birdsovafeather

The "t" in "often" is SILENT, but two guesses as to what I'll be doing more OF(T)EN

2008-10-23T10:22:00.000-07:00

Because of this:

So to kick things off, like, eight days before it's really necessary to start the hunkering down process, here is a copy of an email I sent yesterday. And if you are too lazy to read what I think is my last post, the one where I bitch about the steroids, then just know that the Teenage Acne is still going strong! I liken this whole experience to getting totally shit-faced and going home with the skeezy guy by the pool tables and then waking up two months later with a raging case of herpes so you go to the doctor and he says "Yep, that's the herp, enjoy!" and you're all "And this lasts how long, exactly?" and he's all "FOR-EEEV-ERRRR" and you're all "sweeeeeeeet." Except in my case it's not forever, so it's really more like I have herpes of the face for 6-9 months.

The email:

Random: So I’m in Walgreens a minute ago because my head was about to explode, right behind my left eyeball, throbbing away like someone was pinging it with a ball peen hammer, and I’m perusing the skin care section, like you do, because I’m nearly thirty godamn years old and I’ve got teenage fucking acne on my cheeks (wtf, can we not grow out of this? Am I being punished for my clear skin as a teenager? For all the times I just thought people weren’t washing their face enough? Dear Universe: I’M SORRY I WAS A TEENAGE IDIOT. PLEASE DO NOT HOLD ME RESPONSIBLE FOR MY UNDEDUCATED VIEWS OF THE ACNE-RIDDEN.) So I’m looking around and I notice this thing on the top shelf, mainly because the price has three numbers in it and I think, Holy Cupcake, what kind of skin care regimen has three numbers before the decimal sign comes in to play? And it’s this crap called Zeno and it zaps the zits with it’s hot hot heat and I WANT IT. I looked at the reviews on Amazon and everyone’s all, love it! can’t get enough! would make out with it if I could! And I’m thinking, you know, I just might buy this. This is self-esteem in a mechanical device! Plus, it’s a gadget, and I can get away with buying stupid crap because THAT’S WHAT I DO. If not for my uncontrollable quirks (hello, I’m looking at you, Miss Carmen Electra workout strippercize video set) I would be just a regular human with the rather obvious and odious problem of not cleaning out my vehicle.

Do you support the purchase of this item? Check yes or no.

I may have leprosy.

2008-09-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

No lie, I have been sick since June rolled it's humid ass into Arkansas. In the process I have formed a personal relationship with my doctor, something I have always avoided. This is the man who has to see me beg for sedatives, the man who stands unflinchingly in the line of fire breath during a bout of strep throat, the man who knows exactly how much I weigh. This is not a man with whom I want to create memorable impressions. I want him to forget my existence when I leave his office, my co-pay securely transactioned by his receptionist.

Instead, he now knows my real name, not the official name that populates my medical records and employment applications. It's just a middle name, nothing fancy like a mob nickname or anything. But it's how I differentiate between those I don't care to chat with (doctors, credit card companies, the weird neighbor who keeps asking for my "chat" i.d.) and those I do (friends, family, Robert Downey, Jr.). And to top it off, the nurse has "befriended" me. That's in quotations because let's be honest, we're not really friends. We just share laughs about how every time I come in and she asks me when my last menstrual cycle cycled on through, I respond with "three weeks ago." After she got that same answer seven weeks in a row she told me she knew exactly what my problem was- I was packed FULL of shit.

No, actually, I'm packed full of plegm with a little useless trivia thrown in for fun. (The Golden Girls premiered in 1985! The heaviest element is Uranium!)

The best thing to come out of all of this? I now know what it's like to be a fifteen-year-old boy. Thanks to several weeks of steroids I experienced the following:

1) Misplaced rage and an increased combative nature. Case in point: While walking through the Detroit airport I got so fed up with a woman who blocked my passage on the moving walkway I started to curse her, IN MY LOUD VOICE, and then sort of gently connected her rolling suitcase with my patent leather flat. Excuse me ma'am, my name is Temper, last name Tantrum.

2) Men are strangely attractive, even when they're not. I think that actually makes me a homosexual teenage boy if we stick with the analogy from above. Anygay, it's not that I don't find men attractive in a steroid-free world, it's just that I didn't appreciate the sheer number of hot y chromosomes strutting around. My usual standards were thrown out the window (too short, too tall, too stupid and listens to tween pop on his ipod) and suddenly everyone, in the words of Marlon Brando, coulda been a contender.

3) Teenage Fucking Acne. Oh yes. The malfunction at Skin and Pore Streets was just a taste, just a dangling dingleberry of what was to come. And apparently is still coming, all over my WAIT. Sorry. I should also mention that I developed the ability to make tasteless jokes at random. Back to the acne. It's awesome and very teenagery. So if we follow that out to its logical conclusion, that means the acne actually makes me look YOUNGER. I have found the secret to eternal youth. Spread the word.

4) "Are you going to eat that?" became my mantra. I have never been so hungry, never ever, not even when I managed to do things like exercise or let's be honest, extend any sort of physical effort whatsoever. During my steroid spell, I woke up in the middle of the night to EAT. In addition, I ate two breakfasts, two lunches and three dinners. It was during this cheek stuffing spell that I had flasbacks to my little brother's teen years and how we used to order an extra large pizza just for him. And how he ate it. All of it. But my brother had the metabolism of an actual teenage boy while I was just experiencing teenage boy-like symptoms. My metabolism remained firmly grounded in the nearing-thirty range, which lead to:

5) Weight gain! Nearly ten pounds in the first ten days! Insert fat ass jokes HERE.

Overall, I'd say my steroid abuse was pretty fucking lame, dude. (Keeping the teenage slang alive here at birdsovafeather!) I've still got an annoying cough and a very depleted checking account because apparently one can't just google one's symptoms and call in to request specific medication. They like to see you in person so they can do things like weigh you and check your glands. Greedy bastards.

Follow the yellow brick...river

2008-08-06T12:58:00.001-07:00

Two Sundays ago I was bouncing a five month old baby girl on my lap while Amanda, the other nursery worker, corralled the older toddlers. Without warning I heard Amanda’s voice stairstepping over her no, no, nooo, nooOOO, nOOOOO, NOOOOO’s and looked over to see two year old Layla awkwardly straddling the window of the child-sized plastic house. Her left leg was angled strangely outward, probably all the better for her urine to come splashing down the side of the house and onto the linoleum floor.

This is not the first time a child has peed on the nursery room floor, but it is certainly the first time a child has peed on the nursery room floor with such flair.

So I picked the cuddly baby off my lap and started to place her on the floor when I realized my right leg was uncomfortably warm. And wet. In the midst of all the chaos my first thought was not “Fucking hell, I’ve been pissed on by a diaper-clad baby” but rather “Holy cupcakes, this baby drools a lot.” I can’t tell you what happened to my common sense but I have the distinct impression that it packed up and left for The Netherlands where it smoked some really good hash and laughed uproariously when I doubled over to squish my nose against my thigh because goddamn, that seriously cannot be urine on my leg, let’s smell it just to be sure.

Obviously it was urine. Grade A Baby Piss. And instead of helping Amanda throw two rolls of paper towels at the yellow moat around the playhouse, I stripped off my pants and threw them in the sink, where I had a minute to contemplate a) my pants-less state and b) how a fifteen pound baby managed to unleash the Nile on my leg. Thankfully I had on a mid-thigh length tunic that could have doubled as a dress if I had done a better job of shaving my legs that morning and if I was into wearing mini-dresses, which I didn’t and I’m not. But the urine overflow was another story.

Upon stripping down the cherub-faced infant I noticed her bloomers were soaked through, not surprising, and that she was wearing a pull-up, moderately surprising. Specifically, a pull-up made for a thirty-six month boy. Later, when her parents came to pick her up and I told them that their baby had peed straight through her PULL-UP and PULL-UPS were not for BABIES and to please refrain from dressing your still-on-the-breastmilk baby with a [insert mental cursing] PULL-UP, they just laughed. Said how hilarious it had been when their older son had wanted to dress his sister in one of his, wait for it, PULL-UPS. And I’m sure it’s no big deal to them, I’m sure they get pissed on all the time with their real-live version of Wanda fucking Wetsherself but I did not squirt this thing from my vagina and therefore I am less inclined to slather myself in its excrement.

At the end of the day we had sanitized the linoleum and the plastic house and my pants got a good soaking in a mix of antibacterial hand soap and Lysol. As an added bonus, I got to walk past an entire congregation of churchgoers in one half of the outfit they’d seen me arrive in.

And here’s an added bonus for you, but seriously, take heed. It makes you cry a little on the inside as you pee a little on the outside. (Only NSFWish if your boss doesn't have a sense of humor.)

At the corner of Holy and Shit

2008-07-28T13:26:00.001-07:00

I didn’t have bad skin as a teenager. By some genetic fluke, I remained nearly blemish free throughout nature’s most awkward years. On the flip side of that coin was a penchant for twelve foot bangs, multi-colored braces and tapered leg jeans. The universe made sure to punish me.

Admittedly, there was this one time in ninth grade when I woke up with a wee little dot on my chin. It was the day before chearleading tryouts and I was in a panic, convinced that my entire social career depended upon my pom pom performance and my pom pom performance was entirely dependant upon the eradication of the the angry nodule of bacterium. So I convinced my mother to drive me to Eckerd’s, which was the Walgreens of the south before Walgreens was even a glint in nation’s pharmaceutical eye. The Piggly Wiggly to your Costco.

In the skin cream aisle I was confronted with a whole list of products that had previously never crossed my radar. Wrinkle cream, exfoliants, face masks that promised to devoid you of puffy eyes, the whole lot. I bypassed them all, looking for something, anything that promised to scoop out the byproduct of my teenage hormones.

That night I placed a dot of Oxy-10 on my chin. And then I kind of smeared it around, thinking that if one pore had instigated a riot, it was possible that others might join in the fray. Then I squeezed out a quarter sized amount and rubbed it all over my t-zone, a facial area that my new Seventeen magazine claimed was “prone to breakouts.” I remember this moment succinctly because I had been annoyed with Seventeen for calling it the t-zone when cleary it was more like an inflated I-zone.

In the morning I woke up with a fluttery stomach (cheerleading! tryouts! today!) and an itchy face. I had prepared for the fluttery stomach but not for the itchy face. The bathroom mirror provided a glimpse into my worst teenage nightmare- splotchy red patches all over my chin, my forehead, the inner edges of my cheeks. The zit was gone, but so was the top layer of my skin. It was peeling and flaking and nowhere near the ninth grade perfection I had demanded of it on this one day, this one social career-defining day.

It took nearly a week for the angry red skin to subside and just in case you were curious, no, I did not make the cheerleading squad. I was relegated back to the band field in my hot polyester uniform and squeaky clarinet, somewhat relieved that I wouldn’t have to flash my navy blue bloomers to the whole of the student body come football season.

Which brings us to nearly two weeks ago, when I woke up with a little malfunction at the junction of Skin and Pore Streets. I wouldn’t have paid it much attention, but it was the day before I was to leave for a job interview in Vermont. My to-do list had said nothing about an angry adult zit, so I was wholly unprepared. That day at work I did a little internet reading about homeopathic remedies and came to the conclusion that putting toothpaste on my face was just a poor decision. So I stoped by the grocery on my way home and picked up a tube of goop that promised to clear up my skin in a snap.

You see where this is going.

Before bed I put just a wee dot of the clear gel on my cheek, right over the tiny little red dot. I didn’t smear it around, just kind of dabbed it into position. I brushed my teeth, pulled up my hair and put my suitcase beside the door. I laid out my airplane clothes and packed my purse with essential reading material. Then I crawled into bed and turned out the light.

At 3:27am I woke up from a dream where someone was dropping lighter fluid on my face while I tried to light an outdoor grill. It took me a minute to realize that the lighter fluid was code for HOLY BALLS MY FACE IS ON FIRE. In the bathroom I grabbed a hand towel, shoved it under the cold faucet and pressed it against the side of my face, only to watch a perfectly circular swatch of skin be wiped away, little red dots of blood welling up in the wake of the hand towel.

It took me nearly half an hour to get my cheek to stop bleeding. Another fifteen minutes before I had calmed down enough to go back to bed. The scene wasn’t any better in the morning, either. The nickel-sized ulceration had spent the rest of my slumber scabbing over, something near impossible to cover without industrial strength makeup and a healthy dose of Photoshop.

Without enough time to drive across town to the supercenter, I resigned myself to dabbing layers of loose powder over my cheek. I figured it was early and one of the four airports I would be in that day would surely have some liquid heavy duty makeup.

Not so much. So I got to introduce myself to everyone with an icky spot on my face that looked like someone had put out a cigar on my cheek. With every new introduction I wanted to explain that the scabby looking monstrosity was not an indication of my usual appearance and to please forgive me for looking like I just took up a meth habit.

Genetics

2008-07-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

Last week my mother called to tell me that they’d been victims of identity theft, only when she told me she didn’t know the proper way to communicate her rage (MOTHERFUCKER STOLE MY SHIT? AW HELL NO) and instead said something nice and fairly restrained like “I just can’t believe someone would steal my checking account number! I’m just so… so… well, frankly Birdie, I’m pissed.”

Really? Because let me introduce you to some websites that will not only steal your credit card information, they’ll make a brisket out of your ass and sell it back to you as cheap barbeque. That might even warrant a damn pissed. But this attitude is one of the things I love about my mother, that she can look at a bank statement missing thousands of dollars and tell me she got a little nauseated when she had to talk to the bank manager. Because I’ll be honest, I do not have that genetic trait. I would not have been able to refrain from driving to Katy, Texas, where the faux checks had been cashed, finding the ignorant catfish that had stolen my money and setting their house on fire.

A whole new look

2008-07-03T11:18:00.000-07:00

For the most part I ignore the Spam folder in my gmail (an email address that will remain forever sacred because, hello, have you ever been online-stalked by a foot-obsessed podiatrist? I have and it's not as fun as you'd think). But today I got a wild hair up my ass, an expression I am just now contemplating and realizing is a bit disturbing. I'm picturing rotund buttocks with mutant fur that grows steadily into the rectum, all in fast-forward video. It is not pretty. And neither is my Spam folder.

As you can see, quite a lot of people are encouraging me to update my penis.

First, let's talk about the random capitalization of letters. Why is Penis capitalized, but not Your? I mean, this is a perfectly good imperative independent clause. Implied subject, verb, noun, the whole bit. What kind of significance are they placing here? It's like saying "Clean your Room!" or "Change your Underwear!"

Second, how does one go about updating a body part? I mean, I love makeover shows, but the thought of giving a weiner a new set of earrings or a stylish new hair-do is just plain un-American. Updating is what you do to your wardrobe or nail polish, it's not what you do to your wangalang.

On a walk with my pregnant friend Lily, who has since given birth:

2008-04-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

"I lost my mucus plug on Saturday."
"Party foul. "
"I called Natalie to ask her if it should look like a 'roid loogie and she said yes, so I guess all I've got left is the bloody show before my water breaks."
"Is Marilyn Manson going to perform?"
"It's not really that bloody, just sort of, you know, a show. Of blood. Just a little Hiieeeey! It's meee! Bloody Show! right before all the hip spreading and birth canaling. But then the nurse gives you drugs and all is well. My husband gets to live another day."
"I support you in this drug business. I talked to my mom about all this and I found out she gave birth to me AND my brother without drugs. She's way more hardcore than I realized. But I was a fairly small baby so maybe it wasn't that bad."
"How big was your brother?"
"Over ten. He was nearly a month overdue."
-Pause
"I kind of want to send a sympathy card to your mom's vagina."

My birthday was yesterday. Neat, huh?

2008-04-01T17:13:00.000-07:00

So yet again I'm here in The Frozen Tundra, watching whatever tom fuckery television the network executives have decided to broadcast over the airwaves. Currently my options are endless. I can paint my nails, read a book, eat some strangely unsalted hot and spicy peanuts or nibble on the leftovers of my pistachio-crusted salmon, compliments of room service. I can also watch neverending episodes of Law & Order and HELLO, can we talk about how many episodes of this show are sitting in a vault somewhere? I used to watch reruns back in college and that was eight years ago.

I think I'm going to paint my nails. WHILE watching Law & Order. I'm a multi-tasking fool.

Two for the Money, Three for the Show

2008-03-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

Lately I’ve been house hunting, due mainly to the fact that I don’t have a current project to occupy my time and house hunting seemed like the way to go. Normally when my boredom level reaches critical mass I take up a new time killer- like making plans to move to Maine or obsessively looking at plane tickets to The Netherlands. I don’t actually plan on doing any of these things, I just waste valuable time researching them. Time that could be better spent not eating cookies so as to give myself a better chance at fitting in that godamn bridesmaid dress. But I digress.

While I’ve had the most success at finding possible homes on the generic MLS search engine, craigslist has been the most amusing. I was introduced to the site back in 2002 when I lived in New York and my roommates and I had what you might call a spat. That spat had me dreaming about baseball bats and the kind of damage I could inflict with metal vs. wood. In my dream I decided on wood, because I thought I’d get a more satisfying crunch when I hit a homerun with their kneecaps. That will forever remain in Dream Status, because otherwise that’s known as attempted manslaughter by reason of the Twinkie Defense. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- I am not a good candidate for jail. Jumpsuits make me look bloated.

And so craigslist.org became one of my top timewasters after a coworker found me on the flower bleeding from my ear because I’d just found out how much a broker charges to get you into 450 square foot apartment. She took pity on me, poured me a glass of vodka and pointed my browser to that fairytale place where brokers don’t rip flesh from your upper arm as payment.

But the houses are just a drop in the bucket compared to the overall scariness that can be found there. Need a small ass? Get a mini donkey! Ever thought about moving to San Francisco to live it up with a Caddyfastic light peanut butter man with zero setbacks, check out brotha brotha. Don’t bypass those errors of grammaticalness. Then there’s a packrat whose wife has probably threatened him with bodily injury if he doesn’t get rid of those Car & Driver magazines from 1977. And 1983. And 1992.

Or I could just buy this house. Or should I say houses?

My favorite part is the closing sentence: ONLY SERIOUS INQUIRES!!!! JUST REMEMBER THEY DO NEED MINOR REPAIR YOUR NOT GETTING TWO MANSIONS FOR THIS PRICE OK.
Ok. Duly noted.

I'M TALKING TO YOU J. CREW

2008-03-27T07:48:00.000-07:00

Two months ago I got a text message from my friend Becca with a picture and a tagline that said, “I just got engaged!” The picture could not have been more disgustingly adorable, what with the Magic Kingdom castle in the background and rosebushes at every conceivable angle. Both of them were smiling like they’d just eaten opiate-laced sno-cones and her hand was placed strategically on his chest, which is girl code for LOOK AT MY FUCKING RING, BITCHES. Her future husband could not have picked a better place to propose to her because if anything personifies Becca, it’s Disney World in its truest form. Not the scary teenagers in Pluto costumes or the eunuch-esque voice of Mickey Mouse, but that magical tingly sensation you’re supposed to get when you’re a kid and you see the sparkling castle in the distance where Tinkerbell might live. Becca is Tinkerbell, if Tinkerbell were a recovering hippie with a tendency to wear jingly ankle bracelets and frolic through fields of flowers.

Right after the engagement announcement I got word that I’d be playing the part of bridesmaid. I was kind of excited, because if Becca is getting married it’s the real deal. I met this guy over Thanksgiving and to say I approve would be an understatement. Not that she needs my approval- but it sure is less gut-clenching when your friend isn’t marrying a total douche. It also means that there will be less surreptitious sipping from the whiskey flask, which would lead to fewer grain-fueled speeches about how their love is like a bb gun: not too painful and rarely fatal, unless you shoot them right in the eye.

The only issue I have is my selected bridesmaid dress:
Pretty, no? It is. Except when I put it on and it zips up to my bra strap, wherein my upper chesticular region starts to laugh and says REALLY? TRY AGAIN. This is a problem, because J. Crew doesn’t make clothing above size ITSY and I got the largest size they make, knowing as I did that what fits in the waist does not fit in the top, and the top must definitely be covered. Can’t upstage the bride in the middle of her wedding vows with a boobtacular revolt.

So I set out to correct the problem. I ordered a second dress from ebay with the hopes of using the extra material as… something. A wrap? A jacket? A poncho? Because that’s what it’s going to take to move this dress away from the gaping maw of Slutville. A fucking poncho.

When I realized that the task at hand involved things like seam rippers and sewing machines, I thought maybe I could just rectify the situation with some undergarments. Have you ever seen those really ugly garments that look like modernized corsets? I bought one, but not for my waist. I thought that maybe, possibly, if I hooked and lycra-ed them into submission, it might give me a few more inches of zip-able dress. It does. But it makes me look like I’m smuggling really large and strangely poofy dinner plates. Not my most flattering look. So I bought a cardigan, hoping to cover up the inches of material that steadfastly refused to meet in the middle. Also not my best look. I look like I’m about to serve tea in 1956 and, oh, I’m sorry, let me get you a plate for that, I’VE GOT ONE RIGHT HERE IN MY BODICE.

I have from now until April 26th to come up with a viable solution. I’ve even enlisted the help of my mother, who will be lugging a sewing machine up three flights of stairs because the one I’ve got is broken, possibly due to the last time I tried to sew something and I ignored the telltale angry machine noises and let the needle lodge permanently in the plastic siding.

Dude does not look like a lady- rather, lady sounds like a man.

2008-03-26T10:31:00.000-07:00

Right now I’m sitting on an eight hour long conference call and if you think I’m listening, you’re right. I’m listening with my magical multitasking skills to three people carry on three different conversations. I can’t tell who they’re talking to but that’s part of the fun. Are they talking to me? The wall? That crazed chinchilla in the corner, staring beadily from his hiding place inside the laptop bag?

Lately I’ve been on lots of these calls and sometimes, if I’m really lucky, I get to fly to The Frozen Tundra to bodily participate in these meetings. I use the term “participate” very loosely because, hello, I am Southern. Southern Folk don’t waste their time on all-day meetings, especially when there’s this handy-dandy newfangled thing call THE INTERNETS and THE ELECTRONIC EMAIL. So mostly I nod intelligently and pretend to take notes. During bathroom breaks I check to make sure my face is still holding up its Moderately Interested look because there’s always the chance I’ll get tired and slip into my WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK face.

Last week was more interesting than most because my boss, Leotissimus, was requested to join the call. It’s not that his mere presence made it interesting because it’s generally real hard to spice up a conference call when you’re stuck on the ass end of it, listening via the telephone in your office. It’s more that Leo has this innate ability to insert his foot square into his mouth, all the way down his esophagus where his toes wriggle around and rip a hole in his spleen. Like that one time he accidentally walked in on a woman pumping breast milk in one of our unused offices, right after someone had told him that a new mother was going to be using it to pump in peace. He just wanted to make sure the door was locked. Imagine her surprise.

He’s normally pretty good with the shit we give him, just like the rest of us. Nobody is immune. My other boss once sent an email to the wrong [redacted] that just said “Kreatur wants a kiss!” That sentence has a long and sordid history and one day I might explain it. But it has nothing to do with my boss wanting a kiss, which is pretty much what The Other Robin assumed. I once returned a phone call from our then-Vice President, like, THE Vice President, the one that’s right under the president, the one that blinks twice and shit sings down the toilet, with “TAG, YOU’RE IT.” In my defense I didn’t know who he was because much like Dick Cheney he just kind of faded into the background, on purpose, so he could surprise unsuspecting employees and make them piss themselves with fear.

The thing is, we all do it. We all do asinine things and later regret that our mother didn’t shoot tequila during her pregnancy because at least then we could claim mental defect. It’s just that here, at The Undisclosed Location, we never let you forget it.

So last Thursday I was sitting in a room with fifteen very unhelpful Yanks while Leo dialed in from Little Rock. We’d had about two hours worth of document revising when the person to my right started talking about how System X was going to communicate with System Y. During a lull in conversation, Leo popped in with “Who was the gentleman that was just speaking?”

Pretty innocuous, right? But the room goes silent and since no one appears willing to speak up, I lean into one of the strategically placed microphones and tell Leo that the last person speaking was Tanya, but Robert was the one a few minutes before. Leo says, “No, the gentleman. The gentleman that was just talking about System X.”

That was pretty much what I was afraid of, so I whipped out my blackberry and sent him a message that said “NOT A DUDE.”

But I’m 700 miles away and there’s probably a 2-3 second lag time between when I hit Send and when he reads his message. Three seconds that could have saved us all a lot of tension. Meanwhile he digs the hole deeper, summarizing what “the gentleman” was just talking about, just to make it clear that he wants the name. Of the gentleman. That was just speaking.

And then The Universe intervened and he finally read his crackberry message. His response? “Oh FUCK.”

It’s a tribute to my upbringing that I kept a straight face.

One of the reasons I support Hillary

2008-02-20T11:39:00.001-08:00

Newsweek article

Awkwardly forward

2008-02-08T13:22:00.000-08:00

I didn’t really make good on my promise to finish talking up the events of last year by the time last year was actually over, so I can’t give myself a gold star for Completion of Goal. But I give myself a gold star anyway, because I can, because I’M THE MAKER OF THE GOLD STARS, DAMMIT.

The new year came in with relative quiet, just a clink of some champagne glasses filled with sparkling white grape juice. My friends don’t drink and as it turns out, neither do I. Not really, not anymore. Stomach and I reached a tender truce towards the end of last year and part of our agreement was no more lettuce, no more beer and no more questionable meats. Not that I was a big questionable meat eater or anything- but it’s not like Chinese food comes with a Certified Chicken Meat Stamp. And now I’ve gone and insulted the Chinese food-makers, awesome. But seriously, if anyone has some contacts at Nu Fun Ree, could you let them know that I used to love the shit out of them but since their move downtown it’s like they go out of their way to incite stomach rioting? Thanks.

Since then (“then” being the New year, not the stomach rioting) I’ve threatened to quit my job, received a job offer, declined said job offer, received a raise and a promotion and suffered through influenza type A. In the beginning I made lots of jokes about the type A flu, how it might obsessively balance my checkbook or ferociously scrub the toilet. But the flu was a nasty, mean-spirited bitch and I’m keeping my insults to a minimum. Karma and all.

Anyway, since I so obviously flubbed my previous goal I’m setting a new one- posting at least once a week. Because the interwebs needs some more mindless rambling and useless drivel. [Insert emoticon of your choice] I sort of let the internet go last year, not deliberately, but because I got a little sad. And crazy.

Apparently that’s a winning combination.

ROCK THE VOTE

2008-02-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

It's Super Tuesday- go vote!

And don't whine about it. I don't know where to go, I'm not a registered Democrat, wah wah wah. DOESN'T MATTER.

Google "your state + Feb 5 + where to vote" and you're bound to find a list of counties and locations.

DON'T BE A PANSY. GO VOTE.

I'm going to claim sleep deprivation when my bills don't get paid this month

2008-01-07T13:31:00.000-08:00

A little over a year ago I went to this wonk-ass doctor who hooked me up to wires and electrodes and a night vision camera in an effort to figure out why I couldn’t sleep. Before that process began, I started off my Quest for Sleep with my generic anti-narcotic doctor. He wasn’t really concerned with the fact that I was hallucinating spiders and bloody beating hearts on my wood floor but was terribly interested in whether or not I was a) depressed or b) depressed and contemplating offing myself. I informed him that I was neither depressed nor depressed with suicidal thoughts. I was fucking pissed and I wanted a nap.

But this time the inability to sleep cannot be blamed on my pantalones loco, my obsessive anxiety or the troll who lives under my bed and pulls my hair out at night. (Note: I’m sure my hair falls out during the day, but staying in one place for eight hours really brings home the total, gut-clenching amount that finds its way to my pillow case. So I’ve stopped blaming it on my rebellious finger-flipping body and have placed the responsibility on my friend the bed troll.) So this time, the no sleeping? Wow. I have a direct culprit that I can blame for my sleepless nights but it turns out that putting a stop to the culprit could be interpreted as animal cruelty and I’m really not a good candidate for jail.

The culprit is Lily, my mildly standoffish cat who is lithe and agile and apparently insane in her membrane. Any time I crawl into bed, day or night, sleep or nap, that bitch ass fur monster finds my antique vanity mirror simply irresistible. And you thought Robert Palmer had the market on that. No. That’s not how this works. That mirror is so irresistible it makes Charlie Sheen’s late 90’s hooker visits look like midnight charity work instead of a skank sex addiction. I’m not sure if it’s a Pavlovian response or a sadistic bend in her kittyality, but I’m about to put an end to this shit. She claws and claws and claws, scraping her paws against the mirror and making it bang against the wall, over and over and over. And over. 2am? And over. 4 am? And over. Time to get up? Here’s Lily, our favorite kitty prisoner, digging her way to freedom through my mirror. This isn’t The Shawshank Redemption. Morgan Freeman is not her best friend. She will not meet up on a Mexican beach in a romantical man reunion. I NEED TO SLEEP.

The Food Chain of Haters

2007-12-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

I am a little concerned for the birds who inhabit the trees outside my building. This isn’t the kind of concern I had for the singing birds who lived outside my bedroom window when I shared an apartment with my brother. That kind of concern stemmed more from my desire to kill every last one of them and my fear that even if I managed to peg them all with my brother’s gun, there was some endless supply of night-singing devil birds that would swoop in and take their place. I spent months shoving various ear plugs down my ear canal in the vain hope that it would block the amplified twee-tweeeeeee-tweeing that began every morning at 3am. And then one day I lost my godamned mind and grabbed my brother’s BB gun from his closet and stomped outside in my pink nightgown and flipflops. I only got two (unsuccessfull) shots off before I noticed my neighbor staring at me from her driveway, ushering her children into their oversized Suburban monstrosity. Ushering in the way you usher unsuspecting bank patrons away from the Crazy holding a gun to a tellers head. No sudden movements, don’t break eye contact, keep your voice soothing and low. I gave her my sweetest smile and told her I was just looking for some breakfast.

Those singing birds were the bane of my existence, they were the rat poison in my coffee, the dirty finger in my eye. The current birds haven’t quite made it to that level, but they are quickly moving up the Hater Food Chain. Right below People Who Don’t Understand The Proper Use of the Interstate On Ramp but above Stepping in a Puddle of Cat Vomit with Bare Feet.

I hate that I have such a horrible relationship with these animals, because for the most part I’m a sucker for anything covered in fuzzies. However, I am comforted to know that other people feel just as repulsed by glorified flying insects and once watched a movie where Zoey Daschenel stole my life. Besides her seriously lacking interpersonal skills, she had a collection of singing devil-birds outside her window and even though the movie was terrible, totally without purpose or other redeeming value, there’s a line she utters while taking a swig of beer:

“What kind of devil bird sings at night?”

Exactly. WHAT KIND OF DEVIL BIRD SINGS AT NIGHT. It’s unnatural. And then she tries to shoot one with a BB gun. And I thought, “What the fuck, this has happened to someone else? Someone ELSE shot at the singing devil birds with a BB gun? VALIDATION IS MINE.”

But the current birds don’t sing, at least not where I can hear them. And if I can’t hear them, no one else can. I hear people two blocks away, just because they thought about blinking. So there’s no singing. I can vouch for that. No, these birds have some kind of crazy, chucktastic diet that gives them serious cases of bird-diarrhea. Runny, chucky messes of bird shit. And it’s not like they can crap on the ground. Maybe even on the roof. These are wily little birds and they know, THEY KNOW, how much I hate cleaning off bird crap from my car. So that’s where they go. On my car.

Before you think, meh, whatever, everyone gets birdshit on their car, STOP. Stop thinking. It’s not like that. I washed my car last night because it set in airport long term parking for four days while I was in Phoenix and it was covered in dirt and airplane funk. This morning I go outside and there are twenty-seven (I counted) separate glops of bird excrement on varying parts of my car. As an added bonus, the biggest chunky mess was on the driver side door handle. Tasty snack for later.

And in case you were curious, like me, I’ll save you the trouble: All you ever needed to know about bird shit

A Lethal Injection of Christmas Cheer

2007-12-13T15:13:00.001-08:00

So you might have noticed that I never actually finished that whole Look At Me I’m Dying story. I should point out that the events of that story transpired way back in August, when the weather was still flaming hot and I still had a (relatively) scar-free body. Now it’s December and I keep traveling to places like Minnesota, where the weather actually defies human logic with its inability to rise above Fucking Freezing (actual scientific name) and I have this newfound ability to predict the weather with my abdominal tingling.

Because I’m looking to finish talking about the events of this year by the time this year actually ends, I need to get on the ball and do a sum up. Here goes.

After my mother showed up and reaffirmed my conviction that mothers can hear you when you scream in your head, my dad rolled in roughly three hours later. Timetable: Before the surgery. Or even the mention of any surgery. Still vomiting/dry heaving into popcorn buckets but had acquired a private room so as to remain uncontaminated by the Poop Bomb lady.

Right before my parents left to go back to my apartment for the night, I had a sudden flash of the empty cigarette box lying on my kitchen table. Not because I smoke in my house but because I periodically empty my purse of it’s residual crap and the empty box(es) take up valuable space that could be utilized by FULL cigarette boxes.

Normal people would have a) told their parents about their smoking habit many years ago, or b) would have been busted by their parents many years ago. But I’m the child who was so secretive I somehow managed to keep my eighth grade boyfriend under wraps until I was twenty-five. No reason. Just for giggles. So imagine what I can do with a little tobacco habit.

We had a very awkward non-conversation where I told my dad that he was going to get in my car and it was going to smell like an ashtray in an old McDonald’s bag. I also told him he was going to need to move the three or four Virginia Slim Ultra Light Menthol boxes (empty) that would be scattered on the driver side floorboard. Then I looked at my mom and told her that there were going to be empty boxes on my kitchen table. Maybe some in my bedroom. You never know when or where the urge to clean out your purse will strike you. I wished them both a good night and acknowledged that I’d been smoking, off and on, for around a decade.

Two days later they cut out my gallbladder (such a hideous name for an organ). I stayed in the hospital an extra three or four days because I kept passing little alien zygotes in my urine. Before I left a urologist wrote me a prescription for Flomax, a drug that I later learned is designed for MEN with PROSTATE TROUBLE. As I am not a man and I do not have prostate troubles, this ended up being a bit of a concern. Especially when my vision started to go a few days later and WAIT! Let’s google this drug on the internet! Side effects include loss of vision (sometimes permanent). That sounds fun.

A week after the surgery I was still weak and nauseated and oh-so-miserable. So my mother took me to the ER, where they gave me more drugs. And I spent another week following the doctor’s regimen of pills until I decided that those people were morons and I stopped everything. Morphine, Phenargran, Xanax, Valium, Odansetron, Sucralfate, Flomax and Lexapro. Done.

Now that the surgery story is complete, we can move on.

Points of Mild Interest:

1) I have a new scar on my forehead from where my coworker accidentally shot me in the head with a plastic spring-loaded airplane. See the following conversation:

Boss: Don’t point that at Robin – you know liberals and their gun control laws…

Coworker: Oh whatever, I’ve got it totally under contro—WHAP!

Me: SON OF A BITCH!

Coworker: Holy crap you’re bleeding!

Me: SON OF A BITCH!

Coworker: I’m so sorry! It just went off!

Me: YOU SHOT ME IN THE HEAD YOU CRAZY REPUBLICAN!

And now I’ve got a thin half-inch raised scar on my forehead just above my right eye. Gives me a jaunty, rogue-ish look.

2.) My hair is falling out. HA HA HOW I WISH I WAS KIDDING. Apparently this year isn’t through shoving its unlubed fist up my ass. According to my doctor, this can happen to people after a “body trauma.” In my case, the “body trauma” would be the ill-received gallbladder surgery. Anyway, I was doing okay with it, laughing with Mother Nature as fistfuls of my frizzy mane ended up swimming down the drain or coming out in my brush until one day I realized that my hair was falling out. Don’t ask me why one day it just punched me in the face like that, how on Monday I was all, ha ha! my hair is falling out! and then on Tuesday I was all ohmygod I think I’m having a heart attack, my hair, it is falling out.

I ended up sending my hair dresser a frantic text message begging for a hair appointment the next day. I needed bangs. Big, long bangs to cover up the now visible thinning at my hairline.

She obliged. I now have bangs.

If I put in my jaw splint and fluff up my bangs a little, I find myself looking at the 11-year-old me. Just so we’re clear, the 11-year-old me was tall and chubby with frizzy permed hair, braces and a bit of a lisp. I occasionally had to wear head gear. I was a sexy beast.

No biting, small story interruption

2007-11-02T10:51:00.000-07:00

A few Sundays ago I packed up my car and strapped the cats into the backseat and started the verbal “Did you forget anything” check with my mother, just like I always do when I leave their house. The last time I was there I left several vital hair-fixing accoutrements on the bathroom counter, like, just in the middle of the counter. I even looked in the bathroom before I left. Twice. Did I see the giant dryer sitting there on the yellow tile? No.

So my mother is going through our traditional ritual and it suddenly hits me that I’ve left my cell phone and blackberry chargers in my old room and my mother, being helpful, dashes inside to get them. She’s gone longer than I expect and I almost get out of the car to see if she’s gotten distracted by one of the stray mini-lizards that Jack, their cat, likes to bring in for play pretties. Like the rest of the family, he gets bored easily and is too much of a pussy to go in for the bloody kill; therefore he leaves their maimed and sometimes legless bodies to hobble and dart around the house. Kind of disgusting when you think about it, so don’t.

Just as I’m about to unbuckle, she comes out of the house carrying my laptop case, the laptop, the laptop charger and, oh yeah, the two things I remembered forgetting. Those two things in comparison to the laptop are worthless. Imagine me, rolling into work on Monday, looking at my desk and going WHAT THE FUCK, SOMEONE STOLE MY LAPTOP. But I’ve got my cell phone charger, so no worries!

I’d like to say I never forget things but that would be lying and liars go to hell. Probably less of a hell than child molesters but it’s hell nonetheless. And sadly, I can’t say this is an abnormal reaction, the panicking and tearing up of the purse and then coming to the (ridiculous) conclusion that the item(s) in question have been yanked by the Thief Fairy. Just last week I was getting ready for a business trip and was packing up my two laptops when I realized that I couldn’t find my aircard. It had been in my laptop case the week before, where was it now? STOLEN, THAT’S WHERE. So I walk down to my boss’s office and give him my nervous smile, which indicates it’s possible I’ve done something bad. Like letting my aircard get snatched. He comes over to my desk and, while I’m rifling through laptop case number one, he sticks his hand in laptop case number two, coming up with, guess what? An aircard! Voila, its is magic!

I’m quite glad that the aircard wasn’t stolen because as it turns out, that trip was canceled twelve hours before my flight, which means I was already packed when my mother called on Tuesday night to tell me my grandmother had gone into renal failure. Now, I’m not going to spend much time on all that because it’s a bit of a downer (Grandmother is dying! Come quick!) and because as it turns out she didn’t die (Grandmother’s not dying! Come quick!) and she’s currently holed up in rehab where her roommate wears socks with ready-made blue holes in the bottom. This is ultimately perplexing to me and I just can’t move on from the scary blue hole socks. If her feet were Mormon, this would make sense. But I didn’t sense any Mormon-ness in her, so, yeah, I don’t really know what to tell you. Grandma’s fine so stop crying.

The aircard was obviously useful because it was how I beamed magic internet particles into my laptop and “worked from home”- if “home” is really 240 miles away. I was working because as it turns out, my vacation hours sit steadily below the USELESS line (less than 10 hours but greater than 3 hours). This was all due to the week-long hospital stay back in August and the ensuing hilarity that made me wish for a bottle of Jack and a straight razor. (note: I THOUGHT I was getting credit for working while my grandmother lay in ICU but as it turns out, I was not. Cruel joke. If you feel like campaigning on my behalf, you can email Bossman@whogivesafuck.com).

It's a biter.

2007-11-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

Spend more than a night in a hospital and you come to realize that it’s like existing in a suspended reality where time is marked by the arbitrary delivery of green Jell-o and beef broth. It’s a state of being where, thanks to heavy doses of painkillers, a trip to the bathroom becomes the highlight of your day. I mean, where else would you find a seemingly sane woman relieving her bowels on industrial strength linoleum? And upon witnessing said act, respond with neither alarm nor horror and instead calmly notify the nearest be-scrubbed hospital worker?

But enough of all that. Day Two of my hospital stay was just as eventful as the first twelve hours had been, starting with my trip to the nuclear lab. The test itself wasn’t that bad, just a lot of stillness on a cot mattress with a big black drum placed over my midsection for three hours. A screen to my right showed the little nuclear bits going to work on my innards while I tried not to think about alien babies with exoskeletons and dripping mucus. My reverie was interrupted two hours into the test by my lab technician, who informed me they hadn’t been able to view a certain organ. This calls for a morphine injection, stat!

Now, I’ve had this test twice before and each time I’ve been given a morphine injection. I knew what to expect: a swift tingling in my legs spreading upwards towards my heart and down to my fingernails. I would float for a minute and swing gently back to earth. I would want a cookie afterwards. But this time, sweet jesus. It was like flaming balls of acid rolling along my veins until it settled in my stomach, which immediately revolted. As they were pushing my bed out of the nuclear lab I had a stomach contraction so intense I would later swear that the alien baby was gobbling up my internal organs in preparation for its stunning exit through my navel. It was not pleasant.

Thankfully hospitals are prepared for people who spontaneously dry heave and my lab tech had a popcorn bucket in front of me faster than you can say ‘Shoe Sale.’ I heaved all the way down six or seven indistinguishable corridors, straight back into my now spotless semi-private room, a room I was still sharing with my shitastic cell mate.

After an injection of anti-nausea medicine, things calmed down in the stomach region, at least somewhat. I was able to call my mother and tell her I was STILL in the hospital a whopping twenty-four hours later. I know, I know- twenty-four hours. I should get a medal. But seriously, did they misplace their magical illness detector? What was the holdup on getting my alien baby delivered? Could I not just get a stomach transplant?

I ended the call with my mother ten minutes later because even if she didn’t verbally express her grossed-outedness at my dry heaving on the phone in between sentences, I was having a hard time not being grossed out. There’s nothing so miserable as feeling perpetually nauseated with a stomach that says Fuck You at every available opportunity.

Before I hung up I told my mother that I was fine, no need to come up, I was a big girl, no worries. Inside I was screaming Can’t you fuckers fix this? I want my mommy, godammit! But still, as we get farther and farther away from the era when a sniffle warranted a full day at home with mom and ceaseless delivery of Sprite and Saltines, we feel obliged to exert our independence. I can handle this, don’t worry. It’s just an alien baby. People have those ALL THE TIME.

So I closed my eyes and let two fat self-pity tears trail down my cheeks before I drifted off into Candyland. Three hours later I woke up just as my mother was walking into the room. Apparently there’s some supersonic brain wave detector that lets moms know when their children are lying about needing them. Even if said children are skilled secret-keepers with years as practice.

Count to ten and see if it bites.

2007-10-24T15:41:00.000-07:00

Back in the middle of August I was working in the nursery on a Wednesday night when all of a sudden my stomach region gave me the finger and I collapsed to the floor in pain. It might have scared the kids a bit, but not as much if I’d let out the stream of GODDAMNSHITASHOMOTHERFUCKINGCOCKSUCKER THIS HURTS! I don’t have the money to pay for their therapy bills so I managed to keep my mouth shut and just groan with the kind of fervor that hopefully conveyed the above phrase, just, you know, without speaking.

Instead of going to the ER, which I probably should have done, I just kind of ignored it. This is a tradition in my family and why start breaking with tradition now, when I’m so close to 30? We’ve carved out our own breast lumps and sent them off for testing because asking the opinion of the doctor is just like admitting you’re stupid.

The aftershocks were still kicking my ass the next day so I made an appointment with my gastro specialist, a man who is not known for his sympathy or endearing bedside manner. I don’t like him much and I’m pretty sure the feeling is mutual, but that following Monday I found myself sharing breathing space with him, trying my best to convey that the pain? It had had been bad? And I wanted to stab myself? But couldn’t? Because nurseries are traditionally scarce on sharp objects?

He nodded abrubtly and left the room for some “papers,” coming back fifteen minutes later smelling like ink toner and Chinese food. According to him, I had 45 minutes to drive home, feed my cats, pack a bag and get to the hospital because shift change was at 6:30 and I didn’t want to get lost in the shuffle.

And then he turned around and walked out. I told you I didn’t like him, and now you don’t like him either. I hadn’t realized the papers he was referring to were admitting papers and I’m not even sure had he said “I’m going to get your admitting papers” that I would have made a connection between leaving the doctors office and checking into a hospital. Which is apparently not called checking-in, but ‘admitting.’ It’s not the Marriot and I now understand the full truth of that statement.

My first night there I was in a double room, which wasn’t really bothersome because I came prepared with earplugs and a sleeping mask. I’ve been in the ER enough times in my life to remember the BEEP BEEP BEEP MOTHERFUCKING BEEP of the heart monitor and the DRIP DRIP WHOOSH DRIP DRIP WHOREFACE DRIP DRIP of the IV line. Not conducive to sleeping. What I was not prepared for started very early the next morning on the other side of the curtained area. My cell mate decided she would start her day with some sporadic moaning and thrashing, followed by thirty minutes of violent pacing in her two square feet of allotted space. If you’re wondering how pacing can be violent then just continue reading, because I can’t say with certainty that I wouldn’t have paced violently if my body was about to drop a bomb on me. **Editors note: That’s not funny yet, but it will be.

While my cell mate continued her pacing I played with my heart rate- forcing it up, WHEEEEE! forcing it down, WHHOOOoooooo. Up! Wheeee! Down, Whoooo. I can do this with my blood pressure as well. Freaks the fuck outta nurses, let me tell you. On one of my down swings I noticed that the pacing behind the curtain had gotten sporadic. Pace pace pace stop, listen, slither plop. Pace pace pace stop, listen, slither plop. It took me a good sixty seconds to figure out what the stopping and slither plop was all about and I can tell you that I now look back on those sixty seconds with fondness. Those blessed sixty seconds spent wondering what the hell was going on, right before my olfactory glands kicked in and bitch slapped me.

She was dropping a bomb, all right. Big, goopey diarrhea bombs. On the floor. Now, this mental image probably isn’t the best but I need you to understand my absolute horror- She was pacing (pace pace pace), stopping at her desired location (stop), tilting her head to the side (listen), unleashing the viscous mass (slither) and waiting until it hit the floor (plop) before starting the process again.

I decided I was mature enough to keep my cool and crawled silently out of bed, pulling along my IV stand to the bathroom, praying for some nose relief. But no, that’s not how this game was to be played. The bathroom had already been bombed; the pee-catcher propped on the toilet was overflowing with poop, the floor was covered with poop and the sink handles were smeared with, two guesses, ok, I’ll give it to you- poop.

Outside in the hallway I overheard two nurse-like-people passing by and decided I’d give them their morning dose of What The Fuck.

“Excuse me ladies, my roommate seems to have had an accident.”

“We’ll get to it as soon as we change the sheets down the hall.”

“I’m afraid that would be too late. Here in about five minutes the River Styx will hit the threshold and I’m not sure I can keep last nights tasty dinner of Glucose Drip down while it makes its way under my bed.”

This catches their attention.

“Is she peeing on the floor again?”

“Peeing on the floor? Again? No ma’am. She’s shitting on the floor. And hopefully there won’t be an “again.”

During this conversation we had attracted the attention of three actual nurses who had started making their morning rounds. While catching them up on the situation I happened to raise my right arm to brace myself against the wall. I may not have been as bad off as Ms. Slither Plop, but I wasn’t feeling frisky and standing up plus conversing plus dragging my IV stand around was wearing me out. The fluorescent lights must have caught my arm just right because in my peripheral vision it looked like I had a flesh-colored cantaloupe strapped to my forearm. Right by the IV line. Upon close inspection it turned out that my peripheral vision wasn’t half bad. I DID have a flesh-colored cantaloupe strapped to my forearm.

“Is this a problem?” I asked, pointing to my IV arm.

“Oh, Jesus. How long has it been like that?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure this isn’t supposed to be comfortable but I have a very angry alien baby gestating in my stomach region and I haven’t been keeping track of anything else.”

“Who did your IV last night? My six-year-old daughter could do a better job.”

“That’s nice. Look, now that we’ve started pointing and talking about it, it appears that it really IS painful and I’d like to take it out. I’m not that squeamish- if you want I can just pull out the needle.”

“Uh, no. Let me get Sheila, she can take this out and start you a new line.”

So while I stood in the hallway with a cantaloupe forearm and a roommate with bowels like the Gulf of Mexico, I contemplated my fate. I had been admitted to the hospital, had a sonogram, been given a ridonkulous IV and slept in a room with a woman who has a habit of peeing on the floor. This was not the fluffy cloud where the Carebears live and I was exceptionally tired.

Ding Dang, Ya'll

2007-09-24T15:18:00.000-07:00

I had a whole series of posts planned out, and then I got distracted. This is nothing unusual. I get distracted all the time. I get distracted when I’m driving down the road and a pretty cloud floats by. I get distracted when I see ugly shoes. I even get distracted when I’m talking and a random thought creeps in, forcing me to pause and think while my listener waits with bated breath for me to finish. Or they just walk away.

After the administering of drugs I agreed to see the pyschobabblist because a) it was the only way to keep the drugs a-coming and b) I would get to use the following phrase in everyday discourse: “My therapist says….” Even knowing that my therapy experience wasn’t going to be near as exciting or couture-filled as Carrie Bradshaw’s (I don’t see a crazed Bon Jovi seeking therapy in Arkansas, much less being attracted to a girl who doesn’t frost her hair or spray tan), I did see it as an opportunity to finally figure out what happens in a “session.” I have a close friend who swears by her weekly “sessions” and spends a lot of time at the dinner table discussing “break throughs” and “mental blocks.” Most of the time I grit my teeth because these are things I have told her many, many times, but when it comes spewing forth from the mouth of a therapist, someone to whom you sign over your monthly paychecks, I guess it sounds more convincing.

The first session was probably the most involved, what with the seventeen pages of paperwork I had to fill out. How often did I experience anxiety? What were the triggers for the anxiety? What is my relationship like with my parents? How many times a day did I piss? So I ::cough:: took my time ::cough:: and answered the questions to the best of my ability. I told them that going into work everyday was like putting a cheese grater to my face and having to eat a taco salad garnished with the grated bits off my face and drizzled with bird shit. I told them that I had coked up hamsters running my heart rate, that my neck skin was having trouble remaining attached. I even mentioned my brother’s frequent run-ins with the law and that while I appreciated his dedication and single-minded determination to be the drunkest family member, it was STRESSING ME THE FUCK OUT. Smiley face.

The session itself was mostly unremarkable. Things continued fairly smoothly for the first forty minutes- the therapist spent most of her time going over my paper work and making comments about my ability to so graphically describe things. And then she made a mistake. She tried to pull the staring trick, the one where an individual ceases to speak, thereby intending to make the other person uncomfortable enough to open their trap and spill all their secrets. Only I don’t respond well to those kinds of tactics and stared right back. For four and a half minutes. The clock was right beside her head, so I’m fairly sure I have an accurate time measurement of the staring. She finally gave up and slapped her hands on her knees, drew in a deep breath and asked where I’d grown up. Therapist: 0, Robin: 1

During the next session we talked mainly about my health. Her suggestion was to take an aerobic class. I had to explain that aerobics, running or anything overtly physical was on the no-no list. All that bouncing around forces food back up into my esophagus, which allows the acid to burn fun holes on my vocal chords. I probably came off sounding overly critical during this session, mainly because I have three doctors that do nothing but monitor my stomach and esophagus. I get enough shit from them – Take your Nexium! Don’t take your Nexium! Avoid vegetables! Eat vegetables! Eat small meals! Stay away from breads! Eat a Happy Meal and tell me what happens! -- that I have no desire to hear anyone else’s opinion about what they think gastroparesis is and what I can do to cure it. First of all, it CAN’T be cured. Second, you’re trained to treat MENTAL PROBLEMS, not STOMACH PROBLEMS.

I only went back one more time after that- it was just too much stress on an already stress-filled plate. Thankfully, the doctor that actually doles out the drugs agreed to keep writing me prescriptions. Notice how the therapist, the one who listens to patient bullshit, is not the one who gets to hand out the drugs. She just makes a “recommendation” and the doctor nods his head wisely and hands you a prescription. Good times. I totally should have gone to school for that.

Now that that end is all nicely tied up, I can move on to the most exciting development of the summer: How I Amused Myself Whilst Spending 6.5 Days in the Hospital.

We have a winner

2007-08-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

It all started several months ago, when the questionable work environment, the random, incurable health problems and the drunkaholic younger brother insisted on feeding the hamsters that run my heart rate with line after line of cocaine, until the little rodents became so Lindsay-Lohan-ed that not even the threat of a stint in Promises would force them into time-out. It was bearable at first, the cocaine binges coming in spurts, pushing my chest into a jog-esque state. However, things finally culminated with the decidedly unbearable continuous sprints, pushing my heart muscle into an arena I’m quite sure it’s never seen nor felt, not being the kind of body who runs just for the hell of it.

And that’s what it felt like. Like I was running to or from god only knows what, with my body in slow motion. Move hand to keyboard, try not to panic, smile at passing co-worker, try to not panic, hear about brother’s drunken exploits, try not to panic. Until the ‘trying not to panic’ bit morphed into the sudden and abrupt realization that I wasn’t doing a very good job at the not panicking, especially when I couldn’t conceal the violent leg twitching. Always a dead giveaway.

So I packed up my pride and went to the doctor. I sat in the little sterilized room like any other patient, flipping through some inane magazine about hunting dogs, legs twitching, staring at the diagrams of inner ears and holding myself back from picking up the brochure on erectile dysfunction. I guess it was just a leftover curiosity from my youth- always wondering exactly what went on down there. Much as I’m sure men wonder exactly what a uterus does.

And I was fine sitting in that office, a perfectly normal person visiting the doctor to ask for some pills. I was fine right up until the doctor walked in and asked, in his deep and sympathetic voice, “So, how are you?” and immediately burst into tears. Big, gulping, gut wrenching, complete disregard for the mascara tears. In front of a man I had never met. I should have died of embarrassment, but it was like I had immediately been transported back to the age of six, when I’d been careening down Quail Lane Dr. with my three best friends, taking the hill at enormous speeds, laughing at the pure joy of releasing the handle bars when BAM! I crashed straight into a neighbor’s curb, scraping the skin off both knees and elbows. But me? I jumped right back up, no harm done, right? I was a godamn six-year-old badass and nothing was going to stop me from riding home on my now dinged-up bike. So I did, I rode straight home with nary a tear in sight, not until my momma saw my dirt stained face and blood streaked legs and, again with the soft and sympathetic voice, said “Oh, my sweet baby, are you okay?” Tears. Tears, tears and more tears.

Between my hiccupping and snot-wiping, I finally got it all out. I told a single person my stomach-clawing worries and he just sat there and listened. No smug smile, no move for a hug, just listened. Which is good, because I don’t react well to hugs or touching from strangers and while most people can grasp my non-too-subtle vibe, there are those who ignore it anyway. But he continued nodding until I had completely finished, told me I wasn’t crazy like I kept claiming to be and all I needed were a few of these pills.

Pills! Finally! Relief in sight! Though normally I will eschew even the barest of medications, I couldn’t help but wait greedily for my prescriptions. Anything, whatever it takes, just make the coked up hamsters go away.

But there was a catch- he was only a family practitioner, and he wasn’t in the habit of treating mental thingamabobs on a regular basis. So, deep breath, I had to see a psychiatrist. At that moment I wouldn’t have cared if he’d said I needed to have my ear lobes shortened and my pinkie toe removed- I’m an adult, and a reasonably intelligent one at that. I can handle a pyschobabbleist. Just as long as they keep the pills a-coming. I already had my trial tablets in hand with a prescription for a mighty heavy tranquilizer, so I was keen to roll my chubby ass out of the office and straight into Wal-Greens, promising I’d visit his recommended pyschobubble the very next Thursday.

That visit, the one with the pyschotherapydollhead, was quite the adventure.

Waxing On

2007-07-11T09:35:00.001-07:00

To say I've been mildly disinterested in the goings-on of daily life would be a mild understatement and if there's anything I abhor, it's a statement that could have been adjectivified to death. And wasn't. It's like leaving a baby to starve. Or eating picked eggs from the gas station.

I can't think of any witty or humorous transitions for the non-post I'm about to compile, so you'll just have to bear with me. Or move along. My apathy level is right on par with that of a coked up hooker and besides, there's only like sixteen of you out there. I know this because I occasionally check my sitemeter, which is how (transition approaching) I came up with the following: A twisted look into what, exactly, leads people to this site. Obviously the Google team and I need to sit down and have a little chat.

Search words that have, however unfortunately, led people to birdsovafeather:

Prickly feeling after injecting crystal (My personal opinion? A dirty needle and a raging case of herpes.)

Hi, my name's Max and I'm an adrenaline junkie. I need my adrenaline shot every day. (Starbucks is on every corner, douche.)

Big black jumping roach indoors (Hmm. Pesticide and/or a large shoe should take care of that.)

Is it proper ettyqet {sic} to wear shit hose with brown shoes (I have no idea. But then, I don't own many pairs of hose made out of shit.)

Plunger game. (What the fuck.)

What kind of poison can make a hamster die and bleed out of mouth and nose? (Well, I'd be curious to know if you're trying to kill your pet or just ascertain the manner of death. Either way, it's a hamster. LET IT GO.)

"felt the bump" + "ran over" (So, you had a little accident with your ex-girlfriend, did you? Ran her over in the parking lot? Wanting to know if "feeling the bump" qualifies you for legal ramifications? Now, I know I watch too much CSI, but I'm pretty sure you're fucked.)

llama + "stomach acid" (I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure this person was researching biological weapons.)

8 pills singel doze clamydia {sic} (Obviously our educational system is falling below par. If you can't even spell "single" correctly, I can't imagine how you could keep yourself STD-free.)

fetish of wiping poop (Having wiped a lot of asses in my day, I cannot fathom how this would be appealing on a sexual level.)

Crystal light turns my poop red (Stop drinking red Crystal Light. Problem solved.)

Cutting a cake and screaming out the demons (I think this person might be in need of some serious psychological evaluation.)

I have a marble stuck in my throat (Deary Precious Baby Jesus, please send your army of angels to strike this person dead.)

Can a peanut get stuck in my esophagus? (Yes.)

Heavy Breathing

2007-05-27T14:32:00.001-07:00

Thursday morning we were all slow to get up, especially Kasi, who's reluctance was at least in part due to her "insomniac" status. It is my very humble opinion that a good portion of that non-sleeping can be blamed on someone's mild addiction to Facebook. I am no one to judge because hello, I am totally all over the covert online stalking. Driving past your ex's house is so 1996.

After a quick bite to eat we headed up roads that are commonly known as 'pig trails' in northern Arkansas. I'd been delegated to the driver seat because I am that kid who turns multiple shades of green right before vomiting all over your grey upholstery- and lord knows how hard it is to get that smell out. Best just to let me continue with my controlling personality and let me drive.

After ten minutes of driving up a mountain in a Civic, taking curves at 25mph and staring warilly at the one-foot-high railing, Kasi threw herself without warning onto the front armrest. As it turns out, all three of us are prone to car sickness. And even if we weren't prone to car sickness, those mountain roads would have forced anyone to reconsider the buffalo chicken sandwich they had for lunch.

We stopped at several lookout ponts along the drive, if for nothing else than to put our feet on solid, non-moving ground. Also, the pictures were nice. Even though Kasi delighted in making me nervous by clambering over railings and hanging onto the backs of signs, thus leading to some really unflattering pictures of me, standing with my shoulders up by my ears and eyebrows that fade straight into my hairline.

The whole point of the drive was to stop at Craggy Pointe and do something called 'hiking.' I was promised that the 'hiking' would not involve boulder jumping or climbing or areas without protective railings. Say what you want about me, say that I'm a weeney, that I'm unathletic, that I'm inherently lazy. But just understand that while you are tumbling to your death after a railing gives way, I am probably waiving at the cabana boy for another margarita. And you can't waive at the cabana boy from the bottom of a ravine when your arm is being chewed off by vicious gophers.

The hiking wasn't really that bad, at least not as bad as I'm making it out to be. I did get lots of enouragement from Becca and Kasi, friends who never once rolled their eyes when I told them that we were going to have to stop and rest. Again. Becca kept promising that I would feel such a sense of accomplishment when I reached the top, even pulling out her camera to capture that moment when I finally pulled my ass up the last step. That picture will never see the light of day, a) because I was bracing my upper body on my knees and you can see straight down my shirt and b) you can clearly see the bloody mass of a lung that I lost on the way the way up. I blame the high altitude.

I can't say as I'd hike every day, all day- and I still think people who roll up in the Smokey Mountains for three months of solitary hiking are fucking insane- but I might consider doing it again. For money.

2007-05-25T20:49:00.001-07:00

I would just like to know how all five hotels are booked in Timfuckto, TN. The only attraction in this town is the Loretta Lynn Museum and Dude Ranch. Give me break.

2007-05-24T00:11:00.001-07:00

ZerO percent humidity. It's late, don't judge.

Zerp percent humidity leads to good hair days

2007-05-23T23:47:00.001-07:00

The interesting thing about today was not the abundance of incense-burning stores, but rather the fact that I walked for seven straight hours- up the hill, down the hill, up the hill again- and never once broke a sweat. Not even like a pre-sweat where you feel the back of your neck getting hot and the hair around your neck (at least mine, anyway) rebels against the smoothing effects of a straightener and ringlets itself out of sheer defiance.

This was a nice change of pace after the 85% humidity of Central Arkansas.

Midway through the day I found myself wandering through a store full of shoes. Shoes on sale. Racks of shoes. On sale. But as much as I love seeing Irish green flats with delicate bows, I have a foot thing. Not like a nasty foot thing, just a foot thing that usually requires a special order. That is, unless I happen to get lucky and some poor shopkeeper has taken pity on the Big Foots with bony heels and narrow widths. Try finding a size 10AAA. Just try.

I'd changed out of my polka dot flats earlier in the day because they were rubbing the ragged cut on my foot that stems from where Butterbean mistook my dangling foot for a ladder. Always the girlscout, I had planned for this event and packed my favorite (and only) pair of black flipflops. These are the same flops I purchased three years ago from the discount bin at Walmart. In those three years they survived several stints as a cat chew toy and that time in Mexico when ::cough:: someone ::cough:: dropped a lit cigarrette while lounging in a beach chair. This person may or may not have been slightly intoxicated. Either way, the heel of the flop has sported a character buiding half-hole since the summer of 2004. It's safe to say that it was time for The Replacements to roll in.

Because I am vacationing in a land where people do not judge you on the basis of your designer jeans but rather the brand name of your polar fleece, every store we visited had multiple selections of "shoes." Some of these "shoes" are made specifically for walking on creek beds. Others are made for rock climbing. And still others are made for the hippies to buy and wear to Phish-esque shows as they normally have to park way far away, and that's a lot of walking for someone so high.

Attempting to aid in my flop relacement, the girls first convinced me to try on a pair of flipflops made by Choco. Every time I heard this I thought of the Choco Taco at Taco Bell and I just couldn't bring myself to pay fifty bucks for something so ugly.

Later I tried on a pair made by Teva. At twenty bucks this was far more reasonable and far less ugly. So I puchased them just as the store was closing, immediately running outside for a ceremonial trashing of the rubber foam that has carried me from Mexico to Dallas and from Dallas to Asheville. They now lie borken-heartedly in a dumpster off Lexington Ave. I will miss them.

Oh My.

2007-05-23T13:20:00.001-07:00

I have encountered my very first Granola. She does not wear deoderant, shave her legs, wax her moustache or comb her hair. I am very aware of the deoderant situation because she keeps walking past my seat in the dressing room. Jesus Christ Almighty. We need an intervention.

Tennessee is far too long a state

2007-05-23T07:37:00.001-07:00

After twelve hours in a very small Honda Civic, Kasi and I made it to Becca's house. Before we move on, I'd like to point out that her directions to the house included "turn left by the taco stand." This was a moment of clarity for me; we were rolling into a town where the tacos? They are sold out of stands? Not that I would ever eat a taco stand taco, but still. The fact that other people eat taco stand tacos means this place might actually serve BBQ ribs with actual ribs and not vegan tofu rib substitute.

In the car, in one of our many half-delirious conversations, Kasi ended up divulging some pretty interesting factoids. Like how she and Becca had agreed to refer to everything as a "walk." As in, "Hey Robin, let's go take a walk around the mountain park!. Or, "Hey Robin, let's take a walk to that waterfall in the park brochure!". Replace "hike" for every "walk" and you've got the truthfull description of the activity. But knowing my proclivity to veto a hiking excursion, the girls were going to try a little bit of trickery- all in an attempt to get my chubby ass up a mountain.

The thing about hiking is that I don't necessarily hate it. Its just that I have a very literal translation of words, and when someone says "Let's go hiking!" I assume they mean "Let's take up our walking sticks and leap like goats from boulder to boulder!". This literal translation problem is the exact same thing that got me into trouble when my friend Lily suggested we "float" the river. Only "float" really meant "paddle fervently inside a metal Canoe of Death," and did not mean that we were going to float gracefully down the river on a no-paddling-needed flotation device.

I have to admit, the walking trick probably would have worked. But now that I am wise to their ways, they will have to provide physical proof that the "hikes" are free from boulder-jumping. I am, quite obviously, not a goat. Also, shoe-oriented Southern girls have a very hard time reconciling their outfit with sneakers.

Scooby-do-it-yourself

2007-05-21T18:22:00.001-07:00

The pre-vacation sprint has worn me out.

But! Have had epiphany about the blackberry. I was going to attempt to sever the umbilical cord, the one so firmly connecting me to mobile google-stalking and instant emails. But look! I can email post, which is so very different from my other nefarious activities!

Sigh of relief.

Take those old records off the shelf

2007-05-21T17:46:00.000-07:00

In less than 36 hours I will be headed out of a town on an east bound train.
Only the train is my car and the beverage cart is my cooler full of Diet
Pepsi and grapes.

Its been nearly seven years since I took a proper road trip and just as long
since I took a proper vacation.  Technically I took a trip to Mexico three
years ago with two guys, which theoretically fits the Vacation description
(no work, abundant beer). However,I don't feel its a vacation if you spend the
majority of your time ducking the pussy being thrown in the vicinity of your
hotel room. I'm not sure if my friends were really that hot or if the equatorial
sun plays tricks on the eyes, but the naked girls that paraded in and out of that
room were enough to force me into a temporary Lysol high. Thus voiding my
vacation experience.

Long story short, I am seriously in need of a change of scenery.

I'm going to be driving with my friend Kasi to visit our friend Becca in
Ashvegas(Asheville), North Carolina. I've yet to figure out why its referred to
as Ashvegas because from what I understand, this is the place where granola comes
to die.

Even though Becca was born and raised in Little Rock, she could not have found
another city so closely matched to her patchouli-wearing lifestyle. For example:
The first time I met her she was wearing a blue potato sack dress, Birkenstocks
and a jingle bell  anklet. Those Birkenstocks nearly had to be pried from her
cold dead feet, but Kasi and I put our manicured feet down when Becca considered
fixing the broken straps with duct tape. As someone who takes an inordinate amount
of pride in her shoes, this was just anunacceptable answer to the broken strap
problem. The acceptable answer,obviously, was to buy new shoes.

Later Becca moved on to the closed-toe Birk. I didn't really find this a step up
in shoecouture, however. Just think- instead of letting the foot smell waft around
and dissipate, the closed-toe version was merely bottling it up inside its leather
confines, waiting for an unsuspecting roommate to pick them up and die from
olfactory overload.

I'm picking on Becca's not-so-latent hippie tendencies, just as she would pick on
me formy shoe elitism and heathenistic tendencies. Notice, please, that I said
HEATHENistic and not HEDONistic. I am much to preppy to, you know, act all
hedon-y.

My only goal for the next week is to drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a road that
took fifty years to build. Last week I watched a special on mountain roads, and the
Blue Ridge Parkway was a main feature on the program. Though the scenes involving
over-the-cliff shots freaked me out, I'm open to stopping and taking some pictures.
Assuming my friends sign a no-pushing contract and I am guaranteed at least fifteen
feet between me and the railing. Those railings are never near high enough for my
paranoid sensibilitites.

Other than avoiding a rocky death, I plan on sleeping late and eating lots of organic
free range chicken with gluten and dairy-free mashed potatoes. I'm only assuming
that this is what granola people eat. Here's hoping its more than just granola because
this kid needs her daily dose of non-vegan entrees.

We plan on having a photo journal of sorts, which will not be near as artistic as the
name implies. I would wager that most of the shots will be coming from the inside of
a moving vehicle. I may or may not post them throughout the week because HELLO,
this is a vacation. But this is 2007, not 1999. I will be traveling with my digital
camera, cell phone, blackberry and laptop. These items are just as necessary as
toothpaste and razors.

Maggot on my sleeve and a Bozo nightmare

2007-05-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

My only goal for this weekend is to change the filter on the vacuum cleaner. For the past six months I have ignored the fact that perhaps the vacuum’s lackluster performance could, at least in part, be blamed on the bits of treated paper and plastic that were coated in layers of icky dirt. The same dirt that I do not acknowledge as being a part of my carpet. Theoretically I could wash the filter but I never remember that interesting little fact until I’ve already begun cursing the vacuum for missing that clump of cat hair, right there. Oh, and over there.

Also, the fact that the filter encourages you to wash it with warm soapy water but threatens you with certain death should you NOT LET IT DRY COMPLETELY, well, this just scares me. If I can’t remember to put soap in the dishwasher how am I going to remember to let the filter dry completely before inserting it back in the vacuum?

If I’m honest with myself, the filter changing thing was my goal for last night. I did at least take it out of its package, but the package opening coincided with an episode of ‘Workout’ on Bravo. I haven’t been near a gym in ten months but watching mindless television turned out to be way more interesting than taking apart the vacuum cleaner.

And if I’m even more honest with myself, the filter changing was my goal for Tuesday. The thing about making goals is that if you don’t really feel like accomplishing them, you just mark them off the list and move them a few days away. This is how I manage to be both obsessively organized and astoundingly lazy. And while Tuesday would have seemed like an excellent day for accomplishing tasks, what with my whole day off and all, as it turns out it was not. I was very busy thumbing my nose at the doctor after he told me I was never, ever to eat bread. Like, ever again.

This was disturbing news to me. I mean, bread. BREAD. How can you be so mean to the yeasty goodness? And so I nodded my head in the same way that I used to nod my head at my father when he told me I should practice changing the tires on my car. I am non-verbally telling you that while your idea seems good to you, it seems non-good to me. Therefore I will be ignoring you from now on.

After the visit I drove across town to the Krispy Kreme. I don’t really care for their donuts but their pastries, oh, their pastries. Would you like some pastry stuffed with strawberries and crème? Would you like it topped with drizzly icing? Would you? Well, did you know that they come by the dozen?

I ate three in the time it takes me to drive downtown. And then I spent three hours on my couch bemoaning the fact that my stomach was trying to claw its way out by way of my belly button. And my sternum. And probably my knees. I was miserable and cranky and uncomfortable. It was one thing to ask me, politely, to cut back on the bread. But to issue a decree, a stern one at that- well, my natural inclination was to revert to the mentality of a four-year-old with a really good grasp of the f-word.

I’m not sure how well I’m going to stick to this new order. I feel extreme embarrassment when I order something and ask them to hold the croutons or the tortillas or the side of delicious crunchy bread. I’m utterly paranoid that someone is mentally rolling their eyes at my attempt at fad dieting and I have to stop myself from word vomiting that I’m only doing what the doctor told me to do, SO THERE. I’m also of the opinion that I should be secure in the size and shape of my body, even though I most assuredly am not. But that doesn’t mean that other people need to know I’m moderately insecure. But it’s totally okay for people to know that they don’t make near enough drugs for my Crazy.

Pants on fire

2007-04-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

Back in January when my job and my cats and my bleeding esophageal region all decided to bare their vicious teeth and rip the limbs from my body, I thought I could perhaps turn the remnants of my energy into a job search. Washing clothes and scooping cat litter were not important, but labeling manila folders and organizing recommendation letters, resume’s and portfolio information were right up there with breathing.

My mother has always told me that I’m the most sporadically organized person she knows; meaning I have a specific order for plate distribution in the kitchen cabinets but will shove the cheese and the chicken and the grapes all in the same refrigerator bin. I organize my clothes by color and length of sleeve but care nothing about the top shelf of the closet, covered as it is with old Christmas decorations, clean sheets and a tool box. I will also re-make the bed after you, because you have no idea how to do it right.

The job searching turned out to be mildly fruitful with a whopping total of 1.5 job offers. The point five was an offer I knew was coming but couldn’t bear the thought of accepting, so I played my ‘No-Thank-You’ card before she got back to me with the salary information. The second offer came the day after we found out about the severance package, which means I suddenly had images of gold-plated sugar plums dancing in my head. Not really, because the package isn’t as gilded as I’d like to believe, seeing as how I have to stay here until the very end of the transition before I’m rewarded for my ::cough:: loyalty.

During this time frame I probably applied for twenty to twenty-five jobs. Jobs in Arkansas, jobs in Texas, jobs in the farthest, most ass-cold regions of Maine. I even applied for a job in Austria. What? They said they wanted English-speakers. But as the end of January drew near, I became less inclined to reply to emails or phone calls. I’d reached a point of acceptance with my current situation and had decided to give it until July, after the next Big Meeting with Big Information. This would give me a better idea of exactly how long I’ve got, rather than the speculation I’m currently running on.

Then two weeks ago I got a call from an unknown number. It was Jake*, calling from a company that I’d applied to nearly three months before. I’d heard through the grapevine that there’d been a hiring freeze and beyond that, the job application hadn’t registered on my radar. But Jake wanted a pre-interview phone interview- and if you’re confused with that request then trust me, so was I. He wanted to interview me on the phone before he actually INTERVIEWED ME ON THE PHONE. And if they liked me, I might even get a chance to come into the office. Whatever. I’m not in the habit of being outrightly rude. Cranky, maybe, if you cut me off on the interstate. And sure, I’ll give you a glimpse of my finger. But I very rarely flick people’s ears or hang up on callers, an action so unspeakably rude that my Southern sensibilities just bristle at the thought.

After he concluded the interview I rested comfortably in my seat, secure in the knowledge that I definitely wouldn’t be hearing from Jake ever again. He’d wanted me to do things with numbers. Like, add them. And analyze them. Which I could totally do, if the numbers were letters and I had to form words with them.

That afternoon I ambled home from work and decided that I had enough energy to check my sitemeter. I rarely do this, because honestly, who cares? I know that I will always have that one visitor from Tehran with a referring search of “Hot asien slutts,” a string of words that somehow sends them directly to my page. I’ve ceased contemplating how this happens.

Something strange caught my eye during my review of sitemeter- someone had read thirty-three pages of my blog with an IP address leading straight back to Company Blah, the same company that Jake the Phone Interviewer had called from two hours before. And the time stamp? Less than 20 minutes after we hung up the phone.

Maybe I’m being paranoid. It’s possible. But I just never considered the ramifications of pasting my In Living Color Real Name in the upper right hand corner. I wondered for a split second what it would be like to know exactly how crazy your possible employees are. Did he linger over high school stories detailing my ridiculously reject-like experiences? Did he pause over the purse-o-vomit story? Or did he wonder how long I was going to whine about my Weeks of Shittiness, effectively beating a dead horse that everyone had to read about, oh, I don’t know, seventy-five times. Only to say I beat the horse is a bit insulting to the horse, as I not only beat the horse, I drop kicked the horse into a branch shredder, a la’ Fargo. You might say I’m a bit whiny.

I contemplated a) removing this site, b) setting it to private and c) removing my name. But nothing felt right. This blog is far less unprofessional than some of the things people do in their free time. I don’t ACTUALLY beat dead (or living) horses. I don’t throw back a fifth of whiskey every night. I don’t cheat on my taxes. I just run my mouth. A lot. About total shit. Boring, ridiculous and nonsensical shit.

DEAR FUTURE EMPLOYERS:

This site is for my amusement only. I have never (now will I ever) indicate the name or location of my employment. I will not talk about a boss’s incompetence or how my VP left a stanker in the restroom. I will, however, write about cat shit and human shit and maybe even some goat shit. I will be long winded.

Please note that I am not serious when I refer to alien transmitters implanted in my esophagus, nor am I inclined to stab people with stilettos. It’s all in good fun, promise.

Sincerely,
Robin Holmes

I need more drugs for my Crazy

2007-04-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I spent my normally Reserved for Sleeping Saturday in the clutches of three children under the age of five, one of which still shits her pants. The whole diaper changing thing isn’t really a deterrent to care-giving because, hello, this is what I do every Wednesday and Sunday. I wipe poop from dirty bottoms. I wipe poop from dirty legs. I wipe poop from the bathroom floor when little Charlie mistakes the toddler toilet for a flesh-eating monster, taking a giant dump on the linoleum instead. But kids go into a different behavioral mode when they know Mommy Dearest is more than a few stairs away. They transform into needy heathen sticky monkeys who will climb your shoulder because that spot, right there? the clean one? the one not covered in Koolaid? LET’S SMEAR OUR LEFTOVER ICECREAM ON IT.

Of course the exasperation all melts away when the little girl who would not. stop. talking. less than thirty seconds before suddenly feels the need to curl contentedly in your lap. And says she loves you. But then she accidentally knees you in the shin and gets your hair caught in her zipper and you remember, with blinding clarity, that raising a child rates right up there with eating a bowl of urine covered earwax.

Later that afternoon, when all three children had finally (finally!) laid down for their afternoon nap, I took the opportunity to enjoy my friend’s snazzy new television and her plethora of channels. It was a nice respite, because for a solid hour I got to watch a program with actual dialogue and cuss words without the lingering fear that someone would turn their innocent eyes in my direction and ask, “Miss Robin, what’s a dildo?” To which I would reply, “An adult tool that leads to certain blindness.”

While I was laying on the couch, my friend’s husband commented on the fact that I had monkey feet. I’m not sure what this means, the monkey feet comment, but I know it doesn’t bother me that much. I mean, if he had said I had a monkey ass we’d be scrapping directly. Word. Those monkey asses leave something to be desired, especially when you get into the whole huge bulbous red ass on the orangutan thing.

The foot comment reminded me of a reader I had about a year ago out of the UK. Apparently he’d stumbled across my blog, followed by my Flickr website, followed by the picture of me showing off my One True Talent: the ability to flip you off with my left foot. My father can also perform this feat due to a nonexistent joint in the middle toe. Though even he admits he’d never fully realized his deformity’s potential until I came along.

My UK reader had a propensity for long winded emails, most revolving around his burning need for my feet and his outstanding career as a podiatrist. This merely cemented my feeling that foot-doctors need to be on medication. Strong, heavy-on-the-sedatives medication. Lucky for me, my UK friend had a whole network of feet-minded individuals and I saw a drastic upswing on my visitor log with a majority coming from the UK. All of them had a referring url of this , which leads straight to my post on ::retching:: corns. The corns I got on my pinkie toe after wearing shoes conducive to ripping someone a new asshole. Also known as the pointy-toe ones.

To say I began to get a bit panicked was a bit of an understatement. I kept seeing the scene in ‘Kiss the Girls’ when the police stumble upon a freezer full of feet. Feet. In a freezer. Freezer-o-Feet. I go out of my way to not acknowledge feet, especially anything associated with Sexy and Feet all in the same thought. I once sat at a dinner table while my friend compared her husband sucking on her toes to a mini-orgasm. I cannot agree or disagree with this statement because should someone come at my foot with an open mouth, I will probably assume that they’re getting ready to bite them off. Also, feet in mouth? Isn’t there a disease called Hoof and Mouth? Same thing, right?

So I kindly (also known as ‘curtly’) responded to the emails from my UK friend, indicating I did not share his foot fetish nor would I be willing to send him additional pictures of my feet. I haven’t heard from him since last August and I can’t say as I’m sad about that. I sincerely hope he’s gotten that whole foot thing under control and, if not, is harassing someone closer to home.

Trying to get to you and that booty

2007-03-30T13:45:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, I quite like the term "international pariah."

Now if only someone *ahem* would feed the pariah some poisoned sardines...

I Got Your Hey-Oh

2007-03-14T21:53:00.000-07:00

1. I am only somewhat amused by the gleaming white toilet currently adorning my neighbor’s side yard. It’s been a month now and I’m more than tempted to gather up a bag of cat shit and dump it unceremoniously in the bowl. I wonder if my neighbor is confused about the generally accepted functions and locations of a toilet. I mean, maybe they're from the hills of Uzbekistan where a toilet is considered a Tool of Satan. Maybe they like hovering over a hole in ground. Maybe it’s an art installation piece and I’m just too uncultured to appreciate its bold statement about the struggle of humanity against oppressive societal norms. Or maybe they’re just lazy. Total toss-up. Also, the piece of plywood propped up against the toilet tank does nothing to disguise the actual fucking toilet sitting in the yard. The YARD, people.

2. Whenever I go to the grocery store I have to drive past a giant green billboard with JESUS in pristine white letters. It’s always confused me because there is no church affiliation stamp to lead Jesus-seekers to the proper Jesus location. Just Jesus. All the time. I also seem to pass the disgusting foot sore billboard, at least more than I would consider my fair share. I’m all for people getting foot ailments taken care of, but I’m not sure it’s really necessary for me to see a giant gaping quarter-sized crusty hole on the bottom of some customer’s foot. Because, EW.

3. My new work schedule makes every day feel like Saturday. Only I’ve discovered I don’t much like a never-ending Saturday. I get the impression I’ve been sucked into some Groundhog Day-esque time warp. Let’s do the time warp again! God, sorry, total flashback to my college days and dancing to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack dressed up as Snow White. That whole Snow White thing is a complicated explanation; just rest assured I was a bitchin Snow White. I had chin-length dark hair with pale skin and cartoon-proportioned breasts. Put me in a blue dress and it was like sending out a homing beacon to all the cranky dwarves in the world.

4. I’m pretty sure someone just got shot in the house next door. Only logical explanation, really. I heard a pop, followed by an OH SHIT, followed by a BITCH! followed by the sound of rubber not making good contact with wet pavement followed by police sirens about ten minutes later. The last time I heard someone get shot I was living on the corner of Broadway and 16th. Don’t judge, it was a wicked cute apartment. Anyway, as it happened some young delinquent with robbery (and crack) on the brain decided to break into my neighbor’s restored Victorian house. The delinquent was obviously new to the ‘hood because of all the houses to pick, THIS WAS DEFINITELY NOT THE ONE. The guy gardened with a 22 by his side, for goodness sake. His car was covered with NRA and ‘God Bless George W.’ stickers. Put two and two together and you’ve got a gun-toting right-wing Republican. I recognized him for a man not unlike my father, who told me if someone ever tried to break in our house that I was to aim for the head and drag the body inside the house. Didn’t want the little fuckers suing us after a disabling shot. As for my neighbor, he aimed the gun through his window when he heard the lock being jimmied. He missed the first, second and third time. But then he got good and warmed up, jogged out the front door and shot the would-be deviant as he was running down the street. All in all, it was quite the good time.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition

2007-03-01T10:44:00.000-08:00

It’s not to say that I’ve become disenchanted or disillusioned, because that would imply I had grandiose illusions and, um, enchantments to begin with. Is ‘enchantments’ really the word I’m looking for? Because short of stewing toad legs and newt eyes in my spare time, I can’t say as I’ve ever let myself be enchanted by much of anything. I’m nothing if not a realist. Maybe a very optimistic realist, but a realist nonetheless. I’m aware that kittens get run over, puppies are bludgeoned and little old ladies have their life savings stolen by men of ill repute, men who normally lack a full set of teeth. Maybe the grannies relate to their lack of toothedness, I have no idea.

I’ve spent the past few weeks simmering down from my full boil of righteous anger after a boss of mine was treated horribly. This, in turn, means that what little morale we had left around this place has gone directly down the shitter. It’s gone down so far and so hard, not even Heidi Fleiss can relate. Here was a man standing up for us, speaking his mind (as he was encouraged to do) and running our department with the kind of intelligence that makes me struggle with ever referring to myself as a Smart Kid. Then one greasy old cheeseburger of a woman gets her panties in a twist, smiles smugly and says There’s the door, sonny.

It started back in October, when my boss, we’ll call him the Can Can Man, got wind of some change in the air. The change had the kind of odor that accompanies Important Decision Makers within general crumbling companies that are struggling to keep their very large heads above water. This odor is greatly reminiscent of dirty asshole, because more often than not these Important Decision Makers have their heads firmly lodged in someone else’s rectum. And if I had someone’s head lodged up there, I’d have a hard time keeping that particular area clean, too; hence, the smell of dirty asshole. Not pretty flowers, just asshole.

The rest of us got the news at the start of January. Happy New Year, ya’ll! It was a shock to say the least because, hello, we make money. Oodles and oodles of money. The Big Company? Not so much. We’re better and quicker and faster than The Big Company because down here in Aw Shucksville, Arkansas, we don’t fuck around. It’s too hot for all that. Plus, there’s a rule in the handbook about putting your head up where the sun don’t shine. It ain’t sanitary, it ain’t healthy and it sure ain’t conducive to getting your work done and heading on home for a cold beer on the front porch.

The thing about The Decision (the one that puts me out of a job in X amount of months) is it really does look good from a high-level perspective. Can Can Man made a note to point this out because it’s best to understand the rationale THAT PUTS ME OUT OF A JOB. But when the Big Company brings in a third party to run test after test, wouldn’t you think it would be a good idea to utilize that information? The information that says this company right here in Arkansas, whooo-eee do they get their shit done right- ya’lls yankee system ain’t near as fine as what they got right here, and we reckon you’ll lose a bunch of money by trying to reabsorb their business. Can Can Man thought so, too. And he wasn’t shy about saying it.

Ultimately this was his downfall. The Big Company just wasn’t used to hearing such clear, succinct words. After all, it’s rather hard to understand someone when they’re speaking from the general location of your colon. Can Can Man had valid points: why WOULD you destroy a system that generates millions of dollars to put it on your decrepit and function-less one? Why would you ignore processes and procedures that we can prove generate a substantial profit? Why would you ignore study after study after study that says THIS is the better system THIS is the better process and THIS is the better company?

Why? Because someone way up high, someone so high on the food chain they’ve retired their personal ass hat, said so. They deemed it so, and so it shall be.

They said it was Can Can’s fault that we were leaving in droves. They said he should have done more to keep us here until the end. The end where they hand us our meager severance check and we all pray for a job in the middle of this forest called Little Rock. What they didn’t, and don’t, understand was this: He was the reason we stayed as long as we did. He was our morale booster, our rock of knowledge. You don’t find those qualities much nowadays. Mostly you get the Vice President who kiss-assed his way to the top, or the one that knows his job but couldn’t begin to grow appropriate personnel skills.

And so, because I’m too low on the ladder for anyone to really listen to me, here’s what I’ve got to say:

Dear Big Company,
You are very cordially invited to go fuck yourself.
Sincerely,
Robin Holmes

Overall I’m just gravely disappointed, and I hate it that I didn’t expect to feel any other way. What little loyalty I had left was destroyed by the treatment of Can Can Man and you can bet I’m going to smile when you fall flat on your ass. Of course, you won’t really fall. You’ll just move your losses here and there, claiming that they’re capital interest or some such flumubbery. That spreadsheet where you showcase your loss-recoup time will casually be thrown in the shredder and you’ll all pinky swear not to tell the board of directors about your giant failure. No one but us slow-brained Arkansans will remember how you made a poor decision and went about that decision’s execution like a two-year-old and a plate of spaghetti.

I wonder how long it will take before I get fired for running my mouth.

Honey put on that party dress

2007-02-13T14:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning I drove across town, to the place where hillbillies and the like build plywood houses for refuge against the bustling demonicity of The City, to drop my car off for repairs. I wouldn’t have chosen this particular body shop had it not been for my last experience with bumper replacement. A year and a half ago I let the insurance agent suggest/coerce me into going to XYZ body shop, the body shop that is run by my ex-employer. This wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, except the last time I saw my old boss I was screaming Fuck You and other obscenities. I also might have mentioned his tight pants, and that he might want to take his miniscule dick that he so loved showing off and put it in his ass. I was having a very bad day. And he deserved it.

There was nothing so awkward as running headlong into the aforementioned previous employer, because even though we both smiled and shook hands, there is no doubt in my mind that while I was thinking Coked up fucktard he was thinking Raging bitchface. I crossed my fingers and prayed that my Honda came back with a recognizable paint color and intact upholstery. It did, but still. I figured it was best to be on the safe side this time around.

Which is how I ended up among the cast of Deliverance in bumfuck Little Rock, waiting patiently in their trailer-turned-waiting room for Enterprise to make good on their commercials. Twenty minutes later I was greeted by Joe, my friendly car rental representative. Joe had obviously had a hard life, one that involved a lack of teeth-brushing and a possible head trauma.

During the fifteen minute drive back into town I was serenaded with none other than Joe’s highly deviated septum. I kept wondering if it was possible that he just couldn’t hear it, that steady stream of whistling air bringing oxygen to his ancient bloodstream and expelling germ-tainted nose breath into the confines of the vehicle. But there was no way possible, no way in hell, that he was oblivious to the ceaseless sound. People thirty miles away were turning their heads to the side and asking each other, “What’s that sound? Is it the wind?” NO. It’s just Joe and his whistling nose.

Joe also liked to make small talk, whereas I am much averse to the stuff. I thought I had finished with my polite overtures when I climbed into the van and nodded politely, asking him about his day. He responded in kind and we settled into, what I thought, was a peaceful silence. It’s a long drive back to town and there’s only so much chitchatting a girl can handle. But Joe wanted to make comments on everything, from the silvery purple color of a Cadillac to the possible conspiracy of five white sedans in a row on the interstate. He intimated that the sedans were probably with the FBI and on their way to some secret rendezvous. Only when Joe said it, it came out as randy-voos.

About halfway through the journey, Joe turned to me and asked if I was sulking. He thought he’d heard me sighing at some point and had probably mistaken my unconscious verbal expression of annoyance with general sulkiness. I haven no idea how he heard it over the 1820 Overture playing steadily from his nostrils, but he merely nodded his head sagely and asked how long she’d been hurt.

It took me a good five seconds to respond. And five seconds is a damn long time for car silence when someone is paying no attention to interstate and waiting breathlessly for your response. Only I hadn’t the damndest of clues what he was talking about. A ‘she’ had been hurt? And I knew about it?

Then I realized he was talking about my car, with its bumper hanging pathetically from the rear driver side. My car was a ‘she.’ This was news. So I told him it had been a week since the accident and ‘she’ would be fine. But of course Joe couldn’t leave it at that, he had to regale me with stories of his vehicularly challenged wife and her propensity to wreck his brand new truck, over and over and over.

To which my only response was, “Perhaps you should stop handing her the keys.”

Love me, Love me- Go on and love me.

2007-02-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

I’m not one of those girl who lights (or even buys) candles. I’ve got a green mottled one that has moved with me since 1999. I know this because, well, I just do. Leave it at that. I always intend to light it, I intend to utilize its forrest-scented-ness, but I end up spraying some febreeze instead. Because spraying a bottle of overpriced smelly water in the air is wicked easier than finding a lighter.

The other day I was shopping with Amanda for some apartment accoutrements. She is moving into a two-bedroom duplex that gives her and her new husband roughly forty times the space of their current living arrangements. No one is happier than Amanda with this development, except for maybe Senora Robin. This is very selfish of me, but the thought of sharing a space the size of my bedroom with another living, breathing, excreting human being makes me want to claw out my eyeballs and serve them as appetizers.

So along with helping pick out curtains and table covers, I was suckered into throwing a super spiffy oven mitt in the buggy. I should have done this a long time ago but I’ve always been relatively content to wad up paper towels to protect my fingers from the oven’s flesh-searing metal. But after a near-miss on Saturday when the pizza pan became unbalanced and almost landed on my delicate and unprotected feet, I decided it was time to take a big girl pill and pony up.

After the kitchen aisle came the candle aisle. I am normally loathe to stop here, a) because the mix of honeysuckle, vanilla, sage, rose and patchouli makes me want to hurl, b) I am indecisive about candle scents- do I really want my house to smell like Jasmine and Honeydew? and c) TWENTY BUCKS FOR A FUCKING CANDLE? ARE YOU HIGH?

But there was a sale aisle, which was right next to the Relaxing Music display, the kind where you get to push the buttons and hear tracks from each CD play somewhat obnoxiously over cheap speakers. Amanda had already gotten onto me for making the oven mitt talk (it looks like a puppet, dammit) so I had to keep my excitement to a minimum. I was busy switching between Inspiring Salsa and Big Band Classics when I noticed a sale shelf of candles.

So I bought one. And now my house smells like cake, just like the ad said it would. I am also very hungry because of said candle.

Wears dark glasses like the cops in Texas

2007-02-06T15:28:00.000-08:00

I would show you a picture of the back of my car, the bumper hanging so precariously from its plastic and styrofoam sheath, but I will not. Mainly because that would constitute physical proof of my poor luck, but also because the car is outside (obviously) and I am inside. Also inside is my camera. Hence, due to some very simple logic, I will remain inside.

I started my taxes on Saturday night but they asked such ridiculous questions. It’s worse than filling out the form to give blood. Did you ever have sex with a man who had sex with another man before 1978 in the Congo region of Africa? Did you ever engage in questionable acts with a primate from the Congo region of Africa? Have you ever kissed a transvestite? Similarly, the tax software I use wants to ask silly questions about my personal property taxes, as if I would be so organized as to keep that information. Did I purchase a large item this year, such as an auto, but not a boat or RV or jet ski? Yes I did! I get a tax credit! BUT WAIT. Please enter the selling price of the vehicle minus the sales tax plus the commission, less the depreciation and adding the cost of after-market items. Please put that number HERE in this yellow flashing box. It’s all very simple, didn’t you know.

I gave up finishing that project because I have a mind to become a fugitive from the law. I will wear dark jeans and learn to live off the land. I will lure fat squirrels into my lair and roast their pitiful bodies over bic lighters. I will rob convenience stores for Dr. Peppers and Oatmeal Crème Pies.

Randomly, I am thinking of getting a new phone. I have been thinking of getting a new phone for a year now but it’s such a grand commitment. I become overwhelmed by all the features and options and buttons. What if I purchase this one but realize three months from now that I really should have gotten the one with mp3 capabilities? What if I realize I needed unlimited internet access? So I’ve decided that my current function-less phone and I are just stuck, stuck together like Dolly Parton’s breasts. I will upgrade only when the current model truly fails to deliver. Presently it is only cranky and I cannot in good conscience put it out to pasture.

Anyway. It’s been a long time since I updated this poor thing, hasn’t it? I reread some of the crap from the past few months and realized I had to cut myself off. It was for the benefit of mankind, really.

I've got skills, just ask me

2007-01-25T15:27:00.000-08:00

Before I get to the reason for my lethargic depression, I thought I’d make an attempt at pushing myself out the relentless need to stay in bed and read trashy novels by pinpointing the things I normally would have written about. Things that take normal people three sentences to accomplish but in my overly-verbose case, take forty-five paragraphs. I think I’ll start with the mysterious case of my magical healing powers:

Saturday morning I was awakened by Kimberly peeping her blonde head inside my bedroom and pitifully calling my name. We’d made an attempt at killing our mutual depression by walking downtown and tossing back glass after glass of cranberry juice and vodka. Then we ate an entire pizza, after which we deemed ourselves properly refueled and continued with the vodka concoctions. It was all in good fun until the next morning, when the effects of throwing down like a college student were clearly and painfully felt in our non-college student bodies. Kimberly slept in the guest bedroom until the early morning sun refused to abate, deciding the recovery process was best completed in the confines of her king-size bed and ample cereal selection.

I sleepily followed her to the door and locked it behind her. I was already up, so I decided that at least fifteen minutes of productiveness was in order. I focused my attention on the dishes from the 2am eggroll snack scattered across the kitchen.

When I was finished rinsing the last of the dishes, I reached across the sink to turn off the hot water. Only it didn’t turn off, not all the way. I was left with a steamy stream that was far greater than a trickle but less than a gush. I pounded and pushed and pleaded, all to no avail. The water continued to flow and I had a sudden image of next month’s electric bill, my ensuing bankruptcy and swirling demise into Crazy Destitute Cat Lady status.

All day long the water poured straight down the drain. It continued on through Sunday, paying no attention to the wealth of tools I half-heartedly waived in its direction. By Monday I was frustrated with my landlord’s lack of activity and his obvious disregard for my hot showers, showers that had become lukewarm at best. And so I did what any woman would do. I stared down the ornery faucet, stomped my foot and screamed in frustration.

That’s when it stopped. It slowed to a gentle stream, then to a trickle, coming to a complete and utter halt within seconds of my hissy fit. I cautiously approached the sink, reaching over to turn the hot water back on. Hot water gushed forth. Then I held my breath and turned the knob to the off position. Hot water stopped. No drip. No trickle.

I HAVE MAGICAL HEALING POWERS.

Moving along…

On Tuesday I got up in what has, of late, become my normal routine. I hit snooze for forty-five minutes before finally rolling out of bed and stumbling into the bathroom. I appraised the hair situation. Definitely in need of a wash. Full shower, conditioning and shaving was in order.

About a year ago I purchased one of those new-fangled vibrating razors. I’m a sucker for new shaving devices simply because my skin can sense a razor when I’m twenty feet away. It can sense it and it’s not happy. The skin expresses it’s unhappiness by screaming in pain and erupting into red fire. Therefore, I’m highly choosy with said razors.

The vibrating one seemed like an excellent idea. I mean, hello, it vibrates the hairs right up into the razor’s path. Surely this will be wicked awesome. Unfortunately, it was no different from a regular three-blade razor. I kept it anyway and used it on the no-way-no-how-vibrate setting because the little moisturizing strips were kind of nifty.

I wish I could somehow make this the enticing part of the post, the part where you visualize me in the shower, but in truth I’m as far from appealing in the shower as watching Donald Trump masturbate. Okay, obviously I’m more appealing than the Trump bit, but you get the point. I’m normally sleepy and cranky and unhappy that I have to rush through my routine because of my ancient water-heater. I have nine minutes to accomplish what should take normal women with ass loads of hair and body parts at least fifteen. Sort of like speed-dating, only naked and alone in your shower with shampoo, conditioner, exfoliator and razors to choose from.

After I finished shaving I placed the razor back in the shower caddy and rinsed the conditioner from my hair. I turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. But something was amiss. There was a strange noise coming from the bathtub. A noise that screams angry gremlins jumping around or, for the less imaginatively inclined, what could very easily be air in the pipes. It was loud and obnoxious but I was already late for work, so I made a mental note to call the landlord if the situation had not resolved itself by evening.

When I came home that night, I could hear the crazy noise from the hallway. Concerned that something had seriously malfunctioned in my absence, I warily walked into the bathroom expecting to see shattered tile and sewage. Instead, it was clean and white, just as I’d left it. I resigned myself to calling my landlord and began removing all the pretty bottles from the edge of tub, thinking that I could never be so lucky to get a hot, manly plumber that would appreciate my display. With my luck, I’d get a tubby, gelatinous mass of a plumber with low-rise dickies and a thin t-shirt. (All the better to showcase the man titties, m’dear.)

As I got to the shower caddy, I struggled a bit trying to lift it up and over the shower head. I finally succeeded and placed it in the sink. It was then that I noticed that the abrasive noise had mysteriously subsided to a dull hum.

Strange, I thought.

I stepped into the bathtub and placed my ear against the tile wall. Nothing. I leaned up and listened carefully to the showerhead. Nothing.

I stepped back out of the tub, my eyes going to the shower caddy resting in the sink. The noise, it had moved.

You know what’s coming so I won’t even try to deny it. I’d somehow managed to inadvertently turn on the vibrating razor, which succeeded in sending vibrations straight through the metal caddy, right into the metal pipes within the wall.

I AM A FUCKING IDIOT.

And finally…

There’s nothing like spending money when you know you don’t have it. I purchased an electric blanket on Tuesday night and I can liken the sensation of sliding into a pre-warmed and deliciously cozy bed to having someone handing you a check for a million dollars. No shit.

Now, to the real story….

My lethargic depression, which has manifested itself in many delightful ways, was caused by a rumor, a confirmation of a rumor with no additional information, and finally the Rumor herself appearing in person to deliver the news.

The company I work for is part of another company, which is, in turn, part of another company. It’s all a bunch of strategery, as George W. would say. The fun part begins when the big company has lots of big-minded and big-idea-ed individuals who make a decision and decide that come hell or high water, their decision will be carried out.

I’m being laid off.

This is oh so cliché, but it was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

Dead cats, bleeding esophageal lesions, compulsive vomiting, alien transmitters, nose catheters, poking and prodding and needle-happy nurses had only primed me for the news. Before I could emit my stomach contacts, I grabbed my first cigarette in two years, pulled the smoke in my lungs and waited for the blessed relief of nicotine to hit my bloodstream.

The thing is, and please feel free to groan, I quite like my job. I won’t say I love it, because that seems to invite all kinds of eye-rolling. But in truth, I kind of do. I appreciate that my bosses know more than I do. I love that everyone stopped by to hug me after Llama died. I like that I have never been micromanaged. I love that some of these people have turned into my best friends. I enjoy the work I do, the products I work with, the random bits of knowledge I add to the pile everyday.

In one fell swoop, my five-year plan was crushed all to hell. And that pisses me off. More than anything, it pisses me off that I finally find the place I like to be, the place where getting up in the morning doesn’t make me want to stab myself in the eye with a dull spoon, and some ill-educated loony-toon had to go and fuck it up.

I don’t want another job. I want this one, dammit.
On the somewhat-of-a-plus side, I will have a job for around ten months. And then I will get a severance package. And then I’m going to take one very long vacation. So no need to start sending me your canned goods quite yet. If a food drive is ever in order, rest assured I’ll let you know.

Insert Applicable Title Here

2007-01-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

Hi, My name is Melodramatic. What’s yours?

I’m a little annoyed with my Whiny Self, not only because I’m a terrible whiner but because it takes a lot of effort to be this depressing. And if there’s one thing I don’t have at this particular moment, it’s the desire to expend any effort whatsoever.

So in lieu of bitching about my current situation (due to that pesky unlubed legal fist and all), I’m going to talk about cute boys.

Here is one:

Dear Jeremy Piven:

First, you should know that your hairline in the movie PCU circa 1994 is very different from your current hairline. Normally men continue to lose hair, but you have mastered the male hair loss gene and actually REGROWN hair on your head. I commend you for this, I really do. Just know that I love you in spite of your current strange, artificial mop. Though in the above picture you look wicked hot and I would totally make out with you.

Here is another one:

Dear Robert Downey, Jr:

You have a bit of a drug problem. For whatever reason, I find this attractive. Possibly because it causes your normal rapid-fire wit to explode into unknown territory. Also, I bet you’re a hell of a compulsive cleaner and there’s nothing more appealing than a man who will assist me in all-night cleaning fests. I would bear your children if I was into that whole caring for another being for the rest of your natural born life thing.

All my lust,
Robin

It's Friday, I'm (Not) In Love

2007-01-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

If there is an opposite of an adrenaline junkie, I am most definitely it. I’m anti-adrenaline, anti-rush, anti-jitter. I don’t watch scary movies because the stress involved in viewing people being chased by aliens, chainsawed into skin lamps or eaten by overgrown predators is just too much for me. I will never jump out of a plane or bungee off a bridge or strap on an oxygen tank and swim 150 feet below the surface. Why? Because genetics and evolution saw fit to leave me with arms and legs, not wings or gills. I do everything in my power to engineer my surroundings into the antithesis of drama and stress. Should you, as a person, be involved in creating drama or stress in my life, I will undoubtedly cut you out, just as I have cut out alien movies and scuba diving.

This isn’t to say that I’m not a good handler, because I am. I can handle just about anything. And when I say ‘anything’, I’m still talking about middle class employed white girl ‘anything.’ Like spending two-hundred dollars on shoes and realizing DAMN this pair is wicked uncomfortable! Or, OH NO! I appear to have torn my nail! Whatever am I to do? I can handle the stress of not finding earrings to match my outfit or the button mysteriously disappearing from my jeans. I deal well with deadlines and projects, simply because it gives me something to do. I do not handle boredom well, and it’s just pure luck that I never set the house on fire as a kid. I could go through a box of matches in less than an hour, scratching each red-tipped stick against the side and watching it burst into flames, only to flicker out forty-five seconds later.

But the past three days- sweet baby jesus. The stress, the anxiety, the all consuming fear, is about to kill me. I find myself alternating between a desire to buy a carton of cigarettes and hoping that a bottle of valium will just magically appear in my cupboard. What’s funny, and not, is that I used to make fun of people with valium. “I could use a valium dispenser,” they’d say. And mentally I would berate them for needing a crutch, a pathetic drug, to ease the pain. “Try breathing exercises!” I’d say. “Maybe a yoga class!” And then I’d put a sympathetic smile on face while inside I said poor, poor schmuck. Can’t even manage their stress levels.

I am here to tell you I am sorry. I should never have made fun of you. Perhaps your commute to work really was that bad. Maybe your child really is the devil. I judged, and I’m sorry.

Last night I laid on my couch for three hours, willing my legs to stop their nervous, uncontrollable twitching. Praying my heart would slow it’s frantic pace for just one godamn minute, just to give me some peace. Stomach and I had several chats about how keeping food below the Mason-Dixon line was non-negotiable. And then I pulled out that (prescription) bottle of valium and thought, maybe, please, yes, this will help. I took four.

I am notoriously hard to sedate and didn’t have much hope, but two hours later it finally kicked in. Oh, the peace. The blessed, blessed peace.

I know, trust me, I know, that I’m being very vague. I haven’t elaborated on my three days (and what will probably be many more stress-filled ones) and that’s a little unfair. It’s only because I seem to have forgotten my KY and I imagine that an un-lubed legal fist up my ass quite would be quite uncomfortable.

Just know that I realize I asked for it. I had to go and tempt Fate. I had to complain about my luck and my shitty, shitty month of sickness and dead cats and strange, invasive tests. I accept it, and that is fine. I am a grown ass woman. It would just be nice to have a permanent IV full of heavy sedatives.

I Don't Care If Monday's Blue

2007-01-08T14:06:00.000-08:00

You could probably say I’ve had a spell of bad luck. Naturally I’m talking about middle-class employed white girl bad luck, not poverty-stricken Somalian bad luck. That kind of bad luck would involve my last goat being eaten by neighboring dogs and contracting a flesh-eating virus while trying to squeeze the last drop of milk out of my shriveled breast for my crying baby, who’s covered in flies and clinging to the legs of Sally Struthers. So forgive me my self-centered drivel today, because I’d like to start at the beginning and just work my way forward. Maybe I’ll find a pattern. And then I can kill the pattern, preferably by breaking the pattern’s knees.

It started with a combination of bronchitis, sinusitis and laryngitis. Not so bad, really. I mean, I was just choking runny snot down my throat and coughing it back up again for shits and giggles. Breathing is very highly overrated. But then the running snot made a trail of inflamed tissue down my throat, which made a lovely home for my acid reflux. I ended up with actual bleeding lesions on my esophagus that didn’t go away for a week and a half.

The first morning I woke up without a crusty nose and an aching throat, I felt like throwing myself a party. I was healed! I met Kasi for dinner at a small Italian place downtown and ordered the special, the pan-seared salmon. Food was finally tasting like food and I couldn’t have been happier, as sinus infections convert normal food into peanut butter. Cheerios? Tastes like peanut butter. Chicken? Tastes like peanut butter. I might have mentioned on here that I can’t stand peanut butter. Hence, an eleven day stretch of peanut butter flavored everything was about as amusing as rubbing battery acid on my arm. But oh, the delicious salmon! Flaky and seasoned, it was! I especially enjoyed that seasoning when I contracted the stomach flu at 3am and vomited up fish, spinach, bread and diet coke until 5am, when I switched to straight stomach bile for another ten hours. I would have tried to drown myself in the bathtub but I didn’t have a stopper.

Four days later I took The Demonspawn to the vet for some routine shots and a little declawing action, because my sofa is new and I happen to quite like the arms covered in intact, rather than shredded, fabric. But the vet killed Llama (undeniably my favorite) with an overdose of Valium. I was sad.

The next day I went in for a procedure involving a radio transmitter being implanted in my esophagus (by the aliens) and a catheter through my nose. Unfortunately I was one of the .2% of people who react badly to the implantation. When I say badly I mean that stabbing myself in the chest with a fork was a viable option for over five days. Christmas was a blast. Also, I have an insanely high tolerance for Valium.

The day after Christmas my mother drug me to the animal shelter because she needed to adopt a friend for her current cat, Dr. Watson. Dr. Watson used to have a friend named Sherlock but Sherlock got runned over by a reindeer. There was another cat in the house named Cleo who maintained his superior cat-distance for over eight years, refusing to give in to Dr. Watson’s friendly gestures. Then Cleo died of some strange ear-slash-eye-slash-mouth infection but he was eighteen so it’s not like we were surprised. Very long lead in to the fact that my mother was looking for a new kitty friend for Watson and the animal shelter seemed like a good place to start. Save the animals from Certain Death!

She narrowed it down to two sweet ones, one orange and fat and another one small and gray. With Certain Death looming over their heads I decided to take the small gray one, naming her Josephine. She went immediately to the vet for declawing and spaying because I thought if someone was going to kill another one of my cats, they might as well do it before I got all attached. But two days later she started sneezing. Then strange liquid coughs that made her tiny chest heave with effort. I took her to the emergency vet and was told to squirt antibiotics down her throat twice a day. No need to worry, they say. Cats get this all the time.

The Sunday of New Year’s Eve was a no-go. I misread a new bottle of pills, assuming when it said Take With Food it meant that any food was acceptable. What it meant to say was Take With Five Course Meal Or Severe Nausea And Vomiting Will Occur. Also, Attempting To Operate Machinery While Vomiting Can Lead To Messiness. I rang in the new year with re-runs of CSI and a bottle of Pepto.

By Thursday I was kissing Josephine on the nose and tearing up in front of my Kervorkian vet as she sent her off to kitty cat heaven. No need to worry, indeed.

That afternoon I took myself out for a late lunch and early beer. My boss works with a lot of women and recognizes mental instability when it’s crying in front of him. During lunch my right arm started to feel weird, kind of like it was asleep but without the tingle. As the day progressed I became more and more jittery and everything from my eyeballs to my toenails felt like they were stuck in limbo. I wanted my finger to press Channel Up on the remote, but my finger was cranky and slow to respond.

By lunchtime the next day I was miserable. I hadn’t slept a single minute and I was feeling like Michael J. Fox but without Rush Limbaugh to make fun of me. I called my specialist doctor and talked to his nurse, who told me to turn the car around and head to the nearest pharmacy for some Benadryl. Apparently if you don’t act fast these side effects can last for a very long time, as in weeks or months. Fearing the worst I took three times the normal dose and waited for relief. Three hours later I was still wide-eyed and crazy. It took many more Benadryls and many more hours before I felt human again. It was a wicked fun experience, one I’d pay people to never experience again.

I think it would be kind of dryly amusing to end this with a “And I stubbed my fucking toe this morning” but I’m not about to encourage anything else, plus I’d be lying. I want no more dead pets, no more strange pains, no more exhausting stomach viruses and no more alien transmitters in my esophagus. Which is why I spent all day Saturday inside apartment, refusing to even unlock the front door. My big accomplishment for the day was taking a shower and watching John Grisham movies on TNT.

**After rereading this I see no pattern. Obviously I have just pissed somebody off.

I’m not a resolution maker because January 1st is exactly the same as any other day of the year. It just happens to be when some yo-yo way back in the day decided to restart the 12-month calendar. It could be the month of Gilgamesh for all I care; I just like to put on a pretty dress now and then. Make kiss a boy at midnight. Toss back some overly-sweet champagne.

But this year I’ve decided that I’m done. Bad luck is supposed to come in threes, and this shit is getting old. I’d better be getting something really nice for my birthday. Like a hot, gainfully employed man with the ability to form grammatically correct sentences. Or I could win the lottery. I’d be fine with that, too.

Around We Go

2007-01-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

Right this very second there’s an abominably fat red-breasted Robin sitting on a dismally gray tree branch directly outside my window. She or he or it, whatever you’d like to call it, has been there for a good ten minutes. We’ve been having a staring contest of sorts, all while I figure out exactly how pathetic and melodramatic I’d like to sound. And I think, or I hope, that we’ve come to the conclusion that there’s really no cover up for my patheticness, but there’s a distinct possibility I could tone down the melodramatic blathering. Our agreement was sealed with a flutter of his tail feathers and the drop of his multicolored poop on my neighbor’s lawn furniture.

Two mornings ago I took my new cat Josephine to the vet for the third time. She’d been coughing and wheezing and these are just not things that cats should do. They should sleep in the sun and curl gently on your lap. Eat tasty morsels of lunch meat that get “accidentally” dropped on the kitchen floor. Shed ridiculous amounts of fur so the cat-mom has a reason to run the vacuum every Saturday. And sometimes on Wednesday, if she’s feeling productive.

But this time was serious. Even I, with a lack a stethoscope, could hear the fluid rattling gently in her lungs with each labored breath. My stomach was in knots during the drive over because this cat had already become my favorite. She liked to cuddle and roll on her back for a nice tummy rub. She liked to crawl on my side while I watched late night television, turning in circles until she found just the right combination of soft belly and hip to make a bed.

You see where this is going, I’m sure. I wouldn't have this dramatic of a lead-in without some terribly sad ending.

The vet drew blood, took x-rays, ran tests. When she called me back to the examination room, she had the kind of look you see on the faces of actors during weekly viewings of ER or Grey’s Anatomy. The look that says I have bad news, but I’m going to take twenty minutes of your time to get to it, not counting commercials.

She explained the blood work, snapped x-ray films up on the wall and flicked off the lights. “See here?” she said. “Nothing but fluid.” My options, Josephine’s options, rather, were slim. She would never get better, not permanently. So it was drugs to combat the pain, or the option for which Dr. Kervorkian is sitting in a jail cell.

“It’s very quick, no pain, only sleep,” she said.

Josephine was brought back into the exam room wrapped in a towel. They’d already sedated her. I gave her a final kiss on the nose and told her I was sorry and I hoped she forgave me. I had no right to play God, but here I was, signing away the life of a living, breathing thing. I told her she’d been the perfect cat, the perfect companion and I was so very, very sorry. So unbelievably sorry.

I cried when they shaved her arm, I cried when they found a vein for the needle, I cried when the hand I’d left resting on her belly no longer rose with her breath.

Calgon Done Took Me Away

2007-01-02T13:27:00.000-08:00

Theoretically, my New Years could have been very exciting. I’d purchased a dress, a stunning one actually. New shoes. Pretty jewelry. And then Kasi called me at 8:15am to tell me she’d contracted the dreaded Stomach Death which, as I personally know, involves at least 15 hours of compulsive vomiting and many hours of delicate conversation with your stomach. It’s very easy to misread Stomach. Sometimes he may say that he’d like some jell-o when in fact he wants nothing at all to do with jell-o. Stomach just meant that at some future point in time he’d like jell-o, but definitely not NOW, what the hell were you thinking putting that down your gullet?

And then I went and misread the portion on the back of my new medicine bottle that says, in stern block letters, Take With Food. In my defense, I did take it with food. A small can of mandarin oranges. Because this, my friends, is definitely food. Tasty and delicious food. Not so tasty on the way back up, because they kind of form one giant gloopy mandarin orange that threatens to clog your nasal cavity. Do not pretend you don’t have nose vomit because I know you do. Just accept it and move on.

As such, I was in no mood for an evening of festivities and neither was Kasi. So I spent the Eve watching reruns of CSI (the original Las Vegas one, not the one with the abominably creepy David Caruso) until 4am because they kept showing these To Be Continued episodes. Naturally, I had to make sure that Nick made it out of the glass box alive and that Grissom would somehow incorporate his expansive bug knowledge into the plotline.

In other news, I have named my new kitty Josephine. Not Gidget or Sugar Monkey or even Bobo, as suggested by the Arabian Dumbass. Josephine is sweetness personified. Like pancakes in a cuddly furry form. However, she and her upper respiratory infection are also money personified. Two emergency vet visits = depleted checking account.

If anyone has any money making schemes they’d like to suggest, I’m totally game.

And I’d like to move here. Should anyone know of a way to make money while writing mindless drivel on the internet without the following of dooce, please let me know. I could use a cottage lifestyle in Spain.

Druglord

2006-12-29T09:31:00.000-08:00

I probably should have saved the shitty valium title for today’s pathetic diatribe but hey, whatever. I could be my very own title Nazi but I’m choosing to let this morning’s morphine injection rule my thoughts. Which means everything is followed with a ‘meh, whatever’ and then a disgusting giggle or dopey smile.

If you’re me, and you’re not, obviously, because I’m me, then you hate when people start conversations with sentences like “When I was on morphine this morning….” because that means you’re obligated to mentally sigh and say “Oh my! Why were you on morphine this morning?” It’s like people so desperately want to divulge their personal business but they don’t want to come across as the grandmotherly-type who talks about her bowel movements. So they dangle the carrot and wait for you to bite, and you do, but not because you want to. You bite because society has dictated certain behaviors as acceptable and you’re too much of a pussy to stand up to The Man.

The morphine came from a gallbladder test this morning, only I wasn’t aware there was a chance that morphine could be involved. So when my gallbladder proved mighty elusive and cantankerous, the nurse in pink scrubs came in with a shot of morphine to move things along. This information would have proved useful previous to the morphine insertion. If for nothing else, it would have saved me the mild embarrassment of rambling nonsensically about kitty cat heaven and my inexplicable dislike of peanut butter. And Amanda would have been much more prepared when I called her from the nuclear medicine lab to come get me, because as I was talking to her I was imagining that my voice sounded much like butterflies. Like that scene from The Green Mile where the guy spews forth all manner of creepy computer generated bugs. Only way less creepy, because butterflies are sweet and gentle. Unless you read books by Laurell K. Hamilton, and then the butterflies are mean little fairies who nibble off bits of flesh.

Back to the whole point of this, which is valium. Valium is useless. I’ve gotten higher pumping gas than swallowing four of those orange tablets in a six hour period. Ugh, and now I’m realizing that I never explained the reason for the spasming esophagus and the need for valium. I only alluded to contacting aliens via a radio transmitter, and this is not near enough explanation for someone as verbose as me.

The radio transmitter was implanted, not by aliens, but by my doctor. Who may or may not be working with the aliens. They’re supposed to sedate you while they slide the camera down your throat, cut off pieces of flesh for biopsies and then staple gun this eraser-sized contraption to your esophagus. Only as I’ve previously learned, I have the world’s highest tolerance for valium and demerol. So after my second injection and pleading, tear-filled eyes aimed at the doctor, he slid the camera out of my throat and patted me on the cheek, saying he was very sorry but he just couldn’t give me any more. My blood pressure was too low, so be a good girl and this will all be over in a second. Most of the time when women hear this phrase they end up pregnant. I got a pissed off esophagus. Same thing.

Normally this procedure is completely painless. You wear a pager on your right hip to receive the (alien) transmissions about ph levels for 48 hours. The transmitter falls off five days later and gets eaten by stomach acid. Or something. I also had a catheter inserted into my right nostril with a tiny ph-measuring bulb that hung by my tonsils. Not really that comfortable, but not painful, either. And it was definitely attractive having a plastic tube taped to the side of my cheek. I’m surprised the people at work didn’t have sex with me right then and there.

But obviously I’m a human reject, which means I spent last Wednesday night cranky and miserable. Upon calling the doctor the next day, he was only mildly sympathetic, stating that he had suspected I would be uncomfortable. While most people breeze right on through these tests, my symptoms indicated an extremely sensitive upper GI area. *insert technical doctor jargon here* As such, I was probably in quite a bit of pain.

I’m not sure what’s gotten into people lately, but there have been several times in the past few weeks where I’ve had mental screaming matches with myself about how very useful certain information would have been previous to these events.

To compensate, Senor Doctor called in large bottle of valium at my local Walgreens. Super, I think. I will take the valium and go into a lovely pain-free trance-like state. But four pills and six hours later found me sitting on my couch, wishing death upon the entire world. Still in pain, still cranky and slightly homicidal.

As such, my holiday season was spent popping valium. Lots and lots of valium. It takes four pills at a time to make me relaxed, and another two if I feel like sleeping.

The alien transmitter fell out late Tuesday evening. I feel much better now. Also, I have a new cat. Her name is Sugar Monkey. Or maybe Gidget.

Dear Santa: Your elves have shitty valium.

2006-12-27T14:58:00.000-08:00

I thought about describing my pill-popping Christmas by going into great detail about my mental disintegration after the vet “accidentally” killed Llama (with valium, no less). I would describe the ever-increasing emotional hysteria, culminating in an office meltdown of epic proportions. Then on to the brief but stern admonishment from my boss regarding throwing sharp projectile objects in spaces that might be occupied by other humans. My story would end when a sympathetic coworker popped open a bottle of valium and force fed three orange pills down my throat, which left me comatose and slightly drooly. After which I was fired for my unsatisfactory conduct.**

But then I realized not everyone finds me amusing. Plus, this is the holiday season, and whether you sing that crazy dradle song or the one about a baby in a poop-filled barn, most deities hate liars, especially blatant ones. And while I definitely cried, okay, sobbed, on the phone with my mother after the vet called with his bad news, I wouldn’t describe my emotional state as unstable. Pissed off would be far more realistic. And maybe just a little sad. Oh, and guilty. See below:

By the time I finally managed to call the vet back, it was late afternoon. I’d spent my morning within the bowels of a hospital eating eggs laced with nuclear matter and reclining under what appeared to be a giant black drum. While it’s inordinately uncomfortable for me to lie perfectly still for any length of time, this was by far the most enjoyable portion of my day. Possibly because I hadn’t been able to eat anything since 9pm the night before and I’m not one of those kids who forget to eat. Forget my keys, maybe. Eating, never. As such, those nuclear eggs were like manna from heaven.

The only moderately cool thing from that whole ordeal was watching the little nuclear bits hang out in my stomach. They kind of resembled very busy microscopic ants with a tendency to stay in a giant dotty cluster. I’m using the word ‘cool’ very loosely, because while it was neat in that ‘look at my innards!’ kind of way, I’ll be the first to admit that I have very irrational semi-fears about things. Mostly they involve aliens, alien babies and bird noises. My greatest fear would have me standing next to a long-armed alien while I birthed his alien spawn from my stomach, all while they communicated via bird noises. So it shouldn’t have come as any great surprise that while watching the little nuclear bits move around in my abdominal cavity, the Crazy part of my brain was all “You know that’s how they breed, don’t you? The eggs are merely a vehicle for their alien spawn. Look at them on the screen- invading every molecule of your body. You’re going to be the Mary for the bug-eyed alien race.”

The non-crazy part of my brain, the one that deals frequently with my overactive and slightly paranoid imagination, responded by sighing in resignation. “You’re going to write about this on the internet, aren’t you? This is not how you get boys to make out with you.”

However, I’m going to blame low blood sugar on the brief (but stunning) coup by Crazy Brain. I’m quite aware that nuclear matter does not equal alien babies and should the previous admission diminish anyone’s desire to make out with me, I’m deeply sorry.

Following my nuclear morning, I was sent to another hospital building for a CAT scan. This wasn’t nearly as amusing as the egg test, mainly because I had to drink a gallon of pink Crystal Light infused with some unidentifiable substance. I was not to drink it too quickly, however, because it would make me nauseated. I nodded my head in acknowledgement when the nurse told me this, then informed her that everything makes me nauseated so this should be wicked exciting.

The scan itself wasn’t anything to write home about, with the exception of whatever drug was injected into the vein in my right arm. After the technician left the room, her voice came over the intercom and told me that I would probably feel like I was wetting myself and that my pelvis would feel abnormally warm. Personally, I feel that this is the sort of information that should be shared before the drug injection. But hey, who’s judging?

Now that I’ve run through my six hours of hospital visiting, you can understand why it took me five and a half hours to return the message left by my vet. I thought it was just a normal update on the declawing and shot-giving for The Demonspawn. Maybe letting me know that they were resting comfortably, ready for pickup after 5pm. Unbeknownst to me, Llama was definitely resting comfortably. In a fucking body bag. He’d died when the nurse had injected the kitty cat valium into his hind leg. Dropped dead right on the table, the vet said. I got to hear about that ‘dropping dead’ part about eight or nine times, which is exactly the mental image you want of your pet. Right next to the one of an ice-encrusted ball of fluff inside the confines of a plastic ziploc bag. Because I’d taken so long to return his call, he said, they’d had to put him in the freezer. To halt decomposition. Again, THANKS FOR THAT MENTAL IMAGE, ASSHOLE.

So I drove across town to pick up Lily, because one pet death was really all I could handle. Had I ingested more than Crystal Light and nuclear eggs that day, I probably would have had the energy to disembowel the vet like I envisioned on my drive over. But hunger and sadness hand rendered me weak, and instead I just held Lily’s furry little body to my chest and cried silently all the way home. Feeling like a horrible cat-mother for sending them off for an unnecessary procedure, just to save my new couch from frenzied clawing. Feeling horrible and heartless for shoving a normally docile Llama into his cat carrier, clawing and hissing all the way. Feeling even guiltier for thinking, over and over, you had to kill my favorite one, didn’t you?

Oh, and before you think I was kidding about the elves making shitty valium, I’m totally not. Tomorrow I promise to tell you how I made contact with the aliens via the radio transmitter implanted in my esophagus. And no, I’m not kidding. At least about the radio transmitter. The alien part is up for interpretation.

** Just so we're clear, I'm not terminated. Nor did I have a hissy fit and throw objects at humans. I did let a tear or twelve slip out when everyone at work stopped by to hug me, and it was all very Terms of Endearment-y.

2006-12-20T07:04:00.000-08:00

Llama died yesterday and I'm unbelievably sad.

Where I continue to overshare

2006-12-17T17:11:00.000-08:00

I had every intention of keeping my mouth shut about future health malfunctions because I finally reread a week’s worth of entries and realized that I was one whiny bitch. My throat hurts, I feel bad, my body is achy, my toe has a cramp, wah wah wah. It’s like someone opened the floodgates and instead of just calling my mother every night to complain, I had to open my laptop as well. Super.

But then Friday morning I woke up with the Stomach Death and I realized I was totally going to have to word vomit my experience into the bowels of the internet again, just like I vomited up a week’s worth of dietary intake straight into my toilet.

It started at three o’clock, a time when the majority of the greater Little Rock area was fast asleep in their dry comfortable beds. When I woke up, my entire body was covered with the kind of sweat that says “I just robbed a convenience store and sprinted for two miles to escape the police, pardon me while I pass out in your front lawn from exhaustion.” Obviously something was wrong, but I’m a stubborn one. I had a vested interest in keeping twenty dollars worth of pan-seared salmon below the Mason-Dixon line.

Four Tums (useless fruit-flavored crap) and an hour later, I was begrudgingly sliding out of bed, only to be hit with a wave of nausea so intense my legs almost gave out. The blood vessels around my eyes, the ones that always burst unattractively after a bout of vomiting, were already preparing themselves by puffing up in excitement.

And so my fifteen hour love affair with the porcelain goddess began. By seven-thirty I was confident I had expunged not only the pan-seared salmon and a gallon and a half of stomach bile, but possibly a kidney as well. I made a pathetic attempt at lightheartedness when I called and left a message for my boss, not realizing until the last second that the stomach acid had damn near ripped my vocal chords in two and I sounded like an eighty-five-year-old man with a four pack-a-day habit. Which meant the verbiage about dying alone in my apartment with two hungry cats who would eventually gnaw off my face sounded unnervingly real. And I was only half joking.

When eight o’clock rolled around, the early morning sweat attack had dried to little crystallized spikes all over my body. Obviously I was dying. Best to speed it up by drowning myself in the tub, where at least I could die warm. Only I’d forgotten to purchase a drain stopper during each previous grocery excursion, which meant I’d have to figure out how to drown myself in the shower. But this required standing, and countless hours of compulsive vomiting had rid me of any coordinated leg movements. So I flipped on the shower nozzle and waited for the hot water to hit my hand before rolling myself over the edge, red trackpants and all.

Unfortunately, my hot water heater is a useless, malignant oozing sore on the face of humanity. It provides about nine minutes of shower-worthy water before abruptly giving out. There are probably ways I could fix this, but I’d lay money on it being older than the invention of fruitcake and I have a strict no-fondling rule for persons and objects greater than twenty years my senior.

And though there was nothing left to give up, no semblance of liquid left in my body, The Goddess and I continued to have a face-to-face relationship until mid-afternoon. I’d covered the floor in soft fluffy towels, where I reclined in wait of the next dry heave, the next organ-loosening contraction, the next near-death experience.

By late afternoon I had the following conversation with my stomach- here is the transcript:

Me: Hi, Stomach. This is me, Robin. First, I want to say I completely and utterly to submit to the rule you have over my body. If I have slighted you in the past, I do humbly beg your forgiveness.
Stomach: As it should be.
Me: Obviously Amanda contaminated us with a virulent strain of Vomiticus, which forced you to expunge last evening’s choice of dinner- the aforementioned dinner shall remain nameless as I have come to the conclusion that the mere thought of it sends you on a well-deserved jihad against my esophagus.
Stomach: You are observant, my child.
Me: I wonder if I might run a few things by you- feel you out, so to speak.
Stomach: Please, go right ahead. I’ll be sure to inform you if I am displeased.
Me: Thank you, Stomach. You are most gracious. I was wondering how you feel about crackers?
Stomach: I believe this would be a hasty decision. Imagine what non-lubricated cracker bits will do to your esophagus on their way back up.
Me: Your opinion is duly noted. What say you about juice?
Stomach: What kind of juice are you suggesting?
Me: We have grape in the fri--
Stomach: DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A CLEAR LIQUID TO YOU?
Me: Um, no sir.
Stomach: Then perhaps you had best stay away from it.
Me: A pear, then? They’re awfully juicy. Very soft.
Stomach: That’s a negative, ghostrider.
Me: Where did you learn such colloquialisms?
Stomach: Please stay focused.
Me: My apologies. *pause* There are popsicles in the freezer. Cool and soothing....
Stomach: After the juice debacle, I’m afraid to ask what flavor.
Me: Well, they’re creamy coconut but you usually ADORE creamy coconut.
Stomach: Are you high?
Me: No, just sore.
Stomach: Stupid, then?
Me: So the coconut is a no-go. *long pause, cringing* How about some Sprite?
Stomach: Hmmm. Possibly. Maybe you should take a sip?
Me: Is this a trick? Because I did not like the previous revolt and-
Stomach: Do not anger me, missy. I will do as I see fit and you will like it. Do you understand me?
Me: Yes, Stomach. I understand you. So you’d accept a small cup of Sprite? Could I trade two sips of liquid for one cracker nibble?
Stomach: *thinking, thinking* Yes, provided the cracker nibble is extremely well chewed.
Me: *mentally shaking hands* Deal. Two sips for every cracker nibble. I will not disappoint you, Stomach.
Stomach: Let’s hope.

The Agony

2006-12-13T15:40:00.001-08:00

On the way back from lunch, Nancy shot her arm across the span of the car to turn down the “puppy killing” music that Kimberly had selected to help combat our post-lunch slump. She then turned her perfectly coiffed blonde head towards the three of us in the rear and fanned her face in mock excitement, exclaiming that up here on the left is where Robin and I were attacked by the bee!

She was right. And as far as I’m concerned, it should be hallowed ground protected by pink forcefields and vicious attack kittens because it’s not everyday that you pop your Embarrassment Cherry in front of the entire lunch-going population of West Little Rock.

It started at Mimi’s, a relatively new addition to the generic restaurant chains that sprout up in under fourteen days. These family oriented establishments come complete with a uniformed and seasoned crop of servers just dying to read you the specials, smile firmly in place, because working at Mimi’s is totally going to increase their tip revenue and waiting tables at On the Border is just so passé.

Throughout lunch I kept finding the crispy remains of flies on our table in places that had been decidedly fly-free only moments before. Like the heavens confused fly carcasses for manna and dropped them liberally upon unsuspecting restaurant patrons. And then halfway through the meal I saw something small, black and winged fly just past my eyelash. I have no idea where it landed but judging by its trajectory, the French onion soup one table over might have received an unexpected visitor.

For whatever reason, the six or seven dead flies I was personally witness to didn’t affect my gross-out factor. Because, I suppose, they were dead. If they’d been buzzing around my face, this would have been an entirely different story. Obviously whatever was supposed to kill them was killing them, however unfortunate their crinkled little black bodies looked beside the bread basket.

Nancy and I had taken my Honda to lunch, mainly because we like putting as many vehicles on the roads during lunch hour as humanly possible. Also, global warming is just a scam and it’s not like we really need the rain forest, anyway. On the way back we cranked up the air conditioner because September in Arkansas is akin to placing your delicate, naked body upon a hard reflective surface at high noon on the equator. Only it’s more humid here.

About a quarter of the way back to the office, Nancy inexplicably stopped mid-sentence and I turned my head, confused, just in time to watch her blue eyes go from normal mascared size to the kind of eyes you see on dead people. Specifically, dead people who have just been confronted with an alien race that intends to drown you in festering alien pus while sharpening their razor sharp teeth on your tailbone.

The only thing she could get out was a breathless squeak of unadulterated fear. She pulled her suddenly frozen hand from her lap and pointed at the side of my head, finally managing to form her mouth around the words that nobody trapped in a moving vehicle with air-tight windows wants to hear: BEE.

As Nancy finally gained her breath and forced a scream out of her windpipe, I lost every ounce of my sanity and swerved to the right, narrowly missing a silver Toyota. When I realized that a twelve inch tall curb significantly prevented me from ramping into the median, I swerved again, this time to the right. I imagine that the people behind me nonchalantly let off their gas pedals because look what we’ve got here, another corporate junkie coming off a liquid lunch. Surprise.

I turned a space just barely big enough to fit a tuna can into my impromptu parking spot and jumped out of the car, not caring that my door was open and the chances of it being ripped off were pretty high. Also, there’s that whole human body versus oncoming traffic thing but that’s just not what crosses one’s mind when confronted with a vicious bee in one’s hair.

At first I ran to the front of the car, hoping to dislodge it and send it on its merry way. But Nancy immediately and shrilly confirmed that it was most definitely still stuck in my hair and if I didn’t hurry it was definitely going to eat my face off. So I ran to the passenger side and threw my head towards my knees, assuming the quick flurry of activity would rid me of my unwanted hair accoutrement.

Here’s where it gets even more amusing: After twenty seconds of head-flipped-over screaming and indescribable panic, I finally convinced Nancy (via more screaming and panic) that she had to help me and she had to help me right that very second. So she sucked up her courage and got out of the passenger seat, scrunching her nose and averting her face, hands pawing at my hair in the manner of a girl-fight circa 1975 Connecticut. I say Connecticut because hello, I spent the majority of my high school years in a place (Mississippi) where girl-fights meant somebody’s weave was getting ripped out and the sign of a seasoned fighter was a string of self inflicted box-cutter scars on the forearm. Those bitches did not play.

I finally flipped my mass of hair back over, only to be met with Nancy’s horrified eyes. The bee, it was still there. Which just launched more screaming and general ass-hattery.

Three hair flips later and Nancy deemed my tresses bee-free. After a moment of hysterically tinged laughter, I got back in the driver’s seat and drove us back to the office, where we diligently reenacted our embarrassing and irrational display.

Also? That bee? It was already dead.

What? More snot?

2006-12-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

Let’s be honest- at this point I almost have no choice but to morph this blog from a spewing of mindless drivel to a spewing of health related dysfunctions, including examples of my patheticness when sickly. This is not to say I’m over being sick, because I’m not. We have officially kicked off week two in Robin’s Misery Campaign and what better way to make my proposed format transition than by notifying everyone that from this point forward, I will talk incessantly about bowel movements, mucus balls, eye goop, bloody snot and vomiting.

Only I hate talking about bowel movements, this is just where I draw the line. They shouldn’t be discussed with anyone outside of the healthcare profession or that one friend who talks openly about dropping the kids off at the pool. The friend who will openly and unashamedly tell you that now is definitely not the best time to visit the ladies because she’s about to go in there and coat the pipes. We all have this friend so it does you no good to deny it.

It’s just I’ve spent a lifetime of listening to my grandmother describe color and texture and frequency and suppository insertion and pain of poop removal. Add onto that another lifetime of listening to my mother bitch about how she has to smile and nod with concern or appreciation during these stories, and it’s like being tag teamed by herds of angry rhinoceros and gassy warthogs. The rhinoceros are pissed because they’ve had their delicate ears assailed with stories of poop carnage and the warthogs are oblivious to the fact that a) eating the crunchy caterpillars gives them lower intestinal difficulties and b) the rhino’s aren’t really that keen on hearing about the rectal expelling of the caterpillars.

Obviously I need to come up with better analogies. The point being that I’m not going to talk about poop. My poop, your poop or your girlfriend’s poop. I will, however, talk about cat poop. Because that shit stinks and it’s especially foul when it gets stuck in the kitty cat butt-fur. Besides, my whole goal in life is to grow up to be the cantankerous lady next door who smells faintly of cat litter. It’s just an added bonus if I get to smell like cat litter tainted with poop. It’s like asking god to strike a trifling whore with a case of chlamydia and instead he gives her a kid plus thirty pounds of stretch-marked baby weight.

Chuck Norris, come kick this mucus in the ass!

2006-12-07T13:45:00.000-08:00

This past week has been an in-depth study in the inadequacies of hydrocodone and the sheer ineptitude of medical professionals. Barring the mono incident during my junior year in college, this is by far the most miserable I have ever been. And when I say miserable, I mean so miserable that the act of swallowing my own spit actually keeps me awake at night. The sheer pain involved in contracting my throat makes me want to tear the heads off helpless gerbils. Though obviously I can’t do much more than make paste-o-gerbil in my oral cavity. Like pate’, only not.

I made it into wok for a solid hour yesterday when I decided the world would definitely be a better place if I would take my cantankerous ass home to bed. Many hours of sleeping later and I was equally as cranky as when I left work. And my throat still felt like a breeding ground for unhappy scorpions.

This morning I made deals with myself: I did not have to wash my hair but I did have to shower. I did not have to shave my legs but I did have to brush my teeth. I did not have to dress in a professional manner but I did have to put on a bra. This made these accomplishments easier to stomach, simply because I had exempted myself from the more laborious tasks. Also, it’s winter. Who cares if I miss one day of leg shaving, anyway?

Once at work I realized what an awful, terrible thing it is to be cooped up in one’s apartment for many, many days in a row. It was abundantly clear to me upon sitting at my clean, clutter-free desk that my apartment had gone from meeting the definitions of those words to being an apartment that might actually collapse under the weight of stacks of leftover sherbert bowls and popsicle wrappers and half-eaten pasta frozen dinners. Much like cleaning the yogurt remnants from my three-day-old scarf, I apparently couldn’t be bothered with little things like putting the crusty dishes in the sink or picking discarded blankets off the floor.

And even though the thought of my living space sitting in such a mound of cluttered filth would normally send me straight home for cleaning, nothing short of a building fire and the smoldering remains of my belongings could illicit a greater reaction than ‘meh.’ And even now, thinking about the smoldering couch and charred shoes, my first thought is “that’s why you have renter’s insurance” followed immediately by “meh.”

Misery also loves The Real World

2006-12-05T17:13:00.000-08:00

Much like yesterday, I spent the majority of my time today in heinous fits of misery. I rotated from the couch to the bed and from the bed to the couch roughly every four hours. Not because I really wanted to, but because I once watched a Primetime report about nursing homes and the horror that is an oozing bedsore. Obviously my bedsore risk rates fairly low, seeing as how I've only been confined to my apartment for three days. I never claimed to be totally rational.

I wish I could enjoy what is effectively a four day weekend but it's amazing how old forcing down popsicles and yogurt can get, especially when one's throat feels like someone set your esophageal area to the pureed setting. I also tend to doze off at the oddest of times, normally snapping to attention when my body has text messaged my sleeping self with 'Hey bitch. U have snot rnng dwn ur face and ur throte needs sum h20. Thnx!! xoxo.'

And then there are the really confusing moments, like when you wake up to two over-zealous Real World sluts performing a vicious oral examination when the last thing you remember is watching a polar bear documentary on Animal Planet. Just in case you're wondering, that's a whole twenty channels worth of flippage or some very coordinated channel selection, all while heavily sedated.

Tomorrow I'm going to make a concerned attempt to make it in to work. This requires that many things be accomplished before 7:30am, specifically, a shower. I'm not sure how that's going to work seeing as how I've had the same black scarf around my neck since Sunday at 2pm. That's going on fifty-five hours of crustification, including the mounting yogurt stains achieved by attempting to feed myself in a semi-prone position. I couldn't be bothered to do more than wipe half-heartedly at them, seeing as how I was conserving my energy for the next time I was going to have to get up and pee.

Misery doesn't love company, it loves mucus

2006-12-04T20:05:00.000-08:00

I spent the majority of my day either huddled into a corner of the sofa or huddled in a ball on my bed, covered by copious amounts of polarfleece and down.

Amidst all my misery, I received the following touching message from a friend of mine:

Some people are like Slinkies... Not really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.

There's really nothing like an inspirational pick-me-up to brighten your day. *tear

An apple a day

2006-12-03T17:02:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up with Tickle Me Elmo having a go at my throat. Which would be all well and good if I were a masochistic puppet but last time I checked I wasn't made of velveteen remnants or polyester hair. And I certainly don't require someone's hand up my ass to simulate strange hinged-jaw movements that showcase my delightful gullet-less orifice.

Also, I somehow managed to restick my Breathe Right strip to my right forearm in the middle of the night. As breathing rarely has anything to do with right forearms, this did nothing to curb the steady drizzle of snot making it's way down into my stomach. Breakfast of champions, it is not. I tend to rub my face a lot when sickly, so sometime between midnight and feeling healthy and seven and feeling an unfortunate weather condition of mucus, I appear to have rolled myself in a field of Agent Orange. I knew all those years in 'Nam were going to bite me in the ass one day.

I pushed on through four hours of nursery duty because the money's good and what better way to spread Christmas cheer than by letting a five-month old gum your dioxin-infected fingers? Besides, Tickle Me Elmo had deserted his voracious tickling of my throat, probably in lieu of the veritable gold mine that is a room full of two-year-olds.

After lunch I made my way home and climbed three flights of stairs that felt distinctly like eighty. All the way I cursed the Third Floor Walk-Up, damning contractors the world over for failing to install one measly elevator. Once inside I went immediately to the thermostat and moved it up to seventy five because my fingers had suddenly lost all blood flow and if I wasn't careful, I'd be dropping frozen appendages like Elizabeth Taylor drops husbands.

Two hours later I woke up from my fitful and drug-induced nap in a fit of shivers and in distinct need of some pliers to remove the glass spikes from my throat. These moments always make me want my mama, not only because I know she'll bring me hot tea but because I have some morbid need for someone to see me when I'm deathly ill. I need someone, somewhere, to fully comprehend just exactly how miserable I am in that current moment. I need them to reassure me that I really am sick and I have every right to moan half-heartedly under the covers. And they're really handy when it dawns on you that the bottle of hydrocodone that Doogie Howser gave you after your stomach tried to birth an alien baby is sitting in the depths of your purse. Which is sitting in the middle of the entryway, right where you dropped it on the way to your bed mere hours before.

The only problem with hydrocodone is that a whole pill puts me in a very vomitous frame of mind-- and while eating wasn't high up on Things To Do list, forcing acid coated vomit up through the bloody remains of my throat was even lower. So I forced The Demonspawn from their very appreciated spots on my feet and pulled all the covers from my bed, grabbing my scarf from the closet because I quite like my nose and what if it should get frostbitten? It'd be all black and crusty and nobody likes a girl with an icky, half-gnawed off nose.

I stood in my kitchen wrapped in four layers of down comforter and polar fleece and watched the microwave while it heated up my pasta, knowing if I went back to my bed to wait out the cooking time, I'd never get back up. And then I'd never take the happy pill. And then I'd never make it to the Pier One sale because I'd have up and died alone with my cats in my third floor walk-up. And that's just too sad for words.

Which brings us to now: HIGH AS A FUCKING 747 FLYING OVER THE ATLANTIC. Still cold, but in a very dreamy sort of way. I have a very squishy mouth. Specifically, my lips feel all poofy and soft and when I bite them they seem to just kind of spill over my tongue. At least the glass spikes have subsided to a sort of swollen spikey marble feeling. I will take a throat full of swollen spikey marbles over the rotating slice-n-dice of the glass spikes any day. And if you're the one who has been sending me the glass spikes, have no doubt that I will find you and I will cut you.

2006-12-01T07:09:00.000-08:00

Dear MSN,

Seriously. This picture does nothing to put me in a Holiday mood. I do not care that it’s a “fun” parade float. I do not care that this is considered to be the french-fry dispenser by children the world over. I DO NOT CARE. It is early and I don’t appreciate being greeted by a building-sized air-filled clown whose expression is less “Happy Holidays, kiddies!!!” and more “Please, I beg you, get this light pole out of my ass.”

Sincerely,
[redacted]

I'm Feeling Happy, So Highly Evolved

2006-11-30T11:22:00.000-08:00

This morning I drove across town to pick up my deposit check from my previous landlord. His acquiescence was ensured after I faxed and emailed a lovely document I created, one in which I visually detailed the rat population and the monochromatic display of mildew on my bathroom ceiling. I also pointed out that in the 18 months I lived in that apartment, only one major repair was completed. The kitchen window sill had rotted through and was allowing all manner of water and creatures into the apartment. After two months of repeated phone calls, emails, faxes and personal visits, my leak was finally fixed. WITH DUCT TAPE. As such, my deposit was expected in full. By today.

Late yesterday afternoon I received a response to my email, indicating that he’d be in the office after 9:30 and he’d have the check ready. I refrained from replying back, as much as it killed me. I desperately wanted to ask his pasty red-haired slimy ass if he had any intention of returning my deposit until I threw a giant fit. He should have known better, though. I can throw fits like nobody’s business.

On the way back to the office I pulled out the CD in my dash, half-heartedly looking through my lackluster collection of available music for a replacement. Feeling very uninspired, I made a blind grab for a disc in the middle, praying it wasn’t the soundtrack to “Sliver” I’d bought 1994. Instead, I’d managed to select a burned copy of the Highly Evolved album by The Vines. I know that absolutely no one is interested in how I came by this CD, but if you’re really that bored, click on Yoj to your right and read about man titties.

When I lived in New York I worked at a post-production facility. We took the footage from commercial and short film shoots and edited them down to the 15, 20, 30 and 60 second spots that aired across the globe. Ever seen those Valtrex commercials? The ones for genital herpes? How would you like to eat three weeks of lunches sitting in a room full of ad execs discussing whether they liked the “I NEVER let genital herpes get in my way” take or the “I never let GENITAL herpes get in my way” take. My god, the agony.

In the DVD production office was a tall, broad shouldered guy with a personality that could strip the varnish off a 100-year-old violin. I’m assuming it’s hard to take that varnish off, I have no idea. Point being, he was sarcastic and acerbic and caustic MY OH MY, that’s just how I like ‘em.

Late one night we were lounging in the kitchen, eating Ritz crackers and cream cheese, waiting on an editor to finish cutting the last bit of a commercial so Steven could transfer it to the final DVD reel and I could get in the Towncar outside and head to Long Island, DVD in hand. Amidst our bitching that it was ten o’clock at night and couldn’t these people wait until the morning, we got to talking about music. I admitted to rarely buying CD’s, or even taking the time to burn them. I was lazy at heart and there was just no beating that out of me.

In our discussion, Steven asked to borrow my Silverchair CD, one of the few newer albums I’d swiped from my brother without his knowledge. Obviously I agreed, as what better way to win favor with cantankerous men who haven’t the slightest idea that you exist as a female? I was almost giddy with excitement, as this meant I had a guaranteed conversation starter for the following day. Score one for me.

The next day Steven returned with my disc, as well as a copy of Highly Evolved that he thought I might like. I had the hugest crush on him from that moment forward--until he invited me to a movie with some friends of his and we went to some anime’ premier that made me want to stab myself in the eye, repeatedly, with a lit blowtorch. Suddenly I realized his cutting remarks stemmed less from high intelligence and more from a total lack of relevant social interaction.

2006-11-29T11:13:00.000-08:00

Days left for my previous landlord to return my deposit before I light his ass on fire and key his car: 1

Notice

2006-11-28T14:44:00.000-08:00

I added some links on the side. Please do not hex me if I didn't add yours. I was probably just too lazy to look up the URL.

In other news: My god am I hungry. Definitely a delivery kind of evening.

Why I should just burn more CD's

2006-11-28T13:40:00.000-08:00

I realize I’m not really the person to ask about popular music. After all, I’m in love with The Cure, and have been for many, many years. This isn’t a Radiohead or Pearl Jam-esque obsession, because people who get all up in Eddie Vedder’s business are a little insane. Music by The Cure is always relaxing and happy to me, plus it makes me dance in my living room in spasmatic, uncontrollable fashion. Because I’m fairly positive my neighbors lead a boring suburban life and what better way to spice it up than watching the idiot cat-lady through the third floor windows?

It’s just I get confused by some forms of music. I spend the entire length of the song thinking about the circumstances that had to occur to get this idiotic representation of the human race a recording contract and by the time I’m done with my thought process, the song is over times four. Not all of it is bad, obviously. Take the 'popular' music stations, for example. Some of the music is nice, inspiring what I like to refer to as my non-death-metal head-banging antics. Some of it even makes me wish that seats didn’t have to cup your posterior so closely, thereby preventing the posterior from shaking it like a salt shaker should so obviously be shaken.

But the names, MY GOD, the names. A couple of years ago I was totally thrown off by a grown man who went by the name of Chingy. Maybe this is a perfectly acceptable moniker to you, I have no idea. But Chingy sounds an awful lot like dinghy (wee little boat) or dingy (see also: ding bat). These, in turn, make me think of dingleberry, which is what hangs off my cat’s ass after he craps in the litter box and a leftover piece of poo gets stuck in his butt-fur. Hence, I associate Chingy with fur encrusted poopage. Probably not what he was going for.

Now I know I’ve berated some of the more amusing songs on here, ones that verbally express their undying love for strippers with big, brown eyes who twirl around the pole. The song where female genitalia is, I assume, being compared to peanut butter and jelly. Fergie and her inexplicable lyrics about going down on her London Bridge. And now I have a new one to add to the list, per yesterday’s rush hour drive home: a song about a man who’s trying to get to you and that monkey. I’m assuming that, per usual, the never fully described “monkey” is referring to female bits (obviously these men are tired of having penises). Of course, he could actually be referring to a real live monkey, because he’s just kookoo for coco puffs, if coco puffs are the round bits of poop that monkeys will inevitably throw at each other. I seriously doubt he has such animal-preservation motives, however, because the line right before the monkey bit professes how he’s trying to get to you and that booty. This line I totally understand. He’s enthralled with a young woman’s backside and he’s been overcome with the need to get to it, like, right that very second.

Plus, he wants you shake it, shake it, later on tonight.

I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you?

2006-11-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

I transferred to the new Blogger Beta last Wednesday, mainly because I was wicked tired of logging in and being greeted by a full page SWITCH NOW!!!! advert. It started off as a lonely little link in the upper right hand corner, quietly hovering, patiently waiting for me to choose the new and improved (and probably untested) version of Blogger over the comfortable and familiar home to which I’d become accustomed. Later, it was a slightly larger and only mildly obtrusive link above the dashboard. Then apparently they decided they’d had enough with this subtlety bullshit, let’s take up the whole page with our reminders about easy template editing, layout design and much, much more! Just click here to switch! Easy peasy!

Only it wasn’t easy peasy and little things like making my yahoo email address reappear on my profile were ridiculously complicated. It only wanted to show my secretive gmail address, and it’s called my secretive gmail address because IT’S A SECRET, DAMNIT. I finally gave up and used the layout design screen, which was alright and all, I was just super annoyed with the whole process by then and couldn’t think of anything nice to say.

Thanksgiving came along and that evening I decided to check out my sitemeter. It’s not something I do all time but it’s kind of festive to look at, especially when I see that someone in Tehran found my site by googling “hot girl but sex.” And yes, they spelled it without the second t. I’ve also enjoyed “fabrication sandwich roll ups,” “mormon hobby lobby,” and “fergie + every time my laundry.” I know I harp a lot on Fergie but she just makes it so easy. Big Bird-yellow ruffle dresses. Peeing on herself during a concert. Meth addiction. Spray tans. Plus, someone out there confused her lyrics of “every time you come around my London Brige” with EVERY TIME YOU COME AROUND MY LAUNDRY. This alone is priceless to me.

But as of 10pm on Thanksgiving, I’d had not one single visitor. Kind of strange, I thought. But it is Thanksgiving. Maybe the whole internet population is just doped up on turkey-sleeptophan. Then it was Friday and Saturday and Sunday, and still not one single hit on the sitemeter. I actually got a touch paranoid, thinking maybe there was some vast internet campaign to keep visitors away from the mindless drivel I spew forth on average of three times a week. Sometimes more if you’re lucky.

By Monday afternoon I’d had it. Something was very obviously wrong with the sitemeter and I was totally going to get to the bottom of it, what with my total lack of patience concerning things I don’t understand. Thirty minutes of my lunch break later, it dawned on me that perhaps when I switched to the festive little Beta version, the sitemeter folks just didn’t know what to do with it and, well, I don’t know. There’s probably some techno lingo I could throw in there but I only know enough to sound reasonably intelligent in my meetings and to know that there’s not enough money in the world to convince me to be a programmer.

Anyway. This is all very anticlimactic at this point, but installing a new meter fixed it. I can now go back to cross-state/country/continent stalking. All is right with the world.

Dragonflutters

2006-11-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was one of those crazy days where the world stops spinning on it’s lovely diagonal axis and you get a second or two to understand what Mr. Clarke was talking about in ‘Childhood’s End.’ Obviously I’m overexaggerating, but that’s what I do. I say things like “This lotion smells like heaven” when what I really mean is “This lotion adequately performs it’s lotionizing duties but I feel I must be excessively exuberant in my appreciation of the lotion.” That may or may not be a good example but I’m counting on you not to judge me and to continue nodding your head in semi-agreement.

A friend of mine got married yesterday afternoon and another one found out she is having a bundle of joy that comes fully equipped with a sausage and meatballs, which means she instantly began debating the name that will accompany this little boy well into adulthood. Here’s hoping they don’t name him Rupert or Otis.

Both of these girls are like balls of hyper-rotating happiness, radiating fields of glowing human sunshine that thankfully does not require one to wear protective glasses to prevent the dancing sunlight from sneaking in and searing off your corneas. It’s a pleasant kind of sunshine, one that leaves chunks of sparkly glitter in their wake because they’ve got so much giddiness stored up they can’t possibly contain it.

On a different note, this means I am the last remaining single female in my office. If I think really hard about it, I may be the only single PERSON left in my office. This is neither good nor bad, it just is. Just like the love of Tom and Katie just is. And the lure of yellow post-it notes just is. And the thirst-quenching effects of water just is. That was all one potential grammatical nightmare but I had to keep going with my analogy. You understand.

So what I’m thinking is this: I’m going to start dressing my cats in clothing, like, really scary clothing. The best kind is usually made for dogs, so I think I’ll just repurpose it for the cats. Cats have four legs and a head. Dogs have four legs and a head. There’s no reason this won’t work. Then I’m going to double, no, triple my efforts to train The Demonspawn in the delights of walking on a leash. There’s really nothing delightful about it but with the use of many, many cat treats and the lure of an open can of tuna, perhaps I can convince them to go along with my plan.

Once we master the leash walking and the clothes wearing, we’re going for very long walks around the neighborhood. I’m going to start waiving at everyone in lieu of channeling my inner New Yorker and refusing to make eye contact with passer-by. So instead of Inhospitable Southern Lady Who Probably Has A Yankee In The Family, I’m going to be the Gracious But Distinctly Crazy Southern Lady Who Smells Faintly Of Cat Litter.

That or I’m going to get some religion in me. So when people ask for the thousandth time why I am still single at the ovary-shriveling age of 26, I can tell them it’s because I’m married to my lord and savior Mohammed Ali.

**Addendum: Just so we're clear, I'm truly not concerned with my ever present single status. Though if I listened to my grandmother, oh, I don't know EVERY TIME SHE SPEAKS, I'd have settled down and hence would have someone available who, theoretically, would readily volunteer to help me move roughly every 18 months. And Carl is right-- marriages and kids take a lot of time and energy, neither of which I'm willing to spare. if everyone listened to their mothers and fathers and truly believed them when they said marriage and offspring are hard work, no one would actually participate in the propogation of the human race. And if everyone listened to me ramble, no one would get married or let their ovaries accept the knocking of some traveling sperm. Unless you're that girl Erica from 'The Bachelor.' Then I will beg you to listen to me and strongly urge that should the situation arise when someone is willing to loan you their DNA, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU BREED.

If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving isn't for you

2006-11-21T11:01:00.000-08:00

Normally I don’t watch the weird reality shows that force people to make-out on camera in tiny bikinis and perfect makeup while frolicking in the ocean surf. I also don’t watch reality shows that force people to hike or fish or swim or swallow living things with exoskeletons. And I really hate the ones that pretend that walking a low-quality metal structure with a camera strapped to your hard hat are meant to entertain me. They make me uncomfortable and they make me feel awkward. Not awkward as in I just burped in front of my boss awkward but awkward as in Holy Catpoop, Batman, did that girl really just eat an uncooked cow penis on national television? My heart hurts for her.

But last night was different. I was bored and feeling very disinclined to get off my couch and find the remote. Granted, I know that the remote is sitting on the left side table right next to the DVD and stereo remotes because this is where the remotes live and god help you if you move them. My arms aren’t long enough to reach them while stretched out on the couch, however, and short of training The Demonspawn to perform such useful acts, I was left watching whatever happened to come on ABC at 8pm.

As it turns out, the 8pm slot was reserved for some kind of catch-up show for The Bachelor. Besides the fact that The Bachelor holds some of the characteristics I mentioned above, I don’t watch it because it is by far one of the stupidest concepts I have ever seen appear season after season on the airwaves. I can’t even be bothered to explain why because it truly just annoys me that much.

Apparently not enough to force me off the couch and change the channel, though. I watched an hour of some reunion episode, where the “most memorable” girls came back to air their grievances and get a short generic statement from Senor Bachelor about why he didn’t choose them to be his most esteemed lifetime companion.

The real amusement came when some dark-haired Prissy McPrisserton named Lisa was asked to defend the fact that she WALKED OUT OF HER BEDROOM WEARING A WEDDING GOWN when Senor Bachelor came to meet her folks. Just in case you missed that: SHE WALKED OUT OF HER BEDROOM WEARING A WEDDING GOWN. Like, one she purchased before going on the show. I’m not sure what message she was trying to send with this display of commitment-readiness. And let’s not even talk about the plethora of wedding planner books and brides magazines and various other Till Death Do Us Part accoutrements. This one, she is scary.

The part I was really looking forward to was the discussion of Erica, the Texas-born rich girl whose comment of “I don’t see any maids around here and I’m a little concerned.” was played on various satirical radio and television broadcasts. I even once caught a scene of Kelly Ripa impersonating the little pointy-chinned twat, and I thought surely, SURELY, she was exaggerating just a wee smidge. But no, she was not. She was by far the most annoying human being I have ever seen on television, and that includes the creepy kid who played Urkel. Her vapid smile made my innards quiver in fear because someone, somewhere will breed with this idiotic specimen of a human being and those genes will yet again be watered down and passed forth to an unsuspecting and ill-prepared generation.

In the end I felt kind of sorry for these girls, and doubly sorry that I had not found the energy to change the channel to a nice viewing of Meerkat Manor on the Animal Planet station.

Sneezy and Dopey and STUPID

2006-11-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

This morning I pulled my one pair of clean but excessively wrinkled jeans off the hangar and resigned myself to the ten extra minutes I was going to have to spend ironing out the crazy diagonal creases that the dryer should have removed, but didn’t. Because while this is our monthly Jeans Day, it’s not our monthly Homeless Lady Staggers In Building With Wrinkled Jeans And Wet Hair Day. For whatever reason I rationalize that if one presses their clothing, others are less likely to judge for walking in bare-faced and soppy-haired.

While the iron was heating up I decided that I would even go so far as to put pretty creases in my jeans. These are not the scary creases that people make on regular generic jeans or the really baggy kind with three cans of starch. These jeans are cut like nice trousers, only made of denim, obviously, because I just called them jeans. So basically I’ve got on the same kind of outfit I wear every other day, it’s just that this material happens to be outlawed during the majority of my work month.

Once I was satisfied with the nice clean lines down the front of my denim trousers I looked at the clock on my phone and realized it was time to get the fear of god and put my ass in gear. So as I’m putting on my pants and hopping around with one shoe and grabbing keys from the dresser and unplugging the iron, I’m also attempting to hook my pants. Like many ladies trousers, the maker has eschewed the button and the snap, going instead for a flat front look with two wide slider hooks and a zipper. I keep grabbing and pulling and attempting to find the hook catching things on the opposite side of the hook part and the thought crosses my mind that maybe I’ve gained some weight since I wore these pants last month. Maybe I need to cinch them tighter.

I pull so tight my belly button recoils in fear, telling me that it will not accept pants that will have to be worn so tight. Finally I put down my purse and keys myriad other accoutrements and look down, exasperated with the length of time it’s taken an adult woman to hook her pants.

It’s then that I notice that while the pants have the two wide hooks on the right tab, they are missing the hook homes on the left. Where is the hook to go, I think? What has happened here?

I give up completely at this point and just take the pants off, staring at the little tabs in confusion, still thinking that these pants are just more complicated than I remembered and everything will resolve itself in just a few moments. But when I bring the tabs under the microscope of my non-microscope eye, I realize there are four wee little holes on the left. Four wee little holes that at some point would have housed the hook homes, BUT WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Ultimately I had to scrounge around in my junk drawer for a mini snap and some needle and thread. It wasn’t pretty, but I spent three and a half minutes whipping it on because heaven forbid I have a safety pin. Granted, I could have just found some other pants but this is JEANS DAY, people. It comes around once a month, sometimes twice if you’re lucky. We can’t just waste it because of a little thing like keeping your pants closed.

Here's your one chance, Fancy

2006-11-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

My parents are such lovely, law-abiding people. They’re good with their finances, they save adequately for retirement and they normally keep their vehicles through at least three presidential terms. They do things like pay off their auto loans and replace the clutch in the truck when it goes out. Even more specifically, my father is normally the one changing the clutch or the engine or the throttle body, because he’s all mechanically inclined like that. And if it gets down to it, he’ll even change the oil.

When I got my first car at sixteen I had to show my father that I was competent enough to be let loose on America’s highways. I’d miserably failed the ‘Driving a Stick-shift’ lesson and it wouldn’t be so much of a stretch to say he wasn’t terribly confident in my abilities. After all, I’d somehow managed to rip the driver’s door off my mother’s van less than six months before while reaching out to open the mailbox with the van in reverse and the door wide open. I still maintain that this is hardly my fault. Had they taken the van into the shop and had them replace the window motor, this would never have happened. I am so not to blame here. *cough

My father-created Driving Test involved me, a 1993 Ford Tempo (white), a lug wrench, a jack and one very hot concrete driveway. My goal: to remove and replace all four wheels by the end of the day. Looking back on this, it seems much more like a punishment and less like a Test. But that’s how we roll in my family. Why change one tire when you can so obviously change four?

I got through two of them before my then latent piss-and-vinegarness rose to the surface. I would not be removing any more tires, I decided. The first one proved I could do it and the second one showed that the first wasn’t a fluke. Statistically, I had a very small chance of blowing all four tires at once and should I someday encounter that kind of circumstance then changing them would not be my chief concern; escaping from the gun-wielding officers after having just run over a police barricade and making it across the Mexico border would be my chief concern.

I managed to stick with Tessa the Tempo until I was two months away from leaving for college. Then came Gidget the Jeep, a 1993 Daimler-Chrysler creation that sported a lovely, if enigmatic, sticker on the rear hatch that read simply: Please Use Tongs.

After that came Anabelle, a Mitsubishi Montero with leather seats. I don’t really need to go into what happens during an Arkansas summer when bare leg meets scorching leather. After my senior year in college, Anabelle languished at my parent’s house during my stint in New York. I guess she knew I’d come back for her.

Then Dulce, a Grand Cherokee that had no real problems other than the fact that gasoline had suddenly risen to a staggering price per gallon. Plus I became less concerned with carting friends around in a vehicle that had headroom. If you want to bitch about it, I decided, you can take your own car. It was time I purchased something sensible and sedan-like. Something that would boldly proclaim to the world that a) I had a steady, reliable income and b) that I was a steady, reliable adult.

I’ve never named the current Accord. Not from any lack of names, more from the fact that this reliable and sturdy sedan was just that: reliable and sturdy. Every other vehicle had strange quirks and dings and behavioral patterns. Tessa the Tempo used to activate her automatic seat belts when I was driving down the interstate. Gidget the Jeep used to fake you out with her lagging starter. Anabelle would screech her locking motors in a chorus of pain if you happened to touch the automatic locks from the driver side.

As of Saturday I will have added another one into the mix. This one will more than likely be just as devoid of quirks as my last one has been. I’m not terribly upset by this, however, because what this new car will lack in quirks, she will make up in gas mileage and warranty coverage.

Paging Dr. L'Enfant

2006-11-13T15:08:00.000-08:00

I can remember standing in the lunch line at Wake Village Elementary School and feeling stomach pain like you wouldn’t believe a seven-year-old could experience. Short of impaling yourself on the see-saw or getting a dodgeball to the abdomen, that isn’t really the age for unidentified pain. Certainly a little young for ulcers or reflux, plus we can exclude the rogue ovary theory. Puberty came early but it didn’t come THAT early.

I finally gave in at nineteen and headed for the doctor. No real results, only some concern that I stay away from late-night Waffle House runs and cigarettes. I think I’m going to stop here and admit, much to the possible surprise of my mother, that I smoked for going on a decade. It got heavy in New York and even heavier once I moved back to Little Rock. I gave it up one day, cold turkey, when I finally calculated exactly how much it cost me to inhale two packs worth of cancer a day. That’s not the only reason I quit, however, and as much as I wish I could tell you, that deal is between me and God. Notice this is the capitalized form of God, not the normal god of which I speak. That’s because it’s my personal god and not the First Baptist Church of the One Who Has Risen and Redeemed god.

Over the years there have been barium scans and sonograms and more barium scans and lots of people who really enjoy pressing their fists into my stomach, asking me if it hurts here or HERE, how about over here? The last doctor finally did a scan with a nifty little camera that she slid right down my throat while I was vastly undermedicated. As it turns out, I have a hernia in my chest, which supposedly explains why I have strange pain in my stomach, pain that makes me want to shove a fork in my side in the hopes of having the little pain receptors move to the fork stab wound. I don’t know, a fork stab just seemed more manageable. At least I would have been able to verbally and visually indicate why I hurt in a particular area, making it much less of a guessing game for the medical personnel.

All of this culminated last Wednesday after a lunch of pizza and water. Really tasty pizza, I might add. I rarely eat it because every Sunday night for close to eighteen years my family ordered pizza. Specifically, one pepperoni pizza and one meat lover’s pizza, both with extra sauce. You could say it was because it was easy, that it meant my mother had one less night that she had to cook. In actuality, one of the adults in the household had to drive twenty minutes into town to pick it up. We lived so far out in the country even the pizza guys refused to visit.

As we were waiting on our checks I was completely overcome with the need to leave right then, as in right that very second. Had I been driving, I probably would have gotten up and just left my credit card in the hands of our waiter. But I wasn’t driving, which meant I had to wait for the general leaving consensus. I could have piped up and expressed my Leave Now feelings, but I’m a stoic one. Plus, my Actual For Real Boss was sitting at my table and one just does NOT discuss intestinal difficulties in front of Senor Actual For Real Boss.

After we’d pulled in the parking lot and I’d had to walk eight football fields back into the office, I decided I was definitely leaving. I was nearing the stage where you curl up in a ball of misery and cry, plus the pain was making me nauseated. Not the kind of heave-ho you get after a bad piece of fish, rather, the type of heave-ho one experiences when a bodily part has just been severed.

Unfortunately I do this really embarrassing thing when I have to tell people that something hurts: I cry like a little girl. I hate that I do this, I hate it I hate it I hate it. I could skin my knee and be perfectly fine until my mother asked if I was okay. I can bust my ass and crack my ankle in front of an arena of two-thousand people and not cry until my dance teacher pats my arm and ask if it hurts. Yes, it hurt. It all hurts. But the tears don’t flow until someone asks about it, naturally.

So upon telling my boss I had to leave for the day, my stomach feels like I’m being stabbed repeatedly, need to go to the doctor, I cry. Well, not cry. I tear-up. Which then completely muddles my speech and he thinks I’m telling him that there’s something wrong with my mouse. Obviously, he was a bit confused. I have to try again to form comprehensible words, make my mouth roll around sounds that should be relatively easy for an adult female. He understands, he says, and sends me on my way.

Here’s where it gets moderately interesting: On the way to my doctor I decide that he’s a raging douche and he doesn’t like to give medicine, which seems totally contradictory to being, you know, a DOCTOR. When I couldn’t sleep for months on end, he didn’t want to write me a prescription for Ambien or Lunesta because there was a chance I could get addicted. To which I replied: “Yes, but there’s also a chance I could sleep. Don’t be stingy with the drugs, little man.” So I bypassed the doctor’s office and drove straight to the ER. Almost straight, I should say. I had to pull over half-way there because a wave of pain so intense crashed through my abdominal region and I thought I was going to pass out.

The pain had dimmed from a 9.5 to a 7 by the time I was shown back to a hospital room and forced to don an ugly gown, one that I couldn’t figure out how to tie in the back and eventually just gave up and curled into a ball on the hospital bed. I know I said that thing about here’s where it gets interesting back in the previous paragraph and I may have lied. Because where it actually got interesting was when Doogie fucking Howser walked through the door.

I shit you not, this kid couldn’t have been over nineteen. Maybe twenty on a good day. My first thought was THIS is the guy they let dispense the valium? Plus, he had a wicked nasty scab over a zit he’d managed to perforate and pick at along with some very scraggly just-past-puberty facial hair. Inspire confidence, he did not.

He pushes on my stomach, makes me lift my legs, pushes on my stomach again and tells me he’ll be back. Thirty minutes later he rolls back in, telling me he’s only been at Baptist Medical for two days (really? I’m surprised!) and says he had to consult another doctor about my condition. He recommended a heavy dose of hydrocodone and some rest. Doesn’t want to put me through the cost of a CT scan. I tell him I have insurance, run any test he damn well pleases. He says no, you seem to be able to talk coherently and we’d rather just give you some pain pills.

SO WHAT YOU’RE TELLING ME IS, I’M BEING PUNISHED BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO ACT LIKE A MATURE, PROFESSIONAL ADULT AND NOT BLATHER ON LIKE A LUNATIC IN THE WAITING ROOM?

Whatever. I went home and took the happy hydro pills, cursed the infant doctor and slept like a kitten.

Take exit 5A and head straight into oncoming traffic

2006-11-11T13:28:00.000-08:00

Lately I’ve noticed a sudden influx of newly painted, brightly colored vehicles with matching window tint. As in someone took a 1984 Caprice with an original paint job in the dusty brown category, painted it candy-apple red with a hint of glitter and then tinted the windows to match. Red tint. What purpose does this serve? Are you attempting to distract us from the fact that you have windows? It must be some new thing, some new thing that involves the population making an attempt to be more white trash/ghetto/redneck than the previous generation. Perhaps it’s just some interior design fad gone horribly wrong. Someone misread the part in the design book that said keeping the room in the same color scheme makes it look bigger. Or something. I don’t really know what those interior design books say but I’ve watched a hella lot of decorating shows and I’m absolutely positive this is a theory. But them something went horribly wrong and it was applied to a vehicle. In candy-apple glitter red and sparkling green sherbert and fiery crackling orange. ALL WITH MATCHING WINDOW TINT.

Transition

The only time I advocate smoking is when it’s a radio personality. Because maybe one day they’ll get throat cancer and never speak again. Never inflict their nasal laugh or grating dialectical nightmare on the general public again. Never throw in an endorsement for Big Daddy’s Pawn Shop in the middle of the traffic report. Never say that Big Daddy’s will give you cash for all your jewrrry, when it should so obviously be pronounced jewl-er-y. Three very distinct syllables, SAY IT WITH ME NOW. Also, I’d never again have to sit at a redlight and ponder, even for a second, about Deer Widows. And why a nightclub if offering free admission and two-dollar well drinks for the aforementioned Deer Widows. I know I had to have heard that term before because it’s not like my father didn’t spend half my life at deer camp. In fact, he used to bring home the carcasses and string them up to a tree in our backyard and let the blood drain out of them. This probably bothers many people, this image of a limp deer dripping blood into a backyard, and I could not possibly care less. Because my dad can make some killer deer sausage and that deer was going to good use inside my belly. So my first thought when hearing that Deer Widows got in free was “Holy shit, there are that many women who’ve lost husbands in the deer woods to advertise this on the radio?” Followed by, “That’s really kind of sick. Who thought up this promotional crap, anyway?” A few seconds later followed by, “Oh. They mean wives whose husbands have gone off to deer camp. Clever. AND FUCKING STUPID.” Granted, it has never escaped my attention that I live in Arkansas. But I live in a city of roughly 280,000 people and for whatever reason, sometimes I mistakenly get confused and think this is, I don’t know, someplace where people don’t celebrate the first day of deer season with head-to-toe camo and a celebration that outshines Baby Jesus’ birthday.

Also radio related: I keep thinking the Outback Steakhouse jingle is a for-real song and I’ll stop the radio dial to get in a full ten seconds of head bopping only to realize I’ve been conned by the Outback jingle AGAIN.

Another Transition

Last night I went to Movie Xchange and perused their television series section. I love this section, love it like I love cheese sandwiches. They carry everything from ‘Friends,’ volumes 1-infinity, to ‘La Femme Nikita.’ I almost rented ‘Nikita’ last night and, laugh all you want, rented ‘Moonlighting’ instead. Bruce Willis circa 1987, BE STILL MY HEART. I rented season four because that was all they had. Obviously I had no idea what I was getting myself into, though it did suddenly become blindingly clear why my father would casually change the channel during the show. I mean, I always knew what he was doing. Someone was doing something naughty on TV and I wasn’t supposed to see it. Like the tongue-kissing scene in ‘Top Gun.’ Or the part in ‘Troop Beverly Hills’ where the wishy-washy troop leader says “Screw you, Velma!” It must be some strange dad-instinct because he’d always change the channel just as David and Maddie made sexual reference number 5,678. IN ONE EPISODE. Also, and maybe she just went a little crazy in season four, but Maddie was such a raging bitch. Jeez.

The Chuck Norris of hair product

2006-11-08T09:05:00.000-08:00

For whatever reason I feel like I should get a cookie or something, maybe a big fat one with coconut and chocolate bits and caramel drizzle. And some icing, white buttercream icing that tastes like creamy fairies in a blender.

I should get this cookie because I have converted yet another person to the wonder that is the fifty-dollar bottle of hair conditioner. I know, fifty dollars for hair conditioner, what kind of madness could this be? But I have hair that lands well below my bra strap even when I leave the blow-dryer under the bathroom sink in the morning. Hence, there is no screwing around with hair product selection. I say selection like I had a choice in matter, though obviously I did not. No one looks at a bottle of seemingly over-priced hair goop and exuberantly whips out their checkbook. We need affirmation that the week of ingesting cans of fifty-nine cent Campbell’s tomato soup is totally justified because our mane has suddenly transformed itself into hair-tossing, shine glinting under studio lights, Pantene commercial-type hair.

My hairdresser, who is also my friend (like the Hair Club president, who is also a client) gifted me with the shampoo/conditioner set for my birthday many, many months ago. That night I went directly home and smathered the new conditioner all over my head because obviously I have a rocking social calendar. And like the elusive Perfect Couch, I had suddenly found my Perfect Conditioner. It miraculously tamed my unruly locks into luscious waterfalls of dark silk and I found myself gently stroking the newly smooth strands for many days afterwards, still in disbelief that the lightly scented pink cream could perform such a mighty transformation.

Seven months later, when I’d finally scraped the last of the conditioner from the insides of the container, I happily drove over to my friend’s salon to hand her a fifty-dollar check. And then two weeks later I justified a thirty-dollar bottle of shine serum because when she fixed my hair with this product, the angels wept tears of baby kittens and sunshine. The pain from all those years of buying products even more generic than Suave had finally burst forth from my chest cavity and I felt the shame, OH THE SHAME, just melt away. I had officially crossed the threshold into a Person Who Can’t Quit Their Job and Move to Maine Because They Have Expensive Maintenance Charges. I must forever rely on my paycheck to keep me in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed, expensive hair products and all. Oh, and shoes. Mustn’t forget the shoes.

2006-11-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

Dear Internet,

I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU PEOPLE DON'T GO VOTE TOMORROW I WILL PERSONALLY BREAK YOUR KNEES.

And if you live in Little Rock and want to whine about not knowing where to go, then click here and shut your pie hole.

Love,

Robin

Pretty? Or Pretty Special?

2006-11-05T18:37:00.000-08:00

The other night I woke up to the distinct sounds of the alarm sirens, the ones that go off every Wednesday at noon. Only this was Thursday morning. Specifically, Thursday morning, roughly 2am. For a solid five minutes I laid in bed and tried to comprehend the rising, falling, rising, falling sound outside my window. I even had one of those discussions with myself where I asked exactly how important it was to get out of my warm bed if a disaster was imminent. Because it would totally be easier for people to find my body if it was right where they thought it would be, rather than hanging over a tree limb somewhere. In the cold. Outside of my warm bed.

I’m very focused on this warm bed situation because the temperature has decided to take a sudden nose dive into the chilly region. So chilly, in fact, that my thermostat clicked on several times in the night just to keep it from going below sixty degrees. This is a sure sign that I should have turned up the dial a bit but I’m telling you, it just wasn’t that cold when I finally got to bed. I should know because I made three lengthy trips into the dark abyss of the basement laundry in my flip flops and never once felt the bone racking chills that attacked my body every time I pushed a nostril out from beneath the bedcovers. And that was at 10pm, so what happened to the weather in a mere four hours?

Eventually I decided it was probably in my best interest to get up and at least check the television for the inevitable anchorwoman, calm and collected, telling me to pack my shit up and get the hell out of dodge. I grabbed my robe off the hook, cursing it’s thinness and my avoidance of washing the heavy one that evening because it meant I’d have had to run to the store and get more quarters. Damn me and my laziness.

But as I flipped through each station I noticed a total lack of calm anchorwomen and a plethora of infomercials. This is very odd, I thought, that even the local stations refuse to run a ticker on the bottom of the screen. They run tickers if a thunderstorm in northern Missouri threatens to bring an extra gust of wind through the Ozark Mountains . I’m contemplating how I’m going to get two unruly cats into the back of my Honda and these newsie people don’t even have the courtesy to tell me why someone has decided to turn on the city sirens.

So I head back to my bedroom, where I can still hear the rising, falling, rising, falling siren. I crawl back in bed and point my still half-asleep eyes out the window. I feel my brow crinkle in confusion and a fleeting thought crosses my head that I forgot to rub on my moisturizing wrinkle-keep-away cream and what if my forehead gets too dry and permanently creases? Apparently I’m very vain during the wee small hours of the morn.

Not a single porch light, vehicle light, garage light is visible, which causes my brow to crease further in confusion. But I’ve moved on from my vain midnight wrinkle obsession and I realize I’m more awake now than I was ten minutes ago, which brings me halfway through my normal twenty minute awakening period. It’s then that I notice the sound I’ve been hearing is decidedly fainter than it was just a few minutes past. I focus more intently upon the sound, trying to make out any idiosyncrasies, half-heartedly attempting to remember if the siren has different sounds for Tornado Imminent warnings and Air Force Base Bombing, Time to Load Up On Out warnings.

Perhaps the cold was a factor in speeding up the awakening process, I really have no idea, but it suddenly dawned on me that the sound I was hearing was the slow moving street cleaner. Not the disaster sirens. Not even a chorus of tortured cats. Just the normal, average, weekly street cleaner.

Bloody smashing, dah-ling

2006-11-02T11:57:00.000-08:00

On my way to a Halloween party last week I was listening to the radio, something I can’t stand to do in the morning due to all the incessant chatter and forced hilarity. But this was evening, obviously. Have you ever been to a Halloween party before noon? No matter. It was evening and I was driving and I wasn’t wearing a costume because moving is expensive and my bank account needs money for things like automatic car payment drafts and cell phone bills, not Slutty Cop costumes or Skanky Nurse outfits.

In lieu of a costume I’d paper-clipped a small note to my shirt with the previous date stenciled in my very best handwriting. All night long people asked what I was, to which I replied, “Yesterday.” It wasn’t really that funny, at least not as funny as the time in college when I stapled a note to chest that simply read “Thirsty?” Because I wasn’t sporting a toga or recognizable Star Wars costume, I got puzzled looks followed by a confused reading of the index card. “Thirsty??” they’d say. To which I’d reply, “Why yes, I am. Could you be a kitten and get me a beer?”

The ensuing party and my non-costume were the last thing on my mind, however. As previously stated, I was listening to the radio, one of the generic radio stations this town produces that spews out American Idol emoti-ballads and bleeped-out rap songs. Got to keep it clean for the kids, you know. *cough.

The song for the evening was one by Fergie, the lone female addition to the Black Eyed Peas. I don’t really have any problems with the Black Eyed Peas, besides the fact that their name makes me think of rubbery bacon stewing in a pot of actual black eyed peas. The bacon makes the peas taste good but it always looks pale and trembling, as if to say it had prepared itself for the hot crisping frying pan but this slow, painful and watery death is just more than it can bear.

Fergie apparently struck out on her own with this new CD and really, who can blame her? If someone is stupid enough to fund your debut solo album then by all means, take that check and run. Should I end up hating your efforts, I’m old enough to change the radio and you’re rich enough to buy a radio station. I’d say that makes us pretty much even.

What confused me about this song is that I finally took a moment to listen to the lyrics, lyrics that are a direct contradiction to the video I saw on MTV the other day. Those lyrics are: “How come every time you come around my London Bridge, wanna go down like London Bridge.” I’ve omitted many, many instances where words are used twice and sometimes thrice to fill the beats of the song because someone, somewhere was just too fucking lazy to write out a whole verse that made actual sense.

In the video we see Miss Fergie making clear intimations that her sole source of happiness stems from a certain act performed on her knees. The London Bridge Gatekeeper people, who have special English names and special furry tall hats, are oblivious to her groping and ass rubbing, but you can totally see the struggle in their reserved British eyes. Should I abandon my post of duty and allow this scantily clad American to fondle my private bits, they seem to say. And then we cut to lots of other scantily clad non-Fergie people dancing around and making more ass rubbing movements. It’s great fun, really.

My first problem stems from the fact that the video seems to say that the London Bridge she’s referring to lives on these lovely British men, the ones who repeatedly get her face buried in their crotch. But the lyrics imply she’s empowered with her female-ness and the London Bridge lives in her pants and that the men are so crazy about this bridge they want to, ahem, go down. Hence, I feel she should obviously fire her creative video director and take some lessons from Janet “Ms. Nasty” Jackson.

My second problem relates to dear Fergie and how she used to be such a cute little bugger. You see, I remember Fergie as Stacy Ferguson, the blond, annoying and slightly chubby kid on Kids Incorporated during it’s mid-eighties run. She was the one who followed Jennifer Love Hewitt around and always got into trouble because, dangit, she was just so fumbly and clumsy and cute. What happened to that Fergie? When did she take a turn for neon wearing, eyebrow piercing, heavy lipliner sporting Hoochie? WHERE IS THE FERGIE OF MY YOUTH? And why does she sing nonsensical lyrics that somehow manage to rhyme the following:

Grey Goose got your girl feeling loose
Now I’m wishing that I didn’t wear these shoes
It’s like every time I get up on the dude
Paparazzi put my business in the news

Not for those with a Low Ick Factor.

2006-10-29T20:45:00.000-08:00

This is my bedroom from the old apartment. It's serenity belies the terrors that lurk beneath the surface.

Here's one of the living room. Pretty, no?

This is Lilly Monkey. She is very ferocious.

So imagine my surprise when this fell out of my laundry hamper:

Notice the malicious glint in his beady black eye. This one, he was a fighter.

Immediately following The Great Rat Hunt of 2006, my ceiling popped a giant zit, spewing roughly eight gallons of air conditioner water all over my bathroom floor.

And then came the mildew. Or mold. Really, it just wasn't my job to ask questions at that point. Also, I'd like you to play close attention to the random holes. This is what my douche of a landlord did to "redirect the water flow" into the bathtub, rather than the floor. Smelled great, too.

Here's another one of the rat, just because I know how much you wanted to see your breakfast again:

Crunchy Apples

2006-10-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

After a fascinating Sunday morning with the babies I decided it was high time to get my move on, so I cashed in all my sexual favors and played them out as moving chips. As it turns out, I had so many moving chips that I was able to bribe some individuals to drive across town and pick up my first real full-money adult furniture purchase. And I must say, it is beautiful and stunning and worth every bit of the two and a half years I spent searching for The Perfect Couch. It’s so perfect, in fact, that Pier One sent me thank-you note for choosing the Chocolate Flannigan Sofa. This is also known as a credit card bill but we are so not having that discussion.

Before I get into the full Moving Day details, I’d like to make a little announcement: Should anyone tell you that Hell has something to do with fire and brimstone you have my permission to call them a liar right to their face. Hell has nothing to do with an eternity of burning flesh and everything to do with third floor walk-ups.

That being said, I have wicked nice friends, some of whom have wicked nice boyfriends and brothers, who quietly agreed to move every piece of furniture I own and never once threatened to disembowel me, even when they realized I’d omitted that whole ‘many flights of stairs’ bit until the day of the move. I repaid them all with pizza and beer and still I think my debt has not even come close to being repaid. This of course means they can call in a Move Day Favor at any point in time and so the vicious cycle of helping friends move begins.

Move Day marks my transition from free-couch-having individual to purchased-couch-individual-with-an-extra-bedroom-JUST-CAUSE. It does not, however, mark any transition that has something with me being less of a dumbass. Please see the following example:

After moving an especially heavy piece of furniture, Lilleee came bounding down the stairs and flexed her muscles at Amanda and myself, stating she totally has tickets to the gun show. I looked at Lilleee and asked her why on earth she wanted to go to the gun show, thinking she had some previously undiscussed fetish for flying metal projectiles of death. Lilleee says No, the gun show, like, for my arms. And still I am confused. Why are you going to the gun show for your arm? Do you have a gimp arm that needs gun protection? No, they both say, the gun show one goes to for having strong arms, also known as strong guns, WHY ARE YOU SO SLOW. At which point I told them I would need a memo if they were going to make obscure references to muscle strength, jeez.

Last night was my first night in the new apartment and I have to say I quite like being so far off the ground. While those last five stairs are almost enough to make me wheeze in pain, the simple fact remains that should someone feel like breaking into my apartment, they better have a jet propulsion pack or really bad projectile burrito gas. Because short of setting up a trampoline outside the house, there is zero chance of my kitchen window being confused with the Burger King drive-thru.

Long Hair and Knee Tapping

2006-10-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

After throwing away just about everything in my Lazy Laundry pile (due to the aforementioned rat carcass contamination) I had significantly reduced my total laundry time but not so much that my mother didn’t roll her eyes heavenward as bag after bag of dirty clothes came rolling out of the back of my car.

And yes, I totally took my laundry to my parent’s house on Friday. First of all, it’s free. Second, I can put a load on and go take a mini-nap or have a cup of coffee in a building that isn’t crawling with random dryer-bunnies and cigarette butts. Third, well, I don’t know what comes third so just accept that it’s way easier to take it home when I’m pressed for time.

The original purpose of the trip was to visit with some family friends that I grew up with, one of whom is now in his late teens and making the rounds as a bad-ass guitar player. I was going to use the f-word in conjunction with just exactly how good this kid is but his mama would probably tell me to watch my language when speaking about her son. Because his delicate ears, they’ve never heard such language. *cough

Anyway, I stayed up late with my mama and Jolene and had girly chats, the same kind we used to have when I was like eight and they were, um, younger than they are now. Only I didn’t beg to braid my mother’s hair and I didn’t run my mouth about whatever it is that an eight-year-old will run their mouth about. My shining moment was when I yet again managed to make a total ass of myself by using the word ‘pussy’ in relation to me not dating people who have those. I can’t get annoyed with her for jokingly asking about my preference because hello, when was the last time I brought a guy home? Much like the Prince song it was 1999, only we didn’t party and I’m fairly positive that no cracked a smile. All together now: AWKWARD.

Saturday morning someone managed to set up the Play Station on the living room TV and I realized just exactly how silent my house normally is. And how silent it will remain, forever and always. The Play Station was for Jason, the youngest of the three boys at the age of ten. Josh is the bad-ass guitar player at eighteen and Jacob is the guy who used to own a ferret and now has a little boy of his very own. If you’re confused about the names, you should be. Because everyone’s name starts with J and no one gets called by their given name. Jake and JP and Jase and Joshie and Jay and really, just keep thinking of nicknames because they’ve got them all.

In the early afternoon we all bundled up against the blustery weather to watch Josh play with The Reba Russell Band at a downtown festival. I could lie to you and say they were good but in all honesty they were fucking unbelievably awesome. Notice how I used the f-word but did not use it in direct correlation to Jolene’s son, which should keep me out of trouble. Josh has been playing on Beale Street in Memphis since he was a wee young lad and as he’s only eighteen now, I mean WEE YOUNG LAD. Of course he’s not a wee young lass now, he’s all grown up with facial hair and everything. As such, I will never tell The Internet that I used to clean his room out of sheer boredom because Jolene was never nice enough to pop out a little girl for me to play with. I was just much too cool to play Thundercats with my brother and Jacob and Josh in the basement. I will also never tell anyone about what a cute little ball of diapered rolli-polliness ol’ Josh used to be, because that would be embarrassing and I’m a kind-hearted individual like that.

By mid afternoon the blustery weather had turned to searing heat from the roiling sun and I was wishing for a bucket of ice water to pour over my head. But still I sat, bouncing my knee to the music and the great singing and in total awe of just how good the whole band sounded, and that was with an incompetent sound guy who couldn’t figure out how to turn up the piano volume because look at all the pretty birds in the sky and maybe that girl over there has some weed and holy shit man! I’m supposed to be working all these crazy buttons for the sound and I really want some ice cream. That was a roundabout way of saying Senor Slacker was a bit distracted, but he was, and I stand by my appraisal of him.

At the end of the set I managed to convince my mom to give me some cash in exchange for my out of state check and purchased a CD from the vendor by the stage. I should add that I rarely purchase music because I have a short attention span and should I feel like singing in my apartment, that’s what The Cure cd’s are for. What I’m trying to tell you, and probably not doing a very good job of, is that this band rocks out with their Lego blocks out and if ever I was going to endorse something, THEY WOULD TOTALLY BE IT.

So just in case you missed my sneaky link above, here it is again. Not that I'm being a pusher. Or anything.

Make it out of this Rivertown

2006-10-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

I don’t even know where to begin. And they say if you don’t know where to begin you should just start at the beginning, which gets you halfway to begin. No one actually says this so just accept that I totally made it up. Because I’m a liar, and god hates liars.

Last Thursday night I was on day two of the Packing Spree, which is not to be confused with any other kind of Spree. This Spree had nothing to do festively coated Smarties-wannabees and everything to do with knocking over a liquor store and stealing all of their boxes. I’d been boxing up books for two nights and was contemplating having a Nazi-esque bonfire in the parking lot because those things are heavy and I’m damn tired of moving them. But then about eleven o’clock I realized I was done, done with the book packing! Huzah! So naturally I moved away from other packable objects because the paper cuts those liquor boxes can give you are just plain angry kittens. Hence, I found myself staring inside my wee little closet with a total sense of dejectedness.

I should first explain that I’m not an abominably messy person. I put my dishes in the dishwasher, I pick up my dirty clothes and I make my bed at least eight percent of the time. However, I hate washing clothes with a passion. Not so much because of the folding or hanging up, but because it’s wicked annoying lugging bags of dirty towels and sweaters into the car and across town to the laundromat. I have many stories from the laundromat, none of them good. As such, there tends to be a small laundry basket devoted to things I’m currently unwilling to wash, things like polar fleece sweaters from last spring or the heavy bathrobe I wore during the winter. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to rot away down there, so I just leave them languishing in their plastic basket until the time comes when I’m ready to sacrifice an extra hour doing laundry or it’s sleeting and I need a hoodie.

Because I was moving I thought it might be nice to start off with a clean slate, so I started pulling out the bags of normal laundry for separation into dark piles, darker piles and bleachable items. Then I pulled out the purple plastic basket that normally sits shoved in a dark corner with all my Lazy Laundry and started sorting it as well. Blue bathrobe into the dark pile, black jacket into the darker pile, green towel into the dark pile, dead rat in the EXCUSE ME WHAT IS THIS DOING IN MY LAUNDRY BASKET I HAVE NO ACCEPTABLE PILE FOR YOU UNLESS IT INVOLVES A HIGH SPEED BLENDER AND SOME BLEACH.

The nasty curled up monstrosity landed square on top of my fleecy black hoodie and because I am a girl I’m allowed to tell you I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran in the living room at wicked fast speed. Think of me what you will but imagine a large dead ferocious looking rodent falling within inches of your delicate and unprotected bare feet and there’s not a single one of you out there, at least not that I’ll believe, who’d have been calm about that situation.

I sat in the living room for a good five minutes and contemplated what, exactly, I was going to do with the dead rat. Obviously get rid of it, but how? I couldn’t imagine wrapping my hands in paper towels and picking it up *retch* and carrying it outside. Just the thought of feeling it’s creepy dead little body, even through the layers of an entire roll of paper towels, was enough to keep me from eating for a solid day.

In the end I settled on sweeping it into the dustpan, the one I was going to soak in bleach after I carried it outside for a proper burial in the city dumpster. But before I took it outside I decided this was a situation that needed documenting. I grabbed my camera out of the closet and clicked it over to the I’m Ready For My Close-Up, Mr. DeMille setting. Then I sat down on my wood floor and got way more personal with a rodent than I ever anticipated. I snapped him from the top, from the bottom, from the side where you could see the malicious glint in his beady black eyes. I got close-ups of his snarled mouth and ginormous rodent teeth. I immortalized the length of his thick stubbly tail and the way his claws had curled into his belly in death.

And then I sang the Robin is a Big Girl song as I carried his pleasantly scented carcass through the back door. If you’ve never heard the Robin is a Big Girl song well, you’re totally missing out. I’ve got a voice like two dollar prostitute with a two-pack-a-day habit.

Definitely Throw That One Back

2006-10-17T12:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was telling a friend of mine about how I had this urge to move to Iowa and get my MFA and I got this blank look followed by “What the hell is in Iowa?”

She may have a point, but it’s not like she, or anyone ‘round these here parts, can say anything because, hi, we live in Arkansas. A state that should for all intensive purposes be pronounced as ‘ar-can-sus’. And please, feel free to the emPHAsis on any sylLABle. But somewhere along the way, probably the point where the hill folk became known as hill folk and stopped caring about their lack of teeth, the state became ‘ar-can-saawww.’

It’s just I’m perfectly aware of the stigma this state has. Just like Idaho. What’s in Idaho? Potatoes. And Iowa? Corn. And Tennessee? A fucking lot of Elvis impersonators, that’s what.

So I get it, I get that some states are way cooler than others. Can you imagine a prime-time show about teenagers at Central High School? There’s one rich kid whose daddy thinks they need to experience a “mixed culture” and everybody else sports fashions from the sale rack at Target. That’s a far cry from the Gucci purse or Jimmy Choo shoes worn by the perma-bored cast members on “The O.C.” Also, there’s just something so infinitely less cool about flipping your 1996 Honda Civic as opposed your 2007 Range Rover.

Which is why, when I read stories like this, I get a little annoyed. First of all, who the fuck rolls around with a crossbow in the back of their SUV? And who picks up said crossbow and shoots it at another vehicle? God, what is wrong with people.

Though I will admit I laughed my ass off. Granted, wouldn’t have been laughing if some drunk country boy whipped out his crossbow on the interstate and shot out my back window. But funny nonetheless.

See, what happened was

2006-10-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I bought some new Lower Sugar! oatmeal, because I figure it can’t hurt me to consume less sugar and I imagined that if they took away the ass fatening sugar they replaced it with the fake sugar.

BOY WAS I WRONG.

What is the deal here, folks? You think I want to eat vaguely sweetened insta-oatmeal? Do you? You are so very mistaken. If I have to pour four packets of Splenda on the top just to make it bearable then you should add someone smart like me to your marketing team, someone who will point out on the box that while it may be lower in sugar, you will probably have to add double your usual amount just to choke it down. And then I’d point out that the now fake super sugary taste will probably not distrct you from the fact that when we took your sugar we replaced it with Goo.

I do not like the excess Goo. It is gooey and strange and it makes a weird gooey mess in my bowl.

Little Boxes Made of Ticky-Tacky

2006-10-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday I decided I wasn’t going to move, I was going to stick it out in my apartment as long as possible. The rent is cheap and to be honest, it’s a beautiful place. Beautiful doorways, nicely worn floors- plus my furniture ends up looking less like an eclectic hodgepodge of flea market finds and more like an eclectic hodgepodge of intentional purchases. In brand-new-cookie-cutter-apartment-complex type places all of my things (the old hats, the antique purses, the stack of old-fashioned brown leather suitcases) look vastly out of place, almost sad and forlorn. But next to an imperfectly smooth wall or a slightly chipped window frame, they look content and at peace. They’re not competing with the fresh white paint and the brand new beige carpet, they’re winking slyly at the creaky floors in the kitchen and the door that doesn’t quite shut in the hallway.

And if I’m honest, I can say that I was a bit reluctant to leave a place I got a tingle in my back about. I found the apartment one evening over a year and a half ago on my way downtown for dinner with a friend. She was setting me up with an acquaintance of hers, one that I was just going to fall in love with and marry on the spot. I was a bit early and it was a breezy late spring evening, so I slowly drove around the downtown neighborhoods. On my way up a one-way street I saw a beautiful red brick building, shaped like an open U with three flowering trees planted down the center of the courtyard. The upstairs apartments all had French doors that opened out onto narrow New Orleans style balconies and I stopped my car in the middle of the deserted street because I knew, with a surety I can’t even explain, that this was where I was going to live. When I walked into the open courtyard I saw a tiny orange For Rent sign in one of the windows and decided it was Fate. I hadn’t even been looking and here It was, the tingly back feeling and a perfect apartment for rent. Done deal.

Two months after I had moved in, my dear friend Lilleeee needed a place to live and she moved into the apartment directly over my head. We used to sit out on our back porches and sip coffee on Saturdays, until her brother moved in a few months later and then she found Jeremy and he moved in too. It’s like the Brady Bunch up there, only with about seven less people, no maid and no creepy incest vibe.

But then I found a leak and then a rat and then rats-sah, which is my way of saying plural rat infestation without having to use that infestation word. Obviously that plan worked out well. And then I found another leak and then the bathroom ceiling popped a zit and then my friend Mr. Mildew took over and it makes me sneeze like nobody’s business. And then my landlord expressed confusion and dismay that it had never been fixed, because he didn’t get a single one of my five bazillion messages or threatening emails, and said he’d get right on it.

That was Thursday, and he agreed to have it all fixed on Monday. The ceiling, the mildew, the chewed up rat holes in the kitchen cabinets. And I smiled and agreed because MY APARTMENT IS SO DAMN CUTE. Plus I’m old and I’m tired, tired of putting my shit in boxes and lugging it across streets and counties and state lines. I have moved house eighteen times in seventeen years. Fourteen of those times have been in the last eight years. That’s a lot of moving. And did I mention that I’m tired. And lazy. Exactly.

But then it was Friday and I woke up and had a back tingle. It was the same kind of tingle I got when I woke up one morning and knew I had new job, a big snazzy new job with a big snazzy pay raise. I hadn’t canceled the appointment to see an apartment on Friday and I kept it mostly out of principle, because I thought it was rude to cancel on such short notice and it wouldn’t kill me to see what XXX.XX amount of dollars would get me in my neighborhood.

I rolled up outside the building on my lunch break with Amanda in tow, because the cardinal rule of apartment hunting is you never go in a locked room with some man you don’t know. That’s not to say I don’t ever break this cardinal rule, but if I have the opportunity to stick to it I’m mighty happy.

I knew the apartment was mine before I even walked in the door so of course it was utter perfection. Big windows, open floor plan, lots of closets. Plus, there is a second bedroom, something that makes me feel very settled and mature. Because nothing sucks more than having your mama come to visit and sharing a full size bed or attempting to get comfortable on The World’s Most Uncomfortable Couch.

So now I have a new apartment. And I’m pretty damn happy about that. Little scared about the one year commitment and all, because I may or may not be utterly devoid of that gene that lets me happily commit to things.

Try hanging up and slamming your hand in a drawer

2006-10-10T14:51:00.000-07:00

Last year was the first year I have ever voluntarily participated in having a Christmas tree in my home. It’s not that I don’t like Christmas trees, because I do. I think they’re relatively pretty in their own way and I recognize that some people spend a lot of time and money making things twinkle and sparkle. And I will fully admit that I like they way they look, all lit up and glittery, through frosty windows in mid-December. It’s just that it was always an awful lot of effort, not to mention fundage, to get one of those things up.

The one-bedroom apartment I shared with two other people (no matter how expensive rent is, NEVER DO THIS) in New York didn’t have room for an extra coffee cup, much less a Christmas tree, but somehow my roommates found a way to cram it almost underneath the spiral staircase. This annoyed me to no end, seeing as how each and every morning as I stumbled down the staircase, bleary eyed and fuzzy haired, the tree made it it’s joy in life to scrape my legs with it’s stupid stubbly plastic green branches. It snagged my pants and tickled my feet and while I might be able to forgive you for snagging my pants, I cannot forgive you for tickling my feet. And so I spent two months with that green monstrosity hulking in the stairwell corner, doing nothing so much as reminding me exactly how much I hated my roommates.

The next tree came a year later, in the apartment on Broadway I shared with my old college roommate. Kasi is much more of the seasonal decorator and while I didn’t heartily object to her putting up a tree, I sure didn’t offer to help, either. I’d just gotten Llama five months before, the first addition in what would later become the collective entity of The Demonspawn, and he took great pride in worming his wee little runty kitten body up the center of the tree and knocking it over. I even once saw him take a flying leap from mid-living room, launching himself directly onto the middle branches with front and back legs spread akimbo. This was reason enough for me not to participate in the decorating because anything I put up was just going to be knocked over, plus people with no money shouldn’t spend it on useless things like ornaments. They should spend it on gas and cigarettes.

Then came the Year of Living With My Brother. Needless to say we did not decorate at all, because we have exactly the same views on decorations. Can you eat it? No. Can you fix something with it? No. Can it get you to a specific destination? No. Only my mother came to visit around the first of December and brought some random cast-off decorations for us to use, which really only served to emphasize the fact that Matthew had cooked a pound of bacon three nights before and yet again left all the cooking accoutrements strewn about the kitchen. But look! There is a garland above the door! Pay no attention to the smell of rotting pig flesh!

So last year I made my first attempt at seasonal decorating. I purchased a fake tree that looked decidedly better in the store, seeing as how the store person probably had many years of tree-fluffing experience while I was unaware that branch fluffing had to occur until my neighbor pointed it out. I purchased the cheap ornaments from Wal-Mart because I wasn’t quite ready to commit to this decorating crap and why spend $4.99 per ornament when I can buy a box of 50 for ten dollars. Unfortunately I later learned that cheap ornaments = nasty glass shards all over wood floor. I spent the month of December sweeping up colorful broken crap. Not cool.

All of this has been a very long lead-in to the real story, the one that involves me being totally perplexed by the strangeness of the human race and one of my co-workers and his recent move. In standard office conversation I found out that he had over one-hundred boxes of personal items that the movers picked up over the weekend. Of those one-hundred boxes, three of them contained his Christmas Village.

“Christmas Village?” I asked. “What the hell is a Christmas Village?”

Three pairs of eyes turned on me, expressing such shock and dismay you’d have thought I said something about draining the blood from small woodland creatures and nursing helpless infants with it.

As it turns out, several people in the office actually have these Christmas Villages. One woman has a Village so elaborate it takes no less than ten days to set it up. My coworker has one that comes with a little train that runs around the village. There are little teeney tiny figurines you can buy to make it look like your Christmas Village is full of happy, rosy-cheeked individuals. They buy special tables and set them up in their living rooms and foyers and guest bedrooms, all so they can have creepy Beetlejuice-esque town replicas full of tiny snow covered buildings and spindly street lights and you know what, I bet they make animatronic versions of these Village things and THIS KID DOES NOT DO ANIMATRONICS.

I’m not judging anyone because I’m sure there are people out there who totally don’t get why a woman who finds it acceptable to buy pants from Old Navy finds it unacceptable to purchase shoes that have a starting point of less than two hundred dollars. Right this very second, the shoes on my feet are worth more than my pants, my top, AND my earrings. So I get that people spend money on things that maybe don’t make sense to others. But these are shoes, people. You walk in shoes. They get you places, plus, they’re wicked cute. But the ultimate function is still there. Christmas Villages? Um, what the hell? They just sit there. And collect dust. And your kids and pets and stupid neighbors probably knock shit over all the time. This isn’t like a pretty picture that sits on your wall all year long. This is something that’s not only useless, but you look at it for one month out of the entire year.

Thank you but I’ll stick with my penchant for expensive shoes, rather than purchasing strange mini-replicas of a Dickens Utopia Snowy Townsville.

Upsy Daisy

2006-10-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

Earlier this evening I was watching the premier of Saturday Night Live, only about a week or two late. Thankfully they replay such things on various channels which is why I occasionally get moderately caught up with this supposed icon of pop culture.

The host for the evening was Dane Cook, a guy with whom I’ve become only vaguely familiar since they’ve been playing the previews to Employee of the Month (starring Jessica Boobson) pretty much every 45.7 seconds. Apparently he’s some internet stand up comedian and a purported previous love conquest of Ms. Jessica Boobson, who totally doesn’t want to be known for her blond hair and boobs but still insists upon flaunting them about like cupcakes.

The thing is, for the first five minutes of his super lengthy opening monologue, all I could think was a) THIS is the guy everyone’s talking about and b) did no one tell that kid his shirt’s too tight? Because he wasn’t really that funny and his hips kept moving in strange quasi-flamboyant movements. Plus, and I know I’ve mentioned this already, his shirt was too tight. As in so tight I could tell he’d laid off the crunches the past few weeks and maybe it was time to go up a waist size in jeans. Which sucks for him because he’s not a chubby man. He’s not even a super flabby man. But when your shirt is 87% spandex with a little cotton thrown in to dull down the sheen, you have to be very secure in the fact that you’ve spent a lot of time in the gym or you’ve got a personal assistant who doubles as your emergency liposuctionist.

I was getting ready to change the channel because MY GOD this was the longest opening monologue I have ever seen on SNL and I could be doing important things like lint rolling my ironing board. I hadn’t managed to crack a smile through the opening act of politically correct holiday celebrations (oh, I’m sorry, didn’t you guys already to this sketch like three years ago? k, thanks) and this Cook chap was certainly not tickling my fancy or my funny bone. But then he started a bit about shoe shopping and I stopped my finger from pressing the channel up button because, well, here’s something with which I can relate. He saw a pair of boots and he needed them in his life. This I understand.

So he asks the shoe girl for a twelve and she hands him a nine. At which point he makes a joke about a bone saw and don’t ask me what I found so funny about a bone saw but it kind of made me snort a little. Shoe ladies the world over adhere to the same practice then, I thought. I ask for a ten and they say “well, I had it in a nine” and I have to hold myself back from pushing my finger in their eye. If I’d wanted a nine I would have asked for a nine you ignorant twat. And now, look, here was a grown man expressing the same shoe shopping frustrations. I CAN SO BOND WITH YOU NOW.

Then he launched into a bit about erections and I mentally rolled my eyes because I totally expected him to go with the beaten-to-death (no pun intended) joke surrounding those pills that help men get their thingee up and the ensuing joke about “if you have an erection lasting four or more hours...” Funny the first time and, if I’m really honest, funny eight-hundreth time, but still not funny for a paid comedian to add in their act.

But he took it in a totally different direction, not mentioning the thingee-lifting hydraulic pills but instead talking about a really dandy stiffy he’d had one day while making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Noticing a can of cashews he pops the top and places a delicately curved and salted nut right on the tip, pulls back his member and flings the unsuspecting cashew towards his head where he catches the nut between his pearly whites. At this point I’m actually laughing out loud in my apartment because This Man Be Crazy.

Cut to commercial and my laughter dies down. I think this situation through. And then it fully dawns on me that this Dane Cook guy has admitted on national television that he ATE A CASHEW FLUNG FROM THE TIP OF HIS PENIS. I’m still finding the situation amusing but am now very concerned about his personal hygiene. Because just in case you didn’t know, THAT’S WHERE THE PEE HOLE IS AND HE JUST ATE SOMETHING OFF IT.

Don't think for one second that I won't cut you.

2006-10-06T07:53:00.000-07:00

I have a serious complaint and I’d like all four of you out there to read this in its entirety, because it’s of great significance, possibly even great NATIONAL significance. Or something.

People. Why do you not respond to my emails? I’m not talking about friends and acquaintances, though to be honest I can’t say I don’t want your responses, because I do. It’s just that I know that there are times when I’m not good at replying. I get distracted by the ceaseless noisemaking of the two felines that insist upon living in my house, even though I’ve decided they are good for nothing but lots of smelly poop and tracking miniscule bits of litter on the sofa. And so I read an email and hear a meeeOWWWW, mmmeeeoowWWWWW, MEOW BITCH LISTEN TO ME I WANT YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION meeeOOWW. And then I throw whatever unsolicited mail has managed to pile up on my desk right at their heads, halfway hoping the sharp pointy edge takes out their vocal chords. As such, my attention gets turned away from the laptop and towards a dust bunny that needs sweeping or a marathon showing of Laguna Beach. (Who gives a 16-year-old a Range Rover? Seriously.)

So while I don’t normally judge the friends/acquaintances group for not replying, because I have replying issues of my own, I most certainly judge the work/business inquiry group for not replying because, hello. Does your email not sit directly in front of you all day long? Have you somehow managed to figure out how to keep the little You Have New Mail celebratory message from popping up in neon lights on your desktop? HAVE YOU? Because it took me nearly a year of using Outlook to figure out that was even a changeable option, that I could somehow turn off that annoying function that not only shows I have a new piece of mail but also displays the first twenty or so words to whomever happens to be sitting in my office. Which is awesome, especially when I get a non-work-related email that starts off something like Hey hooker, how’s your day? Ugh. I’ve got major gas from those burritos last night…

More specifically, when I send you an email inquiring about an apartment for rent, one you listed on your confusing and inelegantly designed crock of a website, do not take eight days to reply. This is a cutthroat business, folks. Someone is bound to snap up an under priced two bedroom in the historic district and you with your slow replying and lackadaisical response of “I can set up a viewing anytime late next week” is totally unacceptable. I don’t apartment hunt for my health. I apartment hunt so I can find a place I like, sign a lease and MOVE IN. I do not dilly dally. I don’t wish wash about decisions. If anything I make decisions too quickly, only stopping to mock the slow decision makers along the way. This may or may not be a good trait but personally I could not give less of a shit.

So in conclusion, if your livelihood depends upon me and various others stroking you a check every month, it seems that it would be in your best interest to reply to my email already and in quick-like fashion. The sooner you get me in, the sooner I am likely to fork over a thousand dollars worth of security deposits and pet fees. And the sooner you can lease a new Porsche or twelve with your rental income, all because your wife’s father was loaded and gave you some change to purchase a real estate “investment,” which now funds your golf habit and that tennis pro you’ve been seeing on the side.

C'est la Viesitation Hours Are Over

2006-10-02T18:52:00.000-07:00

Saturday afternoon a bug must have crawled up my ass because I decided it was okay to venture forth to Wal-Mart, the place where people walk three-abreast down tiny aisles with the sole purpose of pissing me off.

My original purpose for going there was to find some sort of container to hold the cat food. Since The Great Rat Hunt of 2006 I haven’t really felt comfortable with leaving the bag in the bottom cabinets and the upper cabinets are just too small. So that left me buying the medium sized bags of food and leaving them out on the counter, which quite naturally hurts my supreme decorating sense. I’ve just never been able to reconcile the shiny blue bag of cat nuggets with pretty Cuban pictures and apple green cabinets.

Not to mention the fact that now that the cat food sits within reachable distance of The Demonspawn, I spend a lot of my time shooing them off the countertops. Don’t ask me why it’s even tempting because it’s not like their special red bowls ever fall below the half-full line. Maybe they need the exercise or something. Or maybe they’re just throwback cats and I got the dank end of the kitty gene pool. Whatever the reason, it’s damn annoying to come home to a brand new bag of cat food that they’ve managed to claw, pull and swat of the counter. And they don’t just leave it there, either. They spend days in cat time chewing a hole in the bottom because again, IT’S NOT LIKE THERE’S READILY AVAILABLE FOOD IN A BOWL LESS THAN THREE FEET AWAY.

I started off in the pet aisle because I was absolutely positive that someone besides me had experienced this problem. I mean, they make automatic litter scoopers and electronically enhanced, free-flowing water bowls. Surely someone, somewhere has animals that find it amusing to attack their food bags.

No? Okay, then. Moving on to the next aisle.

A couple of rows over I found some of those glass food containers that people like to leave out on their countertops, usually filled with festive colored pasta or decorative rice. Those things always bother me because at what point do you need to change out the contents? Is it just one of those things you learn upon becoming a mother? Change out yellow and red pasta every two years! Clean rice container every three!

I thought about getting the biggest size, a five gallon monstrosity with a stainless steel lid, but decided I wasn’t really that keen on displaying multicolored brown nuggets so prominently in my kitchen. I mean, I love my cats and all but I don’t LURV my cats.

One aisle over had shelves full of all kinds of Rubbermaid containers and storage units, most of them of the design that lets you slide them under your bed for easy-breezy storage. Only my bed is like eighteen feet off the ground and it’s not the type for a bed skirt, meaning my see-through Rubbermaid storage container would be very see-able upon walking down the hallway. Again, not really the look I was going for. Plus, I’m lazy enough as it is so imagine having to pull some fugly plastic box from underneath my bed, open it (my arms, they are so tired), get a scoop of cat food (is it over yet??), walk to the kitchen (I’ll just stop here and take a nap) and finally drop it in the bowl. And then I’d have to repeat the process because there are two cats, two cats who must have separate bowls for separate eating.

At the end of that row I decided if I didn’t find what I needed in the next five minutes I was definitely headed home. I was out in public on a Saturday and I’d already passed three people (two men, one woman) who apparently found deodorant on the Optional list of personal hygiene. So it was with much elation that I made it to my last and final row, confronted with all sorts of containers that would most definitely suit my purpose.

Trash cans! Trash cans, everywhere! In every shape and size and finish! Small metal and red, oval plastic and yellow, flip top, step top, no top, hurah! So I purchased the medium oval brushed-metal step top, complete with removable black bucket (with a handle!) for easy cleaning.

On my way out of the store I was so pleased with myself for finding a solution to the food storage issue that I swung by the pet aisle again. Now that I had a nice sealed and relatively unmoveable container I figured I could again start purchasing the more cost efficient Giant Bags o Cat Nuggets, the kind that most people assume are dog food they’re so big. But apparently you haven’t met Llama, The Fat One, the cat who can eat through an eight pound bag of cat food in like two weeks. So I grabbed the chicken-n-rice formula and placed it in the buggy, merrily making my way to the checkout lines.

Where I stood for twenty minutes behind some crazy bleach-blond hair lady with five children, all girls, who’d apparently taken to mommy’s Sun-in over the summer because ALL OF THEM had three inch roots. Not so terrible, maybe, except the oldest was maybe nine and the youngest was pushing four, all with beautiful waist-length hair that their dear sweet mummy had irrevocably screwed up.

Once Roots and her seventeen kids had checked out (all five girls got some kind of white stuffed puppy in a pink carrier, very Paris Hilton-esque) I moved forward and handed the checker my boxed trash can and my giant bag of food. She scanned the trash can and handed it back to me, where I placed it right back in my buggy. Then the bag of cat food. Same process. Scan, hand back to customer. Only something happened on the transfer and the bag kind of caught on the plastic bag dispenser.

No worries, I think. I lift the bag up and over the edge of the buggy and drop it in the bottom, WHERE IT EXPLODES.

Not just a little leak. Not just a few brown nuggets on the floor. No sir. That bag ripped from top to bottom, side to side, spilling all sixteen pounds of multi colored chicken-n-rice flavored crunchy kibbles ALL OVER THE WHITE LINOLEUM FLOOR. There wasn’t anything I could to do to stop it, or even slow it down. So I just stood there, hand on my debit card, watching it bounce over sixteen square feet.

When it was done I just looked at the checker and told her she’d probably need to take that item off my ticket.

Ann Ranned Away, Far Far Away

2006-10-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

A while back, Dan Dan the Can Can Man (who has abandoned his blog because he’s wallowing in the pits of despair) asked me why I did not care for the Evil Mayonnaise. And if I didn’t partake of the creamy substance, what condiments DID I enjoy? Honey Mustard? Ketchup? Just a smidge of lemon?

The thing is, I don’t think I can ever fully convey how much I hate on the mayo. Back when I was a wee little nugget, probably four or five, my mother made a plate of snack crackers for my digestive enjoyment. Normally these snack crackers came with peanut butter, but on that dark day my snack plate was filled with half the crackers smattered in peanut butter and the other half in a very innocuous looking white substance. Who was I to question a snack plate prepared by my mother? Mothers love you and take care of you, hence why would I have ever prepared myself for the UNRELENTING HEINOUSNESS OF THAT FIRST BITE.

Needless to say, I was disgusted with the mayonic substance even then, before I knew that it was nothing but liquid fat and eggs, before I made the correlation between what goes in HERE and then shows up DOWN THERE, right on my ass. My mother, on the other hand, will pour the substance on her bacon and tomato sandwiches, so much so that every time she takes a bite it kind of squishes out on the side. And every time she takes a bite, I die a little inside because somewhere along the line she’s going to hug me and what if some of that mayonnaise seeps from her pores and attacks me? The travesty.

Normally if I’m out in a public place with my mom I will totally and unashamedly make her check my sandwich for me, just to make sure that the waiter completely understood that NO MAYONNAISE WAS TO BE PRESENT DURING THE MAKING OF MY SANDWICH. At a wedding reception earlier this summer we filled our plates with the reception food and headed to a comfortable couch to talk amongst ourselves, seeing as how I lack social skills and it must totally get annoying having your grown ass daughter follow you around while you make small talk with guests. So we made our way to the back and began picking through the random shrimp sandwiches, cheese rolls and mini desserts when I came across a rye bread mini sandwich that appeared to be cream cheese but just to be on the safe side, I made her take a bite for me. Lo and behold someone had concocted up a swiss cheese and mayonnaise sandwich and just IMAGINE my horror had I bit into it, mistakenly thinking it was cream cheese.

As a final example I submit to you the incident in Atlanta, a mere two weeks ago on a business trip with two other women from my office. One of them was my friend Amanda who joined me for lunch in the office cafeteria. We’d placed our lunch orders first thing that morning, me ordering a roast beef sandwich with cheese and lettuce ONLY. I’d put that bit out to the side of my order, underlining and highlighting the line where I specified NO MAYO.

For whatever reason the “chef” (and I use that word very lightly) decided that I was being snotty about his special sauce and smeared it on my sandwich anyway, but only in the middle so when I lifted up the edge to check it appeared to be white-goop-free.

Nanoseconds after taking that first bite I felt the grotesque substance coating the insides of my mouth. Try as I might I couldn’t convince myself to swallow it, even after chewing with grown-up determination for a solid five seconds. I finally gave up and spat it back out, right into my napkin as discreetly as possible.

And then my dear friend Amanda took the mayonnaise-ridden bread from my sandwich and replaced it with her own dry bread. She even wiped the mayo from the top of my roast beef with her extra napkins, bless her.
So I’ve decided that I’ve added this quality to my Must Have list for Friends: Willing to wipe disgusting mayo from sandwich bread with proven ability to NOT JUDGE ME for behaving like a four year old when that crap comes within five feet of me.

Perhaps We've Met.

2006-09-29T19:05:00.000-07:00

As a senior in high school I was a big fan The AOL, as my mother calls it. We’d had a computer in the house since 1990, back when The Oregon Trail was just a bunch of green dots on the screen and god save your soul if you didn’t have an extra spoke to fix your wheel after inevitably rolling over a green rock in the road. But dial-up did not become a factor in my life until the early part of 1996, The Year of the Move. (And I totally think they should reinvent The Oregon Trail for today’s generation, making it more Gen-X-er-y or Gen-Apathy or whatever the generation is that plays lots of video games.)

Just realizing that’s actually MY generation and feeling momentarily out of the loop. Also realizing that perhaps not everyone rolled their eyes upon seeing the lead story on MSN this morning, the one about some new Nintendo game thing that’s called Wii. I mean, come on. How the hell am I supposed to pronounce that anyway? Because where I come from, that sounds a lot like a slightly intoxicated honky-tonker wailing “But whiiiii?" after her boyfriend as he walks away from her and their volatile relationship, flipping her the finger as he tosses his lustrous mullet over his right shoulder, coveting the sweet ass on Bobby Sue and the new muzzle loader he’s going to purchase at Wal-Mart later on.

Back to The Oregon Trail thing, I think it should obviously get a little color update. And instead of trading oxen for a new wheel spoke, you should have the option to trade ugly family members or just ones that don’t pull their weight or get sick when you’re crossing Nebraska . And I think you should be able to artificially inseminate the oxen because a) I don’t really want to watch oxen do it and b) don’t you think it’s odd that none of the oxen ever got preggers while on a months-long trip to Oregon ?

**Have just been told that this is very similar to something called Sims? What has happened to the two-dimensional games of my youth?! Pong! Frogger! And then Nintendo came out with Mario Bros and all the world stood still and took a collective breath because THE GENIUS of that game, seriously. Are these languishing in some never-never land of cast aside games? My god people, my heart is breaking.

Have gotten a bit off track here, there was a point to this story and it totally didn’t involve The Oregon Trail or the death of the two-dimensional game force. It involved around AOL and the advent of instant messaging. Though I now consider “chatting” via IM as annoying as listening to someone clip their toenails within hearing distance of my office (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), back in the day the novelty of being able to think about my responses before hitting the Send button was damn near more exciting than waiting for Ross-n-Rachel to get back together already. Instead of tying up the phone line for one phone call to one measly friend, you tied up the phone line for one internet session and 15-20 instant message boxes.

My senior year in high school I was friends with this girl named Arwen, whose parents were obviously quite enthralled with books written by Tolkein. She had flaming red hair and a twin brother named Owen, whom I rarely saw because he was all wicked smart and shit and he’d been shipped off to a super smart math genius school in Dallas. Though I did spend one rainy day with him in New York when he took the train in from Yale or Harvard or wherever he was getting his doctorate in Super Smart Mathematical Theories and for some reason I wore my pretty knee high boots with four inch heels to walk around the city and I can distinctly remember purchasing some cheap (and flat) black shoes half-way through our excursion because my feet, they were threatening to amputate themselves with a dull wooden spoon.

One Saturday afternoon Arwen and I were chatting, discussing the vagaries of high school and the girls who most certainly DID NOT have the face for a Rachel-esque hair cut. She sent a ‘brb’ and a few minutes later came back on with very exciting news- Chicago was coming to town and did I want to go?

ARE YOU SERIOUS? CHICAGO IS COMING TO TOWN? AND DO I WANT TO GO? I’ve been searching for so long? Till the end of time? HELL YES!
So I gave her my money and she purchased my tickets and can I tell you how much we talked about the upcoming Chicago-ness? Like, every day. HELLO. It’s CHICAGO.

A week before the scheduled festivities we were in the midst of an in-depth discussion of our chosen attire when I became a little concerned with her choice of a nice black skirt and her mother's pearl earrings, thinking that maybe she did not understand the origins of Chicago but she was my friend and I would not judge her. I mean, just because she wasn't going to sport some ripped up jeans didn't mean we wouldn't have a good time. Besides, Arwen was way preppy and I struggled daily with just making my shoes match. This was a few years before I came to realize that shoes NEVER have to match on a woman and if I feel like wearing turqouise kitten heels with a grey sweater then by damned, I can wear them.

A few days later our excitement had reached peak teenage levels. After dance class that night Arwen asked me if I knew who would be playing Roxie Hart, and for the life of me I had no idea what she was talking about. Roxie Hart wasn't the name of a song I'd ever heard Chicago sing and if we were going to a Chicago concert, wouldn't Chicago be playing Roxie Hart?

And then Arwen scrunched her brow in confusion and said "No, I mean do you know who's playing Roxie Hart, you know, like, the character."

It was at that moment I realized I'd comitted myself to go see Chicago, the musical. Not Chicago, THE BAND.

Mae West by Northwest

2006-09-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

This evening I’m heading out to Shotgun Dan’s for some pizza and beer, emphasis on the beer. I’ll be honest and say that I am normally a Liquor Girl, which is easily and quite frequently confused with Fruity Drink Girl. Fruity Drink Girls are normally just past the legal drinking age and are usually heavily involved in sororities. They are mesmerized by the possibility of being given a White Rose at a super secret fraternity ceremony and giving it up to the Frat Boy President because he’s totally going to call tomorrow. Fruity Drink Girls can also be above the age of sixty-five because, hello, have you ever been to Atlantic City?

Liquor Girls, quite obviously, drink liquor. And even though this liquor may occasionally be spiced up with some cranberry juice or a twist of lime, given the choice of on the rocks or frozen, we will choose on the rocks. I prefer things like cosmos and dirty martinis and the ever-popular Long Island iced tea. Frozen choices are reserved for times when a dessert is warranted but a creamy concoction of tiramisu just doesn’t cut it.

Definitions now aside, I can’t say as I have anything more to add about this evening’s coming festivities. Only that I’m ready for an evening with a very frosty mug full of very frosty beer.

This Hotel Lets Birds Fly In Their Lobby. Did I Mention HOW MUCH I HATE BIRDS?

2006-09-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

Amanda and I went to the hotel pool last night, the indoor one that's surrounded by trees that are probably fake. All in an attempt to make you feel like you're outside, only without the SEARING HEAT and TOTAL LACK OF BREEZE.

It was deserted at 9:30 so we headed downstairs for a little splishy splashy. Inside the enclosed arena we threw our key cards and coverups on the benches and Amanda was quick like bunny and made her way to the edge of the pool, quickly stepping into the water and just as quickly stepping herself right out.

She claimed it was cold but I figured she was crazy, I mean, HELLO, it's an indoor pool. What kind of indoor pool isn't heated?

Apparently that one.

But I was brave and waded in to my waist, at which point I decided that was as far as I was going. About that time I noticed a strange noise coming from the end of the pool, sort of a grating humming noise. The longer I stayed in, the louder it got. I had mental images of being sucked into the pool filter and being spit back out as a tangled cheese grater like mess.

But the noise got louder and I just couldn't stand it so I told Amanda that the Langoliers were coming and it was time to roll up on out.

This isn't at all funny but it's a reasonable segue into the fact that our hotel has a total lack of free internet (stingy bastards) and this irregular scheduled programming will return, um, like Friday? Or Saturday? Whatever. I'm totally going to go sleep now.

Almost forgot: our hotel has an 'Adult Menu' on the television and Amanda called me up on Sunday night to laughingly tell me that our porn choices for the evening were "Titty Titty Bang Bang," "MILF and Cookies," or "Double Slut Sandwich."

Hold Tight, Wear Something White

2006-09-16T08:56:00.000-07:00

Thursday night I showed up at the Doctors Building (the actual name of the building, I know, how original) around 8:45 for my sleep study, something I wasn't really looking forward to, knowing as I did that some strange person was going to be gluing electrode discs to my person.

I grabbed the overnight bag out of the back of my car and ambled up to the front doors and for a whole two seconds, waited patiently for those normally automatic doors to whoosh open. But they didn't. So I walked around to the side of the building, smiling and nodding politely at the homeless man with patchy fuzzy hair, only to find not one single door that had a handle on the outside, only anonymous looking key holes and dim flickering lights over the double metal doors placed at intervals down the building.

So I discarded my casual ambling and stalked back up to the front, muttering to myself about what total bullshit it is to have people show up here for a sleep study with no clear indication of how to get in. Back at the front doors I pushed and pulled a little, knowing they wouldn't move but still feeling it was necessary to try. I decided it was Fate, I was meant to go home and sleep in the privacy of my own home, and I whipped open my cell phone and called the main number. I forced myself to sound Southern and Girly and Bemused but by the end of the message, I was just flat-out annoyed and I may or may not have ended the call with "Oh, fuckit, I'm going home."

Just as I was backing out of my parking space, however, I saw a heavyset woman with dyed dark hair wearing a set of those really ugly printed scrubs, the kind with strange geometric shapes and swirlies and lighting bolts of pure unadulterated color. She was coming out of a small glass door that had previously gone unseen on the right corner of the building. I continued backing out and pulled up next to the sidewalk as she was walking towards her car and asked her if she knew how one would go about getting in the building for the sleep study clinic.

Why yes, she told me, just hit that little button in the brick beside the front door and someone will buzz you in.

I parked my car again, grabbed my bag and walked back to the front door, this time noticing the small (and matte black) button placed inconspicuously about three quarters down the brick wall. How I was to EVER know that button was there, much less push it for entrance, I have no idea. But immediately after pressing the button a voice came through a speaker, telling me that I was to come to suite 506.

all right, whatever.

Inside I was greeted by a very energetic black man with arms and legs long enough to make me think he probably got teased for being a Gumby back in high school. After talking to him for a few minutes I realized his accent was familiar and I asked him where he was from.

"Hattiesburg, Mississippi, sugar! Where you from?"

I KNEW I'd recognized that speech! It's the same accent I used to have, before I had some wild idea about being a television anchor and made myself try and emulate the indistinguishable accents of CNN reporters. He'd said something about going down to Louisiana for a family reunion and he'd pronounced the name right- Loo-ze-hannah, not Lew-ees-ee-ana. And then he'd made a comment about the "yellah" scrubs he'd picked up the day before and I knew he was born and bred bayou rat.

We continued to chit chat for the hour it took to glue on all the little discs, inside my hair, on my temple, beside my eyes, on my chin, my neck, my chest and back, then finally down my legs. When he was done I laid down on the mattress and sighed a sigh of great relief. I'd been exhausted when I got there at nine and it hadn't been my turn for gluing until after ten, so by the time he flicked off the lights it was 11:30 and even with the mounds of wires and glue and strange surroundings, I fell right to sleep.

To be exact, I fell asleep in forty-five seconds.

And there was nothing I could do to stop it. I'd felt it on the way over, that this was a good sleep night. If I'd closed my eyes on the drive over I'm positive I could have fallen right to sleep. And it didn't matter that this was the one night I needed to behave like normal, I needed to lay in bed awake for hours, I needed to show up on those little graphs and charts as being the insomniac I most surely am. But Fate thwarted me and sent me right to La La land, just like I'd asked every single night for the past few years, finally answering my plea on the ONE NIGHT I didn't want it.

But that mattress was so comfortable and the room was so dark and the nice man who'd glued on my discs, well, he doesn't play for my team, eliminating any residual fear I might have had regarding late-night visits from unknown men. And I was just so tired I could have cried and I laid my head down on that pillow and was out before my Gumby friend had time to get himself a cup of coffee.

In the morning I sat in the small office of the sleep doctor while he told me he didn't think I had a problem with falling asleep, seeing as how I'd crashed mere seconds after the lights had gone out. I don't think he much believed me when I told him this was fluke, I could count on my hand the number of time in the past six years I'd been able to close my eyes and head to La La land. He smiled and said maybe that was so, but I still had other problems to deal with.

He pulled out a stack of graphs taken from the night before, each page showing a five minute section of time with varying lines for my heart level, my breathing patterns, leg movement and brain activity. He pointed to the sheet in front of him and told me that in that particular five minute span, I'd woken up six times. He pulled another graph out, another five minute log of time, and said I'd woken up four times. Another sheet, showing I'd come out of stage 2 sleep a total of six times. Then five. Then four again.

I'd only gotten about 30 minutes of stage four sleep, the kind I was supposed to have, and the rest of the time, he said, I'd spent an average of fifteen seconds for every minute completely awake.

At the end of the visit, after we'd discussed things we could do and surgeries I could have (I'm one of the lucky few who can't be helped by pretty little pills, dammit) I walked out of his office feeling totally validated. I wasn't crazy, I wasn't suicidal, I REALLY WAS JUST FUCKING TIRED.

Random bittids (which is tidbits, only cut in half and reversed):

2006-09-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

Sunday night I was working in the nursery with an exceedingly small group of kids. Normally I have thirteen Not Close To Walking-, Almost Walking-, Walking But Unstable- and Able To Walk And Therefore Also Think Can Climb Walls- children that take up every available brain space because have you ever tried to anticipate the amount of trouble thirteen pre-preschoolers can get into within a four hour period? No? Okay then.

But Sunday night brought only Natalie and her rambunctious older brother Micah (he of the ‘Ribbit’ fame) and little Charlie, a self-proclaimed vegetarian at the tender age of 2.7. Charlie was early and his mother left a dinner of peas and carrots and cheerios and half of a parmesan sandwich for his eating delights. Personally, of all the choices displayed, I would have gone for the cheese sandwich and maybe some carrots. But this kid shoved his grubby fist into the cup of english peas and unloaded them unceremoniously into his mouth, kind of what I would do with cheetos if it was at all socially acceptable and had no bearing on my daily caloric intake.

Dinner complete, Charlie and I played with the beach ball until Natalie and Micah showed up, and then Charlie abandoned me for a playmate that didn’t creak with age when standing up for the bazillionth time to retrieve the beach ball that had been thrown with really good intentions but had yet again lodged itself in the far right corner.

Charlie and Micah are within three months of each other and are normally all BFF until one of them thinks about that pubescent hair that’s going to get lodged in their ass and smacks the other one with whatever hard plastic object seems to be lying around. But Sunday night was relatively uneventful, and they managed to chase each other around the room, making intermittent high-pitched growling noises at each other, avoiding the hard plastic hit-able objects.

Natalie, being eleven months and of a generally Chill persuasion, sat happily on my lap and watched the two boys act a fool, making cute oooh, aaaah noises that I’m trying to form in to Rah-been. Say: Raaah-beeen, Natalie-bug. Raaaah-beeeeeeeeen.

Towards the end of the night, Micah came over to my chair and absentmindedly pulled on the two small stretchy headbands I had wrapped around my wrist. Both were about an inch thick and black, and I immediately thought about how wicked cool these boys would look with a little Rambo-esque headband. So I held them both still while I slipped it over their heads and told them both to go play Rambo. Only I guess there’s a bit of a generational gap there because they thought I said RAINBOW, not RAMBO and spent the next forty-five minutes screaming RAINBOW! GRRRRRR! RAINBOW!

****************************************************************************

I bought a Ricky Martin CD in 1998, right before he came out with that Livin la Vida Loca song, the one where he made that video that showed a super hot girl pouring hot wax on his chest and we were all too enthralled with his Latin-ness to notice that those leather pants? Just a smidge too tight.

I originally heard Por Arriba, Por Abajo in a Mexican restaurant in Texas and I’m sure the waiters were ready to stab me in the heart for asking who was singing the song on their loudspeakers (much how I would react if a German tourist heard Tell Me Whatchew Want, Whatchew Really Really Want on the radio and begged to know who sings that delightful little song, and I’d have to grudgingly tell them that the Spice Girls sing it and then go home and cry because those German tourists, they just didn’t know any better, bless their hearts.)

I brought this album before I’d taken any Spanish and I have to say that I wish more American singers would take after Senor Martin. I don’t even speak the language that well and I can repeat back to you what he’s saying, rather than Garble Garble Hooker Ho Bag Garble Mumble Mumble. Whatever the problem is with Americans and enunciation, I’d like to know. I mean, maybe it’s that fake-platinum grill (or is it grille?) that hip hop artists feel obliged to sport. Or the lackadaisical allmywordsruntogether sound of SoCal. Or they could be like that girl, Cassie I think, that sings a song entitled Me and U, which from her song alone I can tell you she’s younger than 25 because I don’t see a lot of people nearing thirty that name a song with singular letters. Anyway, this kid Cassie could not possibly sound more bored. As in so bored I think it was just too much of an effort for her to open her damn mouth and get a sound out that doesn’t sound like it came straight from a Casio keyboard, circa 1987.

****************************************************

Yesterday I wore the skirt that mother once paid me two hundred dollars to never wear again, except to Wal-Mart. Because it’s okay to look like a bag lady at Wal-Mart. But the thing is, it has big deep pockets. And it’s all big and flowy and a nice greenish beige color, which doesn’t sound like a nice color but really is. So I may or may not have broken our deal by possibly wearing it to work yesterday but it’s been over a year since that deal was made and I wasn’t making any money then and I think the deal was made in an effort to make sure her daughter had more than tuna and ramen in her kitchen cabinets.

After work I met up with Amanda in the furniture department of Dillard’s, because we had an hour to kill before nursery time and they were having a sale. I’ve been looking for a couch for over a year now and I’ve come to equate couch shopping with the Prince Charming fairy tale. I keep thinking that when I see it, I’ll just know. Unfortunately this has not worked out for with the whole couch shopping thing. Or the Prince Charming thing. Which is why I’ve decided it’s a fairy tale because OBVIOUSLY the perfect couch does not exist. It still doesn’t stop me from shopping for it, however.

So as we’re leaving the store, another furniture shopping expedition thrown to the dogs, I was walking up the two flights of stairs that lead up to the parking lot. Maybe I was tired from the day or maybe that skirt is longer than I think it is, but about halfway up I got my foot caught in the front of my skirt and apparently tried to rip it clean off. Thankfully, my ass got in the way.

Please, Reach Out To Others

2006-09-13T12:22:00.000-07:00

My post-workout soreness finally went away yesterday afternoon and I stopped getting those strange shooting pains starting at my right elbow and careening down to my finger tips, leaving that whole extremity in a state of such confusion I think the properly functioning portion of my brain overruled my normal right-handedness and started forcing me to grab cups and pens and shampoo bottles with my left. It’s very odd to grab your morning coffee with your left hand, even when you know that there’s every chance a tree will drop a leaf into the silent forest and it will inexplicably piss off your right arm, which will then revolt by sending tingling, numbing pains down to your fingertips which in turn causes you to drop whatever it is you might be holding.

I think the Workout Feeling backfired on my psyche, however, because in the past few days I’ve been unable to resist the call of Cold Stone Creamery, that bastion of public fatness, a place that takes already sweet and delicious ice cream and INJECTS MORE FAT into it, just to make it even creamier and drool inducing. I’ve been inside the doors of this hell many times and never felt innately compelled to purchase anything. I’m happy to watch other people eat it but ice cream has never really been my thing. Unless it comes with cake, and then I’m all over it. Which is how I got into trouble on Monday when I ordered the cake batter ice cream with chunks of yellow cake and pecans, all mixed in. Seriously, if I could have promised my undying devotion to this concoction, promised to love and cherish it for all time, I would have thrown my marriage views to the wind and slipped a ring on it’s cold, icy finger.

And so yesterday I found myself in the grip of the cake batter ice cream again and pulled into the parking lot before I’d even had a chance to talk myself out of it. Thankfully I ordered a small this time but seriously, like those extra 200 calories in a medium would have had any effect on the size of my ass.

I should also add that in that same day, I ate a package of chocolate ho-hos and a bag of cheetos. Things I normally would never have an inclination to eat, except maybe the cheetos and even then the only time I let myself buy them is if I can find the baked kind on the chip aisle. I do this because the baked kind don’t taste near as good as the regular kind, which makes me disinclined to eat eighteen handfuls all at once.

So maybe this working out thing isn’t for me. Maybe I should throw all caution to the wind and shove bonbons and jellybeans and baskets of fried pig feet down my throat and embrace the oversize-lady adult film industry. Because if you’ve ever googled that, and I know you have, then you’ll notice that all the men are completely normal sized and they seem to find great pleasure in lifting yards of flesh away from the important bits so they can do, you know, the thing they were hired to do.

Blech. Right now that above paragraph is enough to keep me from EVER eating bonbons without serious restraint. I kind of just threw up a little, right in my hand.

Head Down, Outta This Town

2006-09-12T17:59:00.000-07:00

The consequences of being able to whine to your friends about not sleeping is that that they automatically feel compelled to tell you how well they slept the night before. As if to prove, yet again, that something as intrinsically natural as laying your head upon a squishy surface and falling asleep is just something you should be able to do, something like blinking your eyelids or wriggling your toes. And while I know they mean nothing but the best, it still doesn’t curb that initial rush of hatred that wants to scream out SO WHAT, DO YOU THINK THAT MAKES YOU COOL OR SOMETHING?!?

When in fact it does make them cool. It also makes them less irritable and cranky, seeing as how they had at least six and sometimes nine hours of full recuperative rest. It’s just, imagine you eat lunch at a nice restaurant with one of your girlfriends and you both happen to order the salmon. It’s tasty and delicious and perfectly cooked but about an hour later you’re clutching your stomach as it does it’s eighth double back handspring in a row. Your friend is sympathetic to your cause because, hello, we’ve all been there. But somehow she feels obligated to tell you how perfectly fine her stomach feels, how she has no idea what could have caused your stomach to revolt against such delicious salmon and did you do something to piss off the chef?

And as far as I know I did nothing to piss off the Sleep Gods. I lay down at an acceptable hour every single night, usually eschewing an evening of festivities so I can recline on my pristine white sheets. I don’t watch late-night television, I dim the lights in my apartment to simulate evening hours and I don’t stay on the computer trolling dating sites until the wee hours of the morn. I rarely drink caffeine after 3pm. In short, I have a bedtime routine, the kind that all the sleep literature recommends. And still I lay awake, night after night, begging the Sleeping Gods to reward my good behavior and send me an all expense paid vacation to La La Land.

Once I realized a couple of months ago that this whole not sleeping thing wasn’t normal, not by any stretch of the imagination, I decided to go to my doctor. That visit didn’t go well, especially after he not-so-subtly intimated that perhaps my not sleeping was directly proportional to me wanting to take a razor to my wrists. I had to inform him that sleeplessness is not always related to depression, which is not always related to wanting to kill yourself. And if anyone in that small doctor’s room was in danger of losing their life, it was most definitely not me.

This morning I bypassed my regular doctor for one who specializes in folks who just want to get some shuteye. Inside his office on the fifth floor I spent over an hour chatting with him about family medical history (we die of everything, but we hang around for a really long time) and my jobs and my hobbies and as we wrapped up the hobby section, he told me that before we go any further, he’d like to confirm some of his preliminary thoughts.

“Your nose lists to the right a bit. I’d say you have a deviated septum. And your mouth is quite small, I bet you hate getting X-rays at the dentist.”

At first I was kind of insulted, like, who the hell are you to talk about my nose listing to the right? My nose is lovely, thank you. The only people who talk about deviated septums are overly indulged rich girls who think they can get their insurance to pay for shaving three inches off the tip and filing down the bump. But then he took out a mirror and said, see, look here, and pointed to the right side. And you know, I had to agree with him. Then he took out his little black instrument with the light on the end and shoved it up my nostril, proclaiming that he was indeed correct and the septum was actually touching the bone on the opposite side.

I had a little moment of panic because of all the surgery shows I watch, the only thing I can’t watch are the nose jobs. Noses are so delicate and fragile and while I agree that some of the people come out looking much better, seeing that poor defenseless bone get hammered into submission is almost too much for me to bear.

I told the doctor of my nose-job fear and he agreed that my nose was quite nice (my nose-pride was instantly restored, thank god) and said surgery was the least of our worries right now. His worry was getting me into the sleep clinic to see what a night hooked up to wires and a video camera could tell him.

And then he said he noticed that at the end of the questionnaire I’d filled out, the fifteen pages of yes and no and how frequently and fill in the blank questions, I’d answered the last bit with “If you make me sleep I will give you a cookie.” And then he told me he was quite fond of oatmeal raisin.

You Appear To Be My Dues To Pay.

2006-09-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

I bought a yoga mat like six years ago and I can confidently say that in those six years, I've probably taken it out of the closet maybe ten times. Out of those ten times, I've probably used it for it's intended purposes maybe two or three. The rest of the time I normally throw it on the floor with every intention of doing something yogatastic and instead get distracted by a surgery on the Discovery Health channel and I'll sit cross-legged on it until my ass falls asleep, convincing myself that it's necessary for me to watch yet another cleft palate reconstruction or one more endoscopic brow lift.

Before I put the mat back up, I'll do a quick test to confirm that I can still bend over and put my hands on the floor. Then I'll roll it into it's little carrying case and throw it back in the catch-all closet, ready for the next time I think I'm going to make an attempt at being skinny.

But last night I was bored to tears, bored like I was at the age of twelve and sent to tennis camp for some aerobic activity and outdoor fun. Though if I'm honest the tennis camp debacle was a combination of boredom and outright annoyance, expressed to the full extent of my pre-teen abilities by sitting with my back against the fence and deliberately ignoring the instructor when she used her faux-enthusiasm to encourage me to get off my ass and try it already, I might even like it.

I did not like that woman very much.

In my boredom I somehow found myself driving to the supercenter across town with no list of groceries and no need for batteries or light bulbs or lint roller refills. It was odd walking in the store like that, with just a total lack of ambition or designated plan of action. I always have lists. Always. Right now I have a post-it note list on my laptop at work, waiting for me to walk in on Monday and know exactly what I need to do before eight. I have a list of things I need to do, letters I need to write, harassing emails I need to compose, friends I need to call. And somehow I still remain neurotic enough to forget to pay my water bill or deposit money in my bank account.

So I wondered around the store for a bit, stopping off in cosmetics and throwing random products in my buggy, products that claim to make my curls soft and frizz-free, another that promises to help straighten wavy hair. (To be used separately, obviously.) Then I was back in electronics, perusing the aisles of music and thinking how I have no idea who Ne-Yo or Chingy or Cheyenne Kimball are, but they're all featured prominently on the displays.

Then it was off to DVD's and I couldn't find a single thing that I wanted, because I don't buy DVD's that I can rent for two dollars at Movie Xchange and throw in the return box when I'm done watching them. But as I was walking down the last aisle a picture of an impossibly fit woman caught my eye and before I knew what I was doing, I'd picked up the double disc set of ab and arm and butt and leg and probably pinkie toe exercises and thrown it in the buggy, right next to the shiny green bottles of hair product. Then I marched over to sporting goods and threw in two ten-pound weights, just because whatever I was high on must taken over the properly functioning part of my brain. I've never purchased weights before, never had the desire to, simply because for my entire childhood my father kept a set of ancient brown weights on the fireplace and it drove my mother absolutely insane that the only time those things got used were, um, never. Their entire purpose in life was to collect dust and dog hair and cat fur.

As I was walking out to my car, however, I think I came a little to my senses. The bag with the weights was heavy. Like, for real heavy. And I was going to do what with these exactly? OH MY GOD I'M TURNING INTO MY FATHER. Next thing you know I'll keep stacks of engineering magazines by my chair as an homage to fire hazards everywhere.

Oh well, at least I'll get more productive with a hammer. Maybe even use some nails.

This morning I got up because some asshole was knocking on my neighbors door yelling JOHN! bam bam bam JOOOOHN! I could have helped the guy by politely pointing out that JOHN! is not home, see how there are no cars in the driveway? No car equals no JOHN! so please go home and have a nice burrito. But instead I opened my back door and anonymously yelled out "SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I'M GOING TO CUT YOU." And then I quickly shut my door and closed all my curtains, because I'm a little crazy but I'm not actually stupid.

Since I was up, I decided it was time to bring out the old blue yoga mat and pop one of my new get-yourself-skinny exercise DVD's. I grabbed a glass of water because, though it's been a while since I've deliberately made myself sweat, I hear it's good to keep hydrated while bouncing around your living room.

After fifteen minutes of jumping jacks and leg lifts and strange butt-lifting abdominal crunches, I lay panting on my blue yoga mat, thinking these people are smoking something illegal to think I can get my ass off the floor, much less do one more leg swirly kick thing.

And then I turned my head and got an in-depth look at the dust bunnies under my couch and I dragged myself off the floor to add Sweep Under Couch to my to-do list.

'La vache est un idiot' is the only thing I remember from French class.

2006-09-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

As I was driving home this evening I happened to get caught at a downtown red light, one that afforded me an unobstructed view of the early evening sky. In the distance I could see a plane, obviously in it’s beginning efforts of climbing to a respectable altitude, and I was struck by the obscene angle by which it was traveling. It seemed impossible that the passengers inside weren’t being thrown upwards and over their uncomfortably close seats and I immediately envisioned the warning printed on bags of chips, proclaiming that Contents May Settle During Shipping.

For whatever reason I thought about the first time I’d ever been on a plane. The destination was Maastricht, a small university town about an hour’s train ride outside of Amersterdam. My friend Kasi and I had spent a weekend early in the spring semester writing grant proposals for our trip, researching plane fares and in general attempting to contain our excitement at embarking on our first-ever across the pond excursion. When our grants came through we immediately sat down to book our flights, an adventure in and of itself as Kasi had spent the entirety of her previous college career laboriously typing upon a word processor, eschewing The Internet as a thing of demonic possession. She was determined to make her reservations on her own, however, and knowing Kasi as I did, I finally slipped out of my room, leaving Kasi to her own devices and praying my computer would be in one piece by the time I got back.

Our tickets came a week later and both of us slipped them between the pages of our crisp passports, complaining of the hideousness of our passport photos. We’d scheduled the trip around spring break, choosing to miss three days of classes on either end of the vacation to allow for more travel time and recuperation from jet lag, which strangely I never felt. Probably because the entire time overseas I stuck almost religiously to my own local time, not caring that I woke up in early afternoon because the museums were open until five and the hash bars were open all night.

When it came time for us to leave, Kasi and I packed our suitcases full of everything imaginable. We would be staying with friends in the international dorms so they’d prepared us for the weather but it’s amazing how the words ‘Spring’ and ‘Break’ can infiltrate your head so that you still pack a few tank tops and shorts, just in case the weather should warm up. In March. In The Netherlands. Right-o.

We were scheduled to fly out of Little Rock at 4pm on a Wednesday but due to weather or plane malfunction or just some newbie with an affection for the delete key, our flight was canceled for the evening and we were given meal vouchers as compensation. So Kasi and I ate dinner and then drove the thirty miles back to Conway to wait out yet another day before our trip could begin. The next day we showed up in the airport again, still wearing our polar fleece ‘traveling clothes’ which looked nothing so much like actual clothing as soft and cuddly pajamas.

The first flight from Little Rock to Memphis was horrendous, and I remember thinking that if I had to survive this turmoil and tossing about I would surely never make it through the upcoming flights from Memphis to JFK, JFK to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to Maastricht. But the flight to New York was more subdued and the flight across the ocean was much like sitting on a cloud with a constantly rumbly tummy. The only parts I truly hated were the take off and landing, feeling myself either pushed back against my seat by some invisible and unkind hand or pitched forward against the paltry restraint of my seat belt.

The trip itself was fabulous. We spent hours each day roaming the streets of Maastricht and passing ourselves off as students in the dorm cafeteria, feasting on bread with butter and delectable chocolate sprinkles, avoiding the strange meats in the spaghetti and the other meats just in general. We made trips into Amsterdam and found a bar that was actually a boat permanently moored to the side of a canal. We took a four day trip to Paris where we climbed the steps of Sacre Coeur, amusing ourselves to no end with our ridiculous French accents, relying on my two years of high school French to count out bits of change and say things like ‘Laisssez moi tranquille!’ (leave me alone!) when shabbily dressed gypsy women tried to con the shoes off our feet.

Before the trip I’d convinced a new professor to let me take one of the media department’s new digital camcorders and I spent the majority of my time filming our bus rides and train rides and various museum excursions, one of them being a tour of the famous Amsterdam Sex Museum. The museum itself was worth far more than the paltry two dollars we paid to get in because inside were six, seven and eight foot tall penile replicas, along with various artifacts ranging from carved jade depicting rather amusing acts by extremely flexible individuals to short films detailing the evolution of sex (and our reactions to it) throughout the ages.

In my tv cabinet reside two small tapes that hold footage of Kasi and I inside this museum and one day I will befriend someone with access to a converter and the willingness to transfer these to DVD. Because one Christmas many years from now, I’m going to present to Kasi the footage of her standing directly under the curved overhang of an eight foot tall penis, lovingly throwing her leg around the base and ungracefully falling on her ass. And then I’m going to throw in the part where we ran across a shopkeeper who was quite enthralled with our Americaness and insisted on showing us his American Dollars, which happened to be very realistic looking dollars except for the fact that on the front, where George Washington’s stoic and immobile face usually resides, was Monica Lewinsky paying special attention to something that was most definitely not a cigar.

Spies Like Us

2006-09-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

My oh my oh MY.

This afternoon I spent the majority of my time cleaning. Not because I really wanted to but because the one place I wanted to clean was and remains unavailable for cleaning.

You see, around 3am I woke up to this utterly atrocious splattering noise. I couldn't possibly imagine what it was but immediately blamed it on The Demonspawn. Upon further inspection, however, I ascertained that The Demonspawn were innocent of my accusations with the real culprit being my bathroom ceiling. Apparently it had been storing up a filthy present for a good long time and chose the middle of the night to make it's grand entrance, pouring and splashing a ricockulous (look YoJ, I used it in a sentence) amount of water all over my bathroom floor.

It would have been too much to ask that it burst over the bathtub, wouldn't it.

There wasn't much I could do in the middle of the night so I waited until morning to ring up my landlord. He sent over one of his maintenance men to cut out the sagging plaster and while I appreciate the gesture, all that did was put a layer of soggy dust over the already soppy floor. And because the ceiling is still dripping there's not much point in me cleaning it up, not to mention the fact that my bathroom is so small that there's no place I can stand to clean up the mess without putting myself in the line of (dirty dripping water) fire.

So in lieu of cleaning the bathroom I found myself angrily scrubbing the windows and polishing the armoire and mopping the floors. I scooped the cat litter and took out the trash and lint rolled the furniture. And then I decided I'd clean up the back porch, because I'd let it go all summer and in three short months my pretty glider had been covered in a layer of sticky dust and the poor potted plants had shriveled up inside their terra cotta pots. The plants have actually been dead for a year but I've just been ignoring them, hoping that one day they'd magically sprout again. I have a complete lack of anything pertaining to a green thumb and the opressive humidity found in this part of the country was the biggest deterrent in replanting some greenery.

As I was grabbing the broom off the wall I happened to look outside and spied an unusual vehicle. Not unusual as in lime green unusual but unusual as in I know the two cars that park on my neighbor's parking pad and this shiny SUV wasn't one of them, not to mention that it was parked at an odd angle. My next door neighbor is what you might call cranky and I almost went outside to tell this new person to move their car before Mr. Crankpot got home but decided whoever this was, they could fight their own battles and secretly I was kind of amused that the SUV was blocking the entrance of the driveway.

Upon going out on the back porch to begin the process of sweeping away a summer's worth of crap, I saw a woman in her mid-sixties walking around the edge of my neighbor's house, the part where the outdoor stairs lead to the upstairs apartment that Mr. Crankpot rents out. I smiled and waived and noticed she was getting various cleaning accoutrements from the back of the SUV so I stopped my sweeping to ask her if she was moving in.

No, she said, just my son.

About that time I see, out of the corner of my eye, a rather tall and broad shouldered individual emerging from the side of the building. The woman smiles at me and introduces her son, Jake, and I walk over and shake his hand.

Hell-o, sugar. My name is Robin and I'll be your cute and SINGLE SINGLE SINGLE neighbor. How ever can I assist you today?

Oh, you're gainfully employed? And you speak in complete sentences? And you have all of your natural born teeth? WHAT MORE COULD I ASK?

Now, guess who's going to be making a concerned effort to take her evening coffee on the back porch? GUESS.