SarahWurrey.com

It’s possible that I’ve quit smoking.

It’s been over a month since I’ve had one, and just about 2 months, I think, since I’ve smoked more than one or two. I can’t even remember, actually. So it’s possible that I’ve quit. As I wrote last year, the thought of quitting smoking seemed like some unbearable punishment. Mostly because, as everyone knows, smoking is awesome. (Remember kids, don’t smoke! Because it’s awesome, so you will never, ever be able to stop, and then you’ll end up accidentally essploding your oxygen tank, like happened in that one episode of that hospital show I saw that time, with the doctors who make out in supply rooms all up against the sterile equipment and stuff. Gross, doctors!)

My reasons for quitting can be boiled down thusly:

1) The awesomeness tax that has swept the nation has caused the price of a single pack of smokes to skyrocket to approximately $147. I could buy a ticket on Southwest for that, and go to Phoenix or something!

2) People hate awesomeness. They don’t let you smoke, anywhere. Not even at outdoor bars, where it is acceptable to smoke only if you get up out of your chair and take one large step to the left, to the other side of the invisible smoke forcefield.

3) My boyfriend made me.

Number three is highly problematic for a fire-breathing dragon-lady feminist like myself. It requires many rationalizations, such as:

1) Is smoking really worth fighting for as a feminist sticking point? Well, of course it is, if you really think about it, but on the surface: no.

2) I have a chit to cash in whenever I feel like it!

“I gave up smoking for you, and you can’t even shut the shower curtain after your shower? Well, I nevah!!!!”

3) I’m certainly not doing anything else that I started doing when I was 17. Do I have Leonardo DiCaprio pictures on my wall? Do I wear tie-dye shirts and Birkenstocks and flannel shirts every day? (What? It was the 90s!) Do I listen to Smashing Pumpkins albums on repeat, searching for hidden messages sent straight from Billy Corgan to my damaged teenage soul?

No, no, and BWAAHAHAHAH, no. So why am I still smoking?

Of course, now that I’ve written this blog I will no doubt set out to chain smoke at my earliest convenience, having irrevocably jinxed my chances of making this hiatus permanent. I’ll let you know.

Okay, lucky for him, Jon does not snore all the time.

Okay, that’s not true he totally does. But, lucky for him, he does not snore so loudly that it keeps me awake all the time. When he does? It’s World War 3 in Casa Wurrey.

“Honey. HONEY.”
“Whuh?”
“You’re SNORING.”
“Oh.”
“HONEY.”
“WHAT?”
“YOU’RE DOING IT AGAIN.”
“(mumble mumble)”
“GAAAGHGHGHG!”

There’s really not much a person can do. I usually refrain from Option A (pillow violence) and head straight for Option B (resentful couch sleeping). Why doesn’t HE sleep on the couch, you ask?

“Why don’t YOU go sleep on the couch?”
“Why should I? You’re the one who can’t sleep.”
“…rrrrrrr…”
“What are you doing with that pillow? GAAAGHGH!”

And the worst part of all of it is that no matter what the infomercials tell you, there is NO cure for snoring. None. No, none.

“Those nose strips though!”

No. Those nose strips are very useful if one has a cold and can’t breathe well. They are also very useful in taping one’s nose back to make pig faces (not that I’ve done that). What they are not useful for is snoring. Just stop saying that when you know it is not true.

“What about that spray?”

Dr. Franks has an epic moustache. He also sells an “arthritis spray.” This man is very pro-spray. But if it worked, he wouldn’t hock it via infomercial and cheesy website.

One thing I do like about Dr. Franks and other anti-snoring infomercials is that they are clearly employing actresses who know exactly what it’s like to sleep next to a jet engine. This lady’s Faces of Exasperation and Requisite Pillow Violence are spot-on. Get this chick a guest-starring role on “Two and a Half Men.” She’s just that good.

(What? That would be a big step up from a Snoring Infomercial actress.)

I present to you, the Five Stages of Pillow Violence, courtesy of the “Z-Quiet Snoring Cure” commercial:

Stage One: Yep, He’s Snoring Again

Stage Two: Attempt to Stop it Via Evil Side-Eye

Stage Three: Resentment Builds, More Side-Eye

Stage Four: Futile Attempts at Rage Control

Stage Five: PILLOW VIOLENCE!!!!

I’ve only resorted to pillow violence a couple of times. Normally I try to just gently place a pillow onto his face to muffle the sound. This technique is met with the same amount of anger as if I’d decided to solve the issue by beating him with a pillowcase full of hot nickels, so I’ve abandoned that as well.

Good thing I love my couch. Almost as much as I love him.

(Awww.)

You know that dread in the pit of your stomach you feel whenever you get the dreaded Facebook alert email? “So and So has tagged you in 6 horrible awful hideous fat ugly pictures!”

Take that feeling and multiply it by fifty, and you’ll know what it’s like to date my boyfriend. His inexplicable love for some of the worst photos of me ever on record defies all laws of attraction. If I were him, and I uploaded all those pictures to Facebook, I’d go out of my way to not point out to the world that the ones appearing to be of Jabba the Hut’s less attractive twin sister are actually of my significant other.

Exhibit A:

Seriously, what is wrong with him? He put this on Facebook and tagged it, as ME.

I mean, seriously, I could not hit de-tag fast enough. Granted, I am now claiming the picture as my own by placing it on my blog for the world all three of my readers to see, but I had to prove my point here. Hopefully this public plea will prevent any of these photos from making their way online again. He can just frame them and display them in our home like some sort of god-awful temple full of Rosie O’Donnell look alikes.

While spending the last two days chained to my couch, being incredibly dramatic over my non-swine related head cold and rocking sweatpants and my gigantic WEEI long sleeved t-shirt, whose origins remain a mystery (this shirt is my favorite thing to lounge about in, and yet I have no idea how I came to own it), I’ve made several meaningful observations:

1) Despite the common notion that men whine like babies whenever they catch so much as the sniffles, the Chef has schooled my ass this week. He had the cold first, and basically acted like it was no big deal. I on the other hand, act as though I’m on my deathbed. Or, in this case, deathcouch. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s love when he still thinks you’re cute with a red nose, glassy eyes and couch hair.

2) That old “feed a cold, feed a fever” thing (yeah, I don’t do starving, have we met?) really just doesn’t work. The more cookies I eat, the more sick I end up feeling. It’s like, great, now I’ve got a head cold and a stomachache. Thanks, cookies.

3) When you have a friend in town for one night only who wants to go out, just go to the bar across the street. That way if you keel over, the couch is 50 yards away, and whiskey and NyQuil have very similar scientific makeup.

4) When delirious with cabin fever and dry mouth (caused by all the mouth breathing) (and all the cookies), don’t decide it’s a great idea to get “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past” On Demand. Just….don’t.

5) No matter how much you want them to taste good, those blue corn tortilla chips from Trader Joe’s will never taste good. Even with salt. Move on.

6) You know how when people who cannot sing do karaoke, they always make those lame excuses beforehand “Oh, you guys are in for it tonight!” or “Ohmigod, I can’t believe I let them talk me into this!”….well I do that with cooking. I made breakfast this morning, and it was a constant stream of excuses. It’s that way every time I cook, or really every time I allow anyone in my kitchen:

“Okay, this pancake might taste like bacon, becuase I only have one frying pan. It might also taste like burning, because that one frying pan kind of has scorched-on something or other on it. Also, the pancake itself is burnt, soooo. Yeah.”

“Okay, we can make dinner here, but first let me take all my dirty dishes out of the oven….What? I don’t have a dishwasher, and sometimes you need to get them out of the way!”

“Sorry about that container of ricotta cheese that’s six months old, every time I want to throw it away I have a fresh bag in the garbage, and if I threw it away it would reek!….What? The garbage chute is all the way down the hall!”

7) I can sew buttons! I have this fab red coat that, for reasons entirely unrelated to my corpulence since the coat is not too small AT ALL (no really!!!) lost almost all its buttons last fall. I decided to use two hours (yes, really) of my couch time today sewing them back on, and it totally came out well! I think! We’ll see!! I pricked three fingers, my leg twice, and my lips. But check me out, I am like, totally domestic.

8. No, I was really serious about “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.”

9) My cat keeps trying to get in the fridge. I am tempted to let him to teach him a lesson, but with my luck I’d forget he was in there and then I’d have to give him mouth-to-mouth like that “Punky Brewster” episode where Cherry got stuck in the old fridge that scared the bejesus out of me when I was 8:

Official Wurrey Helpful Bit of Advice, #237:

When dating someone who has to work ten days in a row until 1 in the morning, and therefore waiting around until 130 am for him to come over so you can see each other for a little bit before bed he totally goes home (hi, Mom!), and you start to worry that you’re going to be a zombie at work the next day, just remember this–

I’d do it, too. Damn, close-minded Republicans. We’ll be together someday, Dunkin.

Yes, I keep mentioning it, but I’m sorry, my delight in the fact that my boyfriend cooks for a living has yet to fade. Everyone I tell always seems duly impressed, and so far only my sister has mentioned that this fact could be a dangerous thing for the size of my already considerable booty. But I don’t care about that at this point.

The Food and I are in a honeymoon period. Soon, I will start to find The Food’s cute habits and overall deliciousness supremely annoying, and only then will I notice the booty issue.

Regardless, the whole undertaking has me thinking about which chefs–real and fictional–I like the best, besides the guy, of course. (With the possible exception of the Swedish Chef, who I really think comes in first ahead of just about everyone.)

5) Chef Louis – “The Little Mermaid”

He wins points for pure enthusiasm. Perhaps I should try singing to my food as I cook it, and my technique would improve.

4) Barth – “You Can’t Do That On Television”

Gotta respect a chef who has loyal customers despite making them puke their guts out in every episode–to say nothing of his dedication to filth so intense that he kills the health inspector and serves him in the burgers.

(Side note: YCDTOT was a dark show, y’all. Here’s another Barth clip I found. Sick!)

3) Julia Child

Julia rocked for a billion reasons well-documented by Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”. But this segment with a young David Letterman is sublime–beef tartare au gratin (raw hamburger meat with cheese melted with a blow torch) is something I’d probably end up making if I ever endeavored to cook. No one screwed up like Julia.

2) Chef – South Park

I believe this is self explanatory. (I’d put these up against Schweddy Balls any time.)

1) Swedish Chef – “The Muppet Show”

Bork bork bork!

Honorable Mentions: Casey Ryback (he uses his chef skills to make bombs, y’all) and Sookie from “Gilmore Girls” (her and Chef Louis should get together and have extremely enthusiastic half-human half-cartoon chef babies).

So here’s the thing, so people stop asking: No, I’m not doing the marathon thing anymore.

It was probably a shite idea from the start, let’s be honest. No one will my complete inability to give up happy hour and cigarettes (to say nothing of cheese and Skittles) (which go GREAT together) was ever really going to be able to do a marathon with only 6 months to train myself from Couch Champion to Marathon Staggerer.

With these daunting odds against me, about 3 months into my efforts (when I was up to pretty good mileage of 7 and 10 milers on the weekends), I hit a perfect storm contributing to my demise, broken down thusly:

a) Plantar Fasciitis, which I have illustrated in Fig. 1  (60% contributing factor in the quittage).

Fig. 1

b) A new relationship, which is a time-suck (albeit a terrific time-suck) (and with a damn chef for crying out loud, hard to work the motivation to run when you’re being served bacon-potato-cheese scrambles for breakfast, as in Fig. 2 (17% contributing to quittage).

Fig. 2

c) Supreme, total, and in every way laziness, which had been battled aside for a couple months when the mileage was low and I was riding high on all the rampant praise and support from friends (”You’re doing a marathon?? Oh my, I wish that I was that committed, I can hardly get out of bed in the mornings!”), but which has slowly taken hold, aided by couches and salty snacks  (23% contributing factor to quittage, as per Fig 3).

Fig 3.

Well, there you have it.

For what it’s worth, I’m going to think about paying the minimal fee to transfer my registration to next year. A marathon is still something I really want to do, since my sister seems to enjoy them so much, and believe it or not, I really do like running! I just was struck down in this particular effort.

Sigh.

You may begin shaming me.

I’ve learned that what happens when you don’t blog every day is that all the things that are awesome tend to pile up. I keep a running “Awesomeness List” to remind myself of what to blog about. I know I’ll never write up several separate posts–so how about a weekly Awesomeness Compilation?

Seven Things That Are Awesome This Week:

7) The Wearable Towel. Where to begin? This thing has the potential to put the Snuggie right out of business. Who doesn’t wear a “toga-style” towel to go get the paper in the morning?

I'm not naked, it's a TOGA.

6) Jezebel’s Celebrity Twitter Roundup – Where else would we learn the thrilling news that Miley Cyrus found her lucky bracelet in her, get this, car cupholder!

Well, thank God. Now I can sleep tonight!

5) My new boyfriend, who cooks. Like, for a living. (No, seriously.) Just don’t tell him I am using him for baked ziti and homemade bagels.

4) Speaking of the Snuggie, how did I not know it now has designer models?? I demand a zebra print deluxe Snuggie at once!

I wish my Snuggie were even uglier!

OMG! Ugly fairy dust!

Oooh, even uglier than I imagined!

Don’t get me wrong. I totally want one. Zebra print, people. Look, if they’re good enough for the Invisible Man, they’re good enough for me.

What, no argyle?

3) Jason Stackhouse in a gas mask, pretending to be Dionysus (I think?) so the mob of black-eyed zombies will give Sam enough time to turn into a housefly and escape from the crazy orgy meat lady. Ah, True Blood. Everything about True Blood qualifies for the Official List of Things That Are Awesome, but shirtless Jason Stackhouse with road flares and a tree branch for horns?

“Oh yes! He is the best offering ever!”

Yeah, this show is ridic.

2) While turning 30 next week is in the list of things that are decidedly NOT AWESOME; my 30th birthday party is this Friday night, and it involves karaoke. And karaoke? Is awesome.

1) Poodle Panda! Who is only outdone by Poodle Jack Sparrow.

What is wrong with people?

Dog bowl full of rum, arrr!

Facebook’s contextual ads are a constant source of amusement for me.

If I am on a good running kick, they make me feel good with constant ads for various running-related paraphernalia. If I am on my usual lazy-assedness kick, I get to feel crappy about myself with nearly constant ads of people with muffin tops claiming that Acai Berries saved their lives or some nonsense that cannot possibly be true.

(Side rant: I can’t understand people who fall for the latest “fad” in weight loss. If they ever actually DID discover some miracle that can actually make fatties thin, I’d be all over it, but so would every single reputable news organization in the WORLD. Odds are it would be backed by enough venture capital to buy and sell Jupiter, and wouldn’t, you know, require $50 a day Facebook ads to market it.)

I’m not sure what I said or posted that caused the above ads to pop up today, but I couldn’t resist a screen capture. First off, “Accepting Virginia Babies”? Into what? Why do I feel that people clicking on that ad will be encouraged to bring their babies to an un air-conditioned room at a Red Roof Inn to meet with a suspect “baby modeling agent” with a porn-stache?

Your baby has potential, baby.

Second, the obvious humor in the juxtaposition of a birth control ad and a “hey, you must have a baby!” ad totally killed me. To say nothing of immediately making me think of one of the best “Seinfeld” episodes ever.

Regardless, I will take sponges and babies any day over my usual ads, which tend to lean towards “You’re a dried up spinster with cobwebs in your womb, you’d better click here to find a guy pathetic enough to want to marry you, despite your obvious physical deformities!” any day.

I’m a big fan of Meg Fowler’s blog–she’s funny as hell and writes about interesting things, but she also does one of my favorite blog staples really well. List writing! I don’t know why, in the last couple weeks when I’ve been a bit tapped out for things to write about, I didn’t turn to list-making sooner.

Meg usually calls them “love lists,” so here’s a list, with full hat-tip to Ms. Fowler, of things I’m Loving This Lazy Saturday:

Corn Pops–I took some grief from a couple different people for mentioning eating Corn Pops in my Facebook status update. What’s wrong with Corn Pops? They’re delightful! Let me tell you something, I go on plenty of health kicks from time to time where I will only buy Kashi. If you have ever gathered up a bunch of twigs and pine needles to make a fire, except instead of making a fire, dumped them into a bowl and poured milk over them, then you know what Kashi tastes like. I reserve my right to corn pops!

Moving on with the rest of the list:

- Chipotle guacamole
- New bright green springy handbag from Target
- New living room chair! (Which is this one but with a totally different color pattern.)
- Convertible weather on the horizon
- Irish drinking songs
- Jameson
- Being Elaine
- Plans for summer
- Liz Lemon (yes, this is 9 minutes long, but WORTH it)

- Jack Donaghy

- The smell of fertilizer in my building’s courtyard (”stings the nostrils!” but means that soon there will be flowers)
- Pandora
- New Blackberry–still longing for an iPhone, but it’s an upgrade I am psyched about!
- Underdogs and Upsets
- Candles that smell like clean clothes (how do they DO that?)
- Back cracks (James, why do I have to do this alone? When are you done chiropractor school again? I need adjusting!)
- Scandalous behavior
- Rationalizations
- Coach Taylor:

- My mom, who came to see me while here on business, and agreed to split the cost of the chair so my living room would stop looking so barren!
- Breakup songs, for no reason in particular, as I’ve not been through one in a year. But I can’t stop listening to “More Like Her” on my iPod, make of that what you will. (Oooh, and “You’ll Think of Me“)
- Shooz
- The fact that there is a huge treasure trove of “fake ‘Lost’ opening credits” on YouTube that I only recently discovered. My fave:

(They also have “Veronica Mars” set to “Buffy” music, and while thinking of that, maybe I also present this, as I remain ever-hopeful that the VM movie WILL one day happen…le sigh.)