Kitty Deschanel

Making Friends As An Adult  Popular, you're gonna be popular. I'll teach you the proper poise when you talk to boys. Little ways to flirt and flounce, ooh! I'll show you what shoes to wear, how to fix your hair. Everything that really counts... I was very popular today. Popular, I'll help you be popular. You'll hang with the right cohorts, you'll be good at sports. Know the slang you've got to know... I stopped at the grocery store and instantly regretted it once I saw the crowd, realizing too late it was too close to the holiday weekend for a quick stop. I grabbed one of those little carts with an upper and lower basket and squeezed my way in, planning to grab just a few things and get the heck out of there. I hate crowds. I suppose everyone hates crowds, at least at the grocery store. Popular, I know about popular. And with an assist from me to be who you'll be... While walking toward the watermelon, I noticed two shopping carts full of wine with

 Remember when Olive and Bernadette recently  flooded our new home ? We all had a good laugh (except when the water bill arrived...and the gas bill, because of course they used the hot water...and every time I look at our baseboards, which have warped right off of the walls). Despite this nonsense, do you know what I told everyone the next day? "At least our floors are clean." Ha, ha, ha, ha. All they do is sleep all day, so surely these two sweet pups would never cause any trouble. (The chair askew is a little hint that they cause sooo much trouble.) The morning after the flood, I got up early, making sure to give Olive and Bernadette plenty of time to romp outside prior to heading to work. All they did was sit on the patio and stare at me, longing to come inside to nap. Of course, the moment they were inside? Romp, romp, romp, romp. You know the pack of rambunctious dogs in the movie A Christmas Story who tear through the house and ruin the holiday turkey? These girls are

Let me start this post by stating, for the record, that I stay at Marriott hotels all the time. I'm in it for the breakfast and when a hotel doesn't include this, I stay elsewhere. I am a hotel waffle-making pro . Then again, making your own waffle is easy peasy, right? Behold, the tower of waffle batter goodness. How many gallons does it contain? We would soon find out. I always look forward to creating a decadent hotel waffle. The fateful Monday morning after the Summit County Parade of Homes was no exception and I was pleased to discover that no one was using the waffle iron, despite the crowd in the hotel breakfast room. It's no secret that I'm a social-anxiety mess, even with something as basic as navigating a shared waffle iron, so this was a relief and a great start to my day. I picked up my little plastic batter cup. I pressed down on the dispenser nozzle, as I've done 100 times. And then... The nozzle broke off. It just snapped right off

This is my  "Can you believe these are really my teeth?!"  face. Braces Before & After My mom insists I've done so much to my teeth that they're going to fall out. IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY, MOM! For the record, my teeth are all icky and brown in the middle photo above for two reasons: I'd recently gotten my braces off. Teeth with braces are impossible to keep clean. In preparation for gum surgery, I'd been using a prescription mouthwash that removes any trace of white from your teeth. I've had a terrible smile ever since 3rd grade, when I fell face-first onto the road and fractured my front teeth. My dentist at the time did the best he could to make them look nice, but dental technology in the early 90s just wasn't what it is today. Plus, let's face it, a 3rd grader is rarely a model patient.  Fearing braces, which I was convinced would be painful (not to mention that I was more than awkward and dorky enough without