All ready to ship clothing (and a few choice customs) are 20% off at SmarmyClothes.com for the weekend! Sale ends Monday 01/30/12.

http://smarmyclothes.com

Today we tried unsuccessfully to get an easy chair from the garage into the house. In fairness, this chair is HUGE. When we bought it, the guy informed us that it’s actually called a chair-and-a-half. Trying to get the damn thing through the door involved a lot of google searches, swearing, shimmying, pivoting, and numerous declarations of, “fuck it, it’s not going to fit.” Everyone on the internets seems to agree that you can get almost any couch, no matter the size, through any door, no matter the size. Apparently, couches defy the laws of physics. And we’re dealing with a mere chair here. Well, chair-and-a-half.

Anyway, “fuck it” won out and we gave up for now. I think the final solution is going to be cutting the legs off the thing, because then it will definitely fit. Plus I like breaking out my new power saw at the drop of a hat. Or should I say, drop of a chair-and-a-half, in this case. (How many more times can I say chair-and-a-half, you’re wondering? Don’t tempt me!)

Despite the fact that it was deliciously, unseasonable warm today, it’s now cold as balls with a nasty wind chill. This calls for a round of banana nut muffins, I say. The problem with baking in this house is that I bought this new microwave, and while it is sort of hilarious in it’s retroness (which is made more amusing by the anachronism of a 50′s style microwave), it doesn’t have a timer!

I don’t know what sort of dingus would design a microwave without a timer, but they did. Apparently, it’s 2012, we no longer need kitchen timers! Have no fear, the oven has a timer, yes? Well yes, but the oven is truly retro and has this horrid buzzer style timer alarm that makes me (and the cats) think the world is ending when it goes off.  BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!! So now I know why they make egg timers, which I always felt were a completely superfluous kitchen device meant only to be filler for a Christmas stocking or as a Hanukkah gift.  (I seem to remember getting an egg timer for Hanukkah as a kid. Twas shaped like a pig.)

So now I’m forced to use my innate kitchen timer, which actually turns out to be not so bad, but I don’t trust it. It’s only a matter of time before I burn some muffins. Speaking of which… muffin time!

Best things I’ve said when talking in my sleep:

While frantically grasping at the bed and wall, “I knew it! There are crab in here!”

During a particularly dramatic courtroom drama dream, I guess, “Gah, he knocked the fucking gavel out of your hand. Act like a man! ACT LIKE A FUCKING MAN!”

Of course, since I was asleep when I said them, I have to rely solely on Mr. Smarmy to provide accurate transcripts, and to also not completely make shit up, which he loves to do. Often.

One time he told me that his step dad referred to some kittens they had as, “Pretty cool little dudes.” You probably have to know his step dad to know how funny it would be if he used those words. He did not actually say that, and that makes the world slightly less funny.

Unfortunately, Mr. Smarmy himself does not talk in his sleep. The most he does is breathe funny so I have to poke him in the arm to make him roll over. One time, he somehow knew I was waking up and took the opportunity to stop breathing. And you’d think it wouldn’t be that noticeable to a just-woken-up-individual, but I immediately noticed that he wasn’t breathing and had a minor freak out. Boy, did he think that was just the funniest thing ever. PURE EVIL.

Speaking of evil practical jokes, when we first met, he used to talk about this elaborate joke he’d thought about playing on me, which involved paying some random old man to sit in his closet, and then when I noticed said old man and said, “WHO/WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?” he would respond, “Who? Where…? What are you talking about.”  It’s a good thing he never did it, because I probably would have punched him in the nuts.

He’s probably realized now that such fancy pantsery is a waste on me, because I scare the crap out of myself on a regular basis. Sometimes he’ll walk into my studio to tell me something, but over the music and the machines and my sucky hearing, I don’t hear him. So he speaks and I have a mini heart attack because OH MY GOD SOMEONE IS RIGHT BEHIND ME!!!! and then I yell at him about sneaking up on me and he laughs and plays the innocent card.

Speaking of my sucky hearing, my best Mondegreens:

(What was actually said) – The brothers have this eternal competition…
(What I heard) – The brothers have this Sea Turtle Competition…

(What was actually said) – A Giant Tent Sale!
(What I heard) – Vagina Tent Sale!

That title is sure to get my lots of spam comments, but oh well. I was quite fascinated by cubic zirconium when I was a kid. That “GENUINE!” bit really got me. I was fooled into believing that cubic zirconium must really be something special. It’s Genuine! As opposed to fake cubic zirconium?  Genuine Margarine! Genuine Ultrasuede! Genuine Breast Implants!

But it is fun to say. Qoobik Zerconeeum!

We’re STILL not unpacked, mostly because I have to get all anal and obsessive about everything being organized. Which is so utterly pointless because it never stays that way. Obsessive, yes. OCD, no. I lack the compulsive bit of OCD that is required to be a neat freak. Instead I’m a weird, uptight slob that has very particular feelings about WHAT should got WHERE, and most of the time I find the idea of moving all of these things that are cluttered about into their rightful places overwhelming, so I don’t do it. It’s kind of annoying.

Even though we’re not unpacked all the way, the stressful moving part is over, and so I will do what I haven’t done in a long while, which is Blog About Nothing.

But boy did I find some gems from my childhood as I unpacked. Like a 3 ring binder with some Coca Cola brand folders in it, which I apparently never used. I think they were probably from 8th grade (circa 1996), when all of a sudden no one was carrying binders around anymore, and NO WAY was I going to be That Girl That Continues Carrying A Binder Even Though It’s Totally Not Cool Anymore. It was like in elementary school- Trapper Keepers were THE COOLEST, and then suddenly, NOT COOL. Like everyone just decided that velcro was So Out or something.

But back to the Coke folders.  While it was a complete waste of my parents’ money to buy all of these folders I never used, which were probably totally overpriced because of the Coke branding, THANK GOD I never used them, because they would have gotten ratty and surely would have been thrown away and not preserved as they are now. HOLY SHIT, these folders are hilarious in their 90′s ridiculousness. We’re talking Coca Cola polar bears with their undies showing because they’re SAGGING. Sagging! Remember sagging?! Coca Cola polar bears with snowboards. (EXTREME!) These things are so embarrassing, it’s awesome. They’ll probably seem cool in a few years. I have a couple folders that survived 6th grade that are much more early 90s with their neon colors and grunge-y text and collage style photos. When I found those a few years ago, I had a chuckle, but now that stuff is cool again, so it’s only a matter of time before  a polar bear giving you a glimpse of his boxers from under his outrageously saggy jeans is Tres Chic.

We got about 8 inches of snow, so it’s Officially Winter. We shoveled that and then got 5 more, and I really can’t be motivated to shovel again. I will say that it was very nice for Winter to wait to dump a shit ton of snow on us until after we moved. Winter is really quite a gentleman that way. The new driveway is about 1/20 of the length of the old one, so that’s good, plus the neighbors are all retirees who seem extremely lax on the shoveling, so we fit right in. As Mr. Smarmy put it, “We’re all home all day, yet we choose not to shovel the walk.”

The only young neighbors in the neighborhood brought us some Rice Krispie Treats to welcome us to the neighborhood. I know what you’re thinking. “You- Alexis, the hermit, the recluse- MET the neighbors?” I had no choice, you see. In our old house, it was much easier to hide from strangers knocking on the door. I haven’t quite gotten the routine down here. They spied me through the window, and it would have been rude to hide after that. As opposed to when I normally hide, which is not out of rudeness, I’m just weird.

Mr. Smarmy asked me what they looked like, and I described the girl as looking like someone that would be a contestant on The Bachelor (which means somewhere in the spectrum of elementary school teacher and pageant girl). We found her Facebook profile (cyberstalking!) and he said, “Wow, she looks EXACTLY like someone that would be on The Bachelor.” And the point of the story is that while the neighbors might THINK they want to have us over for dinner and be buddies, they are mistaken, because we have reached a point in our lives that all of our references relate back to reality tv somehow. We are scary TV zombies and we will EAT YOUR BRAINS.

We’re all moved in! Still unpacking, but I should have shipping times back to normal in a few days.