All Hail Shonda

I have never jumped on the pop culture bandwagon very easily. I remember when commercials were just starting to advertise websites and when my dad asked me what 'that www thing at the bottom of the screen' was, I replied with the infinite wisdom of my 13 year old self, 'Oh it's some weird thing called the 'internet' - businesses have these pages that people can look at on their computers for more information. Just ignore it, it won't ever catch on.' Point you, Mr. Gore.

 

Still not one to rush into liking something, there have been countless other retractions in the last 17 years. I hated Taylor Swift at first, and now I am a 30 year old woman who begs her husband to take her to a concert with screaming 12 year olds so that I can sing 'Love Story' at the top of my lungs without being judged. Someone who turned out to be a dear friend was the same someone who I chose the furthest seat away from in class because he was so annoying and I just knew that I would never have a reason to speak to him. He married my best friend and I was in their wedding.

 

That same best friend and I used to watch 'Desperate Housewives' every Sunday night in college. Immediately after our favorite show was a new program titled 'Grey's Anatomy'. We made fun of that show for an entire year, dubbing it a 'B rate 'ER' at very best'. I now spend every Thursday night trying to watch the full episode before my husband, who hates everything medical, comes home and makes me turn it off - inevitably at the very best part.

 

Knowing that I am slow to warm up to basically everything, it should be no surprise to me that I continue to miss out on all sorts of amazing things. But, since I am apparently not the brightest crayon in the box, it still shocks me every single time.

 

A few Thursdays ago, my DVR list was at a dangerous low and I was about to be relegated to watching live tv. With commercials, like I am some animal who lives in the woods in 1997! Citing my love/hate relationship with Shonda Rhimes, I gave in and recorded 'Scandal'. It was a half hearted interest, as I am not a lover of politics, and I was also well aware that I am several seasons behind.

 

Holy. Crap.

 

WHY didn't any of you tell me 4 years ago that this show was so good?! I mean, 24 Emmy awards was a good hint, I guess, but for future reference I need to be on some sort of phone tree for these developments. 20 minutes into the first episode of season 5, I was frantically scanning Wikipedia to get the background story to help me decide which characters I love and which I hate. After 2 days of Ryan being painfully subjected to a recap of every second of the show, he opened Pandora's box; a crown jewel of our time...Netflix. He showed me how to run Netflix on the PS3 (refer to paragraphs 1 & 2 if you are wondering how I don't already know how to do this myself), where the first 4 seasons of my new favorite show live, just waiting to be watched.

 

That was 43 hours ago. In that time, I have showered once, forgot to cook dinner twice, and am currently on Season 2 Episode 5 of Olivia Pope and company being gladiators in suits. While we're on the subject, does anyone else find it more than a little bit mocking that after a mere 4 hours of continuous playing, Netflix asks 'are you still watching?' Uhhh, obviously I am, Netflix. That's why you're still on. Quit judging my life choices, and get to driving the Shonda train!

 

Anyway, I will be unavailable for the next few days; either packing up and moving to our nation's capitol to become a political crisis consultant, or continually hitting the 'x' on the PS3 controller to play the next episode. Either way, Ryan will be dining on whatever he makes or he can join me in making 3 meals a day out of the Halloween candy bowl.

Cinderella, Cinderella

My absolute most despised chore to do is laundry, which is unfortunate, because we go through a lot of clothes at our house. How? I am not sure. We are just two people, who change outfits a reasonable amount of times, yet somehow there is always a heaping pile of clothes waiting to be laundered.

 

The whole process is exhausting. First, I have to collect clothes from every room in our home, because my husband thinks that going on a scavenger hunt for dirty laundry is my very favorite game. Next, there is the sorting, which is quite the complicated system - Is blue a dark or a bright? Does the one white shirt Ryan owns go in with the greys or does it need bleach? Do my black and white pajama bottoms with the maroon drawstring go in with the darks, even though the matching maroon tank top obviously goes in with the brights? - it is an endless sea of confusion and grey area, and nothing about my personality does well with grey areas unless it happens to be a load of laundry consisting of solid grey pieces.

 

All of this madness has to take place before schlepping it downstairs (which requires moving the dog gate and herding said dog downstairs with me, because if left unattended for any amount of time, she will eat an entire loaf of bread - bag included. She comes by that one honestly, though I am civilized enough to not eat the plastic.) and actually starting the laundry. Once the clothes are loaded and the machine is going, it means that I have a solid 40 minutes to completely forget about starting a load of laundry. I have resorted to having to set an alarm on my phone to remind me that if I don't check on the state of the laundry, we will have nothing clean to wear. Otherwise, our clothes live in a 3 - 5 day cycle of being washed three times before being transferred and then dried multiple times over the remaining days until we literally run out of clean clothes. Downstairs is very far away, and I am incredibly lazy.

 

After they are sufficiently washed and dried, I have gathered approximately 12 guitar picks from the dryer (every. single. time!), and I have collected the clothes before they are ice cold and wrinkled, the worst part begins. Placing a soft, warm pile of clean clothes on my lap instantly makes me want to take a nap, until my skin is scorched by a 900* jean button. The only aspect of the actual folding that I loathe is the pairing up of socks...it may be the figurative straw that one day breaks this OCD patient's back. Seriously - where do they go?? It's like a living math problem that has no answer - 10 pairs of socks go into the washer and dryer, but only 7.5 pairs come out - solve for 'x'. I keep thinking that one of these days, a rapture will take place in the dryer and I will be the savior of the missing socks that spill out and plead to me to return them to their unmatched friend who has sat in a pile on top of our dresser for three months. No such day has transpired as of yet, so the tower of lonely socks atop our bedroom furniture remains.

 

I get them folded and laid out to hang just fine, but my will to live is destroyed at the very thought of having to actually put them away. What happens more often than not is that we fish clean items out of the basket each day until it is time to start another load of laundry and I need the basket, so I finally break down and put the remaining clothes away.

 

It's pathetic, I know, but believe it or not, people aren't lining up at my door begging to do my laundry for me. As I recently saw someone post on social media, 'I don't care that Disney lied to me about Prince Charming*. I'm more upset about forest creatures and their unwillingness to clean my house.'

*I love my husband dearly, and given a thousand lifetimes to do it over again, I would pick him every time. I'm just saying, it would be nice if the gig came with a crown and a staff of servants, or at least a couple chipmunks who vacuum.

Just Call Me Ivy

We like watching t.v. at our house. Judge if you must, but we are not above mindless entertainment. Admittedly, I am a much worse offender than Ryan. He keeps his t.v. watching to sports and one or two shows that we can watch together. I have so many shows recorded every week, that I have to watch a few in secret before he sees them on our DVR list because I am embarrassed that I have stooped so low as to watch things like "Marriage Bootcamp: Reality Stars". Listen, there's enough serious things happening in the real world (does MTV still show that series? Because I will totally watch it!), so I choose to unwind by watching things that don't require me to think too hard.

 

As a loyal and devoted television fan, I have tried my fair share of cable companies. In Vegas, I cursed Cox Communications for having a monopoly on the area and being my only option. I bought and watched their product, but I did it begrudgingly. Then I moved to Iowa and signed on with Dish. My sister once had a now famous in our family run-in with Dish where, after a 45 minute call to resolve her initial problem, she eloquently told them where they could shove their satellite dish. Literally. The well trained Dish representative calmly told my sister that she had actually purchased the dish, so she could do whatever she wished with it, as it was technically her property. Spoiler alert: that conversation only got worse from there. So I probably should have learned from my sister's experience that they aren't the best company to do business with, but I am dumb, and signed on anyway.

 

Fast forward 6 weeks - I had paid for 2 months of service, yet had no actual television programming because after 3 service calls yielded different excuses why they couldn't install the dish, they stuck with "There's snow on the roof, and we can't install the dish until there is no snow." Well that's awfully convenient, because you can take my money when there's snow. Many calls later, I vowed that they would never get another dime of my money, and switched to their competitor. Seeing as how we are still with said competitor, and we are quickly running out of options of who to get service through since I could make holding a grudge an Olympic level event, I will be careful with my words. But they rhyme with "DIRECTV".

 

Overall, they are the least of the evils, but make no mistake about it, we have made a deal with the devil. Like any relationship, things were good in the beginning. Then after a few years, their initial promises of loyalty, fidelity, and discounts began to change to legally binding contracts, incorrect billing, and sorcery. They lured us into their den of trickery with free NFL Sunday ticket. Every game, every week, plus RedZone. It was the perfect concoction to get us lovedrunk on them. Basically, they roofied us. And it worked hook, line, and sinker. The next year, we handed over ungodly amounts of money in order to keep us in the football lifestyle to which we had become accustomed, and even added a St. Louis baseball package.

 

When Ryan and I first got married, I joined his existing bank and cell phone accounts, and somehow along the way, that made me the primary account holder. At our specific bank and cell phone provider, that means that he cannot access the accounts without my expressed, written permission, the blood of a virgin, and our first born. I, for one, thought it was all kind of hilarious, especially when we realized that my daily debit limit is over 10x higher than his. I joined his accounts, and somehow ended up as sole dictator of them. If that's not an accurate glimpse into marriage, nothing is. 

 

As we established earlier, television is far more important to me than it is to Ryan, so the tables were turned when I realized that his name is on the cable account. Since I am the one who pays most of the bills, he has no tangible benefit of being the sole proprietor of this account. Unlike our cell phone and banking companies, I as the secondary member of the household, can access our account. It just takes a million questions to verify that I am who I say I am. The irony of all of this to me is that 90% of the time when I call, I am doing so to make a payment, because they double debited our account one month when on auto-pay and they made me mad, so now I torture myself by having to pay by phone...really showed them on that one, didn't I? While we're on the subject, why do I have to be 'verified' to make a payment to the account I am calling about? Are there that many people calling and trying to pay our bill? And if there are, LET THEM!

 

Karma has settled the score, though, because I interact with our cable company far more often than any other place where we hold an account. After reciting my name, phone number, primary address, social security number, Ryan's name, phone number, social security number, email address, his mother's maiden name, and my relation to him, I was transferred to a manager and asked the exact same set of questions. Once I was asked for my name 3 more times, he asked if he could call me by my first name. I always say yes, but one of these days I am seriously going to demand that I be called Her Royal Highness, Princess of The Real Housewives. Anyway, this whole song and dance is pointless, because he called me 'Ivy'. You'd think they could make a little note of what my name is seeing as how I call every 30 days, but I choose my battles, people. 

 

Since I know that our account is flagged after the whole 'We have pulled ABC from our lineup and therefore Heidi has to wait 2 weeks to watch Grey's Anatomy online...WITH commercials' debacle, they also throw random discounts our way every time I call in. I am not proud to say that during that dark time in my life, I yelled at more than 1 customer service rep, cried to a supervisor, and used my mom's infamous "I am looking forward to hearing how you plan to make this right" line. That resulted in $10/month off for the inconvenience, $10/month off for being loyal customers, and $10/month off to stop crying. It doesn't take away the trauma of having to watch Grey's with commercials, but it helps. 

 

They have obviously figured out my soft spot, because every call goes in this exact order: automated voice, call center in India, annoyed lady named Denise, and sweet older lady with a Southern drawl. That drawl gets me every time. How can you be irritated when she's speaking slower than molasses while reciting to you how her 3 year old grandson explains the game of golf - "If the ball goes in the hole, they win, Gamma!"? I also learned that said 3 year old is an Auburn fan and is going to his first football game on Saturday with his dad and Grandpa. His mom was supposed to go, but she just had premature twins who were due October 16th, and they are still in the hospital so she has to be there to feed them because their hospital has something called 'care time' where moms of preemies can feed them if they want. Okay, so I didn't sell it all that well, but trust me, she was adorable, she gave me more discounts (Today's random win was $10/month off for having 3 receivers in the house), and she made me care significantly less that I had just spent 38 minutes of my day on the phone with the cable company answering to 'Ivy'.

 

 

Death of the Bobby Pin: The Lilla Rose Story

Unlike my dear friend Whitney, I have never been terribly creative with my hair. Whit is the woman who once literally pulled branches of flowers off one of her house plants and expertly weaved them in and out of the up-do she had just assembled on my head in less than 5 minutes. I am more of the person who will watch an hour of YouTube videos with the search tag "easy hair style for medium hair", then spend another hour trying to copy the strategy I saw on the video, only to give up and go for my usual look. Unless I have my 15 year old niece here to spruce up my hair for me, straight or curly are about as big as the variations get for me.

I did recently learn how to make fabulous curls in my hair using my flat iron, which was a result of pure necessity after the springs came flying off of my curling iron with half of my head already curled and plastered in place with hair spray. I have used either a curling iron or a flat iron (or both) every single day of my life for the last 18 years. Somehow, I manage to scorch my hand every single day. Like it's some surprise to me that the 400* metal iron molding my hair might be a tad warm to the touch.

 

So when my friend Brandi reached out to me recently and asked me if I would try a Lilla Rose Flexi Clip, I warned her that I am not the most talented hair designer in the world, but she assured me that they are easy to use. After browsing her website and selecting the size and design I liked best (no easy feat - there were lots and lots of pretty ones!), the clip of my choice arrived at my door 3 days later! I have medium-long, very thick hair, so I was a little overwhelmed by having to choose a size, but there were many helpful videos showing different kinds of hair and styles, and the corresponding size of the clip.

 

They seemed pretty cost effective, too. The medium (apparently my hair is not as remarkably thick as I once thought) that I selected was $11, and it looks like the priciest Flexi Clip is $17. They are made from beaded piano wire, which I honestly had no clue that pianos had wire - I'm not a music nerd, I just married one (and I am sure he knew that pianos had wires), and come in all sorts of colors and designs. Lilla Rose has a lot of other really cute products, too, but I haven't tried any of those out quite yet.

 

Since most of my wardrobe is black and white and all of my jewelry and accessories are silver, I opted for the clip called "Elegant Ornate". Pretty, but not plain and not too flashy. Just like me :).

 

 

The first thing I noticed and loved about this clip is that it is all one piece, significantly reducing my risk of losing a vital part. I am a huge bobby pin fan, but our house (and my purse, and the laundry room, and our cars, and everywhere else I may have ever set foot) becomes one giant bobby pin graveyard. Our welcome sign should say: Welcome to the Sloan Household: The Final Resting Place of Guitar Picks and Hair Accessories.

 

Secondly, I realized that the package my Flexi Clip arrived in also included a little brochure with some information about the company and the product, and several photos of step-by-step instructions to achieve five different looks.

 

 

 

The third thing I saw was that each clip has three notches that the wire locks into, depending on how much hair you are securing and how tightly you want the hair to be held. I will admit that the first two three several attempts didn't work because I was holding the pin with the notches facing up instead of down. Once I realized that I am an idiot and flipped the clip over to the correct position, I could hook the beaded part into the appropriate notch, and it comfortably and securely fit right into place.

 

Here I am modeling the half-up look that I love so much - a little fancier than all down, but casual enough that I am not flipping my hair from one side to the other all day long, fixing it in every reflection I see.

  

What I think I love the most about the Flexi Clip is that 1.) unlike bobby pins, it only takes one to hold my hair in place all day, and 2.) It is painless! With the bobby pins that I have been using for so many years, I sacrifice about 7 of them and several chunks of my scalp to the hair gods every morning. Plus this is a really easy way to add a little spunk to my look. Every girl needs a little sparkle!

 

I am someone who loves up-dos on other people, but I just don't feel like I can personally pull them off, so the below photo is stolen from Brandi herself. This is the French Twist style, that I think looks so cute on her, and I know that as a busy mom of three small kids, it is important to her that she can fix her hair in this style quickly and easily.

 

 

 

If you want some more information about the Flexi Clip, or any of Lilla Rose's other great products, visit Brandi's website by clicking here. If you want to learn how to accessorize your hair with common household plants, call Whitney.

My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Morning

Today has not been awesome so far.

At 3:30am, I was wide awake. I tossed and turned for a while in vain, but that just woke Ryan and the dog up along with me. So at 4am, I cut my losses and moved to the couch for 4 hours of trying to be quiet while also being the only one awake. At 5:30am, I couldn't wait anymore and needed cereal. Have you ever tried to pour cereal quietly? Not possible. I thought pouring the milk first was brilliant and would cushion the sound of Frosted Flakes hitting hard plastic. My plan may have worked, had I hit the bowl with the cereal instead of the kitchen floor. Our house is tiny, and turning on the kitchen light would have definitely woken the rest of the crew, so I was trying to pour said cereal in the dark, and completely missed the bowl and the counter.

Mia heard the music to her ears of spilled food, and came running out to help me clean up. I let her eat every single piece, and she promptly went into the living room, let out an over exaggerated yawn, and collapsed onto a pile of blankets. My intended breakfast was just an early morning snack to her. Deciding to just wait until everyone else was up, I occupied myself by playing games on my phone, reading every online news story I saw, and texting my favorite insomnia buddy.

Minutes before Ryan's alarm went off, my body decided it would be a perfect time to go back to sleep, because insomnia is a jerk. I snoozed until it was time for him to head out, and then it was my turn to get up, take care of Mia, and get ready for the day.

At 10pm last night, I decided that I needed to buy microwave popcorn and m&m's, and after my cereal fiasco, this salty and sweet combo sounded like the perfect breakfast. M&M's swimming in a bowl of buttery and perfectly popped corn, I poured myself a large glass of Caffeine Free (read: broken) Diet Mountain Dew, and settled in to try to peel my eyes open. Yes, I know that chocolate has caffeine in it. No, I do not care.

 

About two minutes into my long awaited meal, Mia came running in from her breakfast, and immediately got sick...ON ME. Which led to me getting sick, though I was nice and ran for the bathroom instead of poetically repaying the favor. Fabulous start.

 

Once we were both feeling better, we returned to the couch and I plopped down. The girth of my rear end knocked over my very cold glass of soda, drenching me, the couch, and the dog. In a move that left me both confused and amazed, I realized that somehow, 3 of the 4 ice cubes had lodged themselves in my underwear!!! That's one way to wake up without caffeine, I guess. Unpleasant, but effective.

 

Changed, cold, and still starving, I returned and dug into my popcorn. Watching those sad, sick puppy dog eyes watch each bite I took tugged at my heart strings, and against my better judgment, I shared a couple of pieces with Mia. Have you ever seen those videos of dogs who are terrible at catching things? Our dog should have her own YouTube channel of nothing but missing things thrown at her. On literally the third piece of popcorn I shared with her, I watched it fly through the air, touch her tongue, and bounce back into my bowl.

 

And that, my friends, is how I ended up eating half of a bag of m&m's for breakfast.