I love the fact that Olive Garden has their restrooms located at the front entrance of the restaurant so when I take Little Button to change her rather stinky diaper and she yells “EWW, BUTT!” as we’re walking through the lobby, all the staff and waiting patrons get a good giggle out of it.

Sigh.

So it looks like Anti-Sanjaya Girl will have to endure another week of starvation. So far, it looks like she’s up for it - which, frankly, surprises me. I was thinking she’d give in this week.

If I ever decide to starve myself for a cause, I will make sure that:

1. My goal can possibly be reached in increments of DAYS, not WEEKS. I can’t imagine the thought at 8:29pm every Wednesday night that you have to endure another ENTIRE WEEK before the next possibility of relief comes.
2. It will not have anything to do with a reality TV show.

Although, I will say that I disagree with the people who are mad at her for hunger striking over such a minor issue because they think her priorities are screwed up when there are SO MANY MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO STARVE YOURSELF FOR.

Frankly, anyone who goes on a hunger strike for World Peace, or Save the Rain Forests, or Stop the Genocide, or whatever, is resigning themselves to a death sentence. There is simply no way that any major issue like that can get resolved in the time it takes to die from lack of food, no matter how many people are trying to help you.

If you’re going on a hunger strike, it SHOULD be over something trivial, so that at least there is the possibility of succeeding - the possibility that SOMEBODY who matters will think that your life is more important than X and will conceded to your demands.

I’ve been keeping up with her blog, not so much from an overwhelming compulsion to see what happens to her, but more because it’s entertaining to read the comments she gets. Some people just have this compulsive need to hear themselves type, even if what they have to say takes a sudden left swing into the Valley of Irrelevance.

For instance, this was in response to a post she made about having lost 10 lbs:

wait, wait, let me get this straight…you are supposed to have LOST 10 lbs? Man, no offense, because I don’t know how tall you are and everything, but .I am like 5′7 and weigh 115 (if that)… and whereas you are supposedly 23 and from what I can gather you are living with your parents and they have so much concern, I just turned 21 and am in college, and we lost the house that my family was living in in Maryland because my mother made my 19 year old sister, 22 year old autistic brother, and I abandon the house and move with her and her crazy gf to Troy, NY the night after she made my father leave the house and go live with his mother, and my mother drove me back to Maryland in August 2006 since I am in college, and her friend came along for the drive and threatened to kill me and cursed my mother’s parent’s out and my mother did absolutely NOTHING, so now my father has to come get me and I have to stay at his senile mother’s house with no computer or internet during breaks from college. Otherwise I am pretty much on my own. I don’t even have a bf or anything because I am afraid to trust anyone, and it seems like everyone at my college is black, but I don’t want to feel like I have to be comitted to a black person.

So you mean you weighed like 165 before? How tall are you anyway?

Somebody needs a therapist to get all that angst out to. And then there are the AI wanna-be’s, waiting to be discovered:

THIS KID SUCKS… I would take him on in a second in a sing off, been singing all my life, so all these ppl saying they would like to see you or anyone else sing better than him, I will do it and this is not a joke, my dad taught me to sing when I was like 4 and he was a great singer I have a CD I made for him, just from him singing to music, anyone have any questions on that, I will be glad to send u a sound file!!!!!!! Just add me as a friend and you will hear it on myspace… I have sung in front of thousands of people, I know the nerves and was able to overcome them, it was AWESOME!!!! And you know what, would do it again in a second……My nephew was 4 years old when he first started singing thanx to my dad and his first song was BABE and he was on every note and every lyrics, So I guess what I am trying to say is all u ppl should think before u put your foot in your mouth………Sorry if this sounds harsh but I can’t stand u ppl putting J down for what she is doing, I worry bout her, but I understand her stand on this……………Oh and P.S. can u hypocrytes sing better than Shejaya, I think not…………..

Careful, y’all - she’ll “do it and this is not a joke.” I guess for some people, everything really is all about THEM.

Rachel asked how I handle it when there are slow times at work:

How do you keep yourself constantly busy? If I’m stressed out, but occupied, I’m great. But the nature of my work means the busy times come in waves and spurts – and a lot of time I find myself with nothing to do, which makes for LONG, even agonizing, days. I’m not a slacker, my work is never neglected – I just run out of work - and then I lose my motivation/will to get out of bed, completely. Do you ever go through phases like that at work?

Absolutely. I will start by saying that I wrote this post at work.

I am extremely project-oriented, and need to have some sort of goal to focus on in order to keep my mind stable. When I first graduated from college, I got a desk job in which my bosses left the office at 3pm every day to avoid rush hour traffic. It was one of those jobs where if my bosses weren’t around to give me work, I didn’t have anything to do.

Now, I could have asked Bob the Marketing Guy if he had any special projects for me, but Bob was one of those people who refused to admit that there was nothing to be done, so he would make up stuff that was so mundane and useless that I’d find myself wishing I could just watch flies get sucked into the fan. Projects like “Go through this list of 3,000 customers and Google them to see if you can find email addresses,” or “Read everything in this 10-foot wall of filing cabinets to see if there are any good case studies to put on the website.”

It was during that job that I learned a lot about The Art of Looking Busy.

(more…)

Today is our weekly Cleanse Day, more commonly referred to as Liquid Fast Day of Doom. Being unable to eat real food for an entire day does not bode well for my mood.

Neither does the fact that the cat has recently developed a propensity for peeing and pooping anywhere EXCEPT the litter box.  We’ve already said goodbye to one cat because of this problem.  Unfortunately, Little Button is rather attached to this one, and J and I are as well.

The dog has been chewing up Little Button’s toys.  Again.

I’m having a hard time remembering why we thought pets were such a good idea.

J put all of Button’s blankets in the wash today with a large red blanket that has never been washed before.  So now her white blankets are hot pink, and her green blankets are brown.

But at least my kid is cute.

“Dow.”

“That’s right. There is a cow on your yogurt carton.”

“Dow.”

“What does the cow say?”

“Moo.”

“That’s right. Did you know that cows make milk?  And yogurt is made from milk, so yogurt comes from cows.”

“Eww.”