day 73.

today i found myself riding in a limo in Naperville, IL.

no, i was not kidnapped.

neon, car bar, and a very rainy illinois in the background.

see? i promised i'd eventually get around to doing something more interesting than laundry and shoe shopping.

day 72.

the whole loveandcyanide team is sick with some sort of rabid flu-like virus.

no one wants to see pictures of that.

day 71.

backstory 1: missy and i developed an affection for the del rubio triplets from our frequent watching of pee-wee's christmas special. old ladies - sisters, no less - singing a christmas carol in glittery red bodysuits and snow booties is right up our ridiculous alley.

interesting tidbit: a year or two ago, we received a wonderful surprise when the del rubio triplets friend requested me on myspace. (apparently missy had commented about them at one point on my page, so i must have turned up as a potential fan if their people did a search.) serious, serious joy abounded over here that day.

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backstory 2: since childhood, missy and i have been obsessed with the pointer sisters' (see a trend here?) song "Neutron Dance". it's even on our 'happy cd'.

interesting tidbit: while our love of the song clearly has to do with its infectious rhythm and inclusion of "whoo hoo's", we think it's magnified by the fact that we both vividly remember some disney video where daisy duck danced around, shaking her little tail feathers, to it. clearly seeing one of our favorite cartoon characters dancing around to a song that we loved elevated the tune to magnificent status in our books forevermore.

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sometimes i think it's amazing how the universe works, and how atypical circumstances just bring about a most perfect moment. like this morning, when missy stayed home sick from work, and flipped on the golden girls, a show i would have never ever put on, and there were the del rubio triplets, performing the "neutron dance".

day 70.

the hanger lies.

i spent a good few minutes of my day quibbling with ms. laundromat proprietor about the length of a sweater. i lost the battle, and was charged the price for a dress. really lady?? it's a cardigan - if i wore it as a dress i'd be arrested for indecent exposure!

day 69.

new shoes!

in my typical goldilocks fashion, lately i've run up against the fact that although there are at least 10 pairs of black heels in my apartment they are all either too high, too low, too casual, too fancy, too summery, too shiny, too round-toed, too pointy, too something to perfectly complete my preferred interviewing look. not that i honestly believe that i haven't gotten a job yet because an interviewer didn't like my footwear.

but i do lose sleep over such things. this pair should remedy that.

day 68.

ummmm, this has nothing really do with my day other than the fact i obsessed over it for hours.

i need a tawny frogmouth chick, pronto.

day 67.

even more exciting than eating lucky charms was coming across a gatorade bottle that expires on my birthday*.


*you may have to zoom in to catch the "mar 08 09". but i swear it is there.

day 66.

i haven't had lucky charms in years - but they completely made my morning. possibly even my week.

although inspecting the current marshmallow selection made me feel old - i remember the commercials/jingles for the "new" horseshoes and balloons - and slightly nostalgic for the sugary selection of yore. why did they change the star and the clover?! and the new yellow 'magic hourglass' leaves something to be desired as well...

holiday greetings.

happy ferris wheel day, readers! this article was sent to me the other day as an early ferris wheel day present, so i figured i should share being it's the only holiday-appropriate bit i have this year. i'm all tapped out of heartwarmingly weird holiday stories after last year's post. shocking, i know - everyone should have a cache of ferris wheel stories.

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but i had promised last year that i would top that post this year, and given ferris wheel day 2008 was nothing short of tragic, i'm going to have to veer from the holiday a little, although still keeping it in the spirit of the season. so for 2009's sole matters-of-the-heart piece* i'm going to discuss an interesting phenomenon that's been taking place over the last few years....

guys i date marry the next girl they date after me. not all of them, but enough, thus far, during my post-college years, to become apparent. and although i know i'm not the only female - or person, really - on earth to experience this, out of all my close female friends, i am the only one to experience this. and experience it over and over again. and they all kind of look at me, mouths agape, whenever i've brought this up, so that puts it into "rare territory" in my book.

i've been trying to come up with a proper term for this affliction/superpower but still haven't found anything i like, nor read anything i liked from articles/other women who suffer from this. maybe 'penultimate girlfriend syndrome', but i feel like that phrase leans towards the negative, and in some cases - and so far, all of my cases - being the PG is most definitely not a negative thing.

but for brevity's sake, we'll call it PGS for now. so i've suffered from PGS since 2002, although i wasn't aware of it back then. but since then, three guys that i dated married the girl they dated immediately after me. all are still married, ranging from about 2-5 years of wedded bliss at this point. guy #1 even has two children.

a fourth has been dating someone seriously for the past few years after me. another is also in a serious relationship, and he's the settling down sort and a little older, so i wouldn't be surprised if they become victims numbers 4 and 5.

a sixth entered into a relationship about a month after professing his love for me this past summer. i'll be shocked if he doesn't stay with this girl, putting him on the list as well.

so that's three actual marrieds, three on the cusp. there's actually only two guys that - well, as far as i know, so there is margin for error here, but i'm pretty sure i'd know about it - have not started a serious relationship right after dating me.

so i've been told in the past that i should capitalize on my PGS and start some sort of backwards dating service for guys who really want to get married - they date me so then they can find the woman of their dreams afterwards. (before you think i'm dissing myself here, i realized that my PGS comes into play, at least so far, only in cases where i ended things. the men who've broken up with me are, for the most part, still running loose. this enables me to find humor in the whole situation, as opposed to sending me running into therapy). i imagine i could use the endorsements of the three who are not only married, but happily married for a decent amount of time already, in my marketing paraphernalia. alternatively, one of my female friends suggested another creative method of profiting off of this gift of mine -- she would set me up with guys that she likes, that way when i'm done with them they will be ready to run down the aisle with her. clever.

considering my current state of affairs, now is probably the time to attempt my abnormal dating service, although i worry that trying to use my PGS for specific means is tampering with the universe. but i am kind of curious to see if i can actually manipulate this innate talent i have of sending men fleeing from bachelorhood into a career.


*i realized in creating these 2/14 posts that it is just so much easier to write about these sorts of matters, but i just can't bring myself to be one of those girls with a public dating diary. not to mention the content would scare away all our readers. if morbidly curious, someday you will find them in my essay collection - working title is "love stories for the dark humorist".

day 65.

i spent most of this afternoon in astoria park - thankfully we're having an unseasonably warm week. however, it's not SO warm that plant life is already in bloom - more stock photography here. i am very much regretting my decision to get a camera-less phone, as i consistently forget to bring my camera around with me during the day. photojournalism is not my forte.

day 64.

finally finished this book today, including the final chapters on bedbugs and mites, which clearly means i'm not sleeping well tonight. i know, you ask, as did others who saw this on my reading list, "why would someone as preoccupied with bedbugs as you are want to read this book?" i don't know - i'm morbidly curious. but the book was, as predicted, disturbingly interesting and totally worth the hour i'll spend later inspecting my mattress and bedspring for unwanted guests.

day 63.

this somehow represents the day.

day 62.

these boots were NOT made for walking (3.7 miles around manhattan). i imagine today's visual snippet will include a pair of crutches.



in related news, well, related to day 60, in between a lunch with a fellow unemployed (my first jobless acquaintance in my industry. yay, commiseration!) and a rowdy reunion dinner with cousins i dropped a netflix in a random mailbox in soho.

and yes, again, this morning i awoke to a notification that the disc was already received. insanity.

day 61.

it never fails that i am sick in early february. this is, no joke, my third box of tissues of the day.

day 60/going postal.

yes, another stock photograph. i apologize - i was whipping out my camera when suddenly it hit me that photographing a mailbox might be a federal offense. or maybe it's taking pictures of someone's mail. or the mailman. or just tampering with mail.

either way, i have enough problems right now without being incarcerated. so why is a mailbox a symbol of my friday? well, the story begins last week...

during a jaunt around manhattan, i tossed a netflix in a random upper west side mailbox. the next morning i had a notification from netflix that they had received the disc. really? in less than 18 hours the mail was picked up from the mailbox, processed, shipped out AND already received by the recipient? well, i was amazed. and a little disconcerted. unless this was just a special magical mailbox...are us outer-boroughers getting shafted by the post office? is manhattan mail moved more quickly? the netflix facility is in queens - so is my apartment - so shouldn't the movies i mail from my local mailbox get there faster than this one did? i spent hours pondering this, and for the first time ever realized there might actually be something that would get me to move into the only borough i've never lived in. who would've thought it would be a stupid blue metal box.

in any event, i've been on a mailbox crusade ever since, and having an important letter to mail today* decided i wouldn't drop it in my local mailbox on the way to the train, but would instead mail it once i got into manhattan. worrying that there wouldn't be a mailbox along my route this morning - since i find you can never find a mailbox when you really need one - i wondered if there was someplace where you can look up mailbox locations.

and there is. and you can even find out pick-up times! and i swear it's my new favorite website. missy refused to partake in my joy over this last night, but hopefully you all will.

enjoy.



*i know. you ask, who even mails stuff anymore**? why do you have so much interaction with mailboxes, chrissy? join the computer age!

**a frequent stop-off when driving with my parents is the post office, to drop off mail via the drive-through boxes. probably 50% of all car trips involve a stop there. i kid you not - i wouldn't be surprised if there was a photo of our car hanging inside the building next to the flag. our family is postal for the post office.

want. want. want. want.

hamburger bed.


if you replace that green lettuce sheet with a bacon blanket, it would be perfect. i'd have the most amazing dreams!

day 59.

today i spent an eternity on the phone with citibank attempting to get my credit card's interest rate back to its original rate after they jacked it up for absolutely no reason at all. actually i'm lying - there was a reason, as the customer service representative so kindly told me - they were raising everyone's rates because they were hit hard in our current economic climate.

oh really?? no kidding. ME TOO. but you don't see me paying $400 million to have my name put on a stadium now, do you?

but i can only be so bitter since i was somewhat victorious in my battle with the big bad bank.


**that is neither me nor bear in that photo. you try image-googling the word exhausted - slim pickings.

to dye for.

missy and i* decided to dye each other's hair last night - considering we're both using dark colors and have a mostly white bathroom, this could have been a recipe for disaster. but we managed to make it through the evening relatively unscathed, although we did ruin three towels and two t-shirts, and i wouldn't be surprised if our downstairs neighbor's ceiling started leaking from the amount of water that landed outside the tub during the rinsing portion of the evening.

the fact that her hair is all the same color, i don't have dye stains all over my neck, and the worst name one of us called the other was "motherf---ing goldilocks"** proves that we've matured vastly since the last time we attempted simultaneous dying, after which we were eternally banned from ever sticking our dye-covered heads in our parent's kitchen sink.


*bear also got in on the action. he put up pics over at bearsociety.

**in my defense, the water she was dumping over my head really was too hot or too cold.

day 58.

taken at 5:11pm today, which i found thrilling. spring is on its way back again.

day fifTEA seven.

snow, unexpected presents, and...a mystery! it's a banner tuesday over here.

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a package was delivered outside our apartment earlier today, and while i was under the assumption it was some dorky book missy had ordered, instead i opened the door and found a most exciting surprise - a box full of mighty leaf teas!


as the package slip only contained recipient information, we have no idea who this lovely gift is from. we're assuming our aunt or our mother, but until we get a hold of either of them we'll pretend we have some sort of mind-reading admirer who knew that this morning when i looked in the cupboard to pick out which flavor of tea i wanted i had commented to myself that our variety was dwindling. and now it isn't. tea-riffic*!


*i really enjoy tea puns.

day 56.

is there anything more daunting than a pile of freshly-washed-but-need-to-be-matched socks?