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

Because of this:

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

The email:

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

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

I may have leprosy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow the yellow brick...river

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the corner of Holy and Shit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You see where this is going.

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

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

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

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

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

Genetics

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

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

A whole new look

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


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

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

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

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

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

My birthday was yesterday. Neat, huh?

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

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

Two for the Money, Three for the Show

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'M TALKING TO YOU J. CREW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the reasons I support Hillary

Newsweek article

Awkwardly forward

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

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

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

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

Apparently that’s a winning combination.

ROCK THE VOTE

It's Super Tuesday- go vote!

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

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

DON'T BE A PANSY. GO VOTE.

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

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

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

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