DC Katastrophe

Oh Hai

2008-10-13T14:42:00.002-04:00

Looky here.

A blog!

He ate her food.

2008-05-04T21:32:00.010-04:00

Ladies and dues with boyfriends who do not co-habitate, does this sound familiar to you?

You have made dinner. With minimal help from a boy, who's flopped on the couch catching up on whatever brand of Law & Order is on. Generally, he's stretched out as far as he can be on the sofa, a hand is on the belly and shoes are off. If he helped cook noodles, have a gold star handy, you'll need it.

This is fine. You like cooking. It's relaxing. You also know you are a better cook than your boyfriend, purely because of the training your mother gave you. Maybe because she liked it, or maybe because she was used to it.

You eat the delicious fruits of your labor: sometimes something that braised for 3 hours on the stove, sometimes something that popped fresh from the toaster oven onto a plate.

And yet you get stuck with the dishes.

Perhaps you, like me, inhabit that gray area-- where this is my house, and this isn't his house. I can't expect him to be as interested as dusting as I am, but on the other hand he spends a lot of time here. I'd like to not feel like he may start expecting turn-down service when he is around. I'm not wearing an apron, after all. Not even with a touch of irony.

A friend of mine has perhaps, the most illustrious experience.

Mine is known as the "get me water" fight. I'm sure you can see where that went. Let's just make it fair to say I was not headed for the kitchen.

My friend? Her boyfriend ate her food.

Hurriedly preparing for a fun night out, she had nuked a turkey burger to inhale before a few drinks with friends. This friend of mine has effortless composure, even after a few whiskeys. She's bad-ass. It must be the burgers! Her boyfriend arrived as it was freshly plated.

She turned around after greeting him, and found him mid-bite. In her dinner. In their rush. Because he was hungry. So hungry, in fact, that he didn't have the time to ask if he could forage for a snack. He just saw food on the table, and assumed he had full access to it.

This fight generally happens in the gray area of "we have been dating for a while and you are around, but you aren't living here, so you are a guest (?)". And guests get glasses of water handed to them when they ask. And plates of food set out are often for them.

But this dude isn't a guest, he's a part of your life. And when a part of your life puts you into a box without consideration, but in part because you let him-- the line of politeness and caring constantly shifts. You want to do nice things for him, but you don't want to be walked all over. Likewise, he gets used to being too comfortable in his divet in the couch and then when you pitch a fit, he's surprised. He had no idea, that in that moment, of his hands on his belly, or wrapped around your dinner, that he is not a guest. Nor are you the harried hostess who has a dinner party 3 - 4 nights a week with no dishwasher. And a monthly grocery bill that is triple his.

People aren't moving from their parents' house right onto marriage. People don't blindly accept that because I'm a lady I take care of the inside of the house, and a boy would take care of the outside. Because I rent an apartment, and I call shenanigans on whomever takes care of our front lawn (man or woman) because it needs HELP.

I'm already a multi-tasker, and I don't have children! I can put laundry in, clean the bathroom, update my Facebook profile, and make dinner all at once. FOR ME. FOR MY HOUSEHOLD OF ONE. I've lived alone for well over a year and I like things how I like them.

This brings me to the other issue: living alone has made me particular. Also my genes, but that was sort of undeniable anyway. I used to not get it when I "did the dishes wrong" as a child, but now I totally see it as clear as day. You're a fool to wash the pots first, and there's no argument you can make to change my mind. And that's an uphill battle with my own neuroses that I battle every day. The reality of it is that I can't imagine sharing an apartment, chores or DVR space with a boy. There's barely enough room for all the Top Model reruns and hit movies of the 90's in mine.

But that's what a relationship is: choosing your battles. Building a partnership requires give and take, but if both of you are carrying your relationship around in tandem, and one of you is constantly the one walking backwards, you start to resent his view of the future. Of course it looks awesome.

Because all you see is a trail of socks and shoes from your front door. And a collection of dirty glasses on the coffee table in your dishwasher-less apartment. But he sees a great gig with a girl who's funny but sometimes inexplicably furious. Suddenly, the boy who once "broke all the rules of dating" to take you out two nights in a row is completely unable to stand up and hydrate himself. Or if you're my friend, the boy who whispered sweet nothings in your ear in a language you don't speak had blatant disregard your schedule, and above all, your hunger.

So how do you fix them? How do you undo years of their mommies mommy-ing them and then even the years of your desire to be nice to them and do it the only nurturing way you know how? More mommy-ing? Greater interest in sports? More beer chugging like one of the guys? How can you show your appreciation without sacrificing your self respect so that when it comes to making big decisions you don't let your resentment speak for your heart?

Because hearts generally are better leaders, and often lead you to the good sense to have a dishwasher. And boys, take note-- they are necessary.

Going hard

2008-04-07T23:01:00.004-04:00

I like to pretend I'm a bad ass. See my blogger profile photo. Ooohhh tie and vest and short hair. SEE HER REBEL. BOY DOES SHE HAVE SOMETHING TO PROVE. I have a motorcycle jacket. Chuck Taylors. A belt chain. A wide array of footless tights. An ipod-induced commuting sneer.

But really, I couldn't be squishier inside. It's a bad holdover from high school.

Shhhhh, don't tell. I sleep with a stuffed panda. That my boyfriend gave me. And I knit things for babies, and cry at work, and TiVo Extreme Home Makeover. Punk rock I am not.

But one thing that I think is a little bad ass is my ladies-only poker night. It's become extra enjoyable now that we're all finally better at it (i.e. thinking in flushes and straights aside from wishing desperately make two pair).

Also, it comes with a serious amount of rib-poking. It's fun to be only chicks, talking the girl talk, sassing each other, and doing something "the boys do". Just pass the pinot grigio, shut up about your boyfriend, and call someone a naughty word for your own ladyparts if they mess it up. It's the absence of men that makes it so fun, actually. But the fact that there's some risk involved, quick thinking, and lots of wine help.

But with the bad-assery comes the squish. It's a $10 buy-in. Sometimes we'll sing with Lily Allen. Often, chocolate and cheese are involved.

But hey, like all tough players, regardless of gender, we stand up when we go all in.

Never gonna run around and desert you

2008-04-01T22:10:00.004-04:00

April Fools day always makes me roll my eyes. Really, I hate it. The only reason I can stomach it is because it is now only 25 days until my birthday. This birthday is especially exciting because I'll be turning 26 on the 26th, which is I think, what they call your golden birthday. I hear on those special days, you poop rainbows, the mayor hands you a puppy, and the skinny mirror that gives you all your devious advice tells you you're the fairest of them all, and actually means it.

But back to stupid April 1st.

It's an excuse for the corporate world to try and nervously prove that it has a sense of humor. Meetings held to announce the end of TPS reports, email trails of Family Circus cartoons, and a promise of lobster in the office cafeteria. Of course, none of this is true, minus the stupid forwards of cartoons, usually from the type of person that has an email message background, a quote on the bottom of their email, and makes a lot of smiley faces.

The webber-tubes are also overly geeked about April fools day, making jokes with slashes, ones, zeros and cats laughing, rabbits disapproving, and dogs failing. One of my personal favorite sites, Jezebel, turned into Lucky-magazine-meets-the-skinny-website for a day. I let that slide though, because it's smart.

The only gag that really made today worth grinning and bearing, is the You Tubes.

When I was little, my dad had this 45. YES, THE 45! I would dance to it, watching my reflection on the darkened TV with Get in Shape Girl sweatbands on my wrists, thinking this is what it must be like at prom. Minus the spandex. And also, the possibility of cleavage.

Rick Astley makes everything better. A lousy week at work. Gloomy weather. A sinkful of dishes you've been ignoring since Sunday.

The bouncy dancing. He really leads with the knees and the finger snap, doesn't he? He's guilty of the white person overbite. And someone clearly told him to write his name in the air with his ass. While attempting "the eggbeater".

The pants. Specifically, the whole head-to-toe denim look. It's like he's hiding a cheese steak in there for a snack later. Maybe two.

The bartender. Where is he when I need him? Can we get him a job at Sonoma, my new favorite place to hang out? Seriously, just don't kick over my bowl of baby peaches and I think that would really spiff up the upstairs atmosphere. I especially like when he's recycled as the dancer in booty shorts who bounces off a fence. Nice transition, 1980's music video editor!

The set. Clearly, the filming location of your local haunted house during Halloween.

The two blonde backup dancers. Who does this guy think he is? The artist formerly known as Prince for the Landsende catalogue crowd?

THE SHADES.

I've watched this video no less than about 17 times today. I maybe danced to it in my living room.

New, big purchase, recession or no.

2008-03-27T23:00:00.002-04:00

My new (old) bike!
Originally uploaded by dckatastrophe

Lots of big, life purchases are made in your mid-twenties. I know people buying rings, buying homes, buying cars, or buying time. You know, for their grown up lives of homeownership, parenting, and credit-having.

I just bought the most gorgeous vintage bicycle. Really, who needs a better life-stage purchase than that?

It's true, it wasn't expensive. Five crisp twenties handed over to some kindly Dutch lady who was moving back to the Netherlands who had this bike while she was here.

She loved this bike, all three speeds of it. The fenders especially, for the rain.

I like it because this is a dream. Well, part of the dream.

Since I've lived in DC, I've wanted a bike. Since I was an idiot eighteen-year-old, wide-eyed with the city life. Specifically, with a basket. To put a puppy in. And streamers. Perhaps a horn. To ride to Eastern Market. To purchase veggies and fresh flowers. To ride home to my perfect life.

Now I have the bike. No basket or streamers or puppy or veggies. Just yet. But I live near Eastern Market. And I sometimes have fresh flowers.

I might have to buy this first. But otherwise. I like this stage. Free transportation is a good thing.

Somebody please just hit the lights

2008-03-10T22:01:00.003-04:00

I'm ashamed by my new love affair. I've only said it out loud I think twice, and only cavort with it at work.

Really, work needs it.

A little Paula Abdul that is.

Seriously, it's like my cool kid card should be revoked. Ok, ok, ok, ok, like the half a cool kid card I found on the sidewalk once should be revoked. I should be telling you how much I love Vampire Weekend, but instead I really just want to dance like there's no tomorrow.

I don't know WHY exactly either. It's a little magic carpet ride, a little Prince hooky baseline, a little forever your girl, a little "Remember the Time" Michael Jackson kick-back and tres over-produced. Paula's voice is as flat as a pancake and as thin as her hair.

It's the kind of song you make dances up to. This song calls for three Katastrophic signature moves: making one's neck work (generally in a circle from right to left), the Roger Rabbit and the Michael Jackson snap while leaning to one side.

You should give it a try. It feels good. But not great. This song is the appetizer to your entree of Rhianna. The amuse bouche to your Fergie. This song revs you up to hear oooooooh what's next? Because that song is ABOUT that feeling. it's like an M.C. Escher drawing of getting ready to go out and flip your hair around, 3 cocktails to the wind and in a new shirt.

But I'll still take it, I'm a little cheesy.

Case in point: I'm the kind of girl who's had 7 PBR's and when "Umbrella" comes on at the Argonaut, I whip out my umbrella from my purse and do a little Mummers strut in my chair while I'm a little losing my balance and a lot losing my pride. At the Argonaut. Cuz there's lots of dancing at the Argonaut. With an umbrella open indoors. Bouncing above our heads. I squarely blame awesome bartender Lee and my boyfriend's birthday celebration for that. And PBR was $2.75.

Adventures of an ipod-less commute

2008-02-19T22:21:00.005-05:00

It's 7pm.

I'm on the metro home from work. Late. Because even though I'm miserable, all of that birth order hoo ha is completely true. I am not going to break any rules, stop over-achieving (hi first-borns!), or disappoint my superiors just because of a little misery?!

So I am sitting in one of those coveted seats, with no inward-facing seats in front of me, in the first row. By the window. I'm ipodless, bookless, knit-less and paperless, for once. I usually need an army of supplies to get me through my 16 minute commute or I am as cranky as a toddler on an endless road trip.

So I'm employing the standard Marge Simpson method-- closing my eyes and thinking of items I'd like to purchase to pass the time.

As I'm off enjoying visions of not sugarplums, but slingbacks, I hear someone behind me.

"I'm gonna bust a rocket up your ass. Yeah, I said it. I'm gonna bomb you."

I'm snapped out of my fantasy of shoe shopping with Stacey and Clinton and think, "huh.... I'm not sure who that was directed towards", and decide to resume fabricating the perfect flat, knee-high boot.

"Yeah, and I need an apple, or yogurt or something.... With some FLAX!" the voice behind me exclaims.

Now I'm intrigued.

It's the million-dollar question.

Are they crazy, or is it just Bluetooth?

How to survive 30 mins on the elliptical with only the golf channel to squint at and nary a magazine in sight

2008-02-13T19:39:00.003-05:00

Larger than Life - The Backstreet Boys

Hey Mama - Black-Eyed Peas

Never Gonna Come Back Down - BT feat. Mike Doughty

Smiley Faces - Gnarls Barkley

Stop - The Spice Girls

Ojos Asi - Shakira

My Love - Justin Timberlake (Diplo Remix)

Days Go By - Dirty Vegas

Touch the Sky - Kanye West

I don't always enjoy being a girl.

2008-02-05T22:24:00.002-05:00

Today I cried at work.

Cue the chorus of groans, you've all witnessed a girl cry at work. I'm groaning along with you, really I am. That girl sucks. I hate her too. She can't just separate work and real life. She can't not take everything too personally. She can't stand up for herself, she gets overwhelmed, blah blah blah.

I read ya. Loud and clear. I received a "I'm worried about you" AND a pity coffee today.

A PITY COFFEE.

In a time of layoffs, by the way. Again. Now with more beer money and less patience in waiting for my F-ing severance already!

The hot tears sprung to my eyes for the first place because my job is like working for The Terrible Trivium.

Like this:

So, after moving piles of sand with tweezers, drilling through mountains with needles, and emptying wells with an eyedropper, I had about had it.

So I cried.

How about you don't make this expensive mistake.

2008-01-29T22:05:00.000-05:00

On Saturday night, I had the pleasure of going out to a fancy dinner. Since restaurant week this year was bypassed for five days in Quebec, DK and I decided to treat ourselves to the new nice restaurant in the neighborhood.

Every time I'd walk by, I'd press my nose against the glass to see the candles flickering, customers laughing, and the wine flowing. Seemed like my kind of place, if I could dig my elbow far enough into DK's side to get him off the couch, away from the soft glow of my flat screen TV.

DK and I couldn't wait to try it out. It was out of our normal price range, so we made it a special occasion. A maybe 3-year anniversary (who can know? We don't!). A date. A thing. That we'd drop some coin on.

Frankly, it was unremarkable.

Our server came over immediately after we sat down and pushed a cocktail on us. No menus had been opened, no wine list inspected, not even a breath between “hihowareyou” and “howaboutacocktail”. We said we were still deciding and off she went to be chatty with other patrons and let us sit for 10 minutes too long. That wait multiplied between courses while she laughed with the preferred table of five to our right. They ordered the cocktails. And maybe they didn’t look shocked at her attire. Which consisted of a short black skirt. And a black hoodie. A HOODIE. In a restaurant where 12 gnocchi were $17, and 3 scoops of pistachio gelato were $10, I feel like that waives both the customer and the server the right to wear a hoodie.

The busboy was my favorite hilarious wayward detail of the night. Water glasses? SLAM! There you go! He ran suicides back and forth from the tables to the kitchen, huffing and puffing the whole way. Bread and dipping oil was tossed onto the table, the basket skidding to a stop before he angrily re-arranged our glasses to accommodate the gliding hockey puck of an oil dish. He was so over-worked slamming glasses around; he only managed to refill water once—after we had finished eating.

In fact, the only likable person I encountered was a server who set down my cheese plate. Smiling, she explained which cheeses were which, and said to enjoy.

The food was lovely, but for the money you paid the loveliness of it didn’t warrant that teeny of a portion. DK had the pork belly, which was cooked to perfection, I must concede. My cheese plate was also delish, but compared to the past five days in Quebec without a war on bacteria, the cheese we ate there from the grocery store was decidedly better.

Yet the place was crowded. Packed. People desperate for a nice place to eat without leaving the Hill. Perhaps this is why we Hill people are so persnickety about leaving the neighborhood- we have to all the time just to get some decent food, we could be at least left alone to stare into our $5 beers stumbling distance from our apartments.

I love living on the Hill, don’t get me wrong, dive-y bars and all. I like watching dogs, having Eastern Market a few blocks away, and a knitting store just a few further. But since the government office and the throngs of their workers descend upon the neighborhood for lunch and post-work snacks, it’s not like any place sits idle— no matter how mediocre.

But seriously, the further DK and I get from our date, our special anniversary dinner, the less I liked my experience. This place doesn't know if it wants to be a Hook's Mediterranean little sister or a funky neighborhood bistro. If it wants to be the former, ban hoodies and amp up the sevice. If it wants to be the latter, lower the prices and amp up the portions. Considering there was less handholding and nuzzling on this date, and more “whoa— what is up with this busboy?” the more I think I’ll never try it again.

In fact, maybe you shouldn’t either. It was much better off remaining Meyhane.

Locanda is decidedly disappointing.

Cure for insomnia

2008-01-15T22:25:00.000-05:00

1.) Run errands after work in the cold. Tell two separate stores' employees how excited you are for your winter, Canadian vacation-- full of lovely people, purple bruises, a merino wool face mask (what else are 12 hour car rides good for?) and a quest for the best poutine.

2.) Return home to the warm, soft glow of new TV and multiple episodes of Girls Next Door in the DVR.

3.) Spaghetti (not diet friendly).

4.) Three vodka tonics. Extra lime. (diet friendly! diet tonic!) No sharing.

5.) Rinse and repeat.

6.) zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The entry that never was

2007-12-13T22:38:00.000-05:00

I'm sitting on my couch watching "Crowned: The Mother of all Pageants".

I'm trying to write about how hilarious this show is, and how crazy queeny Carson Kressley is the least flamboyant thing on my TV. I love how the losers are announced by a de-sashing ceremony, complete with bejeweled scissors. I want to write about how this show is going to change my "bad" TV viewing schedule and how it's the show with the highest priority in my DVR. One team named themselves "Silent but Deadly" because they are quiet but totally smart. They totally didn't realize that they are now "Team Fart".

But i can't, because my "delete" key on my keyboard doesn't work. I love my wee macbook, and I am scared to try and mess with the keys. All my goodies are under the keyboard. Airport Card! Extra memory! But Macs only have delete, no backspace. I can only either POUND ON IT with my 4th finger (seriously, WITH PURPOSE) or highlight things I want to delete and then immediately begin typing which is perhaps the most counter-intuitive thing ever.

So I won't. I'll continue to watch with my pint of Ben & Jerry's. I watched America's Next Top Model beforehand.

I've lost 50 brain cells today.

I don't care.

Vignettes on a week in my parent's house:

2007-11-24T03:26:00.000-05:00

-I return home at 2:45 am after watching a movie with friends. My father and brothers are away on a man road trip for the night. My mom has been waiting up for me since she's alone, and she's a mom. She had to look at me through tired eyelids with a tired eyeball as living proof of my late arrival. This is why curfews exist. So when you are too old for one, you know when to be sorry for being late. I apologize for worrying her. She goes back to dozing on the couch. An hour later, and she's still there, perhaps waiting for me to complete the journey and march upstairs.

- My brother Neal and I are sitting on the couch. We take turns pointing at each other and saying things that our oddly reserved, yet gloriously wacky father might say to make us laugh (or make my mother roll her eyes) during the commercial breaks of a "Scrubs" marathon. With an affected voice only my father can really do, we say the things that make us giggle until we can't come up with any more. I win with the version of my father presenting you a plate of bacon. In this goofy cartoon voice he says "here you are" that sounds more like one word "heeeyaaaaheeeeyaaaah" in a way that we don't know exactly who he's poking fun at, but hey! Free bacon!

- I know many people who are teachers, and right now each one wants to bang their head against a wall. My brother, included. His response is the only one I hear that makes the most sense. It involves several variations on the word "fuck".

- I'm walking with a friend through Valley Forge Park. On our way we pass 6 awesome dogs, a woman who graduated high school 3 years ahead of us with a baby carriage, and a man wandering alone through the trails in the woods, but for his bagpipes, which he is playing alternately on and off key. My friend wonders aloud, 'are there any re-enactments today?'. This is somehow normal.

- I return to Pennsylvania my 17-year-old self, only now with money. On my first excursion out of the house, i have lunch at the diner with Cameron. Only now, as a salaried woman of the world, it is followed by 2 hours of vigorous shoe shopping.

Headdress on

2007-10-25T00:00:00.001-04:00

Headdress on
Originally uploaded by dckatastrophe

I love Halloween.

I love crafting.

It's only right that Halloween mean a few hot glue gun burns, finding needles in your couch-used-as-pin-cushion, hunting through your spare fabric, and general giddiness because you dug to the DEPTHS of your stash of stuff you save for moments exactly like this.

I had more fun making my Carmen Miranda headdress than I can properly explain. It's raining out. Shitty E! is playing in the background. I am "allowed" to come into work a little late tomorrow because I've been pulling some late hours. I covered something with hot glue. There are remnants of feather everywhere and there's no avoiding vacuuming my couch (really: i should get a desk).

I've already paraded around my house trying to get the balance of it correct, which I think was pretty even (you know, on purpose, I'm cool like that).

I got the idea from CRAFT magazine, which totally sells out my awesome geekery. Angie Pontani of the Pontani sisters (a burlesque troop) supplied the instructions and inspiration. When I saw it online, I IMMEDIATELY knew it was for me. I don't think she knows yet, but we are friends. Submitting stuff like this to awesome magazines? BRING. IT. ON.

I just need to make a skirt. I was most-worried about the headpiece, so making a skirt will be easy-peasy

Life doesn't get any better than this. Ok, well less burns on my fingers might be nice. I am typing this in pain. HOT GLUE IS HOT!

Faux-Halloween is in full effect on Saturday and I can't wait.

It seems to me

2007-10-15T22:13:00.001-04:00

That the "shorter period" birth control commercials have cornered the market. And by that, I mean they know how to sell birth control pills. By featuring basset hounds to capture my attention before I go "OH, another birth control commercial! Telling me how much I must surely be suffering in some way for my chemically responsible decision to not have children."

Usually when these commercials come on I laugh, and think "Buy the three extra packs. And maybe just never have your period?" and roll my eyes and go back to looking at the internet while watching TV while talking on the phone.

There are a few exceptions.

There's the commercial for Loestrin 24, featuring Cammie and her basset Shorty. I like that fellow. He's wee and has ankle fat. Floppy ears and is leash-trained. What's not to love?

Perhaps the idiotic dream that his doggie-mama lives in alphabet city, sits around googling birth control and THEN calls up her man. When I googled the commercial, you find a whole RUN DOWN of how this character lives her life.

But I'm not going to switch my birth control in hopes of becoming like her, and having a loft, I "fix up with flea market and second hand" finds. And no, I do NOT believe she lives in Alphabet city, but NICE ONE Loestrin. I'm sure some teenage girl might think that is EXACTLY what she might do when she graduates college and becomes suddenly aware that brilliant good luck like Cammie's TOTALLY exists. Move to this New York and see if she can't have a loft in a pricey neighborhood, with a dog and a man and skinny-ass legs in jeans tucked into boots.

The basset hound is the only thing in that commercial that's real. That chick is perplexed enough by lady times to spend an idle afternoon googling it. Thankfully, she doesn't hide for a whole WEEK when her period comes and ruins her life, she only hides for up to three days! It's like four whole extra days to LIVE.

And then! Today! One minute, staring dreamily at Anthony Bourdain in Tahiti talking to drag queens, then another and THERE IT IS. Some chick, alone at the beach because her friend wouldn't come with because she had her period. The bad, bloaty friend texts back and forth with her sunbathing, well-adjusted friend about how shorter periods would bring world peace. Or feed children in developing countries.

Or rather, how the sunny, skinny friend is SMART! Takes birth control that lightens everything up. Lame bloaty friend seems to think you must sequester yourself in shrouds of lady-misery and communicate only via text.

Friend at the beach is all "whatever, Bloaty", cuz she has two ice cream cones and a man waiting for her on the boardwalk.

See that? Sit at home with a sweatshirt tied around your waist to hide any potential "issues" and you could miss out on meeting a MAN. A handsome man who loves mint chocolate chip as much as you do. AND ALSO, HAS A BASSET HOUND.

I'm telling you.

Clearly, market research has been done. I'm mad ad agencies know this. And tell pharmaceutical companies to capitalize on it. A bunch of old white guys must know the twenty-something ladies, like me, seem to think that the trifecta of happiness is skinny, man, and dog.

I'm not going to lie. It's a bit my life dream to be skinny, have a nice man-friend (check!) and have a dog.

My life's dreams are being sullied. So that I might be marketed to.

More dogs, less whiny friends in commercials, please.

Can't spell insomnia without MIA

2007-10-09T02:07:00.000-04:00

It's two am.

I am wide awake.

blink blink.

W-I-D-E A-W-A-K-E.

In my living room. Gone AWOL from the bed because isn't that what you are supposed to do? Only sleep in bedroom, no fidgeting.

Where did I go wrong?

I suppose I slept in too late this weekend. That probably robbed me of a decent night's sleep last night and tonight. When you sleep 24 hours total in a weekend, why would you need weekday sleep? Aren't you supposed to not sleep in?

I suppose I shouldn't have taken ONE Tylenol PM last night in order to start the week off on the right sleeping foot since i slept until noon both days. I was strung out on it well past 4pm and useless at work. I was so exhausted from being drunk on whatever a half dose does to you that I fell asleep for twenty minutes this evening.

I suppose I shouldn't have taken a power nap at 7pm. I was just so tired from being drunk on Tylenol that I needed to give into the exact urge I had been fighting for 12 hours.

I suppose I should have been less combative in a meeting today, but I have no patience for self importance amid your post-it notes.

I suppose I should be more patient, or at least, learn to let my mini-grudges go. I think a large part of my insomnia is residual anger that just snowballs.

I suppose I should be less angry, and might learn from his that going to the gym exhausted is better in the long run for your mental well-being. Working it out at the gym is better than muttering to yourself about everything you are angry about at 2 am on an idle Monday night.

I suppose muttering might be ok, because it drowns out any creaks and groans from my apartment building that are crazed lunatics trying to break in. My windows might be 7 feet off the ground, but lunatics are raised mighty tall these days, and are hankerin' for a break-in.

I suppose whipping through "The Boleyn Inheritance" is not the best way to soothe yourself to sleep. First of all, it's heavy enough to fend off any potential attackers, and secondly, it makes me angrier about girls treating each other horribly throughout history, the lack of feudal feminism, and how I might end up poisoned or beheaded, or both.

At least there's Bourdain on for me at this hour. He's in Brazil, the least I could be in is lala land.

too much cheese, sushi and brown butter

2007-10-07T19:43:00.000-04:00

I love the weekends because I get to cook (or eat!) a bit better than during the week just because I have more TIME.

During the week, I get home about 6:30 or 7, and often hit the gym. By the time I'm back ,it's late-ish and if I want to make an involved dinner, then I'd better be wanting to eat at 10pm or later. Often, if I feed the DK, I like to make something nicer than grilled cheese, because who doesn't like to woo one's significant other with delicious food? But eating late means it's hard to get to sleep, which means I can't sleep for days, and then I end up going to bed at 9pm, avoiding Anthony Bourdain, Tyra, and all other TV hosts that distract me from spending time in my un-cable equipped bedroom.

Friday night: Ladies fondue night at my house. We watched dreamgirls, ate cheese, drank arbor mist (YES! we are proud, whatever) and hung out with our full bellies protruding from our sweatpants. Classy girls night in full effect!

Saturday night: I grazed all day and then had delicious, delicious sushi at Bamboo Cafe in Virginia. It was an old haunt of my friend E's and we had some SERIOUS delights. They put creamy shrimpy sauce on California rolls. How smart are they?

Sunday: I went to Eastern market with Shifty, to buy lunch meats and fish for dinner. After drinking wine and eating pretzels all lazy afternoon, E came over for a dinner of scalloped potatoes, steamed veg, and fish in browned butter and lemon sauce.

This week I have delicious sandwiches and apples for lunch.

Life is ok. Sandwiches and cheese are plentiful.

I don't have anything to say

2007-10-03T20:36:00.000-04:00

Partly because tonight marks night #2 this week that I will be in bed before 9pm. I guarantee it.

As a total night owl, this kills me.

I was at the gym, half-heartedly chugging along on an elliptical, and could barely keep my eyes open. I made a grilled cheese sandwich for my gourmet dinner, and almost let it drop out of my hand.

You have to be in pretty dire straights to be dropping sandwiches and can't make it through an episode of America's Next Top Model, let alone stay up for the Top Chef finale.

TV and sandwiches. That's really all I ask on weeknights. Maybe I go to the gym, maybe I have a beer with friends, but a good dinner and some tube is really all I need.

And right now, I am propping my eyelids up to see who Tyra kicks off and then promptly ignore my dishes and leap right into bed.

Ignore the vacuuming. Ignore the work I brought home with me that I will get up earlier tomorrow to do. Ignore listening to my voice mail (Alex, I'm so sorry I owe you a phone call) and just read a page out of my library book and just pass out.

you make me sick.

2007-09-17T23:17:00.000-04:00

Job-hunting required something of a blog hiatus. Of all things, frankly, I was sick of talking about my damn self. I am boring, really, and it's pretty hard to walk around in put-together outfits and try and tell everyone how WONDERFUL! YOU! ARE! When you are in the throws of job hunting, you can't see further than the interviewer in front of you. Sitting in front of a mirror. So you can see yourself, too.

And then realize that there's this thing on the internet where you used to brain dump anecdotes that fell from the 'tell your boyfriend' list, weren't exactly appropriate for the 'tell your mother list' and really, it's just better to not put them on the 'tell your friends' list because telling the same story leads to confusing who you told it to, so you tell everyone a few times until collective groans mark your exit.

And then you remember that you have a life. A life that fell by the wayside completely while you were trying to look around interviewer's office for conversation starters once your pre-memorized question reel was through.

And yeah, some real life things fell by the wayside. I forgot a dear friend's birthday who sort of lives for birthdays. I sent my own mother's birthday card late. I still have yet to send my newborn baby second cousin a card and a present. Or, perhaps, acknowledge that my cousin was ever, in fact, pregnant. I still have yet to write an important thank you note. I still have yet to make headway in the 45 craft projects I am dabbling in. I still have yet to clean my bathtub with baking soda and a grapefruit. I still have yet to donate half my wardrobe that is stuck in my inner-15-year-old, outer-25-year-old questionable taste.

And really, the only reason I have a blog is to have ONE, UNEDITED space in the world where I control the content, and that content is me. And for a while, that content was: whine, whine, whine, (sniffle, woe is me!), whine, whine, (CRUNCH, mmmmm cookie!) whine, whine.

And that gets old. Hell, I was sick of me.

I still am a little.

I hate to think that for a while I was an EVEN GREATER self-fulfilling prophecy of the urban twenty-something than I normally am. She who can't talk about anything but herself. Her troubles. Her relationship. Her pants. Her hair. Her bruise from just trying to give her damn blood away. I wasn't even talking about myself in my usual "dudes, I am a geek and here's why. Now LEARN before anyone else catches you acting a fool like me. I only get away with it because after this geeky thing happened, I tripped over someone's front stoop and skinned my knee and then mumbled something about 'finding ten dollars' and then everyone forgot.

Seriously. Being self-involved could not be more boring. From now on, it's only moderately self-involved for me. Now with more charity. For the children!

Too pooped to pop.

2007-08-21T17:08:00.000-04:00

I've been "on" for almost 2 week and I am exhausted.

I've been on 4 job interviews since not this past Friday, but the Friday before.

I also spent some time with the DK's lovely family, and even though they are lovely, it's still time to be ON! SHINY! NEW! PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE, THOUGH LACKING JEWISHNESS. PRETTY?

I've had to sell myself left and right.

You want creative problem solving? it's called TAKING AMTRAK, not GREYHOUND ever AGAIN!

Communications skills? I have carried on conversations with children onto grandmothers, and written about 45 thank you notes.

Experience? I'll give YOU experience!

Dry cleaning? Check.

Emergency pedicure at the dirtiest salon EVER (bebe nails on Penn ave, SE. NEVER Go. Let's just say "dirty, used toe dividers" and "wet, used flip flops". Oh and the lady killed a bug by smacking it on my friend's leg, but I digress.)

Check.

I haven't sworn, eaten something garlicky, not sat straight up with my legs crossed or smiled encouragingly in ages. I am out of nice clothes to wear, inoffensive stories that would make anyone giggle, and looking around the room for conversation starters. Like you in a frame with Bill Clinton. I am perpetually ready to impress someone. Anyone.

You there, with the umbrella on the street, I HAVE PLANNED SOME SPECIAL EVENTS.

Madam who kindly took my Chinese take-out order, may I go on and on at length about my killer communications skills? You know, by ordering the amount and THEN the type of fried rice?

Oh sir who held the door for me, I could creative problem solve your life, if you'd just let me.

Kindly CVS check-out person, I know that you are a non-Catholic, and I am a lapsed Catholic, but let me prove to you how awesome I am so that you don't worry about that so much. Extra Care!

Please like me, anyone out there. I am a laid-off, lapsed Catholic desperately seeking a job I can wear jeans to, have funny co-workers, occasionally read the internets, and get paid better. Skills include: gets along well with grandmas of all faiths, ability to eat large amounts of ethnic delights, ably timing my arrival with public transportation. Basset hounds a plus.

boring, boring, depressed, boring.

2007-07-30T21:44:00.000-04:00

General glum-i-tude has taken over from crying and swearing repeatedly.

Since my poor mom heard me say the F-word while sobbing, she's had to have been held back to not drive down here, slap some people around, fetch me and bring me home to eat her Italian mama diet of comfort food to pad the ego and the ass.

I almost wanted her to. I almost wanted to give the world the finger and go be taken care of immediately, but I suppose that's adulthood. Adulthood minus the fact that you might have to borrow money from your parents if your sorry depressed ass can't (or won't) find a job.

In all seriousness, if I could sit on the couch in ill-fitting sweatpants until October, I would.

Which is pathetic and stupid, because I have a pretty good shot at getting a new job at my workplace I think, and I have heard people say nice things about me. I have people high and low sending me jobs, being encouraging, and generally helping me land on my feet. There are jobs for me I could find.

Everyone is hugging, emailing, texting, calling and preventing me from being a slug in ill-fitting sweat pants.

And I'm grateful for them.

But a small, nagging part of me just wants to see me fail.

Part of me wants to get hit by a bus, so I had an excuse to just lay in a bed somewhere. You know, I don't have a woe-is-me-death wish or anything, I just sort of morbidly daydream about some minor broken bones and my jaw wired shut so in 3 months I could emerge shiny and new. Skinny. Ready.

Not this.

So that small, nagging, bullshit part of me is fleeing to the beach to crash my parent's vacation for a few days. To clear my dramatic bullshit head and have it patted by my mom and dad because I can't handle things here myself.

And get a little tanner, since my OWN vacation lo these TWO WEEKS AGO.

I just need to get away from the drama that keeps us glued to coming to work and talking with each other like we were prisoners of war. So I stop beating down on my nice boyfriend because he won't give me enough pity (every hour on the hour, if you please, and louder, with more head patting). So I stop putting off working on my resume. So I stop ruining my own fun.

So my mother can fix me a plate and lie and say I look skinny and good. And my dad can just be adorably geeky and I'll feel like he needs me to survive a bit better because I am the oldest kid and he finally sees me as something of an adult so don't whine, and moan and be dramatic when you could be, you know, DOING SOMETHING?

Because if it were up to me, sitting here right now, I might not.

I'm Mr. Bright-sized.

2007-07-26T18:54:00.001-04:00

brightsizing n. Corporate downsizing in which the brightest workers are let go. This happens when a company lays off those workers with the least seniority, but it's those young workers who are often the best trained and educated.

I got laid off today.

I am not one to write about work on the Internet. I don't think it's fair, and I don't want to be punished later in life because I have opinions about work. Apparently that sort of talk is for the water cooler and not on the Internet.

The situation is this, at my nameless workplace. I got laid off. My position no longer exists.

I know this because a big boss at work as well as some fake-nice HR lady told me so.

Today.

In a conference room with a box of tissues and some bottled water. As she brightly talked about how this was going to be BETTER. She was trying to sell me on my three weeks of severance pay as something to be overjoyed about. Like it was severance Christmas and I had been a good girl.

They kept talking about how the new structure of our unit will better serve our partners, and all I could think was, what about us?

In my department of 36, all but about 8 got laid off, including Shiftless Badger. There are positions in the new structure for us to compete for, but you would be doing so with your tail between your legs ready to beg, borrow, or steal to be continued to be paid.

Many of those 8 who retained their jobs spent the day either being dicks about retaining their jobs and how this change could be good for us. The rest of them are mad at us for belonging to the newest, hippest club out there. The laid-off club.

Not that anyone has said laid off.

"Re-aligned". "Right-sized".

It's hard to rationalize this.

That I put in AWESOME, hard work there. I did some killer stuff. Big, important people know I do good work.

And for what?

It's like work dumped me. I feel slapped in the face and punched in the gut.

And now I'm in an abusive relationship, because it hit me, and I have to crawl back for more. I have to go back to work for WEEKS before the "end date". Or I have to go beg work to take me back and interview for other jobs. Which, if I am lucky enough to get, I'll no doubt resent.

I tried drinking beer, but I couldn't get drunk.

I tried pigging out, but my stomach hurts too much.

I have been smoking cigarettes and saying words that hurt the ears of baby Jesus.

I have been calling my co-workers in the department who still have their jobs awful names out of spite.

I cried on my parent's answering machine. I accidentally said the F-word while I was crying about my job on my parent's answering machine.

I cried on my boyfriend's shoulder. On my friend's shoulder. On the couch.

Luckily, I have tickets to the Cat Empire show in Baltimore tomorrow.

It's nice to have something to look forward to.

F, man.

F.

I'm comin' out

2007-07-01T22:30:00.000-04:00

My boyfriend is handsome, and I'm not just telling the Internet that because he bought me a blender as a present for no reason when we were at Target today.

He's handsome because he's got the smoothest nose I've ever seen. I'm dating a Jew, and he defies stereotypes with a nose is as perfect as any Colorado bunny slope. It's perfectly smooth and quite proportional to his high cheekbones and full, thick head of hair.

I CONSTANTLY compliment him on his nice hair. He is a straight man who has a trendy haircut. Sometimes his nice haircut gets more attention than his pink tie collection.

But that nice hair is both his pride and a curse.

Namely, because it begins at the eyebrow and creeps like vines past his shoulders. WELL PAST THEM.

Normally, when the topic of the follicle-ly enhanced comes up, he waves it away.

"Ain't no skin off my nose," he says, and rightly so. He doesn't see his furry back. It doesn't bother him, usually.

However, tonight, there was some skin off him. Thanks Sally, Hansen!

Yes, Internet, I waxed my boyfriend's back tonight.

JEALOUS?

He thinks you shouldn't be. I told him as I smoothly applied wax to his shoulders to think of the ladies. Think of us, as we get bikini waxes, with our legs up in the air making idle conversation with a lady who doesn't know my name but knows where I have THAT FRECKLE.

He shrugged it off. He was too nervous to have me ramble on about my own waxing woes. This was him, admitting with a receipt for $10.99 that his back was furry.

I told him, "Don't worry. I did my roommate Julie's legs in college. I know what I'm doing."

That made him feel better. (Truthfully, it was just the backs, and it was like twice.)

I ripped.

That made him feel worse.

He didn't yelp. He didn't say anything. Once I got a "hoo HOO!" in pain, mostly some very deep breathing. That was about it.

The whole process took about 20 minutes. 11 strips of wax later, he was done. Smooth, like a turkey.

He was a TOTAL champ. Maybe it was the lavender essential oils in the wax. Maybe it was his pride. Maybe it was the promise of a post-back-wax milkshake, thanks to the blender present.

He got through it. Soon, he was slurping on a milkshake with lots of neosporin on his back. Soon, he was ready to hit the dusty trail.

As he was putting on his shoes, he said to me, "I think no on the S,B,C. B is just fine."

"B?", I asked.

"Sack, Back and Crack" he smiled, "I don't know how those dudes do it. You must REALLY be committed. No, sir. Not this guy."

I smiled at his bravado. He was gasping in pain at the work of my hands not an hour ago.

A jaunty kiss and a spin on his heel, and he strolled away from my front door with a "I'm going to the beach with my friends in 5 days" spring in his step.

And then I understood.

I noticed the shiny with neosporin skin that was pink with new-ness. This was his neck's coming out party. This was his back's independence day.

The Diana Ross could be heard faintly in the background of his stroll.

DK is free. The Jersey shore shall be his oyster. Going shirtless (with pride) shall be his pearl.

ALSO

2007-06-20T00:33:00.000-04:00

My alley is swarming with fire fighters. I think it's the building the PIRG is in? I walk by it every day, but I couldn't tell you now. I saw the firefighters walking around on the second floor. The building is narrow and non-descript, between the WSC on Dst, SE and the American Legion Hall.

Searchlights. Hose. No visible smoke. Lots of yelling. Men in the bottom halves of their suspended fire suits in their DCFD t-shirts all up in the tunnelled alley.

I am that kooky lady peering at these poor people through my blinds.

How on EARTH are people sleeping through this? How can you not watch?

I feel like I'm the only neighbor awake through the noise.

They see me peeking through the blinds and you can tell they wish I wouldn't.

So... internet. Got any answers?

It finally happened.

2007-06-19T19:08:00.000-04:00

Every morning when I make my coffee, I make a mental note of the time when I turn off the coffee maker. I bought my coffee maker for $7.99 at Target in the "off to college" section.

7:55. 8:01. 8:13. 8:23.

It's an integral part of my morning routine. Flip on "Today Show". Rinse and repeat. Apply liberally. Make sure coffee maker is off. Slip on shoes. Lock door.

I guess you could say I have an irrational fear of leaving the coffee pot on.

Well, of leaving the coffee pot on, it shorting some wires, and me burning my apartment building down.

I've double checked. Triple checked. Stopped checking because I felt like I belonged on MTV True Life: I have OCD.

I have even turned RIGHT around when finally at the metro in the morning to go BACK to double check that it's off. I stopped short at calling my boyfriend and having him in all his non-electrician glory console me and say that I could leave the coffee pot on. Nothing would break or burn.

I don't really trust myself not to burn the house down. I can't keep plants alive and I forget to vacuum a lot.

I used to live on the top floor of a row house in Adams Morgan above some businesses. I would come home from Thanksgiving to find the front door wide open for days thanks to thoughtless travel agency workers. The wiring in our building was old, and alarms went off and they almost shut down our power. We had a wire gate that separated us from the rest of the boozy world where drunk frat boys would pass out on our front steps.

I used to fret about whether or not the apartment would still exist when I was away. I would always see the outside and breathe a half-sight of relief; the other half exhaled when I saw none of my stuff was moved.

It's hard to shake that when you live in a proper apartment building with locks and a landlady.

Today I had to make a stressful phone call in the morning. I was EXTRA glad to discover coffee in my cupboard when I had presumed I was out. I made coffee! I rinsed and repeated! I made the phone call! I watched the Today Show!

And I went to work.

AND came home and watched TV.

AND went to the gym.

AND THEN, only 20 minutes ago, discovered when I followed my nose to the vague smell of burnt chocolate, that the coffee pot was still on.

Moral of the story: if you leave the coffee pot on, planets do not combust, God does not kill a kitten, and my house doesn't burn down.

Don't you think for a MINUTE that I'm going to press my luck twice in this department, thankyouverymuch.

It is currently unplugged.

Breaking the habit

2007-06-04T19:37:00.001-04:00

Breaking the habit
Originally uploaded by dckatastrophe

I'm desperately trying to break some bad habits. I should prolly follow through and stop biting my nails, but I think attaining a level of personal enlightenment should allow you some faults. I think biting my nails and sometimes admitting out loud that I think Kathy Griffin is funny are two faults worth tackling a little bit later.

I've tried all sorts of new-age, hippie fault-fixing shit, but it doesn't really work for me.

I can't all of a sudden relax my body in a systematic way and dream that I'm at the beach and can hear the roar of the ocean as I sync my pulse with mother nature.

I can't sit still and imagine a room, where I visualize myself putting awful situations my brain conjured up in the cabinets and closets of my mind and then visualize locking them up.

I can't sit around and think about bad habits and take the time to go "hmmm... self. How will you feel about these choices later?".

I can't even stand googling HOW to break bad habits, scouring 43 things hoping that someone else like me might have asked Metafilter the secret to unlocking a similarly flawless existence.

Some bad habits make you realize that some people, when it comes down to it, like to suffer. Why else do we bite our nails down to the quick? Smoke a pack a day? Binge drink?

Part of the allure is the pain that follows. The inability to type any words involving "a" because your pinkie is bleeding. Silently enjoy your coughing spells. Smiling through your hangover.

I am therefore trying the age-old method of stopping a nasty habit. Every time I catch myself, I snap 5 rubber bands on my wrist.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not snapping the hell out of them. I'm not crying and smiling through it. It's something to take me out of my head and back to reality. It's something to remind me of how many times without even MEANING TO, I lead myself down a terrible path that takes a little while for missteps to be identified.

Also, I've just now gotten the short-hair fetish site guys to stop looking at my blog, so I'm in no rush to get the naughty rubber band fetish (hello! gum bands to you Brits!) underbelly of the interwebs interested in me trying to engage in a little head game against my head game.

Let me tell you, your brain learns things fast when you aren't allowed to float through life being that indulgent to its every whim.

The first day of my rubber band exercise last week I snapped them 31 times from the time I woke up until the time I went to bed. THIRTY-ONE times where I CAUGHT myself. Think of all the times I didn't realize I was even engaging in the fault! Think of when I felt JUSTIFIED in faulty behavior! Think of when I forgot to snap my rubber bands!

Today it was three.

And that, my friends, is progress.

Shopping list.

2007-05-26T13:15:00.001-04:00

To Do list
Originally uploaded by dckatastrophe

I was sitting in Farragut West waiting for a train on Thursday and when i stood up from the low, stone bench this was stuck to my ass.

Someone else's shopping list.

I looked at it and smirked a little.

Hat. Midol. Bug Spray. Claritin D 24h 20 count. Comb.

I know exactly whose this is.

Sounds like this person was going to have a KICK-ASS time at the beach.

SHE (thanks midol) probably will be allergic to everything in sight, and will spray herself with bug spray religiously because bugs only seem to like her and ignore everyone else. She'll be crampy so will exclaim about how she'd LOVE to go swimming, but simply can't because it's "that time of the month" every few hours. She'll have sunblock on her nose that's blue and will have perfectly combed hair which will be mussed under a huge hat under a huge umbrella.

Worst memorial day mini vacation list ever.

I'm going to the beach in July like a big kid for a week.

my list includes:

get skinnier, pronto.
booze.
bathing suit.
7 sundresses.
booze.
sunscreen.
booze.
frisbee.
a few trashy books.
booze.
deck of cards.
booze.

Things that made me chuckle today

2007-05-15T22:21:00.000-04:00

My mom swears up and down everyone who works at Trader Joe's is in a Hawaiian-print, glassy-eyed, sandal-wearing cult.

Every time you go in you know you can chat with the check-out person about at least ONE item that they LOVE that you purchased.

You are prepared for this.

I walk into Trader Joe's constantly ready to over-share. To chat about pita chips and my huge food-crush on their cheese selection.

I perused the items. I bought some food, limiting myself to one basket full of treats for the after-work meals and weekend delights to look forward to.

After waiting in a line that lent itself to DMV-worthy groans, the check-out fellow asked me if I found everything OK.

I said "yes, for an impulse trip, I seem to have found a lot".

And that's when he started giggling.

A long, drawn-out, airy giggle. He then said "what's this (hee hee) here impulse (wheeze wheeze) trip?" in such a nonchalant way that I cocked my head and leaned in as a response.

What do you mean, check out guy? I came here on impulse. I realized that I had plans the rest of the week and should maybe buy that carnitas pork that your fine newsletter told me was so delicious. Maybe I need to pay you $2.99 for the luxury of purchasing a kit so I can make my own guacamole when the time is right. Maybe I need some wine with an "apricot" aftertaste (apricot, as I am learning, is just Chilean for "cheap").

Suddenly snapped back from squinting at him and thinking of the items I had just purchased, I immediately zeroed in on the issue at hand.

Just potentially, how high he might be.

He had a stamp of Trader Joe's address and phone number (in reverse, of course) on his forehead. His airy laughter belied him. He asked me to describe to him my "impulse trip" and gave me a wide grin like we were secret members of an awesome club.

"Well, you know," I said, "I found myself walking past the metro station and decided I should buy some food. For fun."

That was met with the aftermath of the initial wheezy laughter.

I shifted in my sandals and continued.

"Um, well, you know when you, do things on impulse?" and he draws out "yeah yeah yeah. Cool. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR TRIP".

So I said, "Uh, well, I was at work... Time passed... Now I'm here."

Wheezy liked that. He wheezed some more and said "that's alright, that's alright. Good trip."

I said, "Something like that, you could say. Thank you for taking my $50 and good day".

Wheezy continued to grin.

I then notice an impatient, all-business kind of clerk, standing to his left waiting to take over Wheezy's register with a tray of cash. He just looks at Wheezy, in disbelief of the conversation that he was engaged in.

Past tense.

Paused.

Wheezy had not spoken for a full minute.

The conversation had ceased.

Wheezy was enchanted with some place to the left of the top of my head. I'm guessing it was a non-verbal compliment to the at-home dye-job brought to you by Feria that occurred last weekend.

I ask Wheezy for my receipt, which has been waiting patiently to be collected since my initial squinting.

He says "yeah.... yeah" and hands it to me absentmindedly. No-nonsense clerk moves in as soon as humanly possible to take over the register.

I walk away with my bags (managing not to fall down and feel sorry for myself this time) and chuckled at that fellow.

Drinking the kool-aid at TJ's?

Nah.

Exactly what I needed to watch 15 times today

2007-05-14T22:21:00.001-04:00

Today was the kind of day where I wanted to bang my head repreatedly against the wall, but there didn't seem to be any walls thick enough or hard enough to do the kind of damage that I was hoping would get me some medical leave.

The only thing that can remedy this is Turk dancing to Bell Biv Devoe.

First with the youtube. Then with the frank discussions of early 90's music that you must jazzercise-dance to. I loved a good bouncy early '90's running man. A little roger rabbit. Whatever that thing Turk does with his hands and flappy elbows. I've done it, and I'll do it again.

If I had a dollar for every time I've said 'Bell Biv DeVoe' in the last 2 weeks I think I'd have about 13 bucks.

Seriously though-- who has SEPARATE conversations about this? Over google chat. Over the Cubicle wall. Whatever.

That's some serious cash. For Bell Biv DeVoe I mean. When is the last time YOU said "Bell Biv DeVoe" out loud?

Try it.

It's one of those phrases that pleases your mouth to say it. It's like saying "kerfuffle". You just have to grin.

Like me now. Cuz now I'd have $15.

home is where the hemming tape is

2007-05-06T22:43:00.000-04:00

I have lived in my current apartment for 8 months.

I have only, today, put up curtains.

(I have good blinds, for the record)

I had been putting it off, because they are Ikea curtains. You have to hang them up just to take them down, and then iron them, hem them, and cut off the excess fabric.

Seemed easy enough on paper.

It took 3 hours.

Have you ever tried to iron curtains?

It's not a particularly easy job. I swore a bunch. There I was. Trying to make a straight crease with an iron, only to RE-iron that crease with a piece of hemming tape precariously balanced between the two layers. And make it look straight. They are sheer, so they were slick to iron and kept falling off my ironing board. I had to take a break and have some lemonade.

I could have used a more grown-up drink, but I had plenty of margarita from the night before coursing through my veins. Enough so that I was trembly the next day. Not hung over, but reeking suspiciously of anxiety. Trembly. I thought "what eases tremblings?"

A TRIP TO CHINATOWN!

Nothing eases anxiety like over-stimulation. Blinky lights! Neon hoodies! Fuddruckers!

I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought hair die, a new toothbrush, and an iron.

My head is now RED. Like, the streaky red that everyone dyed their hair in 1996. I'm rolling with it. I could use the change.

I went to Urban outfitters and bought a shit-ton of decorations for my apartment. New "artwork". New picture frames waiting for photos to "Rasterbate".

And, I only did it today, because when my mother was visiting a few weekends ago, she remarked upon my lack of iron (in self defense, i had one, but it rusted) among other things, including decor. She could not believe that I didn't iron my underwear into perfect triangles and where were the hospital corners on my quickly made bed? She said to me and some of my friends at some lovely springtime outdoor festivities,

"oh, well with such nice friends like yours, who needs an iron?"

I let that fester. I bought an iron. I hung up curtains.

YEESH.

In defense of girly music

2007-05-01T19:23:00.000-04:00

I bought the new Tori Amos album today. It was F-ing $14.99 on itunes.

Big surprise, I know.

Me!

She who sleeps in a Righteous Babe Records T-shirt!

I'm a huge slut for "girl music", which I'm sure defeats the purpose of girl music, but who can care? I love it all. Any lady who plays her own instrument and sings I will support. You got me. I am your target audience. PREACH! I will buy it, even though it's $14.99 on itunes.

What I think is funny is the sneering girl music gets. Yes, I know the Spice Girls ruined everything early and loudly, but they've since all mostly procreated and found other things to talk about, like Katie Holme's new house, or whether or not Eddie Murphy is their babydaddy.

I think it's all fair in the great equilibrium of music. If women are still bitches and ho's, then there's an asshole to sing about and you SING IT loud and all purdy-like.

And I don't feel the need to be ashamed of this. Yes, I like other music too. It's not like I'm monogamous with girl music. Like i said, it's my weakness. Like boys who wear glasses and have blazers with elbow patches.

So this album is my weakness, that is, if I could just get past the 2nd song on the album.

I cannot stop listening to Big Wheel, the first single.

I should get past it. There's a whole rest of an album to love! I mean, I'm a freak of a fan. I have B-sides and T-shirts.

And an example!

My parents did not know what to do with my combat-boot wearing, slip-sliding good-girl attitude in high school. They soon figured out their idiot 15-year-old daughter was making out with someone older than she was. They may or may not had figured out exactly what that "Icicle" song was about and they were appalled that was oohey, gooey and girly could be so nasty.

So they tore through my room for my diary and read it. Where I kept detailed accounts of my trials and tribulations getting to second base when I couldn't drive myself anywhere to make out in peace. I had been writing everything down in EXCRUCIATING (read: embarrassing) detail-- so much so, that they feared it was going to burn our house down with the fiery fury of the Virgin Mary.

They broke us up. I knew it was trouble when my mother AND father were both home from work when I got home from school.

I screamed and yelled back at my parents screaming and yelling. At one point my mom actually said out loud she blamed the music I listened to (?!) as a reason for getting to second base. As if 15-year-olds aren't surrounded by overt sexual messages, she blamed my role models! My swearing, combat boot wearing, men-dissecting idols.

So I screamed back, "MOTHER, Ani and Tori did NOT TEACH ME THE WORD", and I paused for teenage drama, "FUCK!!".

And then she promptly took the Cd's, tapes, posters and everything and tied them up into a neat little bag and hid it.

And so my friends furiously taped me everything they had. They clucked as they stroked my hair how wrong my parents were were for robbing me of my two lady loves on top of stopping me from seeing an OLDER boy from ANOTHER school. Oh, the humanity!

So I have a long history of being dramatic and fiercely loving Tori Amos.

And this new album is no exception. AND THIS SONG! I have listened to it no less than 157 times today. That is freakish! Adolescent! Lame!

I. DO. NOT. CARE.

This song just SLAYS me.

Yeah, it's nice sounding and stuff, but it's not pretty. It actually rocks. PRETTY HARD. Impossible not to tap your foot in a slow white girl "Proud Mary"-esque way.

It's the big belt on my swagger of a playlist. I imagine this song is what I'd hear if I were starring in "Saturday Night Fever: DC Faux-Hipsters Don't Dance, They Just Stomp To British Music" (Does she count? She lives in Cornwall.) It makes my spine straighten up. It makes my lips purse in some ridiculous Ashlee Simpson impression. It makes me think of that "Sex and the City" episode where Charlotte poses in drag for that weird artist guy and all she can talk about afterwards is the power she felt. I can imagine what it would feel like to be a man in a suit walking down a street in this town and feeling like it's his god-given right to tell me about how my ass is looking today.

And I think that's why I like girl music. Especially THIS girl's music. Yeah, yeah, women's rights blah blah blah. I know. I know. Life isn't hard for me, in 2007, a 25-year-old white girl. Boo hoo my rights, your laws, my body blah blah blah.

But every woman who has walked down the street in front of a construction site, a frat house, or your ex-boyfriend walking hand in hand with another woman needs to have this song blaring in the boom box of her brain.

Or at least, the recording studio of your bathroom.

'blank' ass bitches

2007-04-25T22:14:00.000-04:00

You know, April 26th has a lot of meaning.

John Wilkes Booth died, it's World Intellectual Property Day, the Geneva Conferences began and the first U.S. rocket landed on the moon.

Carol Burnett, I.M. Pei, Jessica Lynch, Jordana Brewster and I were all born, in different years of course. Tell me we aren't all important?

Wouldn't that be a FUNNY group of people in one room? I'd like to talk to each of these people at a reception over cocktail weenies.

Carol: Is it as much fun being funny as it looks? Cuz it looks like funny is old.

I.M.: Aren't you glad you are brilliant instead of a 12-year-old girl who would, like, TOTALLY giggle at your name?

Jess: What does that sort of amnesia taste like?

Jordana: Weren't you in some awful movies? No? Then who exactly ARE you?

But we're all Tauruses (Tauri?) and we are funny folk, us Taurus/es/i.

We are stubborn-ass bitches.

I would rather DIE than give in to ANYTHING. DIE. Because of this, I choose my arguments and statements carefully. Also for this, I sort of hate debating. HATE! Let's not philosophize or argue about something I can't change, because I'll have to unfortunately stick with that statement until it is buried with me, thanks.

Along with stubborn, we are patient. This, I think, goes hand-in-hand with stubbornness. Sometimes it's easier to wait for just the right time to proclaim how right you are about something than mess around with the wrong times for utter correctness and charm.

We are jealous-ass bitches.

In the equal amount of time I can sit without being antsy about how long it will take my hair to grow, when I'll be devastatingly toned, or when Jake Gyllenhaal will realize how cool I am, my blood can boil in five seconds about someone or something if it crosses me.

This is especially true of rivals of all sorts: people who are skinnier than me who are eating huge cheeseburgers, people who don't respect the fine social art of where lines in the sand are drawn, and people who have bulldogs of any variety.

Perhaps the flip-side of blood-boiling jealousy is blood-boiling of a different variety. We are sensual. It's true! I'm not just saying that to be like tooting my own sexy-horn or anything. We bullies enjoy good food. Good wine. Soft fabric. Backrubs. Exotic Flowers. Amazing views. Good smells. Oral hygiene.

Tauri are also reliable-ass bitches.

I may be perpetually 10 minutes late. But I will arrive when I say I will. I only break plans if I really need to and then I feel terrible when I do. If a friend is sad, I am all over that situation doing the monkey-with-cymbals distraction song and dance. I will help you move. I like helping! Look at me! I am so ready to help!

But reliability comes with inflexibility. If we are going out for sushi, don't all of a sudden go "hmmm... maybe we should have Indian food" because I will patiently choose to argue with you about the ridiculousness of what you are saying. I have internalized the sushi. Visualized the sushi. Dreamed about the smooth, cold fish, creamy heat of the wasabi and the vinegary rice. I taste the Kirin in my mouth, fool-- don't rob me of that!

Also, tell me I'm pretty. And bring on the quarter-life crisis.

Tauri are also NOTORIOUS birthday princesses.

(ok, ok birthday-princess-ass-bitches)

Justin Timberlake is my personal trainer

2007-04-19T20:56:00.000-04:00

Let Me Talk To You Prelude / My Love
Katastrophic thoughts plus Justin Timberlake =

6 minutes, 10 seconds

Place: Washington Sports Club
Calories burned in that time: roughly 80

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
(I'm tired of arguing girl)
Hey, hey, hey,

If my dad were around, he'd yell "Hay is for HORSES" already, JUSTIN.

(I'm tired of arguing girl)
Hey, hey, hey

Hey. I'm here, aren't I. FELLOWS. JT. Timbaland. I AM HERE TO BRING SEXY BACK, ETC. I AM HERE TO LOSE WEIGHT AND WORK HARD. See this? I am geared up to do AN HOUR OF CARDIO. TELL ME I AM PRETTY.

My love, uh huh, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey

(That's me, thanks. I know.)

My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey

(Don't I F-ing wish. Tell me why you wear vests and why it makes it hard to breathe when I am sneak-reading Tiger-Beat in my cubicle).

My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love
My love

I love the way you're standing
Lips look so sweet, like cotton candy (My love)

That don't mean you gotta stop dancing
'Cause the way that you move is so demanding (My love)

It's true. I'm a demanding lady. I like all eyes on me when I want them and no eyes on me when mine are daggers. DUH. I love dancing in people's living rooms. In bars where no one else is dancing, and in crowded places. I hate it when my parents are around, the music involves too many guitars (I never know what to do) or I am not drunk enough.

Let's put it on cruise control
Let me take you to the crib, let me ease your soul (My love)

I gonna take it really nice and slow
But first let me, let me, let me talk to her

Is this what nice boys do? Talk to her? Don't people fall in love on dance floors? What I would have given for a west-side story-minus-tragedy-affair? Right? Like I'm in a swirly dress, and we dance once, I in my swirly dress and he in a red shirt. NOW WE ARE IN LOVE. God-- isn't this EASY? Also, we are Puerto Rican? Please say so!

LOVE.

My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey

God-- this was the BEST concert. Even from the nosebleed seats I could tell how hot he is. Yes my Ani DiFranco, Beth Orton, Indie rock loving self LOVES THIS SHIT.

My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey

(My hips wiggle on the elliptical in time to the music. I can't help it. SO F-ing catchy!)

My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love
My love

DUDE. Wicked cowbell. Is that what it's going to take for me to drop down to an easy size 6? Some Cowbell? God-- I AM SO WHITE.

Walk into my great place, cozy
I'm glad you came, let's make a toast (My love)

A toast. We've made toasts. Whole wheat. Sometimes with Jelly. Once or twice regarding anniversaries, birthdays and perhaps flag day.

Let me make an indecent proposal
Let me take you to the back and do what we're suppose to (My love)

Let's take a trip to the bayou
You can be the investigator, I'm your Private I (My love)

You know I want a piece of that pie

(mmmm......pie. I'm on a diet. I CRAVE PIE EVERY FIVE MINUTES. What do you tell a stomach that wants pie that it's getting an apple? Nothing. You pretend it's not speaking. No hablo ingles, tummy. Solo tengo ensalada.

But first let me, let me, let me talk to her

My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey

(oooh.... I smell the big tough guy transitioning into a total sap. God I LOVE TOTAL SAPS. SAP! SAP! SAP! Rings and puppies and picnics and SKINNINESS!)

(sigh. Not a pointed sigh either. Befuddled. Not there yet? I like chinese take-out and netflix. That's not SAP and that's not settling either. Where is it? Normal?)

My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey
My love, hey, my love, hey

Ain't no other woman that could take your spot my..

(swoon. Holy hell. Justin Timberlake wears suit-type items with non-suit-type flair. SWOON.)

If I wrote you a symphony
Just to say how much you mean to me (what would you do)
If I told you, you were beautiful

(Go on.... I'm listening.)

Would you date me on the regular (tell me would you?)

Um, YES. you are like, #2 on my "list of celebrities". That's for another entry. Mine is random.

Well baby, I've been around the world
But I ain't seen myself another girl (like you)

This ring here represents my heart

Who is getting married these days? WHO DO I KNOW WHO THINKS LIKE THIS. What IS romance these days? Saving money? Convenience? Lowered condo fees?

But there's just one thing I need from you (say I do)

Because, I can see us holding hands
Walking on the beach our toes in the sand

OMG CANNOT WAIT UNTIL I GO TO THE BEACH IN JULY. WAIT. (looks in mirror to the left of me on machine.) OH. RIGHT. That means other people have to see my ass in a swimsuit and still want to drink beer. That means not be nauseous. JUST YET.

I can see us on the country side
Sitting on the grass laying side by side
You can be my baby
Let me make you my lady

SERIOUSLY. MOVE. BURN CALORIES. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, HAVING THAT BITE OF CHOCOLATE?

Girl you amaze me
Ain't gotta do nothing crazy

oohhh... Sorry. You can have that bite of chocolate. Aren't we trying NOT to be insane? one bite (of chocolate) is OK. 15 Hershey bars is not. A stranger's arm? Your desk? Worse.

See all I want you to do is be…

My love (so don't give away)
My love (so don't give away)

Who gives a millionaire's love away? my boyfriend makes $3,000 more than me and I am like "wooo hooo, jackpot boyfriend".

My love (so don't give away)
Ain't another woman that could take your spot my love

Does he understand my jealousy issues? Can JT SEE ME? RIGHT NOW?

My love
My love
My love
My love

Now if I wrote you a love note

When is the last time I got a love letter? I can't even tell you. Who can know? Who writes them anymore? Let's just say the last time someone signed an email "xoxo" perhaps? Can you send them from your black berry?

And made you smile at every word I wrote (what would you do?)

I sort of do that already. Is Gmail a love note? in the 21st Century, I vote YES.

Would that make you want to change your scene

((God I am so tired... Must keep going. Breathing is heavy. My back is wet. Catches glimpse of self in mirror. Making progress. Gulps. Sucks it up.)

And wanna be the one on my team (tell me would you?)
See, what's the point in waiting anymore

Everyone is waiting. While I am here, breathing in a creepy heavy way, I've seen about 4 wedding rings. NO ONE IS MARRIED. At least, NO MARRIED PEOPLE WORK OUT AT 10PM!

Cuz girl, I never been more sure (that baby, it's you)
This ring here represents my heart
And everything that you've been waiting for (just say it, I do)

Now, I, as a 24-year-old-turning 25 next week feel marketed to. Are you selling me your fidelity, JT? Are you selling me the package of a smoking hot 25-year-old who is TOTALLY down with commitment. Rings. Roses?

LIAR.

(Do you have a P.O. Box I could direct my fan fiction to?)

Because, I can see us holding hands
Walking on the beach our toes in the sand

ALSO, GET PEDICURE. HOLY BALLS.

(mental note)

I can see us on the country side
Sitting on the grass laying side by side
You can be my baby

I sort of hate that. Baby. Who calls people baby? I never really liked it. It's like, verbally squashing your adult-y independence and ability to buy alcoholic beverages. Baby. It's just so weird and like you are dating a doo-wop song.

Also why are there no songs about people with my name? NADA.

Let me make you my lady
Girl you amaze me
Ain't gotta do nothing crazy

I prefer to think of crazy in the Patsy Cline kinda way. My boyfriend's basset hound at home bays with Patsy Cline. Maybe she and I are more alike than we know?

See all I want you to do is be…

My love (so don't give away)

At a house party this past weekend, I drunkenly did the dance from the video.

stomp, stomp, draaaggggg in a circle. Like the video.

stomp, stomp, draggggg.

My love (so don't give away)
My love (so don't give away)
Ain't another woman that could take your spot my love

Why don't real people say this out loud ever?

My love

HOLY HELL. WHAT IS THAT SMELL? IS IT THE DUDE RUNNING IN FRONT OF ME?

((looks around))

Oh god. YES.

My love

Colloquially, English-speakers don't use this term as much as the Spanish-speaking world. It's too preshus for me to deal with in English. Too saccharine.

My love

stomp, stomp draaaag

My love

alright it’s time to get it JT
I don’t know what she hesitating for man
(Aye aye) Shorty, cool as a fan
On the new once again
(Baby) Still has fans from Peru to Japan
Listen baby, I don't wanna ruin your plan
But if you got a man, try to lose him if you can

WAIT-- NO. TI. WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? When I first heard of T.I. I thought he was T 1. You know, like, ONE. Like a LAN connection. Boy, was I sad when I realized I was wrong. My friend laughed at me for weeks.

Cause the girls real wild throw they hands up high
when they wanna come and kick it wit a stand up guy

I ALREADY DO. MINUS STINK-RUNNING-FRIEND in front of me.

you don't really wanna let the chance go by
Cause you ain't been seen wit a man so fly
(baby) France so fly I can go fly
Private, cause I handle my B-I

I can handle that. (I think. What is that?) B.O. is another subject. YIKES. Running Friend! What is going ON?

They call me candle guy, simply because I am on fire
I hate to have to cancel my vacation so you can't deny
I'm patient, but I ain't gonna try

Ouch. Rings truer than normal. Yes, patience is a virtue. Don't you notice my held tongue? TRYING.

You don't come, I ain't gonna die

OH.

Maybe it's good I'm NOT dating JT. If he doesn't care about that sort of thing.

Hold up, what you mean, you can't go why?
Me and you boyfriend we ain't no tie
You say you wanna kick it, when i ain't so high
Well baby,its obvious that I ain't your guy
I ain't goin lie, I feel your space
But forget your face, I swear I will

What about glorious Brigantine, NJ? i'll totes be kicking it there in July. That's why I'm here for an HOUR OF CARDIO. To impress all of Central Jersey and Philadelphia on vacation that I am hotter than your average girl on the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Shouldn't it be NOT HARD?

St.Barth's, Anguilla, anywhere I chill
Just bring wit me a pair, I will

I can see us holding hands
Walking on the beach our toes in the sand
I can see us on the country side
Sitting on the grass laying side by side

Why don't I drink wine outside more? I totally should. Note to self: buy nice plastic cups.

You can be my baby
Let me make you my lady
Girl you amaze me
Ain't gotta do nothin crazy
See all I want you to do is be…

My love (love)

stomp, stomp draaaaggg

why didn't I become a back-up dancer?

My love (love)
My love (love)
Ain't another woman that could take your spot my love

My love
My love
My love

stomp, stomp drag
stomp, stomp drag.
My love

(phew. ONLY 13 more minutes!)

(OH GOD. UNTIL I'M DONE WITH THIS SET!)

Otherwise entitled "yes, I admit to watching Country Music Television, and it maybe changed my life".

2007-04-16T19:27:00.000-04:00

Sunday night sleep is never what you want it to be. You go to bed early in hopes of cashing sleep in or to bed late hoping you can write a check for it later.

In an effort to numb my brain screaming all sorts of Sunday-type worries both old and new, I drowned out the crazy with something even more horrendous: Country Music Television.

...I can explain.

I had gone to Florida Avenue Grill with my friend who had some very exciting news to tell me. She's going to save the world some day, one kid at a time, this friend of mine. She's recently changed her behavior to properly reflect what sort of good she'll do one day, so instead of drowning our dreary Sunday in margaritas, we drowned them in grits.

So, I was battling some serious food coma. I was bacon-induced sludge. I turned on the TV and saw "coyote ugly".

I thought: this is GREAT! This is just what I need, an awesome-terrible movie to keep me company while I food sweat-nap the biscuit out of me.

Except my napping plan was derailed by a SHOW about these gals. A REALITY SHOW.

I'm not exactly their demographic, considering the fact that I have to snort whenever women are consistently referred to as "girls" even though they are well into their child-bearing years. As far as I can tell, "boys" are "guys" the moment they hit 5th grade. You couldn't find a show on Comcast's cable line-up that centered on good looking "boys" handling liquids. You have to pay extra for that shit on Pay-Per-View, and then everyone is actually over 18 and takes monthly tests.

But the premise of the show is hilarious. They were looking for "bartenders" with a talent. It was Miss America for people with a platform of "wooooo!" or "yeeeahhhhh" and they were spokes-girls for their individual boob job funds.

So I spent all lazy afternoon dozing with half an eyelid propped up to watch this glorious train wreck.

Then I cleaned my apartment and winded down my Sunday night as most do: with a Tylenol PM (half a dose) and something to bore me asleep.

Which is right now, since I have two deleted posts and a few lives to stop ruining is: Why Can't you SHUT UP? How We Ruin Relationships-- How Not To by Dr. Anthony E. Wolf. I'm not saying it's not helping, but wallowing in your own shortcomings is not exactly the best way to end up not staring at the ceiling on an idle Sunday night with the 5am news broadcast looming in the near future.

For all my uppity "ew that's so gross" re: the bar booty-shaking that I watched these long-haired, long-legged ladies do, there was something that separated us.

I was awake despite some Tylenol PM, nursing a fragile manic-depressive ego re-adjusted by a life lesson learned that I can't say I'm entirely done processing or feel like anything outside of my own thoughts is going to change; except for the fact that it's no longer a topic of conversation. The green of jealousy is not an attractive color on me and I refuse to say anything about the subject again.

These "girls" were out there on TV embarrassing the hell out of themselves because they thought they could "make it". And perhaps "it" consisting of sharing prize money and getting a cushy bartending job is just about all they wanted. That would make them happy. They knew somewhere in their brains that this show was going to do something for them, whether get them somewhere new or stroke their egos. They liked dancing on bars and fiddling or singing or re-adjusting their bra straps-- whatever their talent may be.

And then there's me. So far in my own head that I can't realize how far in I am that I've become one with my eardrums. There always has to be drama. There always has to be dread. It's like I can't live without a pit in my stomach and making sure someone else know about said pit. Only when I'm drunk and dancing on the living room floor of a house party do I not give two shits about what's going on around me. Or knitting on the subway. Or strutting around the city with my ipod pulling my spine up straight.

I don't walk like that all the time.

Perhaps it's high time I should.

So I am going to try and be more like these ladies on the CMT. I think I need to hit the gym with greater vigor before those short-shorts can enter into the discussion (oh and like my yuppie ennui would even dare let me wear jean shorts). But I think I'm going to try and do something new.

Not worry. Not stress. Not internalize until I can't keep it in me anymore and then spew it out in a force of two years worth of why-did-you-do-this and why-didn't-you-do-that's of fears with no actual basis in reality, but based in the past. In the distant past.

I think trying to relax is going to be the hardest thing I have ever done.

I suppose a nap on an idle Sunday was an OK start.

Helloo "travelling for work"

2007-03-30T19:14:00.000-04:00

I was away! For work! Work paid for me to eat awesome food!

Something about being alone in a strange city with no real ambition to go out in the morning and explore was at first luxurious and too quiet. Staying in a hotel room yourself when other people are occupied only has certain charms. I resorted to an old standby: hours and hours of TLC’s What Not to Wear, which always is a good thing. I could have gone to museums and strolled around, but I let laziness take the hold in a sea of soft sheets, cheez-it crumbs and the occasional tissue.

After the first day, things were a bit better. Exploring and the like, when I had time in between conference -type joys. I’ve never stayed in a hotel by myself before, and it’s weird to have your clothes in drawers and not feel “aahhh I’m home” when you let yourself in. Just more of a “aaahhh… I just might take my 5th free piping hot shower of the day”, which is its own joy to be sure.

People have different ways of functioning in hotels. Some people, like me shower. Some people actually do some work or go to the hotel gym. Some people relish the time alone. Right then was sort of one of those times that I didn’t want to be alone. I am sort of bad at being alone, unless it’s on my terms. It was a strange place with a marble desk wasn't my terms. There’s no Food Network there, you see.

As I got busier with my conference, it was WAY more fun. I had two beds. One was my "living room" and the other my "bedroom". I took joy in resisting the mini bar and $5 potato chips that loomed large before me in my hungriest hour, even. I didn't do a thing, except flood the bathroom and eat one gi-normous meal a day after a long day of "learning". What can I say? Foreign shower curtains and I aren't really friends-- it's not like my OWN shower curtain isn't a co-dependent whiner stuck on the right side of my body.

Also the interwebs were like, 500 dollars a minute, which is why I am back-posting. I don’t have $500, and if I did it would certainly be spent on shoes.

Since I've become a whiney asshole

2007-03-23T19:07:00.000-04:00

Here is a list of day dreams I play out in my head when I am upset.

Arriving home to find a wicker basket wrought with pink ribbon full of soft, wriggling, white puppies on my doorstep (for me to keep and be nice to, don't get any awful ideas).
Singing karaoke (current song idea: "Rehab" by Amy Winehouse, past songs include "Stolen Car" by Beth Orton) only to be discovered by record company and brought to fame, fortune, and total skinniness.
Turning my knitting habit into some sort of arts and crafts themed bar/bookstore on H street with a greeny-blue decor, hodge-podge tables and hilarious drinks.
Meeting a celebrity while riding public transportation (movie star/ musician preferred) and having them be instantly charmed by me, but sweetly decline because i have a "boyfriend".
Starring in MTV faux-reality show about being self indulgent, the trials and tribulations of living in a warm place, being thin, and surviving.
Like Marge Simpson, I close my eyes and think of items I'd like to purchase.
Dream up situations where the offender finds me walking down the street with a single perfect tear rolling down my cheek and suddenly realizes how awful it is to wrong someone so attractive, and then something dramatic happens (catch up with me with a "Breakfast at Tiffany's" style kiss in the rain, apologize profusely and hands me a large check, tells me I won the lottery, has pizza, etc.)

it's in the air.

2007-03-22T22:47:00.000-04:00

As a Taurus, it's in my nature to stand at an impasse with my arms folded and bottom lip out refusing to budge. I am completely resistant to change. I am the champion of the way things were.

Even when I left my old terrible job, I felt guilty somehow that I was letting them down for leaving and thought about changing my mind. Just to keep things the same.

I moved to a new neighborhood. It's a very nice neighborhood and I like living on the Hill in its own right, but the 42 bus doesn't go here. I used to live and die by the 42 bus. The orange and blue lines are somehow not as successful a lifeline. The 42 always took me to happy places with butterflies in my stomach. Now I long for those days before the butterflies turned to wasps.

I complained about my stompy upstairs neighbor. I bemoaned her awfulness to everyone and anyone. But now that things are too quiet for me to bear, I sort of wish for her squeaky, thunderous warning signals that someone else was here, living and breathing right above me, so I wasn't completely alone. Just quiet in my own little box of an apartment and she (less quiet) in hers.

I miss the whizzing mechanical hum of stability. Right now everything could change, and I don't know how else to kick and scream and say NO. I am fighting for last week, last month, last year. If I could frame my pace before any missteps I would. I saved pieces of paper documenting what last felt normal. People can't leave. People can't give up. People can't die. People can't change. That much. Time is so short yet so slow. How do people reconcile?

Because I can't. I can't even deal with how I rearranged my refrigerator for Christ's sake. I've been growing out this damned pixie cut for months and I'm sort of grateful you can't really tell.

But all around me it's looming large. Faces are in my head of people who are gone, and people who might be next. People who are shrugging their shoulders and threatening to go, and people whose shoulders are bent from hanging on.

And I'm just sort of here, with my arms folded waiting for the hubbub to die down before I try and put things back where they belong. Asking me to change against my will is difficult. I never go down without a fight. It's in my nature to ride out storms with my chest puffed out for what I want.

The trouble is other people. And what they want.

My pride, served on a silver platter

2007-02-27T19:44:00.000-05:00

Today at Trader Joe's, I got carded buying Two-Buck-Chuck. I handed over my license to the fellow ringing me up, and after taking one look, he told me, "Huh. I used to work in Devon". And thus, we begin to shoot the Pennsylvania shit.

It's a game I like playing.

He grew up in Norristown, where half of my delightful Italian molto mafioso family lives. He knew the ancient department store where my grandmother would take us shopping. He knew the random bar across the street from her house. He knew the zoo, and the slightly creepy Christophe Columbus memorial my great Uncle Frankie helped fund. It was a pleasant, breezy conversation.

And then he said:

"So why don't you have a DC license?"

I just don't. This is something I have often wondered about. I move around a lot here. Apartment to apartment, job to job-- it just doesn't make sense. I'm 24. Pennsylvania is still "home".

So I told him, "Well-- I went to GW, and now I work around the corner, so I guess I just never really left." Which sort of hung in the air. Bitter, almost. Without intentionally meaning to sound anything specific, out of my mouth came bitter.

I've lived here for seven years and everything is a bit the same, though at least now I live in a different quadrant. Not that the same, is bad. But it's the SAME. I've spent my days in Foggy Bottom on and off for 5 of those years. I take the same subway. I wear the same clothes. I have a lot of the same friends. The only passage of time is the length of my hair and the addition of shoes.

Check-out guy said, "Oh. Wow. You must like it here, then."

I said "yeah" and heaved my backpack over my shoulder and carried out my things. At least this city has water ice now. A transplant of my breed needs water ice to live, since we don't have acceptable substitutes like New York's Tasty Delite. (Or a FREAKING Wawa. What I wouldn't do for a Wawa hoagie sometimes.)

I walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, thinking about the interaction. What a pleasant fellow. I wonder which high school he went to? I wonder if he knows that the Dunkin' Donuts at the corner by my aunt's house on the main thoroughfare is being rebuilt. Did he also see movies in high school at the Oaks 10 theater when it was still new and big before the King of Prussia 16 moved in?

Walking along, eager to taste my TJ's treats, I opened a bag of pretzels and took a handful, pleased with myself, and began to munch. I am easy to talk to! I bought healthy things! I had a breezy conversation with someone from back home. Water ice! Zeps! Steak sandwiches! Valley Forge Park! South Street!

And then, reality smacked me in the face.

And by reality, I mean the cold, hard pavement, because I had lost my backpack-heavy, high-heel wearing balance and had fallen flat on my face.

I laid there sprawled out on the concrete, my weeks' worth of groceries heavy on my back and my one grocery bag tossed a foot ahead of me on the sidewalk. I lifted my cheek from the ground, rubbed my fingers against my scraped palms, and began to cry in a way where you are trying REALLY hard not to be that crazy girl with a backpack laying face down on the sidewalk, but what can you do? You look crazy, and for the moment you are. My ankle hurt. My knee is bleeding. I had hit my head and my hands were scraped.

I felt like I was down for an hour, but it was probably about 20 seconds. I pulled myself up and reached out for my bag. A passer-by asked me if I was ok, and I nodded with my eyes closed in embarrassment and lips pursed in anger with tears rolling down my cheeks.

It took the walk to Foggy Bottom to calm myself down. So then, I suppose, I was the crazy girl walking and crying with bags. Like walking with tons of bags and crying isn't just CODE RED for crazy.

I can't tell if I was in shock about the fall and the throbbing of my knees and ankle, or whether or not it was the stark realization that sometimes I still feel like my lost 18-year-old self; standing on a corner in Foggy Bottom wondering if this was, in fact, the right place.

Selected Haikus on the Oscars

2007-02-25T23:41:00.000-05:00

Jennifer Hudson
the new "it" girl for the year,
minus that jacket.

Oh Jessica Biel,
Wearing a belt, but no bra--
I know of your kind.

So, Pan's Labyrinth
You were so brilliant, yet I
still sleep with lights on.

Nicole and Gwenyth,
Have you heard of "Locks for Love?"
Ample for ten kids.

You, Ryan Seacrest--
I'll double what they pay you,
If you just shut up.

Penelope Cruz,
Wrongfully a Mexican
For five full minutes.

Abigail Breslin
Secretly, I wish you won.
Over-achiever.

Ms. DeGeneres,
Infinitely better than,
Yup-- Billy Crystal.

Beyonce, diva--
you want to cut Jennifer,
Shameless fake smile.

Oh my dear Leo,
From under what rock do you
Crawl looking so fine.

Al Gore wins cool points.
You don't see Dan Quayle here,
That couch potato(e).

Done. With. It.

2007-02-19T12:08:00.000-05:00

Right now is one of those times where I hold up the white flag. This is me surrendering, people.

I, Katastrophe, am not cut out for apartment living. I am just not.

Upstairs neighbor (remember her?) is HAMMERING THE FLOOR. HAMMERING THE F-ING FLOOR. In my day dream, it's called "securing your new THICK, THICK wall-to-wall carpeting that will block your stomp foots and your boyfriend's vocal boom" but I doubt that is true. She's probably doing it just to be irritating because I've complained about her behavior and she's been gone for the weekend so she has to get her digs in. But seriously-- it's not human to wear high heels and clomp around your not-so-carpeted-should-be-carpeted bedroom floor at 6am. It is not human to listen to your TV that high or to let (make?) your linebacker-who-let-himself-go boyfriend stay over every freaking night. Doesn't that stort of immature bad girlfriend behavior fade when you start getting wrinkles?

Outside, in the back of the building (which my bedroom faces) the owner of the building is ice-picking the parking lot free from its wintry tyranny.

Inside the lobby (right outside my front door) the landlady is vacuuming, making sure to bump into all the corners that she can.

It's been like this since 10am.

Is it impossible to have a QUIET apartment and not pay 1600 for a one bedroom? A federal holiday is a precious thing, and I'm wasting it sitting around thinking about how MAD I AM. It's not like I don't pay a pretty decent amount of money for this place. I know some of that is being on the first floor-- but I am just losing it here, and I am not an angry person. I am mad at being mad.

My man-friend has never had a loud apartment. Yeah there was street noise, but that doesn't bother me as much. He never hears a peep from anyone else ANYWHERE. But he always lives somewhere swank and shares the place with a friend. I'm trying to afford my own space, and my budget is different.

Tell me of apartments available on the Hill, because complaining a lot often gets you out of leases. Tell me of how I can get this stompy fool to move out. Tell me how you cope with this, because all my own answers are falling short and I am about two weeks away from hammering my ceiling back and starting a serious war, instead of going through management and trying to be polite.

Being nice only gets you so far.

Things people have googled to find my blog

2007-02-15T18:56:00.000-05:00

all together now:

"strutting like my daddy"

[ i have no idea how that came up. I don't write about strutting (or, struting, as my searching friend put it) and I haven't called my father 'daddy' since I was like 5 ]

"proper bathroom ettiquette"

[i wrote a post about this like, a year ago. it is still something very near and dear to my heart, especially since ladies know what kinds of shoes we all wear and then you know that Carol So-and-So over in Finance totally had a burrito for lunch. And that is gross and weird.)

"...calories in Andre Brut champagne"

[I love Andre. It's the two buck chuck of champange, only not as good. But cheap! And plentiful!]

"is Giada de Laurentis a midget?"

[yes.]

"ladylike belch"

[My boyfriend thinks that my burping is less of a 'belch' and more of a "blooorrrppppp". Whenever I burp (which is an embarassing frequency. I must be VERY attractive, since I burp with such reckless abandon and he only looks the more triumphant each time). SO attractive, perhaps, that I had a problem with a short haired ladies fetish site stalking my flickr and my blog. That actually didn't make me feel pretty. It made me feel pretty gross. ASK ME ABOUT THAT SOME TIME. I DIDN'T LIKE THAT VERY MUCH. ]

When the moon hits yer eye

2007-02-14T18:31:00.000-05:00

Today, at work, since we weren't home in sweatpants like we had all PLANNED, we ordered pizza. Ordering lunch to be delivered at work is pretty indulgent. No fetching, no wind, no winter, no scarf that smells like breath over my mouth and nose.

We placed a Papa John's order at 12:15. We called to confirm. They said about an hour.

We were overjoyed! PIZZA! On a cold day! The fat will keep us warm! Pepperoni will keep us alive! With the coupon it was like $4 each with a generous tip for the delivery person.

We sent around emails being thrilled! Hurrah! Pizza jokes! Pizza face! Pizza, pizza, pizza!!!!!!

So we waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Until we said "F this" and threw in the towel.

We called the store. And called and called. The phone kept ringing and ringing, and eventually we had Papa John's CORPORATE cancel our order because we were starving NOW. And while we realize that ordering out on a day where everyone and their MOTHER probably wanted to order in, and cancelling was crappy, we waited well over 2 hours. We were defeated.

So everyone else went to Subway and I had low-fat split pea soup that has lived in my desk since about October. The moment was gone. Gone was my desire to eat something crazy fattening and different. I was going to punish myself with a boring lunch for tempting fate. It was only right.

Also I didn't want to go outside. If all was right with the world and I was home in soft pants, I wouldn't have gone outside anyway. I abide by snow day rules on rightful snow days.

When everyone returned, we chatted about a friend's brithday and then how everyone is finding my seventeen-year-old vocabulary coming out out of our twenty (and thirty!) something mouths. Totes. Betch. W00t! OMG!

Then we went "back to work".

At 3:15 our pizzas arrived.

Fate is cruel.

Staff Meeting Haikus

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

these were all taken from what people said or looked like during a staff meeting:

a death stare he gives
daggers shooting from the eyes
eyebrow arch. contempt?

No news is good news
have you heard any mention
of the millions due?

this is my blank check
if i seem extra bitchy
waa- my deadlines

slowly passing time
a bit of a problem here
come out of the shoot

the puppet master
the camera just loves you
smile pretty for me

bullishly stubborn
disbelief takes form of fist
beating on forehead.

it's lonely here, at
parents without state partners
pony up, casserole.

Love thy neighbor

2007-02-11T17:55:00.000-05:00

Like any good district resident, I spend a lot of time hating on the suburbs.

It's pretty easy. People from "out there" come "in here" and mess everything up. Traffic. Standing to the left on metro escalators. Crowding the sidewalks yelling "woooooooo!" coming out of the bars that would make me rather take my twenty dollar bill and swallow it, rather than enter. The suburbs are these ominous glistening towers of Harris Teeters and Targets where people live who want to afford home ownership.

I venture out into the suburbs sometimes, though. As a lady without a car, if you have a friend with a car who is going to Virginia to buy things, it's urban law that you MUST accompany them and MUST buy as much as you can such that getting to your ground floor apartment is a challenge. It's nature's will. If someone is going to Target, I must travel to the great unknown with them. Who doesn't ALWAYS need something at Target?

This past weekend, I was in Virginia both days, and as much as I hate to admit it, both were for good things.

Good thing the first:

The Cat Empire concert. At the State Theater. Man oh MAN was that a good show. Take 6 Aussies (5 regular band Aussies and one PAR-TIC-U-LAR-LY hot singer Aussie) and have them beach-jam-band-slash-Cuban-jazz their way into your heart and see if you don't tap those hipster-flats you're wearing. Dueling trumpets are something that I had not properly prepared myself for. Listen on myspace, it's worth it. Close your eyes and revel in the 5 + 1 who are awesome and surprisingly do not have a guitar amongst them.

The prize of the evening was the keyboard player. He was an amazing musician for sure, but was one of those band members who takes himself a bit seriously and John-Mayer-grimaces in some sort of painful orgasm of his own musical brilliance.

That aside, the State Theater is kind of an odd venue for this show. And there was an odd crowd. The crowd was like, 50-year-olds. But for every 50-year-old, there were two 16-year-olds. And then we twenty-somethings filled in the gap. Lots of people sitting down at tables, eating hamburgers like civilized people. And the 16-year-olds were crowd surfing. It did not compute.

Nor did the angry table-sitter who shoved the guy standing behind me to get out of his way, and the guy behind me managed to spill half his beer on me and my friend. I expect beer poured on me other places, not ones with table service. Apparently, standing and dancing was not allowed. At a concert. How Virginian of him!

Good thing the second:

The Italian store. Sweet Jeebus it's like going home! Everyone messed around with sandwiches of thinly sliced cold meats. That's delicious and all-- but child's play. Sausage and pepper sandwiches are where it's at. We waited a while for our lunches, but it was well worth it.

We ate in about 6 minutes outside in the balmy 38 degree weather before driving off to the Harris Teeter where we and all of Arlington fought for the last yellow onions in the behemoth store. I know Sundays are rough, but EVERYONE was at this store, and everyone was being pushy. I stopped saying "excuse me" when I was playing supermarket cart chicken, and instead just did what I had to do. My poor man-friend's deli meat took TWENTY FIVE minutes to arrive. TWENTY FIVE.

But I would say for the most part that I've had enough Virginia for a while, thankyouverymuch. You people have a lovely state with delicious sandwiches and tall buildings, but a girl cannot exist on sandwich or building alone.

now with more $4 champagne.

2007-01-30T17:46:00.000-05:00

Without fail, I watch the Miss America Pageant every year. It goes against every Northeastern-raised, short hair-having, skull sneaker-wearing bone in my body, but it's hard to stop once you start.

In high school, my marching band (something had to prompt skull sneakers at 24. I was a flag girl!) marched in the Miss America Parade when it was still in Atlantic City. At one point, I wouldn't have blinked at waving a silver flag at the crowd to a saxophone-heavy rendition of Semper Fidelis, marching on a boardwalk behind a convertible carrying a 20-year-old with Vaseline on her chicklet-shaped teeth.

I've always watched the Miss American Pageant, and I have to say that yesterday marked the longest I have ever watched the Country Music Television in my whole life. I can't even admit to a Dixie Chicks CD somewhere in my jumbled collection from college. It's never tempted me. The closest I've come to pageants is Little Miss Sunshine, and the closest I've come to the real South (excluding New Orleans and Miami, which I think are culturally distinct enough though geographically Southern) was a dive bar devoted to Patsy Cline in West Virginia. I was there for an hour. My two drinks totaled $ 4.25.

Last night was similarly brought to me by $4 of booze. Andre "Brut" (2006-- a good year), and a variety of cheesy delights that my friend and I assembled. We had a ball being bitchy, and as someone who was on hold with Verizon today for over an hour fighting about 30 dollars from 2004, I can assure you that I'm pretty good at that.

We noted the amounts of nose jobs needed, lipstick shade adjustments, faux-tanned muscle definition, and regional accent cover-up. How do people watch it with any level of remote seriousness? We jokingly blinked with emphasis at each other as we shouted out pageant buzz words: Leadership! Education! Prayers! THE CHILDREN!

Miss Pennsylvania, the representative of my driver's license was from Beaver, Pennsylvania, which made me snicker for a variety of reasons. And Miss Virginia was from Fairfax Station and Miss Maryland was from Hagerstown, so the two of them were closer to being Miss DC than Miss DC could ever be, considering all that hullabaloo that surrounded her tiara.

We decided out of 52 women, that we'd like to be friends with Miss "tap-danced her way into our hearts to a Prince song and had the balls to wear a white bikini" Georgia, and Miss "I'm a passable Beyoncé impersonator, but I look totally hot in lime green" Texas.

When BOR-RING Miss Oklahoma's mouth gaped in the fake-shock of her triumph, we chuckled at our two favs who rounded out the 2nd and 3rd places. They're probably better off not winning-- at least now they can have a cheeseburger and stop trying to cover up what they really mean with a charged lexicon of PageantSpeak. When Miss Georgia was asked "who would you rather sit on a plane next to, Bill Clinton or George Bush?" and she said "Bill Clinton" without even pretending to hesitate, I knew she was a goner.

But I think the familiar end of this pageant is what it needed, or else I might have felt bad if someone I might have liked in person won. Here I am sitting in my living room, all brave for being liberated and snarky and skully-shoed. And there they are, all out there in the open. Like freaking Chris Matthews, pageant judge, checking out a different kind of suit than he does on your average episode of Hardball,

I could never have done that. Kept my trap shut. Been called a "girl" until I was nearly 27 and had to answer questions and "show my personality" without actually having an opinion that would cause any sort of rift. Where else in the world does "personality" equal "muscle tone"?

But then again, if I had, I wouldn't owe money for the education I got at most expensive college in the nation, now would I?

Shopping day

2006-12-13T10:56:00.000-05:00

My lovely place of employment has given us a "shopping day" for christma-kwaanz-ukkah. Today is my day and thus far no shopping has taken place. Only sleeping, lazing, and making my eyes bleed by watching Tyra. Oh and dabbling in some English muffins and coffee.

What a gift today is though, TODAY IS MY OYSTER. TODAY IS FOR ME, and ME TYPE THINGS!

I could shop. I could go to the gym. I could clean my apartment and decorate more. I could drink in the afternoon! I could have lunch with the DK! I had even thought earlier this week that I would metro to PG Plaza to go to the Target there. I could buy yarn and finish up some gifties for various born and unborn-as-of-yet friends. I could go to the hardware store and buy things that I have to buy there. Don't we all have to always buy things at the hardware store? I could buy a Christmas tree! I could buy lights and ornaments!

I could...

But really, so far, these options have not taken me any further than my couch. And the warm, loving glow of TV. Ambition will only get you so far, until you remember that your couch is soft and it's rainy outside.

SSSSShhhhhhhh

2006-12-05T21:22:00.000-05:00

I had a good time with my friends last Thursday. We watched Gray's. I made pizza. We had cake. We drank wine. It was nice.

Then, we watched the most glorious thing.

Do you have Comcast? Do you have digital cable? On-Demand?

Have you seen the video personals? In the Get Local section?

They are riotously funny. Get someone who's nervous with some drinks in them talking about what they look for in a partner and how they rate themselves is fascinating. Also, we had drunk copious amounts of two buck chuck.

Dating on-demand was the best thing on TV, and that was a night of some good programming. Though they definitely played safe.

For example: the "Naughty" section? " "No listings available." What about the "one of a kind" section? Same deal. "Beefcakes?" None.

The most uproarious section was entitled "hidden talents".

Our favorite was a sassy lady who did impressions. She had a great sense of humor about herself, and really trumped her techniques. Best impression?

A bus stopping: "Sssshhhhhh".
The doors on Star Trek "Shhh".
Betty Rubble: :::giggles:::

She had us all in stitches. I wish to meet her and tell her to "SHUT UP!" like a graduate of the Stacy London school of outbursts.

Another hidden talent was "sculpting naked cows".

Ooh and karaoke in deep corners of Virginia. Apparently, single Virginians love themselves some off-pitch Bohemian Rhapsody. Some Virginians come see this woman sing it EVERY WEEK.

There was Walter, who's hobbies include "playing tennis, listening to live music and doing some things" and wouldn't date a woman who would "mock him".

There was Diana, who was in search of "whatever" and "spending time with people she likes to spend time with" who dislikes when men say "racy things".

There was Alex, who was looking for a woman who "has a great body, but isn't superficial" and likes it when women look him right in the eye so he can see through them immediately, and understand their souls. Also he's an ass model.

Seriously, watch the personals. Marvel at the brave souls who are putting themselves out there on TV. [Insert perfunctory 'it's hard out here for a pimp' quip here. ] I could never do a personal ad, much less one on TV.

If I'm ever in that position, get me six cats and teach me to needlepoint.

Today was one of those days...

2006-11-29T23:47:00.000-05:00

... and totally in a good way.

There was bounce in my step. If my hair were long enough, it would have swung rhythmically with my stride. I could faintly hear the theme song to "Stayin' Alive" as the soundtrack to my strut.

I thought at first it was my renewed interest in actually burning some calories post-holiday since I am still carrying around the 8 pieces of poundcake I ate while I was home, but I decided perhaps no.

Or maybe, I thought, it was the shoes.

New shoes! I bought four pairs when I was at home for Thanksgiving. Three of those pairs of shoes were necessary for work-appropriate fashion that didn't involve me still wearing business casual from the ankles up, and slip-on sneakers with skulls on them from the ankles down like my look circa October.

Three purchases were necessary, and I've worn already. One sensible, two mildly sensible (sort of--
flat is sensible. And metallics are the modern neutral, right?).

But then.

There was the impulse buy. A steal, no less, at a crazy sale price that made my knees weaken.

I bought grapey suede wedge heels. With a twee bow on the heel in matching grosgrain ribbon.

So wondrous, these shoes be, not one but TWO very nice ladies stopped me on the street to say so.

It made me wag my foot at all my female friends (and some poor, unprepared males too) and say "See? Don't you see?".

If you could package that, just about any lady would ask for a box of "excuse me, but where did you get THOSE SHOES?!" for Christma-Kwanza-kkuh.

Or for "Wednesday". Whichever.

It was a sad, sad day.

2006-11-27T23:32:00.000-05:00

I just found a few things about my Veronica Mars boyfriend, Jason Dohring. He's super-cute and when his character, Logan, says smarmy things, I lap it up like my rightful inner 15 year-old does ice cream on a proverbial Saturday night.

There are four facts about him below. Guess which one is a lie?

a.) He is married.

b.) His dad owns Neopets.

c.) He and Zach Braff and Peter Krause are Jake Gyllenhaal's REAL best friends. None of this Mattew McConaughey and Lance Armstrong nonsense.

d.) He's a scientologist.

Sadly, the lie is c.) but it's d.) that upsets me the most. Even though c.) involves ALL my Hollywood boyfriends. Suck.

I'm a little tea pot

2006-11-22T23:27:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, my family is hosting Thanksgiving. We are 5 in my immediate family.

Around 5pm, TWENTY of our nearest and dearest are descending upon our humble abode, and that's only one side of the family with some family members missing.

My mother is making 5 desserts. Just in case. She feels like a bit of a failure for not making pound cake AND chocolate cake to accompany the medley of pies to be displayed.

So, I've been helping out as best I can, but apparently, not correctly.

As I was dusting tonight, I was using "too much pledge" and had to be reminded to "spray it ON THE rag" but not "near the floor" or slipping is eminent. You pledge with SIDEWAYS motions and with SPARINGLY spritzed amounts, dusting the surface first and THEN progressing to the items that reside there.

I turned around, and told her "you know, last week I told so-and-so that he was a control freak in a meeting. I meant it with love, and I'm telling you now. Also, with love."

Mom turned around and looked fake-shocked. This is a skill we all have perfected. The huffy, fake-shocked pout.

To back-peddle with a bit of humor, I told her the rest of the story: How so-and-so countered with "ring ring! ring ring! Hello Kettle? IT'S POT!"

Mom laughed. She said, "that's good. I'll have to use that one!"

And like that, Shifty saved me from being grown-up grounded.

And then for the rest of the evening, it was a joke. Mom would pick up the tea kettle and wag it at me while fake-chastising me to "watch out for the pledge on the floor!".

This is what happens when anal-retentive people have anal-retentive children. I had to pledge the whole house and arrange things in the medicine cabinets neatly, because my mother heard on Oprah that 60% of people dig through other people's medicine cabinets when they are visiting.

The labels are facing just so.

Like mother, like daughter I suppose.

why was I so angsty as a teenager?

2006-11-20T19:06:00.000-05:00

SERIOUSLY. WHY?

Home is glorious. I am at home now. I am sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop while my father reads the paper and has some Hershey miniatures. He's like clockwork. He'll have a lemonade (now that he's given up tea and iced-tea products for health reasons) and a bowl of pretzels in 4 hours and then hit the sac. It's so easy here.

And delicious!

I had a steak sandwich for dinner, and it was perfect. It was so nice to have it right.

Imagine: a world where you don't have to PREFACE that NO, SIR, I would NOT like mayo, lettuce, tomato, or mustard on your steak sandwich. Just steak, onions and goop that may or may not have once been a cheese-like substance.

It's a thing. When I come home, there's a list of people I have to see. Family. Friends. Franzone's Pizza. It's like home to me, that pizza place. I might want to have my funeral party there. Or my wedding, I can't tell.

Keep that in mind for the story I have regarding the chinatown bus and my trip back to the glorious Filth-a-delphia. It rocks.

here's a sneak peak.

More delicious than a butterscotch krimpet

2006-11-13T23:19:00.000-05:00

On Saturday night in New York visiting friends, I went to a lil old post-hipster dance party. It was like I died and had gone to heaven. It was better than a butterscotch krimpet, and having been raised in a Tastykake kinda town, I can assure you that translates into serious business.
It was Britpop night with more Justin Timberlake. It was cheesy 80's tunes with more Nirvana. It was $4-PBRs-worth-it to see a beautiful man in a police hat and the teeniest, tiniest kilt and fishnets. The bathroom was bright gold and my feet are still sore from all the bopping around. They played BREED right after Girls & Boys and before some Prince for crying out loud.

But Nirvana! I couldn't tell you the last time I have listened to Nirvana, especially in my "adult life". It was like 1992 had smacked my fushia legging-ed self with an old flannel shirt.

Hearing Nirvana made me haul out all my pre-2000 CD's when I got home. Has it been all these years really since I took down my Kurt Cobain poster? Since I listened to Kula Shaker while driving my 1987 Honda Accord? It feels like yesterday.

When I was dancing it's amazing how the words came back so easily (thanks, PBR!). Jumping up and down SCREAMING "we can plant a house we can build a tree!" was easier to recall than state capitols at Quiz Night. I think at the end of the night my throat hurt worse than my calves.

Which says a lot. Trust me.

So now high school Katastrophe is the soundtrack, and it's hard not to re-live some angst. And Tastykakes are on sale at CVS.

Trouble abound.

I don't know what to think

2006-11-09T16:25:00.000-05:00

Someone found my blog by googling:

"I'm wasting my life away".

If you google that, I'm #3.

#3.

For wasting one's life.

Yup.

According to the air-heady-voiced twenty-something on the Metro

2006-11-06T19:57:00.000-05:00

she LOVES! some things. The way she said "LOVE!" is unlike anything I've ever heard. It's written in pink, loopy lettering in the word bubble of her after-school cartoon special. It's fuzzy like fleece and soft like a baby's cheek. It smells like unicorns and tastes like strawberries.

She LOVES!

her neighborhood (Shaw)
hotels
chocolate
metro

In my brain, she also LOVES!

kitties!
lollipops!
Days of our Lives!
Satan.

Help me oh internets

2006-11-06T19:44:00.000-05:00

So, say you lived in a wonderfully cheap apartment building. You love your apartment, but the neighbor above won't give you much rest (hello, VACUUMING BEFORE 9AM ON A SATURDAY MORNING).

You beg and plead with God to make her stop. You sleep with the air conditioner on even in the fall so that there's some white noise cover.

You shake your fist. Hourly. MUST YOU WEAR YOUR STILETTOS INDOORS?

You told her about herself already ONCE.

You practice conversations with yourself to figure out exactly how to come off like you mean business without sounding like a TOTAL bee-yotch for the NEXT time.

And then God smiles upon you.

A crooked, crooked, smile.

My landlady informed me that someone on the TOP (TIPPY TOP) floor is moving out. She knew I was only half moved in, and figured she'd ask to see if I wanted to move upstairs.

On paper, sounds PHENOMENAL. Same building, but the sunnier side. Same lay out. Same rent. Park view (over a smaller building, but still).

The catch?

That apartment is surrounded by old people who chain smoke in their places and that smoke travels up. INTENSELY. The smell of smoke pours from her kitchen sink, seeps through her closets, and stains her windows black. She spends $30 on candles a month to cover up the odor. She fabreezes herself before she goes to work. She has already had her couch cushions dry cleaned. She changes her sheets every 4 days so they don't reek.

I enjoy a cigarette socially every now and again. Usually after a blurry-fun night. But all the time? At least Stompy goes away sometimes.

I ask you. Which is the greater evil?

Stompy or Smokey?

Lazy bones.

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

I am sitting at home with a pot of mac 'n' cheese balanced on my knee, enjoying the fruits of my cable bill.

This is one of my simple pleasures. Awful Kraft mac n cheese and watching equally cheesy TV. it's the cheese afternoon, brought to you by Viacom and Kraft.

I had seen some good stuff today. I saw many Mtv True life shows: "I'm a Jersey Shore girl", "I'm getting married", and right now I'm watching "I'm Obese".

I could eat the mac 'n' cheese through the first two.

The third made me put down my fork of processed, powdered cheese sauce covered white pasta and think about doing some yoga.

Yikes.

Actually, that's a lie. the "I'm a Jersey Shore Girl" made me gag a little too. I can say it. I was a Jersey Shore Girl. But I digress.

The woman on this show is breaking my heart. She used to weigh 615 and she can't do anything for herself. She doesn't seem to have any friends, and her legs look like tree stumps of thick oak trees.

I am immediately guilty for not having joined a gym yet, and go make some asparagus. Mmmm, asparagus.

After my asparagus, I realize that I just did exactly what Mtv wanted me to do. I was affected by its programming and changed my behavior.

That's crazy. I'm 24 years old, it's a.) a wee bit embarrassing that I still watch Mtv with the regularity that I do and b.) that it's old tricks still work.

Shoot.

This post is brought to you by t-mobile

2006-10-28T13:16:00.000-04:00

I'm stealing from a real live famous blogger, Que Sera Sera. I am SHAMEFULLY stealing her ideas because, hey-- they are good ones and it's Saturday and I am lazy. There is Disc 5 and 6 of Season 1 of Veronica Mars, Halloween costume detailing, house cleaning and run-taking to do. Oh, and then copious amounts of fun to be had!

So, I'll just give you a list.

Here, are some text messages that I find in my cell phone this very minute:

Whoops. Out of hair dye. See you at the party.

Is it wrong of me to love Forever 21?

Je suis arrive. and stuff.

1. Shake excess water from hands.
2. Push button and release.
3. Rub hands briskly under hot air.
4. Dryer stops automatically.

Eh. you don't think about it until you need one. Then you REALLY need one.

Awake and upright. Surprise! Still interested in dumplings?

Brock lifted my dress up. Hate him a bit. it's ok, he's pretty!

OMG [redacted] is at this party. Lying profusely. Yay!

I have no idea what that means. I can only presume you are drunk.

OMG you must make that soup. It is like a cheeseburger dressed in cream clothing!

24

2006-10-22T17:25:00.000-04:00

I think I may have had the best 24 hours ever.

Let me elaborate.

I got cable TV. Need I say more? I'm now free to watch things like "40 Dumbest Celebrity Quotes EVER!!!!!!!" and waste my whole life watching Food TV.

I ate a tasty dinner. I cheffed deliciousness for me and the the DK.

I put on a dress and footless tights. Purple eyeshadow and faux-hawked my hair. I took a cab with Runjit.

I drank VERY cheap booze at the Common Share. I think I had a gasoline and Red Bull. Who can care?

I danced to much amazingness at Brit pop night at the Black Cat.

This is a big one. Brit pop night is SERIOUSLY one of my favorite things about living in Washington. For those of us working for geeky or wonky places, it's our answer to MisShapes and NYC style revelry. I've been going since I was in college, and there's nothing better than putting on a ridiculous outfit, getting a little loose, and dancing. But dancing in all ridiculousness. Thrashing of arms, flailing of limbs, wiggling of heads, stomping of feet, and general silliness.

I'm so sore today. It's like battle wounds of a good weekend. And all that interpretive dancing about swimming that Shifty and I did to Pulp blaring in the background makes a girl feel like she ran a marathon.

I dragged my ass home drunk on the metro and ate leftovers and animal crackers while gulping down water and watching food TV. I woke up at 6am with an infomercial on and I dragged myself to bed in my clothes from the couch in my clothes.

I woke up, miraculously not feeling the affects of any of my fun. I made coffee and bummed around my apartment. I watched Giada Bigface make some stuff. I caught up on the celebrity gossip. I got some phone calls.

Then Shifty and I and our S.O.'s went for dim sum. To Hollywood East Cafe. Far away, in Wheaton. I have never experienced such a delicious meal of dumplings, nor have I ever experienced an MSG high THAT HIGH. Everything we ate had pork and shrimp in it, and we giggled, drunk on sodium about the follies of the night before.

Then we got into the car.

And went to Michael's.

Swoon!

I'm either dreaming, or I've died and gone to heaven.

In the past 24 hours, I've eaten delicious things, drank some beers, danced my little heart out, went to a craft store, and had a lot of fun.

Bring it on, Monday. Bring it on.

Live blogging cable installation

2006-10-21T16:25:00.001-04:00

1:00pm: my Comcast-given "window" begins. Any time now between 1 and 4pm a cable fairy will magically descend and let the food network come to my TV. I drool with anticipation (or was that the Dunkin' Donuts breakfast sandwich?).

1:10pm: I fret. What if the cable guy doesn't know that there's no buzzer. What if I miss him? Should I write a sign? YES! A SIGN!

1:24pm. Write "Hello Comcast, I am so effing thrilled that you are coming so I can watch Paula Dean eat butter. call me! xxx-xxx. thanks!"

1:26pm: Realize that's abhorrently geeky. Change sign to "Comcast: please call xxx-xxxx. Thanks."

1:29pm: Can't find keys to go put sign outside. WHERE ARE THE KEYS? Under the bed? No. In hoodie? No. In door still? NO!?

1:37pm: Finally find keys. On table, in plain sight.

1:45pm: Decide to actually update blog. Write half a post about how I like some tunes and wish they'd be in a movie sometime. Some brief googling settles that. Who knew Grand National was on the Transporter 2 soundtrack? Delete post.

1:54: A CALL!

1:57pm: Charlie, the cable guy arrives. He's a nice enough fellow, calling me ma'am (which is totally freaky) and I try to make idle chatter with him but he'll have none of it. He is here to get in and get out. Knee pads and all.

1:59pm: Charlie realizes there is no cable jack. NONE. That he'll have to drill outside, through a lot of brick, by the window to get cable into my living room. Charlie almost doesn't believe me, he looks around for a cable jack that does not exist. Swears slightly under his breath. Takes apart my window and looks for the sea of other cables on the building. Finds them. Notes how far the box is away from my house.

2:01pm: Charlie sighs. Deeply.

2:05pm: I take Charlie downstairs through the laundry room. He inspects some wiring, and sighs again.

2:07pm: Charlie brings his truck around the back. I realize that the back alley was just repaved, so he cannot park right up against my building. Must park about 15 feet away. He carries heavy things to and fro while I fret about breaking apartment building rules, namely keeping the door open with a piece of wood, and letting him at least U-turn on the macadam.

2:11pm: Charlie starts drilling.

2:15pm: Charlie still drilling.

2:25pm: Sweet Jesus, poor Charlie! He's balanced perilously on a ladder and leaning into the drill with all of his might. He's drilling through a foot and a half of brick. He asks me if I could hand him his bag through the window.

2:26pm: I hand Charlie his bag and inspect the progress. He's halfway there. Apologize profusely to Charlie. Charlie shrugs. Charlie drills some more.

2:28pm: I have visions of my neighbors throwing darts at my picture; of them cursing my name. The noise is unreal. I have visions of Charlie, day dreaming about laying on the couch and watching football.

2:31pm: Charlie abandons drilling for hammering. Swears softly again. Hammering goes SUPER loudly. Take that, STOMPY!

2:34pm: Headache ensues. Embarrassment ensues. I hope no one has a migraine today. Or is home. It's too pretty a day to be inside anyway. Convince self that neighbors are not at home, but rather out in the world!

2:37pm: SUCCESS!!!!!! Sweet success!!!!!

2:41pm: Charlie gets the box and everything installed super fast. I offer him a glass of water and a banana, but he just goes for the water. I wish I had coffee, or a cheeseburger, or like, caviar for him.

2:42pm: Charlie calls up Comcast for the job and asks them to let the cable on through. Let it flow, baby, let it FLOW!

2:47pm: No cable. Charlie calls up Comcast again and is all "There's no juice!". Tina, on the other end of the phone sasses him. He tells her "C'mon boo-boo. Do your job now." I decide I like Charlie. He is sitting on a huge coil of cable sideways in the middle of my living room telling Tina about herself.

2:52pm. I handed Charlie a check, thanked him profusely, and am sitting on my ass watching Project Runway reruns.

There is a god.

heffalumps and woozles

2006-10-09T19:07:00.000-04:00

My upstairs neighbor is a force to be reckoned with.

I've had upstairs neighbors before. Loud ones. Upstairs neighbors who bounced basketballs at 7am and upstairs neighbors who, like Craig David, were Born to Do It.

But current upstairs neighbor takes the cake.

Let us call her Stompy.

I know it's a single female inhabitant. I know her name. I know she orders prints from snapfish.

I also know that she has a tendency to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, generally around 4am. She probably has gone to lots of concerts, because her TV is loud enough for the both of us to enjoy. I know she washes dishes only in the evenings, and she eats dinner roughly around 7. She wakes up, and probably goes to the gym, and then comes back and takes a shower. She wakes up before I do but leaves after, so that's the only guess I can properly make.

Doesn't that just make you feel uncomfortable?

It makes me uncomfortable that I know THAT much about her. It also makes me uncomfortable that I have to fill in the gaps in the story. I don't know her face, but I know how often she pees? Give me a break. Creepy! But, to my own defense, it fills the time while I'm staring at the ceiling laying in bed, swearing quietly to myself, wishing for her sudden purchase of thick, expensive wall to wall carpeting. There must be some good to this woman, though she stomps around mightily.

I imagine she's training injured elephants who have been shipped from Nepal who were mis-treated how to perform gallant tricks so that an organic, free-range circus can take them around the country and have them shake hands with disabled children. How can you hate an animal lover? An activist?

Maybe she has a life long dream of being in a revival of "42nd Street" and has been a self-taught tapdancer since the age of 7. She practices at night to keep her dreams alive and her apartment warm. At night she cries herself to sleep, but to dream of glimmering character shoes and bow-ties. That dream keeps her moving, and that moving keeps her going.

Or, she's plagued by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It's ruined her life, and the only way she can cope properly is to rearrange the furniture on a daily basis. Her dining table has been in all possible corners and now is occasionally moved into the bedroom, just to shake it up a little. Her medication also gives her superhuman strength, so it's easy to lift those couches but her OCD makes it hard for her to select the proper locations.

She has 24-hour dance-a-thons for Easter Seals. Twice a week.

Perhaps she is a determined Catholic who wants to bring drifters back to the flock. She MUST know I gave Catholicism up for Lent in 2003, and has decided that the only way to get me back in touch with the Lord, is to irritate me to the brink of summoning Jesus, Mary and Joseph by name. Only after I take them in vain so many times will I properly feel Catholic-flavored guilt and repent. Become a nun. Decide that the noises from above are not from a neighbor, but from God himself. Give up sleep and food in favor of fasting and meditating upon said noise as divine intervention of syncopated footsteps and nonsensical creaking of floorboards as the modern burning bush.

Is a Republican and saw all my liberally-leaning mail and has decided to make me pay for my bleeding heart.

Is a Democrat and doesn't think I do enough for the cause. Isn't the relinquishing of my relationship until election day enough? Doesn't the DK do enough for the BOTH OF US?

Is Satan. Tempts me with forbidden fruit of silence. Thinks I'm hilariously cute when huffy.

Is Jake Gyllenhaal. Tempts me with forbidden fruit of self. Thinks I'm hilariously cute when huffy.

Is my mother, so she can guarantee that I can't sleep in.

(DCblogs, Express: kisses!!)

The first words spoken to me today by a living, breathing person were:

2006-10-04T19:07:00.000-04:00

"Thank you, ladies back there for waiting patiently for the light to change, unlike THIS young lady who seems to be in a hurry!"

Gee, thanks crotchety capitol police officer, for pointing that out. You are TOTALLY right.

I was impatient.

I was in a hurry.

Haven't you ever, dear capitol police officer, ever woken up late?

I woke up at 7. I hit snooze many times. I woke up at 8:05 in a blind panic, because I had 25 minutes to be on time. Ok, not like I am EVER on time, but it's a jolt into your day.

So I hustled. I chugged my coffee. I skipped eyeliner (short hair = I've taken to wearing actual make-up, instead of just my standard blush/chapstick/one swipe of cream eyeshadow former technique).

I ran out the door, at 8:27, resigned to being late, but doing my best to be as LEAST late as possible.

I show up at your fine intersection of 1st and C, SE on my way to the subway. It's a very nice intersection. Sometimes there are cars. Sometimes, like this morning, there are not. I hustled along, minding my own business, until you pointed out my haste.

I contined on, rolling my eyes into my sunglasses right past you.

This made me huffy, because:

1.) I am not very good at being "in trouble". I obey rules (minus WRONG rules, like say, not being allowed to wear white after Labor day and no jaywalking when NO TRAFFIC IS PRESENT). I have never gotten a ticket, and I buckle my safety belt. I send thank you cards, and pay bills on time. Don't go against my grain here and point out how I am DISOBEYING. Because the light turned green JUST as I had taken my third step, and also you are a capitol police officer. You got right in my face and wiggled around like a good, topical political joke (ps isn't it like, DC martial law to make Mark Foley jokes? The ones I loved, which are hilarious, can be found here).

2.) I am an aggressive pedestrian.

I have no patience for people who have a comfortable, cushy drive from their mansion in McLean. I haul ASS to work and sweat on the subway and freeze while I wait for the bus. I am an urban scurrying machine. I don't appreciate being called out on being a good urban citizen. Guess what? I don't pollute as I stroll. Lay off.

I bet as your precious and rightful cars roll by you don't yell, "Thank you, kind pedestrians, this big ass-hat over here in the VE-HIC-LE had to just push on through because SOMEONE needs to get onto 66 while the HOV lanes are still open".

Doubtful.

I hear you yell at everyone in this fashion, congress-people and tourists alike. I suppose this is a good "welcome to the neighborhood" moment, because I will continue to cross against that red light to Capitol South if I am in a hurry and no cars are coming. And if you continue, I'll start yelling back.

But only in my head, because I am a giant wussy rule-follower.

Per usual

2006-09-26T01:20:00.000-04:00

When I need sleep the most, sleep won't come.

I got in bed at 10:45, thinking I could finish my book and roll over only to wake up at 3am all groggy-like to turn out the light and re-locate a soft thing to hug to lull me back to sleep. A penguin or panda, whichever.

The book I just finished, The Flight from the Enchanter was a fine read up until the last 50 pages. The last fifty pages were not magnificent. They made me angry a little.

After I had finished the book, I was a little like "hmmm, clumsy ending-- a bit freaky, though".

And then anger turned to all out, ridiculous, un-prompted new-house-what's-that-creaky-noise fear. A noise I could not blame on my intrusively loud upstairs neighbor

And then my tightly shut bedroom door pops open.

And now I'm sitting in my living room with all the lights on watching David Gregory booty dance on Conan O'Brien to some Chris Brown. Didn't he already do that?

You know you're home when you're scared in your house for the first time for absolutely NO REASON.

I just can't tell if it was the sight of the booty dancing or the book that has caused me to be awake this late AGAIN after being exhausted all day. And still, with the extreme tiredness. But the lack of sleeping.

:::sigh:::

Double your pleasure, double your fun

2006-09-25T01:39:00.000-04:00

I just got back from work.

Not day job, which I do not write about on the internet. (Haven't we all learned that lesson by now?)

OTHER JOB. Which I will.

Other job involves me wearing a very unattractive suit that would melt if lit on fire and which makes a rustling sound that makes a girl feel as unattractive as it gets. The pants are tapered, the jacket has shoulder pads are too boxy, and the shoes like that of your dippy middle school English teacher who liked sensible shoes with long flowy skirts. The pockets in the blazer are long but not deep, which doesn't make carrying a lot of necessities a good option unless you like to rock a mean cellphone bulge. The button-down shirt is tight around your neck neck and short at your sleeves. There is ring-around-the-collar on it like you wouldn't believe. No matter the amount of bleaching I put forth, it's still 3 years of sweat.

Catering is a serious business.

There are people who take it as such. People who get into the power of telling hundreds of lemmings (many of whom are college students) where to go, what to do and "HUSTLE". They know the way to lay the knives just so, that your way which was .5 millimeters off is just SO WRONG. They walk faster than you and heave deep sighs when you might not jump when told.

There are people who do this on the side of day jobs, because those jobs don't pay them enough money. There are two types of those people.

1.) young people who work for non-profits or are just starting out in the workforce and don't have much money. Apartments and beer and clothes not from H&M sometimes need to be paid for, but not when you make a laughably low starting salarty.

2.) people who don't understand why you would pass up the opportunity to make more money pretty easily (you carry things, walk around, get fed, clean up and go home). Many of these people were born outside the US and cannot believe EVERYONE doesn't hand people plates of food for $17 an hour. In some of these peoples' faces, is where you see the most gratitude for living in America.

There are other people who do it because friends of theirs do it, and why not get paid a very decent hourly wage to whisper your gossip into their ear than yell across a smoky bar.

There are people who do it because they are newly 21, and need to fuel their new relationship with alcohol now that they are finally out and proud.

And then there are people like me. Who just spent an irratingly high amount of money at Ikea and who might have to buy some leopard print new shoes. I have money in my budget for things, but not for EXTRA things. I spent all my recent savings on Gilbert chairs and Expedit shelves. C'est la vie when you move.

I've had this job since 2004 on the sly. It's always been good to me. It's there when I want it, ignorable when I don't. Tonight was one of a handful of "mandatory" dates. I went, begrudgingly.

Now there are a handful of people I enjoy seeing there, and our numbers are dwindling because people move on. It was more fun in the past when my roommates in college and I did it together. Out of 4 of us, someone was usually working with you, and it was fun to unwind together after being on our feet unaccustomed to that much action.

That is the main drawback. When you get home, it's impossible to shift modes. You just carried plates and trays and tables and chairs for hours. Always more than 4, never more than 12 hours at a time. Your hands hurt from heavy decorative plates topped with delicate china, and having to pinch them so other people can grab them from your shaking hands while balancing a handful of silverware and being told to smile. Your back hurts from lifting things; your shoulder blades from picking up trash and your lower back from picking up heavy boxes. Your legs hurt from walking so swiftly around people milling about, eager to catch a glimpse of DC celebrities and show of their biggest diamonds and smallest appetite. Your feet hurt because your heinous shoes cost $12.99 at Payless in 2004 and you are too stubborn to buy new ones.

Your pride hurts, just a wee bit, because you still need that second job.

I don't know when I can get rid of it exactly. The money is too good and too necessary. I have student loans and expensive taste. That's a dangerous combination.

Much like being very awake at 2am on a Sunday, with your feet in a tub of hot water and two advil swimming in your stomach.

On the upside, they usually let us take home the flowers.

Heaven is your boyfriend asking you...

2006-09-23T15:05:00.000-04:00

"so, I really need to get my roommate to drive me to Michael's. You should come!"

SWOON!

SERIOUSLY!

There's nothing I like more than some craftiness. This whole lil blog here was for me to take pictures of my knitting and show them to my friends. I had fooled myself into pretending that people were interested in my fibrous habits. I had also fooled myself into thinking that I have THAT MUCH TIME on my hands to do enough knitting to show people things so that I'm updating my blog with the due tenderness it deserves.

Now that I live much closer to a kickin' yarn shop, and the temperatures are falling, I AM interested in getting into the cozy crafting. I'm totally into watching TV with a glass of wine with my needles clicking. It's the best 'me time' a girl could ask for.

So, of course, when your boyfriend needs to get some matting for a print he'd like to frame, those eternal words just made me swoon with delight. OF COURSE, I would LOVE for you to talk your dear roommate into driving out to Falls Church so I can tag along and buy yarn and buttons and beads and JOY!

I feel like that was a big moment in our relationship. A first date. A first kiss. THE TIME HE ASKS YOU TO ACCOMPANY HIM TO A CRAFT STORE. IN HIS OWN RIGHT AND SOBER MIND.

I think this all comes down to a repayment of karma for the World Cup. Because that wasn't fair, not having a boyfriend for that long. He just bowed out of all boyfriend duties because there was a ball to kick. I may have watched some matches because, HELLO, THERE ARE SOME GLUTES ON THOSE BOYS. But otherwise, no thanks.

So please, karma gods. Allow his roommate to not think he's lost his mind, or that I had a hand in persuading two boys to take me to a craft warehouse so that I might skip gleefully through its aisles of fake flowers, embroidery thread and paintbrushes. So I can run my hands over every skein of yarn, every pad of paper and every ream of fabric. It's my own version of being Veruca Salt, skipping in a red dress and tights throughout a craft store, touching everything and wishing for it all to be mine. Only I would be a teensy bit more polite, and probably not demand that my parents buy it all for me. But still.

Do not take this moment away from me.

It just wouldn't be fair.

Like water for chocolate

2006-09-22T00:30:00.000-04:00

In the early spring of 2003, I gave up Catholicism for Lent.

My grandfather has always given up candy, and in all 87 years he can remember (which is not very many, granted...) he's always owned up. My mother says extra rosaries. I was encouraged to do something nice for my community and to be a good kid.

Ok, that's fair, but...

Oops. That all was well and good when spoon-fed from my parents, but add the atrocities of Catholic school into the mix, and you've got yourself a deserter. So I dissented in the grandest way possible.

The Catholic girl falls for the Jewish boy. My first friends/family of friends Rosh Hashanah is tomorrow. So far, all I know is that I am in for a.) goose (goose? Is this a "thing"? I don't know any better, so I'm asking b.) honey, walnuts and apples and c.) loads of wine.

So far, being Jew-friendly is a-ok by me. mmmmm.... loads of wine.

It's also fun for once to not be in church elbowing the DK, explaining why being at Mass at Christmas is like a 2-hour lite aerobics class and why you under no circumstances can gulp the wine in the chalice. There will be no slapping away of his hands as he gestures below eye level, to indicate naughty things that are in the news involving altar boys. I've dragged him through many levels and discussions of why Catholicism makes no sense. It flip-flops. This will be different.

On the contrary. I think it'll be neat, I think, to be on the learning end of what seems like the greatest holiday in history. Though it does not involve presents, for which I find great fault.

My friend, Dan, is all about making me and his girlfriend (and a few other select ladies) Shikse shirts. I know it's a term that people have mixed feelings about. But I think you just have to embrace it.

Especially when you are in a relationship where there are differences as such. Sure-- a nearly lapsed Jew and a quite lapsed Catholic seem nearly perfect on paper, but there are always some arched eyebrows and latent questions. It's not like we had to fight through picket lines to be together, but people have opinions, and some of them reek of 1952.

I think the best way to go about it is to enjoy it, recognize that I'll learn how to participate in a way that makes me feel good about eating that much goose. Preferably with a big red-wine-stained smile. BIG.

Cheers!

Social organizer extraordinaire

2006-09-20T19:14:00.000-04:00

I'm not very good at keeping my personal life, personal, and my professional life, professional. It seems only natural to make myself perfectly comfortable where I have to spend 40+ hours a week, and vice versa. HELLO, if I like these people, I'm going to want to drink beers with them on my off time, not just fill out TPS reports.

I've done this EVERY job I've ever had. Work friends often cross the line into friend friends and they often have been some of my greatest delights. Before I know it, I'm gossiping at the water cooler about embarrassing things that shouldn't be spoken out loud while wearing security badges, and then the next day, I'm dragging myself into work hung over and that is always much more fun if there is someone else to blame.

Work friends are important especially here in DC. I've had more friends move in and move out and move back in (and then back out) than you could shake a stick at. People come here (and often go) from all walks of my life-- high school friends, college friends, hell; friends I met while living in different countries! But work friends often form bonds firm and fast because you know they are here to "stay". Not that jobs REALLY hold people down in this city, but you look at a work friend and you think maybe, "cubicles aren't conducive to rapid change. Please tell me that you'll stay for a bit and we can have some fun and laugh and drink beers and make faces at annoying people at work both on weekdays AND weekends!". And I don't mean that in a needy way, but when your friends are of the livelihood that they could do whatever they do in any city, it makes things more transient. Really, if you work in non-profit land, you work here. And here you will probably stay.

I don't know if this experience is universal or not. I highly doubt it. I am just sort of a social circle busy-body and mold them constantly. And I wouldn't say I have a specific circle of friends, even, because who does after college? But I really value them, however they are scattered.

At my old job, I met two of my best friends here. And my job would be much less sunny (ok, perhaps my whole existence) without shiftless badger by my side.

So here's a thanks- to work friends old and new. No, I won't sing you the Golden Girls theme song, but I'm TOTALLY TEMPTED. So enjoy that as a token of my appreciation for liking jobs that don't pay very much but are somehow money-centered. Go figure?!

Welcome to the neighborhood

2006-09-14T23:19:00.000-04:00

When I heard the snap, I assumed it was a twig. When my foot wobbled, I blamed the beer I had with dinner. When I felt the heel pushing inward, I raced over to the nearest streetlight. I turned over my foot of my FAVORITE HEELS, to find this. A crack.

I did the only thing I could do.

I threw my head back and yelled "BALLS!!!!!!!".

A woman walked by in an expensive-looking trenchcoat and looked at me strangely. I showed her the shoe as she was talking on her cell phone. Her look of snobbish contempt gave way to empathy. Every girl has feared the snap of a heel. Tonight was my night.

I can tell you exactly how that happened. It got stuck between two cobbles in the sidewalk. I tugged.

I'll have you know I never broke ONE HEEL while living in Adams Morgan, and I clomped home late at night in heels often. I'm not used to this. I my second assumption was that there was trash under my heel that caught it-- maybe a Big Mac box or a Subway cup, not quaint street that is centuries old.

I have ONE BEER and come home in a klutzy tradewind to this after a long list of hilariousness in the day. Exploding coffee in the microwave. Dropping of keys in a puddle. Cramping of knees while sitting on the floor at Sushi Taro.

This is uncalled for.

Capitol Hill, I want a refund.

Nine West, you suck.

Who has a good cobbler?

A long time ago, we used to be friends.

2006-09-12T21:02:00.000-04:00

I'm notoriously late on things. Cool-kid things.

Like this whole here blogging thing? Yeah, 3 years too late. Maybe more.

Legwarmers? Didn't do it the first time around. HELL YES, do I do them now.

Ok Go? Yeah, I was a year too late on that bandwagon. Everyone was dancing in their awkward band-front-flag-girl kind of way along with their adorable backyard video and a YEAR later there I am, "oh yeah guys, there's this awesome new thing on teh internets" and the rest of the world sighed with a dull yawn of DUH. Where were YOU in 2004?

My new favorite thing in the world that I totally missed the boat on but REALLY, isn't there time for redemption-- is a TV show. No, it's not The Wire, because EVERYONE just jumped on that bandwagon. That show gives me bad dreams and the theme song stays in my head for weeks on end. That ship is overloaded, they are throwing their suitcases overboard to last.

I'm totally girl-crushing on Veronica Mars. Where WAS SHE ALL MY LIFE?

I was an AVID Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. I still love a host of terrible actors because of it (see Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Michelle Trachtenberg et. al). There is a toss up for me as to what I would name my first-born. Xander, Giles or Spike. So lots of folks who jumped the Buffy ship landed gracefully on the Veronica Mars space odyssey.

It's a good one.

When I was cable-less in my squatting situation, I caught Veronica Mars one night because it was the only TV show aside from public television stations begging for money that came through with no static. I was instantly hooked.

VM is now my crack. I've netflixed season 1. The WHOLE rest of the show is in my queue. I am obsessed with its film noir slant through blue-washed retrospection. I love her chunky adorable haircut. I love that the dog's name is "back up" and she takes him on stake-outs. I love that she takes pictures and wears short sleeve hoodies.

I hate that Kristen Bell is OLDER THAN ME. And that all the boys in the show look at LEAST 27. But I can look past these things.

It's re-arranged my world view. Like "OH, OMG, that's the girl from Big Love who plays the only likeable character!". Or "OH, OMG, you can say 'laid some pipe' in that sorta way on UPN?". Or "OH, OMG, that's the guy from Just Shoot me who plays the only likeable character!."

So I'm getting better. I was TOTALLY on top of OK GO's SECOND video. Treadmill times? I'm getting better. HELL YES.

Kevin and Neal: 2 vignettes

2006-08-31T19:28:00.000-04:00

Kevin is 22 and realized before the rest of his friends that any beers involving the words "ice", "natural" and "keystone" should be avoided. He could play you any song he ever heard once on any intstrument in any key you would like. He is crass and likes working his summer job as a janitor and is bitter about having 1 more year of college left in his 5-years-for-two-degrees gig at Temple.

He may be crass and bitter, but he's a very nice brother and came down to help me move into my apartment. In return, I bought him beers that did not have the words "ice", "natural" or "keystone" on their labels. He returned the favor by sleepwalking out of my apartment into the basement of my building for which I had lived in for precisely 18 hours. He woke up at some point to walk back up my stairs and rap lightly on my door for a short eternity, which my exhausted ears did not hear. Instead, my land lady did and she let him into my apartment at 2:30 in the morning after good-naturedly ribbing him with "Who's waking up the land lady?".

Kevin didn't tell my mother, but my dad told me eventually and my cheeks burned for a full 10 minutes. I apologized to said land lady who has known me know for like, a week. I promised her she wouldn't find strange boxer-clad men rapping lightly at my door at 2:30 in the morning again. I promised her that with a bit smirk on my face with a "maybe I will, maybe I won't" charm but truth be told I hope she meets the DK and understands he's not "strange" before she encounters him in a similar fashion.

* * *

Neal is so freshly 18 that he saves poignant away messages to describe how being so newly in college feels he can share them with everyone. He wants everyone to like him so much, that he's squirmy about it. He doesn't have to be, because he's cute and personable and funny, but it seems everyone knows that but him.

He's the baby of the family, and my mother frets about his every waking breath and whether or not the next will properly find its way in. He is in his second week of college, and was a staunch non-drinker in high school. I had encouraged him this summer to figure out what he likes and dislikes (beer and gin, respectively) and how much he can ease into drinking, because that is better than lying and saying you don't drink only to find yourself at an Edward-40-hands party so dizzy you confused yourself for a sprinkler system.

Being impressionable AND wise, he took my advice sort of. He doesn't want to be uncool, so he's going with the flow of his peers. An email came on Saturday.

"Hey K. Just so you know, I entered a case race on Saturday night. Thought you'd want to know".

I, being a fool, read that e-mail out loud. To my parents, who were diligently helping me clean and put together furniture. We all thought, "Neat! Sounds like a marching band thing!"

Later that night, I found out it is definitely not a marching band thing. Case = beer. Duh, he's 18 and at college. I had envisioned co-eds traipsing up and down the football field with their instrument cases full of leaves or water until they knew the fight song. So I text him "go Neal! Don't boot!". He IMMEDIATELY drunk calls me back and tells me how many beers he's had and how fun it is. I don't think anything else of it.

Until the next day, when my mother asks him "how the case race went". Some back-peddling and excuses later, the truth comes out. My prudent mother was appalled. I was embarrassed to have broken sibling code. Neal was embarrassed that Mom knows he can drink beer in Western Pennsylvania.

Moral of the stories? Siblings' memories are short for things like this. I hope Kevin is laughing about his tour sleepwalking half-naked around my apartment building. Neal, hopefully, is laughing at our prim and proper mother making disapproving Marge Simpson noises about him drinking beer. Because I am laughing at them already, and that's what big sisters are for.

Idiosyncrasies

2006-08-28T19:24:00.000-04:00

My new apartment has been mine for about 4 days now, and we are getting along swimmingly. It's fun to get acquainted with new house-- its character is always fun to figure out. It's like making a new friend, and trying to describe her to someone else.

My old apartment was a sorority girl. Her name might have been Amber or Heather and she might have worn jeanskirts and danced on bars and flipped her hair to pout. My new apartment? She's old but has kick-ass vintage jewelry and her name could be Vera or Blanche. Shehas been known to indulge in too much port after dinner and has the habit of winking at handsome waiters.

My old place had no neighbors to be conscientious about. There was a set of Parrot Bay plastic margarita glasses left for us in a cabinet. The rug was grayish and the windows dirty. The price was right and the layout good for roommates. We had parties and once had a whole yellow cake with chocolate frosting smashed into our rug. We didn't care, it was a first apartment and we treated it as such. It was our savior when it was impossible to find housing. She was to us like the friend all the boys liked, and you hung around with her hoping that energy would rub off on you somehow.

The new place has welcome mats in front of each apartment. The hardwood floors gleam and my oven is retro-fabulous--totally Rachel Ray styles. I tiptoe around in socks now because I don't have rugs yet and don't want to stomp around to annoy those below. I have mopped and scrubbed this new apartment with yellow rubber gloves on my hands and knees to get this place clean. My silence is reverent and I have been watching a lot of jeopardy and have some old lady chic knitting projects coming down the pike. When I walk around I let one hand linger on the walls, trying to learn each corner and light switch's home

The difference has resonated with me immediately.

The problem with that is, frankly, that fretting about the proper furniture and decor does not a well-rounded girl make. Nor does this adult-old-lady-pipe dream where I am 24 and have a broom to scoot the riff-raff out the door. I have grout to scrub, a bedroom to paint, and curtains and pillows to sew. I want to do it all RIGHTTHISMINUTE, but I have no time for other things. Important things. I haven't seen friends regularly, and even had to wimp out at RUNJIT's birthday party because I was so tired I could barely converse, let alone bowl. I haven't written in ye olde blog in weeks. I haven't run in a week, and I hadn't slept in my own bed in a month. I have been drinking more wine.

So now is the fun part, I suppose. Game on. The exciting changes and balancing them with the activities of my old house. Turning the novelty of a new place into reality. But know this-- I totally kept those parrot bay glasses. For the kitsch factor, of course.

Since I have no TV and no permanent home yet

2006-08-22T20:09:00.000-04:00

I've been exercising all the freaking time.

SERIOUSLY, having no cable has forced me take long runs in the evenings to fill the cavernous void that sitting on my ass in front of the TV on an idle evening had previously filled.

I've been so bad at my life since I've been in interim housing; piss-poor job of seeing friends, not folding clothing and failing to get a good night's sleep, etc. At first it was like camping at a hotel with a soft leather couch and drawers full of other peoples' clothing. Now it's like "OMG, LET ME MOVE IN ALREADY!" I'm totally lacking the energy to be sociable because I am totally unsettled. I just want to sit until it's move-in day.

So I am. Sorta. Until Saturday, that is.

But until then, I shall continue to be bad at my life. Minus the running part. I might even keep it until it gets cold and I get wimpy and join a gym to work out inside.

Life needed some calories burned lately, so this is a good thing. I've never been much of a runner. I'll begrudge myself 20 minutes on the treadmill at the gym to shake up my old boring routines. I ran in Rock Creek Park after college because I couldn't afford a gym. I ran some in college when I was new to DC and just wanted to stare at these big white structures with my suburban mouth gaping at all the stateliness of this city.

I was never good at running, but I always found running on a track soothing in high school gym class. The chaotic monotony of running in the same circle with something new to see has always settled well with me. Taurus. Remember? I'm a Taurus. It's the same routine, the same turns and the same landmarkers. I can push myself until a designated position, or lap and the view is always changing.

So, since fleeing Northwest, there's a lovely park that I run around that seriously just fuels my soul. It's long enough that it's like running on a track. that's squished so the straight parts are longer. There are fast lanes and slow lanes. There are runners and walkers and the two people playing always sort of playing lacrosse. There are families and babies and crap, but more importantly; THERE ARE DOGS. SO MANY DOGS. It's like I've died and gone to petster heaven. It's glorious. One day I saw a bulldog AND a miniature schnauzer AND like, 40 of their waggy-tailed friends. My friend E told me there's an ALL BULLDOG DOG PARK DOWN HERE. I'll run all over this city until I find that! It's my idea of heaven, provided that I get to choose the soundtrack.

This whole opposite quadrant thing is going to work out well. Figure A.

Not enough to miss comcast, but still

2006-08-14T21:34:00.000-04:00

Post "le gran move du monde" or "how I swindled 8 perfectly nice people into carrying heavy things up and down 25 steps for 8 hours in exchange for some falafel", I find myself in a very interesting interim housing situation.

My apartment (the for real one) won't be ready until late late August, and I have amazingly cool friends with super lovely neighbors who have come to my rescue. My friend E had asked her neighbor, an acquaintance of mine, if she might borrow an air mattress for me to sleep on in my 3.5 weeks of homelessness. Her neighbor, replied "or, she can just stay at my apartment" because she was traveling outside of the country on business and is just so freaking nice.

This woman seriously, saved my butt. J, in all her kindliness and amazingness left her apartment spotless, and 2/3 of my entire life fits stacked up in the 2 corners of her apartment. Her taste is impeccable; beautiful leather couches, crate and barrel model kitchen, and a whole apartment full of design porn a la Better Homes and Gardens. It's the perfect place to gear up to decorate and think about how I want my apartment to be.

I say this because there's a lot of time to think.

Cuz the woman may be brilliant, tasteful, nice as all get out, but she lacks cable. And that hit me where it hurts, friends.

I will not say one word of complaint about my time without cable, because this lady, J, has done me such a huge favor that not the biggest basket of thank you odds and ends and wine and dinners will ever cover it. However, this lead me to discuss with other friends exactly how funny it is what some people spend their money on.

I know plenty of other people without cable, without a TV, even (I'm looking at you, R and R in Mt. Pleasant). And you people are utterly crazy.

It is currently almost 10pm. I've been stuck with one eyeball oogling the Ikea catalogue, and the other warily watching "Wife Swap", which is making my blood boil that a) wives are commodities to be traded b) husbands and fathers are that idiotic and c) children could be that squeaky.

If I were in charge of my TV viewings, I could be drooling over Food Network, watching the 500th replaying of Project Runway, or even maybe watching Entourage On Demand. I find it interesting, and have been talking with a friend M, about how funny it is what people spend their money on. My friend Dan doesn't have a TV, but he's got like 14 computers and a pimp vehicle. E doesn't have cable, but girlfriend has a hott apartment. R and R don't have TV, but they do have a healthy understanding of the ends of the internets and are pros at drunk biking.

But I am not in charge since I am only sort of superficially living here out of suitcases and not getting anything dirty-- so I've read a few books and A LOT OF HOME MAGAZINES and all I have to say is

1.) Driving over Lemons made me want to leave a life of cubicles and learn to midwife sheep and have a farm in Spain and

2.) I totally found the inspiration for my new living room in the new Martha Stewart mag Blueprint and just might sign up for a year subscription.

Ok, well Super Nanny is on now, and I think that's where I have to draw the line. I still have my dignity among the boxes, you know.

Breaking up is hard to do.

2006-08-10T19:59:00.000-04:00

I can't.
I'm sorry.
Don't hate me.

Words made famous by Sex and the City regarding breaking up. Moving on.

Moving sucks, and there are complications with moving, so I blame my neighborhood. It just wasn't working out. It was me, not it. So we're through.

We sort of had a torrid affair, and then when I decided that this wasn't what I was looking for. I came to realize that this wasn't going to work. Adams Morgan. Me. Us.

I lived on 18th Street in Adams Morgan. ON 18th STREET. Yes, people LIVE THERE. This came as a constant surprise to all the loiterers who stared at me in disbelief as I hauled an old-lady cart full of groceries into what people assumed was a bar or an office. My neighbors were Queen's Hookah and a Moroccan bazaar owned by the nicest guy ever. I lived in a 3rd floor walk up where weekends meant cleaning up the pizza plates and turning up the TV a few notches so that the fervent prayers of "wooooo!!!" and "hhheeeyyyyyyy!" could be audible to their gods: Millie and Al. It meant arguing with college kids who were about to hurl on my front steps to get past so I could slip in the front door without their vom touching my shoes. It was the loud sighs I would emit while I had to dodge kickball players walking 6 across on the sidewalk in matching T-shirts like they owned the place because the backs of their t-shirts proclaimed Tom-Tom as THEIR BAR. Well, you guys can have it in the divorce. Trust me, it's no loss on my behalf.

It's not Adams Morgan's fault.

At first it was SO FUN. Restaurants, bars, stores, everything and everyone was my front yard. It's hustle and bustle in a way that makes you forget that you are in Washington, and maybe somewhere with a little more edge. I liked that. But then you see the edges soften and finally just dull. When we first moved in, my roommate and I would get excited. "Ooh! Listen! We can hear live jazz!". That quickly turned into "EFFING FELIX NEEDS TO GET A NEW BAND." We had Jumbo Slice for our friends who helped us move in. "It's not too bad sober," we thought. Now, the smell of Jumbo slice and the pounding refrain of "Dame mas gaso-lllllllliiiiiinnnna" makes me lose my appetite. I haven't gone out to the bars on that street (save Asylum and Bourbon) in months. I couldn't stand it because there was no relief. I couldn't throw open our windows and yell "For the love of God, SHUT UP!" like I wanted to on idle Thursday nights. I was a woman scorned. It was too much.

So I moved. I was grown about it. It was an amicable split. I am sure there is some girl out there who could learn to love the AdMo more than I. Though there are still things about my old stomping ground that I love and will miss seeing. Astor Mediterranean cafe, for starters. Pasta Mia. Western Market. Amsterdam Falafel. The Red Box DVD vending machine. Real live diversity on a weekday. Saturdays at Asylum. The excuse to pop into Payless with a disturbing frequency. Sitting on my stoop during the afternoon on a clear day reading the paper with a coffee. The guy behind the Salsa Safeway who winked at me when he gave me my turkey. Memorizing more happy hour specials than I care to repeat. The glutial workout of 25 stairs from front door to apartment door.

I'll go back there for some of those things. For others, I will gladly let the new guys who moved into my apartment enjoy. And then promptly grow to hate. Two years there was my fill. And if you can handle more then that, I salute you.

Easily swayed

2006-07-23T21:03:00.000-04:00

I was out this past week with a friend from California at dinner. He and I were discussing some things, and jean shorts were brought up, somehow. I told him that I hadn't worn jean shorts since I was 16, and that I didn't get them.

When I was 16, I spent the better part of my summers in cut-offs and teva sandals chasing children who were recently taken off their ridalin around outside. It was always an exciting choice-- which jeans deserved to be immortalized by scissors. Jean shorts to me are a time and a place that I could pull up in a capsule of time.

When I think jean shorts, I think my father gardening in 1991. I think being in middle school where whomever had the longest acceptable fray on their shorts was the coolest. I think about tourists and Middle America and the Gap.

My friend said he didn't understand the East Coast snobbery, because when he showed up freshman year of college, he wore jean shorts out on one of those first few awkward group outings where 30 18-year-olds do the same thing. He said he got made fun of something fierce for wearing jean shorts. I laughed at him AGAIN. Like I did, lo these many years ago. JEAN SHORTS? GIVE ME A BREAK!

I see hipsters walking around now with the knee length jean shorts. They look pretty cool on skinny girls with converse and a few tank tops, it's true. I am easily swayed by hipster nonsense like that.

So, I did something this weekend that I haven't done since I was 16.

I made cut-offs. To be like the hipster kids with the converse.

Only mine were old brown Gap chinos.

I rule.

Apparently, Buster the Bunny was a HUGE Digital Underground fan

2006-07-17T23:19:00.000-04:00

Do the Humpty Hump

I had the unique displeasure of watching a rabbit go to town on my slippered foot this evening.

Buster, my rabbit-friend who is taking a vacation from his daddies while one daddy is in Ghana and other daddy is biking across the country, is currently in love with my foot. Via my slipper.

I was sitting on the floor in shorts and slippers with my feet flexed watching some "Good Eats" on the Food Network while I slipped out of my "drrrr spreadsheets" coma. I was watching him make pad Thai with renewing vigor when I sensed some OTHER renewed "vigor".

There was Buster, holding onto my toes for dear life while he pounded away at the ball of my slippered foot. I couldn't shake him off. I was frozen-- staring at this creature hammer away like he was an awkward teenager who was mistaking speed with skill, while I watched my foot pray for this drunken mistake to just END ALREADY. In about 15 seconds it was all over. For the time being.

A wave of emotions washed over me. I went through the normal cycle.

Guilt.
Violation.
Shame.
Pride.
No, no. NO PRIDE.
ONLY GUILT.

Buster has two daddies who are raising him to be an open-minded, worldly, and knowledgeable citizen of the world. And then my Catholic upbringing realized that I HAD HELPED THIS RABBIT GET OFF. Being paralyzed by the horrified fascination of this rabbit mistaking MY FOOT for a foxy lady rabbit had inadvertently gotten him hooked. Apparently, my neon green slipper is a machine in the sack, because that was it for him-- the deal was sealed. He became more adventurous-- different positions, different speed, you get the picture.

I'd like to thank a friend for giving me this slippers. I'd like to thank my mom for the yarn that I stuffed into the toe after my foot was rammed the first time so hard that I felt like I should start charging this fellow and we should share a celebratory cigarette. I wore these slippers religiously for over a year, and I am sad to see that they met their whorish demise. At least until I can wash them a few times.

Then he tried the same deal with my ankle. Up on his hind legs with a good grip on my calf muscle. That got him put back into his cage. I was raised Catholic enough to laugh after the fact, not be ok with Rabbit-to-skin contact. I can't help a brother out THAT MUCH.

Now that my slippers have been deflowered by a rabbit with two daddies who clearly HAVE TAUGHT HIM WELL, it's at least helpful to look at the positives. Apparently, he's a five-minute-man, but at least he owes the slippers the courtesy of multiple lovemaking sessions. Kudos, gentleman. You are raising the boy right.

Letters unsent

2006-07-12T19:20:00.000-04:00

Dear Jay McCarroll:

I love that one skirt in your Project Runway Season 1 collection. So patchwork-zen, blue-green glory. Should I get this (fingers crossed) apartment, it's the inspiration for my living room. This is geeky, but I really like fabric and paint swatches so it's just heaven to me. Rock on, sir.

-K.

Dear mail guy at work:

You are very short. Your hair is decidedly slicked-down. But very pleasant. I always say hi to you in the halls with my head cocked to one side bemused by the combination.

-K.

Dear skinny blonde woman with the eclectic wardrobe that always looks work-appropriate:

I really dig your clothes. I'm glad you work in my work 'hood and manage to look like you have some spunk. Also you look like my friend from high school. She was a little kooky.

-K.

Dear Pilates Instructor:

I am going to miss your classes since I cancelled my gym membership. I thought about keeping it, just for you. But I then remembered that you teach other places too and I'll track you down that way. Seriously, your classes make me feel like a Gazelle. In a long and lean way, not in a "I'll start walking on all fours" way.

-K.

Dear lady who is always working at Peking Garden:

I love that you asked me once "that's it?" when I ordered food without the DK present. I don't come in super often, but you've started to pretend to recognize the two of us together, which makes me feel fuzzy inside. Also, the general tso's chicken does that too. Nice and spicy. No messing around with too much broccoli filler. Just sweet, sweet chicken filler.

-K.

Dear friendly cafeteria worker who makes the killer wraps:

You rock. Seriously. "good sandwich-maker" is something to aspire to. Also I tend to flush when you call me "baby" while I ask for hot peppers. Makes it seem so natural to have so much hot peppers on a sandwich. You're a nice lady.

-K

Dear the ONLY nice lady at Comcast I have ever spoken to:

You make me want to maybe not think about getting "the dish", but then I think about all your colleagues and I giggle about how I'm going to maybe get "the dish".

-K.

Dear random older gay gentleman who asked me to dance in the middle of Sonoma last night:

You were a good dancer and your partner seems very nice, though confused how we knew each other. I understand you wanting to help your buddy Carlos score some ladies, but the gay bbf angle doesn't work on us. Three taken-ish women sipping white wine on an idle Tuesday would much rather just talk to you, because you were drinking the same wine and it would be easy-- don't you see?

-K

Dear Amos Lee:

please please please please please please please come to DC. I saw that you were playing in Vienna, and thought, "you know? I'd TOTALLY go to Virginia to see him" but then I realized it was Austria. And I pouted. Please sing me the phone book any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

xoxoxoxoxox
K

I am currently wasting my life

2006-07-10T19:22:00.000-04:00

Looking for an apartment.

House-hunting is currently gnawing away my social life. Friends are decidedly SICK of me discussing where I am going to live. They are sick of hearing the logistics of the what-ifs of timing. I'm at work bitching to EVERYONE who listens about all my apartment woes. The woes of the lack thereof.

I've seen a basement apartment that was 300 square feet and the ceilings were so low I could put my hand up (the hand above my 5"7 head) to touch the ceiling. It was painted the most putrid mustard yellow color and had two windows the size of my ibook.

I saw a very cute studio, cozy. But the floor plan was so awkward that I couldn't put much more than a bed in it. It had cabinets older than me, and a bunchy carpet that looked like it had been smoked on and then tidied up, trying very hard not to gather my attention. It's hard when you are too young to have saved up a lot of money, and get paid less than your old college tuition bills PLUS room and board. And I just got a raise! If I had $1500 a month for a one bedroom, I wouldn't be whining. But I don't. So I am. A little.

I think I ONLY have about another few conversations of the "pleasantly quirky new neurotic girl whose eyes twitch when she jokes about putting a cot in her cube because REALLY, I THOUGHT about the dimensions." I have an eye-mask. It could totally work for a while. I already eat 2 meals a day there, why not just make it 3? There's a TV. There are chairs and a microwave.

But I suppose that this is what you do, in order to find your home. Today in ALL honesty, I said to a potential landlord "you know, I can bake pretty well. Seriously, think about that come the holiday season. I could make it worth your while in sprinkles." She wasn't very impressed, but I hope she at least denoted the sense of urgency in my voice.

When I found my current apartment, I did everything but shove a check in the face of my very pleasant yet slightly shady landlord, who took pity on my roommate and I because he had a son my age and "knows how it goes". We had a lease and the *perfect* apartment stolen from under our noses, but it was much better how it worked out this way. We both walked to work and both made some friends by saying "well if you're out in Adams Morgan you should call me".

I have until August 6th to find an apartment. AUGUST 6th. AT. THE. LATEST. Like sign a lease and move some boxes. It's pulling apart at the insides of my stomach when I eat, and keeping my eyeballs peeled open at night. It's refreshing websites every 30 minutes and pulling my brain away from other important things. It's doing fervent math on my cell phone calculator and making lists only to cross possibilities off.

So that's why I'm not blogging. Also cuz my new work blocks gmail, blogger, and for some reason the EFFING Washington city paper classifieds. DAMN YOU!

Not unlike crack

2006-06-26T22:04:00.000-04:00

Cutting your hair off makes you feel really good, really fast.

I liked my cute other short haircut, but this one takes the cake.

It was a hot steamy Friday and I had an appointment at the same place I normally get my haircut, BANG, but with a different stylist. My usual stylist was booked FULL UP until mid-July and when you need a haircut you only really notice after it's WAY TOO LATE ANYWAY, and I was headed home for my little brother's graduation party and there was NO WAY that my she-mullet was coming home with me.

I went to the website and decided, that yes, I katastrophe, was going to judge a book by its cover. So I did. I gauged who had lots of availablilty and decided that it was because they were new and didn't have a client base yet-- and that was not for me. I noticed one stylist had just a few holes in his schedule. So I looked at the picture, ran my fingers through my she-mullet, looked at the picture, ran my fingers through my she-mullet, and hesitating ONLY SLIGHTLY-- clicked the "book it" button.

All week at work I was the "neurotic about my hair in a sort of adorably self-centered way, also maybe this will make you remember me since I'm new" girl. On Friday I burst out of the office full of nervous energy about seeing "the random".

Oh reader, I married him.

Ok not really, but I am totally going to cheat on my old stylist with him. Like, take his calls when she's around speaking in code, and making up excuses about why I haven't called so that she doesn't know I totally left her for another man, and a man with an armful of tattoos and a man-mullet who gave me the best haircut of my life. I don't care that it's dangerous. Her chair is right next to his. I am so in love-- SO IN LOVE, that I gave him a gi-normous tip and I give you this.

YOU. ALL YOU PEOPLE WHO GOOGLE "SHORT HAIR". More of you come to this blog as a gift from the internets to seek out becoming pony-tail-challenged. HERE IS A PICTURE.

EVERYONE WHO IS LOOKING FOR A SHORT HAIRCUT-- you there, netscape searching, googling, and google blog hunting. Have no fear. DO IT. Cut it off.

Who wants you to have long boring hair? a boy? a girl? your fears?

Release yourself! (hot damn, and your CHEEKBONES) and CUT. IT. OFF.

it's awesome.

Also economical. I'm going to have my bottle of shampoo for like 4 months!

(except not economical because now i have some sort of "My Hero!" type fascination with he who cut my hair and will probably continue to tip gi-normously).

Commercial Jingles with which I have been known to serenade my boyfriend

2006-06-22T19:49:00.000-04:00

1.) At Eastern Motors, your job's your credit!

2.) Freeeeeeeeeeeee Crrrrrredit Report Dottttttttt Commmmmmmm!

3.) Rub-a-dub-dub we'll cover your tub!

4.) Eight hundred five eight eight two three hundred, EMMMMMMPPPPIRRRE!

5.) THEY GOT A PEPPER BAR

6.) Don't. Hold. Back (do do dododo do do do do)

7.) Big Fuuuuccckkkkkkiiiiinnnnggggggg Chicken

As you can see, he's pretty lucky to be dating me.

He only knows the commercials that I point out because he's got TiVo and is above commercials.

That's the point I am trying to work myself up to. Goal-setting, and such.

Yes, Britney-- I am "pro love"

2006-06-15T23:10:00.000-04:00

Because I know we gossip freaks exist, and exist in shamefully high numbers, I'm not even going to operate under the pretense that people might not have watched Dateline tonight and the hour-long Britney Spears "KFC thigh and breast combo with two sides(#3 )" special. Apparently, Dateline has run out of online predators staring at the camera caught like a deer in headlights, so they have moved onto the poor prey that is Mrs. Federline, with child, natch.

(I have decided that is the LAST TIME I WILL USE THAT AWFUL "..., natch" tag in my blog. My mom told me to just "say no".)

Good God, it was a total trainwreck.

Let's hope the GFY ladies get on her for the platform flip flops, frayed denim mini skirt, and a-little-something-for-them-there-menfolk shirt, because her get-up felt purposeful. Like "LOOK AT ME. MY LIFE IS A MESS. LOOK AT HOW MY HANDLERS LET ME OUT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT IN A DESPERATE PLEA FOR HELP."

And then there was the inexcusable gum popping. Poor Matt Lauer. There he is in loafers with no socks asking Britney-Effing-Spears if Kevin Federline lives on the main floor of her house while Katie Couric is going to be announcing to us all the woes of the world with new solomnly appropriate lipgloss. Britney avoided answering the question directly, and retorts with a pop of gum, which was the wrong answer. CLEARLY, the right answer was to get that clump of mascara off your right (my left) eye and to say that you are a benevolent ex-post facto hottie who likes to keep it COUNTRY, but not redneck thankyouverymuch.

This woman was a pro. She didn't answer a DAMN question that Matty-poo asked her, just kept going back to Goldie Hawn, her new mother figure. Frankly, I would have stuck with Madonna. Who's got more money? Who's got the toned arms? Yeah, not Goldie.

Britney has always had a personal benchmark with me-- one of my good friends and she share a birthday. My friend is pursuing acting and her womb is thankfully fruitless. And Brit-Brit? She is on dateline fake-airing her dirty laundry. More like dirty laundry show, but no tell.

I loved every minute of it. My friend and roommate sat with me in the living room, and it was like a 20-something girl version of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Only instead of old bad movies, it's someone's LIFE. I barely paid attention to my beer, let alone anyone else. My father called to chat because his life has been hell on earth at work and he finally could stop crawling around power plant tunnels, and I had the audacity to say "gee, Dad, Britney's on Dateline-- can I give you a call tomorrow?"

Happy Father's Day 'n' crap, Dad. I sent you a card and I hope you feel the guilt that I harbor from here. To make it up to you, I may have already purchased you a present. Also, I hereby swear to stay this far away from back-up dancers, men who leave their pregnant girlfriends, and white men with cornrows.

Footie Widow

2006-06-13T21:47:00.000-04:00

So this here World Cup thing.

It's the European in the room at a party in Levi's and a sweater around the shoulders. YOU KNOW. The one that you sort of take a side-glance at and wonder if their jeans were fabulous or FAHH-BULOUS. If that sweater fits or if they were FIT.

It's the crazy friend you have that grew up abroad and has rich parents, and sweeps in on idle Tuesday nights and gets you REALLY drunk and then "runs to the bathroom" but before you know it it's 3 am and you can't find them because they're LONG gone and home doing a Danish model.

The World Cup doesn't seduce me like I prefer my Europeans to do (at least, my imaginary Europeans). It isn't teaching me the local dance in a darkened salsa bar, it isn't explaining to me the finer points of Bordeaux, it isn't teasing me about "my president", and it isn't even sitting on its ass drinking litres of beer and signaling for the manliest beer wench to bring us the goods.

To me the World Cup ditched me long ago in the bathroom with that Danish model and I'm just waiting for the frenzy to die down so I can piece back together the fabric of my habits.

The people around me? They are emotionally involved (I'm looking AT YOU BOYFRIEND and YOU ROOMMATE in particular). Can't a girl just get her international flair on TV from Globe Trekker and BBC America? Can't I just knit while you sit around and yell at the TV? At least the players are attractive enough to hold my interest for some of it, but that can only take you so far. I understand being super excited for a sporting event, but a month of super excited for sporting events really just falls flat after its first weekend. It's re-arranging their lives, and to a certain degree- MY LIFE.

It affects ME, all this nonsense. I had to be sympathetic yesterday when the US team embarrassed us. I had to entertain myself in very specific intervals during this past weekend. I had to elbow my way through an evening to get some FREAKING BRAVO up in this joint. It's playing in the cafeteria when I'm eating lunch, on TV in the evenings, and corners of the internets far and near.

That's not the point. The point is come July, SO MUCH PROJECT RUNWAY is going to be coming atcha that it's going to be a pink and pig-tailed, girlie, ruffly, frilly nightmare unleashed upon my life like none other. This shall be my revenge, and my ovaries its champions.

Of day dreams and playlists

2006-06-06T19:38:00.000-04:00

In college, the student paper would occasionally stop people on the street and ask them what music they were listening to. This would then be published for all to judge according to how cool the music was and also how attractive they appeared in their photos with the kicky blurb below.

I would always secretly pretend that I would get stopped and I would have something SUPER COOL on my CD player to share with them and would totally be that alluring co-ed in the paper who had this "come-hither, I'm emo" look while still sounding knowledgeable about music. Everyone would nod their heads in agreement at my caption and photo, and I would be stopped on the street and thanked for being an ambassador of good taste.

Today that memory flooded back to me as I was walking through old stomping grounds and I laughed out loud at how sudden the memory was of my yearning for an ipod but having no funds and still believed in the mission of a good mix CD (which I still do-- but itunes playlists also work).

I laughed out loud AGAIN when I reached my house. Had any student paper writers cornered me on my playlist du jour, they would have laughed their butts off. These were by choice, not even shuffle could have made this up.

Today's walk home:
a. Ted Leo-- Timorous Me (3x in a row)
b. Tears for Fears-- Mad World
c. Tears for Fears--Head over Heels
d. Roxette -- The Look
e. PJ Harvey -- Big Exit
f. Pink -- God is a DJ
g. Edwin Collins -- Girl like you.

So what could you deduce about me from this, in the paper?

1.) I really don't understand it's 2006, but rather FIRMLY believe that it's 1997. (b, c, d, e, g)

2.) I am a total fake-out when it comes to being a hipster. Note the PJ Harvey album that 12 year old girls like and a Ted Leo song that EVERYONE knows. (a, e)

3.) Yes, I do own Mean Girls. (f)

4.) I totally wish I owned all of the My-So-Called-Life DVD's. (g)

5.) My I-pod is probably pink. (a, e, f)

6.) I am one of those people who cannot let a certain song go and sort of make it a mantra that like, 5,000 other people share and I am SO not a significant little snowflake (a)

7.) I may or may not, be in fact, a British gay man. (b,c,d,e,f,g)

Catchy tunes with profoundly depressing lyrics have always been my downfall. Also I am totally not ashamed to own the Tears for Fears Greatest Hits. They totally rocked. In that "this band was brought to you by Casio" kind of way.

All aboard the Katastrophe Paranoia Express

2006-06-05T22:56:00.000-04:00

Well, the first day went off pretty well. First days are like that. Pretty good.

What stressed me out the MOST though, was my new commute. Before, my own two feet would shoo themselves out my door and after about 3 - 4 songs on my Ipod, that would be that. BAM. C'est le Commute.

NOW, I have to walk, take a bus, walk some more, or even figure out mysterious 'H' busses. Have YOU EVER RIDDEN AN 'H' BUS? NO, didn't think so.

Everything is variable now. I have to make the bus at 8 or I'll be late. But if the bus comes before 8 I'll miss it. If I miss it, I could walk to work in like 45 mins (I'm already set on walking home when it's not MadStickyHot or raining or sleeting or whatever) but that bus is crucial. The bus before it gets me there too early, the bus after gets me there too late. I need my 8am bus to come at 8am. Or my world will fall apart.

This means, for safekeeping, I have to get to the bus stop at 7:55. That's even taking chance too far. The Mythical L 2 cannot be trifled with. Sometimes when you need it, it won't come for 40 sufferable minutes. Other times, when you harrumph and resign yourself to walk, three pass you by. This morning it came at 7:59 on the dot, and this princess stepped into her coach ready to be whisked away to a shiny new building to be the smiling idiot, frantically trying to remember names and match up departments in her head.

The walk home was actually enjoyable, minus some very SERIOUS engagements with sidewalk chicken matches. I seriously took off about 2 shoulders and sidestepped around 6 people yapping on their phones. I could bus it home-- but really, DC isn't all that big and I owe myself the exercise, though I do miss out on some very important Ray-Ray time.

So, I think this gig will work out nicely. There are some minor complications, but I'm sure they will all get ironed out. It's day #1. How bad could it be?

(biting tongue as so tomorrow night's post won't be "OMG IT GOT WORSE".)

D-day

2006-06-04T20:26:00.000-04:00

So full of worries about the first day of my new job tomorrow. First days of new jobs are just the worst. I imagine I will wander around like a lost soul on my way to finding the ladies room, and probably spend the majority of the day reading things and organizing the post-its and a highlighter collection that will live on my desk.

The first day of my old job, I was asked to do some simple things, without any explanation of how they wanted them, and ended up staying late and crying softly in the restroom about my impending firing for not understanding how to set up a certain document. I should have read into that and run screaming for the hills, but instead I stayed for two years because it was easy enough and a short walk downhill.

But I assume (minus crying) that first days of work are uniformly awful. You don't know anyone's name, where anything is, what's important, what's not, and who you're going to eat lunch with (hurrah for having a friend work there!). You always will mess up, and you'll inevitably feel like a complete fool complete with flushed cheeks and red ink on paper.

Tomorrow is a whole new chapter. Perhaps the first chapter of like, part two of a book. New job, in 2 months finally living by myself and ruling my own roost, and sort of settling into life. I had sort of languished in freshman and sophomore year of life, and like a college junior thirsting for something new this job came at just the right time and is going to usher in a whole boatload of changes that I am very excited about. Also, I think this job is going to be important for me career-wise, and I'm excited to learn new things and not languish in boredom anymore. I guess my blog reading routine will get done at home more than the office now.

I'm nervous. This also is par for the course. I'm a pretty nervous character. I suppose all I can do is relax tonight, show up early in a bitchin' outfit and smile pretty.

Thank god we threw a party on Saturday and there's a lot of booze about.

Goodbye, Job.

2006-06-01T10:26:00.000-04:00

I leave you with something I drew during the last staff meeting out of boredom so devastating that I thought about the utensils that I could stab myself in the eye with as an excuse to leave and also as a cathartic symbol of the pain and grief you caused me. (and how staunchly I will refuse to work with all women EVER AGAIN.)

It's a piece I've entitled:

Things I'd Like to Eat and Drink: A Staff Meeting of Longing.

Fare thee well, Job.

Stay tuned for tomorrow: sleeping away my one day of vacation before throwing a gi-normous house party and convincing a friend with a car to help us to pick up our keg of cider for snake bite blacks.

Squawk Box

2006-05-31T09:22:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was nothing but fun in New York for me. My new job starts soon (and my old job ends even sooner!) and to treat myself, I went to NYC to a weekend of utter debauchery.

I heart New York, it's true. It's so different from DC and it's so refreshing. Politics didn't exist. I didn't know about Brangelina popping. I was only interested in my friends, seeing their new apartments, eating a vodka-melon, and hanging out in the park. Oohh, and that cheapo pedicure. But I digress...

Lately my many retreats in and out of Washington have really brought on a love-hate relationship with the city. I've lived here since 2000. Give me a break. Most people move on by now, don't they? But for some reason I can't. It keeps me here.

When I'm here, I'm so full-up with the politics, and the wonking and the gossip that no one can really talk to me about it or the hands wave frantically and I get flustered because I am SO FULL OF POLITICS THAT I COULD JUST DIE. And my office doesn't have CNN on all the time. And I hit the alarm too fast to listen to NPR in favor of the Today Show.

When I leave, I wonder what's going on in the world. I sneak away to check the Post. I talk a good game (not that I'm involved in politics professionally, but like to leave the impression that washingtonians know EVERYTHING) and always like to argue about things and wear my liberal badge in precarious places and make no apologies at family dinners where the rest of the family jokes about wearing their GOP t-shirts and bringing guns to meet my boyfriend who is decidedly liberal. (note: no guns are actually OWNED by the fam, so they would GO BUY THEM just to SHOCK THE DK.)

I think the world would be easier for me to take if the McLaughlin Group wasn't on TV. I'm sure everyone on the program is a nice individual-- but with their powers combined I can't take the yelling, the screaming, the punditry, and the VOICES. THE SQUAWKING. I swear, my life would be a lot better if they just stuck to journalism that is seen and not heard, or were fluent in ASL. Because everytime I am at the gym on Saturday evenings I have to see it. The DK watches it EVERY SUNDAY. And it's EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. It makes me need to lay in a room with a cool compress on my face. Or at least escape to his roof deck. With a mimosa. And that cool compress.

I don't understand how people can survive 30 minutes (oh god-- is it an HOUR? I don't even know) of people yelling over each other in competing volumes to really try and get someone from the Times and someone from Newsweek to agree. IT'S NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

Couldn't they debate like, which puppy is cuter?

Puppy A

or Puppy B?

I think that much more productive discussions would go on. The blonde, short-haired lady would like the bottom one because he is VISIBLY exhausted from being reamed by "The man" all the time, and the guy in expensive suits would CLEARLY like the top one, because he's pulling himself up by his own bootstraps. Or t-shirts. Or something. The misc. extra guy from the Financial Times would talk about them being HILARIOUS, because he's British and above puppies. And Pat Buchanan would just say to hell with puppies because THE MINUTEMEN will take care of them ONCE and for all.

Are they working towards good? NO. Is this helping America? NO. Is this squawking and yelling going to change anything? NO. Somehow it's a JOB to scream at someone on Saturday evenings for no end but the entertainment of Washington to chuckle at themselves for a job well done. I suppose these shows exist for some audience, but can't they be PLEASANT. Can't Operaman sing about some scandals? Couldn't a midgit in a bikini interview a Senator?

So John McLaughlin, start squawking about puppies and fluffly clouds or something. Go a little soft in your old age. It would widen your appeal. It would make it better for those of us who wish for earmuffs when people allow other people to get red in the face about taxes, war, and the state of the union. People are ALWAYS going to get red in the face, isn't that what this town exists for?

But puppies? The options are ENDLESS.

*puppies taken from CuteOverload, which makes life worth living.

Gnarls Barkley and my Dad should TOTALLY kick it.

2006-05-25T10:52:00.000-04:00

I couldn't help it. I gave in.

I downloaded the Gnarls Barkley CD from i-tunes because having "crazy" and "smiley faces" at my disposal was just too good an offer. Really, both those songs are worth my $11.99 plus tax. Thanks, i-tunes for making me an offer I simply could not refuse. I give you money and you give me fodder for annoying everyone I know with talk of this album like I invented them. Give me a break.

Per my recent discussion of how much I like girl oohy ooohy music, I had to chuckle at myself for buying an album with a song entitled "necromancer".... But WHO CARES. I can't help it. This album makes me feel like I should have a car, and drive it around with this album blaring and do some awful white-girl dances involving invisible lassos, slapping invisible asses, and pounding my open palms against an invisible wall.

Though, I must say with all the buzz that this album is getting, I am totally digging the last song. I blame my love on this disco-flavored tune "The Last Time" that begs "when was the last time you danced?" squarely on my father.

My dad is a character. He's very straight-laced. He doesn't drink. He laughs REALLY hard at a good fart joke, and loves to talk about how he STILL, TO THIS DAY, didn't get The Matrix. He has pocket protectors and his favorite thing in the whole wide world is a sunny day and his deck full of bonsai trees. He is the kind of guy who can't sit still but doesn't really like to REALLY push it activity-wise so standing upright outside in old jeans and fastidiously pruning delicate, expensive plants REALLY just makes him SO HAPPY. My dad is a smart fellow, but one of very simple joys.

My father's other simple joy?

Disco.

My dad was one of those guys who in 1982 was in COMPLETE and UTTER denial that disco had died and that hip-hop, new wave, and the beginnings of electronica had taken over. NO way. Dad still did the hustle, and still had a VERY INTENSE leisure suit of yellow, orange, green, red and white plaid. I AM SO NOT KIDDING. (It made a very good Halloween costume for years. It still lives in the attic so my dad has physical proof that this time no longer exists.) I think he likes it because the 70's were when he was young and cool, and a pretty good dancer. Dad is a quiet fellow, so he sort of just let his feet do the talking. Disco is easy to understand, the lyrics don't make sense (HELLO, MacArthur Park?) and it harkens back to a simpler time where things weren't complicated by kids, money, a job that stresses him out, and a changing world. He and my mom fell in love by going out disco-dancing.

As a child, when my Mom was out and we would hang out with Dad, this meant he put on The BeeGees, or Donna Summer and we'd mug for the video camera. They have drawers full of enough blackmail to last us WELL through our adult lives. My brother would duck down and then appear RIGHT INFRONT of the camera and make gross faces and wiggle around. I would twirl.

At my cousin's wedding in March, I drunkenly told my father that at my wedding the dreaded Father-Daughter dance should be the hustle. You should have seen that face light up. It was like 24 years of dread + how ever many more years until WHENEVER that should be was lifted from his shoulders.

He doesn't dance much these days, but I think when my youngest sibling goes off to college in the fall he and my mom are going to get back to strutting their stuff, empty-nester styles.

So when was the last time you danced? I can tell you mine. Brit-pop night. April.

Proper Etiquette

2006-05-22T17:42:00.000-04:00

My hurrah-almost-over job is at a place where a lot of ladies work. There are a handful of men, but it is mostly women, most of the time here. The office is a whole floor, and of course there is a men's room and a women's room to fulfill all our bathroomly needs.

But someone wasn't thinking things through, though I understand the need for equal facilities under Title WHATEVER, and I understand that I should expect facilities to be equal because the majority of workplaces aren't like mine.

There are not enough men to fill up the men's room if they all were in there at the same time. Just enough men for it to NOT be worth it to risk using the men's room. But there is roughly 1 stall per 20 women in this office (that's three total). With that kind of woman-to-stall ratio you tend to come across some poor bathroom behavior. And due to the vast number of women, the estrogen-charged atmosphere encourages you to notice most peoples shoe collections as an identifier if the face isn't visible. And after a nice matching shoe-to-sound session, you know that so-and-so had a burrito for lunch and you are caught along for the ride. Pinto beans and all.

I know women's rooms and men's rooms are different places. But women use the restroom more, and when working in an unfavorable ratio, just makes some of our lives miserable. I hate to ruin some sort of fantasy that the women's room holds-- as if we just have pillow fights with satin pillows and there are rose petals on the floor and everything is soft and pink.

I was raised too Catholic to be ok with all of this, I feel the need to speak up for my sisters in silence.

Allow me to address my bathroom-friends who decide to treat the work restroom like it's your own private colonic session.

Here are five friendly hints

1.) Don't enjoy that there work poop.

This is ridiculous, this nonsense of bringing the paper in or flipping through some files as you take care of some business. As someone who is low-ish on the totem pole, I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO TOUCH THOSE FILES NOW, but it's sort of my job to do so. This shouldn't be a 30-minute spa treatment. GET IN. Get the job done. LEAVE. Don't dilly-dally. Don't chat with me walking down the hallway with the Post under your arm and then leave me to my horror as you walk into the restroom with me and enter a stall ready for some fun.

2.) Never underestimate the power of the courtesy flush.

Have a heart. It's an easy thing to do. Your peers will thank you and trust me, I know that there are little gaps between the doors and the latch in the bathroom. You can see people walk in, you can HEAR people approaching. Have a heart-- and flush. If not, I can see a sliver of you THROUGH the doors that have slight gap and I will clear my throat at you in a passive-aggresive beg for a courtesy flush.

3.) Please, though I am sure that you are GRATEFUL to be going through this, don't sigh as though your bladder is JUST NOW processing the 3 venti skim lattes that you had today because who has time to eat?

Also, when the OTHER effects of coffee take hold, please refrain from any sort of grunts, strains, or vocal explanations for the work that it takes to purge yourself of $14 of coffee. Do you feel good about paying that much money for that much coffee? If only Citrucel had caffeine!

4.) Why did you, lady at work, argue for the removal of the air freshener in the bathroom because of your allergies?

You did us a disservice and a organization-wide memo should have prompted a vote, rather than you deciding to take matters into your own hands. I'd much rather spend five minutes in a nightmare where I'm 15 again and doused in Plumeria-scented-EVERYTHING-Bath-and-Bodyworks-NIGHTMARE then have to smell the bathroom from around 10:30am -- noon.

5.) If you in fact, needed the work poop and were respectful of the above rules, don't CHAT with me when you come out of the stall as I am trying to FLEE your burrito.

Seriously? Just smile and wash those hands. I don't want to chat with you post-poop, it's just too personal and this is a work relationship. There's no one else to blame but you, and I don't know you well enough to rib you about it so please just stop prolonging my agony.

Slightly Masochistic

2006-05-18T11:12:00.000-04:00

Nearly every day after work I walk home and go sit on the couch to watch tv just for a bit before I head off to the gym. I have the same routine. I'm a Taurus and we like that sort of thing. Stability. Routines. Etc.

Food Network is my crack. I have a pretty hard weekend Food Network habit. I like to watch Giada De Laurentiis on and marvel at how big her noggin is and how she EXCLUSIVELY wears V-neck shirts because someone told her it would make her head less big-- but really, they lied. I like to watch Ina Garten because she is such a people pleaser who bends over backwards to feed the her friends (who seem to be exclusively gay men) and husband to prove her worth for existing. I like Paula Dean because she puts a pound of butter in everything, and she KNOWS it might just kill her family and there's a devilish twinkle in her eye like that's her master plan.

And then.... There is that EFFING RACHEL RAY.

I watch 30 Minute Meals just about every day. I watch it to incite some rage so I have some steam to work off at the gym. I. Hate. Rachel. Ray. She makes my blood boil. She makes me unpleased to have traces of Italian heritage, a family, be American, be female, and exist.

When I watch Food Network I want some FOOD PORN. Show me the frying close up enough so I flinch when the grease splatters. Show me how you dice things effortlessly, show me gooey sauces and crispy chicken skin. SHOW ME THE MONEY. I watch food TV for the same reasons I read Vogue. SHOW ME LUXURY and rub it in my face how that's not how I can live.

Don't giggle and say "oohhhh these sammies look DELISH!". How dare you blaspheme sandwiches as such. Sandwiches are on my list of "reasons for living", don't you take them away from me.

Don't say "well in my family blah blah blah" BECAUSE YOU ARE LIKE 40 YEARS OLD AND SHOULD HAVE OTHER STORIES TO TELL BESIDES ONES ABOUT YOUR GRANDFATHER.

Don't call your boyfriend your "sweetie", it isn't 1957. Have you gotten pinned yet? Oh you're married? I see. I'm interested to find that a man found you attractive. Does he have any defects?

Don't "sprinkle a little E.V.O.O." When you mean LOAD UP THIS PAN WITH EXPENSIVE OLIVE OIL. Not every occasion calls for extra-virgin olive oil, which is why they make many types. Ass.

Don't let everyone know after every commercial break what you just did. This isn't cooking for kindergarteners in ReCap-ville, we WILL REMEMBER from before the break, or FIGURE IT OUT.

Don't use grill seasoning ON EVERTHING EVER. You have a TV show, MIX IT UP.

Don't tip so effing badly when you survive on $40 a day. And next time you are in DC don't go to Clydes and be real; 2 tapas at Jaleo is not a meal and the Sky Terrace is tourist trap #1.

Must you mention: that you live in the country, that what you are making is "affordable", that you can find this in a local grocery store, that you can of course substitute other things for alcohol because alcohol is scary, and that you don't bake. LEARN TO BAKE.

It's good to know there is help for people like me. That I'm not alone in my utter hatred. Maybe there are other ways of coping.

The problem is that I simply can't stop watching. I hate her cooking style, her food (usually), her SELF-- even her damn theme song. But I still tune in at 6 AND 6:30 because I have to. I punish myself daily with Rachel Ray. And I have no plans to change. This is out of my hands.

picture taken from budgettravelonline.com

good thing my i-pod is pink

2006-05-17T12:53:00.000-04:00

I cannot ignore my ovaries. They are loud and proud and they are some bossy bitches.

So when they say, "katastrophe, LISTEN TO SOME CHICK MUSIC" you sort of have to go "ok, ovaries!......But people are so over your chick music." My ovaries are like your Aunt who tries to be cool and asks all the kids if they still listen to music by 'that Canadian angry lady with the long hair' and has just sort of figured out that pleats do nothing for her figure, and her 5 cats do nothing for her social life. They don't know there hasn't been a Lillith Fair for many a year now. They think Sarah MacLachlan is still sort of the queen of the hive. They don't know about the rest of my lovelies.

I've tried to get over chick music. I have stretched my music tastes further lately-- trying to listen to more man-music, or even just PEOPLE music. But I get equally excited when Wolf Trap's newsletters arrive in the mail as I do the 9:30 club e-mails. I love me some brit pop, I'll wag my ass at anything with a jagged beat, yes-- I enjoy enough indie rock to make myself presentable, but really my heart belongs to girls who play an instrument and coo along with it.

This is why I am enlisting help. Who else wants to hit up some girl shows? Namely, who wants to pay $16 to see KT Tunstall and maybe (gulp) $40 to see Ani at the 9:30?

KT Tunstall I will go to alone if I have to. I'll just pretend she's my friend. She's like, my age and Scottish and wears leg warmers, which puts her at the top of my list of PEOPLE, regardless. Also, hello, I sob while watching Grey's anatomy, and her acoustic version of Universe & U flattened me to the back of my couch. Come ON people, $16. Yes, she is a little processed, but she's so stinkin' cute and really knows how to put on a show. Did you see this woman live on TV? On the Today Show? She charmed the pants off Matt Lauer and then sounded like a full band with nothing but a series of pedals where she layered sounds over herself and that she harmonized with. HARMONY. Eat that, Simpson sisters!

Ani is a given. For any girl who's ever been wronged by an asshole, maybe liked girls (and now have loved girls), damned 'the man', or been an angsty teenager that grew up into an angsty twenty something-- Ani is life, if you said yes to any or all of the above. Yes, my mom calls her goat-girl and sorts of bleats "I hate meeeennn" to me when she'd hear her songs. Yes, a lot of her songs are angry, angry anthems. Yes, she could just sing the Buffalo phone book white pages and I would buy it and save the packaging and worship it quietly like I was savoring the last bite of my last meal on earth. I can't help it. I am part of the masses who would vote Ani for president. It's a fact. It is unchangeable. She's the poet of my life and I'd pay more than $40 to see her in her fake nails + electrical tape and black-booted self tell stories and enchant a room. We all flock to her shows to hear her speak. Sure, her playing kicks ass but we crave the cute little snippets that we can repeat and then squeal at each other later like we have the sweetest inside joke EVER.

I start my new job June 5. Clearly, going to a concert the night before my FIFTH day of work is a good idea, but really, it's not up for discussion. I won't even get real wasted. I'd just like to sway and sing along and maybe my ovaries will snap to it. And realize that some chick music is ok. Just as long as you mix it up a little.

Get on the boat

2006-05-16T11:52:00.000-04:00

I'm late on the cool-things-on-the-internets boat a lot. Like blogging, the "Numa Numa!" guy and Skype. But one thing that I'm better late than never on is Pandora. I am enjoying it SO MUCH. It's a great way to discover new music, and to figure out WHY you like certain songs, and let me tell you-- makes the day fly by. And who doesn't like the Roman voting?

The problem with it is that you can train it. The more thumbs up, that's more of the type of music it will play. The more thumbs down, and you'll never again speak of Cher popping up on your playlist.

For a radio station which knows I like KT Tunstall, Low, The Cure, Zero 7 and the Killers, it's recommending a lot of:

The Human League
Kylie Minogue
and
Bryan Adams

And I can't really tell what that says about me. Except that I mind the Kylie Minogue the LEAST. Ok, don't really mind it at all. Ok, got really excited when Kula Shaker transitioned into "Come into my World." And by really excited, I mean chair-danced. VIGOROUSLY.

I abuse hyphens when I blog and cry

2006-05-15T23:13:00.000-04:00

I'm sure every water cooler that is near a place of employment where females work (and select quality mens) will be abuzz with chatter about the finales of Grey's Anatomy.

Or as I prefer to call it: "the-two-hours-of-television-wherein-I-
either-couldn't-breathe-or-wanted-to-cry-or-kill-myself-
and-I-chose-door-number-two-the-crying-that-would-not-stop."

SERIOUSLY NOW. There will be recap after recap online I am sure so I speak to you who watched it. People are going to talk the whole episode through. Blah blah blah.

Here's what I cannot get past.

You knew that somehow, Denny wouldn't survive. He was a goner the minute he decided to flirt with Izzie and his fate was sealed when he signed those DNR papers. GONER. He made it through the surgery and he and Izzie were supposed to have overly-stimulated-but-under-performing hearted children. I was always interested in their story line-- their love story.

Perhaps, because-- I AM IZZIE (though um, less crazed. Only slightly crazed. I pinch). I understand why she does things. I get her follow-my-gut, then perhaps my uterus, and THIRDLY the brain. Her crazed, ridiculous, illogical, impractical decisions are ones that beg my empathy. I understand why she cut that cord all the while shrieking like a banshee, and I understand why they found her wrapped around his dead body in a prom dress. I UNDERSTAND WHY SHE IS CRAZY. She ignores her brain and follows her heart around like a dumb dog who always wakes up wondering if today is the day that they'll get that steak for breakfast. So to have that dream that she finally allowed herself to visualize just broke my functioning-but-murmur-y heart into about a thousand pieces. She puts herself out there ONLY when her heart tells her so because you don't trust people until they worm their way into it. You may think that you can make lists about how people act, reason with them when they are irrational, and tell them what they should do but who is practical, stable and rational all of the time?

I sobbed like a blubbering fool for the last 20-25 minutes of the season finale. I sobbed because the writers wanted me to. I fell for their every trap because this episode had traps for EACH CHARACTER. This wasn't a game of "which girl from sex and the city are you" and how that corresponds to what you'd mess up in your life by your forties.

This episode had something for EVERY Chief, Dr. Bailey, Mer/Der, Addison, George, Callie, etc-- even Alex. If you identify in SOME sense with ANYONE on that damn show, you cried your eyes out for them tonight. FOR EVERYONE-- the other shoe dropped.

And I cried my eyes out for Izzie, because she was [--------] that close to thinking she had everything in the bag. Denny's surgery went well. They were going to get married. But behind door number three was a stroke. Blood clots. And a dinette set.

But instead, life threw her a curveball. I'm constantly watching for these. Like right now. Everything is great. My lame-ass job is almost done, a new one on the way, my relationships are in working order, my family is all here and healthy-- when is my other shoe going to drop? Who is going to die? Who is going to leave? Who is going to push me around? What is going to go wrong?

This is where I have completely immature problems. I cannot exactly separate fact and fiction in my brain after heart processes it. When I was watching this show, my niece has cancer, my boyfriend is dead, my boyfriend got shot, my girlfriend just shagged another dude in a hospital room, and I just let big secrets fall out of my fabulous latina-mouth on my skinny bad-haircutted-man-toy.

I understand this show is General Hospital with better writing at night. I understand these characters are FAKE, and that Ellen Pompeo has bigger fish to fry than McDreamy (more like McEating-Disorder.) But I cannot separate the emotional flogging that I just endured from my cozy apartment with all its ducks in a row. Instead I am here stuffing as much KT Tunstall and Amos Lee as I can into my ears and will probably go to bed with a sinking "you-watch-too much-television-and need-to-kill-off-some-excess-imagination-no-I-MEAN-it-this-time" feeling.

....Sssoooooooo when does season 3 start? I'm a glutton for punishment!

I'm a quitter

2006-05-12T11:20:00.000-04:00

But I'm not very good at it. Sure there are lots of things that I don't "do" now that I used to "do". But I don't think actively saying "no, I shall not continue piano lessons through college" is the same thing as saying "Sorry, I'm leaving in a few weeks because other people are going to pay me more and it's going to rule". Not the SAME.

In fact, In my brain I still play the piano. I still do all the things I "quit". I still identify with all of that. I have a tendency to throw myself into everything I do and I really think I'm shaped by everything that I've done. Even if it's something lame, like 12 years of piano lessons.

Working here was like hanging onto a relationship that you should have gotten yourself out of ages ago. Everything is routine and you resent that, the ups are alright and the downs are a mess, you don't know who you are or who this other person is, and you take that frustration out each other. But somehow, you stay. And talk of leaving is hard to really examine. My job and I have had a rough run, and I'm ready to just shake hands, make peace, and walk away. Execpt make fun of it. Just a little. You know, when I'm with other people who have been there too. Cuz really, if you ONLY knew.

I also feel like I've done a bad job at keeping it a secret. Maybe it's because I felt like I owed the people I work with something more than just two weeks notice. Also, maybe I was afraid of quitting. A problem with being something of an introvert is that it sort of gets messed up with being self-centered. Sitting face to face with your boss and telling her about this awesome job offer you got and apologizing for leaving, and being so sorry is going to get you weird looks. Absolutely everyone here has been gracious, and congratulatory, and genuinely excited for me. And also, Hello-- they are going to get along just fine without me.

I'm 24 and in a job that people stay in for a year. In fact, I've had two jobs that they expect to have people in for a year-- back-to-back. It's my time. Give me two gold stars for surviving this long. They expect this, so why did I cry? (a little, I know)

I feel very weird about it. I've been here for nearly two years, and considering this was my first job out of college, and my first promotion, I think that's a long time. It's like my Freshman and Sophomore years of LIFE have gone on here, and I have routines and have figured things out, and L'SIGH it is SO MUCH CLOSER TO MY HOUSE. AND WHERE I GET MY HAIRCUT.

I'm feeling very zen about it. Maybe too zen. Like, I'm worried it was all a dream and I just confused the dream with real life and then I'll have no job. Change can be sort of a sticky mess, and for me generally it's pretty awful and not much goes my way and I have to kick and fight to patch everything up. There's no mess for me to clean up here, and that is REALLY weird.

I have nothing to do, not a whole lot to freak out about. I'm just sitting here filling out new healthcare forms. You can't spill ink when you fill them out online. This is just weird.

To the tune of "you don't make friends with sal-ad!"

2006-05-10T12:49:00.000-04:00

I JUST GOT A NEW JOOO-OOB

I JUST GOT A NEW JOOO-OOOB!

Seriously, can't I just give you $12?

2006-05-06T16:12:00.000-04:00

I went to Payless this afternoon on a total whim. There's all that bogo nonsense, and I had seen some adorable flats in Lucky magazine that I wanted. I love Lucky magazine, especially because I have a very lovely co-worker who BUYS it and then when she's done with it she passes it off to me.

THEN THE REAL FUN BEGINS. Those stickers Lucky gives you? Bring it on. I usually get a drink, turn on some TV that I can proceed to ignore, and then rip out the page of stickers full of "YES!" and "MAYBE" to lay on the pages where I see something I like. Or would like to like. Or need for further reference when I have to discuss it. Or if I want to buy a knock off of it.

This gives me such great personal joy I cannot even begin to describe. Just like the Simpsons episode when Marge says "I'll just sit here and think of products I'd like to purchase" and then she closes her eyes and hums.

This is my closed-eyed, humming times. Where I can afford to buy that tunic, because someone's told me it's "effortlessly chic", which are two things I like. No effort and looking "sooooo goood!"

But back to the flats. They're cute and like $11.99 or something. So I walked the three blocks to the Payless next to the SALSA (not Spanish, who are these people?) Safeway and stuck my feet in about a hundred pairs of shoes. I tried on nearly every shoe there in size 8 up to 9 1/2. AND NOTHING. There were like three pairs of the flats I was looking for in that store, and not my size, But one close.

I had to talk myself out of buying the cute flats in a 1/2 size too small thinking back to other payless shoes that made me bleed. But seriously, where were all the cute shoes in size 8 1/2 or 9? The two full aisle of 7's were sitting there untouched, but the big-boated ladies had nothing to choose from but heinousness and more heinousness. What gives?

OH. And while I'm on the subject of "what gives?" and Payless, WTF is going on with people wearing THESE monstrosities around? UGLOR. STOP IT. Especially those red ones. Did you read the description? It says GARDEN. KEEP THEM THERE.

So listen up, Payless. Next time I need to get an image of Star Jones hawking shoes out of my mind, and to do so I want to give you $12 for some 9-time-use footwear, be a peach AND TAKE IT.

Katatrophe: 0 Tylenol PM: 1

2006-05-02T10:57:00.000-04:00

So yesterday, I walked home from the CVS with 228 pills in my bag. This was weird, purely because a) HELLO, that's a lot of pills and b) I felt like I needed a backpack and a good swagger and to play some house music, walking around looking a little dazed offering the goods to skinny girls with PLUR bracelets and pacifiers.

Well, maybe not. All I did was fill a prescription and buy Advil (necessary, long shift at the 2nd job catering on Sunday) and Tyenol PM, which was on sale for 8 bucks. EIGHT BUCKS! As I've written about before, I am not a great sleeper. It always takes me forever to fall asleep, a la when I get in bed it's at first with Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte on the WB and when I fall asleep my bedfellows have changed to Conan and Max Weinberg. When it's Wednesday night and I am up late worrying in bed, and those damned Ambien and Lunesta commercials come on, they ARE TALKING TO ME. I AM THEIR AUDIENCE. They tease. They taunt, "oh katastrophe, if only you weren't overly anxious, than you too would be dreaming of butterflies and puppies that we put in our commercials to soothe you."

So, EFF YOU BRAIN, I bought Tylenol PM. Baby step towards being soothed. I took some last night to ward off the monstrosity of a headache that I was dealing with and hopped into bed early, thinking I had tricked the system.

Ohhhhhh but on the contrary, Tylenol PM reigned supreme over both me, AND my brain.

Last night I had a dream that I was canoeing on a very flat river. Then, I saw a VERY large face that looked just like the dude on MAD magazine with a VERY large mouth gaping open and dove into it, with a backpack on my back and a snorkel. When I surfaced, I looked up and realized I was in a strange land. Middle-Earth-ish. Then I met up with a group of backpackers (who may or may not have been Australian) and they were like "WE ARE SWIMMING TO NORWAY!" and I was like "saaahh-weeeeet! I'm in" and so we put on flippers and swam in very shallow water UP STAIRS, AROUND TREES, and then on a very flat indoor studio that didn't look unlike the TLC's "Waterfalls" video set.

So after swimming, we surfaced at the beach. In Norway. Which was hot, by the way. Flat, flat, flat and then huge mountains in the background. Lots of people walking in crisp white bathing suits. You could see people skiing in the mountains in crisp white snow-bunny outfits. It was like Capri had thrown up on Norway and Michael Kors was their god. Then we hear shouts of "oh no, THE TIDAL WAVE IS COMING" and apparently, the tidal wave was ONLY for the non-Norwegian. Norwegians weren't susceptible to such conditions, so all us lowly backpackers had to go back down into the sand and swim back (yes, swim through the sand), this time UPSTAIRS.

One of the backpacker friends said that we could hide out at his mom's place, because the tidal wave wouldn't find us there, but we had to keep up. So I swam my little heart out and when we came up for air near his mom's house, they were all trolls living in gummed up pink and purple tee-pees, but for his mom, who was a woman I saw on TLC's What Not to Wear and somehow got mixed into the dream. I was the only one that could keep up so I went into his mom's house, which was a trailer. It was snowing in this troll heaven, and his mom gave me a flannel jacket and let me sleep on the pull-out-couch. I could see the teeth of the large mouth I had swam into high in the distance and I fell asleep on the couch looking at fish in a fishbowl thinking "if only I had gills". And then I realized that I was in fact, UNDER WATER. And all I could think was NOT "gasp! How can I breathe" but "gasp, my hair looks like THIS?"

What I don't get is the TLC waterfalls set conjoined with TLC's What Not To Wear. Too much TLC.

So thank you, Tylenol PM for such an engaging evening. Shall I meet you tomorrow, same time-- same place?

Wherein I make a bad hair analogy and run with it

2006-04-28T15:46:00.000-04:00

It's officially the season for change. Temperatures are warming, hemlines are rising (Vogue said so this month, so it MUST be true), and all possibilities are on the mend.

Today, to celebrate these changes, I whacked off all my hair. It felt awesome. My hair used to be down past my shoulders and has been incrementally crawling upwards towards my ears. I had 5 or 6 interim chops that each felt so good, that I might be officially addicted to the drug of haircut-thrill. It's like, half the thrill of doing something bad (props to my fallen sister, Chloe, the eyebrow ring of angst, who lasted 10 months) but better than new-outfit thrill, THAT'S FOR SURE.

I had very short hair when I was a teenager. I cut it all off, from below shoulder length to quite short, thanks to some movie-inspiration. I had just seen Sliding Doors and the short hair business that Gwyneth Paltrow sported, and coveted it.

Ok, actually the longer story is this dude Mike, sat behind me in biology and would sing me the "Adams Family" theme song to me, because apparently my long, dark hair reminded him of Cousin Itt. I never appreciated this, but he seemed to think it was really funny. Perhaps in hindsight it is; my hair is very thick and there is a lot of it, and it had a tendency to be triangular in nature. So in the interest of about 60% spite, 40% get rid-of-5-lbs of hair, I chopped 11 inches of my hair off and showed up the next day and told him to shove it with a big grin.

Lately, I've been yearning to get back to the short-haired times. Short-haired times are the ones where I was optimistic-- hopeful for the future. I knew what I liked and I was in an emotional place where I was a little too naive to worry too much but just wise enough to worry some.

I feel more like MYSELF than I have in a long time, if that makes any sense at all. It's been a slow process of me re-acquainting myself with feelings of deja-vu in good ways. It's remembering what it's like to be into music, needing to hear a song because it's already coming up your throat and out your mouth but just didn't know the words. It's having outlets for creativity so you remember you are worth more than your cubicle and (in/de)flated job title. It's reading books you love to read because you sort of maybe wish you were British and in a hoopskirt, denying your love for Mr. so-and-so because he was cross with you once blah blah blah..... and you are unabashed about the daydreams thereof. It's being more connected with friends, and understanding sort of maybe even just a little where your insignificant speck belongs with the galaxy of others. It's about having my life sort itself out after the confetti of college-life hung in the air all sparkly and suspended and it's all gently getting reacquainted with where it will rest.

So, the short-haired-times are hopefully leading somewhere good, taking me back to a road I got tripped up on. I am a Taurus, and we are notorious for being resistant (or at least anxiety-prone) to change. But there's nothing more shocking than changing what looks back at you in the mirror, because you know that change was $45 and fleeting. But what's to come is worth more. After that, hopefully a (FINGERS CROSSED OH PLEASE OH PLEASE) new job and (FINGERS CROSSED OH PLEASE OH PLEASE) new apartment will just be the icing on my butterscotch krimpet.