How to alienate your date

I am SO. TIRED. And not like regular tired. Like, I just ran a marathon and single handedly saved the world from evil and solved the economic crisis while giving birth to a baby that will grow up to develop a cure for AIDS and also I'm an amputee, so I did all of that with one hand. Excessive exercise and one-handed heroics with a baby genius wriggling out of my twat. Exhausting.

I decided I have the plague, and since I am always selflessly looking out for others, further concluded that I should be quarantined. And put on bed rest. I'm a doctor. A traveling physician, as a matter of fact. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, it might make sense if you read this).

That lasted about ten minutes. See? I'm so good at what I do, I cured myself inside of a half an hour. Also, I think I was having an allergic reaction to sitting still. My health is so precarious these days.

In the Halloween spirit, I have a scary story to share. I went out to dinner with someone last night. I don't really date people that I don't already know. At all, ever. This was a good reminder why.

Cold Feet, Warm Boobs. [Updated]

I want to make myself a cordless electric Snuggie, and not take it off all winter. I am picturing myself landing an office job and taking phonecalls in said Snuggie, and hailing a cab, or grocery shopping. The possibilities are endless. Take your Snuggie to Work Day. I like the sound of that.

I am such a pansy about cold weather. I have a sudden nap-attack, and leaving the house takes about 400 times more effort because I'm all lethargic. I have been known to stuff those little shake up hand and foot pocket warmer thingers in various places throughout my outfit. I'm not above putting two or four in my bra. I love them. I would date those things. I decided I need ski underwear, and am now on a mission to get some. I don't have an appropriate pair of shoes at the moment, and am still wearing flip flops around. If one more person asks, "Arn't yer feet cold?" Ugh... Subsequent inquiries will be met with a flop to the face. The worst part about wearing flip flops in the winter that I have discovered is that it makes you a foot-fetishist magnet of epic proportions. Since everyone else has their feet safely nestled in the warmth of their boots, my poor, unsuspecting leg-bottoms have been eyeball raped by every creepy hoof-lover in chicagoland.

The Birthday I Spent in a Crackhouse

My last birthday was a complete hellhole shit show. It was September 4th. I think I have sufficiently recovered to talk about it, even though I still kind of don't acknowledge that it really happened. I mentally called do-over, like a little kid who fucked up in four square. This has caused me to have a somewhat bizarre, awkward reaction when people ask me how old I am. Sometimes I stutter. I'm hoping this response fades with time, because it isn't very cute or convenient. Not enriching my life a whole lot, I don't think. Nope.

Birthdays are always weird for me, for many reasons, but this one definitely deserves a special mention. I felt it coming the way you can tell you're coming down with something.

Thin Walls Don't Make Good Neighbors

My mother and I once lived in a one bedroom apartment, 505, uncomfortably sandwiched in one squat level between two other units, on the top of a small hill. The walls were about as thick and sturdy as a Club cracker, and had none of the cracker's buttery deliciousness. Which is good, because if they did, we probably would have had no walls at all. I ate a lot at this point in my life. I'm getting sidetracked. As I was saying, if I was on one side of the apartment, and a neighbor in the apartment on the opposite side fucking blinked, I could hear it. I was a kindergartner living with an uptight, working single mom. (Nothing against my mom, she's cool and everything but I didn't think she was very cool when I was four and I wanted to jump around and shit.) Needless to say, any time I did anything, ever, you know, like, breathe- I was SHHed and told we had thin walls and I was going to disturb the neighbors. I might be exaggerating ever so slightly, but in my bouncy ball baby brain, that is what it seemed like.

One fine evening, I was sitting on the couch, watching an episode of The Golden Girls. Then my mother did something that really spiced up our otherwise quiet evening.

Back Me into a Corner and I'll Break Your Neck in One Swift Move

Being a dominatrix has to be incredibly cathartic.

Just saying.

Seriously, think about that. You get paid however many hundreds or thousands of dollars to make someone do whatever you tell them to do, bind/gag/torture them, and humiliate them. They pay you to treat them like shit, and they're saying, "Thank you, Mistress," or whatever. Talk about a power trip.

I'm picturing a leather clad chick letting some goofy, naked executive off of a leash and taking a ball gag out of his mouth.

Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Without the sex. Or videotape. Ok, just some lies and forgery, and NAPS.

When I was a child, there was a period of time when my mother took very frequent naps.
After some investigation, trial and error, and the like, I eventually decided that these nap times were an excellent opportunity to ask for permission to do various things that I wanted to do. I also found these afternoon interludes useful for asking important questions about life, what in the hell there was to eat for dinner, and the occasional attempt at getting a permission slip signed. I swear I wasn't nearly as rotten as this paragraph is making me sound.

My mom and I got into a fight that ended with me being practically hysterical once, her being completely unconscious- because I was trying to ask her something or another, which was undoubtedly a terribly pressing situation. She responded with some weird sleep talk about helping myself to 'whichever pop I wanted to get from the window.'

Self-doubt and Happiness

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath


Quoting someone who stuck their head in the oven isn't probably the best starting point for an entry, but this struck home for me when I read it. My urges to isolate have gotten stronger and stronger the longer I am unemployed. I was actually doing pretty exceptionally well (for me) connecting with people, making phone calls, going out, and having a pretty good time. There was still the ever present undercurrent of anxiety, but I wasn't generally finding myself wanting to unzip my skin and jump out the window or anything quite that alarming. My confidence was growing, and I felt like things were going to go well here.
Then, little by little, I allowed self-doubt to creep in.

Keep your pants on. Probably.

The events of this day have encouraged me to question whether or not I should be considering becoming part of the sex industry, or permanently locking myself in my high rise apartment with my fat-assed cat, Duncan, a huge supply of ice cream, and regularly Tivo'ed Spanish soap operas.

I've been job hunting maniacally for a month. Job hunting is a special brand of self esteem enhancement and social interaction. Today, for instance, I got a call back about an ad I responded to online, about housekeeping. The guy was Extremely vague at first, and welcomed me to ask whatever questions I had. He asked me if I realized that this was not a 'typical position,' which immediately got some warning bells a'ringin He let me know there would be compensation for gas, 'special clothing' allowances(uh-oh)...