This might make you throw up in your mouth.

Via Google Talk...

Me: "OMG are there a bunch of toenails on the end table by where you sit?"

DNB: "Oh, maybe."

I'll just let that part sink in.

Are you ready? Because then he says this.

DNB: "They should go behind the couch."

Me: "I'm never moving that thing."

Don't toss this candle salad

This is one of those posts that's going to make my mother call me clucking her tongue and muttering about my not being appropriate.  And all I'm going to say is, TAKE IT UP WITH BETTY.

I was watching an episode of "Watch What Happens Live" with Andy Cohen, who in an interview with Amy Sedaris mentioned the Candle Salad.  If you're a thousand years old you might remember this, because the recipe appeared in Betty Crocker's Cookbook for boys and girls, published in 1957.  Oh yeah, it's a real salad. 

Original recipe

Modern interpretation

Remember, kids. It's better than a real candle, because you can eat it!

Wherein I lose all my plant-based followers.

"As not-compassionate as I usually am, I don't want to hurt people's feelings," I tell the DNB. I'm explaining why I always find it difficult to turn away all the pyramid sellers who come my way.

"I don't blame the people, but more the companies behind the products," the DNB replies. He's hardcore skeptical of all the "these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA" goods out there.

"Oh I just blame it on you," I confess. "Like oh my husband is concerned about FDA approval, blah blah blah. But then they just tell me everything is all-natural, so how could it be harmful?"

"UM, like cyanide?  Some of the most toxic substances we know of are natural!" the DNB shouts.

Yeah, buddy, I'm on your side. Take it down a notch.

"Plants make this horrible stuff because, I don't know, they DON'T WANT TO BE EATEN," he continues.

I nod. "Man, plants are bastards."

"They TOTALLY are."

Dr. Douche

The DNB looks at my locked Blackberry!

"Wait, your locked screen says that your emergency contact is DR. DNB?"

"Well, before it just said DNB," I explain.

"So who added the Dr. part?" he replies.

"You. YOU added the Dr. part," I remind him. Sometimes people with bad memories will be able to recollect really random things with incredible clarity, but no, the DNB pretty much forgets everything.

"Oh," he says. "Ha. I was thinking it was kind of a douchebag move."

"It was. You're that guy."

I SWEAR Pittsburgh is messing with us.

We try to go to sleep!

Until I smell...OH GOD. It is one of the worst, most putrid  stank-nasty odors I have ever encountered. It practically knocks me over. "Did you do that?" I shout at the DNB as I plug my nose. "It's horrible!"

"It was like 2 minutes ago!" the DNB replies.

I wait half a minute then tentatively sniff the air. "How is it WORSE?" I try to screech, but the air is so thick I can barely catch my breath.

"I even did a test fart!" he yells after me as I head downstairs.

The smells seems to have settled down to the living room as well. THIS is why you don't get married, I tell myself. Because one day you will suffocate on fart, and all the women will be sad at your funeral and all the men will act sad but really they'll just be waiting till after the burial to high-five the DNB because DUDE, that thing must've been EPIC.

I flounce down on the sofa. I can hear the DNB upstairs moving around. Finally he comes marching down the stairs. "Ok, I sniffed around a lot, and I swear that smell is not me."

I roll my eyes. The smell seems to be getting worse in the living room. The DNB disappears into the basement for probably 30 seconds. Then he comes bounding back up.

"There is SEWAGE bubbling up THROUGH THE BASEMENT DRAIN," he announces, looking at me pointedly. He should be upset, and probably on the phone with our landlord, but instead he's completely triumphant. "Vindication is mine!!"

"Wow, are you serious?  Fair enough, I apologize for accusing you," I reply.

"The world needs to know how wrong you were," the DNB tells me, as he turns off the A/C to try to contain the smell in the basement.

"You didn't even realize it wasn't you for like ten minutes!"  But maybe he's right.  

Which is how I've come to be writing this post while in my 5th hour of waiting for the city water & sewer workers, on a 90 degree day, with the A/C off, in a house that smells like poo.

I really think we're Minnesotans.

You may have noticed that Pittsburgh hasn't been treating us very well. Like, if I were dating Pittsburgh, I totally would have ended things this week. It's not me, it's you, because you suck.

We've been living in a temporary house, which lacks, I don't know, all my stuff but especially my cute fall boots. This week, our "sure thing" permanent housing option fell through after the landlord decided she didn't want to move out of her house. A week before she was supposed to move.

So it's not a little exciting to me that I'm about to travel back to the Great White North for business. It's too bad the DNB can't go with me; he's been pretty upset with this fair city as well, mostly because IT'S HIS FAULT WE'RE HERE.

"Do you want me to bring you anything from Minnesota?" I ask graciously.

"I don't know," he replies sadly. "Maybe just some... hope?"

PA, we already know you hate us. Enough already.

We go to a Labor Day festival!

Or, we try to.

It's in a town about an hour away, so I get the address from the festival website and off we go.

"Are we going to be the only ones there?" the DNB says as we approach the festival grounds.

"Definitely not," I reply confidently. "I read an article that said yesterday's attendance was 20,000."

"Ok, because we're at the right address right now. And there's no festival."

I pull over. "Crap."

I look up the festival website on my phone. And realize that the address at the top of the page - the one I used - is the address of the county parks department, which is SPONSORING the festival. Which is in a completely different town. Let me draw you a picture.

We're not about to give up now, so we figure out a new correct address and continue driving. When we arrive at the right place, we know it's the right place because there are cars for miles in both directions. After we enter the park where the festival is being held, the DNB gets antsy with the traffic.

"Let's just park in that parking lot," he suggests, in what later I realize is the WORST IDEA EVER. "We can just walk up to wherever the festival is."

Let it me known that my consent was UNINFORMED. I park, and we start walking. It quickly becomes apparent that the whole thing would have been a much better idea HAD THE DNB EVER BEEN THERE BEFORE. Then he might have known that not only was our parking spot NOWHERE NEAR THE FESTIVAL, but the parking lot was at the bottom of a small mountain. The festival, of course, had to be at the top.

Our path pretty much becomes the Trail of Tears.

We finally, finally get to the top. It takes about 2 minutes to figure out that no way is this festival worth ANY of what we had been through to get there. First, I apparently missed the fact that the festival is called the "Laborers United Celebration" not because it's Labor Day, necessarily, but because it's a Union event. This is not, you might say, our "scene."

We walk by the main stage, where a Teamster/Union/Organized Person is telling the assembled crowd that "America is the only country with a middle class." The DNB and I glance at each other. "What about Canada?" I whisper. "They copy everything."

[Turns out, my good buddy Wikipedia tells me that "In February 2009, The Economist announced that over half the world's population now belongs to the middle class, as a result of rapid growth in emerging countries."]

Past the main stage, we find the "craft" portion. One enterprising woman has a whole booth of shadeless lamps she's made by shoving lamp sticks through stuffed animals. Look! It's a teddy bear lamp! And here's Mickey Mouse with a cord coming out of his butt!

There's also what appears to be a giant yard sale going on in one corner. If you need 10,000 VHS tapes, mismatched coffee cups, or baby clothes (one bag for $1.00), this place has got you covered.

"Yeah, I think I'm ready to leave," I tell the DNB.

"It's too bad we spent less time actually here than we did getting here," he says sadly as we begin our trek back down the mountain.

You know how I know you're not lazy?

The DNB gets pimped at work!

This isn't unusual. Pimping is when a more senior physician sells a less senior doctor's body on the streets tries to make a younger doctor look stupid in front of a group intensely questions a younger medical professional about a topic.

On this particular day, the DNB was being pimped on why he didn't take a specific course of action with a patient. The truth was, he considered the options and risks, and decided to do something different. The pimping physician, however, doesn't know him, didn't believe him, and ended the conversation by noting that the DNB was "just being lazy."

OH NO YOU DIDN'T.

I'll grant you this: the DNB can be lazy. I've got 5 months worth of opened mail he needs to sort through to prove it. But at work? The man is at the hospital nearly 80 hours a week. I don't think so.

"How did you respond?" I ask him, incredulous.

"How was I supposed to respond? It was in a group. I didn't want to be disrespectful," he replies.

I get it, but I'm not happy about it.

So instead, we've compiled a list of How A Medical Professional Might Know He's Not Lazy:

If you've had to pee for the last 5 hours, and you're not on a family car trip... You're Not Lazy

If you've skipped 4 meals in 2 days because of work...

If employees return to the hospital the next morning the morning and say, "Oh, you're still here?"...

When it would be frowned upon to take a 20 minute nap during a 30 hour call shift...

When patients' families ask, "When do you get to go home?" and the answer is greater than 24 hours...

If you've rounded 5 times during your call shift...

If while you're eating dinner, you answer 15 phone calls and none of them are for your teenage daughter...

We livin life like a video . . . during which the DNB has to correct everything.

"I listen to a lot more pop music now since the stupid NPR station here is Half Talk, Mostly Jazz," the DNB says as we drive home from the zoo.

"Ug, but I hate this song," he continues as 'Forever Young' comes on. "Did you notice how the rapping is continually like a half second behind the beat?"

"Are you seriously down on how Jay-Z raps right now?" I ask. "You don't see Mr. Knowles coming into the hospital telling you how to intubate a kid."

"No because intubation requires skills Jay-Z probably doesn't have," the DNB notes. "Whereas, I have musical skills."

"This is why we don't let NPR snobs listen to Top 40 radio," I tell him.

He's tapping out the beat on the dashboard, totally not listening to me. "Seriously, his timing really doesn't bother you?"

YOU'RE fat, and I hate you.

"I don't know about this shirt," I say to the DNB as we get ready to take a Saturday morning stroll through the markets and shops of the Strip District.

"I was just going to say you look nice," the DNB replies.

This I believe. Stupidly. Sufficiently convinced that I look okay, we head out.

Two hours later, a woman giving lobster bisque samples at a gourmet grocer asks me something about what I do.

"What do I do?" I clarify. It's kind of weird that she's asking. "For my job?"

"No," she says. "When are you DUE?"

I am caught completely off guard. No one has ever asked me that before. I try to laugh it off. "Oh, I'm not pregnant," I tell her. "But I'm never wearing this shirt again!" Ha. Ha.

Let's just make this the rule, Interwebs, for future reference. Unless a baby is CROWNING from a woman's VAGINA, you should NEVER ASK WHEN SHE IS DUE. And even then, the due date is almost always going to be a moot point.

"My daughter has a shirt just like that," the woman continues BECAUSE SHE HASN'T ALREADY DONE ENOUGH DAMAGE. "I don't like it on her either."

I try to give her a look that says, you should have quit talking before you were born, but I'm generally a nice person, and kind. So instead I kind of walk off, handing my remaining bisque sample to the DNB like it's a live grenade. I'm never eating again.

I say this outloud about a thousand times on the way home, I'm never eating again, never ever. The DNB tries to be helpful, but since he never once says "you don't look pregnant," he's kind of an Epic Fail.

And then, fifteen minutes ago, he looks over at me pleadingly, willing me to understand a man's needs. "This might not be the right day to ask, but can we get pizza for dinner?"

Orange-Strawberry-You're-A-Jerk, Dude.

We move to Pittsburgh! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

On the 18 hour drive out here, I was listening to a comedy album by Michael Ian Black, who maintains that everything sounds less negative if you put “YAAAAAAAAAY!” after it. Packing up all your stuff, YAAAAAAY! Moving it all into a storage unit and then being told that unit was actually already rented to someone else and that you’d have to move everything, YAAAAAAY!

Our second day here, the DNB and his mother walk to a local convenience store. We’ve spent the last 36 hours loading and unloaded, and we need a mixer to go with the vodka I all but stashed in my purse to make sure I knew where it was.

The store stocks everything that costs more than $2.00 behind the counter. “Yes, I’d like a box of Cocoa Puffs, please. No, not that box, the one above it. One to the right. Nope, too far, the one to the left. Yes, that one.” WTF, Pittsburgh?

The employee must have heard the DNB and his mother debating which beverage under lock and key would make the most delicious mixer.

“You know what you folks need?” he asked. “Orange-strawberry-banana juice.”

“Oh yes, yes we do,” the DNB replies.

“That would go great with vodka,” the employee continues.

“We have vodka!” shouts the DNB excitedly. “Where’s the orange-strawberry-banana juice?”

“Oh no, we don’t carry that,” responds the employee. “But it would be delicious with vodka, if we had it.”

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

"Drink the Fat"

We are moving from the Great White North!

We've been married, what, 3 years now? It was a joyous day, made more joyous by the fact that we could supply our own alcohol at affordable prices. The problem is, we had a martini bar, which involved a vast variety of liqueurs. The other problem is, we've moved 4 times since then. Every time we pack a house, after I try to figure out when we acquired so much STUFF, I ask myself WHY I AM STILL MOVING 17 BOTTLES OF LEFTOVER CREME DE CACAO??

This time, have I wised up. My mission, which I have chosen to accept, is to Drink All Of The Random Liqueurs Before Moving Day. Oh yes, it will be done. The question is, just combine them all and hope mixed liqueurs end up as Long Island Iced Tea like liquor does, or take a sip of each every 2-3 hours for the next 3 days?

Here's what I have:

Peppermint Schnapps

Root Beer Schnapps

Creme de Cacao (in bulk)

Creme de Menthe

Melon Liqueur

Razzmatazz Raspberry Liqueur (side note: don't ever buy this)

Limoncello

Chambord

Triple Sec

Butterscotch Schnapps

Frangelico

Irish Cream

Absinthe (less liqueur and more Please Let Me Live, kthxbai)

Another complication for how this all goes down, no pun intended, is that I'm also trying to empty our chest freezer. What pairs best with a bag of spinach and some freezer-burned Bagel Bites - a 2005 Root Beer Schnapps or a 2006 Frangelico?

I think he's on his period.

When the DNB and I first started dating 10,000 years ago, I remember he'd always get nervous when I'd go to get my hair cut. "I just don't want it to be short," he'd say. A few years ago, I had grown my hair out quite a bit, but it wasn't working for me. "I'm getting a lot cut," I warned him, and he looked panicked. When I came home, he noted my shoulder-length hair and relaxed. "That's not short," he claimed.

Last night, after another trip to the salon, I decided to address his weird Short-Hair Thing and find out what, exactly, "short" meant to him. Shoulder length hair? Not short. Chin length hair? Short. Somewhere in between? On the border.

This is pretty much exactly what he told me:

Girls start talking to their friends. "I need a new style." Then one girl's all, "Ohmigod, I totally know what you should do. You should SHAVE YOUR HEAD." And then all the other girls are like, "That would be TOTALLY cute. You totally should shave your head." And so then she goes and effing SHAVES HER HEAD. And then she comes home and is like, "Do you like my hair?" And her husband goes, "Ummm, I thought ..." And then she's all, "You hate it? I can't believe you hate it. I DID IT FOR YOU, jackass!!"

Digging for Treasure.

I get sick again!

"Remember how often I got sick my first year as a doctor?" the DNB asks.

"A lot," I reply.  "I wonder whether you've just built up better immunity to hospital germs."

And then he says this: "I think it's because I started using foaming hand sanitizer before I pick my nose."

"Ok, what?"

"They don't teach you that in medical school," he says, a touch indignantly. 

"Um, yeah, because they teach you to quit jamming your finger up your nose in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL."

An Open Letter to Allstate Workplace Division

Dear Epic Fail,

Dude, as an insurer, your company sucks.  Of course that's just my opinion, but let's run through why.

First of all, your website provides the the opposite of helpful information. See below:

Second, you routinely received my self-submitted claims (I had to do all the work!  It should have been easy for you!) and did nothing with them for periods of months.  Your website itself makes the astounding claim that not only do you "care about [me] and [my] family and are committed to providing prompt, accurate and courteous claim processing services," but that "claims will be processed in less than 10 business days if all claim forms are completed accurately and no additional information is required."  You have never indicated that my forms are inaccurate nor that you need additional information.  So how come it's been two months?  And how come when I call to force the issue, your employee tells me my forms were received just fine, but they just haven't been processed.  Like this happens all the time.  BECAUSE IT DOES.  If I billed you my standard hourly rate for all the time I've had to spend tracking down unprocessed claims, you'd owe me approximately $203,394.00. 

Third, it took you months to issue a completely inane denial of one of my claims.  I still don't understand why you wouldn't jump up and down for the opportunity to cover preventative care, but whatever.  When I appealed because I am that person, you sat on my appeal form for FOUR MONTHS.  Even then, I had to call to get it "re-sent" to your review board.  You reversed your denial, which I appreciate - I really do - but do you understand that I had to pay my doctor's office for those fees almost a year prior?  You got to earn interest for quite a while on those unpaid fees, while I was out that money entirely.  Not cool.  

Finally, your employees could not BE more unhelpful.  Every call is clearly an inconvenience.  I've tried explaining that I don't want to be calling.  I just want my insurance company to process my claims.  Unfortunately, your employees tell me there's nothing they can do.  Sometimes these things just happen, they explain. 

You know what I think?  I think you're banking your business on wearing us down.  If you make us submit claims ourselves, you can eliminate X claims because some people won't go through the trouble.  Then if you just don't process them, you'll eliminate another X claims when your insureds don't make an effort to track down the status.  You're playing the numbers.  Except that promptly processing the claims as you've publicly promised you would isn't some kind of marketing flash, it's not a rebate, it's not an incentive to buy.  It's the minimum.  And you're failing.  

Cordially,

S

50% chance of DEATH.

So I was looking at the forecast this morning. 

Looks like we just missed out on the red . . . what's red? . . . oh, STRONG STORMS.  And there's snow heading across the Midwest, too, see that band of gray and white?  Look at Indiana, dude, it's getting blasted with -- OMG weather.com, you bastard, there's no key for BLUE.  What does blue indicate?  What's happening in Indiana and some part of Nebraska no one cares about?

I'm not positive, but potentially, it could either be the Zombie Apocalypse or wind.  Just, don't panic, people.

UPDATE:  Is it WATER?? 

It's called, helping you not waste your breath. You're welcome.

The DNB is considering a HOT DEAL at Woot.

"There's a hard drive here," he tells me. "500 GB, 7200, 35 MB."

"I don't know what those numbers mean," I reply.

"Well, 7200 is the amount..."

"No," I interrupt. "I don't want you to explain. I just want you to know that I don't know what you're talking about."

Smells Like Teen Spirit

"You smell good," the DNB says after I shower.

"Is it my cocoa butter lotion?"

He sniffs. "No..."

"My hair crack shampoo?"

"No." He keeps sniffing and finally reaches my armpit. "Oh, it's your deodorant."

"Are you serious right now?"

"It smells like flowers," he sighs.

I'm never cooking again. Part 2.*

Remember that one Thursday night when you tried to make a ham?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

That's how it's going to go in about 3 days. For now, though, the other white meat is on my blacklist.

First of all, who makes meat that's the same color whether you buy it cooked or uncooked? Pork producers, listen up. Inject some White #4 in there or something, because pink is not the new cooked.

"So is it cooked or not?" the DNB asks, warily.

I shrug.

"Oh, it's bleeding," he says as he eyeballs it from all sides.

"Let's go with uncooked then," I reply. Fearing this, I've cut off some chunks from the massive, pink, bone-in, uncooked monstrosity I somehow thought would be a good idea. They're lying sadly in the oven. I've been basting them with brown sugar and honey every 15 minutes.

"I don't know how to tell if the chunks are done," I tell him, poking at them. They're the same color they were when I put them in an hour previously.

"Maybe a meat thermometer would have helped?"

I stare at him.

Eventually the meat is done, but the baked potatoes take another thousand hours.

"No really," the DNB says when we finally eat. "It's pretty good."

He pauses. "Really good!"

"I hate cooking."

* The DNB insisted that I title this "Part 2" because he's sure I've threatened this at least once before. Haha, sucker. It's been like 3 dozen times.

What's it like being a huge jerk?

I peer at the DNB's face.

"What's it like having hair around your mouth?" I ask.

"Oh, I don't know..." he pauses. "Why don't you tell me?"

I smile sweetly as he cracks himself up.

"I'm smiling," I say slowly, "Because I'm thinking of all the horrible things I'm going to do to you when you're sleeping tonight."