Street Cred

It's totally true.

Brain No Work So Good

Conversation between me and Mr. Salty in the car one day, after failing to remember the details of an event.

Me: I can't remember anything for shit anymore. I heard that multitasking, like, messes up your brain or something. Like with your memory. I think it kills your brain cells. I dunno, I forget exactly what it was that I read about that.

Mr. Salty: How incredibly well put.

When It Rains It Pours

Hello dear readers! When I started this site just under a year ago, I didn't even know if anyone would read. And yet I've managed to build up a small but loyal following of awesome readers. Exciting things have been happening around here, and I don't want to give anything away yet, but there are gears in motion. At any rate, I'll keep you filled in and above everything else, will try to keep up with this site. (Even if my posting winds being slightly less frequent.) I totally appreciate all the support I've gotten and hope that litelysalted's popularity continues to grow!

On that note, I'll be posting over at Yeeeah! all of this coming week, so stop on over and see what that crazy Paris Hilton has gotten herself into this time!

-Ms. Salted

Gone Gossipin'

I'm over here today, if you'd like to stop in! Otherwise, posting on litelysalted will resume tomorrow. See you then!

Take these words and eat 'em!

I know that in the past I may have... okay definitely have mentioned that my alliance runs towards Macintosh products as opposed to PCs. Well guess what? My beautiful 20-inch work imac is broken! Suck on that, Justin Long's dreadfully annoying 'Mac Guy' character!

Well okay, it's not broken as in broken that I'm not actually typing on it right this very moment. But there is something fishy going on with the power source and it's been increasingly giving me shit turning on in the morning... So, next week— off it goes.

Good news? It looks like I'll be working from home for a little while.

Bad news? This happens mere weeks before our massive home renovation project is completed which will furnish me with a home office.

Good news? I get to watch MAURY while I work!!!! Hooray for Maury!

Memo:

Readers to litelysalted: No one cares about Sanjaya!

Sorry guys, I promise to write about something better next time. The premiere of Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School, mayhap?

Happily Cohabiting.

Shhh.... Wanna know a secret? It's a little known fact, unbeknownst to many of my readers, that Mr. Salted and I are not exactly Mr. and Mrs. Salted in a "legally binding, holy matrimony" kind of way. For the purposes of this blog, I refer to him as Mr. Salted, just because it's easier than, say... "Man with whom with I share a mortgage and two dogs."

The fact of it is, we've got nothing against marriage. I've even got an antique engagement ring that we bought off of ebay for a couple hundred bucks. But it wasn't so much about us wanting to "seal our commitment" than the fact that I like sparkly old things.

So I guess if I had to actually pinpoint the exact reasons why we're not married, it's mostly because we're kind of lazy, pretty immature, and don't like being bothered or hassled in any way, shape or form. Oh and it doesn't help that my family is pretty much crazy. So one thing I tell people sometimes, is that if we do decide to get hitched, it will be far, far away from my anyone in my family. So right there that kind of rules out a wedding... You know, without hurting any one's feelings anyway.

Case in point: My sister (not crazy) got married this past summer. A visit to the parents' house after the wedding photos came back yielded a frightening discovery. Fourteen framed wedding photos I counted. What's that you say? That's not so bad? No, my friends... Sadly, that was JUST IN THE LIVING ROOM! When questioned as to why there were a maniacal and obscene amount of wedding photographs covering every conceivable surface and inch of wall space in their home, my mom answered with, "Well, there were just so many good ones!" I should note that my mother's interpretation of a "good" photograph can mean anything from a smaller version of a larger photo that my father scanned and printed out himself, to a candid shot with other people in the background that she blacked out with a magic marker.

Desire to avoid a creepy matrimonial shrine notwithstanding, we're pretty content as things stand. The only thing I could do without are the constant queries about my (lack of) marital status by everyone from family friends and relatives to gym acquaintances to doctors. Why, in this day and age, people have such a difficult time grasping the concept of "happily unmarried" is beyond me, while many couples flippantly take their vows. But rather than try to begin to dissect the ethics and standards society places upon marriage nowadays, let me just sum it up with this, "No, we ain't married, we got no plans of gettin' married, now get the hell up out our bidness!"

Back... With a Vengeance!

Ok maybe not so much with the vengeance but I am back. First of all, my apologies for the lengthy absence. But let me just say I have a perfectly good excuse.

A week ago today, like every other morning, I stopped at my local non-Fartbucks Coffeehouse/ Espresso Bar for my usual. On the way back to my car, 16oz. travel mug in one hand and a box of Girl Scout Cookies and oversized change purse in the other, I stepped square onto a patch of ice and dropped like a K-Fed album. It happened so quick that I didn't even have a chance to comically flail my arms about (although I think my first instinct may have been to protect the precious, precious contents of that mug) so I landed smack on my right elbow.

After picking up myself and the contents of what I had just been carrying, I reluctantly got in the car and realized that my elbow was gushing like a geyser. So it was back to the coffeehouse where I saw that my pointy little elbow bone had torn through both my skin and cashmere sweater. The skin was more or less salvageable; the sweater on the other hand... As yet to be determined by my dry cleaner.

The coffee and cookies actually fared decidedly better. Our troops in Iraq should be so lucky to have the technology of a Max Cremas house travel mug.

At any rate, after being patched up by the fabulous "Dr. Barista", it was off to the doctor where I was sutured up, sent for X-rays, and therefore could not bend my elbow for several days; resulting in my getting behind on everything even after my partial recovery.

I'm still not fully recovered because my family doctor apparently belongs to the school of Half Assed Major Wound Suturey so the elbow will start bleeding at any given moment and I STILL haven't heard back about my X-ray results which may or may not have detected bone damage... So in the meantime it just hurts like a sonofabitch. God Bless the American Healthcare System.

Update! Photographic evidence of the carnage... Enjoy!

Short haired girl.

It’s official: I’m in the club. After years of going back and forth from a Jackie-O reminiscent bob, to a bland shoulder length style... I finally took the plunge.

This marks another first for me, as I finally broke down and went to a fancy-schmancy salon. Over the years I’ve treated haircuts much in the same way a homeless cat sees a meal. I go as long as I can without one until I break down and head over to “Holiday Hair” (the metaphorical “dumpster” of salons) and get butchered. Or if I was lucky, have my talented ex-hairdresser friend cut it for me. One of the reasons I’ve always avoided short hair, alluring as the idea was, is because short hair requires a degree of maintenance. And the commitmentphobe I am knew that this would mean finding a regular, competent hairdresser, and sticking to it.

Having done some rudimentary research I decided upon a trendy local salon: Lords and Ladies. Embarrassingly stupid name aside, (which I feel compelled to pronounce Laaaahhhhhds and Ladies) I had heard good things, and the fact that they offered $25 haircut specials on Sundays pretty much sealed the deal.

One thing I don’t understand about getting your hair cut in a salon, is the ridiculous amount of styling that takes place afterwards. Nobody styles their own hair this way. They must think that we don’t feel we’re getting our moneys worth if there’s not 5 pounds of product slapped on our head.

Although this still doesn’t explain why my 20-something, reasonably hip looking stylist, after creating a reasonable facsimile of the mod pixie-cut I had printed out and brought with me (pictured above), proceeded to spray and tease my hair into a bouffant suitable only for a rousing afternoon of Bingo down at the senior center. This humiliation was compounded by having to wait for 10 minutes at the checkout counter while some cow housewife in sweatpants interrogated the receptionist about how much it would cost for her 10 year old to get highlights.

Finally I escaped the salon and hopped into the waiting vehicle where Mr. Salted was picking me up after running an errand, and gritted ”NOT... A... WORD.” through my teeth before furiously flattening the hair down with the Snoopy mini-brush handily kept in my purse.

15 minutes of grandma hair aside, overall I would have to rate my experience very satisfactory. I can’t believe it took me 29 years to get a pixie-cut, because seriously? This haircut was made for my face. What do you guys think? Yes, I’m in the club, and I do believe I’m here to stay.

Oh Yeah? Well I sell baked goods for SATAN!

I haven’t posted all week out of despair from the cold. As a matter of fact, my toes have been in a constant state of feeling like they were dipped into a steaming tank of liquid nitrogen by Mr. Wizard. So today, I think I’ll make lemonade out of lemons. Creepy, religious, lemons...

I’m sitting at work; space heater roaring and office door cracked a few inches. All of a sudden I hear a faint tapping and look over and see someone peeking in at me. The employee who sits behind the front counter happened to be off, so naturally I assumed it was either a delivery guy in need of a signature, or a courier from one of my vendors. I get up and open the door to find a tall man of Asian descent, medium build, and approximately 25-35 years of age standing in front of me holding a nondescript rectangular box.

It’s always awkward when someone I don’t know comes to see me with unannounced business... Which actually happens more than I’d care to admit. So I put on my best fake cheerfulness, and exude a polite greeting followed by an intentional pause. The box’s owner stutters for a moment, and then finally spits out that he’s fund-raising for his “church group,” and opens the box to reveal an assortment of crappy suncatchers; like the kind you paint yourself with a small palette of predetermined primary colors.

First of all, our building is a small renovated doctor’s office. Second of all, we just moved in recently. There’s no sign out front, and this man entered through a front door to find a dim, still unfurnished lobby containing nothing but a card table, a few unhung pieces of framed artwork and some boxes and bags on the floor.

For some reason, however, it didn’t discourage him from just coming the fuck in and poking around. At this point I’m completely taken aback, so I lamely excused myself to “go get my boss” much like an 8 year old would do in a similar situation. Unfortunately the sheer panic in my eyes wouldn’t budge her to come to my rescue, and she told me to get rid of him myself. But not before he craned his neck past me towards the other offices down the hall beyond mine, asking if anyone else was back there. I locked the door behind him after he finally left.

I often watch true crime shows. I watch Court TV’s Forensic Files on pretty much a nightly basis. I watch, more of less unfazed, as they go into gory detail after detail about serial killers and home invaders. Because in the safety of my own home, under protection of a man, a firearm and two uppity medium-large sized dogs... That stuff might as well be fiction as far as I’m concerned. This? Freaked me the hell out. Afterwards I was even afraid to go down into the basement to use the “Privacy Dump” bathroom because I couldn’t remember if the basement door was locked.

I suppose when it comes down to it... intrusive religious zealots are much more common than serial killers who break into random advertising agencies in broad daylight to go on murderous sprees, but you never know. Maybe I’ll start keeping mace at my desk. “You wanna take one step closer with that little bible? Go ahead and make my day, motherfucker!"

Hell shall suit me nicely!

I used to work in one of your stereotypical sterile Office Space-esque cubicle farms. Some of you were there, some still are, and longtime non-coworker readers may fondly remember my daily blog-griping about the godforsaken place. I have to say, personal comfort and happiness aside... My blogs were probably more entertaining back then, as I had a daily influx of material to work with.

The thing I easily hated most about that place was the freezing cold temperatures, which I incessantly complained about to the overwhelming irritation of my fellow coworkers. I had the following circumstances going against me:

A. I worked second shift. During the day the A/C was usually cranked up to accommodate a larger staff and also since days tend to be warmer. At night? No one bothered to adjust the thermostat because....

B. Most of the managers were men and men tend to be warmer than women.

One time I even got into semi-serious throw down with a coworker over climatical issues. Well, Old Bill... If you're out there, I have this to say to you: Right now I've got my office door (that's right, office, biatch!) closed and my space heater going like a mother. And I am absolutely purrrrrrrring, much like that cat of yours whom you spoke so highly of. Take that, you fuppish gaywad! My only wish is that you are enjoying such a sauna-like temperature, wherever you may be!

Happy 2007!

Sorry kids it's been so long since I've posted. Litelysalted has been on quite the gluttony/sloth bender, but things seem to finally be getting back to normal. And if I so much as look at another Christmas cookie I'm going to fugging puke.

At any rate, I was going to post a "resolution" blog like so many bloggers have done before me, but to be honest I'm not big on resolutions. I mean seriously, I'm practically perfect, right? In fact, my only two resolutions this year were to start blogging more regularly again and to stop cutting my own hair. And since I'm just getting around to posting my "New Years" blog on January 4th and I arrived to work this morning looking like a Special Olympics participant, you can see how good my word is.

You know, when you think about it, what's so damn "happy" about 2007 anyway? We're probably on the brink of the next world war, our natural resources at rapidly becoming spent, and I turn thirty this year. Actually forget the Times Square nonsense, here is a more appropriate image to sum up my feelings on 2007:

Having expressed that, I hope you'll all stick around for it!

Confessions of a diet pill addict.

First of all I would like to apologize for my lack of updates lately. So, sorry to all of you who have been refreshing this site every day for the past week only to get hit with a glamour shot of J-Pad's mug, again. Even I'm starting to tire of it as I check for fresh comments, and I enjoy J-Pad's lovely face more than most.

Moving on. Here's what going on with me. I have my 10 year high school reunion coming up in a few weeks, and yes I'm actually going. I'm not sure why I'm going, because I didn't really have any friends in high school, and harbored a resentment towards 90% of my graduating class.

I guess I'm going mostly because EJ is going, and the two of us can have fun pretty much anywhere. EJ was more of an acquaintance back then, but has become a good friend later in life after we attended college together. Besides, let's face it. I turned out pretty reasonably decent considering my patchy start and who wouldn't want to show off a little? Let's just say it's a little fantasy of mine to get hit on by a guy who was mean to me in high school, only to administer a verbal kick in the nuts in response.

Naturally, I had to purchase a new dress for this occasion. Because what's the point of even going if I'm not going to look faaaaabulous? Not too long after I received the invite J. Crew had a massive online fall sale and I picked up this hot little pink number. Since the last time I bought a dress from J. Crew it was a size 4 and a smidge too big, I went with the "4-Petite" in lieu of a smaller size.

Unfortunately... the dress doesn't exactly fit glove-like as I had anticipated. Depending on my daily IBS symptoms, what and how much I've eaten in the past 48 hours, and lunar cycle it ranges from "fitting acceptably if you don't mind not breathing" to "that zipper is going to fucking break." And when is this blessed occasion, you may ask? Why the day after Thanksgiving, of course!

Now it would be all well and good to blame the dress, and blame J. Crew for making such wacky sizes... But let's face the music here people. Litelysalted has put on a few pounds. All this stress I've been under lately with the house, work, and random family drama has made nightly bingeing a thing of the norm. For the past month I keep saying that I'm going to stop eating candy every night so I don't have a "back buttcrack" the night of the reunion but with three weeks and counting the scale still said 111-112. (This might not sound bad to most of you... But keep in mind I'm very petite.)

However! Just this week, something has changed all that. Meet my new savior: hoodia! As I was ordering my "vegan sampler" at the health food store on Wednesday I noticed the display next to the register. I said to the ladies behind the counter: "I need to lose 5 pounds in 3 weeks. Is this the stuff?" And they confirmed hoodia's appetite suppressing abilities. After an unfortunate Diet Fuel addiction I swore that I would never do diet pills again, but drastic times call for drastic measures.

So that's it folks. After the first day of taking them I arrived home after work to find that Mr. Litelysalted (aka my enabler) had bought me a little gift in the form of a bag of gummy worms. I still haven't opened them! Two days later and I am already back to 110. My appetite is gone and has left only a faint headache in it's place.

Vacation-a go-go

Okay I have been putting off the inevitable. I know you're all dying out there to hear about my vacation. If only, my preciouses, I could gather you all up and pull out the slide projector. But alas, we'll have to do it this way instead.

The Mister and I arrived on Monday after a more-pleasant-than-you'd-expect 10 hour drive for 6 days and 5 nights of vacationey fun and relaxation. 1 kayak, 2 dogs, and 3 books. I only finished one book while I was there, and as much as I would like to say it was the Sarah Vowell or David Sedaris, it was instead an embarrassingly campy best seller by an author I am also too embarrassed to name.

The second day we encountered the Tuttles. I know their last name because it was on a placard on their dining table in the lodge, where our meals were served. Since I avoided conversation with them like the plague all week, I never did gather their first names. Literally, when I would be sitting on our deck reading the forementioned fluff novel, I would leave a dust cloud beating ass inside to avoid them when I'd see them coming by with their dog. They seemed like very nice Christian people, and I know this because of the loud and throaty grace Mr. Tuttle would say before every meal, (which reminded me of this Daily Show clip) and the rotation of Jesus T-Shirts he invariably wore. They even offered to loan us one of their kayaks, since we had only the one I bought for The Mister for his birthday last year. As only I can look suspiciously upon an act of kindness, I politely and noncommittally thanked them and hoped they never brought it up again. It might have been fun to use the extra kayak, but I knew we would be forfeiting a week of forced small talk laced with fake enthusiasm in exchange for it.

The lone cottage next to ours stood thankfully empty for almost the whole week. Thankfully not just because I'd prefer not to have neighbors, but mostly thankfully because Miss Sophie and Miss Ivy go berserk when they see people. On the fourth day a family moved in next to us. I tried to be open minded that maybe they weren't just obnoxious yuppies with spoiled brat kids, even when The Mister heard the one child bratting snotfully to his mother about the whereabouts of his ipod.

So it turned out my instincts were right about the obnoxiousness of the family, but they ended up providing more entertainment than annoyance. I nicknamed the two kids The Funboys, after a line from a Simpsons episode: "Get a room, funboys!" The Funboys were a couple of years apart and approximately 10-12 years of age. In other words, old enough to know better. One was kind of slender and the other was fattish, most likely raised on a rich diet of high fructose corn syrup.

You're probably wondering the reason behind the nickname. Soon after they arrived, The Funboys went swimming in the lake in front of our cottage. What came next was the most bizarre demonstration of brotherly companionship I have ever witnessed, keeping in mind that I have seen the movie Brother's Keeper. You know how some insects like Dragonflies with latch onto each others backs while mating and won't let go for the life of them? Well that's what these kids did when they got in the water. Constantly, suctioned onto each other's backs, all the while screaming unintelligibly at the top of their lungs, "MOMMMM!! TAKE OUR! PIHHSHURE!" but most of the time it just sounded like "UUNNNGHHHHHH!"

Now if you think two fatty kids humping on each other while making crude sex noises is funny, try doing it halfway into a glass of wine on an empty stomach. Later when they came in from the lake, they kept yelling over and over like little gay parrots "BIG and HUGE! BIG and HUGE! BIG and HUGE!" I have NO idea what they were talking about, but let me tell you, the innuendo you could cut with a knife. I giggled, uncontrollably and red faced, knowing that the parents most definitely heard me but not giving a flying fart. That's what you get, when you raise incestuous, gay children: public mockery. And let that be a lesson for us all.

The rest of the trip, fun yet uneventful, was spent kayaking, walking, swimming, and eating. The weather was beautiful, in the low to mid 80's all week although almost everyone we encountered complained about the heat. I believe Mr. Tuttle even complained to God during grace a couple of times. Yeah, God. How bout it?!

Since it's not as exciting to go into lengthy details about the fun we had as it is to make fun of the people we encountered, I will leave you all with these photos that pretty accurately sum it up.

No salt next week.

Dear suckers, (I mean readers)

I will be the spending the following week in a small cottage at the Northern tip of Coos County, NH, where I will not have access to internet, TV, or cell phone reception. As much as I really, really like these things (really), it's a fair trade for a week of reading, hiking, swimming, kayaking, eating delicious food, drinking delicious wine, playing with my dogs, and doing the things I would otherwise love to do on a day-by-day basis if I wasn't so neurotically obsessed with modern conveniences, working, etc.

See you in a week!

Success!

Some fucktard spammed the old blog last night. So either that means my blog is successful enough to be spammed, or someone found my blog at random my pressing the "next blog" button. Regardless, it was very irritating and I had to go through post by post to delete all these comments that said "Great site! Lots of useful content!" with links to fake mortgage sites.

As preventative action from this happening again, I have turned on word verification. Trust me, no one hates word verification more than I do. I literally go into throes of panic attacks when I have to fill them out to register for anything online. "Oh no! Is that and uppercase or lowercase 'S'? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD what am I going to do??"

Rant of the week. Yahoo's new homepage sucks. I really, really hate it. It constantly says I have 3 new mail when I don't even have any. It also doesn't have entertainment news stories anymore, just links to videos. Dammit yahoo, keep your damn fool online videos to yourself! If I wanted to watch something, I'd turn on the TV. Except that I'm at work, and I don't want to watch my news, I want to read it. And when I says "news" I mean "Haley Joel Osment getting into a car accident." (Oh, and apparently turning into a full grown man overnight!) Don't believe me? Check it out. It honestly made me recoil in horror.

Fisher Price's My First Blog

For the past year and a half I've been maintaining and frequently updating a blog on the ubiquitous myspace.com, however I have recently decided to follow the inspiration of others and get myself a real blog. Myspace is good for a lot of things. Like keeping in touch with friends, child predatoring, networking, stalking... you know.

But unfortunately the myspace blog is certainly not without limitations. Immediately I notice that this format comes with a spellcheck.* That's great. No more copying and pasting words like "diarrhea" that I can never remember into my dashboard dictionary. Plus this blog has a certain anonymity to it, and yet at the same time is more easily accessible by strangers and people who genuinely enjoy reading these things. I kinda like that.

And you know, one thing that always drove me crazy about the myspace blog format was the (lack of) archiving. You have a choice of how many blogs you want on a page; 10, 15, etc. And then the highly advanced myspace blog organization consists of "older" and newer" for any given page of blogs. I mean, what the crap? I have a year and a half worth of posting blogs several times a week. How the hell am I supposed to find anything THAT way? How am I supposed to go back and read a post I was exceptionally proud of, or delete an embarrassing one that I wrote when I was drunk?

Anyway, I'll probably update this blog just as, if not more frequently, often than the old one. So if you're an old reader or a new one, I hope you'll come back.

* I also immediately notice that the blog spellcheck doesn't recognize the words "blog" and "spellcheck." Heh.