On a Halloween night over a decade ago, my friends and I dressed up as hippies, bearing peace-sign bedecked pillowcases to hold our loot. In between houses, one of the girls mentioned that her mom always inspected her candy to check that nothing was poisoned. One time, she warned in an ominous voice, a kid had bit into a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup only to see it was green inside. His stomach was pumped, and he barely lived through it.

After I arrived home, I dumped all my candy on the ground and looked up at my mother expectantly. I was pretty frustrated that for years, she’d allowed me to eat un-vetted candy when Death By Reese’s Cup could have been imminent.

Sheila isn’t one to trash talk parent strategies, but I could tell she thought inspecting Halloween candy was a huge waste of time. She agreed to check that none of the candy had been opened and then went into one of her favorite parenting lectures.

“Here’s the thing – it’s really unlikely that your candy is poisoned. The reason episodes like that make the news, is because they are rare. Plus, if you live in fear of everything you see on the news, you’re not really living at all. Are you?”

This logic had already been successfully presented to me several times. That year, I had expressed concern about being kidnapped, my school being bombed, and my little brother being born with a birth defect because of my mom’s advanced age during pregnancy. (Pro tip: Don’t let your worrywart fourth grader get her hands on Reader’s Digest. It will not end well.) So, I was happy to accept that the poisoned candy was simply another *Rare Newsworthy Event* that I could quickly move past.

And thank God, because throwing away a perfectly good Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup would have been a traumatic experience in its own right.

I’ve always loved that my mom thinks worrying is a waste of time. I wish that her lack of worry was among the five million traits we share. Alas, in this trait, behavioral genetics is a lot like economics: it doesn’t trickle down.

And with that casual Republican zing, I’m back. I sure have missed my little corner of the internet.

Happy Halloween, amigos! 

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As is typical when the sun starts shining and the heavy winter sweaters come off, I’ve been feeling like I need to take better control of my diet and exercise. I’ve become really dedicated to the green smoothie, specifically the Glowing Green Smoothie as created by Kimberly Snyder, nutritionist to the stars. Kimberly has a whole program you’re supposed to adhere to, but her clients generally look like this:

which seems a little intense. And unhealthy. So in the interest of balance, I told myself that I'd rock the GGS for breakfast and try to sprinkle more fruits and veggies into my remaining meals and snacks.

Then I started drinking the green smoothie and everything fell to shit.

It’s not just that I don't care for the taste of the smoothie. It’s more that by consuming it, a part of me says, “Hey! Way to go. You drank that smoothie. It tasted like grassy water with a hint of dirt, but you choked it down. That’s like nine servings of veggies in a 12-oz. glass. You should celebrate your healthy life choice by eating twelve serving sizes of Cheez-it Snack Mix.”

And then I eat twelve servings of Cheez-it Snack Mix.

I wasn’t eating that poorly before I implemented the green smoothie into my diet, and I certainly wasn’t allowing myself an endless supply of salty snacks. In fact, I was probably healthier before I started this whole fiasco. But now my fridge is stocked with kale and other greens, and I'm kind of determined to finish it all off. And to maybe, just maybe, knock off the ridiculous rewards and just eat like a normal person who happens to start her day off with some blended lettuce.

I'll keep you all posted. In the interim, a fun fact: When carrots and kale are combined in a blender, the outcome is the exact color of something you might find in a baby's diaper.

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In business, you’re supposed to strive for minimum input and maximum output. Print journalism is dying because it requires maximum input (trees, ink, printing presses, paid journalists, brick and mortar newspaper locations, delivery staff) for minimum output (subscriptions are dropping rapidly as everyone starts to read the news for free online).

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post operates on low overhead/input (they “pay” their writers in exposure, steal everyone else’s content, and appear only online) but achieves maximum output through advertising and cross-promotions with their owner, AOL. Even if you (rightfully) think that the Huffington Post is destroying fact-based journalism, you can still appreciate that they recognized an opportunity and capitalized on it.

Awhile back, Eric tried to convince me that he’d never heard of a Dairy Queen Blizzard. At first I refused to believe him. But he pressed on. “Yeah, I mean, I’ve had their cones before but that’s pretty much it,” he fibbed. I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t be stupid. The Blizzard. It’s soft-serve ice cream. Blended with delicious treats. It’s their signature product. You're lying.”

This exchange went on for about five minutes. Then came the kicker.

“So it’s like a McFlurry?” he asked.

“NO! I mean, yes. But the McFlurry is McDonald’s ripoff of the Blizzard! The McFlurry is like the Blizzard, the Blizzard is not like the McFlurry. What is wrong with you?”

I had finally given in. I was pissed. I wanted to call up his parents and ask if he had been trapped in a well for a long portion of his childhood. Then he broke into hysterical laughter.

“Of course I know what a Blizzard is! Has anyone ever ordered anything but a Blizzard at Dairy Queen?”

Seriously. That was the whole joke. He pulls stuff like this every so often, and every time I’m fooled only because I don’t know why anyone would lie and scheme for ten minutes, all for a five-second payoff.

"If your sense of humor was a business,” I said last week, “it’d be dying a slow, gasping death.”

Still, every time we pass Dairy Queen, he gets to say, “Maybe today’s the day I’ll try one of those blended things you’re always talking about.” Always, this is followed by a guffaw of epic proportion.

It’s his version of the newspaper subscription cards that fall out of your mailbox every week. I’m not going anywhere, those cards say ominously. I’ll be here for so much longer than everyone thinks.

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Last night, my dear friend J dyed my hair for me. After a few months of sun-soaked highlights, I decided it was time to go dark for winter. As per usual, once it was finished, I became panicked that this was not a good look. This happens after every haircut - in fact, in high school, my mom started refusing to pick me up from the salon because I'd be such a crying brat.

I'm really good with change.

J reassured me that my return to the color I'd previously rocked for 25.5 years was in fact, a good choice. Still, I needed further approval. So at work today, I snapped a pic of the new hair and sent it to Joel for input.

After he responded positively, I thanked him and then sent him a follow-up text, saying, "I just took a photo of myself in my cube. Are you going to defriend me now?"

He said, "Haha of course not. I mean, there are no Cathy comic cutouts yet so you're still good."

Which is when I sent him this.

Unsurprisingly, this exchange was the highlight of my workday.

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I really do love blogging challenges. So I’m happy to participate in this one, hosted by the very funny ProntoPup. I like this challenge because I can pretty much write about anything I want, right? I think so.

Yesterday, I saw a tweet saying that Rottlund Homes, a local home builder, was going out of business. And I laughed out loud. I swear I'm not evil.

When I was little, I always went grocery shopping with my dad. My biggest job was to make sure we brought chocolate home for my mom, but my second biggest job was to unpack all the groceries onto the belt while he bagged them on the other end. One time when I was around six, we saw a raffle to win a ROTTLUND HOME at the checkout.

As a kid, I didn’t know we were relatively poor. But I knew that we didn’t live in a glamorous brick-style mansion on a sprawling plot, like the ROTTLUND HOME RAFFLE showcased. And I wanted to live in that ROTTLUND HOME.

As a Catholic kid, I knew that my best shot at this ROTTLUND HOME was not in a grocery store raffle, but in a formal appeal to JC. I already had quite the bedtime prayer regimen at this time in my life, but I decided the ROTTLUND HOME was a necessary addition. So each night, I prayed for the safety of my family and my dog, followed by a request for a ROTTLUND HOME, followed by the Our Father, Hail Mary, and the Guardian Angel prayer.

This routine went on for years, I’m pretty sure. I don't know when I stopped praying for the ROTTLUND HOME, or stopped praying in general. I do know that my parents never won a ROTTLUND HOME, but they did manage to buy a very nice home all by themselves about a decade later. (The original home we lived in had mauve carpeting. My mother will never live down the fact that she once thought said carpeting was super chic.)

Anyway, I emailed my parents to share the story, which neither of them had ever heard. Both of them were apologetic that we never lived in a ROTTLUND HOME, and also seemed unsurprised that I was such an utter spaz about the whole thing.

RIP, ROTTLUND HOMES. For what it’s worth, I tried to get God on your side.

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I turned 26 a few weeks ago. While I had no reservations about turning this particular age, I have noticed over the past few weeks that I am becoming a flat-out grandma. To wit:

When I started to feel a bit tipsy at the bar on my birthday, I turned away free drinks from my comrades in favor of large glasses of ice water. (However, I did wake up sans hangover so let's call that a half-win.)

I recently googled local car washes to determine which one had the best customer appreciation program.

After agreeing to meet a friend for lunch, she sent me a meeting request via Outlook. I accepted.

I went to H&M to peruse their lady undergarments, and came out instead with a three-pack of wool socks.

The good news? I'm in great company. My old roommate gave her boyfriend a serving bowl for his birthday and he freaking LOVED it. No judgment, at all, but just imagine any of us giving that gift as 22-year-olds. We're old, y'all. Stock up on the Gold Bond, large-print books, and find yourself a good denture doctor. The next 70 years are going to be wild.

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It seems like a good day to admit something weird to the internets. It’ll be liberating. Or something.

I'll go first. It's time I disclose that I have a thing for dudes with prominent noses. I know, super weird. But as all my close friends know, it’s all in the shnoz for me. My major crush in high school had a sniffer that most resembled a pelican, and yet… there I sat, patiently waiting for him to break up with the awful human being he was dating his girlfriend. I think the interest might be because I have very small features, and so anyone who can pull off a big nose, lips or eyes is fascinating to me. (Picture Anne Hathaway. She has all the same enormous features as, say, Sandra Bernhard, yet she’s totally hot. It defies all logic.)

While I can’t totally explain the root of my olfactory organ obsession (OOO), I can say that I watch The Good Wife each week because of one Mr. Josh Charles. I have loved this man and his blessed beak since I first saw Dead Poet’s Society at the inappropriate age of eight. I didn’t understand the plot but I understood that Knox Overstreet was a fox.

I loved him again when he put the moves on Christina Applegate (while wearing a fast food uniform, no less) in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead.

Then, the Good Wife premiered and, judging from the demographics of that show, I became the only person under the age of 60 to watch it all because of my fake celebrity boyfriend, Josh Charles. (Quick aside - you all should be watching that show. How are you not watching that show?!)

Yesterday, the lovely ladies of Go Fug Yourself did a slideshow of the many looks of JC, and I spent a good 15 minute ruminating on how darling he has remained over the years.

So there you go. I am attracted to men with ample nares (google it), and I am just caffeinated enough to think posting this is a good idea.

So, what’s your weird thing? Come on, free your mind now. Leave it in the comments.

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