Evolving Does The Washing Up

Before:

After:

Yes, I most certainly and finally went grocery shopping. Can you believe it? Since I no longer have a car (and I'm back to hoofin' it around town) that means I can't just drive somewhere to get food. So I have to like, have food on hand and stuff.

The sad part is how empty my fridge still looks.

That was Friday. I wasn't very productive that day. I am fighting off a bit of depression. It's part existential crisis, part impending doom*, but I know I can kick its ass this time. That's why I didn't allow for my two hour, middle of the day nap and why I bought groceries, cleaned house and took a long bath with a non-school book and I didn't feel guilty for it. I spent actual time on my homework. I aced my math test. And then I took care of that part of me that is threatening to become frazzled and unravelled.

The first of the Frenchies are going back to France next week. It's a little bit too close to home. But I allowed myself to say aloud today something to the effect of "until I decide if I'm going to stay in America." As if these thoughts are solely based on my desire to leave, and not an "I'm going to chase this one down" knee jerk reaction.

I still need someone to do my dishes. They have been piling up since the New York Trip*. I tried to get my cats to do them, but they just looked at me like this:

and then like this:
Seriously, what's a girl have to do to get some good help these days?

Thankfully, my new friend Biddy said she would love to clean my house. What? Oh wait, maybe she said I can do my own damn dishes.

I can't wait until I can afford a maid. Then I could just sit around and file my nails write the three papers that are overdue, instead of vacuuming under the bed. Lord knows I would even do that (and obviously didn't since I can now build a whole cat out of what has been shed there) except I am getting a mattress delivered today.

WHA??

Oh yes, people, oh yes. In all my life I have only ever slept on ONE purchased brand new to your comfort level mattress. As a child my mom alway got them used at yard sales or the good will, and as an adult I never made it a financial priority. So that means that the one I have now is stained (ew, I know right?) and that no matter how many times or directions I flip it it sags in the middle like my fifth grade principals breasts**.

Anyway. I went to the mattress store yesterday and got to experience first-hand the wierdness that is mattress shopping. B and I went to three "Mattress Showrooms" where-in we found a delightful array of grossly overpriced super deluxe mattresses.

"This one is awesome baby," I said in that whisper you use so that the salesman knows your broke but you don't have to say it aloud, "but it's pretty far out of my price range.

And then the salesman pitched in:

"Well, we do have other mattresses, but because of the size of our showroom we can't keep them on the floor, so we have them stacked in the back. ...If you'd like to see them."

And then, as if we were doing some kind of illegal deal on hot mattresses, he opened the doors to a white van took us to the back of the store. The lighting was worse and the mattresses were, indeed, stacked up side by side on a shelf. For each one that I wanted to try he had to pull them off the shelf and heave them onto a waiting box-spring.

Can we just talk for a minute about how weird it is to lay down on a bed and bounce around in front a person in a suit? The last salesman we went to (whom I ultimately purchase from) even made a comment about how I obviously sleep on my right side. That's a bit creepy, but Thanks dude.

So I picked out a mattress named the "Aspiration". I've decided that my number two "coolest job ever" would have to be naming mattresses (First place going to naming paint colors, because, seriously. Think about how fun that would be.)

But now I have to vacuum under my old bed because the new one is being delivered by some strange men and even though I shouldn't care, I don't want them to see how gross it is that I have two cats and I never vacuum. Ask B, he will tell you.

I think that it must be one of those things like "Always wear clean underwear, because if you get in a car wreck you don't want the Paramedics looking at your dirty ones." But why are the Paramedics going to look at my panties? Wait, let's just forget about that.

On second thought, I could never have a maid because I would clean first anyway. And that would be a waste of money, and everyone knows I don't believe in that.

*Here's where I tell you that I went on a badass trip to New York with B and I SWEAR I'm going to post pictures. No really. Sometime in April, I promise. Maybe before June.

**The principal of my Catholic School was Sister Mary Geraldine, and just like her name she was stale and crotchety. Also, she wore her black calf length skirts way up past her belly button, or at least thats what it looked like because her breasts sagged all the way down to meet the waistband. I'm pretty sure she never wore a bra. In her life. I can say all this because I think she's dead now. I might be going to Hell.

I Feel I Need To Share

Last night before bed I took my antidepressant - which is late for me because normally I take it around noon with a full glass of water (or a beer [just kidding. mostly.]). I thought the swig I took from my water bottle drank the thing down but when I woke this morning I could feel this knot lodged in my throat and I'm pretty sure it's the pill I took last night.

I don't think it does the same thing when absorbed through your esophagus, do you?

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

And sometimes you just want a bar of dark chocolate, soaked in chocolate ice cream and drizzled in chocolate syrup.

The Frenchman (being French I suppose) doesn't seem to believe that the drop of my eggs every month causes my hormones to go wonky and make me pitch like a tugboat in a tsunami. But then, some people still don't believe that dinosaurs existed so, hey, I'll cut him some slack.

All day I walked around thinking that we had gotten only four hours of sleep last night. B kindly pointed out that we had gone to bed around one, which meant more like six hours of sleep which is actually pretty reasonable for someone my age. Regardless, I was convinced that I only had slept for four hours, and so I walked around thinking as such.

I spilt an entire bottle of water (somehow) inside my book bag. It was fairly awful: Leaving school I couldn't shake the feeling that I was peeing my pants and when I realized that the source of the water would do more damage to my electronic goods than if I had soiled myself I was quite distressed. I dumped the entire contents of my bag out on the concrete by the bikes, praying that I wouldn't lose my computer and camera to a watery death.

And then I clocked into work.

After three hours I convinced myself that I needed something from the 7/11. Was it sunglasses? Batteries? Funyons?? No, I hate Funyons. Then I spied it, just above the Combos and to the left - Frito Lay Bean Dip. I bought this and a bag of Tostitos Dip Chips, convinced that this was my comfort food. For some reason after dining on pates and spanish hams and thick red wines, the only thing that sounded as good as chocolate on your period was this Frito Lay Bean Dip.

And so it was. And now I'm happy.

Did I ever tell you?

- I am not a good student. I never have been. I always wanted to be, but not badly enough that I actually applied myself in class. My sophomore year of high school I dropped my Humanities class - even though I found it incredibly interesting - because I could not force myself to do the studying required to pass the class. I love to learn new things but I cannot stand test taking and note taking and reapplying and regurgitating information. If you give me a choice, I will always choose sleeping in, I will miss class for a road trip, and I will choose fail over pass - completely able to justify it all later in my life. This is, of course, after the requisite existential crisis.

- Every six months I get a travel itch. (So far it has been restrained to the United States and I have been able to keep it as such by not getting my passport, but soon I will remedy that problem and get the hell out of Dodge.) I have found, through careful and very scientific experiments, that if I go more than six months without some kind of a trip away from my home I start to slowly implode. I begin to look a bit like a mouse in a cardboard maze, frantically looking for a way to whatever I know must be out there. If after six months I have not been able to satisfy my travel bug I will decide that I in fact need to move. That is to say I will decide that simply getting away is no longer an option, but rather leaving the city or state I am in could be the only possible answer to my internal aches. Thus, I travel every six months. This does not mean that because I just went to New York that I won't move to France.

- My Mom likes to tell about how "whatever games you used to play as a child are an indication of what you will become when you grow up". ...If you buy into that whole "When you grow up" stuff... So, when I was little, I used to pretend that I was a world traveler checking into fancy hotels and attending dinners with famous people. Sometimes I got stranded on deserted jungle islands and built myself "thatch" houses out of old pieces of plywood and cardboard that hung around our yard. I only really played Barbies to change their clothes (and later to make them have sex). My Cabbage Patch Kids had passports.

- My staple foods growing up (by my sheer indignation) were macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off. As of late, my favorite foods consist of aged meats, pate, sourdough breads with hearty helpings of salt butter, mussels in garlic ham sauce and anything with truffle oil. I never tasted guacamole until I was twenty-two, but now I could easily consume a whole avocado a day. I love wine, but am beginning to think my stomach can no longer handle cheese. This makes me incredibly sad.

- When I want something bad enough, I almost always get it. I have yet to decide if the latter is a positive or negative quality, but I do know that if you asked my nearest and dearest friends they could regale you with stories about my incredible ways of manifesting the things I wish for. I think of it as "Manifest Destiny", but surely it has more to do with the fact that I will only put my energy into the things I really care about - the things I deem worth keeping around.

- Life isn't about luck, it's about making the right connections and utilizing them at exactly the right moments. You can make anything happen if you just think outside the box far enough.

- Trust me. It's all true.

In Which Little Sister Played Too Hard Last Week

This morning I've felt like ralphing for several hours. I'm not hungover, specifically. Just not used to being up this early in the morning again. Add to that the tall cup of strong coffee with an extra shot of espresso (which did not wake me up, by the way) and you can color me nauseous.

So, you know how I posted like, once last week? Well, it's because I was drunk. No seriously! I got a little excited about the SXSW festivities, combined with a full week off of school, and decided to use my extra time drinking a lot and sleeping in. I have a delightful array of photos to share with you and will...er...as soon as I get them off the camera. Hopefully tonight.

Last night, after I had an emotional seizure* and fell asleep crying, my cat decided that regardless of the fact that he had been sleeping just fine at the Frenchman's house all week, he could no longer bear to be locked out of the room alone and proceeded to meow loudly for several hours.

At the beginning of the week B had trained both the cats to steer clear of the bedroom with a crazy running at the door and hissing thing, proving he was indeed the alpha male. Last night when he tried it, though, the fat orange cat darted past his legs and directly under the bed. As if he belonged there. Through my puffy crying eyes I scowled, flung myself on the floor and hissed wildly until he ran back out into the hall. Now who's alpha male.

Needless to say I feel as though I got approximately ONE hour of sleep. I think when I have children I will have to try to establish some kind of crazy hissing alpha male technique, because losing sleep is for the birds.

Also for the birds? ATT wireless service. (Good link there, no?) I decided that I should try to find out how much my phone bill was because the thing has been turned off and B and I are going to New York on Wednesday and wouldn't it be nice if we could reach the people we're going there to see? But when I went to the website I realized I had forgotten my password and so tried to have it emailed to me, which apparently you no longer can do because they have "tightened security" at ATT, but to receive it they text it to you and you have to have your phone in service to get that. But it's fine - I don't have to worry now about any rogues breaking into my phone account and paying my bill because the security at ATT is like Fort Knox.

*Can we talk just for a minute about this whole "The Frenchman Is Leaving" Thing? It's getting harder and harder for me to be all like "Oh yeah, we're not thinking about it" because what's really going on in my head is "What the HELL. This is quite possibly the most unfair thing that has happened to me in my whole life. Just hit me with a bus and get it over with." And he's doing what he can to be reassuring and sweet and patient but I still don't know where I stand and I've never been good with that. In addition, people are giving me ridiculously fabulous advice in the form of "Well, that's life!" and "You'll move on and find someone else." and "Well now you know someone in France!" to which I would like to say "Thank you so kindly, but please f***ing stop. That advice doesn't actually make me feel better."

And now I have to return to class, because gawd knows that's where I want to be today. It's swell round here, really.

"Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner"

The other day, I got a comment from an "anonymous" that said something to the effect of "You seem very sweet. Are you a teenager?" It wasn't meant in a leering, dirty old man way (Mmmm, you sure seem sweet! Are you legal?") but rather as a slightly condescending, curious sort of thing ("Aw. You're really sweet! But seriously, HOW OLD ARE YOU?")

I want to say that this didn't bother me at all. I want to say that I laughed at the comment, closed it and never thought about it again. But I did think about it. I thought about the fact that someone clearly regarded me as juvenile.

Alright, the post that was commented on had photos of my desk, which exhibits my school books, a gaggle of 'How to Learn French' texts and a number of sentimental knicknacks that could be regarded as a child's. ...Although, it's debatable if I would have gotten the same kind of pleasure out of the Smorkin' when I was fifteen.

But whether the comment was an honest question (made by someone who obviously hasn't read my blog for very long) or intended to be taken the way I took it, I've been thinking about it.

See, I have spent my whole life trying to prove myself to others. When I was in the second grade, the school sent me to a guidance counselor and made me talk to a sock puppet because they worried that I cried to much. The counselor assured my teachers that I was "just sensitive".

Post elementary school, I spent my days trying to be "good enough" for the people I deemed to be "important" (who, ultimately, held no importance whatsoever). Something about my feathered bangs and side ponytail made me always the outcast.

After high school, once I moved out, I made a life out of trying to prove to my family that I was an adult. I floundered and flailed. I fucked up and got fucked over. Each time, with grinding teeth, I would set out again to prove to my sister and my mother (who looked on with the worried "tsk tsks" of maternal elders) that I could take care of myself, and that I wasn't a Goddamned baby anymore.

Then last night, laying in bed with the Frenchman, I felt words come out of my mouth that I immediately regretted.

"You don't know it yet," I said, "But I am not a child. I never give up and I always get what I go after. And I'm not afraid of anything."

"What baby?" he asked, not hearing the last part of what I had said.

"I am not afraid of anything."

"That's good baby," he replied softly, his warm hand resting on my belly. "That means you are strong."

And I thought to myself, I know I am strong. Why do I feel like I have to prove that to him? Why do I have to prove that at all?

In my slumber I had crazy dreams. Dreams of distress and hiding and fucking it up. But when I woke, I had a profound realization that my insecurities have been masking what I know is there for this past month. My fear of losing something I hold very very dearly has made me child-like - bashful and weak.

But I am not going to waste any more time worrying about keeping up my appearances. If they don't want me the way I am - if they can't see my strength as I pummel forward in this life - then I don't want them in it. Whomever "they" happen to be.

I counted out my options after this first college semester is over and they fill up my right hand. It's true that some of them may not be feasible, but they are options - things that I can make happen if I decide I want them bad enough. It is only a matter of time before my life changes again, in a very profound way. I am beginning new adventures, and I am not afraid.

Spring Break + SXSW = Snobby Bloggers???

Okay, so that equation doesn't equal up at all. But I am feeling so inclined this week to make a special note of my dismay towards certain...ahem..."successful" bloggers. I mean, at first I was excited. Dudes - Dooce is coming to my home town. And Maggie Mason? This has the potential to be really, really cool. Not only could I possible get to hear riveting panel discussions on things like blog content, but I could maybe get to pick the brains on how Heather Armstrong is supporting her family (and her two dogs) by her blog. I won't lie that I want a piece of that action. Corporate sponsorship? YEAH!!!

But then I realized that these women are kind of becoming like any other famous people. They have so many fans that they can't devote time or energy to any of them. To me that just doesn't seem right - not for a blogger. Don't you blog to share with people? Isn't that why you started in the first place? And now you don't even try to return emails from your people. Fellow bloggers, too, not just your average groupies.

I think what makes it worse for me is that this group of women bloggers is sort of elitist. "Look, we all went to San Fransico for the weekend Aren't we cute??" Yeah, you're fucking cute. But can I just point out how much like high school this suddenly feels? They're like, the popular girls.

And it's not just me who can't seem to get a nod from on high. Bossy fans remember this little gem she made, which clearly depicts that Dooce is just too good for the rest of us. I mean, seriously? Dooce doesn't respond to Bossy's emails? I could go on about the reasons why Bossy is superior, but look at the case in point: Bossy's Excellent Road Trip. The woman may be certifiably insane, but she's doing it. For her fans! ... Or maybe for a chance to get Merk to sponsor her in the form of free anti-psyhcotics (which she may need after the trip!)

Another cool, sexy-mama blogger? Abby Lee from Girl With a One Track Mind. This British sex pot has a book deal or two under her belt and still responds to each one of her comments. She's coming into town for South By and she's inviting her fans to introduce themselves. As opposed to hiding behind the facade of fame. This, to me, is classy and cool. Sure as hell beats the empty void that is the apparent blogging elite.

So I've decided two things: First, if I should achieve any modicum of fame (or cash) from this blog, ever, I intend to work towards the human level of cool, as opposed to the elite level of cool. That is to say, I do not desire to become anything in life that requires I turn my nose up at others.

Secondly, even though I wholly admit to enjoying Dooce and Maggie Mason and Fussy (kind of in the same way that I secretly enjoy Walmart...you know at midnight when no one is around), my bloggy loyalties will always lie with the blog mamas who keep it real.

And now I step down from my little soapbox. I will surely still read Dooce, because I honestly can't get enough of that dog balancing stuff on it's head. And if I see her in real life, I will probably do something stupid, like drool. Because that's the kind of girl I am.

Shame? I ain't got none!

101 Ways to Avoid Doing What You're Supposed To

I'm sitting here with my math open thinking that I ought to be putting on make-up, and maybe I should brush my teeth too, because the Frenchman is coming over and I don't think I really did anything all day. I am watching out the window as a woman picks up the poo her small dog just left in our yard. She's using a newspaper and I can't help but think that at any second it's going to slip out of her hand. If it does she will not pick it up again and I will probably step in it as I take the cat's litter to the trash, soiling my new Longchamp shoes. I am making a mental note to avoid the grass.

I'm wondering why my computer, what K spent several hours on geeking up, is moving so impossibly slow. I can type a full sentence and then let go of the keys and watch it scroll out, kind of like when you pedal real fast on a bike and then stretch your legs out to either side, screaming "WEEEEEEEEE!"

Even though I have more deeply profound things to say, I am going to stop now, because I am far to impatient to type at the speed required to avoid error. This is some kind of gross metaphor for my life, I think.

And Then I Had an Anxiety Attack

It went something like this:

Saturday I got hoodwinked by GreenAustinTechnologies some local jerks who steal money from poor people and call it selling computers. Remember when I was all "Yea! I have a laptop!"?? Well it turns out that buying a "refurbished" laptop isn't a good idea, and when you go to have this company you bought it from switch out the broken USB port, they will switch out the whole computer for a junkier one and not even tell you. AND THINK YOU WON'T NOTICE.

So I got my money back.

The next part of my story goes a little something like "I will finally begin working tomorrow after one full month of not, but that doesn't mean I have money now, in fact it might means I lose my car insurance and / or have my cell phone turned off, and thank GAWD the Frenchman likes me or else I would starve."

Then it went all: "And I'm behind in school because I'm the kind of asshole that falls in love right at the beginning of a new semester, the first year back to college after five years (but can't do both things at once.) FANTASTIC!"

To top it off I threw in: "What am I going to do with my life? Because now I am stuck here for at least three more years because I have no college education and I can't do anything in America or abroad without one of those!"

Thus followed said anxiety attack. Then I threw myself under a bus.

The End.