No Pasa Nada

The time has come

2007-05-07T07:55:00.000-05:00

“And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” – Max Ehrmann

Last night after a whirlwind tour of Georgetown that included Café Bonaparte, Paolo’s and Café Milano, I cried. No, I sobbed. I sobbed in such a way that the girl walking in front of me down M Street, turned around while I was on the phone with my mother, to ask if I was OK. Because apparently someone bawling outside Sephora is unusual. I should have told her that they didn’t have my blush color and that just pissed me off a bit.

The good thing about mothers is that they know just the right things to say and to do, even if you are doing the whole shoulder shake sob thing from 400 miles away. As my mother gently reminded me that I don’t do change well. I actually find change to be some awful act of God in retaliation for all of those times I lied about who stole all the quarters out of the family ‘treat jar’. Or perhaps it’s because of that time I drove to the mall, well before I got my license. I lied about that too.

I thought I was badass and deciding to quit my job in search for something else was taken rather lightly. An outer body experience or something that told me that it was perfectly OK to uproot my life from my best friends and move to a place where it snows from October to April. A place where no one knows what the fuck ‘table service’ means and the closest Trader Joe’s is in Scarsdale. But really, I was handling it all quite well. And my mother even said that I could live with her forever so that I could keep my apartment down here. I really think that tears are the best way to a mother’s soul or at least the best way to get my mother to say something that she’ll find really regrettable by next Tuesday.
I needed a good cry. That’s all. It’s a lot – more than a lot and in combination with other huge changes – to take in and absorb and to be OK with. One of those changes, though not nearly as monumental is this site. It has moved. To here: http://nopasanada.org

It’s .org because .com and .net were taken. And much like I treat people who tell me that it snows in Albany, if you tell me that I am not an organization, I’ll punch you in the baby maker. Obviously there hasn’t been too much change.

The long goodbye

2007-05-04T08:54:00.000-05:00

"Be well, do good work, and keep in touch." ~Garrison Keillor

I’m currently holed up in my house drinking fruit punch out of a plastic Front Page mug. I swear that each and everyday I get more and more classy and this, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason for why the boys are falling all over me.

Slowly I’m preparing myself for the inevitable and yet it doesn’t seem all that real yet. I’ll be seeing friends up until my departure. And thus far my friends – nay, family – have wined and dined me and plan to do so until my departure. It’s amazing what suddenly leaving can do. Everyone wants to do drinks and dinners. I’ll even be imbibing the fermented drink on the Lord’s day, that’s what my schedule has become. Thus I’ve woken up every morning of the past week with a hangover.

My only question is why no one wants to come over midday and sit and watch Little Children while I fold my laundry and find bills from 2004?

Another question, how does one show sincerest apologies to their liver? Do flowers work? A nice and well thought out card with masterful prose as to the wonder and lovely thing that it is? Or shall I just appreciate it a little better and be kinder? That always helps.

Not just a river in Egypt

2007-05-02T07:04:00.000-05:00

"This isn't a conversation about this being over. I'm not like, putting a period at the end of this. I'm putting like... an ellipsis on it."-Andrew Largeman

After one year, ten months and five days today is my last day at work. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry but for now it's quite odd how I'm just going through the day as if it's like any other day. I might actually be in denial. I've been to the gym, I'll get ready, walk to work, get tea and it will be just like every other morning. At the end of the day though, it won't be a simple 'see you in the morning, HB.'

Actually I lied, I'm pretty sure I might cry.

How to get the girl

2007-04-30T20:05:00.000-05:00

“The problem most men have is they don't know how to talk to women...” – Cal

The dry cleaner that Ken Mehlman and I frequent, is located at a busy intersection, where families with dogs and dads with babies strapped in a bjorn stroll, while driving tourists question how to get to the other end of the street at the opposite side of the city. My response is a standard: keep going straight for five miles. They perk up and I mutter "too bad, sucka, it'll take you like 45 minutes."

They – the dry cleaner – leave the doors open on nice days, as it was on Saturday afternoon. I had literally rolled out of bed after a night of a very poor Beirut performance and slipped on my practically crotchless jeans and the t-shirt I had slept in with my Vineyard Crew 80's-esque sweatshirt. I had rushed out without brushing my teeth in my haste to get to a mani/pedi appointment. My hair was pinned up with 17 bobby pins and a headband to keep the afro-mass o' curls hybrid at bay. I had hairs coming from strange parts of my face and no makeup to cover up the random chin hair or ten.

All of this while standing at the dry cleaner waiting, until a black man came up to the door and leaned on the frame.

"Pssst. Hey girl"

I looked up and saw a gangly man with an oversized Skins t-shirt and gray sweatpants on. He had fuzzies in his hair. I then closed my eyes quickly promising my first born child to the Lord if he just made the stray man go away.

I went back to rummaging around in my bag looking for a credit card. When the woman at the desk asked if he needed any help.

"No, I'm just trying to holla at her."

He then went back to interrogating me:

"Girl, you gotta boyfriend?"

" Can I take you out on a date?" [insert off color and horribly un-PC joke about the location, say to Taco Bell? Or perhaps BK, where I can have it my way]

When it was finally my turn I ran up and whispered my phone number handed my credit card and turned back around and wouldn't you know, that motherfucker was still loitering outside waiting for me to come out so he could sweep me off my feet. Perhaps he would take me to McDs for my filet-o-fish fix.

Upon completing the longest dry cleaning transaction ever in the history of the earth, I sprinted outside and there he was standing on the sidewalk. So I sprinted across the street and was almost a causality of woman versus Lexus. All to prevent myself from being love interest of random street man. And here I’m thinking that I’ll never find anyone – at least according to Oprah – but then again, there apparently is something mighty attractive about a woman with plaque covered teeth, a bird’s nest on top of her head and reeking of Natty light. I am every man’s dream.

Mailbox

2007-04-25T22:03:00.000-05:00

“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.” ~Harry Truman

I’m queen of the half stories. The stories that there are to tell that maybe I can tell at a later date but just cannot right now. Regardless, I have to look at the little things as fucking awesome. El madre threw a kick ass party at Love that involved an open bar with top shelf vodka and my new coworkers who I know that I will grow to love.

It’s just a lot right now. I’m overwhelmed by several different things all trying to diverge right at my frontal lobe. I fear an implosion of infinite proportions and yet I’ve managed to stay steadfast and not spew brain bits all over my bay windows.

Last week, I ran one of my final errands to the Social Security office to obtain a new card. An office that is in the HOOD and involved different groups of people taking a number. Some were there for hours I was there for exactly one hour, which involved a screaming tiny baby and an old blind man who didn’t bring a single piece of identification. Though I came prepared and today in the mail, just days later, came my new social security card. So! I am now an actual US citizen that doesn’t have solely use a passport to prove that I was born in Albany. But really, who the fuck would lie about such a thing? That’s like pretending to be born in Scranton.

In addition to the new Social Security card came my Employee tax ID number, which means that I can freelance my way through life without fearing paying $10,000 to the IRS as well as my tax refund of like $10 , a coupon to Bed, Bath and Beyond and The Queen. Which means that I get to stare at Helen Mirren for as long as I’d like and that is the true source of my happiness.

There comes to a point where you just take what you can get. Life is hard and it fucking sucks so god damn much some days to the point where you wonder if all of this is really truly possible. So you allow yourself to relish the little things: a refund, a DVD, a form of identification. For those are the only things that can keep you going. It’s just realizing, way deep down inside, where you think there is absolutely nothing left, that there is a little glimmer of hope. Even if it is just worth a few dollars, it’s something.

Just keeps getting better

2007-04-24T16:15:00.000-05:00

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that when one part of your life starts going okay, another falls spectacularly to pieces.” – Bridget Jones

One would think that after giving notice, then one would be able to relax and enjoy semi-retirement. Froclicking about of course and possibly planning impromptu trips to Paris. Because I’m sure that’s what you think that I have been doing. Sitting on my ass, enjoying cake love for the last time ever and maybe quickly diminishing my Netflix queue.

But no.

Schnozz is going to read this and beat the ever loving shit out of me, because 2007 is the year of the other shoe dropping and I can't tell you what kind of shoe it is! Just when things get AWESOME! And GREAT! And I emphasize things with exclamation points and capital letters, something shitty happens. Like there are multiple things that I’m excited to do and I just finished this big giant freelance project that was fun and I was genuinely excited about. Then BOOM! While I’m riding this high of a new job that I’m beyond ecstatic for and party planning and other things, the other shoe drops.

It’s like the story of my life: one thing goes well and so another must go to shit because woe is always me. The sad part is that for once, I’m not being melodramatic.

In other news, I’m not a list maker. In fact I think lists kind of suck. But OH MY HELL…I have been listing away as of late. I get a little giddy each time I can cross something off. So you know, in that regard, life is good.

The Queen of Everything

2007-04-19T10:27:00.000-05:00

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."” ~A.A. Milne

I’ve probably told this story before, but I don’t care, because it’s one of my favorites. That one day when still living in Northwest, I was walking to my apartment on the phone with Kimber. There is a large empty park next to my old building and located on a very public and heavily trafficked street. And there in the middle of the park there was a very pregnant woman getting her picture taken in the middle of the park on Massachusetts Avenue in the middle of rush hour. Thus, I dubbed her Crazy Pregnant Lady to Kimber whose response was “oh my word, that’s the dumbest thing ever”.

I forgot about Crazy Pregnant Lady for a time and then discovered her blog and devoured her archives. I emailed Crazy Pregnant Lady about my enjoyment of her site and offered to babysit for her unborn child because that’s obviously so completely normal: “Umm hi, you don’t know me and I’m a crazy stalker freak who wants to babysit for your fetus. Wanna be friends?”

Anyway, Crazy Pregnant Lady never wrote back; at least not until about two months later when she requested my services despite the oddness of it all. I replied with an enthusiastic ‘Dude! YES!’ and the rest as they say is history.

I’m not sure how it is with most babysitters and their charges, but I fell in love with Noah. Despite the fact that the kid is gorgeous, he’s also amazing and funny. He gives hugs and kisses and likes to make faces in the mirror and I’m pretty sure that introducing him to Photobooth made his short little life. I figure that how he felt about Photobooth is how I felt about discovering Trader Joe’s: Shock and awe.

Growing up I had plenty of babysitters including an au pair. I have scattered memories of all of them, but nothing really tangible. If one walked up to me on the street today, I would have no recollection. For me they were just a string of women who were forced to deal with my brother and I locking each other in the garage in the dead of winter. Or the time I stepped on G’s back and he spit in my face. I’m sure these women felt really blessed with their good fortune of babysitting heathens. We even made our au pair cry once and so she locked herself in her room until my mother came home. Good times.

Last night Amy and I went out for drinks. It’s been something that we’ve wanted to do but never had the opportunity for until now. And thankfully she’d already been drinking when I told her that not only had I given my two weeks notice earlier that day, but that I’d also be moving. To Albany. And then I almost started crying at the bar, because of all of the people I’ve babysat for – and there have been loads – she and Jason have by far been the easiest and the best and they, in turn, have gotten a babysitter who has readily made herself available at the drop of a hat every week for the past 18 months.

They’ll find a replacement, I’m sure; probably not someone who will drive an hour in rush hour to come to them. And it’s not like I had the intention of babysitting him until he could stay home alone, because then I’d be like 45. But dude, I’m going to miss him so damn much. And even though he screams and looks like someone just shot his dog every time he sees me, and I have the audacity to actually wash his hair, I’m sure that deep down inside, he’s going to miss me too.

Comfort food

2007-04-18T12:31:00.000-05:00

"Optimism is the foundation of courage.” ~Nicholas Murray Butler

Trader Joe’s makes this amazing macaroni and cheese. It involves gouda and havarti, two of my favorites and butter, my second favorite food group behind fermented grapes. Abi wrote a review about it and since then I’ve been hooked. It’s become my go to food when I need a little warmth and well, comfort in me. It’s the food version of the fetal position, though the fetal position has considerably less calories.

Despite the sometimes, rough exterior, I need a little comfort in my life, especially as of late. I need to be held and to be told that I will be ok and that I’m great (and hot and pretty and that my ass looks good in my jeans). I need reassurance.

Last night I turned to LB who hugged me and celebrated with me and got be drunk on Costco size bottle of Pinot Noir. She helped me with the pros and cons of things right now and then I made the biggest decision I’ve ever made in my life, even bigger than the PC vs. Mac debacle. At any rate she comforted me with chocolates and Mahill brought neopolitan ice cream which I mixed together so that all the flavors melted into one another. That’s always comforted me as well.

Stacy talked with me, despite my inebriation about the evils of depression and she comforted me as well. LB and Stacy were like my Mac & Cheese last night. Just making me feel better and less likely to vomit and hyperventilate and more willing to get excited and be happy for myself and for everything that I have going on right now. Even when I don't feel like I deserve it.

I’m comforted enough to be confident in going in today and putting in my two weeks notice.

Just like death and taxes

2007-04-17T15:27:00.000-05:00

“I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.” ~Jane Wagner

Right around this time last year I wrote these two gems. Both were my way of putting my anger and disdain into fine literary prose, peppered with the word ‘fuck’ a few dozen times just for good measure and dramatic affect. I wanted those around me and visiting and breathing the same oxygen in this tiny nation’s capitol of ours to understand the basic principles of dealing with several thousand smart Type A personalities, as every year we Washingtonians deal with the same shit and frankly, something needed to be said. I wanted them to understand that if you get on our nerves we will have no choice but to shove you down the White Flint metro escalator. And do y’all know how long that sucker is?

Which leads me to this morning when I took an impromptu trip on the metro. In a perfectly fine/excited/anxious mood but good nonetheless; that is until I encountered the first set of escalators. I wanted to walk up on the LEFT side but could I? Of course not, because standing on the RIGHT side would really be too much of a hassle. No, no, please do take up the entire escalator with your fabulous Jordache fanny pack and I’ll just stand here and smile and wait while you enjoy all that DC has to offer.

On the first escalator, “Please move over” I said it nicely, yet with an air of authority which says that I live here and you are totally just not following the rules, but I understand. The offending party quickly moved.

On the second escalator, they were just STANDING. Just standing still acting like they didn’t have a care in the world. And given the surly mood I find myself in without some good old fashioned medication, I did as any average PMSing female would do: “STAND on one side, WALK on the other. Why is this so difficult for you?” Then shoved my way through, huffing and puffing, with a trail of angry turistas behind me yelling that they were in fact tourists and/or new. Maybe I didn’t get that memo from the way they just take up all the damn space on the little tiny escalator.

Later was free cone day. And oh my lord, don’t get me started. But there’s nothing like a line of children under the age of 7 screaming about ice cream and generally flailing themselves around, that will force a woman to seriously contemplate tubal ligation.

Good news

2007-04-15T21:24:00.000-05:00

“The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.” ~Ivy Baker Priest

How 99% of the population reacts to fucking fantastic, mind
blowing news:

- gracious thanks
- a good old fashioned BJ
- equally mind blowing sex
- giving thanks to jesus/buddah/moses
- veuve cliquot or Cristal

How I react to fucking fantastic, mind blowing news (short of Random House calling):

- deep sobbing shoulder shaking tears, in which my mother offers a paper bag of some sort so that I do not completely hyperventilate
- xanax
- movie popcorn with extra salt and butter
- xanax
- two Blue Moons
- two glasses of 365 Merlot (mmm, tastes like ass with a hint of fruit. Goes best with chipotle burritos and xanax)
- three ketel one and tonics
- crying
- xanax
- told Andrea no less than 4 times that I have a linebacker neck so my necklace would have to be like 21" (I may have said "I'm built like a SF 49er." She may have wanted to drop kick me from 3000 miles away)
- the fetal position
-sticking my head between my knees
- cuticle removal courtesy of my incisors
- xanax

True love

2007-04-11T23:27:00.000-05:00

“He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.” ~Leo Tolstoy

On Monday evening, I drove home and noticed a compact car behind me. At the light I noticed it was a family: a husband driving, the wife in the passenger seat and a boy, about 12, leaning against the back window.

At the next light, they were directly behind me in my rearview mirror. It was that moment that I glanced over at the mother with her index finger up her left nostril: She was a pirate in search of her buried treasure. Convinced there’s gold up there, she keeps on digging.

And I sat in complete awe. While her husband kept chatting away. When she finished she pulled her entire finger from out of her nostril – still nasal mucus runs deep, apparently – she looked at the contents on her finger. Inspecting thoroughly and I half expected for her to bust out a macro lens, just to get a good look at her specimen. Then wiped it on the car interior and continued conversing with her husband.

Neither were dismayed by what had just occurred. They smiled, the husband chatted away and yet no look of horror or disgust nor did he push her out the car in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue or bust out the Purell.

I suppose that’s what we all want in life though: Someone who looks past our faults We just want someone who can see that there is more than just gross things and boogers and imperfections. It’s human nature to need someone who has We all just want and need someone who can love us and ignore our foibles and realize that we all just need to do a little deep digging every once in awhile.

What would you say?

2007-04-09T18:32:00.001-05:00

“I’ll tell you in another life, when we’re both cats” – Vanilla Sky

Though I doubt I should have to explain myself, like ever, I feel the need to acquiesce to my gut and reiterate that I do not believe everything that Oprah says. I do not necessarily believe the aforementioned statistic. If I did believe such drivel then the title of my previous post would have been “Oh my fucking hell”. I would’ve been less jovial and unable to write three coherent words together let alone four entire paragraphs. I also would have swallowed my tongue, drank myself into a stupor, cried a bit, frozen my eggs and found a sperm donor all before writing Part #457 of the stupid shit that Oprah says. Or better yet, Part #457 of the stupid shit that Oprah’s production staff feeds to her and perhaps those women are feeling lonely in their powerful positions and University of Chicago degrees and so why not pass off their depressing statistics to the masses? That way all can partake in the joys of permanent celibacy.

I should probably stop going on these bitter tirades because in the end I seem so rancorous but I cannot because the neurons going from my brain to my fingers say otherwise. And yet thinking of how things have been going as of late, I suppose there are things that I wouldn’t dare write less incur the wrath of all those around me. So I step back and then skirt around the issue, which manifests itself into a myriad of crap ass half stories. Which begs not one but two questions: 1) Why can’t I stop with crap ass half stories but instead must go for the crap ass half segues? 2) What won’t you ever write about?

Always the bearer of good news

2007-04-08T15:52:00.000-05:00

“Lust is easy. Love is hard. Like is most important.” ~Carl Reiner

On Friday afternoon, after a rousing morning of sitting on my ass and then lunch and then a slight OH SHIT panic attack on the walk home, I settled down to stare at Jason Morgan for an hour and then some Oprah. Unlike others, I have no strong feelings towards Oprah. I’m ambivalent at best. I’ve been known to read ‘O’ and went to a taping, but I don’t believe that everything that comes out of her mouth is gospel which means that I also do not believe that she can walk on water.

So, she’s talking and getting America’s opinion on everything from Elizabeth Edwards to Anna Nicole Smith to Cadbury cream eggs: love ‘em or hate ‘em? And then she goes onto speaking of single women as this really fantastic demographic destined to a life of singledom 51% of the time. Then she decides to throw out the real kicker, the coup de grace of single statistics: 70% of black women are single and will likely stay that way forever.

I wasn’t sure whether or not to dramatically roll my eyes at the absurdity of such a statement, die, or drown my sorrows in a large bottle of Maker’s Mark. For if I’m to be perpetually single then why not just drink my way through life and indulge in chocolate fashioned Easter baskets EVERY SINGLE DAY?

Her reasons were something along the lines of black women waiting for their perfect black male soul mate and given the ratio of successful black women to the successful black men that they envision themselves with, was something like 50,000:1. Again, all of this according to the high priestess Oprah.

Obviously the validity of this might very well be skewed and I have probably mentioned before that I could give a fuck if a male is black or fluorescent magenta, I’m just interested in MEN. Period. So it might be possible that this whole 70% thing may not pertain to me. Or perhaps things could change before 2025. Who the fuck knows? I figure it’s best to not obsess about such trivial matters. And if I do end up single for the remainder of my life, it will have less to do with any specific criteria I have for a future partner and more to do with the really classy way I just housed a box of gummy bears and a Godiva chocolate bunny.

Welcome to the District of Columbia

2007-04-05T09:49:00.001-05:00

“What is the city but the people?” ~William Shakespeare

Sometime yesterday afternoon I was sent a forward from the always useful and capable Metropolitan Police Department. They of infamous double parking and being generally unhelpful roughly 89.9% of the time. Except for those times when they choose to holler at me and/or stare and I choose to return their ‘niceness’ with my patented scowl/eyebrow raise combination and maybe the finger.

Yesterday’s email described attacks taking place in the Capitol Hill/Eastern Market areas, where a presumably homeless person in a red jacket has been going around stabbing people in the neck and back then running off. Before victims realize what has actually happened they experience a “burning sensation” in their back and then come to the astute realization that some psycho motherfucker has just stabbed them in the back. Which, you know…is almost as awesome as that time that we had snipers.

In the evening I decided to walk from where I was in south east to north east – across capitol hill – to a friend’s home. I had forgotten about crazy knife wielding man, though was thankful upon remembering that I was wearing my super cross country adidas and it’s easier to escape a knife than a rifle. But of course, every step I heard behind me on my mile long walk, gave me severe heart palpitations, but hopefully I’d be able to out run the motherfucker or have the where with all to step on the opposite side of the street upon seeing a red jacket clad man, dancing in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue and picking through the garbage. Just a thought.

Though it’s 7:30 PM, it’s still rather light outside. As I approach north east’s Stanton park, I’m still aware of my surroundings and see in the park a woman with a dog on the other side and a man on his bike then a black male standing in front of a bench. I look back towards the man at the bench and see an arching stream of water. But the arch…well it is controlled by the man standing at the bench. And well, there’s a homeless man peeing. In the middle of the park. In broad daylight. While some man pushes a stroller across Mass Ave.

The man finishes and sees me. Not that I’m still staring at him pissing in the park but because I start to walk a little faster as I can see him coming towards me out of my peripherals. And what does that motherfucker do? He starts yelling at me: “HEY HONEY! HEY GIRL! WHY YOU WALKING SO FAST?!? SHAKING THAT ASS!” For the record, I was sweaty and had shoved my fat ass into lycra.

At which point I died or at least contemplated moving to Ottawa. I mean, I’m sure in Ottawa, they don’t have snipers or knife wielding mental hospital escapees or homeless people pissing in the park exactly 3/10ths of a mile from their CAPITOL BUILDING.

Now tell me you don’t want to live here; with the brilliant hummer drivers, the Beltway, members of Congress and park pissers. Oh yes, and the Cherry Blossoms.

Crazy love

2007-04-02T20:30:00.000-05:00

"Computers must be male. As soon as you commit to one you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have obtained a better model. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on. Big power surges knock them out for the rest of the day." ~Author Unknown

I never thought I’d be this person. A person who loves unconditionally, even though there might be some flaws, I see past them to see the overall beauty of Bordeaux. I thought Mac people were silly, creative, hipster types who sipped lattes in trendy coffee shops while hunched over their computers writing about Nietzsche. Those ‘right-brain’, smart types with the ability to be expressive and visionary while using big words in complete sentences. A group of people that I have no business cavorting with.

And then one day it was as if I made this rather big decision to see what all the hype was all about. Mahill kept professing his love for Steve Jobs and that whole ‘you can just plug it in and it works’ nonsense. I called bullshit though and needed to look and test drive and lightly touch the perfectly pristine cover. I saved my pennies and brought home Bordeaux and ever since then I have been in deep love.

Oh you all do not even know of the things that can be done with this machine. The comic strips and the easy start up and the way that iphoto proves to be more interesting to an 18 month old than Blue’s Clues. Behold, a miracle.

It has made coming home to sit down and write less of a seizure inducing ‘I’m going to go stick my head in this oven’ activity. And more of a pleasure…more like an ‘I’m going to sit here and drink some Malbec while fondly thinking of a million other ways to pepper my writing with the f-word’ activity. When Stacy brought Pax home and spoke of her discovery and the way it truly can change one’s life and way of thinking, I wanted to hug her from 3,000 miles away and exclaim YES! For it is amazing.

The drawback would be the daytime. Those eight hours a day in which I’m forced to be at the beckon call of Michael Dell’s ass box. The way I slam on the keyboard and move the mouse around frantically as it eats away at precious time I could be using for copying and watching baseball, because it continuously freezes. And when it doesn’t freeze, it just shuts itself down and restarts all by itself. Which might prove just how far technology has advanced and maybe there’ll be flying cars tomorrow, but for now it’s a fucking pain in the ass nuisance. Every morning I die a little inside knowing that I have to ctrl+alt+del my way through the following eight hours. It’s a sad, sad existence.

True Story: This weekend, I was running late and had Bordeaux in the back seat. I made a sharp turn off of the Beltway and he fell. I picked him up as soon as I noticed what had happened and hugged him to my chest and hoped – nay, prayed – that he would be OK* and fully functional when I went to watch Best in Show for the 45th time. Of course, he was. But I fear that day, many years from now, when I learn the hard way that Steve Jobs might not be the genius that I had originally thought, but we do not speak of that. For now I feel like this might be how parenting goes for me. Name the kid some shitty name like Cabernet, drop it, kiss it’s boo boo, then fall asleep on top of it after using it to watch Borat naked wrestle a fat man. I am poised to be quite awesome at that whole parenting thing.

*Believe it or not, the same thing once happened with a six pack of Pilsner Urquell. I stopped short and hit someone’s bumper. The first thing I did was turn around to MAKE SURE THE BEER WAS OK and then I checked my car. For I have my priorities straight.

You've come a long way, baby

2007-03-31T20:59:00.000-05:00

“A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.” ~Charles Evans Hughes

A few weeks ago, I spent some time perusing my archives. Not necessarily looking to bask in the glow of my brilliance but looking for a post highlighting my socially awkward behaviors. A post that screams: You KNOW you want to be friends with me even though I mumble. Anyway, during my quest, I came across one of my first pieces to adequately show off how I let anticipation run rampant through my life and psyche thus forcing me to stick my head between my knees and kiss my ass goodbye, when faced with a potentially awkward social situation. In this case the famed DC Blogger Happy Hour: The monthly event in which we speak less of blogging and more of the gossip and best practices for taking shots.

Given that I find most NEW situations with NEW people to be particularly frightening and I face it with a rapid fire ‘What if?’ round of questioning, usually starting with “what if they hate me?” and ending with “what if they think I drink too much?” Though most importantly, “what do I do when they decided that they hate me?” Because they will hate me, they have to hate me and maybe if I drink myself into a stupor, I won’t notice the seething hatred spilling out of them. I must say, thank the Lord that it’s a blogger happy hour, for they are the only people able to handle this extreme level of narcissism.

My first HH was an act of experimentation. Balls of never ending nerves and a shaky hand trying to hold a martini glass perfectly steady. That was the happy hour when Cookie and I bonded over double fisting chocolate martinis before Dragonfly’s drink specials ended (I am nothing if not excellent in getting more bang for my buck). It was the happy hour before I knew of the drama that those surrounding me could endure and involve themselves in, stupid shit that need not be detailed. Mostly because my attention span is a grand total of 2.8 seconds. It was the happy hour during which I realized that everyone needs a few drinks to relax themselves, thusly I am not really that much of a lush, just completely normal.

This past Thursday was I-66’s last stint as social chair. We went to Buffalo Billiards. Kassy met me outside with hugs and a kiss on the cheek. We beelined for the restroom and then to the bar, for we are two girls who have our priorities. We were cornered at the bar by a man who wanted to express sincere adoration for us and we in turn, wanted to hug…during which she was gracious and I made my “oh my fuck…there’s better shit to read” face. But it was his sincerety that kept me from awkwardly shifting from one foot to the other. An Argentinean Jew greeted me with a real hug. And these two are not nearly as scary as one might think, in fact it’s there whole “I don’t give a fuck” demeanor that gives me more inclination to love than hate. She thinks I exude smarts and I'm positively giddy each and every time I see her. They’re both hot and fucking brilliant and I want to pet their heads because they like me, they really like me.

Imagine walking into a room and being totally at ease. The ability to approach someone with “Oh….we were trying to figure out who you were” without the recipient punching you in the nose for being so damn rude. It’s not about whether or not they like me or what I had to do and have to do to keep the others for finding me terribly annoying and bull in a china shop-esque. Though I’m sure that the monthly bribes do help a bit. I don’t know what happened or the when or the how, but I suddenly find myself to be gregarious and freely meandering and laughing through waves of people. Genuinely happy to see and meet, while staying out of the fray.

Is it possible that my socially awkward phase is finally abating? Is it that I’ve slowly grown into feelings of comfort and affability when with this particular group? That all remains to be seen. But I can say with complete certainty that there is no such thing as too much drinking at HH. In fact we embrace the drinking whole-heartedly and as the reigning Biggest Lush, that first drink, is on me.

Slippery slope

2007-03-28T16:57:00.000-05:00

"The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting." ~Dave Barry

Tuesday morning I prepared for work as I would any other day. Including getting up and out by 6 AM so that Fergie could spell ‘delicious’ and ‘glamorous’ out loud for me while I trudged along on the elliptical, a shower and then off to work. The only difference being that I left my keys on the dining room table for my guest: Schnozz.

Growing up during the AOL chatroom era wherein we kept the IBM laptop weighing in at a hefty 27.8 lbs in the middle of the kitchen so that El Madre could peak over pre-teen shoulders to make sure there was no A/S/L going on with some 38 year old posing as a 16 year old. For the internet was a scary, scary place full of pedophiles and stalkers, thusly I was raised to believe that the only people using the internet were balding white men between the ages of 45 and 65 and teenagers using fuchsia for inside jokes on their AOL profiles. I did at one point learn the hard way that the internet was and could be a terrifying place, complete with raging lunatics, but for awhile there it was ‘la dee daa’ and the whirring sounds of dial up.

Some 11 years later, I get an email from Schnozz - someone whose existence I’ve been aware of since November - that she will be flying through Dulles and my only trepidation is that my bedroom looks like the Titanic dining room but without the water and Leo’s baby blue eyes to stare at over the immense piles of debris. Other than that I told her to come on down without a single thought of fear or worry save for the fact that she might tell the internet that I snore loudly and shed enough hair to cause the average shower drain to clog on a regular basis. This is probably a bit of an improvement from most bloggers I meet, for I always fear greatly that I will either pass out or vomit or a lovely combination of both.

A sordid experience ages ago left me somewhat terrified of the internet and yet now I find myself blogging endlessly while willingly befriending and vodka tonic-ing with people whose last names I don’t even know and all without that gut feeling that someone is going to kidnap me and sell my internal organs and pearls to the highest bidder. For there is the 41 year old republican who said “I’ll be in DC for work, lets drink” and so we did and we have ever since, each time even more hilarious than the last. There’s my neighbor whose keys I have who has no problem with me running to her apartment for safety at the sight of a tiny mouse. Then there is the infamous one who leaves me with her child with nary a second thought. When I mention these occurrences to those who have made the very wise decision not to broadcast their every thought to the internet, they give these incredulous looks and find it all very abnormal. Which I’m sure it is on some level and of course I still am fairly wary, yet there is still this odd sense of comfort and lack of uncertainty; for am I the only person who finds most bloggers to be fairly normal so of course I'll hang? Is it OK to say to a virtual stranger Of course you may sleep on my couch and eat my food and drink my wine and prance around with my panties on your head! Why Not?!

Shock me, shock me, shock me

2007-03-26T18:24:00.000-05:00

For every surprise event I've attended, that is one more that I've wished for myself. Younger HB always felt that the lack of surprises meant that she wasn't cared about or for with the same force that others cared for their loved ones. Older HB gets queasy and jittery complete with butterflies flying in perfect formation in her belly at the thought of a remote surprise. I'm one of those people who flinches at sudden movements. I'm one of those people who apparently was beaten far too many times as a child thus, my startled state when someone moves their hands to emphasize a point in close range.

I do not do rapid, unanticipated things. They scare me.

But apparently I do, for in just a few moments, I'm getting a spontaneous visit. And now I'm going to shock the shit out of myself and both make my bed, vacuum and pick up my W-2 from off of the floor.

No Pasa Nada: we never cease to amaze you.

Par for the course

2007-03-25T08:55:00.000-05:00

“Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.” ~Mark Twain

To say that I’ve been in a bad, bad mood as of late would be like saying that today is March 25th, 2007 and it is quite sunny: Stating the fucking obvious. Though I feel I’m preternaturally laden with an awful attitude, I can usually just get over it, but I find that increasingly difficult to do while systematically having your soul sucked out of you for eight weeks straight. Hell, I’m surprised I still have the ability to FEEL without crumbling into a heap of ash and dust.

“But, Heather, why don’t you do anything to make yourself feel better and change the fact that you spent an inordinate amount of time wishing you could remove your eyeballs with a rusty, tetanus riddled spoon?”

Well, hell, why hadn’t I thought of that really easy and simple solution? Or perhaps, I have thought of that really easy and simple solution and yet the ease and simplicity are greatly lacking. Which leaves me to wonder if it’s just me and something I’m doing wrong or maybe I just don’t deserve it. I do not know.

What I do know is that going to bed two nights in a row at 7:30PM only to wake up at 8 AM and lay in bed because I am tired strikes me as somewhat of a problem and inhibiting on any life that involves walking out of my front door and maybe I should just stay in and watch more Borat. Though when I did walk out of my front door yesterday afternoon, with the clouds and the rain and the man who tried to run me over with his Hummer, I complained that it was too bright. Did I mention the clouds and the rain??

Like I said, I’ve been surly at best.

All of this suffering has led me to believe that a) Maybe it’s a sign that it’s high time that I do actually find out what real suffering is about, b) Maybe I should try harder but dude, the trying is getting a little frustrating and vexing C) that I deserve a little something – that isn’t fermented – to ease the pain.

What a good country song is made of

2007-03-22T21:26:00.000-05:00

"Every path hath a puddle. " ~George Herbert

Kimber invited me to partake in a few drinks in Chinatown and given my faulty relationships as of late, I decided to give up a night of misanthropy for a pitcher of sangria.

The sangria being mostly weak and Kimber being my esteemed counterpart when it comes to all things fermented, we decided on an Irish bar down the street for she wanted to partake in ‘real drinking’ and I am nothing if not a ‘real’ drinker.

Upon approach of the second establishment an ID was required and none was produced on my part. Though I shook it off and we decided on Clyde’s. Though annoying and with a royal stick up it’s ass because of it’s claims on popularity, it’s there and easy and there wasn’t a burly black man at the door with a blonde Mohawk. So off we went.

We sat at the bar. I batted my eyelashes and smiled to pilfer a bar stool from two gentlemen who then proceeded to check out my ass. The bartender took our drink requests, Pilsner, Bud light…and before getting to me, he requested an ID.

Never have those words yielded such a look of pure pain and sorrow and essentially heartbreak. I stammered and stumbled something about taking my license out of one bag before putting it in another as I had recently been flying.

He responded with the look of ice cold seriousness that he needed an ID.

I ordered a diet coke and proceeded to look away in order to fight back tears when he actually produced a diet coke that tasted like ass flavored water, while those around me enjoyed the fruits of Czech labor. I literally went from jovial to humming a little diddy about how my man done left me and my ID has gone astray. A very sad and lonesome tale of a poor girl trapped in a bar unable to enjoy her much needed ketel one and tonic because she didn’t have proof of age*.

But by the look on my face you would have thought that my dog just got run over by a hummer just minutes after finding out about an unplanned pregnancy and a tornado done blew my home away. What can I say? I take my drinking very seriously.

Investing in a car and driver

2007-03-20T21:42:00.000-05:00

“The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.” ~Dudley Moore

Only when it comes to the important things has my date of birth ever been a source of complaint and woe. Though now the next milestone to hit, in terms of legal activities, is the ability to walk up to the Avis counter and rent a car, just like all of the big other kids.

Getting my driver’s permit was a breeze. I was then relegated to the parking lot at Walmart to drive circles and eventually graduated to the SUNY Albany campus loop. Then came merging and driving on windy roads past the horse farms then rain, flurries and eventually the big test; snow. In fact a few weeks ago during a brief fluffy flake wintry mix, I drove LB in ye old sable to and from upper Northwest. As the heavy flakes came down, she who hails from Phoenix asked whether or not it snowed like this in upstate New York. I laughed and replied that in upstate New York, if it snows a couple of inches, you shovel and go on with your life. In upstate New York, we have these things called blizzards and speak of snow in measurements of feet. I’d trust an upstate New Yorker with a crap ass sable that shakes when you try to brake to drive me to and from AU Park in heavy snow, before I’d trust a Pasadena native with a fully equipped, four wheel drive hummer to drive me from one side of Capitol Hill to the other.

It took only two tries for my license. The first time the failure was due to sub par parallel parking skills, which I find most interesting given that I now live in metropolitan area that requires regular parallel parking between a Porsche and a BMW. Though now I can do it while eating sushi with a chai latte between my legs and walking it out to Unk.

Six days after I got my license, I drove to the Key Bank and attempted the very tricky maneuver of switching lanes. Though did you know that when trying to switch lanes, it helps if there is more than 5/8 of an inch between your bumper and the car in front of you? Well I was not aware of this and rammed my minivan into another minivan and subsequently pissed all over myself because my mother was going to beat the ever living shit out of me.

But she did not. Instead she saved that hostility for my coup de grace of one sunny day after school when tooling around in Walmart, I shoved my license plate under a parked car by running into it while I, myself, was parking. She beat the ever living shit out of me for not being able to discern between an empty space and a parking space with a Honda Accord. Tricky stuff there. Until today, I have denied doing that until I was blue in the face because somehow my plate had disappeared and miraculously ended shoved into someone else’s rear bumper. Then the Easter Bunny shot out of my ass and sprinkled fairy dust all over my little boo boo.

On Monday I was in a fit of excitement and kissing the US Air gods for placing me in their good graces long enough to get me home in time to run a few midday errands. There is nothing that gets me off the way that grocery shopping in the middle of the day does. I get chills just thinking about it, which is why I willingly sat in the center seat from Palm Beach to DC smiling giddily because I would have first dibs on all the frozen brown rice and vegetable flax seed tortilla chips, I could ever want.

In the thrill of the moment, that prospect of all of the bags of frozen organic peas I would acquire and so instead of slowing down two blocks from a yellow light, I decided to rev it up to 60 and whip a left hand turn out of fear that the peas would be all gone and then what? Of course to my right there sat a member of the metro police department. Who noticed my fast acting turn – for the peas! – and turned on his lights behind me. I silently prayed and flashed my cutest smile and apologized profusely. He let me off with a warning to slow down. I smiled and went on my merry way carefully stopping at each light and sign between my apartment and the next two blocks.

Literally 47 seconds later, I rear-ended a DC Central Kitchen van while getting onto 395. 20 minutes later, I almost rear-ended a parked Harley.

Tomorrow I’m going to try something basic, like walking and chewing gum at the same time and I will be sure to let you all know how that goes.

Feel for me

2007-03-17T21:19:00.000-05:00

“No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one.” ~Elbert Hubbard

As I recall, last year, Marci returned from Boca Raton exhausted. And I thought well, that’s a load of bullshit, boo fucking hoo. Go cry in a corner you tan whore.

Then I went back to my lame ass life to cry on my bed about how the world and Jesus are out to get me and if this isn’t Hell, then I don’t know what is.

While it seems highly incredulous and baffling, it is entirely possible for one to completely tire of South Florida. With the sun and perfect weather and pristine beaches and shit and the looking up in the sky and finding it mystifying that it could be snowing enough somewhere to cause flight cancellations because the Sun is fucking shining.

Marci’s ditched me in Florida, where I am ‘stuck’ until Monday to wallow in my sadness of being ‘trapped’ at a five star resort to tan.

But I swear on my life, if I see one more motherfucking Bentley (not mine) or Ketel One and tonic (most certainly mine) I’m going cry. I’m going to cry the real tears of horror and sadness that one cries upon realizing that she might have to go to the spa. Again.

Emboldened

2007-03-13T20:42:00.000-05:00

"Vacation used to be a luxury, but in today's world it has become a necessity." ~Author Unknown

Raise your hand if you need to be up in eight hours to finish packing in order to make your flight to Boca so that you can flaunt a really lovely citrus scrub in Marci's face while she works.

Raise your hand if you need to do the above and you're four martinis deep.

Also raise your hand if you've been an ornery, pissy, bitch as of late and you're pretty damn thankful that you're friends haven't thought of interesting and non-messy ways to off you.

Raise your hand if you're semi-cautiously optimistic but your pessmism sometimes trumps any remote optimism.

Finally, raise your hand if it took you 139 tries to spell optimism.

Pot o' gold

2007-03-11T18:19:00.000-05:00

"When after the Winter alarmin',
The Spring steps in so charmin',
So fresh and arch
In the middle of March,
Wid her hand St. Patrick's arm on..."
~Alfred Percival Graves

When I was little, my mother would take us to the Jazz Festival at SPAC. An all day affair that meant fried chicken wings and my mother’s onion dip. It meant sitting outside on the grass and eating by day and James Taylor by night indoors. On occasion we’d be walking around and see my father on the opposite side of the grounds where he’d have a tent and a grill set up. The difference between the two parents was that my mother would be filling up on coke while my father enjoyed an Amstel or three and cognac. It was during one year that I was given my first sip of Coor’s and promptly swallowed with a look of pure disgust. A look that conveyed my disappointment and bewilderment towards grown ups and their obsession with the fermented drink and why on earth would one enjoy drinking in the middle of the day.

I probably also believed that Santa Clause shoved his fat ass down the chimney and that an adult woman flew through my window to take my grimy baby teeth in exchange for a bright and shiny half dollar.

I’m practically a small child therefore I do not do well during an all day affair. I get tired and need a nap or a place to just put my head for a short while. I’m not really a marathon take it easy, yo, type person. Which is why my feelings towards an offer of VIP tickets to Shamrock fest* was met with trepidation, even though it meant free beer all day long (!!!) Which meant rejoicing for any day that begins with Bass and Heffevisen is a day to be extraordinarily grateful for.

I’ve been trying to piece the events of the day together, so as to come up with a comprehensive Pulitzer Prize winning recap. And yet the lasting effects of an innumerable amount of drinks, has left me mildly slack jawed that yes in fact I did say that. OUT LOUD. I only wish I had been a little more prepared and better with my copious note taking skills.

While I’m not completely sure how things are in other cities heavily populated by bloggers, I know that we DC bloggers are notorious for our coveted abilities to drink as much as possible without passing out or puking. Shockingly enough I am not an all day drink fest type girl. I’m more 5K than 26.2 miles if you catch my drift. Thus the reason for why I tend to stick to happy hour. ‘Hour’ being the operative hour. I almost vaguely remember DJ AM being there and that anytime someone said ‘falafel’ I had a pavlovian reaction and began drooling immensely. My eyes lit up because oh my hell, food. And this children, is why you should say no to the beer. Well that and because too much drinking often leads to fashion faux pas. It was almost like a throwback to the college days – for they were so long ago – when I mastered in keg stands and watching sorority girls show off their pink thongs. Those days were good.

Ahh memories.

And it seems that over the years I've gotten over my disdain for adults who drink in broad daylight. In fact, I now EMBRACE it. With two hands to boot.

*Many thanks to I-66, KassyK, Arjewtino, and Freckled K for putting up with my drunk ass all day long.

Reason #357 for self medication

2007-03-08T20:06:00.000-05:00

"Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them." ~Brendan Francis

I’m sure that when I announced that I was leaving on a jet plane yesterday, you all assumed that it was to somewhere fabulous. Alas it was only a night in Albany. During which I indulged in Fridays and Friendly’s, because that’s just how I roll.

Returning home just now, I decided to try on a brand new dress from Anthropologie. My rule when dealing with my body, is quite simple: If I can wear clothing from Anthropologie with ease, then it’s all good. The end.

I began glancing at myself in the mirror. Sticking my hands in the side pockets and twirling. When out of the corner of my eye….and I’m loathe to write this…I see a dark spot on a sticky mouse trap in the corner of my closet. I step closer, over the massive pile of clean clothing and there they are. THEY. THEY. THEY. TWO WHOLE MICE.

Just laying there. In the fetal position. One probably got caught and then the other probably came to save its best friend. Which makes me revisit that whole being there for my nearest and dearest thing. One could die in the process.

In lieu of actually picking up the trap with the advised three plastic bags and a broom theory (courtesy of my brother and my pal), I’m sitting here with a rum and coke. Two and half shots of rum to be exact. I’m partly sad for the little critters and partly disgusted beyond belief that they are laying in my closet just dead. And I’m in a fleece and my dress and some Uggs.

Suddenly I remember the quick effect that rum and coke has. It’s powers are magical and I almost don’t remember the reasons for why I stopped partaking in the rum. But I’m sure I will in the morning.

Speaking of drinking and uh randomness….Shamrock Fest this weekend! DJ AM, Carbon Leaf, Flogging Molly at RFK and me drunk and busting out the Irish in me while retelling this story! People, y’all don’t even know the debauchery and fun that is about to ensue.

I promise more fun and excitement than mice in a closet.

Up on high

2007-03-07T18:47:00.000-05:00

“...I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I'm just soul on a sunbeam.” ~Richard Bach

There is nothing better to me than flying. I love to fly in a way that is a complete antithesis to the average person who finds flying some horrifying experience akin to jumping across a volcano for fun. I find my window seat. Sit down and pass out for 50 minutes to 10 hours and I just chill the hell out.

What I dislike about flying is the airport. Actually I didn’t mind the airport that much until the woman next to me decided to call her friend and loudly and obnoxiously complain about how awful her watery queso was for her chips. “Literally, unbelievable” that’s what she keeps saying about her fucking queso dip. She’s going to write her friend who apparently has the stellar position of being high up in the California Tortilla hierarchy, to tell her about her displeasure with the fucking queso.

Flying should be calming. Flying shouldn’t lead to violence. Flying should make me want to toss my filet o fish at the woman with her fucking queso dip complaints. Not to mention the fact that she’s not only complaining about the damn dip, but also doing so with her mouth open. Damn BWI, once again not being up to par for the masses and their need for high quality queso dip.

I’m just going to sit here, relax, and think of flying.

*Penned today at 3:57 PM from the B terminal in Baltimore/Washington International airport.

The mouse will play

2007-03-06T20:43:00.000-05:00

"I like the word 'indolence.' It makes my laziness seem classy." ~Bern Williams

When Mel moved in, she promised furniture including a glorious wine rack and table combo. She delivered exceptionally as that was pretty much the selling point for her. It also helps that if I were to ever find myself stranded in Hawaii, I’d have a free place to stay.

As she mentioned the wine rack, my eyes lit up with anticipation, because she doesn’t drink. Not a sip. Something about enzymes or another. To which I replied, that I only drink occasionally. And only wine, as I’m sort of an oneophile. The first night she slept here, I drank an entire bottle of yellowtail while telling her about the price of shots in Salamanca. Poor girl didn’t realize that I have the capability to be completely full of shit, especially when I come in Wednesday through Saturday, having enjoyed my share of an open bar. My feelings on that are as follows: It’s free and someone has already paid for it. Why let all that delicious Ketel One go to waste?

The other day she said that she would be going to Texas for a few days. My heart skipped a beat though I doubt I let it show. I said “oh ok” while envisioning walking around the apartment in my Calvin Klein’s and eating everything and not putting the dishes in the dishwasher. I had to keep myself from clicking my heels and confessing my plans to party up and be irresponsible with housekeeping for four. whole. days. It’s like my mom was going away and I had free reign to turn the living room into a disaster area and not get the stink eye for being and indolent lush. It's like the woman of the house is away and I, the man, can, do as I please without the old woman being all up in my shit.

For the past three days I have consumed crustini and gouda for breakfast and as a quick hors d’ouevre. After that I went straight for the bottle of wine and the egg rolls. And tonight I’ve gone to a new low: Rum and diet coke and a bagel pizza with some peas on the side.

My laundry is strewn through out the apartment and I can watch House without her covering her eyes and saying ‘ewww’. My bras are hanging on the back of the front door, the bathroom door handle and the outside of my bedroom.

I feel like such a fucking rebel. Tomorrow I’m going to watch Sports Center all day and polish off my case of Yeungling. I’ll just be sure to hide the bottles so mom doesn’t find out.

Notes on a weekend

2007-03-04T21:17:00.000-05:00

“It doesn't hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later.” ~Lucimar Santos de Lima

Let me be brief in this startling look into my weekend. Despite the popular believe that I live lavishly and fantastically, thus the copious amounts of wine and overpriced apples. The sad truth is that I’m woefully boring and I spend a lot of time doing stupid shit. And though I’ve asked this once before, why would anyone care how I spent the last 48 hours? But then I could also question why anyone would care to read me on a daily basis, which then delves into why people blog etc, and my God, with the amount of Amstel consumed, now is not the time to get into deep psychological discussion of why others are attracted to a stranger’s trainwrecky life. Besides, it would involve a lot of words and as we all know, I do not do well with words.

There is nothing exciting or enthralling about dropping a bottle of rum on one’s foot. Really. Nothing. Save for the large bruise left on said foot and the accompanying awkward gait. Sadly, had I already consumed the alcohol I would not have felt it and yet at 4 PM, I was uncharacteristically sober and my I was most certain that my foot was broken because large bottles of alcohol can cause serious injury.

To say that I’m merely looking forward to the next two weekends would be an understatement. Let’s just say I’ve turned a new leaf from complete dire straits and wondering when exactly a lightening bolt would strike me down and (thankfully) kill me to cautiously optimistic. And that’s all that will be said on that.

The hits, they just keep on coming. Next up: I will discuss, in detail, my nail growth, because nothing can get as exciting as the state of one’s cuticles. Nothing.

Impromptu

2007-03-02T12:19:00.000-05:00

“A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of her self. And mothers are their daughters' role model, their biological and emotional road map, the arbiter of all their relationships.” ~Victoria Secunda

El Madre came down for meetings yesterday. Approximately two hours of meetings and one hour chasing me down Connecticut Avenue, in heels. While I stomped and swore and tried to keep my tights from falling completely below my ass. Which they did and I was wearing a wrap dress. And my does that early spring air feel good.

There was a miscommunication and she felt bad that she almost missed lunch but my anger was somewhat assuaged when she mentioned Raku and since I’ve had this insatiable craving for sushi as of late (Note to self: DO NOT get pregnant. Ever) I grumpily accepted her accord only to begin crying over salmon and avocado maki.

We’re talking deep tears here, people. The kind that have been waiting to make an appearance at some arbitrary time wholly unconducive to my life or schedule. She petted me and suddenly turned into full on ‘I’m going to kick those motherfucker’s respective asses’ mode. The woman who once shuddered at the thought of having her own children, felt protective and said she didn’t realize that I had been that upset. Not that I’ve been at all surreptitious about my misgivings on every facet of my sad and pathetic existence as of late. Clearly the phrase “I’m seriously going to lay in front of a bus on Pennsylvania Avenue and pray that it hits me” didn’t carry much weight for her.

But no matter. Tears were shed. Mothers show up at the perfect time and are equipped with rational behavior. They become understanding and equally as upset and frustrated. They can impart knowledge that despite the ‘take a number’ mentality, soon all will be right with the world.

And permission is granted and money shelled for random vacation sprees and a much needed sugar cane scrub*.

*that was for you, Marci.

Hot like me

2007-02-28T22:34:00.000-05:00

"Establishing goals is all right if you don't let them deprive you of interesting detours." ~Doug Larson

I had this rather garrulous literary masterpiece three quarters written about my propensity for being a lush, versus my roommate’s propensity for looking at me funny when I say “holy fucking hangover”. All of which went to the wayside when during the premiere of ANTM, there was a long preview for a new reality show in search of the next…great…PUSSYCAT DOLL. Almost like being the next…great…BEATLE, but with less clothing and more eyeliner and acrylic nails.

I watched in awe as girl after girl sat teary eyed and confessed that being a pussycat doll was what they wanted in life more than anything. How it would change their world forever and all carried signs that said “Live Pussycat or Die!”

I’ve had some crazy goals in life, ranging from neonatology to fictional novelist to Ballerina, which I know, right with the size of my ass. But never before nor will I ever, get on camera, in front of a million and ten people and announce that I, Heather B, have the aspirations to dance in my bra and boy shorts, with my ass cheeks hanging out, lip synching that I would love nothing more than for Snoop Dogg to push up on my buttons, baby.

Some people may remember this night

2007-02-26T22:12:00.000-05:00

This post brought to you by the letter 'H' for 'Hmmm...maybe she'll stop bitching and start drinking again and be funny, then maybe I won't want to poke my eyeballs out after every other paragraph'

“A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking.” ~Earl Wilson

Sunday evening I was directed toward a Facebook photo album courtesy of a friend from another life. ‘Another life’ that involved packing up my possessions and going to play with the monkeys in Gibraltar and wondering around in the dark night after picnics on the beach. The photos had been long forgotten. But as soon as I saw Clay making the word ‘poop’ out of his fingers like gang signs, I remembered the bottle of Bacardi that we hid in the tree and how much we drank in the hotel. And that Thekla covered herself in yogurt to help the sun burn and I too this day, do not recall how we got home that night.

What happened that night is unimportant and only the five of us would remember, but it was the deluge of memories that took over me. Like the nights of wandering around Madrid drunk at 3 AM or the Valentine’s Day spent in an Amsterdam coffee shop or the numerous bus trips through the Moroccan mountains without getting shot. All of which done without a care in the world and frivolous at best.

Things have been shitty. Not “I have cancer and my boyfriend died and my dog got shot by a cop and I have worms coming out of my eyeballs” shitty, but severely inconvenienced and stressed out shitty. It’s more like the type of shitty that you explain to others and they say ‘That’s nice, take a fucking number’*. I’d enjoy that life of frivolity again. The ability to say ‘fuck it’ and drink grey goose and tonic like water. I say these things like a 47 year old with kids and a mortgage trying to pay the Pepco bill, trapped in a 23 year olds body.

So I’m doing what any normal person my age who realizes their incessant bitching is really fucking annoying, would do; I bought a ticket to Boca: Because nothing screams, “I’m embracing my responsibility and saving my money by investing in my 401K” like spending your last $14 on a vacation.

*as said by Schnozz** and her infinite wisdom.

**leave it to her and her crazy editor skills to notice that there was even an asterisk there in the first place.

Always on a Sunday

2007-02-25T15:16:00.000-05:00

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show." ~Andrew Wyeth

Why never on a Monday? Wednesday, even. I'm not that picky.

*these are over at flickr as well, but since I'm an idiot who can't figure out how to upload them from flickr to here, this will have to do.

Interruptions and complications

2007-02-22T14:21:00.000-05:00

“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.” ~Robert Fulghum

I began saying things with extra emphasis and added dramatic flair: “Can you believe that the bar ran out of all hard liquor and then my car blew up and HE is the father of HER child?” Just like that, with much purpose and expression and a little hyperbole. Because if there is anything I know, it is how to be as hyperbolic and exasperated as possible without any really imminent disaster looming.

But that’s how it feels at time: one thing inevitably will need to lead to another equally disastrous circumstance and my death is threatening because of the lack of Pinot Noir at Trader Joe’s and so help me God, if I have to deal with another inept leasing office I’m going to climb through the phone and choke a motherfucker.

Breathing though mandatory seems like something not being done ever. I had the gall to say that I hadn’t been drinking. This said smugly with a pat on the back for being so responsible and not drowning my sorrows in pear flavored vodka. The response was less than optimal, a head shake and an ‘oh honey, now is the time to start drinking. Now run for the hills with that bottle of Tempranillo under your arm.’ Sage advice that landed me in bed until 5:45 PM the next day with a headache much like the one I had been experiencing for days on end prior.

I relayed this all to Kris, with a heavy sigh and to Peg with a few choice words and to the women at my leasing office with a few more choice words. All of these incessant things are annoyances, I know this. But the build up of annoyance leaves me thinking that Albany is a fine place to spend the rest of one’s natural life. In the comfort of one’s true home. Or perhaps curled up in the fetal position with the aforementioned bottle of wine.

I said that life is one big shit sandwich. She says that she wants her youth back. I’m left wondering when exactly I lost mine and how I get it back.

Last but not least: Citizen of the Month

2007-02-21T07:33:00.000-05:00

-My final guest post, because really now, is by Neil of Citizen of the Month.

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."~Bertrand Russell

I moved to Los Angeles to go to film school and become a screenwriter. I was surprised by how quickly I got a job involving screenwriting at a major Hollywood studio. Unfortunately, it was not a job writing scripts. It was a job READING scripts.

Yes, I was a low-paid, low-on-the-totem-pole script reader (or script "analyst" as we liked to call ourselves). It was the worst job I ever had.

"What's so bad about getting paid to read?" you might ask. It sounds like the ideal job for an English major and someone who loves to read. First of all, a true "reader" reads for enjoyment or enlightenment. A Hollywood script reader reads and reads and reads and reads endless piles of CRAP. Serial killer movies. Vampire movies. Retreads of whatever comedy was successful the year before. If a dumb movie like "A Night in the Museum" is successful, be assured that within three months, there will be a hundred similar scripts about "A Night at the Zoo" or "A Night in the Art Gallery."

Step one of being a reader is reading the material. Step two is doing the "coverage." Coverage is the equivalent of writing a little book report for each script or book submitted to the company. It is never-ending homework. You summarize the written material. You write a one sentence "log line." You give your opinion of the story, the characters, and the writing. You decide whether the material deserves a "pass," "consider," or "approve."

Within the first week, I was called into the producer's office and told that I was being TOO honest in reviewing the terrible scripts. As a newbie, I didn't realize that Hollywood is mostly based on relationships. My job was not so much to review the script, like a critic might review a book in the New York Times. My main goal was to read the script so the producer didn't have to, but still enable him to LOOK like he read it. Part of my job description was to help the producer be like Paula Abdul on "American Idol" -- finding something positive to say while still rejecting the person. Since you never know who a script may come from, it is always important for the producer to be able to say SOMETHING positive. For instance, if Tom Cruise's aunt wrote a really bad screenplay about a League of Superheroes, the producer should be able to say "the script had some fine moments of dramatic action, but we aren't going in that direction right now." This way, the producer can look like a cool guy -- and blame someone else for the script's rejection.

During the second week, I was called into the producer's office again because I "approved" a script about women's wrestling during the Depression. I thought it was a moving story with great characters, exactly the type of oddball movie I would want to see. No one else agreed with me. Even worse, by "approving" a script as noteworthy, the producer actually READ the script, and HE doesn't like to have his time wasted. That's why he is paying YOU. So, out of fear of losing their jobs, most script readers rarely approve a script unless box-office gold is dripping off the pages (which is rare). In four years of reading scripts, I think I "approved" four projects, all of them vehicles for popular actors.

During the first month, I was called into the producer's office a third time -- this time to learn about a new wrinkle to my job. The producer had taken on a partner and they disagreed over some projects. "My" producer said he would appreciate it if I "liked" certain materials more than I did, in order to convince his partner that a script was not as bad as it seemed. For example, he handed me a script that "he knew had major rewrite problems" but wanted his partner's approval because he thought he could get Eddie Murphy to be involved. So, surprise, surprise -- my coverage of the material contained only mild criticism, with expressions like "flawed, but with a little work, this can be a rollicking comedy, maybe for someone like Eddie Murphy."

For four years, I never read a book for pleasure. Writing became a chore for me. I saw how difficult for any screenplay to get past a reader. There was always going to be a jerk like ME, some frustrated writer, dismissing my script after reading it in a coffee shop at three o'clock in the morning. I lost my ability to distinguish between good and bad. When everyone said a movie sucked, I would just be impressed that the project actually got made!

Eventually, I quit this job and my mind got a needed rest.

In the scheme of things, being a Hollywood script reader isn't the worst job in the world. You can do a good portion of your job sitting in Starbucks. You don't have to shovel horse manure. You don't have to wear a suit.

But for me, it was the worst job I ever had, because it was soul-destroying.

Guest Post: Pink Lemonade Diva

2007-02-20T11:43:00.000-05:00

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. ~Bertrand Russell

-Oh yes, this is a series. To be concluded on Wednesday or when every other sentence isn't 'holy motherfucker'. Today's guest post is brought to you by the lovely Pink Lemonade Diva.

My milkshakes bring no one anywhere

Not a long time ago, I went into a McDonald’s to order a McFlurry and the cashier looked me in the eye and told me the machine was broken.

Karma, it seemed, was having the last laugh.

I have a confession to those in the Annapolis, Maryland, area who wanted frozen yogurt milkshakes in the mid-to-late 90’s: the milkshake machine wasn’t always broken.

But when you’re 16 and working at a national chain yogurt franchise, you’re not interested in giving the customer what they want, rather what’s easiest for you to make.

And that was – always – a small (cup) single flavor with no topping.

And even though the pre-made ice cream sandwiches in the freezer would seem like a preferable option, we made them by hand every time the supply got low, so please not those either.

Yes, I was not the Super Scooper I purported to be and now, as a mature and responsible adult, I’d like nothing more than to find that franchise owner and apologize for being such a sludge. I would also like to apologize for not locking the door at 8 pm exactly even though those people walking through the parking lot were clearly heading into your store to spend money, and, not least, for being caught by the mystery shopper for wearing sweatpants instead of a uniform pant, although I’d like to know how the hell that person caught that detail. I’d apologize for making up our own names for flavors and for the time my friends came into help clean up and sampled the flavors without using new sample spoons. We should also probably apologize for the trivia contests we’d hold offering winners a free topping, but that was just to make the shift a little more interesting – no one buys ice cream or frozen yogurt in winters, as the franchise owner later found out.

I probably should apologize for that Styrofoam tip cup that we put out to earn a few extra dollars each shift, but the one thing I will never apologize for, however, was for letting the customers in the back to customize their own Happy Birthday cakes. Calligraphy with icing is a bitch, and at least when it looked crappy, the customer had no one to blame but themselves.

So just a warning: if you’re ever given the special opportunity to write the custom happy birthday message on the sheet cake you’ve just purchased, know that A) the person behind the counter has shitty handwriting, and B) it’s amazing what those icing roses and balloons can cover.

And to all those kids with tip cups for college funds on the counter of their ice cream shop – I promise to never order a peanut butter shake, and I’ll always give you the spare change.

Guest post: Chirky

2007-02-18T14:00:00.000-05:00

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." ~Bertrand Russell

-From Jes of Chirky.com

Considering Heather B.’s recent misery with [redacted] life, and Isabel’s guest entry about her worst job EVAH, I thought it only fitting for me to write a similar entry.

And so I sat at work all day yesterday thinking about all my past jobs.

I thought about my first job: I worked as an assistant to an elderly man two days a week. My job was to (a) iron his shirts and pants, (b) cook him dinner and (c) vacuum his house. For this he paid me $15 per day. He loved me, naturally, because I’m a good ironer. I love starch. And so did he. It was a match made in heaven, except he was a good 60 years older than me. That didn’t stop Anna Nicole Smith, but I have to draw the line somewhere. Also: gross.

I’ve contemplated other jobs I’ve held – jobs during college and jobs post-graduation. I’ve thought about my current position and I’ve considered my last position.

The problem is that I have a terrible, terrible memory. I watch a movie and ten minutes later don’t even recall its name. A friend tells me what she did last weekend and I call her the next night to ask how her weekend went.

I think this is because my tendency to forget pain that I’ve endured has spread to other areas of my life. Now I just forget. Period.

Sometimes I walk around in a fog, flouting the negative. Often it just doesn’t occur to me. On the other hand, when it does occur to me I am fully aware of how much I dislike my job, I have no problem complaining. But once I’m out of that situation I have almost immediately forgotten it again.

And y’all? I have something to admit to you. And you may hate me a little. But I really can’t remember a job that I’ve hated with such a passion that I’d rather lick the bottom of my purse after setting it on the concrete floor of a public restroom at the State Fair of Texas. That would be misery.

So while I’ve been intimidated and been inundated and been irritated with work, I’ve also had very cushy jobs. I’ve held positions that pay me well to do relatively little work. I’ve held positions that pay me little to do relatively a lot work.

But mostly I’ve loved the jobs I’ve had because of the friendships I’ve made. Is that a little corny? Maybe. But the good thing is that tomorrow I won’t remember what I just wrote.

An ode to my sanity

2007-02-16T08:24:00.000-05:00

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." ~Bertrand Russell

So the other night I had a bit of a crying/screaming* fit and it was a lovely throwback to the tender age of four. There might have even been some laying on the floor and kicking of my arms and legs and flailing. Then I had some thin mints and did some yoga and suddenly I was rational again. Amazing how that happens.

* crying/ screaming = saying fuck, a lot and hanging up on el Madre.

The truth is that I was and am suffering from a severe case of ‘oh my holy fucking shit’ syndrome. Symptoms include severe swings between ennui and eating macaroni and cheese in while watch Oprah and sitting on my ass furiously typing and hoping and then typing some more. Then my eyes started to burn and I thought they would fall out of my head if I kept scrolling up and down on my little Bordeaux and/or I’d go blind. So! In lieu of me going blind and/or postal I did the most rational thing I could think of: ignore everything else except for my blog. Duh.

Did y’all know that if you ask the internet for help, they will help??? Especially if you write that you are about three seconds away from a straight jacket embroidered with your initials. Oh they will. Ergo, a few of them, whom I now would like to make out with decided to lend a helping hand at guest posting, while I try to just be…

And so I present to you an entry by the lovely Isabel, of Hola, Isabel

Look at me; first time guest blogger, long time fan. Heather, thanks for giving me the chance to guest blog at your shiny site. I never thought I’d see my words posted next to pictures of the glorious Miss Foxy Brown. I like it.

So let’s get right to it.

Let me tell you about the time I stayed at a job about 2 years longer than I should have.

My family moved the summer before I graduated from college. By the time I graduated and moved back home they were settled into their new town. My younger brother and sister were enrolled at the local high school and doing just fine. They didn’t move far away. Really only about a 20 minute drive from the town I had grown up in. The town where all my high school friends still lived (you know, except for the ones that moved away to college to). So while I wasn’t really that far away, I still was far enough away that life wasn’t going to be the same for me.

I decided that I needed to make the best of the situation. I needed to make some new local friends. I figured the best way to do this was to get a job which would force me to meet new people. A job where people my age worked. A job where I could be surrounded by people my age. Preferably hot guys who were my age.

I kept my eyes open for a job like this every weekend when I came home to wash my laundry and eat my parents food. (Dude, I was a poor starving college student. Of course I came home on the weekends to do my laundry. Plus, my Dad would always fill my car up with gas. Thanks Dad.) I finally found what I thought was the perfect job at the local convenient store. I had been in there a ton of times and realized that all the girls that worked there were super cute. And super chipper. They wore cute little uniforms with the store’s log on it and had cute hair. Plus, all the hot guys from town were always in there getting sodas, chewing tobacco and filling up their trucks. And there was a drive-thru window. How cool is that?

I had a few more months before I graduated, so I kept scouting out the joint. By the time I moved home, I was sure this was where I wanted to work. Lucky for me they had a “Help Wanted” sign in their window. I promptly applied and got called in for an interview. I was pretty confident that I could get this gig. Being fresh out of college, I knew I needed to wear a skirt and look all professional. (For a job at a convenient store? What in the hell was I thinking?) Anyway, I showed up for my interview in a nice skirt. There were about 8 other girls there for interviews. I got a little nervous until I looked around the room and realized I was the only girl there not wearing cut-off shorts and a tank top. I wanted to scream; Hello, have any of you ever heard of job interview etiquette? I guess not.

I had noticed that this convenient store only hired girls, and cute girls for that matter. I felt pretty confident about how I did in the interview, but what if I wasn’t cute enough to actually get the job? What if they had interviewed some other girls that I hadn’t seen? Girls that were cuter then the ones I had interviewed with? And what if they actually liked girls who wore cut-offs? I started to psych myself out.

Whatever. I got the job. I started the following week. They gave me my uniforms, spent a few days training me on the proper way to fill a refill mug with Pepsi, and I was good to go.

Good to go!

The girls I worked with were all awesome. (Okay, the older ladies that also worked there weren’t as awesome. That’s because, I’m convinced, they were jealous of my youth.) We all bonded instantly. They were really good gals who were funny and made the new job even better. And then there were the hot guys who came to the drive-up window all day. Glorious, glorious hot guys with their youthful bodies and their yummy, kissable lips (and which I didn’t fully appreciate at the time). You would be surprised at how much Pepsi a 19 year old can throw back in a day. And since I was new to town, it was even better. Have you ever been asked out on a date through a drive-thru? It’s exhilarating. Really.

(Okay, not really. Are guys so lazy that they can’t walk inside to ask you out on a date? Yes, they are that lazy.)

I had a lot of dates. I met a lot of the customers. I met my (first) husband through the drive-thru window at the convenient store (I can’t remember, but let’s pretend that he actually walked inside to ask me out). I met some of my best friends working there. Heck, I even got my life in order through the example of the other awesome gals I worked with. So what’s the problem?

The problem is that after I married the hot younger guy, I stayed on at the convenience store for a few more years. I was a married, college graduate who worked for peanuts at a small town convenient store. I filled refill mugs all day for people who were too lazy to get out of their car and come in to get their own damn Pepsi. I cleaned the public restroom after high school students shit all over the walls because they were too drunk to poop in the toilet. I swept the parking lot twice a day because people are slobs and can’t seem to throw their cigarette butts into the garbage cans. I put up with being sexually harassed by the owner of the store (and select customers) on a daily basis. I worked the opposite shift from my husband. I worked every weekend and Holiday. I was forced to wear a “uniform” with a picture of a scantly clad pin-up girl riding a bull. A bull that glowed in the dark.

I shudder just thinking about this. I’m mad at my younger self for putting up with this for so long. I’m mad at my former husband for not encouraging me to quit. I’m mad at my parents for not advising me to get a real job. I’m mad at my friends for not taking me with them when they quit and went on to get better jobs.

I can usually look back on past experiences and see though all the rubbish and be able to appreciate the good that came from the experience. To know that I’m a better person because of it. But I can’t with this. All it does is make me feel ashamed. And while I did gain some new friends, which was really all I set out to do, I also lost a lot. I missed out on chances to spend Holidays with my husband and family because I was working. I missed out on actually working towards a career. I missed out on life because I didn’t make enough money to do anything fun. I even think me working opposite shifts as my husband lead to the demise of our marriage.

What’s the moral of this story? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m giddy I don’t have to wipe shit off the bathroom walls anymore.

That's just the way it is

2007-02-13T19:48:00.000-05:00

“If you're going through hell, keep going.” ~Winston Churchill

If I could find the proper analogy for this, I would use it. I don’t think that there are words from the English language that I could put into almost paragraph form that would adequately describe this.

I’m standing on a street and everything is moving past me. Everything is normal. Postal trucks go by, a woman walks her terrier, a man is gently stroking the top of his child’s head as she is nestled into a bjorn. Meanwhile, I’m just standing and staring and everything keeps moving – just like normal – everything except for me.

I want to write fuck a million times and tell the truth, but I cannot. I just suffer and tell Kris and pray that my head doesn’t explode from the ridiculousness of it all. And of course a little self medication.

Thin mints, Amy’s Kitchen mac & cheese and Augusten Burroughs. Shockingly enough, NO WINE. So not only am I miserable but hell has apparently frozen over.

Write the rage

2007-02-11T22:06:00.000-05:00

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

As children, we’re taught to ‘use our words’. That screaming and throwing ourselves on the floor in a fit of rage, isn’t the answer to our problems. It will not get us what we need and want, but instead we should express ourselves eloquently and be articulate, using the words of the English language.

I’m guessing that the above doesn’t cover the homicidal rage and general pissed off –ness that I’m feeling right now. And all I want to do is scream “FUCKITY FUCK FUCK FUCK” while standing at the top of the Washington Monument. Speaking of the phallus, perhaps tell those who have offended me that they can sit on the top of it and rotate.

Livid cannot even describe how things are right now. That tomorrow might very well be one of the worst days ever and I actually might rather be crushed by a large truck and then well, kicked in the mouth. Given that I’ve used the phrase “kicked in the mouth” about seven times in the past three weeks, then you will realize that I obviously have a hard time with using the English language, for that is the only thing I can think of to describe severe pain.

Usually I go off the deep end, flip my shit and am full of causticity and vitriol. This time? Though I am 79% sure that Jesus Christ hates me and finds me to be a complete waste of His time and talent, I have some sort of semblance of hope. Hope. Oh things suck and I should probably seriously contemplate fleeing the country, I still have hope and will get through this and oh my, look at me being all optimistic even in times of severe, white hot HATE.

In other news, I went out Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. Not just ‘out and kinda tipsy’ but seriously out what with the open bars and the shots of cognac and grand marnier and the awesome flip cup playing and have woken up with a hangover everyday for the past three days. Dizzy hangovers that can only be cured by a giant sized beer at 12:45 on. a. Sunday. The Lord’s Day. And then I went to Hooters and Hooters has curly fries and curly fries makes most everything momentarily better.

Taste test

2007-02-10T17:02:00.000-05:00

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.” ~Luciano Pavarotti

This morning during breakfast at Town Hall:

“You know what I had yesterday for the first time ever?”

::blank stare::

“Oatmeal. It was really good. It’s opened up a whole new world for me. You should try it”

::dies::

*****
I always want to know the little things about people. First and last names especially, since I’m prone to calling you such. Also how those names came about, favorite things, passions, and taste in music. So now I through out there food preferences. I’m often asked why I am a vegetarian; given that the odds of a black female raised by very southern parents who think that ribs should be eaten by the slab and bacon should have it’s own food group, are about 1,700,987 to 1. It has nothing to do with animal cruelty given that I am fond of sticking my nose inside of a Coach bag because leather smells delicious. It’s because I was never a big meat eater in the first place, so I figured why not. Or maybe it had something to do with the number of Big Macs consumed as a child and now I am averse to a quarter pound of meat. In fact my stomach is churning with the thought.

But yes, food. I feel passion for chevre, Trader Joe’s mac and cheese and the avacado.

Almost like 40

2007-02-05T20:35:00.000-05:00

"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.” ~Henry David Thoreau

How it occurred, I am not acutely aware but at some point my nearest and dearest went from being solely in my age bracket to upwards of 30. Of course all of the former are people that I love and admire. I’m not kissing any ass when I say that their wisdom and reliability as good friends have made me a better person. One who tests the boundaries of trust a little more and knows that drinking eight glasses of water a day will lead to eternal hotness; or at least the ability to look 19 when about to hit 33. No matter, they’re lovely people.

My age has never been a point of discussion unless an intense discourse on Silver Spoons or Jake Ryan comes up and even then I just smile and nod and remark how hot Rick (sorry, Ricky) Shroeder was in NYPD Blue. Which leads to Mark Paul Gosseler discussion and well I’ve seen every episode of Saved by the Bell and we carry on. It’s something that one rarely notices, especially I that is until recently when the subject of birthdays came up. Specifically how excitement dwindles after a certain age.

A good friend happens to have a birthday well into his fourth decade next week. Kid looks about 24 and acts about 13 on a good day (I say that with love) so I tend to forget that he will be over a decade older than I. In fact he’s probably reading this now and contemplating ways in which to kick me in the head from afar. Ad nauseum requests of his excitement and birthday plans are all for naught because apparently the clichés are true: as one gets older birthdays tend to just become another day. Or so he said when I counted down to the minute how long until his birthday and he depressed the hell out of my by pointing out that after 25 birthdays are no longer exciting or something to look forward to. So remind me to toss myself in front of a bus somewhere around October 26, 2009, because life goes downhill from there.

Of course I beg to differ solely based on what I’ve heard from others in the over 25 set, but I thought that this would be something to throw out to the internet. Especially since right now I am this close to writing a long bitter diatribe of a novel because there’s so little time until I begin to give up on life and the date of my birth. And lord knows that y’all don’t want me writing novels. Unless novels can have the word fuck thrown in every other word and then I suppose it’s all good.

Enlightenment

2007-02-04T12:46:00.005-05:00

“Just remember, if you hang in there long enough, good things can happen in this world. I mean, look at me.” – Tom Smykowski, Office Space

I feel like I’ve just returned from an extended absence or a vacation that was supposed to be fun and full of sun filled days but instead I got kicked in the mouth by my horse while riding along the coast. It’s been a week with mayhem, torture and murder. Ok no murder but full of torture and drama and ask me just how many times I cried. Not just cried. No, no. But sobbing shoulder shaking tears of dismay and that’s where being kicked in the mouth comes in.

And am I going to let on as to where I’ve been? Nope. Because even better, I CAN’T. In fact I’m just writing this as a ‘teaser’ and to say woe is me and so that you all feel bad for me and so that I can remember this weekend as the weekend that I contemplated hurling myself off of the Washington Monument or moving to Albany; more than once.

I promise that tomorrow I’ll be my former prolific self and that I will be in a wonderful mood because my southern gentleman is the victor.

I suppose I should ask: How was your weekend?

Carnival of the Mundane: Part the XXIX

2007-02-02T00:48:00.000-05:00

The following is my first time hosting of the Carnival of the Mundane and it might be my last. Be gentle.

 "There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes." ~William Makepeace Thackeray 

After being named the Academy Award Winner for best original screenplay for the blockbuster movie “This Isn't Education"

Well…wow…::laughs:: I have no idea where to begin. This is beyond surprising and I didn’t even have a speech prepared. They tell you to think about it but I never really believed that I could actually win and so now I’m at a loss.

::laughs::

Lord, I don’t even know if we can swear during these things? Is it ok to say oh my holy fuck? That probably got bleeped out by the censors.

And speaking of um…holy, everyone seems to start out by thanking God, something about without Him all things would not be possible. And in that same vein, I should thank Jesus for turning water into wine without which I would not be able to imbibe on all the sweet, sweet syrah that I drank while producing this work. And without which I would not have the brilliance of my good friend Mad Kane to decipher those tricky wine labels for me.

You know, this screenplay was a labor of love that required hardwork and dedication, that I wouldn’t have been able to give without ample help. Like from my house keeper – the Saint that he is – for purchasing a new vacuum cleaner after mine spontaneously combusted all over my brand new carpet job. I’m also thankful that he didn’t have to go through nearly a sucky - HA! Sucky - of an experience as Postmodern Sass.

I wrote much of this screenplay – the best original screenplay – while overseas. Where I could be alone and as misanthropic as possible. I’d awake every morning on the same side of my giant bed – much like the dear Blundering American who taught me to enjoy my time alone as much as possible before I had to head back to the states and deal with others possibly wanting to share my space. But I got to write everyday with the wonderful Batya sitting next to me soaking up the beautiful view and the experience. And I’d call Abigail. But sadly Abigail would spend most of our conversation cursing Verizon and it’s lackadaisical customer service. But that would be OK because I’d spend most of our conversation by telling her of the view and the new kick ass – wait, are we allowed to say ‘ass’ – and witty t-shirts that Sara None provided. Because we all know that brilliance comes from being able to rock a shirt with a tiara and an emphatic “go die”, proudly.

::Orchestra strums::

::Actually Orchestra has been strumming for the past 27 seconds::

Gosh, I have to wrap up, I think that the constant plucking of the harpsicord means something. I just want to say that I never could have imagined all of my success in writing novels and screenplays. Who knew that all of my dreams would come true after a few lame ass blog posts – ahh remember blogging?? – about making my own granola. I’d just like to say one last thank you to my manager Karl, who always made me believe in the tallest of tales and that if I continued to contort my face into that of loathing, that it would stay that way. And finally to the production team, headed by Marisa, who knows the power of the written word and is probably spent a lot of time hoping that one day my crap ass novels would be able to be sold to the highest bidder.

Well Marisa, I hope that an Oscar is good enough for you. Goodnight.

And so ends my contribution to the Carnival of the Mundane. I think I shall drink now or at least take a very long nap.

Epic pimpage

2007-01-30T19:24:00.000-05:00

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” ~Thomas Jefferson

One of my New Year's resolutions was to stop writing just for the sake of doing so; which has manifested into epic posts that probably require chapters and sections and an intermission. For my next post I strongly suggest having a beverage and a snack nearby because hoo boy, it's poised to be a long one. In fact may I suggest a Patron Margarita, chips and guacamole? Hearty and guaranteed to fuck you up enough to ignore my 179th post about Trader Joe's. Let's just say that I don't think I could ever write a novel because it's too many words and pages and thoughts but I'm one prolific motherfucker and my fingers hurt. The end.

Other things that can easily keep me from writing in the paragraph form – though hot damn I'm doing a lot of that right now – is the constant feeling of knowing that I'm about to fail at something miserably. It's like falling and falling and falling into a deep abyss and I knew this would happen and I could have stopped it sooner, but I am brilliant and stubborn. "Keep on keeping on" is a phrase now permanently removed from my repertoire of clichés.

So two things:

1) On Friday, yours truly will be playing carnival master to the Carnival of the Mundane. Which you can read about at the previous link. I hope for more contributions between now and tomorrow and welcome anyone who can write something more mundane than my startling expose on making your own granola. Because if you can do that, my hat goes off to you. Email all contributions to: nopasanadablog@gmail.com

2) IndieBloggers, Indie Bloggers, Indie Bloggers. I feel like I need to speak about the idea behind this site very, very slowly. One need not write something new to submit to IB, in fact I’ve submitted approximately one recent post to the site. And then realized that the posts I adored and wanted to share with the internetwebosphere the most were posts of yore. Like remember that time I jumped out of the window while babysitting? Or that time I suffered the ennuiparapsychosis? If you’re wondering why I’d ever think to share my absolute lameness with more people than I already do? Because I can. And you should too. It requires the simple act of signing up and then you can post to your heart’s content and everybody’s a winner.

Now go forth and write, I say! Write!

Getting real

2007-01-29T21:19:00.000-05:00

“Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home.” ~David Frost

The time that I got a tattoo was because I couldn’t get my tongue pierced. I wanted my tongue pierced because someone on the Real World had their tongue pierced and since the Real World was the epitome of cool, then I had to have my tongue pierced as well. It all makes perfect sense and so why I receive looks of absolute bewilderment when retelling this story is beyond me. The same goes for the looks of absurdity and questions of how hard I far I fell when I was a mere babe, when I mention that I’ve been watching the same show for 15 years. For I am 23 so I have been watching seven people get real for almost my entire life. Which is really, really sad if you think about it and no, I do not have parents, the television and my booze drinking nannies did all the hard work.

(Hi Madre! Thanks for paying for those piano lessons!)

It was more that I snuck in my Bunim-Murray fix on random afternoons while hiding in the den. I still get my Bunim-Murray fix that way because seeing two drunken girls kiss in a hot tub causes my mother to break out in nasty open sores and convulse. Sometimes I make her watch on purpose because it’s some sort of medical mystery and when the doctors ask me about the rash that developed on her arms and the current catatonic state, I can say “It’s because Brooke and Jen were nude and kissing in front of Tyrie.” Most people just embrace the trainwrecky goodness dipped in ranch dressing, but my mother goes into a coma.

She hates MTV. She hates it with the white hot fire of a thousand suns on a July afternoon in Barstow. She also has taste and intelligence. Her daughter has intelligence but also enjoys watching people behave like imbeciles in public. Because then she can relish in the fact that for once it’s not her becoming so inebriated that she falls out of a shower. It’s someone else’s child. This addiction to MTV has outlasted years and years of schooling and I’ve been known to enjoy countless hours of Laguna Beach when down the street from the Atlantic because looking away would mean missing LC’s slippery slope to missing out on Paris. There may or may not be shouts of “you stupid whore” at the television.

I received an email the other day from Isabel who knows of my well documented dependency of MTV reality television and asked my thoughts on the new show “Engaged and Underage.” Though I’d heard of it, I had no intention of watching it because for now I’m busy worrying about Marcel vs. Ilan: Battle of Foam and Flambé to think about such drivel. Though I can be judgmental if there is one thing that I can see past and defer to someone else on how they truly feel is when it comes to their relationships. The show follows around couples 21 and under as they enter into marriage. Of course it seems crazy to me and of course I am incredulous to it all because I am not in such a relationship that marriage is in the foreseeable future. Nor do I plan on entering into such a relationship anytime soon. And my maturity level is very, very low and I refuse to share my bed with anyone and I’m 23. I am a 23 year old who only says ‘Til death do us part’ to her macbook.

Poor choices are made everyday at every age. So yes these are 21 year olds who are getting married and yes they might be making a huge mistake and their parents find them in dire need of a lobotomy for entering into the sanctity of marriage at such a young age because they could get a divorce. But then again 30 year olds make mistakes in their choosing of a partner as well as 40, 50 and 60 year olds. No one is immune to such a thing. And people of all ages are allowed to divorce. But for some reason watching 21 year olds enter into marriage and possibly fail, makes for some excellent entertainment. Do I agree with broadcasting it on television? Not necessarily. Do I watch eagerly awaiting for the first fight over dishtowels? Hell yeah. I’m human. I also am intelligent enough and have learned enough from those Reunion specials that sometimes things are skewed during production to make a perfectly lovely woman look like a raging hormonal bitch who gets her period 365 days a year. What might be perfectly innocuous argument looks like the beginnings of World War III over the difference between 'eggshell' and 'beige' for the living room wall. And damn it’s hard to look away.

*Quick example: My parents were 28 and 38 when they were married and got divorced when they were 32 and 42. The people I babysit for got married at like 12 and 14 and are still happily married seven or eight years later. See my point?

Shifting ways

2007-01-28T18:57:00.000-05:00

“Probably no man ever had a friend that he did not dislike a little.” ~E.W. Howe

I used to be friends with a girl named Megan and with her and two others, we became as cliquey as possible and given that we all lived within .03 miles of each other, it was a certain that we would spend hours and hours together. We were practically inseparable and weekends involved sleepovers and Seagram’s wine coolers and my phone had to be surgically removed from my face every evening after two hours of discussing Megan’s recent sexploits with her lanky, clod of a boyfriend, Chuck. Let’s just say we had countless conversations about the art of fellatio. They were even doing it behind the bowling alley at midnight bowling, which reminds me that I should thank my mother for denying me the God given right to bowl after 12 AM.

One weekend, a few weeks before my 16th birthday, we had a falling out over something innocuous that ended up with her yelling at me outside of the Macy’s in Colonie Center. This after I spent $3.84 on a nail polish from the GAP to give to her so that she would take me back as a friend. Because to me, giving people things was the only way I knew how to make them like me. If I keep reading over that last sentence, my head aches with knowing the way I wanted, nay, needed to please people to make them want me as a friend because I had apparently fallen. Hard. And hit my head on the corner of some table and punctured my skull, and that is how I ended up brainless and an idiot.

The fight, at the time, left me bitter and resentful. Which manifested itself into a behavior, wherein I went out of my way to get Sarah and Lauren, the other two in our little gaggle, to see my ‘side’ and they did. We had established that Megan was an evil whore with 666 tattooed on her left butt cheek, which is why she was so damn difficult and prone to throwing things (in public) and punching walls.

In the next week the fellatio giving Megan, ended up with mono and was guaranteed to be out for weeks. One would think that a debilitating illness would keep that whore at bay, but alas not and in her infinite wisdom and realization that I had gotten her friends against her, she called and cursed me out and politely requested that I drop dead and get herpes. I thanked her and told her that I hoped her Chlamydia cleared up soon as well as those carpet burns on her knees from being on them so much giving head and then hung up and went to pack.

I was packing for my 16th birthday trip to Chicago. It was fate that my aunt had been trying for years to get tickets to Oprah and when she finally got through to the operators they offered her three dates, one of which was my 16th birthday, the magic age at which one is allowed to be in the studio audience. So off we were going to see Oprah and so that my already fat ass could enjoy such luxuries as Cheesecake Factory and Giordano’s deep-dish meat filled, artery-clogging pizza. I’d point out the wonder that was being at Oprah, but alas we did not get a free car and I didn’t get free hair care products or a sample from Emeril’s new cookbook or even a chance to lick her and ask what it’s really like to be a multi-millionaire, as she wasn’t yet a billionaire. Though I did get to shake her hand and I haven’t washed my right hand since October 26, 1999.

The show topic was about “Friendshifts”: The inevitable loss and addition of friends as we get older and come into our own. It’s just something that happens that isn’t necessarily out of malice and is due to more than a nail polish being thrown and shattered on the sidewalk. As it happens, over the years, I’ve tried my damndest to maintain most friendships. I’m still friends with my best friend from Kindergarten as well as my best friend from Girl Scout Camp. Though over the years I’ve gained and lost many friends but never because I didn’t try or so I don’t think Those fostered are important to me, though I’m nowhere near a fantastic friend and infallible. Trust me, I’m actually prone to passive aggressive behavior and I yell and sometimes I’ll eat your pizza when your back is turned. But if anything I try to be loyal. I don’t want people remembering my awful behavior seven years earlier, with hurt and disdain. I wouldn’t want people that I’m no longer friends with to thank God that I’m no longer in their lives as I do with Megan. I don’t want anyone wishing that I forget to get a tetanus shot and then drunkenly puncture my arm on a rusty nail.

In the end I haven’t a clue as to what happened to Megan, except that she returned to school and wanted to be friends again and then started taking Metabolife at the suggestion of her mother. She sent me a message via Facebook, which I promptly deleted and though I should be over her discretions, I obviously am not. And thinking of it now, that probably makes me as person, even worse. For if I can’t get over shit from seven years prior than I couldn’t possibly expect for my friends to get over my eternally pissy and bitchy ways. But thankfully, they are far better than I and considerably more forgiving. They also don’t require trinkets and gifts as a sign of my undying devotion. And as far as I know, none of them have punched a wall or thrown a glass at my head during a fight. And let’s pray that they don’t think Seagram’s winterberry wine coolers are a ‘classy’ drink.

Do not be friends with this girl

2007-01-24T22:20:00.000-05:00

“I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.” ~Franklin P. Adams

Because I believe that movies should be watched and pondered alone, I don’t tend to attend movies with friends just for the hell of it. The movie has to be one that I know will captivate me or I have to be threatened by said friend and/or promised pitchers of sangria immediately after the viewing. Those stipulations are carefully articulated and highlighted in my friend contract. Right under the section that provides instruction on how to react when I’m about to flip my shit. I’m complicated.

My presence was requested at a viewing of Pan’s Labyrinth. When Kimber suggested it, I said, how about we just head straight to the drinking part of the evening and do not pass go, do not collect $200 anywhere near a movie that involves a talking tree. Though at the time, I didn’t know that there was an actual talking tree, I just guessed. In fact the only way she got me to go see the movie was by mentioning the word “Franco”. Because up there with the fervor that I exhibit when speaking of Trader Joe’s and wine, is my interest in European dictators. Which isn’t to say that I agree with totalitarian regimes or facism, or propaganda against an entire group of people based on their religion, creed, or where they purchase their shoes; but for some reason it all fascinates me.

To pinpoint the exact moment that I decided to read up on Mussolini, is something that I’m unaware of. Though I think it was about the same time that I had my mother read Poe to me before bed. I’m assuming 8 or 9 years old. Calling me an odd child, would be putting it mildly. There’s also no reason for it nor did it come from any source. Kind of like the way that I’m obsessed with Congress and can tell the difference between 250 white men over 50. Thinking about it now, it’s the entire history of Europe that I find ridiculously intriguing, especially dictatorships (how it’s possible) and...uh...the House of Bourbon.

In sum: I am weird. So very, weird. And mentioning a dictator will get me to see a movie. A movie, which was a spectacularly weird feat of vivid imagery and violence rolled up into two hours of a talking tree, a puking frog, and a girl who doesn’t know how to fucking listen. Oh and another guy who was the spitting image of Voldemort.

Next up on my tour of oddities: I woke up crying after a ‘nightmare’ that ended with the death of Hugh Laurie.

Crush, redux

2007-01-22T21:56:00.000-05:00

"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love." ~Albert Einstein

My love life is useless for fodder because it is seriously lacking. Something that I won’t even pretend to mind, because being free to sit in my pajamas and eat all the damn granola I please, is something that I appreciate and possibly need. Lest you want to see me involuntarily call someone a dumb fuck, solely out of annoyance. I’m so good at being single that I think I might do so permanently. She says at the tender age of 23 far away from the ticking of a biological clock.

That being said, the crush that I once mentioned has turned into a confusing sordid affair that I am unsure of. For it was completely unexpected but something that I knew was coming for a long time. How am I to resist the charms of a nice adorable southern boy? That is the question I’ve been asking myself for some time now and the answer is that I cannot. I’ve tried and tried again, but I am unable to.

The unfortunate part is that there have been rumors abound about him and more than enough people hate him. But I don’t know I just can’t help myself. Even when he fucks up at the most crucial moments, I still adore him.

So far, so boring and very ‘yadda, yadda, who gives a shit?’ To wit of course, the sordidness stems not only because of his lack of success (Which doesn’t mean that he didn’t want it enough, but shit happens, but still…), but because his brother has been so very successful. Though equally as disliked by many people, including my closest family and friends, he still has that same southern charm and modesty. And now I’m just so…I don’t know. I don’t know which I like better and which I want more, though for now it seems like his brother might be getting the better of me.

Here’s the kicker, the other week I mentioned my longtime love to my father. He told me that not only does he hate the object of my affection, but he also hates his considerably more successful brother. In fact, el padre, hates the entire family, including the mother.

So, what is a girl to do?

Feeling crunchy

2007-01-21T20:59:00.000-05:00

*This post inspired by the always effervescent and witty Alice Bradley

“The belly rules the mind” – Spanish Proverb

One Sunday morning, you will follow the usual routine of reading the New York Times and drinking café au lait with splenda. This just after a Saturday morning full of Wait, Wait...don’t tell me. You realize that you are the epitome of a pretentious North East liberal. You shrug and continue perusing until you happen upon an article about making your own granola, which you are far too lazy to do given your propensity to scour the Trader Joe’s frozen food aisle because cooking is something you do not have time for. So you go back to contemplating the meaning of life and the title of ‘President’ before the name Biden.

A few days later you will be cruising around Google Reader and notice that the lovely and talented Alice Bradley, has read the same NYT article and then decided to delve into the world of creative granola making. Much to your chagrin she details her experience and then speaks of her homemade granola with such enthusiasm that you feel as if you’ve missed something. You go back and re-read and then think back to your recent issues of Vegetarian Times and Food & Wine and briefly recall your personal resolution to cook more items that do not come straight out of a box (cough Trader Joe’s Mac & Cheese cough).

To wit you spend the remainder of the week thinking that if there were five ingredients you would put into granola, besides rolled oats, what would they be? Then your mouth begins to drool thinking of all the granola you could possibly make and all the possibilities of granola to be made. So with list in hand you march over to Trader Joe’s half drooling and admire the cashews and almonds and debate between dried cranberries or dried pineapple or perhaps some banana chips.

You go home with almond slices, dried cranberries, and soy nuts but you purchase the soy nuts with trepidation given their already roasted and salted status. The above is then mixed with some leftover dried coconut, walnuts and some delicious Lake Champlain honey. All will be cooked while you are decked out in your Christmas pajamas. While cooking, you deliberately clean up the kitchen and empty the dishwasher then load the dishwasher and organize the Tupperware in order to show your roommate how one properly cleans a kitchen after usage. There may or may not be heavy sighing and shuffling abound.

Then the lovely mixture is removed from the oven, toasted to perfection and your panna cotta and fresh pesto making roommate may or may not drool a little and say ‘yummy’. You will proceed to eat the fresh granola and char the inside of your mouth but oh my hell, you are a genius of epic proportions. Because you’re feeling good about your awesome domesticity you begin to slice avocado for lunch the next day and think good thoughts about Drew Brees and Peyton Manning.

It’s finally time to taste your granola and it confirms your previous suspicions that you are a culinary master whose talent has been hidden for far too long. You contemplate telling your tale to the Internet, because you’re just so freaking proud of yourself that you want to shout of from the rooftops. You don’t care if people will think you a granola eating, special interest pandering, vegetarian, pinko, commie, liberal, because holy hell that granola might be the best damn thing you’ve ever tasted. You will inevitably spend the remainder of the day periodically diving into a vat of granola. You are brilliant.

I can see clearly now

2007-01-17T09:22:00.000-05:00

“It isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe” - Anonymous

To say that I’ve been in an absolutely horrible mood for the past six months would be an understatement. Something about sleeping on a mattress on my bedroom floor every night since August, probably is what put me in such a sour disposition. But over the past week the clouds have parted and I feel less inclined to be menacing and threatening. Literally almost every night for the past six months – save the moments when I’ve been away and/or sleeping at Kris’ – I’ve had to sleep on my fucking floor. There is nothing worse than going home to sleep on the fucking floor with the fucking laptop that only works when the spirit moves it to do so. A laptop that turns into a desktop attached to a 14 year old monitor that again, only works when you pray over it. Even then I’m pretty sure that the whole thing makes the baby Jesus and I cry.

And now I sleep on an actual bed with a fully functional laptop that makes me want to go home and write and be productive rather than dread writing. You might suspect hyperbole but every second that I spent in my bedroom with the shitty mattress on the floor and the computer that I needed, nay, wanted to write with, but couldn’t, made me a very unhappy person. Given my predisposition to being a bitch, try multiplying that by 114. All of this with a recently cleaned carpet – hell yeah I got that sucker cleaned – with a cute new floor lamp and wall clock and storage thingies that are useless since I just dump shit in there anyway, but at least they match my new area rug.

And I shall dwell in the house of Ikea forever and ever. Amen.

2007 is going to be a good year all because I now sleep on an actual bed like and don’t want to put my fist through the damn computer.

A Confession

2007-01-16T12:33:00.000-05:00

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being particular about the friendships I cultivate is a manifestation of having zero friends and/or friends that used me and generally fucked me over for a number of years. To say that the junior high years were ‘tumultuous’ would be putting things mildly. Of course there’s still a little bit of that in me when I attempt to be nice and complimentary of people who disregard me and find me a nuisance and who are frankly rude and pretentious little shits who feel that the world should cater to them, but they are not obligated to behave the same back. While it irks me entirely, I’ve learned to shrug and behave as if they do not exist and instead be terribly cautious when choosing who I want to be friends with and who I would like to punch in the nose.

I have few extremely close friends, and hordes of ‘friends’ or ‘acquaintances’ that I see for Happy Hours and parties and events. Those are the people that I can give a hug and quick side kiss to while balancing a drink in my other hand as we exchange pleasantries and a few notes of gossip. Then there are my honest to God friends who know that there are nights I’d much rather spend with a very cute blonde and catching up on Tivo than trying to figure out how many glasses of wine I can consume before puking all over U Street. These are the friends that know how much I need and value my alone time and can tell me that I’m considerably more pleasant when “getting ass” than I am 90% of the time. I can appreciate that they can appreciate my generally quirky behavior and why I do the same thing every single Saturday like a little old woman.

Over the past year, I’ve gotten better about who I let in and to what degree of trust I will afford them, which roughly correlates to the number of times that I will freely Instant Message such a person about the inane details of my life. I think I’ve gotten incredibly lucky with Kris, because with her I can do just the latter. And she knows me to a ‘T’. I say all of the above, because the truth is that while I love that woman wholeheartedly, I love it even more when she goes away because then, I get her apartment to myself for an entire weekend or on those really awesome circumstances, an entire week. And nothing says “I heart you, HB” like giving me the keys to your apartment and letting me have at it. Alone. Alllll alone. Misanthropy, my friends, is a lovely thing.

Priceless

2007-01-14T14:35:00.000-05:00

"We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs" - Gloria Steinem

Being able to turn on my computer without wanting to cry and/or toss it out of the window and/or wanting to put my fist through the monitor is really quite priceless.

Welcome, little guy.

It doesn't have a name yet so suggestions would be helpful.

(Also, that bed that it's on is brand new too. As is the mattress. Am now officially broke and donations to the 'Heather B. will need to eat at some point this week', fund are being accepted now. They're also tax detuctible.)

Fahrenheit

2007-01-11T18:11:00.000-05:00

" We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink..." ~Epicurus

Kimber is the type of person you’d want to be friends with in the event of untimely serious issues or when you really want to drink and smoke inside of a bar (the horror! And no longer, because it's illegal!) but not alone because when you drink alone, people consider you an alcoholic. She’s been my best friend for going on four years and knows things about me that I would never readily admit to anyone, including that when I lived alone I only did dishes when I finally ran out of cups and even then, I only did the cups and we’ve had more than one serious conversation about the state of the Middle East with her on the potty and the door open.

Since graduating, the time I used to spend with any friends of mine which once thrice daily culminating with wine at a Georgetown bar, has since been reduced to the occasional get together that needs to be planned weeks in advance because suddenly we’re all very busy; very busy with my Netflix queue and blogging of course. Even when planned well in advance, someone always ends up canceling because of this whole necessity to have Dental Insurance and a 401K. Financial stability is all the rage and at times trumps friendship.

This means that I haven’t seen Kimber since my birthday, in October. And since Kimber enjoys Movado and Coach bags that could fit a small child, she’d also enjoy a meal out that isn’t quesadillas and especially at the Ritz Carlton with the bathroom attendant and heat lamps under the taxi stand and warm towels with which to dry ones French manicured hands. Now that it’s January there really is no better time to meet up with people that you haven’t seen since 1978 for it is Restaurant Week, don’t you know and nothing screams, I will shed these unwanted pounds like a Mushroom tart that involves a flaky buttery crust and melted smoked gouda courtesy of Terrence Feury at Fahrenheit.

I’ve gone on ad nauseum about how I love Jeff Tunks and Geoff Tracy, because I feel comfortable in their restaurants and of course there is trepidation with eating at the Ritz, because do they allow people with roughly $8 to their name at the Ritz? I doubt it. But I do it for Kimber and also because I saw the aforementioned Mushroom tart on the menu. I’m a sucker for flaky crust of any sort especially when it melts in your mouth and I am also obsessed with mushrooms. My hat goes off to anyone who can sear scallops – mine usually come out in the rubbery form that forces me to question any chance I have at becoming a good housewife who can make scallops. The scallops were tender and set in a bed of some sort of tomato salsa concoction which was spicy yet sweet with a hint of pepper and gave the scallops this delicious tangy flavor despite not being deep fried. There were also potato sticks involved and if I hadn’t been in the Ritz, I would have licked the plate.

Shockingly enough, I ran my fingers over my dessert plate while Kimber went to the little girl’s room and then of course snuck a bite out of her key lime pie. I contemplated the Panna Cotta but instead opted for the chocolate tart. Chocolate crust with apool of dark molten chocolate in the middle that spilled over the sides when it’s chocolate dam broke. Right into hazelnut and butterscotch gelato. It was a chocolate butterscotch river and never have I prayed so fervently for a canoe to tip over in such a mixture, because I would gladly swim around and enjoy.

My thing about eating out is not only the food, but also the service and the atmosphere, because what else are you paying for?? Upon Kimber’s arrival she found me sitting in the lobby with a glass of Spanish Tempranillo and the man who would be our server was smiling ardently and we were already the best of friends and he’s now invited to my wedding. I’m a cranky person who is also impatient and so I like to be taken care of immediately and if I have a glass of wine before my ass warms the seat, then damn, I’m happy. Given that I couldn’t even remember one of the restaurants I went to for Restaurant Week the last time, I would say that writing about the melt in your mouth crust at Fahrenheit and it’s impeccable service, makes this Restaurant Week a success.

*Don't forget, still delurking week. So delurk or risk eternal whore-dom.

*I should mention that people always ask me, because apparently I know these things, when RW is. I do not have some super insider information. I just actively stalk DC Foodies.

I love New York

2007-01-10T10:06:00.000-05:00

“One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years” – Thomas Wolfe

I was once convinced that I would live in Manhattan: Another life where I was the US Ambassador to the UN and I would speak Spanish and have an apartment on the Upper East Side and visit Madrid regularly. This was probably about the time that I thought that I would be having children during my 24^th year of life, which is pretty soon, remind me to add to my To Do list: get some ass. Also: Have concussion treated.

Anyway, that passed and I stopped naming my children 30 years in advance and have yet to get that concussion taken care of, but I figure that’s what gives me my cute quirky obnoxious behavior. But Manhattan is still one of my favorite places in the world. Especially in the winter, and by winter I mean a balmy day after Christmas during which I contemplate purchasing a tank top as opposed to a turtleneck and find adorable hats to be useless because IT WILL NEVER SNOW. EVER.

People say that it’s magical and gorgeous and there’s that inexplicable feeling that I can’t very well put into words, but I’m convinced that someday I will learn how. My first visit that I can actually remember was about 12 or so years ago, with my parents and brother. We saw the Rockettes and ate hot dogs and Ray’s Pizza, discovered that it is entirely possible to consume a Ruben roughly the size of Djibouti and that cheesecake is the size of my head, that the Saks windows were magical and that I cannot play the piano with my feet like Tom Hanks, but damn I’ll try.

I’ve been asked about that visit before and about my most recent visit to the City, on how awkward it is to have both of my parents go on a trip. Really it isn’t awkward at all and I’ve never been a child that sits around hoping and praying that mommy and daddy love each other again some day. In fact I’d find it more awkward if they did. I actually find it to be a really great blessing as my parent’s divorce saved me from 18 years of standing on crowded subway platforms with one saying “Do we take the A train or the D train?” and the other responding with “OK” and then subsequent eye rolling ensues because clearly coming to a comprehensible decision together without one threatening to push the other onto the dreaded center rail, was never their forte. But they procreated quite well, so I'll give them that.

*In that last picture…yes, my parents are midgets. Midgets who gray and go bald early.

**It’s also de-lurking week. So de-lurk if you’d like. Or you can be a troll and I’ll make fun of you and possibly call you a dumb whore or something equally unintelligent. But if you say hi, I’ll share my secret of drinking a bottle of wine without puking or hangover.

Of Mice and Murder

2007-01-09T14:14:00.000-05:00

“Women are afraid of mice and of murder, and of very little in between.” ~Mignon McLaughlin

Thinking the shape was chimerical, I looked back at the screen towards Zach Braff and ignored it. When I looked back down to the floor, I realized what was once my eyes playing tricks on me again, a flash of light from outside, perhaps; was certainly not. It was moving. And as it happened the first time*, I jumped on my bed, which is dangerously low to the ground and makes it easy for a little Mickey or Stuart Little to gnaw at my eye lashes, and screamed. Though it was a Friday night and surely no one could hear me and even my non-drinking, footsie playing roommate was out. I was completely alone at midnight, just me and another mammal whose mere presence had once again set me into a fit of convulsions…and screaming.

Normal procedure is to run for the nearest exit hollering about the rabid rodent that had made its way out of the cold into my closet amongst my cashmere. And while I do feel for those things that are out in the cold my thought is that if I am not bothering you and crashing into your home and leaving poop in your closet, then you should do me the same. And if you do intrude into my surroundings, I reserve the right to beat the shit out of you and/or kick you and/or pray that you fall into a glue trap and make sure that you die of asphyxiation in a plastic grocery bag.

Anyway, I stood on top of my pseudo desk chair, questioning why God made such disgusting animals who can’t understand the phrase “dude, leave me the fuck alone”. So I stood and recalled that I had Kris’ keys. Kris who was in the boonies of Shenandoah without a cell phone signal, and so I did what any normal Human being who feels like a mouse, roughly the size of a pen cap would eat her head, would do; I broke into Kris’ mouse free apartment and slept on the couch and had pleasant dreams of the mouse with a noose around it’s neck.

Two nights later, I finally had to sleep back in my own bed and stayed up long enough to see the little fucker come in underneath my door. So I did what any sensible person would do: I placed a large suitcase in front of the door. And when the little shit surreptiously managed to evade my brilliant large suitcase, I was resourceful and made good use of a hard cover copy of Little Women, thank God that Luisa May was prolific and managed to write a giant book perfect for blocking doors from mice. And the remainder of the door was blocked off with The Alchemist, some Augusten Burroughs, Salinger, and a giant copy of East of Eden, oh and The Bible: The impenetrable wall of doom.

I haven’t seen it since. I’m sure it’s still slinking around like a clandestine spy and telling its little cohorts that I have traps set up. I’ve been sleeping with the covers over my head as to prevent actually catching sight of it, but I can practically feel it taunting me. But now that I’m good and pissed and less terrified, it’s more like I could kill the fucker with one swift kick to the ass with my size 11 foot. And I’m sure that dropping said copy of Little Women on it, might very well do the trick. Either way, that little motherfucker is going down.

*different state, different mouse. Awesome.

Date night

2007-01-05T16:59:00.000-05:00

"Let's face it: a date is a job-interview that lasts all night. The only difference between a date and a job interview is: not many job-interviews is there a chance you'll end up naked at the end of it.” Jerry Seinfeld

My last good date was innocuous at best and hardly memorable, though a success because neither of us puked in the dorm bathroom and I didn’t have to do the walk of shame the next morning. He ended up marrying this past summer, clad in a seersucker suit, and I was appreciative knowing that I would never have to marry a guy who wore summer materials mid-January and dipped his French fries in mayonnaise while rubbing my upper torso in the middle of a crowded dining hall. In a word: relieved.

I haven’t been all that anal about getting into dating once again, because I’m in no rush and I cannot handle the presence of another person on a semi-regular basis. Especially one that insists on touching me and holding hand. Even so, a little practice could never hurt and my first victim – Rachel - fell prey to me on New Year’s Eve and evening in which I realized that as a date I am one who not only is never ready on time, but also demands that the date pay for my Coldstone addiction and then has my mother pay for our meals at the ever fancy Friday’s and afterwards I proceed to become drunk on my mother’s couch and ate an entire bowl of guacamole. Thankfully though I got my victim to sleep in my bed and at the end was told that I’m just like a real live male.

The next morning I reviewed my over full protruding stomach and realized that I had no clean socks and figured that I should make some serious strides at becoming less male and hairy and getting women into my bed, and more girl-like, I suppose. So I planned for my next victim to be this week during inauguration festivities. I was determined to show her – yes, Her. I said PRACTICE, not “Oh you there with the six pack abs, come hither and buy me some wine” - a good time. I was prepared to schmooze and to hold my alcohol and to get us into concerts that were something like $1000 per ticket, because no, I did not pay $1000 to get in, but will gladly partake in these crab cakes.

And let me tell you, after two nights of extensive open bar-ing and blowing air kisses and pretending as if I was actually cool and could totally and modestly dance to Wyclef without spilling Cab. Saugv. all over my pink sweater. She didn’t even bat an eyelash when I attempted to chase a former Law and Order star around the bar. Earlier today I received an google chat message from the person I had catered to for the past few nights, surely that is a good sign; when one stops during a day to thank the person who brought him/her out. I am apparently a great date and even better that though I did get her drunk, I hailed her a cab on more than one occasion and never, ever even tried to get her into bed.

So apparently I am a good date. And maybe in a year or ten, I’ll test out my skills with actual boys. Maybe.

Things you probably won’t hear me say after being away for 11 days

2007-01-03T11:47:00.000-05:00

“No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one.” ~Elbert Hubbard

“Working only Wednesday, Thursday and Friday isn’t going to work for me. I like to have the entire week to get back into things. The quicker, the better”

“After indulging in all of that Friday’s and macaroni and cheese, I lost a mere 7.25 lbs. Time for that marathon”

“There’s just a little too much Law and Order watching going on here. Less Vincent D’onofrio more Wolf Blitzer!”

“You there…with your expert blackberrying while driving your Maserati…kudos to you. I could learn a thing or two from you.”

“I LOVE the beltway”

“El madre really shouldn’t have brought me starbucks in bed. Just too much”

“Wow, these expertly planned out and convenient traffic circles are really great. Even better the way these streets just go along seamlessly. I appreciate Pierre L’Enfant’s ingenuity”

“No Melanie, you can have the bathroom first. I’ll gladly wait”

“I don’t appreciate G enough. Here’s to hoping we spend more quality time together this year. Possibly while knitting and sipping on some chamomile tea and discussing how inherently racist television is”

“Noah, the incessant hugging really has to stop. Here, child, go play with these marbles”

“I HATE Whole Foods”

“No, no. After you, Congressman”

“mmmm Metro”

“I really have never minded that Target is in another state. I’m all for checking out all of America”

“Having a liquor store that sells wine, beer and hard liquor is terribly inconvenient. Also, what’s with grocery stores having all of this wine? Does not compute”

“No, I’ll just stick with water and diet coke. I’m not really into fermentation”

“It’s unfortunate that I made a permanent ass print on my mother’s couch”

The curious incident of the mouse in the house

2006-12-31T02:13:00.000-05:00

“New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.” ~Mark Twain

I had been sitting quietly contemplating important matters such as electrolysis and the number of road runs I should sign up for. I have developed this peculiar belly ache, which really shouldn’t be that peculiar given the amount of mac and cheese I’ve eaten over the past few days and that I’m a firm believer that Starbucks eggnog lattes should be consumed everyday during the last week in December because they are damn serious when they say they’ve run out: Which means finding yourself verklempt and saddened while traipsing around the city of your choosing in dire need of frothy caffeinated eggnog. All of this while deep into a Criminal Intent marathon and questioning whether or not Robert Goran and I could make sweet, sweet love.

There had been flashes out of the corner of my eye since yesterday, which could be a manifestation of the aforementioned Law and Order watching with intermittent viewings of the Real World/Road Rules challenge. Perhaps all of the murder and cattiness got to me and I developed a brain disorder whose symptoms could be an eye thing. Maybe. So the mass had been drifting about for days, but I blinked it off and went back to testing out the chocolates and writing things like, stop being an overly obsessive bitch in 2007, in my moleskin.

And here is where I point out how truly fascinating my life is. Also? I’m not sure it’s possible to be more boring, but for fuck’s sake be less boring in 2007. And do away with eating fish, given that I only eat fish so that I can eat as many filet of fish as I desire. It's a sickness.

And so this evening, I figured that this was just more imaginations and also a really awful side effect to not having any fermented grapes for almost nine days, which is a record somewhere. That is until the mass came out of hiding. For the mass is a real live little baby mouse. A little baby mouse that warrants standing on the couch and doing Lamaze breathing while stealthily (well stealthily as possible with the loud ‘hee hee hoo’ going on) grabbing all of the Twizzler nibs that had fallen on the floor in addition to the DVDs and turning off the television with my nose. Of course the DVDs were unnecessary given that I left the blasted DVD player in the room with the little baby mouse that at some point this evening will gnaw my face off.

Now, in case you were wondering, I am not a tiny little person nor am I a complete girly girl who fears spiders and snakes. No. I can man the fuck up when needed and the very rational side of me knows that I am roughly 1.2 million times the size of the little baby mouse which I could easily stomp dead with my size 11 foot (see? Not tiny). But instead I take the not very calculated hopping up on the couch and gathering the necessities (see: DVDS, but no DVD player and lack of sneakers) running out of the room, and slamming the door behind me route. One that leads to me running up the stairs and tripping over a very well placed kitchen island, which came out of nowhere and should really be moved in the event of a rabid field mouse that will bite my arms off, of course after magically getting through the glass sliding doors and into my bedroom at the other end of the house. It might even claw my eyeballs out, but again…I’m not really sure.

And hopefully next year, I’ll not only be slightly thinner and less obsessed and maybe I’ll grow some balls of the brass and pseudo nature, that is.

Lexicon

2006-12-27T22:26:00.000-05:00

“One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity.” ~Kevin Smith

Just minutes after professing my love for the c-word. Yes, the c-word the one that causes the Swiss to go into a catatonic state, which she can only be brought out of with the offering of a generous offering of Chardonnay. We’re talking goblet, people. Anyway that c-word…I was told: “no one splices the f-word in with such a large prolific vocabulary like you do.” Which induced an aww, how precious out of me, but also a mildly disturbed type feeling that I am truly unable to find a post without rampant use of the f-word. It’s like the search for the Giants in the playoff: you think you might find one, but whoops, nope, almost, not quite. Any piece of writing that I can find without saying motherfucker to people in the grocery store, isn’t all that entertaining and mostly me being angry about how incredibly unfair my life is. It’s like No Pasa Nada: We complain so that you don’t have to. How thoughtful!

In some ways, it’s funny the way in which I can toss the word ‘fuck’ around and the different ways that one can use it and well…anyone who can use ‘cunt’ in a sentence without flinching and with utmost authority is one that you might not want to fuck with. But it’s so very crass. And none of this is coming from a power up on high who scolded me for calling someone a douche bag whore, but because ‘douche bag whore’ is just so very uncreative. It’s as if I never stepped foot into a classroom and that $34,000 tuition went straight to Ben Ladner’s foie gras addiction, and actually that last bit is true, for it did.

So…now thinking on this…I’m not exactly ready to you know, curb the use of the word ‘fuck’ it’s just such a glorious word, but I am committed to creativity with the English language. It’s hard and it sucks like a 16 year old on prom night, but there’s so much that can be done with it. And sometimes…well sometimes I get giddy. Heartbreakingly giddy when I go through and realize that I’ve called tourists ‘fucking mother fuckers who can’t fucking drive’ no less than three times. And perhaps, I could refer to them as ‘asinine dip shits who couldn’t retrieve there head out of their own asses even if John Roberts himself did the pulling. And even then they might be too busy attempting to kiss his ass in excitement.” I was going to add an Ann Coulter reference, but even that was too dirty for a family site like this one. Eh, whatever maybe I’ll just call annoying people ‘fucking cocksuckers’ and leave it that. Oh what fun it is to be completely crass.

All of this was written and saved to my mother’s laptop. Upon finding this her head will immediately fall off of her body and her heart will shrivel up to the size of a raisin. And if she hasn’t yet died from that, she’ll see the c-word written in plain sight and her brain will explode out of her nostrils. Deep down inside, she’s really, really proud.

*btw, I’m number one on google for “wry single female blog”. Rock on.

Release therapy

2006-12-26T23:35:00.000-05:00

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ~Ray Bradbury

When one begins quoting Ludacris in a totally serious non-Move Bitch kind of way, that usually means that there is some sort of serious problem lurking below the service or perhaps now I have a penchant for telling people that I’ve got ho’s in different area codes. No matter, because this really is not about Ludacris, as tempting as it might be to write an entire post as to his genius (‘Get back, get back, you don’t know me like that’? Brilliant), this is more about that release of letting things go and letting things out. Despite having that ability to be as prolific as possible there are just those things that are untouchable. The things that I can obsess and fret over and question how exactly I go about finding a remedy to something that’s probably innocuous and then I end up elusive and here we are with me writing as to not explode all over my mother's precious upholstery.

I like that writing can get me to say things that I wouldn’t otherwise say. It’s a matter of who I am saying it to, who I am writing for. It’s for me but I sometimes need the opinions of others to tell me what to do, not make my decisions of course but to make me feel less like I’ve fucked up egregiously. But in the end I think that writing about not being able to write because of some other bullshit, is just a waste of time and adds to the risk of carpal tunnel without ever really saying anything. I want to be able to say things without sounding pretentious or uptight or anal or a flaming ass bitch who writes just for the sake of writing something. I want to be able to say something, not just say anything. The latter is my goal for the year, a resolution of sorts, to not just write for the hell of it about whether or not I wholeheartedly agree with leggings, which I totally do if they’re keeping you warm, but not to wear with a sweater and Uggs, which serves no purpose because ladies, the ass! It is still bare! And also, not 1988! But I digress…oh so none of the above and no lists unless it’s a deep and heartfelt list as to why I could live at home for awhile, number one being, my mother brought me starbucks in bed. Number two being, and then the food was in the refrigerator and I didn’t have to fear for my life while driving through Thomas circle to get to the grocery store. All good.

Though I should touch on the beauty of having people who know me, and know that I would fall madly in love with anyone who gives me both gift cards to Target and Whole Foods and also the sweater I wore on Christmas Eve and subsequently got ridiculously drunk in, smells like nine week old baby. Yum. And that my friends, is the sign of a very Merry Christmas and I hope your Holidays were groovy as well.

*I started this talking about Ludacris and ended with Christmas, so clearly with more time to write ‘something’ I can work on segues. Clearly.

Takeoff

2006-12-22T11:48:00.000-05:00

"If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others." ~Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld

Any story that begins with ‘so I was in the airport bar…’ is bound to be doomed. It feels rather inevitable especially after recent viewing of Red Eye. I mean that’s how Rachel – I was a mean girl now I’m lovely and did I mention Candian – McAdams and her soon to be psychotic stalker yet ridiculously handsome killer meet, of course from there the whole psychotic-ness comes into play and it’s down hill from there. But of course the above hardly warrants fear nor precludes me of all people from venturing into the bar at Thurgood Marshall airport (If people are going to say ‘Reagan’ than I get to say ‘Thurgood Marshall’, period) and imbibing on some Chesapeake crabs and cabernet and yengling and apparently there was a moment in which I had turned into one of those creepy airport bar dwellers and soon I’ll be joining the ‘mile high club’ this is all very sudden.

Regardless, there are really creepy airport drunk people. I just want to sit and hear more about Eli and how Isaiah has suddenly made people fear the Knicks, that’s all. Closed captioning not withstanding of course, yet alone, to dwell in my misanthropic and lush behaviors, while fucking around with the crackberry. Of course the hint is not well taken by others specifically a gentleman who seated two seats down from me decided to spit tobacco in a bar glass and then involved himself in the conversation of the woman sitting between us. The woman whose hand I came quite close to ripping off when she drunkenly poked me in my fleshy side to question whether or not the seat beside me was taken. Startled, I mistakenly said no and allowed her to sit between me and drunken spitter while she loudly berated her boyfriend on the phone. In a public small bar. And every once in a while…ok, every 10.98 seconds…drunken spitter would holler “Call him an asshole!” or “he’s an asshole and not worth” or “Fuck yeah, asshole”. While she intermittently gave him the glary eyes of death and then shot daggers at me as if drunken spitter and I were BFFE from way back.

There’s a very visceral reaction in me to ignore and drink yet ignore some more until drunken spitter yelled at me as to the quality of my crackberry and how much he hates Hillary Clinton. But drunk public boyfriend berater she’s a republican but really likes Barack Obama. And clearly my keeping my head down while slamming my yeungling (so that I could get the fuck out of dodge and sit and wait with the normal Southwest airlines patrons who line up in their proper section two hours before the plane departs) was the perfect sign for please tell me how you feel and while we’re at it, you were born where? Oh but of course I know the answer to that last question; drunk public boyfriend berater is from Cincinnati and drunken spitter is from Phoenix, and I’m from Albany which is somewhere near Syracuse and it’s cold and sometimes we get 7 feet of snow (that according to drunken spitter). My response was that it doesn’t fucking snow when it’s 57 degrees, asshole.

So I left, because there is only so much conversing that I can handle and I can’t be completely shitfaced on a plane and show up to greet my mother by licking her or some such shit. Though I did meander just far enough to walk right into someone who I’ve known since kindergarten. Right there on my flight and I’m thinking the fermented grapes had something to do with how effortlessly the conversation was and why I turned into a walking sales person for fucking leggings.

And there you have it; the rest isn’t all that exciting except…well I have no couth as my mother pointed out no less than 7 times because I stripped in front of an open window (In my defense the window wasn’t open and no one could see me and jesus lord it’s only day one). Welcome Home and Happy Holidays, clearly, we’re off to a lovely start.

Photographic Evidence

2006-12-20T21:33:00.000-05:00

"But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Gifts," Essays, Second Series, 1844

So that I might end on a high note (pun beyond intended. I went to the pun store and found that and brought it back) dover here until Mac Fest 2007 I figured I'd post a little something that I did over at Indie Bloggers as my gift to you. Y'all I am loving that site like it's my baby (even better that I have the lovely Swiss and Stacy). So I'm a momma bear and be good to my little cub. Visit, sign up and enjoy and apparently I put out, so that might be fun as well.

When I’m bored I procrastinate and being that the internet is a procrastinator’s wet dream, then that is where I head. So imagine my surprise during my regularly scheduled perusal to see a picture of myself in all my bathing suit glory. Right there staring at me, smiling in a two piece suit that was something like two sizes too small and my lord the fat rolls that were spilling out of the edges. It was like pork stuffed into sausage casing. That is if fresh sausage had a massive fro and oily skin.

In a word: Hideous.

And my own feelings of hideousness aside, it was in public and right there on the internet for everyone and their brother’s mother’s cousin to see: Me, with my poofy hair and giant hips meant for birthing five at a time comfortably. And all I could think and still think is oh my fuck.

Though this not just about me being terribly embarrassed, but also about the manifestation of my stalker tendencies and the way in which I almost daily look at pictures of friends and foes and strangers alike; as today I happened upon an unsightly picture of a close friend and had to stifle my laughter. And when I came to, I made wondered whether or not this friend knew of these unflattering pictures*. In fact do most people know that every picture of them snapped with eyes a flutter due ghastly flash, has the possibility of ending up on the internet? While I’m sure most are aware that it’s a possibility there is nothing worse than seeing yourself in a bathing suit on Flickr or MySpace or wherever the hell ever.

What creeps me out more about the entire thing is the way in which EVERYONE can see these pictures. I mean if I can find a picture of someone with a goofy ass smile rocking Lees from 1989 on some random website, anyone can. And it’s all anonymous…and excuse me while I breathe into this paper bag. Because oh my hell, I don’t look at pictures of myself in a bathing suit ever nor do I have any that weren’t distorted with burned edges, because – and I repeat – rolls of fat.

So just be careful out there, not with the pictures that you throw out there, because if your friends are anything like me they’ll see that picture and die a horrible death after falling head first onto a floor and forget all about the picture and focus less on the elliptical. But! Be careful and be sure not to be caught drunk in a hot tub in your bathing suit. For my sake and yours, people; Mesh shorts. Just sayin’.

*This person is actually pretty fucking cute...so that we're all on the same page here.

It's the thought that counts

2006-12-20T10:16:00.000-05:00

“Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.” – Christmas Vacation

In the spirit of sharing during this holiday season, I decided to participate in Neil’s Christmahanukwanzaakah Holiday Concert. A few things: 1) I haven’t played in like four years, 2) The damn thing hasn’t been tuned in five years, 3) I was only first chair of the clarinet section for like a year, 4) Playing an instrument is kind of like riding a bike, you never really forget how to make a really fucking awful noise that will blow your eardrums. Think bluegrass on crack. 5) Cell phone quality isn’t what it used to be. Or it’s probably better and I should get a new phone or perhaps not be playing my clarinet over the damn phone.

So here in all it’s (awful) glory is my rendition of O Come all Ye Faithful on the b flat clarinet. I song I chose for it’s easy as pie single sharp moderate tempo. Read: Even an 8 year old could play this shit and hell of a lot better than I. If you’re lucky in the New Year, I’ll play a little Pachebel for you.

O Come all Ye Faithful: The Lame Edition (so bad that it makes the baby Jesus cry)

On that note, I wish you all a wonderful Holiday. And I’ll catch y’all in 2007.

If you really miss me that much, I will be here and here.

It's like a really bad episode of Standoff

2006-12-19T09:05:00.000-05:00

“Anger ventilated often hurries toward forgiveness; and concealed often hardens into revenge.” ~Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Well, I’m speechless. I’m rarely speechless. With the amount of hot air that exudes from my mouth and the way sentences flow from my fingers, I am the last person who has nothing to say. But oh my hell, it’s Tuesday. TUESDAY. And last night after coming home from a perfectly lovely dinner at Vidalia (eh, Bistro Bis is better) I went into the kitchen to find the wine opener and lo, it was still a disaster area and the Pillsbury doughboy must be having a motherfucking field day.

And you ask the requisite ‘Where was your roommate?’ Well, she was at home in the living room cuddling with her boyfriend on the couch and then they stood up and they began canoodling in the middle of the living room for, while I stood and poured my shiraz and silently cursed her and willed her to clean her shit up. They stopped briefly so that she could ask whether or not I enjoyed peanut brittle. Though on occasion I do partake in that buttery and nutty good stuff, I pursed my lips together and sighed then clenched my jaw so that I could politely decline. But if I hadn’t been feeling polite I would have said something to the effect of: “Yes, I would really like some Peanut Brittle, but what I would really enjoy right now is a clean kitchen. So unless that Peanut Brittle is also some sort of new fangled Clorox cleanup sponge, I would like for you to clean you fucking flour off the god damn counter and then shove the peanut brittle up your ass.”

But like I said, I am feeling polite. I haven’t even been my usual passive aggressive self because I don’t know what to think. What if it’s there for the rest of the year? Why should I be the bigger person and clean it up? It’s not my mess. If it were a few crumbs, then fine, OK, I’d grumble and move on, but there is flour in places that there shouldn’t be flour and how one manages to get chocolate on a cutting board that they weren’t even using, is beyond me. But oh my hell…(breathe)…What do I do? Because this is out of hand and it’s now Tuesday morning. Oh yes, Tuesday motherfucking morning and I’ve been to the gym, showered, etc. and she has checked her email, made breakfast and I sat and watched her glance around the kitchen, while I burned a hole into the back of her head with my eyes, because how do you glance around the kitchen, sigh and then keep walking?? HOW?

I just don’t know anymore, and I swear to God, if she leaves for Hawaii and that shit is still there, well all I have to say is that the lease is in MY name.

Crimes Against Cupcakes and other faux disasters*

2006-12-18T15:45:00.000-05:00

“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Worship," The Conduct of Life, 1860

While Stacy spent her Saturday working on the site, I spent mine in Georgetown for 12 straight hours – after parking in a pristine spot right on the corner of M and Wisconsin – and let her remind me over the phone that I obviously hate mommybloggers. And not only do I hate mommybloggers, but I also hate rainbows, puppies, babies, butterflies and Tony Romo. But yes, I dislike and spent my day contemplating such and intermittently asking El Madre when she was going to have Chris introduce me to Will and also being cantankerous. And well, it’s lovely when my avid pissy attitude spills all the way to Monday. So much so that I’ve spent more than my fair share of time, going between wishing for someone to lose an appendage and poking the bottom of each chocolate (in a two pound box) with a letter opener to see what was inside. Who the hell thought of a box of chocolates without a guide at the bottom was clearly smoking something that I would really like to be a part of.

Oh and I mentioned spill which means that it’s an easy segue into the state of my kitchen. My kitchen which looks like a baking experiment gone awry and has looks that way since Saturday. And again, I emphasize how very Monday it is, which is a long way from Saturday, which means that I shouldn’t still be looking at the same pile of flour on the kitchen counter that I was looking at Saturday night**. And please tell me what kind of person leaves cupcakes out in the open, not in an airtight container? So not only has she wreaked havoc on my kitchen – not that I use the damn thing, but really, I would enjoy some TJ’s Mac & cheese without having to reach over dried up chocolate sauce on the stove – but she also disregards the feelings of cupcakes. And as a lover of cupcakes I must say that I am appalled, by these crimes against cupcakes and will deal with my roommate accordingly.

*I’ve decided that if I’m ever propositioned to write a book with segues and paragraphs and shit, then the first one would be called (first, meaning that I get a contract to write two books and a seven figure advance. Oohhh, sorry, hell just froze over) This Isn’t Education and the second would be called Crimes Against Cupcakes.

**I've been trying to post a picture of the damn kitchen for like 15 minutes now and I can't. And it's driving my crazy. And blogger is a dirty whore.

Acadiana*

2006-12-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

(Another stab at food blogging. Work with me here people)

“Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.” ~Voltaire

I made the decision to drag the Wry one to Acadiana the other evening under the guise that because it’s owned by Jeff Tunks and Gus DeMillo, then it must be excellent. While Geoff Tracy holds a very special place in my heart and has been with me through thick and thin for five years, I cannot pass up what I’ve dubbed the Oysters of Love™. The oysters are still in the shell and I’ve dried before to explain the way they swim in a sea of garlic butter and are broiled with parmesan cheese on top, and how looking at them and dipping the loaf of French bread into the garlic butter makes my heart melt. It’s probably not perfect by any means, but I’ve never been an avid oyster eater this a manifestation of my lack of sexual prowess. But still the oysters that I consumed prior to the redfish - that really isn’t worth the mention, a) because I don’t remember it (due to alcohol consumption) and b) it just wasn’t that good – were as always mouth watering. I feel that if I can recall a dish weeks – nay months – later and still reminisce fondly about how every time I see these oysters I salivate, then that it is a good thing and that makes a food worth it. If all I can remember about the red fish was that it was light and probably good enough that I ate it, then one could say that it was just average and not worth three prolific pieces on how much in love I am. But that’s just me.

Despite the omitted and possibly repressed fish, it’s always nice to be able to go into a restaurant and be comfortable. It may have been the company; because there really is nothing better than drinking with the Wry one and imitating Citizen Kane (“Rose…bud”) and discussing whether or not Joe or Steve is better (JOE!), but I digress. There’s just something comforting about the atmosphere there, which is unpretentious. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not all that pretentious, especially when it comes to my food (have I mentioned the filet-o-fish yet? Yes? Really?). But I enjoy going into a restaurant and having that nice atmosphere. I think that’s why I always loved Chef Geoffs, not that the food was perfect – though they did have banana wontons with caramel ice cream for years and that was beyond perfect – the service worked for me because most of the servers were my classmates and I felt rather at home there.

Though I’m beginning to think that I feel at home at places when I’m with people that I adore and restaurants that I frequent. And really I’m not sure where I’m going with this, except to say that OYSTERS. I repeat: OYSTERS.

And because I’m nosey, I would like to know a few things:

a) Your favorite restaurant (name, location)

b) Your favorite dish there

c) If you had to choose between Grey Goose and Tonic and Wine, which would you choose? Because I chose the former and regretted it for 36 entire hours until I had my first mojito last night.

*fuuuuuuuuck and it’s Blog Crush day and Ummm I forgot, but was just reminded. So, who do I have a crush on? Jonniker (Close runner up: Schnozz). I will write more about her later, and by later I mean Monday (ish) which makes it rather moot, but whatever, I try.

Moving on

2006-12-14T11:18:00.000-05:00

“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.” ~Vita Sackville-West

As the founder and president of Over Thinkers Anonymous™ it’s my duty to you know, think things over and obsess and really put my nose to the grindstone on every little detail and hot damn, I’m fucking awesome at it. But much like all things that are fairly routine, I’m starting to realize that’s getting a little old and my obsessive nature is just bothersome and overly tiring. I mean, try spending two solid hours devising the most illogical scheme possible and then making it seem as if yes! That totally makes sense! Why don’t you follow?! It’s damn hard and now I’m terribly tired.

So now I’m toying with divulging more about the oysters of love over at Acadiana or why I am most certainly not a home wrecker, or how I baked magic cookie bars last night that got stuck to the bottom of my good pyrex dish, or how I find footless leggings to be God’s gift to the free world, or you know more about my holiday (let’s be PC now shall we?) shopping is so not even started, or a myriad of other boring ass things, that I can make seem really interesting, but ummm, no.

Instead I leave you with the following, which I wrote for BlogHer. I’m sharing it with you all because I never share anything that I write there over here for no particular reason other than, I’m lazy and if I write about my personal finances etc here, then there’s less time for incessant and unnecessary complaining. Which we all will agree I’m really terrific at.

S.I.N.King and loving it

It’s pretty much been the same tune sung day in and day out in regards to the fund crisis that is the life of a 20 something. It’s not necessarily crisis but it can be mildly frustrating and while there are aspects to being in your early 20’s, like a high metabolism and it being acceptable to have a constant hangover, it’s still just a nagging thing that I’m sure I will laugh about in the end. And while I will readily complain about the former, I cannot say that I don’t enjoy having a rather disposable income. I can do pretty much what I want, when I want and if I really wanted to pack up and move across the country tomorrow, there is no one else that I would have to check in with. If I wanted to invest in Alpaca and make a new career as a sheep herder, then no one can stop me. It’s actually quite a beautiful thing and to quote Dave Matthew’s I shall miss these things when it all rolls by.

The reason I began blogging was because it was a platform to discuss/whine about the above. That the immediate time after college where you’re pretty much in flux with things, is rather tumultuous and given that 99% of people happen to go through it, I felt that there would be some sort of support or something there. And as the time has gone on and I do have an avid ‘You rock’ etc. readership, it’s not the same, being a single female blogger (since blogging can be very niche like) and getting that same support mechanism of say a female who happened to have a child, for instance.

I write the above with extreme trepidation because I don’t want to be labeled a hater of those who write blogs of the parenting genre, mostly because I don’t dislike and embrace them with enthusiasm, hell, I garner much of my disposable income from babysitting for a “Mommy blogger” but I do find it all rather interesting. I was speaking with another blogger about this earlier in that I am a single person with no kids (Single Income No Kids) and like I said, disposable income, from a business stand point it would make sense to swoop me up and offer me things and realize that with my disposable income, I can buy whatever I feel like buying, but alas they don’t. Not to mention (deep breaths) that ad offers aren’t the same either, I mean it’s a known fact that bloggers who are parents are considerably more desirable than those of us without children. It’s not a criticism but just a true fact.

But like I said, I don’t dislike parent bloggers I just find it interesting the way women in particular will flock to another woman if she is pregnant but if I were to get a new job or decide to make a career change into acrobatics, I doubt anyone would be equally as enthralled with my journey and/or search me out for premium ad space. It’s just how it goes and you can be assured that I’m not the only SINK (or Dual Income No Kids) who is equally flummoxed by this entire “parent blogging brings all the ads/love to the yard”, phenomenon.

An excerpt from a very excellent post by Stacy of Jurgen Nation:

The bloggers I read faithfully are, in my mind, friends. Some of them are parents, some aren’t. I don’t really think of them in terms of mommies or daddies, I think of them as [blogger] friends - “Blends”, if you will.

What bothers me is not that the Mommy Bloggers have a network. Nay, what vexes me is that the personal bloggers, i.e., the SINKs (Single Income, No Kids! Hi Mom! Over Here!) and DINKs (Double Income, No Kids) don’t have this built-in support system. The Mommy Blogger has that extra wonderful layer. If you’ve never witnessed the Mommy Bloggers in action, it’s truly astonishing. They form an umbrella of support and cheerleading for each other; one could even describe it as “mothering” or “nurturing” (I know!). It’s almost as if, when a new mom starts a new blog The Moms form a caucus, the sole purpose of which is to pair that new mommy blogger up with a mentor or buddy until she gets the hang of it and becomes A Mommy Blogger (echo, echo). And then, like bees, they all descend on each each other to encourage, cheer, support.

Because I can*

2006-12-13T11:40:00.000-05:00

“The best writing style is the style you don't notice.” ~Somerset Maugham

I’ve become overwhelmingly concerned with the state of Lulu and Jason’s relationship and less on the state of my Christmas list. I mean, will they or won’t they get together? What will happen with Alcazar? How the fuck did I end up in this strange vortex of having to halt all things when General Hospital comes on? GH, notwithstanding there’s avid traipsing around town with various spectacular people and every time I think of spending money above and beyond for my brand new baby, I get hives, because I keep falling asleep to images of BofA’s online banking and my account showing a negative balance all in the name of being able to blog from my bed on something that doesn’t purr and blink and contemplate giving me the blue screen of death. It’s on some serious life support right now and we’re all standing watching and praying that it survives through next week. Then I’ll be more willing to let it go.

When my Uncle asked what I would be doing with my new laptop, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’d be using it to blog so I’m sure I muttered something and then put my head down and prayed that he would attack G over something, and lo, he did, in regards to G being an Africana Studies major which is a whole different post about that and his Marcus Garvey love and other fun things. So! Blogging! Yes, I do so and rather fervently and at the beginning it was for my friends and family and then it turned into not just for my friends and family. Which I noticed the other day when seeing Elisa (Of Blogher fame as well) speak and someone came up to me and said “Are you Heather?” and then I promptly shoved my hands in my pockets, despite the 98.4 degree temperature and possibly mumbled yet again, something about how yes, I am Heather. And then you all would be proud, I proceeded to complete a quality 45 minutes worth of conversation with several complete strangers, while utterly (and not all too painfully) sober.

And now is a perfect time to mention that one of the people that I was conversing with had been a clown in a ‘former’ life. Clowns scare me in ways indescribable and to the point that I was once terrified to close the door to my bedroom and have the lights off because one would come in and kill me in my sleep, in fact, I’m sure I was once convinced that all clowns did was lure little children to kill them. Of course this clown was a nice one, and I possibly…you know…maybe I had an incredibly fucked up movie experience as a child and watched It (the Stephen King movie that I would link to via IMDB, if it didn’t sport a picture of a deathly clown right on the front, though I’m not sure of that, but I’d rather not risk it) one too many times.

Anyway, I have a visitor coming this weekend, solely for the purposes of shopping with me. I’m not sure where exactly I found her and did I mention the stellar boot collection that I stole from and then had a coworker tell me how stylish this aforementioned visitor is? Yeah. Anyway, the visitor is coming to take me to Anthropologie, something about me losing weight and being a genuinely fucking fantastic individual has lead her to do such a thing. But! While with her I can dissect the above things and the reasons for why segues are such a tough thing for me to tackle. And of course that whole clown thing.

*This post brought to you by my brilliance to write it yesterday afternoon knowing full well that I would be sporting a massive hangover today. Note to self: The quality of vodka doesn’t necessarily mean a different hangover. In fact right now I have another crazy ass hangover which I can feel in my neck and in my right ear. It’s very odd. I asked someone for a remedy and then realized that I could always just drink less, but that’s silly talk.

I promise to stop tomorrow. Maybe.

2006-12-12T10:45:00.000-05:00

“Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?” ~Winnie the Pooh

I’m caught between a rock and a phlegm storm that I’ve been trying to ward off via airborne and water and a myriad of citrus fruits. Yet nothing works and I can feel the snot dripping away diligently down my throat and the mucus just laughs and scoffs. And as with most everything in my life, I’m projecting that this will all lead to a dire and tragic bronchitis/strep thing and none of this has helped my current stress right now, in fact it only makes things worse.

Not that I really have anything to stress over, but it’s just more in the great moments of projection and I’m begninnig to think that spending so much time alone with just a bottle of wine and DVR for company, bodes terribly unwell for my tendency to over think things. Last week, clearly being the best, with the whole being completely ALONE. ALL WEEK. With nothing but the vino and I turned off my crackberry and phone and just spent the week alone in Kris’ apartment obsessing about the inane and using her perfume which is so very Single White Female of me. All the while relishing in the fact that I could walk in, go to the bathroom and not have anyone come in literally 15 seconds after I walk in the door, knocking requesting that they be able to use the fucking bathroom. I also missed out on a weeks worth of ‘Hey there…’ conversations while I’m trying to find my coat or fish the last package of oatmeal off the top of the refrigerator. Case in point: Living alone fucking rocks.

Anyway, without the distraction of other people, sharing my oxygen I’m free to stumble around and with a glass of wine and order Over the Hedge via On Demand and think about every situation and every single solitary outline in such meticulous fashion that I contemplated charts and graphs and possibly began talking to myself. None of this necessitates full on detail of the object of my neuroses, but it all leads back to me just fucking caring. Even when I say that I don’t care, which I say more often and not, out of fear and wanting to protect myself, I care immeasurably and I worry and then I spend my days eating Poptarts and thinking the worse, and caring more and then questioning my ability – which I seriously lack – to convey the ways in which I care and subsequently fear.

Consequently I’ll live up to my title of Biggest Lush (this is the first time I’ve won anything since being elected Anderson Hall representative to the Student Confederation General Assembly during my sophomore year of college. And please stop me when I’ve fully disclosed just how terribly unpopular I have been for my entire life), and drink some more and over think my over thinking (and my Christmas list, because dear lord, I have yet to figure out what I’m getting a single solitary anyone ever and people will hate me and want me dead because I didn’t get them the perfect gift. Ahem) and realize that I still need to chill the hell out and find ways to say things with utmost sincerity and hope that one knows that I mean them.

And it goes a little something like this

2006-12-11T11:07:00.000-05:00

“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.” ~Samuel Johnson

My astute ability at hangover prevention has apparently waned over the past few years. Thus the reason for a residual headache come Sunday. A headache that was the product of drinking nine of those miniature plastic wine glasses full of cheap red wine at a former Professor’s home and then two large, grey goose and vodkas at Science Club, because the drunk the better. I’m fairly certain that my last conversation was with Ms. K over a forkful of chocolate cake thinking fondly of filet – o – fish. Which didn’t exactly prevent the hangover the next morning or come Sunday either.

Ambitious I am enough to meticulously plan out a trip through Friendship on my way to Bethesda. Mostly to pick up new sunglasses because I’ve driving down 395 with the blinding white hot rays of sun and my hands covering my eyes and/or eyes completely closed, ergo making the feat of crossing four lanes of high speed traffic complete with type a luxury car drivers who seem to think that writing an email while driving is most brilliant, to be one of the most precious things ever. So in lieu of dying because of driving with my eyes closed, I opted to throw down $20 for some new Ralph’s at Steinmart.

I follow the ‘kill two birds with one stone’ method of errand running, in which I will get everything that needs to be done completed in one trip and since I was going to be in Friendship I’d stop at Tiffany (as in & Co) to get my bracelet cleaned, because it was rather gross. Umm so, that place gives me hives and also necessitates a few outfit changes (I’m loathe to write that I settled on this subtle Burberry shirt, as opposed to like a fucking coat/headband/bag/scarf combo that I’ve seen others wear. And that last sentence just made me die a little inside. But I digress…) because the last thing I want to do is venture to that end of Wisconsin avenue, with this massive gash below my eye (possibly drunk when it occurred, also could have been a cat, but I prefer to say a fight), rocking my sweats (Oh shut up). And you know just what end of Wisconsin I’m speaking of the end with the Saks and the Gucci. The end, which I question exactly which city I’m in and I half expect a FAO Schwartz to be around the corner because that would make my fucking life.

Anyway, my bracelet ended up all nice and shiny and I didn’t succumb from a severe silver allergy while there. Oh yes, so very, allergic to silver, actually I’m not sure if I still am, but I’d rather not test the waters and end up with puss filled welts all over my ears/neck/fingers. And while smiling that I survived that trip with my head high and managed to get almost past the Gucci store, where lo, I saw someone that I used to date. In college. Who is a staunch Michael Steele supporting Republican. Who once told me that I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. And now he’s gay. So I saw him, and whipped out my handy dandy blackberry and practically ran into a very large Hummer.

To recap and bring it all together at the end: I make fairly poor decisions when it comes to the opposite sex and if I stop making these poor decisions and find someone to accept my status as the Biggest Lush in the DC blogging world (There was an actual vote for this superlative and I actually won), then he should know that I would prefer platinum and a solitaire emerald cut diamond setting.

The end.

Slowly getting there

2006-12-08T10:21:00.000-05:00

“Hey! I tell you what I'm gonna give you, Snakes. I'm gonna give you to the count of 10 to get your ugly, yellow, no-good keister off my property before I pump your guts full of lead! One, two, ten!” – Home Alone

First off, I dutifully and immensely apologize for an entire post dedicated to my disdain for vomit, not to mention that I possibly come off as some wretched bitch who finds comforting sick children to be some sort of chore that she is too good for. Which, no. Thusly, I am every sorry for using the phrase “I pushed him away because the puke was dripping off of my clarinet case”. Really, I am so very sorry and I’m still trying to not gag while thinking about it.

Speaking of clarinets, I bought sheet music a few days ago. Have I mentioned that on my list of mundane activities that I enjoy, buying and playing music is up there along with chewing ice, watching my netflix queue slowly dwindle and well, blogging. It’s truly rather risible really, given that my proficiency in music is that of a second grader with a brand new recorder. Though I was first chair of the clarinet section and I can also play the bassoon and bass clarinet and the piano and now I’m realizing that every day I look more and more like the least popular person ever. Anyway, I bought music, I’m going to play music and it puts me that much closer to being into the season.

Speaking of season (are we sensing a theme here with the masterful art of segues?) I’m almost on the brink of giddiness with it all as I have lined up Home Alone and A Christmas Story along with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, to watch over the next week to make me all holly and jolly and such. I figured that finding out that I would not be receiving a Bear Bryant hat for Christmas, would damper my spirit, but alas, it has not though I’m generally just blasé and full of ennui as of late.

So now I am a vomit fearing, clarinet playing, arid brat. But one who is sporting leggings of the footless variety and loving it. In the spirit, I’ll be optimistic and say at least I’ve got that going for me.

In which I use the word 'vomit' eight times too many

2006-12-07T11:32:00.000-05:00

“You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.” ~Franklin P. Jones

The first time it happened, I had a boiled egg for breakfast. I knew I didn’t feel well and I told el madre* that I wasn’t well and she told me to get my ass on the bus, but of course didn’t use the word ass for she isn’t a heathen like her daughter. So I got on the bus and someone had hocked the world’s largest loogie on the floor next to me. I took one glance at it and then threw up all over the aisle of the bus. And as we continued to drive a long, it splashed down the aisle accompanied by the screeching of 40 or so elementary aged children. I was promptly brought to Mrs. Ostrander’s office and sent home.

The second time it happened, I was in 8^th grade, approximately six years after the first time. That day I knew for a fact that I was in dire need of gingerale and bucket close to my bed and once again el madre shot me the glary eyed look of death that bore holes into my skull and I suddenly was chipper and went on the bus. And approximately 20 minutes later, threw up all over my clarinet case. Again, it went sloshing down the aisle towards the front. When I got off the bus, Jason Stewart, the boy that I had been in love with for two years, stopped to ask me what’s up and give me a hug and I pushed him away because the puke was dripping off of my clarinet case. I was promptly brought to the Nurse’s office and sent home.

I have a general rule that I do not do well with vomit. Once I see vomit, I will vomit, rinse and repeat. For years though, at the drop of the flu, when it – the vomit - was coming out at an alarming and quick fire pace, I could never figure out why my mother would run and greet me with a look of sheer terror. It was like she couldn’t stand to be around me at that time. And instead of soothing me with her gentleness, she would stare at me horrified as if the devil had taken over and was spewing things out of me and well when my head turned 360 degrees, that was the end. If I recall correctly the great kitchen incident of 2002, when G literally had it coming out of everywhere and instead of calming holding her second born and favorite, she hollered at him to not move one inch lest he wouldn’t die of dehydration but because she stabbed him in the face with the heel of her boot because he dared track vomit throughout her kitchen. That’s love, people.

Like I said, I don’t do well with the puke but always assumed that love conquers all and I could be there and be comforting for a little person who had things that he had eaten like two weeks ago coming out of his mouth. So when my poor sweet baby boy**, threw up all over me and the floor last night and then came out into the living room to come find me because all he wanted to do was be held. I turned and said to him, with wide eyes “Dude! Step away”. While he looked pitiful and sad he had his entire dinner (Yes, yogurt comes out in white chunks) all over him and it was on my pants and then he stepped in it. STEPPED IN IT…and so I possibly yelped some more and told him not to move because I needed to asses the situation and not end up with vomit all over my dry clean only sweater. I am nothing if not a loving person and apparently exactly like my mother.

*I’m going to start referring to her as ‘El Madre’ because it’s nicer than using her first name. Formally, “El Madre all around bad ass and coach lover extraordinaire”. For that title commands respect, yo.
**And by 'my' I mean, not mine really. Though I do love him immensely, he is not my actual child.

I'll take 'Chill the hell out' for $400, Alex

2006-12-06T13:43:00.000-05:00

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.” ~Dale Carnegie

Before the incident with Lauren Narckiwiez wherein she stole my seat on the bus and so I hit her on the head with a poster, I was pretty much an easy going person who wanted to be a people pleaser and have everyone love and adore me, because I was needy. I was desperate to be around people at an alarming rate and because I wanted everyone to like me I had no selection process of who I would let into my life and so it was a giant clusterfuck like free for all. Of that four year period, I enjoyed approximately four months.

Being perfectly content to be alone with a bottle of wine and selections from the Trader Joe’s frozen food aisle and the internet, is not necessarily a bad thing. I leave the house and socialize and then retreat back into my hibernating state for a few days, rinse and repeat. Throw in my aversion for actual conversation unless accompanied by a glass of wine and really I have no business being a full functioning adult and really would be better off alone. Then again that couldn’t possibly work, I can’t spend the next 60 years being a true to form misanthrope, so I practice being a good conversationalist.

While most people need not take Simple Conversation 101, I do. I just find it difficult to convey things sometimes; thoughts, feelings, whatever. Everything that comes out usually makes me seem an inept loser who should be shot or something and 99% of the time anything that I might want to say or convey, needs to be thought about over and over and over again and sprinkled with sincerity so that I don’t come off as a flaming narcissistic bitch. It’s work, to say the least and what it all boils down to, is that I need to get a fucking grip.

It’s not like this is some huge epiphany and a light bulb went off and I had my ‘Aha!’ moment, it’s just that the average person can handle basic conversation without ending up with a noticeable tick and the average person can easily give and receive compliments without yelling or going into dramatic hyperbole and hysterics and/or analyzing every other word. And at some point I’ll be able to go an entire week without the dire need to discuss in detail and ad nauseum the ways in which I am socially awkward. That last bit would be my holiday gift to you.

On the daily

2006-12-05T11:22:00.000-05:00

“Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.” ~Hermann Hesse

In third grade I told my teacher – Mr. Horan – that his pants were ‘tacky’ because I had confused ‘tacky’ with ‘khaki’ and apparently the two are not the same. Which reminds me of the day that he brought in an ultrasound picture of his son (Who I saw recently and I’ve suddenly aged like 14 years, which is probably the reason for the grays.) and I told him that it looked like a seashell, but how I came up with that is beyond me, but I was 7.

There was the time that I called my father a ‘son of a bitch’ in a joking fashion over a bottle of grape soda that he had hidden in the pantry. Though unlike Mr. Horan, el padre didn’t enjoy the words coming out of his 7 or 8 year old daughter’s mouth and decided to remove my lips from my face with his bare hands and since then I haven’t called anyone a son of a bitch.

Sometimes it’s a general spewing of things and even when I really think about what I want to say before actually saying it, I end up catatonic. Thus I rarely like to speak unless I’m fairly sure of what I’m saying before I say it. Which is why I tend to fare better at writing things out than actually speaking, but even then things don’t work very well, though actually it goes both ways given that I find the sound of my own voice akin to the noise that a fork makes when scraped along someone’s front teeth. So I end up sitting in rather durr-like fashion muttering to myself, possibly rocking back and forth and realizing that that didn’t go as well as I hoped.

Really though, I’m actually getting used to it. I plan to have lots of cats to talk to and maybe a dog. They won’t judge.

And on the 7th day, there was mutiny

2006-12-04T11:26:00.000-05:00

“Mother, is that you? Beckoning me into the light? Must... move... toward... the light!” ~ Ozzie*

Sadly, I am writing this practically from the beyond right now, due to an unfortunate incident with a mob scene at Trader Joe’s on a Sunday afternoon.

The typical Sunday afternoon with BMW driving suburbanites, clad in Lily Pulitzer of the great north (Read: Bethesda) with their children and want of free range chicken eggs. Yup, just a normal Sunday afternoon in a crowded grocery store. Everything going smoothly, the lines are flowing, the brie is being swiped through at an alarmingly fast rate and balloons are being doled out to toddlers, who believe that balloons should be eaten and not held, all the while the swiping of the Amex. Just as things should be.

When it’s my turn I’m positively giddy about the mushroom turnovers and the mushroom filled filo dough appetizer thingies and some vitamin water, and the prospect of being the ultimate misanthrope for seven days and an eggnog latte. I’m feeling good and great and fish out my (bright pink) wallet (which I must say, goes with my impossibly small, thereby impractical pink umbrella and my pink Franklin Covey clutch planner), and there is no card. Well there is a card, but that particular card belonged to an account which had exactly - $2.09 in it.

And here’s the part where if I could get red, I’d turn an obscene shade of fire engine red and my cheeks would become flush, because I, Heather B., did the unthinkable. I took out my motherfucking check book. I wasn’t desperate for mushroom turnovers but they had already been rung up and oh my hell, I cast down my eyes and quickly mumbled “Do you take checks?” And the cashier sighed heavily and looked back down the line and there was a woman who decided not to get a basket, therefore was holding all of her worldly organic possessions in her arms, who GLARED at me and then ROLLED HER EYES in the direction of the person standing next to her. Then at me and then the cashier because who the fuck was this chick, who already sticks out like a sore thumb in Bethesda, but then decides to relive 1996 and take out her check book and ask the date (Oh yeah, I asked the date, more like mumbled while the cashier tapped his foot).

So the woman with out the basket, which really, I don’t know why she would do such a thing, because I may not be well versed in normal 2006 etiquette, but she is not well versed in grocery shopping. Anyway, then after she rolled her eyes at me, she turned to the woman next to her with the baby. It was a nudge, which she then passed along to the man behind her. Then she got this look in her eyes. That look that Francisco Franco gave to Manuel Azaña before saying “I’m going to fuck your shit up and take over the country”. That look. Like a rabid dog. And well, everything else was just a blur because the woman without the basket, dropped her gluten free waffles on the ground and ran up behind me and choked the hell out of me for using my check book, while the woman with the baby beat me senselessly with a bag of soy chips. And judging by this bruise on my head, someone threw a jar of pumpkin butter at my head.

Anyway, now I have a headache and a strange ringing in my ears. I strongly believe that this was the sign of karma getting back at me for ridiculing Peg every time she took out (and still does take out) her check book and instead of protecting her from the mob, I also gave her the glary glare of death. Because really, people, this is why God invented plastic.

*This quote brought to you by excessive watching of Over the Hedge.

Pain

2006-12-01T10:23:00.000-05:00

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily. "So it is." "And freezing." "Is it?" "Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately." ~A.A. Milne*

While wandering around drunk** and loving everyone within a 10 foot radius last night, I had hopes of relaying said love and how I want to emulate other’s genuinely nice behavior as well, oh and that VK and I actually don’t despise one another. Then this morning I realized that the only way to successfully keep the room from spinning was by laying on my right side with my shoulder blades pinched together, right arm under my pillow, left hand pressing against the middle of my forehead. And my uterus and I need to have an armistice in order to peacefully coexist together for the next 30 or so years. Then for some reason my eyes were puffy as if I’d cried myself to sleep (which I did not) and my sides hurt and I have a rogue curl at the front of my head and it’s 79 degrees right now and humid which is quite reminiscent of Orlando in July. And my throat hurts and I’ve been sneezing and I’m in dire need of a blue bulb snot sucker.

Given these things I still smiled at the barista in starbucks for my lovely eggnog latte and cheerfully gave Melanie the bathroom this morning even though I was running late and really didn’t mind that a Prius splashed my already wrinkled pants, because it’s true that sometimes just being nice takes considerably less effort than writing a book called 99 Pointy Things to Stab Annoying People With (that’s a working title). You know?

*I love that quote.

**Guess which hands are mine...

More importantly*

2006-11-30T09:43:00.000-05:00

“Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” ~Voltaire

Some might see it as some sort of sadomasochist tendency to put myself through a crazy ass hell of driving for seven hours and thusly subsisting on Cinnabon and filet-o-fish and having to merge along with people who find pumping their own gas to be odd (Hello New Jersey!). I do it because on the return trip home I am guaranteed a stop at what might possibly be the happiest place on earth. Woodbury Commons - which I should probably be a spokeswoman for, given the enthusiasm that exudes when saying the words FENDI! OUTLET! – is a shopping Mecca. If I died tomorrow, I’d possibly want my ashes spread somewhere between the Kate Spade outlet and JCrew. Actually if I died tomorrow I’d maybe want my ashes spread around a Trader Joe’s, not that I’ve given this any thought. But I digress.

So, I have fat calves. Calves that are larger than Peg’s, which I know because I tried on her boot collection and none of her boots fit over my fat calves and I have a mother whose boot collection might rival Oprah’s. Thusly I wanted black mid-calf boots to go with my new winter white skirt. And you are kidding yourself if you’re thinking that I should already own a pair of black boots. Which I do, but obviously, semi ankle boots do not look cute with a knee length skirt, but mid-calf would be perfect. Everyone knows this. Henceforth a trip to the commons for boots and a sweater or two and I missed out on the last Kate Spade sample sale, so I should probably hook myself up there and really I do not have much more money than the guy who works the drive thru at Starbucks, so I’m not sure what I was thinking with my grandeur dreams of looking mighty hot and ski bunny like for the winter, but whatever.

Anyway, the words 40% off at Banana Republic, is kind of what led me to wake at 5:30 AM so that I could be to the outlets when they opened at 8AM and then stand outside in the cold that is upstate NY and then gallop into the store to whisper sweet nothings to an incredibly soft black turtleneck. There may have been caressing, but that’s neither here nor there. Because when it comes to caressing, the thing that honestly got me off (How very Vincent Libretti of me) was the pink cashmere sweater at JCrew that was something like $13.50 with a free stock option. Then the boots, the perfect boots, from Nine West that were approximately $12.47 and then they threw in free shoe shine because the people at Nine West are so very giving and into the spirit and then it was time to go home.

The problem that has arisen it that I have such lovely clothing in my closets now, particularly the boots with a cute (wool) black skirt and the pink cashmere sweater are making me tremble. Alas, I once made the mistake of wearing cashmere in 70 degree weather because I don’t know where my head was at and all because it was fucking October and I expected cold. And as you can imagine it is now the final day in November and 70 degrees therefore I am not sporting any incredibly soft cashmere and this is what is bothering me more than anything in the world. Because I am nothing if not hot in pink cashmere and when I finally get around to being able to wear it in like February, you will be the first to know.

And apropos of absolutely nothing else save for the fact that I will be babysitting for the rest of my natural life (you know, before the spreading of the ashes all over an outlet mall); I spent an hour last night saying “Noah, where’s Heather?” so that he would at least point to me and acknowledge my existence. Instead, my dear shmoop, proved that he is considerably more intelligent than I already suspected and he has perfected the quintessential “Are you fucking kidding me?” look and then went back to playing with a sock. That’s my boy.

*I’m the worst hiatus taker ever in life. I am also nothing if not dedicated. I’m a lot of things though, but apparently never enough.

So not in the spirit

2006-11-29T14:53:00.000-05:00

“The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.” ~Jacqueline Schiff

Warning: I’m about to be Debbie Downer and annoying. Also am about to turn off comments and hopefully this will end my three month stint of being sullen and full of rage.

So umm, yeah…I’ll be back in a few. Possibly tomorrow or possibly a day when I can go without thinking of how positively incensed and hurt I am. Also because other than that my only thoughts revolve around why it’s 70 degrees outside on this the 29^th day of November. And why exactly people are playing walking in a winter wonderland like it’s going to snow sometime soon. Really?? Must you do that? With the sun out and the perfect golfing weather?

Anyway, upon my return I’ll be happy*. Or at least I’ll be considerably better at pretending to be in a good mood.

But this here makes me pretty fucking happy...

Pity party for one

2006-11-28T14:57:00.000-05:00

“I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.” ~Joe Walsh

So there was supposed to be a well written post about my progress and how I enjoyed polenta lasagna with fresh pesto and half a bottle of wine and my roommate and I were brought together by the phrase “Fendi outlet” which I’m sure would bring any two people with a sense of bargain shopping together. Alas, there will not be because I just found out that I will not be enjoying Las Vegas with my brothers and my father.

But since I must take a vacation that’s not to Martha’s Vineyard, which while lovely, gets a little old, and every year I (and by ‘every year’ I mean ‘last year when I finally had to start paying for and actually planning my own vacations and realized that I didn’t have $9,000 to frolic around Europe again. And well, I’ll be damned’) I say that I’m going to go somewhere and yet I do not. I go to Martha’s Vineyard and indulged on fried clams and sit on my ass and eat pie. (Of course I’m exaggerating slightly because if I remember correctly in 2003 I went to Rome/Naples/Sorrento/Pompei and in 2004 I went to Madrid/Mallorca/Portugal/Morocco/Amsterdam and in 2005 I didn’t go anywhere because I’m lazy. Minor detail.)

I would like to go somewhere in either March or April. That requires a passport. I’m fluent in Spanish. I could go alone** without being shot or something (though even that is probably not going to happen, but definitely could go alone) and I’ve already been to Spain, Italy, Morocco, The Netherlands, Mexico, Jamaica, Portugal, and if you suggest Canada, I’ll hit you. Hard.

OR!

I could suck it up and just go out to Las Vegas a few days early and then meet my brothers and father there and then fly back earlier than they would. But that would require maturity. Which is something we all know that I am genuinely incapable of. So instead, I wine.

The end.

*Lord, I hope you all (sorry, ‘ya’ll’) aren’t taking me seriously. Because this is such trite shit to complain about and do not pity me. Instead offer suggestions of where to go, because now I’m flailing.

** I should also mention that I want to go away alone, not because I have to, but because I’m a misanthrope like that.

Lady of Leisure (Read: Sloth)

2006-11-27T20:24:00.000-05:00

“I like the word "indolence." It makes my laziness seem classy.” ~Bern Williams*

Between November 3rd 2004 and January 14th 2004, I lived as a Lady of Leisure. I did nothing except for golf and go out for lunch, occasionally having an actual class to go to. Between January and May, I studied abroad in Spain, which is code for I went on a bender through Europe including a puke fest on my host mother’s toilet after a night of champagne and vodka/red bulls at some posh Madrid club. There was also sangria. When I returned home I did the unthinkable; I baked. Cookies, muffins and a cake and then drank the nights away over a bottle of the Yellowtail while I pined away about not having a job and how I would actually die if I didn’t find a job and health insurance for the inevitable alcohol poisoning.

I’m adept at doing nothing. Really fucking good at it. Right up there with playing the clarinet and listing the members of the 108th Congress in alphabetical order, I can totally sit around and do nothing. It’s my thing. In fact I spent four! Whole! Days! Doing nothing except for eating pie and the occasional filet – of – fish**. In fact when I finally ventured over to see my father, you know that man who is responsible for one half of my GNA, largely the half that says drink the bottle of wine, but also says why the hell can’t you hit par? Whyyyyy. Yeah, well him. When I finally did see him he questioned what I had been doing all day. I responded truthfully that I had been eating blueberry pie and then rolled over on to my back and watched Bamboozled (I told you G was channeling Marcus Garvey) and then actually had a physical altercation (I called him a fucking fucktard and kicked him) with G over the last piece of stuffing (G, being the more mature younger sibling that he is, then offered up his piece of stuffing after asking whether or not I minded a little Frank’s red hot on it. Love him). Thus the reason for why I couldn’t visit my dear old dad. I suck.

And strangely enough, being home in Upstate NY is the best environment for a life where the only necessities are cable television, a dvd player and a mother who makes sure that her babies are properly nourished with stuff crust pizza. There was nothing I had to do. In theory though, being particularly indolent and gluttonous isn’t a good quality to have. Neither is telling your father that you would have come over had your television watching habits been conducive to watching Luke and Laura’s first episode together. But whatever. The point is that right now, LB is enjoying a life of leisure. I phoned her and she’s been busy in Brussels and Paris and is now home and eating chips and she baked a motherfucking pumpkin pie.

Really, you should clearly ignore me now for it’s all the jealousy speaking. And because I could totally use more pie. And cable. And quality time with my golf clubs. And a life.

*Yep I’ve used this quote like 14 times now. I love it.
**I’m paying for this now. It’s called a waistline and it is not clearly visible.

You must not know

2006-11-26T18:57:00.000-05:00

“Oh baby you ever seen Saturn
No, not the car but everywhere we are
You sure to see stars” – Jay Z

I spent several hundred miles doing the impossible; actually it was an experiment of sorts to see whether or not I’d toss myself off the Delaware Memorial Bridge after listening to B’day six times in a row. And you will be happy to know that listening to Beyonce for 8-ish hours won’t actually force your brains out of your ears, though you’ll begin to feel the opening bass of Jay-Z’s voice in your eyeballs after the fifth or so time. No other adverse affects though, save for the fact that I’ve been telling people to the left, to the left, everything you own in a box to the left. It was somewhere between hours seven and eight though when I started doing my own choreography to Ring the Alarm so I decided to stop and think nice thoughts about the people in New Jersey who can’t fucking drive. Seriously, every time I give them the benefit of the doubt and think that this time they’ll drive like normal people who can pump their own damn gas, and yet every damn time, they cannot. Merging, people, isn’t really all that difficult and doesn’t require much brain power though maybe I’m mistaken.

Now, when I say I’m from Upstate NY, I mean UPSTATE. Like with deer and bunnies in the backyard and cows down the street and a vast collection of Birkenstock footwear for all of your crunchy granola needs. And in Upstate NY, we don’t really do the wireless, we do the DSL and we do it well. Thus every attempt to I dunno make my bloglines not look like something threw up all over it (now I’m afraid to check) was met with a warning and lots of words and jibberish about checking my internet connection and then I ate more stuffing and watched Little People, Big World. Rinse and repeat.

There are stories of course, about how I’ve aged gracefully and how a woman with a hot ass boot collection managed to give birth to a girl who believes that Reefs should be worn year round and a brother – the Prodigal Son – who has been channeling Marcus Garvey, why I don’t have a bed (haven’t for three months now), why I don’t have a new laptop, why I’ll be taking two consecutive trips to Alabama (I already feel real blessed with a hankering for some grits to boot) and well…dwarfism.

My bedroom looks like Hiroshima after the atom bomb and I have new boots and winter white skirt to frolic around in. But really I’m in a semi OK mood and I managed not to kill anyone on the Beltway (from the Latin for ‘parking lot’) mostly because the Whisper Song was on during those last few crucial moments and nothing says it’s the Lord’s day like a song with the lyrics “walk around the club with your thong in your mouth”. Really.

I hope you all had equally thrilling Thanksgivings and I plan to be in a semi good mood until December 26th (ish).

*So as you see, Abigail; Socially Awkward Barbie™ is still alive and kicking.
**Also, While away, I missed you all so much. Tears. Really. Must now spend the remainder of my natural life catching up on your lives.

Exhibiting social graces

2006-11-21T10:04:00.000-05:00

“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.” ~Samuel Johnson

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a coworker who had recently started asking whether or not I was the Heather who wrote this blog called No Pasa Nada, because she had been reading it for about a year and it cracked her up. After I picked myself off the floor and stopped hyperventilating, I replied that yes that was me and that we would never speak of this again, and umm please love me? Even though for roughly 40 hours a week, I’m really not funny and actually at my most socially awkward, pleeaaaaase love me? K?

And ever since that moment, every time I see this person, I die a little inside trying to be funny and graceful and totally not making awkward jokes in the elevator that aren’t even funny. And then I smile and want to punch myself in the face with all the social awkwardness. In fact I’m pretty sure that I had a conversation that went something like “My this soda is so fizzy. Why is it so fizzy? Heh, ha, ha”. And now you want to punch me in the face as well, non?

It’s my personal resolution to myself to get a fucking grip and not be Socially Awkward Barbie™. To add further insult to injury (though writing this will hopefully alleviate the situation) I’ve totally become That girl, you know, THAT girl. Her. That girl who acts like a girl and cannot make it stop besides years of therapy and four years of university and vast knowledge of John Locke and Erasmus, I am still that girl. That girl who – gasp – can’t get a fucking grip and starts doing things and acting like a fucking psychotic idiot with a little irrational behavior on the side.

I’m driving to upstate in a few hours, where I will exhibit the aforementioned traits and more! I’m a tool. But please be my friend. Please? And send wine and fries. And if there is one thing to be thankful for, it’s that you aren’t me.

Edit to Add: Here’s a little view behind the curtain; I wrote this yesterday and was thinking about it this morning in the shower (feel free to stop and think about that then shudder). Then realized that this weekend I attended a friend’s birthday party and was totally not socially awkward, but instead nice and polite and normal and I HUGGED and laughed and consumed five (weak ass) vodka tonics. So maybe I’m not that bad and doomed to a life alone.

With sadness

2006-11-20T09:32:00.000-05:00

“Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.” ~C.P. Snow, New York Times, 15 March 1971

After five years, including a terrorist attack, a sniper, and general neglect, and that time that I broke the latch while highly inebriated, my laptop, a 2001 Sony Vaio, has succumbed after a long battle with my bullshit rants and the occasional virus and hard drive replacement. Our last moments together were while chatting with my pal and attempting to do a blogger verification. At which point I wanted to kill the fuckers who thought of word verification.

In lieu of flowers, I just request that you all treat your computers and hard drives with lots of love and respect.

I’m both highly devastated, as this is the computer I’ve had for five years. Since freshman year of college. But also a little giddy that I could go to bed and watch movies and clean my room without having to write anything or read a blog. People, I went to bed last night at 10:15!!! It was lovely.

Anyway, it’s time for me to make the switch and to get to know Steve Jobs a little better. So I write this not with sadness, but happiness that I now have an excuse to spend a ridiculous amount of money on a piece of metal. Though know that after depleting my savings account, I will be treating my new laptop with respect, love and tenderness.

Any suggestions for a name for my new baby? (Expected due date November 22, 2006)

It goes like this

2006-11-17T13:52:00.000-05:00

“New! Improved! Instant asshole... just add alcohol!” ~Author Unknown

Let me preface this by saying that this is what my inevitable dotage will be like save for the fact that I will most likely be entirely sober throughout the entire thing, which will manifest itself into super psycho HB v. 2.89. Actually I strongly suggest that you have a drink in hand and/or be seated while reading this. Also, try not to want to smack me in the head.

8:48 PM Arrive home after a trip to UStreet for hair product and the gym and Potbelly. Question how I ended up in Anacostia for 7 minutes. Also patting self on back for getting to the wine store minutes before it closes, for a bottle of Vila Malbec. (This will be crucial to the rest of the timeline)

9:00 PM Tear open wine. Begin watching Grey’s. Blind spots, eh? Interesting. McSteamy, yes, I will pick up your dry cleaning. Let’s have babies, yes?

9:30 PM Drinking wine, blah blah blah. George’s dad, blah blah blah.

9:31 PM Bored. Laptop.

9:32 PM Thinking I love my laptop. My shmoopie, baby cakes laptop that has been with me through thick and thin for the past five years and two months. Awwww. Lovey dovey kins doodlebop.

9:33 PM Hear noise coming from the foyer. Presume that it is the roommate coming in. My non drinking roommate who probably thinks that I am a lush, which, ummm yes. After hearing said noise, get up because usually she calls out and says hello. Am being burgarlarized. Contemplate last will. Run over with my wine glass (thinking: Malbec to the eye, will blind the fucker). And lo, it is my roommates boyfriend who calmly says ‘hey’. Like it’s totally fucking normal to be standing in the foyer like a robber.

9:34 PM WIIIIIIIIIINE.

9:35 PM Laptop status: flickering. Hmmm. Possible seizure? No. Possible flicker due to half of a bottle of wine consumption? Perhaps.

9:36 PM – 9:38 PM Restart laptop continuously. My precious baby couldn’t be dying on me.

9:39 PM Peg calls. Through tears, I say something unintelligible about broken laptop, broke HB. Drunkeness. (All a blur now) Recall that she says something smart about purchasing new Mac book now, as opposed to later, and she’d give me the money now for it. But cannot possibly listen. Too busy throwing temper tantrum to think clearly.

9:40 PM Frantically IMing my pal more non-sensical things about my laptop slowly killing itself. Needs CPR. Tracheotomy, emergency c-section and some sutures. All the while, the laptop keeps with the flickering!

9:45 PM Marlboro (oh shut it, dead laptop! You’d want drugs too)

9:55 PM Lament on how un-cathartic Grey’s has become. It used to be that I’d sit alone on Sunday nights afterwards and cry my eyes out because my god! Meredith was so right, even though she needed a filet-o-fish. Now, I’m all “blind spots? Judgement? Not knowing your child’s blood type? Wha?”

10:00 - 10:30 PM Barbara Walters. I would also enjoy interviewing George Clooney, as well as be interested in humping his leg and general licking.

10:35 PM MORE WINE!

10:40 PM More frantic IMing to the pal. Rampant use of emoticons to convey the dire need for help because woe! Pray over laptop (seriously) and demand its cooperation. But it’s too stubborn and I’m too ummm…drunk.

10:45 PM Admire reflection in mirror. Purple teeth and bad skin. Question why on God’s green earth, I could still be single. Whimper.

10:50 PM Fall face first onto my bed.

5:20 AM Alarm goes off (for the gym of course). Awake and question massive hangover. Possibly whimper. Possibly sleep until 8:00 AM.

And scene.

If I never, ever get married, I’ll look back through my archives, find this post and realize why, I never found the right man. Because I’m drunk all of the time and alone and rambling around my house with a broken laptop, yelling at it to please work. Also, I think I might have to wave the white flag and surrender to the NaBloPoMo.

Tears.

Le chat noir

2006-11-16T17:28:00.000-05:00

*This post brought to you by the letter ‘O’ for ‘Oh my hell I need some wine and perhaps a lobotomy’

“There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.” ~Andre Gide

My neighbor has a black outdoor cat. Thusly, every evening it crosses my path on my way home from work and I inadvertently am taken aback. It’s my ever present superstition that makes me do it. That fears that if a black cat crosses my path, then inevitably something bad will happen. And though I try to talk myself out of it, I cannot feel anything but that.

One night it followed me to my car and last night it stared at me while I sat outside. I couldn’t help but think of the bad luck that might come off of it: Like its glare would lead to years of bad luck and that all of the things that I wanted would be thrown to the wayside due to interaction with a black cat.

Though I doubt anything bad that occurs today or better yet, as of late, is permanent. Much of it is self – inflicted bad things and fear of being jinxed, I know that it most likely will not last forever. But there’s that inexorable nagging and the fact that at this very moment in time, it is all so very important to me. All of the things that I want that I fret over, are all very important even though in the grand scheme of things, they are not. Nevertheless and much to my chagrin, there will always be something stopping me not necessarily a black cat or some other superstition, but something – anything – that will cause me to think that I won’t get something. And that fear – a fear of something that I’ve miraculously conjured up based on no concrete evidence – is the worst feeling of all.

Olives*

2006-11-15T17:40:00.000-05:00

“Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.” ~Voltaire

I went through a white wine phase during which I consumed copious amounts of Pinot Grigio on the daily coupled with grilled cheese or a hearty meal from Steak N’ Egg. When I learned that a glass of red wine is good for the heart, I started in on the Yellowtail Shiraz and haven’t looked back since. I have a Wine for Dummies book and keep lists of the Argentinean Malbecs and the South African Syrah, but you are sorely mistaken for thinking that I should give up my day job to pursue life as a Sommelier. All of this means that I drink red wine with everything, including Yellowfin Tuna which totally deserves a white, and I know better and look classy (sorry ‘Klassy’) when ordering Cabernet Sauvignon with my very light fish. And well, it pretty much goes down hill from there. Hell, I think that a fillet of fish from the good ol’ golden arches is a treat and will gladly talk about how well the flavor of the cheese plays off the tang of the tartar sauce. You’re drooling, I’m sure.

Last week, I went to Olives for the first time. The second I put my fork into the Falling Chocolate Cake and the fudge oozed out into a pool quite near to the raspberry coulie as the vanilla ice cream melted on top and it was all a swirl of chocolatey goodness and I died; well I wanted to write about going to Olives. But then I had the sad, sad realization that writing “The chocolate was everywhere and despite the mix of red wine and the olive and goat cheese pasta, I totally didn’t puke on the table” wasn’t exactly a quality food review. In fact, I’m probably the lamest foodie ever, what with the red wine with fish combo and all, and thus decided that Jason is far better at it than I’ll ever be; for this is a man, who beyond all of his other awesomeness, has a favorite gnocchi and knows about the different ‘notes’ in wine, whereas I only know that the gnocchi from Trader Joe’s* tastes like pure ass and that last night the two buck Chuck, gave me a tummy ache. And that my friends, is about as good as it gets. Henceforth, my dreams of writing about the deliciousness and the way the Butternut Squash Tortelli melted in my mouth (despite the tad undercooked dough), were dashed towards the wind. Though seriously people, the secret is that there are finely ground amaretto cookies mixed into the squash that gives it that melty sweet I-will-die-right-now taste.

A smart woman would stop there with full knowledge that she will never compare and Food and Wine will not be calling anytime soon and well Top Chef? Out of the picture. In my next life though, I’ll be Oprah and someone else can make and execute the perfect meal with the perfectly paired wine and know what goes with what. While I sit on my ass and relish in the glory that is a perfect four course meal that involves expert pasta making, some sort of cheesecake, and anything that involves gruyere.

*Umm yeah, food blogging? Not so much
**Oh wait, later this week a special on what HB should make for Thanksgiving that doesn't involve, shirataki noodles, edamame, guacamole and veggie burgers.

And now is a good time to be concerned

2006-11-14T22:55:00.000-05:00

"Know thyself?" If I knew myself, I'd run away.” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The other afternoon, after a perfectly acceptable morning of grunts and sighs and the occasional toppling tower, Amy, Noah and I ventured to Chipotle. And while in line, Amy and I were conversing about the shittiness that is cancer when a woman behind us caught our attention and began conversing with us, while completely polite. What was said is beyond the point, nothing insulting, just friendly discussion pertaining to what we had been talking about. The problem is that had I been a normal person with acceptable conversational skills and had not been raised by (apparent) heathens, then I would have spoken back. Or at least done something a little bit more intelligent than nod and smile and say “Oh wow”, then intensely stare at the burrito makers (FYI, they really do make the guacamole right there). But I’m not a normal, intelligent person who is able to hold a conversation. Amy, on the other hand is, while I couldn’t get away fast enough. It was all very awkward, not on the part of anyone else of course, but because I cannot hold a conversation with strangers. And even if one is not a stranger, well that can get a little confusing (and, I’m wincing right now) and well more awkwardness and bring on the vino!

Apparently I bleed gauche behavior which people are soon going to see as rude and then I’ll have to you know, talk back and use coherent sentences and I won’t be able to die a little inside every time I’m poised with a question or idle chatter. It seems that I cannot handle speaking (to those I do not know well) without great trepidation. Which is a little sad and weird, I might very well say because what kind of people brought up a child who cannot answer a question such as “Would you like fries with that?” without hemming and hawing? Who are these people who raised a daughter who gets tongue tied so very easily and well this whole going into politics thing might not work out if I can’t answer ‘yes’.

I’ve learned to do the whole nod and smile thing pretty easily and I can do whatever you damn well ask me to do (and more!) with a drink in hand. The latter, I think needs to be worked on given that some people might like to speak to me while sober because it’s noon. Though I am a firm believer that at noon, it’s happy hour somewhere, but I suppose that some do not see that as a valid excuse. But I have been getting better. There was an evening where I was thrown into the mix of many, many millionaires and I held my own and drank San Pellegrino, silently. I only spoke when spoken too and it appears that I can say both my first and last name, while shaking with my right hand and holding a drink (water!) with my left. Alas, a miracle.

Though lately I’ve just been thrown into these really awkward conversations where I don’t know what to say and my whole nod and smile deal is the only thing that will get me through. Then I pray silently for it to end and all of my 45 minute conversations are actually only 27 seconds. Really there must be a name for it? Fear of speaking to strangers? I dunno.

Come to think of it, I highly doubt that its roots are genetic. I wasn’t raised by heathens, but instead by those annoying people who feel the need to strike up conversation while waiting in line at the bank. Which begs the question as to whether or nor procreating helps one gain the ability to commiserate and speak with strangers with ease. Something to ponder I suppose or maybe I’m just prone to awkward behavior and conversation. But it’s always one extreme or the other; either I’m too shy to talk and stand at the same time without going into hysterics and/or a blank stare, mouth open (horrific) or I get so comfortable with people that I’m prone to licking (possibly unsanitary, and yet The Swiss* is mighty tasty):

And somewhere in there, is a happy medium.

*Have a very Happy 33rd year, my dear. You deserve it.

1988

2006-11-13T19:49:00.000-05:00

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." ~Lesley P. Hartley

A few of you* enjoy teasing me because of my age and because I missed all of the 80's. It's not that I wasn't alive, it's that I don't remember much of it, my earliest memory being the day before my first day of kindergarten in September of 1988. Let's just say that I did make the occasional fashion faux pas in the 80's, but at least I didn't have a choice in the matter. I was forced to dress that way. I didn't voluntarily sport Wranglers, or big hair, or puffy sleeves**. Someone, made me do this, and since Peg isn't one that you'd eagerly want to fuck with, it seemed to be in my best interest to just listen. Which is how one ends up looking like this:

Though I must say it's not that bad. As I just sat behind a little girl on the way back from Atlanta, with a shirt that said on the back "Daddy's little redneck" complete with a picture of a confederate cap with a confederate flag. Apparently it takes some people a little time to get over the loss of the Civil War.

It's so nice to be home.

*Don't make me name names.

**Seriously, don't make me do it, you know who you are.

Fine

2006-11-12T02:03:00.000-05:00

“How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling.” ~Claude Debussy

I always think that I’m onto something brand spanking new when I divulge another (innocuous, or not) tidbit about myself. Like the other day I told Pal that I could be obsessive, as if no one would ever guess that I, of all people, obsess about things endlessly. To which he replied that it was cute that I thought that it was a secret. Have I mentioned the internet searches that go into every little thing that I do? No? Well, there’s internet searches and web MD, because I’m like 99% sure that I have ADD or something.

So, for days, nay weeks, I’ve been saying “Oh yeah, I’m fine” to everything. How’s the weather, HB? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. It’s like my Pavlovian reaction to any question even if it has nothing to do with me, I’ll say “I’m fine”. From now on, please call me Narcissus, please and thank you. Everyday, Swiss Kris will ask me how I am and I immediately pop up with an ‘I’m fine’ and a smile. I’m not sure where I read it, for it was fairly recent, but the author questioned what ‘we’ did before emoticons and well, I pray at the alter of emoticons. So I figure that an AIM smiley, totally conveys that I’m so utterly fine and there are butterflies and rainbows and puppies. The end.

But alas not, because Kris called it my bullshit modus operandi. Damn it, I thought I had that hidden, dude she found me out. No one would know that I’m not feeling completely up to par and because I talk to 87% of people via some sort of Instant Messenger service, I figured that no one would be none the wiser if I threw in a little smile. Or a wink face. Yes, a wink face! Nothing says, La dee da, like a wink face, but sometimes I throw in a kiss face for good measure. And maybe we should be concerned that 87% of my conversations occur via IM. We’ll discuss that later.

Where was I? Oh yes, I’m fine. I am fine. Though if one more person comes up to me and says “Well you must have had the best week ever!!!” I might punch them in the jugular. Not stab, because yes, the wink was fucking awesome, how kind of you to notice, so I wouldn’t want anyone dead, but a little injury, because yes, it was superb. Yes, I drank more Moet than I have in years and I smiled. Am I really fine though? Eh, given that only one person knows what is making me so un-fine, then I’m OK, because not everyone and their brother knows how dumb I’ve been. Though I must admit, I’ve been on cruise control through this haze and everyday is weird and I’m a little more quiet and thoughtful and I may have let the tears well up a bit when I thought I left my ID at home Friday night and had to drive all the way back home (1.3 miles thankyouverymuch) to get it and I haven’t been to the gym and my ‘fine-nesss’ ruined what was supposed to be the Best Week Evah.

But yeah, I’m fine. Totally fine. And maybe if I keep saying it, then it will be true.

*I wrote this entire post with a defective ‘K’ key. So every time I wrote like, it came out ‘lie’. And then I’d have to smash the key down (like now) in order to get it to function properly. This is all very aggravating, but I’m still fine.

What you know about that?

2006-11-11T10:33:00.000-05:00

“Our siblings. They resemble us just enough to make all their differences confusing, and no matter what we choose to make of this, we are cast in relation to them our whole lives long.” ~Susan Scarf Merrell

During his rehearsal dinner, Ty wanted to make me a drink. When I’m not drinking barrels of wine, I stick to vodka tonics or vodka red bulls if I’m feeling particularly feisty. There was no tonic, so I requested some vodka sprite. And since we’re ‘klassy’ it was in a red plastic tumbler. And because my brother and I have the same genes (well, at least half) and because he thinks I don’t drink enough, I sat and watched him pour ketel one into my plastic cup, only leaving less than half an inch. As my eyes widened at the thought of all that damn vodka, I hollered at him to stop. He looked at me and with a wink and a smirk, said, “Oh, we’re Barmores, you can handle it”. With that, he topped off my cup of vodka with a smidgen of sprite. I will say that it only burned a little bit and possibly put a little hair on my chest. But at least I now know for certain that I wasn’t adopted.

I’m in ATL, which is a big step for me given my intense fear of all things southern. Where I intend to drink copious amounts of wine with my brother and see one of my best friends from College and visit the Waffle House. In preparation I listened to Lil Wayne and TI, in addition to my usual Johnny Cash and ABBA. Remind me to tell you about the 139 awkward conversations I’ve had over the past 48 hours, how I licked Kris last night that is after being 2 hours late to her party because of the numbness in my face and the cast of Law and Order was on Jeopardy, and how in order to avoid awkward conversation on the MARTA, I whipped out my blackberry and missed my stop then had to endure more awkward conversation with a fare evader (Dude, this guy totally crawled on the ground of a fucking rail station because he couldn’t pay the $1.75 fare and then he proceeded to try to pick me up. Discuss.). On second thought, I might very well be adopted as my brothers are nowhere near as awkward as I, but at least we all share the same love for Ketel One and Amstel.

A very rare occasion

2006-11-10T18:57:00.000-05:00

“Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.” ~Mark Twain

I’m sitting here watching ABC World News tonight, while stressing about figuring out what to write. I’m upset over something that could have been controlled, and I’m thisclose to cutting someone out of my life; which under most circumstances wouldn’t be given a second thought. When suddenly I look up at Charles Gibson doing a special report about an 11 year old Iraqi boy, who found his father’s headless body in the road and now, due to depression and post traumatic stress disorder, is unable to attend school or play with other children.

So while I sit here in woe, because my jaw hurts due to a filling. And the entire right side of my face is numb and I’m tired and I have shit to do and I’m angry at myself…all of that and my usual bullshit complaining, suddenly matters a little less. You know?

AlexanderGrahamBellaphobia

2006-11-09T13:04:00.000-05:00

“I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.” ~Henry Miller

There’s something that I finally feel ok to tell you all. It’s semi serious, but I’ve been pretty good at keeping it hidden. And this is something that goes beyond the fact that I’m really not all that funny in person, but even worse than that: I’m afraid of the phone. Really afraid of the phone. So terrified of it that right now I must type or do something with my hands or I don’t know…deep knee bends…or something, because it’s just really hard. Let’s just say I just had one of the most awkward phone conversations ever (no, seriously) and then had to actually get up from my desk and take a walk. Because OH MY GOD, I had to call a STRANGER.

Oh and another secret: I obsess. Even when things don’t warrant obsessing, I’m obsessing because using the phone is such a big deal and a new fangled thing that I’ve apparently just discovered the proper way in which to use it. Thus an entire two paragraphs devoted to why I can’t handle being a competent person in this world. In fact, you know in The Net how Sandra Bullock did everything from the comfort of her home, including order pizza, and then she finally did leave the house and her world blew the fuck up?? Well that’s going to be me. I’m going to become a recluse and never leave my laptop and never actually talk to anyone on the phone, because apparently, I cannot.

I need to sit and rock a bit and get back to my happy place and remember a time, not that long ago, when I could use the fun and continue to be a functioning member of society. I don’t know what event triggered this panic to using the telephone, but oh my hell, I think it needs to stop.

Ok, all better.

Hurt

2006-11-08T23:08:00.000-05:00

“I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.” ~Jack Handey

It’s not like there is a worse feeling than this, but my god, this feeling right now, fucking hurts. Though I should be happy and frolicking around town, my throat has a huge lump in it and I can’t help but sit here and fight off the tears. It’s like being told your worthless and not good enough, without being told such out loud. It’s implied. It’s tacit and without the explicit words I can feel it. I’ve seen people rub their temples or rub the bridge of their nose when overwhelmed and that’s just a coping mechanism: A nervous reaction to this overwhelming sense of stress, sadness and fear. And now all I am left to think is that I’ve gone from being semi-intelligent to purely idiotic. I feel stupid and that trumps all. In a few weeks or months I’ll look back on this and laugh. I’ll have forgotten all about it, but for now, I just hope I don’t cry and will list all of the bed. I’ll dwell and possibly cry even though I know that this doesn’t deserve the tears. Thankfully I'll also reason and rationalize that despite feeling hurt, I'll be damned if I become a cliche.

God, I'm tired

2006-11-07T22:58:00.000-05:00

Edit to Add: So, on ocassion, I'll get emails from people wanting for me to write for them for actual money. Who knows the validity of them, because I usually read and then laugh; because really, have you read the content here that you think is so great? Like, really read it, not just skimmed. Yeah, do that and then come back to me. I just read what I wrote over the past 48 hours and I sound like a spastic person on crack. Which is kind of close given the amount of candy from the wonderful world of Willy Wonka that I have consumed. In fact I'm pretty unsure of how I'm functioning right now and people that know me in real life will probably question the same and I'll just have to respond with, Bottle Caps, don't underestimate the power of some good old fashion Bottle Caps.

“Life is one long process of getting tired.” ~Samuel Butler

Tired in a way that is totally and incoherently indescribable and would only make sense if you knew me in real life because then you’d pat my head and say “poor baby” while whispering sweet nothings in my ear and feeding me chocolate covered strawberries. And my, whew, it’s getting a little hot in here, no? Apparently some deep rooted fantasies have just come out there.

Anywho, tired, but going strong with the NaBloPoMo because I’m woman hear me roar, but whimpering woman who is so god damn tired and full of Mexican food and random stuff from TJ’s. TJ’s is the devil if you don’t have one near you. I’d link to it, but we don’t want everyone succumbing to the will of the Devil. Unless you want to keep me company in the fiery depths of Hell, well then go for it!

Look! Rambling again. Shutting up now because it’s Election Day. A good Election Day. And please don’t misinterpret my babble for sadness, but instead of joy, but holy motherfucker, I’m tired.

Oh, yes! Per Jes’ suggestion I forgot to mention the Hoagies. HOAGIES. AN AWARD. FOR ME! VOTE (or Die!).* Gah, but I’m not that rude, I do thank you all immensely for nominating me for I have always wanted to be the proud owner of a gold turkey and I do love jelly beans. But seriously, many, many thanks.

Exactly how does one end an incoherent rant about nothing? How about: The End.

*Pimp much? Yup.

Think blue

2006-11-06T22:38:00.000-05:00

PEOPLE, LOOK!

“If worrying were an Olympic sport, you'd get the gold for sure.” ~Stephenie Geist

I came quite close to titling this post “Freaking the Fuck out” but then figured that the fine folks over at BlogHer ads wouldn’t want “Freaking the Fuck out” directly below an advertisement for strollers and how to help busy moms practice good time management skills. But I am. Freaking the fuck out that is, not a busy mom.

You must know that not only do I have a bit of a hyperbolic tendency, thus going to extremes with every situation, but my nerves and anxiety generally manifest themselves in a ridiculous eating habit that would rival that of a marathon runner at the height of training. Which means that I made a foray to Trader Joe’s to pick up essentials such as garlic & chive yogurt dip, pita chips, chocolate covered peanut butter filled pretzels and pretzel thins. Alas, my arrival there was marred by what could only be described as a horrendous clusterfuck due to a 16 wheeler trying to back itself into a parking garage on a street that is, at best, 4 feet wide, thus not giving nearly enough room for the average Washingtonians BMW SUV and yet somehow they make it work and carry on.

That said, I’m now consuming Argentinean Syrah and several wrap shrimp things that were being sampled at Trader Joe’s. And well, half the box is gone. Thankfully I am also a nervous gymmer (I made that word up by the way) and managed to run many miles, which means that the amount of time spent on both the elliptical and treadmill, combined with lifting and a little ab work, will cancel out the fried shrimp and wine and the overwhelming amount of carbs to be consumed tomorrow and my bubble ass, won’t get too much more…well…bubbly.

OY. It’s poised to be a long day*.

*This post brought to you by the fine folks known as our Fore Father's for giving us life, liberty, and the freedom to change things up every once in awhile. Otherwise known as Election Day, yo.

It's a shame that it's come to this: Part 2

2006-11-05T19:52:00.000-05:00

“Suddenly the basic survival needs also include a cell phone, cable TV, and French manicured fingernails....” Charlie Diekatze

Verizon,

I have to take deep breaths before writing this because I’ve been patient with you for years. I’ve tried to be understanding and relax, which says a lot given my propensity to fly off the handle and relinquish any sort of relationship, fairly easily. I’ve been able to look past ridiculously high bills for no apparent reason, the fact that you have dropped calls in Banana Republic, but in the Metro, you’re game. While that’s commendable, in the event of some sort of serious metro emergency, it’s totally unacceptable when I have an actual important question to ask my mother, like whether or not to get black pants or Heather grey pants, and I cannot, because I don’t have any service. All of which is strange, because I’m pretty sure that there should be a whole slew of people lead by a nerdy, skinny white man, helping me out 24/7, and yet I do not feel the love. Where is my skinny, nerdy, white man? Huh? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

(deep breaths)

As you see, I was ok with that and understood and things were fine and generally I like to remain drama free with you, but there is one thing that pushes me over the edge and frankly makes me want to kick some nerdy, skinny, XY chromosome ass. And that, my dear wireless company, is when I try to figure out how one of your people, “accidentally” put someone else’s phone on my account, thus removing my free upgrade as well as seriously fucking up my service for 4 days. How is that possible? And what did you think was going to happen when you had the same phone number for two different people? Yeah, you idiots fixed it and yeah I still have my upgrade, but I was without service for four days! A fuck up, which required two trips to your damn store, where I was met with a trainee, named Jeronimo, who couldn’t understand why I would be so irate that a Nokia magically showed up on my account.

But I did keep my cool during my transaction and while I was thisclose to placing my foot up someone’s nose, I was able to not yell or threaten violence. But believe you me, I’m pissed. And I’m switching to T-Mobile, if you don’t shape up.

You never stop working for me, my ass,

HB

It's a shame that it's come to this: Part 1

2006-11-04T11:13:00.000-05:00

“We're smart, we're witty, and we've got asses that rock!” – Mary Cherry

Dear Netflix,

I think things have gotten a little out of hand recently. I mean at first you were a fantastic idea. Do you remember our first weekend together? It was love at first sight the way you dropped American Psycho right on my lap and well, it was because of you that I discovered my deep love for Lloyd Dobbler. Since then, we’ve become close, almost too close some might say. There are weekends when I will not leave my house until 6 PM (and even that’s a stretch) because I just got new movies and I can’t possibly leave three unopened discs of Entourage, in all it’s Ari Gold goodness, just to sit there. But now I there are something like 500 movies in my queue and I’m unable to add anything new, which is infuriating, because I’ll forget that I wanted to add An Affair to Remember and this drives me mad.

The real reason for why I’m writing is because of recent difficulties I’ve been having with the first season of Popular. I loved this show and I talk about it to this day. And because my love of the deliciously evil Nicole Julian trumps my love for you, I’m about 2.8 seconds away from flipping the hell out. Because OH. MY. GOD. Who do I have to sleep with to get a DVD that works properly and doesn’t turn the screen all green and scary and make Leslie Bibb, look like she has 14 faces and a blue streak running through her chest? Huh?

I don’t want to break up with you. I really, really don’t. But we can’t have this. I fear that it might happen – a sudden freeze – during a crucial moment. I mean, there was the Tyler Durden incident, during which I had to throw something at the television and almost started crying. And we really shouldn’t have to repeat that, now should we?

I’m not in the business of entering abusive relationships and this relationship is on a slippery slope to doom. I fully expect for my DVDs to arrive unharmed later today or else prepare for anger of apocalyptic proportions. Ok, cupcake?

HB