Pet Peeves

I have so many pet peeves!

One of them is not posting on my blog. ha.

When I'm feeling like there's nothing to write I might cheat and just post one of my many million pet peeves. So here goes:

I hate it when:

You know when you're in the car on the on-ramp to get onto the freeway and you're being metered and everybody has to get into two lanes? Well, I'm really good at figuring out quickly which lane is the best one. I have lots of tricks, like if there's a semi truck in one of the lanes I get in that lane, because the meters are every-other and a semi takes up the space of like four cars and so DUH, you'll get to go first if you get behind the semis. (Don't worry the pet peeve is coming.) Another trick if I'm desperate is to just really quickly visualize the every-other pattern that's happening and get in the lane that lets you go first.

SO:

I will never understand why people get in the wrong lane! I laugh to myself when they go right and left was the way to go. I love that when we get up to the lights I get to go before them because THEY picked WRONG.

The pet peeve?

When they go in front of me anyway. Speed off like a whiney baby, peeling their tires to show me.

Photo wicfy.com

Am I the only one? Do you also hate this?

Summer-isms, Vol. 62

"That's not gonna smell good. I just had a bunch of onions."

"I've never been able to duplicate the feeling I had when I looked at Mark Paul Gosslear's face."

"From what I've learned about humans..."

"That's adorable that you have a crush on me. So does every comic book reader."

"I still don't know what Drake is."

Hal-isms, Vol. 46

"Boy. It's an earth-shattering experience when you find out you're nobody. Earth-shattering."

"I'm gonna have a cup of coffee while we sit here and bond."

"You're not makin' bean dip?! I hate Spanish things."

"Well? Have you ever noticed their food is either beans or -- I don't know -- cactus tips. It never seems to change."

"I think I'm gonna crap any minute. Do I dare walk out the door?"

The Most Important Thing I Ever Learned in My Life

I've learned a lot of stuff in my lifetime. Lots. (Mostly the hard way by screwing up real bad.)

Today, I'm gonna share the single most important thing I ever learnt in my whole entire lifetime. It's from my good friend Anna Gustafson and it's these five words:



"No ice ruins the party."

Seriously.

The Station Wagon, Vol. 2

Our family's ugly Station Wagon had a window that rolled down on the hatch back. On afternoon when I was three years old, my mom was driving us down the road when she happened to look in the rearview mirror to see me, outside the car, hanging on. All she could see was my white hair and my little knuckles.

She slammed on the breaks.

I was three. I guess I decided to climb out the back and ride on the bumper.

It's a miracle I'm alive today.

The Station Wagon

When we were kids my parents had a pea green station wagon. It was very, very ugly and embarrassing and we tried very hard to never get dropped off at school in it. 

We were eight people and we all rode around in that thing. Two parents and a kid up in the front, three kids in the back and Kasey and I sat with all the luggage in what we called the "back-y-back", or the cargo-hold. I also remember sometimes sitting in the space where people's feet go in the back seat after losing the "who gets the hump" fight if and when there were too many suitcases and boxes of pigeons in the back-y-back. Boxes of pigeons? What the? That's another story. 

Anyway, the car was ugly. Other people got the new invention they called the "mini van" or the "Astro van" but we Hexums drove around in a station wagon. Gosh it was ugly. The color of green puke. One day, my mom got into an accident and totaled it. Nobody was hurt thank goodness but the car was a goner. We kids hip, hip hoorayed! because: no more ugly car.

Yah, right.

Hal and Dianne promptly went and bought our old car's ugly step-cousin, the even uglier poop brown station wagon.

Something drew me to this painting (currently hanging in my bedroom) by local artist Neal Perbix. I'm not sure what.

Shash-age Links

An inspiration. And what a way to go- This 86-year-old runs a marathon, and then dies the next day.

I think I really need to have a few Japanese babies so I can make them these adorable lunches every day.

This interview of two girls who found the scissors is pretty stinking hilarious. 

These old time photos don't seem so old-time-y anymore now that they've given them a modern facelift. I wonder, will today seem like "old times" in the future, since our photos are so true-to-life nowadays?

I want one of these un-helmets invented by two Swedish women. Too bad they're more expensive than my bike...

There are many reasons to love Minneapolis, and it's bikability is high up on that list. 

Summer saw this guy first, but if she doesn't marry him I'm a-going to:

Adopt an Adult Kid

Sometimes I write posts that I don't publish, if you can believe that. Usually it's for a very good reason. This, for example:

I've been down many internet wormholes in my day, but none so horrible as the "adopt an adult kid who is 18 and still hasn't lost hope in waiting for his forever home or how about this 12-year-old boy who functions at age 6 but is looking for love from a mom and a dad and wants to be adopted because he 'would like to stay there and not move again' or here we have an outgoing 10-year-old girl who just wants somebody to 'forget her past and be there for her when things get tough'" and there are photos no doubt donated by professional photographers and it's like shopping for shoes but it's real people and what happened to the parents? and so I'm crying and have decided I can probably fit like eleven or twelve teenagers in my one bedroom apartment and we can be a family but truth be told I don't really want the responsibility and I'm only home from about 9pm to 9am and during that time if I'm not sleeping I am drinking wine and watching back-to-back episodes of some TV show in my underwear so I probably can't really help with homework until weekends. 

My Favorite Things

I started this post a while ago because I wanted to share all of my favorite things with the world. I could only think of one thing at the time and saved it as a draft to add more things later. And then I never did. 

So, here you go. An incomplete list of all of my favorite things:

I Don't Deserve Anything Nice

Since I bought my new car, I have:

• Left the windows down in a rainstorm.
• Unwittingly let sauce-heavy Chinese food slowly drip, drip, drip onto the passenger seat and into the crack of the passenger seat
• Put a metal chair in the backseat that had wet rust inside it somewhere which then dripped onto the leather.
• Parked next to somebody who likes to RAM! their door open into other people's brand new cars when they get out of the car.
• Been sideswiped in the middle of the night by a random mean sideswiper who totally scraped up the whole side of my car and broke my rearview mirror OFF (to the tune of $2000) and then did NOT leave a note.

Which just proves I don't deserve anything nice. If I still had Ol' Blue I'd purposely pour Chinese food all over it to make it smell BETTER.



This was my car new:

Here's a couple pics of it today:

Shash-age Links

I never want to believe that anyone would ever lie to me ever ever ever (why would somebody lie to me?), so this makes me feel lots of bad feelings.

I was in Sarajevo and I stood in these places and this photo collection is incredible.

I don't think I'm a very good person because I would probably not do this.

Ha! Axe Body Spray is totally toxic and sends people to the hospital. This is awesome and crazy.

I wonder if anybody will ever love me like this.

As much as I hate the font he used to make this post about deep dark secrets, it's pretty hilarious. I'm guilty of 2, 4, 5, 14, 15, 26, 28, 30 (but only to determine clean vs. dirty) 36 and 40.



Here's a tiny little three-minute glimpse of what it's like to be in my family:

Ol' Blue Bit the Dust and I Bit the Bullet.

RIP

After already having broken down and towed to the mechanic twice in one week, Ol' Blue didn't start one day at work. I was late for a meeting with my boss and all my old tricks weren't working. I adjusted the idle. I waited. I pressed the gas to the floor and kept it there as I turned the key. I flooded it. So I waited. I tried again. I started crying because I was so sad and frustrated. I loved that truck! I just had it fixed. Twice! I wanted it to work so's I could drive it for five years and then decide what to do about buying a different car. Is that too much to ask?

I texted my 27-year-old coworker Mike. "Truck won't start. Come out to parking lot right now and be my big brother and tell me what to do." Mike came out to the parking lot. As he approached I crank-rolled my truck window down and wiped the tears from my eyes.

Mike looked at my pathetic self and said, "go buy a car you dummy."

He helped me start the truck and I had 14 seconds to decide which direction I should go. Ol' Blue took me to Acura. (I did have to make one stop on the way at the toxic waste dump to unload a humidifier and some paint cans I had picked up from my rental property.)

I walked in like a fancy lady and asked for a manager. I said the following, numbering each bullet point with my hand:

• "I have one hour"
• "I want to drive away in the gunmetal gray ILX with tech package"
• "I want all-weather mats"
• "You're going to give me $1000 for the piece of crap truck in the parking lot"

One hour and five minutes later I drove away in my new car.

Once the fancy business lady stuff was over I could take off my serious poker negotiating game face and do this:

And this:

And this:

(I guess the extra five minutes was kind of my fault.)

p.s. they only gave me $500 for Ol' Blue. I mean it also didn't start when they tried. But I made them throw in the all-weather mats for free which meant technically I got $650. I call that a win. 

Sunday Favorites: You Know You're Lonely...

New to A Lady Reveals Nothing? You've missed SO MUCH. Not to worry. Every Sunday, I dig through the archives to repost an old favorite. Mostly because I'm too lazy to come up with new content every single day. This story originally appeared on January 30, 2013.

You know you're lonely when you're shopping for clothes and the salesman who is obviously gay touches your leg in two places to try to explain why the knee of the jean isn't hitting your knee in the right spot (because your legs are way too short), and his hand lingers on your calf muscle and the electricity shoots up from his hand on your leg straight to your empty womb. And then you buy four pairs of pants.

Why I'm even shopping I don't know. This outfit has served me well every day for the past five weeks.

Just Exactly HOW Do Normal People Ride Elevators?

Last night after work I got into the elevator to find three young handsome men including a bearded redhead -- and you know I'm a total sucker for beards and for redheads. They were in the middle of a conversation but that didn't stop me from stepping right in the middle of all three of them, while maintaining eye contact with the redhead and declaring,

"OOOH! I LIKE MY CHANCES!"

And then acknowledging the awkwardness of making that joke right upon entering the elevator, not considering the time required to make a 10-floor descent, I turned back to the door and declared again,

"I SHOULD HAVE MADE THAT JOKE A LITTLE LATER IN THE ELEVATOR RIDE. HEH HEH HAHEHAHDHADHEHDHHAHHAHAHA. AWKWARD. HAHAHAHAah!!!!!"

They looked at me, confused and the redhead continued speaking, presumably where they had left off before I broke their conversation. '...and then I talked to Rosalind about it...'

And then I interrupted again, mock-angrily-crazy-eyesed, (you know, like a jealous hag over the '10-second relationship' I had just pretend garnered with the bearded red-headed cute one), cocking my head and positioning my arms across my chest:

"OH. ROSALIND. YOUR GIRLFRIEND."

"No. She's my manager." By now they realized I wasn't going to let them have their conversation and that clearly I wanted all of the attention on me. They gave me a slight pity laugh (because come on, that jealous bit was FUNNY) and then mercifully the elevator doors opened and THEN I said,

"I'M GONNA GET OUT OF HERE REALLY FAST BECAUSE I'M EMBARRASSED."

I went left when I should have went right, and then I figured it out and had to turn around and walk past them again and then I walked really really fast out of the building, with the three handsome men following me all of the way out.

WHY can't I be more like her?