Pants-wearing optional, racism a deal-breaker and other shocking developments...

So I know that I’ve never gone this far w/ a match on E-Melody before because I’m only just now beginning to think that this feels a lot like school. Like “falling in love homework” Like E-Melody is some online teacher who keeps sending me home with a new assignment. “Very nice job on your first three questions – solid B+. Now before our next class please search your soul and bring me a dozen things that you cannot live without, as well as another dozen things that you just cannot stand.” Because after there are questions and more questions then there are the Must Haves and the Can’t Stands.

Also I have to say this particular exercise just seems silly. I mean if you explained to me the various steps to finding Twoo Wove via onlineness this one would have seemed sound – compare those things that you either really must have in a mate (needs to have a head – neck-onlys need not apply!) as well as those things that you really cannot abide (anybody who shoots snot rockets really should die alone! I’m serious!) But then when you get to this step it seems silly! Because it’s not these kind of unique things, but instead it’s stuff that I have to categorize as “Ummm, DUH!”

The good news, though, was that I apparently created my list when I set up the initial profile, so at least this step was EASY. I went through the list, which I made almost 2 years ago and which I honestly don’t remember making, and can’t really even be sure I did make, because although I agree with the list WHO WOULDN’T????

Minor tangent: I’m sorry so many of the recent posts are so listy. I read them later and I cringe with all the listiness, and I promise myself that there will be no more posts which are just me telling you EVERYTHING TO THE LAST DETAIL of what E-Melody is like. Guh. But I’m sorry, I cannot seem to avoid it this time either. But next time I will! I promise! If the next blog post is all listfull you can go ahead and… read it and love it and tell your friends? Please don't go away...

Examples of things that I can’t live without include:

Emotionally Healthy: I must have a partner who is emotionally healthy, and able to share a stable life with someone else. (Not me, I want someone who can’t make it through a coffee commercial without sobbing and who insists that I enter the room backwards just in case he can’t face me at that moment.)
Communicator: I must have someone who is good at talking and listening. (Wait, talking AND listening? Where DUST THOU get these impossible expectations? I suppose you want someone who can both chew AND swallow too, eh? Ridiculous!)
Loyal: must have someone I can count on to always support me. (Or, failing that, please don’t make faces behind my back when I’m talking at parties. Or at least let me come in to the parties, rather than sitting in the car. Or at least let me get in the car. Instead of the trunk. This time.)
Spirit of Volunteerism: must have a partner who shares my willingness to volunteer and support community and/or social causes. (…ok, I have no response to this one. I seriously don’t remember picking this one. But I guess I’d better start volunteering and supporting community and/or social causes. …crap.)
Kindness: I must have a partner who is gentle and kind. (WHO WOULD NOT WANT THIS? This has to have been an “ok, I'm out of other options, guess I’ll pick the “kind” one. It’s either this one or “generally likes to wear pants when out of the house.”)

…The Can’t Stand options were much the same, and rather than my listing them let me nutshell it by telling you that I’m apparently not willing to date someone who is a boorish, depressed, mean-spirited, arrogant racist. And apparently you need to stipulate this. Because apparently there are some women out there who WANT THESE THINGS? Who are these women? And do they really need to spend $50 a month to go online and FIND these things? Are the boorish, depressed, mean-spirited, arrogant racist men of the world really such rare, precious gems that you have to search and search and search for? REEEAAALLLYYY????

I sent him my lists, because that was the current homework assignment, and in about 2-3 days he sent me HIS lists. And again to not list things I will nutshell it and say that he is ALSO looking for an emotionally healthy, kind and funny communicator, and especially does not want to date a lying, cheating, arrogant, foul-mouthed racist. (gosh, I wonder where all the racists go to find love? Is there an E-Purity website out there somewhere?)

And now I have a new assignment: sending YET MORE QUESTIONS. But we’ll cover that next. For now I have to go tell the other 10 guys that I’m already dating some story about my not being awesome enough for them (ha!) so that they’ll go the f*ck away. (good thing I’m not racist.)

Yes I Can? Really?

Is it me or is it really hopey around here these days? (and by “here” I mean the nation. And by “these days” I mean mostly since Tuesday) For the most part I don’t do the politics thing here, but I’ll go ahead and fly my flag for a minute: I’m one of the people who was HAPPY about the outcome of this most recent election. And if you need a why let me just say because we have hit ROCK BOTTOM, people, and no matter what we need something really different. Though it is trite, I’ll go ahead and drop the new party line: we need us some serious CHANGE.

Now it looks like we may get some. Yay!

As such, the concept of change has been heavy in the air, like crappy cousin Chip’s fajita farts in the communal tent. With so much talk of change everywhere to you look how do you not look inward and think about your own capacity for change? Answer: you don’t.

And so I must confess that for the first time in years and years I find myself thinking that it MIGHT be possible that I indulge in partnership.

DO NOT FREAK OUT. I haven’t met anyone or seen anyone or even had a sex dream or anything. We’re just being conceptual right now. We’re shooting the sh*t, we’re throwing around ideas, we’re raising something up the flag to see if anyone sets it on fire. But even just the act of me leaving this option open is a little huge. Because despite the online dating and the speed dating and the thousands of wooooooooooords spent on this pursuit in the last 2 years, I’ll be brutally honest and tell you I’ve not once actually expected anything to come of it. Igloos by Satan’s beach house and pigs with pilot’s licenses have seemed as likely.

But this week, while contemplating all the possible changes I could make on my life I actually entertained the idea that there had been some massive, scifi-scale shift in the fabric of reality. And that maybe there’s a person out there up to the challenge?

Interesting.

(also I’m going to start bathing, go back to wearing a bra and I’m going to stop ending every sentence with “and like dat dere…” It’s a brand new day dawning, people!)

(and like dat dere…)

Q & A. Or actually A and Q.

I answered questions. I am a question answerer. Erer. Er.

The Question Man we will now call Mr. Carl. For no reason other than I’m sitting here watching a NASCAR race and the guy for whom I’m cheering is Carl and so Mr. Carl it is. Mr. Carl asked me 5 questions, as is the way they roll at E-melody. His questions were these:

1) What kind of exercise do I prefer?
I wanted to say that I prefer to not need exercise, and to be skinny and pert anyway. I wanted to say that I prefer to go dancing with fabulous packs of fierce homofexuals, no boyfriends allowed. I wanted to say that I would vote for any presidential candidate who can promise me a completely exercise-free method to be both trim and also fit. But that seemed like a lot of crazy right up front, and also you shouldn’t talk politics on the first ‘date’. So instead I told him that I’m a tap dancer. Because he should get at least a little of the crazy up front, right?

2) My idea of a romantic time would be:
OK, so this is tricky because I don’t respond well to the idea of a romantic time. I tend to roll my eyes and bite my lip and here my own voice yelling “lame!! Laaaaaame!!!” at each lighted candle and Celine Dion song. But didn’t we just decide that the crazy needed to be spread out over time? So I simply told him “You show me your favorite movie and I’ll show you mine.” Because just saying “show me yours and I’ll show you mine” was dangerous.

3) What style of dress do I prefer?
Danger, Will Robinson! Of the 4 pre-crafted answers I could pick from I decided “I dress for the occasion” was sufficiently non-committal. I’m hoping that, inspired by my answer to number 1, he’ll picture me in white tails and top hat, black cane and surrounded by Busby Berkely girls.

4) Would I rather date someone who is:
This question is one I have also sent, because it touches on the issue of time. How much time do you want? How much time will you need? If I never have any time for you at all will you WHINE ABOUT IT? I told Mr. Carl that I would prefer someone who is busy, with a structured scheduled, where I would know what days they will be available for fun. Mostly because he’d better be looking for someone just like that. Because I have an important blog to write, and he’s gonna have to wait his turn!

5) How often do I find myself laughing?
This is where I get a danged trophy for NOT answering “every time I read the profiles of dudes who match me on E-Melody!” I was swimming in self control. I was careful and forward thinking, and I, as it turns out, was not going to sabotage things instantly after all! After such impressive willpower I felt I should immediately go to the living room and eat every last bit of Halloween candy in the bowl. But first I needed to give Mr. Carl some kind of answer, so I picked the almost-honest “I crack myself up!”

Once I sent these answers to Mr. Carl I was then instructed to send him some of my own questions. I was there, the mountain was showing me it’s big, mountainy butt as if to say “bet you can’t climb me!” so I capitalized on my momentum and 5 sent questions:

1) When in a relationship, how much personal space do you generally find you need?
Most questions have 4 answers to pick from, plus the option of "other" and you write in your own response. The options for this question were:
- I don’t need personal space; I like together time.
- time spent at work is enough personal time and I wanna spend the rest of the time with my partner.
- I just need one night a week of personal time and the rest with my partner
- when I’m with my partner I’m completely there, but I do need personal time for reflection
Sadly, this is a trick question because none of these work for me. I’m looking for that one guy out of twenty who writes “look, I’ll call you when I call you. Back off, will you? YOU’RE SMOTHERING ME!!!”

2) Which of the following scenarios would make you more nervous?
- making a presentation in front of 500 people (because apparently I’m looking for someone not afraid to start a pyramid scheme?)
- taking a long car ride with someone you just met. (isn’t this how most episodes of “Without a Trace” begins?)
- talking about your biggest fears with your lover. (Or being involved with someone who wants you to call them “your lover.” Ech.)
- meeting with the president of your company (…ok, that has potential for being scary…)

3) On Saturday night, would you rather go to:
I won’t even give you the options here, because the only bad answer would be if they wrote in “bed.” (unless they mean it in the dirty way. Except that would be “ew!”, so I’m still opposed to the answer “bed”.)

4) What is your opinion of traditional gender roles?
OK, if you’re a guy this has to seem like a complete trap, right? And it is! Instead of the normal 4 possible answers this one just has 3, and they’re basically “loves me some Donna Reed!”, “loves me some Sarah Connor” or “pass.”

5) Outside of a romantic relationship, are you competitive?
Translation: can I play RISK with you or not?

I sent these questions to Mr. Carl, and since I was on a productivity roll I sent them to all 4 of the other matches too. Lookit me, sending questions out like I’m actually looking for wove. Who IS this woman?

Happy Halloween...

...and abracapocus! (for the King)

Watch more Dailymotion videos on AOL Video

Matches? We don't need no stinkin' MATCHES!

OK, so I’ve been through the matches. There were something like 20 of them when I first checked in! I thought “Man, I am some extra-matchable kind of chick! Lookit me matchin’! Matchy-Matchy-MATCH BABY! Twoo Wove in no time!”

Then I noticed that about 1/2 of them had already sent me “thanks but no thanks” emails. So nice that my good friends at E-Melody take the time to send me pre-rejected matches, thereby saving me all that pesky time normally spent reviewing their profiles and getting excited at the prospect of them and maybe dreaming a little dream where you meet and they look like Robert Redford and talk like Paul Newman and their biggest worry about you as a potential mate is that you won’t be able to spend all of their big, heaping heaps of cash as fast as they absolutely MUST be SPENT. Much better to see that it took them all of about 16 minutes to run away, away, away. MUCH better.

I also love how they insist that you look at the “reason” that you’ve been rejected before you can just make the rejections GO AWAY. Most of the reasons were the same as that which I have used: “Other” (because they don’t have a pre-fabricated rejection reason for “Your favorite movies were “Deliverance” and “Dude, Where’s My Car?” or “I already lived with my mother – I don’t want to live with yours”, let ALONE “you look like Nick Nolte’s mug shot”) The one(s) that were more specific were Michael (not his real name), who rejected me because of our different family backgrounds (I come from Europeans, he comes from jerks who pre-reject people) and Del (not his real name too) who rejected me because he’s pursuing another relationship (with his hand. HO!!!!)

You don’t think I’m taking these rejections personally, do you? Me neither.

ANYWAY, after I closed the fabulous rejection connections I was left with about 10 or so guys who either still might think I’m match-worthy or don’t realize there’s the pre-rejection option. I started looking through them and in a word? AWESOME. (another possible word: celibacy! I also like “dies alone!” but it’s too many words, so…)

My favorite is the guy who is 1) shorter than me, 2) possibly naked in the picture? And 3) LIVES IN A COMMUNE. Having read his profile now about 16 times I still cannot for the LIFE of me figure out why we were a match. I’m officially doubting the relationship wizards and their systems if they can find a single thing in common between myself and someone who could keep a straight face while typing “I'm looking for a woman who can navigate the rapids and enjoy the calm, serene waters of a relationship.” Oh yeah, and did I mention COMMUNE? Imagine how awkward it is when your date has a roommate. Now imagine the roommate is a family of 6, their compost heap, their rain stick and their goat named “Mr. Crystal Hope Rainbow.” (if this self-sustaining living collective is rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’, but DO attempt to use our kinetic energy as a new power source!)

The rest of the group was a disappointing collection of invisible men (want some lovin’? SHOW YOUR FACE, DAMMIT!) with some wee bits of possible potential (but still no picture) and guys who posted pictures, and probably should not have. (Note: just because you CAN post a picture of you shirtless does not mean that you SHOULD.) After 30 minutes of checking the matches I realized that this experiment is doomed because I’m suspicious of those who DON’T post photos, but turned off by most who do.

And then there was the guy who sent me questions.

This means that one of my matches looked at my info and thought “hey, this could be interesting. I will interrogate her for possible future love.” Nothing much to look at and all, but for the sake of the experiment, the project, the FRIGGIN’ PILE OF MONEY I SPENT TO JOIN I’m going to answer the questions. We’ll see where it goes from there.

And of COURSE I’ll post about the interrogation! Sheesh! What do you think we’re DOING here?

Green... thumb.

I started this post about the matchie matches, but lost it and now I can’t get it back. My brain is stalled. So I will try that one again tomorrow, and instead I will tell you now about how my landlord raised my rent.

And that it is awesome.

I have lived in this same 1/2 of a duplex for almost exactly 5 years. When I moved in here fall of 2003 my landlord explained that I had to keep my lawn and corner lot trimmed and such. I didn’t have to GARDEN, mind you, but packs of raccoons should not be able to travel through my lawn unseen. And let me assure you, nothing that I do could accurately be called ‘gardening’; however I can shove a mower in waves across a lawn. In fact, I pushed the hand-me-down mower from my uncle back and forth so diligently the first 3 years that it eventually coughed a final gas-powered gasp and croaked. And I did what any responsible home-renter would do. I nestled the non-mowering mower in the bushes ‘round behind my carport, bought a new one and finished the lawn.

My landlord has only raised the rent once before, so I was a little bummed to hear of the hike in early October, but mostly on principle. It’s not a lot of money at all. But it’s more than the previous amount of money. Sigh. I decided to blame the government and moved on with my world.

Then about a week later I was home during the day, eating lunch, and I spied someone stealing my lawn mower. My broken lawn mower. Someone was pulling my dead lawn mower out of the corner of the carport bushes right there in front of me! “Scuse me!” I yelled, “are you stealing my broken lawn mower???” and then the next few minutes are a soft, nice-smelling blur of hot dudeness.

Here stood this hot dude! A lawn mower stealing dude? Well, sure. But it was so broken and he was so YUM! Let him have the mower! Finally the blood rushing. Hormone-fueled, past my ears calmed down and I heard hot-mower-stealing-dude mention that he worked for a yardwork business that my landlord had hired to come and clear out the mass of bramble bushes behind the house. With my brand new, now completely justified and maybe even a bargain, rent hike.

Tangent: I’m extremely independent. To the point of being simultaneously stupid and annoying about it. I get angry when my helpful Auntie M folds a towel for me, because my overly independent brain translates the act of towel folding into somehow impuning my ability to clean up my own towels. Many smart, loving people in my world would probably hesitate to pee on my flaming form for fear of my insisting I was just about to pee on myself and totally didn’t need the help thank YOU! So for months now I have been girding my loins in preparation for an assault on my neighbor’s attacking bramble bushes. I even got gloves! Special barb wire gloves, so very thick and stiff as to not allow one to touch thumb to finger! But these brambles were apparently transplanted from the land of Sleeping Beauty, being the same ones they used to keep Princey McPrince-boy from reaching her for some hot smoochey-smooches. Of course none of this kept me from momentarily getting defensive at the idea of someone being hired to do this bramble bush warfare. Because HELLO, I was TOTALLY going to do it! I was! I could totally do it myself. Wanna see my plywood gloves??

Beautiful bramble bush attack boy worked all during my lunch and I was able to find a good 11 or 30 reasons to go into the back of my house during lunch and peek out the back window. “hey, I wonder is the sun spontaneously setting in the east? At 1pm? Nope! Good to know! Veeeeerrrryyy good….” He was still hard (gulp) at work when I went back to my job. I came home to a note that he was all finished and some other guy would be back in a few weeks for general maintenance. Wah.

And yet there he was again, today, to blow my leaves and edge my lawn, both of which suddenly sound just a little dirty. Do I know his name? No. To me he is just Hot Yard Guy. But I am very much looking forward to the summer months! The hot, sweaty, hopefully shirtless, summer months… I think I may take up gardening after all!

My, what a very full circle I have found

So somewhere along the line when I wasn’t paying attention this humble little blog passed the 2-year mark. Two Years! Kind of amazing really. According to my good friends at Google, those two years included 255 published piles of words. 422 published pictures, a happy little chunk of comments (thank you so VERYmuch!!) and one o’ these:


In the beginning it was all “ooh, look at me being so single and Wah, I sure wish I was less single and Grrr, being not so single is HARD!” and nobody tired of that shit faster than me. Because seriously, crap or get off the pot, right? MOVE ON, WOMAN!

After a year I said “ENOUGH!” I said I didn’t want to keep bashing my soft, squishy head into the glass ceiling of relationships. I was DONE with all that crazy free dating sites and speed dating and meeting some random dude in a restaurant, all the while trying to figure out if I could make a break out the back and get the bike unlocked without being seen through the window. (good times.) I said to you, my peoples, “hey, couldn’t we have just as much fun if I stopped hunting for love and just wrote about my life? And the stuff that I do? By myself? With nobody along with me? Eh?”

This winning strategy brought such posts as “My co-workers are filthy, filthy people – look how I mock their fridge use” and “my pritty, pritty toes – let me show you it.” and (of course) the classic “Gu-Huh… blue pens R fun.” Clearly my choice to refocus was genius.

I won’t lie to you, my peoples. Sometimes I sit here in front of my keyboard wondering what in the HELL I could possibly write about which anyone other than my mother would give a single ounce of crap. And she doesn’t even read this blog anymore!

And then the universe started poking me. Poking, poking… insisting that I look more than 2 inches beyond the end of my adorable little nose. It sent me not one, but two cool chicks who mete their eventual husbands online. It gave me a tiny little bonus that I didn’t expect to get and don’t already have spent. And it gave me something like 12 matches on one of the most popular online dating sites around.

So tonight around 10:39pm I gave this online dating site a pile of cash. And they promised to give me Twue Wove. (or the cash equivalent. Or possible a home version of the game.)

I’m not feeling confident about this. In fact I made the payment but could not bring myself to look at the matches. I’m actually kind of sure that I’m going to go through things and find nothing but rat droppings, pumpkin scones and serial bed farters. UUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHH. But I gave them the money and their promise of wove, wove and fabulous wove lasts for the next three months. And you can’t let me go through this alone!!!

Girl-Island, no boys allowed

Ugh. I’m a very bad friend.

I went to the wedding reception party thing today of a friend of mine whom I will now dub “Kermit”. Kermit is a very cool chica who is my age, my temperment, my style, and just generally very me-like. Me-ish, if you will. Me-esque. A lady I have always felt like could easily be a super-close friend if it weren’t for the fact that she lives over an hour away. (stupid geography.) She got married up in Canada this summer with a petite little “family only” wedding, so TODAY was the domestic, less-Canadian party where the rest of us not shiny enough to trek to Canuklandia could come and say “woo hoo!” and the like.

But instead of woo-hooing like a good friend shoooo-hoould, I waffled back and forth between being annoyed that she got married (because hello, wasn’t that something that we had in common? Being the last single women on the planet? Did I mention HELLO???) and being uncomfortable that I, in fact, now AM the last single woman on the planet. I just kept waiting for that fabulous moment when someone would ask me “so, when are YOU getting married?” so that I could reply with the requisite “SHUT UP YOU SUCK I HATE YOU AND SHUT UP (please pass the turkey rolls) YOU SUUUUUUUUCK!”

This is the second fellow last-single-girl-ever to quit the club this year. You may remember the SUUUUUPER-COOOOL co-worker who got engaged last May (I called her then, and will continue to call her now, Joette Cool, or JC for short)? HER wedding took place last month. (and, big surprise, her wedding was tremendously and absurdly cool, cool, cool. Of course.) For both of these folks I should be very happy and “good for you, getter of a life partner!” but I swear that the petty and crappy part of me can’t seem to get past the part where I resent them for not just staying here, on this desert island of singledome with me. We can make s’mores and braid eachother’s hair! But do they care? No. They want someone to mow the lawn and make waffles and sometimes do sex-things! Sheesh!

So now I’m sitting here staring at E-thingstuff because I came home to find that “Hey! You have a new match! We’re your last chance for partnership because you’re broken and stuff! Click now or die alone under an avalanche of cats! Matchy-matchy-match-match!” I don’t even WANT to find a life-mate-partner-dude through an online matchmaking website. I have long ago decided that would be embarrassing! I mean, why should I even believe that there is any chance?

Other than the fact that BOTH of the ladies who got married this year met their now-husbands on E-thingstuff?

And also there are somehow not just one but six new matches there?

And also I have this tiny little extra pile of money in my last paycheck?

And…

Stuck in the middle with EWWW...

I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out how to set this scene and this is what I came up with: The other day I “dropped the kids off at the pool” and it the “pool” turned out to be more like “the elevator from the Shining.”

(other rejected ideas: “a few days ago I had a long sit on the throne and the finished product was way more colorful than normal. And by “colorful” I mean mostly brown and bright red.” OR “recently I was taking a dump and started my period. Out of my butt.”)

Anyway, I went to my doctor and she tends to be very “It’s probably this little thing, but just in case I’m going to also check that it’s not this very BIG THING.” And by “BIG THING” she meant colon cancer. I’m very happy to make sure that I don’t have colon cancer, because I’d like to have no cancer at all. It’s just a decision I made a long time ago: I want to avoid any and all cancer-like-things. However the steps involved in making sure that you don’t have colon cancer involve getting stuck. A lot of sticking. And not any of the good kinds.

So first I got stuck by needles. Funny thing about me: I have a tremendous clotting ability. Seriously, I’ve had to give up donating blood because I’m always clotting before we get the full unit. So Mr. Blood Drawing Dude (or MBDD) stuck me in both arms, and failed to even fill a test tube, and finally resorted to sticking an IV needle in the back of my hand.

This was a first time for that trick for me, so I says to him “hey, I’ve never had blood drawn from the back of the hand. Does it hurt more or less than the arm?”

And he says “Hmmmm. It depends really…”

And I says “No, no, no, that’s not the right answer! You’re supposed to say “oh heck, it hurts WAY less than the arm does!” No matter what, that’s what you say!”

“Oh! Then oh heck, it hurts WAY less than the arm does!”

“Well you can’t say that NOW!!! NOW I KNOW you’re bullsh*ting me! What, are you new or something?”

A week after I got poked in both arms and the back of the hand (oh, and for the record? It doesn’t depend on anything. It hurts more on the back of the hand. It just does. Works pretty well, but hurts super-crappy. I’m just sayin’.) I had to go to a Gastroenterologist. She was a lovely person and very witty and charming and very clear and all of this really doesn’t matter at ALL once she started sticking things up my poop-shoot! There’s no way to charmingly wedge something inside the out-door, know what I’m sayin’? I mean, I’ve prided myself on keeping that particular avenue as an “out only” orifice! (I know that’s kind of a strange thing to pride oneself upon, but you take your pride where you can get it, people! That door goes ONE WAY!)

What I’m saying is that all the parts of my rear that are designed as a defensive line are SERIOUS about it! When there’s any kind of rear invasion all kinds of walls and fences and locks come into play, and they will not be dissuaded! So here’s me, standing pantsless in this brand new doctor’s office, trying very hard to distract my ass from it’s whole job by looking out the window. At the parking garage across the street. And the random stranger there, obviously locked out of their car. Trying to shove their arm inside the little window gap they’ve left. WHICH IS ENTIRELY TOO SIMILAR TO WHAT’S GOING ON BEHIND ME AND PROVIDES NO DISTRACTION AT ALL!!!!

The good news is that all the various medical poking-people reached the same (extremely intrusive!) conclusion: I have no cancer, but instead a pretty impressive case of mystery hemorrhoids. (I call them “mystery hemorrhoids” because when the doctor ran down the list of all the things that can CAUSE hemorrhoids I came up zip for zip. I’m one of those precious few who can just get hemorrhoids. From nothing. Whipdee-friggin’-doodlepants.) The bad news is the treatment: I get to stick something up my butt.

Twice a day.

For a week.

I’m pretty sure I’m just gonna stick with the hemorrhoids.

That's what friends are for.

You know how you can tell that someone is your very best friend? When you’re 38 years old and single and still living fairly hand-to-mouth and they keep saying ‘WHEN you have a baby” instead of “IF YOU EVER have a baby.” Because they know that you’re probably beginning to think it’s just never gonna happen, but that thought bums you out because you really would like to have one, so they’ll have faith in you even though you don’t really have the faith anymore.

That’s totally how you can tell someone is your very best friend.

(of course, if they were TRULY your very best friend they’d break into a sperm bank and steal you some grade-A sperm, preferably from one Mr. Daniel Craig or Mr. Robert Redford or Mr. Robert Downey Jr, (but without the crazy drug addiction genes of course) and they’d help you figure out how the hell you get the frozen sperm into a turkey baster and they’d sit there and keep you company while you lie with your ass in the air for a day, hoping that the swimmers have a good sense of direction and a triumphant spirit and “take no prisoners!” attitude. But the other thing is also totally awesome.)

(Love you, Queenie. Thanks for keeping the faith!)

Do you get dental with this blog?

My stupid job is ruining my blog.

Because the thing is I promised that I would not write about the job in the blog. (I didn’t promise you guys, but I just generally promised myself. Because even though I’m not religious, I do believe that Heather Armstrong’s job died for our sins. Amen.) But right now I’m working so damned much that I don’t seem to have anything else to write about!! I get home from work and eat and feed cats and then I sit there on the couch saying “I really need to get up and go in there and show my love to my readers! Because love them? Oh yes, I do! But the only thing I can think of to WRITE is either “Gah, my job is all the time all the time and then more and more MAKE IT STOP!” or “Zzzzzzzzzzz…”

And then I doze off in front of some pithy little drama about doctors or cops or time traveler cops or time traveler doctor cops who travel through time and invent “soup”.

Heck, even if I DID have a date I’d have no time to go! (not that I have a date. Don’t get the wrong idea here, I’m not turning down hot date requests because of my super-excellent career. I’m just sayin’…) Or if I went on a date first I’d have nothing to talk about except how stupid-busy my danged job is, and then I’d fall asleep in the soup or salad or mozzarella sticks or mozzarella sticks served with a side order of cheese-fries.

Man do I love cheese fries.

So, to recap: too busy, glad that tv is back, love cheese fries, zzzzzz…

Couldn't agree more

You probably thought that I'd totally forgotten about Desktop Fun, what with two whole months having passed and no such posts. Truth is that the August change of desktoppery happened while I was in the devil's crotch-sweat and the September change happened while I was deep in hecticity (IS SO A DANG WORD!) so neither of them were really honored in the way they should have been.



But now? Now I'm done being so busy (which is a lie -- I'm just done having official excuses for being busy, so everyone is sure I'm not busy, which is a problem because I actually am still super-duper-SomeoneKillMe-busy, but whatever, "here'ssomethingelseforyoutodo'kaythanksbye" and bleh. All of which was just to say it took me no time at all to pick the following as my desktop icon. Because EXACTLY.

Lefty.

September was my month to "clean" the "kitchen" at work again. Its a joyous thing because I not only get to go through our little mini-fridge and do away with the scores of lost, abandoned and rogue foodstuffs, but I also get to mock my co-workers for their negligent food care-takery.

Here, for your reading enjoyment, is my debrief after the 2008 fall fridge free-for-all:

Hello:

Once again we have a fridge that is so very, very clean that you could actually even store things to EAT in it! And since I had such a positive reaction to last year’s list of “Things learned” from this experience I figured I should share again. Never let it be said that you cannot learn new things even while doing something that makes you wish you were totally, totally dead. Please to enjoy…

-Femtastic

Things I learned THIS TIME while cleaning out the kitchen fridge:

• There are some exciting new products out there that I had not heard of. They include:
• Kraft’s Honey Dijon wallpaper paste, guaranteed not to let your wallpaper come off. Ever. (seriously, ever. You’ll burn down this house and the wallpaper will still stand.)
• Ranch-flavored ice cream, complete with icee crystals on the top and a festive red tint to the edges (which screams like boiled lobsters when you wash it down the sink)
• Yoplait Blackberry slow-setting cement – just add cold and lots of time.
• Chunky’s new Petrified Beef and Noodle Soup (chisel not included)
• Ever still our department’s love for the un-eaten yogurt continues unabated. I believe now that we may have a grassroots “Save The Yogurt!” campaign happening right under our noses, where we flock to the stores and buy yogurt in order to protect them from ever, EVER being viciously consumed!
• Did you know (because I didn’t!) that there is a flavor of Jello which, if left alone long enough, will eventually smell like a combination of cumin and the blood of a thousand lost souls? True story!
• The noodles used in Lean Cuisine’s Fettuccini Alfredo can, in some cases, attain a sort of animation, nay even life, and attach themselves to your skin, say if you were unfortunate enough to let one get on you.
• In such cases the appropriate response is to flail your hand over the garbage frantically while screaming like a little girl
• Neither action will get the noodle/attack worm off, but it does make you feel a little better about your chances for survival
• Eventually you will have to have the noodle/worm-attacked hand removed.

Let’s see how long it takes for the box of cold to get filled up this time…

-Lefty McOneHand

Do I always have to be the grown-up?

So mostly I really like being independent. I have this whole life-rule-motto-thing where it’s really important to me that I never be prevented from doing anything I want or need to do just because I’m terminally solo. It was this vow, this creedo if you will, that lead me to carry a 50 lb television up a loft ladder by myself one night because I wanted to be able to watch tv in bed and just because my bed was in a loft, and just because the tv was heavy, and just because I was a single woman that was not going to stop me so BY GOD, I WAS GONNA HAVE A TV IN THAT LOFT! (as it turned out, I had tv and a wrenched shoulder and a big dent in my loft wall. And also Sunday mornings in bed with my NASCAR race and my sleepy kitty. All good.)

Where was I? Oh, right. I’m INDEPENDENT!

Even with my ironclad, bulletproof independence, there are still times when I really wish there was someone else that I could ask to do the stuff I hate to do, or don’t do well. For instance, I really hate to do the dishes, and would LOVE to be able to say “tonight it’s your turn to do the dishes, while I will eat bon bons and drink champagne and watch some girly show with fancy shoes or long, deep conversations about feelings. Tra la la and whee!” I would also say that sometimes about cooking, and sometimes about mowing the lawn. Except less tv shows about feelings about shoes and more NASCAR races. About feelings.

But what I REALLY wish I could let someone else be in charge of is the MONEY. Not that I can’t deal with it, but I just don’t like to. It forces me to be extremely responsible and level-headed and “good”. When really what I want is to BUY! COOL! THINGS! Sigh. Like when I got the first credit card ever, which I didn’t even really ask for and didn’t think I wanted, I was all about “use wisely. Don’t be stupid.” For like 5 seconds, and then it was all magic money that I didn’t even have to earn first, and the fabulous thingies that I could buy with the magic money.

I haven’t used a credit card for close to a decade. And I’m finally closing in on a zero-balance on that one that I did have. Blessed, debt-free nirvana.

I want a laptop. I really want a laptop. MAN do I want a laptop. But laptops are expensive. And good laptops are even more expensive, and then you talk about the nice software to go on the good laptop and now we’re talking serious money in the house that Jack built. Where as most of my money is extremely light-hearted, trivial, silly, even ridiculous! (thanks, Roget!!) But in October there is talk of a bonus at my work. Bonus, which I believe is French for “money that is not already earmarked for rent or gas or bills or anything.”

Money that I could maybe use to get a laptop.

Money that I really SHOULD use to get even closer to that credit card zero balance.

See, this would be the perfect time for me to have some other person who always manages the money and gives me an allowance and balances the wants, like laptops (and I-Phones, which I also want, and a new photo-printer and did I mention that I-Phones are super-cool?) with the shoulds, like credit card balances. (and financial aide, and a couple of kitty check-ups and WOW, did those lame college classes really cost that much? Gah!)

I won’t tell you how this gripping suspense ends. Suffice it to say that if you read a future post where I comment on how nice it is to write while lying in the sun you’ll know what happened. (and also that the weather here in Hippyville is strangely sunny for the fall or winter!)

Wish me strength.

Attention to detail

Lest everyone thinks that I have absolutely no idea how to flirt or jive or be with people without sticking my finger in my nose, I give to you this story from a recent Friday night:

I’m with a group of ladies from work – one of those things where the fact that we work together 40+ hours a week somehow mandates that we need to spend a few more hours together to make sure we’re super-excellent BFFs, and you can see how enthusiastic I am about the whole concept, but anyway – at this slightly snooty pizza joint. The joint isn’t so snooty as much as their ideas about pizza are snooty -- they make snooty, gourmet, fancy-pants pizzas. This is the kind of place that has a whole category of pizza called “chicken”, which includes things from the darkest corners of asia and exotic chili peppers. The place is HOPPING and everyone at our table is loud and obnoxious, as is the rule for any table of over 6 women.

All evening long there’s this big guy who looks like he MAYBE works there, but different from the others who OBVIOUSLY work there, and he’s patrolling the restaurant constantly, so I peg him for management. Every time Mr. Manager walks past our table he takes a good, long look. Eventually someone at our table makes comment, along the lines of “what is the deal with the big guy in the black shirt who keeps looking at our table?” I explain my management theory, but still the “why” becomes a topic of goofy, giggly girl conversation, and eventually our table has narrowed the reasons for his constant drive-bys to two:

He wants us to get the heck out of dodge
He’s thinks we’re a table of hotties

For everybody else the speculation is fun, but I'm not speculation-girl. I'm forward, direct, no-sense-of-shame girl, and so I offer to just ask the guy. And the next time he comes by I share our expert hypothesis (as well as the scientific method used to identify these options, which consisted of mixing estrogen, vodka and beer and shaking well) and ask him to select option A, option B or an option C of his devising.

He chooses option C, which is this super-safe combo platter of equal parts "hot chicks! Woohoo!" and "for the love of Pete, please free up my table!!!" Problem is we're waiting for a to-go pizza still baking, which is when he offers to give us our “to go” order for free if we’ll leave, which some people would be offended by but I’m all “hey, free pizza!” He doctors the check and we place the order and eagerly await free pizzas wafting out of the kitchen!

So lesson number one here: hang out with amusing people with no reasonable sense of personal boundaries = get free pizza!

Now, I mentioned that it was busy, right? OK, so we ORDER the pizza but it takes a stinkin’ long time to cook and in the meantime there we are, all occupying this table that the guy specifically wanted us to FREE UP. And sure enough, eventually he comes by and notices how not gone we are. (because we’re something like 85% not gone. So not the deal he made!) And he complains that we’re not doing our part (but he’s joking here) and that he’s gonna have to give us something else to make us vamoose (funny, funny guy still all jokish) and “next you’re gonna want a date!”

Um, what?

He keeps talking, I keep talking, many pithy, ironic and super-clever lines are bandied back and forth, and really it isn’t until 5 minutes later, when the pizza arrives and we depart, that I start thinking “hey, did that guy kind of ask me a little bit sort of out?” I've since decided that he didn't, but where as most people figure these things out as they're happening, it takes me (apparently) at least a WEEK. Apparently I have the reflexes of a stoned turtle! The response time of the Titanic making a U-ey! I'm slow and stupid!

Don't get the wrong idea: He wasn’t my type and I wasn’t looking for a date. But with this attention to detail I'll be married for three years before I realize some dude thinks I'm cool.

Vindication!

I KNEW it! Call me lazy, call me slacker, call me narcoleptic! But I totally knew that all the naps I am always all-the-time takin' were noble, healthy, nay even ORGANIC and good for me! And LO, see how the good people of the Boston Globe (a real paper written by real journalists and read by people who went to real colleges!) broke down the ins and outs and various facets of that most glorious of health regimens: THE NAP!

Some things I learned from the Boston Globe Smarty-smarty-smartsmarts? That I'm an owl, not a lark. and this is good, because I'm pretty sure that the lark is the dorkiest of the birds. Seriously -- I think they have little bird pocket protectors and play lark Dungeons and Dragons and the like. Whereas owls are stinkin' cool; they fly the coolest cars and smoke and swear birdy curses.

Also, I'm NOT afternoon-stupid! No, it turns out that my days have been plagued, nay MOCKED, by an afternoon quiescent phase. A PHASE, people! How could someone combat that? Answer: nap.

My nap of choice? I rock that 4th image where you're lying on your face, naked, with your ass lovingly covered by some kind of blanky. That's how I roll. (and also between 60 and 90 minutes of hardcore, quality nap-action. and also when I nap I'm devoid of hue. But hey, aren't we all?) But let's not take anything away from Mr. Clean down there, with the bare feet and the headphones, huggin' his security pillow. That is a guy I could learn to love: a man who naps unabashedly. Unashamedly. Puts his all and his everything into every nap.

So the next time you fall asleep on your desk at work, your nose covered with "sign here" tags and your screen full of nothing but g's, g's, g's, don't get down on yourself! You're just overdue for that power-nap, people! Time to find a couch! A sofa! A loveseat! and GET our NAP on, my people!!

PS: seriously, counting sheep or "floating Z's" actually works? Man, I owe Chuck Jones an apology...

Wait, there's one in the morning AND in the evening?

Amidst the various hecticities (is so, is so, is totally so a word!) of the last few weeks there was a 42-hour window where I had to work three shifts: one from 7ish(am) to 3ish(pm), then one from 10ish(pm) to 7ish(am) and then one from 3ish(pm) to midnightish(am? Man, that one always confuses me).

Understand that I still believe, despite recent evidence otherwise, that I’m 17 years old and can work for 24 hours in a row without even getting tired and only need 4 hours of sleep to be fresh as a daisy and other stupid, untrue things. And as such, I did this schedule to myself. (also I just couldn’t bear to do this to anyone else. Not since I was so young and spry and all.)

ANYWAY! I worked the first shift that morning and all was fine. I went home by way of a soccer game (watching, not playing) and some Jamba Juice (Razzmatazz, why must you tempt me so with your berry siren song?) and had about 4 hours to sleep before I had to be back for shift #2. And I’m thinking “no problem! I feed kitties, pack my bag of stuff for tonight, get up with 30 minutes for dinner and I’m there in no time!” (clearly I should also have been thinking “and later I’ll meet Debs and Scooter down on the Quad for coffee and a gab fest about our classes and how much Professor Smithers sucks with all the homework, and man am I lucky I’m so very, very young.”) I fed kitties and packed bag and flopped down on the couch for 4 hours of quality nap-sleep.

And I marveled at how bright the sun was outside and how very middle-of-the-afternoon it felt, and how not at all sleepy I was.

So I’m lying there watching tv and stressing that I’m not sleeping and flippy-flopping with not sleeping and realizing that if I were as spry as I think I am I wouldn’t even know enough to stress about not sleeping and thinking “why do I have to have a ‘coming-to-grips-with-my-maturity’ moment NOW???” But somewhere in there I DID fall asleep. A hard sleep. A rock-hard sleep. Sleep of the damned and all.

And then I woke up, and the morning was bright and crisp. And also it was the morning. The clocks all mocked me with their “6:30”ness and I FREAKED OUT BECAUSE I HAD SLEPT COMPLETELY THROUGH THE WHOLE OVERNIGHT SHIFT AAAAUUUUGGGHHH!!!! Now, properly inspired by the panic of the completely screwed, I grabbed my purse and shoes and was in the car and out of the driveway in about .2 seconds.

I RACE out to the location for these funky shifts at about “bat-out-of-hell” times 10. (Oh no, not conveniently close enough to be biked quickly, and therefore driven even more quickly. No, these shifts are out at “far away pavilion land”, which takes 15-20 min. to even drive there. Fabulous.) I’m all over my phone calling the managers who should be managing the thing that I didn’t come and do, and nobody is answering their damned phones! Exactly why do we have cell phones if not to answer them any time I call and need them? Plus, might I add, FREAKING OUT!!!

Finally I get a manager type and I explain my whole missing of my shift and the tremendous badness of same. And she is fine with it. She doesn’t even seem to understand what the heck I’m talking about. In fact, the tone of voice smacks of “oh darn, Femtastic has finally jumped the crazy shark of no saneness. Had to happen eventually.” So frustrated am I by her distinct lack of getting it that I hang up pretty quickly and start the turn-off to the last 5 minutes of the drive and hey, did my phone say PM?

Did my phone say that it’s 6:30PM?

Gosh, 6:30AM and 6:30PM sure do look similar this time of year! Except that would definitely be what we like to call “West” that the sun is melting down into.

CUH-RAP.


…I have no idea why I jumped immediately to 6:30AM. It never for even one second occurred to me that it could be only about 40 minutes after I’d fallen asleep. I knew, 100% knew, that it was the morning and no amount of it actually being the evening could slow me down!

So I turned the car around and drove the reverse route back home, at a much more reasonable “I am such a complete moron” pace. Of course now there’s enough adrenaline rushing through my system to reanimate Uma Thurman, so even though it’s 7PM when I get home it’s at least 8PM before my lids dip even a smidge. And that shift from 10ish to 7ish was SO MUCH LONGER than I’d hoped.

Lesson learned: I need AM/PMs on all my clocks. Or to work overnight less. (“or a husband” says a friend. Do they help with this stuff?)

Potty Poetry, Volume 1

I have a magnetic poetry kit, have had for years. Just like most folks, when I first got the kit I put it on my fridge. I made 2 or 3 pithy, clever phrases and then never composed while in my kitchen ever again.

Then one year I had a burst of inspiration. I picked up a magnetic white board from Ikea and hung it beside my toilet. Ever since that day, my magnetic poetry kit has been on FIRE!

I bring to you now the current genius items of poetic majesty on my magnetic potty poetry kit, for your poetic and scatological enjoyment:

• Essential beauty needs to incubate
• Never smear power with luscious lather
• The fluff crusher produces a garden of enormous black men
• Mad visions of a Delirious egg diamond
• Hee, hee, panties
• She can picture me one honey of a boy
• I love the maybes & lies
• My dinosaur suit is but a sad shadow
• These sausages are not true meats
• You want purple juice, I want white milk
• Chocolate is an elaborate apparatus for delicate arms

An Open Letter to Whomever Is Left...

Hi. My name is Femtastic. Used to be I kept a blog and blogged about things and stuff. But then I had this job and it was hectic. And then it was super-hectic. And then it was “holy crap, I got me no time for anything except the job” hectic.

But lo, I am Free-ed! I am back to the bloggy goodness of my life, because the hecticity of the job (is too a word) has finally calmed down. And, might I add, “Whew!” So sorry for the distinct nothingness and also the pervasive quiet and lack of words and such.

To make up for this I have a goal for this week: to blog every day. This is my goal. It is a GOOD goal. It is a SOLID goal. It is a NOBLE goal.

It is also probably an impossible goal. Because TV comes back this week, and tap dancing also returns. And there are plans on some nights with friends and family members who also kind of forgot I existed because I was tremendously not around. And also sometimes I get sleepy.

But it is the goal that I promise to you, the 6.3 people who foolishly keep checking back to see if I’m around, to do my best to achieve.

Wish me luck, my friends.

(PS. You look great! Have you changed your hair or lost weight or something? How are the spouse and kids? Are you still in that book club/cooking class/Young Republicans Coffee Clatch? Never stop being you. Kiss Kiss and some huggies.)

Battle of the Bulge, Part Three – Bad Days = Bad Food

You know what happens when you decide to watch what you eat? Food begins to drop from the sky. Bad food. EVIL food. Soulless food with a chocolaty coating and creamy, black filling.

I’m trying to be good! I mean, not last week of course. The big push last week was to remove the bad foods from the house. It was with this noble goal in mind that I ate fish sticks, tater tots, frozen waffles, peanut butter cookies and terrible, terrible Cap’n Crunch. (oh you devilish seaman, you, with your swarthy, sugary mustache and your berries of tempting crunchitude…) And I was rewarded for my noble deeds! Rewarded Sunday night when I stepped on that scale, STEPPED ON IT WITH PRIDE! Stepped up and said to it “do your worst, Scale!” And it replied “you gained two pounds, Fat-Ass. Step off before you damage my insides.”

Still, I’d done the hard work and now it’s time to dedicate myself to the good foods. The Fish! The Veggies! The foods called “Lean” and “Light” and “of COURSE there’s no flavor here! You want to lose weight, don’t you? Then shut it!” I did away with all the Pockets that are Hot, and turned to the Pockets that are LEAN! Surely they would still be a tasty way to take care of the occasional lunch, right? And just as I’d hoped, they were fine! Oh sure, the sauce puts one in mind of light-orange milk and the crust is most definitely made from mulch and manila folders. But other than that? Fine.

But things at my work are difficult right now. Nay, some might even call it craptastic, with the constant stress and too much to do and “Hey, who put this flaming sack of poop on my chair???” And, like many organizations, we combat the work stress with FOOOOOOOD! At every turn the universe jumps out and attacks me with the savory bombs of temptation! Scrumptious bullets of sweet decadence! Sneaky Snack Attacks! Make it STOP! Just yesterday I fought my way through the day and was doing ok. But I ended up the day at a very angry work meeting, capped off with a lovely plate of rage cookies. Who can say no to sweet little rage cookies, shaped like angels and hearts, but brought forth only to stuff the mouths of the rageful meeting participants? Its just not fair.

And today! Today! Today I didn’t even take a lunch, so busy with crazy was the day, and I thought (in an effort to sketch a lovely, silver lining on a day too busy for lunch) “hey, at least this should help me with my desire to be less of a fatty-fatty-fat-fat!” And like THAT boxes of free pizza and bags of chips and plates of home-baked, love-filled desserty things sprang forth from the ether! Swarmed my desk! Wedged themselves down my helpless mouth! Oh sure, I nommed! I nommed like nobody’s BUSINESS! But still, what is with the non-stop buffet from Temptation Island, people?

Tomorrow my plan is to have a simple P, B & J for lunch. As a result, I’m sure I will receive a gross of deep-fried Twinkies in the mail.

Battle of the Bulge. Part Two - Suck it Billy Jean

Now that we’ve covered whence we’ve placed the finish line, let’s talk about my two prongs of racing-winning success: finding some way to get some exercise in my big, stupid life AND trying to moderate my intake of food without starving or getting very, very blue. And cranky.

OK, so not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I super-hate to exercise. However I do NOT hate to get some exercise if it’s a great big accident, say as a side effect of doing something fun. Remember tap dancing class? FUN! Also the biking to work and back? (sometimes damp but still mostly) FUN! These are some of the keys to my most certain and triumphant success.

Tap class starts back up next week. This is tappy, sweaty exercise that I most definitely love to do. And even though it’s getting rainy, and presently I just cannot find my rain pants, and also I keep having to go to these meetings out at the very far away new hospital which is too far for biking and also I really need to figure out some way to wear a helmet, STILL I will continue to be a bike-commuting girl. Including, whenever I can, doing a scenic route home that takes me about 30 minutes and be even more exercisy.

On top of those existing exercise super-genius plans I’ve got two more. The first? Tennis! Or, more accurately, “chasing yellow, fuzzy balls around a tennis court while explaining what it was that happened that last time which made it totally impossible for me to hit the ball even though it was right where I was. And I was swinging every which way. And did I mention that the sun was in my eyes?”

My Dad and I decided to invest in uber-cheap used tennis rackets (which came with fancy, zippy covers with shoulder straps that make us look like we’re totally good at this! Like the dudes that bring their own cue to the pool hall! Not at ALL dorky or lame!!!) and we’ve been going to one of the multiple free, common-use neighborhood tennis courts that surround my house one night a week. We go about 10pm (for we require an entire day of walking around and talking and just existing in the universe as our warm-up before we risk actual exercise, and also there’s generally nobody else there at that time.)

Now counting the two times that he and I have gone over the last two weeks I’ve only been playing tennis for approximately (wait, let me check this to be sure… yep, that’s what I thought) two weeks. So you can imagine how truly fabulous I am. Why there was one time last week where I served a ball and he hit it back to me! (yes!) Not only that, but I was feeling all kicky myself so I hit the ball back to HIM! (seriously!) Of course by then we were both too exhausted and amazed with ourselves to continue standing, and we did that traditional lying down on the court and wheezing thing that you always see on the Masters or the World Series or whatever that tennis championship thing is called. Which, by the way, I’ll surely be winning next year.

But the REAL key to my exercise success with the balls and rackets and very, very bright lights at 10 at night is the dozen or so times each week that I accidentally hit the ball pretty much right up in the air, way over the stupid fence that surrounds the courts (and which, by the way, is about 11 feet too short!) This gives me the opportunity to run to the single door in or out of the courts (sure, the fence is too small, but they sure didn’t waste any fencing on copious doors in or out!) and then roam around in the neighborhood around the court looking for the runaway ball. My rule has been that I have to run to get the ball and run back. Or at least run our to get it. Or at least run to the door. Or do that little hoppy thing when I first head off to get it that makes it look like I’m about to run, but then I don’t. or at least say the words ‘I’ll run and get it” when I hit it over, even though my Dad wasn’t for even a second planning to go get it. I’m pretty sure that saying the word “run” does burn more calories than any other word.

My other secret exercise weapon? Hot Hoola Hoop Action. I can say no more at this time.

Battle of the Bulge, part one - the Goal.

OK, so this may be an unpopular, unsubstantiated and possibly ludicrous concept, but I’m here to tell it: big, chunky girls don’t get the lovin. They just don’t. And by “they” I am really saying “we” because people, I am currently both big and also inordinately chunky.

Unfortunately I also have some handicaps that make it tough to combat this situation. For instance, I really hate to exercise. Hate it so much that I think my hatred actually does burn calories. Also, I really love to eat food, and especially those things a) deep fried, b) covered in chocolate or c) made entirely of fat. God bless the inventor of the deep fried Snickers bar – I think I love you the most, Scarecrow!

(gurgle, gurgle, drooly love of deep fried Snickers bar…) Sorry, where was I?

Oh, right. Lovin’.

So The Queen is a motivated type. She does things like run marathons and try to push a person through her cooch for something like 62 hours. Give her a challenge and watch her CONQUER. A year ago she had a baby, which lead to some surplus or bonus bodyness, some of which is still hanging around. When she heard that I sometimes sit on my couch and run through my head all the things that my poochy tummy is larger than (loaf of bread, copy of Moby Dick, child’s bowling ball…) she was struck by motivated genius and she came up with our Battle of the Bulge.

The first version of the Battle of the Bulge was just us competing for who could spend more time each day doing something exercisey. Like for me it was biking in to the office twice a day or taking walks or lying on the grass imagining what I could look like skinny. That burns more pounds than you’d guess. For her it was things like going for a run at the break of dawn or taking the kids to the park and chasing them around for an hour. Probably not once did she do any cardio-imagining. She’s hard-core.

But now we’re kicking it up a notch. And this next step required that I do something that I NEVER, EVER DO. This silver-tongued devil, this Svengali, she talked me into STEPPING ON A SCALE! ONE THAT TELLS YOU HOW MUCH YOU ACTUALLY WEIGH! OH, THE HUMANITY!!! As a rule I never step on scales and, in fact, I have not seen/known my own weight for over a decade, on account of I think people completely obsess about The Number. The Number. The Damn Number! But The Queen had a plan, and the plan really did demand a benchmark. And that benchmark really needed to be our terrible, terrible weight. Sigh. So weigh me she did, and she looked at the number and wrote it down and I averted my eyes and stuck my fingers in my ears and went “La, la, la, la, I can’t HEAR you, can’t HEAR you!” (just in case, when she saw the actual number, she spontaneously let loose with a “Great Googly-Moogly, I didn’t even know the scale WENT that high!”)

So between now and the end of November she and I are going to do whatever it is we’re going to do and see which of us can lose more weight. We’ll weigh each week (and by “we’ll weight” I really mean “I’ll get back on her big, dumb scale and she’ll write down a number”) and the winner will get some kind of CASH PRIZE. If I’m the big winner I’ll be spending that money on cases of deep-friend Snickers bars. And a dainty little chocolate covered, deep fried trophy. Whee!

Big Fail, part 2 -- the Punishment

Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the email conversation with The Queen which followed the blog post about my epic fail with Big City Guy. It started with my assertion that the Queen would never have let me leave that room w/out at least a sweaty-palmed handshake and a “Dude, you were super!”, to which she left a comment.

Q: So true! Consider yourself tskd, tskd!

F: I even considered going back on Saturday night for the last performance, and subsequent last night reception, but I was so pooped from wandering around the county fair and I'm sure I looked like deep-fried ass, so I didn't. And thus my one and only chance for love was forever lost. I'll be headed to humane society to adopt my required additional 35 cats this weekend. Sigh.

Q: I think we should come up with some sort of penalty for you when you are in these situations and you don't take advantage of them. yeah, I'm liking that idea...

F: What KIND of penalty? Isn't letting the love of my life get away enough of a penalty? (notice the overly dramatic words here -- I'm definitely appealing to your romantic dime novels side.)

Q: Well apparently not since you let him get away without so much as a "hellomynameisfemtasticIloveyou."

…I ask you, oh best beloveds of the Internets Super-Highway of information, do you think I need a penalty for my epic fails? If so, what KIND of penalty? I’ll get the ball rolling: what about I am forced to eat a heaping bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream every time? THAT would sure show me! Your thoughts please?

too busy for ANYTHING.

Well, it’s official. I’m officially old. And I hate it, not because I’m opposed to being old or old people or that people get old, but because it’s limiting things that used to be limitless. Like my energy, and my time and my ability to do things with little or no sleep. Somewhere along the line I’ve become this weak, sad, sleep-needing person! (note: if you have always been a sleep-needing person I apologize for characterizing you as weak or sad. I’m just not used to it. And it’s making me cranky. I’m sure you’re wonderful and strong and I promise to bring to you the next pickle jar I cannot open…)

Background info: I work for a Medical Group (which is basically a big pile of doctors who have office hours and see patients for that which ails them). This Medical Group is part of a larger healthcare organization which also manages our sister/neighbor/good friend hospital (which is basically a bigger pile of doctors who have shifts and see anybody who crosses their medical path for that which SERIOUSLY ails them). The hospital just moved into a newer, bigger, super-StarTrekish-hightech building and it was a BIG DEAL in Hippyville! And because we’re related anyone who works for the Medical Group was helping out with the big move.

OK, so last week was the actual move and the first week in the new, fancy digs. And I have to tell you, there are so many cool things about this new building! Twice before I’ve started to write a post waxing geeksodic (it’s a word now – tell your friends) about all the cool things! Like for instance there are these big screens which can tell you where any patient is in the whole hospital based on their ID badges and sensors in the ceilings! I want to say “computer, where is ensign LaForge?” so it can tell me that he’s left the ship and is on the planet’s surface. Also we have NEUMATIC TUBES! Tubes that run for MILES all over the building and even to a near-by LAB BUILDING, running under the streets magically! Tubes in which you can put papers or lab samples or gloves or whatever you want and hit “send” and they’ll shoot away, popping up as if by magic in another place with a satisfy “Hshhhhh-THUNK!” Really, its just a great big pile of very cool toys that I wish I could play with.

In an effort to be helpful to the sister hospital I volunteered for a “phone coaching” shift last Tuesday from 6pm to 6am. Yes, that’s a 12-hour shift. Yes, that’s an overnight shift. The idea was that the new, fancy, SUPER-COOL phones are very different from what the doctors and nursing staff are used to, and while doctors and nurses are extremely smart about what things you can and cannot do with human bodies, they are often not technically savvy folks. There was a fear that someone would run into confusion w/ the new phones while trying to yank a poor soul from the jaws of death and would LOSE THEIR SH*T if they suddenly had to grab a phone manual to make a damned call. Hence we phone coaches, who were mostly charged with “being around” to help folks w/ the phones if they needed it at any time. But for me it was mostly “wander around the ICU all night long, while nothing happened and nobody called anybody or got called by anybody. And eat Red Vines.” In order to “work” this shift I left my normal job at lunchtime and tried to nap for a couple of hours, but mostly I was up and working from 7am on Monday until about 7am on Tuesday.

But here (at last!) is the point of my rant: Time was (and has always been!) that I could have been up for 24 hours with no problems. NO PROBLEMS! “24 hours of being up? Bring it on!” I would have said. “Heck, while I’m at it I might as well stay up for 36 hours! It’s only another 12 hours!” Sleep, I figured, was for the sleepy and/or dead, and you can always get more sleep later. I don’t do skateboarding or skiing or anything, but was all about the EXTREEEEEME WORKING! And so off I went for my shift and I coached and I worked and the sun set and slept and rose and I finished and went home. By which I mean I got behind the wheel of my car and only fell asleep at 2 stoplights and only once forgot that I was DRIVING A 2-TON VEHICLE!, and finally got home and fell over dead on the couch and slept for about 4 hours. And then I was all good and got up and felt no ill effects and everything was just fine!

HA!!

I woke up after 4 hours and tried to eat, but instead napped a little. I showered and did a little work from home, but was attacked by another nap from out of nowhere. In the space of 12 hours I took something like 5 spontaneous naps. I felt like a narcoleptic, too afraid to operate heavy machinery because I didn’t know when the next attack-nap would strike. But hey, even that was ok, because at least at the end of the day I went to bed and slept like I would generally sleep and everything went back to normal.

HA AGAIN!!!

I’ve been sleepy and off-kilter ever since. It took several days for the attack-naps to back off completely. I slept in on Saturday until past 11am. And even this week I’ve felt like I’m walking through flaming oatmeal here, unable to get back up to speed and running on all cylinders. And my stomach, probably feeling left out of all the fun, has been throwing the occasional tantrum where food turns to poisonous gas in my stomach. Any food. Even safe food. With no rhyme or reason.

Oh, and it’s also apparently made me very whiney. See this post as “exhibit A”.

Because I’ve been so out of sorts, which I blame on my oldness and new inability to handle EXTREEEEEME WORK, I’ve been too busy for my life all this week. Work is piling up all over me. I’m working tons of extra hours, and still can never reach the end of the “to do” list. My personal life is a shambles, both because of all the work hours and the other stuff that has cropped up. (soon I will post for you the story of Chester, the Sad and Abandoned Kitty of Sadness and Woe. Watch for it.) So busy am I that I have not posted in almost a week! So busy am I that I haven’t emailed to the Queen ALL WEEK! Normally a daily thing, and yet silent has I been! She probably thinks I’m dead or in a coma or a Jehovah’s Witness or something!

Today is Friday. I’m going to get to the top of my pile IF IT KILLS ME! And from there I will be able to see everything and get a handle on it all and GET MY LIFE BACK! And BE LESS OLD!! (and STOP TYPING THINGS IN ALL CAPS!!!)

Big Fail.

I went to see a local performance of Brigadoon tonight-

What. Yes, I like musicals. Shut up.

-and it was a pretty good performance over all. One reason to go was we (my parents and the favorite aunt) knew the dude who had the lead. He’s one of those people I don’t know very well, but I maintain my connection with him because eventually I’ll get to write the blog post about how I once coached the famous Dude McFamousy in his high school Improv troupe! Back when he wasn't so very, very, terribly and muchly famous! And also la-de-frickin’-da! And McFamousy was excellent, as he always, always is, but there was another guy (playing second banana character Jeff) who was even better. A super-talented actor. Really stood out from the whole cast.

Plus he was CUTE.

I check the bio in the program and lo, he is new in town! Also he’s all sorts of experienced, coming from some Big Cities of fame and reknown! Places where everyone is cute like that!

And he dedicated his performance. To. His. Mother. How fabulous is that? (and yes, I noticed that he did NOT dedicate his performance to any wives or girlfriends. This is also fabulous.)

So me, I’m smitten. And after the performance there’s this reception in the basement, full to overflowing w/ people in sweaty make-up and plaid. (Brigadoon, people.) My Dad wants to give the big hand shake to the family connection (aka Dude McFamousy) but I’m sneakily and trixily scanning the room for Second Banana from the Big City. Because since curtain call I’ve had this fantasy running in my head.

In the fantasy I go over and introduce myself to Big City guy and tell him how I think he stole the show and also I see you’re from , which is a great town and how are you liking Hippyville? And he perks up, because I know his Big City, and tells me how it’s been great, but he does miss the comedy and improv scene from his Big City. And that’s when I mention my Improv history, which will impress him (because usually girls aren’t both funny and fabulously fetching, like me) and we’ll strike up a conversation.

A conversation where I am both radiant and also witty. Charming but fascinating. I talk about shows I love and he loves them too, because we’re SO on the same page. We both love the comedy of Mitch Hedberg and think that Mencia is overrated. We enjoy a good book, but really indulge in comic books, especially from Dark Horse. He’s a Coke drinker, but I find that forgivable because I’m magnanimous like that. Oh, there are sparks, people! Sparks and chemistry and it’s the beginning of something…

Magical.

But in the REAL world, here’s me with my Mom and Dad and favorite Aunt. Because hitting the town with your older relatives is SO hot! And I’m standing across the room staring at this guy, but making absolutely no move to bridge the gap. The huge, mammoth, deep and wide and impassable gap that I cannot pass because lo! Impassable!

Plus the lame, paranoid and self conscious side of me arrives (she also likes musicals and requests that you shut up) to ask questions like "who's the girl standing next to her? Is that his date? Is that someone in the cast? Is it someone in the cast who wants to date him? Did she just touch his arm? I will KEEEELL her! Wait, did he just look at that guy's chest? Oh hell, is he gay? I can't feel my arm, because the love of my life is GAY! AGAIN! No, wait, he's just reading his shirt. Why didn't I wear a funny shirt? Do guys like girls who wear funny shirts? SHE TOUCHED HIS ARM AGAIN! KEEEELL HER!"

I’ve got a window of maybe 5 to 10 minutes maximum and I’m just standing by the pretzels, feeling the room fill up with uncomfortable, failure-flavored molasses.

And finally my Dad has had the Big Handshake w/ Dude McFamousy and I gotta leave because they’re my ride. They’re my ride! So hot! Guh. Goodbye to Big City guy, and to my life of talking theater and travel and how long we’ve waited for each other in this big, lonely world.

BIG FAIL.

This, my peoples, is why I really need to never go anywhere without the Queen ever again. She would never have let me leave that room w/out at least a sweaty-palmed handshake and a "Dude, you were super!"

My Summer Vacation of MUCH KNOWLEDGE, part 2

When last we saw our hero (which is ME) she was taking a trip from Hippyville down to sunny (sunny, oh so very terribly and tragically sunny, please make the sunny stop) Palm Springs, CA. And this trip was full of knowledge. And now the hero (again, ME) is sharing the knowledge with her bestest internet friends. (which is YOU)

We covered knowledges 1 through 50 in the last post. Now we start this with knowledge number 51! Go, go, trippy knowledge!

51. Billboard seen driving down the street in Palm Springs: "If you must curse, use your own name. -god"
52. There are places along the San Adreas fault line where the earth has cracked open from earthquakiness
53. Along these lines there are these "natural oasis" where water comes up through the ground as if by magic
54. Because of the magical water-features there are also trees! Springing miraculously from the ground! All green and supernatural!
55. This happens in Hippyville too. Only it happens pretty much everywhere. And it's not considered magical at all.
56. It's also why we don't mind the rain here so much. Because rain = GREEN
57. There are actually douchebags in the world lame enough to smoke IN A SWIMMING POOL.
58. Glaring at these douchebags for a really long time, while psychically sending them the message “you are a great, big douchebag and should put out the cigarette that you just almost stuck into that little kid’s eye as he swam past. You douchebag.” doesn’t actually do anything.
59. However there’s no greater rush of pride than when your 12-yr old niece turns to you and says “Man, those people are such idiots.” Before she swims away. (tears of pride welling up at the memory.)
60. Except maybe when your 10-yr old nephew does a cannonball right by previously mentioned smoking tools, thereby putting out one of the cigarettes. (ok, seriously proud tears now.)
61. kids still play duck, duck, goose!
62. But now it’s EXTREME duck, duck, goose, where they run and run and RUN until the millisecond before they get tagged, and only THEN do they sit.
63. Watching EXTREME duck, duck, goose is exhausting. Especially when you remember that they’re running around in 114 degree temperatures.
64. European teenagers are just as full of youthful angst as their US counterparts,
65. and the only way to exercise the European angst is to go online
66. at any hour of the day and night
67. no matter how many other, non-angsty people are waiting for 5 minutes to check their email or WRITE A BLOG POST ABOUT HOW DANGED HOT IT IS!
68. Palm Springs was named after natural hot water springs that the local Indian tribes used for bathing and spiritual ceremonies. (no really!)
69. Not surprisingly, it was only a matter of time before The Man came along and tried to take away the springs.
70. Today those same springs are the center of a great big resort and spa and casino, run by a local Indian tribe and totally raking in the dough from crazy white people.
71. Because sometimes there is a certain amount of justice in the universe.
72. If there isn’t enough wind blowing the fields of wind generators won’t spin
73. This is a strangely spooky sight to behold
74. Great, huge schools of sardines gathering in the ocean off the coast of Santa Cruz begats great, huge flocks of pelicans on the beaches of, and in the skies over, Santa Cruz.
75. A sardine-rich pelican is a happy pelican. (but still goofy-lookin’)
76. The more exhausted you are when you arrive at your latest Motel 6, the more floors you’ll have to climb to reach your room.
77. If you book a Motel 6 room with two beds, even if you tell them it’s for three people, you will have only 2 towels.
78. and one washcloth.
79. However a screen over your large, 3rd-floor window is optional.
80. as is the complimentary fall to your death.
81. Never, ever, ever try to park on the street on the waterfront in San Francisco.
82. The meters charge a quarter for every 6 minutes!…
83. …and the maximum time you can buy is 1 hour…
84. …which is about how long it takes to find a nearby store willing to sell you enough quarters for another hour of time.
85. Segue tours around San Francisco seem like a very cool idea!
86. right up until you’re stuck driving behind them, moving down the street at roughly 4 miles per hour.
87. There are crazy people who voluntarily swim in the San Francisco bay, which is usually about 58 degrees.
88. No matter how hot you are the day before (even if you’re, say, 114 degrees?) this will still not seem like a refreshing idea as you see them go swimming by.
89. It helps a little if you imagine that they’ve escaped Alcatraz (behind you) and are making a mad, swimmy dash for Ghiradelli’s chocolate salvation.
90. Sea Lions are STINKIN’ FUN to watch.
91. Way more fun than watching a street magician hammer a nail into his nose.
92. Even if the magician was careful to clean that nail in alcohol before the hammering began.
93. If you are ever in Redding, CA, be sure to check out the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay Exploration Center!
94. A very effective way to keep someone from taking a sneaky, and urgently needed, tinkle behind your building after hours is to post a sign reading “Rattlesnake Habitat”
95. no actual rattlesnakes are required for this to be effective.
96. There’s no such thing as “too many pictures of an outrageous sunset.”
97. It’s important to remember, if you decide to sleep in one morning, that McDonalds stops selling Bacon, Egg and Cheese Biscuits PROMPTLY at 10:30am on Wednesdays.
98. Also an order of Carl’s Jr. criss-cut fries is not at all the same thing as an order of McDonalds hash browns, no matter how much you try.
99. Calico kitties hold a GRUDGE if you leave them for a week, no matter how cool the house sitter.
100. THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

Thus endeth the knowledge acquired from this trip. I hope you found it as educational as it was obsessed with crazy-hot temperatures. Now enjoy this sunset picture, number 26 out of 47. (because you can't take too many pictures of an outrageous sunset...)

Just when you thought I was done being amazed at Palm Springs heat...

Since I was gone for so long I figure I should tell you something about my trip, but I don’t want to create the blog-equivalent of “hey, come over and see the 3-hour slideshow of pictures of trees I took while touring Vermont!” As such, I will do it thusly:

100 Things I learned while on a 1-week trip from Hippyville to Palm Springs for a family reunion.
OR
“what I did on my family vacation. By Femtastic.”
(OR “No WONDER August is the off-season time to visit Palm Springs. KILL ME!”)

1. if you set fire to a big chunk of a State, suck as California for instance, it makes everything super-smoky. I recommend against it.
2. You can’t really take cool pictures of things zinging by your car window while driving down the freeway. You can take pictures of the place that was cool three seconds before. It’s not the same
3. All firefighters are hot (no pun intended).
4. when you drive through California in the summer you’ll encounter packs of wild, roaming firefighters in every fast food joint you visit.
5. if they get there right before you do you’re going to have a long wait until you get to order
6. but at least you’ll have something nice to look at while you wait.
7. It sucks that there are no Sonic restaurants in Hippyville
8. but it’s very stupid that there are so many in California
9. because it’s so hot there that everyone has to sit there in their CARS with their AIR CONDITIONING RUNNING while they eat their food!
10. The milk shake was still super-fabulous, even with the side-order of guilt
11. When a fancy resort is charging the same amount for a night as a Stockton Motel 6 you know you’re there during the “off season”
12. this is your first clue that you should flee immediately
13. If you throw a street fair in Palm Springs in August you should start it at about 7pm, when the sun goes down
14. even though it’s still approximately 102 degrees
15. the booths, at such a street fair, who are selling hot Mexican food and burgers and kabobs will do decent business
16. but that’s nothing compared to the one guy selling fruity icees, who will have a line roughly 6 blocks long
17. which you will gladly stand in as long as there is cold, slushy, lemony drink goodness at the other end!
18. it’s impossible to tell which is a more sure sign of madness: that the strange street performer is a rock violinist with his own flashing lights and wind machine
19. or that his costume covers neck to toes, (in 102 degree heat, people!) with some suit-of-armor accents. (wind machine, by the way, is key)
20. either way, nobody is going to buy his CDs, but they will take their pictures standing right in front of him, which is tourist for “Dude, I think you’re totally wackadoo!”
21. if you step into a swimming pool at 9pm and the water is just as hot as the air, which is about 99 degrees, it’s completely appropriate to cry a little. Nobody will judge you.
22. it is not possible to turn your hotel room’s air conditioning up too much if the outside is still gonna be “I hate it here so much” hot at 3am.
23. people crazy enough to live in Palm Springs also think it’s reasonable to get up at 4:30am every day. To avoid the heat
24. even though it’s still hot at 4:30am, and even hotter by 5am
25. As such, all the bars close down around 11am because everyone goes to bed at 8:30pm.
26. you’d think that someplace that hot wouldn’t bother with outdoor seating at their restaurants, but you’d be wrong.
27. instead all the outdoor seating has fancy little misters over the heads of the guests, spraying a fine, and constant, cool ‘pffffsssstttt’ of water.
28. all outdoor seated eaters end up damp, either because the misters aren’t reaching them, and therefore the exertion of just sitting and eating have worked up a huge sweat that’s soaked their clothing OR
29. they misters are reaching them, and gently watering them like a bag of carrots at the supermarket.
30. either way you end up the same way: hot, wet and cranky. Check please!
31. Apparently your 12-pack of soda cans will explode both if they’re left in a very cold box, like a freezer, OR if they’re left in a very hot box.
32. like the trunk of a rental car
33. rental car places do not check the trunk for mysteriously sticky carpets when you return the car.
34. A can of Pepsi that has spent 2 days in the uber-hot trunk of a rental Honda is still pretty tasty, once you can get the bulging top open.
35. it takes more than 5 days to stop being constantly amazed at how hot it is in Palm Springs in August.
36. Nobody is too cool to have a monkey bank. Monkey banks are just that cool.
37. apparently my fear of heights is exceeded by my hatred of abundant heat
38. as I was motivated to take a dangly little tram car, suspended over a terrible drop of death, up to the top of a mountain by the promise of a 30+ degree drop in temperature.
39. sun screen comes in spf 70.
40. Which is the lotion equivalent of a flannel shirt
41. and feels like your coating yourself in a fine layer of cream cheese
42. but works super-good for keeping out the sun. (although next time I might just try using cream cheese.)
43. Some palm trees grow with ladders on their trunks and bags wrapped around their fruits
44. sometimes the fruits hanging off of palm trees are “dates”
45. an educational movie about how dates reproduce can be way more naughty than you might think.
46. according to the good people at Shields Date farms, there is no natural way for the male date to pollinate the female date, so the farmers do it by hand.
47. except then how did they ever exist in the first place?
48. no, I don’t think this is where the concept of 2 people “dating” originally came from
49. at the same time, I will forever think of the date mating video if ever I “date” again.
50. date shakes taste way better then you’d think they would, seeing as the actual fruit looks like shiny poop.

...it's late, I have to get up much too early tomorrow morning and I have a movie to finish, so I'll post this first half and complete the other 50 things soon. g'night!

Hot no more. (but in the good way)

Well I am EVER so pleased to report that I'm back to the land of the temperate climates. My shorts are no longer stuck to me in gross and inhuman ways, and there is not the constant whirrrr of the air conditioner buzzing through my brain. I've actually been back one whole day, but I wasn't able to post yesterday due to being very busy smooching all of the opened windows and making sweet, sweet love to the weatherman as he whispered "with a high of 89 degrees" into my non-sweaty ear. Priorities, people -- I has them.

Anyway, tomorrow I will regale you with tales of my trip and stuff. It will be awesome, because my brain will be able to think anything besides "I'm sweating where?"

Too... Hot... To.........

I have never been this in love with air conditioning in my whole life. It's truly the greatest invention since INVENTIONS and I want to buy stock in the company responsible or write an epic poem about it's wonderfulness or have "Air Conditioning is SUPER-AWESOME!!!" tattood lovingly across my busom.

Because it's awesome. Is all I'm saying.

Four days ago I was snooty and pious and "ooh, air conditioning is for weenies and wimps and pansie-asses and I don't use it, even though I totally could, because la-dee-dah I'm ever so above it all!" Then I got into a car and drove south, south, south into the land of "wholly crap, who the hell ever thought it was a good idea to live HERE???? In places where they like to use the word "desert" in their NAME???" and I fell for Air Conditioning. I fell hard. I went to sleep dreaming of clandestine moonlit walks with air conditioning and woke up with the strong desire to stroke the big, jet-engine-fan wall unit to show my love and devotion. "Who needs a man," I ask myself "when you can have air conditioning?" Oh baby, I've got it bad for the old A.C.

Seriously, this is the hottest I've been since ever and ever. Yesterday? It was 114. DE. GREES. On PURPOSE! Every time I walk outside, even if it's just to run to the car to get something and run right back, I feel like I'm getting smacked in the whole front of my body with the vent-end of a clothing dryer! At night, when it's SUPPOSED to get COOLER, you go outside and the still hotness jumps on your head and smothers you from the top down. The first night I stood in the outside pool and wept for the water was the exact same temperature as the air. And the air was 98. Still degrees. This, my peoples, is just not right! I stand perfectly still outside for three minutes and the seat of my underwear fills up with water running down from my back. From all that strenuous standing around and trying not to die. My sister turned on the auto-open-thing on her van because nobody could TOUCH the DOOR HANDLES for all the ridiculous HOOOOOOOOOT!!!

I have never hated an outsideness more in my life.

I don't know if I'll get a chance to blog again before I get back (later I'll explain how it was that in order to do this post I had to wrestle the one and only lobby computer away from a never-ending stream of teenage European girls with angst!) but I'll try. In the meantime, whenever you feel a lovely, cool breeze think of me, trying to open the car door with my damned beach hat!

See, but this time I have an actual REASON

Hey, I'm going on vacation! Woo Hoo! A vacation to Palm Springs in August, which is one of those classically bad ideas like tonguing a car battery or 2 terms of George W. Bush as president, but a vacation none the less! But since I'm all low-tech and poor and have no lap-toppy-ness I've got no guaranteed way of posting while I'm gone. I will TRY, TRY, TRY, but if I'm super quiet for the next week just remember that I'll also be super sweaty.

and not in the good way.

See you in a week!

Hard Ass with not so much flirting

OK, so is it bad if you there’s a guy who flirts with you, and the very next day you rip him a new one? That’s bad, right? That discourages flirting, right? NOT sending the right message.

Yeah, that’s what I thought…

See, the other day I was chatting with this freelance mover guy who is working with my company. We were just chatting, chatting, super-casual chatting, and then ooh! Hey, what was that there? Was that there a little flirting? A little sneaky, subtle flirting? I think it was!

He’s all “here’s my email address and stuff so you can send me work info and stuff.” And I’m all “cool. Thanks. ‘sup.” And he’s all “wow, you know about the stock market too? Cool! We’re totally connected!” and I’m all “tee hee, the stock market is cool, I’m totally into that.” And he’s all “my ex-wife used to spend all my money which sucked and I was totally in debt and that sucked too…” and I’m all “…”

Did I mention that this guy is older? Like probably 10-15 years older? But not creepy older! More like that salt-and-pepper sexy thing! Silver foxish, see? So, ya know, there’s an ex-wife and uber-awkward flirting right then. Sigh.

Anyway, overall it was excellent flirting action. I knew that you guys would be so proud of me! I thought to myself, as I was batting eyelashes and showing leg (sock, really, but you know what I’m going for) “oh my internet friends will be ever so pleased that I’m here flirting with this guy. Yay for me!”

Until he went and RUINED it!

See, the next day this guy is supposed to give me this THING and he doesn’t, and doesn’t, and then doesn’t some more. And then he DOES and it’s missing all this information! So I did what I had to do: I bust him on it! I say to Mr. Flirty McDivorcee “you yourself said you’d get me this info, dude!” To which flirty boy says “I lied.”

I LIED??? Oh, it is ON, my friend!!! Flirting or no flirting, right now I’m mostly looking forward to seeing you CRY!!!

Yeah, I verbally provided him with a new and fabulous crap exit route, so to be speaking. Because it is SO NOT OK to tell me one thing, do another, lesser, crappy thing and then reply with “I LIED” Someone had to die, I’m sure you would agree. Hot and Cold running My Foot Up His Ass, that’s what there was!

Of course most dating “how-to” books are probably going to tell me how this is not the way to have future flirting opportunities. Sigh. Such is the difficult love life of we, the hard asses. The lonely, kick-butt hard asses.