Winner Winner Ryan Is Taking Me Out To Dinner Which Is Why I Don't Have Time To Write A Real Post.

Hey blogstalkers!  I'm sure you've all been anxiously awaiting my announcing the winner of this here giveaway and you don't have to wait any longer.

Accounting for repeat comments and the like, a random number generator has determined that the winner is ....

DeDe R (who actually entered the contest in celebration of her own birthday!  Serendipity!)

Send your info to LaurenRaeGallagher@gmail.com Dede.  I'll let you know when the prize has shipped.

I want a number between 1 and…

Result:

53

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I'm High As A Kite, I Just Might, Stop To Check You Out. Let Me Go On, Like I Blister In The Sun.

Good Morning blogstalkers.

First, I feel I should mention that I saw my doctor again yesterday for a follow-up to the whole massive panic attack ambulance episode.  She still feels my anxiety is not quite under control (and as I spent about ten minutes deep-breathing in the bathroom stall whilst repeating the lyrics to "You Are My Sunshine" in my head yesterday at work, I concur.)  So until my normal anti-anxiety drugs (which I had unfortunately tapered myself off of before all the life crazy happened) start kicking in, I'm also on, let's just say a copious amount of more fast-acting drugs.  As well as a quick round of heavy-duty antibiotics for some sort of bladder infection that I am totally blaming on Mexico.

So I am like, seriously seriously drunk and high (hunk? dry?) on pills right now.  At work.  I just tried to eat a pistachio without removing the shell first.  And earlier I crawled under my desk to plug in my phone charger, then got tired, and a little bit fell asleep under there for about two minutes.  Yep.  Doctor's orders though.

Sidenote: If anyone at work is reading this, the above paragraphs are total exaggeration.  You can tell by all of the coherent sentences I've typed so far in this post.  Oh need more proof do you?  Fine, here are some more sentences.

God bless the Baldwins.

My name is Sylvester McMonkey McBean.

This is a coherent sentence.

You used to be so much more muchier.  You've lost your muchness.

Oh dear lord they should send me home. 

(Extra points to anyone who knows from where Sylvester McMonkey McBean comes.)

But anyway, the point of all of that is to warn you, that this could be the most nonsensical post I've ever written, and I wouldn't even know it, because like EVERYTHING is making me giggle today.  Like the fact that I just built a small pyramid out of Dots and SnowCaps on my work desk is killing me right now.

And for some reason, I can NOT get the song "Say My Name" by the one and only Destiny's Child out of my head.

Now that I've warned you...

I thought that since I am currently recuperating from a semi-severe case of sunburn, I would take this time to tell you the story of my worst sunburn ever.  A sunburn so bad that it addled my brain.

Our story begins on a sunny Tuesday morning at Ryan's family's lake house.  The Monday had been a bank holiday and then I had taken the Tuesday off of work to make it an extra long weekend.  My sisters and Ryan's siblings and Ryan and I were all just laying legs and arms akimbo on the speedboat, floating aimlessly about the lake.  I had applied a plethora of different types of sunscreen but had forgotten just how deadly the sun can get in late summer in the early afternoon near a reflective body of water.

We dozed off.  (Really for only like 35 minutes too.) 

Upon awaking I knew immediately that something was wrong.  Mostly because Ryan was shaking me awake shouting something about Ooompa Loompa Doompity Doos.  I was like, scalded yo.

I spent the night covered in aloe, filled with aspirin and gatorade, alternating between needing someone to burrito me up in a blanket and shouting "Get this blanket off of me and fill my pajama pants with ice for the love of god!"

When I woke up in the morning I actually had blisters all down my shoulders.  I couldn't wear clothes.  I wore a wet towel and boxer shorts (and a hat and sunglasses for anonymity purposes) to my doctor's office (after calling in sick to work "for probably at least a month.")

Prescription salves and apple cider vinegar baths did their job over the next couple of days and by Saturday I finally felt able to leave the house.  Ryan wanted to go to Nordstrom.  Because he needed new shoes.  I still had a fever.  I am blaming what happens next on that.

Wandering the men's shoe department Ryan and I had the following conversation.

R: Do you like these?

L: The Cheesecake Factory should definitely start making Vicodin Cheesecake.  I would go there then.

R: You go there now.  For that pasta they make with all the cheeses.

L:  ::dreamy sigh:: oh yes I forgot, Four Cheese Pasta.

R: What about these?

L: Actually those aren't bad, I think they'd look really good under pants.

R: (Has somehow moved like 20 feet away.) What did you say?

L: UNDERPANTS

Like seriously blogstalkers, I can not even stress how loudly I yelled the word 'underpants' (as one word, not two) across the crowded Saturday Nordstrom shoe department.

Everyone turned to look.  I was standing there alone, holding one shoe, shouting about under garments. 

Someone asked if I was "quite alright."

If I could have turned any redder, I would have.

I died of humilation and sunburn.  Ryan died of laughter.

I shop at Bloomingdale's now.

Remember to enter my giveaway here!


This post has been brought to you by Alisa of Snarky Cards.

Alisa Starr has been making and selling Snarky Cards for 4 years.  She sells them online, in stores up and down the west coast and in bars, from a box that hangs beneath her boobs; like a cigarette girl. She's sold 47,296 Snarky Cards so far.  They will crack you the fuck up.  You can see her selection of Snarky Cards on her etsy site.  And you can stalk her at www.superalisa.com.

This is my favorite.

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Sweet Home Chicago

Because our lives just can not get any crazier right now, this was the view from our balcony last night.

Oh Look.  That Building Is Totally On Fire.  Also, There Seems To Be A Giant Car Crash On The Corner.

And Now A Firefighter Is Climbing Up The Ladder.  

And Now The Firefighter Is Climbing Down The Ladder.  WITH SOMEONE OVER HIS SHOULDER.

No worries though blogstalkers.  No one was seriously injured.

Because they were just filming the pilot for a new tv show based in Chicago.

It was awesome to watch.

There were EXPLOSIONS.

Here is what our view normally looks like.

I Love This City.

Remember to enter My Giveaway if you haven't already.

And have a lovely rest of the weekend!

Now off to see The Hunger Games.

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We Saw Two Whales. One Was A Mom Whale And One Was A Baby Whale. Even The Whales Are Giving You Hints Now RYAN.

Hey blogstalkers, welcome to the most scattered post in the history of this blog.  It will include Cabo Day Five Part Two as well as Cabo Day Nine as well as a new giveaway.  So get ready to be like really confused.

(You can find Cabo Day Five Part One HERE.)

(And Cabo Day One HERE and Cabo Day Two HERE.)

So where were we...

Oh yes, St Patrick's Day.  Yikes.

After we left the bar Happy Endings we headed to another bar called Cabo Blue, which is basically just a little outdoor tiki hut sort of thing.  Nothing super special.  But they had tvs.  And the boys really needed to watch March Madness.

I like taking the pictures because then I don't have to be in the pictures.  Also if there is ever a contest of who gets smiled at the most, I would totally win.  Just one more thing I can add to my list of things at which I exceed Ryan.  I realize I'm grasping for straws here.

"Hurry up and take the picture LAUREN.  Basketball is on."  God, could he whine any more?

So we hung out at Cabo Blue all afternoon and at some point Ryan got tipsy enough to purchase various wares from various vendors.  First he bought flowers.

Yes that is Danny in the foreground of this photo with a flower.  "Five beautiful flowers for five delicate ladies."--Ryan

Then a small adorable Mexican child approached selling tiny painted animal figurines.  Ryan told me I could pick out two.

So I picked out these two.  A fire-breathing dragon and a penguin wearing a cowboy hat.

I was very proud of my decision because dragons are awesome and penguins are awesome.  But Ryan was less than pleased.  He was all "I thought I spotted something orange and white in that small child's bag..I swear to God Lauren if that was a clownfish...."

It was a clownfish.  That kid can smell a clownfish across a crowded reef.  It's frightening.

So Ryan purchased his clownfish and then forgot he was mad at me for not choosing the clownfish because of how happy he and his clownfish were together.

He named it Nemo, which apparently "Is not unoriginal LAUREN.  It's the Spanish translation of Nemo.  I just looked it up on my phone."

Two days later Ryan was walking about the house, clearly looking for something and I was all "What's the matter Ryan?  Can't find Nemo?"

And he was like "Oh HAHA.  No I can't find my computer charger."

But then I saw him do a quick check that Spanish Nemo was still on his bedside table.

But moving on.

As the night wore on, we all got a little bit crazier.

The bartender even managed to convince Girl Ryan to get up on the bar so Danny could do a body shot.

I just shouted out the patio door, "Hey Girl Ryan, do your parents read my blog?"  She was like "No, why? Oh God Shit."  Girl Ryan's Parents, if you are reading this blog somehow, she didn't say 'shit' she said "spit" "Oh God Spit."  She says that sometimes because that is how she explains rain to her students, as 'God Spit'.  There Girl Ryan, even if your parents do read this blog at some point, I've tied everything up in a nice little bow for you.  Except for the part where you did a body shot.  There's no hiding that.  Photographic evidence and all. LYLAS!

Eventually we remembered that we had never actually eaten the lunch that we set out to get.  Also, that we had never eaten dinner.  And that eating would probably be a good idea.  Yep, we figured all of that out on our own, even given the degree to which our mental faculties were impaired.

So we said goodbye to everyone at Blue Cabo.

Bye Blue Cabo!

 And went back to Las Quesadillas.  And I got to eat so much cheese.  Glory Glory Hallelujah.

See how white my neck is and how red my shoulders are?  My face sunscreen works better than my body sunscreen.

And then we walked home.  We were SO responsible on Cabo Day Five.

Sensible and Appropriate and Responsible.  ALL DAY LONG. 

Cabo days six/seven/eight were again pool/beach days so nothing too interesting happened then.  Although I wouldn't know if it had because I was not allowed to participate in pool/beach days after Cabo Day four.  Dumb cautious Ryan.

But Day Nine.  OMG.  We went on a sunset whale-watching cruise on a sailboat in honor of my husband's late father, who owned a sailboat and LOVED to sail and spent his Januarys sailing from island to island in the Caribbean.  I'll just post the pictures because words will do this no justice.

Ok this picture gets a caption because right after this jump I was so excited that I shouted "I saw the whale's eyeball!"  And then everyone on the boat next to us laughed at me.  They were probably just jealous.

It was a fitting tribute.  We'll miss you Dave.

As far as the promised giveaway goes...

In the end we had quite a collection of small Mexican animals.  We are not sure what the one with the pink ears even is.

One of you lucky lucky readers can be the proud owner of four of these five sweet animals.  As well as some other Mexican treasure and American ridiculousness.

Just leave a comment to enter.  This totally counts as my April 7th Quarter Birthday Giveaway.  Ends a week from today (Thursday the 29th) at midnight CST.  I'll announce the winner on Friday.

Also I'll do a short recap/explanation of what I sent Stefanie, who was the last giveaway winner.  Because with all of the crazy in my life right now, I totally forgot to do that and Stefanie is probably really really confused at the box she received in the mail.  Sorry Stefanie!

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Cabo Day Five. In Which We Eat Fish And Then Drink Like Fish. And Then Buy Tiny Sombreros For Our Dogs.

Hey blogstalkers!

Sorry for the temporary MIAness but days three and four of Cabo we didn't do much or really take any pictures and if I posted about those days you all would have been like "Ugh this is SO boring, why am I even reading this?  Why do I even read this blog?  I'm never reading this blog again."

And I can't have that happen.  So I didn't post those days.

Also, I was trying to take a small break from the web because when my husband was filling out customs forms on the plane he first wrote "She lives on the internet" for my address.

My sister and my best friend made me this shirt when I got engaged.  Because when I was still in the 'pestering Ryan to propose' phase of my life, I had a shirt made that said "Currently Filing Single.  Looking To File Jointly."

But anyway, day five was the complete opposite of days three/four.  Because we became a group of seven and sort of went a little crazy.  No judging blogstalkers.  It was St. Patrick's Day.  And even though the man I married is a big Jew, his name is somehow Ryan Patrick Gallagher and he thus must celebrate St. Patrick's day with enthusiasm.

If you haven't read them already, you can find Cabo Day One HERE and Cabo Day Two HERE.

I'm going to do this post in two parts, because there are one million pictures.  And Day six is looking a little boring (I am currently sitting inside covered in aloe, eating kiwis and listening to Jimmy Buffett music.)  So it'll give me something to post about tomorrow.

But I'll start with dinner on Day four.  We went to a place called Las Mariscadas.  It was SO good.

Right away they brought us chips and three different salsas: Mild, Medium and Hot.  Danny took a big scoopful of the Medium and immediately got the hiccups.  I smelled the Hot salsa and burnt the inside of my nose.  Seriously.

Can you see the beginnings of what will soon be a sunburn of marvelous proportions on my face?

To begin, we had ceviche and 'Sopa De Los Siete Mariscos.'

"This is the best soup I have had in my entire life.  And I have had some truly excellent soups.  Don't tell your mom.  I don't want her to stop making me soups."  Guess who said that.

The best part of the soup?  I'm seriously sitting here squirming because I am so excited to post this.

Tentacles!!  Ryan can no longer fault me for having brought all of my tentacles to Mexico because they clearly belong here.  Even if the customs person who went through my bag was somewhat confused.

Then Ryan and his sister Katie split a gigantic seafood platter.

There were tentacles on this platter too. 

Ryan wouldn't let me get close enough to take a good picture of the tentacles because  "Having a wife who is a hypochondriac and who travels with a noodle and always has Cheetos in her purse is quite enough crazy for one fellow without adding a tentacle obsession into the mix."

And then I was like "I do not ALWAYS have Cheetos in my purse."

And Ryan was like "Prove it."

And I was like "Not right now thank you."

But moving on.  Sean made friends with a fish.

And then Sean ate his friend the fish.  But not before making its dead fish mouth talk to us all even though we asked him to stop repeatedly.

We just headed home and to bed after dinner.  Danny and Katie had to get up early to head back to the airport and collect his girlfriend and her BFF.

Meet Girl Ryan.  We sometimes also call her Decent Ryan.

And Elyse.  We make her ride in the trunk.  She is a very agreeable person.

Once everyone was all settled in, we decided to head to town (which is walking distance for us) for lunch.  It was a good thing we walked because "lunch" soon turned into "Oh Right...It's St Patrick's Day."

We started at Happy Endings because Ryan liked the name.

And yes those are double shots of tequila on the table.

Ryan liked the name because he and I have a reoccurring discussion in which he presents the idea that it would be cheaper for him to fly to a Las Vegas massage parlor once a week for the rest of his life than to have a wife.  And then I present the idea that he "shut up."

And we had a liquid lunch.

And then Katie made a fort out of our empty beer boxes.

And then the bartender took this picture of us.

And then Ryan bought a tee shirt with the girl behind us on it.  Because "she looks like you."

The face that Ryan is making in the above picture became sort of a theme of the afternoon.

For example.

She looks surprised but really she's thinking "Hurry up and finish that beer and then drink another beer.  I need more boxes for my fort."

Happy Endings staples dollar bills that customers have drawn on to their walls and bar.  So we made this one.

YOLO is "You Only Live Once" which is Katie's current mantra and sort of the theme of this trip.  If you look closely we all signed the top "Lauren, Ryan (Boy), Katie, Elyse, Danny, Ryan (Girl)."

So look for it if you're ever in Cabo San Lucas and inexplicably feel the urge to go to a bar called Happy Endings.

Also, apparently when Girl Ryan was little she couldn't say "peekaboo" so instead she said "buckabee"which makes absolutely no sense but which has earned her the nickname 'Bucky'.

So when we saw this dollar, we got this picture for her to give to her parents.  They are going to be so pleased.

"And this is our second daughter, Fucken Bucky."

We left Happy Endings shortly after this photo was taken.  And went to another bar.  Forgive us our sins blogstalkers.  We've been very stressed.

I'll post the second half of our story tomorrow.  But here is a sneak peek.

He really really loves Clown Fish.  Seriously.  It rivals my monkey obsession.

Talk to you soon!!

I was all "To cool to smile for the camera fellows?"  And then Ryan was like "I really regret using the word fellow last night."

OH and for right now, if you're wondering, my noodle is named Ryan Patrick Gallagher.  Because then I can say things like "True story, Ryan Patrick Gallagher and I had a conversation by the pool last night about how it's totally time to have babies."  And person Ryan can't be like "That's a dirty lie."

Also, even though my last post was about starting to take paid endorsement, it is just a wild coincidence that on this post I would like you all to go check out the greatest blog in the universe: Bob The Water Cat. 

NOTE: Bob has not paid me to say that. (yet)

Seriously blogstalkers, his blog actually makes me laugh out loud.

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UPDATED: I'm Only Doing This To Make My Tax Return More Complicated. Being I'm An Accountant And I Love Doing My Tax Return.

So no Cabo Day 4 post either.  Boo.  But really, nothing to post about.  Just pool time again.  We're adding to our group tomorrow so definitely expect something in the evening at some point.  Until then, I'll be eating salsa and trying on noodle names.

And actually I won't be eating salsa, because I don't like chips and salsa.  Or french fries.  Or coconut.  Or white chocolate.  Or sun-dried tomatoes.  In case anyone wanted to know all of that.

Hey blog asediadoros (google tells me that means 'stalkers' in Spanish and google is never wrong.)

So no Cabo Day 3 post because we literally did nothing today, just ate eggs and then sat by the pool reading and turning the color of tomatoes.  I will definitely be back with an update tomorrow, because we are doing adventures tomorrow.

I did want to take a moment to address something I've been dealing with recently.

I've been getting more emails lately asking if I was accepting sponsors or willing to do a sponsored giveaway.  In the past I've just responded that I had not yet decided how I felt about paid sponsorship and thus was not taking sponsors at that point in time.

But thanks to all of you effing wonderful people, this blog is growing.  It's growing faster than I had ever anticipated when I started it.  It's sort of freaking me out.

I average over 2,000 hits a day and get more than 50,000 page views in a month.  And that's not taking into account readers that use an RSS feed or hit me up using Google Reader.

I've talked to some of my friends that are MUCH more famous bloggers than I and they've made some of my bad feelings about this go away.

So I'm going to start taking sponsors.

Please please don't hate me.  Please please.

So if anyone is interested my current rates are $20 a month for an ad on the sidebar, with the first month being totally free if you lock in for more than two months.

I'll also accept sponsors for individual posts, with a shout out/blurb of your choice at the bottom of the post for $5.

I'm still now sure how I feel about sponsored giveaways, so I'm going to hold off on those for the moment.

Any and all money earned from sponsors (and also from my Zazzle store which now features a "Blogstalker" tee shirt) will be going directly back into this blog in the form of ridiculous giveaways and such.

Just email me at LaurenRaeGallagher@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

Try not to think me a sell-out blogstalkers.

Love from Cabo San Lucas <3

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