Just a friendly reminder, it’s that time of the year again (I’m sure you’ve read this a time or two before). Please raise your BIG TOE and repeat after me; I pledge to follow The Rules when I wear sandals and other open-toe shoes:

I promise to always wear sandals that actually fit, no matter how cute they may be. My toes will not hang over and touch the ground, nor will my heels spill over the backs. And the sides and tops of my feet will not ooze out between the straps.

I will go polish-free or vow to keep the polish fresh, intact and chip-free. I will not cheat and just touch up my big toe. Instead, try using a rubbery base coat like Creative Nail’s Stickey or Orly’s Bonder to help your polish last longer (I swear by this stuff!).

I will sand down any mounds of skin before they turn hard and yellow. Or easier still, I’ll slather on some Mr. Pumice Callus Terminator, give it a little buff with my pumice and call it a day. And remember to moisturize nightly to keep your feet soft as a baby’s butt.

I will shave, pluck or wax the hairs off my big toe, or any of my toes for that matter.

I won’t wear pantyhose even if my misinformed girlfriend, coworker, mother, sister or stranger on the street tells me the toe seam really will stay under my toes if I tuck it there.

If a strap breaks, I won’t duct-tape, pin, glue or tuck it back in to place hoping it will stay put. I will get my shoe fixed or toss it. No matter how much it hurts.

I will not live in corn denial; rather I will lean on my good friend Dr. Scholl’s if my feet need him.

I will resist the urge to buy jelly shoes at Payless no matter how low the price, even if my feet are small enough to fit into the kids’ sizes – even though the fashion magazines may say they’re back in style. Whatever. This is out of concern for my safety, and the safety of others. No one can walk properly when standing in a pool of sweat, and I would hate to take someone down with me as I fall and break my ankle.

I will take my toe ring off toward the end of the day if my toes swell and begin to look like Vienna sausages.

I will be brutally honest with my girlfriend/sister/coworker when she asks me if her feet are too ugly to wear sandals. Someone has to tell her that her toes look like they’ve been dragged behind her car on the way to work and no sandal in the world is going to make her feet look good.

I will promise if I wear flip flops, that I will ensure they actually flip and flop, making the correct noise while walking and I will swear to NOT to slide or drag my feet while wearing them.

I will promise to go to my local nail salon or beauty school at least once per season and have a real pedicure (they are about $20 and worth EVERY penny). Or splurge and spend a few bucks more for an even better, deluxe pedi – you’ll thank me for it. It’s the perfect way to get those puppies ready for summer! If you can’t afford the professional upkeep, I suggest Klean’s Peppermint Pattie Pedi. It’s everything you need for that at-home, spa pedi experience all in one nifty pack – just add polish!

And finally…I will promise to throw away any white/off-white sandals that show signs of wear. There is nothing tackier than dirty white sandals or flip flops.

So please, for the sake of everyone that will see your toes this summer, pass these rules along!

They tried to break us
looks like they’ll try again

What the hell is up with the 101 today? I just spent an hour of my life stuck on there, maybe traveling 12 or so miles. Insanity. To make matters worse, you’d start getting up some speed, but without fail, every time you’d hit a bend in the freeway, you’d somehow manage to come to a complete stop.

Of course, right at the 134/101 split, things opened right up. I often wonder where this mysterious traffic disappears to if its no longer in front of you. Really, where does it go to?

It helped that I had a great mix of tunes to occupy my time. Nothing makes traffic more bearable than screaming along to Duran Duran’s Wild Boys. Trust me.

Let me do a brief, bulleted post for today.  I’m sure I’ll be back later to post more, but for now, I’m meeting  a future blogger in a bit and I still have to get ready.

•  First and foremost, the answer to my two truths and a lie from the first party post…
  • I’m great friends with my husband’s last ex-girlfriend – This is actually true.  In fact, I arranged my recent trip to my dad so I’d be back in town to meet up with his ex and her hubs for dinner.  We’ve also been known to vacation with them – three times now.
  • I’ve done phone sex to make a quick buck – I’ve always been told that I have a great voice and give good phone.  When I was in grad school I was so behind on my bills that I needed to make some quick money.  I actually managed to make about $3K in less than a month doing it part-time.  Funny though, you can’t do phone sex FROM the state of CA, but many of the reception & billing offices are out this way.
  • I actually know some people that can take care of that for you (she says in euphemisms) – this is so false it isn’t even funny.  It’s the result of needing a lie badly, and talking about my growing up in Jersey and an upcoming wedding we’ve got.
  • I’ve partied with Bruce Springsteen – totally false.  But I have partied with Paul McCartney (he spilled his drink on me during a very animated conversation) and Carlos Santana – not at the same time  – and a couple of folks in the jazz world.
  • My husband I have invested in my best friend’s haunted, ghostie business – this is true.  We are part-owners of a touring company that also does ghost tours.  How cool is that?!?
  • I’ve had a couple of my amateur photos published – yep, I’ve had two of my photos published for an online tourist magazine for the wine country.  Come to think of it, I might have also had one of my photos published (same company) from my Albuquerque trip as well.  So maybe it was three afterall.  Funny thing about my photos…when I put them up in Flickr, they’re rarely, if ever edited photos.  I sometimes wonder what would happen if I actually tried my hand at editing.  Not that I’m a photographer by any means.
•  I love that our new garbage can locks.  I came home last night to a bit of a mess, but it was only the ripped plastic bag from the pupster trying to get into the trash to eat the 2 slices of moldy bread.  Woohoo!  This is much better than how it was before.
• I miss my husband!  Interestingly, we’re talking more while he’s gone this year than any other year (or trip) in the past.  Must be all that lack of intimacy before he left – stupid illness crap!
• Speaking of whatever it is that I had, I’m much better.  I’m still not 100%, but my breathing is better, there’s little coughing and only slight sinus congestion.  I guess 17 days of meds was enough afterall.
• I don’t recall if I mentioned it yesterday, but my SEO class rocked.  I’ll also be a featured speaker down in Orange County later this month.  Business is booming – Yay!!
• My hubs tried to call me yesterday while I was out to dinner with my LWL gals…he got a great raise and a niiice bonus.  Of course, I went online and immediately ordered curtains for the kitchen and the cat’s space (would have been the laundry space, but the landlord said NO to any laundry stuff).

Okay, I’ve got 10 minutes to get out of this place or I’ll be late for my coffee date.  Later y’all and thank you to all my party guests for stopping by.  Please, we can continue the party without any sort of official decries, so feel free to stick around.

Happy Weekending!

But really, I don’t have much of a desire to say it. Today is well, it’s Monday. Monday after we switched the clocks. I couldn’t fall asleep last night and today, I woke up too darn early. So maybe that’s why I don’t really have much of a focus or desire to do much of anything today.

My stomach is grumbling, but I don’t feel like making anything for lunch. Though I heard a commercial for a shamrock shake and damn if that didn’t sound like a grand idea.

I also have to do laundry today. And well, for those of us renters in SoCal, that means I have to lug all my crap to the laundromat. The good thing, I’m able to wash multiple large loads at once. The bad thing, I hate laundry. In fact, I still have two baskets full of clothes from the last two times I’ve done laundry that still need to be put away. And the hubs shirts need to be picked up from the cleaners. I’m so domesticated, I know.

More simple domestications…I still need to figure out what to do about dinner. The hubs leaves tomorrow for SXSW and will be gone for the week – don’t even get me started on the loooong hours he’s been working for these last couple of weeks working up to Southby. In fact, that was going to be a post of it’s own, but blah…no thanks. Any dinner suggestions? I’ll be able to run to the store while the laundry is going so we’ve got time here.

The accountant shot me an email this morning and told me that the disk I gave them with our QB wasn’t working. The gal tried to walk me through it, but since I’m Mac and they’re PC (which I think is the problem right there), there were some challenges. I figured that while I was out that way I’d also stop by Nordstrom to pick up some tinted moisturizer. Um…yeah, I left spending about $50 on new moisturizer, new eyeliner and she tried to sell me on a new facial soap (I talked her into a sample instead). So much for not shopping since having spent all that money on my dad a few weeks back. Oh well, I’m trying.

My desk is still a heaping, pile ‘o mes.  The to-be-shredded papers are driving me crazy.  Maybe I’ll take a picture of this disaster area.  I’m also still sick.  Yeah, this is fun.

And that, I do believe is it. Now I need to start writing up my workshop notes for Wednesday, respond to emails and after lunch-hour, I need to head on over to the dreaded laundromat (too many restaurants and not enough parking over there during lunch-hours). Maybe in the meantime I’ll catch up on my blogs…good lord I have 243 waiting for me in my reader!!!

I’m tired of being sick!  Mind you, I feel better.  But I’m still sick.  I still cough.  My coughing still wakes me up at night. I still have all sorts of gross crap floating around inside of me.  My head is still all sickly and floaty.  My ears still completely clog up just driving up the slightest incline.  Two rounds of antibiotics.  Seriously, this is enough all ready.

I’m also tired of not being able to kiss and snuggle with my husband. While it’s been three weeks and he hasn’t yet caught anything, because he has a lot going on at work and SXSW next week, we’re not taking any chances.  But come on, a chaste kiss on the cheek a couple times a day along  with the occasional hand holding just isn’t enough here.  We’re married!  We should get to, I don’t know, act like we’re married.

I told him that once he gets back from SXSW that we will, without a doubt, make up for our lost time.  Regardless of whether he might catch something.  And well, let’s be honest, by then, he’ll probably have caught whatever is going around anyway either on the plane, hanging around all those other people, a band he worked with, or some club he went to.  So by then, I’m off the contagious hook!!  Woohoo!

This is one of those situations where I marvel about how some folks do it.  Hats off to you parents!!  Really, I’m tired and it’s just me, trying to keep him from catching whatever sickness I might have.

We just had the strangest visitor at our front door. It’s this lady going door to door from the local cemetery on the other side of the freeway (where quite a few famous movie stars happen to be buried). She wanted to know if we’ve made our hereafter plans. Of course, we need to remember that property values increase (mind you, right now, the whole SoCal housing market is falling about).

So that got me thinking, do people buy and sell cemetery plots? So if someone asks them “so what do you do?” do they respond “I’m in real estate. I flip properties“? Which of course also makes me wonder if that might be a good way to get your foot in the real estate business? I mentioned the crazy So-Cal real estate market, right? Of course, the hubs pointed out that his dad used a “broker” to be their plots once his mom passed – and well, he didn’t seem to thrilled about my interest in the flipping market.
Kind of makes you wonder though, I mean eventually, we are going to run out of land here.  Then what happens?  Do we start building sub-divisions on cemeteries? Do we build skyscraper mausoleums?  And why do we insist on putting people in the ground (or in a wall) for the remainder of their physical existence?  Cremation and being tossed into the ocean by a loved one sounds like a much better plan to me.