What my mom's Christmas newsletter won't tell you:

Proving (if only to myself) I don't need a man!

I made this:

Out of this:

See that cute, pink screwdriver? Midge gave it to me for Christmas, and while I simply adore it, it's not exactly the ideal tool for such a project. I have blisters. For real, blisters!

The lesson learned: I don't need a man, but I definitely need a drill.

Undeserved Punishment!

Marky made me go here:
Because I made him go here:

Rare Steak and Karaoke, column 6.28.07

To read this week's column click here! To see humiliating footage from the night click here, here and finally, for the best/worst click here.

Neither Ben nor myself will be trying out for American Idol anytime soon. We, fortunately, realize how much we suck. And if we didn't, we certainly do now.

Beer & Balls

I was over at a friend's house last night, sitting on the porch having a drink when he walked in and said,"Hell yeah! My yeast is rising, and it's making my balls rise."

How was I supposed to know he was talking about pizza dough?

home, stinky home

i live in a victorian house that has been converted into five apartments. i love my apartment with the exception of the kitchenette, rather than a full kitchen. it has a cute bedroom loft and overall fits my personality quite well. with that said, i think it's time to move.

it's really hard to rent cool apartments when my roommate is a dog. so when i found my apartment i was thrilled the owners were cool with dogs. i'm VERY allergic to cats and none of the tenants had cats. now a few years later there are four cats living here, and that's four too many. do i really want to live in a cat house?

tour de girl

no, this is not a lesbian post. sorry, boys.

i made the trek to utah county today to see midge and milinda, and their respective male company, or children as others keep calling them. it's nice that my girlfriends live within five minutes of one another, i just with it were somewhere in the salt lake valley.

milinda and i met for lunch at chadders, the american fork knockoff of in-n-out burger. it was a sad affair. the food sucked and it took way to long for sucky food. it tasted nothing like in-n-out, but did look like a very cheap knockoff. what a complete and total waste of six bucks.

midge and i went for iced tea and dessert at some sandwich place by her house. when i asked if they had iced coffee the clerk just looked at me with the stepford wives blank stare. do people really not know what iced coffee is? come on.

the point of this post is not to bitch about utah county eating establishments, but to bitch about my friends--that's right. two of my best girls let me wander around IN PUBLIC with the tag still on my pants! it's one think to overlook the tag out of pure excitement to wear cute new pink summery pants, but how i didn't feel the tag rubbing on my butt is beyond me.

open mouth, insert pink converse.

after my bitchy encounter with a fellow student last week, i wanted to make an attempt to be nice to him in class last night.

so, when i noticed his new haircut i felt it was important to let him know it was time to fire his hairstylist.

he was quick to point out he was making good on a bet with an eight year-old cancer patient.

once again, i'm the bad guy, but at least the bad guy has cute shoes!

filthy fun!

a group of us went to the arts fest this weekend to see the filthy gorgeous fashion show. it was incredible! obviously i was especially obsessed with the pink guitar.

i had a semi-date with me, which ben claims scarred him for at least a week. my date happens to be a family counselor, so of course ben insisted on immediate therapy to deal with a man flirting with his sister. and you think i've got issues?

thanks to cottonsox photography for letting me post one of her "bloody brilliant" pics!

a month of fridays

after listing reasons why i've stayed home the last few fridays, i'm amazed i still have friends:

1-i can't go out, i'm too scared of hannibal lecter to leave the house tonight.
2-i have burrito belly and can't go anywhere beyond the couch.
3-i have to stay home and delete duplicate songs from my itunes.

oddly enough, they were all 100% true.

breaking up is hard to do, column 6.21.07

click here for this week's column.

it's my blog, i'll bitch if i want to.

does anyone want to marry me for a week, just to provide health and dental insurance? my tooth hurts.

i have a night class that pains me even more than my tooth.

i know the next statement is going to make me sound like a bitch, but like i said, it's my blog! there is one student who drives me insane. unfortunately he's in a wheelchair, which means i try as hard as i can to bite my tongue and never lose my temper with him. last night i didn't. we were initialing something on a wipe board and he couldn't reach, so when he asked me to write something for him i didn't mind at all. however, when he made me erase and rewrite it more than once i got frustrated and said something snarky. in my defense i would have snapped at anyone at that point, wheelchair or no wheelchair. there's something about this class that drains my patience, and as everyone knows there isn't a lot there to begin with.

the rest of the evening i felt like shit for being semi-cruel. had this particular man not been in a wheelchair i wouldn't have given it a second thought. i suck.

girlfriends

i was looking at my friend milinda's profile on blogger and her answer to the dumb blogger provided question reminded me why we are still friends after all these years!

For your birthday, your aunt gave you a maple syrup dispenser shaped like a rooster. Please write her a thank-you note:

Thank you auntie, for the beautiful maple syrup dispenser. I always enjoy looking at a good cock first thing in the morning.

chicken and coffee, it's what's for dinner!

i gave hannah and carter both stuffed daisy dolls for their birthday in february. since then hannah has decided to show her pug love by taking her daisy everywhere she goes. daisy went to target and starbucks with us. hannah and carter both insisted she had her own seatbelt while riding in the car. it was cute so how could i refuse them.
daisy also has to eat dinner with us. when i asked hannah what they wanted to eat: hannah wanted chicken and starbucks and daisy wanted peas. i suspect someone has been reading my blog posts to the little lass.

my inability to communicate:

ben and i have been wanting to join the 'big brothers big sisters' program. well honestly, ben has been wanting to join and i'm joining so he doesn't have to do it alone. it's much like the time i took a hunters safety class with him, only this time i'm actually interested.

i have a friend works for the organization so i sent her the following email:
So my younger brother and I have been talking about doing this for a while and need to be a little more pro-active. We want to be brothers and sisters to someone other than each other. Do you have a contact that would be good to work with?

this was her reply:
I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for. Are you asking me and my brother to swing? Do you need an attorney? Or a therapist?

after i laughed so hard i nearly peed, i realized i shouldn't expect people to read my mind.

my version of hungry hungry hippo:

when i complained to daisy's very cute vet that she has the worst dog gas ever, he told me not to feed her people food. being the klutz i am, this is not such an easy task--at least this time it was frozen peas and not wine!

sloppy joes & sloppy 'hos

ben and i went to a family reunion today. not necessarily because we wanted to, but because my mom is the master of all things guilt. it didn't hurt knowing i'd see my mom, aunt carol, holli and the twins. all of whom i never see enough.

i was in line with ben getting sloppy joes, because that's how my family rolls, when my aunt judy looked over and noticed two very large hickies on ben's neck. rather than chastise him she just asked why he didn't bring the girl with him as a date. how great is that?

on the drive home i gave ben advice on how to get rid of the hickies, as well as suggesting he date girls who are over the age of 16.

Where Obsessions End and a Social Life Begins--column 6.14.07

I think the universe swallowed my last date. For real! I always wondered what happened to those really great two-date guys. You know the ones, you meet and feel like there could be a real connection, and then suddenly they just drop out of sight.

My friend Aimee has a theory they disappear out of fear. They’re too scared to deal with such a possible connection. I, on the other hand, think it’s like a missing sock our of the dryer; the universe just steals them.

I met this particular guy on my old standby Match.com. After a few emails we decided to meet for coffee. He was running a bit late, so I ordered a drink and sat down with a newspaper. I left my bag on the chair next to me, in order to save a seat in the busy coffee shop for him. A few minutes later an older man came and moved my bag to sit down and started chatting with me. He was so nice I couldn’t bring myself to ask him to leave. We chatted until my date arrived.

When I saw him arrive I joined him in line and said, “Oh, I hope it’s okay I brought my Dad. He really wanted to get out of the house for a while.” He knew right away I was kidding and played along. I love a good bit, and within five minutes we had one of our own! This was promising.

We didn’t run out of things to talk about, which was nice. We were discussing movies when I mentioned my current obsession/fear of Hannibal Lecter. I’d recently finished a marathon of Red Dragon, Hannibal, Hannibal Rising and ending with the first movie in the series, Silence of the Lambs. Needless to say I had Hannibal on my mind.

Thinking perhaps I was an Anthony Hopkins fan he asked if I’d seen The World’s Fastest Indian, which was filmed out on the Salt Flats. I had, and also mentioned I, being a Utah native, had never actually been to the Salt Flats.

After an hour we both had to be elsewhere so we made plans to get together a couple days later. Between the two dates we continued to send emails and text messages, finding that we were really hitting it off.

For our second date we met at Desert Edge Brewery for dinner. I was going to already be there having drinks with a friend so he kindly agreed to just meet me there.

Originally, he suggested we grab dinner and head out to the Salt Flats so I could see them. Which, I thought was sweet, but slightly creepy. The last thing I wanted to do was jump into a car with someone I’d only just met. Better safe, then sorry. Sure, in hindsight I could have probably just mentioned the idea of driving out there with a stranger made me uncomfortable, rather than asking if he planned to take me there to kill me for the sake of my skin. It made sense; the salt would be a nice skin scrub producing much softer skin with a lovely glow.

He laughed it off and we had a nice time anyway, or so I thought. We exchanged a couple of text messages the next day, but then nothing. If the situation were reversed I’d certainly not want to date someone who wouldn’t stop talking about Hannibal Lecter and serial killers. It’s just not that sexy.

One of these days I’m going to figure out that I don’t actually have to vocalize everything on my mind. And also, my new scary movie obsession has to end, otherwise my social life might.

why people suspect ben is gay:

ever since ben joined me in the pride parade people have mistaken him as gay. i really think the parade has nothing to do with it, but the man flirting and dimples do. okay, i exaggerate... ben doesn't man flirt, he's just a nice, friendly guy to everyone.

i invited him to come along to the trapp door last night for drinks with some friends. he declined. when my phone rang an hour later with his name showing up on the caller id, i answered "BEN, i knew you'd change your mind, admit your man love and want to come to the gay bar tonight!!" there was a slight pause and then one of his co-workers started asking me a question. oops!

**just a reminder, ben is very, very straight.**

yay, i'm a niece!

i have a new aunt; my uncle cabbage patch got married a few weeks ago. i'm thrilled for him, but mostly i'm thrilled for myself. this means she has 31 years of auntship to make up for! that's a lot of birthday cards and cake. ben said i'm not allowed to request 31 birthday presents, but thinks the cards and cake are perfectly acceptable.

"please don't go girl"

i met milinda, one of my very best friends from childhood, for lunch yesterday. i haven't seen her in years, which is really sad, and i vowed not to let that happen again.

it was so nice to see we have just as much in common now (sans the hubbie and kids) as we did then. we spend nearly two hours complaining about the church and our respective parent's strange obsession with all things religious. we have the same issues with our dads and dislike of our younger brother's choices in wives (not you holli!).

it's strange to go from talking about which member of n.k.o.t.b we want going to hump to discussing real life problems. i felt so grown up, which i'm sure won't last long.

losing my standards

all that's left is buying plastic red cups. sad, i know...

sweaty habits

someone told me yesterday that if you do something for 21 days it becomes a habit that can't easily be broken. i call bullshit.

so, to test the theory i'm going to go to the gym for 21 days straight, rather than my "once in a while when i'm bored" current gym habit. and because i hate going alone i'm trying to talk marky into taking part.

it's funny the things i'll do out of pure spite.

birthdays & beer

this weekend lo, my friend aimee's daughter, had a family birthday party. trying to figure out what to buy a seven year old when you don't have one isn't easy. so i picked the toy i'd like to play with the most: a kid's airbrush tattoo kit. i can't wait for my pink tribal arm band!

when i was in the bathroom i couldn't help but notice an empty beer bottle alongside the mouthwash. looks like i don't have the only family where you have to drink in secret.

self-esteem in check, yo.

i've just been outsmarted by a one-eyed, fat pug!

for the past two days daisy's been limping around the house. i checked her paws closely to make sure she didn't have any glass in them from the mighty two-buck chuck fall. nadda, but i still felt guilty and gave her a treat. a couple times a day when i felt really bad her limp may be my fault, i gave her a treat. today, when i noticed she was limping on a different paw i suspected she was faking to get food. i waited until she went into the other room and peeked around the corner to watch. the minute i'm not in the room her limp disappears. that little bitch! and here i thought she wouldn't like her new low-fat treats.

slow sunday

summer's here. i know this not because it finally stopped raining, but because flyboy and i made our beginning of summer trek to the drum circle today. it wasn't as entertaining as last years first trek, but there's an entire summer worth of sundays left. iguana guy was there with the iguana wrapped in a baby blanket. the only other item of interest was the guy serenading a tree. seriously.

when bad things happen to semi-good people:

this is not where i wanted my last bottle of two buck chuck to end up! i'm such a klutz. the worst part is that was the last of the case chady-bear brought back from cali. now that he's on a mission i don't think he's going to rush home to smuggle cheap wine back into utah. damn.

i'm an aunt! sorta.

baby ike finally made an appearance into the world last night. he's beautiful and totally worth sitting through an entire episode of oprah for! midge being uber cool, as always, had 'i like ike' pins for all to wear.

weird things people do:

i call this the cross-over talk. when ben talks on his cell phone he uses his right hand for his left ear and the other way around. it drives me nuts! i don't think you should have to be a contortionist to talk on a phone. he also does it when driving which makes it extra interesting.

Parades and paddles: striking out at a pair of weekend festivals--Column 6/7/07

Go here to read my newest column. It's all about the paddles this week, kids. And oddly I'm still wanting to go back and try kayaking. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact they sell pink kayak's, right?

jeans & jesus

i just noticed the inside tag on my jeans says "god loves you." i don't need my jeans to tell me that, i went to mormon primary. i'm also jesus' sunbeam.

and, is it just me or does it seem odd to have god so close to my crotch?

she's NOT having a baby!

i drove to happy valley yesterday. not because it makes me especially
happy, but certain people who live there do. midge. very pregnant
midge.

it was the last day i'd be able to spend with her before she has the baby. she's a week overdue, that lazy bugger just won't come out. thursday she goes in and they will force the little guy out. i'm sure there's some sort of technical term for this, but i like to refer to it as operation baby retrival, where they go in and smoke him out--sorta like iraq, but cheaper.

we enjoyed a leisurely lunch, pedicures and oprah. because that's what you do when you're pregnant and your best friend is unemployed... i think.

who doesn't need a meat blanket?

chady-bear and i have more in common than i originally thought! he's currently in the mtc doing that mormon training stuff before he heads to japan for his mission. he's not allowed caffeine there, and it turns out he's a slave to it, just like his sis.

he emailed and asked i send him a package of mountain dew and beef jerky. rather than argue with him on what a dumb request i decided to just go with it. after all, i'm not going to see him for two years. i might as well be nice to him.

i looked all over target and couldn't find any jerky. of course my standby maverick gas station had some. so chady gets his mountain dew, a meat blanket and just to be a bratty sister i sent some princess pop-tarts. what the hell, right? he can't yell at me... he's with god now.

complete and utter lack of, well, everything

my pal marky's best friend's father passed away yesterday. rather than being the sensitive person my mother raised me to be, i was the idiot i've turned out to be.

mark: what's up?
sarah: it's hotter then hell in my apartment right now.
mark: i set up my little ac thing.
sarah: so hot i want to die right now!
....silence....

shit. shit. shit. i'm the worst friend ever.

what i'm looking for in a man

i'm looking for a geek. not the kind of geek who never leaves his mother's basement, but the geek with designer jeans and cool glasses. oh, and hair. that's important--bald geeks need not apply.

my geek must be geeky enough to accompany me to the mac store and actually enjoy it. (my ibook is on the fritz AGAIN!) also, please know every computer program i may need, and redesign my blog to look exactly the way i want it: pink. my geek must accompany me to movies at the broadway, and drive me home when i've had a few too many. my geek must be able to read and discuss books with me.

what you'll get in return. i'll never complain when you watch the simpsons. i'll always be willing to bring you coffee while you fix my computer. i'll try and behave myself in front of your parents, and not behave myself in front of your friends. i'll happily discuss most new geeks toys with you. of course, reserving the right to pick and choose which items interest me and discuss accordingly.

is that really so much to ask?

why ben's not speaking to me:

in utah this week was a sponsor for this year's pride parade. ben, being the good brother he is, walked in the parade with us. after hearing numerous times how cute his dimples were he shut down and hid in the booth. i think he was just mad i got to ride in a car and he had to walk. it pays to wear shoes that are pretty and not at all sensible. comfortable tennis shoes guarantee you're walking!

"never gonna get it"

'tis the festival season! today's venue was paddlefest then pride. oddly, i had to get my paddle pre-pride, and surprisingly i was a powerhouse at steering the canoe. at least that's what my female partner-in-crime told me. perhaps she was placating me enough to make it to shore. either way i love her more for it! both events were a good time thanks to good friends and beer coupons! and both are going on again tomorrow. paddle or pride, people.

girls will be girls

holli and i took the kids to the zoo today. mrs. ak, her two children and mina, the mother of all, met us there. we did all the usual zoo stuff: rode the train, saw the animals, hunted for diet coke, nearly puked walking out of the stinky snake building. hannah and her new best friend explained it best:

flirting: it's child's play--column 5.31.07

go here to read my column for this week.