"I will sell this house today. I will sell this house today..."

I knew that when we listed our home for sale in late May, it would be an exercise in patience. You may be thinking, "Wait a minute, I thought you sold your house already?" Well, we did. In fact, the first day we listed it, we had an offer within about four hours. My eternal pessimist knew that offer was just waaaaaaay too good to be true because quite frankly, it was too good to be true and I really don't feel like re-hashing the details of its demise because a) it was infuriatingly stupid, b) the buyer was an unreasonable douche, c) my life never works that easy and d) it was infuriatingly stupid. But, to make a long story short, the buyer canceled because she was/is completely leotarded. (P.S. I hope the house she eventually buys has a latent termite problem.) At any rate, this was not one of those gratifying sort of "I told you so" moments.

So, here we are, back on the old MLS again. Showing activity has been relatively plentiful and we still have ample time before we're scheduled to move into our next place in November. Eventually, "the one" will stop by and fall in love with it, but until then, I'm doing my very best not to smother Brent with a pillow in the middle of the night because you can only imagine how unbelievably uptight he has been throughout this whole process. GAWD. Okay, we all know we're talking about me here and not him, but admittedly, we're both getting tired of keeping this place showroom clean and the minute we have a confirmed buyer, all three of us are going to mess up all the toilets in a colossal way and not clean them because it will be beyond liberating.

This whole selling process reminds me so much of why I can relate to Annette Bening's character in American Beauty, which is hands down one of the best movies ever. I've expressed my feeling of kindredness with her character before, but usually in the context of her completely awesome mental breakdown scene.  At any rate, I'm something like this as we prepare for every showing, except we do not have a swimming pool and if we did, you can bet your ass I'd have it looking like a tropical oasis.

In the meantime, I know our story will eventually have a happy ending and not an American Beauty ending. Our house will sell and we'll finally move into the home we've been dreaming of all our lives. Brent will likely not get popped in the head by a deranged teenager and I have no plans of sleeping with Buddy Kane, the "King" of real estate, though if we get desperate enough heading into October, well, who knows...

Just humor me for a second...

My colleague and friend, Leah, explained the significance of a tattoo on her wrist that I'd never seen before. That spurred a conversation about tattoos and though I think tattoos are pretty awesome, I'm so non-committal about things, I don't see myself ever getting inked. Also, I'm not a huge fan of needles or pain and I get tired of things really quickly. I could see myself regretting the tattoo after about a month. (Maybe that's why people get the ol' tramp stamp? Out of sight, out of mind?)

This is just for the sake of nonsense, but you MUST choose from one of the following tattoos. Again, if you want to participate, you must choose from the options below. If you don't like this game, well too bad - it's my game and I said so, so just pick something and move on:

1. A little tiny swastika in the middle of your forehead (just an itty bitty one)
2. Two or three tear drops near your eye (left or right eye; like I care, it's your face)
3. The famous "cat butt" tattoo
4. The phrase "Meaningful Chinese saying" in Chinese on your mid-lower back
5. Your current significant other's name in any visible location
6. A giant "W" on each butt cheek

I think your choice will say a lot about you.  These are your only options.  If you choose something else, you're just not following very basic instructions and that signifies that you're a loser.  Thanks for playing.

Like a Boss!

At dinner tonight, Caleb asked me, "Mom, are you a boss?" I replied, "Yes, I suppose so," though I'm really not a fan of the word "boss" because I immediately envision someone sitting behind a desk barking orders at people and just acting, well...bossy. I'm not ruling out that I'm like that, but I like to think otherwise and I guess it's not up to me to be the final judge on that one. (Co-workers, feel free to weigh in. I'm a big girl; I can take it.)

Anyhow, Caleb continued to ask if as a boss, I "get to fire people."  I explained that while terminating someone from a job is part of being a boss, it's never fun because generally people's jobs mean a lot to them and losing one's job puts people in a difficult position (even if they played a role in losing their job, which usually they do!)  The obvious footnote here is when people don't care about their job because they've just won the Powerball or they're just apathetic and well, quite frankly, I try to not hire people with that kind of lousy attitude. In other words, letting someone go is part of the job, but it is neither fun nor is it a privilege. In all honesty, I've never once enjoyed letting someone go.

Caleb showed me what kind of boss he would be given the opportunity. This first picture is him sitting behind what can only be his giant mahogany desk someday.  Note the feet up and arms in the relaxed position, but the "boss scowl" that puts everyone on notice that he means business.

This next picture is his best "termination face."  More specifically, he is yelling, "You're $%*ing fired!!  Get out of my office!" (He didn't actually swear when he played out his little simulation, but let's be honest - this kid is going to have a filthy, filthy mouth one day.  We all know that to be true.)

Look, I don't know where he learns this shit because I certainly do not come home bragging about firing people, nor have I ever let someone go in such a heartless, cold manner. For starters, I reminded him that he'd better start toeing the line at school and stop getting yellow, red and blue card flips for behavioral mishaps or HE'S going to be the one on the firing line. As his parents, Brent and I will continue working on that, but we should all hope we don't end up working for this little tyrant one day.

"Back to school, back to school, to prove to my dad that I'm not a fool..."

Caleb's perception of Mr. Vetsch, his elementary school principal:

"I don't really ever see the principal. I think Mr. Vetsch is in his office watching the news and eating banana wraps all day. Sometimes he pauses his shows and stops eating his bananas to make some announcements, but then he goes right back to the TV and his banana wraps." 

Who knows if this is accurate or not, nor do I have any idea what a banana wrap is, but today was probably a big day for bananas and very unfortunate news. For this reason, let me offer you this somewhat random distraction from today's events.

If Caleb is anything like me, he will see the principal's office soon enough. Having a child in elementary school reminds me of some of the more inexplicable, embarrassing and strange memories I have from my early adolescence. Here is a small sampling:

Pass the glue, please.
Remember those little bottles of Elmer's paste? Don't ask me why, but I remember eating an extraordinary amount of that paste in kindergarten and genuinely liking it. I scooped it out with a tongue depressor or my index finger and just ate it for no good reason. (I was fond of the glue, too and would readily eat that if it was within closer reach.) I do NOT; however, remember learning anything useful in kindergarten. I'm sure I wasn't reading until sometime late in 1st grade and I certainly wasn't learning a foreign language. Could've been the paste and glue consumption, but I don't remember doing much of anything except making shitty crafts, napping, playing and singing songs.


Labels are important.
There was this 6th grade picnic at Alexander Park to celebrate the end of the school year and the end of "elementary school." It was a Friday. I distinctly remember it was a Friday and here's why. 
Earlier in the year, I had received a simply adorable package of "Day of the Week" underpants. After a while, I wasn't all that strict about wearing Monday undies on Monday and so on an so forth and on this particular day - a day when someone decided to "pants" me down to my ankles in front of several of my classmates - I was wearing the Sunday undies. I was thankful that the school year was mostly over, followed quickly by a long summer break with a transition to the junior high school, because by the time fall rolled around, most people had forgotten to tease me about my alleged failure to change my underwear on a regular basis.

At any rate, I think this traumatic event is a reason for my obsessive attention to detail and why I refuse to wear undergarments with any sort of distinct labels or markings. Plain and non-descript is the way to go if you're looking to get an extra day or two out of your drawers, folks. 


Some nuns are evil.
At first, I labeled this paragraph "Nuns are evil," but broad generalizations are unfair and I do recall a kind nun or two from my brief two-year stint in Catholic school. Unfortunately, it's the mean ones that really left a mark, both figuratively and literally. I won't delve into all of the events that led to these nuns taking out their pent up, hostile aggressions on me, but I remember certain nuns grabbing me with their sharp talon-like nails and leaving marks in my arms, yanking me by my ear lobes and doing other things to humiliate me like making me sit behind the classroom door for time-outs. Seriously, what the hell? Is that what they used to teach nuns in the nunnery? No wonder I gave up Catholicism for Lent one year and never turned back. 


My whole class was a giant asshole. 
This memory is actually just one gigantic recollection that spans from about the 4th through the 6th grades and really implicates my entire class at Washington Elementary School. Any Washington Elementary alums reading this are free to either agree or disagree, but I distinctly remember us making a few teachers completely lose their shit (Mr. Jaeger, Mr. Gora, Mrs. Knack, Mrs. Holmblad). I also recall a physical altercation between some of the students and the poor principal. Mr. Burgdorf, rest his soul, must have taken an unprecedented break from the news and his banana wraps that day, but I won't ever forget that incident and thinking, "Man, this class is a real bunch of assholes."

(Note: I looked all over for a 6th grade class picture.  No luck.  Anybody have one?  Send it to me, please.)


I'm going to abruptly stop here because I'm tired and well, it's my blog, so I will stop whenever I damn well please, but I do hope Caleb has some normal memories of his childhood. I'm also grateful that Elmer's has largely done away with old school glue and paste in exchange for glue sticks. (They taste horrible, too.)

Good night!

Warning: TMI

I have a habit of ending up in rather deep personal conversations with people on a regular basis and I am often times surprised by how quickly these conversations erode to a level that is not only juvenile, but downright disturbing (albeit hilarious).

A common theme will typically involve some discussion of bodily functions as just one example. If discussing such matters is beneath you, well - steer clear of me. Pooping and farting are absolutely on the table (no, not literally, you dumb ass) for open debate and discussion. Yes, there are aspects of pooping and farting worthy of debate and that may even be controversial. Not controversial in a "guns don't kill people, people kill people" sort of way, but more lighthearted in nature, of course.

Like earlier today, I chatted with a distant colleague and friend who I've known since kindergarten about bathroom etiquette in the office. He had just exited the men's room feeling somewhat embarrassed by his failure to hold back a sudden "splurge" of uncontrollable #2 and was sure that the other man in the restroom was likely grossed out. I told him I thought guys were kosher with this sort of thing in the men's room because quite frankly, my boss' office is right on the other side of the men's room and damn, I've heard some of the horrifying sounds that have reverberated through that wall. No one appears to be holding back anything and I'm eternally grateful I can't associate those sounds with the faces of my male counterparts around the office or I'd never get anything accomplished at work ever again.

I went on to explain that my perception and experience is that most women will play the waiting game with each other and try to outlast the woman/women in the neighboring stalls until they have the place to themselves. I've personally played this game before and have sat on the can doing essentially nothing while I've waited for the woman next door to just get the hell out of there. If you "win" the game, you might get a full minute or two to yourself where you can quickly do your business and carry on with your day like a proper lady who never poops.  If you "lose" this game, you walk around feeling and looking like you might burst all day long until you get home where you run inside and well, explode with relief. At any rate, he thought this was really fucking weird and that I'm weird and in researching this more, I've come to learn this is an actual condition and it is shared by both men and women, so there.

Okay, wow, TMI? Yep. I sure didn't start this post with the intention of sharing all that. In fact, I meant to reference a different conversation I just had about 20 minutes ago that started on the topic of relationships, men and women, and dating and somehow concluded with us discussing clown porn. For the record, search Google for "clown porn" and go to the images. What the living hell is wrong with people? If I die and anyone looks at our home computer, I guess I will take full credit for all of the demented search terms in our Google history to spare Brent the shame of having to admit he was curious about clown porn. I may as well because I wouldn't be here to care or defend myself anyhow. I did; however, find it suspect how quickly it auto-filled the search. Hmmm....

Looking back at the beginning of this post, I did initially mention that I often get into deep personal conversations with people. So fine, the two conversations above don't seem to fairly represent what I mean, but rest assured, I've had very meaningful conversations with both of these people. I can't help that both of them share the common thread of being psychologically disturbed. Yes, I'm definitely blaming this on a shared coincidence between the two of them and not some other common denominator, like me being part of both those warped conversations.

Denial is good.

Freud surely has better things to do.

Hello blog.  I didn't forget about you.  I've just been feeling blue for quite some time and have had nothing to say that hasn't been depressing or angst-ridden.  I think this funk is clearly the result of this miserable winter that will not end.  Or maybe it's the recent series of unanticipated events that led to mass destruction within our home or the never-ending list of unfinished tasks at my job and the perpetual feeling of being behind on everything all the damn time.  It could be any of these things, but when I feel this way, I have no desire to leave a mark here because being sad is boring.  Being boring sucks. Sucking at stuff sucks and I hate sucking at stuff.

Speaking of boring, that reminds me of a dream.  Which dream?  Like 97% of all my dreams actually.  My dreams are excruciatingly boring.  I have shared the following dream with a few people, but here's an example of just what I mean by "boring."  So, I'm at Cub Foods.  There's a sale on tangerines.  I know this because there's a sign above the tangerines that says "SALE" with a reduced listed price.  I grab some tangerines, throw them in my cart, pick up a few other items and proceed to the register.  The cashier rings up my tangerines at full price, which I immediately question and then we proceed to have a cordial debate over the sale sign and whether it's intended for the tangerines or the oranges.  Both of us make good points about the applicability of the sale, but I feel I make more compelling arguments about the confusing placement of the sign seemingly equidistant between the tangerines and oranges and that from the angle where I stood when I was in front of the fruit section, it was closer to the tangerines, which also makes me wonder about the real difference between tangerines and oranges...

If anyone completely tuned out for that entire paragraph above to go do something else like floss one's teeth or close the window entirely, I wouldn't blame you in the least.  The sad part is that I left out a lot of the finer details like the listed sale price and that the sign was mysteriously suspended above the fruit in mid-air and what I provided above were actually "the highlights."  If you loop that sequence of events 39 more times and slow it down so that each time it happens it takes about 15 minutes, you'll have some sense of what it's like to be in my dream state.  Seriously.  I wake up and wonder why these dreams can't even have something crazy going on off to the side.  Like, why can't the cashier be someone famous, hot and naked or why can't there be some circus clowns performing lewd acts on a goat by the popsicles (or with the popsicles)?  Something, anything.  I know the demented, twisted potential of my mind so these dreams are painfully weak and just unacceptable.  Subconscious, throw me a freakin' bone here.

I can't actually remember the last time I had a dream that was even remotely interesting. When I share my dreams with Brent, his typical reaction (if he can even stay with me long enough to endure the lame details) is "Well?!?" and I confirm that actually everything I described above with the orange and tangerine sale confusion was "it."  I don't even get full closure for christ's sake.  I just keep going back to the miserable tangerine display and throwing a few tangerines in the cart and the same boring sequence repeats itself over and over and over until the alarm goes off and it's time for actual life shit to get real.

I like to think my conscious life is more interesting than how life plays out in my dreams, but lately, life has felt like nothing more than a tangerine sale at the grocery store except all the tangerines are rotten and infested with larvae.  When we return from next week's vacation in Mexico, I'm hoping the sunshine will restore my mood and I can resume blogging with some energy and enthusiasm.  In the meantime, I'm sort of tired now and I'm craving an orange.  I hope there's a good sale tonight.

Sweet dreams and think spring, everyone...

When are you planning on...shutting your face?

At least once or twice a month, someone asks me when/if I'm planning on having another baby because people just do not seem to be satisfied with the fact that Brent and I have an only child. I know that every human being on the planet can relate to some form of questioning about when they plan to reach the next logical milestone in their lives that they obviously haven't reached yet. Single people need to date.  Dating couples need to get married. Married people need to get knocked up and people with kids need more kids and more kids, etc. Everyone asking these questions really just needs to shut the hell up because people inevitably have good answers and the reasons all begin with, "No. Because it is none of your fucking business, that's why," and maybe they end with a tragic or completely disgusting explanation that would make you wish you'd never even asked in the first place. Did you ever consider that possibility?

Most of the time when I hear this line of inquiry, it's in an elevator. No one, especially Minnesotans, likes silence in the elevator, so we will fill the air with nervous or mundane conversation. (This totally reminds me - ask Brent to tell you about the time he purposefully farted in an elevator in Las Vegas.  Hilarious story.) I know I've been guilty of striking up mundane conversations myself, but I generally try to avoid the "When are you planning on [insert thing the person hasn't done yet]?," unless I'm intoxicated or you're ridiculously attractive (then I will ask you a lot of stupid things that are none of my business).

Someone asked me the "When are you going to have more kids?" question today and I know she meant well, but seriously. Look, I think my kid is incredibly freakin' awesome. He's clearly my best "unplanned enormous life event that resulted from too much alcohol and poor judgment about my birth control choices" ever and I wouldn't change a single thing in my history if it meant voiding his existence, but we are sooooo good with one and quite frankly, I think he is SOOOOOO good with being "the one and only." He gets our undivided attention and as we've explained to him, "You can't have as many toys and you can't go on cool vacations if we have to buy diapers for a baby." Yes, we really have told him that because it's absolutely 100% true.

Like for instance, instead of us taking him to Tulum this March, we'd be mapping out a road trip across South Dakota. I don't have anything against South Dakota. In fact, our family road trip to South Dakota is one of two major vacations Family Keilen took back in the day. Yeah, we did the whole Wall Drug, Black Hills thing. I do recall getting in a wee bit of trouble on that vacation for spending my meager allowance on the infamous "Truly Tasteless Jokes" book.  I think I was maybe 10 or 11 years old at best and I was secretly reading the jokes to my younger brother, Josh, who would've been 6 or 7 if my memory serves me correctly. Anyhow, my mom discovered the book and shit got real after that. I remember her lighting into me something serious and then one of my parents made me discard the book in the dumpster behind the hotel. Then, they lectured me relentlessly about what a sick individual I was to find those sorts of things funny and I felt ashamed and awful (and I bet they dug that book out of the dumpster and were laughing at it later on after we went to bed), but now that I think about all this, I fucking hate South Dakota. And clearly, mom and dad, that book did NOT ruin me like you said it would!  Look at how awesome and normal I turned out.

And so, if anyone ever asks me again why I'm not planning on having anymore children, the reason is South Dakota.