your car can't make up for your awful personality.

I came as close as I ever have to getting hit by a car today.  In a situation like none I had ever seen, as I started to cross the street during the indicated “walking” period, a woman pulled up around the curb, came within inches of running over my feet, leaned over, held out her stupid white woman palm to indicate that no matter what the light said, her rules required that I stop. Had I not been looking over my shoulder, I would have been hit dead-on. The worst part was that I was so shocked by her blatant disregard for my safety, and her complete lack of concern about how to drive a car, that I didn't even yell at her, or gesture clearly enough to the fact that I had a walk sign on my side, or even better, to kick at her car. The woman clearly had no indication of stopping, and probably could not have been bothered to do so even if I had been in the middle of the road when I was legally allowed to do so. It wasn’t so much that this woman hadn’t wanted to stop. It was that she patronizingly held out her hand, with the expectation that I would see it, to indicate that I was no more than a trifling impediment with no respect or understanding for the importance of her time. It wasn’t that I was jaywalking, or attempting to cross when it was illegal, or even crossing just as the light had changed, or that I had darted out in front of her car. I was there first, and I was crossing during the walk symbol. It was simply that she couldn’t be bothered to step on the breaks of her Honda Accord in her hurry to drive straight ahead to the next stoplight, where she would inevitably be stuck for five minutes with only her shitty personality. People like this really make me hate myself. Just the fact that they can exist with so much self-importance and so little regard for the fact that their needs aren’t the most important things to ever happen makes me wonder what happens in their day-to-day lives that allows them to get away with always getting their way. Putting your arm out to stop me from walking across the street while you’re in your little Honda Accord? Really? So, like, not only do you know that what you’re doing sucks, but you’re actually going to blame me for it and act like I’m the asshole? Great, but you know, if you had hit me, you would have broken the law. Asshat. I don't care if you don't volunteer or give your money to charity or have friends, but pull it together long enough to go out in public.

I’m starting to think I could use a boyfriend because my expenses are getting too expensive. Burritos, movie tickets, gigantic sodas at the movies, not to mention the lies about who else is eating the pizzas, sitting next to me at the movies, and meeting me at the restaurant. It is just getting expensive. But for now, I like getting out of the movie and walking to the bus stop and seeing that your car is still parked. I like knowing that no one else’s blond hair is blowing in the breeze, and that at least if I have to be alone, you have to be alone too.

i'm right there with you, girl

...tell you how I miss you
Thought I would have a son for you
But now it’s official it’s over and I can’t let you go
But I gotta let you know all the shit I did make it feel like I’m dying real slow, 
cause no one understands me 
they don’t know what to do when I’m hurt when I’m angry
Cause of you all them chicks couldn't stand me
So why hurt you? That’s the question
It took this long for me to learn my lesson
Cause now all I want is peace and forget drama
I finally understand the true meaning of karma


Please baby forgive me, mommy was young, mommy was to busy tryna have fun 
Now I pat myself on the back for sending you back,
'cause God knows I was better than that, to conceive and then leave you 
the concept alone seems evil - I’m trapped in my conscience
I adhear to the nonsense, listened to people who told me I wasn’t ready for you
But how the fuck would they know what I was ready to do?

gettin' counted

I just filled out the census! By myself! It was really easy and actually took less than a minute to do! I feel so grown up, especially since filling out the census is apparently a very difficult thing that most people don’t do. But now I am pretty much eating Girl Scout cookies for dinner, so once again, we are at an impasse.

Seriously about the census, though, I was expecting it to be quite difficult, like more intellectually taxing than it was, because there is so much emphasis on how important it is to fill out the entire census on time and return your responses and make sure everyone is counted! I was expecting it was going to be a rather tedious process that would take hours. No. It took literally forty-five seconds. I understand I’m a household of one, but please. They only give you space for twelve people. The maximum time this could take is twelve minutes! Is it seriously possible to be unsure about the race of the people living in a house with you? I think not.

There are also many reminders on the census envelope that my responses are confidential, so I was assuming they’d ask some juicy questions, like what race of people I prefer to sleep with or if I’ve ever been pregnant or something. Nope. None of that. The only question that could possibly be seen as a little embarrassing is one about Person 1 predominantly staying somewhere else. If I was currently hooking up with an ugly dude, and I had to fill out a write-in section of this question, and the census counters and I all went to the same college, and we were sitting around counting the census together, I guess my response to this question could be embarrassing, and I’d want the census counter to keep it confidential. But seriously, please, the census? What’s the big deal? I don’t get it. You could probably make it up and still get it right. I should fill in imaginary information about my household so they stop closing schools and fire departments in this neighborhood, and maybe give me a new bus stop. But I won’t, because that is also emphasized as very illegal. 

Errbody knows it ain’t trickin if you got it

It’s just that every time I sit down to consciously start writing, I start thinking about how Julia Allison is probably sitting down to start liveblogging pictures of herself dressed as an upside down cupcake, and thousands of little girls with access to MacBook Photo Booths are concurrently contorting themselves into poses that only make you think of their fathers, and dashing off tumblr posts about Edward Cullen that not only misuse both forms of “you’re,” but also elucidate on the sexiness of physically controlling “romantic” behavior.  And then I remember that at the same time, Sarah Palin is tucking in to pen another incoherent page of her next memoir filled with gems about what being an American has to do with hunting, and Lauren Conrad is dictating the vapidity of Reality TV to a well-paid ghostwriter in order to put the bowels of the television world into writing, and Sue Grafton and Dan Brown are whipping out their mini laptops spewing forth the stuff of a new generation of Airport novels.

It’s like, there’s just too much.

The computer has done more to fuel the aspirations of people who would never have passed the writing section of the SAT than probably even the Tea Party Movement.

not even fake life is fair.

The times when I'm funny are times when I'm overcaffinated, slightly tipsy, at a tragic bar with my friends, or just about to fall asleep, usually after some mix of the first three. None of these times ever seem to beautifully coincide with times when I'm feeling bloggish.

if you're vaguely attracted to rooftops...

I hate doing laundry at my apartment. In college, there were a small enough percentage of us doing laundry in our dorm that we could generally guess at whose laundry we were callously shoveling out of the occupied drier of our choice, and either feel bad about it, possibly leave a sufficiently apologetic note, or chuckle as we sprinkled their neon sex thongs on the floor. Or we could alleviate the stress of literally airing our dirty laundry by doing laundry as a group, jamming up the available appliances while hoisting ourselves onto the driers and splitting six-packs. We also shared minimally similar ideas about what passed as acceptable underwear, and even if our underwear didn’t fit in, we accepted a strong enough social hierarchy to realize that this was some sort of failing on our part, and not on the part of others who owned things like clean undergarments, exercise clothes, and things in size small. In my new grown up apartment, it’s not like that. I feel uncomfortable putting my unmentionables in a place where they remain vulnerable to be seen by people whose general cleanliness habits remain a mystery to me. Not only do I want to keep these people as far away from any kind of situation in which they might feel prompted to touch my underwear, I’d also really like to prevent them from thinking about whether or not I wear it at all. I want the whole thing to just stay off their radar, much in the way that I have no need for my grandparents to understand what exactly a NuvaRing does.

was it love or fear of the cold?

Whenever I'm forced to live through excessive amounts of snow, I'm left wanting only comfort: comfort food (, comfortable clothes (sweater tights and flannel), comforting drinks (whiskey/tea or whiskey/coffee - it's actually good!), comfort music (Bon Iver), and comforting places. Comforting places, for me, this year, is becoming a little more difficult. As I've mentioned a multitude of times, I went to college at a small liberal arts college in northern (okay, it's what I consider northern - I suppose it's actually central/east) Wisconsin, where it would snow sometimes five days out of the week (this was probably related more to the outrageous weather pattern of the last three years), the sun set routinely at four o'clock, and there was no major body of water to cut the wind chill or add moisture to the snow and air. We were, however, blessed with a campus bar in the basement of our old student union that opened at four on Wednesdays and Fridays, and a cafeteria that had seemingly missed the memo about margerine and other healthy eating options. At first I resented the location - being from southern Wisconsin, the weather hardly seemed novel, like it did to friends from other parts of the country. Eventually, the kitschy, somewhat antiquated comforts of a northern midwestern community that my university could provide turned out to provide the backdrop for some of my most treasured memories from college.


Last winter, I took a class called "Zymurgy," which meant "Beer Tutorial," which meant we got to drink beer in the bar before it opened with professors, and then we got to talk about the beer. The beauty of the class revolved around drinking delicious, expensive, imported beer, talking about it with importance, and doing all this with professors. The class was held from three to five on Thursday, which meant we were sitting underground in front of sheets of glass windows as the sun was folding behind the river for the evening. We all seemed to dress like eskimos, so we sat bundled in our sweaters and scarves and corduroy pants, gradually peeling off layers as we filled our glasses with the contents of multiple pitchers and watched day turn to night. The time spent in this class is my ideal version of a "snow day," so much so that it is difficult to struggle through snowy afternoons at work without wondering how much more fun I would be having, were I sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench, surrounded by fourteen peers, three professors, and as many pitchers of Belgian beer, grasping a mug imprinted with my initials, dutifully taking notes in our beer journals, drinking away the outdoor chill with every sip.

most of y'all can't even eat without per diem

Here are some things I just did at work:

Sent four individual calendar invites to my boss - two were the times of her flights, two were the times she had to leave for the airport. She did not tell me these times, but sent me the link to her flight reservation and asked me to send invites for the four events. Because she was dissatisfied with the times I'd picked for her to leave the airport, she resent the invites to me so I could fix them, send them back to her, and have her resend them to me and fix them again.

Read aloud all the settings listed under my printer settings so my boss could copy them into her computer and hook her computer up to my printer.

Crawled on the floor to find some sort of number for my computer so that some tech support person could hook up her computer to my computer (I think? I guess? I don't know why I had to do this). After finding the number, they doubted that I'd read them the right one, so they came over to look. I was right.

I'm not complaining, it just seems like in an economy like this, more people should have the opportunity to have positions like this, that are actually completely unnecessary in every way. Seriously? What?

snOMG

Things I wish I were doing during Snowpocalypse 2010:

• Wearing french terry sweatpants
• Watching back-to-back Bravo programming
• Multi-tasking: making coffee and putting liqueur in it while watching Bravo
• Googling jobs in LA and also resort wear
• Finding every way possible to avoid having to wear UGGs in public

Here are some things I don't really wish to be doing: 

• Walking from my office to the bus stop and then waiting (downwind) for it to be 10-15 minutes delayed.
• This is more theoretical, but still: I rarely see people I find attractive in Milwaukee at all, much less on the bus or in bars, which are like the only two places I ever spend any time. Recently, I've noticed that the only days that I have actually spotted reasonably attractive men my age on the bus are also the same days that I'm wearing UGG boots (and also, glaring because that's what I do when it snows). This seems generally unfair, especially because in Appleton, UGGs weren't even seen as a necessary evil. They were revered as a style item. The adjustment is brutal, especially in a blizzard.

 I also have a job application to finish up, so that hopefully next year I can help kids get into college instead of help my boss fill out her expense reports and serve water to her. I could be sitting at home in my previously mentioned terry cloth and flannel ensemble, crafting a tear-jerking masterpiece, but no, I'm sitting at my desk looking busy, because of course my boss didn't come in today (but sees fit to send numerous emails about how people are "overreacting" to the blizzard). No hate, just UGH. SNO- frustrating. (Sorry for that).