Jenn Martinelli Blogging in Boston

If you read Joy Unexpected and haven't seen this yet, you really need to check out the video. And hey, even if you've never read it you still should.

Synopsis: Y and her 3 kids cover Red Hot Chili Peppers. Awesome.

Now I guess this article doesn't give enough info really about the individual families they use for examples, but their little snippets about their lives are not enough to convince me that they're trying hard enough to really live cheaply.

In one of the families only the husband works. Now that may have been a decision they made a long time ago and I'm not trying to make some kind of stink about whether moms should stay home with their kids or anything like that. But the fact is, if you're struggling to pay your bills and your youngest kid is 12 maybe it's time for Mom to get a job! Sorry, but it seems really lazy to me to pretend otherwise. If you're scrimping your pennies to buy eggs (a quote from the mom in this family) maybe working at Starbucks part-time won't kill you, lady.

The other people they mention are a young couple in their 20's, both working and living outside Seattle. They have apparently cut out "most of their entertaining" and trips to visit her family and friends 30 miles away. OK, well I don't know what they're spending on entertaining but I guarantee they can cut back more. And maybe her friends and family can share the burden of visiting. And maybe they can visit less and talk on the phone more. And really, if you're a couple with no kids and both working and you're living in a suburb of Seattle (which is much cheaper than living in Boston, where we live) then you really should be able to get by. I'm sorry.

The guy alludes to their grocery bill "doubling". Well, food prices haven't doubled, so if youre grocery bill did then maybe you need to plan a little better and pay attention to what you're spending.

Listen folks, we spend $200 at the grocery store in a month, to feed two adult human beings, and we spend very little aside from that on other food or drink. It's certainly less than ideal, and in fact a lot of the time it totally sucks ass, but you don't have to act like the sky is falling when you haven't even made a decent effort yet.

I'm just saying.

Sorry if this makes me sound bitchy but it's just that I know feeling poor as dirt and these people aren't there yet.

That's why I don't like hotels with grand entrances, because then I have to walk into them - and I don't make grand entrances.

Rob Reed

So Clementine and I had a very nice birthday date yesterday but all the forces of the universe were working against us!

First I was running late, then I couldn't get ahold of Clementine. Then I got to the Public Garden where we were meeting and still hadn't heard from her. Had to text robreed and ask him to check and see if there was a problem with the red line because she was coming from Harvard Square. No red line advisories.

I waited for a bit and I think tried calling a couple more times. It's very very unlike Clementine to just go missing like this so I started to get kind of worried. I debated calling Hashbrown for a while because I didn't want to worry her but then I did just in case she knew something I didn't or Clementine had left behind her cell phone or something. Hashbrown didn't know either so she said she'd call her.

A few minutes later I got a call from Clementine - she had just stepped out of her coffee date and happened to notice her phone ringing when Hashbrown called her - she was shocked at what time it was and could barely get the story out for all her apologizing. I know she felt really bad but I wasn't mad, just glad she wasn't in a ditch somewhere or something!

Turns out her watch had very recently died (on her birthday!) and although she had her cell phone on a very loud setting and was listening for it, never heard any of my calls and lost track of the time.

Anyway, after all that insanity was over we met up at DeLuca's market but it was too crowded so we walked to Bella Vita Cafe where she bought a sandwich for us to split (she was originally going to bring cheese and crackers but didn't have time after being so late). Then we got delicious Starbucks drinks and walked over to the park to have our birthday picnic.

She had brought Rosie's chocolate cake and I had brought spinach salad with raspberries and blueberries and balsamic dressing, as well as two cupcakes from Sweet, which robreed and I had just walked by in the morning - it had just opened very recently. See his weblog for a review of the cupcakes. Let's just say "Sweet" is a good description for them!

The weather was nice - not too hot or cold, the clouds came and went a bit, but no real threat of rain. There were tons of people out and about in the garden and there was lots of good people and pet watching to be had. We saw some really cute puppies and babies.

Thanks for a great birthday date, Clementine! AND for not being kidnapped.

(Warning: unnecessarily expletive-filled post to follow)

Jenn angry. Jenn smash.

Yes, it's my fault I'm doing laundry so late. However, what the FUCK is wrong with people who think it's OK to leave a giant puddle in the middle of the laundry room floor as a death trap to anyone else who enters or exits the room?

Gee, I'm sure whoever had the machine overflow on them was probably pretty pissed. I know I would be. But guess what? That's not an excuse to kill anyone else who enters the room YOU STUPID FUCKING MORONS. Frankly, some of the people in this building are pretty much sub-human in their activities and behavior.

Tonight I saw someone flick a cigarette butt INTO THE STAIRWELL while they were walking down the hall. The interior stairwell. In the building they live in. That's not something that someone with any fucking sense would do. I'll admit I was already primed for my laundry room flood rage by my cigarette flick observing rage.

In case you can't guess, I slipped in aforementioned puddle and went down hard on my ass, directly into the disgusting puddle of course, soaking everything I was wearing. I somehow saved dropping all my clean laundry in it but that didn't make me feel much better given that my clean laundry was BARELY DRY AT ALL. In other words MOSTLY WET because apparently there is about a 23% chance that any given dryer in this place will actually DRY YOUR CLOTHES. I'm so angry that I was sorely tempted to call the "emergency only" number of the management company and scream at them.

And I didn't just slip in the puddle in the room, I slipped again right outside the room because my shoes were still wet. Both times I screamed something like, "WHAT THE FUCK! FUCK EVERYBODY!!!"

I am very angry. I'm going to bed now to dream angry angry dreams.

For other laundry adventures, see here

Because Rob just read it out loud to me and we were both cracking up.

Warning: If you really love Stephen King, you might be offended.

Review of Duma Key

Actually testing inbound trackbacks to Robs test site

This movie very very very very much needs to not exist.

As goes Massachusetts, so go other states with liberal residents and conservative governors... ha ha.

Way to go California!

This quote was on my iGoogle page today and I thought it was particularly fitting and funny.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Lord Acton

On a random site - maybe it was a Yahoo home page - on someone else's computer - an ad for some humane society that said, "It takes 2 hours to poison a dog." with a sick as hell looking puppy on it.

Fuck off, humane societies. I don't poison dogs, don't make me want to kill myself just because I go online.

Here's what I don't get:

What makes people think that a fun time is hanging out in a basement apartment and spilling out of it into the basement and the airshaft/courtyard (where you're specifically not supposed to hang out because it's too loud and disrupts all other apartments) and smoking and drinking beer?

I seriously don't get the appeal. It's lame.

I had a date w/Clementine, Hester, and Hashbrown today. Please note that we went to Pad Thai and the result is that even though I ate my food there around 4pm I'm still not hungry at all and it's almost 11pm.

I met Clementine in Kenmore Square and we walked over to our new apt in Fenway where she got to check out the place, and we took Billy the dog out. He was real sweet to Amy, just like last time he saw her a couple years ago on Beacon Hill. Good thing because the first couple times he was around her years ago in Brighton he scared the crap out of her as he was in his "fake friendly with snapping at people" phase and snapped at her badly at least 2 times.

Anyway, we went on a little walk with Billy where he was feeling his oats because he likes to show off for visitors so he was prancing around like he was a spring chicken instead of a grumpy old man.

Then we took him home and headed to Pad Thai. I got crispy chicken pad thai. Mmmmm. Clementine got spicy bamboo chicken rice plate. After a while we heard from Hashbrown that Hester had woken up from her nap and they came and joined us.

From that point on it was all about Hester, as it should be with a almost 15 month old! She was having none of sitting in her stroller or in our booth so I followed her around the restaurant a few times as she explored everything, often pointing things out and asking "What's that?" (more like, "Dat?") We went to the window and looked at birds, people walking, and buses and cars. She also enjoyed playing with Hashbrown's cell phone and my cell phone.

It was great to see everyone - I haven't seen Hester Willa since January and she's really getting to be such a big girl! She was wearing the gift my parents gave her for Christmas and it was the official last wearing because it's a little too small for her now. Thanks for letting her wear it one more time for me!

The reason people are portraying you as a monster is because YOU ARE A MONSTER.

The end.

I don't know how many people have heard about this study, which seems to point to diet soda actually being a marker for weight gain and obesity.

Kind of interesting, and I get what they're saying, and obviously the study doesn't lie but I just hope people don't make too direct of a connection. It's not like diet soda secretly has calories in it, but something else you're doing maybe because of the soda or maybe not may be leading to weight gain. Anyway, but this part of it annoys me:

"People think they can just fool the body. But maybe the body isn't fooled," she says. "If you are not giving your body those calories you promised it, maybe your body will retaliate by wanting more calories. Some soft drink studies do suggest that diet drinks stimulate appetite."

Yeah but I'm not trying to "fool" my body lady, I'm trying to drink something with caffeine that doesn't have 150 calories a glass.

All I can say for my experience with diet soda is that when I switched from regular to diet I immediately lost 10 pounds which I've relatively kept off since then. (I say relatively because when I do other bad things like eat lots of fried foods and cookies I obviously gain weight but that's unrelated to the diet soda.)

By the way, I'm not trying to make a post that's all about dieting and pounds and calories because I'm so totally not someone who enjoys talking about that shit, I just find the study interesting because I've heard some scuttlebut over the last year or so that diet soda makes people gain weight and I found it hard to believe.

Here is Miss Hester Willa playing on a recent trip to visit her extended family. I can't believe what a big girl she is getting to be!

I was listening to Cornflake Girl on my iPod this morning and it reminded me of Clementine. I don't even remember which of us is supposed to be "Raisin Girl" anymore but it's all because of a story of how when she was a little girl in Hawaii she or her mom once opened a container of raisins to find it full of maggots, so she for years and years referred to raisins as "raisin worms". In fact, I'm thinking now the nickname was probably not Raisin Girl but Worm Girl.

Anyway, I just wanted to dedicate a post to my psychic twin Clementine, as it is our co-birthday month.

We have known each other for almost 14 years now, since becoming fast friends our first year at Smith, bonding over our love for Miss Saigon, Indigo Girls and our propensity to sit in our pajamas folding laundry and watching 90210 rather than partying at the Quad. (Oh yeah, we were that cool.)

We've been through lots of things together from literally sharing a dorm with crack-smokers to moving to Somerville after college and now Clementine and Hashbrown are moms and I am a doting Auntie to Hester Willa.

Happy Birthday month, Clementine! I love you and I'm so glad we were lucky enough to land in the same house first year.... god knows we may never have met each other otherwise (what with the whole staying in doing laundry thing and all)!

In case you were considering eating the new Steakhouse Burger at Burger King on purpose, here are the nutrition facts folks:

Calories: 950
Calories from fat: 540
Total fat: 59 grams
Saturated fat: 21 grams
Trans fat: 2.5 grams
Cholesterol: 140 mg
Sodium: 1950 mg
Total carbs: 55 grams