My Bridget Jones Life

[NOTE: THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE IN NO WAY INTENDS TO EVOKE PITY, BUT RATHER RELAY A HUMOROUS, RELATABLE ACCOUNT OF ONE WOMAN’S STRUGGLE FOR INTERNET. IN OTHER WORDS, OUR BRIDGET HAS PLUCKED HERSELF UP, EATEN CAKE AND DECIDED IT’S RATHER FUNNY, NOW (NOT THEN). THIS IS FOR YOU, DANA.]


Once there was a girl named Bridget Jones*, who sometimes is a bit of a klutz, a Calamity Jane or more often than not, tends to have stress-induced freak-outs.

It started simply enough, with a harmless puddle. A puddle that was soon enough in her shoes after a wayward bus splashed her on the walk to the office. We don’t need to talk about what happened in said office except that she arrived with soggy socks and exited with a mountain of frustration and slightly soggy socks. The only thing putting a spring in poor Bridget’s step was getting to talk to her charming, darling Mark Darcy* after work, out of the country on some important, pressing work* we are sure, because he is important, and charming and cute and….oh wait, where were we?

Right, Bridget bumbled her way home, fighting traffic, sweeping into the house to log onto Skype (after all, Bridget works in media, and Skype is free). Two minutes into a long-awaited conversation in which Mr. Darcy was of course, darling and charming, the connection goes dead. Bridget waits for Mark to reset the connection and call back. Nothing. Well he is a foreign land, give him a moment, she reasoned. She starts to kill time on Facebook and then realizes it is her Internet that is the problem, not the charming, darling man’s. She runs into the other room, pushing aside the paint cans and paint rollers (sometimes Bridget is well intentioned, but rarely finishes her hair-brained schemes, in this instance, the room she half painted resulting in a half blue, half gray guestroom) to reveal a modem blinking helplessly as it drowned into an Internetless abyss. Bridget, trying to maintain composure in light of this disappointing start, employs her IT where how and unplugs, replugs, unplugs, replugs, prods, says please nicely, clicks computer mouse, double clicks mouse, left clicks mouse, unplugs again, watches blinking red light, watches blinking red light, starts to plead, prods HARDER, gently slaps, slaps HARD, starts calling the modem names including “bugger” and “wanker”, hits, hits again, picks up, thinks about throwing against wall, HITS HARDER, starts to call names at MUCH LOUDER DECIBEL LEVEL, WHY WON’T YOU WORK WHEN I NEED YOU? YOU PIECE OF……

Mountain of frustration, soggy socks, puddles, no charming man at home- all come crumbling down and our Bridget, our stressed out Bridget collapses sobbing on top the friggin’ traitor of a modem, fat mascara-laden tears hitting the paint tarp, which luckily is still wet enough to get paint on her pants. Thirty minutes of ugly cry (you know the ugly cry, not the dainty, a tear or two, sniffle, but snot, mascara, headache resulting cry) later, Bridget realizes there is only one thing she can do, the only thing a woman can do to pick herself back up, what every strong, competent woman does when her composure has cracked. Crawling out of the guest room to the kitchen, Bridget reaches into the freezer, grabs the Thin Mint ice cream tub and the closest utensil available- in this case a butter knife, and uses it to shovel the ice cream into her mouth for the next hour while watching Ryan Reynolds in “The Proposal” and then finishing off the carton by licking the inside of it. That’s right, what every strong, competent woman would do, use a butter knife to polish off the tub. I am woman, hear me eat.


* Kate Calamusa changed her name to protect her privacy in this tale… oh, drat.
* Also known as the charming, darling Mr. Calamusa
* Or in Haiti all of February working

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

Hi lovelies!

I’ve neglected to post about the new house because I wanted to post before/after pics (no more purple kitchen! Guest room-almost- repainted!), but somewhere hidden in the abyss of boxes in the garage is one very important thing: the camera cable. Once I unearth it I will post pics but in the meantime, a running list of the things I love about the new place will have to suffice:

1. There is a giant, well stocked, quiet Target three miles away. I repeat, a giant Target with hundreds of parking spaces a mere five-minute drive away. Bonus: same strip mall contains a Payless Shoe Source, Jo-Ann Fabrics and a TJ Maxx. Downside: cannot be good for my budget.

2. Two bathtubs to soak in after a long day at work.

3. A plant nursery at the end of the street.

4. The plethora of authentica taquerias.

5. The morning sunlight through the picture window in the living room.

6. Closet organizers specifically for my shoes.

7. For the first time in my entire married life every scrap of clothing is clean thanks to a washer and dryer that doesn’t require quarters. (SIDE NOTE: Casey has a lot of clothes. Must bring this up next time he mentions my clothing obsession.)

8. Dishwasher. ‘Nuff said.

9. A garage so the Bug doesn’t freeze at night.

10. Winco. Winco. Winco. Oh, and an awesome, cheap bakery: Wild Wheat.

Now if only my favorite guy was here to share all my favorite things- 16 days to go.

Pics to come!

Moving Hazards

So… (awkward pause)… It’s been a while. I do apologize for the absence, but closing, packing, plumbing, almost moving (I’ll get to that in a second) and the Haiti crisis have completely depleted all creative thought. Status: we were going to move last weekend, but then the earthquake hit Haiti and Casey’s three days off got postponed (along with our move). First of all, thank you to all who have checked up on us, taken me to movies and perused Ikea with me while Casey has been working, it is so very appreciated and has kept me well entertained.

Also entertaining (or frustrating, depending on my mood): when you move, you inevitably pack up all your belongings, yes? And Kate Palmen (not using my married name here, this is an inherited Palmen trait, for sure) feels the need to “plan ahead” and so 3 days before the move, she has practically everything in a box, and a very good chunk of it already at the new house, because: “Don’t you see?” she says to her ever-patient husband, who is getting really tired of having things ripped from his hands while he is using them so it can be packed. “We can’t possibly have things just lying around the day we move. It must be all organized and labeled by what room it goes in the house. Where’s my tape gun and blue Sharpie?”

And then you don’t actually move, won’t for another two weeks, you are forced to eat your cereal out of a traveler coffee mug because someone packed all the bowls and took them to house. Plus the cups, the cookie sheets, the last roll of TP, and oh the horror, all the movies. And even if it is by some miracle still in the apartment, it’s been tightly sealed with packing tape away in a box, and good luck finding the camera cable to upload the photos of the house to show the bloggy people, it is lost in the abyss that is Kate’s organizational (de)feat.

The pile of boxes in the corner

People, it’s time to face the inevitable: I have got to start thinking about moving, because (supposedly) we close on the house 3 weeks from today. I’ve started to make a pile of packing materials in a corner of the apartment, none of which have anything packed in them because I just cannot make myself do it quite yet.

The reasons are twofold: I still don’t think I have quite come to terms with the fact that we actually bought a house that we are actually going to move into and I will be leaveing the neighborhood where I’ve spent the last 6 years. Am I excited about this? Completely, utterly, totally. Have I quite grasped it? No. And I have a feeling that for the first four weeks or so I will feel like I am playing house- at someone else’s house.

The other reason? I am in a bit of denial over the physical task of moving, yet again. In the 5-plus years Casey and I have been together, there have been 11 moves between the two of us. I inwardly cringe to think how much stuff we actually have to move now with our accumulated junk (although the good news of moving 20 miles away is you really don’t have to do that much packing, you just throw clothes in the back seat of the Bug).

But the solace in this move is for the first time in my adult life, I am moving into a place with no expiration date. In college (and after), you know you are living there for a year and then up and leaving. It’s quite liberating to realize I have no clue when we are moving again, but odds are I have more than a year (oh please, oh please) to call this place home.

Frozen assets

Hey gals!
Remember that conversation we had like a year ago about how they don't heat the bathroom at work, which was causing major health concerns? And how, I would wait so long to avoid sitting on the freezing toilet that I'd practically be doing a grown-up version of the kiddie "potty dance" at my desk?

Well, guess what? Now that it's decided not to get above freezing any day this week and was 22 degrees when I got to work this morning, guess how cold that glacial-like porcelain seat in the unheated bathroom is? AS COLD AS WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER. Glad we had this chat. Again.

a few steps closer...

Okay, pending yet a few more things, we've bought the house! It's so incredibly exciting and scary and whole heap of other things, but more than anything, it's a huge new step. More to come...

How I know what polybutylene means

Thank goodness my husband loves me so much, because I have been a drama queen this week. No, not in a girly way complaining about how he is ditching me for two weeks for Kenya (which he is, but since he has to do emergency comms training in the middle of Africa, I’m not going to bewail too much), but about PIPES. Yeh, polybutylene piping, which is all over our prospective new house and I have worked myself into a tizzy over it.

Apparently, polybutylene was the “pipe of the future… future…. future” when they installed it in the house, but in the last 20 years they have discovered that it has a delightful habit of spontaneously combusting. And the plumbing in the house runs through the attic, which given said spontaneous behavior could mean a big mess in a big hurry. So naturally I want it replaced before it spontaneously combusts over my brand new dining hutch, and so far its not looking favorable. I’m usually pretty level-headed, but this has honest to the plumbing gods gotten me so stressed out that I am just plain pathetic, and I need it to be over- fixed or not- so that I can stop having heart palpitations every 10 minutes. Bottom line is today (while at work no less) we have to decide whether or not to spend the cash to fix or walk away from the whole thing. New arch enemy in life: polybutylene. Good news is John & Kate are now off the hook.