Crunchy Elegance. You might want to wash your hands after reading this post.

There is no one on the planet that will bring me out of my blog writing slump like Pamela Anderson. So thank you Pam for getting up off of that sticky floor of your trailer and going out there; half dazed and looking all kinds of crunchy. Nothing gets my writing juices flowin' again like a (barely) walking, talking carny ride like yourself.

GLAMOUR! SOPHISTICATION! DIGNITY!
(but on this day, she obviously left them at home.)

Seriously, what exactly is going on here? Surely the economy can't be this bad that she's succumbed to dressing herself in toddler fits? Then again I guess this is what happens when 100 years of sun beats down on an open bag of STDs. I'm impressed that her white outfit remained white for the pictures because she sincerely looks like she oozes hot burning pus uncontrollably from her flappy gash. When I think of the worst/best example of rode rough and put away moist, one particular girl comes to mind. Once upon a time I used to do ad copy for a telemarketing company and one telemarketer literally came into work one day high on coke, wearing a short silver dress with a safety pin holding one of the straps in place and heels...except one of the heels had a broke during her guest appearance on Cops that evening. She smelled of sour milk and sorrow. And yet SOMEHOW, compared to this picture of Pam, she's become Audrey Hepburn in my mind.

But don't get the wrong idea, I love a hot mess. If Pam and Courtney Love were to go on a hot mess tour, I'd be right there in the front row ......with a hazmat suit.

In other news...

* My Palm Springs trip was uneventful, relaxing and way too boring for me to write to you about. When I say nap, eat, lay out, repeat. I mean it. On Saturday night we both fell asleep while watching t.v. at the twilight hour of 6:00 p.m.! Suffice it to say we were both wide awake at 12:00 a.m. but both of us thought the other was asleep so we kept going in and out of slumber until about 6:00 a.m. the next day. It really is the best type of vacation. Like charging up our very empty batteries.

* On a low note, ever since Palm Springs, I've been eating like crap. I allowed myself to splurge a little in PS - and by 'a little' I mean I ate everything that didn't move fast enough. (KFC strips on Friday, coffee cake with cream cheese icing for breakfast on Saturday, shrimp pasta for lunch, chili cheese omelet). I got back home and all of a sudden I catch myself eating fried pop tarts dipped in chocolate. Okay, I'm kidding but wouldn't that make some great fair food??? In short, (ha) I fell off the wagon momentarily, my bloated pop tart filled belly is temporary, and ...um....Robin Williams is really hairy.

* LadyGAGA is following me on Twitter. I'm an idiot but I'm kind of flattered. And really how can she not follow LadyHAHA? (me) It was bound to happen.

* I'm slowly but surely starting to gather up our belongings preparing for the move. Most of which is going straight to the yard sale pile. You should see the crap I've accumulated over the years, I have a stack of US magazines that's about as tall as I am. A year's worth of US Magazines. Why??? Why did I keep all of them? because of their stellar journalism?

"Look! Reese Witherspoon picked out an annoying wedgie! LIKE US!"

On a positive note, I found Jessica Simpson's career underneath my pile, unfortunately, it's dusty, worn out and has her father's handprints all over it. (eww).

* I'm almost positive that if I keep digging through my crap I'll find the giant wooden spoon and fork that I was meaning to hang in my kitchen. (I'm kidding. I don't really have that and I'm trying really hard NOT to go on ebay to look for it.)

remember these??? I still remember our giant fork and spoon that we had in the Phils.

* Where can I buy a box of Count Chocula? Oh wait. I'm suppose to be getting back ON the wagon, not falling off of it, crawling into a tub of sugar and going for a swim with my mouth open.

Okay. I get it now.

The World Would Be A Better Place if People Co-Existed as Peacefully As The Random Knick Knacks Do On My Shelf.

We checked out our future place of residence this past weekend and wow! It's huge and I'm already feeling overwhelmed - in a good way of course. I can't believe how incredibly lucky we got nabbing this place. Basically it's more than twice the size of our two bedroom condo, the living room alone is half, if not the size of our entire condo. There's a huge backyard, a pool and a pool house complete with bathroom and shower and a lovely hillside view.

I've recruited the help of my friend Brandie to pick out colors (the owner is letting us paint!) for the walls, cabinets and just general help with placement of furniture and decor. Being that I'm Asian or more specifically, FILIPINO - my natural instinct is to fill every little nook and cranny with crap. Intermixing knick knacks, themes, decor, color - and basically turn the house into a living breathing definition of A.D.D. I'm not saying ALL Filipinos are like this, but most of the ones I've encountered, including my parents fit the A.D.D. decor mode.

For example, my mom had Buddhist and Catholic art and decor sprinkled throughout the house. It was not unusual for Buddha statues to co-exist with crucifixes and candles with saints on them. We had a 3D - YES, that's right, THREE DIMENSIONAL - painting/diorama of the Last Supper (faux gold plated for your pleasure) hung up on a wall in our dining room area so that every meal was like breaking bread with Jesus and his desciples. Or in a lot of instances, breaking a hot pocket or a bowl of cookie crisp with Christ. But the decor wasn't limited to religious Gods, oh no. If it was the hot ticket item at the swap meet or given to us, you can bet it had a place of its very own in my house.

There were these random paintings that a relative did that my mom simply could not resist putting up. They were nature scenes (a river, a cabin, a forest) that I think would have given the paintings at your local Motel 6 a run for it's money. We also had another 3D diorama type painting of an ocean with movement (SEE the ocean crash!) AND sound (HEAR the ocean waves!). It was like looking at a painting during a bad LSD trip, except no drugs were necessary, only a nearby outlet to plug it in. Let's not forget the clock that played a different CARPENTERS song every hour. (Okay, I kind of loved that one..)

That was my house and it never even occurred to me how horribly maniacal the decor was because it accumulated slowly. My mom would change her mind on what 'theme' she wanted but failed to take down the prior theme and wala, by the time I moved out in college the house looked like a storage room for Antiques Roadshow rejects.

I vowed to never be like that and yet....in my first tiny tiny apartment, I already had 'themes' going on in my head. For example, my bathroom was going to be done up Superman style. (STOP LAUGHING AT ME! I was still a kid! Okay, 22, but still...) Of course in my head, it was going to be done in this cool retro vibe. I was going to build (cough*viking hubby was going to build*cough) a nice high shelf and display all my Superman collectibles on it. I use the plural term 'collectibles' loosely as I only had a Superman statue, an old Superman pretzel tin and two old Superman metal lunchboxes. Thank you Ebay.

I was going to hang a retro Superman painting ...somewhere..in there... only I never could figure out where... and so my 'retro superhero' bathroom ended up basically looking like a normal bathroom except there were a few Superman knick knacks on top of the toilet that occasionally fell if you closed the lid wrong. Then, like mother like daughter, I would change my mind on these ridiculous decor themes and accumulate crap that fed into my 'hoarding' gene - also passed on by my parents who KEPT everything! When they finally retired, they still had my old speak n' spell because it worked and I guess you never know when you're going to need something to robotically nag at you on how to spell squirrel. I really don't know why they kept it. They claimed they kept it so I could give it to my child. Can you imagine giving an old speak n' spell to your child right now?? Or a Teddy Ruxpin with the story cassettes that go up his ass? Complete that set with a catch a ball in a cup toy and they'll never need the internet again.

Anyways, I've been pretty restrained with my condo because I'm well aware of my problem. It's an inner fight with myself to NOT buy that life size Elvis cut out at the gift shop. Where would I put that leather clad hunk?

First thought? "You could totally make your office into an Elvis shrine! And you could install a CD player that can play Elvis songs on a loop as soon as you sat down!"

If Nate Berkus could see the decor ideas in my head, he would need serious therapy afterwards or a mental scrub brush to erase the gaudy decorating taste I would leave in his soul.

I've also been restrained because from this point on, my dwellings have been rather small and I value space a teeny bit more than my penchant for room themes and useless knick knacks. A teeny tiny bit, not a lot. I may or may not have a Bob's Big Boy statue bumping shoulders with a matching set of ceramic tiki mugs on my kitchen window ledge. (head down in shame).

This house however, has space and ...gasp...an extra bedroom ..that in my head has already turned into my MADONNA themed office...with a DVD player playing Madonna videos on a LOOP! (what I've learned about myself today: Apparently I like my entertainment played on a loop!?) There's also a fully equipped bar - and of course, since viking hubby doesn't drink alcohol, in my head, that has already turned into a mini-Jamba juice smoothie bar, complete with a retro Coke advertisement above with flashing lights!

Don't even ask my head about the ideas its had for our bedroom.
Two words: Space Cowboy.

wait..three words: RETRO space cowboy.

If left to my own devices, it could get straight up Graceland II in this new house. (The Jungle room is my favorite! Sick.) - so thank you to my friend Brandie in advance for holding my hand and knocking some good taste in me.

San Diego is my mother and I shall not be extracted from the comfort of her bosom!!!

Let's start off with some GREAT, FANTABULOUS NEWS! - I'm staying in California!!!! whoooo! The job outlook for the future was much better for viking hubby here than it was in Missouri; we felt it would be foolish for us to leave when he has a 40 hour a week job, a very good reputation with his company and the fact that we just found out that they are signed up to do a lot of big projects in the future. His boss has a rental house east of San Diego that he's offered to us that is a less than what we pay at our current condo. It's on top of a hill, no neighbors, three bedrooms, and...what I'm most excited about ...a wa-wa-wa-..(sorry I'm getting ferklempted) ..a washer and dryer!!! Which means...sniff...no..(hiccup)..no more digging around for quarters to get my laundry done?

Pinch me sweet baby Jesus because it feels like a dream! That is truly the sole reason why I HATE doing laundry, having to go out and get that coin! Either I have to go to Wal-Mart and get the side eye from a disgruntled Wal-Mart cashier when I ask for a roll of quarters, or I have to dig around couches, steal it from unsuspecting bums or children, or sneak into the car wash, get some change and get out of there before the owner sees me and screams "Change fo customah ONLY!"

Although, I'm going to miss living 3 miles away from the beach our consolation prize is we have a pool. And check this out, right after I found out that we got the rental and we were officially staying put for a while, I saw this in the sky:


See? Baby Jesus' daddy be giving me love from above via a heart cloud? Awww. Ain't he sweet? It's like he was all, 'Australia was a crazy idea girl, but here I'll give you this just to show that I got yo back - now shut up about it.' Okay so maybe the cloud looks more like an artichoke than anything else but even so, I wanna believe it's an an 'artichoke heart.' Maybe he's giving me love AND telling me to get a artichoke dip appetizer at Chilis to celebrate. Dual messages and what not.

Moving right along, let's see what wonderful totally irrelevant crap I've discovered/observed this past week....just two things really and then class is dismissed I promise....

You would think running three miles everyday would afford me some time to think about a lot of things, get really deep and introspective about life, maybe meditate a little, get in touch with my inner child and yell at it for being such a dork in 7th grade (and 8th, 9th, ..). So far though the only thing I've realized is I'm one of those idiots that push the walk button 50 kajillion times in hopes that the lovely walking man will pop up and allow me to cross. EVEN if I SAW the red hand just came up and I KNOW that fucker works on a timer, I will still push that button like it's a morphine drip going straight into my veins every time I press it. The only excuse I have for this is because A. the traffic light happens to be right before my home stretch and I just want to get the run over with, go home and soak neck deep in a tub of ben gay and B. I cannot COOL DOWN. I don't know if the traffic light understands that I was born in the 70s and I run a whole lot like a car from the 70s. It takes me a while to warm up and if I cool down, I basically shut off. My body thinks "oh this bullshit is over? thank god." And then it'll want to lay down right there on the curb and take a nap. That's how the ol' machinery works people and that damn traffic light just doesn't understand me but at all.

You know what multiplies faster than Octo-Mom? (wait does that joke make sense? bah! you know what I mean!) Publisher's Clearing House contest entries! I made the mistake of filling out an entry form because I'm a retard like that and the prize of winning 5,000 a month for life seemed like a great not too over the top prize. (me in two words? total idiot) And all I had to do was take this stamp and stick it to the left side of this entry, and then I take this bright sticker and put it on the envelope to show the PCH mailing crew that it's a rush entry and then oh...I get a nice offer on a box of mighty mend that I only pay 2.99 a month for? Okay, lets put that on because they say ordering something doesn't improve your chances but you know that's some booshit. I think they put the non-order entries into the shredder.

A couple days later, I had THREE entry forms come in the mail all telling me that, YES bitch we got your ENTRY! Good for you! You're SOOO CLOSE! SO CLOSE! All you need to do is open this entry up, put three little stamps on the top of this form, sign that form with blood obtained from a baby chicken and don't forget to look for a BONUS entry in the mail. THAT IS URGENT. You need to fill that out or your other entry is null and VOID! It has a red sticker on it, please take that sticker, put it up your asshole, let it marinate for a day and then put it on top of this yellow envelope. That way we know you're serious.

Meanwhile, I've ordered a mighty mend, a electric bug repellant, (you just plug it in and the bugs STAY away! I wonder if they have those for people? Hmmm.), and a curved shower bar to give the illusion that my bathtub/shower is bigger than what it is. A lot like what my Spice Girl stilts used to do for me in college.

But really guys I'm so close to winning. I'm serious. They are going to be knocking on my door any minute with that giant check (I'm going to have to ask them where I can cash that because I don't think it's not going to fit in the deposit slot at my bank.) Right now, I'm just waiting for THE final entry to come to mail, I think I have to sacrifice a goat and send them the entrails so that I can be in the running for the 500,000 dollar prize.

All right, I'm outtee ya'll. I gotta go see a man about a goat.