Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Interview Questions - V. Tricky!

I had to help interview some job candidates the other day since I'm a member of a local executive board. Most of the questions were pretty standard fare - including the "tell me about your strengths" followed by "tell me about your weaknesses." Most of the candidates were pretty honest and non-cheesy with their answers.

One gal, who said she was originally from Arkansas, had an intriguing answer when asked what her weakness was. "My accent," she said. "I get teased about it a lot, and I think when I'm on the phone people can't understand me."

I find it terribly amusing that, in a county where most people sound at least mildly accented to me, this poor woman is struggling to be understood. If people can't understand someone from two states over, can you imagine if they encountered someone from a whole other country? Like Mississippi?

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Now With Medically Enhanced Fertility!

So, the secret is out. I'm taking a fertility drug. My once young, able-to-get-pregnant-on-the-pill-at-a-moment's-notice body has been resisting the valiant efforts towards procreation that we've endured these long months. And that is how it came to pass that for my 30th birthday, I received a gift of drugs that will hopefully bring me a gift of a new baby for my 31st.

The unfair part of it all is that fertility treatments are incredibly unsexy. The ones I've only read about - injections, sperm analysis, hysterosalpingograms, intrauterine insemination, in vitro insemination - all involve jabbing, prodding and poking by people that you barely know. Ready to sign up for that romantic stuff?

As for my new meds, I'm most alarmed by the "side effects" portion of the patient information sheet. Nausea, diarrhea and flatulence are the most common side effects. Wow. I'm sure it's a lot easier to get pregnant when you're barfing, running to the toilet, and farting. Nothing enhances fertility like a bit of sexy diarrhea, I say.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

For the love of ....

I don't curse very often now that I have a young soul to be responsible for. I now say things like "son of a biscuit!" instead of the choice expletives that may have exited my mouth at previous times of my life. My husband has cleaned up his vocab, too, although cursing is an art form among the guys he currently works with, so once in a while a *bleeeeeeep* will slip out at home.

The other day, M was in the living room, trying to change her clothes, when her shirt got stuck over her head. She's standing there, arms over her head, voice muffled by the shirt covering her face, and she says, in an irritated voice, "Oh, for the love of bitch!"

I guess I should be glad that she hasn't heard the more common phrases often enough to get them right.

I couldn't help myself when she said it. I laughed. Kind of a lot. There was no stopping it. But then I had to conjure up a straight face and tell her that she could never, ever say that again or she would get sent to the "think about it" area at school, or maybe even to the principal's office. She thought about it and said, "Oh, for the love of mama!" I let it go at that.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Really? I Wouldn't Have Guessed!

Tonight, I wanted to watch a little TV, so I fired up the ole DirecTV guide and started browsing. I came across a re-run of Without a Trace and looked at the description to see if it was an episode I've already seen. I enjoy watching Without a Trace, but if you're not familiar with it, each episode deals with a new case with one or more missing persons. The detectives wander all over NYC until they find the person, and it always happens by 10 p.m. central. Yay!

So, I look at the description of the episode, and here is what it says: Girl goes missing.

Oh, wow! Thank you, DirecTV guide episode info writer! I would never have guessed that on a show about people who go missing that in one special episode, a *girl* would go missing. At least I know it wasn't one of the many episodes in which a boy goes missing. That does help me narrow it down quite a bit.

In the end, I couldn't find anything I really wanted to watch, so my husband and I put on a Jeff Dunham DVD and spent an hour giggling madly over puppets. None of them went missing, male or female.

Monday, October 01, 2007

Saddened, Dismayed, Shamed

I've come to the conclusion that the TV show "Sunset Tan" represents all that is wrong with the world. This pains me to admit, because it involves telling you that I have watched this horror of a "reality" show and because I feel compelled to tell you that I do not intend to stop watching it any time soon because, as with any train-wreck, I cannot look away.

If you haven't seen Sunset Tan, please do not go and watch it now. No. Take my word for it. It's terrible, and you will be able to feel your brain cells slipping out of your ears as you sit there, mouth agape, hoping that this show is not so much reality as someone's idea of a really sad joke. If you have watched it, though, you know what I mean. How much stupid can they pack into thirty minutes of TV? Oh, it's lots. Lots.

The employee drama represents a good portion of the show. It boggles my mind that in all of L.A., the owners of this chain of tanning salons are unable to find anyone to hire who does not appear to be missing key portions of their brain, completely lazy or who actually would perform some kind of work during their shift instead of claiming that 99 percent of what is asked of them is "not their job." Vapid doesn't even begin to describe the employee roster.

And then there are the customers. Ask yourself this. If you'd like to be bronzed and looking as though you've spent a week in the Riviera, would you entrust said bronzing to someone who is the color of an Oompa Loompa, or who accidentally forgets to spray tan part of someone's body (see Olly Girls)? Frankly, if I want to be orange, I can pick up some gloppy self-tanner at my local Walmart. But I digress....

Perhaps the worst offender in the customer realm was the mother who brought in her elementary-school-age child because she apparently didn't look tan enough in previous school pictures. Being the most tanned girl in the class is tres important for the vapid-in-training, according to this mom. Nice. So, despite the obvious discomfort on the part of the child, she is sprayed all over with the Oompa ink, and is later shown all ready for her school picture. When I gazed at this little orange child, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It was truly a ridiculous sight, so I decided on laughter. But really? There should be a law against artificial tinting of small children. It's wrong on so very many levels.

Actually, "wrong on many levels" would be a great subtitle for the whole series.

Evil Eye

My daughter was in the back seat of my truck today as we cruised down the highway on our way to visit my sister and her husband for the afternoon. She was happily entertaining herself, as she often does on road trips. She's always been a good car baby. And yes, I get to call her a baby, even though she's six. She's *my* baby, after all.

I looked at her in the rear-view mirror once, and she had one eye closed, and was covering it with her hand. I figured it was part of her usual pirate act, though she didn't seem to have the opposite hand curled into her trademark "pirate hook finger."

After a while she said, "Mom, when I cover my eye up with my hand I can see spots. Red spots." I answered, "Yep, that sounds normal to me." Her face was serious, though, and she thought about it for a few minutes, occasionally putting her hand back up to her face. "Mom," she said, "that's how I can see my eeeeevil eye. It's red, with spots."

Evil eye, indeed.