And you thought I could only do Halloween songs. Pfft!
A Non-Holiday BaDee
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Author Archives: soniestephens
Freedom!
I have officially been free of the retail world for one whole week. Well, not free of the retail world; free of working in the retail world. BIG difference! Today I actually spent lots of time in that world when I took part in the H&M grand opening. Yep, I was one of those bat shit crazy people that stood in the cold for hours. And other than my hips freezing up and the frostbite on the tip of my nose, it was totally fun.
Besides standing in really, really long lines, I haven’t had much down time since the “whole” transition. (Sorry, that was only funny if you knew my retail job was with Whole Foods Market). I made a quick trip to New Jersey for a training gig, ordered my Thanksgiving turkey and even managed to get an entire workout in. Can you believe the craziness of my life?! Neither can I.
Also crazy is how effing small of a city Salt Lake is. (I’ve decided to work in effing in place of the real thing once in awhile to mix things up). Listen to this…. Last weekend I was on Facebook and saw a picture Emily, my stepdaughter, had posted. The person in the photo looked familiar so I clicked on it and was like, “Holy shit, no fucking way!” (Back to the real thing again). The dude in the picture was none other than my best friend’s little brother! The little brother that I spent my childhood with torturing and making play the Sweet Valley High board game because we really needed someone to be Ingrid. And now he’s hanging out with Em! Seriously freaky, people! Neither of them had any idea until I was like, “Uhhh are you hanging out with Jordan?” It’s a little strange, but Britt and I decided if they get married one day we’ll be related, which would be AWESOME! Then we could officially be sisters!
Always thinking of myself.
Other news is that our cat has feline asthma. Of course it cost us $340 for them to tell us this. Our vet visit went like this:
Vet: It might be asthma but I really need to take an x-ray to figure it out ($80)
An hour later….
Yeah, it looks like feline asthma as you can see here, blah, blah blah. I’m a little concerned with the shape of her heart though so we should probably have a radiologist look at the x-ray ($120)
I have no idea how this all added up to $340 now that I think about it, but the bottom line is I’m pretty sure we got ripped off. Her heart, of course, was fine. So Rob took her in for a shot. He asked for the long acting one, which they told him they gave her. Then, two days later the vet calls me to check up on Kitty (yeah, she doesn’t really have a name) and is like, “I just gave her the intermediate one because I was still a little concerned with her heart.” Which is exactly when I called bull shit!
I am happy her heart is OK. Especially since that means she most likely won’t die of heart failure when we bring a dog home. If we ever bring a dog home. Talk to Rob about that one.
Change
Well, I did it. I made a big ol’ change in my life. I am leaving my current job in the retail/marketing world. No, I will not be sitting at home knitting. I’m pretty sure I will never be a knitter. What I will be doing is going back to the world of training. I’ve already facilitated a course and really enjoy it! Plus, I think it will stay fun because I won’t be doing it every single bloody day. I’m a contract trainer, so I travel all over to facilitate courses to large companies in the United States and internationally. Go me!
When I’m not training, I plan to crank out more blogs and help my sister with my niece, Stevie, as much as possible. And honestly, I am most excited to be able to enjoy my holidays. The retail world totally sucks the holiday spirit right out of you. That and you have no time to bake and take gifts to your neighbors. Yes, we exchange gifts with the two neighbors we know. Don’t judge.
Of course I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without my supportive husband. I think he’s hoping that one day it will all pay off for him when I’m making the big bucks and he can do whatever the hell he wants. Fingers crossed, Rob.
Other exciting things going on in my life involve watching grown men load up on salsa at the salsa bar at Rubio’s. No, it is exciting when the dude has a good 20 sample cups filled and is showing no signs of wrapping it up. I mean isn’t that amazing? I was very close to offering him $5 so he could buy a whole jar at the grocery store. Save some of the Rubio’s salsa for the rest of us!
Oh, and we’re looking at getting a dog! I feel like I will finally have some time to actually be a good dog owner. We’re looking at Welsh Corgis. You know, the dogs the Queen had? They are so cute and supposedly good dogs. Hopefully the cat can adjust quickly. If she can’t, are any of you interested in a really old cat? I’m kidding. I won’t give the cat away. But maybe she could go visit someone for awhile? Just a thought.
Badees #2
Here is another Halloween song for your enjoyment. You do enjoy these, right? RIGHT?! You’ll see that Rob and I obviously find them to be quite entertaining.
Introducing the Badees…
Guess what friends? I have a new and exciting series here at Sonie’s blog! It’s called The Badees (pronounced bu dees). This is a series in which I “sing” a song using badees (you’ll get it when you see it) and you have to guess which song I’m “singing.” It’s supposed to be funny, so my feelings are not going to be hurt if you laugh. In fact, I hope you do laugh… with me, of course, not at me.
In honor of Halloween, the first is a Halloween song… well, sort of. If you know it, say you know it, but don’t tell us the song. I’ll reveal that later. Your prize will be a warm fuzzy feeling. You’re welcome!
Gettin’ My Groove Back
I have a confession. For the last couple of months I’ve been a complete lazy ass when it comes to working out. Rob, on the other hand, has been riding his bike like a son of a bitch. I don’t really know that sons of bitches ride their bikes a lot, but that’s what I mean when I say he’s been riding like one. He has been training for a 24 hour mountain bike relay race. I know, it sounds awful, right? Knowing that he was going to have to ride like 45 off-road miles in a 24 hour period (read: laps in the middle of the freezing cold night), motivated him big time though. He completed the race and did awesome. This is all while his wife that is 16 years younger (yes people, we are really 16 years apart) chose to spend hours looking at pictures of beach houses online. Ok, I’m being too hard on myself. I also worked a lot, cleaned my house and hung out with my niece. But still. How embarrassing for me!
So now I need to get serious. Remember how I said big changes are about to take place in my life? Well, I don’t want to look like a fat turd when those changes happen. Which is why we bought twin spin bikes! Aren’t they pretty?
I’m confident that having Mr. ‘I Ride Like a Son of a Bitch’ next to me is totally going to help.
October Ramblings
Have you noticed how shitty I am about writing blogs? Do you see why I need to make changes in my life so that I have time to write blogs? Please send an email to my husband letting him know that if this blog is ever going to turn into something, changes must be made. His email address is… Never mind. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t respond to emails. Or text messages for that matter. What is it about certain people and text messaging anyway? My mother, for example, is the world’s worst texter. I’m almost positive she has never texted me anything longer than 4 letters. Like recently I sent her a text asking if she could feed our cat for a couple of days while we’re out of town. She is a great cat-sitter. Shitty texter though. Her response was “sure.” I added the period for grammatical reasons, but she did not. Now, “sure” is not a terrible answer, but I would have done something like, “Sure, no problem!” I always think it’s important to use lots of punctuation and happy words in texts and emails so that people are sure of your tone. I mean unless of course you are trying to tell them you hate them.
Anyway, I then figured out we only needed her to feed the cat one day, so I sent her another text (perhaps I suck at calling?) telling her that. Her response this time was, “fine.” Again, no punctuation. I know she didn’t intend for her response to sound mean, but “fine” sounds so mean, right? Like, “Fine, I guess. I really don’t want to feed your stupid cat, but I will if I have to.” I’ll have to work on this with her. Mom, if you’re reading this, I can help you.
In addition to people that are less-than-stellar texters, I know you won’t be surprised to know that I’m unhappy with the weather today. I know, I know, I always talk about the weather and how it is not to my liking. I’m just saying that it’s pretty lame when I have to turn on my seat warmers (thank God for seat warmers!) on October 5th. Why did I have to turn on my seat warmers? Because it’s fucking cold. How cold? Less than 40 degrees cold. My car does this thing when it hits 39 degrees or below where it dings and has a picture of a snowflake next to the temperature reading. It totally pisses me off. It’s not a mean ding but quite a dainty chime if you will. It still pisses me off. GIANT snowflakes fell today! Look at this picture of the mountains.
I saw three different accidents in a 15 minute drive this afternoon. I’m sure it wasn’t just because of the snow. It could have also been because of the “severe dropoff.” Yep, that’s what a sign said on the freeway when I was driving. Holy scare tactic! Severe dropoff? Like, “Drive careful or you will fall hundreds of feet to your death.” Road construction in Utah is seriously awesome.
Oh, and as a final rambling, I’d like to put a call to action out there to all you keyboard users. I mean computer keyboard users. If you have one and use it, CLEAN IT ONCE IN AWHILE! We had an office cleanup at work and I was horrified by the state of people’s keyboards. How can people actually feel OK about typing on a keyboard with six years of food dried to it? It’s unhealthy and wrong.
Something’s Gotta Give
Have you ever seen this movie… “Something’s Gotta Give?” If you haven’t, see it simply to drool over the beach house in it. Seriously people, it really is beautiful and something I dream about owning on a daily basis.
That movie is totally not what this blog is about, however. It just happens to have the same title. Something does have to give in my life though. And… I’m pretty sure I know what it is. I’m just not quite ready to make the leap. I know that everyone is busy, but I honestly feel like I could be working in some way every waking moment of the day and would still not be able to get it all done. I feel as if my life requires every minute to be scheduled. Like I’m saying, “Ok, I have exactly 1 hour to have fun.” I most certainly don’t have time to wait in line at the drive thru at Chick-Fil-A. Do you know how many people in Utah will wait in line though? I was driving past the other day at lunch and there were a crazy amount of cars lined up and I thought to myself, dude, people must really dig Chick-Fil-A.
Sorry, tangent. I just find it fascinating how many people like that place. I have managed some small getaways the last couple of weekends. Yes, “scheduled” fun. Rob and I spent a night last weekend in Heber and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We went on the coolest bike ride down farm roads with zero traffic and super cute animals. I swear the air is fresher up there. Not that it’s hard to find fresher air that what currently lingers over Salt Lake City. Have you noticed the signs on the freeway warning of the bad air quality? On Monday it would say, “Bad air quality Monday and Tuesday. Drive less.” Then, on Tuesday they would change it to “Bad air quality Tuesday and Wednesday…” etc., etc. Finally, they must have been like fuck it, let’s just change it to “today.” Which is what it’s been ever since.
This past weekend was a camping trip at the HOA. Remember the HOA? That place is like a community on top of a mountain, which is very cool. My mornings usually start with my adorable, yet rotten niece screaming at the top of her lungs, “Aunt Sooooonie! Wake up!” This is generally around 5:00am. The day can end any number of ways. Sometimes with handstands. Sometimes with inappropriate comments around the fire. This time it ended with men trying to climb a ladder, a ladder they were holding with their own two hands. And one of them was like, “If you fall, it’s not like you’re falling that far.” Uhhh right, except if you fall you also have a 10 foot ladder faling with you… possibly on you.
So, that’s where I’m at. Stay tuned for some announcements hopefully in the near future. If nothing else, I’ll check back in with some random thoughts.
Falling Apart
If you read the title of the blog and felt worried about my marriage, you can breathe a sigh of relief. We’re not falling apart; our stuff is falling apart. I mean we were almost falling apart when we remodeled our kitchen, but we got past that. Now, we’re forking out big bucks to fix a bunch of shit.
First, our coffee machine, our $300 coffee machine, works intermittently. The intermittence usually occurs at 6:00am when if you don’t get your cup of coffee within the first 5 minutes of waking up, you may start killing people. It’s under warranty, but in order to get it fixed we would have to send it far, far away. And then what? Instant coffee? Isn’t there a coffee repairman nearby that wants to fix it? Ok, so we haven’t actually spent any money on the coffee maker yet, but we have spent time. And time is money, right? Right.
The second thing that broke happens to be a very expensive thing. You see, I like nice things. There, I said it. I do. I like luxurious vacation getaways, adore all Pottery Barn furnishings and happen to love expensive-to-fix cars. On Saturday my Volkswagen Touareg alarmed me with a triple beep on a short drive. And honest to God, the beep (triple, remember) was so loud that I thought the car was telling me that death was imminent. The tri-beep, as I refer to it now, was also accompanied by a message on the screen which read, Coolant Overheating. Awesome. We took it to our mechanics that work only on VW’s, Audis and BMW’s. Unfortunately they said it was, “over their heads.” Which meant…. (tears)…. we had to take it to the dealership. Are you ready for this? We needed a new thermostat. Right, you’re thinking, But thermostats are like $20, maybe $80 on a VW. True. However, the thermostat in a Touareg is buried behind the timing belt and the water pump. If you don’t know much about cars, just know that this is the stupidest fucking idea anyone ever had! Guess how much it cost me? Higher. $1,400!
Third, I was surprised when I went to put the laundry in the dryer and was greeted with clothes sitting in a pool of water. The washing machine decided that it no longer wanted to operate the spin cycle. Luckily, there is a repairman for washing machines. Unluckily (this can be a word if I say it’s a word), he charged us $250.
So, that’s what we’ve been doing with the oodles of extra cash we have lying around. Oh wait, we don’t have oodles of cash lying around. Dammit!
On the bright side, something we spent our money on recently that actually made me happy rather than on the verge of extreme violence was the Adele concert. If you are not familiar with Adele, GET FAMILIAR! She was absolutely amazing to watch live. What was not amazing to watch live was the nasty ass dude in front of us that was grinding his girlfriend all night. Oh, and there may have been some anger about people walking all over our blanket all night. No one was punched or anything though, so it’s all good!
Peeps in the Hood
We have lived in our house for over six years now and we know two and a half neighbors. The half is the lady across the street who I think is named Becky, who we’ve talked to maybe four times. She’s totally nice and one time showed me her sweet glass art in the garage, but I’m only counting her as a half since we don’t exchange treats at Christmas. The other neighbors we know are the crazies across the street and the couple we should be friends with two houses down. In case you need a refresher, you can find it here. Right, we are complete shit at socializing with the people that live around us.
What we discovered last night, however, is that if you light fireworks in front of your house, neighbors will flock to you. Well, let me be more specific. If you light fireworks after the legal date you’re supposed to light fireworks, neighbors will flock to you. It might not be the most pleasant of interactions, but at least it’s an interaction. The first neighbor that approached I can honestly say we’ve never seen in our lives. I mean we’ve never seen him leaving in his car, mowing the lawn (oh wait, that’s because they have a brick front yard instead of grass) or getting the mail. And, our first interaction started out a bit rough. First of all he crossed the street with a purpose, headed straight for us. When he got right in front of us, the conversation went like this:
Rob: “Hey man, how’s it goin’?”
Neighbor (in a nasal tone): “Not good!”
Rob: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. How come?”
Neighbor: “Well, my dog’s a wreck. People have been lighting off fireworks for over a month now. We put up with it until now, but it’s past the date.”
Me: “Oh, we thought today was the last day.”
Neighbor (super nasaly): “Nope! The dates were from the 26th of June to the 26th of July.”
Rob (killing him with kindness): “Where do you live? I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
Neighbor: “Just across the street over there.”
Rob: “Well, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Rob.”
Neighbor (walking towards Rob): “I’m Dave.”
What’s so cool about Rob’s approach is that he basically forced this guy to be nice. Mr. “not good” was suddenly shaking all of our hands and was all like, “Well, if you only have one more, you may as well light it.” What is super awesome though is that the last firework was super duper annoying. It did that loud whistling sound that makes you want to kill people and a shit ton of popping. Oops!
The second neighbor that approached was the one next door. Yes, that’s right, we don’t even know the neighbor that lives right next door to us. Give us some slack though, they’ve only been there for like two months. This neighbor was warning Rob that the police showed up at their house within like five minutes when they started doing fireworks the night before. Guess who probably called them? Mr. “not good” most likely. Dude has had enough!
So, we now know like 3 neighbors (I’m only giving the new guys quarter status at the moment). I mean we’ll probably never talk to them again but whatever. I’m still counting it.
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