Busted by Hallmark: Inappropriate Language

Wow, Hallmark. Are you serious? You rejected my personalized message on the e-card I wanted to send? Thanks for setting me straight.

Anonymous posters, how I love thee.

Dear Anonymous:

I am excessively polite to people at work and I generally try to be that way in life too. But I don't have to take any doodoo on my blog--especially when anonymous posters are concerned.

Now in the last post, you weren't disgustingly out of control, but you weren't particularly polite either. Or astute. I don't recognize you as a regular reader. And if you...

a. Don't have the intelligence to figure out how to post your name, or don't have the balls to identify yourself,

          b. Have nothing decent to say, and
 
          c. Correct my spelling and then move on to make a spelling mistake yourself in the comment

My message to you is:
Thanks for the comedy, Einstein. And please, bite me.

See, Gropius loves to receive constructive information from folks who have something interesting or informative to share, but your obnoxiousness supersedes any bit of smarts you might be hiding in there.

And if only you would dish out your contact info like everyone else, I could cheer you on during your next spelling bee for grown-ups. Here's a digital silver star for you! Wooo hooooo, Anonymous!!!!!!

I Need Sunglasses in My Living Room

Thank you to those who shared a bit of compassion with me last week. Indeed, it's been a long process of accepting this injustice for which I cannot elaborate. How do I regain control, bring some freshness into daily life, and get a little exercise in the process?

Choose a wild color, slather it all over the living room and and surprise Husband of course!

We've had rust-colored walls for the last 5 years. Picked out the color before we moved in and we've enjoyed it, but the time had come for a change. When I discovered Husband and D-Man would be out for most of the day on Saturday, I was in line at Lowe's before 9:30 a.m., paying for "Ocean On Steriods," my name for the color swatch which ended up all over the most well-utilized room in our little house.

Husband was pretty good about it. He walked in on me 2 hours into the process because he forgot a tool he needed. When I heard the front door open, I had paint all over the tile, the oriental rug was folded all over the place, furniture was pulled into the center of the room scrunching the said rug, and I had managed to christen the Ocean on Steriods on patches of each wall. 

If you could have heard the (very surprised) "Hi honey" as it left this man's lips...

Ocean on Steriods is pretty obnoxious. I've tried to lie to myself in miscellaneous approaches of self-talk over the last 24 hours to convince myself that it's great. "It will just take some getting used to," Gropius. But I actually find myself squinting in here. I need sunglasses in my own living room.

Clearly, doing this all again next weekend won't be as much fun as this was. But it's inevitable. After trying to please me for a while with shaky affirmations of the new color, Husband just proclaimed that it has to go.

What's the craziest wall color you have in your house?  I'm thinking of going with a moss or an olive/blue green. Yay or nay?

Sweet Forgiveness

Compassionate people are blessings. And the receiver of yesterday's 3 mistake-laden e-mails was nothing but a Goddess of Forgiveness today. After calling her begging for mercy, she graciously played it as "not a big deal" and reassured me with something to the effect of "I've done this sort of thing before." 

Sometimes I get so caught up with the pooper people in life that I forget about the good folks, people who are cool enough not to relish in your faults.

The lesson for me is less of "read before sending" since I'm usually fairly articulate and decent at self-editing, but more of "who am I going to give a break today?" 

It's true, you never know what someone is dealing with when you're on the receiving end of a weird e-mail, or when you meet someone for the first time and they mix up a fact or two.  This is a good moment for me to remember this. Although I'm generally pretty forgiving, sometimes--even without meaning to--I can be quick to judge competency.

Note to Gropius: Make a point to return the favor, not just with someone, but with everyone.

BTW: I didn't do anything mean. It was a press release with a missed date, then phone number!

Please Tell Me I Didn't Do That

Did you ever hit that "send" button and then think, oh crap, oh no, please tell me I didn't just send that?  Did you ever do that three times in a ROW?

I'm sparing the details, both because what's left of my ego can't handle to have this incident immortalized and because the details are boring.  Let's just say that I sent several versions of something that had teeny tiny mistakes in it. Mistakes that were sent to someone very important.  Mistakes that I would think "What the hell is wrong with that girl?" if I was on the receiving end.  Mistakes that would never exist period if I hadn't been trying to work while still sick and while 2 other people were in my office asking me questions. Mistakes---okay you get it.

So I feel like a complete and total idiot. I'm trying to figure out how to repair the receiving party's now-tainted-forever professional opinion of me. I never make mistakes like this and now I did it not once, not twice, but three times in a freaking 15 minute time frame.

I would like to...

1. Crawl in a hole in a deep cave somewhere and hibernate until this has been forgotten (will that day come?), or
2. Move. Yes, maybe I can move. I've always wanted to live in Ireland.
3. Become a permanent resident of the space station. I have to go back to school and get my astrophysics degree. Hmmm...I need something much more immediate.

The good news: it's made me more determined than ever to triumph over The Bronchitis from Hell. I will meet it in the parking lot and kicks it's arse. I will beat it with an ugly stick, banish it from Bradentucky, feed it to the alligators at Myakka.

...Yet sadly, that will do nothing to undo the damage of today's "send" trifecta. Oh help, gods of forgiveness. Give me a pass on this one?

Failure to Connect: The Rain, The Rain barrel and a River

Imagine my surprise receiving a call that I won a drawing for a new rain barrel. Me. I never win anything. (And I'm not complaining, it's just one of those fact of life things for Gropius.) I immediately thought, all in about 10 seconds...

• Yes! I never win anything.
• Yes! We've been wanting a rain barrel. Not so we can take rain water showers or anything like that. But it would be awesome for watering our plants and garden.
• Wait. How will I fit this rain barrel in my car?
• Oh yeah...coming back to me...It's one of those rain barrels that kids painted with their names and handprints. Hmmm...

It kind of reminded me of when our old neighbors won a drawing for a baby chicken (turning out to be a rooster) at some bird show.  It made for a tough situation, living within the city limits and all.

So Husb went to retrieve the barrel. He bought a gutter for the back roof line, installed the gutter and got to play with power tools. All we needed was rain!  And holy cow was it raining this morning.  Aaaah yeah! 

I hadn't actually seen the finished product, so to speak. You know, the entire thing, connected and ready to go. So imagine my surprise when I walked onto the porch at 6:12 a.m. to see the rain barrel--dry as my January skin--hanging out in the shelter of the porch and the connected gutter doing just what it was supposed to do:

Spewing thousands of gallons of water...

Into newly forming rivers, riverlets, streams, and mini-streams of wasted rain barrel aqua. Our kayaks were feeling very much at home in the backyard. And then a few minutes passed, and as with all deluges in Florida, the rivers passed into quiet subterranian streams.

Husband had a very busy weekend, and for the love of Pete, I could have actually helped getting it all connected. There's always our next rainstorm...

Gifts for Toddlers

Husband was being a nice little Husband, putting some things that had just come out of the dryer into piles as we were both scrambling to hang up the day and get to bed. I do the laundry, and of course handle that big boy of a dryer which obviously has been working over time on special belongings.

Husband:  Pointing to a new Ann Taylor jacket shown below with "big girl sweater" for comparison, "Does this need to be stretched out or something? It looks a little small."

Gropius: "Nooooooooooooooo!!!!"

Husband: "What?"

Gropius: "What do you mean "what?' I just shrunk the crap out of it!!! ...And therefore, it cost me $30 each time I wore it."

Husband: "I thought it was, like, supposed to look like that...maybe a little bigger after it got stretched out."

Gropius: "That is truly flattering, Husband, but I stopped being able to fit into doll clothes when I was 12 months old."

Husband: "I'm out of here."


Poor Husband. Classic case of killing the messenger.

Gropius: (from one room to the next)  "...Hmmm....maybe our 4 month old niece can wear this. I'll get a package together."

Is there a reason we continue to buy bananas every week?

Bosom Buddy Buttons Barge In

Yesterday I must have flashed 4 people, all because my brazen fabric covered buttons--there for my protection--apparently went on strike.

Exposing yourself isn't part of the culture in my office. But I commend those who gently pointed out that I should postpone the show.

After hours, stepping into a street in the Village of the Arts bustling with men eager for their wifes to emerge from the stores, it took one look to know that um, I had been betrayed once more by my own favorite blouse, now blacklisted forever and destined to be sorted and redistributed by Goodwill Industries. I must say, Ann Taylor, I never took you for this kind of girl.