These important life lessons sponsored by MS Word bullets

• Don't leave your apartment at 8:53 am with only a screwdriver and your new license plates.

• When leaving said apartment, try to wear something other than yoga pants and a white tee shirt. Like a bra and underwear.

• When you realize you've locked yourself out and have only a car key, don't berate yourself for not washing your face or brushing your teeth before exposing yourself to the daylight.

• Stay calm. You have given spare keys out to 5 friends for this very purpose.

• Don't panic when you realize that none of these friends is home. Or that you have no phone. Or money. Or underwear.

• Try not to worry about looking homeless as you scour the streets of DC for change. It is enough that you know you have steady employment.

• Don't abuse your steering wheel as it dawns on you first that pay phones no longer exist, and next that you are too gross in appearance to stop at the fire station for help, where all the brothers are lined up out front to greet the Pope.

• When you do locate a pay phone 30 minutes later, don't curse technological advances as you realize you only know one phone number by heart: your mother's.

• While trying to figure out how to make a collect call and conceal your nipples at the same time, ignore the haggard man playing with your tires. He's only interested because you parked half of your car on the sidewalk.

• When your mother doesn't pick up two collect calls, avoid calling her names under your breath lest she pick up on the third.

• While driving to another state to retrieve your spare keys, wash your face with a hand wipe and pull the screwdriver through your hair in the hope that your mother will recognize you at rendez vous point.

• While waiting for mother at marina, ignore frowning woman on cell phone placing a call while watching you change "your" license plates. Yes, you look like a criminal.

• 60 minutes later, when your mother arrives with money, insurance card, and Diet Coke in hand, suppress every urge to jump on her back and hug her tightly. You know full well she'll feel your commando breasts and take the Diet Coke back.

Kris: the other bright meat

I'm tired of living the anti-healthy lifestyle. For all intents and purposes, my picture should be on the FDA Web page devoted to How Not to Treat What God Gave Ya, the one that would pair me with some uberradiant Kris antithesis like Ashley Judd or Denise Austin. She'd be demonstrating how to make popsicles with orange juice and an ice cube tray, and I'd be drinking vodka and Crystal Light while making Velveeta nachos with a Baked Lays base. This is really no way to live long term, and I'm sick and tired of all of it. Literally.

The advice I got about the high blood pressure was infuriating - I don't think there was a thing on the checklist that I was doing right. Multivitamin? Minimal alcohol use? Sleeping well and someplace other than your couch? Eating a low sodium diet that isn't 2/3 dependent on meals that can be ordered by number? It doesn't get better. Regular exercise beyond trimming your cats' nails? Maintaining an ideal body weight? Getting a physical more than once before the cicadas hatch? Here's where I started to hear the crickets. When you're doing most everything wrong it's hard to know where to start. It's overwhelming, to say the least, a little like thinking you're getting a new chandelier hung and finding the whole house has to be rewired.

So I began in the kitchen, and with the wine rack, specifically. Like most people, drinking is my stepping stone to more harmful pursuits, in my case, seven 100 calorie packs of orange hexagons, Marlboro Lights, and innumerable wedges of Laughing Cow cheese. When I'm home most everything I eat is packaged and made by trolls in the Kingdom of Low Fat, which would be fine if I ate them in moderation or with a side of anything green or grown outside the Kraft Foods test kitchen.

I should reveal that I'm a food blog lover, if only for the pretty pictures, and dreams that someday I will put to good use all the Calphalon I've amassed. These cooks are amazing. I envy their ability to stroll through farmer's markets, picking and plucking the freshest there is. I imagine them piecing together a novel meal with each item they buy, knowing just how their full spice rack will play into the equation, thinking in exact amounts what they have to work with at home in their pantries. It must be near orgasmic to know how to craft from scratch. To recognize the difference cardamom will make in a dish. To know why racks of lamb long their entire lives to wear little hats on their deathbeds.

So I set out this weekend if not to imitate to improve. I had only two drinks in four days. And it's amazing just how much extra time you have when you aren't out drinking! You can unpack your suitcase from your November trip! And throw out canned goods than expired in 2006! And grocery shop! Armed with a large fountain soda and a commitment to avoid the frozen food aisles, I hit the Safeway. I picked up a beautiful pork tenderloin, bread and cheese, fresh pasta, a foundation well within my comfort zone. Strategically, as in I had no earthly idea what to do with them just as with infants when they cry, I saved the greenstuffs for last. I won't call it panic that I felt while approaching the produce section, as I reserve that emotion for moments when someone first sees me naked, but I was overwhelmed. So I went for the old friends first: cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce. Wow, Kris, I berated myself, you buying for the Roy Rogers Fixins Bar? In my shame, I forced myself to bag a pound of fresh green beans and some red potatoes, and then blamed my beeline to the register not on those frightening artichokes but on running out of fountain soda.

What followed is a clear indication as to just how much a woman of 34 years can miss out on in a lifetime. When I got home, I opened my catch of green beans, and rather than whirring up a joyous flurry of pans and spices and real, live butter, I simply stared at them. What the hell was I supposed to do with them now? Was I supposed to boil them, broil them, stick them in the cavity of a turkey? So I did what any self-respecting blogger would do: I Googled it. And with the help of the genius that is the Interwebs, I found videos on snapping the ends off of beans like your grammy used to on her back porch, on cooking them to perfection. And every moment of the process was joyous. With wild abandon I broke their little green necks and feet. Then I boiled them like bunnies and plucked them out before sogginess set in. I even timed them to be plated with their red potato bed mates! And they were beautiful, and perfectly done, and tasted luscious with a little bit of butter and cracked pepper. And the moment of triumph was all I imagined for those online foodies, a glorious mix of excess serotonin and a pride not felt since my last spelling bee. And not a morsel of it lessened when I realized the pork wouldn't be done for another half hour.

Reason #1,040

The totality of my Target purchases from last night, which I’m sure were not lost on the adorable single guy in front of me in line:

No fewer than four Weight Watchers meals, of completely limited variety, which of course reveal my affinity for romantic fireside dinners.

A bright blue vat of cat food. Which of course reveals my affinity for impromptu fireside coitus. Stopped mid-motion to remove stray cat hair from his mouth.

Cheap face cream + an alphabetic combination lock = I’m old enough to 1) worry about becoming a leather bag and 2) forget simple number codes. Crying shame that “early onset dementia” is more than four letters.

A three-pack of ankle socks, which I will wear while watching the director’s cut of the Joy Luck Club. Right after I’m done with Hope Floats.

Men’s deodorant, because occasionally a woman does need something strong enough for an indentured servant.

Also note the coupon in the far right, good for $1 off a Kraft cheese product of my choosing. Because hot is a stray squirt of pressurized cheese landing on your three-legged cat.

Come get me, boys.

Samantha . . . who?

I intended to live blog the Golden Globes tonight, but then those writer types whah whah whah-ed all the way home and it wasn’t to be. I’m left watching the Access Hollywood talent fill time with excessively-Lubridermed legs that may or may not glow in the dark and really, really wide ties. Three hours of this and I might cry or break down and agree to have your babies.

It’s sad, but as much as I’m a whore for awards shows, there really wasn’t anyone I was excited to see this year. I need a new star. The starlets of my youth have gone the way of the Honda Odyssey: Julia Roberts seems to be jonesing to squeeze out a full litter and even Halle Berry bought herself a one-way ticket on the soccer mom train. I ache that the days of screwing bad boys like Keifer have been replaced with Costco packs of Sunny D. Nor do I want to make out with the Indie chicks, mostly because of a fear of patchouli well earned in college, so Keira Knightly and most anything British and twentysomething are out of the question. As is anything that’s touched the genitals of Tom Cruise.

The really young ones are just really irritating, as is their collective appetite for destruction. Britney is more than a train wreck, and instead is a woman approaching that Sioux City, Iowa plane crash I should never have read about in Time. If she stays on her current path, in but a few short months there will be absolutely no venti Starbucks foam for her cleaning crew to suction from the sidewalk. All that will remain are some ill-advised West Hollywood extensions and her sister’s 12 minutes of boiled peanuts fame. Hardly a legacy. Ms. Lohan? No different. Nor is the newly-delinquent Ms. Barton. Each of these girls is in a race to meet her demise a la Mama Cass, albeit at the hands of a Taco Bell chalupa rather than a ham sandwich. No sour cream, of course.

I’ve got my eyes on the even younger ones, the Raven Simones and the saccharine Hannah Montanas. One of you has got to have what it takes for engaging stardom, the stuff Madonna was made of when she wiped 80% of her bare skin on that 1984 MTV Music Awards stage. There must be a bona fide bad ass out there, a Russell Crowe or a Johnny Depp who is just greasy enough, but just expensively product'd enough that you’d think of allowing him into your bed.

And I’ve already loved the belles of the ball. Reese, we almost had something special, something lovely, before everyone else thought you had talent. You were Dido’s “Thank You” to me, a beautiful melody that was mine and only mine in the days of Marky Mark and Fear, before the mainstream found you and tainted everything by paying you what you were worth. We are so over.

But maybe just as it was with leggings, but ridiculously more successful and attractive on more than the anorectic, old will be new again. Hello, David Duchovny. Congrats on your big, shiny golden globe. How ‘bout I show you something from my X Files?

It might just be best to go to bed. Maybe until the Oscars.

It's been five months.

Dress from Target for work holiday party: $52. Control top pantyhose to suck in muffin top: $5.25. Finding dressy black shrug in suitcase still packed from BlogHer: priceless.

Further evidence that the hairballs may have reached my brain

There’s no lying on this site. You know this, right? Well, this morning I saw the divine image of Madonna on my shower door. I don’t know how it happened, but the water droplets cleared the path for a gorgeous and clear head-to-toe glass image, gentle curves and all. With dollar signs in my eyes, I entertained removing the door and selling it on eBay. As in removing it from its track while naked and shooing the cats with boobs flailing and preserving the area with God knows what I could Maguyver from the kitchen. After all, didn’t some dunce pay like $10,000 for a pancake that resembled the Virgin Mary? Only after a minute or two did I realize the going price probably wouldn’t be as high for an image of Madonna from her Material Girl years. Sad all around when you really think about it.

Batshit 2.0

I have officially lost it. Recent stressors (Dad was in the ICU. Hi!) have pushed me over the edge. That’s not entirely accurate. Methinks I put on my best running shoes, beat the starting gun, and leapt with all my might right over the border into Batshitdom, as evidenced by a series of eruptive public scenes, including the following.

I was driving behind a car that was not just going cautiously slow, but more dead man walking slow. Apparently making a phone call interferes with the leg functioning of some drivers, particularly the extremity used to press on the gas pedal. I couldn’t move to get around her, and instead was stuck behind the car for multiple meters that seemed more like miles.

Jesus Saves! her bumper sticker read.

I leaned my head out the window. “Jesus Saves!” I yelled. “And Jesus wants you to get off your motherfucking cell phone!”

I still don’t know if I said it out loud.

Yet again it's official. I'm not a real woman.

On the way to work, I passed a man and a woman with a bubbly baby boy. They were loading up the car as they started their sunny Friday. The giggly baby just did not stop laughing.

"How adorable!" I squealed to no one in particular.

I was talking about the mom's haircut.

Oh (my sweet Lord he’s her) Brother

A viewing of “the Great Pumpkin” or “That’s one Big Ass Punkin’” or whatever it is that the kids call it these days is a little different with a glass of wine. And an appreciation for just how odd it is that I enjoyed at 7 years of age a cartoon that employed polysyllabic words that I still have to Google about kids who clearly suffer from a slew of social maladies.

Naturally, I’m struck by just how much like Lucy I really am, making Linus carry the pumpkin from the patch and then stealing it out of his plump hands. And coyly suggesting the kids “bob for apples,” when you know she meant it as dude code. And fooling that dense Charlie Brown by telling him I’ll hold the football steady when he awkwardly comes to punt it. And topping the debacle off with an SAT word no child would know, like “notarized.” The doctor is in, bitches.*

It’s also clear that Snoopy is the only one of the penciled bunch who gets it. He doesn’t feel the need to stick with these losers, instead pursuing some psychedelic combat scene involving the Red Baron while donning a red pashmina. Let the record show that the World War I Flying Ace complete with Nicole Ritchie goggles is oodles cooler than the sheets with holes cut in them. I’d give those kids rocks too if they showed up in those lame JC Penney white sale costumes.

In the most important scheme of things, it’s clear that Linus is the one you try to get a promise ring from even if he does carry that damn blanket. It might come in handy in the back of his Cabrio. If you’ll allow me, I find him to be very George O’Malley, the befuddled and slightly gay man an Americanized Hugh Grant would play in the HBO version. If Linus thinned out he also might have a little Dawson to him, starring in the Schulz High School production of Damn Yankees while still managing to get laid. Yum.

Ugh, and the others. Mr. Brown is just too middle of the road, don’t you think? As an adult, I picture him religiously coming home from his job at the video store to a Tivod Wheel of Fortune and a Klondike bar. I’m pretty sure Schroeder still smells like Water Babies SPF 45 and shops exclusively at Van Heusen outlets. Sally most definitely ends up getting spiral perms well into the ‘00s and traveling statewide to craft fairs. And Pigpen probably runs for city council and does coke off of strippers’ backs. Or maybe just off of Peppermint Pattie’s.

I apologize for that last mental image. Good grief indeed.





* In all seriousness, I just found out that Linus and Lucy are siblings and not completely viable and chirpy love interests. No Pinot Grigio in the world can erase this horror. It’s probably best that I never had a brother.

Even better than Cats

I ate some of the cats' kibble tonight. Don't judge.

Let me preface this moment of TMI with an acknowledgement that I'm going through some heady stuff right now, some unbloggableness that is neither pleasant nor admittedly of a nature that would actually cause one to taste one's cat food. It has, however, caused me to be unusually on edge and snip-happy. Which led to my grandma-like tirade about the quality of the products I've been purchasing.

Junk just seems to fall apart, unraveling at the seams faster than the first two episodes of this season's Heroes. I feel forced into a corner with everything I buy. On my last trip to the Red Bullseye, I couldn't find one brand of toilet paper that a) came in normal, non steroid-enhanced sheets, and b) was offered for purchase in rolls numbering fewer than six. WHY MUST I BUY SIX? HOW MUCH WASTE CAN I POSSIBLY PRODUCE?!?!? I was lamenting this purchase, and not for the first or even the second time, when my extra-fluffy-for-no-good-GD-reason TP clogged the damn toilet. I cleared it with my Michael Kors plunger. It was the only one they had.

Later in the evening, as I poured the cats' kibbles and bits into a storage container given Cricket's penchant for chewing through its God-given bag, I couldn't help but wonder if my purchasing had again failed me. Maybe I was giving the seven cat legs of the house substandard feed, a combination of toucan bills and marmot feet and (gasp!) fellow feline parts. So before I even thought to read the label, before Google was even a glimmer in my eye, I ate a morsel. And then another. Dry. Brittle. And then I scarfed yet another, because I wanted to remember later just how it tasted. Because I knew I'd blog about it.

Surprisingly, that wasn't the saddest part. That honor is reserved for the fact that, should the phone not have rung, I might have had another. Turns out crow claws are surprisingly tasty.

Another reason I need a vacation and/or to lay off the sauce

Last night, while inspecting the gloriousness of my Target purchases, I checked the back of the liquid hand soap to see how many calories were in it.

Crabby.

I’m intensely irritable, and even moreso than usual, it is not a good look on me. For the past three days, I have been the host to large red and ultimately white welts, some smaller and others bordering on the size of nickels and quarters. Urticaria, the Internet tells me they’re called, what we members of the bourgeoisie refer to as hives, and they’ve been my companions for the weekend. Like most maladies and out-of-town guests, they didn’t arrive at a decent hour, but instead struck in full force at 3:30 Friday morning, ravaging my hands and then feet and then thighs. I didn’t know until that desperate moment just what it would take for me to leave my apartment without a shower. I also didn’t know just how far the closest 24-hour CVS would be from my apartment. Or that my pony-tailed, bespectacled self would not be alone. It’s amazing how many of us buy salves and instant coffee and greeting cards at 4 a.m.

The offenders put themselves on hold for a few gracious hours yesterday, long enough for me to have some Corot Noir in the sunshine as well as Kee Mao, both of which I have since realized only make the relentless bastards more determined. As payback for my rash behaviors, they have since taken over my belly and chest and the backs of both arms. CVS therefore got another $31 of my newly-deposited paycheck earlier this morning, courtesy of frantic purchases of calamine lotion and oatmeal bath packets and enough diet coke to sustain me until the irritants have left the building.

Between scratching frenzies I’ve used my powers of deduction to narrow the allergens down to crab balls consumed on the most recent meet up with the boy. Know that I am a woman who seldom dates and almost never eats shellfish, so I’m pretty sure I should continue to steer clear of both for a while. Given all of the irony and the itching, I’m betting the Universe is trying to tell me something.

prohibition

Sunday was my first day in some time without a cigarette. And that’s a long some time. I’m not sure when I started the everyday thing, but I do know that the vice progressed from a once-a-month “with a glass of wine” indulgence to a regular in-my-car and (gulp) while-at-work routine. Giving into this excess happened right around the time of Bug’s tumor and the start of a new, doomed relationship, both of which made me very anxious, something of which I wasn’t completely aware in that moment.

I didn’t come here to brag about this excellent accomplishment, which is actually quite stellar when you really think about it and stop chewing both your fingernails and the cats’. Instead, I came to gripe about just how frustrating it is to find as you age that each and every one of the things you love is now on the list of prohibited items. Like staying out until 3 am. Like breaking into Dave Grohl’s house and inviting him to be your love slave. And smoking. Have you tried cigarettes? If you haven’t, don’t. Because for the most part, they’re glorious. Smoking feels fantastic and makes you a little giddy despite your odd smell. It goes great with a summer night or a glass of Pinot Grigio or a soft taco from the Bell. Cigarettes taste good. And they feel good. And anyone who says differently is a liar, a big, fat dirty liar like those adults who tell teens that sex just isn’t any fun.

Don’t ask me why, but I stayed in, watching nearly every episode of one of those weight loss reality shows on this beautiful weekend (the humor of that fact not lost on me). And I wanted to jump through the screen every time one of the trainers showed a chunky contestant just how super! artificially-flavored, sugar free gelatin is, and how Mmmmm, it tastes just like Mom’s strawberry shortcake when you open a cup of the stuff, top it with a sassy dollop of Suave styling mousse, some crumbled Wasa bread, and ¾ of a strawberry (leaf)! Because no matter how much those reality-deprived contestants want it to be different, the food in life that tastes really, really damn good, the stuff of Pavlovian responses, is all awful for you. General Tso’s chicken. Supreme pizza. Easy Cheese right off of your finger with a 64-ounce Coca-Cola Classic. Eaten while in the tub.

Nowhere in my life is this phenomenon more pronounced than in the area of rosacea. Yeah, I said it, the condition one aims for second only to syphilis, the skin affliction that leaves me at 33 years of old age with teen acne that has me attending to Oxy commercials and putting on foundation before I exercise. Want to know what's on the list of prohibited goodies for this one? Don'tcha?

Alcohol, especially red wine, beer, bourbon, gin, vodka or champagne.
Sour cream.
Hot baths.
Cheese.
Chocolate.
Soy sauce.
Stress.
The sun. You know the one - the giant orb around which we all rotate?
Humidity.
Anxiety.
Dairy.
Indoor heat.
Heated beverages.
Marinated meats.
Spicy foods, like the beloved vindaloo.
Did I mention the beer?
And the red wine?
And the happiness?

Although there is one beautiful item that made the list, for which I will be eternally grateful:

Exercise.

Time to sit on my ass and eat some Easy Cheese. After all, no one mentioned cheese product specifically.

cutting the grass

I had a minor breakdown last Wednesday afternoon which involved me leaning on two of my wise people for more minutes than my Sprint plan currently allows. The flip out was a dash of circumstantial big bang, a heavy dose of the approaching menses, and a generous helping of the grass being greener. Part of the envy I was feeling came directly from BlogHer, land of the women to your right with the full hair and the one to your left with the book deal and the other dead ahead with disposable income that affords her world travel and that elusive Coach scarf hobo. I also booked a flight to a destination wedding this week, one at which I will spend my 34th birthday, likely celebrating both events alone. I was just a swirl of feeling low and as if my cats and my rented apartment just didn’t cut it. It was a pity party for which I forgot to send out invitations.

Things always look so good from the outside. For all of us. Sometimes I wish I wanted offspring so I didn’t have to get the you-just-sprouted-horns look from each and every person who discovers I’m more interested in funding that Coach purchase than a college education. I had to chuckle while reading friend and woman I taught how to text message Chris’ post earlier today. Apparently having seven children and feeding them properly gets you some strange looks at times, as well. What single woman would have thought it?

One of the aforementioned wise people held a get together at his house last week, a setting he has told me on more than one occasion was designed for entertaining. I made this man, a grown man with intact testicles, tell me each and every detail of the event from the napkins to the cheese selection and the service timing because I was just so damn envious. It oozed from me and I cared not to try to scoop it up before he noticed. Neurotic in his planning as I am, he spent days on details like group-pleasing music and cutting the lawn just so. The lawn I don’t have but I'd love to find bits of under my fingernails. Did I mention him having space for a grill? For a deck? I won’t even get started on having a mailbox. A real-life one from which you can send outgoing mail. Without having to go to the post office.

When Jenny was in town a few weeks ago, I openly expressed my envy of her life, a level that grew with each story she told and, naturally, with each glass of Pinot I poured us. It wasn’t one thing. It was the whole picture, albeit one without the zoom on. Her high-profile job that sounds exciting no matter the day and the apartment she co-owns with a man we’re pretty sure will be her fiancé within months in a city that is completely foreign and therefore all the more intriguing to me. Their nights at home with rented movies made me ache a little. To cuddle on the couch with a man with whom I’m in love? Come on, does it really get better than that?

What floored me was that, on more than one occasion during the weekend, she expressed just how boring she thought her life sounded when comparing it to mine. I paused, incredulous, because as glamorous as we all know having the people at your local Subway know your name and mothering one full-bodied feline and the other amputee cat can be, not to mention your collection of brilliant Suave (and now Bliss!) products being every young woman’s dream, I just hadn’t considered how things might look from my outside. She cited the softball and the bocce and the happy hours and the wine tours and the writing and elusive female friendships. And DC and the dating and the drama and the dining out in all four quadrants and being within driving distance of family. And yes, she even mentioned the cats.

Maybe days like Wednesday would be a little easier if I didn’t spend so much of my time looking at the neighbor's lawn.

I won't even show you what's on the door

In scrutinizing the pictures of myself from BlogHer, I wanted to scream at how chunky I looked, how imperfect each and every angle seemed to be. I don't own Photoshop and given that MS Paint doesn't have a tool to trim ass (and chin) length, I think I'm going to have to take it upon myself to stop eating fries for breakfast (ok, it only happened once at BlogHer, but it was like NOON, people).

Problem is, I hate to grocery shop. HATE. DETEST. LOOOOATHE. The Safeway is a completely unsafe environment for the Kris, stocked with forty types of vinegar when I'm pretty sure we all know humankind needs only one, not to mention the infants and the toddlers and the teen boys with their hands flailing toward my highlights while mommy's back is turned. It's enough to make a woman order in every night. Or just not stock her fridge. Like ever. At all. Like really.

Behold today's confession, folks: my refrigerator.


Now before you freak out and start calling the ugly people who protect cats from their neglectful, wino owners, let me offer that I was indeed out of town for five whole days last week. I wouldn't have wanted anything to rot, particularly this:


Yep, see that clear container of soup on the middle shelf? Well, Grissom, that pretty girl used to be a Panera side salad. A co-worker didn't eat it so I took it home from my company meeting in EARLY JULY. I'm pleased to see that the empty Tupperware to her left decided to keep her company. Wouldn't want her to get lonely in there. And perhaps be attacked by a fifth of a green pepper. Moving on.


I HAVE A JOB. What in God's name would make me think that I couldn't afford to toss the last precious three milliliters of Pinot Grigio from my clearly well-fingerprinted glass? And when did I become an ER doc or mother of triplets or Carrot Top or someone else who might legitimately have a reason to be busy enough to put the IMPALED NIPPLE OF A CUCUMBER in the forefront of the fridge? Um, in such a rush to blog and file down your feet that you didn't have time to remove the slicing implement, Kris?

And doesn't it look like it got stabbed in the damn mouth? Like it was sassing the gang of condiments and one of them done gone and shivved him right in the piehole?

Ok. Kids, let's stop this crazy sexual tension a la Maddie and David. You two have been making blue lips at each other since at least May. Whaddya say you scoot on in closer and get your parfait on? Can't you hear them now, party people? "Yoplait or mine?"

I'll be going now.

big winner

I am so tired right now I could cry. Instead of bawling, which is my usual release for all things stressful, including the purchase of my first car which as you might imagine was very embarrassing for me given the presence of all of those clapping Nissan salesmen, I have become a hefty combination of dry drunkenness and what an ex used to term “inconsolable.” Stacy and I have had a competition going as to which of us can go batshit more quickly this month, and after my serious failure in the Bang Off of 2005, all systems are go for me to leave her in the dust on this one.

My latest ex used to tell me that I at times reached a point at which absolutely nada would make my world right while nothing anyone else did was technically acceptable, either. This is one of the things he may very well have been spot on about, along with the fact that I am much better blonde than even remotely redheaded. In the past few days I have felt like a walking contradiction, a Type A sloth calling people on their neuroses while very deftly maintaining my own, bringing Bug up to my chest and then finding myself irritated by his heat, genuinely wanting space from another and then questioning it when it’s given. I’m like a cranky baby. I wail with the tone reserved for the binky, and when I get the binky, I hurl the damn thing across the room, barely missing the three-legged cat. If you were here you’d check my diaper, because you’d be sure that discomfort must be the root of this evil, this whiny malaise that is a product of little sleep and too much wine and not attending to the things that I know keep me anchored. But you’d find the diaper dry as a bone, and as you’d scratch your head thinking of your next move, I’d clock you in the face for having bothered me. I’m irritating myself just writing this.

Humor is my way to pull through these episodes, the ridiculous ones that occur something like once every season (hey, the ex isn’t here to tell you otherwise). It’s not only the way in which I handle most situations, including Christmas Eve service every five years and my annual pap smear, but it’s a survival mechanism that protects me from the realization, and the distinct possibility, that I am just a paper-width away from two dark shades of crazy.

On the way home from work tonight, a ride during which I was apparently just gutted given the fact that I couldn’t stay in my lane and hear Stacy and listen to Peter Cetera AND smoke a cigarette at the same time, all the while maneuvering around those GD Metrobuses with their asshat, likely-unlicensed drivers (straightens skirt), she and I actually got into a tirade about CourtTV being pillaged by Turner Networks, a move that will involve the introduction of lowest common denominator programming into our pseudo-intellectual weeknight crime obsession. We actually raged.

“I can’t believe they’re changing the network over to a stupid extreme tv channel. Ugh.”

“I know. We’ll be losing all of the meat of it, Stace. The smart stuff like City Confidential.”

“And Noreen!”

“Yes.”

“And Bill Curtis!”

“And Bill Curtis.” I took another drag of my cigarette and tossed an expletive at a slow old woman crossing in front of my car.

“@#$%ers.”

“You said it.”

We took a moment to seethe in our collective silence. I took another drag.

“And by the way, if I have to see one more episode of Most Shocking, my head will motherf#%!ing explode.”

“Not to mention if I have to see another c^$&sucking episode of Cops in some lame ass city like f#@$ing Cincinnati.” I exhaled. “I’ll probably smother you in your G*ddamn sleep at BlogHer.”



Destination: Batshit. I win.

sad in so many ways

I just woke up from a dream in which Charlie Brown's Linus and Boner from Growing Pains broke up. Some might call it a nightmare.

how the student became the teacher (told with some artistic license)

Kris: If you had to describe how boring we really are today, how would you do it?

Stacy: How boring WE are or how boring our jobs are?

Kris: Us. We’re pretty boring today. Neither of us has come up with anything snappy since the Spanish Civil War.

Stacy: Actually, I have an answer. Truthfully, the twitch in my left eye is the most excitement I've had all day. I'm trying to see if there's a pattern to it. Like, onetwothree...onetwo...onetwothree or something.

Kris: Good one. I’m so boring I’m pretty sure those stupid Anne Geddes babies sleeping in a mailbox/pea pod/Celine’s hand would get invited to happy hour before I would. Ok, you next.

Stacy: I'm so boring that even the crickets are annoyed.

Kris: Cornstarch is more flavorful than I am.

Stacy: Jerry Falwell is more entertained right now than I am.

OR

I've hit a flat line flatter than Falwell's.

Kris: Ah, excellent use of a current event reference. I’ll take either. Ok. I’m more lackluster than a Julie Delpy performance.

Stacy: OOOOH, SNAP! They named a new Care Bear after me: Apathy Bear. Or, you know. Whatever, I guess.

Kris: Tee hee hee. Ok. Here’s one: I’m more monotonous than your speaking voice.

Stacy: I'm deader than Lindsay Lohan's career.

Kris: I’m as lifeless as your split ends. (come on, bite . . .)

Stacy: That's not as bad as the fact that I'm more lifeless than your sex life.

Kris: I’m more off than the alignment of your eyes.

(e-pause)

Stacy: Touché, Danielson.

Kris: (catches fly with chopsticks.)

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. – Plato

So when you find out you’ll be a panel speaker at this year’s conference, do you:

a) contemplate which of your incognito wine vessels you’ll sneak into the session, enabling you to sound minimally coherent while droning on about your cats,
b) ponder the location of your unfilled emergency Xanax prescription (yes, I have one that isn’t filled, and no, you may not have it),
c) consider feigning a nonspecific GI ailment so as not to be forced to speak in public, much like you did during the unfortunate name-reading-into-a-microphone caper of Girls’ State 1990?

Maybe BlogHer flasks will be part of this year’s SWAG.

urine trouble

I sass a lot. At least I try. I sass when I walk, I sass when I blog, I sass when I’m three Pinots deep and I’m asking random DC tourists if the man on my arm looks like he really measures 6’2”.

And so it was on Tuesday afternoon, when at noon I sashayed my way down a work lobby hallway, sassing to and fro in a pair of wide-legged black pants that I was sure encapsulated my life as the poor man’s Carrie Bradshaw. But on one step down my self-assured runway, the heel of my right shoe caught in my left pant cuff. And I spiraled, and I slid, and I skated along the shiny tile, eventually and most thankfully catching myself. Others watched in horror.

But none was as horrified as I. Because as I turned and I twirled and I twisted, not all remained intact. For in the split second before I recovered, time stood still and a portion of my life flashed before me (the young part), and truth be told to God and Oprah: I tinkled.

It wasn't a lot, like when you actually stick to Weight Watchers and drink 248 ounces of water each hour. And it wasn't really even a little, like a five year old who shivers poolside like a deer in headlights. I was able to recover and hold my head high and say with varying degrees of certainty that I had not wet myself. But it was enough for me to know it had happened.

And it was enough for me to spend the remainder of the day wondering, sans even a remote element of sass, just how far in my future blue plate specials, sitz baths, and the pursuit of hairy youth cocoons really are .