Video Therapy

The days leading up to Christmas break can be a little wild, and sometimes I begin to wonder about the direction my life has taken, you know, when I utter sentences like, "Stop hitting him with that Slim Jim" or when I have to insist that there was nothing racial in my request that a student put away his box of Chicken in a Biscuit* crackers. This break is going to be much-deserved, methinks.

And since my brain has pretty much been fried, and I've spent much of the last few weeks being pissed off or frustrated (But not this week. This week is going swimmingly. Don't mess with me, universe!), I've resorted to a few little comfort tactics to keep myself sane. One of these tactics involves food (I know you're really surprised about that), but since I saw that I'd put on five pounds last month**, I'm working to scale that strategy back.

One of my other favorite tactics is great because it makes me smile without taking up too much time. I like to watch favorite scenes from movies and tv shows or music videos. They provide a little pick-me-up (since margaritas are out for the time being) and lighten my mood. And I wanted to share some of these scenes with you. So, without further ado, here they are.

1. Love Actually cute guy with signs. This is how Matt and I ended up getting together. Except not. But for now, let's just pretend. (And while you're at it, go watch Hugh Grant dancing, too.)



2. Buddy the Elf. Pretty much all of Elf is my favorite, but I'm only putting this one because I love the song so much.



3. The final scene from Dirty Dancing. I particularly enjoy the part where Johnny squints his eyes and mouths the words "And I owe it all to you" to Baby.  I also really love when he jumps off the stage in the most manly of ways.

4. C-Lo Green's "Fuck You." Why is it that I'm so unhip that I didn't know about this song until Tanya put it on a car CD that I demanded she burn for me? And why did it take me listening to the song approximately 30 times before I realized what he was saying? Grandma, you might even like this one. It's awfully catchy.



5. The final scene from Slumdog Millionaire. One of my students asked me the other day if I was going to name the baby Jamal, and I actually considered it, you know, with the hope that our spawn would be as sweet and delightful as Jamal from the movie.

6. Cool Hand Luke eats 50 eggs. This is kind of gross, but mostly just awesome.

7.  Wet Hot American Summer's big secret pizza party.  Always made me want to be a camp counselor and wear cutoff jean shorts.




8.  Don Draper says "What?"  So much handsome I can hardly stand it.



9. Run Forrest, Run.  Love that kid's face.



10. All things Coach Taylor.  I want to see him in a handsome-off with Don Draper.



11. Top Gun. I almost put the volleyball scene here, but this one's better. That's right. I am dangerous.



Those are just a few of my favorites.  What am I missing?



*Those crackers are so disgusting and so delicious at the same time. I should have confiscated them!


**Upon reflection, I've realized that I really did spend the entire month being cocky and gluttonous, and it turns out that it wasn't consequence-free. Who knew? PLUS, I was wearing shoes instead of flip-flops, and when I went home and weighed them on my food scale, they weighed over a pound! So I only gained 4 lbs. Plus, I'm sure the baby has gained like three pounds in the last month, so I only gained one pound. Plus, I'm pretty sure it was a full moon and there was more of a gravitational pull, so that would account for another 2. So, really, I lost a pound. Right? Right? It's amazing that I was able to eat so much last month and still lose a pound.

Less Than Gandhi.

Here's something you might not know: Matt is smart.  He's like sickeningly, ridiculously smart.  He reads like fifty books to my one, and he's rational and insightful and seems to know, well, everything.  And if he doesn't know it, he goes and reads a whole book about it and then knows it.  He can even do math!  I, on the other hand, fall asleep after reading one article in Entertainment Weekly, am occasionally lacking in the rational thinking department, and was told by my college advisor that my "math scores reflect the English major in [me]."  Shoot.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm thrilled to have a smart husband, and I really like it when I can just ask him about something (Arab Spring?) and he can explain it in a way that I can easily understand it (because he's basically Mama to my Forrest Gump).  But sometimes it's annoying to always be the dumb one, or to only be able to contribute to trivia contests if the category is 90210 or cities that have hosted the Olympics.

So Matt knows everything, which is simultaneously fantastic and annoying.  When he was a kid, though, he took an IQ test (which I may have already mentioned here at some point), but he never received a definitive score because while he was off the charts on everything linguistic and rational and whatnot, when it came to anything spatial he scored slightly lower than Mitch would.

Matt doesn't understand shapes.

Anyway, last night we were creepin' on Chloe's Facebook page--oh wait! Time for some awesome pictures lifted from her page--

Hufflepuff.

--and Matt saw an old status of hers that said, "i <3 gandhi."  Matt was confused.

Matt:  I less than three Gandhi?  Chloe is less than three Gandhis?

Idiot.

Long Time No Talk. . .

Well, hello there, party people. Sorry about the week-long absence. Life's been pretty tough for our family lately, but here we are with our heads poking out on the other side. Last time I was on here I was bound and determined that nothing would break my stride. Well, let's just say that the stride was broken like a sombitch. Shoot.

Matt had been out of town (which I didn't tell you about before just in case you are a murderer who would then decide that--since my strapping protector husband was gone--it was high time for some murderin'), and I learned the hard way that I'm just no good at being by myself for long periods of time.* Even Mitch missed him.

But Matt's back, and although there are still some very sad circumstances that are out of our control, and some very annoying circumstances that are out of our control, we're doing better. It's been nice returning to our awesome, albeit boring, routine.

Cue the triumphant Forrest Gump music!



You didn't miss too much in the last week. I spent too many hours grading essays, waiting tables, and being otherwise pitiful. I was abandoned by Matt's car not just once but twice. I may or may not have witnessed a gas station robbery. I ate too much fast food and drank too much wine--so much wine, in fact, that I may have accidentally fallen into some curtains and pulled them down from the window. Oops. I filed the mail for the first time since this happened. And I started our taxes.

Exciting, huh? Try not to get too carried away with jealousy.

Actually, look at today's weather forecast for the SAV, and then you can be overcome with envy.

So, yeah. Things sucked there for a while, and I apologize for the absence. But short weeks and happy times lie ahead of us, and I can't wait to share those with you. I've missed y'all.**



*Judge away. I've spent days beating myself up about not actually being the strong, independent, "I don't need a man" kind of gal I've always fancied myself to be. Twenty-year old Mandy kind of hates twenty-nine year Mandy, but it doesn't really matter. Twenty-year old Mandy was a terrible cook, so take that!


**Twenty-year old Mandy also judges present-day Mandy for her use of y'all. Twenty-year old Mandy is such a bitch!

Hello, Florida.

The two weeks of winter was too much for me and Matt, so we decided to escape to Fort Lauderdale.

Now, to be fair, it had been just as cold in Ft. Lauderdale as it had been in Savannah. And Miami even had snow flurries for Christ's sake! (Oh, Miami gets snow but Savannah doesn't? That's fucked up if you ask me.)

But as we drove farther and farther south, it got warmer and warmer. (Fortunately our trip coincided with the departure of the arctic blasts.) By the time we arrived at Matt's godfather's house, it was tropical and breezy and, well, perfect.

Plus, there were oranges on the trees. That's like an exclamation point on perfect.


The Godfather, Gary, has made of his home a tropical escape, a place where people to go escape the stresses of daily life. Oh, and he makes you eat about 200 brownies a day. I agreed. (Knowing what was awaiting me in Florida, I put off those New Year's "I'm going to eat healthy and stop being such a fatass" resolutions until after MLK weekend.

Even the coconuts at Gary's look like they want to eat.

One of the cool things about visiting Gary and Bill (Matt's godfather and my soulmate) is that we stay in the guest house. The guest house isn't fancy or anything, but it's got a bed, TV, bathroom, refrigerator, and a mirror on the ceiling, so we're set.

We went to the beach, and enjoyed the warm weather.

And we enjoyed a full weekend of quality time with Matt's parents. This is actually one of my favorite things about our annual weekend in Ft. Lauderdale. When we visit them during the holidays, it's always hard to get in a full conversation that's not cluttered with talk of wrapping and gifts and cookies and interruptions. But during that Florida weekend, we can talk, enjoy each other, laugh, drink margaritas, gamble, and just have fun.

Matt's parents aren't wild about having their pictures taken, so I'll just put this one up from when they were younger. Glamorous, huh?

But the best part about the Ft. Lauderdale weekend (it really is our favorite part of the year)?

Soulmate, a.k.a., Bill. Bill pretends that he hates me and I pretend that he's pretending.

I decided, years ago, that we are soulmates and then proceeded to harass him for years. He's a good sport. Most of the time, anyway.

Oh, Soulmate. You and your funny gestures.

(Other awesome things about our weekend: we won $300 playing poker, I scored at Ikea, and I ate so much that I puked my guts out. Well, that last one isn't awesome so much, but it did motivate me to to start eating healthy and exercising. For a couple days at least. Oh, and I saw my best good friend Tanya. She and I are like peas and carrots, or, to translate to our language, cake and icing. Just stay tuned for more exciting details.)

Vaccination and Deep Thoughts

In order that I may continue to make insensitive jokes, I got the H1N1 vaccine today. It was gross. Probably not as gross as the flu itself (what with the puking and pain and whatnot), but I really hate when people squirt stuff up my nose. This aversion is precisely the reason I don't do cocaine. Well, that and the fact that I'm not into drugs other than alcohol, caffeine, and ibuprofin.

But anyway, after I was attacked with a live virus (Does this mean that I'm going to get sick? Oh no! If I kiss Matt, and he didn't get the mist, am I going to give him the Swine?), I started to have very deep thoughts. Deep thoughts don't usually come to me, but I really got to thinking.

You know how Lieutenant Dan had invested Forrest Gump's Bubba Gump Shrimp Company money in some fruit company?

And how he called Forrest to tell him that they didn't have to worry about money no more? And Forrest said that was good, "one less thing."

Man, I bet Forrest and Dan are doing REALLY well now. Little Forrest isn't ever going to have to work if he doesn't want to.

Happy Hump Day!

I'm going to go research what I can and can not do now that I've introduced a live and deadly virus into my body.

It's that time again.

It's football season. Horray.

I wish that I was more excited about football, but I'm not. In contrast to how I felt about it during college, football is not about parties and hot chocolate and sitting on bleachers on chilly Friday and Saturday nights. Instead, the beginning of football season means frustration and annoyance.

For one, the beginning of football season coincides with the beginning of school. This time of year tends to be pretty stressful for me as I adjust to early mornings and full work weeks, students who be tryin' me, and the general knowledge that it'll be 10 more months before I can sleep in every day and drink boxed wine every night.

So as Matt gets giddy like a little schoolgirl about pre-season games and fantasy football leagues, I experience a feeling of dread about how much work is ahead of me.

This time of year, I have less time and energy to do things around the house, the same things I was happy to do during the summer months. And simultaneously, Matt's priorities undergo a dramatic shift. Suddenly, we are scheduling our life around fantasty football drafts (he's in THREE leagues!), and Saturday afternoon and night games, Sunday afternoon and night games, Monday night games, and the occasional Thursday night game (really not that much of a time commitment, Matt argues). Matt will occasionally forego watching a very important game (because, somehow, they're almost all very important) to do something else, but usually only after I get pissy about it.


Have I mentioned that he's a Buffalo Bills fan? THE BILLS? Being a Bills fan is like being friends with someone who punches you in the stomach every time you see each other.

We will have our annual beginning of football season fight, which is usually more about me being stressed than it is about Matt's watching football. (Sadly, it seems that too many of our fights are more about me being tired or cranky or just a bitch in general than they are about the actual "topic" of the fight.) Then things will begin to level out, and I'll cool down.


What I have to remember is that I signed up for this. Matt has been football-obsessed since he was a wee boy, and nothing that I do is going to change that part of him. And truthfully, I wouldn't want to. He loves it. He loves it the way I love The Hills and Forrest Gump and Dirty Dancing and cupcakes and Mitch combined. I'm happy that Matt's happy. I just wish that sweeping the floor, doing laundry, and cooking dinner were the things that made him so happy.

But I'd be lying if I didn't admit to some of the small joys that football brings me. For one, it allows me an opportunity to give really insightful commentary such as "Run to the yellow line!" or "The Patriots are so good at throwing and catching." Occasionally, I get to watch my favorite thing in football, an interception returned for a touchdown. Matt's three fantasy leagues often bring in some cash (for me to spend at Target!). But the greatest thing about football for Mandy? Football boyfriends.

First there's Trent Edwards, the quarterback for Buffalo. He's not the most handsome of the football boyfriends, but he's the smartest. T.E. went to Stanford!

Then there's Brett. Oh, Brett. Brett was my first football boyfriend, but we broke up a couple of years ago when he started being a drama queen.

The most handsome football boyfriend in the league today would have to be Tom Brady. He makes my heart beat fast.
But the one with the whole package, the personality, the looks, the charisma? It's Coach Eric Taylor from Friday Night Lights.

On those days when I'm frustrated with the way our life seems to revolve around football, I can just think of Coach Taylor's wife, and be happy that at least I'm not in her situation, and that football has the shortest season of any sport.

"Is there a Mr. Gump, Mrs. Gump?"

"He's on vacation."

And so are we. Hopefully ours will be different from Mr. Gump's, though. We plan to come back.

Stay tuned for lots of pictures of Mitch swimming!