10-minute prep-time

Today didn’t start off very well. My alarm didn’t go off, there was traffic on the freeway, and through some acrobatic feat of rapid-tooth-brushing I managed to get a splodge of toothpaste on my jeans. But, on the other hand, the day didn’t start off too badly. My alarm didn’t go off, sure, but I got to work right on time, instead of doing like I usually do and getting there a few minutes early and driving the long way through the business park at 8 MPH. And a little splodge of toothpaste on your jeans is nowhere near as demoralizing as a splodge on your shirt. Yup, there was only way thing that could make or break this catastrophic but average day, and that was the investigation and evaluation of my alarm clock’s failure.

You see, today was the first day in the 12 years that I’ve had my alarm clock that it didn’t go off. It went off reliably through middle school when I had to get to the bus stop by 7:10, and in high school when I had a car and would set the alarm for 10 minutes before I had to leave. (A 10-minute prep time is perfectly possible for a teenaged girl. 1-2 minutes for pants and shirt, 1-2 minutes for teeth and hair, 3-4 minutes for finding shoes and agonizing over various zits, 1-2 for debating and deciding not to eat breakfast.) My alarm clock was a supremely reliable sort; it never failed me on early mornings when I had flights to catch, midterms to study for, or job interviews to be ever-so-slightly early for. It even indulged me for the many long years when I left the alarm on during the weekends for the pure joy of turning it off and going back to sleep.

I’m not exactly sure when I got the alarm clock, but I think it was around my 12th birthday. The clunky black plastic seems very 1998, and the sticky tape deck on the front panel matches that time period where CDs existed but cheap stereo companies were still trying to make the tape happen. Anyway, whenever it was, it was back in the time when buttons on electronics still stuck out of the main box of the item, before all of this touch-screen nonsense and the advent of inlaid, flush buttons. My alarm clock has a wire antenna that never works and an excellent sense of humor: I’ve started many hung-over mornings to the tune of Margaritaville.

I realize, in theory, that retiring an aging alarm clock might not be the worst thing. A person needs an alarm clock that can be relied upon to rouse them for work and most everyone I know has already switched to using their multi-purpose cell phone as an alarm. Finally, my alarm clock is old; the tape deck has to be pried open and there is dust between the buttons on that thing that isn’t ever coming off. It’s easy to believe that it might be giving out. Still, I feel bad getting rid of it – it was outdated practically before it came out of the box and I respect that.

Here’s to hoping that this morning was a fluke and that tomorrow will start off better --with a familiar screech from the black, dust-clogged speakers of an alarm clock that doesn’t come with a texting function.

10-minute prep-time

Today didn’t start off very well. My alarm didn’t go off, there was traffic on the freeway, and through some acrobatic feat of rapid-tooth-brushing I managed to get a splodge of toothpaste on my jeans. But, on the other hand, the day didn’t start off too badly. My alarm didn’t go off, sure, but I got to work right on time, instead of doing like I usually do and getting there a few minutes early and driving the long way through the business park at 8 MPH. And a little splodge of toothpaste on your jeans is nowhere near as demoralizing as a splodge on your shirt. Yup, there was only way thing that could make or break this catastrophic but average day, and that was the investigation and evaluation of my alarm clock’s failure.

You see, today was the first day in the 12 years that I’ve had my alarm clock that it didn’t go off. It went off reliably through middle school when I had to get to the bus stop by 7:10, and in high school when I had a car and would set the alarm for 10 minutes before I had to leave. (A 10-minute prep time is perfectly possible for a teenaged girl. 1-2 minutes for pants and shirt, 1-2 minutes for teeth and hair, 3-4 minutes for finding shoes and agonizing over various zits, 1-2 for debating and deciding not to eat breakfast.) My alarm clock was a supremely reliable sort; it never failed me on early mornings when I had flights to catch, midterms to study for, or job interviews to be ever-so-slightly early for. It even indulged me for the many long years when I left the alarm on during the weekends for the pure joy of turning it off and going back to sleep.

I’m not exactly sure when I got the alarm clock, but I think it was around my 12th birthday. The clunky black plastic seems very 1998, and the sticky tape deck on the front panel matches that time period where CDs existed but cheap stereo companies were still trying to make the tape happen. Anyway, whenever it was, it was back in the time when buttons on electronics still stuck out of the main box of the item, before all of this touch-screen nonsense and the advent of inlaid, flush buttons. My alarm clock has a wire antenna that never works and an excellent sense of humor: I’ve started many hung-over mornings to the tune of Margaritaville.

I realize, in theory, that retiring an aging alarm clock might not be the worst thing. A person needs an alarm clock that can be relied upon to rouse them for work and most everyone I know has already switched to using their multi-purpose cell phone as an alarm. Finally, my alarm clock is old; the tape deck has to be pried open and there is dust between the buttons on that thing that isn’t ever coming off. It’s easy to believe that it might be giving out. Still, I feel bad getting rid of it – it was outdated practically before it came out of the box and I respect that.

Here’s to hoping that this morning was a fluke and that tomorrow will start off better --with a familiar screech from the black, dust-clogged speakers of an alarm clock that doesn’t come with a texting function.

Neck braces!

Since I’ve been talking about my personal hygiene habits a lot lately [aside: I notice that I’ve developed an odd fondness for the phrase “a lot” also…I had to stop myself from using it about 400 times today], I’ve decided to revisit a favorite topic of mine that gets sorely neglected here: television. You know, as everyone knows because I’m a snob and I shove it down people’s throats, that I don’t have a TV. But unlike most people who don’t have TVs, I can still admit that TV is awesome and that I go through phases of mild addiction.

My live-in friend and I have lately been watching some a little more embarrassing than usual. I know, I know; you’re asking yourself what could be more embarrassing than my recent foray into the world of watching Xena. And if you are patient I will enlighten you. There is something a little more embarrassing than heavily melodramatic fantasy television with a lot of gratuitous female nudity and that, my friends, is sports melodrama with gratuitous cheerleader nudity. And what’s worse, I don’t even understand football.

So yeah, Kevin and I have been watching Friday Night Lights, mainly because Ira Glass watches it but also because we are easily overwhelmed by emotion in fake teenagers. I got a bit misty eyed when this one teenager (who was paralyzed) told the coach that he was sorry if he’d let him down. When he muttered that from behind his neck-brace my head all but exploded. Coming from a town where football was given little funding and even less notice, the idea that someone would remember that there had been a game going on during their catastrophic injury is perplexing.

But then again, I’ve never been much for team spirit and all that. Mainly I was always into jaded female warriors fighting the forces of evil. These two facts are probably related.

Breaking cleanly from the starting gate

Everyone who is anyone knows that I’ve been reading books about horse racing lately; therefore, I feel it is worth a blog post to advertise the fact that I’m stopping. I know that it’s shocking and that I’ve devoted miles and miles of cyberspace to praising horse books, but I think I finally managed to OD on horse-related non-fiction. At least, that’s what I was thinking when I woke up repeatedly last night from horse-related nightmares.

Now, to be fair not all of my nightmares last night were about horse racing. Some of them were about work and some of them were about some asshole stealing both of the bumpers off of my car. Most of them, however, were about horse racing. I’m not even exactly sure how they were about horse racing; I only know that I kept waking up in a panic, concerned over paddock boots and “break clean” from the starter gate. To make matters worse I was in that hazy intermediate state of coherence and kept having to reassure my soggy mind that there was no part of my life that resembled a horse race.

The terrible thing is that I was on such a g.d. roll with reading horse books. In the last two weeks I’d swept through three, one on Secretariat, one on Seabiscuit, and another on Ruffian. I started a book on Man o’ War last night and I fell asleep reading it. In hindsight I think it was the book on Ruffian that really did me in though…There was a lot about riding towards the light with shattered ankle bones toward the end.

Anyway, this has developed into a very belated and boring post so I’ll stop while I’m still ahead (or at least not that far behind). I’m going to retire with some very tame literature this evening – I’m thinking something about the prairie at about the 5th grade reading level. Any book that mentions the use of sunbonnets to preserve a racially-charged paleness of the skin is like a sedative to me.

In which I list the names of the drug stores that I visited

I’ll warn you right now; this is going to be a boring one. It’s going to be one of those warbling, pointless entries where I talk about my favorite boring things, like shampoo brands and deodorant scents. I’m a creepily domestic person and I know it well.

So here’s the dealio: After an evening spent grubbing on enchiladas and house hunting, my live-in person and I went off to run a few errands. It was a fairly boring affair; we needed conditioner and deodorant and I was willing to spring for some face wash and a brand-spankin’ new loofah if the price was right. Despite our scant list and our pedestrian (oh, so pedestrian) taste in beauty products, we went to 3 different stores before we were able to find what we were looking for. I’m disappointed in Target, CVS, and Walgreens today.

As it turns out, both my husband’s deodorant and my conditioner are being phased out. Phased out! Replaced under a guise of “new and improved,” as though the science of hair-care and smell-reduction weren’t already fully formed sciences. I was finally able to find my conditioner at Wal-Mart in a new snazzy (aerodynamic?) bottle, but my best pal had to choose a new brand of deodorant. I won’t succumb to the terrible temptation and point out that having to pick a new deodorant is the pits.

Puns aside, I really sympathize with my main squeeze; I’ve been using the same brand of deodorant for years. (Hint: It’s the same brand as my shampoo and conditioner. As a smell-impaired person I like to think that means all of my fragrances “match.”) And getting a new brand is stressful. In fact, I might just come out and say that deodorant itself is pretty g.d. stressful.

I remember when I first started wearing deodorant, around the time that I turned 12. From the beginning it was a fetching symbol for the murky underside of the adolescence that I was trying like the dickens to suppress; I kept my stick in my bedroom and put it on before I changed from my pjs. (Disclaimer: I swear I’m not alone in this freakish preoccupation...When I was a teenager I had a friend who stored hers in a decorative wooden box to conceal it from her brothers.)

After a few years I got over this fear and started leaving my stick in the bathroom cabinet and putting it on after I changed, trading those awkward side-of-shirt deodorant smears for small white flecks on the collar of my crewnecks. I started to take a little pride in my deodorant and the glandular regularity that necessitated it. I consider myself an avid and enthusiastic deodorant user now, but that doesn’t mean I want to go switching brands willy-nilly. When I finally switched from the brightly colored Teen Spirit sticks to my current staunchly white and powdery stick the transition was difficult and I have no care to repeat the process.

There were benefits, though. For one, I no longer smell like a pack of sweaty Skittles.