"Real life" can be really inconvenient sometimes

I can't believe it has been almost two weeks since I posted! No real crises or tragedies or anything; I'm just SO busy right now that I barely have time to string two thoughts together, let alone compose them into a blog post. For those of you who know what a Facebook crack-monkey I am, this should prove how little free time I've had lately: I haven't spent more than three minutes at a time on Facebook in over a week. Seriously. Another writing project, a major housecleaning adventure, sick dogs, and a whole load of church activities have combined into the perfect storm of butt-smoking busy-ness, and I'm ready to get off the merry-go-round now, please. Since I am still short on time to write, here are a few random thoughts I've had lately:

• Why do I keep doing embarrassing things in the copy room at work? I can stand primly by the copier for 20 minutes, and not a soul will come in...but, let me try to copy a move from Dancing with the Stars, or burst into a rousing rendition of "Son of a Preacher Man," and suddenly, someone will be standing right behind me. Then I get to spend the rest of the afternoon doing that whole did-they-see-or-did-they-not-see thing. Why do I never learn?
  

• I am a terrible dog mom. Abby Dog had her yearly checkup and vaccinations last week, and the vet found that one of her ears is horribly infected. (I will spare you the details, but the words "ulcerated lesions" were involved.) The treatment? Antibiotics--and a rolled-up gauze square, soaked in medication and inserted into her ear canal, while I hold her ear closed, once a day for two weeks. Surprisingly enough, dogs don't really like it when you shove things into their ears. Poor Abby deserves some credit, though. After four days of doing the gauze-roll thing, she has stopped struggling when I hold her. Now she just sighs a lot and gives me dirty looks. It's a good thing dogs don't hold grudges, or she might try to smother me while I sleep.

• It seems that the FDA has agreed with my opinion that Latisse, that eyelash-lengthening treatment, is pretty scary. One of the comments on my post mentioned that Latisse can cause hair to grow anywhere that it is dropped on your body, which was even more alarming to me than the side effects I wrote about. Of course, when Mr. Nerd and I saw that story on the news, he immediately asked if he could buy some to apply to his bald spot.

Okay, real life--I give! I know I'm out of writing time for tonight. I will try not to wait so long between posts next time!

A Culture of Lies

Wow, that sounds all hard-hitting and newsy, doesn't it? While I think it would be really cool to do research and conduct interviews and write revealing exposés and stuff, I'm just way too lazy for all of that. Instead, I'm going to rant about yogurt. (Culture, get it? Ha! I've got
a million of 'em.) Speaking of being lazy, it seems like the media is all about reporting on Americans' horrible eating habits these days. In response, advertisers are rolling out tons of ads for healthy food products like soy milk, fiber bars, natural cereals, etc. And, of course, yogurt. Unfortunately, most of the yogurt commercials I have seen are either really annoying, or just downright untruthful.

I'm going to pick on Yoplait commercials in particular, because those are the ones that irritate me the most. First, there was a series of ads that featured two incredibly smug women. They had little conversations about the yogurt: "this is shoe-shopping good," "this is day-at-the-spa good," and so on. Ladies, do you really need to be so smug? It's just freakin' yogurt! And,  to imply that a cup of yogurt could be better than a new pair of shoes is just some kind of lunacy, in my book. New shoes are blissful treats that can brighten a bad day, and make you feel pretty and sexy; yogurt is a barely-tolerable dairy product that you eat just because it's good for you. (But we'll discuss that a bit more in depth in just a moment.) Over the next couple of years, Yoplait continued to produce more ads featuring a number of self-satisfied women, all purporting to have lost a great amount of weight by ingesting large quantities of their rancid dairy product.

Now, Yoplait has gone too far. They are introducing a new line of products, called Yoplait Delights, which they claim taste just like a parfait. That is just a lie, plain and simple. Yogurt does not taste like pudding, or cake, or pie. And it most certainly does not taste like ice cream. This treachery upon the good name of desserts should be stopped, immediately. Somewhere out there is a woman who needs to lose some weight. She keeps seeing commercials about yogurt…the health benefits, the weight loss, and she thinks, "How bad can it be? The commercial said it tastes like pudding/cake/pie/ice cream." When she tries it, though, she discovers what yogurt really is: a slightly sour, mildly clumpy cup of thick dairy substance that may or may not contain fruit. While it's not really horrible, it surely wouldn't qualify as dessert.

In case anyone thinks I'm being too harsh on yogurt, or I don't know what I'm talking about, consider this: I ate it every single day for six years. After I did Weight Watchers in 2002, I needed to find a low-fat way to get some calcium in my body before I managed to snap my femur like a twig or something. (I can't stand to drink milk.) Approximately 2,000 cups of yogurt later, I could no longer face it, so I switched to chocolate soymilk. It doesn't taste like real milk with Hershey's syrup, but at least there are no commercials trying to make me believe it does.

It wasn't a "vacay"

It was just a week off work...and I hate the word "vacay," anyway. The husband and I were off last week, and I was officially the least productive person on the planet. I spent nearly the whole week just breathing, napping, eating, and wasting time on the Internet. As my vacation time approached, I was planning to blog more, rather than less, since I was going to have so much free time. Apparently, though, I just couldn't work up the energy.

When Monday came around, I found that I really didn't mind going back to work all that much, since my job is usually okay. I did, however, have a bit of difficulty adjusting to being around actual people again. Mr. Nerd and I have been married for quite a while, so we don't sit around under each other's feet; when we're at home, he does his thing and I do mine. So, I would go for long stretches without conversing with anyone other than three lively, but uncommunicative, Cocker Spaniels. And most of those conversations were of the "don't: sit on the other dogs / lick up things you found on the floor / barf in the corner where I can't clean it up / do unnatural things to your brother's head / bark like fiends at the poor bored neighbor dog / hit the 'delete' key on the laptop" variety. My co-workers might have thought that I was unusually quiet on Monday (unusual, since I'm hardly ever quiet), but I was really just trying to remember exactly what it is that human beings talk about all day.

At any rate, I'm back, and I have some great ideas for new posts. I'll have one later in the week; here's a little teaser:

Be sure to check in later this week!

It's a major award*

As if things hadn't been exciting enough around here lately, what with the new look and the blogoversary and getting TRIPLE the usual number of page views last week (you guys can't see that, of course, but my traffic report made me very happy)--I won an award! The lovely JD, of I Do Things So You Don't Have To, was kind enough to pass the Superior Scribbler Award on to me and several other happy bloggers. (Check out the link to read about the Scholastic Scribe, and the award.) Now, I'm supposed to pay it forward to some of my favorite bloggers, so here we go:

• Heather, from The Mother Tongue. Heather is a writer for my local paper, and she's awesome: funny, geeky, smart, and totally cool. Her blog topics range from politics and current events, to hilarious reports about her home life as a mom to two little ones, to tough, touching stories about some of her personal struggles. Bonus: Heather is a Harry Potter nerd, too. It makes me feel better to know that I'm not the only adult who daydreams about Hogwarts.
  
• Jeff, from View from the Cloud. Jeff has great stories about his former life on the road as a professional musician, and a lot of hilarious regular features (my fave is Mr. Know-It-All).  He has been blogging for years, and you will find tons of laughs in his archives. Jeff is also a fellow Elvis Costello fan, and that's good enough for me.
• Chris, from Maugeritaville. Chris is a school principal, and I believe anyone who deals with today's youth on a daily basis deserves some kind of award. He writes great nostalgia stories about his own school days, and reports from the front lines (aka his job) that make me oh-so-grateful for my boring office job, where everyone is over 25 and (relatively) sane.
• Sarah, from Rhinestones and Telephones. I just started reading Sarah's blog about a week ago, and I am already addicted. She blogs about baking, sewing, crafts (all things I love), Strictly Come Dancing, which is the British version of Dancing with the Stars (my favoritest TV show), and tons of other interesting stuff. There's just one thing: I think "Sarah" may actually be a pseudonym for, like, five people. Because I don't see how one woman could get all of that stuff done.

Congratulations, everyone! Just click on the Superior Scribbler Award link to get the instructions for passing on the award, if you like. I'm not really gonna try to force you or anything.

*Leg lamp photo courtesy of notice things. If you don't understand the significance of the photo, or the post title, go here.