Well, I have to say they pegged the neat/control freak thing. And, yes, the other day I did get up in the middle of the movie and go from the sunroom to the fridge to get an extra blueberry because I had an uneven amount in my bowl.

Stability results were moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.

Orderliness results were moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly organized, reliable, neat, and hard working at the expense of flexibility, efficiency, spontaneity, and fun.

Extraversion results were medium which suggests you are moderately talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting.

trait snapshot:
neat freak, organized, worrying, phobic, fears the unknown, irritable, pessimistic, emotionally sensitive, fears chaos, risk averse, fragile, unadventurous, depressed, frequently second guesses self, likes to fit in, does not like to stand out, perfectionist, hard working, does not like to be alone, clingy, dependent, practical, ordinary, cautious, takes precautions, good at saving money, suspicious, heart over mind, busy, altruistic

Oh my Gosh, people, do not recommend vampire books to me.

I tore through Twilight in 2 days (thank you, broken work computer), bought New Moon, and made my child watch Bambi today so that I could finish it.

Also, Eliza has a new sentence she’s been saying a lot: “Should Mommy put the book AWAY!”

I can’t believe I have to wait a whole month for the third in the trilogy. Torture!!

That said, I was very amused to note that my special edition of New Moon came with a page of fake tattoos. I believe that I am both somewhat older and less Goth than the target demographic. I guess my tastes haven’t changed that much since I was a teenager, since I have historical tendencies toward the baroque in my art (by which I mean over-the-top, not JS Bach). I could just never go full-on with the Goth thing because a. my well-documented issues with joining groups and b. WAAAAYYY too compulsively neat to wear ripped tights. You cannot ladder tights symmetrically. I have tried.

Which reminds me of my Theory of Hollywood, which I have articulated to some of you, which states that Hollywood is really just like a big high school and everyone fits a stock type. This is why I was secretly really disappointed in Angelina Jolie when she went for Brad Pitt. She was supposed to be a the freaky outsider Goth chic who stands on the corner smoking and snarling, and suddenly she’s dating the quarterback? That is a betrayal of her kind. But maybe Brad Pitt is one of those secretly sensitive quarterback who, despite his charm and good looks, longs for an existence with more meaning, and so he is drawn to the wounded outsider and recognizes her unique spirit, blah blah blah. And Tom Cruise is like the cocky tennis player with the vanity plates (think Bruce Patman, for those of you who remember the original Sweet Valley High books), and Katie Holmes is the hapless, sweet but clueless cheerleader. Lindsay Lohan and her posse of frenemies are the Heathers, and Ashley Simpson and that boy she’s dating (and I know I am making a snap judgement but jesus does his self-satisfied smirk rub me the wrong way — plus, if he’s got so much indie attitude, WHAT is he doing with a Simpson??) are that annoying couple who are always all over each other that you KNOW is going to implode two weeks after graduation.

And it was a very, very bad thing when our subscription of Premiere got switched over to US weekly because I could feel my brain rotting as I read and I don’t know whether Jim cancelled it or whether he’s hiding them from me but I am SO GRATEFUL that waste of a tree is no suddenly mysteriously absent from our house.

Also, I am apparently allergic to the skort I wore yesterday because I have a rash on my abdomen that ends where the waist band sat. Perhaps my body is simply rebelling against the abomination of fashion that is a skort. They are the spork of the pant world, I realize this, but when you are crawling around after a two-year-old and it’s too hot for pants but you have signed the UN Treaty Against the Wearing of Shorts, you have little choice.

I’m going to go put on my fake tattoos now.

Because I’m just so darn excited:

The small person went peepee in the potty! All by herself! And there was no freaking out or accident-having!

It’s to Elmo’s credit. We went to the “Thomasthetrainstore” as she calls Barnes and Noble (there’s a hopefully lead-free Thomas set kids can play with in the children’s section), to enjoy the air conditioning and because I wanted to pick up Twilight per Bon’s recent post. (BTW: Totally sucked in already and I’m only on page 52.)

Anyway, the small person wanted one of those atrocious books that makes noises when you push the buttons and when I spotted the one about potty time with Elmo, I seized my chance. At home, I told her it was a book for reading on the potty, and she went for it. I actually missed the actual deed because she was so nonchalant about it and just got up. When I caught on, of course, I praised her TO THE SKIES about the peepee in the potty, and we looked at the peepee and talked about it and flushed it ceremoniously, and she looked pretty pleased with herself.

I am now hoping that this experience made more of an impression on her than the accidental poo in the kiddie pool that happened earlier today when Jim’s mom was watching her, because she would NOT shut up about it. “You made POOPIES inna POOL!”

So, it turns out that even if your kid really really LOVES those playground Merry-go-rounds, even if she is saying, “Want to get DIZZY!”, even if she is telling her friend to push faster, even if she screams like a wounded cheetah and grips the handlebars of the horsie she is on when you try to get her off, you should probably still not let her stay on the thing for an hour straight.

And yet, after the puking, after the clean-up, after the trauma of having to take off the pretty strawberry dress and run around in just her diaper, she STILL wanted to get back on.

In a fine example of barndoor/horse, I said no.

I have been dutifully plugging along on the treadmill for a while now. Usually, I run usual 3.1 miles (5K) at somewhere between 6.1 and 6.3 MPH, then walk at a 2 percent incline at between 4 and 4.2 MPH for 15 minutes.

This was getting oh-so-boring — even admiring my reflection as I practiced my best cat walk strut during the walking portion of the proceedings was no longer filling me with joy.

Thus, I decided to mix it up a bit. In the past week, I have done the following:

1. Ran 2.1 miles at 6.8 MPH, then finished off the last 1 mile at 6 MPH, followed by walking. Painful, lung-wise, but I did it, and learned that if I push myself thusly, I can actually run the distance in a little over 28 minutes, which is faster than I’ve ever gone.

2. Walked all the way around the reservoir at my fastest walking stride, pushing Eliza in the stroller. I took one ten-minute break in the middle (for admiring the Canada Geese). The distance is estimated at 4 miles, which I walked in 55 minutes.

3. Ran outside for 47 minutes (I ran a little over half of my 5K mix up to a light on a relatively quiet, pretty road that runs along a river, then headed back. I chose this road so I could drive the distance later, and it was about 4.4 miles altogether.

4. Today: Ran on the treadmill for an hour at a for-me-slow pace of 5.7 MPH, almost more of a quick trot than a full-on run, just to see if I could do it. The last 90 seconds I ran at 6.7, because I decided to aim for a round-ish number distance at 5.75 MPH, and also I wanted to see if I had it in me to do anything resembling a sprint. Felt good, and probably could’ve gone faster. Now, my quads hurt.

All of the above are much more interesting than jogging whilst glaring at the Y’s TV as Oprah browbeats her guests into submitting to her viewpoint. I mean, I get that she’s trying to make the world a more happy place, but jeeeeeeeeeezus! are her methods heavy-handed. I actually found myself feeling sorry for the homophobe on her show the other day who just wanted to be left in peace to hate whomever he wanted to hate and she was all up in his grill about how after SHE had intervened and taught him how to be a proper human being with the right kinds of views, he was seeing the humanity in those not like him, wasn’t he? WASN’t HE? HUH?? HUH??!

***

On my rubbery legs, I took Eliza to the park this morning*, where she splashed, ate a grilled cheese sandwich, rode the kiddie train, fed the goats and the chickens, went pedal boating, and ran across a baseball field. This could explain why this:

has been tearing up the sidewalk outside our house for the past hour and a half without waking her up from her nap. We’ll see how much longer it lasts.

***

Here are my favorite pictures of the yellow crap (honeysuckle, to you “experts” out there):

And purple crap (clematis):

***

Which reminds me: Jo’s comment on my previous post notwithstanding, I am PG-rated:

Mingle² -

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* My computer at work was fried in a power outage on Friday, so I am playing hooky until it is fixed. Whee!