters were doing something else, talking to a stage hand, having their powder touched up. So my joke was that crazy Connie Chung gets the camera cut back to her and meanwhile she has just shoved a white powered doughnut into her mouth because she was starving and then her mouth is full and has white powdered sugar all over her face and clothes.

I remember us laughing so hard. Mainly because we were delirious. But also because that was a pretty funny joke..........right? I guess you had to have been there.

So 2009 is the year I'm going to loose weight. LOL, LOL, LOL. No seriously. I'm really going to try. My "resolution" is to drastically limit my intake of fast food. Please don't think I eat it all the time because I don't. But I think I eat it too much and I also think that the restaurants here are disgusting, so I'm not sure why I haven't stopped, but sometimes, there's just not a better option when you don't want to cook and clean up. So that's my resolution. No more fast food. Although, I don't consider Chick-fil-a fast food. I think it's actually manna from Heaven so I will continue to eat there. Mostly because I love the grilled sandwich and sweet tea. I know, I know, it's the drinks that kill you. Actually it's probably the chocolate cake I just ate that kills you. Have I ever mentioned that I 100% believe my grandmother is to blame for my size? She doesn't force feed me (well, sorta) but her food is so darn good. It actually makes me mad. Oh well.

Here are some things that I will NOT care or worry about in 2009:

• How fat Oprah is
• If Celie has a mysteriously-rare disease that we cannot detect
• If someone gets mad at me for telling the truth
• Celebrities
• If my neighbor is cooking meth in their backyard (which we're convinced they are)
• If Louis Vuitton has to file for Bankruptcy
• That fact that we barely have any friends in Port St. Joe that we do stuff with
• Oprah's thyroid
• The "ladies" of The View
• People who are self-centered
• Gas Prices (only because I'm so over worrying about gas prices - worrying about gas prices is so 2008)

Things I am going to care and worry about in 2009:

• My family (even more)
• The happiness of people I love
• My lawn (as much as I hate to say it - but this doesn't mean that I will necessarily tend to my lawn, perhaps I can employ someone)
• My weight
• My friends I love like family who don't live here
• Reconnecting with old friends and making attempts to be involved with their lives because with some effort, there are great memories to be made (I mean, that's why we were friends in the first place).
• Getting promoted
• Developing my choir musically
• Getting out of debt

I'm sure this list will change, but it's where I am as of today.

Wish me luck!!! (My mother would now say, "There's no such thing as luck!" although I think I actually heard her say "she was lucky" just the other day. Hmmmmmm).