blood disorder? please.

Time for me to weigh in (yeah, pun intended) on the ever over-publicized Nicole Richie eating disorder. Yes, that’s right. Eating disorder.

She can protest as much as she wants, spin it however she pleases, swear up and down that the team of experts Daddy’s paying to fix her up are only concerned with getting to the bottom of her puzzling, troubling, incomprehensible inability to gain weight – no, she’s not in TREATMENT, she’s in CONSULTATION. Fine. But we’re not fools.

I hate being played for stupid. I hate it when celebrity debutantes assume that the greater celebrity gossip-obsessed public is so gullible (and thinks she’s just sooooo cute) they’ll just believe the ridiculous excuses that get published every couple of days.

The latest: her team of Expert Physicians (read: Hollywood ex nip-tucker Docs now available for private hire, equally as adept at bad press damage control as wielding a needle, drawing blood, and looking convincingly empathetic as they’re photographed escorting their high profile client patient away from glamorously in-patient-esque facilities early in the morning) is concerned that Ms Richie may be suffering from a rare blood disorder that renders her completely unable to gain weight.

Because, you know, famous underweight girls that are genuinely concerned they may have a blood disorder would allow themselves to drop close to 50 pounds and then be photographed jogging on the beach in ill-fitting bikinis if they felt they were legitimately sick…at the very least, if you’re concerned that your weight loss is due to some rare, undiagnosed illness, wouldn’t it be slightly more likely that you’d be photographed leaving Whole Foods with your reusable shopping bag full of Lara Bars and protein powder, or stuffing your face with Azteca “Macho Burritos” – even in vain, than jogging, an activity generally associated (at least among people in the over 80 pound demographic) with weight loss…

Okay, okay, let’s say that – for the sake of argument – she got loaded, “accidentally” shared a needle with her best friend and ended up with some strange “disease.” Would your first consultation with experts happen AFTER you’d lost 40 pounds and suffered a year and a half of “EATING DISORDER!!!!” accusations around every corner? I mean, if I suddenly lost 20 pounds without any obvious explanation, you can bet I’d be running to my doctor – with a Jack-in-the-Box Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich and venti, whole milk, pumpkin spice latte in my fingers.

I’m no sucker. I don’t believe that Shiloh Jolie-Pitt has an ounce of either Jolie or Pitt DNA in her body. I don’t buy that either Tom OR Katie has any desire to live happily ever after together. I don’t think that Brit and Kev share a bedroom at Villa del Spears. I sure as heck don’t think we’ll find out that some sort of chemical imbalance is to blame for Nicole Richie’s problems any more than I buy that she and Paris were ever in any sort of feud.

the hot button in our marriage: big business politics.

This weekend K and I discovered a fantastic way to get each other angry and emotional: we had an “accidental” conversation about corporate politics (don’t ask me how. I think it began with a totally innocuous reference to a childhood friend of K’s that had managed to skim thousands of dollars a month from the coffee shop he worked at during high school. I said, “Wow, I don’t think I could do something like that, I’d be terrified of getting caught the ENTIRE time. Wouldn’t make the money worth it.” From there, it became a quick discussion about the fact that apparently “companies deserve to get ripped off, they’re ripping off their employees left and right by paying them minimum wage and keeping them oppressed and beholden to the company that doesn’t give a damn about them as people in the first place”). So. I assumed my apparently typical position in defense of businesses, K stood his ground and went to battle for the little man (this entire conversation is definitely a microcosm of our entire political belief system, but I’ll blame it on his free-styled Alaskan upbringing and my vaguely Midwestern roots, since I can’t figure out how else I ended up so horrifyingly, unwaveringly politically conservative).

And then the floodgates opened. I was accused of being less than understanding of people treated poorly by employers who pay them in Cheerios. Well, metaphorical Cheerios. Cheerios that taste soggy when they’re all about The Bottom Line. Evil, capitalistic Cheerios. I argued that it hasn’t been all blue skies with fields of honeysuckle for me, either. I’ve worked hard. Employers have mistreated me (coming soon: a more specific account of a job I once held that may or may not have ended because of a box of Sweet & Low). I’ve been laid off ON MY BIRTHDAY. On the first day back from vacation. AFTER I gave them the flag-printed souvenir socks. I’ve been so broke I had to put milk and tampons on the last $10 of my credit card’s available credit because the $2.16 in the bank account just wouldn’t cut it. I’ve raged against corporate ideals. I’ve settled when I knew there was better opportunity. I’ve looked at a pay stub and thought, “is this what I’m worth at the end of the day…is this all there is?”

BUT, as someone that aspires to own a business that’s able to support me entirely, as someone that aspires to wake up in the morning and set my OWN schedule and determine my OWN bottom line and give or take based on my OWN decisions, I can’t help but jump to the defense of business that are taken advantage of and robbed, because behind every faceless corporate entity – large OR small - is someone that at one point laid everything they had on the line, took a leap of faith, believed that their company was viable, and built that business from the ground up – blood, sweat, tears, sleepless nights and all. It’s naively optimistic, sure. But I can’t help but put myself in the place of the coffee shop owner who’s afternoon employee took off with tens of thousands of dollars that didn’t belong to them – someone that in the end, got away with theft and justified it by saying, “they should have paid me more. This wouldn’t have to happen if I got a bigger slice of the pie.” I don’t think that being a thrifty employer, cautious about their revenue, expenses and operating costs is necessarily greedy because they pay an entry-level employee something close to minimum wage. It’s a fact of life afforded business owners: the discretion to pay their employees a “fair” wage, whether or not the employee is happy about it. Doesn’t give Joe Coffee Maker the right to steal.

Do people get ripped off? Every day, on both sides of the working relationship. Is the minimum wage high enough? Not in every case. Would it be terrific if every one made enough money to send their kids to college, to cover their medical expenses, to take a vacation every year? YES! Should every single person working for a company get an even share? Show me a scenario where that’s actually profitable for the life of the business and then we’ll talk.

Anyway – my dull opinions on the politics of employment aside, K and I discovered one area where we can’t even come close to seeing eye-to-eye. I’m married to Robin Hood, and taking the side of the “Office Space” cubicle Nazis. It’s a strange jungle to navigate, knowing that any time this issue comes up we get both painfully defensive and unusually belligerent. We repeat ourselves, we exaggerate, I cry. It’s so out-of-character we SHOULD be laughing about it. I’m sure we will, soon enough.

Ah well, here’s to the beautiful, painful experiences we have on a Saturday evening while washing dishes. Here’s to unexpected philosophical exchanges. Here’s to the conversations that teach us more and more about each other every day – conversations that help me appreciate the nuances of K’s values, the strength of his convictions and force me to look a little closer at my own. Here’s to sitting on the bedroom floor in the middle of the night figuring out why we feel the way we do, figuring out WHY this issue always makes us angry and figuring out how to appreciate each other’s opinions. Here’s to disagreements, to apologies, and to 3 fantastic months of married life. On top of that, my Robin Hood even scrubs the kitchen floor and does our laundry. Beat that.

worth passin along

I’m cheating on Christina Aguilera.

She got booted from the number one slot in the car cd changer.

I love her – I do. It just that…Sister Hazel has a new cd out. There’s something about Sister Hazel that just makes everything feel…better. Warm. Happy. Relaxed. Sunny. They’ve been through a lot with me over the years. I guess once you’ve sat in your car and cried about some heartbreak or another while a certain band plays in the background, their music just sticks with you. Once you’ve listened to a song after a breakup, or during a hard decision, or on your way to a new job, or out the door of an old job, or on your way to a first date, or once you’ve played the same cd to death while you packed up for college, or unpacked inside your first apartment, that band is with you for the long haul.

That band for me: Sister Hazel. They’re like a good pair of jeans worn in just right; like a perfect pair of black heels; like that favorite threadbare t-shirt – always comfortable, reliable, impossible to replace. I’ll even forgive the irritating “All For You” radio single that seems to be the singular association most people have when they hear the name “Sister Hazel.”

I loved their stripped down early days – the garage recordings with the offbeat a capella anthems. They had gutsy harmony and eccentric guitar. I was hooked on their first major studio release, “Fortress,” played it non-stop for MONTHS at a time. Inflicted it on everybody. They took a slightly over-produced turn with their next two albums “Chasing Daylight” and “Lift.” Neither took enough advantage of their quirky vocals, or those beautiful riffs that go up and up and up and up – signature Sister Hazel…it felt like the heart of their music just couldn’t quite get out…it was buried a little. The vocals ended up mixed waaaaay too far into the background – a pity because that meant missing out on the poeticism of their lyrics, my favorite part about them. They’ve got a groovy, backyard-barbeque vibe to their upbeat songs, but the melancholy tunes: those are the gems. Somehow at the same time dejected and optimistic, their lonely, heartbroken ballads with fantastically literary lyrics always stick with me…

At any rate, they’ve found a happy studio medium with “Absolutely.” It’s one of those cd’s that sounded familiar the first time I listened to it – liked it on the first listen. It’s happy music. It’s sitting-in-traffic music. It’s music to toss on when you finally get fed up and HAVE to spend a weekend cleaning the house (oh…is that just me…). To me, they’re a writer’s band. They appreciate plays on words, unexpected phrasing and lyrical imagery.

Just what I needed during a dreary week when I can’t quite pull myself out of the blahs…music that makes me appreciate writing in a new way. It made a grey, dreary day a little cozier.

Now, if I could just find music that would finally force me to write all of those thank-you notes. Sigh...

And in case you missed the honeymoon pictures, they're HERE

ok, ok, i was dodgin the blog.

Chalk it up to a new work schedule that makes it difficult for me to blog at work. Chalk it up to coming back from a trip and not wanting to face the "routine" things I did before leaving. Chalk it up to a plan to open a restaurant and all that goes along with that undertaking. Maybe I was distracted because I finally decided to return to school, but then got stuck vaccilating for two weeks over whether or not to spend the cash on culinary school (aha - a hidden passion of mine...I love to cook. I'm a great cook). I love cooking almost as much as I love writing, and these days, it was - for some reason - infinitely easier to make soup than to spend any of my at-home time in front of the computer after a long day at work.

And I was uninspired. Maybe it was the Foley garbage that turned me off to the news and the celebrity websites became dull...or too entrenched in whatever Madonna was or wasn't adopting from afar. Then those poor Amish school children, then North Korea...

It made an already tired girl that much more tired. Between fledgling school ambitions, the weighty dread over the fact that I STILL haven't sent thank-you notes for all things wedding, trying to spend some time with my husband, trying to work eight hours - and eight hours ONLY - during the day, pondering a new business, starting an entirely new way of EATING (yes, Greece weight is hard to get rid of...)...I just didn't have anything left. Nothing that I felt like making Meaningless Observations about. Or meaningFUL observations (heaven forbid), or pointedly inane observations on stuff that almost mattered. I was decidedly unable to observe.

Then, like the long-distance friend you've lost touch with, I wondered if it had been too long. Was I out of the "blog" frame of mind entirely? Was it "gone for good" or was I just in a strange funk? Had I crossed that "it's been too long, just forget about it" threshold (that weird social point-of-no-return where you wonder if it would take more effort to get back into the swing than to just stay away)?

Not sure.

At any rate: Still breathing. Still busy at work, my blog vibe is still a little off. I'm forcing myself to find time in the evenings and on the weekends to do what I used to do during the day because it's so important to me to make time for my husband, for my house, for my education, for my...culinary endeavors (hmmm, perhaps there's a cookbook in the works, as well, in the background). So it's Heatheradair with a slightly new bent. A slightly new schedule. A slightly more weary attitude, but still dedicated nonetheless. Because I miss my friends. My faceless friends. I miss you guys!

And, because it would be strange NOT to toss up some of the fantastic pictures of the Trip I Can't Quite Come Home From entirely (K wants to move to Greece. He said he felt more at home there than he ever has in Seattle. I can't argue, the people are kind, the weather is beautiful, the country is breathtaking, and the euro goes a LONG way), here are pictures of the trip. The trip that began this whole blog-lite spiral!

*small note: it took some kind of FLIPPIN NERVE for me to post pictures of myself in the swimsuit so many times. I do not post pictures of myself in swimsuits except with VERY good reason ("reason" being very good scenery, in this case). i'm layin myself bare here (er, literally, too, I suppose!)...!