For the next 2 weeks over at the Sisterhood, we are having a Team Shrinking Jeans Bash! What is this Bash I speak of, you might be asking? It’s a HUGE party with door prizes and an awesome Grand Prize of $400 cash! Yes, cash!

What is Team Shrinking Jeans anyway? Well, a group of 16 Sisters and one Brother are training to run the San Diego Rock N Roll 1/2 Marathon through the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) Team in Training Program (TNT). Through TNT, Team Shrinking Jeans will be training for the race AND raising $48,900 for LLS. Isn’t that amazing?

You can read more about our amazing team here, and find out why each of them are doing this here.

How can you join the Bash? Simple! Donate to Team Shrinking Jeans through our secure online team fundraising page. For every $5 you donate, you’ll be entered to win one of over 30 fabulous door prizes. If you donate $25, not only will you get 5 chances to win door prizes, but you’ll also be entered to win the granddaddy of all prizes: CASH!

Did you know?

Every 4 minutes one person is diagnosed with a blood cancer.
An estimated 139,860 people in the United States will be diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma in 2009. New cases of leukemia, Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma account for 9.5 percent of the 1,479,350 new cancer cases diagnosed in the United States this year*.
Overall incidence rates per 100,000 population for leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma are almost identical for data reported in 2008 and 2009 [(leukemia 12.2, 2009 vs.12.3, 2008); (NHL, 19.5, each year); (Hodgkin lymphoma, 2.8, each year); (myeloma, 5.6, each year)].
Leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma will cause the deaths of an estimated 53,240 people in the United States this year. These blood cancers will account for nearly 9.5 percent of the deaths from cancer in 2009 based on the 562,340 total cancer-related deaths.
Every ten minutes, someone dies from a blood cancer. This statistic represents nearly 146 people each day, or more than six people every hour. Leukemia causes more deaths than any other cancer among children and young adults under the age of 20. In general, the likelihood of dying from most types of leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma decreased from 1996 to 2005 (the most recent data available).
*Facts and statistics from Leukemia, Lymphoma, Myeloma Facts 2009-2010, June 2009.
Those are some pretty eye-opening statistics, huh?

So head on over and join in the Bash! Check out the fabulous prizes, click on over and donate, and be sure to check in everyday for Happy Hour!

Screw that, man! Ok, fine, I’ll get to the point. About a year ago my mom got CD the Ekorre Hanging Chair from the Ikea in Minneapolis. She did not realize, at the time, that the little inflato-pillow that goes in the bottom AND the hooks to hang it from the ceiling were not included with her purchase. (Which, on a side note, they should be or it should be marked somewhere on the mothertrucking box that they aren’t.) So she proudly gives it to CD and he gets STUPID excited about it. Imagine my dismay when I realized we were missing KEY elements to the item. I packed it away in the closet and told him I would have to buy the parts on-line later.

Well, now with the BIL moving out we are gonna move CD into the master after putting in laminate flooring and painting. It has a perfect little spot for the chair and so I got to work on Saturday trying to find what I needed to be able to install this bad boy. I found the chair, and found where it says the Sagosten Air Element and the hanging hooks are sold separately. Only there was nowhere on the site to actually purchase said sold separately items.

They have this cute little graphic of a lady and it says “Ask Anna!” I clicked this thinking it would be a live chat feature and I could figure out how to get these items. Only it wasn’t. It was an interactive PIECE OF SHIT that used key words in what you typed in to give you canned responses. Every answer it gave me directed me to my local store… HELLO, asshole, I don’t HAVE a local store!!

I finally typed in “I hate you” and Anna’s response was: “If I have unintentionally offended you then I apologize. If you think that I am not providing you with useful information about IKEA you can contact the Customer Service at your nearest IKEA Store.” Again with the freaking store. MAYBE if you were a huge plentiful chain like Target or Wal-Mart I can understand you directing me to a local store. But when the closest Ikea to me is 500+ miles away it’s more than a little irritating.

I finally emailed Customer Service, explained my situation and made it VERY CLEAR that I do not have a local store because I am in DENVER, CO. The response I received was as follows: “

Hello Melissa,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us.

The SAGOSTEN air element is sold separately.  It is usually priced at
$10.00, however, prices can vary from store to store.  This item can
be purchased by visiting an IKEA store location.

We do apologize for any inconvenience, and we thank you for your
inquiry.

Best Regards,
IKEA Customer Care Center”

Fricken fracken mother trucking son of an alma biscuit eater!!!! I fired off a quick response about how that information does me no damn good seeing as how there isn’t a store anywhere near me. In the meantime April offered to hit up the Ikea in Baltimore when she goes for Fitbloggin’… but truth be told I didn’t want to wait that long.

So first thing Monday morning I called Ikea customer service. The poor girl who answered got an earful and then gave me the numbers to 3 store who do phone orders, one in NY, one in TX and on in Seattle. I had no desire to deal with a NY attitude first thing Monday morning, so I tried TX. Where I was informed that there was a three-day wait for phone orders, then they would contact me with a shipping quote and THEN fax or email me the CC Auth form before they would even begin to process my order.

WTF? Seriously? I thanked her and hung up. I waited 10 minutes for the Seattle store to open and spoke with THE NICEST gal there, Linda. She empathized with my frustration, she made sure she could get me the items and even waived the handling fees. So I paid $20.99 for the air element, the hooks and shipping from Seattle. She said it should ship by this Thursday via UPS, so I should get it next week!

So I hate Ikea.com. I like Ikea in Seattle and when (if) it ever gets to the Denver area I will go check it out and decide if I want to kick those people in the shins too or if I will be a frequent shopper there. The end.

So, when my dream started I was aware that I had died and that I was just my spirit on Earth. I was in my house in my favorite jeans and hoodie and was frantic because no one was there. I knew that I had been so confused when I died that I was “lost” for a few days and so missed my funeral.

I became obsessed with finding out who had come to my funeral and how people were reacting to my death.  But I couldn’t find anyone… and that drove me crazy. The dogs could see me and I spent hours talking to them trying to understand their thoughts. For whatever reason I couldn’t leave my house and go to my friends and family to see how they were coping. I even tried to log-on to the computer to see if you people were talking about my passing and holding virtual candlelight vigils… but couldn’t.

I am sure this can be defined with some psycho-babble about how I am unsure of what I mean to those close to me or that I am feeling like I am small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  Either way it was a dream I’d like to avoid having regularly, thank you very much! Has anyone else had these types of dreams or is it just me??

The infamous BIL, who has lived with us since July (and about 50% of the time since the end of March) has finally found an apartment!! Queue the gospel choir and the organ music, baby!

He signs the lease on Wednesday and hopefully moves out this weekend or the next. This comes as a HUGE surprise that he was approved because of some various legal issues that have been going on since July. I had resigned myself to thinking he would be with us until AT LEAST September, and so am still kind of in shock!

We are already making plans to move CD into the Master bedroom, where the BIL and Baby Grill have been staying. And I may or may not have been in there on Saturday measuring to find the perfect spots for his bookshelf and toy organizer. There will be plenty of room for the giant bunk-bed we bought as a surprise with our tax refund… he still doesn’t know about that bad boy yet!

I am just so excited to have my house back and my guest room back and my family routine back. I can cook what I want instead of worrying about whether they will like it. I can take hot-ass showers in the morning. I can sleep in on Saturday and Sunday mornings without people tromping around upstairs. I can EVEN run nekkid from the shower to my room any time I want!

–noun: Any of several white or yellowish greasy substances, forming the chief part of adipose tissue of animals and also occurring in plants, that when pure are colorless, odorless, and tasteless and are either solid or liquid esters of glycerol with fatty acids; fats are insoluble in water or cold alcohol but soluble in ether, chloroform, or benzene: used in the manufacture of soap, paints, and other protective coatings and in cooking.

Animal tissue containing much of this substance; loose flesh; flabbiness: to have rolls of fat around one’s waist.

–adjective:  Having too much flabby tissue; corpulent; obese: a fat person. Plump; well-fed: a good, fat chicken. Consisting of or containing fat; greasy; oily: fat gravy; fat meat.

Well, interwebz, I took my dictionary and a sharpie (of which I have every color, you know you are jealous) and blacked out the adjective portion of this definition. I am done saying “I am FAT” and “My ass is FAT” and “This shirt makes me look FAT.” I am declaring, right now to all 4 of you who read me, that FAT IS NO LONGER AN ADJECTIVE!

I can say things like “Running makes me feel like the FAT in my ass is trying to rip from my body” and “I am watching my FAT intake” and “Avocados have the GOOD kind of FAT, so pass the guacamole.” But there will be NO MORE using it as an adjective.

From here on out I will refer to my thighs, ass, jiggly belly and arms as PHAT. Because PHAT has awesome, positive connotations!

–adjective: Slang. great; wonderful; terrific.

So while I may have excess FAT on my thighs, they make me have a PHAT, curvaceous figure. Get it? POSITIVE THINKING, BABY!

So, my fellow hookers, will you join me? Obliterate FAT as an adjective and replace it with PHAT? We will all feel SO MUCH BETTER!