Back to My Future

As a teenager, I looked back at my middle school self and thought, I wish I was still that size. At least I had a waist.

At age 21, I looked back back at my high school self and thought, Wow – I was much thinner than I thought. What the hell was I complaining about? I was still young and firm(ish). I should have worn more tank tops.

At age 25, I looked back at 21 and thought, ‘The fuck?  I looked way better back then. My knockers were in an anatomically-correct place on my body! Why didn’t I show them off when I had the chance?

At age 28, I looked back at 25 and thought, Oh how I long for the days of my 25-year old body. I tried remembering when wearing pants became wearing housepants which became ‘Why wear pants? That’s something The Man might do,’ and I drew a blank. But somehow, all of my pants between the ages of 25-28 went from having buttons to having drawstrings, and that’s not a coincidence.

At age 30, I looked back at 28 and thought, Remember when I could afford pants? Remember when pant sizes had just one number? Remember when we were young and life was easy and wearing muffin top jeans was more important than breathing? I miss my old arms and my old ass and my old rack and my old back fat. At least they had more stamina.

So I’m looking at myself now – at 33 years old – and thinking, DEAR ZOMBIE JESUS, NO. Historically speaking, when I hit 40, this is the body I’m going to covet; this is the giant Polynesian coconut husk I’m going to fondly look back on. Uh-huh, and dead babies are going to fall from the sky to save us from the robots. I don’t want to look back at these boobs fondly. I don’t want to remember this double chin wistfully. I don’t even want to think about it. I just want to curl up in the sun for a cat nap, and dream of better days – like that time I got the flu and almost died but lost 30 pounds in the process. Totally worth it.

A flux capacitor would not go to waste in my Delorean, that’s all I’m saying.

Sidenote: Skinny jeans don’t make you look skinny. In fact, if you are skinny, they usually make you look fat or flat, sometimes simultaneously. I’ve seen the skinny jean look good on two people – one was Heidi Klum, the other: lead singer for the Kings of Leon. Sorry to break it to you, but the jig is up.

Hugo Help

I'm raising teh fundz on my blog for a writing center in Seattle, and I'm told there are rewards - ones I'll make myself, ee! If you'd like to see what kind of crap I will make (Johnny Depp is not included, if I could make him, I would have done that years ago), check out my website:

http://www.sn0tty.com

That '0' is a zero, by the way. Thanks, ladies!

Trader Joe's: A Review

You know how they feature time-lapse photography on those nature shows?  The sun rolling through 24 hours in under 5 seconds, a peach gathering mold over a few days, a dead deer on the side of the road, decaying quickly.... that's what it's like being in my neighborhood Trader Joe's.  It's like watching life die in front of you at a very rapid pace.

I've been in a lot of Trader Joe's; they're ALL crowded, they're all a pain in the ass - IT'S LIKE THEY'RE DESIGNED THAT WAY.  But I happen to like the Maui-style ribs, the hazelnut-encrusted salmon, the pineapple fruit roll-ups, their popcorn, and the kickass guacamole kit, so I scowl-and-bear it.  The two buck chuck fanatics love the wine, or at least the price, but I can't buy anything with the words 'buck' or 'chuck' in it. Unless we're talking about Chuck Norris.

THIS Trader Joe's is less than the sum of its parts.  The parking lot is a joke, and the people parking in this lot are equally foolish; there's no way you're getting out of there alive.  Every SUV-driving, allegedly Earth-conscious mother of three seem to convene there at the exact same moment I do, creating a giant traffic jam of whiny, delicate children who are allergic to fun and wheat.  Every time I've gotten bread there--inspecting it thoroughly--it gets to my house and goes moldy within 24 hours.  The freezer food is all right--good potstickers, veggie and meat--and the wine selection is large.  Unfortunately, so are the lines, which are discouraging the moment you get there:  not an open line in site, and it stays that way until they close.

I like all of the things that people like about Trader Joe's:  cheap food that is good for the price and tries to be as healthy as possible.  Nothing wrong with that.  But a grocery store that's big on savings shouldn't skimp when it comes to the emotional well-being of their customers. You know they have the money - would it KILL them to add more leg room?

Whole Foods vs. Whole Foods

RANT

Whole Foods Market. Never have I been so committed to an unhealthy relationship like I am to this one. The guy I dated who decided he was gay, the drug dealer with mommy issues, and that asshole loser who punched me got nothin' on Whole Foods. Upon entering the upscale market, I instantly feel fat, unworthy, and poor; something that is all-too familiar from my previous relationships with men who were fat, unworthy, and poor. Being fat isn’t a new concept to me, and the same goes for being poor: I’m freakishly consistent in both, actually. But self-worth, something I’m low on already, shouldn’t be handed down from my local neighborhood market, no matter how good their Milk Chocolate Panna Cotta with Blood Oranges and Pistachios are (like sin, they’re so good).

There are two types of people who flood Whole Foods Market: hippies and yuppies. They're separate, but equal; I’m convinced it’s just these two groups that eat quinoa and drink Yerba Mate. Quinoa (KEEN-wa) is a species of goosefoot, eaten mostly for the seeds, and is also known as a pseudocereal. I know, it even sounds boring. Only a white hippie or a white yuppie could unearth such a discovery and brand the ever-loving shit out of it - I can see it now: ‘A species of goosefoot called quinoa? Pseudocereal sounds so scientific and healthy! It’s a seed, you say? And it tastes like the butthole of an organic Grape Nut? OH MY GOD WE ARE GOING TO MAKE A FORTUNE.’ I also believe it’s an unholy combination, hippies and yuppies, shopping peacefully together for overpriced ‘food’ - like organic Fuyu persimmons and conventional tumeric root, a staple in every home. Hippies probably like what Whole Foods represents:  food that even a non-human animal wouldn’t eat. Does your dog enjoy eating Kabocha squash or organic mellow brown miso? Of course not! But a hippie does; so does the yuppie, as long as it’s shiny, expensive, and Oprah-approved. Whole Foods is all of those things and more. 

I resent the fact that Whole Foods is so awesome, even with their scandals; even Wikipedia says Whole Foods is 'a food retailer of "natural" food products' - in quotation marks, like 'natural ha-HA!' I resent the order in the store, and how pretty everything is, with vegetables artistically arranged and gleaming in the museum mood lighting; it also seems like everyone shopping there is also shiny, expensive, and Oprah-approved. The hippies are the clean, nerdy kind; the yuppies are of the ‘rich, white, and down to Earth’ variety. I am none of these things. When I go grocery shopping, I want to feel good about myself, not like I should have put lipstick on before going to the gym, and it would be nice if their price point didn’t rape my bank account from behind every time I go there.

But if it wasn’t all of those things, it wouldn’t be Whole Paycheck. It would be QFC (eww) or Safeway (double-ewww) or Albertson’s (Patricia Heaton can suck my Milk Chocolate Panna Cotta) - and I’d miss the experience of trying to fit in, hoping to look like I belong. Also, as relationships go, it’s only emotionally abusive (not physical, verbal, or sexual), which is a step in a direction. That’s the real reason why I continue to shop there:  addiction. Also:  hope. If Whole Foods can affect my self-esteem so easily, surely it can nurse me back to health, just like the gay guy would have, the drug dealer could have, and the asshole loser should have. Of all the unhealthy relationships I’ve had in my life, this one is my favorite.

RAVE

Whole Foods Market. That place is fucking awesome.

Riesling-Flavored Wishes

My boyfriend and I have decided to get married, except he doesn't know it. I decided we would do it in the next week or so - he used phrases like 'one ring to rule them all' and 'a journey to Mordor' before wandering off to play Lord of the Rings online. I assume my boyfriend knows I would like to get married some day; he'd have to be the Helen Keller of boyfriends to have missed all the squawking and flapping and verbal egg-laying I've done about our future since the day we met. I used to have it all figured out - the proposal, the wedding, our life together - but I didn't plan it all by myself, oh no. I had 400 bottles of wine that helped me, and I called them my 'assistants.'

Wine is not your friend, nor does it ever seek to truly assist you; it is the brain's nemesis and my boyfriend's worst nightmare. My pattern was this: the first glass of wine brought a warm rush of artificial goodwill to my brain, like 'Hey - I really dig this guy! We should get married, have babies, buy an RV and die! This is a good idea!' The second glass always brought with it ridiculous proposal fantasies, each one more elaborate than the last (and twice as likely not to happen). For example:  how would my boyfriend propose while riding an elephant? That would never happen in real life, because I'm adamant about having no interest in countries where elephants roam free like people. And he would never propose on the JumboTron; that's a mutually agreed-upon deal breaker. Sometimes, though, the fantasy was perfection, and I sustained myself on that for days at a time. The third glass of wine helped me corner my boyfriend, holding him hostage through an onslaught of earnest, drunken reasoning about the pros and cons of marriage - the only con ever being 'I guess we wouldn't be married.' The fourth glass always brought the conversation full circle through crying, name-calling, shrieking, or worse - leaving us both with a headache in the morning and him no closer to a healthy, sane girlfriend. After repeating this  can't-win scenario with me about 400 times, my boyfriend graciously and respectfully asked me to knock it the fuck off - which I agreed to, humbly. Even the devil on my shoulder was like, I'm a big fan of harpies, but you're an impossible asshole; I knew the jig was up. I was just thankful that we didn't have to give up the wine.

So that's when I stopped talking about marriage, and started saying it with sky-writing. I said it with macaroni art and smoke signals and singing telegrams and ransom notes; I wrote haikus, composed songs, took out full-page ads in the newspaper. Short of faking a pregnancy or a terminal illness, I attempted it all during what I nicknamed Operation: The Future Is Now, a subtle yet effective way of saying FEAR THE TICKING CLOCK WITHIN.  After gaining little headway, I realized how one-dimensional I had been, assuming he didn't want a future with me because it wasn't officially stamped in unicorn blood, or whatever the hell happens when you get engaged. Guess I'll find out one day.

Fortunately, my boyfriend has assumptions of his own:  that I'll be loyal to him, that I'm worth losing hair over, and that someday, we'll get married. Occasional flare-ups of insecurity test these unproven theories, but for the most part, I'm comfortable with what we're doing today:  enjoying each other, building a strong foundation, and eating a lot of cake. The future may be now and it may be unknown, but cake is now and forever.

Jesus Loves You, Bitch

Hey, kids!  Jesus here.  For those of you who care about avatars - a group I don't quite understand, but I'm willing to feign some interest - I have changed my avatar to reveal my true self. Yes, that's right; I'm the chosen one.

Have you died and gone to Heaven? In a nutshell:  YES. If you'd like a tour, please leave your iPhones at home; Apple products aren't allowed in Heaven, everybody knows that.

To properly worship the likes of me, I'd suggest genuflecting in front of my avatar on a daily basis while eating your weight in bacon. Wash it down with four bottles of wine while listening to George Michael's 'Faith,' and you've got yourself religion.

God bless me, and no one else. Amen!

Dear Math: You Suck

“What’s a prime number?” This godforsaken question was asked of me on my first day back at tutoring for 826 Seattle. Although the little girl was ten, adorable, and very intent on learning, I wanted to say DAMN BITCH WHY YOU GOTTA BE ALL UP IN MY GRILL - I came here to volunteer and make a difference in my community, not teach you about imaginary made-up numbers! Isn’t that what volunteering is all about?

Allow me to share with you the intellectual thought process I went through to answer this simple question:

Prime number, prime number… FUCK, it has something to do with…numbers…that are in their prime. Of course they’re in their fucking prime, idiot. Okay, being in your prime sounds lonely to me; someone at the top of their game, surrounded by no one. An elitist, maybe. So, a prime number is lonely. One is the loneliest number, or so the song will have you believe, so it’s probably depressed, going inward. OH MY GOD, I’M A PRIME NUMBER. No, no, keep on track. An internal journey of one. A fucking Army of One. I hated that fucking slogan. STAY FOCUSED!–one one one one one…OH! A prime number is probably only divisible by ONE…and then… maybe… I guess also the number…itself?–since it’s the only other number around? Is this even feasible? This sounds like something a real adult might say. This sounds barely legitimate, but I’m okay with that. Let me test the waters, since I’ve just been sitting here staring at this piece of paper for, um…. going on five minutes. Okay, here goes:

“Diana, what do YOU think a prime number is?” Classic bait-and-switch; my parents and therapists favored this approach, too. “Um, I think it’s a number that is divisible by one and then by itself but nothing else.” She looked at me expectantly. I nodded, trying to look wise and serene like Siddartha, or Splinter from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What, you thought I was going to PRAISE her? Hello, everyone knows what a prime number is.

Diana: “I’m confused!”
Me: “Tell me about it.”
Diana: “I’m confused!”
Me: “I didn’t mean that literally.”

This is the perfect example of why I cannot pass a math class: it’s not that I don’t arrive at the answer, it’s the amount of time and energy I must put into remembering something that a fourth grader already knows. Her next question: “So what’s a composite number?” My answer: JESUS CHRIST, WHY DON’T YOU JUST ASK ME HOW MUCH I WEIGH. Look, I’m a writer - I don’t want numbers in my life unless they’re piling up in my bank account.

Every kid I worked with had a horrific amount of math to do; I soldiered through it like an Army of One, actually. I wish I could just give these kids some real life answers to their standard, homogenized questions. What’s a noun? You will never be asked this question in real life. What is 3x(2x + 4)? It’s a pile of shit that will get you nowhere, so let’s get to work on your Facebook page; how else do you expect to meet anyone?

I have a client from my old work who comes in for tutoring - that’s right, a nine-year old client who used to see me for regular monthly pedicures. It’s weird because she totally knows me, and her mom totally knows me, but we pretend like we’re strangers. She’s a precocious little person; her vocabulary is enormous and she’s what really old people would call ‘whip-smart’. Much like at the spa, everything about her annoys me, but I don’t know why. Probably because she reminds me of my adventures in underpaid indentured servitude.

When her mom came in to pick her up, she was wearing an ill-fitting top with an unflattering skirt; they walked behind me as the little girl was saying, “That outfit looks good, I’m glad you wore it.” The mom said, “Thanks!” as the little girl continued, “…even thought it’s way too tight on you.” Out of the mouths of babes. If someone was that honest with me, I would throw them off a bridge wearing concrete boots, and then film it so the memory could last a lifetime. Especially if it was a nine-year old. What, children are expendable - you can always make more.

I love volunteering for 826 Seattle, because I'm helping the kiddos (or, rather, trying to help),  and it's a place of inspiration for so many writers. I also hear some hilarious conversations and have met amazing people who I now call friends. Plus, I get to tell people that I’m a tutor - more specifically, A MATH TUTOR - and then they’re like OOOH YOU MUST BE HELLA SMART, GIRL and I’m all, WORD.

Jealousy: It's Not For The Weak

The worst part about fighting with someone who is smarter than you is knowing that half the battle has already been lost; you’re not even a worthy opponent. My boyfriend and I don’t argue very often, but when we do, it’s definitely lopsided:  he’s a calm, rational, active listener. I am a screamy hot mess who fights to the death, and when I’m done, I’ll burn your house down with your family in it. I’m like a blind Tasmanian Devil, trying to stab people in the dark. It’s funny, tragic, and completely ineffective. This is why he wins. This is why I hate him.

I don’t really hate him, I just have a serious case of fighter envy. I envy his emotional control, his good intentions, and the way he forgives almost instantly. Around the time he’s happily over it, I’m still plotting my revenge. My favorite rage-fueled idea so far has been to break into the Woodland Park Zoo, lure an elephant out of its’ cage, and ride it home where it would trample my boyfriend to death - because stealing a two-ton beast is easy-fucking-peasy! I’d say the worst real thing I’ve ever done, in the name of jealousy, was cut off one sleeve of every t-shirt, dress shirt, and suit my ex-husband owned. I would definitely say that was the best/worst I've ever done. That was jealousy dipped in unmedicated rage - I don't really get like that anymore, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry.

I've toned it down to three kinds of crazy: Stab-a-Uterus Crazy (PMS), Grown-Up Crazy (overwhelmed by life, bills, kids, relationships, dirty dishes, et al), and Batshit Assclown Crazy (also known as I DON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE RIGHT, I WILL SINK THIS FUCKING SHIP). I haven’t had to get batshit on anyone in a while, so that’s nice; everyone in my world still has their sleeves. But I’ve certainly been the jealous type. Jealousy does so little for us as humans, but it’s a catalyst for so many things: domestic violence, tantrums, theft, murder, dishonesty, self-doubt, isolation, and badly-written poetry - although I like to think that self-doubt and isolation always leads to badly-written poetry. My favorite gay and I were talking about jealousy on a recent walk, and our conclusions were this:  he found jealousy fascinating (as did I), I found it to be pointless (as did he); but both of us agreed it was thrilling.

There are a million reasons to envy the lives of others or the people themselves, from their talents and notoriety to the houses they live in. There will always someone who has *more* than you, at least in a monetary sense, but that doesn’t attest to the quality of their lives. The perfect example of this is a guy I volunteer with named Scott. In the name of ‘background’, Scott is 24, short, Jewish, and eye-rollingly sardonic; he’s wry, which I enjoy, and the exact definition of a ’smart aleck’.  Don’t misunderstand me, though – I’m a mere acquaintance of Scott’s through 826 Seattle and not some cheerleading BFF. This was just the first, second, and third impression I had of him. He also seems agreeable, if somewhat guarded, and intelligent in a nerdy/listens-to-indie-rock kind of way. I don’t know much more about him; I guess he’s a big Red Sox fan and owns a sweet condo somewhere in Seattle. Beyond that, I can’t tell what kind of substance he’s made of, or if he’s still working that part out; just because he has money doesn’t mean he's got shit figured out. He's not exceptional, and yet his story is.

The reason I’m using him as an example is this: in 1988, when he was five years old, Scott’s father tragically perished, on Pan Am Flight 103, after a bomb went off in the airplane’s forward cargo hold over Lockerbie, Scotland. As such, and from the resulting lawsuits, Scott doesn’t really work; I mean, I don’t think he has to. And the 23-year old in me, the one who went without electricity for two months and ate Top Ramen without water, wanted to punch him in his privileged face. When he offered this information to me with a shrug, friendly-like, I was caught off guard; I didn’t expect him to be affable about it, just condescending. I had heard him tell someone else this information, but only heard half of the story, and at the time I'd thought, 'well that is the very definition of New Money: telling everyone about it!' Then he said he was working on a book in his spare time, which made me even greener. The 32-year old in me that should be working on a book every day wanted scratch his friendly eyes out. That’s how I knew he was there to teach me something and not just to annoy me; I started out being jealous of him and ended with a little self-awareness. Sometimes people are in my life to keep me in check and semi-grounded in reality, whether we’re friends or not.

I’ll bet Scott’s condo rocks and I’ll bet he has a nicer car. His clothes are pretty standard for his age group and of course he goes to all the good shows. He probably has an IPhone and a sweet computer and enough money for nine vacations. But I know nothing about his quality of life - I’ve only assumed it was better than mine because of a larger bank account. I hope his life is filled with good things and cool people and high-caliber music, because mine is, and I'm happier because of it. But while I struggle to make ends meet, and break out the Top Ramen (with water this time, don’t worry), I can still call my dad and tell him I love him, and hang out with him when I want to. That really puts jealousy, and things of that nature, into real perspective; it keeps me in check, and allows me to learn more about my challenges. So now I can just be happy for Scott, and grateful for my dad; it’s a good combination.

I resembled a blind Tasmanian Devil today, actually - I’m a terrible fighter. I’m the type that seethes with rage until bursting into tears. I’m the girl who talks for a long time without making a point and then suddenly gives up, a victim to the entire charade - even I get tired of hearing myself. We figured out that I am an open yet totally ineffective communicator, and my boyfriend is the complete opposite; he speaks well and doesn’t waste words, but does so very rarely. I effectively fought my way to the bottom again, blinded by my own very frustrated tears. My boyfriend was supportive and understanding, as always. But, as the saying goes, ‘in the land of the blind, the nearsighted man is king.' I’m nearsighted and saw myself very clearly today, and I’m certainly not fit to be King. But 'Queen' has a nice ring to it.

Get Me Out of Here

Dear New Apartment,

Much like life on other planets, I know you’re out there. I know my current apartment is made from sauce of the awesome, but the conflict resolution-hater in me wants to burn it to the ground. Plus it’s all dirty and stuff; I’d rather move than clean it up.

I used to look in shop windows with longing, remembering the days I could spend money on unnecessary bullshit. A new apartment is at the top of our Unnecessary Bullshit List, but that doesn’t stop me from humping every ‘For Rent’ sign I see. That’s why I need you, New Apartment, to reveal yourself to me. And if you could do that on the same day I win the Lottery, that would be lovely.

I’m looking for a Jesus-scale miracle.  The miracles attributed to Jesus include curing fevers, leprosy, long-term bleeding, withered hands, deafness, blindness, paralysis, and ‘unspecified sickness’; he also performed successful exorcisms – driving seven demons out of Mary Magdalene (I have an idea of how that was executed) – and in many cases, he drove out evil spirits with just a word. Just one word! I hope that word was ‘apartment’, as in ‘you’re getting a new apartment very soon!’

1) I would like the evil spirits to be driven out of my building, but that’s more like an Apocalypse-sized miracle, so 2) I would like my shiny perfect miracle to come in the form of a flawless apartment; near-flawless is acceptable, too.

It needs to be in our neighborhood, since we have a neighborhood blog. It should be $200 less than what we’re paying now, and also twice as big. There should be no move-in costs, an 85-year old granny landlord who’s hard of hearing, professionally-medicated neighbors, very few stairs, tight security, and a secret crawl space where we find gold Kruggerands and a map that leads us to buried treasure. Yes, my perfect apartment leads to a Goonies-type adventure; I’m hoping to find Corey Feldman and prevent him from his failures as a Michael Jackson-wannabe and future crazy crackhead. Also, the treasure.

I’d like to have a view of something, which includes but is not limited to:  the water, the park, a water park, a museum, cute boys, a museum filled with cute boys – or maybe just a museum made of glass that’s trapped everyone I hate inside of it:  pets, children, people, anorexic bitches, religious fanatics, bigots, the ‘WORK HARD/PLAY HARD’ douchebags from the Eastside (sorry to all the non-douchebags on the Eastside, IF THERE EVEN ARE ANY), vegans, women who wear fanny packs, men who wear shiny shirts (I thought it would be racist to say ‘Persians’ or ‘foreigners’, and look, I’m a racist!), Katherine fucking Heigl, did I mention children?, and homeless people who panhandle but have nicer clothes than me. And don’t forget the children.

If the apartment could be self-cleaning, as well, that would work for me. Actually, I think the entire apartment should be run on magic and elbow grease – the bed makes itself, the dishes do themselves, the fridge fills itself up, as does everything else I forget to re-stock:  milk, tampons, pens, stamps, money, motivation, patience, sanity. You name it, I don’t have it.

Look, I don’t think I’m asking for too much here – I just need a change, and can’t afford to get my hair done. So I figured a huge change – some kind of enormous financial burden, because we don’t have enough of those – would do instead. New Apartment, I can’t wait to meet you; I just need you to hurry up and call me already. I’m ready to bounce, like yesterday.

Snotty

Trapped In The Closet

My role this week is House Bitch, not to be confused with being a bitch in my own home - I can do that whenever I want. I’m rehabilitating this house through a detoxing process, a balanced diet, and a wonderful 12-step program. Finally, something that needs rehab more than me.

Entering our apartment is like falling into a recently divorced landfill that has gained some weight and let itself go. The other day I was in our bedroom, and I heard a scratching noise from within the wall, next to our bed. And I actually thought, if I were to find a rat under the bed or in one of the closets, I wouldn’t be alarmed; I wouldn’t even scream. Instead, I would say something like, “Have you seen my brown Franco Sarto shoes, or that box of expensive art supplies? What about that handbag I stole from my ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend? No? Well, keep your little eyes peeled.” I’m like the Pied Piper of Organization, everybody knows that.

One of the organizational tips I’ve followed is going into each room and assessing the situation. Instead of going into the room and actually cleaning it, I was encouraged to observe the room objectively, write down what isn’t working, and figure out what could be changed. Although I was dubious at first, I quickly realized that this task was the easiest part of rehabbing my home; I decided to dedicate most of my time to observation, in lieu of actual organization. My assessment came out looking like this:

Observations: The room is a fucking mess.
What isn’t working: I’m not cleaning the room.
What can be changed: Guess I could clean the room.

Other observations were broken down by each room; I wrote down everything that could be improved, and ideas for improving them. I tried to see my home as a stranger would see it - politely, objectively – but that made me want to turn around and leave. I would only come back in the hopes that the building had possibly burned to the ground.

My bedroom is a wealth of paperwork, bills, clothes that are clean (or maybe they’re dirty?), and half-empty glasses of what started out as water but now looks like Scotch. As a “stranger”, the first thing I noticed upon entering the bedroom - besides ‘wow, they waste a lot of Scotch’ - was the open sleeping bag on the bed, in lieu of a fitted sheet. I honestly believe that fitted sheets are for wrestling champions or Martha Stewart fembots - I am neither. If there were pathways on both sides of the bed, a fitted sheet would be a dream, but since there aren’t, putting the sheet on requires me to be part-contortionist/part-pogo stick. Our solution: subbing in a flannel, open-faced sleeping bag instead. It works, but it’s not pretty - I mean, it’s flannel, for Chrissake. It’s like sleeping on a lumberjack.

The living room is fine, except for two things: 1) We never use it, and 2) The Black Hole lives there. The proper way of describing a black hole is this:  it’s a region of space in which the gravitational pull is so powerful that nothing, not even light, can escape its pull. In other words:  it’s my closet.

If my closet were a person, it would be Andre the Giant; if it were a movie, Titanic. And I don’t mean Titanic in a Leonardo-DiCaprio-is-a-stud kind of way, I mean it in the everyone-is-going-to-perish-or-need-therapy kind of way. It looks like Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty have been squatting in my closet for six months, minus the hypodermic needles. Everything about this closet screams ‘HELP!’ and by that I mean it actually started screaming the other day. I was like, SHUT UP ALREADY, but the damage was done. I flung open the door, and what should come flying out of its dark and lonely depths? All of the hopes and dreams my mother had for me as a successful future housewife.

I read on www.flylady.net that your house will always be as clean as your kitchen. This makes sense in our home because our kitchen is what I like to call ‘developmentally disabled’. It can’t possibly develop when it’s bearing the weight of every dish we’ve ever dirtied. We’ve lived here a year and it’s been cleaned seasonally. I’d say our kitchen has the brain power of a two-year old, and the motivation of a hamster, which is why it looks like it was cleaned by a two-year old hamster. In the dark.

I am cleaning, but more importantly, I’m organizing the shit out of our life, and feng shui-ing in the process. Might as well do it with excellence, rather than half-assing the entire thing (which is my preferred method of doing pretty much anything). Of course, it would help if I quit procrastinating online and actually started. I’m usually a Starter, and not so much of a Finisher; now I’ve come to realize that if I don’t Start, then I won’t disappoint myself when I don’t Finish. This is why we live in a landfill, and sleep with the lumberjacks; this is why the rats are my friends, and my kitchen is a toddler. Things have to change, or I really will burn the building down. I’m almost more motivated to do that, to be honest. I’m going to go see if we have any matches.

'Rafting' Is Not A Euphemism

I was thinking about 'spicing things up' in the bedroom the other day, and introduced the topic to my boyfriend (the Esquire, so named for his profession) in order to get some feedback.

Snotty:  We should try something new…

Esq: We should.

Snotty: Like…

Esq: We could go white-water rafting!

Snotty: What?

Esq: Wait, you’ve already done that, right?

Snotty: Um… yeah. But I meant -

Esq: - how about blue water rafting?

Snotty: (narrows eyelids)

Esq: Non-rafting related?

Snotty: YEAH.

Esq: …how about canoeing?

Snotty: WHAT IN FUCK? I meant in the bedroom!

Esq: Oh! Oooooh.

Snotty: Thoughts?

Esq: How about... canoeing?

Facebook FAIL

Facebook does something that I don't particularly enjoy:  anytime you comment, it's posted for all your friends to see. So when I write on someone's Facebook Wall 'THANKS FOR SLEEPING WITH MY STEPDAD, WHORE,'  all of my friends see it - they get to see everything. The same goes for photos:  I can leave a small note of congratulations on the photo of a newborn ('It's a girl! If she doesn't kill you within ten years, good luck with adolescence!'), and everyone will see it; they're even allowed to comment on my comment, like it isn't hard enough to come up with ONE clever thing to say. Now I have to defend its' honor and come back for Round Two; not my idea of a good time. Sounds more like 'work,' or what others have described to me as work.

Now I may have misled you in saying I don't particularly enjoy this Facebook feature, because that's not entirely true:  I enjoy it immensely when it's other people being monitored. I found a favorite tonight, a comment that popped up on my screen - it was made by an old high school acquaintance on the wedding photo of another high school friend. There were a bunch of people from high school in the actual wedding, and apparently the acquaintance wasn't invited. I changed their names, but not because they were innocent; and it doesn't help that I hated this bitch in high school. Her comment went like this, with nary a linking verb nor a complete sentence to be found:

"Bob and Betty Boop! Congratulateions! I wish i woiuld have been invited! You had the RADDEST Wedding Party Ever! May we can do part two in Frebruary I would love to kick old style with all the fellows! We did have fun adn i was one of the guys. :) Where are you registered? I want to sentd you something. And Grover is still HOT, Brendan looks a little grizzley but hot grrrr. Hoorig. Looking good RED! I am so happy for you...seriouser where aer you registered? Pleasel I love buying weddinhg gifts. I am so happy for you that you have you swan,,, you will be together for every. And Bob is superstar who allowed m to hang out while chaptan churcn would practive in Hoover's basement. I have a pic."

The author of this message appears to have been rendered completely useless by some kind of stroke, which impaired either her typing or her spelling skills or possibly both. I also thought she might have unwieldy hooks instead of hands, which would have explained the typos, but I checked her profile and Edward Scissorhands, she isn't. This is someone who used to be on the school newspaper. Seriouser. It was embarrassing to read the first time around, so I only read it another ten or twenty times before reading it through a megaphone to friends and strangers on the streets of Seattle.

I know it's a little rude to call out someone so specifically, but this shit was trés gauche; it had a big scoop of Pathetic with a dollop of Desperate on top. I'm also curious to know what language it's in - Arabic, maybe? Esperanto? - but I'll leave that to the linguistic experts.

The Hotness

It’s important to know from the beginning that I lived to tell this tale, despite a well-timed panic attack, a partial-brain aneurysm, and almost drowning in my own perspiration.  This is a story about hot yoga, the only extreme sport I’ve ever participated in.

Yes, I said ‘extreme sport.’ I had a friend - ever the egotistical male - who would always laugh at yoga:  ‘Oh, yoooga! Yeah dude, stretching is really HARD.’ Then he’d high-five another meathead, pump some iron, and go home to make sweet love to his girlfriend for seven long minutes. His gym routine was really helping the relationship, and by that I mean the relationship between his girlfriend and her secret vibrator. Yoga probably could have saved their sex life, but he never would have made it through an entire hot yoga class; it's just not possible. Too much ego, and not enough understanding of what it’s about.  Not that I knew what I was doing - I just knew that dying in a yoga studio wasn't an option for me. People would laugh for days.

Bikram yoga  is the kind of exercise that begs to be made fun of, even though it’s harder than fuck-all to do.  There’s all kinds of technical stuff that doesn’t really matter  – 26 poses that are all meaningful in some way, two cult-like breathing exercises, the scandals surrounding Bikram himself – but the most relevant information can be boiled down to these three main things:

1.  The room temperature is jacked up to 105 degrees – to recreate the suffocating heat in India – and you’re heavily encouraged to stay in the room, no matter what.  Your lungs could be exploding out of your overheated asshole, and you’ll still get The Look from people if you leave to clean it up.

2.  It’s ninety minutes long.  Do you know what I can do in 90 minutes?  Write a blog post.  Bake cupcakes. Commit fraud.  Knock boots. My taxes.  90-minutes was a long time to sweat my balls off, although my boyfriend came away from the experience with his berries still intact.

3.  If you feel like you’re going to die... well, you might.  But if you can get through it without being a pussy and perishing, it’s totally worth it.  I engaged in enough mental one-upping without pushing myself too hard, so I held my own much better than, say, my 90-year old granny or John Goodman.

I walked into the studio and immediately smelled the rotting stench of my inevitable failure; I think the girl next to me could smell it, too. She and her half-naked, bitchy teenage friends gave me a look that screamed ‘no way are we saving this old lady when she kicks the bucket.’ That's when I decided to give it my all, go for the gold, and slash their tires in the parking lot if I ever got out of there.

It was hard. Correction:  it was really fucking hard. I sweat buckets when I’m sleeping, which isn’t exactly exercise, so what hope did I have?  During the 26 poses, I was perspiring in places that are normally gland-free:  my eyelashes were sweating. My hangnails were sweating. MY SPLIT ENDS WERE SWEATING.  I probably dropped 20 pounds of sweat and40 pounds of dignity in those 90-minutes. And in case you were wondering, ninety minutes in a human soup sauna feels like three straight hours of being on fire, or, four days in a concentration camp for fat people.

The trick is:  take breaks. I did 3/4 of the poses, and when I couldn’t bend into a goddamn pretzel, I would sit on the mat and practice my breathing, as a lot of people did.  It’s difficult to breathe in a sauna, especially if you’re heat-claustrophobic like me.  Hot yoga was a great opportunity for me to practice meditating, work on my breathing, and detox a billion toxins in my body that could only be blamed on the weekend before.  It was as much a mind exercise as it was a physical challenge for my body.

If you have heart problems, heat problems, or any shred of sanity, you’ll skip Bikram yoga.  But if you’re up for a good challenge, check it out.  I am a giant, sweaty wildebeest who belongs in a sunny field filled with potato chips and cheese, and I survived.  If John Goodman can do it, so can you.

The next extreme sport I attempt will be extreme cupcake-eating. I think I've got what it takes to go all the way.

Wishful Thinking

10 Things I Wish I Could Say To Certain People

1. Your insecurities are so hard for me to deal with sometimes. I dream about giving you the movie speech where I say FAREWELL HOT MESS, just more eloquently. A crowd will gather and, after my speech, they’ll applaud. And then you’ll go far away. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream; this is mine.

2. You and I aren’t friends because you don’t possess the ability to be a friend to other humans. Everything about you is black and white, and I can’t wait around for you to get over your immature anger. Immaturity aside, I hope you die in a fire.

3. Just because you have a huge cock does not mean you’re talented in bed. If anything, you’re probably handicapped, and that’s exactly what it was like sleeping with you: like being in the Special Olympics.

4. I preemptively hated you because I figured you hated me, and then you started hating me, and now I’m like FUUUUUCK.

5.  To anyone that ever had an opinion on what my boyfriend should have done after law school:  shut the fuck up already. It’s ridiculous – I don’t tell longshoremen how to do their jobs BECAUSE I’M NOT A LONGSHOREMAN.

6. You are the most narcissistic, self-centered, half-human being I have ever had the misfortune of meeting. You are utterly without merit. You are completely without value. I think, instead of internal organs, you’re filled with rotted packing peanuts. You hurt people all the time and don’t even know it. I’m sad I know you.

7.  1) I’m a better writer. 2) You’re famous. This is why you suck.

8. All these years, you’ve thought it was me who did that horrible thing to you – but what you don’t know, I can’t tell you. And it’s eating me up inside. I’m glad we’re still friends, despite what happened, but I hate that you don’t know the truth. I hate that I took one for the team and never stood up for myself.

9. Smoking in the house is disgusting – YOU are disgusting – especially when my ten-year old lives there. Thanks for killing my son slowly with the cancer you’ll probably never get. It’s always the unhealthy assholes that live forever.

10. Yes. Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. Yes. But in real life, no. I have a boyfriend.

Looking Forward, Peering Backwards

It’s funny how old friends, former lovers, and past hurts can rise up from the dead and attack you - and by ‘funny,' I really mean RED ALERT RED ALERT ABORT MISSION IMMEDIATELY. Congratulations, Facebook, for amassing the largest collection of people I’ve been avoiding in the history of the online world, but who have apparently been looking for me. Everyone from my small town high school? CHECK. Every person I regret having slept with? Check. Unrequited loves? Every one of 'em. The one that got away? OH.  Him. 

“He” is a Facebook friend who’s incredibly nice, blissfully married, and far, far away. I never check his profile, rarely ever talk about him, and have only messaged him once: to welcome him to Facebook, like a self-promoting social networking tour guide. He didn’t respond - I wasn’t surprised.

I hate this man, and I love this man. I love him because he only ever showed me true friendship and kindness; I hate this man because my heart was like a pencil and he was like a sharpener, grinding down my heart until it was the size of a cheap-ass church pencil. And you know what those are like: useful only for tallying Yahtzee scores, or maybe stabbing a preemie.

Against my own good judgment, and flanked by the phrases “I’m bored” and “What’s the worst that could happen?” I moseyed on over to his Facebook page. Historically, when someone asks, “What’s the worst that could happen?”, the answer is usually violence, cancer, or rodeo clowns. What I found on his page was closer to ‘violent, cancerous rodeo clowns’ taking over the world:  he’s doing awesome, he seems happy, he’s still adorable. Can you believe the goddamn nerve of the guy? THIS IS TERRIBLE NEWS. And his wife is all skinny. What an asshole.

I can’t believe it’s been over ten years and I still get a twinge of regret when I think of him. I can’t believe I went to his stupid Facebook profile, and got nervous just poking around. I can’t believe, after all this time, I’m still mooning about like he left two days ago. I’m so happy with my boyfriend, the Esq, and love our life together, so I marvel at the power of a past relationship that ultimately went nowhere. When I saw a real photo of him, of how he’s barely aged in 12 years, and his smile!–hardly a better one out there besides my sweetie and my son, the monster–I felt twenty years old again:  youthful, brazen, electric, alive. I remembered my 20-year old certainty that this man was MINE; I all but peed directly on him when we met, although later on I just peed around him in tight, exclusionary circles. Needless to say, our friendship was an intense, beautiful, heartbreaking experience, and I re-lived every moment tonight thanks to my folly and my Facebook.

How can old wounds feel so fresh? I’m humbled and annoyed by them. Fortunately, I remember why it never would have worked out, the manner of his leaving, and the way I held on to a possible future with him. I stayed in fantasy about this man for a long time because in reality, my life was a piece of shit - sometimes I had only that hope to hold onto. To imagine a future with him was a luxury because I was imagining myself even having a future, something I was unsure of at times. So my connection to him, far after he’d gone, propelled me through the mire of my unhealthy relationships (or as I like to call it, “my twenties”), and for that I am grateful. Luckily, I found a man who is good for me in many ways, and not just an unfinished dream; a man who is good for my 32-year old self and has nothing to do with the past.

But with something like Facebook, the past is two clicks away from the present when I log in each day, reminding me of its daily presence. Which is why, if ‘the past’ were in beast or human form, I would take a loaded shotgun with me to Facebook, shoot to kill, carve it up, and serve it for our Thanksgiving dinner. I would include a large portion of get-over-it-already, a huge helping of 'bad timing,' and a big glass of my current happiness, to remind me of what is most important:  staying in the present, remaining grateful, and being thin. I added that last one because, now that Obama is the President, anything is possible.

Hen Party

I'm hanging with The Girls. If you’re a woman, and you don’t have a group of women that you call some variation of The Girls, i.e.; My Homegirls, The Ladies, Those Bitches - then reading this is low on your priority list. Go out and find some vaginas immediately, and don’t come back until you’ve accomplished three out of these five things together:

SHOTS

Shots are generally bad for your liver and your memory, but they can be useful in solidifying your friendships with women. Many years ago, My Girls and I did a slew of shots together, all with more ominous names than the last:  The Kamikaze, The Irish Car Bomb, The Alabama Slammer, The Screaming Nazi, Liquid Cocaine, Mind Erasers, The Red Death, and, finally - The Blow Job. I always thought a little cocaine and a mind eraser would make a blow job easier, but I was red dead wrong. We danced, screamed, laughed, flirted with all the wrong men, and wobbled home on three-inch heels, sharing secrets we would never remember in the morning. The next day, when I opened one crusty, dehydrated, bloodshot eye and saw My Girls looking like like shit on a stick, I knew I was finally a part of something special.

TALKING SMACK

There are two levels of shit-talking: the kind you do about Other Whores and the kind you do about Your Whores. Your Whores are probably talking shit about you, too; it’s an Elton John, Circle of Life-type thing that everyone should just accept. Usually, it’s better if you stick to being catty about Other Women - vastly inferior, easy women - and bond over that. Pick a group of vacuous young ladies in their early twenties - girls with severely flat-ironed hair who are covered in glitter. Take a few moments to input their glaring character defects into the Collective Conscious before you make meaningful eye contact. After a while, glower in their general direction, tossing your hair and perfecting your lip gloss while drinking something sophisticated - NOT a Cosmopolitan, because that's what those skanky wannabes will be imbibing. You want something a wealthy grown-up might drink, like a French 75 or a disgusting glass of port/vampire blood. Say something disparaging at their leader, because there’s always an ugly heffer leading the cowherd, and that’s where you want to strike: at their sleazy, weakened epicenter. THAT’S HOW YOU WIN. Later, you’ll tell the story about how you almost got in a bar fight together and died, but lived to tell the tale. A bonding experience.

CHICK FLICKS

In this case, there are two paths to take, and one is only a slightly higher road: good chick flicks, and horribly good chick flicks. Good chick flicks are thoughtful, nostalgic, funny, sob-inspiring, and “real”. Horribly good chick flicks are filled with bad acting, soap opera plots, awful dialogue, and a lot of untalented teenagers. I have watched them all, and always with My Homegirls. The classics include Beaches, Fried Green Tomatoes, Terms of Endearment, Steel Magnolias, When Harry Met Sally, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Say Anything, Dirty Dancing, The English Patient, Sleepless in Seattle, and everybody’s favorite glorified suicide flick, Thelma & Louise. The truly awful movies that I personally loved include dignified titles like Save the Last Dance, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, While You Were Sleeping, Never Been Kissed, Bring It On, Waiting to Exhale, The Notebook, and The Holiday. Schindler’s List, they’re not. But every time I hang with my girlfriends and watch a crappy chick flick, my life feels pretty complete.

SHOPPING

So your power was turned off, and your children are working in sweatshops, just to make the rent; none of that matters when there’s shopping to be done. I don’t know why shopping has the powerful pull that it does, but I’m betting it has something to do with me loving things I can’t afford, like 600-thread count sheets and double-sided toilet paper. Need to put some zing back into your friendship? An eight-hour excursion to your nearest shopping center will enliven any relationship. Make sure you know where the Starbucks is located, and wear sensible shoes. The Ladies don’t appreciate a whiny girl wearing pointy shoes who gets worn out around Hour Five (me). Stamina, attitude, and caffeine are the key elements to a successful shopping trip. And if you don’t splurge on something unnecessarily ‘fabulous’, you’ve missed the point of the trip entirely.

WEDDINGS

It’s not for everyone, but someone in your crew will at some point marry Mr. Only-Guy-Left, and when they do, that’s where you’ll earn your true friendship stripes. If you’re a bridesmaid, I like to think of a wedding as The Last Girl Scout Badge you will ever be awarded and, just like in Girl Scouts, that badge means nothing. If you succeed in your task, you will enjoy the short-lived praise of your bridezilla friend and her elder female relatives who smell of potpourri and soup, for hours and years to come. If you fail, it will be remembered for the rest of your life her life. Failing the bride looks a lot like this: getting hammered and passing out at the reception, dancing on a table where people are still eating, using her ex-husband’s name when toasting the couple, humping her underage cousin on the dance floor, eating the cake before it's cut, sleeping with the groom, answering your cell phone while standing at the altar, pushing her grandmother down the stairs, bringing an actual shotgun to the wedding, and dying. I was going to include ‘not showing up’, but if you really no-showed on the day of your girlfriend’s wedding, you’d be dead within 48 hours anyways. Should you stick to the plan, though, Those Bitches will have to help you with your Hopefully Happily Ever After, too - it's only fair.

My Girls and I have all convened - from Bellevue, Seattle, Los Angeles and Portland - so we can de-stress and re-group. This is an important bi-annual gathering for us and it's necessary for our relationships. There isn’t anything I’d rather be doing, or anyone I’d rather be doing it with - although if Johnny Depp showed up, we’d have an emergency meeting. Good friends don’t let you drink and drive; great friends won’t let you pass up the opportunity to sleep with a hot celebrity.

Quizzalicious

There are a ton of these grammatically-horrifying, totally misspelled quizzes on Facebook, and I hate them all. So naturally, I did three of them - with a Snotty little twist.

I took the "What Kind Of Woman Are You?" quiz and the result is: A Woman.

You are the kind of woman with a vagina. You are unchecked, unmedicated, and your feet sometimes stink. You judge others and the types of Facebook quizzes they take. Your life aim is world domination and obscene wealth; your weakness is your peg leg. You make friends easily and then steal from them. You’re bitchy 3/4 of the month, and blame all of it on PMS. You refuse to pee in public restrooms and have an addiction to overpriced lip gloss. You laugh at Hitler jokes, occasionally fart in public, and worship the almighty Bacon. You’re the type of woman who deserves whatever she wants and will stop at nothing to get it. You make a lot of sacrifices – moral, animal, human – and hope to lead your own cult one day. You've got style, that's what all the girls say.

I took the “Where Should You Be Living?” quiz and it said “Your mom’s house.”

Your mom’s house rocks. She cooks for me and I use her free Wi-fi for days. Your mom basically gave me your old room, and was like ‘oh let’s take all this junky stuff to the Goodwill and buy you some 600 thread count sheets!’ Your mom is so nice. She does my laundry, and makes me crust-free sandwiches, and buys me stuff at Target and Costco, which she never did with you because she doesn’t love you. She told me that, she said you were an accident and that she doesn’t even know who your real father is. Your mom used to be WILD, I can’t wait to tell you the stories I’ve heard in great detail. Also, your mom’s a total MILF, and I think she’s into me. Maybe in the future you can call me ‘Stepmom’ and we can march in the pride parade together. We can go shopping for toys together at Babeland and eat at the Honey Hole and ugh, stop crying already.

I took the “What Bible Character Are You?” quiz and the result is: GOD.

You’re omnipotent, and enjoy a good smiting every now and again. You have a lot of confused followers you’re obligated to like, and you actually hate Hollie Hobby, G-Unit rappers, and Ned Flanders. You like a good challenge, but everything comes easy to you except making clear who your true believers are. You have a good heart and you mean well, but your job is tough and humans are complicated. Sometimes you wish you could go on vacation to Waikiki, just like everybody else.

How to Be A Best Friend

Card received.

Message says:

Happy Birthday!  Hope 33 turns out better for you than it did for Jesus.

My other BFF - Auticia Gonzales, Part-Time Countess, Leader of the Yucutan Peninsula and Bartez of Syracuse, Doo-Wop Girl, Crazy Person Extraordinaire & Strong Black Woman - knows how to sign a birthday card. (She's small and white, but no less extraordinary. I've been told she levitates, and communicates with trees and forest animals. I once saw her create the perfect layer cake, pretty in pastels and perfect in every way, and write HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY!!!!! in a flawless frosted font. She had asshole friends who made her sit on creepy pedophile Santa's lap for our annual Christmas photos at Westlake Center, year after year - but in my defense, a big girl needs to take advantage any time being bigger is rewarded. Because how often does that happen?  They don't thank you in a canoe and only the Japanese are impressed by skilled hot dog eaters. I guess it's helpful if you're crushing grapes with your feet or trying to drown someone, but whatever - I know if my plane goes down in the Andes with my soccer team, they'll eat me first to survive. Sometimes, though, it works out - and that 'sometimes' was always Christmas. Case in point:  do you weigh the same as a reindeer? Move to the back and take a crappy photo. Are you adorable and petite? Get fondled by Santa and go to therapy. Point being, I love Auticia's molested little self to pieces.)

She and I have a lot in common:  we're the same type of snob, we're passionate about books, we both love language, and we support each other well - as evidenced by one of our last text messages:

Aut: I miss you! I'm all crazy and could use a witty quip from you to put everything in some funny perspective. xoxo

Me: Kill yourself.

Me: ...love you chica. Hope you get less crazy. Miss you bunches, whoreface.

Aut: Thanks, you cum-guzzling queen. Phew, I feel much better.

Shakespeare couldn't have said it better. You're a pithy wordsmith, wench, and I thank thee for the card.

Love,

The Alleged Queen of Everything, Self-Appointed Supreme Ruler of the Universe, Mariah Carey Impersonator, Fucked-Up Bitch Extraordinaire & Fake Ass Polynesian.

A Birthday Wish List

If you didn't hark a herald of angels singing the story of my birth, then you probably live somewhere that should only exist in our imaginations - like Somalian pirate ships or The Deep South or whatever town that 'Don't tase me, bro!' doofus grew up in. Worry not, village idiots, for I will keep you updated on my approaching 29th birthday. And like I said in my birthday invitation that you probably didn't receive: 'You only turn 29 once! Or, in this case, five years in a row.' Whatever, my invites are conversational because I'm friendly, bitch.

As I did last year, I'm making a wish list for my birthday this year. Most girls want shoes or jewelry or a nice sensible coat, but I'm not just any girl. Let's go over part of my list from last year, back when I turned, yes, 29:

No one got me a baby panda, not one of you. And I don't see David or Amy Sedaris sitting at my dining room table, begging to be my siblings. Alan Thicke from Growing Pains was nowhere to be found at my birthday party, so I rang in 29 without entertainment or music, which made me feel boring like a 30-year old bag lady with cats. And did you not see my request for a mythical petting zoo, complete with a Hypogriff from Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone?  And no Ipod speakers shaped like cupcakes? Whatever. I forgive you for not sending a rewind button for my mouth, I guess - technology can only move so fast.

This year, I want world peace domination; I want world peace fame and fortune. I want world peace birds to do my hair like Cinderella and mice to make my clothes and shit. See, I need a small staff of eight; I don't care if they're Mexicans as long as they don't compare me to Kathy Lee Gifford or call me a racist. I need a chef who does obscene things with butter and bacon, skillfully extracting the calories from it in some kind of unknown Swiss technology and then injecting it into supermodels, all around the world.  I also need a robot dude - like Data from Star Trek - to be a walking calendar-toolbox-numbercruncher for me, someone who oversees everybody else: a Me Manager.

Then there's the masseuse, who should double as the Birthday Girl, i.e.; steps in during holidays or emergency situations (his birthday, your anniversary, he threatens to leave) and performs the time-honored, obligatory task of cooking steaks and giving blow jobs. I need someone to chauffeur me around, but I won't call him a 'chauffeur' because it's cooler to say 'driver' (at least in Sex and the City) - and I expect us to have great adventures together, like Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy, only more Southern Californ-EYE-AYE, and instead of driving around, we would rob banks. Then I need a professional best friend - someone who is two-tiers down in 'hotness' from me who I can blame later for my cocaine habit and venereal diseases; and a zoologist/ringmaster for the mythical petting zoo, of course (AHEM) - I'm thinking Adam Sandler in 50 First Dates meets Danny DeVito in Big Fish with a dash of Dr. Doolittle. Minus the Eddie Murphy. If we can't find that, I'm fine with a unicorn wrangler.

My last two staff picks would be someone to make me look gorgeous and mean everyday - some days severe, other days soft - but always gorgeous and mean. My beauty czar would also be my stylist and ultimate truth-teller, so I think she would have to be a quiet, icy Russian, although 'icy Russian' is laughingly redundant. The last staff member - the most important one - would think for me. Thinking is hard and takes a lot of energy, and I'd rather be eating bacon or watching cable TV shows about  moms who sell weed to neighborhood children and fuck the President of Mexico - Happy Cinco de Mayo! (I miss you, Weeds.) Point being, this person needs to think like me, and more importantly, Tweet like me; if chosen, I would hand over my brain reins on Twitter to them and hope for quality over quantity. 

What else do I want? A new brain car would be nice - the ol' body is wearing not thin, but out; out as in 'tired' and out as in FAT. I'd like speakers for my computer, or, better headphones with which to hear. That being said, ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME NOW GIMME A LAPTOP. I'd like new records and books and magazines and papers; selfish feasts for the eyes, ears, brain, soul. I want a lot of stuff. I'd like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to light my way through the right paths in life, which will happen around the same time I sprout an advice-giving penis from the top of my shoulder. That being said, what I'd really like this year is an advice-giving penis to sprout from my shoulder; and could he have a foppy British accent? Thanks.

Happy Birthday to me in T-minus one day - Europe (the band) would call this the Final Countdown, although the older I get, the less funny that joke is to me. If I think of any more birthday wishes - oh! thought of one! I want white feet - I'll add it to the list. And add horse-flavored ice cream; if the miniscule people of Japan can eat it, then I can inhale ten times as much. Watch me.

I'll Take Mayo, Hold the Cinco

Happy Cinco de Mayo! An entire holiday dedicated to the love of Mexican mayonnaise.

I’m stealing straight off of an old Fourth of July post, because all the information you could ever want about this holiday was included. So here goes:

I equate the Fourth of July to the Fifth of May; Cinco de Mayo is an amateur drinking holiday that Americans celebrate whether they know a Mexican or not, and the Fourth of July is celebrated every year with tons of booze and very little knowledge of the United States, even though we all live here. This is our history, people! The day we became independent from the British did not include hot dogs and public drunkenness; it was not about getting an even tan, or buying dangerous explosives from a dwindling tribe of Indians. No one even knows what Independence Day is about! I had a client last Thursday, a younger woman, who summed it all up for me in just two sentences: “I’m, like, gonna go and, like, celebrate Independence Day with margaritas in the park? Oh my God, I love that Will Smith movie.” Margaritas in the park and Will Smith in the movie Independence Day, where he and Jeff Goldblum saved us from the martians; this is what our nation’s independence has been reduced to.

Speaking of total ignorance, do you know the history behind Cinco de Mayo? It seems as though Americans aren’t very thoughtful when it comes to other cultures, either (shock!). Most of my friends think that Cinco de Mayo is Mexico’s Independence Day, much like our Fourth of July. Celebrating their independence comes at a hefty price, though: four to eight to fourteen margaritas. This is how we honor our neighbors to the South. “We’re celebrating *slurp* Mexico’s Independence Day!” “OhmyGod, where’s my camera?! *slurp* We need a picture of you in that authentic Mexican hat-thingy!” “Mexican chicks are hot, dude. *slurp* Remember Anna? She was half-Mexican.” “Woo-hoo, Mexico! *slurp* You are now free!” I think Americans enjoy thinking that they personally freed the Mexicans from slavery, or tyranny, which sounds a lot cooler. Americans also seem to believe that for every watered-down margarita they have, a Mexican child will get his wings; it’s noble, really, all of this rampant alcoholism to save the poor children. Unfortunately, Mexico’s Independence Day is on September 16th - Cinco de Mayo is a throwaway holiday, even to the Mexicans.

So this is what you’re celebrating on the Fifth of May: in 1861, Mexico - like an out-of-work older brother who always finds trouble - quit making interest payments on loans it had received earlier. In response, France (and other European countries) attacked in order to force payment of the debt incurred. On May 5, 1862, the French were defeated in the city of Puebla. This is what we as a country celebrate together at private parties, barbecues, picnics, and every bar imaginable, across the entire nation: Mexico being cheap assholes and dodging their creditors. When I successfully evade my creditors, no one gets drunk on my behalf, much less an entire country. I think it’s bizarre.

But not as weird as the sombrero - surely God was joking when he created that, like the moose or the giraffe or Bill O’Reilly. We just don’t have the same type of humor, I guess.