Hi there. You probably don’t know me and maybe that’s a good thing. When Emily invited little old me to be a guest blogger, I was honored and so petrified that my hair highlights faded five times faster than usual. I told her “I’d love to write a little ditty on your blog!” in my cheery voice and then, I went home, drank copious amounts of wine and haven’t slept well since.
I’m Candace. I’ve been brainstorming big words to use in hopes you’ll be so enamored by my intellect and poetic prose that you will want to be my Facebook friend (no, don’t worry, I don’t expect that you’ll want to be my actual friend). Here is the list of words I came up with. Let me know if any subsequent enamoring happens.
queue
bloated
conundrum
carpel tunnel
nomenclature
dilapidated
No? Didn’t work? Ok. I don’t even know what half of those words mean. The other half are maladies that I have been battling since joining the Over 30 Club. Let’s move on. I have another list. About Fall. Because it’s a Fall World After All.
Fall weather shimmied in and I can finally stash away those cellulite shaking shorts (my capris) while the world (and my neighborhood) rejoices. I’m so looking forward to it and here’s why.
1. Halloween. Halloween brings the usual excitement like pumpkin carving (knives!), costume parties, and an excuse to try to once again convince the Hubs that’s it’s okay to buy this 10lb bag of candy from Costco because this year I really promise NOT to shut off all the lights and eat it by myself in the garage until my stomach balloons up into my lungs, leaving me gasping for air. No, this year will be different. Instead, I’ll have this bag finished off before Halloween, we’ll still shut off all of the lights, get take-out and go to bed at 8.30pm.
2. The charming changing color of the leaves. No, let me be real. It’s the cooler weather that comes along with it, allowing me to once again sport long sleeves and not risk reliving the horror of that one time this summer when I waved excitedly at my girlfriend in JCPenneys and my underarm is the only thing that waved back. And then, that girlfriend unfriended me on Facebook. Remember? Things like that don’t happen as often in the fall when I’m wearing long sleeves. Here is a great post to read about giving your girlfriend a gift.
3. Reed diffusers in those new yummy scents. Spiced Apple Carmel Nutmeg Chocolate Goo with notes of Irish Cream and Twinkies. They make the house smell like I’ve been a Baking Genius in the kitchen. When in actuality, the last thing I baked is my arm hair during an unfortunate mishap while warming up a disgusting Lean Cuisine.
4. Pajama pants. With elastic waistbands. We all know what that means.
5. Christmas cards. I know. You are confused. Let me explain. Turns out, the only recipe I manage to follow successfully is the Annual Recipe for Christmas Card Disaster. Without fail, mid December ambushes my already frazzled strung out person and reminds me that, unlike the rest of the world that is happily filling my mailbox with well organized holiday cheer, I have not given any thought to mailing out my own Christmas cards. Clearly, my Life is a Fail. Panic sets in. I don’t want the world to know my dirty little secret (that my Life is a Fail) and so with clenched teeth, I lock myself in my office to painstakingly draft up a letter fabricating how yet another incredibly stellar year of my semi-charmed life has come to an end and how I totally look forward to the fresh new year and what joy it will undoubtedly bring (besides the threat of weight gain, wrinkles, and grungy carpets that need to be replaced). As if that wasn’t a difficult enough task, this little snippet of My Life in the Fab Lane ends up having hateful formatting and the Clip Art I have carefully selected imports in as the size of plankton AND the photos I have chosen are terrible self timer pictures (that nicely accentuates my moon crater pores) which, by the way, instigate an all out Photo Versus Text Hostage Situation (the photos, not my pores) that leaves me cursing like a sailor at my printer (it apparently takes holidays off) until I have come completely undone and surrender by smashing the whole shabang into the office closet (you can have a peek here for franchise) , storm downstairs, pull out all of the frozen Christmas cookies from my perfect Mother In Law and eat myself into a cookie coma in front of reruns of Jersey Shore. Then, I make a promise out loud to the the barren freezer, pile of unused creepy Nutcracker stamps, and the rest of the Merry Crappy Christmas Chaos that taunts my very existence , “I swear, NEXT YEAR, I’m doing my Christmas cards in October!”. Typically, I sleep the days away and then have to take a day off of work in January to finish the buggers up and mail them out in increments of three. Those are called Happy New Year cards. The shame.
This year, I mean it. I’m saving myself the misery and Hubs the damage control by delegating this task to someone who actually knows what they are doing. Emily. I’m going make the Hubs shower and we are going to get our photos taken while the remnants of my Norwegian Tan still exist, before the pretty leaves shrivel up into Death itself, and I can still fit into pants that zip. Afterward, Emily will work her photo and card crafting magic while I kick back with some spiked apple cider and episodes of Glee. My Christmas cards will be ready. And you will, by golly, get them before 2010 grows a 1.
Happy Fall, y’all. Please promise to come back to Emily’s blog even though you found a squatter here today, ok? If there is a next time, which there won’t be, I promise to keep the incomplete sentences and overuse of capitalization to a minimum. But the run-ons, I’ll keep those. They are all I’ve got.
Love and kisses,
Candace
P.S. I have a blog too, which my Mom reads so you don’t have to: thecandace.com
