Dear Aunt Flo,

I was shocked and surprised to see you today. You were so late in coming, I was sure you’d decided to put off your monthly visit for nine months or so. Typically, you’re reliable and trustworthy – showing up every twenty-eight days like clock work to remind me I’m a woman. I recall, twenty four years ago, when you showed up on my door step unannounced. I had no idea who you were and when I asked my dad about you, he just shook his head and took me to the drug store.

I had always relied on your timely arrival, with few exceptions. Both times, unexpectedly, you told me that I’d be a mother, by becoming absent from my life for nine months.

Aunt Flo, you’ve become a constant companion in my life and I appreciate your dutiful attendance every month, even if my husband doesn’t. But that’s not why I’m writing to you, my ever diligent Aunt Flo.

Today, I am writing to tell you how disappointed I am that you have decided to play games with me. Since my marriage, I have tried to put off your visit for nine months a number of times. Yet you continue to come, every twenty eight days, uninvited and with an axe to grind. I thought, for sure, this month, you’d take the hint and stay away, so I was quite surprised when you showed up, later than usual, thirty one days after your last visit.

You see, Aunt Flo, I know that you being in my life helps me remember my role as a woman and most of the time I can breeze through your visit with very little disruption. However this time, it’s different.

Today, I cried when I discovered that you’d shown up, uninvited. I had hoped, on Monday when you’d not shown up at your appointed time, that it would mean I’d get a nine month reprieve. We’d been trying so hard to keep you at bay. Yet here you are.

I’m not sure why, Aunt Flo, you can’t seem to take a hint. I have been more than nice to you in my requests. I simply want one tiny vacation from your monthly visits and I don’t think my request is too much to ask.

I know this may come as a shock, so I understand if you need time to absorb my thoughts so lovingly displayed in this letter. I also know, at some point in the future, you will stop visiting me for good and I’m sure I’ll miss you when you’re gone, but that doesn’t’ change the fact that today, Aunt Flo, you’ve showed up again, uninvited and you’re really starting to piss me off.

Love,

Brandy

I decided to pull a FireMom and do one of those neat-o “I’m sorry you’ve found me” posts…because wow, I was looking today (for the first time in a while) and found a few that really made me laugh.

First, I must say, the Avocado Salad post I made a while back really seems to be a winner. That puppy is dragging in the traffic! So, if you’re here looking for the Avocado Tomato Salad post - Welcome! Thanks for stopping by!

Now, the oddballs. (By the way, Google has blocked me from searching for half an hour because my “queries look automated”).

I don’t know why someone would search for “Knee for Sale” - I suppose maybe they don’t know that buying body parts is illegal. Of course, if buying is illegal, then selling is too and I’ve offered my knee for sale…so…ya. Anyway - in India, that search lands me right up top, at number one. Here in the Good Ole U.S.A - I’m number three. Not bad really. Except, I guess these people didn’t find what they were looking for and for that, I’m sorry.

For “Living in the desert” downside, I’m number 19. I’m not sure why someone would not only search for a possible downside to living in the desert (is it no common sense?) - but what confuses me more than that, is the fact that they went past page one, on to page two and all the way to the bottom - where PerpetualTomorrow.com is sitting pretty simply because I’ve used the words “living in the desert” and “downside” in the same post.

I’m sorry potential desert dweller, that I was unable to help you find the information you were looking for. For the trouble, I offer you this link: Desert Health Issues - all the information you might ever want to know about being a human in the desert. If that doesn’t strike your fancy, try doing a search for “desert landscaping” or something similar. Really, desert living is no different than say, urban living. Except, mostly the smog is less and the sun is more. The water is less (and by water, I mean rain, and generally any other type of water) but the bright side is, most yards don’t have grass…so you won’t miss it to much!

I hope I was able to help out our potential desert dweller - by offering up some great tips of living in the desert.

The downside part. It’s hot. Hot and sandy. Except during Monsoon season. Then it’s hot and muddy. Everywhere. Even on your car.

Finally, “Slightly damaged stuff for sale” must have been quite shocked when he got here and discovered that the only thing for sale is my knee…and it’s slightly damaged all right! I know people aren’t generally in the market for knees - especially ones that have been damaged by unknown forces. It’s a shame really, because I was sure that someone would want this thing - after all, someone bought the Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese!

So, readers who found me on accident, I am sorry I couldn’t help. Stay tuned for the next addition of “What the heck is this crap!?”

Ciao

Newsflash: Gas is now $4.00 a gallon. Limiting my purchase at the pump to $50 is hardly helpful. In fact, it’s down right mean. Either raise the maximum allowed purchase to something reasonable, like $100, or don’t offer the service at all!

I realize you do this in an attempt to reduce the possible risk of loss, so I have a suggestion. Cut the price of Gas in half. The less something costs, the less likely you are to suffer a significant loss due to theft. It’s true, I read it on Wikipedia.

Seriously. The cost of gas is driving me crazy. I drive a mom-mobile. A mini-van. It should not cost $109 to fill up my van when I am sucking fumes, but it does. I think the price of gas really started to bother me once we moved into this house. It’s further from the office than the old house (which I <3′d) - and further from the school, which I drive Jerrett to every morning. What used to take me 15 minutes (don’t even get me started on the office move last Oct, which tripled my commute) now takes me more than 40 minutes. Plus, because I live so ‘nestled in suburbia’ - it’s just easier to take surface streets, rather than going down to get on the freeway.

Anyway - enough of that. I know we’re all being hit pretty hard with the rising costs of everything…

In other news: things are going pretty ok here. We’re finally getting stuff unpacked, no thanks to me. I’m irritated about the barky barky ankle bitting muts that live over the wall from us. They start their crap about 5:05 EVERY AM - even on weekends - and it’s just freaking annoying. These types of things should be required to be disclosed when house hunting. Seriously. Had I known, it mighta been a deal breaker. No lie.

Gosh. Like I need another freakin online addiction. I mean, just today, Jerrett was telling a friend on the phone, “Dude, I don’t know, my mom has to work and my dad might not be home yet”. I don’t know what the kid said but Jerrett responded, “I know, but my mom, like she gets up at four in the morning and starts working and she’s still online working after I go to bed. She just wont stop.”

*Sigh* - He thinks I’m working.

Really, I am - I mean, I do work a lot. It’s not totally unheard of for me to work an 18 hour day - but for Pete’s Sake - I can take a kid to the bowling alley!

Anyway - MySpace.com. It’s kinda like when I admitted a few months back that my most embarrassing secret is that I read PerezHilton.com every day. Of course my friends were stunned. Of course they still make fun of me. But it’s nothing like admitting that I’ve become ‘one of them’. A MySpace Junkie.

It’s true, I don’t have it programmed in my nifty PDA just yet…and I’m still trying to figure out if I like being all ’social networked’ to everyone. I am not social…for the most part, my interaction with people is largely via online media (IM, Skype, email) - you get the idea. I’m just not sure I can fit it in my busy day - but I’ll give it a whirl.

Anyway - add me. Let’s see if I can get a few friends going and give this thing a real bona fide test drive.

Brandy On MySpace

As far as my super awesome parenting goes - Jerrett just came and asked me for a book to read (yes, he reads…I know, I should count my blessings) - and I handed him my book on PHP development… He wasn’t impressed. Poor kid…little does he know that I am secretly trying to give him a jump start on a budding web development career!

That’s all for me. I’m just super-not-into-blogging for some reason.

Oh. My. Gosh. So Sunday is grocery store day around these parts. I usually try my darnedest to get my crap together and get it done on Saturday - but I am also pretty darn good and finding a random excuse not to, so Sunday it is.

I’m up at the butt crack of dawn, even though I’d gone to sleep like six hours past my bedtime last night - I feel like crap, I am clearly dehydrated and John and Jerrett are complaining, again, about having to eat Saltines for breakfast. *sigh* Off to the store I go.

I’m not a big store person…I don’t cook a lot…it’s just not my thing. It’s not that I can’t cook; I just hate doing it…so I do it as little as possible. It stands to reason that my trips to the store are few and far between (although, I will walk across broken glass to get coffee, creamer and sugar, for my morning addiction).

People that don’t cook don’t really keep tabs on the cost of anything beyond the staples. You know, bread, milk, coffee, sugar, cream, Doritos…you get the idea. I rarely find a good reason to go down the “Charcoal, Storage Containers, Napkins, Plastic Forks” aisle. As I’ve said, I don’t cook…therefore I have no use for any of that crap…

Until today.

I’ve decided I am going to try to start making sandwiches or something for lunch every day. Our new office location isn’t conducive to cheap lunch time jaunts and incase you missed it somehow above, I don’t cook.

Last week, a coworker showed up with this “wrap” that even as a non-cooker, I thought I could pull off fairly easily. So off I go to do my Sunday Grocery Shopping (for the first time in three months).

I should have known this was a bad idea when, in the parking lot walking up to the store, I started to get ideas of grandeur for dinner. I start my excursion in the Fresh Vegetables section and by this time, I’ve already talked myself into Chicken Tacos for dinner - and what goes better with chicken tacos than Guacamole? You get the idea. I’m walking out of this store with $200 worth of food that’ll sit in the refrigerator until someone gets sick of looking at the green fur that covers it or it just disintegrates into nothingness.

So, anyway, I’m nearing the end of my shopping excursion when I realize that, even if I do make this fantastic wrap for lunch, I’m gonna have to put it into something to get it from the house to the office. So, off to the Charcoal, Storage Containers, Napkins, Plastic Forks aisle I go.

Now, I should say in advance, there was a time, long before we moved to Arizona, that I did, in fact, cook. Nightly even. I was such a good wife…I bet John misses her a lot. So, it would stand to reason that, at some point in my married life, I did have a ‘thing’ (box?) of Aluminum Foil in the pantry - but, I don’t anymore and honestly, I can’t think of a more ecological and earth friendly way to get my wrap from point A to point B.

I pull my cart up to the ‘foil’ area and I literally start laughing. Like seriously laughing out loud. People must have thought I’d lost my freakin mind. I try to regain my composure because I am clearly making an ass of myself…but I am hysterical.

Please, tell me when Aluminum Foil started to come with this thin gold plating? I mean, it must be there…50 Sq. Ft. of generic aluminum foil cost…(wait for it)…$3.88.

FOUR DOLLARS!

Now, as I said above, it’s been a while since I’ve actually purchased aluminum foil (I don’t even call it that, I’m a throw back to the old school, I call it tin foil) - but I distinctly remember being able to buy a small thing (box?) of Diamond Aluminum Foil (generic) for under a buck.

I am so floored (remember the hysterical laughter from above) that I have to get my phone out, call my mother, and ask her about this $4.00 tin foil! Like me, she’s floored and urges me (the daughter who doesn’t cook, doesn’t like to get out much and damn sure won’t do in two trips what can be done in one, even if it’s gonna cost me a little more) to go to the Dollar Store.

Now, I’m all for the Dollar Store - but seriously…if the Dollar Store can sell it for a buck, why can’t Fry’s?

Please tell me that there is some crazy premium on tin foil due to the astronomical price of fuel…please tell me that there is a shortage of aluminum coming from the aluminum factory because all of the aluminum factory workers are on strike or something. It is not possible for the price of foil to be this high…

It’s un-American!