Summer-isms, Vol. 68

"Yeah but pay closer attention to the high school volleyball player part, Dummy."

"OK, well you live alone with no animals."

"OMG. Fart-burp."

"This is the story of my fat life. I'm full but look at me."

"That's what I get for being an expressive human being."

Sunday Favorites: Dude Looks Like a Lady

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 November 16, 2011, when Summer and I were living in Arizona masquerading as men.


We get a lot of looks.

Everybody stares at the water meter installers in the neighborhood. Some come up to ask what we're doing, but they all do a huge double-take when they realize we are women.

If we go into any kind of store we get lots of attention in these crazy getups.

I think it's just a little unexpected to see girls in any sort of stereotypical male job. It's been a very interesting social experiment actually. And of course it only makes me feel super tough and strong. I like to do things like swing my pick ax or throw heavy things when people are watching.

Another thing I like to do when kids are getting on or off the school bus is to say, "Stay in school kids!" with a shrug of my shoulders, even though I KNOW they are thinking what a cool job I have. And it is cool. Really cool. Part of what we have to do is collect a bunch of the metal pit lids from in front of people's homes and deliver them to have holes drilled in them. Then we bring them back with the holes. I think we would be drilling the holes except I broke two drill bits on one hole. (The holes hold the radios that we install and program.) Anyway, for this part of our job, one of us drives and the other one of us rides in the back of the SUV with the hatch open.  Our code word is "hop pop" when we're ready for the driver to drive to the next one. I use my pick ax to pry the lids up and this part of our job looks really cool, trust me. I always tell the kiddies that the holes are for putting quarters in. (I'm hoping I can get a secondary source of income.) Today I got a little girl to dig an entire hole for me. It took forever but hey, I needed the break.

I digress. The point of this post is to discuss gender disparity amongst manual labor workers.

Not really. Anyway, I've discussed before how I always feel like a dude because I look like this at work:

And we work. We work ten to twelve hours a day. I never wear makeup and I never get dressed up. When I get home I shower and put on my new pajama sweater dress I bought at Old Navy for $5.97 and fall asleep in a chair in front of reruns of 30 Rock at 8:45pm:

And Summer takes photos.

Today we decided to treat ourselves and get Pedicures next door to the FedEx office we frequent for paperwork shipments back to Minnesota. All the ladies at the shop stared and double-taked just as much as the neighbors when we're elbow-deep in their water meter pits.

We're pariahs. We don't fit in the man's world of basic plumbing and we don't fit in the woman's world of Asian pedicure shops.  

Oh Well and Oh Man it felt good to look feel like a woman for 45 minutes.

First of Many Posts About my Emergency Appendectomy

An email I just sent to my entire office:

My surgeons injected my stomach with a bunch of C02 so they could laproscopically get that appendix out of there (I guess it makes it easier for them to see things and isolate others). They didn't pop me like a balloon though when they were done, so at the moment I definitely look pregnant.

Apparently, some of the gas will re-absorb into my body. But then some of it has to come out (if you know what I mean). I have been instructed by Medical Professionals that I need to be farting as much as possible.

Anywho, I have decided to embrace my gassiness. I’m home alone working right now and every time the good lord blesses me with a nice round trumpet fart, though very painful, I throw up my hands (to no one) and exclaim, “Doctor’s Orders!”


You can expect this as normal office behavior from now on. 

Summer-isms, Vol. 67

"You never let me have any fun."

"When celebrities engage...I'm like...yah, right. I'll believe it when I see it."

"OK High Ponytail. Miss Queen."

"Is this what dollar bills look like?"

"Your future husband, probably. Take a right."

Sunday Favorites: I Don't Like to Toot My Own Horn, But BEEP BEEP

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 March 2, 2012.

Aside from the fact that we were totally neighbors when I lived in New Orleans, the celebrity whose life most closely mirrors mine has and always will be Angelina Jolie. 

I'm in a long-term relationship, living with the man of my dreams, (and by 'long-term' I mean 'non-existent' and by 'with the man of my dreams' I mean 'alone in the basement of a married couple in their sixties') have scads of children who love me and each other (and by 'children who love me and each other' I mean 'zits on my chin and cheek area').

Angelina and I have so much in common.  She is comfortable around snakes...

...I am comfortable around snakes:

She looks amazing in a bikini in a waterfall...

...I look amazing in a bikini in a waterfall.

She goes to Cambodia and wears no makeup...

...I go to Cambodia and wear no makeup.

Today, though, we truly have more in common than ever.

...we have both appeared in Forbes Magazine.


She, for her Celebrity 100 status and I, for the lil' appearance I made in an article about ladies who travel solo.

Seriously. I was featured in an article on Forbes.com!!!

I was interviewed* by J. Maureen Henderson, of Generation Meh:

 "...I knew I wanted to bring in the big guns. I consulted some of the web’s most savvy solo female travelers for their perspective on why going it alone is not as daunting as it seems, their best advice for women taking the vacation-for-one  plunge and what makes their personal travel highlight reel."

I'd like to thank my mom...

Get it?

More Personal Ad

When Child Slave Labor is OK

When your car is dirty and you don't feel like cleaning it out yourself and your nieces stupidly drop by to borrow your bike, that's when.

Vacuum...

Scrub...

Who is cuter than these two?

I Want to Talk About My House...

I bought my house on tax day in 2003. I was 25 years old. It wasn't my first house -- in fact it was my third -- but I lived there for seven years and during that time I had about a million roommates and a million parties. And then I decided to embark on a three-year around-the-world adventure so I rented it out.

A couple of months ago my tenant informed me that he had to move out a year-and-a-half before his lease was ending because of a great job opportunity across the country. He expressed an interest in buying it from me so I always figured I'd either sell the house to him, or move back in at some point. Since I wasn't sure I could find such a good renter again, I decided to put the place on the market.

When I went there to clean things out, all these memories came flooding back to me:

Here's a bunch of before-and-empty-afters:

I made a new link on here called The House in tribute to the old place. 

Everything happened so fast! The house was on the market for two days when the buyers made their offer and within 30 I was signing all the papers. By the way they're the cutest people you've ever seen. Coupl'a Gingers and you know how much I love Gingers. I kept bursting into tears during the closing thinking of them in my house starting their family and having a dog.

And then I woke up the next day and I was completely over it. Ha, that's me.

Summer-isms, Vol. 66

"I would do Crossfit but those people get up at 6:30am. That's unacceptable."

"I know! Can you believe the lives I've lived?"

"This was gonna be the year I made my own bitters."

"OK. I'm gonna stop talking about my blazer now."

"I think I bought 5 years' worth of body slimmers in the past four weeks."

Sunday Favorites: More Like "Blunder" Party

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 May 6, 2013.

When I was a little kid, I went to a slumber party with my sister Kasey and several other similarly-aged friends. It was so much fun! There were tons of snacks and the mom of the house was a real nice fun lady so the party was a total hit. AND there were tons of activities, including a fun trivia game where you had to pop(!) a balloon and the trivia question was inside and then you had to answer the question. I loved that game because I was a super smart little kid and probably got all of my trivia questions right.

When it was time for bed, the nice fun lady mom had us change into our pajamas. She lined us all up, got our attention and then solemnly asked the group if there was anybody who was still peeing the bed.

Nobody raised their hand. Silence. This made me feel real bad for the nice fun lady mom who was having this party for us and here nobody was showing her any respect by answering her question. I wasn't quite sure why she wanted to know, but that awful silence was killing me. I was ashamed of our group, greedily taking snacks and prizes but then not participating when it mattered most. Even my friend Bedwetter Betty* didn't make a peep.

I raised my hand. Never mind that I hadn't wet the bed for years. I never wet the bed. But I didn't want her to feel bad! 

Then, right in front of everybody, she knelt down in front of me and held out a pair of plastic underwear. I dutifully stepped one foot in, and then the other, and then she shimmied them up, on top of my real underwear. I had to sleep in them all night long and they were very sweaty.

Taking one for the team since 1977.

*Her real name.

What's a Nerdy Girl With a Bad Back to Do?

Why, buy a kneeling chair on Amazon for $79.74 of course! I had it shipped to work but I bought it for my home office. I've been testing it to see what I think. 

It's kind of hard to get used to, because at first it felt like I basically traded low-back pain for incredible shin pain. And then I shifted my weight into my butt more and stuck my knees into the knee pad instead of my shins and that feels way better. It's a great conversation piece. Everybody wants to try it. And, since my cube at work is near the front door everybody teases me on their way to the bathroom.  

They make a mockery of me, Mom! Because this is what they see:

If having good posture is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Of course I came up with a funny comeback way too late. I might try it tomorrow. Here it is: 

"OH YAH? GO PEE WHY DON'T YOU?"

And then when I finally sat down at my home office tonight to write this blog post, and my friend Heather walked by she made a mockery of me again, Mom! Because this is what she saw:

Inception!

And then I said:
"OH YAH? GO PEE WHY DON'T YOU?" to Heather but she didn't get it.

How Rude

I really can't stand it when some chubby lady borrows my tights and then walks around with her thighs rubbing together so hard that they get HOLES in them and then puts them secretly back in my drawer.

**This photo was taken from above while I was sitting in my car. Some people on Instagram thought it was a photo of me in a weird leather bikini thing with the holes closer to the no-no-special place. To those people I say: "where can I get a leather bikini?"

Most Hilarious Craigslist Text Ever and a Narrow Escape from Being a Silenced Lamb

So I'll make this short story as long as possible, as per usual.

I'm trying to work more from home. I don't really have an ideal situation at the moment, though some may call it that...

Laptop desk? Cereal? Coffee? Check. Check. Check. Fancy Business? Check one million.

The thing is, I am trying to be a fancy business lady and so working in bed, though it has it's benefits (see photo caption above), it isn't a long-term solution. I do have an office, but I also have the world's baddest back -- so my adorable yet hella-uncomfortable little school desk just won't do:

I decided that a corner desk would maximize the little baby office that I have -- and I even created a Pinterest account so I could get "inspiration" for tiny office spaces and stuff like they have in this one really appealed to me:

Isn't that just fantastic? I don't have those stairs of course, but you get the idea.

ANYWAY. I went on Overstock.com and bought a white corner desk from them for $225 that would fit the dimensions of the tiny room. But a week-and-a-half later I realized that my desk wasn't here and then I tracked it on UPS and found that it was damaged in transit. I chatted a customer service rep and they told me that they were out of stock now, sorry. Full refund. Thank you Overstock.com.

So I went on Craigslist and found this little cutie for $95:

Except my office is only 91" long. So I texted the seller:

"Is this desk easily trimmable? And are you the kind of person who has the tools and goes around cutting desks?" and they said yes! 

And then we arranged for pickup, etc. During the conversation, I got the single most hilarious text I have ever gotten from an exchange on Craigslist. Here it is:

"GARAGE IS OPEN AND SAW IS READY."




Of course I responded as you see in the blue above, and thus began a hilarious text exchange regarding my demise:

Don't worry, he didn't kill me. And neither did his adorable daughter.

Instead, he cut 3" off the end of my desk and while we waited gave me and my neighbor Matt (aka bodyguard aka muscles-of-the-operation aka SUCKER) beers and refunded me $30 because I didn't take the chairs and then we all became best friends.

And look at my cute new little office, primed and ready for some fancy business:

Work in progress guys, I still gotta get that staircase installed.

All's well that ends well, am I right, Dad?

Summer-isms, Vol. 65

"I kinda want that rich lady Long Island Iced Tea they have. But that's just because I'm a sad old lady. Should I just get one?"

"That's why we call you Pasta Salad Pig."

"I'm really not a Polo lady."

"It's just that...my cleavage is so...unpredictable."

"You'll get cancer before me, but I'll die of some weird disease."