Rough Rider

The trend in jeans for awhile was to keep things low, low riders, hip huggers, butt crack viewers, etc. I'm going to admit I struggle with this too, because a lot of jeans I put on I love but when I bend over without a belt everyone can view my moneymaker.

Well, a Japanese fashion designer has come up with a solution, the Bikini Jean! She designed this lovely fashion jean because women complained about having trouble keeping their low rise jeans up, so she created a pair that acts as underwear and jeans.

If you want a pair you can get them for the low price of $88. I'm not sure I'd really want to rock these out in public and can only imagine how painful they might be on your lady parts - GROSS!

Remember ladies, not every trend is for everyone as this lady show us below.

Tickling the Ivory

Today I am longing to play the piano. A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I grew up playing the piano and was (am) quite good at it. I come from a family of musicians - Eric Clapton, Madonna, Stevie Nix and such….just kidding. In reality my Mom’s side of the family has quite the musical ear. Anything from guitar, singing, piano, harmonica and so on and I was lucky enough to get this gene.

My parents introduced me to piano lessons at a young age. My teacher, Nancy Walker, was probably a huge reason why I loved it so much. I would sit at her house every Saturday morning for 30 minutes or so and learn all about music. Some days we would play the piano, other days we would write music and some days we would play duets. She had a dog, a German Shepard named Cody, that would sit peacefully while you played at your feet or looking at you from the couch. He also kept me coming. Once a year we would have a recital, which I was more excited at the fact of eating her homemade ice cream floats than anything. The fear would build up inside of you and I would get all nervous but once you stroke one key it was completely gone.

I took lessons from her for over 10 years, I can’t even remember now exactly how long. I excelled in reading music, which a lot of people struggle with. I got really passionate about playing and would spend money buying new songs to perform. When Titanic came out I knew I just had to play “My Heart Will Go On,” by Celion Dion – and play I did at that years recital. My all time favorite songs to play, “Memory,” from Cats and Pachabel’s “Canon in D.” Even now when I sit down to tickle the ivory I merge the two songs together making sure to play those notes.

Moving out of my Mom’s house meant moving away from a piano. A keyboard doesn’t cut it, sorry keyboard cat. Some days, like today, I long to go sit down and play the piano for a few hours. One day, when I’m rich enough I will have my own piano, and teach my kids to play and tickle the ivory whenever I want.

Dog Park Days

Having a dog means you scout out good dog parks. Here in Cincinnati, we have quite a few. The new upscale Wags out in Batavia, Otto Armleder near Lunken and then other smaller parks scattered across the city. I have not been to Wags yet, but with an annual fee over $300 and being more than a 30 minutes drive from my house odds are I may never make it. I frequent the Otto Armleder park, it's free, clean, big and about 10 minutes from my house.

With the weather warming the dog park has been jumping (no pun intended). I've begun to notice common trends each time I go there that I find funny. So here you go, things to be aware of if you go to a dog park:

1. Make sure I get plastic at the grocery store. These are free pooper scoopers which in the end makes it earth friendly! In the summer the “supply” provided is always empty. I don’t want to be the as$h%le that doesn’t pick up her dogs’s biz and casually looks the other way as if engaged in the birds flying overhead. Nothing is worse than running through dog poop or even worse, your dog rolling in it.
   


2. Create an escape plan from the single men that go there purely to hit on women.You know who you are. Every time you encourage your dog to play with mine or another woman standing alone and then walk over and strike up a conversation. This without fail turns into “you live around here” sort of situation. If you know me, I’m nice, I don’t like to be rude and I tend to fall into this trap. Two hours later I’m the girl faking a phone call to escape. I need to have a plan.



3. Prepare an avoidance plan from #2 when you see them immediately upon your next entrance (because you have for sure disclosed when you come to the dog park and they now have your schedule).



4. Remember dog names better. Every time I go the same dogs are there with the same owners and Chili, like me, appreciates a friendly face. She will run up to the dog, chase them around and off they go. Which leads to conversation with the owner and they always remember Chili’s name…and I am the jerk saying, what’s your dog’s name again?



5. KNEES BENT I’ve seen people be taken out on stretchers and knocked on their butts. Chili has a really bad habit of running into the back of people’s legs – which has caused quite a stir when she took out some chick once, I felt bad, but it’s a dog park – KNEES BENT and be alert.



6. Let dogs be dogs. They growl, bite, drool, wrestle and much more…it’s all part of the game. It’s like a bar, if a real fight is brewing, other dogs will circle and then you know to pull your buddy away. I don’t like people who are too concerned when their dog growls or wrestle and immediately pulls their dog away and gives you a mean look. Clearly rookies!

So, to my long afternoons where a strong wind blows in the scent of overheated dog poop, dog drool on my pants is the norm and strategically avoiding people is my M.O.

I Don’t Throw Stones Often But….

I just read this article about a woman who has set a goal for herself to weigh 1,000 pounds! Donna Simpson, from New Jersey, already holds a Guinness World Record as the world’s biggest Mom, weighing 520 lbs when she gave birth to her daughter, but this isn’t a big enough goal for her – she is dreaming big!

Donna now weighs 600 pounds, or 43 stones (which being US, I had to look up what a stone meant – 1 stone = 14 lbs), and claims she is healthy. She refuses to be told she is unhealthy and will not listen to doctors. She wears 7XL dresses, eats 12,000 calories a day, tries to move as little as possible and must ride a scooter around when doing her shopping. The one thing that makes her move and she believes is keeping her weight down, chasing her daughter!

WTF? Chasing your daughter is keeping your weight down? Is this lady nuts? This should be like her sign from above, you have a child, get healthy and stop being so selfish? Don’t you get it, your kid needs you and being 600 pounds and only able to move 20 ft at a time without sitting is a problem. I could rant on this one forever, but this child should be taken from her, clearly she is too selfish to own even a plant (which should would most likely end up eating).

Donna isn’t doing this alone, she has a lover who actually encourages her to eat more. They met on a website for dating plus-size people, which shocked me that these even exist. Her lover, Philippe (150lbs) , only dates women who weigh 400 pounds or more! This is just SICK! I mean, how can they even make love? The fact that there are people out there who are encouraging people to become obese and not do a thing about it is wrong. However, even worse, there are people out there funding her problem.

It cost her around $750 a week to eat, which is funded from a website where men pay to watch her eat. Ok, so there are a lot of freaks out there, but really a group of people enjoy watching an overweight women gorge herself with Big Macs? When asked how she feels about it she has no remorse or blame. She feels she was meant to be fat and tried dieting but it never worked. As Donna states, “I love eating and people love watching me eat, It makes people happy, and I’m not harming anyone.”

Well, technically you are harming people. You are releasing lots of Big Mac gas into the air, your daughter doesn’t really have a Mom who is a role model, when you die from a heart attack New Jersey tax dollars are going to fund the crane it will take to get you out of your house and 50 paramedics it will require to get you the morgue. I mean, seriously, I understand that not everyone is fit, enjoys living a healthy lifestyle but setting a goal to be the fattest woman in the world? Just ridiculous!

Cinciditarod Update

I'm pretty happy to discover we came in 8th place with a time of 1:13! This makes me happy because of the following:

• This was only :06 away from 3rd place
• It was our first time racing and a lot of other first timers came in really low
• We waited at the finish line for :10 to get the Bigg's Bag before giving up on it (no Bigg's in running distance so had to have someone drive to get it - FAIL)
• In addition to waiting, we also got time docked for not having the Bigg's Bag
• Our costumes were amazing
• Our dance was amazing- see below
• We had fun!

Spring is in the air - I can't wait.

Cinciditarod

This past weekend I competed in the Cinciditarod, which is a race that takes the Alaskan Iditarod and makes it urban - to put it simply we used shopping carts instead of dog sleds.

Teams consisted of 5 people and you had to do some pretty creative things along the way, including dress up and perform a minute song and dance. Our Team decided we would be the Oompa Loompas and call ourselves "The Golden Ticket". We made our Oompa Loompa costumes, wrapped our shopping cart in gold foil and started to hash out a plan.

The day of the race was pretty fun. About 50 teams came out all dressed up - anything from Amish Teams, Mario Brothers, Kegs and Eggs and much more! Our outfits were hilarious. The race started downtown and ran about a 5-6 mile route with stops along the way. The first stop was in Mt.Adams, which if you live in Cincy is an area of town atop the steepest of hills. So imagine running up a hill for about a mile pushing a shopping cart.

After huffing and puffing our way atop Mt.Adams down we went to our second stop, Senor Roy's Taco Stand. Now, they have delicious tacos but not when running. Our challenge, to each eat a burrito and polish off a vitamin water. I'm going to say we gave those food eating competitors a run for their money, I was so proud of our team. We polished them off in about 3 minutes and continued on our way.

The rest of the stops consisted of mind challenges, obstacle courses, and buying items from the grocery store. It was about 4 miles, so imaging shoveling burritos down your throat with a 32 ounce vitamin water and running 4 miles after you just about threw up from running up a hill - it's tough.

All and all we had a blast! We didn't come in first, but a marathon team has won it 3 years in a row and we are convinced they cheat. There are easy ways to cheat, like having someone buy your groceries and meet you at the finish line (you basically cut 3 stops out and about 2 miles) but what fun is that? It's more about racing around town and giggling with your friends but Cinciditarod if you are reading these, you need to fix the kinks!

We were disappointed our dance didn't place, it was amazing. You can watch the video below. One of the winning teams was Jersey Shore, they basically fist pumped for a minute, not sure how they placed? I think it's because the judges like Jersey Shore. We are definitely doing this again next year - I recommend it!

Back to Life

I must admit the Bahamas were AMAZING (see view from our room)! It was warm, romantic and beautiful. We pretty much hung out on the beach with a beer, went snorkeling a few times and ate really yummy food! We managed to leave losing about $20 at the casino, which isn't too bad considering we were in pretty bad shape at times!

We did end up participating in a booze cruise and meeting up with a few friends of ours passing through. That was a complete mess and I am beginning to realize I may be getting too old for those type of shenanigans.

Just so you can have some Bahama time the video below is a view from the pool. Every time the US won a medal this man would play the Star Spangled Banner on a trumpet, I caugh him playing wonderful world. Also, you can see the water slide - which yes, Jim and I went down several times and could barely pull ourselves away from it- I am NOT too old to still enjoy water slides.