Say Yes to the Dress. Brownies. It's a very womany night here at the 201.

(We don't really call our apartment "the 201." Although, maybe we should. It sounds kind of cool. The coolest place in a suburb of families with high-school kids, I bet ya!)

OK, so, I'm such an idiot, because I just commented on my own blog, and then in my gmail window, I saw the little "1" pop up - signifying I had a new email - and I was like, "yay!" And then I checked my email, and saw it was a notification that someone left a comment on my blog. And I was like, "Cool! Someone else left a comment at the same time!" (No, someone didn't. It was just me.)

Ay yi yi. Don't ask why seeing that little "1" elicits such an excited reaction. 95% of the time it's just a notification from Freecycle that coolmom845 is wondering if anyone has any used paper towel tubes for her kids to do art projects with. Why don't I just unsubscribe to those emails? I should unsubscribe. I'm never going to go out of my way to either give or take any of the useless crap people peddle on there.

But still. The power of getting email. Never gets old.

Anyway, tonight Dave was at class - my one night a week when I can do whatever I want. Muahahaha! Just kidding, I can do whatever I want all the time.

I had big plans to bake brownies for a Christmas party, make a big dent in the book I'm reading, clean the bathroom, and clean the kitchen.

I think it goes without saying that I didn't clean the bathroom, because, come on, that's way too ambitious for a Tuesday night.

I ended up making pasta (always the dinner of choice when Dave's gone) and watching an episode of Say Yes to the Dress, so, you know, that's not really a promising start to anyone's evening, ever. I just cannot tear myself away from the drama of a woman spending $10,000 on a boring dress. It's truly incredible how much money these women spend to look average. I mean, like an average bride. I'm sorry, that was rude. All women are beautiful on their wedding days. But seriously, unless you're wearing a really unique vintage dress or something, we kind of all look the same. SORRY. I said it. We do. I know it's your special day, but you're mostly going to look the same as every other American bride in a 5-year span.

On our anniversary (of only one year, might I add), I asked Dave what my wedding dress looked like and he paused for a second and then said, "you looked beautiful." (And then I said, "don't you dare ever talk about my beauty in the past tense.")

See? Nobody cares. Just save your money so your child will be able to go to college. The manager of the store talks to these women like he cares so much about them finding their Cinderella moment and then goes home and sleeps in piles of his commission money.

(Dave did finish that conversation by saying my dress was made of lace and kind of sparkly and had "things" (hand motions over the shoulder area), so, his fashion memory was pretty good for a straight man, I'd say. But still, my point is that no man gives a crap about what it looks like.)

Anyway, what else did I do... Oh! I made brownies. My mom's recipe. And they are delicious! I'm so proud of myself for finally taking a childhood favorite and making it taste (almost) as good as my mom's. In an effort to get healthier, I decided to (mostly) give up either alcohol or sweets for the month of December. After tonight, I'm very pleased with my decision to choose to give up alcohol. Although, with the amount of frosting I licked from the bowl, I'm not sure how much healthier I'm getting.

Oh well. It's Christmas. And if you can't lick mint frosting out of a bowl at Christmas, then when can you?