Night Caffeine

Walk the Line so Carefully

2012-02-29T19:22:00.000-08:00

One day, or gradually, I decided that I did not need to take antidepressants any longer. Part of this was because I felt like through behavioral changes and challenging myself more, I could be better on my own. The other part of this was the fact that I do not have health insurance, and though that is depressing all on its own, I can't really afford to take wah-wah pills no more. I can't even afford to get Xanax for a good time.

The turning point for me was in December when my friend Bernadette came to visit for a few days. Just those few days of being with her, and also holding myself to a real schedule was all it took to put both wheels back on the track again.

But it is days like this when I realize how easily I can be thrown right off that track again and want to descend into the pit of despair.

I am really bummed out right now. I've been looking for work for a while, and things are finally starting to pick up again with the fact that I'm getting interviews more. I've been on 3 in the past week! Today I had what I thought would have been a promising interview. It was so close to home that I could walk there, the job description fit me and my skill set so great. When I sent in my resume, I had high hopes! If the compensation for this job had been listed, I would not have applied at all.

As far as interviews go, it was great, I got along great with both the people I met with, and they were very impressed by my experience. So how you gonna offer a bitch with my expertise $10 measly dollars an hour??? How?? That does not pay anything!

Today was a lousy day. It was rainy and windy and still, I was in high hopes when I walked to this job interview 3 blocks away. Walking home though, I felt so dejected I just wanted to throw myself into a storm drain. I just know they're going to offer me the job, and I don't want it. I'm pretty sure I make better money being unemployed. I'm just so sad. Employers are taking advantage of the fact that there is an abundance of people out there that need jobs and treating them like crap because of this. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've been reassured by people "It's not you, it's this economy" but fuck that shit already. How come the only people currently who seem to want to hire me are not willing to pay me a fair wage? Fuck man.

I'm really depressed and want to just lay in my crabitat indefinitely, however I'm not going to let this derail me. I'm just gonna keep on going and eventually someone has to hire me at the salary I deserve, right?

This won't be any good.

2012-02-28T18:22:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a fuck lot to write about lately. I don't really have a specific funny topic du jour so I'm just going to type a bunch of shit, you're gonna leave a bunch of comments, and we'll figure this blogging time out together, ok? Let's do this.

Today my gaybors saw me topless for the first time. At least I think it was the first time. I needed to take a walk down to the apartment complex office to pick up a package. To do this, I needed to put on clothes, pants and shoes so I don't look like a bum. I was in the bedroom and got on khakis, and a polka-dot bra and figured I'd throw on my boyfriend's hoodie that was in the entryway closet, that is right across from the balcony door-windows that face the apartment across the courtyard from mine. My gaybors love to go out at random times of the day and night and drink coffee or smoke in a bath robe. I figured "what are the odds they will be out right now? who cares." and walked into the living room to go get the hoodie. Well they were BOTH out there, so out of embarrassment, I jumped in the closet and put the hoodie on in there before I took the walk of shame out of a coat closet. Even though they're gay, I'm more embarrassed than if straight guys saw me. They have perfect tiny little gay boy bodies that they clearly work hard on, and I just know they were talking shit about seeing my flabby self throw my topless carcass into a coat closet. I mean, they knew I was in the closet, they have the same exact apartment as mine, only mirror-image. They knew how weird and awkward I was.

Someone is mad at me because I told their ex girlfriend that they were at a strip club. I don't even know why he cares or owes her an explanation or apology since they are broke the fuck up, but if you do things that you don't want other people finding out about it, you have two options: don't do shady shit in the first place, or make sure as shit that I don't find out about it. Angry girl news travels fast, yo. And I wasn't just outright gossiping about this dude's life to his ex... I was more venting to a "friend" (that guy's ex girlfriend) about my man-troubles. She's been flapping her gums about her breakup to me this whole time, you might think that it could be reciprocal, like friends are aught to do. The more I think about it though, the more I feel like she has just been using me as a point of contact to get info about her ex. Well that gravy train has left the station and ain't coming back no more. Time to shut that shit down.

In a related vein, if you ask me for advice or solace, maybe take it. I've been around life for a minute or two and have some experience in love live, relationships, make-ups and break-ups. Take my got damn advice and things might go right for you. Maybe if she would have listened to me in the first place when I said "I think you guys will get back together. Just stop texting and calling him for a while and make him miss you. Let him come to you on his terms." AKA stop annoying the shit out of him since you're broken up. Know what isn't included in my advice? Showing up at dude's house unannounced (two days after I gave the "leave him alone" advice) on a Saturday night trying to talk, texting and calling all the time, still acting like you're in a relationship when YOU. ARE. BROKEN. UP. Not taking dates with dudes because you are still operating on the assumption that you're in a relationship? Crazypants. Broken. Up. Go on with life. It is hard but jeez.

I keep making voice memos in my iPhone but I don't know how to find them. I think I have some good ideas chronicled in there but who knows. Or it could just be a short recording of me singing "Every Rose Has Its Thorn." The world may never know.

I will soon be taking up the craft of pysanky, the art of ornately decorated & dyed eggs. Wish me luck.

My boyfriend and I saw The Secret World of Arrietty and he cried.

Last week I tried to change my hair color from golden blonde to a darker blonde and that's not what happened. Here's my hair now: I put highlights in it after I dyed it blah-brown on accident

That's me without makeup. Yikes.

I can't wait to get some dental insurance and get these damn wisdom teeth out. They hurt like a bitch and I'd also like to try vicodin.

Welp, that's all I got on the brain right now. I bet this post has at least two incidences of pissing off my boyfriend.

Schmalentine's Day

2012-02-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

Hello, friends. I had a nice day yesterday and I hope that you did too. I ate a piece of candy, had a fancy dinner out with my boyfriend and got a pretty card and we held hands and both acknowledged that yes, we do love each other. I did my hair, my makeup and wore something besides yoga pants for a change. Just look at how pretty I can be:

Downside: I always look slightly cross-eyed in iPhone pictures.

Yesterday was the Hallmark-manufactured day of love and romance. And I'm ok with that. Here are the cliche phrases I'm NOT ok with:

1. "I don't need a day forcing me to tell my significant other that I love them. We express our love every day."

First of all, no you don't. You have a normal relationship just like everyone else. You take your happiness for granted, get comfortable and get bored just like everyone else does. Quit acting all high and mighty just because you don't wanna spring for dinner or presents.

2. "This is a stupid made-up holiday just to sell cards."

Then don't buy a card? Maybe if bought or made a card more often for no reason to show to your lovah "hey asshole, I still dig you" there wouldn't NEED to be a holiday to tell you to remind someone you love them besides their birthday or your anniversary. Do something nice.

3. "Flowers die and chocolate makes you fat."

Things don't stay pretty forever. Just look at yourself. Enjoy some flowers for a minute and quit being a Valentine's Grinch about shit. Chocolate makes you fat if you eat it obsessively and in excess like it's your last meal. Have a few pieces and enjoy it. Chocolate is delightful and maligning it on this holiest of holy chocolate days is something I can't tolerate in a person. It's one thing if you don't LIKE chocolate (though I still can't wrap my brain around that), but don't hate on it for having a holiday INVENTED just to sell more of it. When else are you gonna eat a Whitman's sampler? Never, that's when. Now bite all the chocolates all in half and rule out the duds.

Put your bitterness aside and just embrace made-up holidays. I am bitter and jaded by life and things that have happened to me, but you can't fucking hate everything or else YOU WILL HAVE A SAD LIFE. You're single? So what. It's the day after Valentine's day and candy is 50% off. TREAT YO SELF. You got a man and he didn't treat you right on the day of obligation? Say something to him or forget about it. Don't stew on it forever... that won't solve shit in your unhappiness. Got a man and you're happy? Good for you, me too, let's double date.

I am a Carb-in Based Life Form

2012-02-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

Remember how I'm fat? Yeah... I guess I forgot and didn't diet and exercise and I got fatter. So that sucks.

I started the Atkins diet last Wednesday. I need to lose weight STAT, get as much weight off of me by my 30th Birthday in April, and kick my addiction to sweets. These reasons made me choose this diet. I've had success on it before. I can't be trusted with Weight Watchers at this point in my life because I will eat garbage food. I like bad food! Goddamn do I like candy, cake and I like fast food. I'm the only asshole who likes fast food, even though I feel like I ate a ball of diarrhea wrapped in concrete afterwards.

6 Days in and I'm down 10 pounds. Suck it, fat! I'm not going to lie and say it's been the easiest thing. I'm a fucking sugar addict and went through detox the first three days. If that's just what happens from SUGAR it makes me never want to try crack or heroin, even though they will undoubtedly make me super skinny, right? At the end of the first day, I laid down in bed kind of early for myself. I didn't even have the TV on, or the lights out. I just laid there on my side looking sad. My boyfriend came in and asked me what was wrong and I just said I don't know... I feel sad all over. I was mourning my carbs.

Day two, I had no energy. I literally laid around all day long and accomplished nothing besides feeding and watering myself. I would have normally quit, but I realized that I had to make a choice: either eat what I want forever and be fat and only happy in small bursts like when I have candy, or suck it up and change my eating habits and lose weight to finally be happier with myself and feel better in the long run. I'm gonna be goddamn 30 years old, I've had too many years of hating myself because of my weight. And I'm not just going to accept myself the way I am, because the way I am does NOT make me feel good. The way I am will put me on the track to getting diabetes in years to come, having joint problems, and who knows, I could die young. Lord knows my Dad was way too young to die, and his health problems were 100% preventable. I'm not dying at fucking 42 like he did. Know what else I don't wanna be? One of those fat Americans that is going to be the norm, scooting around on a Rascal because they're just too much of a fat globule to even bother to walk. Not me, fuckers.

Anyways, that got kind of deep there. Day three came and I had more energy, less depression but I wanted to fight someone. My asshole neighbor though, who I've told before on two different occasions to turn down his gat damn rap music had it pumping yet again. I had to go over to the main office to pick up a package, and I said to myself while walking there that if I was the only person they were helping in the office, I'd lodge a real complaint. If someone else was there, I wouldn't bother them. Since someone else walked in the door at the same time as me, that was my sign. At home though, I didn't want to have another confrontation with this guy... I just had a bad feeling about it, so I left a note on their door.

If I have to ask you one more time to turn down your music, I am taking my complaints to management instead of dealing with you.

Succinct and not that bitchy, yes? It gets better. The people who live there... I've seen a woman, a child, and the person who answers the door the two times that I've asked to turn it down is a man, in the middle of the afternoon. After I heard the music stop, and their door open and him leave, I looked out the window to see which car he got into. I then noticed his car did NOT have a resident parking sticker. Maybe he doesn't even live here and just squats at his baby-mama's house during the afternoons? I don't know. Maybe though I'll talk to the woman of the house one day and let her know what her man's up to and that he could be compromising her continued habitation in this apartment complex.

My next line of action will be to forge a letter on my complex's letterhead telling them to cut the shit, that the next offense will result in a fine, and the one after that will end in eviction. Who knows if I'm kidding about that. Maybe not so extreme, but it seems like a good idea, forgery and all.

What I'm trying to say is that not having carbs gives me a chance to focus on what is important in life: formulating elaborate revenge plans.

American Domesticated Shorthair Nadine

2012-01-30T18:16:00.000-08:00

This past week has been full of things to improve the home. It's really boring to normal people, but I spend a lot of time at home and I like it to be clean and look really pretty. I really like where we live! Now it's getting even better. Here are some improvements that have happened lately.

1. TV in the Bedroom

Since we moved into this place in June we have only had cable in the living room. Then Mike's mom bought a big ass new TV for her living room and gave us her old one so we put it in the bedroom. I pouted "what's the use, we don't have cable or even a DVD player in there." And boom, Mike called the cable company and the guy put TV in there for me. I love it because I can watch shit in bed. For a full week after getting cable in the bedroom, I made that room my new damn office. I took calls, ate meals, took naps, internetted, wrote for my book, entertained gentelman callers and all the rest. I fall asleep so much easier with the TV on in the dark.

First movie from bed: Due Date

2. Trip to Christmas Tree Shops!

Do you know what Christmas Tree Shops is? If you don't know, and you just heard the name of it, you would likely assume that it is a store that specializes in holiday decor, right? You might have passed it and said aloud, much like my good friend Foley did "Gee, I don't know how they stay in business all year round." You'd be wrong. Christmas Tree Shops is like Home Goods, but better. It also has a Harmon Face Values section in it, there's some grocery food novelty items, and just a lot of neat home decor items and knick-knacks for cheap. Even better is that you can use your Bed Bath & Beyond coupons there! Yeah buddy! I got a gift card to that store from Mike's mom because she is really awesome and shares the same interests in home decor that I do. I had a coupon for $10 off of $50. I also had $45 worth of "house money" which is what the change jar collects, so long as Jaclyn doesn't steal it. She tries to steal our change jar every time she comes to my house. I got down to business. I went there on an afternoon so I could just wander around by myself with no Mike for as long as I wanted and not be rushed along. It was great... except for 2 things. 1. I had the farts and I was just farting along in every aisle of the store. 2. Shopping-followers. You ever have that thing happen where you seem to be parallel shopping with another person? They're shopping at exactly the same pace as you are and essentially following you around the store and being all in your way in a very annoying manner? You'd think with all my store-farting that I wouldn't have someone following me. Anyways, here's my haul:

10 Picture Frames
1 iron plant stand
1 fake fern (I will kill every plant)
2 decorative plates with plate stands

The cart is full... do I get another one?

Decorative plates arranged nicely on top of my cabinets.

3. Carpet Shampooer Machine

What is it with apartments and beige carpet? It will always look like you just upholstered all your floors in rags that you rinsed diarrhea off of. I have a cat, sometimes he throws up, and then I clean it up but then the carpet will eventually still look shitty no matter how well I clean it up. I use an ottoman by the couch constantly, and my scooting it back and forth to get up has left that area of the carpet dingy. Mike has a bunch of allergies, and we like our stuff to look nice. We ordered this bad mamma jamma: Hoover Super Carpet Filth Sucker Washer. It did a really good job. I moved all the furniture all by myself, I shampooed the carpet, and I like that it has a "rinse" feature so I can go over it after I use the cleaner. It also dried really fast which surprised me. It's got that super suction.

4. Floor Merkin

You know that spot on the carpet I mentioned about me moving the ottoman back and forth? It's been wearing it down to the underground. I don't want us to lose our security deposit for whenever we move someday, so I figured we should get an area rug for the living room. I had the bright idea to go to Ikea one night after Mike got home from work. We could have meatballs for dinner, buy an area rug and then go grocery shopping after that. When we got there though it was 8PM and they closed the cafe. So we were hungry and cranky and arguing over rugs. Good times. In the end though, we picked a nice merkin for our living room.

5. New Coffee Grinder

The other morning I was putting coffee beans into my coffee grinder and literally was thinking "I've had this thing for a few years and have not had to replace it and it still works very well. I take good care of my things!" Then when I went to unscrew the cap to put the ground coffee in a filter, I dropped it, spilled my only ground coffee all over the floor and broke it. Way to go, idiot, don't ever think about how good you do at something, such as taking care of your belongings, because you will fail at everything. The next step was figuring out how to grind coffee in my house without a grinder, so I put all the beans I had into the blender and did that, just in case I couldn't get to buy a new grinder soon. Mike and I went the very next day to Bed Bath & Beyond for a new grindey mc jigger and it works great and looks nicer than my old one.

Coffee Grinder of Broken Dreams

6. New Objects to rest our Hineys

The sofa and chair we have in the living room has served its purpose well but now it is too worn out to love. The sofabed part of it is falling apart at the seams, and everything is just so sunken in that it's hard to get out of it, and hard to get comfortable. Mike decided that we'd get a new living room set in the new year, and last week we went to the furniture store "just to look." It was my idea to look so we can start getting an idea of what we want. It was Mike's idea to buy right on the spot when we found a set we liked and it was 50% off. Sold! It will arrive in 4-8 weeks and then my butt will have a new home in the living room. In the furniture store, I farted on like 5 different couches.

The couch & chair in the sienna brown, pillows and ottoman in the print.

7. Why am I Even Doing This?

I had an idea last week that one of these days I was going to reorganize all the kitchen cabinets for maximum efficiency. Last night after we had gotten home from a strange day of mattress shopping with another dude (Mike's friend getting a new bed) I just started taking everything out of the cabinets like a zombie and moving things around. It was a pain in the ass but I think it's better organized. I know that it will be a while before I really remember that I moved everything around. I was so confused this morning when my half-asleep self opened the cabinet that formerly held coffee mugs and was greeted instead by soup and pasta. I just stared at it for a full minute trying to understand what happened to my stuff. I should have just put a coffee mug out the night before, I'm too old for this shit.

8. WHEN WILL THIS LIST END OH GOD WHY

After I reorganized all the cabinets, I made a backsplash for the wall behind the stove and by the counter with the coffee maker. It gets all shitted up way too easily and doesn't wipe clean and I hate seeing spots on the wall. I see enough spots just having floaters in my eyeballs. So I got a bunch of cool patterned placemats from WalMart last night and I used velcro and some tacks and double stick tape and it looks really good. I don't have a picture of that yet though. I was so tired at the end of it... I don't know why I keep doing things like this late at night.

Tomorrow, a repairman is coming to fix the stove since the oven gives me an error message when it gets too hot. Someone was by last week and fixed the smoke alarm so I haven't had to behead anyone with a wicked katana blade or anything. I'm busy making a nice little crabitat over here.

Tables Ladders and Chairs Fight

2012-01-22T18:30:00.000-08:00

Last Monday, I'd placed a maintenance request with the front office of my apartment complex due to the smoke alarm in the bedroom beeping once a minute for an indeterminate amount of time in the night. I would have just removed it from the wall or removed the battery, if it was just that simple. First of all, how do people in apartments reach shit on the ceiling? I don't have the means to store a ladder here! I have a step ladder that gets me about 2 feet off the ground. That's it. When I was putting up decorative bead garland around the chandelier in the dining room, I stood on the dining table to get up that high. I also did that unsupervised when no one was home and used a meat fork to get to the highest part that I still couldn't reach.

Good idea to use near wires.

Last night, about 3:30, the beeping started again. I put in earplugs but still couldn't drown out the high-pitched beep-a-minute. I stormed out into the living room and glared at Mike and said "DO YOU HEAR THAT???" Now remember, it beeps once every sixty seconds, and I'm just pointing vaguely up in the air and there is no sound. I'm sure I look insane. Then I said "It's the beeping, give it a minute" so he didn't think I just woke up from some odd nightmare that I was convinced was real. At this point, I decided enough was enough. Hardwired or not, I was going to DO SOMETHING about this!

I don't have a ladder to get me high enough though so I had to think... I can't drag the dining room table in, that's too big. But I could drag in the kitchen dining nook table! That would be just right! I could use the step stool to get onto the table and then take care of business.

Also worthy to note that I built this set myself with real tools.

As I'm in my pajamas with my hair all crazy, dragging a kitchen table into the bedroom at 3:30 AM, I felt a kinship to every Polish wonder in my family from my ancestors all the way to me. Suddenly there was this lightning bond to my dead grandfather that I never knew well, as I was about to mount a kitchen table in my bedroom, I couldn't not think of the story of him throwing a hammer through a brand new television in a fit of rage because the damn thing didn't work. They often don't work when you don't plug them in, is how the story goes. Michael is following behind me because I told him "I'm gonna need a spotter." He's trying to persuade me not to do this, by EVER SO POLITELY saying "I don't know if that table is sturdy enough to hold you." Back the fuck up. I'm in a craze in the middle of the night dragging around furniture, and questioning my weight vs. a table is your bright idea to dissuade me from the task at hand? NO SIR, I DON'T LIKE IT. My answer though was "I built this table myself, I know it is sturdy."

Right about now I bet you're thinking this story is going in the direction of me standing on the table and it collapsing under my fat ass. If that is what you thought, fuck you, because it didn't happen. I'm not that fat and I pride myself upon my quality furniture workmanship.

Right before going to get up on the table, I figure I should take off my socks, so I don't slip. Safety first. So there I am, standing upon the table, investigating this beeping monster. I twist it from the wall, and it hangs down from the ceiling by some red wires and some black wires. I'm living my fantasy of dismantling a bomb right in my own bedroom. I did this in our last apartment when the smoke detector was misfiring, standing on the dresser for height. It had been an easy enough operation of just disconnecting the wires from the detector, much like taking out a USB cord or internet cable of some sort. This time though, it wouldn't budge. I couldn't get it. I stood on that table and fucked with it for a couple minutes with no luck. Then I noticed it just stopped beeping. That was this thing's M.O.; it would beep for a random amount of time, ONLY DURING THE NIGHT, and then just stop. So this time it beeped for about 20 minutes and then it was done so I just screwed it back into the ceiling. I put the table back into the kitchen, wiped my footprints off the tabletop and laid back down in bed.

I did not have a chance to fall back asleep. Mike had started snoring, my blood pressure and anger levels were through the roof. And at roughly 4:30 it started again. The beeping. This is when I just decided sleep was not happening anymore and I'd better just do some other shit. I cleaned up the rest of the house. I made myself some breakfast and watched some Ancient Aliens on the DVR. The beeping stopped at 7:30. I fell asleep around 9 AM for an hour or two. The night time activities made me irritable for the whole day. I was looking to pick a fight at Target.

After Mike and I ran some errands today and returned home, I declared that I was not going to stand for this shit anymore and that fucking beeping hell machine was coming off the wall one way or another. I gathered my materials: the step stool, the kitchen table and a long flat-head screwdriver. Mike called me a hard-headed Pollack, but I didn't care. You know why? BECAUSE IT WORKED. I used the screwdriver to pry back this little plastic tab and that freed the wires from the hell machine. I saw that it was still flashing its test light, so I knew there was a battery in there somewhere. After jiggling it around a little bit, a magic door opened with a 9 volt, and I took it out and declared victory. Feeling smug, I walked away towards the bathroom to wash up, and then.... THEN....

THEN....

IT BEEPED.

I whipped around and said loudly at a seemingly inanimate object "OH NO YOU FUCKING DID NOT JUST DO THAT." I was immediately reminded of that episode of The Twilight Zone where the dad took the batteries out of the stupid Talking Tina doll that he'd thrown away, and it'd returned, and it spoke from the garbage can "I'm Talking Tina, and I'm going to kill you!" I was just about to go get the hammer and smash it to death when it beeped three dying beep sounds and then it was over. I win... for now.

But so help me lord in heaven if that thing makes one more noise, I am putting on my shoes and jacket, taking it over to the main office, and though they are closed till 9AM tomorrow, I will just push that thing through the rent-drop mail slot in the main entrance.

Legions of Doom

2012-01-20T10:10:00.000-08:00

In case you don't cross-reference different blogs on the internet, you might not know that Jaclyn has lesions on her brain. So far, the doctors do not know why, but she could possibly have Multiple Sclerosis. There have been other possible illnesses that have been ruled out, such as brain herpes and Lyme's disease. In case the doctors have not done enough research and tests, here are my scientific theories on the causes of each of Jaclyn's brain lesions (or "legions" as she texted us all after hearing news from the doctor. you really can tell she's dropped some brain matter) that have been backed up in my lab*

(*by "lab" I mean empty bottle of wine in the recycling bin)

MRI Quality imaging of Jaclyn's brain lesions

1. Living in New Jersey
This is the most likely reason she has brain problems and all New Jerseyans end up with chronic health problems. We keep living in this state that is a glorified toxic waste dump. I'm not exaggerating when I say that most of this state is a massive Superfund site that is not being cleaned up. Both Jaclyn and I lived on streets that are right now, currently, immediately and at the very second you are reading this, being patrolled and monitored by men in haz-mat suits from a chromium spill from a metal plating factory in 1983. No one was alerted to the danger of this until about October. So yay, chromium poisioning! There was also another spot in our town close to the river that is a hazardous chemical spill site. Hell, the town I currently live in right now had some sort of chemical spill earlier this week. That could explain this nagging cough I've had....

2. Evil Eye
One time when Caitlyn was like a month old, Jaclyn brought her to the mall. Later on in the evening, her baby was not feeling well. As a new mom, she was concerned and was talking to her mother-in-law from Peru via Skype. The obvious diagnosis? Someone at the mall had given her child the evil eye, and he evil must be purged via Skype Voodoo. Perhaps Jaclyn caught some of that evil eye that very same day, and it's been festering ever since. If only Jaclyn had gotten her some of that evil-ridding voodoo she could be lesion-free right now.

3. Not Praising Jesus or Making a Pact with Satan
Sometimes when bad things happen to a seemingly good person over and over again, you start to feel a little bit like Job and perhaps God is messing with you. You start to wonder if perhaps a weekly trip to the religion factory might do your heathen ass some good. "If only I'd praised Jesus like a good Christian, God would not have stricken me ill!" This is a possibility. Or on the other side of this coin, perhaps it is a good time to make a pact with the devil. You know how in movies, TV and cartoons someone could say "I'd sell my soul for a ham sandwich" and boom, Devil in a Blue Dress shows up and you sign an elaborate contract and suddenly your problems are fixed? Maybe it's time to see if that is real, and see if the devil will cure Jaclyn of her lesions if she will just join the Legions of Satan.

4. Texts from Rodolfo
I am of the staunch belief that each time Jaclyn has to read a text message from her husband, a brain cell commits suicide. English is not his first language. He speaks English relatively fine, but his text messages are so fucking immigranty. Here are some examples:

Randon, no real context: "Nice job, garbage bags," " My back hurt," "fuck, i left the chicken nuggets," "nice out" "I got 13 t-shirts for $20 for my uncle"
Poor, Immigranty Grammar & Spelling: "how its everything?" "how its ur play" (in regards to Jaclyn and her mom going to a Broadway show) "Tjank u", followed immediately by "everytjing ok?" "any excuse to dont go to work eh?". (Just sounds like he was wearing a sombrero and crossing a border while he wrote it. [this, for the record, was in reference to her dad not going to work, not Jaclyn in the hospital. He's not THAT big an asshole, I guess])
Regarding Jaclyn in the Hospital: "tell ur doctor that u have a cat" The day Jaclyn went to the ER, he left before she was put in a room. She told him that once she got one, she would text him the room number so he would know where she was. When Jaclyn sent that text, only a couple of hours after he left, a text he was actively waiting for, he responded with "wtf" When he sent her deadbeat dad to the hospital without Jaclyn's direct approval, she bitched him out for it, appropriately so. His response "ur biching now" Jaclyn then pointed out that her dad probably didn't have money for parking and that she (THE HOSPITAL PATIENT) would have to pay for it for him. His responses, again, in rapid succession, were: "Dont", "Fuck him" and "Is ur father with you".

5. Drinks I Have Made For Jaclyn

I'm sorry I gave you brain problems with my super strong moonshine-esque drinks. No one likes when Nadine plays bartender for a reason. Nadine's drinks are flammable and illegal in most municipalities. Sorry about your brain, I just wanted to get you drunk. But hey, at least now you're slurring your speech LIKE YOU ARE DRUNK indefinitely! Mission accomplished? What I mean is I'm sorry and You're Welcome.

Things to do This Week

2012-01-16T12:43:00.000-08:00

Well I made a list last week of things I would like to accomplish this year. Here is what I want to do for this week.

1. Really organize all the things.
No junk drawers, no hiding places for secret crap. If all the nooks and crannies of the home are cleaned and organized, I won't have that secret lurking feeling of "everything is going to go wrong and all your loved ones will die." I think I have a disorder.

2. Go to Christmas Tree Shops
They have good sales, I have a gift card plus a little bit of "home money" to spend on things. Mike and I want to make the wall in the dining room a big photo wall with all kinds of frames, pictures and art. It will be nice. I also want an area rug for the living room. The part of the carpet by the couch which I call "my office" is looking a little worn from me moving the ottoman back and forth whenever I get up. I always sit with an ottoman. Not because I'm some kind of feudal king that needs to be comfortable and spoiled (maybe a little), but I have bad circulation in my ankles from a medical problem a few years ago, so I get cankles too easily. I will prevent cankles at all costs.

3. Read all the magazines.
I have about 12 unread magazines that I haven't even looked at. Avenue tricked me into getting magazine subscriptions so I guess I'd better read them. Granted, some of the articles are likely to be out of date, like from Real Simple's holiday issues, but I'm going to read them anyways AND GET MY DAMN MONEY'S WORTH.

4. Go to Starbucks and write like hell.
I have not been meeting my writing quota at all. One day this week I will hunker down in Le Starbs and get out my writing from last week and this week. I'm gonna be that person that I hate; the one who makes the coffee shop their office. I will buy stuff though; I won't just nurse one cup of coffee for 4 hours. I will be fueled by the fury of at least 3 lattes.

5. Blog post.
I have this really great blog post that I've been putting off writing up for a few days. I'm very proud of it. I even drew a picture. I'm jealous of blogs like Crappy Pictures and Hyperbole and a Half and Mayor Gia that consistently have really cool pictures that they've drawn. Well I finally drew a picture and I am excited to share it with you.... laterish. I also will start doing a re-cap of Hoarders each Tuesday because I cannot contain my emotions with this show any longer.

Well that's all I got for now. I have things to do. Plus I've hit that point in my day where I am over-caffeinated to the point that I am a little dizzy, a little nauseous and a lot ADHJD (attention deficit hyper-active jumpy disorder) and need to finish doing all the things. All I intended to do today was to straighten up so I can get maintenance in here. There's been an incident... on two separate, non-consecutive nights. The smoke alarm/carbon monoxide detector (I don't even know what it is, it's just the fucking thing on the ceiling in the bedroom that has demon eyes in the night) did this thing last night where it beeped every sixty seconds for an indeterminate amount of time. Could have been half an hour, ten minutes or two hours. I don't even know. Then it just stopped. Then it'd start doing it a few hours later. This has happened twice and only at night. Because fuck the daytime when I'm awake and shit. I woke up with a migraine after a restless night of sleep involving dreams of throwing the dining room chairs at the smoke alarm. This happened once in our old apartment too. I discovered that it's not a battery that needs to be changed; these are hard-wired into the electrical system. Last time I got so fed up in the night that I just ripped it out of the wires from the ceiling. I'm trying not to hulk out this time though. So, yeah, I have to clean up the apartment before I let maintenance workers in because I am secretly afraid that if they see a messy house that they will report me to the Messy House Division of You're Kicked the Fuck Out of Here. Like I said earlier, I have a disorder.

Things to do This Year

2012-01-10T08:27:00.000-08:00

Do you have a bucket list? I don't. How cliche. Of course we all have things that we would like to accomplish in our lifetimes, but I can't think of them all at once to make a list. That list is also bound to change. The things that I wanted to do when I was 5, 10, 20 and today are all very different. Sometimes I get an idea of something that I would like to do, and now I'm going to remember to do them. I guess I can cross some things of my theoretical bucket list, such as "live by the shore" and "sell my goods at a craft fair." Those both happened. I wanted to do them and I did. This isn't the arbitrary 2012 Resolution thing that people do, but I thought of some things today that I'm gonna put down in here, and if you have any helpful tips regarding these projects, I'd appreciate it.

Things I Want To Do This Year

1. Learn how to change the oil in a car.
This could come in handy and make me feel good about knowing how to do something technical. My dad was an auto mechanic who owned his own shop and I know literally nothing about cars and what makes them go because I honestly never thought this would be an issue. I thought my dad would be around forever and he'd happily fix my crapmobiles as needed. It was very inconsiderate of him to die and make me have to think about car maintenance.

2. Learn how to needlepoint.
There are a world of crafty things that I would like to learn how to do. My mom used to needlepoint. I used to want to learn how to crochet, and my friend Wendy taught me after I'd been struggling to teach myself from an old instructional book. This year's craft will be needlepoint.

3. Lose weight and ride a horse.
These are related, I think. I don't know how much a horse holds, but I'm fat. I don't want to get on a horse and then he collapses and dies underneath me. I want to go horseback riding. Step one: weigh less than the horse.

4. Have more sex.
Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

5. Write a book.
This is something I'm working on. The thing that I can't do, in order to make progress with this, is trash my progress into the recycle bin after re-reading my work and deciding it's all horrible and why do I even bother I should just delete my fucking face while I'm at it. I've set numerical writing quotas for myself for Monday through Friday as though it is a "real" job. I'm also not going to re-read back farther than one page and just do most of my edits when I'm finished; that way I don't have the chance to hate everything. I'm probably less likely to throw away a whole book once it's finished, right?

When Love Hurts

2012-01-09T10:33:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had a bad cup of coffee?

It's a sad situation, friends. If you love, cherish and require your coffee the way that I do then you truly understand the hurt and disappointment that a bad cup of coffee to start your day will bring you. The rest of your day won't be right. You'll have all this unrequited anger that you don't know what to do with. Little things will be extra annoying and you will definitely get in a fight. You'll probably start the fight just to put your anger somewhere.

The other day, I got a coffee from Dunkin' Donuts along with their Smokehouse Sausage sandwich bagel thingee. Let me just say how much I love this sandwich because it's like having a kielbasa sandwich for breakfast. The Pollack in me loves that. Anyways, I got my coffee (light and sweet) and drove home. My plan was to sit in bed with my laptop, have breakfast, drink coffee and embrace the day. Maybe I'd get some writing done. Maybe I'd get out of the house earlier than usual. This was all ruined when I tasted the coffee and it was not good. I asked for milk, this was definitely cream or butter. I asked for sweet, this didn't have enough sugar. I might as well just fucking kill myself, life isn't worth living. I took two sips of this coffee, called the day a loss and went back to sleep. No joke. I just went to sleep for 2 hours.

This morning I woke up at a respectable time for myself. Ok, it was almost 11 AM but... I wasn't mad or ashamed of it and it was before the clock switched to PM so that is a good day for me. Today I'm on a roll, I'm showered, dressed and I even remembered to use moisturizer! It's like I'm some sort of wizard! Things can only get better! Now, where did this day take a left turn?

It started with my coffee.

I made a big pot of coffee, and got the new Coffeemate peppermint mocha creamer to try out. Last time I'd gotten the "International Delights" peppermint mocha one to use and I liked that, but the store isn't selling it because I GUESS YOU CAN ONLY ENJOY PEPPERMINT FLAVORED THINGS IN DECEMBER. But I got this one that was still there. Coffeemate is fucking gross. It always tastes like sour. There is always an undertone of sour, as though it's some sort of creamy flavor that was passed through a filter of a dirty gym sock.

I spilled that cup of coffee out and got another. You'd think I'd just keep it simple, milk and sugar, right? No. I got these cool chocolate-dipped coffee flavoring spoons for Christmas and the first one I'd tried was good so today I decided I'd get a little feisty and have a French vanilla flavored spoon coffee. This one was not so good. It made my coffee taste like mushrooms. I like mushrooms, but not that much in my coffee really.

How else has this day sucked? It's only 1 PM here, I've been awake for two hours and I know way too much disappointment. Two cups of shitty coffee. When I was in the shower, the doorbell rang. If I'd spent a little more time doing the Montgomery flea market mini mall song & dance I'd been doing right before I got in the shower, I'd find out what was at the door. I put on Conan when I was all done with the shower, clicked on the one in the DVR that said Mindy Kaling was the guest, and THERE IS NO MINDY KALING. This life I'm living is just not worth it. My shitty ghetto-ass neighbors two doors down are blasting their music so I get a constant bass-thud in my house. I'm trying to fight every urge to not go over there and fight with them in a Jamaican accent. I also have a zit.

EDITED TO ADD

I got fed up with the neighbor's boom-ba-doom-ba super bass and first I just passive-aggressively rang their doorbell in an annoying fashion when I went down to get the mail. Then I mentally gave them until I was done putting on my makeup to be done with their loud-music time. (PS I don't fucking care if it is daytime, be considerate of people and have your noise at appropriate levels.) Well, I was done with my makeup and they're still loud ass bumbaclots so I went over and pounded on the door (so they'd hear me). Then I politely said to the gentleman when he answered the door if he could please turn his music down. See how I was nice? I rehearsed SO MANY SNOTTY ASS THINGS TO SAY in my head! This time I was nice. Next time I won't be.

Fuck 'Em if They Can't Take A Joke

2012-01-05T06:03:00.000-08:00

I'd like to think that my sense of humor is my saving grace. Being a funny bitch can get you through some tough times. It can also get you into trouble.

For example, even if a kid's mom think it's hysterical and totally cool to post the following picture on Facebook, some people think it's borderline child-endangerment and think that someone will call DYFS upon seeing it:

Party Rock in the House

Maybe I'm just white trash and don't know it, but doesn't everyone have a comical baby-with-a-beer photo in their photo albums, from the past and present? Right? Maybe I just have too many alcoholics in my family, whatever. I know for a fact that in a family album somewhere there are at least two photos of my brother under the age of 5 with a can of Budwiser. He's not drinking it.... I think. But that would explain a lot.

This year, my New Year's Resolutions were two-fold, and not necessarily linked to one another. One, be a better friend. Two, be more of a bitch as necessary (not take people's shit, aka Honey Badger mentality for 2012).

The first part of my resolution, I merely thought I'd just "be a better friend." I'd call people more, I'd keep in touch better, I'd send cards for no reason and just be a little more thoughtful rather than being holed up in my depression-cocoon and not even contacting people that I even like. I did not anticipate that "being a better friend" would include keeping my bestie company in the hospital for days on end. I'm not complaining about hanging out with Jaclyn, even though it's in a hospital - I'M COMPLAINING THAT MY FRIEND IS IN THE HOSPITAL. IT'S BULLSHIT AND NOT FAIR YO. She's had enough shit in her life, she doesn't need to be sick. Without sharing all her personal medical info, I will say she is doing OK, will get out of there in a few days and is bored out of her mind. I guess stay tuned to her blog for more personal accounts of her adventures in the hospital.

The second part of my resolution was just to not give a shit. I am sick of censoring myself because people get all butthurt over things like funny pictures, snotty comments or a sense of humor that doesn't necessarily mesh with their own. To convey to our friends that Jaclyn is doing OK (because if you're well enough to fuck around of Facebook, you're not that bad off, right?) we took this picture... then I hesitated on posting it because SOME PEOPLE might think it's in poor taste. But then I remembered to channel my spirit animal, The Honey Badger, and just post it.

Jaclyn: Alive, giggling, etc.

So in conclusion, I'm a good friend and I don't give a shit about people's problems at the same time.

What's for dinner for the next two weeks? COBRAS.

I'm Nadine and I Support This Message.

2011-12-19T07:02:00.000-08:00

Rick Perry is a turd smoothie.

First... this video...

This Brokeback-looking-yet-gay-hating retard wants to be president. President of this country! Not president of his turtle aficionado club, PRESIDENT of the best country ever. I do not understand this country anymore! How has Republican, which though I'm NOT, I can see their side of their beliefs... have morphed into this douche carnival of human filth? None of these candidates are worthy of running for president!

"gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school."

What the fuck is wrong with you? First of all, Christians and Christmas are not the center of the whole world let alone even this stupid country that have people thinking there is a "war on Christmas" led by our Commander in Chief. Since when are kids not openly celebrating Christmas? When did the have to start Anne Franking their trees, stockings and piles of gifts? I'll tell you what - I'll know the WAR ON CHRISTMAS is over and we've defeated those Christians when there is no more Black Friday. Giftmas alone is responsible for the highest grossing day of retail sales.

Rick Perry, and any other bumbaclot who feels their precious Christmas is being shat upon by the liberals, Muslims and Anderson Cooper, let me explain this:

People say "happy holidays" because there are more than one holiday. Leave the cashiers alone, they're being way too nice to you as it is. No one wants to have a run-on sentence of "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and if you are Jewish happy Hannuka as well and I guess Kwanzaa if you're into that, and did Ramadan happen if it did, have a good one of those and happy birthday?"
Everyone is openly celebrating Christmas, even your kids in school. If there was some kind of state-run vendetta against Jesus's Fake Birthday, kids wouldn't get two weeks off of school and a party on the half-day before vacation starts. Kids (of all faiths, regardless) wouldn't be coloring pictures of Santa, gluing cotton balls onto red stocking pictures and crafting ornaments in art class for your dead pine tree that I sincerely hope has snakes in it.
Anyone CAN pray in school, teachers are not leading prayers anymore. If you want your kid to pray in school so bad, send them to Catholic school. Besides, you know your dumbshit offspring are only praying that they don't fail whatever test they didn't study for because they were too busy sexting their gym teacher.

So in conclusion, Merry Christmas and a Happy Fuck Rick Perry to you all!

America's Next Top Baking Model in Rehab that Dances for a Shot at Love

2011-12-06T11:04:00.000-08:00

Reality shows. They're everywhere, on every network, and seem to make up the majority of programming these days. They've permeated and replaced regular scripted shows because they are cheaper to make. You don't have to pay writers or actors, because the people on these shows are just schmucks looking for a shot at fame. I don't even care, I'm not knocking it. If you like shit TV that's up to you. I like my share of shitty TV.

There's a lot of cooking competition shows. I'm only watching The Next Great Baker because Mike knows someone who's cousin is on the show. I'm interested if I can root for a person. So I just started watching it and thought "wait, I better find out which person I'm supposed to root for." I can pre-hate someone just in the first 5 minutes of a show from their intro-interview. Thankfully, I immediately liked the person I'm supposed to root for, if only for proximity being from the same state I'm from. That's the other thing: If I'm watching a reality show and someone is from New Jersey, I automatically want them to win. Best quote by this girl so far about some other guy's creation: "it kinda looks like a taco with skin mousse in it, so it doesn't look very appealing." What the shit is this guy making?

I heard a rumor that Stevie Wonder wants to be on Dancing With The Stars. I hate how much I will watch that and giggle. It's not nice, but I want to see what a blind person looks like dancing. Then I'll weep because he probably dances better than me who can see just fine with both eyes.

Personally, I don't think I would be on a reality show. I could definitely benefit from being on The Biggest Loser but I don't want to be one of those crying and puking fatties that falls off the treadmill. I wouldn't be on a cooking competition because even though everyone loves my cooking, I'm a recipe-follower. I can improvise a little bit off of a recipe. I have good skills at cooking and have good techniques, but I don't just invent things. I wouldn't be on a show to find love, get sober or hoarding because those just aren't my problems.

The History Channel has even gotten in on reality programming with hits like Pawn Stars, Ice Road Truckers and Swamp People. I hate all of these shows. All of them. The one show on History Channel that I love with all my heart, can watch for 12 hours straight, and that my boyfriend makes fun of me for the most is Ancient Aliens. It makes so much sense! Everything that we cannot explain from the past? ALIENS DID IT, Y'ALL. Giorgio A. Tsoukalos is an alien smart-guy they have on this show commenting about alien history and shit, and let me tell you... just his hair is worth watching this show for. He has very big hair, he is orange-ish. Either he's an alien, or he just didn't make it for Jersey Shore.

I was going to make a funny video spoofing how I'm a hoarder, taking video of my "messy" house. I'd not cleaned up for a few days and had stuff around, but I couldn't even stand to keep it messy for any longer until someone helped me make the video because I hate a dirty house. But let me tell you, I love the show Hoarders. LOVE. The worst part is when there's like a mummified cat or just animals involved in any way, but all the rest of it? Love. Their meltdowns, the piles of dirty ADULT diapers, and one episode there was a hole in the wall because a goat chewed through it from outside. Well, I gotta go... I need to go attend to my collection of empty boxes because I MIGHT USE THEM SOMEDAY, YOU DON'T KNOW. THE SECOND I THROW THEM OUT I WILL NEED ALL THOSE BOXES.

The Depression Chronicles

2011-11-29T20:52:00.000-08:00

Has everyone read this post over at Hyperbole and a Half.com already? Go ahead, there are lots of pictures. Ok, good? Let's continue.

I hate how much I could relate to that. I feel as though I owe some sort of explanation or epic great post once I get out of my rut and actually blog about something and assure people that no, I'm not dead; and no, I didn't quit blogging. But I don't have an epic or great post. And this is sort of my explanation.

I didn't quit blogging.

I quit everything.

It snowballs, and it gets bigger and bigger. At first it's just "why bother getting dressed, it's not like I'm going anywhere." Then it becomes "why bother doing anything, nothing matters either way." It makes you look at the depression medication commercials of animated black holes and bath robes and you go "yeah, it's just like that." It's nothing like the sad Zoloft rock from days of yore. It's "I'm going to wear a bath robe for days on end, fuck y'all."

I was depressed at how depressed I felt and that just kept pushing me deeper into the "fuck my life why do I even bother" hole of misery. Then I just stopped caring. Not in the kill-yourself way of stopping caring. It's that I stopped feeling badly about all the shit that I'd been feeling guilty about. Sleep till 1 PM? Who cares, do what you want. Lay on the couch all day and accomplish not one damn thing? Fuck it, that's the only thing you got to treat yo self with, it's your life, live it how you want. Still haven't thought of one good original idea to blog about? Who cares, no one's asked so no one noticed I'm absent from the internet, go play Sims for 8 more hours and binge eat a pint of ice cream.

It's sleeping days and staying up nights. It's feeling useless, worthless, and as though you make no worthy contribution to anyone's life. Once I'm at my lowest and don't want to talk to anyone, I shut off my phone, I hide my phone, I turn off all my online chat mechanisms and just go off the grid. I won't call, text, nothing. Friends, if you haven't heard from me in a while, this is why. I'm just a black hole of negativity and wah-wah sad times. There's nothing fun about this that I want to burden people with daily.

So why am I writing this? Because I know there's other people going through this too. It's important to know you're not alone. And I know you can hear the cliche of "it gets better" and want to punch anyone in the face who tells you that, it's got to get better. That's my point of view that is helping me creep back into having a "normal" life, little by little. I don't know when or how it will get better, but it will. Because I've had low times like this before and it got better. One bad thing in your life doesn't define it. Things won't be shitty forever. So do one thing, don't worry about doing all the things. Tomorrow I'll say I'll do one thing, and then I will feel good for having done it. Maybe it will snowball in a positive way and I'll do two things. Maybe I'll get overwhelmed by the one thing. But as long as I keep pressing on and at least trying to live and do, things are getting better.

Today I knew things were starting to get a little better because I had a good idea for a blog post (that isn't this one), and because I had the courage to actually write all this shit out. So stay tuned... there's gonna be an awesome video coming up within a week.

In Yo Face.

2011-10-22T10:19:00.000-07:00

I like my makeup to be hassle-free and idiot proof. For this reason, I used Bare Minerals for a while. All I had to do was swipe some stuff on my face and go. It's a good product but didn't always give me the kind of coverage I really wanted.

I'm very susceptible to commercials on TV. I am everyone's target audience. You make a good enough commercial, I'll buy your stuff, no lie. Food, makeup, cat litter, and food again. I am often heard saying "I want to buy the makeup that Drew Barrymore had in that commercial." Or last week in Target "Let's buy that new cat litter. I can't remember the name, but it had green on the label."

My "Summer Makeup" I'd been using was Neutrogena Clear Skin foundation, concealer and powder. The slightly off-white color that I'd accumulated over the summer (other people get tan... I just get slightly less transparent looking) had worn off and my makeup did not look right on my skin anymore so I got my coupons and headed to Walgreens, my favorite place to buy cosmetics.

I'd seen this commercial recently, so in the back of my head I knew there was a new makeup out there and all I had to do was remember which one it was I needed to buy...

Literally all I remembered at the store was "new makeup" "somehow better than other makeup." I got the 115 for my foundation and the 120 for my powder. Here is a photo of my daily use makeup thingees:

My face after makeup time.

This includes Fit Me Foundation in 115, Fit Me Pressed Powder in 120, Maybelline Falsies Mascara, a lip gloss from Sephora I got for free with my rewards points and Essence Blush (courtesy of Kizzy!) All in all, I really like my new makeup. It is light and looks natural and not cakey or over-done. It lets my skin look young the way I want... I'd definitely buy this foundation again, so they better not stop selling it.

STANLEY LAUGH

2011-10-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

Let's start making "#StanleyLaugh" a thing on Twitter now, much like people have used #JadakissLaugh

Stanley Hudson, I salute you.

No1Curr

2011-10-12T19:25:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of things that I don't give a shit about.

Football
Zumba
Your photography
Hockey
Olympics
Any of the Kardashians
Any of the "Real" Housewives
Your kids
Your pregnancy
Shows about pawn shops
Shows about loggers
Shows about truckers
Any "reality" show on the History channel.
Yoga
Republicans
Dr. Conrad Murray
Movies about cars
Anything about cars
Cars the animated movie and all its sequels.
Inspirational quotes
Occupy Wall Street
Care Bears
The Dark Tower series
Quinoa
UFC Fighting
Glee
Boxing
Rihanna
Pomegranates
Guy Fieri
Pilates
Padded Bras
Any cop/judge show that isn't Law & Order SVU
Town politics
Private Practice
Yellow gold
BDSM
House Music, I don't even think I know what it is.
Velveeta cheese
The Bachelor/Bachelorette (and anyone invested in this shitfest)
Subway sandwiches
That chick who was on the news cuz she ran a marathon before going into labor. No1curr.
Whatever fucking music you're blasting from your car stereo
People who have rats as pets.
Hats that look like animals on full grown adults.
Any product with caffeine in it that is not a beverage.
Microbrews
Comic Books
Movies about comic books
Macrobiotic whatevers

Probably more shit than that, but that's all I got off the top of my head.

Dr. Whitey McFatFat, MD

2011-10-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

When I first started this blog it'd had been focused primarily on weight loss and exercise and Weight Watchers because I'm a fatass who was trying to be less fat. Then it was like... fuck, I'm still fat. I don't even care, I'm just gonna write about other shit and just push that whole diet blog thing under the rug and everyone will forget and I'll just be fat and happy, whatever.

Except that I wasn't and still am not happy. But fat? I got that shit NAILED yo. I could be like the president of fat. I could write a doctoral thesis on how to be fat. Eat whatever shit you want and then don't do any exercise and watch a bunch of TV. Bam, you're welcome. You know, in case you couldn't figure out how to be a lazy piece of crap and needed some help with that shit.

Three weeks ago though, the switch in my brain just sort of flipped. I had to do something. I need to feel better about myself and treat my body better. I think it was an episode of Dr. Oz that got me motivated. The next day, I joined Weight Watchers and I signed up for the Dr. Oz Transformation Nation challenge and have been making healthier choices ever since.

My initial weigh-in at the Weight Watchers made me sad. I was one pound away from the weight I said I'd never be ever again. Fuck. I know a shame spiral of guilt and self-loathing will not help my cause so I decided I will just be happy I'm doing the right thing for once and be on a steady streak of weight loss.

So after that first week, I weighed in again, and I'd lost 6 pounds! That is awesome. I feel pretty proud of that and have to remind myself that each and every day when I want to do something shitty. Doing shitty things feels good in the moment, but then after the moment is passed and you feel all guilty and bloated it doesn't feel good anymore. If I feel bad about something or myself, and eat 3 donuts from Dunkin' Donuts and a big old apple cider, do I feel good after that? No. I feel sad that I ate a bunch of meaningless bullshit that I didn't even necessarily enjoy. If I dread going to the gym, and then go anyways and sweat through a long aerobics class, do I feel good after that? Yes. I feel physically tired, but good, and mentally I feel accomplished. That feeling lasts. It lasts even longer if I keep going to the damn gym like a good girl should.

Know what would really kick up my metabolism and weight loss efforts? Not drinking a bottle of wine on the weekends. In one evening. But like .... you know how I just said after eating shitty food I feel shitty afterwards? I do not feel shitty after drinking a bottle of wine. I feel fucking awesome during the drinking, while drunk and performing a skit on drunk driving, while trying to booty-pop to Super Bass, and without a hangover the next day I physically feel no guilt or bad effects that would prevent me from doing this in the future. I guess what I'm saying is I just need to save my extra weekly Flex Points Plus on Weight Watchers for binge wine drinking on the weekends.

Going to the gym makes me feel really good. I work out pretty hard. Well probably not compared to someone who is in peak physical shape, but it's hard for me so shut the fuck up about it. I'm taking some classes at the gym. I tried Zumba since that seems like the fun fitness craze sweeping the nation. Let me tell you... I'm not doing that shit anymore. I did it twice, and I just can't. People are all like "OMG how could you not like Zumba?! It's so fun! It's dancing, you don't even realize you're exercising!" Let me explain it to you. I don't dislike it because "it's hard" because it is... it is a really decent calorie-burning workout. I hate it BECAUSE IT IS DANCING. How was 85% of the class I participated in Latina with natural booty rhythm? I have no groove. I am a cracker ass motherfucker. I am Whitey McAlabaster. I'm not just talking "oh white people can't dance." Because first of all, I can't dance. Second of all, I am just really pale looking. I'm pale and I can't dance and I'm fat... so all of that together with a bunch of really good-dancing type Latina women of all shapes, sizes and ages in a room of mirrors... it's a fright fest. I looked like the Pillsbury dough boy trying to dance. It's like my limbs had no joints in them... just white, unbend-able flabby appendages flailing and kicking around. My hips don't shake! How can I not shake my hips?! I move them from side to side like I imagine one should do but it just looks so goddamn awful and everyone else looks so sexy and fun. I hate Zumba and I'm not going back ever again until my fairy godmother gifts me with the power or dance.

Classes that I like more have no dance involved. Yesterday I took Triple Fat Burner. It burned three of my fats? I don't know, but it involved cardio, step and kick boxing. Step is a little tricky for me because my lack of coordination in regards to dance carries over well to step aerobics. I trip over the stepper really easily and have a hard time understanding the choreography of the moves... So I'll watch for one or two sets and finally get it right on the third. I get confused, stand on top of my stepper and look around and see that everyone else is doing the right steps but me and one other confused looking girl who is just kind of flailing her arms around... I think she and I might be gym soulmates.

Even with the foot coordination confusion I had yesterday, I kept moving, stayed for the whole class and felt really good about it. After that I did weights and then spent some time on the exercise bike. Today I am sore in places I've never felt soreness. But I'm going to keep at it. I'm going back for another class today.

This is Incongruous.

2011-10-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about this.

What is Klout? Far as I am concerned, it ranks your internet popularity. It breaks it down into subjects that you are influential or knowledgeable about based upon analyzing your Twitter, Facebook or whatever else you give it access to analyze. I have a Klout of 49 points. I don't expect to be popular, I never was. I'm the chubby unpopular girl in life and I am that on the internet as well.

But let's talk about this list for a second....

I am influential about cookies. Why? I guess I like cookies. I can't specifically remember waxing poetic about cookies on the internet. I like cake a whole lot more. Have I made cookies recently? No. What have I been making? A lot of Hungry Girl recipes. Hungry-Girl.com for lightened-up versions of foods. My fat ass is trying to be less fat these days. I re-joined Weight Watchers, I joined a Dr. Oz challenge and I've been going to the gym. Do not expect any valid information about delicious cookies over here.

I am influential about alcohol. This doesn't surprise me. I like booze and I got an alcoholic bitch of a mom, so it all adds up here. My most recent foray into alcohol? I drank some Coppola vino at Maggiano's Little Italy the other night along with a glass of Skinny Sangria. Both were delightful. Being influential about alcohol means I have a whole photo album called "Nadine Drinking" on Facebook. It's true. Klout got it right with this one.

I am influential about babies. This..... no. I do not have a baby. Mom-bloggers keep adding me as friends on Twitter, though. I follow some mom-blogs because some people are funny and also remember they have a life and are an interesting person besides being a mom. For the most part, I am not influential about babies... I like one baby, Jaclyn's daughter. She's mostly awesome. One of her best features is that she is not mine and I get to live in a house without a baby. The other night, Mike's mom asked "So is Caitlyn sleeping any better?" (also note this ties in with my previous klout on alcohol as it was a question nestled among the glasses of wine and sangria) I kind of thought about it for a second with a blank look on my face and pretty much said "I don't know, all I know is that I'm sleepin' fine at night, that baby's teeth ain't my problem." When it comes to tiny humans, I typically have a DADT policy. Babies: don't ask me about em, don't tell me about em. I don't really curr.

Bitch ain't even gonna argue about it.

I am influential about Jersey Shore. This is a thousand percent accurate. I have a lot of strongly-formed insights and opinions about the Shore. Those Macaroni Rascals. I won't go off on a tangent describing the many nuances of their ridiculous escapades, but I will say this: My favorite moment from the last episode of the Jersey Shore was when Jenni said that Snooki was acting like Sammi and just the look on Sammi's face was priceless.

I am influential about cats. My cat Little Guy is my shadow, my best bud. I'm that chick twittering about her cat. I'm that chick with a Facebook Fan Page for her cat. I'm that chick posting videos of my cat. Yeah. Somehow, I am not a crazy cat lady though.

Y'all Bitches Want a Vlog?

2011-10-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

Here is my opinion about important world topics.

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

2011-09-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

I ran into a bit of trouble at home this morning. Today I got up at the time that other normal and productive people get up. On the agenda was dropping off Mike for his daily commute at the train station and then I was going to attend the world of hurt known as Zumba at my gym. Last time I did that class, I was in pain for 3 days after the fact. My muscles shriveled up and said "nah, bitch." That's not how you treat legs and arms at all. Before leaving the house, I went to run the dishwasher since I'm completely out of spoons and knives now. After turning it on, it wasn't making it's normal noise. It sounded like pain. It sounded like dirty ass dishes. It sounded like no fucking water was washing no fucking dishes. Fuck man... this was awful. I thought about "what if it's broken? I'm going to have to WASH all these dishes so I might as well just run away from home right now, set this place on fire and never look back, lest I turn into a pillar of salt."

After I got home from dropping off Mike, I decided no to the gym and that I should address the problem in the kitchen. First I cleaned out the little food scraps from the bottom, exciting right? Disgusting. I could throw up and die just thinking about it. Then I made sure that the little spinning water thingee's holes were not clogged. I tried again, and nothing. Fuck man. If I had to put in a maintenance request, I'd definitely have to empty the dishwasher and that would suck all the balls. All of the balls. I looked on the dishwasher for like... troubleshooting? Tips? Magic? It had a little panel of tips... one was to run the hot water first, before using the dishwasher ... which I've never done. Whatever. So I tried that... and NO HOT WATER OUT OF MY SINK. What?! How is this my life?

Thinking it was taking a long time to heat up, I washed the few dishes in the sink and still got nothing. I knew we had hot water in the house, because Mike took a shower. I checked the bathroom, hot water. I checked the hot water tank, full of water. I checked the circuit breaker - everything fine. I sound pretty much on the ball, right? This is when I decided that my shit was not working due to no hot water in the kitchen sink so I'd better straighten up the kitchen, make some coffee and then head over to the apartment building management's office and put in a maintenance request.

This is when shit got real.

I turned the handle on the sink faucet to what I assume was cold to get some coffee water.... and hot water came out.

It was this moment in my life that I started re-thinking everything I thought to be true. Up, down, left, right, existence vs. nothingness. Everything was just all shattered.

Here is a picture of my sink faucet giving me hot water.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't the handle be at the side of the temperature you want? Shouldn't that be opposite? I've lived here since JUNE, how did I just forget how to use the sink? I'm retarded. I'm not allowed to think or do tasks before I drink my coffee. Fuck man.

Anyways, since that is resolved.... the other day on Twitter, I thought about doing vlogs. You know, video posts. Well I don't know what to do.... so here is a video of my cat in a sun beam while I meow at him to the tune of DMX.

Edited to add: Once I re-learned how a faucet works and hot water came out of the sink, the dishwasher worked just fine and my dishes are clean. I can't believe I just FORGOT how to use a sink.... this is probably a sign of early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Funny Shit that Brightened My Day

2011-09-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

I think Roseanne Bar said it best that you know we got a depression problem in this country when our anti-depressants need boosters like Abilify. It's like... if you're out drinkin and your shot of Jameson isn't getting the job done well enough for you that you chase it with another shot of pure grain alcohol. It's hard times. It's probably not a coincidence that my first go-to metaphor for depression is about drinking. Whatever, I don't have a drinking or substance abuse problem, which is awesome I guess. Every other female in the family (and half the males) has had their issues so I guess I'm lucky... or I can count on the mystery-genes from my dad (he was adopted so my genetic inclinations from that side of the family is a mystery to me).

Anyways, I've been really down in the dumps. Today I was going to take a walk to the store and buy something healthy to fix for lunch and then walk back, a nice walk almost 2 miles round trip. But then it started to rain, so I just said fuck it, and laid on the couch eating white chocolate Pretzel Flips and watched a lot of TV I've already seen.

Not much has really made me happy. I'm even sneering at magazines, I swear. Reading Real Simple magazine with it's fashion advice or healthy snack ideas, I physically sneer at the article, and in my head go "yeah fucking right, you fucking asshole." TO. A. MAGAZINE.

Here are things that have brought a smile to my face though.

AIDS Jokes. Now I know I might have lost some of you there, but it's worth a look, and not entirely what you think probably.

Lil' Joe Torre and Rock Marley

I feel as though I should explain these two... but it's not that funny when explained. Like an inside joke. Just imagine though, I'm laying around all miserable and shit watching an old repeat of Grey's Anatomy when suddenly Lil' Joe Torre pops up on my phone from a friend I used to work with. It made me giggle.

This video:

I'm going to start making videos like this. I'm also going to be making songs, since I downloaded an autotuner app for my iPhone.

Roseanne on Conan made me laugh a lot too.

Something that made me laugh was the news story about a man in New York who is suing White Castle because the seats are too small. He's too fat for the seats at White Castle so he's suing them. I don't know why no one is suing that place for the diarrhea that is guaranteed each time you eat from there. It's a mystery. Their shitty little burgers give you the liquishits, yet they have plenty of business, and even with that said, I will still definitely eat from there on occasion. One time I was in White Castle, late as hell, drunk. Odds are if you find yourself in a White Castle, you ARE drunk and making bad decisions. Anyways, there were two other drunk patrons on line in front of me. One guy says "What do they sell here, those shitty little burgers?" and his friend says yes. Then the first guy says "Damn, those give me the shits. I'll have a sack of 10."

So that's all I got right now. Monday I will have something more exciting to blog about though. I'm keeping it a secret for right now, but I'm REALLY excited for this :)

whatever, i'm going to be a hermit.

2011-09-09T10:10:00.000-07:00

I don't really have a set topic that I'm going to blog about today, so this might end up being some bullshit.

I currently do not have a job. That pretty much blows and lowers my self worth by 99%. It really sucks, and I don't even have the "well I'll just focus on my kids and family more" excuse because I was not dumb enough to sustain life in this womb. That's something that's been pissing me off lately. No, not the fact that I didn't have kids yet and I'm almost 30 so I might as well just kill myself.... wait. I went on a tangent there. Here's what I mean. You know how stupid people have lots of kids? And poor people? They love having kids. Well even the stupidest people who are always clogging up your Facebook with their crap about how precious their kids are, even when they feel like losers (or maybe they DON'T ever feel like losers, because they're not smart enough to even analyze their own existence), they can always say "well I am a parent and it is the most rewarding and important job in the world." I didn't even do that. I know it's because I'm smart enough to have analyzed my life and thought "well I am not set up right to have kids currently and I'd like to make more money first to provide a stable life for them." Unlike a lot of retards who are all "what, I thought you only got pregnant during your period?" who just pop out kids and don't even understand why. No forethought goes into it. It's just "well I guess I'm pregnant then." Fuck them. And some people have ugly babies. I'm just saying.

The other thing about not having a job right now is that I have no schedule. I don't have to wake up on time for anything. I used to go to bed always before midnight and get the proper amount of sleep to function as a human being the next day. Now I'm just.... awake. Really late. I stay up late internetting or watching TV and then when I want to relax, I watch 2 or 3 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO Go on the Aerobed in the spare room. Yeah I live my life the way I want, wooooo yeah! Anyways, I've been watching so much of Curb Your Enthusiasm that it is getting into my dreamy-times. Last night, I dreamed that I was at my old apartment building and making food with Alton Brown for my upstairs neighbor because I ruined something of hers or borrowed something. Part of this food preparation was sending chicken down an ice luge to cool it off. That's a pretty smart idea, subconscious mind, I might have to try the chicken luge. Anyways, I was about to go upstairs to bring my neighbor some food when I looked outside and saw one of my old bosses coming from the train station. I went to go say hi to him, but then I looked to the left, and Larry David was there waiting for a cab. I totally blew off saying hi to my boss and ran to Larry David and professed my love for him, his show and started saying a lot of things. Then I saw that most of the cast of Seinfeld was there so I was talking to them too. I told them about the chicken luge, and then Alton said we had to go because we had to finish cooking. ~Fin~

Yesterday I had to turn my phone off because Jaclyn wouldn't stop texting me. If I ignore her texts, she'll start sending me messages one word at a time. I was in PetSmart and a woman was showing me the tiny kitten she'd rescued after Hurricane Irene and my phone is beeping every 3 seconds, as though I'm important or have many important messages. I called her from the cat food isle and told her to stop texting me and I'm turning off my phone. Then that gave me an idea. I should turn off my phone more often. I'm ready to retreat into my crabitat for the long haul. Turn off the phone, draw the blinds, no more contact with people.

Well this post was useless. Enjoy.

I'm So Ready for Vogue You Guys.

2011-09-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

My friend Kizzy is a cosmetics angel. She is the only blog that I really follow that has to do with beauty, makeup or skin care ... things like that. I trust her opinion so much. Sometimes I ask her questions on her blog and she answers them. Once I won a giveaway and it changed my skin care regimen forever, in a good way. A couple times, I've guest-blogged on her site!

Now, let me make it clear: Kizzy is a makeup genius. I am not. She sent me a little present in the mail with a bunch of neat makeup things to try out and I couldn't wait to dive in. She's the makeup genius, I'm the kid who plays in her mom's makeup when no one is looking. Here are my results of too much time by myself, the kindness and generosity of a present from Kizzy and my Camera Plus app on my iPhone. Enjoy.


I am winking at you.

look at how good I did there.

this is my favorite! and that's a mirror behind my head, not a weird head-lump.

you want crazy? i got your crazy.

Makeup Removal also looks slightly insane

Back to my normal boring ass self AND I took out my contacts.

How To Eat

2011-08-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

Figure A: The correct way to eat a Polly-O String Cheese:

Peel strips off vertically.

Figure B: One of the most incorrect ways to eat string cheese.

Eat like an ear of corn on the cob.

Today while having a snack, I remembered this gem. One day in the lunch room at work a few years ago, I was eating string cheese and being silly. I started eating it like a piece of corn on the cob. My co-worker Karen was so disgusted by this that she begged me to stop and she was dry-heaving. She likes cheese otherwise, just the imagery of corn-cheese grossed her out? I don't know, but I laughed my ass off.

Where Does My Heart Beat Now?

2011-08-30T21:35:00.000-07:00

When did my creativity die?

I used to make things all the time. I was always crafting. I had huge containers full of supplies, scraps and tools to create with. At any given time, I was in the middle of a project or making a gift for someone I knew. Hell, even on vacation at the shore, I'd bring my small box with "craft necessities" with me to do things while relaxing.

I can't even remember when the last time was that I made something. I couldn't tell you the last time I actually finished a project that I'd started.

one of the candles I made

Something about my marriage ending killed my craftiness. The last time I was really crafty and creative was when I was candle making. I was so into it I had a short-lived business venture of it. I would have never "started a business" at all if it weren't for the rules of the town's craft fair stating that you must be licensed as a business in order to participate in the craft fair. That was my goal, to be in a craft fair, even just once, just to know that I could do it and people would buy my wares. I worked so hard for two months every day making candles that looked like cupcakes up until the night before of the craft fair. I was proud of myself.

some of my candles on display at the craft fair

me at the craft fair

Then, that was it. I just was done. I realized I didn't want to do that as a business because it took up so much of my time to try to make a profit, and I'd stopped enjoying what I was doing. After that, things just dried up, creatively. Months after the craft fair, my husband and I separated. After he moved out, I threw out a lot of things. I threw out my craft supplies because I never used them.

When I read "Bag of Bones" by Stephen King, and the main character had a problem with writer's block, I identified with that because I feel as though I've been through some sort of "crafter's block" or "artist's block." I used to love making things for people. Now I don't feel like anyone even wants my gifts. I'm even pretty sure that my boyfriend wouldn't like anything I made. You know the way when you get a card and you go oh that's nice, you look at it for a few days, but eventually you just throw it out? That's what I feel like anything that I make is. Everyone's just looking at it like some kid's stupid art project.

I see things. I want to make things. I don't know how to start again. I'd literally have to start from the beginning by getting supplies again. I used to have a whole box full of different paints and brushes. I don't even have one now. Sigh.

Kim Kardashian Getting Married is Ruining the World

2011-08-27T20:48:00.000-07:00

Well the world is going to shit.

I'm sure Westboro Baptist Church will blame all this apocalyptic shit on gays being allowed to get married in New York or whatever, but I'm pretty sure all the horrible shit going down is because the prophecy is close to being complete, as Kim Kardashian has taken a groom.

The other day, I experienced my first earthquake. I LIVE IN NEW JERSEY. STOP IT NOW. I should only have to live in fear of spray tans, crossing state lines and subsequently having to pump my own gas, and a Taylor Ham blight. Earthquakes? No.

What was the earthquake like? Well I had just heated up my lunch, some mac & cheese, and tasted it, and it was bland. I put some Sriracha sauce on it, settled down on the couch to watch some Grey's Anatomy, and as I took the first rooster-sauce laden bite, the world shook. Things shook for about a minute... I felt the couch moving, the walls vibrating, the floor... everything was moving as through a truck hit my building. Just as I'd remembered what to do in case of an earthquake (move into a doorframe? or the bathroom... the bathtub? I'll go stand in the bathroom doorframe) it had stopped. I was startled enough, but there wasn't anything to "do" really, so I just un-paused the DVR and finished my lunch.

Patrice from Hell and Heartaches provided eyewitness footage of the earthquake on her website...

As though an earthquake wasn't enough evidence that the end of times is upon us, now I'm dealing with a hurricane.

They'd been hyping this storm all week, and it seemed pretty legit, so the boyfriend and I made sure to stock up on groceries. Non-perishables in case there's no power, two cases of water... that sort of thing. Though to be honest, a couple days without food could do both of us pretty good. I need to go on the Armageddon diet. I also went out on Thursday and stocked up on supplies we might need - a battery-powered lantern, batteries and candles. I got large tea lights, small tea lights and those Jesus & Mary candles that I don't really understand their significance...

I've been inside all day and it's boring. At first, I was excited to do shopping and make a mock panic-room, but then the news kept driving it in how serious this could be and I was all oh crap. This might be awful? The worst of the storm is supposed to be starting now for my area and will continue until tomorrow afternoon. All that's currently happening is that it is raining. It's raining sort-of hard, but not the worst rain I've ever seen, as a matter of fact, I experienced a harder rain storm about two weeks ago, so I'm pretty underwhelmed. I don't necessarily WANT the power to go out, but I don't want to feel like I was just tricked into stoking the fires of the failed economy by purchasing a bunch of disaster supplies.

This seemed like a pretty legit storm though, they evacuated a lot of towns in New Jersey, parts of NYC and shut down all mass transit starting at noon today. HOBOKEN WAS FORCED TO CLOSE THE BARS AT 8 PM, Y'ALL. HOBOKEN. SHIT IS GETTING REAL. I kept checking the news to see if my town would be mandatory or voluntary evacuations since we are close to the water, but we are on neither list so me, the boyfriend and the cat are all staying put. Watched Zombieland earlier, so that made a hurricane seem like small shit compared to zombiepocalypse. The DirecTV just started to fade out so we played Mario Party 8 on Wii and now we're watching X-Files on Netflix. It's hard times on the boulevard over here, y'all.

There's also tornado warnings. Fuck all this shit. I'm goin' underground.

Gay is Natural

2011-08-18T10:41:00.000-07:00

In freshman year of high school, I had a really great earth science teacher. One of the biggest lessons I took away from her was that everything that happens on the earth, all the weather and volcanoes and earthquakes and ice ages ... is a way of the earth trying to heal itself to bring it back to a form of stasis. Everything is an equation and the earth is constantly trying to balance it out.

There have always been homosexual people and animals. It's natural. It's part of the natural equation. Does it seem like there are more gay people right now? Probably. Is there a larger percentage of gay people in our population or is it just becoming more acceptable to be who you are in this society, as opposed to the dark ages when you'd be stoned for being a witch? Maybe.

I have another theory though. I'm not crazy though.

There are more gay people because the earth needs it. There are TOO MANY PEOPLE on this earth. TOO MANY FUCKERS FUCKING UP EVERYTHING ALL UP ON HERE. The earth is overpopulated and we're just hoarding more people, hoarding more greenhouse gases and hoarding more chemicals than the earth is prepared to rectify. Gay people are part of the earth's vibration. The earth is making more gay people to try to balance out the equation of too many people. More people of the same sex means a higher chance of more people getting together who can't biologically make children together who are more likely to adopt the people we already have on earth that need care. I know that gay couples, men and women, can find routes to have their own biological children and that's great. I just wish that being gay would be more accepted as a natural part of human society and that we can embrace that there are people, just regular people, who want to adopt children.

There is nothing sinister about that. I am thoroughly disgusted by politicians in office or seeking office that gain momentum by declaring that gay marriage "isn't natural" and that gay people raising babies isn't right either. It's not just republicans. Clinton was the one who originally signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. Thinking something is "icky" isn't a good enough reason to prevent people who love each other from being together. Two guys having butt sex? So what... how many straight couples have anal? A lot. That's icky and there should be some sort of clause in marriage certificates that state "to have and to hold and never violate my spouse's butthole" if we think that gay sex is so disgusting.

Gay sex is an abomination. Don't get it in my eye - Phil Hinkle, R - Indiana

Marriage doesn't need defending. It's not some holy and sacred union. I can get married while bungee jumping, while drunk in Vegas by an Elvis look-alike, in a shark cage, sky-diving or ... heaven forbid... in a church. There's so much corruption of man, and so many of these horrible politicians who are vehemently anti-gay are the ones cruising for twinks on craigslist or getting blowies in airport bathrooms.

Be gay. Be straight. Raise children, have your own or adopt. Do what you want. Just be good to other people and stop being a dickhead already.

P.S. No wonder Perez Hilton loves drawing cum on everyone's face. It's awesome! I could do this all day!

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 27

2011-08-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Day 27 – A picture of you last year and now and how have you changed since then?

Click for Larger

That's me last summer. At a baseball game, baking for a BBQ and petting animals at the farm. I was blonde then, and I'm brunette right now. I'm going back to blonde soon. I was out of a job then, and I'm out of a job again. Have I changed? Am I wiser or healthier or smarter or happier? It's hard to say. I feel kind of low right now, to be honest. I feel like nothing has really changed, that I'm some sort of epic failure who can't hold down a steady job if her life depended upon it. I finally found what I loved doing, and lost that job. I'm trying like hell to get back at it, to get back there, but it's just so hard. How have I changed? I feel like I've lost a lot of hope.

This isn't an uplifting blog post, is it. Shit is getting real over here. It's come to my attention that for so long, I just did what I had to in order to survive after being abandoned, so to speak, by my mother when my father died. She gave up being a mom and I had to do what I had to do just to keep a roof over my head. Now I look at my life and I feel like I've accomplished literally nothing. I'm alive. I have nothing to be proud of, I've worked hard for no goals and I'm afraid to even try anything because I'm such a failure in my own eyes. Even just the one thing I could do for myself, lose weight, I'm not doing. I'm the same weight I was a year ago. NOTHING about me has changed. I suck a lot.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 26

2011-08-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

Day 26 – A photo of somewhere you’ve been to

Washington, D.C. Mike and I have been there twice together. There's so much to do and see, we both end up wanting to go back. Our next trip will probably be Boston. I've never been there but he has.

The last time we went to D.C. was last October when Jon Stewart held the Rally for Sanity. It was so crowded. I had fun at first but I got claustrophobic from the crowds and really miserable so we went back to the hotel early and watched the rest of the rally streaming from Mike's laptop.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 25

2011-08-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

Day 25 – What’s in your purse?

There's all my crap. Wallet, bubbles from a wedding, pills, chap stick, lip sugar balm, lipstick, eye drops, ring, earrings, metrocard, pens, sharpies, highlighter, keys, tissues, feminine products, compact, Nintendo DS games, facial blotting paper, change, ticket stubs, coupons. Not pictured: all the garbage papers I threw out, 4 more tampons and a congealed handful of cough drops.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 17 through 24

2011-08-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

I suck at this challenge. I stopped at Day 17 because it's hard to find a picture of my whole family together.

Day 17 – A photo of you and your family.

Here are a few photos because it's hard to find us all together....

My brother Anthony & I at my cousin's wedding in June

Me, My Granmier (dad's mom) and aunt (dad's sister)

All my family on my Dad's side

Aunt April, me, my mom (from that time I got married once)

My aunt and I wearing silly hats

Family not pictured: my dad, on account of him being dead and all. My dad's dad, also in Heaven. My mom's dad, probably not in heaven, but is dead, my mom's mom because she is crabby and hates me.

Day 18 – Something you crave a lot.

This is going to sound weird, but the flavor I crave the most is vinegar. I'm always craving acidic foods. Or cilantro.

Day 19 – Another picture of yourself.

mirror pic with my iphone.

For anyone wondering why I'm called "The Claw"...

Day 20 – The meaning behind your blog name.

Night Caffeine is pretty self explanatory. It's caffeine that you have at night. Sometimes I get all jacked up on coffee late in the evening and then I'm up all night starting a blog or getting trapped in a kitten-video loop on the internet. Night Caffeine is what you make it.

Day 21 – A photo of something that makes you happy.

Here is a collage of many of the people, drinks and animals that make me happy....

you can click for larger size.

Day 22 – A letter to someone who has hurt you recently. A letter to someone who broke my heart.

To someone who broke my heart....
Dear ______,

When we were together I had so much fun. You were and still are so cute, quirky, original and fun to be around. Why did I never feel like I was good enough for you though? You never did anything to me to make me feel this way, but being around you made me judge myself, as though who I was just wasn't good enough. That's not your fault, really, but you're always going to hold a place in my heart that has me questioning who I was, who I am, and what we could have been if I'd just been more comfortable being myself. There was also something about "us" together that hurt me, because after we broke up, and you were with someone else, I always wondered "why her and not me?" In my head, I was never pretty enough, hip enough, mature enough or cool enough for you. I'm glad I said goodbye to you when I did. I still like you as a person, I just think we could have been better, best friends even, if we had never been anything resembling a couple. It took me so long to get over you, and I don't think I'll ever get over the feelings that being with you brought up in me about how I feel about myself. I'm still not pretty enough or cool enough or interesting enough. But I try... everyday I try to be the best most vivid version of myself I possibly can.

To someone who hurt me recently....
Dear Mom,
I expected more. But then again I didn't expect much at the same time. I just wish things could have been different, and I hope you get your act together enough to let you back into my life. I won't pretend everything is OK just to have you in it, and I won't put my feelings aside just to fake some sort of relationship, because it would be phony. I have so much resentment towards you, and I can't get over that and I can't get over your lies. That's all I guess. I'm sad about this but I'm through compromising when I'm constantly hurt by you over and over again. I also know you said I'm "just like gramma" because you are manipulative and hurtful. I'm done feeling sorry for you. You don't deserve me.

Day 23 – 15 facts about you.

1. I know how to play the flute, and always feel guilty I never kept up playing.
2. I'm mostly lactose intolerant, but it's sporadic. Sometimes I'll get cramps and sickness from eating ice cream or drinking milk, other times nothing will happen. It's Russian Roulette that I will play forever.
3. I am so addicted to Pepsi Throwback that I'm not allowed to bring it in the house anymore.
4. I look so good in hats but I never wear them.
5. I really like the Siriacha rooster sauce. I'm considering bringing it with me to a BBQ later today.
6. I'm 25% black ... my dad's dad was a black man, but I don't know any of his biological family.
7. I'm a picker. My worst habit is picking at my face.
8. I'm also a perpetual hair twirler and I am always touching my hair.
9. I'm on anti-depressants and I'm not sure if they are working anymore. Usually if I'm on a blogging hiatus, it's because I'm having a "WTF is the point of my stupid life" marathon.
10. I had a blood clot in my right calf in 2003 and it's affected my leg circulation ever since; I'm prone to swelling, it sucks.
11. I'm not completely sure that I want kids. I like the hypothetical idea of a happy family, but I'm not so sure I have the patience for a child or the selflessness to do it properly.
12. I give a fake name in Starbucks, not because I'm paranoid of my identity or privacy, but because they always screw up my name. I just say I'm Jen.
13. Watching Greys Anatomy makes me think that I should have been a surgeon.
14. I usually don't try on clothes in a store, it's a hassle. I just buy my size, bring it home and hope for the best.
15. I remember most of my dreams.

Day 24 – A photo of something that means a lot to you.

i love this mug.

Lord Meowington's Wild Ride

2011-08-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

I love my cat Little Guy. He's my handsome & special little boy. He is getting a little older though. He's about 8 years old. Recently, he'd had a lot of eye boogers and a little lump on his side, like a nipple, so I brought him to the vet.

look at his little tongue!

I've always put off taking the cat anywhere because it's difficult. He hates the carrier. Not in the way of it is difficult to get him in there, but once inside the carrier he wastes no time pissing and shitting on himself. In order to calm him for his trip, I bought a calming spray for animals that you spray in their carrier before a trip. I left his carrier out in the living room for a few days for him to get used to it being there and investigate it if he needs to. All of these precautions worked because Little Guy did not wet his invisible pants or drop a cat carrier deuce.

I'd chosen Banfield Pet Hospital at PetSmart near me because they have a good reputation. I also really like PetSmart because of their charities, works with shelters and rescues and it's a good place to shop in general. I signed him up for their Wellness Plan, which is like health insurance for cats. It's a really good value.

Things went fine. Our first appointment was two weeks ago. I waited a little longer than I'd liked but all in all, I'm really pleased with that place. My vet is so nice, great with Little Guy and very smart. She did some blood work on Lil' G, gave me an ointment for his eyes, cleaning solution for his ears and took some blood to run general tests to gauge his health. The vet also noticed that Little Guy has a kneecap that pops out sometimes, and has been like that since birth most likely and recommended a glucosamine supplement to prevent arthritis in the future. The nipple-like lump I noticed? Nothing more than what would be called a skin-tag on a human. Like a mole. She also said that fatty needs to lose weight and said it would be best to switch to a wet-food only diet. Other than that, she said he was very healthy and looked good and sent me on my way with a follow-up in two weeks.


on the exam table

Later that day I received a voicemail from the vet about his bloodwork. One of his enzymes was slightly elevated, from fighting off the eye infection we went in for, and his platelet count was low. She said it wasn't anything to worry about right now and that we would re-check his platelets at his next appointment to see where he stands. I didn't panic, because I know that once you let that panic rat out of its cage, it's hard to get a hold of again. There was nothing I could do about that as it was, so I just continued with the course of treatment as the doctor prescribed - ointment twice a day, wet food, ear cleaning twice a week and glucosamine treat supplements.

Today was his follow-up. I'd been nervous, I'm not going to lie. I was really hoping that his carrier-phobia had been cured and that he'd be 2 for 2 with not peeing and pooping on himself. I was more hoping that his bloodwork was OK today. I got all his stuff ready, switched purses so I could bring his folder of paperwork, his medicines, and the treats to see what the vet thought of them. Know what I didn't switch to my purse? My wallet. So after his exam, which went great, while he was getting his blood drawn and his rabies vaccine, I drove home in the pouring rain to get my wallet (and switch to sneakers from flip-flops), and drove back to get my kitty. On the way back though, the panic started to set in. What set it off was walking into my house to get my wallet and no kitty greeting me at the door. I started to worry "what if there is something wrong with him, and I lose him? What about all those days I will walk through that door with no Little Guy there?!" It was a rough trip back to the vet's office. Right as I was pulling into the parking lot, one of the techs called me and I said "I'll be right in, I'm just parking now." I thought that maybe they were just calling me to remind me about how I left my cat there. But I was surprised when I got there that the blood test results were back already. His platelet count is NORMAL! Thank goodness. I was so happy I could cry. All I could think the whole ride there was "what if my cat has cancer.... what if... what if...." And that's that. With just that one normal test result, we don't have to go back until January. He'll be back a bit sooner though for a teeth cleaning (covered in his Wellness plan!), but I figured I'd give him a month off from going to the vet.

Little Guy has been a very good boy through all of this. He's happy & healthy, and since switching to wet food, he's already lost 0.2 pounds. That might not sound like a lot to you, but it'd be like a human fatty losing 2 pounds. Lil' G-Unit is on his way to being a lean, mean meowing machine.

Yeah! I'm OK!

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 16

2011-08-08T14:29:00.000-07:00

Day 16 – Your celebrity crush.

Just one? ONE celebrity crush? Do you have any idea how many hot celebs there are out there? I don't have the space or time to go through all of them. How about we go with men named Ryan... It's like some kind of law of nature that guys named Ryan need to have sick abs, right?

Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Gosling

Ryan Kwanten

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day 8 through 15

2011-08-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

I slacked off in this challenge this week. Not trying to make excuses, but I had some major life dramas going on so I was busy drinking away my feelings on a daily basis and just trying to surround myself with friends so I wasn't all Cuckoo McGoos. I think I'm ok now though so let's get these days taken care of, because you are very interested in my stupid life.

Day 8 – A song to match your mood.

I don't have a mood right now. I'm watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and thinking about coffee from Dunkin' Donuts. Is there a song for that? I recently woke up and had some fucked up dream where I was wearing scrubs, was 9 months pregnant and going to labor in NYC and was in the subway trying to catch the next train to the hospital. I don't think there's a song for any of that mood so here's this:

Day 9 – A photo of the item you last purchased.

Glucosamine & chondroitin treat supplements for my cat so he doesn't get arthritis. The vet recomended he take a supplement, and I had the choice of treats, pills or a paste. This seemed like it would be the easiest. He gets two of these treats each day and he likes them a lot. Bought from PetSmart for $6.99

Day 10 – A photo of your favorite place to eat.

I love to eat at Peep in SoHo. It's my favorite. I like Thai food, I like flavors, and I like pink and mirrors. No one likes going here with me though :(

Day 11 – What’s in your makeup bag?

I have a bunch of shit. I have Neutrogena Clear Skin foundation, concealer and powder because I'm a grown ass adult with acne. I have some stuff from Avon, I have some things from Bare Minerals, I have some great things from Sephora. Here are photos of all my junk:

My tools.

Skin & Foundations & Powders

kits - Eyeshadows, blushes, etc.

Eye Makeup

Lips

Day 12 – A photograph of the town you live in.

I've lived here for a month and don't really have much to do with this town, yet. Here's a picture of my apartment complex and a picture I took at the Waterfront park of a boat going by.

I lives here.

It's a boat. Across the water from here is Staten Island.

Day 13 – Your favorite musician and why?

Lady Gaga. I don't care what people say or think about her. Her music pumps me up when I need it, and reminds me to be myself, even when I don't know who that is anymore.

Day 14 – A TV show you’re currently addicted to.

Currently addicted to? Jersey Shore! I'm so glad it's back. It's unfortunate though that they couldn't have stayed in Italy and stopped wreaking havoc on our continent.

Day 15 – Something you don’t leave the house without.

My iPhone. It's a piece of me. I take pictures, video, google things, get directions, look up recipes at the store, get my shopping list, get coupons, play games, Facebook, Twitter, everything. It is everything

yeah you like my goofy ass face

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day Seven

2011-08-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

Day 7 – Your dream wedding.

I've slacked off on this challenge, eh? Is it supposed to be each day for 30 days or just as I remember to do it? Anyways here goes.

I've been married before, it was nice. I had a nice wedding. I've learned from that it doesn't matter how nice your wedding is if your marriage turns to shit. Focus on the marriage. A wedding is just one day out of your life. It does not matter if everything goes right, wrong, matches or whatever on that one day. If you want to have a happily ever after, you need to focus on all the days after saying "I do."

With that in mind....

My dream wedding is just something that will be so super pretty, contemporary-modern-chic. I'd love to have cherry blossoms, and David Tutera, and be skinny and Mariah Carey. Also my dream wedding would be magic in the sense it would be outside on the beach but also be super comfortable as though it were air-conditioned.

A Few of my Favorite Things

30 Day Blog challenge: Day Six

2011-07-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

Day 6 – A photo of an animal you’d love to keep as a pet.

This is a tough one. I love animals so much. I'd love to have birds, lizards, gerbils, bunnies, fish, dogs, more cats, anything. The animal I really want though, it doesn't exist.... yet.

TINY GIRAFFE

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day Five

2011-07-28T07:14:00.000-07:00

Day 5 – A photo of yourself two years ago.

I'll do ya one better - here's two.

Me in our hotel room in Washington, D.C.

St. Patty's Day 2009

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day Four

2011-07-25T20:48:00.000-07:00

Day 4 – Your favorite photograph of your best friend.

I have TWO best friends! I'm so lucky! Bernadette and I have been best friends since first grade. We live far away from each other now so it's even more awesome when we get to spend time together. I'm really looking forward to seeing her this weekend!

Yeah... she's in a band-ish...

She's also in a B-52's cover band "Hot Pants Explosion"

Dressing like Elvis? Check.

Best Friends for Beers

Y'all are probably sick and tired of Jaclyn's dumb ass, but here she is anyways....

There's a baby in there - we're not just marveling at her having eaten 3 meals in a row.

This baby came out of her. And a cornfield.

Snapple Fact: Jaclyn HATES Press 'n Seal Wrap.

L to R: Tara, Me, Jaclyn, Caitlyn, April

I hate that I'm leaving out all my friends, because I like the few people I consider friends... But here ya go. Pics of my two best friends. Let's all hold hands and sway to "That's What Friends Are For"

I'm Not Lovin' It. Ever.

2011-07-25T06:52:00.000-07:00

I had a realization this morning.

After dropping off Mike to catch his train this morning, I decided I'd get myself some breakfast - a coffee and something from Dunkin' Donuts probably. On the way home at the intersection, I realized I could not make a right turn onto the street I needed to go down (I'm not all the way familiar with this new town I've been living in for a month). The Dunkin was about two miles away, and it was a trafficky area during rush hours due to construction on that road. But right in front of me? McDonalds. So I went there.

Living here, the McDonald's is like a mile from my house. I've eaten more McD's in the past month than I have in the past two years. It's not like I'm all "YAY OH MY GOD FINALLY I LOVE THIS SHIT!" It's more of the proximity. It's close, it's cheap and will do in a pinch when time is short I guess. On your way to the city and need a quick dinner in the car? McCrapple has your back. Too hot to cook? They have frozey drinks now! Drunk at 2 AM and somehow need a burger? These bitches never close. Need to punish your body for all the good work you've been doing otherwise eating right and vaguely exercising? Rub these nuggets on your thighs.

I don't even like McD's. I don't like their fries. I don't like their grey burgers. I especially don't like the employees. I like the new McCafe drink shit though, unfortunately. Especially the frozen strawberry lemonade. Those fuckers got me.

May I take your order?

Let me get onto something else I touched upon there, the employees. This doesn't just go for McDonald's but anywhere that I have to put up with people who are going to touch my food. I don't want to see long-ass fingernails and I don't want to see piercings. THERE I SAID IT. I'm not an old fart, but I guess the curmudgeon started setting in 3 years ago at a Food Town in south Jersey. This little tart cashier had the biggest ear-flaps I've ever seen in person. It's so gross and looking at it, I couldn't stop thinking of the nasty way it must look when it doesn't have that big gasket in it, and how much ear cheese she has to pick out of it at night. I hate looking at facial piercings, especially when I can clearly see that they're not well taken-care of. I don't even like places that make you put a band-aid over it while you're working to I guess try to hide it from me. BE APART OF SOCIETY AND GET THE METAL SHIT OUT OF YOUR FACE AND RING UP MY GROCERIES YOU LITTLE FUCK.

When a customer is around, visible or even in earshot, pretend to like your fucking job and act with a modicum of professionalism. I had better damn well NOT see you texting or talking on your cell phone while you're on the clock. Fuck, I shouldn't even know you HAVE a cell phone at all, why am I seeing this? Ring up my purchase. I can name one specific example. And I hope to sweet lord that someone has heard my complaint previously and done something about it. I was at Macy's Herald Square in NYC buying something for work. Not "I was buying myself an outfit for work." I mean I left work with a work credit card to buy something for my job. Not once in the store was I approached by any employee asking me for help (having worked in retail, I know the importance of personally needing to interact with any customer you see. ever.). When I finally, with no help, found what I needed to buy and went to the register to pay for it, I had to wait a minute while this clicky-clack bitch 1. Finished her personal conversation with another employee next to her !and! 2. Sent a text message - for her to start ringing me up. She then says "oh this doesn't have a price tag on it...."

Do your own damn price check, I'm busy.

What I expected to happen next was her to tell the employee next to her to go get a price, right? RIGHT?? No! She said "you need to go get one with a tag" as she did not make eye contact and whipped out her cell phone and commenced her texting. I was floored. FLOORED. I dropped my shit there and went to JC Penney's down the block. BECAUSE I NEVER. I've consistently gotten HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE, WORTHLESS "service" in that Macy's. Not every Macy's though! I've had absolutely outstanding service and help in other stores, especially Bridgewater, NJ. I feel like the Herald Square store is resting on its laurels of being the biggest store, the flagship store and having built-in customers all the time because they're a huge presence there.

I feel like we put up with a lot. It's easier in this day and age to make companies aware when their stores, products or employees are not living up to that company's standards or reputation. From now on, I'm DONE going to places I don't like, always give me diarrhea* or bad customer service. And I will keep on praising the good places, be a returning customer, and always making sure to go out of my way to let a manager know when an employee has done an outstanding job - don't just reach out to complain, say some nice shit too when the time calls for it.

*This does not include White Castle.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day Three

2011-07-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

Day 3 – Your idea of the perfect first date.

The kind where you get your panties AND your handcuffs back at the end of the night, and ideally do not get roofied.

I keed.

I don't know, I'm kind of jaded against fairytale bullshit and things that are generally so hyped up like that you will always get let down. Bitches need to stop demanding romance and magic on THE FIRST DATE just as much as men need to quit thinking they're apt to get their pee-pee wet at the end of the night.

A nice first date is dinner, drinks and then something fun where you can talk and get to know each other.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day Two

2011-07-22T19:04:00.000-07:00

Day 2 – A photo of something you ate today.


Pizza Before

Pizza After

I made homemade pizza today! I made sauce from Mike's friend's blog, Saucy Little Dish. Making sauce from scratch is so worth it. The only way I differed from the recipe was adding more honey than 1 tablespoon, and I hit it with an immersion blender after I cook it so it's nice and smooth on the pizza.

My pizza dough is not homemade though. Wendy says it's really easy, but I always just buy a ball of dough from the store. My toppings of choice? Turkey Pepperoni (under the cheese), mushrooms, onions and peppers. It's a supreme pizza, indeed.

30 Day Blog Challenge: Day One

2011-07-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

My buddy Tameeka over at Tameeka Time is doing a 30 Day Blog Challenge, and I'm game so here goes.

Day 1 – A photo of yourself and a description of how your day was.

Me today.

How was my day? It was ho-hum. I took a sleeping pill last night and it made me extra groggy today so I slept late. At 9:30 am I heard the cat yowling at the bedroom door, but I decided to just tune him out since I knew he had food and water and mama needs her beauty sleep. At 10:40, I gave up. I was still very groggy, and something in my groggy mind said "he's probably trying to tell me someone is knocking at the door." That didn't make a lot of sense.

"Groggy" is the defining word of my day. I felt like I floated through everything, lifeless. I made Starbucks Iced Coffee and it came out great. It perked me up a little bit, but I was no where at 100%. Around 1:20 I noticed the red recording light was not on the DVR and got angry-level-red that Grey's Anatomy was not recording on Lifetime. I turned on the TV to see what the hullabaloo was, and apparently there was a Project Runway marathon on. That was OK with me. I ate leftovers from the previous night's dinner (half a piece of chicken, cornbread, corn on the cob, baked beans) and watched one of my favorite seasons (how much did you hate Gretchen? A lot.)

I took a shower and did my hair routine. Then my stupid ass thought it would be good to sit outside for an hour to let my hair air-dry. This sucked so much. Like most of America, it's motherfucking hot as balls in Jersey. Just stay inside... it hurts to breathe air. It's so hazy. It's hazy at night, how is that even a thing? It's damn near 90 degrees right now and it's been dark for hours. I can't live in this world.

Around 5:00 I got hungry like the wolf but didn't know what I wanted to eat. I'd had ice cream earlier and wasn't hungry for a snacky-snack. I couldn't tell what I wanted so I ate 2 string cheeses and some crackers with Laughing Cow cheese on it. I dicked around on my phone, played Tiny Wings, and then made up a meal plan and grocery list for later in the evening.

Mike and I got dinner at Panera before shopping at Wegmans. That store has what we affectionately call IPH: Indian Power Hour. This seems to be any hour we are there. Indians all up in Wegmans. Buying a shit-ton of milk. Why so much milk?! So many gallons! We did all the shopping, loaded up the car, came home, carried all the shit in and put it away. Excitingly mundane, oui? I'm glad I have all the dinners planned out for the week. Tomorrow I'm making sauce and pizza again from Saucy Little Dish. I'm also going to make some Hungry Girl thing for breakfast.

Well that was my day. Boring as shit. Tomorrow I'm staying inside. I want to go to the pool, but if it's lava hot outside, I'll just sit in the bath tub instead.

This One's for the Curls

2011-07-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned my hair before. It's always been a struggle. A struggle to fight frizz, a struggle between the urge to straighten it or keep it curly, a struggle to make my curls look good, just everything about my hair has been a fight for the past 16 years. I like how it looks straight sometimes and I enjoy it curly as well. Whenever it looks good, I love it. What I love best is not having to do a whole lot to keep it looking its best. Spending a lot of time on my looks is not my idea of a good time. Being myself is also important, so trying to "go with the flow" and bring out my own natural beauty is prefarable to trying to fight nature and be someone/something I'm not.

Curly

Straight

In 2008 I heard about the Curly Girl method on NaturallyCurly.com. There is a book, The Curly Girl Handbook that helps you get the best out of your hair. It's core is using products that are sulfate and silicone free. Sulfates are harsh and drying to hair, and curly hair can tend to be dry as it is, so adding something like that to it isn't doing any favors - it creates more frizz and continues the cycle of relying upon anti-frizz products to try to tame your mane.

Those anti-frizz and smoothing products come with problems of their own as well. From what I've read, the silicones in anti-frizz products basically act as a band-aid and don't actually help. Sure, it will appear that your hair is smoother, but it's not getting to the core of the problem and fixing it - the problem being dry & under-conditioned hair. The frizz is like little fingers of your hair reaching out trying to grab any piece of moisture they can find. Silicone seals the hair shaft and this keeps out the good things your hair is trying to reach for - moisture! All the while this is happening, the ends will keep splitting and you will keep reaching for more and more products to try to remedy this, continuing the cycle of hair abuse.

That's where the Deva curl products differ. These are the products from the Devachan Salon, founded by the author of the Curly Girl Handbook. They focus on moisturizing your hair from the inside out, eliminating your need for emergency frizz cover up. "Frizz is a curl waiting to happen," is the defining statement that Lorraine Massey sets out in the book, guiding you through the different curl types and how to properly care for them. I'm currently between a wavy and curly type of hair, since I'd been coloring and trying to straighten it so much, the damage had lessened my bouncy, tighter curls.

When I first started out with the curly girl method, I'd used products from other companies that were free of sulfates and silicone. I had good results, sometimes, but was still frustrated that I'd had more bad hair days than good ones. This is when I reached my breaking point: either find a way to get my curls to be their best or resign to a life of straightening. This is when I was considering getting the keratin hair treatment to straighten it in a more permanent way. After doing research on this, seeing real-life before and after results, I decided this was too harsh, damaging and detrimental to my health. Reports came out that even keratin treatments that claimed to be formaldehyde-free weren't, and had very serious health concerns. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and a respiratory irritant. Serious health concerns aside, it doesn't always deliver the promised results, and the grow-out time looks awful.

After a Deva cut & style to remedy the problem

After a "Brazilian Blow-out"

I started getting serious about conditioning my hair better using the Deva Heaven-in-Hair deep conditioner at least once a week. It smells amazing and I definitely started to see improvement. The other products in my regimen included shampooing (occasionally) with Burt's Bee's Pomegranate & Soy Volumizing shampoo (a non-sulfate shampoo that is CG approved), co-washing (conditioner washing) most days with Suave Natural's Lavender & Lilac conditioner, and conditioning with Garnier Fructis Pure Clean Fortifying Conditioner (free of silicones). This was a start, but I still knew I was missing something.

This is when I gave up the ghost, let go and let Deva. I went to their salon location on Broome Street in NYC since I was in the area. One of the stylists was in the reception area and took a look at my curls, asked me some questions and suggested the right products for me. I left the mothership that day with Low-Poo, One Condition and AnGel. I'd originally only went in to get another bottle of gel and I'm SO happy that Rick was there to help me out! The next day, I used his tips on what would work best for my hair and the results were immediate and amazing (you can see the photo of my curly hair at the top). My hair felt great and looked great, and continues to look better each and every day as it gets better conditioned each time I use the Deva products. Not only does my hair look great, but it smells great... Deva products smell absolutely heavenly.

My haul - One Condition, Low-Poo and AnGel. And a free microfiber towel!

The only part of the CG method that I don't subscribe to is the idea that you can not ever wear your hair straight. I think part of the fun of having hair is having the freedom to do what you want with it on a whim. Once in a while, I might want to wear it straight. Just that now, I know a better, gentler way of straightening it myself - with a lower temperature flat iron, and plenty of TLC before & after.

I'm making this blog post in hopes of spreading the love and helping out another girl like me who gets angry at her hair, who's looking for that magic fix. This is for you... love your hair, stop fighting yourself.

INDEPENDENCE & FREEDOM: DIVORCE EDITION

2011-07-20T05:42:00.000-07:00

My rings & booze... awaiting their fate.

I've never really written about this a lot over here, but if you're a friend or a faithful reader, you would have gleaned the fact by now that I was married once. You'd have also caught wind of the fact that I have a boyfriend, who I am most definitely NOT married to.

My EX-husband and I were together for a while before we got married and then we got married. After about a year of marriage, it was over. When you tell people you got married in 2007 and were separated by 2008, you get such shocked responses. "OH! So soon after the wedding?" You know what? Why don't you get credit for time-served BEFORE the wedding? There were years there. A wedding can serve as a distraction from the rest of the relationship. When you're preparing for a wedding, you're not even in your relationship anymore, you're party-planning and things can very easily fall by the wayside, and as you neglect your relationship you can easily ignore the problems that are there, the problems that have been and continue to grow.

I was a really pretty bride, FYI.

If I learned anything from getting married, it's this: Don't just get married because it seems like the next natural step and progression of your relationship. Don't get married out of the obligation of "well, we've been together X number of years, I suppose it's time to get married." Don't do that.

I'm not jaded against marriage, per say. Though I'm very quick to throw out a loud and assertive "DON'T GET MARRIED" to anyone who is single. Marriage and relationships are hard work, and with the right person they are worth it. I'm not ruling out the possibility of getting married again one day. It will be different though. Right now though, I'm happy and I don't need to change a thing.

On Monday, July 11, 2011, my boyfriend and I celebrated our faux-versary. It's the day we picked to be our anniversary. It's hard to pinpoint a day as a couple to celebrate when you got together as an adult, right? I mean what day do we pick... we weren't kids in high school who decided to be boyfriend & girlfriend on a specific date. Things just fell into place. Of course though I can tell you when we first kissed, and the first time I said "I love you" and he said it to me, and all that jazz. Relationships are a progression. Sometimes you don't know you're even in one until it hits you like a truck that damn, you really have it hard for this person.

On Monday, July 11, 2011, after 3 long years, my divorce was officially finalized in a court of law. I felt so good! On my way out of the court room, I wanted to slap-five everyone else in the court like I was a basketball player making my way out of the locker room. I was grinning really wide, and the other people in the court room who were smiling back at me were other women there. It was "family court" so there were cases of divorce, child support and restraining orders. Women, we are all in it together.

FREEDOM tastes like Jameson

On Saturday, July 16, 2011, Jaclyn and I went out and celebrated my divorce. I'd said for 3 years that there was going to be a divorce party. I'm not going to regale you with the whole story of how drunk I got, because... well because. But I did get ridiculously shithoused. Did you know that when you tell bartenders that you just got divorced, you get free shots? I got a lot of free drinks that night. I got yelled at by a bouncer when I tried to leave the bar with my drink to make a phone call. Did you know that you can't bring a drink outside? I didn't. Did you know that it doesn't matter if you keep one hand on the building while you're outside? The bouncer still gets just as mad and tells you "This ain't fucking freeze tag, go back inside."

Here's another pro-tip: Don't get in the middle of a stranger's conversation/argument. After I'd gotten yelled at by the bouncer and went inside, I saw a couple that looked as though they were having an argument. I'd had several drinks and shots and thought it was my duty to mediate and help them. So I get right in the middle of them and say "listen.... don't get married. Stay happy, don't get married." The guy said some more words to me... I don't know exactly what he said... but he wasn't pleased with my wisdom, and then I said something back to him that ended with "ya mother/ya face," something to that effect. Well he got up, and made motion like there was about to be a punch coming to my face, so I ran away to the other end of the bar to the safety of my friend Jaclyn.

Girls just wanna have drinks.

I'd decided that night I would get rid of my wedding rings in some sort of cathartic and symbolic fashion. I just had no idea what. Just like how I figured I'd "just know" when/where to scatter my dad's ashes, I figured the time/place would occur to me when I should dispose of my rings. And for anyone who tries to say "you should have sold them for the money!" No. It's not a seller's market for gold and I know what kind of hits I'm looking at for used wedding jewelery, that's just more hassle than is worth the money. At the beginning of the evening, I put them on the table as Jaclyn and I toasted our first drinks and asked her if she had any ideas. She said she didn't know, what was I thinking of doing? I said that ideally, I'd like to shove them up a hobo's taint. She said this plan was faulty, as the taint is not an orifice, and I counteracted that point with the fact that there is a little divot... I'm sure it could hold a size 6 ring.

Once we moved on to the next bar, I put the rings in my bra so I'd remember about them, but they kept colliding with my phone (I keep that in my bra when it's small purse night), so I put them on my pinky so I could see and remember I was supposed to do something. The night progressed, I drank and danced, having fun, and at one moment I looked down and one of my rings was gone. Good, I thought, that is what was supposed to happen. The second ring? As I was outside getting some air ("trying to maintain" as I call it, that blissful moment before barfing where you think you might be able to get a handle on yourself), I had a moment of clarity. I took the last ring off my finger and threw it into 2nd Avenue. With that catharsis behind me, I leaned my right hand on the Escalade next to me and had another catharsis: I unabashedly puked at the curb.

This has definitely been a time of tying up all my loose ends and it feels great.

Swimming Upstream

2011-07-19T08:15:00.000-07:00

While I was at a kid's party, the US Army scientists were busy doing experiments on monkeys. Sock monkeys. Super-intelligent ocean-swimming telepathic sock monkeys, trained to attack. Sock monkeys that knew how to beat you at hide-and-seek through their new thought analyzing machine. All the seeker had to do was look into the Dyson fan as the hider found their spot, and the machine would automatically know where they would pick to hide. You can't outsmart the machine either; there is no such thing as choice, the machine knows where your indecision would occur and where you would ultimately end up. There is no such thing as choice, the sock-monkeys will always figure you out.

Eventually they would tire of swimming in the ocean. They would all band together as one giant fist and punch the Army in the face. They swam fiercely up river like crazed salmon.

Suddenly I'm 16 again and I need a ride to school. Those monkeys aren't my problem, my only problem is getting to school and thank goodness my mom is willing to drop me off on her way to work, I make it just in time for the bell. It's a trap, of course. The second I sit in my seat, I'm falling... falling into the river.

Swim, swim, swim for your life. I'm fighting the current, somehow I have the skill and power to swim up the river with the monkeys. Oh how they bite! They nip at my arms and legs as they swim faster beyond me, and right now my only hope is that as their telepathic powers diminish as they are less like one unit and fade into themselves, less of the flock mentality hopefully.

They're fish. They look like sock monkeys, but they are really just telepathic, hateful fish. You get away from bees by jumping in the water, you get away from fish by jumping out of the water. So I fall back, and once I'm alone, I crawl up the side of the river, over branches and rocks piled particularly organized on the river bank. Is this a blind for duck-hunting? There's siding and a door and after I enter, what was originally thought to be a haphazard hunting blind is a more complex river hut. It's almost a house, almost a home, if it weren't for the mud and silt you can tell comes in when the river gets too high, if it wasn't for the snakes I can most certainly hear slithering somewhere under a bed. But my companions are here. My love is here, and I leap into his arms and we retire to what passes as the master bedroom in this hut.

My respite is short-lived as there is a crash from the land-side of the home. Looking out the window, I can see a street, a street light and in the yellow glow of the sodium lamp, I can see the aftermath of a car accident. The man in the dark sees me, locks eyes and immediately his eyes grow angry. We are squatters! This is his true home! This man, who is built like a linebacker and of course has companions of his own storms the castle. We are all thrown off, as this place seemed half-abandoned. How sad it is that someone calls this home, and that they will fight so fiercely to defend it. We barely make it out unharmed and flee back into the river, hopefully not disrupting the migration of the sock monkey piranha flock.

Summer Movies

2011-07-18T20:48:00.000-07:00

There aren't a lot of good movies coming out this summer, eh? The one that I've been super excited for did NOT let me down - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It was super awesome. I'm a little sad that it's all over :(

James Franco doesn't just play a scientist, he IS a scientist.

There's some movies coming out though that are really shitty looking but I want to see anyways. The boyfriend says he will NOT go see the Planet of the Apes movie with me. So I'm going to need a movie-buddy soon. Anyone?

everything about this = yes

The other movie I would like to see that is probably crappy is Friends With Benefits. Surprisingly, I did not want to see it's identical predecessor No Strings Attached. Why? Because I could give a fuck for Ashton Kutcher. Justin Timberlake though? I'd like to throw some vag his way. And Mila Kunis, I'd lez out with her pretty damn hard.

The Smurfs movie doesn't look bad and I really want to see that. I used to love Smurfs when I was little. I loved them so much that I put a Smurf action figure toy in the toaster and melted it. This is probably the only time I could like something that Katy Perry does. Besides Russel Brand. I'm strangely attracted to that man.

So that's my summer movie post. Someone please go to the movies with me. I doubt Jaclyn will want to see the crappy monkey movie. I'm not going to be the dweeb that goes to the movies alone like some kind of lone masturbating creepster.

EDITED TO ADD:

I JUST SAW A COMMERCIAL FOR FINAL DESTINATION 5. HELL YEAH! I'M GOING TO GO TO THERE.

don't let this be my future of ape-movie watching.

Things That Scare Me

2011-07-16T06:37:00.000-07:00

Everyone has some kind of phobia, right? There's something that gets everyone, and most things are normal. Spiders are common. I'm afraid of spiders and most bugs. Then I realized I am afraid of some things that are not your average fear. I'll share them with you so you know how to fuck with me.

1. Spiders.
2. Bridges
3. Flying

Those are the "normal" fears. I think... I don't know if a fear of being on a bridge is that common, but it's more the heights that get me, I think... high bridges, tall bridges with lots of cables above me or high bridges over water. It just makes me think for one hot minute "what if I have a seizure or freak out or someone hits me and I go flying off the side of the bridge into the great beyond??" Everytime I drive over a bridge, especially the Pulaski Skyway, I white-knuckle it the whole time and tell myself in my head "you can do this."

Stranger things that I'm afraid of.....

Statues that Come to Life

This isn't something I'm actively afraid of... worrying if a statue will come to life. But if I see it in a movie, I'm reminded how much I hate this. That was kind of the catalyst for this post. Last night, Mike & I saw the Harry Potter movie, and even though Professor McGonagall used the statues for good, they still scare me. Statues should not come to life.

Alien Abduction

I've watched X-Files since I was a kid and have seen way too many TV specials and documentaries about all-things-alien. It's an interest of mine because it scares me. Since I was very young, probably 7 years old, I can remember having nightmares about "space men in space suits floating next to my bed" (I had a bunk bed). I'd be paralyzed and couldn't yell for help as the space men looked me over. This made me recently start wondering if it's just the sort of thing a child's mind can run away with or if maybe I was abducted and don't know it? I'm NOT a crazy person, I swear... but I really don't want to get abducted by aliens.

Scary Videogames

When I was a kid, I didn't like when my dad or brother played Zelda and he had to go into the dungeons or castle or whatever... the music scared me. The video game Zombies Ate My Neighbors scared me. It also bothered me that there was NEVER an end to that game! The levels just kept going and going, repeating themselves with no hope of any end in sight. Video games that are too suspenseful or stressful bother me and get me all strung out.

TV Static

Probably because of Poltergeist.

Records or CDs skipping

There's something haunting about the sound of a record skipping.... I can't even pinpoint why this puts me on pins and needles.

The beeping sound a phone makes when you leave it off the hook

Because obviously something has gone wrong if you just dropped the phone and ran. This sound is like the background noise to me running from a murderer in my house.

I'm not googling one damn picture for this post because I know they will scare me.

I'm only here till the pills kick in.

2011-07-13T21:28:00.000-07:00

So I'm awake. It's "only midnight" but I like to be asleep early, ok? I don't know why, I just feel like it's good to be in bed around 11:30. I might not have to wake up early, but I don't want to fuck up my sleeping schedule and become that person again who sleeps till noon and only has repeats of Grey's Anatomy to look forward to on the Lifetime channel.

I love my Starbucks mug.

Drinking a quart of iced tea at 9:00 PM was not a good idea. The coffee I sustained myself upon today seemed like a good idea. Yesterday I got a new coffee maker since my old one broke. Something must have happened to it when I moved because whenever I put more than 2 cups of water in it, the damn thing would leak and piss all over the counter. So my boyfriend ordered this sweet thing off of Amazon and I made my first brew this morning and WHOO is it strong! I had no idea how much my previous coffee maker was under performing. I wasn't really hungry today, so all I had was coffee till like 4:00 PM. That's when I was all shaky and running in circles and generally starting 100 projects at once and not really completing anything. I didn't know what to do really... so I figured if I ate something it would absorb the caffeine much in the way food will help you be less drunk.

I made a Hungry Girl egg mug with egg whites, Laughing Cow light cheese and some honey turkey. At this point I was really hungry, so I sliced off a thick hunk of Red, White & Blue bread (a cranberry-blueberry bread from Wegman's) and topped that with Brie and black & red raspberries from Alstede Farm. It dawned on me how ridiculous it was that I was eating sugar-crusted bread with creamy Brie on it along side the lowest-calorie possible food I could make. Whatever, I liked it.

Around dinner time, I wasn't really hungry, but cooked anyways because the boyfriend? He is hungry when he comes home from work and he likes to eat food. I made steak, chipotle-lime corn and roasted garlic broccoli. I also drank a quart of iced tea, no lie. I wasn't hungry, but I really wanted tea. That was not the best idea.

You ever go to the store and feel like you're about to be judged about what you're buying? I always feel really self-conscious when I'm at the drug store. Not in the way of I'm embarrassed about having my period, I don't give a fuck, I'll bleed all up and down the aisles of Walgreens. I'll do a jaunty flamenco dance with tampons for all I care. My vagina bleeds, what a surprise. I'm a female of child-bearing age, you gotta understand that Carrie is gonna go to the prom at some point during the month.

The other day when I was looking especially haggard from humidity, cleaning the house, rain, and just looking generally shitty, I went to Walgreens to pick up my prescriptions and a couple other things I need. One of those things was earplugs. My boyfriend snores pretty bad and I need silence to sleep, so most nights I use earplugs. Buying that in itself is not a concern. Since losing my job and moving and thinking about my upcoming divorce finalization (that's another post), I hadn't been sleeping well so I bought some OTC sleeping pills. Ok... so earplugs and sleeping pills, that shows the cashier I have some problems sleeping. Since I was there picking up my scripts, I went to pay for my extra items at the pharmacy counter for my pills... an anti-depressant and an anti-anxiety medication. Add all these four things together, I feel like the cashier is going to call the suicide hotline for me, or at least give me a hug and tell me it's all going to be ok. Looking at my frizzy, baggy-eyed, sloppy-t-shirt-wearing rain-drenched self asking for uppers, downers and buying earplugs and sleeping pills all at the same time... I don't know, I just feel like there should be some kind of buzzer that goes off in their system for them to help out. I'm glad they didn't, but fuck, I'd be worried about me a little bit. But then again, have you ever MET a pharmacy cashier that gave even 1/10th of a fuck about anything?

Anyways, my point here was that I'm awake because of Night Caffeine and that's the name of my blog and I hope my sleeping pill kicks in soon.

Floating

2011-07-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: this post is serious and maybe sad.

Me in HS at my locker.

My dad died in October 1999. It was the beginning of my senior year in high school. Before that, I was happy enough aside from the average teen angst. I was overly-dramatic about everything and I fought a lot with my dad, mostly about boys, the phone and my curfew. I was smart, I had a boyfriend, I was in the drama club and I had a job. Pretty average I guess.

But then my dad died and I just felt like The Girl Whose Dad Died.

It was awful, really. My grades fell by the wayside for the most part and I only passed because I was naturally smart and didn't need to study for anything. If I was an average student, or someone who really needed to work hard just to get a B or a C, I would have absolutely failed my senior year because I just didn't give a fuck. I didn't turn to drugs, or drinking (more than your average underage high school senior, anyways), I just zoned out. I didn't care how I looked, and I wore pajama pants to school almost every day. I was outwardly hostile towards freshman. I did fail one class... Advanced Math, which was like pre-calc or trig or something, I'm not really sure. I am fairly certain that even if I wasn't the girl with a dead dad that I would have failed that shit regardless. The fuck is a logarithm? Fuck that noise. The best part of that class was sitting with Tara and snarking on everyone. The teacher was nice but so odd.. he reminded me of the hippie teacher from Beavis & Butthead. At one point towards the end of the year, I just stopped going to that class, because really, what was the point? I'd been there for 7 months and still had no clue what was going on. That was the only class I ever failed in my life.

The week before my dad died, he told my mom what he wanted to happen to him after he died. This wasn't because he was actively in the process of dying, in the hospital, with his loved ones by his side. He was fine. He was at a funeral for my mom's uncle, and decided that ending up in a casket in the ground forever, or being surrounded by grieving family was not how he wanted to end his trip. Instead, he wanted to be cremated, with no service, and the have his ashes scattered at the Delaware Water Gap in the Delaware River. After his family was finished depositing his earthly remains with the fishes, they were to proceed to Hot Dog Johnny's and have hot dogs in his honor. He loved hot dogs and he really liked that place.

Here's what really happened. A week after he said that, he was rushed to the ER in the middle of the night because he couldn't breathe. He died that night. My brother was the one who he woke up, and he called 911. I was asleep, or at least I pretended I was because I was so scared. My mom should have gotten up, should have been in the ambulance with him, but she wasn't. She followed soon after, and then she came home and my dad's clothes and sneakers were in a bag. That's the image I will never forget - his Nikes in a clear plastic bag from the hospital. We had a wake for my dad a few days later and he was creamated and since then his ashes have been with my brother.

On Saturday, July 9, 2011, my brother and I finally put my dad to rest as he wanted. We scattered his ashes in the Delaware River. It's hard to know that you picked the right spot to dump your dad in a river, but when we were walking along the muddy river bank, we found a dollar and I figured that was a good enough sign, right? My brother handed me the urn and asked me to say a few words but I got choked up and said "I don't know what to say" and handed the urn back to my brother. He said a few words, and then handed the bucket 'o dad back to me. I didn't know what to say, and still didn't, so I just said "Dear God, please watch over my dad, he's going to the ocean now." I opened the top of the urn and looked in. It's so weird to think that the man who hugged me, yelled at me, went to work, swam in a pool, coached football, went fishing, smoked pot and did so many things on earth was in a jar. I poked at his ashes with my fingers. There were some larger bits on top and I wondered what parts of him they were. Maybe his bones or his teeth or his feet or his hands? I wanted to giggle but held it in. Then i just poured some out into the river a little at a time. I didn't want to bogart the dad-flakes so I said to my brother "here, you want to do some too?" And there my dad went... he made a cloudy streak in the river. People were about to swim and kayak in my dad. Fishes were biting my toes as I sprinkled the man who raised me into the river.

The only picture taken that day. Mr. Froggie.

We watched my dad float downstream and his cloudy streak mingle and mix with the rest of the water and then walked up to the path where my boyfriend waited for us. We all got in the car and drove to the next required stop, Hot Dog Johnny's. I got a birch beer, two hot dogs and some french fries. We sat there eating, it was 90 degrees out, and I couldn't help but thing "what's the big deal about these stupid hot dogs? Rutt's Hut is way better." I don't even like birch beer, but they're famous for that... and buttermilk apparently. Who drinks buttermilk? Disgusting. After eating, my brother went to get a refill on his birch beer and Mike and I walked down to the river just to walk. My brother joined us a few minutes later and said "look what I found!" and handed me a little frog. I held him for a second, reminiscing about all the times my brother and I would have frog-catching contests when we went camping up in the country with my dad, and then let the little hopper out into the water.

The rest of that day was ok. We went to Alstede Farms and got some ice cream and produce and then headed home. Mike kept asking how I was doing, how I felt and I didn't know. It took a while to process. Did I feel at peace? No. When it finally crept up on me how I felt, it was clear. It felt like losing my dad all over again. I felt very upset that he was just floating down the river and into the ocean. I traced his route along Google Earth and wondered how long it would take him to get to the ocean. It made me sad that he was just floating there... everywhere... nowhere... that I really would never see him again, even his little particles in a jar. But it's what he wanted. I should be happy that he finally got what he wanted, right? I'm not... I'm still upset that I had to dump my dad in a river and that he's not alive. That never really fades away. It was all too surreal, and at the same time that action made it even more real that he's gone, gone, gone. I felt some regret that I didn't keep some of him, but what would that have done? So I'd have some dad-dust in a jar in my house and what would I do? Cuddle it? Snort it? Yell at it because he resembles the stuff I dump out of the vacuum canister? Knowing me, I'd decorate it for holidays or put jaunty little mustaches on the daddy-decanter. This is why my brother had the ashes all along and not me. I'd probably put santa-pants on it the day after Thanksgiving.

So that's that. I wish I had a more witty, funny or thoughtful way to end this post but I still don't. File this under "well, that happened." And move on I guess.

I'm the Man and Woman of this House

2011-06-27T07:23:00.000-07:00

Detail of my shower curtain

The title of that blog is not meant to say I'm transgendered or to emasculate Mike. I think I put it best on Saturday when I said "I can't help it that I'm so awesome." It is the duality of man and woman.

The other day when Mike and I went to our storage unit to get out all our stuff so the movers can take that, I showed my he-woman like strength. Mike picked up one of the boxes and said "oh hell no, this one is really heavy." I rolled my eyes, flicked him aside with my giant hands from 10 feet up in the air (because I also grow to super-human heights when I am feeling invincible) and lifted the box with ease and carried it off into the sunset. I'm not trying to say Mike is weak, he's not, I'm just very GRRRRR and powerful like a mother lifting a car off a baby kind of strength when I put my mind to it.

Sure I have super strength like a female wrestler (minus the baby-dick though... I'm lookin' at you, Chyna), but I am still a lady and a domesticated lady at that. The second bathroom, "my" bathroom, I couldn't wait to decorate with all the things that Mike's mom and I had picked out at Bed Bath and Beyond. I'll show pictures soon, but the theme is black & white pattern with pink accents. And sparkles. The first thing I did yesterday was put one of the finishing touches in my bathroom... This fine item, purchased for $7.00 at Home Goods.


My shamdelier with rhinestones.

I saw that and specifically went "squeee" in the store and hugged it and said "IT SPARKLES." And I knew that Rhian (photographer, twitter) would love it since she also likes Home Goods too. Speaking of Home Goods, see that link right there, to Rhian's blog? That led me to this giveaway contest! I entered to win $100 gift card to Home Goods from Fresalina. Check out that blog and enter the contest for your chance to win!

After hanging my sham-delier yesterday, the day's tasks included making a meal plan and grocery list. Mike and I collaborated on this and headed out to the store. We felt very accomplished because we set a budget, stuck to it AND came in under budget after buying "extra" things that were not on the list. It's not like it was junk food or anything, just stuff in the store that we didn't think to put on the list - yogurts, peaches, local honey (good for allergies), and ice cream sandwiches. A house is not a home without ice cream novelties.

We cooked our first meal together in our new home. Chili, cornbread and rice. I now have 3 different chili recipes in my repitoire and they are all good in different ways. This was the best and tastiest beef chili I'd ever had. Here is the recipe at Wegmans.com. As for the cornbread, I use a Betty Crocker mix and add a can of creamed corn in lieu of the milk the recipe calls for.

YO DAWG, I HEARD YOU LIKE CORN, SO I PUT CORN IN YOUR CORNBREAD SO YOU CAN HAVE CORN WHILE YOU EAT CORNBREAD. ALSO IT HAS A PLAYSTATION.

After dinner, while watching The King's Speech, I put my man-pants on again and got out my tool box to assemble some furniture. I built this 3-piece dining set for the kitchen. It is very nice and I did not mess it up at all. A few notes though.

1. You can really fuck up a Pollack's sense of well-being by adding an extra set of hardware & screws to the box.
2. Fuck Allen wrenches. They might not strip the screws, but they do strip any softness and skin on my hands.
3. Instead of selling "tools for women" in various colors and patterns (pink tools are fucking lame and make me irrationally angry) they should make tools with padded handles so that delicate lady-hands don't hurt from the torque.

Here is the finished product: one mission-style kitchen set.

Purchases from Target.com for around $120

And keeping with my trend, here is my food I ate yesterday

Breakfast: Dunkin' Donuts: Turkey Sausage & Egg White flat bread sandwich, iced caramel mocha latte
Lunch: Sonic: New York hot dog, onion rings, cherry limeade
Dinner: Chili, cornbread, rice
Snack: Ice Cream Sandwich

Greetings from Carteret

2011-06-26T05:51:00.000-07:00

So we did it. Yesterday was moving day. I'm now updating this blog from my same spot on the couch but in a different town, a nicer home and it's still not real yet. This place is absolutely lovely, but it certainly doesn't feel like I live here. It just looks like someone put all our stuff in someone else's house.

Moving day, I was stressed out. We had movers to do all the work, really, but I was still full of anxiety. I'd been packing up until the last minute and had a cat who is nervous about transportation to worry about getting from Point A to Point B. In the end, it all worked out very smoothly. The movers were SO awesome, so if you are ever moving and you live in the New Jersey area, I can't recommend these guys enough - Palmieri Movers. They are professional, friendly, hard-working, efficient, take care of your things, and honestly seem to enjoy what they do! They were such nice guys and really knew what they were doing. Mike's mom has been using this company for 17 years whenever she's moved and I can see why. This family-owned company takes pride in the quality of their work.

You know who was NOT efficient though? Comcast. They only had to set up internet here since we get our TV through Direct TV satellite. Comcast was scheduled to be here between 1 and 3 and had Mike's cell phone number if anything was to come up. Well after moving and beginning to unpack, we were all really hungry here, so after the mover's left, it was after 3 already so we went and got some lunch. When we were finishing up eating, it was 4:30 and the Comcast tech called Mike to tell him he was there. We were only 5 minutes from home, so we drove back so the guy could install the internet. How ridiculous though, an hour and a half AFTER the scheduled time without so much as a call to say "hey my last job is running over the time I thought, I will be late." I had so much anxiety about yesterday, that guy was lucky he did not get my wraths. Because all I wanted was to either throw up or yell at someone just so I could feel better.

At the end of the day, the kitchen was completely unpacked, save for the table set that needs to be assembled. Both bathrooms are unpacked and set up very nicely. The bedroom was ready to sleep in and the living room is set up right. There's still unpacking to do, sure, but this place is starting to shape up and look great. We could not have done it without Mike's mom, my BFF Jaclyn and Mike's friend Jeff.

And keeping with my new trend, here's what I ate yesterday:

Breakfast: A couple munchkins, half a bagel
Lunch: Italian sub, 2 cokes.
Dinner: Panera, 1/2 thai chicken salad 1/2 lemon chicken orzo soup and a frozen strawberry lemonade.

Stuff I ate 6/24/2011

2011-06-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

So I want to lose weight. I'm not really trying so much right now though since I've been all stressed out and whatnot with moving and losing my job. But I'm going to get in the habit of sharing what stuff I put in my face hole so here goes. Here's what I ate today:

Breakfast: anxiety
Lunch: 2 cosmopolitans, a bacon cheeseburger, a couple french fries.
Snack: Venti Lemonade Iced Tea from the Starbs.
Dinner: Bacon Mushroom burger, fries and Hi-C from Wendy's.

Aaaaand I ate two bacon cheeseburgers today. Fatty go home.

Facebook Fuckery

2011-06-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

I hate to admit that this is my nature, but I'm very snotty, catty and sarcastic. I also suffer from an extreme case of "Just Don't Give A Fuck" for which there is no cure.

When you couple that, my regular intolerance for foolishness with a hormonal time where I do not have the patience for any nonsense, you get a new breed of "iCant." Normally, I'll read something on Facebook or Twitter and just say something snotty out loud. I've gotten good at holding my tongue. You know the phrase "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all?" Just because someone is writing it on Facebook or Twitter doesn't necessarily mean they want my rusty two cents added in there. I have so many opinions though! It is so hard to see these people living their lives and me not intervening at all even in the slightest! Sometimes I slip.

Like this comical exchange below... started out just as a funny comment, by me, to a friend...

Then enter... Let's call him Wolfie since that's what this dude is calling himself, amirite? Believe me, it is not his Christian name, no sir. He used to be a friend. We're not friends on Facebook or in Life because iCant. Why? He's in his 30's and thinks he's a wolf, that's why. He's the douche-b that will have his profile pic be Wolverine or like a car. He is not either of these things! We used to go to school together, but I stopped associating with him in our early 20's even though he was still friends with several mutual friends. I just didn't like him and thought he was a ridiculous person. That is a valid reason to not hang with someone. Know what else is a valid reason not to hang with someone? IF THEY'RE IN THEIR 30'S AND WEAR FISHNET SHIRTS AND THEY ARE A MALE, THAT'S WHY. And the sideburns... CHILE YOU AIN'T WOLVERINE, STOP IT. STOP. THIS IS WHY VAGINAS WILL NEVER FLOW YOUR WAY. Some people in life you want to give Life Interventions to, but that's not often well-received. You just have to walk away and make fun of them on the internet instead.

What Else Is Up

2011-06-18T06:50:00.000-07:00

Here's the quick run-down of what's going on in my life.

First, I hate so much to say this, but I lost my job. I got laid off. I am sad about that, so very sad. I finally found what I want to do, and I get laid off. Sigh. No worries, though, I'm very confident I'll find a position in fashion again doing what I love. Moving along.

Last week was Jaclyn's birthday and we went to NKOTBSB. YES FRIENDS YES. It was awesome, and I will rank my NKOTBSBers in order of sexiness.

1. Nick Carter.
2. Donnie Whalberg
3. Jordan Knight
4. Joey McIntire
5. AJ McLean
6. Danny Wood
7. Jonathan Knight
8. Howie Dorough
9. Brian Littrell

THAT'S RIGHT, BRIAN IS DEAD LAST. He's so... ugh, I don't know if it's that sugary-sweet born-again shit or just like HE IS NOT SEXUAL AT ALL. No. He's just not... and he squints a lot. But welcome back to the top of the list, Nick.

Also, Naughty by Nature made a special apperance at the concert. I don't know either dudes, but it was pretty cool. I'd heard a rumor for a while that NKOTBSB were trying to get Boyz II Men on this tour but they said no. That would have made more sense. NKOTBSB2M? Too many acronyms. And New Edition wouldn't even work with that word scheme at all so of course they weren't asked. In the car, sitting in traffic waiting to get to the arena, Jaclyn and I were talking about boy bands and how cool it would have been if they had gotten Boyz II Men. Then I said "yeah or they could have gotten that other shitty boy band..."

Jaclyn: You mean 98 degrees?
Me: No. That other one with the song we liked.
Jaclyn: Oh, that explains a lot.
Me: You know the one... what is it... (mumbling singing only a few words of the one song they had) "blah blah blah but I feel alright, thinkin' bout makin' my move tonight dooo dooo deeee daaaa guuuurl"
Jaclyn: OH YEAH THAT SONG! THAT WAS TOTALLY AWESOME!
Me: YEAH! SOUL DECISION! THAT WAS IT, THAT WAS THEIR ONE SONG!
Jaclyn: And what about that other shitty boy band that had 2 songs?
Me & Jaclyn together: CUZ I WANT IT ALLLLLLL OR NOOOOTHING AT ALLLLLLL (and really off-key at that)
Me: Remember they had that other song, Liquid Dreams, about ... obviously wet dreams.
Jaclyn: Oooooh yeah, why was that even a song?

So that was fun. Then I returned back to regular life to do shit and get ready to move.

I've done ALL THE LAUNDRY THAT EVER WAS. This might not seem like a big deal, as though you can say "pfft, I do laundry every week" and I thought I did too. But I had secret laundry piles of stuff I wasn't wearing for a while, or towels, linens, and just oh my god so many things. Last week I did laundry for 8 hours straight on a Saturday. Hard times. Now everything is clean because I am packing it.

Been busy packing all my earthly belongings in preparation of moving in a week. Mike's wonderful, amazing and way-too-generous mother gifted us movers (a real actual moving company) for our moving day. So instead of bribing our friends into slave labor with the promises of pizza, beer and an offer to return the favor for them next time they move, we get to sit back and sip lemonade as SOME GUYS move all our shit. But this is leaving me with questions.

1. Do I have to take the clothes out of the dressers? I don't want to get more boxes. These guys should just wrap the dresser shut and put it on a dolly or something, right?

2. Do I even have to pretend like I'm going to do shit and help, because I'm not. Not even a little. The only thing I'm moving is the cat.

3. Is this jug of Hawaiian Punch moonshine yet? Because it's still on my balcony.

Moving sucks so much. The negative: all our shit goes in boxes and we have to take it out of boxes again and then throw the boxes away. The positive: I guess I've been throwing out junk we don't need and our new place is so much bigger than this one. I've been a little spoiled living here, and there's two things that the new pad won't have that this one does: a garbage disposal and a garbage chute down the hall. Instead, I'll have to just throw scraps IN THE GARBAGE CAN like a commoner, and then take that bag OUTSIDE to the trash can. HARDSHIPS, I HAVE THEM.

The Dickmobile

2011-06-17T20:03:00.000-07:00

In retrospect, I really should have taken pictures of this.

Anyways, since my commuting-via-driving job ended last year, my boyfriend and I tried out being a one-car family and it worked. Our apartment building has an underground garage. I haven't driven my car regularly for a year. It's a 1999 Jeep Cherokee sport. I named it Missy Elliot The Jeep Dot Com.

In the beginning, I'd drive my car outside once a week on a rainy day just to wash the garage dust off her. Then that kind of petered out and she's just been collecting a layer of dust for months on end. In a garage where about 200 other people park, drive, walk to and from their car and the elevator. At first, I had a parking spot right in front of the elevator, a high-traffic area. People would write things in the dust on my car as they passed. The oh-so-clever "Wash Me" was frequent.

Then I moved to a parking spot more out of the way. My car has been little more than storage for me and a dirty message board for the rest of the tenants here. People like to draw dicks. There were so many dicks drawn on my car once it was in a spot further from the elevator! Dicks, balls, cocks, wieners, schlongs, wing-dang-doodles... all over the car. Someone was even clever enough just to write "DICK" across the windshield. Someone else drew a butt pooping.

I've pretended for months that it wasn't my car, just so I didn't become known as The Girl With The Dickmobile. Or have people be all "Why don't you drive your car?" How about fuck you I've been too lazy to get rid of it.

Since I'm moving in ONE WEEK, I can't just leave the hunk of junk here, so Jaclyn and her dad came over, we gave it a jump, she started, and now her dad is taking The Dickmobile. Godspeed, Missy Elliot the Dickmobile Dot Com.

Ya Can't Get There from Here

2011-05-31T18:28:00.000-07:00

My day started with protest. I was tired and didn't sleep well because of someone snoring again. The decision to sleep a half hour later than usual and take the second train is pretty useless when the snorer keeps trying to wake me up every five minutes, then comes back after his shower, lays down and starts snoring again. It really and truly makes my blood boil. Not for nothing, but I'm not the one who has to be told and reminded to wake up or I'll miss my train. I get myself going with no help from anyone. I'm not late, I was born this way.

Though tired, I was in a good mood because my hair, makeup and outfit all looked good. I wore a new skirt for the first time, a pretty floral skirt with pinks, purples and white, a pink lace-trimmed cami with a black cardigan and pink flip flops. I looked so cute and kept comfy in the heat outside and in the AC indoors.

Of course my morning was marred by the perpetual fuck-up that is NJ Transit. Found out later on there was some sort of gas leak by Elizabeth. One of my co-workers was on that train and never made it in. I'm sure I'll hear her flapping about that for 20 minutes tomorrow morning.

Something that made my day awesome was downloading Pandora radio app for my iPhone. Today I listened to "Today's Hits" station and my "All-American Rejects" station. Good stuff that kept me going throughout the day. I had a productive day at work, finishing a project that I was pleased with and doing some other odds and ends in there as they came up. I stayed late today, late on late, just so I could finish this project. For the rest of the summer, I'll be working till six daily so that I get every other Friday off. So that means this week is a THREE-DAY WORK WEEK FOR ME. YEAH BITCH YEAH.

I didn't mind staying late today since I'd been getting transit alerts to my phone since rush hour began that NJ Transit had delays yet again. Sigh. I'd contemplated taking the PATH train to Newark to get my connection, but then saw that my 2nd train had delays as well, so nothing mattered. I can't get anywhere on time, who cares. By the time the boyfriend and I got home, no one was going to defrost anything to cook so it's a pizza night and as many episodes of Law & Order SVU that I can stand.

Updating from my iPhone

2011-05-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

I'm just testing out how easy it could be to update this blog from my iPhone. So far, not that bad. Is there an app for this? I am also going to add a picture to see if that works too. Not much else to report right now him laying in bed and watching the history channel while hopin that I don't have a nightmare like I did last night. Also trying tothink of what to wear tomorrow since it's going to be hot.

Well looks like I can't add an image from the safari browser here. Let me know of an app. A free one hopefully.

Are you there, Xanax? It's me, Nadine.

2011-05-30T19:36:00.000-07:00

It seems like I will go through phases where I will be all proud of how I can consistently blog for a week, and then I'll be silent for two months and apologize and swear I'll write more, but come on. I guess we're done with apologies now. It's a horrible guilt cycle, a week will go by, I'll feel bad, two weeks, feel even worse. Then a month and I think "wow, no one even asked where I disappeared to?"

Here's the deal though. I got an iPhone and now it's my life and I don't need any of you fuckers any longer unless you play Words With Friends. If you do, my username is Shoebootie and we can have a beautiful relationship together.

Why haven't I blogged much lately though? It's simple... I'm busy. And crazy. It's not just writing in here though that I've been bad at - I don't even keep up with my "real" friends much either lately. Jaclyn is the only one who I keep up with on a regular basis, but that's because we work together and I have to see her ass every damn day. If I skip lunch, she comes looking for me.

Things also started getting a little too real up in here too, writing about where I lived and whatnot. I'd gotten as far as writing my 3rd installment of my "Home" series when I decided I couldn't post it. It's too serious and emotional and even just reliving those memories, writing them again, brought me to a sad place. I have issues :(

Not trying to get too "real" over here, but dealing with those issues (I'm divorced, I got a dead dad, an alcoholic mom, weight issues and a slew of other shit... let's just say "I have a demon inside me" and leave it at that for now), I admitted that I needed help and I am on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. It's helping. It's lifting the fog where I can kind of see that I'm not a waste of a person and I should try to be more awesome. BTW Xanax = super great unicorn glitter sex in a pill.

So with all that in mind, I'll wrap up my series on where I lived by saying this: In the last 10 years, I've lived in 8 or 9 places and I'm moving again next month. My boyfriend and I are moving out of our very nice apartment to an even nicer one. What can I say, my twenties have been a very nomadic time. This by far has been my favorite place I've lived. It's very nice here. I can't wait to make our new home feel like a home.

The Most Awkward Thing I Ever Said

2011-04-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

Good Friday means don't eat meat. Even you, Raptor.

One time a Mormon or Jehova's witness came to my door as I was leaving. They handed me some pamphlets and asked me something about Jesus or whatever and I said,

"No thank you, I'm not interested. I already have a relationship with the Lord."

What does that even mean? Why did I even say that?? What a load of shit that was. Of all the cordial "get off my goddamn porch you religious peddling fucktard" things I could have said, I declared I had some kind of relationship with Christ?

He cool I guess. I like Christ, it's just the Christians that ruin it for everyone.

Happy Easter!

my boyfriend is manly

2011-04-20T15:51:00.001-07:00

gaytard

Mike got a sampler thing of some oatmeal stout. I didnt know that thing would be smaller than my dick.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Drinks & Dinner After Work

2011-04-20T15:47:00.001-07:00

my first drink was lonely so i got it a friend

I ended up working later than usual today, so the boyfriend and I opted for a dinner close to my office. He works in NYC too, by NYU and I work by the Empire State Building. Tonight's dinner and drinks are at the Heartland Brewery Pub.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

About My Hair

2011-04-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

My hair.... is naturally light brown or dirty blonde, curly, often frizzy, thin.

My hair... is currently dyed blonde, highlighted, sometimes curly, sometimes I straighten it with a flat-iron. Less frizzy since I'm using Lisa Rachel Cleansing Conditioner (similar to Wen). My curls aren't so great anymore though since I color my hair, and after my foray into straightening serums last year when I did Matrix Opti-Smooth cold process.

My curls aren't the same and they're not as great. I try to love them, but they're not loving me back. I have more bad hair days than good it seems. I really want to have good curls and love my hair the way it is, but it's been months now trying different things and nothing is working.

It's also been a few months that I've been considering getting the Brazilian Keratin straightening treatment. If you don't know what that is, it is a semi-permanent straightening process that is ideal for people with damaged, frizzy hair and for people who color their hair. Here is some verbage from the salon's website that I'm considering getting this done:

Brazilian Keratin Hair Treatment at Hair Collage in NYC

A gentle & friendly treatment that has top celebrities embracing it!

Nicole Richie and Halle Berry are just two of today’s hot celebrities who have embraced the Brazilian hair straightening treatment! The Brazilian Keratin Hair treatment – rich in keratin, amino acid and botanical extract acai, is the way to rid of your frizz. The active ingredient –keratin, fills the gap in the cuticle to add shine and strength, which naturally straightens the hair.

Because it is formaldehyde-free, it reduces the level of toxicity. It does not contain the chemicals- sodium hydroxide and ammonium thioglycolate – that are found in most straighteners which

can cause damage and breakage.

Process

After a clarifying hair wash, Keratin solution is applied onto your hair in sections prior to hair being blown-dry. Using a professional ceramic hot iron, the stylist seals the solution onto the outer layer of the cuticle sticking to the cuticle’s rough edges, trapping moisture and hydrating the hair. Hair is then rinsed and a neutralizing mask is applied, then blown-dry and styled as usual. This leaves the hair silkier, glossier and the look of lighter weight.

For Who?

Brazilian Keratin Hair Treatment works best on hair that is frizzy and unmanageable. It is also

most suitable for those who has recently and will regularly color, highlight or chemically treat

their hair.

How to make your treatment last longer:

■Do not wash or wet your hair, or pull it back for the first three or four days

■Only wash with sodium sulfate-free shampoos

I don't know what to do.... The keratin treatment wears off, so it's not like it is something that I will have to touch-up the new growth. A friend who's had this done says her hair was more manageable after the fact, after it had worn off. Curly websites/salons have warned against the brainwashing of the straight-hair phenomenon, but are they just looking out for their best interests? I like my hair straight, I like my hair curly, and this isn't forever, but I still don't know what to do. Someone help!

My Birthday

2011-04-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

April 17, 2011 - I am 29 now.

Today was my birthday. I didn't have a lot of grandiose plans, really. Usually I make a whole spectacle of my birthday, but today's plans were simple: brunch with Michael, his mom and Foley (his best friend and sort of now my best guy-friend).

This birthday started out a little difficult for me. I ended up waking up early because of Mike's snoring. I was tired. I couldn't go online because the internet was down for no real reason. I was pre-upset last night because there was something I was really hoping would arrive in the mail before my birthday, and it hadn't arrived. This morning, I just ended up very bummed out about that, about getting older, just feeling "off" in general, so after my shower I just went in the bedroom and wanted to cry for a while. I couldn't even place a name on "what's wrong" when Mike came in and tried to see what was going on. It was a lot of things I couldn't put my finger on, so I know how silly it must have sounded to say "I'm tired and the internet's not working."

Brunch was faaaaaaabulous. It was a beautiful day out and I had two mimosas in me, a cup of coffee and all kinds of delicious brunchables. I had a nice time with three of my favorite people in the whole world.

Mike, Me & Foley

Me & Mom Marlene :)

After brunch, I was feeling a little "off" again, but in a physical sense, not emotional. Something hurt... the lights were too bright... I couldn't concentrate. Happy birthday, it's a migraine! Mike and I were going to his mom's house, so right before that I stopped at CVS and got some pills while Mike got me some Starbucks (a cold caffeinated beverage might help). When we walked into his mom's house, they both could tell I seemed not-right, and let me lie down for awhile. I took a nap on my birthday, something I haven't done since I was 3 probably. I woke up feeling much better after that.

We spent the afternoon with his mom playing with her new iPad, had a nice dinner at a nearby restaurant and said goodbye for the night. On the way home, Mike and I stopped at Target to pick up a few household necessities. I got a Cherry Limeade at Sonic on the way home and that was that. I ped-egged myself and put on some lotion, washed my face, took out my contact lenses and I'm going to bed soon. It was a good day... I got a million Facebook birthday wishes, calls, texts and niceness from everyone today. I might have felt crappy about the day to start, but that was just all in my head. I had a very nice day.

Is It Wine Yet?

2011-04-14T15:11:00.001-07:00

I guess this is something else to throw out before we move. This half-filled jug of Hawaiian Punch has been aging gracefully on the balcony since the Christmas party we had. It is probably even more delicious now than when I made party punch with it before it fermented into what is likely prison wine.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Butt Implants, Tight Butts, Butt Exercises and more are NOT here.

2011-04-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

This one blog post has the most hits out of all of my entries. Hundreds. Take a read, if you already haven't: How to Get Strong Butt Muscles for a Tight Ass

People are referred to this blog post with search queries like these:

flat butt
bras caffeine
nightcaffeine.blogspot.com
ass implants
before and after glutes pictures
butt implant
butt muscles
strong butt
flat butts

(what's bra caffeine by the way?)

I regret to inform you that this blog, no entry of it, will help your butt. You come here looking for tips on getting a nice booty and instead find a story about farting. I'm sorry. The only way I have the illusion of a booty is by wearing pajama jeans, aka knit denim. So comfy, so soft, so deceptive.

Home, Part Two

2011-04-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

Some rocks cannot be moved. No matter how hard you try to push, some things just are immovable. Such was the rock in our basement. I’m not making an analogy about rocks and stubbornness. There was a huge rock in our home on Pierre Ave in the basement that couldn’t be moved, dug out, or even exploded with dynamite. We know they tried to explode the rock into tiny pieces because there were drill holes dug into the rock where the dynamite sticks were place with scorch marks around it. The rock would not be moved so they built a house around it. In the basement there was The Rock Room. The rock had a small room built around it. You wouldn’t even know it was a room when you passed it. It just looked like part of the wall. The door had no knob; it wasn’t even a real door, it was like a secret panel of drywall that was on hinges. We stored some junk in that room, but for the most part I stayed out of it. I’m sure my parents yelled at me not to go on there and play on the big fucking rock in our house.

The first day we moved in, there was a boy and his brother at the end of the dead-end street climbing a tree. The older brother was in the tree and his mom and younger baby brother were watching him. We went over to say hi and make friends, and the boy named Alejandro said "Ecco buttus!" We could tell he spoke Spanish, and for a moment thought he was speaking Spanish to us, but it was just jibberish. Alex and my brother would come to be friends and play together a lot.


Me in my awesome bunk bed with kitten poster

Our yard had a shed in the back that looked like a miniature version of our house. Just beyond our yard was the park, Belmont Hill, the highest point in town. The house that I spent all the years of being in elementary school was also right across the street from school. Apart from the rock in the basement, it was a normal home for the neighborhood. It was a two-family house with a back-yard and a garage. It was a two-bedroom apartment, which was a step up from our previous living arrangement. My brother and I were excited to get bunk beds for our bedroom! I got the top bunk, and I’d like to say it was because I was older and could pick what I wanted, but the true reason I cannot divulge on here. In case my brother ever figures out what an internet is, and somehow figures out what a blog is, I cannot write the true reason on here and embarrass him. My mom put so much thought into that room. She wanted it to be nice for a girl or a boy, so she sponge painted alternating square patterns in blue and pink throughout the room.

Sharing a room never really fazed either of us until we got older. The only thing that had bothered me was my brother’s obsessions. He couldn’t fall asleep in complete silence, so he had a tape deck beside his pillow so he could listen to something quietly as he drifted to sleep. The two tapes that stick out in my mind that he played relentlessly are very different from each other. One was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic-book read-along companion. The other was some promotional tape from Quaker State Oil that he had gotten from dad, who ran an auto repair shop. It was a mix tape with a lot of oldies with hits like “Runaway” by Del Shannon, “Chantilly Lace” by The Big Bopper, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” by The Shirelles and “All Summer Long” by The Beach Boys. The music itself didn’t bother me, but hearing anything every single night on repeat is bound to drive a person mad.

It was another lovely neighborhood with kids all around to play with. Right next door to me lived a family that

My 7th Birthday party R to L: Me, Dad, Tim, Brian, Jessica

we became quick friends with. Brian was a year older than me and his younger sister Tara, who was a year and a half younger than I was were the best friends I had growing up there. We played all the time, outside and inside, driving all of our parents crazy on the days it rained and we were stuck indoors. Tara and I played dolls and Barbies a lot, and when we played with everyone outside, we had games like Ball Tag, which was basically dodge ball with bases I suppose. Brian was the cutest boy in the whole world. I had hearts in my eyes whenever he was around. He had the prettiest blue eyes, golden curly hair, he was smart and he liked Guns ‘n Roses. If that’s not the basis for a schoolgirl crush then I don’t know what is. He was so cute he was even in commercials! I was jealous of how he got to go off to The City to audition and shoot commercials for stuff like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. He was the most famous person I knew. Tara was in dance classes, and I was equally jealous of her. I wished I could move as gracefully as a dancer, but I had (and still continue) no rhythm. The saddest day of my childhood for the most part was when they moved away. On the moving day, I sat atop my garage, cried and ate Berry Berry Kix right from the box as the moving truck pulled away. For a kid, that’s like hitting rock bottom and swigging jack straight from the bottle.

Speaking of neighbors, since it was a two-family house, we often had neighbors upstairs. One was a single mom and a girl named Jessica. We were friends and played Barbies, as much as she would with a kid two

L to R: Alex, Tara, Anthony & Me

years younger than she was. The best neighbors ever, though, were two guys that I only remember as Bill and Ted. They were single dudes in their 20’s and they were in a band. They were absolutely the epitome of cool to me. I remember after they moved in, they needed my dad’s help running a hose from the yard up to Bill’s bedroom. To fill his water bed. Could he possibly be more cool?? I wanted to hang out with them all the time, but that didn’t happen. No one entrusts the care of their kids to a couple of stoners in a band. I still think they’d be the best babysitters ever.

My kitty Snowshoes

Even though I was convinced it was haunted, there were so many good times at this house. Holidays, parties, barbeques, with family friends and neighbors. My cousin Robin still remembers the big Memorial Day and Fourth of July barbeques with all the family, passing potato salad and platters of food out the kitchen window to the next in the chain in the yard. I found my beloved pet, my cat Snowshoes (rest in peace sweet kitty) in the yard at this house. I had chicken pox in that house at the same time with my dad (rest in peace daddy). He never had it growing up, so once our neighbors Brian and Tara got the pox, we weren’t far behind to catch it next. I remember being so sick, and to keep the sickies in the same room together, my mom had me and my dad sharing the bed in the daytime. Both of us were whiny and miserable. He was just as bad as me, a grown
man reduced to child-like vulnerability by the chicken pox. I was a little sad when in the summer before 7th grade began my family decided to move, but at the same time this meant I would have my own bedroom, something very important to a 12 year old girl.

NY Penn Station

2011-04-12T14:25:00.001-07:00

i downloaded an app on my blackberry to do a photo of the day type update from my phone let's see if it works. this is the view going into the train station after work. nothing crazy today. sometimes i see a woman who can be best described as the crazy cat lady from The Simpsons. she even mumbles and screams in the same incoherent way.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Home, Part One

2011-04-12T10:26:00.000-07:00

My boyfriend and I are moving soon. The second that we decided to not renew our lease and that it was time to move, I was overcome with sadness, anxiety and overwhelming doom. Moving is so stressful and I am just overwhelmed by it all right now. It was a Tuesday morning via g-chat that we hammered out the decision that yes, we have to move. The rest of the week I was in a deep funk of stress and worry.

I’ve moved around a lot I think. Growing up, we moved 3 times in my childhood. We moved out of our first tiny apartment when I was 5 or 6, in the middle of my first grade. My whole life until that point, we lived in that small attic apartment on Lincoln Place that was on the top of the two-family home my grandfather owned. I think we lived there because my parents were young and didn’t have a lot of money. It certainly wasn’t for the familial closeness, because my mother hated her father so much. I don't have any memories of my grandfather, honestly, but I think I used to call him "that mean man downstairs" or something to that effect.

Growing up there, I was young, so I only remember good things really. I loved the neighborhood and I had lots of friends. We had a fig tree in the back yard, and on the other side of the fence there was a girl named Amy. Her family was rich and Italian and going to their house was so completely different than mine. Everything was pristine and covered in plastic, and something always smelled like sauce in her house. Her grandmother would see us come in, and then yell something in Italian that I didn’t understand and shoo us out of the house again. I liked playing at her house because she had a swing set. What torture it was, for it to be just on the other side of the fence from me, just beyond the fig tree, but I couldn’t play on it without my friend.

My brother and I in the first place we ever lived.

Looking back on it, I can really see how I was brought up with a sense of equality because I rolled with a very diverse crowd. One of my closest friends lived two doors down. Tim, who was one year older than me, was mentally challenged slightly. He was a little slower, sure, but he was one of my best friends and he taught me how to ride his bike.

My other friend there, Maria, she was from Ecuador. She had a brother that played with my younger brother. She was also the first kid on the block to get a Nintendo. I was absolutely captivated by watching this little man named Mario jump across the screen. My family had an Atari and I was allowed to play it sometimes. Maria wasn’t even allowed to play the Nintendo yet. We watched her dad and older brother play mostly. I was so jealous though! It looked like so much fun! When my family finally got a Nintendo, I realized why the older men said “no, no… this isn’t for little kids.” It was just so they could hog the game themselves. My dad was a Mario Master.

Just around the corner was a girl named Cassie. We were the same age, but she was taller and even though I was young, I knew she was beautiful and would always be. She had a pretty house with a big garden and came from a warm Italian family. They grew grapes in the yard that they made their own wine with. One day, it was Memorial Day I think, my family was going to a picnic or bbq somewhere that I didn’t want to go to. My little five-year-old brain said “well, I’ll just go hang out with Cassie” and I left without telling anyone. When my mother finally found me playing with Cassie in her to-die-for Lisa Frank decorated bedroom, she was frantic and told me I was never going out of her sight again. At the time, I didn’t see what the big deal was, I was only around the block! But as an adult, knowing the implications of a child going missing, I get it. Sorry, Mom. This was also right around the time where kids were getting snatched up. I remember being warned about a white van or a red pick-up truck that had been ID’d in some kidnappings or something like that. I was always on the look out for a truck cruising past me just a little too slowly.

"What do you want to be when you

grow up?"

Me: Asian.

It was a great neighborhood to live in, in my opinion. There were so many kids to play with, and it was a time when even with the warnings about suspicious vans and trucks, you could send your kids outside to play and then just call them in the house for dinner and not worry if they’d come back or not. I was friends with every kid on the street… every house had a kid! There was another friend I had down the other end of the block. I don’t remember her name, but she taught me about sniffing markers and glue. There was Johnny in the blue house that had a real, honest-to-goodness built-in sandbox in his yard and monkey bars! The teenagers two houses down from me and across the street from them seem like the coolest kids in the world, and I couldn’t wait to grow up to be just like them. Especially the pretty Japanese teen, who would come to remind me of Claudia from The Baby-Sitters Club books. The house next door to me, they’d had kids at some point long, long ago, because they had a tall metal jungle gym that at one point you could tell was painted bright red, but had chipped and faded into a dull rust color in their secret-garden of a yard. The woman who lived there was older when I was small and she liked having me play in her yard sometimes. I liked the tire swing and the ancient jungle gym, it seemed like something from another time. There was a huge oak tree and vines and ivy covering everything. Somewhere in all that green, I knew there were secrets, and I was secretly happy that I was allowed to play amongst them.

Our house wasn’t nice. It was small and we all shared one bedroom. My brother and I had a bunk bed and I had the top bunk. The house itself wasn’t memorable, it was the ugliest house on the block but I was a happy child there. In 2000, my grandfather died. I don’t think there were services. My aunt, mother and grandmother sold the house. It was demolished and a new house built on the lot that looks nothing like where I live, and there is no more eyesore on Lincoln Place anymore.

Taste Test

2011-04-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

Fact: I am gross.

Example: As I just posted on twitter, I was eating a granola bar at my desk here at work. I finished it and it was delicious. Then I looked down, and right where I had put my granola bar, there was a crumb left on my desk so I was like "YES." and I picked it up and put it in my mouth (that's what she said). My smile quickly faded as I realized THAT was NOT food. It was like a piece of pencil lead or who knows what. But I ate it. Hope I don't die, right?

Another gross thing I do.... I lick my phone. My cell phone. Not always, just if there is food on it. One day, there was a smudge on my screen, and I thought "Hmmm, what could that be? I bet it is chocolate." So I tasted it and it was in fact chocolate. Score for me! The boyfriend saw me do this though and he was really grossed out and told me I shouldn't lick mystery smudges on my cell phone. It's always chocolate. I have a problem.

That's not the only example of me being gross and putting things in my mouth. I chew on my cuticles a lot and realize too late that HEY maybe I should go wash my hands before I shove them in my mouth? No wonder I've been sick all damn winter. I take public transportation to get to work, then when I'm happily (not) sitting in my seat on the train, I start to chew on my cuticles. So work this backwards... mouth-hand-train hand rails - escalator bannister - door - another bannister - apartment building door. I should just kill myself.

Puddy: "I'm a recovering germ-o-phobe. Ten years."

Elaine: "What is this symbol?"

Puddy: "It's a germ."

When I start to think of it like this, I get germaphobey. I don't think I'm a legit germaphobe, but I do have tendencies. They flare up sometimes and I go on these binges where I disinfect and sanitize everything I touch. I've had fits where I wipe down everything with Lysol wipes, spray doorknobs and light switches with Lysol, clean the whole bathroom (walls and ceiling included) with a too-strong bleach mixture. Then my trachea aches for days after breathing in lots of bleachy chlorine fumes in a bathroom with no real ventilation or window after using a 42% concentration bleach-to-water mixture. I've also been known to be that obnoxious person at work who cleans off their desk, phone, stapler, keyboard if someone sneezes in my office or borrows my stuff and becomes sick within a few days. I have tendencies.