My heart will go on

Enough with the rantings and the babies. For now. (Maybe I am so whacked-out because I've gone off the pill? That must be it. Everything can be blamed on hormones! Thank god.)

Now I am going to talk about the fact that I've been having chest pains since last night. Chest pains! Sharp pain when I inhale too deeply. And I am 25! 25! Way too young to die of a massive coronary! Plus I went to the gym last night. People who go to the gym do not die of massive coronaries at 25! I'm not going to see a doctor about it, because I've had this many times before and I haven't died from it yet. I once brought it up during a physical, and since my mom says she has a mild heart murmur, the doctor tested me for those, including one that can only be detected when you are squatting down. At the end she said I did not have one, and that the pains are probably not my actual heart hurting, but my chest muscles. Like from tension or stress or something. That made me feel a little bit better. (Maybe chest pain, too, can be attributed to going off the pill? Damn pill, I am glad to be rid of ye!)

Other than not being able to breathe deeply for fear of exploding my heart, things are fine. It's almost Friday. It's almost October, actually, so that means SEVEN MONTHS until I can blow this pop-stand (sp?) and go off to lovely grad school. I will be like a proper Victorian lady, just painting away all day. Ah, the life.

Breathe in...and out...

In an effort to calm myself down, I did some websurfing, and I came across a scarily adorable photo. I know it is cheesy and twee to be all "Look! An infant!" but I'm doing it anyway.

"Look! An infant!"

Something I forgot, and it sucks.

I think I must have blocked this out when I wrote my previous post because it made me so livid. While taking the bus Saturday night to meet my friends, a guy messed with me and I actually kicked him. Seriously! I will explain.

See, the buses in DC are set up like airplanes: rows of seats with an aisle in between. I was sitting at a window seat reading, since it was still light out. After a few minutes we hit a busy place and the bus filled up, and a guy about my age sat next to me. Right away he pissed me off, because when he sat down he smooshed up right against me, taking up more than his half of the bench. I kind of gave him a sideways look and he said sorry, but he didn't move over at all.

So we were riding along, and I'm still reading, and I notice that he is slowly leaning further and further onto me! What the fuck?! It was creeping me out that this total stranger's arm flesh was pressed up against me. I wedged myself up against the window but he just kept leaning closer and closer. I gave him another nasty look, and he responded with a placid, cud-chewing-cow gaze back at me. FUCKING HELL!

Now I don't know what to do, and I am so stubborn and prideful that I don't want to, like, cede territory to him. I am actually weighing out in my head whether it is better to "give in" by making myself smaller so that he doesn't have the satisfaction of rubbing up against me, or whether I should shove over further towards him so that he has to give up some of the seat. I am pathological with the power thing, I think. I also kept trying to surreptitiously wrench my elbow into his side to force him over, but he is so close that I don't have the leverage for a good jerk.

Then he asks me what I'm reading. I ignore him and roll my eyes so hard I nearly pull a muscle, hoping he will see that his assholishness is not charming me. All it does is make him more persistent, and now he starts reading my book out loud while tracing the words with his finger. That was the last straw. We were almost at my stop, so I jam my book into my purse and say "Excuse me!" to him. He gives me the Cow Gaze of Lust.

I stand up and glower down at him. He looks away from me and just stares straight ahead, while not moving his legs an inch. I cannot believe it. He's not going to let me out?! What the hell is he trying to do - hold me hostage on the bus? I am fuming mad at this point, but also a little scared that maybe I will be held hostage on the bus. Maybe he won't let me off, ever, and I will have to live on the bus, and I will get fired from my job, and I'll never be able to take a shower again, and I'll never see my friends and family, and...

Okay, so all of that is running through my head, along with the blinding white hot fury. After a few seconds, I YELL "Can you let me by, please!" The bus is packed, and everybody turns to look. He mutters "Bitch," and moves his knees about four inches to the side, a final power play, so that I have to rub up against him to get past. In that moment I wonder what the chances are that he'll follow me off the bus, and I decide small. So I kick the ever loving hell out of his legs as I shove past him, through the crowded aisle, and off the bus.

I made it off the bus fine; he didn't follow me or anything. (I don't know what I would have done if he had! I'm small!) But I am so angry about it. I think I may need anger management training or something, because I feel almost perpetually pissed off about the street harassment I experience in DC. The only other large city I've lived in has been London, and it was practically never an issue there. Here in DC? Hardly a day goes by that a man doesn't mutter something nasty at me from a doorway while I pass. There is construction going on all over downtown, and I've heard the phrase "Nice tits" more times than I can count. In my neighborhood there are packs of young guys who just hang out on the corners and call me baby, or they hold entire conversations in Spanish accompanied by some choice hand gestures.

*Okay, now here comes the part where I get really mad.*

Seriously, what the fuck is this? There is almost nothing that angers me more. I resent the hell out of the fact that when I walk I am on display, and people can look at my body and make comments about it, as if that is their right. What are these people thinking? Were they raised in entirely male households? I just cannot imagine that anybody who has had a sister or a girl friend or even a mother, for chrissakes, is still capable of just carving up people's bodies with their eyes this way. It's become a quality of life issue. It sucks to have to walk around with my nose in the air, pretending I didn't hear what some guy just said, because if I make eye contact he'll only get more forward.

And I know I am not the only one having this problem. I don't dress in muu-muus, but then neither do I wear skimpy, flashy clothes. There's nothing really eye-catching about my appearance (except perhaps for my now-red hair) so every other woman must get the same crap. I think we should start up a campaign to make the local politicans aware of this. We can have a special police force that deals in Urban Assholery. I would totally pay more taxes to the DC government for that.

Damn. I have to stop now before I have a stress-induced aneurysm.

Weekend o' Wine

Hurrah! I have great hair now. It is all fixed up and exactly what I wanted. When I got to the salon, Devil Haircutting Girl was actually standing outside smoking (ha!), and my first instinct was to turn and run. Thankfully I did not, because that Alex guy gave me the best haircut ever. Also thankfully, his hair station was way far away from hers, because I would have had a nervous breakdown sitting near her the whole time. She kind of gave me the evil eye as I left, but she is obviously crazy, so whatever. I don't even feel bad that her manager was going to "reprimand" her, because she did it to herself, because she is crazy.

So then I went to painting class, where I produced the fugliest piece of "art" that has ever existed. Portraits are hard. Mixing flesh tones is hard. And next week we are moving on to figures, so I had better get better at painting large expanses of skin real fast, if you know what I mean.

At night I went out with some girl friends and we had Ethiopian food and wine, and then we went full-on bar-hopping. It was a long night. I spent Sunday wolfing down Advils. Also Sunday my mom came over and she dyed my hair, which I have been planning to do for a long time and it is only coincidental that all this hair stuff fell on one weekend. (I do not usually devote entire weekends to getting myself all fixed up, just so you know. Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

My hair is HOT now. It is floppy and cute and wine-colored. Ugh, wine. My head hurts just thinking its name! Cruel seductive wine.

Part I : The fellowship of the hair

My hair thing has turned into a saga. What happened was sort of unexpected and ridiculous, and it has almost drained me of my will to live, let alone type, but I know there are a good four or five of you out there in computerland who are dying to know, so I will martyr myself and just get it all out there.

(Just to allay any terror any of you may be feeling right now, my hair does not look BAD. It is just not what I wanted.)

So the stylist girl was really nice to me when I first sat down. I explained what I wanted, which was punky and layered with the ends flipping out, and she was totally down with it. We were soldiers together in the battle of Operation: Make My Hair Look Less Like Crap.

Then she sent me to get shampooed. When I was done I waited for her in the chair, and after a few minutes she came in and she all reeked of cigarette. (Okay, sidebar: I am totally fine with smoking. I like smoking. Smoky bars and clubs are fine. But even when I was a smoker, I sure as hell didn't like my fingers or hair or clothes or bedsheets smelling of smoke. And I don't think I'm in the minority there.)

She started futzing around with my hair, and dear god, the clouds of cigarette were hovering all around, and her hands were all stanky, and HER STANKY HANDS WERE ALL IN MY HAIR! And it had just been washed! What is the point of that? I could have asked the shampoo guy to skip the soap and just lather me up with ash from the nearest ashtray, if I wanted to reek of cig. So I said to her, very politely, "I'm so sorry, but I'm allergic to the smoke. Do you mind just washing your hands real quick?" (The allergy thing was a lie, but it is hard for me to be assertive, so cut me some slack.) She looked surprised but she agreed nicely, and she went, and then she came back.

And THEN she proceeded to cut my hair in the most passive-aggressive fashion ever. Until that moment I had not been aware that it was even possible to imbue haircutting with passive-aggression, but take it from me: it is. She did not look at me or say one word the entire time. She did not clip my hair into different sections, or even part my hair, or even COMB my hair. It was just in a big tousled zig-zag pile on my head, and she spent about five minutes grabbing chunks of it and cutting. Suddenly she said, "Is that good?"

I looked up. I had to look through a wall of hair, because she had shoved the entire front half of my hair so that it hung directly over my eyes. Through the wall, I saw that my hair was still dripping wet, hanging in little tendrils. It did appear to be shorter, at least in certain areas. Assuming she was asking me whether the length was okay, and for her to proceed with getting it all even, I said "Um. Yeah, okay."

But no, she then broke out the blowdrier. At this point, I admit, she did brush my hair out, so I didn't leave with a rat's nest or anything. After a few minutes she finished, thrust the mirror into my hands, spun me around, and marched off towards the front desk. I had about five seconds to check myself out. It was not disastrous, but she had turned the ends under, so I looked like a TV news anchorwoman, or Monica Lewinsky. I looked really really conservative, and poufy, and lame. Also, I couldn't be too sure, but it looked uneven. (Possibly that was because she had never parted my hair and compared the length of each side to the other? Just a thought.)

But I didn't really have time to, you know, TALK TO HER, because she marched back and with the bill and snatched my bib-thing off. I thought, Okay, I guess I'm done then!

On my walk home I called a friend and wailed about how poufy and Monica-y I looked. I felt embarrassed just to be out in public with my stupid helmet hair, and I think I saw a few Trendy People pointing at me and snickering. I was so upset that my face turned all red, so I was blotchy and poufy. Not a good look.

Anyway, in my ongoing struggle to become an Assertive Adult, I called the manager of the salon just now and explained the whole thing. She was fantastically, everlovingly nice. I am actually going in tomorrow to get it fixed for free, and I have a reservation with "Alex," who apparently I will "love," because "he is sooo cute." (According to the supernice manager.)

With any luck this will all be over tomorrow and I can move on to worrying about more normal things, like laundry and credit card bills and nuclear war.

Hair, you will Respect Mah Authoritay!

My hair has reached a state of Extreme Terminal Ugliness. Every morning when I get ready for work, I have to stage a blitz attack in order to subdue it. I sneak up behind my hair, slowly, craftily. Palms up, like they do on Animal Planet when they don't want to spook the rhinos. I croon soft, soothing words of love to it: "Thaaaaat's right, goooood girl. Eeeeasy now, easy! Easy! Goooooood girl."

Then, when I have my hair's trust, I BEAT IT INTO COMPLETE AND TOTAL SUBMISSION. This requires some combination of the following: brush, comb, spray-gel stuff, pump frizz-ease stuff, water, Bisquick, leave-in conditioner, and Windex. Lately, though, the beating-into-submission part has taken longer, and the results are getting crappier. So it is time for a haircut. (Heh, I just typed haircute - do you think that will give me good hair karma?)

I am going to do it tonight on my way home, at this kind of trendy drop-in place. Now, I generally get my hair cut at a hair school. Not even a drop-in haircut place. A hair SCHOOL. Not because I am especially cheap, because I'm not. I will totally spend money on certain things that are investments, like grad school, or an urban apartment, or great red corduroy pants from Express that make one's ass (my ass! my ass, okay?) look really smokin hot. I'm just weird about haircuts. I have short-ish, floppy hair, so it's not a particularly hard style to replicate, and also my hair grows ridiculously fast, so it just seems like a waste of money to go anywhere expensive.

However, while the the hair school usually does a good job, the last cut I got made me look like the love child of Florence Henderson and Rod Stewart, which has made me a little spooked. I therefore am putting my faith and trust in this trendoriffic Dupont Circle place to make me feel cute again.

A combination TMI / WTF? post

I was so sleepy this morning that when I went to the bathroom and saw that I was, you know, bleeding, I momentarily freaked out and thought Oh holy fuck, what the fuck is that?! And a split second later I realized, oh, it's because I'M FEMALE. Doy. Has anybody else done that?

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Also, WHY is Adrien Brody in a diet coke commercial? I was under the impression that he won a Best Actor Oscar not too long ago. Did I make that up? Was I just really stoned that whole year? I could swear he won. I remember kissing him on the TV screen as he gave his speech. Poor, hot Adrien Brody. What has become of him?

Politics is (not necessarily) showbiz for ugly people

I have been in the presence of greatness! People, come from near and far to touch my arm, the arm that has shared airspace with greatness! I am talking about the man, the myth, the legend...George. George Stephanopoulos.

Yes, it is true. I passed him on the street not one hour ago. I have wanted to run into him for like a year now, and I had it all planned out. I would tell him that I read his book and really liked it, and that I identified with how torn he felt between his loyalty to Bill Clinton and his desire to be good and honest in his public persona. And he would be so charmed by my youthful ingenue-ness and earnestness, not to mention my hotness, that he would ask me out for coffee and then we would be boyfriend and girlfriend. George + Sup = LUV 4 EVA!

Oh, but that's not what happened. What really happened was, my boss and I were walking together and he suddenly muttered, "Here comes your boyfriend." My head snapped up and I scanned the crowd coming toward us. Eeeee! George! He was so cute and small. He had on a little suit and everything. Adorable. Talking on a cell phone. I actually made an "eeee!" sound, which was muffled by my fist, which was stuffed into my mouth. I don't know if George saw/heard this, or if he really was intrigued by my, you know, hotness, but he smiled at me. For real. Yes he did too! Don't even start.

This is my biggest Star Sighting Moment since I won that radio contest and got to have my photo taken with Jared Leto's arm around me. That was hot.

Unoriginal complaint #1

What is the point of even having dental insurance when you are charged $400 at the time you have your teeth yanked out, and then receive a further bill, SIX WEEKS AFTER THE PROCEDURE SO YOU HAVE BEEN THINKING YOU WERE IN THE CLEAR, for $200 more?!??? Gah! Gah! Gahhhhhhhhh! If I had known wisdom tooth removal was going to cost approximately thirty months' worth of Netflix, I would have just bought a bottle of scotch and had a friend pull them out, via the time-honored tooth-removal system of string tied to slamming bedroom door. Damn you, American insurance system!

Cowboy Thought for the day

Isn't the phrase "assless chaps" an oxymoron? I mean, all chaps are assless; they end at your upper thigh. Or do people use that phrase to indicate that the wearer isn't wearing pants under the chaps?

Yay for corduroy, and for not being cattle anymore.

Oh I am so pleased with the new fallness of the weather! I had been trying for weeks to singlehandedly usher it in by the wearing of weather-inappropriate corduroy and cardigans, but all that got me was sweaty. I walk to work, which is thirty minutes each way, and I love the walking but I hate that all summer I got so sweaty, especially early in the morning. It feels pretty nasty to arrive at work and know that, even though it is a ridulously early hour, you already look like you were working in the fields all day. (That is a slight exaggeration, but not by much. Perhaps the sweatiness is a factor in why I haven't had a date in a long time? Something to ponder...)

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My oldest friend in the world (since second grade) just moved back to the area after 2 years of living with an emotionally abusive boyfriend. She is doing really well; she's got a job and a nice apartment and seems to be happy. I think she had to hit such rock-bottom in order to break up with him and move out that she had already sort of gone through a lot of the breaking-up stages in her head. So now she's, like, way beyond what people typically are doing at this point - talking about the guy a lot and feeling really sad and bad and needing large portions of ice cream in order to make it through the lonely night. Anyway, she's doing great, and it's great, and of course I am THRILLED that the guy is history. I went to her new place last night. She had her younger sister and her friends there, and another high school friend of ours, and we played a fun interactive card game called Apples to Apples, which I very much recommend having around as a party game. It got pretty loud and raucous. Also we were drunk, which may have been a factor in the game's funness.

At one point we all started talking about birth control. As you do. And it got me thinking, and I think I will go off the pill. I mean, when I got on it about two years ago I was with someone, and when that ended I stayed on it in an effort to keep my skin halfway clear. But when I think about it, my skin is not all that clear right now, and hasn't been for a while. Maybe I have become resistant to Ortho Tri-Cyclen's charms?

Also it has forced me to buy new bras, because my boobs went up a whole cup size. Most of my friends say that I should feel grateful for this, since it doesn't always happen, but I don't feel grateful at all. I want to be able to walk down the street again in a cute t-shirt without being sexually harassed every four seconds.

Plus, I have never liked the idea that I am pumping these extra hormones through my body on a long-term basis. It feels unnatural and unsafe, like I am making myself a Super! Extra-Feminine! Woman! Or, like I am cattle, being fattened up for the slaughter. And then, finally, there is the whole "controlling birth" factor of the birth control, namely that there is no reason for it in my case right now. As far as I know, I am not the Virgin Mary, so there is no possibility of pregnancy.

Anyway, by Murphy's Law, as soon as I go off the pill I will meet the man of my dreams, right? That is my ulterior motive in all this.

You don't have to email this post to 7 people.

Today I received a "Chinese" Horoscope in my email. I am going to spare you the Magical Chain Letter Hex that it contained, and just post the good part. The 7th grade-esque "Ohmygod, who am I going to marry?" part. Because it totally nailed me. The horoscope, I mean. Not the guy I am going to mar - oh, hell. You get my point. It is an amazingly prescient chain letter! The first ever! And here it is...



Take 3 minutes - try this - it will freak you out!

1st. Get pen and paper

2nd. When choosing names, make sure they are real people that you actually know.

3rd. Go with your first instincts!!!!! Very important for good results.

4th. Scroll down one line at the time.




1. On a blank sheet of paper, write numbers 1 through 11 in a column on the left.












2. Beside the numbers 1 & 2, write down any 2 numbers you want.















3. Beside the numbers 3 & 7, write down the names of two members of the opposite sex.











Caution: do not look ahead or it will not turn out right!








4. Write anyone’s name (like friends or family) next to 4, 5, & 6.













5. Write down four song titles in 8, 9, 10, & 11.










Are you ready? Here is the key to the game.

Number 1 is your lucky number.
The number of people you must tell about this game is in space 2.
The person in space 3 is the one you love.
A person you like platonically is in space 7.
You care most about the person you put in space 4.
The person you name in number 5 is the one who knows you very well.
The person you named in 6 is the your lucky star.

The song in 8 is the song that matches with the person in number 3.
The title in 9 is the song for the person in 7.
The 10th space is the song that tells you most about your mind.
And 11 is the song telling how you feel about life.




So, did it work for you? Did it blow your fragile little mind?

I am going to tell you my results, so that you can grasp this horoscope's amazing power and omniscience. The person I love is the guy I totally fell for on my business trip last month, and the song that matches him is (shut up in advance) I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore. The person I like platonically is my boss, which is correct. The song that corresponds to him is Slow Ride, which...hmmm. That song doesn't have anything to do with sex, right? Because that would gross me out. I only associate it with pot, which is actually appropriate for him. Moving on.

I care most about a girl friend who I have known since we were seven, and who has just moved back to the area. That works. The person who knows me very well is Poppy, and yes, we have spent many a night chugging down red wine together, so she does know me very well. My "lucky star" (blech) is a female cousin who I do have quite a special relationship with.

Okay, here is the part where you will laugh and laugh and pee yourself. The song that "tells me the most about my mind" is Yankee Doodle Dandy (does this mean that I am simple and child-like?!), and the song "telling me how I feel about life" is Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Hi, I am Mr. Bean

At my gym there are these big rubber bins for used towels. Last night I went to throw my towel in, but it was in the same hand as my umbrella, and due to a lack of fine motor coordination I accidentally let go of both items. Which was not so bad; the bin was pretty empty so I figured that it was safe to reach back in for the umbrella. Now, with one hand I was carrying a lot of random things, so I reached in with the other arm, the one my open handbag was wedged under. Since I am short, I leaned waaaay over...

Estupido! Soy muy estupido! One inch away from rescuing my umbrella I heard the tinkling of my entire purse contents hitting the bottom of the bin. Yup. Now I had to reach in there, to the very very bottom, and save my wallet, keys, phone, 42 tubes of lipstick, and all the jewelry I had taken off. Did I mention that the bin was for used towels? Yeeeaaaah.

This was SO typical of me. How do I get myself into these situations? I swear, I am like a cartoon character sometimes. Someone should follow me around with a camcorder and sound effects reel, and document all my pratfalls to the accompaniment of bloopy noises. It would totally sell.

Vote early and often

On the way home from work yesterday I voted. It is funny how voting involves really self-important officials herding you through a rigid series of lines, creating an atmosphere of Super Governmental Importance, and yet the entire thing is being held in, like, an elementary school or a church.

In one line an official handed me a blue card, denoting my Democratic party allegiance. (Is it just me, or is this sort of a violation of privacy?) Five seconds later, in the next line, another official collected my card. Maybe I am thick, but I cannot determine the significance of said card practice.

The room was awash in the blue cards. One guy about my age had a yellow card, denoting Republicanism, and he stood out like tofu at a Southern barbecue. It was as if he were wearing a Scarlet A.

The way we filled out our ballot was very primitive. There were two bars for each candidate's name, about 1 centimeter apart, and you had to connect them with a crappy golf-scoring pencil. At one point I was pressing down so hard to make the greasy little mark show up that my hand slipped, and I f-ed up my entire paper, causing the surprisingly modern ballot-accepting machine to reject it. I asked the lady manning THAT line if I could have an eraser to fix the one mark, and she was like "No erasing! No ballots may be erased! Your ballot is spoiled, and must be turned in over there - in the 'Spoiled Ballot line.' "

So I got a whole new ballot, and my dirty skanky ballot was sealed up in a "Spoiled Ballot envelope," and a tick-mark was noted in the "Spoiled Ballot Official Tally Form."

I hate bureaucracy.

I made it through the second ballot with little to no spoiling. I was so grateful when the machine accepted my paper that I actually said "I did it right!" to the lady who gave me an "I Voted!" sticker. She was like, Yes dear, pat pat pat. It's entirely possible that she thought that I was retarded. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Painting is hard, mmmkay?

Hey! How was your weekend? Mine was swell. Saturday, after going to work for a few hours (boy, do I hope not to have to type THAT combination of words again for a long time), I went to my painting class. But I went two hours early. Tha's right! I spent two extra hours being hardcore. Hardcore and obsessive. Because my drawing from last week's class had begun to haunt me in that the more I thought about it, the crappier I remembered it. So I made myself go early and re-draw the whole thing.

Man, was I glad I had. When I pulled it out of the closet I almost barfed at the sight. The big water jug, which was the main and largest object, was right in the middle of the canvas. Gack - Lame City! Things that are really balanced look amateurish, and I cannot be thought of that way by my fellow students. So I redid it, and I am proud to say that the final version resembled a Rembrandt. But then actual class began. Once I started painting it in, the damn thing became a Picasso, in that the objects went all crazy and refused to adhere to the laws of physics and nature. So I still have some work to do. But dude, I am proud of my obsessively anal work ethic, at least.

And then, Saturday night, I went out with an awesomely random group of people, none of whom knew each other. We drank for five hours straight, so you see that it was a successful night. I had two Toasted Almonds, and they were so good I went to my Happy Place. I made everyone try them, and we all agreed that they tasted like the Good Humor toasted almond ice cream bars we ate as kids. Run right out and order this drink! And then go to your Happy Place!

Sunday I went out to this big street fair, which was a madcap whirlwind of culture 'n' stuff. Very colorful and exciting, and there were lovely smells of jerk chicken and funnel cakes floating around, but it was very hot so I couldn't really devote myself to the food 'n' culture. I had to concentrate on not sweating so much that my friends got embarrassed of me and ditched me, or, barring that, not sweating so much that I passed out and was trampled by an African tribal dancer. Success on both counts, thankfully!

Sunday night I watched South Park, and man, I want to marry whoever created that show.

Many things. Many. Many. Things.

So, it took me a few months, but I did a 100 Things About Me list. It is over yonder, in my sidebar on the left.

No, your other left! Thaaaat's it.

So...THAT happened!

This morning on my walk to work a little boy in a school bus flipped me off.

Minutes later I was crossing the street and a really big van turning left came right up beside me and took the turn RIGHT FREAKING IN FRONT OF ME. In one second my entire field of vision was filled by a yooge big van whooshing in front of my nose. I was so shocked I actually yelled something, which may or may not have been Fucking hell, dude!

Also, muscles that are still sore from Wednesday's aerobics class (yes, aerobics class. I was raised by a Jane Fonda-loving mother.) include my ass, stomach, back, upper arms, and left ankle. That last one is worrisome, as technically one's left ankle is not a muscle but a bone and ligament conglomerate. Hypochondriacally, I am convinced that I have gangrene and will soon need an amputation.

Furthermore and in conclusion, I have been requested (nay, commanded!) to come in to work for a few hours tomorrow morning. Wah wah wah barf suck crap.

Oh, for school to begin! Oh, for my working life to be over! Oh, for the sweet golden god arms of my future prince and love, "retirement," to encircle me!

Blogger hates this post because it is an epic poem. (Not Greek, though.)

Warning: autobiographical crap ahead...

There is this girl I went to school with from about fourth grade on. We were good friends when we were little, but then she became one of those girls who was getting noticed by the popular crowd while I was not. (Every girl out there knows where I'm going with this, I bet.) She started pulling that trick where she'd be all nice to me when it was just the two of us, at each others' houses, but in school she'd ignore me and point and giggle and gossip and stuff. And I totally had, like, no other friends, so I just took it. Blah blah blah, low self esteem, fast-forward to high school. At that point I DID have a tight group of friends, and I'd see her around and I suppose she had her own friends and was doing fine, but there was a period during senior year when she had a crush on one of the guys in my group so she'd hang out with us a lot. The guy didn't really like her back, and she didn't mesh so well with us and our sense(s?) of humor, so it all kind of tailed off. At that point I was doing my own thing and didn't really think about her.

So, graduation, college, etc etc. Her parents still live in the neighborhood so every so often my mom would tell me how they'd run into each other at the grocery store, and would tell me what this girl was up to lately. (She was at art school in NYC.) Fine, great.

College graduation, blah blah. I lived at home the summer afterwards as I was about to go to London for a year(!), for an art program. My parents find out that the girl is living at home too, and they GIVE HER PARENTS MY NUMBER. Arghhhhh. She called, wanted to go out. Fine, I will go out once. We're not bosom buddies, but it's one night, so fine.

Okay, it sucked. We went for a drink, and first off, I was frightened by her appearance. She had always been very tall, big-boned, and brunette. Now she was tall, emaciated, and blonde. She was wearing a shirt that was very low-cut in the back, and as I sat next to her I could see all her vertebrae and stuff. She didn't have a drink, because she said she didn't like "being drunk." Whatever. But all night she was going on and on about the ex-boyfriend she had lived with in New York, and their nights of coke benders followed by wild sex! Aiiiiii! I was petrified of her by this point. A big night for ME at college involved, like, a keg.

When I told her I was about to go to London she got all excited, because, ohmygod, SHE was about to move there too! Great.

I didn't see her anymore that summer. Then I was in London, and waaay at the end of the year she emails me (because, yes, my mom gave her parents my EMAIL ADDRESS TOO), and asks me to go out. I went out.

Oh, for fuck's sake. It sucked again. The night was pretty much her telling stories about another ex-boyfriend, and the coke and wild sex, but also at this point she had stories of all the modeling she did too. Which would have been awesome, and really entertaining, but she was just dropping names left and right so it just came off as kind of annoying. It was topped off by her dissing my London art school because I would "never really learn anything about art anywhere other than New York." Alrighty then!

So, I didn't see her anymore that year. Got home to DC, blah blah, time has gone by. A few months ago I got a mass email from her about how she's pregnant and getting married. I guess she had mixed feelings about it all, because it was in a tone of "yay, bring on the fatness and domestic crap, yay, I'm so pregnant." I wrote back and said (sincerely) congratulations and best of luck, and that I was excited too because I'd just gotten into grad school. She wrote back and ignored both the baby and the grad school thing and was just like "ohmygodyou'restillinthearea? let'sgooutIamsobored." I just never wrote back, because she kind of annoys me, and I don't feel like we've hit it off very well, and also I get the feeling that she's just using me as a warm body to go out with because she's bored.

THEN (sorry, almost over) last week one of my high school friends ran into her, and the girl asked my friend about me and whether I was still in the area, and my friend said yes (argh) and then realized what she'd done and told me. And, of course, yesterday I got an evite inviting me to the baby shower. I have not opened the evite yet. I'm just going to open it and politely decline, and then ignore any further emails. I mean, god. Isn't that sort of a naked display of greed, to send an invite to someone you've seen in person twice since high school graduation in (oh god) 1997?? Without even first sending a how-ya-doing email?

I don't know if I am out of line on all this. Am I out of line?

We have a piper down. I repeat, a piper down.

Dear Blogger,

I'm sorry. I was trying to publish a post that is longer than The Iliad, and I think I broke you. Please forgive me, and also please publish the stupid thing, because it took me 89 hours to write.
Best,
supine

Old Maid

I left a very breezy (tm Friends) message for that guy upstairs last week, saying that I was on my way out to get a beer with a friend, and did he want to come if he was bored with unpacking? And he never called back. And it has been four days! I feel like a loser. I mean, he could have called just to tell me he was "really busy lately" or that he "has a girlfriend," even if neither are true. I hate not getting called back. And then on Sunday night I could hear him moving around furniture and I actually shook my fist at the ceiling and cursed him and his toolishness. I am so mature!

Scary! Eeek too hard must quit!

I haven't mentioned any of this before, but I'm going to grad school next year. I am so so thrilled. This whole "working" thing hasn't been that bad after all, but it will be great to revert to student mode and hide from reality for a few years again. And also, great to wear hoodies and my favorite paint-covered green corduroy pants all the time, because I'm going to be in ART GRAD SCHOOL. Aren't you jealous of how rich I am going to get with that degree? No? Well, you will be jealous when you hear that I'll be living in gorgeous Savannah. Glee, glee, glee!

When I was accepted to the program (which is for painting, by the way), I was really relieved and pleased but also sort of terrified and intimidated, because I didn't major in art in college and really have very little actual instruction in it. It's been a lot of self-taught stuff. And I only ever got around to teaching myself acrylics. So I was accepted, but I have a few undergrad classes as prerequisites first. Which is fine, because I totally would not want to start the grad classes feeling that I was behind everyone and like I had to work twice as hard just to catch up to what they had mastered years before.

So I signed up for a Saturday continuing ed class of HARDCORE OIL PAINTING. To give you idea of the hardcore-ness, it is called Academic Painting, and involves still lifes and figures and portraits. Like, serious traditional art. I have had 2 college drawing classes, so once upon a time I was okay at traditional drawing, but that was about 3 years ago. Now I paint abstracts and collages, which are really fun to do and end up being all swirly and colorful and pleasant to look at, but do not require HARDCORE CONCENTRATION AND DRAWING SKILL at all.

The first class was yesterday. It kicked my ASS. I was exhausted afterwards (staring and drawing and erasing and staring some more for 3 hours is pretty hard). It is going to be really good for me, though, and really challenging and I will come out of it much better, and I know this because I had to continually fight the urge to turn and run out of there and hide out at home eating Cheetos and watching old episodes of Cheers. Because I was scared and intimidated! People around me were excellent draw-ers. And excellent painters. And I...am out of practice. But by the end of the class I did not totally suck. My bottle and leafy vine looked life alien life forms, but my apple and green pepper actually did look like an apple and a green pepper. So that is a start.

And it's okay, because I will WHIP MYSELF INTO SHAPE! I will stop watching so much bad TV and I will sketch all the time and fool around with my new pretty oil paints and I will be a good draw-er again! Yes. Yes, that is what I will do.

Oh god. I totally will not.

MUST. BUY. SONG!

Please help me, as I am an iTunes addict. I love love love it; it's the best invention since the tampon. It is so great to be able to buy individual songs, thus avoiding spending about $12 to buy an entire CD for that one song that is always on the radio and you love it and have to have it but know even as you hand your money to the cashier that you are throwing it away, because the rest of the CD will SUCK. (Rooney, I am looking at you. Damn VH1 with their incessant playing of that Blueside song.)

(And yes, I know that that song is from last summer, but that was the last time I fell into such a trap. Because after that I discovered iTunes.)

Ah, iTunes. You lure me in with your Google-esque search box, but it's the 30-second teaser that really hooks me. I don't think it's a coincidence that you always play the 30 seconds right before the chorus starts, so that I'm listening and I'm getting into it, and then it cuts off like 3 beats before the part of the song I wanted to hear in the first damn place, leaving me feeling all wound up with no release in sight! All dressed up with nowhere to go! And the only way for satisfaction, at that point, is to spend the stupid 99 cents and make the song mine. So it goes. The brilliance of this marketing strategy is so profound that it has tricked me into buying the following embarrassing songs:

Bonnie Raitt - Something to Talk About
Bee Gees - like, every song they ever did, ever
Britney (she needs no last name) - Toxic AND Crazy AND I'm a Slave For You
Justin (eeee! He's so hot in this video!) - Cry Me a River
Kelis - Milkshake
Wallflowers - 6th Avenue Heartache
Michelle Branch - Everywhere
Pink - Trouble
Lenny Kravitz - Fly Away

Yes, it's sad. I used to be hip in high school. I listened to, like, Liz Phair and Blur. Now I am a VH1 whore. Yet another reason the iTunes is so great: it allows you to indulge in musical dorkness in the privacy of your own home.

Privacy is key, as I have been outed before, and it wasn't pretty. My college roommate owned a Phil Collins Greatest Hits CD. (Yes, seriously.) I used to mock her about it all the time, but then one day she came home unexpectedly early and caught me singing into a hairbrush to Against All Odds, and pretty much NEVER LET ME OFF THE HOOK ABOUT IT. And rightly so. I mean, Phil Collins? Jesus.

Still, I did luck out. Just ten minutes earlier I had been butchering In the Air Tonight.

No more waterfalls in my bathroom

Okay, so. To update you from last time, I did play pool with my boss. It was actually very fun and he told me all sorts of nice complimentary things about how well I am doing and how much he appreciates my help, etc etc. When I got home my bathroom was all patched up. Heavy on the patched part. One would think that when repainting a white ceiling, white paint would be the obvious choice, but one would be wrong. Apparently, dark grey paint is the pony to bet on for such a situation. Grrrr.

Then I went upstairs and knocked on PM's CMM's (Poor Man's Chad Michael Murray's) door. It sounded like there was a TV on inside so I knocked a second time really loudly, but no answer. So then I got a little paranoid that he saw me through the peep hole and was avoiding me, because he finds me annoying and/or unattractive, and was just being polite the night before. So I ran back downstairs. But then I started watching Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, which I love, and it gave me the courage to write a little note asking if his house is fixed and thanking him for calling maintenance, and to slip it under his door.

Hours pass...

My phone rang right before I get into bed. (Actually that is a total lie. I had been in bed for ages but am just embarrassed that I go to bed so early. Most people my age are probably just doing their first hit of E for the night when I am getting into bed.) He said he'd just gotten home, and that he was glad my ceiling was fixed, and his faucet was fixed too, blah bling blah. At the end he said something like, "Well, I guess I'll...see you around the building, I hope?" and I said, "Yeah, I hope so too," and then we hung up.

So I am no closer to getting a date. I am at a loss. I hate asking guys out, but my boss thinks that that time has come.