I started basic burlesque class at Studio L’Amour last week. Boxing is out, burlesque is in. Hopefully burlesque is a bit more successful. I have high hopes because unlike park district boxing, burlesque class is structured. It feels weird for me to say I want structure but when I am a newbie to something, yes I need an instructor that says “Step 1,2,3 and BOUNCE!” I don’t know how those Montessori kids do it.

As usual, I was just a little bit off for the first class. The instructor said we could wear gym shoes or heels and workout clothes. I figured out this does not mean wear basketball shorts so I wore kind of tight yoga capris. I didn’t figure out that gym shoes would be really bad for the small foot movements sexy walking. Or that a loose fitting tshirt would cover my hips. Hips are the best part of dancing! I kind of suck at being a girl but I will try better next time!

At the end of the month when class is done, the new park district session will start. The boy and I joined the park district fitness center. It’s a pretty small fitness center which leaves no room for me to hide in a corner and sweat over my 20 pound weights without anyone staring at me. The goal is to drop my desired amount of weight by the time I hit 30!

I was telling my boy yesterday that I think the best job would be reviewing bakeries. He pointed out I would be huge if I had this job but it would be a delicious premature death by suffocating in my own fat.
My roommate and I reviewed local cupcake bakeries for science a couple years ago with excellent results. The excellent result being using Sweet Mandy B’s for our awesome volcano cake the next year.
The boy and I are planning my No-Baby Shower and once again I have the chance to summarize cupcake findings FOR SCIENCE.
Reviews behind the jump.

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Happy new year all!
It’s hard to remember to post with all this holiday excess going on!
I did the whole Xmas thing with my family and it was surprisingly calm this year. My big brother kept his proselytizing to a minimum and I kept my shaking of children to once an hour. I sent out Xmas cards with a picture of Santa in meditation pose and the words “Dharma Dharma Dharma!” above him. Dharma is translated to ho in Japanese. Buddhist joke! I noticed that I didn’t get a card from my aunt and uncle in The South and I don’t think I got one from them last year either. I haven’t seen them in a while but I still talk to my cousin. I sent her a card and present and got a “Happy CHRISTmas!” text back from her. Oh, Jesus lovin family members. I feel more Buddhist the less I let you upset me.

For NYE, I went to Takashi with my boy and friends and then to Subt to see Holy Fuck with a bigger group of friends. Takashi is a Japanese fusion restaurant and it doesn’t focus as heavily on the raw fishes as other Japanese restaurants do. I think they were just as fancy as Blackbird (the restaurant I went to last NYE) but about half the price.
Subt was good because it wasn’t packed so there was room to stand in the back and drink without being smashed into by drunk hipsters. Afterward was late night food and immediate passing out. I’m getting old.

I went to the doctor for my tube tying follow-up. He said everything looks good and reminded me I can have unprotected sex before I left. How often does a doctor do that!
At work, we seem to be trudging along with a grant application that I don’t really think is feasible. Grants often require a match which means the agency has to put up a certain percentage of the amount they are requesting. This particular grant requires a large match amount and our agency just doesn’t have it. We can use in-kind matches, percentages of the salaries of staff that will work on the project but that won’t cover the full amount. It seems like we are going after the grant because we are desperate for new funding sources which ultimately wastes a lot of my time when I put grant writing/prep effort into a grant we aren’t going to get.
The exec team member I’m working with did bring up a good point. He said if we could just get one grant in, it might give us some momentum and the CEO would notice our efforts and maybe give us more time to work on future grants. Rights now there is no designated grant application time for the exec team. It’s just tacked on to everyone’s regular job. It’s a big part of my job but I have a few applications in process and other stupid stuff to do. I spent some of this week filing a big stack of papers and thinking about how it would make much more sense to hire a part time person to do the admin BS part of my job. I know, no money in the budget.

Next week starts boxing and next month starts burlesque lessons. I’m going to bash and bounce!

I got out of work early today because of the snow. I like that the execs live in the suburbs. Whenever there is bad weather, they will let us go early because they want to leave, too. The snow is still in that pretty stage that makes me want to take pictures of it and push people in it. There’s an empty lot next to my workplace that I need to take pictures of. It looks deceivingly pretty under the snow but a good angle could capture the sadness of the neighborhood and empty warehouse next to it.

All of my clients cancelled for tonight and I’m not calling any of them until tomorrow. I feel like I’ve successfully engaged my clients and I can see progress but I still get lazy when it’s time to actually go to the counseling center. I don’t know if it’s still anxiety or if it’s just that this is adding to my work week and stress.

My recovery since my last post has been pretty good. The big release of all of my anxiety and feeling of Rightness in the World didn’t happen. Kind of disappointed. The swelling in my belly button has gone down enough that real pants don’t bother me.  I returned to work today.  I just happened to miss Xmas paper door decorating at work! Oh well, I guess they will have to skip me.

Have you ever looked at YouTube comments? I’m on SomethingAwful and I still think YouTube comments are horrible. My favorite interactions are like this one:
AmbiguousUsername: Zach Braff is dreamy!
TotalDude95858: fag!!!!!!!!!
AmbiguousUsername: What?? I’m a girl!

No girls allowed on the internet.

I downloaded Tucker Max’s book because someone was talking about it. I didn’t realize it was just stories from his site that I read (and he wrote) 7 years ago. I still think the guy is a tool. I went to his site because it linked to the special ed teacher’s blog which I could identify with (on a professional level, of course). I’ve tried to write about my clients but most client based entries are venting or sharing some horror show story in attempts to purge it from my mind. No one wants to read a book about crackheads.
Recently, I was working a career fair and I got placed right next to the Disney college internship program. When I was in college, it was widely known that Disney takes anyone, gives them summer jobs making fries and calls it an internship. These suburban kids must not have got the message because they were swarming Disney all day long. One of them even said to me, as he was waiting in line and blocking my table, “Can’t compete with Disney!” Do you think they’re going to hand you a pen (or computer) and say “Make the next Bambi, kid”? No one wanted to get down with the crazy people.

So I need another stupid book to read. I’ve been reading a lot of Buddhism books lately so I need to throw in some candy type books, too. Last one was The Game. Before that, something about zombies. Sometimes I do chick lit but I’ve had enough whiny bitches in real life to read anymore of that right now.

What I did over the weekend:

Played in the City Museum in St. Louis. Chicago needs something like this. It’s a huge indoor/outdoor play/art/museum/aquarium space that kids and adults can enjoy. Ya, most stuff is geared toward kids but they have nights where the museum is just open to adults. They sell beer! They have slides and tunnels leading to mysterious places! They have some rusty bolts!
I liked playing in the caves

and inside of the giant fish

There were lots of slides and tunnels. This slide was awesome because it was really long and all of the bars are handpainted and spin when you run your hands along them. It almost forces you to go down the slide in the hands above your head “whee!” position.

There were lots of random exhibits and I think what I liked best is that there are little or no descriptions on them. Do you really need the history of an object to enjoy it? Is it a little better to make up the explanation yourself?

Inside of a safe door:

After the museum, we went to the Arch.

You can go inside the arch in a frighteningly small tram car. 5 people get squished into one car and in a few minutes are pulled up to the top where there is an observation deck.

I observed East St. Louis and clouds.

It was a good weekend overall. St. Louis is a much better town than I had previously thought. And I finished my tattoo! Yay!

I came back to no boss at work (she is out for the week) which is nice. I came back to a cat pee smelling kitchen which is not nice. Does anyone want a cat? She doesn’t really smell bad/act bad if you do crazy things like clean her litterbox and pay attention to her. She is indoor only and probably would not be good with small kids.

I got off work early today, it was my boss’ way of thanking me for being assistant bitch all day. he group I was helping today was impressed with my hella mad organizational skills. One lady commented ‘You just do everything!’ and without thinking I responded ‘Everything and everyone!’ Ya, that’s why they only let me talk to crackheads.

She says that I will get a day or two off soon for all the extra work I have been doing. It would be nice if those days off coincided with my next trip so I don’t have to take a ’sick day’ but I don’t think things will be back to normal by then.

We still have not got paid. The CEO is going to Springfield tomorrow to get us some moneys. I hope. He’s had meetings with just about every department that pays us and so far I have not seen nearly enough checks come in to cover payroll.

I will be happy when my stimulus check comes. I know I’m supposed to damn the man and save it instead of spend it but I’m spending it on a tattoo. Doesn’t that count as damning the man a little bit?

This keyboard sucks and the shift keys don’t work sometimes so I have to go back and make sure all my capital letters are there. What happened to being able to buy a functional keyboard for $3 at a thrift store? I went looking this weekend and all of the keyboards looked like a child or dog chewed on them. This is what sucks about not hanging out with geeks anymore. I have to go all of the way to the suburbs to steal keyboards from my little brother. I will be in the burbs soon for my neice’s Hanna Montana themed birthday party. Who is wrapping her gift in Miley’s topless picture? The best aunt ever!

When someone says “sunny day” does it make you think of the Sesame Street song?

Fine, it’s just me. You have no soul.

I spent a lot of time at work fixing someone else’s mistakes. A coworker gave me a bunch of addresses and they were all so close but not right. Like 312 Main St instead of 314 Main St. I told on him and it made me feel better.

Boy and I went to a Buddhism study group at a different temple. This one looks like a real temple and it even has real Japanese people! The temple where we have been attending meditation courses is also a dojo and so it looks like a dojo and it’s attended by mostly whiteys. The study group at new temple was more diverse in race and age. And they don’t even do sitting meditation. Lazy Buddhists!

For clarification, the meditation I am referring to at temple/dojo is Zazen. The teacher at the 2nd temple practices Pure Land Buddhism which isn’t so big on the sit down and shut up.

From CuteOverload

I keep saying I’m going to learn to meditate and I think a good opportunity has come up. The boy found beginner meditation classes at a Buddhist temple near his apartment. I don’t know much about Buddhism but their website seems inviting to newbies. I looked up the temple on Yelp, they have 5 stars! I think it’s funny that religious institutions are on Yelp. I want a review that says something like “This church helped me through grandma’s death but needs to lighten up on the chastity thing. 3 stars.”

I’ve thought about sitting down next to the Bible reading, too many question asking coworker and reading the Tao Te Ching but the more I thought about it…she probably has no idea what the book is. I had to explain to a coworker how St. Patrick’s day is celebrated. “Well, there’s a parade..no I don’t march in the parade, I just watch. No, not everyone is Irish, some people just like to go.” How hard is the concept of a parade?

I don’t think I would make a good Buddhist.