The last days of twentysomething

I came upon an alarming revelation yesterday as I was emailing a friend of mine. He and I have been trying to get together for a beer for a while. Attempted to get together last night, but he was too busy (me, I’m never busy unless I have social activities double-booked). So he suggested next Monday. Which made me look at the calendar. Epps! I will be 30 next Monday*! I should be out living it up this week, my last few days as a 20-something. But true to usual Erin fashion, I’m not. And Will is out racing all weekend, so I won’t even be living it up this weekend. Sucky!

What’s worse is that my birthday falls on a Monday. I’m pretty tempted to just take the day off (ensuring I have a good day). Or maybe just go to swim practice, work a half day, then leave at lunch…..

Then do I need to sit back and reflect on my 20’s, develop a plan for my 30’s? I’m not really the type to do resolutions at new years, so I doubt that doing this now is going to help me out. Besides, I have no idea what I’m doing next week normally, much less being able to plan out an entire decade. Maybe this should be a list of “things to look forward to in the next year”.

1 – must. get. new. job.

2 – camping in March at Big Bend Nat’l park, and not being too sick to do anything active (like last time we went)

3 – swimming at the USMS nationals event in Florida next May.

4 – hopefully taking the much-talked-about-and-little-acted-upon trip to New Zealand’s South Island over Thanksgiving.

See, lots of fun stuff! 30 is the new 20! or something like that.....

*sending me presents is completely optional

Critters and Lush

Found out what the "critter" in the bottom of the pool was.... turns out it was a huge rolled up Ace bandage. Which we all decided was still pretty icky. But not as icky as a bloated dead rat, I guess.

Got my Lush package last night. And well, um, its on the stinky side. Love my Snow Fairy shower gel - with its glitter and candy smell. Mmmmm.... My dusting powder scent is growing on me - its jasmine and vertivert. I don't think it smells that strong, but my swim team ppl did. My soft couer massage bar has potential, but it does smell really, really sweet. My Love Bug, well, lets just say I have it in a ziplock baggie and I can still smell the thing. It does have lovely golden sparkles. I just don't know about the scent. I'm hoping that it mellows out when I wear it. My freebies have potential. Two bubble bath bars, one in my Candy Fluff scent, and one is supposedly lavender (but all I could make out by that point was the stinky Love Bug). So we'll see if I like what I got. I'm thinking I will, its just a bit different than what I was expecting...

I am *dying* with anticipation

Hopefully when I get home from work today, I will finally have my package of goodies I ordered from lush waiting for me. I truly am a tad bit too excited. My friend got me the Rock Star soap, Candy Fluff dusting powder, and Melting Marshmallow Moments as a present last year. Love this stuff. But for some reason, never had the courage to order some on my own. Partially b/c its expensive - partially b/c there is so much to choose from and its overwhelming. And hard to pick things when you read what the ingredients are and you have no idea what they smell like. Such as neroli. What exactly is neroli?

For my first (of I'm sure many, many orders), I purchased 2 massage bars (one with glitter! the other with honey and chocolate!), another scented dusting powder, and a shower gel (pink! with glitter! that smells like my beloved Candy Fluff). And part of a promo deal, I get two mystery freebies. Combine the mystery freebies with the exceptionally long delivery time (15 days since I ordered.... which sadly is std since its handmade and comes from Vancouver), and I simply am dying for my order.

A statement you never want to hear during swim practice

From a swimmer in the fast lane (the opposite side of the pool from where I swim):

"Coach, there's a dead critter at the bottom of the pool. Can you hand me a flipper so I can remove it?"

Um, ewwwww. I'm so glad I own my own flippers so there's no chance of that dead-critter-retrieval-tool ever touching my feet. I don't even want to go there about the whole swimming in a pool with a dead critter thing. Or what kind of critter it was. Ew.

Beer chug swim relay results

First of all, I have three mystery bruises on the side of my left leg that really hurt. And my abs were sore for 2 days from doing those starts. Had to get my whining in first. Swam 8 events. Sounds bad, but it was really only 1x100, 2x50 and a bunch of 25s. Started with 100 back, which turns out, I haven’t swam since July 1994. Woo! I’d swam 50 back in meets in the past year, but not 100s. Turns out, I beat my estimated time (1:27 actual), so I was happy. Swam 50 breast, improved on that time. The rest were 25s or fun relays, so the times really don’t matter. Plus, they’re relay times, so they’re “off” by a few seconds anyways. FYI, I am one of those anal engineer types who has a spreadsheet tracking every event that I’ve swam since returning to swimming, complete with meters/yards conversions. I’ll try to post times next time I swim in a meet (mid-March maybe).

I did two “fun” relays. And by fun, I think it was more fun to watch from the sidelines than to participate.

First up, the sweatpants relay. As in you swim while wearing sweatpants. Then have to get out of the pool, strip, and have the next person put the wet sweatpants on. So dude jumps out of the water and strips the sweats off. I sit on the blocks and have two teammate guys in speedos wrestle with the ginormous wet sweatpants and my feet. My feet didn’t want to cooperate. Then I dive in. First thing that happens is the sweats fall down past my ass. So, I pull them up and swim the best I can while wearing XXL sweat pants. Get to the shallow end. The guys on that end YANK me outof the water by the shoulders and flop me sideways on the deck, then proceed to de-pants me. You know, that’s every girl’s dream, to be de-pantsed on deck by a bunch of balding men in speedos. I figured it was best just to lay there like a dead fish and let them have their way with me and the sweat pants.

Second fun relay – the much anticipated beer relay. Complete with Budweiser! Fortunately for me, I only had to consume half a can of the vile stuff. But man, just the smell reminds me of the time I was at a frat party in Missoula where there was 1” of beer on the basement floor. Ew. Anyways. Deal is, you have to chug your beer then sprint a 25. This old lady on my team kept telling me how to chug my beer. As if this would be a problem. If anything, when I am faced with having to consume crappy beer, the only option is to chug it, so you don’t really taste it. Besides, Bud is basically water, so its not like it was a big deal. So, I chugged, spilling a good portion of it down my face and on the deck (sooo glad I don’t swim at this pool normally or have to clean up – can you imagine the smell?). Then I sprint my 25 free. Let me just say that chugging icky beer then sprinting is really not the best thing for my stomach. I just felt ICKY after that.

Wherin I do my impression of a flopping beached whale

Relay meet is tomorrow. So, we spent half of practice doing relay starts. Pretty entertaining really, as one of my friends hasn’t done a start off the blocks in oh, 25 yrs. I’m certain we were a graceful bunch. Confirmation is from all the red marks on my upper thighs (regular start) and back (backstroke start) from my body smacking the water. And all the bruises I’m sure I will have tomorrow from me scraping my shin as I climbed out of the pool (I hate using the ladder) and on my arm from when I smacked my arm against the block as I was not-so-gracefully climbing out of the pool.

Hey, at least my goggles stayed on!

The Shayla ate my baby

There is something you must know about my husband. He can take any real life event and turn it into a Seinfeld episode, complete with a quote from the show.

So last night we went to the friendly neighborhood pub for the regular Thursday Subaru happy hour. (And on a side note, I was going to post a pic of my newly painted fingernails, inspired by Aarwenn, but well, it was either take a pic of my nails or drink $3 Boddingtons. Sorry blog-world, the Boddington’s won. And now every finger is chipped from swim practice, which serves as a reminder of WHY I normally don’t paint my fingernails.). We sit down and notice that our waitress isn’t completely there. I nicknamed here GED, as I’m sure that’s about as far as she got. Nice girl, but not really there. It was her 4th day on the job. And we knew that she was new a)b/c we’re there every Thurs (and sometimes more often) and we know all the waitstaff and b)she introduced herself (Shayla) and shook each of our hands and asked for our names. Which really was odd. Who shakes hands after receiving a beer order? So after introductions and she walks off, Will comes up with (in his best Elaine-Australian voice) “The Shayla ate my baybey.” Which nearly caused me to shoot beer out my nose. The Shayla thing continued on as we ended up with ~12 ppl at our table and each time someone would order, she would be missing either her notepad or a pen. We’re still not sure how that happens, as she had one of those pocket-apron deals on. And if I was new, I’d be sure to have about 5 of each stashed in those pockets. It just became a running joke and became quite amusing. But I’m sure its one of those things where you had to be there to actually find it funny.

Random mumblings for a Wednesday

Spent most of last week in Oklahoma City for a job. Actually had a splendid time. The client and site people were really nice to me. Actually treated me with respect and didn’t question my every move. I got to relax, have fun, and feel confident in my skills. This week I’m back in the office and its back to the usual crap. Fun fun! Makes me wish I was in the field more often.

Swimming was crazy amounts of hard Monday and Tuesday. Mainly I think b/c Sunday was simply not enough rest for my poor arms. So, I’m taking today and Thurs off. Then hit practice on Friday, and my meet on Saturday. And being that I have OCD about swimming, its killing me that Coach refuses to tell me what I’m swimming. Absolutely killing me. It’s a relay meet and no individual leg is over 100 yds. So, for the entry sheet, he asked for our split times and for us to tell him which events were ok to swim and which events fit into the category “no way in hell”. Well, I told him that everything EXCEPT 100 fly was fair game. Fly is my nemesis. They made me swim it my Sr year in HS and it was agonizing and humiliating. But since a lot of the other schools couldn’t place 3 ppl in that event, it was an easy way for me to get points for my team, even if I did come in last out of 4 or 5 swimmers. Anyways, I fully believe that fly aided in the destruction of my shoulders. I guess destruction is not the right word, as they’re mostly functional now. But at the time, not being able to lift your arms over your head b/c the tendonitis had calcified seemed like “destruction”. So, from then on out – 100 fly is evil. Somehow, though, in my skewed head, 50 fly seems ok. Go figure! So last week, I “attempted” to swim 50 fly with flippers. It was horrible. Of course, part of the reason for it being horrible was that I did it at the end of a 75 minute workout. But still, all I can think of is humiliation and pain and horror. I also told coach that 3 to 5 events would be ok. And I listed times for 100’s of everything, including the IM. So, in my warped mind, I’m swimming 50 fly, 100 IM, and 100 breast, in addition to a few other things. All back-to-back of course. Which makes me hyperventilate! Coach claims that he refuses to tell ppl their events prior to the meet b/c he’s had a good history of people whining about what the got stuck with or simply drop out, which makes his job that much harder on the day of the meet. Good point, but it still doesn’t do much for my OCD.

A funny from Will. He is thinking ahead this year (points are deserved here) and has made reservations for dinner on Feb 12th. The 12th b/c I have to fly back to OKC on the 14th. So, per his email, I am telling my IIF’s. To quoth him, “I deserve positive points for thinking ahead!!! Write them down and tell ALL of your web buddies. I have to keep my status as most desirable but un-obtainable web buddy husband!” So, you have been informed. And I’m thinking of referring to him from now on as “MDBUOWBH”. Damn, that’s a mouthful.

And I seem to have no motivation to do things. Work… home stuff. Even jewelry. No idea why. Must get over this soon though, b/c its annoying.

And speaking of work stuff, I should actually work on well, work. Instead of blogging. Even though this is way more interesting and fun.