Somewhere in my house is my wallet with credit cards, multiple forms of real and fake identification, some loyalty punch cards, perhaps a stray HyVee Chinese fortune.  Unfortunately, I have no idea where in the house it is, and it’s KIND OF something I’ll be needing very soon.  Like to board an airplane.  No big deal or anything.

Mom, Savannah, and I went to see It’s Complicated today because who doesn’t love Meryl Streep (or even Alec Baldwin.  I want to hate him because he seems like such an ass in real life but WHO CARES because he’s in The Departed and him saying “Paaaaatriot Act!!!” is one of me and NPH’s favorite movie lines of all time.)  Well let me tell you– if you are one of the few 40 year old and over readers, close out of this screen right now and run small children and animals down in your frenzy to get to the movie theater.  If you are anywhere near college age or just generally don’t want to even think about what it must be like for your parents or professors to be together between the sheets DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.  So much old people sex.  So much fleshy Alec Baldwin.  So much divorcee humor.  So much kettle corn inhaling (oh wait, that was just me.  And Savannah– I’ll throw her under this bus, too.)

After the movie we returned THE raincoat from Christmas and got a super classy charcoal gray/black coat that I LOVE and fits like a glove and was on super sale and it just awesome.  I look so damn sophisticated in it, no small feat mind you.  Props to Mom and Savannah for putting up with my in-store antics, too much kettle corn will do that to a person (my inner five-year-old also followed us to the parking lot where I drew a swastika and male genitalia on the undefrosted windows of my mother’s vehicle.  She was not super pleased with my behavior.  OOPS.)

THEN Savannah and I were all “Wow.  Way too much fun for one night.  Let’s head into the GREAT METROPOLIS of Adel, Iowa to see what shenanigans await us.”  And do you know what we did?  Not a goddamn thing.  I hate this town.  So lame.  Nay, it’s a quaint town, methinks it’s the people in it who really just make me contemplate how much slitting my wrists would actually hurt (again, if you are a mandatory reporter– step down, apparently making slight suicide references is just a phase I’m in.)  To give you a hint, the most entertaining interactions we had were in the Kum ‘n Go parking lot which is actually a step up from our normal meeting place, the Subway parking lot.

Tomorrow we’re going to church, only this time there probably won’t be a REAL BABY playing my savior so it’ll be kinda way more lame than last time.  Today I got ALL PACKED for the cruise so tomorrow will be more packing for Germany/ tearing the house apart in search of my wallet/ trying to figure out how to get a working laptop to Germany without actually spending any money (my father says I can’t afford to pay attention, let alone buy a new one.  Excellent.  Apparently personal finances really aren’t my thing.)

I painted my fingernails today (bright pink) AND toenails (silver sparkles.)  No need to tell me how excited you are this new nugget of information.

Things I don’t like: sunsets.  They make me sad.  Not like boo-hoo cry sad, but you know, sad.  Sunrises and I are a-ok, but their nighttime counterpart and I have some beef.  Methinks this is because when I was a little kid, I had a freakishly early bedtime during the summer.  It would often still be light out (the damn sun was starting it’s horrid setting) and I’d sit at my window and hear other kids playing and thinkof all the stuff I was missing out on and be really upset.  I’m one of those people who has zero problem with it getting dark out at like 5 pm now that it’s not Daylight Savings Time.  The sun sets in like two seconds– HA!  Take that, dusk. 

Man am I gonna be sore tomorrow.  From the GYM, get your mind outta the gutter.  My aunt is a personal trainer (or as one could call her, a freak anomaly in the sea of ”not-exactly-what-you’d-call-active/ could-I-just-get-a-trough-instead-of-a-plate”-ers who hail from the same gene pool.)  She honored us with the privilege of getting up at a single-digit hour in the morning to sweat out yesterday’s shameful show of How Many More Ribs will Brittney Eat Before she Actually Passes Out?  Which I’m glad she did because the answer to that question is a much higher number than even I was expecting.  So, an hour on the elliptical followed with some fun ab/arm/leg contortions will leave me feeling absolutely peachy tomorrow.  Don’t worry– I know you’re all probably quite concerned– I’m eating jerky as we speak.  (Oh, PS Mom, I found some jerky in the fridge.  Hope you weren’t saving it for anyone else.)

We have returned from the land of the south, and after about two minutes in the house I realized I was going to be here for a week.  A WEEK.  Do you know the last time I spent a week at home?  Uhhh maybe Christmas Break freshman year?  Oy vey.  When grumbling about this aloud to the one they call T-Bone, she told me I could separate the laundry for her.  HA.  What is this “laundry” you speak of?  And I certainly can’t figure out why anyone would “separate it”– isn’t it just a dump in magic machine, pour three cups of pretty blue soap on, hit a button & pray for the best activity?  Uh-oh, the jerky’s gone.  That doesn’t bode well for the rest of the week.

Today I’m thankful for… airplanes.  I hatey-hate-HATE flying, but damn it’d be a long walk to Germany.  (For those of you counting at home, t-minus 45 days until departure.)  Oh wow, so this is what hyperventilation feels like.

As many of you know (partly in thanks to an after-bar post that you can read here) a classmate of mine passed away ONE YEAR AGO today.  So I went up to hang out with him in the cemetary today, seeing as I have a WEEK here and all.  It wasn’t really sad, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” was on the radio and really that song’s so awesome it could bring war-torn nations apart, so I was in no Debbie Downer mood.  Someone had brought flowers up there today, but there was also a new pack of Swisher Sweets (the kid smoked em like they were going out of style, long story).  This was in addition to the OLD pack of Swisher Sweets someone had put there.  On top of the MULTIPLE DOLLARS IN QUARTERS that are just chillin there.  Am I missing something?  Is this some sick joke and Boner’s gonna come back, need a bunch of smokes, and have a shit ton of dirty clothes to clean at a Landromat?  He’s dead.  First of all, if you’re making wishes with coins (which I always thought there needed to be a fountain involved, but whatever) wouldn’t pennies be more of a recession-savvy coin to use?  Also, anything tobacco-related ain’t cheap anymore, go ahead and save yourself the couple dollars on the smokes for the dead guy because I guranTEE some high school hooligan from ADMHS will lift those babies within a week.  Those were just my thoughts. 

Methinks tomorrow I will accompany my mother to “tea” with her friends.  I have not been invited, but feel it would be kosher pickles if I showed up anyway.  Those crazy pre-menopausal vino-freak ladies are the shit.  I baby-sat for most all of their kids who were younger than me, and I illegally drank in barns, cornfields, and parent-less houses with the ones who were my age or older.  Ahh, the unbreakable bonds of the Tea Kids.  Perhaps we’ll get a cheaper rate on group therapy.