Confessions of a Middle Aged Teenager

by Gig Girl on August 30, 2010

Here’s my confession:  Gig Girl has significant boundary issues when it comes to my preferred media indulgences and what is considered “age appropriate” by the masses for my specific demographic.  Put simply: I’m a pop culture junkie.  Don’t get me wrong, my English literature and creative writing degree means I love the classics and can hold my own in a literary debate.  However, oftentimes, my conversational passion frequently revolves around the latest Jersey Shore episode (don’t even get me started on the Ron/Sam drama) or most current People Magazine (I firmly believe that Elin Nordegren held her own with dignity) issue.  There… I said it…

Soooooooo – the upside is that even as an individual categorized as an “AMA” (of “Advanced Maternal Age“) for this pregnancy, I still have a pretty good grasp about what “the kids” are into these days.  I am very close with my pre-teen/teenage niece and nephews and I love chatting with them about the latest MTv “reality” show or some other current trend.  However, this middle aged teenager learned the hard way that this adoration for all things fluff has a dark  and seedy underbelly with dire consequences…

A few weeks ago the Hubs and I traveled 2.5 hours to the Cape for a bridal shower (one of my non-biological “sisters”).  While there, we also ran another errand for the Hubs that didn’t go well.  As I sat in our truck watching him conduct a “carefrontational” conversation with the salesman, I could tell this was not a discussion easily wrapped up.  So, picking up my smartphone I decided to amuse myself (the phone is new and I’m still getting used to all its functionality). “Hey!  I didn’t know I had Youtube on this…”

That night we stayed in a hotel so I could go to the shower in the morning.  I got a funky, early morning text from my service provider telling me something about exceeding my data plan BLAH BLAH BLAH.  I hand these matters directly over to the techie department in my house:

Gig Girl: Hon…can you tell me what this means?

Hubs: (reading message) Uhm…this says that you’ve gone over the allotted “courtesy” minutes on your data plan.  Which…is weird…since you know you don’t have a data plan.

GG: Right, I know that.  I’ve never emailed from my phone.  So what’s their deal?

Hubs: You know it’s not just email right?  It could be from internet use or…

GG: (with a sudden anxietal pang gripping my innards) Wait – internet use??  How could it let me even access the internet if I didn’t have a plan for it?  I mean, what…

Hubs:  (interrupting as its clearly not his first time at this particular rodeo) I put a $200 cap on the “courtesy minutes” just as an emergency measure.  So this means you’ve exceeded that limit.  What website were you on?

GG: (softly) Well…yesterday while you were talking to the salesman…I went on YouTube.  I thought it would make the hour go by faster…

Hubs: Youtube??!  What were you watching for over an hour on Youtube??

GG:  (very softly) ……

Hubs: Wait, what?  I couldn’t hear that….

GG: (exasperated and embarrassed) TWILIGHT OKAY!  TWILIGHT!  While you were in there doing your thing, I sat in the truck and did searches on various Twilight scenes and watched them again and again until you were done!  TWILIGHT!  There!  Are you happy now?!

Hubs: Didn’t you already see that movie? (Seriously, that was his response. Clearly the Hubs just doesn’t understand the whole Bella/Edward compulsion.  Plus, if he were truly paying attention he would have also added “AND READ ALL THE BOOKS” to the end of that question…)

So for the next hour, the poor Hubs had to work with our service provider to remove the $200 charge off our bill.

One problem – the charge wasn’t $200…

This past week our cell bill came in.  I opened it up to find that our normal $130 worth of combined charges was currently coming in at SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVEN DOLLARS.  Essentially, my little one hour Twilight marathon rang up a whopping FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY SEVEN DOLLAR charge.

I silently handed the bill to the Hubs and just hung my head in shame.  After he put his eyeballs back in their respective sockets, he laughed, shook his head and spent the next hour trying to not only get the original $200 off that he was promised weeks ago, but also seeing if he could get the extra THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS taken off our bill as well.

He was able to get all but $87 of it waived, which we both can live with.  He also signed me up for a new data plan to ensure this little episode does not repeat itself.  Now that it’s “free”, Edward has never looked so good…

Have a similar guilty confession?  Embarrassment loves company…feel free to post below in the comments.  Or, simply confirm my husband’s belief that I’m utterly ridiculous when it comes to my pop culture obsession…I deserve that…

{ 11 comments }

My Own Backyard – Lessons in Perspective III

by Gig Girl on August 18, 2010

Old woman or young lady? It's all how you look at it...

Achieving a first time ever threepeat, Gig Girl is posting one last blog on perspective for theme week. Please click here and here to read the first two posts (I promise, I’m done after this one this week).

When it comes to perspective, the Hubs and I are wired very differently.  Perhaps it’s a guy/(Gig) girl thing, perhaps it’s a thing nurtured into us from our families or perhaps its just some inherent and unalterable DNA that makes us view the exact same situation with completely different perspectives.  I don’t know.

What I do know is the Hubs is an unbelievable task-master who, when faced with any given situation, takes it one grain at a time until he achieves what he’s set out to do.  I envy his ability to systematically check things off his list and finish EVERYTHING he starts.  Quite honestly, the man is a machine.  He exhausts me.

However, because Hubs methodically attacks one item at a time, his perspective, while sharply focused, tends to occasionally (please read “occasionally” as “quite often”) morph into a fixated tunnel vision.  He is a man (albeit an adorable and precious man) of routine and systematic approach. Deviating from his conventional mindset of how “things should be done” or where “things should be” can be really tough for him. I tease him about acting like a pitbull on a bone and that he needs to step back sometimes and readjust his perspective so he can take in the big picture.  (I’m very convinced that one of the reasons why I’ve been put in his life is to let him know when he’s hammering away on a single nail…despite the fact that the entire house has already collapsed down around him).

Case in point – a few weeks back I found him frantically searching for the Parsley in the cabinets.  This was his perspective:

And this is actually (I swear this is exactly how the cabinet was) what the whole picture entailed:

Lest you think this is a Hubs bashing post…I’m here to offer up my own perspective Archilles heel.  Yes, I am a spontaneous, unconventional, big-picture-perspective kind of girl.  I don’t tend to get hung up in the minutia or in standard operating procedures (aka how things “should” be done) and that has served me well through a divorce and my days as a single parent.  However, the flip side of that means that occasionally drinking in the entire big picture completely overwhelms me.

Case in point – after I quit my job and decided to try to start my own business, the action item list was endless.  If not for the Hubs helping every day to keep me focused and motivated I would have simply hyperventilated at the sight of my lengthy to-do list and eventually the authorities would have found me in sweatpants curled up in the fetal position in the corner of my pseudo office…or (if I were feeling slightly less dramatic) I would have just hit the mall every day.  Either way – you get the point.  I constantly look to the Hubs for help on keeping my perspective focused.  (I’m very convinced that one of the reasons why he’s been put into my life is to make sure that, when I need to build a house, I don’t just hurl the hammer and head for the proverbial hills.) We take turns creating balance and teasing eachother as needed – it’s comforting

But old habits (or inherent DNA) die hard.

A few weeks ago, my dad and I were talking about current events. We talked about the Gulf oil spill, the floundering economy, the war and various other depressing current events.  I felt that big picture anxiety start to creep in on me.

Gig Girl: (heavy sigh) Seriously, Dad, what is good in the world?

Dad: What the hell are you worrying about the world for?  Everything good is in your own backyard, kid.

Hmmmmm…..

An excellent point, Dad.  Score 1 for small picture perspective (and yes, I say this knowing full well that my darling, lawnorexic pitbull-on-a-bone husband is completely going to fixate on how dead his grass looks in this picture…). XOXOXO :)

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The View From Here – Lessons in Perspective II

August 17, 2010

SharePost II in Gig Girl’s Perspective Theme Week (see Post I here) involves my pre-retirement/pre-leap-of-faith self.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, my former place of employment was not exactly a “family friendly” work environment.  The demanding hours which often included late nights and weekends, the raised eyebrows and heavy sighs over vacation request forms [...]

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The View From Here – Lessons in Perspective I

August 16, 2010

ShareA lot of blogs ardently adhere to “theme week” formatting.  I read these blogs, I enjoy what a theme week provides to me as a reader and I truly look forward to each new post in a particular motif.  However, as a still green blogger, rookie work-from-home business owner, newbie stay-at-home mommy and completely out-of-practice [...]

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When There Are No Words – The Grand Finale

August 4, 2010

ShareFor anyone who hasn’t had the chance to read Part I and Part II of this Gig Girl series, please click here and here to connect the Dots… After hearing Dr. T’s announcement regarding Dot’s dismissal, I immediately burst into tears.  This was certainly not the outcome Hubs and I had been pursuing.  We had [...]

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When There Are No Words: Part II

July 28, 2010

ShareIf you haven’t had the chance to read Part I of this Gig Girl series, please click here to catch up (we’ll wait patiently). Again, please note that I’ve changed the names of some of the people and parties involved.  It’s a looooooong story (I suppose “When There Are No Words” is a complete misnomer [...]

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When There Are No Words: Part I

July 19, 2010

ShareWhen I started Gig Girl, one of the things I immediately shared was my struggle to conceive.  I wrote about my two painful miscarriages and divulged that my husband and I were in the beginning stages of the dreaded “infertility process.” You may have noticed there hasn’t been much discussed about the topic since.  I [...]

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My Own Worst Frenemy (I love me, I love me not…)

July 6, 2010

ShareWhen I went through my divorce, I had the unforeseen and unfortunate opportunity to find out who I could count amongst my true friends.  The failure and dissolution of my first marriage taught me countless humbling life-lessons, none of which I could have endured without the unwavering support of my inner circle of family and [...]

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Man Plans, God Laughs

June 27, 2010

ShareTo put it simply; Gig Girl has blown it…big time.  Tomorrow marks my two year anniversary, which besides the birth of my son, quite literally embodies the most precious event of my entire life.  On this day I gained a devoted life partner, O and I forever discarded the term “duo” in favor of “family” [...]

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Feast or Famine

June 23, 2010

ShareAs a teenage girl, my best friend Elaine’s mom had a favorite expression; “Feast or Famine.” She used the idiom most often when describing the ebb and flow of high school (and later college) boys who would float in and out of our lives.  One minute, our phones (Sidenote: these were landlines, mind you, as [...]

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