OOOOOOOOOKlahoma! Where the wind comes sweeping down the turnpike....

Ok so I have been gone for a year. I'm in grad school. I'm not gonna give any excuses because no one cares anyway. So off to new and random thoughts!

So Oklahoma, the land of my people. Well, at least for the last two decades or so. I tend to like it because its really cheap to live here, my friends and family are here, there are some beautiful landscapes and lots of history. However, there are quite a few stereotypes about Oklahoma and you know what they say about stereotypes: they're there for a reason.

I was watching an episode of Criminal Minds the other day and while other states have had serial killers that were portrayed as intelligent and sophisticated, Oklahoma's serial killer was a mentally retarded taxidermist that was fixated on honing his glass eyeball technique. Not that I feel slighted on the social status of our serial killers in fictitious media, it's just the principle that despite gleaming and beautiful cities full of successful people and rich histories, the best they could come up with to represent the 28th most populous state was a recluse man in a raccoon hat killing people with ashtrays and stuffing wall-eyed mountain lions. I resent that.

And how about the episode of Friends when Chandler (Chanandler Bong to those of you groupies) was transferred to Tulsa? Now I am well aware that Tulsa holds no candle to the Big Apple, but you got the feeling that both Chandler and Monica would consent to contracting a strapping case of herpes before having to live here because all there was to do was eat BBQ and... eat more BBQ. In fact, apparently the only place Chandler can be considered sexy is... you got it- Oklahoma. Bollocks.

Many moons ago, I used to live in South Carolina. I moved there from Oklahoma and of course, turned around and came back when my father's company transferred him, again. I remember my last day of school there when all the kids asked, "Are you afraid that you'll die in the tornados?" Really??

And let us not forget that Charlie Sheen invented Tulsa.

So, point taken. We're known for some pretty lame things. But despite the fact that we're 49th in education, first in early death, so subsequently dead last in health, and that the populous spent $304,000 welfare dollars on tobacco last year, some of us are proud to live in Oklahoma and actually enjoy it. And despite the fact that that we have the junkiest roads in a 15 state radius, that our weather has an uncontrolled case of bipolar disorder, and are 5th on the DEA's list for one of the top methamphetamine producing states in the union, some of us call this home and you won't find a friendlier population of people. And just go ahead and forego the fact that the media portrays us as all as cowboys and indians who spend all day out hunting, eatin' BBQ and beef jerky out of our truck bed, just to come home to our trailer/teepee and cook up some toilet bowl cleaner so we can sell some meth, buy a new deer hauler, and go huntin' again tomorrow. Despite our tarnished image, we really are a great and diverse people who take pride in where we live, who we are, what we do and that we do it with with sophistication and style. Welcome to Oklahoma!!

Neuroticism and other new traits

So I am erupted back from the dead by a lovely head cold that has snapped me back into one of the few remaining artifacts of my former life: my blog. Since my last post, I have been accepted to graduate school, met a long -lost sister, planned a wedding, got married, quit my job, moved, and became a full time student. Life is so different from what is was just four months ago, I fear the fall out or absolute meltdown that may lie ahead. No one switches up this much crap and gets off scott free.

I have embarked on becoming a physician assistant because apparently I think I am smart. I really just think I'm a damn good actress that fooled a lot of people. I sit in my class everyday soaking up thousands of little bits of information concerning the human body in hopes that one day I might even be able to pronounce it, let a lone recognize it and actually help someone. There is so much data cramming into my neurons, the little person in my head that sits back off to the side and is amazed at it all. Now this side person, I'm convinced, is a product of my sheer loneliness. She needs a name, for she's somewhat stylish and pretty funny. Come to think of it, she reminds me of my former self. But I digress. Many of my fellow students have felt the same sentiment. One girl wanted a cat so she'd have someone around. Another one admitted to talking to pictures of her friends. So really, having this imaginary person to talk to in my head doesn't seem so crazy.

I think she's stylish because she wears cute outfits, much unlike myself these days. I was so used to buying fun, professional attire. Now that I am just wear jeans and tee shirts, I feel like everyday is the first day of my period. Or that maybe I was kidnapped as a child and raised by bums. Either way, I feel pretty not pretty. This person in my mind is also pretty amusing. She tells good jokes. Everything in class is so serious, so detrimental, so pertinent. It was beyond old after the first week. I'm tired of everything being a flipping emergency, like the western hemisphere is going to burn down if someone gets a B because they didn't know that diarrhea was a side effect of some obscure tropical disease.

At home, I am a wife. I think. This new abode I live in was his prior to the wedding and some days I feel as if I live at a hotel only without the maid service. I'm not very good at cooking or cleaning, but I try in between paragraphs of human behavior and power naps on the kitchen table. The laundry room looks like downtown Beirut. I have so many clothes missing, I swear the lawn guy comes in the house and shops in my closet for his wife. Its the only explanation I can come up with for the missing athletic shorts, white dress trousers and black flats. Whoever has them looks really good from the waist down. I'm also in charge of grocery shopping. Currently we have chocolate soy milk, an over-ripe avocado, some spaghetti sauce and pretzel sticks. Apparently grocery shopping requires an unoccupied brain. We eat out a lot.

So needless to say, life has gone from one kind of crazy to another. Instead of a year planning for massive change, its a new year of coping with its aftermath. It's trying to keep up while finding moments to relax/silence my brain. Sleep is a hot commodity. Its figuring out my new role as a wife, sister, in-law, and roommate while creating another as a student and medical practitioner. It's exercising all morning just to eat it all back on trying to stay awake while reading physiology. So really, there's no figment, there's just the apparition of my former life I'm clinging to for some means of stability. And I feel its only fair I get to post up a little bit of neuroticism every now and again.

Magic Words

Or not so magical. There are words that just drive me crazy, gross me out or just plain don't make sense. Here are a few of the toppers.



1. Moist

This is just a gross word. It's an oddly formed word coming out of your mouth to begin with. But at the end of the day, it conjures up some crass-nasty mental pictures. Moist cupcakes. Moist towels. Moist underwear. Let's just be honest. Moist underwear? It's wet. Whether you peed your pants, are unusually sweaty or just glimpsed George Clooney in the flesh, it's not moist. You're just trying to be delicate. Moist cupcakes and moist towels are wrong for the same reasons. We all know that anything "moist" eventually generates nothing but fungus regardless of how good it tastes and how much icing you put on it. Give me a damp cupcake any day.



2. Tender

This goes right along with moist. "Oh she has such a tender heart" or "Oh this steak is so tender!" If you're labeled as "tender hearted," you could be foreseen as a sensitive person, maybe overly emotional- borderline a wuss. Compassionate- now that's a word that shows your humanity while retaining your dignity very much unlike "tender" that will lead people to think you pull over and cry for dead squirrels or secretly re-enact reruns of "Touched By an Angel" in your bathroom. Tender steak? Bull crap. Anyone who uses that word to describe meat is just trying to soothe their nagging conscience for satisfactorily devouring the a tiny Japanese calf that was fed nothing but beer and never allowed to stand. Definition of moist, tender steak: you're a fungusy prick.



3. Hubby

Oh Lord how I hate this word and any conjugate of it. "The hubs and I are going to dinner to night." "My hubby won't ever fix the door knob." Of course he won't! In one word, you've just verbally castrated him and tuned him into a complete pussy. Just like I would be aggravated by being referred to as "The Wif," I'm sure there is not a man in this world who wouldn't be grateful for this term to be lost to the English language. Number one, its just disrespectful. But secondly, he sounds like possession that has replaced your slobber-covered, threadbare, "Woobie" insecurity blanket you clung to when you were a child as life support from the real world. Again, not great. The occasional usage of it could be overlooked but one girl referred to her fiance as "The future hubby" so often on Facebook, I actually asked her if she knew the name of the man she was marrying and promptly deleted her from my friends. It just seems weird to me that after dating hundreds of douche bags, that one would completely disrespect and emasculate the one person they're supposed to revere above all others by consistently calling them "My Hubby."



4. Baby Bump
I don't hate this word, it just doesn't make any sense to me. After gaining minimal weight, my friends and I will spare no mercy and cut ourselves down- "My gut is getting huge," "Well that bike tire inflated over night,"or "It looks like my belly is housing a banana factory." But once someone is pregnant, it becomes a "bump." Realistically speaking, there is no bump in this situation. Being that I have never been pregnant and have no prior experience, I may not have any room to talk. But I have been led to believe that being pregnant causes your stomach to be larger than it has ever been. So why is it called a "bump" when three months ago, you derogitorily referred to your own belly button as a bomb crater? This especially goes for celebrities. Kourtney Kardashian gains a few pounds and she's slathered on the tabloids as a morbidly obese "Jabba-the-Hut," eating everything within a five foot radius of her mouth. But pregnant and 26 pounds later- baby bump photo shoot on page five. I know its called a "bump" because there is a tiny little cute baby inside instead of just a large fat mass of cheese and girl scout cookies. But the liberal frickin media, the people who firmly state that babies are nothing more than a ball of flubber until they're born, coined this oxymoronic term. As previously stated, I don't hate the word In fact, it gives me hope that after a night of heavy Mexican food binging I can begin referring to my need to crap as my "bam-beano bump." It just seems very double standard-ish for ourselves.

* Addendum
After posting this, I realized how this explanation could come off as horrible and hurtful to those I love around me. The more I thought about it, the more I felt a deeper explanation was needed. This term really bothers me because it is such a huge indicator of our vanity as a society and how we let the media, yet again, influence our self awareness. We're already told that if you eat carbs and weigh anything more than a typical fifteen year old, that you are ugly, lazy and fat. Any sign of getting larger is a mortal sin. It doesn't matter if it's self or age induced, or part of your genetic make-up, there is just simply no excuse to carry excess weight. And while it seems that pregnancy should be an exception, it too, is not exempt from this rule. It's like we just HAD to come up with a term to make absolutely sure that no one thinks we're fat and that we'd be a size two, 36 C running down the beach in a yellow two piece if it weren't for this "bump." We simply just HAD to downplay any sort of size increase. Entertainment Tonight says,"While Natalie Portman's baby bump is getting bigger, she's still working hard to make sure her body is red carpet ready." Really? Is that what's most important? The bump isn't getting bigger, the baby is getting bigger. Why? It's healthy and normal and a baby. It's not an inanimate object, some pillow stuffed under a shirt. It's a human being that is depending on its mother to get bigger to properly sustain it, protect it and enable it to flourish. We should be encouraging this through healthy eating, appropriate exercise and education of healthy weight gain. Not this sick mentality of exercise binging, dieting and body image obsessiveness just to avoid possibly being labeled overweight. It's not a bump. It's not a body image. It's a belly, and a large, beautiful one at that, containing a son, daughter, nephew, God child, or sibling, and most importantly, a promising future.

5. Rockabilly

Absolutely the most God-forsaken word in this world. Oh how I hate it. The whole world and lifestyle around it is just atrocious. Its utterly mind boggling that this is a style people actually choose to sport. It's defined as: a vigorous form of country or hillbilly music (referred to as hillbilly boogie) fused with rock or electric blues. The fact that the term "hillbilly" is even in the definition is enough for me. I don't care if Elvis is involved or not. The style gets to me too. Fifties fashion barfed up with a side of Bumpit mullets and toothless smiles of red lipstick. Heinous. But at the end of the day, it's the word that just gets me. Its awful. Its just plain awful.

I Love....

Since the world needs a little more positivity (in my opinion) and I'm on this Sesame Street-ish alphabet kick, I figured for "L" I'd list something oddball that I love for every letter of the alphabet. But the deal-e-o is, I want to hear yours. :)

Asiago cheese bagels with reduced fat cream cheese. The "reduced fat" part does some reverse psychology helping me forget I'm eating close to half a day's calories in one bagel.

Babies. I love to hand them back at the end of the day.

Chapstick. I'm just glad I don't have to use it intravenously or I'd have track marks like a Central Park crack whore.

Donkeys. And small horses. Donkey's are just so sweet and obviously make the best animal noise possible (hyenas are a close second). My great uncle had one named Chico that stood in the same spot by the fence, all day every day. There is a mini horse farm near my house. I cannot lie. I have pulled over to pet the mini horses.

Erasers. They just feel cool because of the volcanic rock in them. Or was that just an urban legend?

Fogies. I love old people. I love their stories. I'm envious that they got to live in times where personal propriety existed. I love the fact that I can look at them as they type on their 22" laptop fully aware that they've seen the invention of toilet paper.

Goonies. I finally bought the DVD of it this year and regardless of how many times I watch it, I still want to ride down those tunnel water slides and I would have totally stuck some jewels in my underwear. The Fratelli's wouldn't have checked there.

H&M- Apparently Oklahoma isn't one of the "cool" states so the nearest one is roughly a continent away. But I can't get enough of being able to buy trendy clothes at a reasonable price. It's like Forever 21 minus the need for Ritalin to shop there.

In The Raw. It's a local sushi joint in Tulsa. I hate sushi. But they have an expensive steak there that I'd give my right ovary for and since I don't like anything else on the menu, it seems perfectly reasonable to get the steak.

Jack Sparrow, Captain that is. First off, anyone denying that while stranded on a tropical beach is straight loony. Secondly, burning off all the rum while stranded on a remote tropical island with Jack Sparrow (ok. Really just Johnny Depp) is just a tragedy. And thirdly, I would have given my next year's salary for him to pose just one time like Captain Morgan right in the middle of that Disney flick.

K9's- Doggies that is. Doggies Doggies and more Doggies. My finance once asked me what the chances were that one day I'd come home with 48 dogs. I shrugged, "Pretty good."

Lingerie. It's always a good laugh picturing myself in it.

May. Ah the month the children go home. The month I get married. The month I can celebrate an entirely different country's Independence day with salsa and beer.

Nougat. I have no idea what nougat is made of or what it's technical state of matter is. All I know if that it tastes good and my thighs love it.

Opening Mail. It's like Christmas! (so long as it isn't a cut-off notice)

Potatoes. Au Gratin. Baked, Caked, Diced, Evaporated, Frenched, Garnished, Homemade, Irish, Julienned, Kosher, Loaded, Mashed, Natural, O'Briened, Peeled, Curly Q'ed, Roasted, Sweet, Toasted, Uncooked, Vegan, Wild, X Crossed, Yellow or Zapped. I will eat a potato for breakfast. Love 'em.

Quart sized baggies. These are the perfect size. The sandwich size only fits sandwiches whereas the quart can hold leftovers, become an icepack, or store an extra pair of panties in your car, just in case. The gallon size is too big. Much too big.

Red lipstick. I always feel like a cheap hooker right when I put it on. But combined with the correct attitude, you can feel like a siren.

Sonic ice. Those of you reading this may not have a Sonic Drive-In in your sad little place of residence so in case you don't. here's a quick synopsis: Sonic is heaven and can kill you in five minutes. You can get burgers, coney's, fries, tots, fried cheese, milk shakes, ice cream and slushies. You can also get fountain drinks in something that resembles a small barrel. And it comes with this crushed ice that is so great for chewing. People actually just drive up and just buy the ice.

Tumbling. At this age, it looks and feels more like I'm being thrown around by F5 tornado winds, but there's no feeling to match yourself flipping end over end on purpose.

Underpants. Panties, whatever. I have about five thousand pairs. There are particular pairs for underneath dress pants and yoga pants. Certain ones for sleeping. Some are for summer only and others are considered "curse panties" for when mother nature tries to destroy Victoria's Secret. Most of them are nude string bikinis but a few are crazy colors. I have one boy cut pair with a picture of my dog on it.

Vasectomy reversal billboards. Really?? They make me laugh much like the Cialis and Viagra commercials. Call me immature for laughing but really???? I understands a men's health magazine or pamphlets in locker rooms, but billboards? Public television?? Cut to story time-

Once, on Thanksgiving day, I was sitting in the living room with my 90 year old grandfather and my dad. (That is correct, I was not helping my mother cook. Yes I know. I am going to hell. Just hold tight- I get my just dues....) A Viagra commercial comes on and they're at the part where they list all the side effects, one being, "If you have an erection lasting more than four hours, seek medical attention." As if being in the room with two men while a wiener plumper commercial is on isn't awkward enough, my ornery father looks at my grandpa and laughs, "Can you imagine a hard-on for four hours?" My mother shouts from the kitchen "That is NOT an appropriate conversation," while my grandfather just laughs. I promptly exit the room and take my rightful place in the kitchen. Cut back to prior paragraph.....

I totally get how a man would want something like that fixed (and his wife, partner, whatever) but I wonder how many men have looked at that billboard and actually said, "You know what, honey? I think I'd like to get a vasectomy reversal."

Wienermobile. Speaking of wieners. I always pictured myself getting married in Vegas and riding off down the strip in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. I may not have Vegas but I wonder about the latter......

X Chromosome. I love being a girl. I get to look beautiful even if no one else thinks so, I get the right to be crabby once a month even if I don't have a period and I won't ever be bald or colorblind, and will always be able to clot my blood. To all you Y affiliated people out there- Sorry suckas!

Yahoo Babelfish. I have the ability to write home to your momma, you Urdu speaking punk!

Zygotes- we were all one once. All the same color, androgynous and silently floating through our mom's fallopian tube. Ahhh..... I remember those minutes. The last real time I felt rested. But zygote- such a great word.

Kankles and the Truths of Being Small

Kankles, muffin tops, Dunlop disease, cottage cheese, saddlebags, side boobs, stretch marks. Nobody wants these things but everyone has them. That is correct. EVERYONE. Every single normal human being struggles with these things. And it was brought to my attention that not everyone is aware of this phenomenon. So I must point out that there are key terms in the sentences beginning this paragraph: normal, human, and weight.

Defining normal, when it comes to size and body type, pertains only to those people who eat. Who really actually eat. You know- things like sandwich meat and real cheese slices. Maybe even a mini Kit-Kat or two. Heck through in the whole caboodle- those who actually eat dessert. Normal does not describe any thing you see in any form of media. These people do not eat. I am convinced they are fed by tubes of water, air, cottony things and my nephew's freeze dried yogurt droppings, penetrating their abdominal wall through surgically implanted ports. There is absolutely no possible way that someone as tall and split-brained crazy as Angelina Jolie can stand like the tattooed tower of Pisa and weigh less than me (which is 120 after the holidays)(OK, really 123). She has to be having hallucinations of flying meat and made of Japanese clock parts instead of vital organs. Cameron Diaz is most definitely made of tampon tubes encompassed by LA Looks hair gel. So to compare ourselves to anything found on a magazine or search engine home page is to compare ourselves to what our second definition is: human. Every human being must produce 443mL of water per day just to rid the body of necessary wastes. I'm fairly certain I have that much clinging to my left saddle bag whereas Rihanna doesn't pee because her body obviously doesn't hold more than a shot glass of water, thus proving, she is not human. Victoria's Secret models? Completely alien. 15 year-old aliens who eat Q-tips and lick stamp glue for sustenance. Because of these definitions, I feel I never have to compare myself to whatever media mogul feels he wants to thrust in my face today.

Our third word: Weight. The definition of weight: earths gravity on your mass. But that definition does not hold true when standing in front of the purely evil, 9 foot mirrors in the aerobics room of the gym. Weight is whether or not you can see your side boobs thrashing from side to side as you awkwardly uppercut at double speed in your martial arts aerobics class. Weight is putting on your favorite tank top and yoga pants only to find something that resembles an uncooked ham sticking out between them. Weight is defined as the moment of self defeat and admittance that the washing machine did not, in fact, shrink every single clothing item you own. Weight is the light headed feeling you have when you know that if you take a breath, your dress buttons will explode open like Mt. Vesuvius in the middle of Christmas Eve service. Weight is feeling like a stuffed sausage. And let me attest- whether you're a 4 or a 14, our definition of weight will find you. I'm a size four and these days, everything between my knees and my belly button seems to officially be made of pineapple chunks and banana pudding. Putting on my skinny jeans actually requires me to stuff my inner thigh down my pant leg. The moral of our little story is that although though a person may be a small tyke, they have fat sink holes just like anyone else. At the gym, I too have to watch as my butt cheeks move in the opposite direction of my body movement. And if you think being small will solve all your body problems, they won't. You still get stretch marks.

Jingle Jangle All the Way

This time every year, I get the same feeling. The feeling that I am in an alternate universe, that I have morphed into another being and am at a loss for how to get back. All the people, the money, the traffic, the schedules. I always end up asking myself, "What happened to Christmas?"

I grew up in a middle class family where our Christmas was a picture you could put on a greeting card and sell in gift packs of ten at Hallmark, covered in glitter, of course. Magically, one day, I would come home from school to find little plastic Santas and votive candles sporadically placed throughout the house that would be a glowing haven for the next month or so. The scent of sugary cookies and pine wafted in the air. In my backpack was a letter with all my hopes and dreams written on that extra-wide ruled manila paper. The cookies on a plate by the fire. The sounds of Nat King Cole crooning from the LP on the console. And the Christmas tree, oh the glorious Christmas tree..... back in the day when people still bought actual Christmas trees. They shed like hell and had sap all over them but by gosh, it was REAL. I was so fascinated with the tree, I once knocked it over while my parents were at the company Christmas party. Oh, but it had all the ornaments I had ever made displayed with pride on the front. In addition to my Yuletide master pieces, each year, we got to pick a new ornament- a total highlight of the Christmas season. Our tree was wrapped superbly in sparkling gold tinsel concluded with a grand, blinking star on top. But best of all- the lights. There were millions of multi-colored, blinking lights all over the place, but my favorite of favorites were the old school bubble lights. They had a medicine dropper on the end of them, full of colored liquid that bubbled once the lights got crispy hot. Looking back as an adult, my parents had to be strictly out of their mind to place cheap, Chinese boiling hot Christmas lights on a dry conifer, knowing that at any second, our house could become an erupting inferno of plastic Santas, all for the sake of child-like wonder. And I thank them wholeheartedly for it.

So the question is, where did I misplace that greeting card? I have recollections of it all the way up until a few years ago and then it just-poof- disappeared. Now Christmas makes me feel like on old-wintry hag who steals children, burns them in her oven and turns their ashes into Christmas cookies to feed to the neighbors. I hate to say it, but I hate Christmas. OK. That was harsh- I really don't hate Christmas, I'm just resentful for being an adult at Christmas time. It all started the Christmas that Santa's thank you note for the cookies contained handwriting that looked oddly akin to my father's.....

There isn't any wonder in Christmas anymore when you're standing in Wal-Mart at 12:30 at night, stumbling because you're fairly certain you lost your feet on aisle 18 and are now walking on the stubs of your tibias. You've been shopping for hours buying cheese-filled cocktail weenies, cookies, booze, more cheese, cartons of microwaveable mashed-potatoes, dinner-plates, a wintry vest for a homeless kid, pantyhose, fake tanner, monkey bread and aspirin for the ninety-five parties you have to attend in the next five days or heaven help-us, someones gonna get their flippin' feelings hurt that you didn't come to THEIR party and contribute. You load up your car after dragging your wares to the horizon of the parking lot just to have Suburban Super Mom stalk you for your spot.

Now I must interject- it's at this point for me when the alternate universe jumps in and I'm fairly certain an exorcism by a devout priest would be most helpful. I have never been a patient driver. In fact, I am a hateful driver. Jesus has a filing cabinet that is dated back from November 28th, 1996 when I began driving that is jam packed with copious sums of spiritual citations due to my driving deviance's. I have never hidden this fact from anyone. It is the sole reason I refuse to put my church's sticker on my car. Rather than curbing my impatience, it will only fuel non-believers to think even more poorly of the Christian nation. ANYWAY... Christmas traffic is the reason I might possibly go to hell. I try so hard to be a very compassionate person, during Christmas especially. But behind the wheel, during the Christmas season, icy black tar begins to flow through my veins and horns birth from my skull because it's like all the Christmas cookie crack and lard filled treats have gone straight to the logical, decision making areas of some people's brains and turned it into mushy, melted, abominable snowman crap. It's complete anarchy out there, folks. Suddenly, one-way street signs no longer matter, much like the gentleman attempting to escape mall traffic in his big, honkin' crimson Infinity mini-bus coming at me at full throttle this afternoon in the wrong lane. Or like the blue Honda pilot that feels the need to drive forty-five through a parking lot full of pedestrians. But even more aggravating- the Christmas traveler who is completely lost in the space-time continuum. You're stuck behind a mini-van only going 24 in a 50 mph zone with your surrounding lanes swamped with cars, warping time only to figure out she's mesmerized by the Christmas lights on the adjacent Blockbuster and Chevy dealership. You try to go around her and she blindly cuts you off and crosses three lanes of traffic in a span of five-feet so she can stop and get some Christmas toffee at the Bohemian Love Bakery, never mind the eighty people who had to slam on their brakes to allow her safe passage. At that point, I begin having an out of body experience where my face contorts to look like mouth of squid, my wings come out and I begin screeching obscenities at a pitch only dogs can hear. I have no idea what my car is doing at this moment in time as my skyrocketing blood pressure as baked my eyeballs into little glowing smoke bombs. I simple cannot handle it.

But I digress..... amidst all the parties, shopping, planning, packing, baking, eating and worrying about the various costs of it all, most of all, I find myself missing Christmas. I miss spending time with my family because I nodded off in exhaustion once I actually go to sit down and talk with them. I miss being able to actually enjoy the gift giving without worrying if it will be enough. I miss getting to watch the clay-mation movies, or really just having to time option to do so. I miss looking forward to going to my grandparents house, now that there is no house to go to. I miss my real tree.

My homesickness for Christmas is a simple reminder to me at how "life" can ruin our lives. So often as an adult, I find myself at the all-to-familiar crossroads of choosing to live simply or running through my life as everyone else says I should. Too habitually I choose the latter, trying to keep everyone happy, or to keep up with some ridiculous standard. Many times I do it to uphold some image that I can do it all. No matter the reason, I always end up paying for it. Like losing my childlike spirit of Christmas. Can I get that back? Some people say I will when I have my own kids. While sitting in my cold car, in a long line of traffic, I wonder if I ever will.

I Know What I Know.

There are a lot of things I don't know but a few, valuable things I do. Here's a list in case of emergency:

1. If you say the word wedding, it automatically goes up by $100.

2. Eating both fiber one pop tarts in the pack= bad afternoon.

3. Ninth graders are allergic to following directions.

4. Gas pump hoses have a pop-off safety release in the case that you drive off with one still in your tank.

5. Bed Bath and Beyond means "As Seen On TV" in Hindu. It means "You'll Never Find it in All These Piles of Crap" in French. The French always have to make it complicated.

6. Potatoes can fly if put in boiling water.

7. If you are behind a Durango, a Jimmy, or heaven forbid, the dreaded Blazer, you will be late.

8. If you are on a highly anticipated date, you will have to fart.

9. During furniture assembly, there will always be one piece that is broken.

10. Wherever you find yourself, know where the plunger is.

11. The amount of Law and Order watched has a direct correlation to exactly how far your imagination will run away you.

12. Your bra will unhook itself only in the company of others.

13. Hot pink paper on birch wood table + water = hot pink birch wood table.

14. Don't ever buy generic Velveeta.

15. Never run from the dog. Especially one with foam on its mouth.

16. If you put on a clean shirt, they'll throw up on you again.

17. When creating a media project for the masses, your chances of misspelling menial words infinitely goes up.

18. Macaroni and cheese with lemon juice. Dare ya.

19. Beef jerky and powdered donuts. Double dog dare ya.

20. There will always be the lady with two shopping carts and no knowledge of how to use the self- checkout.

Homeownership smonership

The American dream: owning your own home. The American nightmare: owning your own home.

I currently am living in my first house. The one I truly own, all by my lonesome. I can paint it whatever color I want, walk around naked, bang on some pots and pans..... oh wait. I think that's my nine month old nephews mantra. But anyway.... I had lived in apartments for so long and had put up with all the mass living shenanigans that all I could dream of was the promised land of private home ownership. You know the shenanigans like the lawn mowing service that never hesitates to give you the good old early morning rise at 7 am on Saturday morning. Of course they can't come during the week to make sure you're up and at 'em for work. They want to make double sure you keep up that good 'ole circadian rhythm on the weekends. And then there is the past decade of tenant's mail that you receive from the day you lease until the day you leave. I got more of their mail than I did my own. I would get people's tax return information, just to sit and wonder how the heck their employer doesn't know their correct address and how bad I would get in trouble for opening it. And rest assured your mail will go there too, long past your death certificate is issued. My adoption agency was sending letters to my former rental residence (that I pleasantly called Smurf Village due to its fashionable cornflower blue exterior) to inform me that a birth sibling was trying to get in contact with me. Hope they didn't need any bone marrow- they couldn't find my real address for months even though I hadn't lived there in six years. And of course- your overhead neighbors having sex. Nothing that a good beating to the ceiling with a mop handle couldn't fix.

All those things that seemed so awful, you dreamed of leaving behind you forever. Sucker.

I now live in a condo next to a man who loves to watch air force movies on his surround sound speakers. At 8 am. I still get people's mail, including current credit card bills, which I open because I know now, for certain, no one is coming for them. And screw the lawn mowers. I have to mow my own lawn, which I hate more than hell itself. I'd rather eat my own barf then to weed eat. Since I have been a homeowner, I have: killed 2 snakes, one which entered my home, smelled dead mice in the walls, been infested with brown reclouse, had my dog have an anxiety attack and chew two foot holes in the carpet in every room of the house. My fence has blown away, my outdoor water faucet torn off while honking like a Canadian goose in heat. I've had my window shattered by a hot grill and goatheads in my grass. A tarantula was found under my pillow. My air conditioner drips condensation like an incontinent old woman. My garage door opener requires a person with polydactyly and psychic powers to get it to operate. The water tubes under the kitchen sink spewed for hours before I came home from church one day. I came home to an episode of Swamp People after my yard spewed water for an entire weekend from a broken water main. I have had a rat in my garage. My dog door was chewed off by the dog. The bathroom door was chewed through by another dog. My house had 1985 blue trim and a fake butcher block kitchen. My washing machine vibrated its drain tube out of the wall on an oversized load. My washer is upstairs. I now have a new downstairs, and upstairs, sub floors, carpet and tile. I have weed-eated frogs during a reenactment of the plagues of the Old Testament in 2008. I have endured a weed eater to the ankle while attempting to coif my grass. I have moles in my yard that are talented enough to make my lawn look like a scaled-down model of the World War II trenches in Germany.

Let me tell you my friend, I thought this was just my world. It is not. Every house gets its share of crazy, which is not what I bargained for. And when you own it, you get to fix it. And the longer you wait, hoping and dreaming that a landlord will pop up at your door to take care of it, the more you become the white trash, redneck hillbilly on the street. The days of apartment living now look like the land flowing with wine and cheese. So is there any reward to home ownership? Sure! Raise your glasses! Here's to being able to paint your hallway metallic orange! Here's to running around naked in your house! Here's to banging pots and pans at 8 AM to enact revenge upon your neighbors! And here's to the government paying you extra in deductions just to endure it all! Cheers!

G is for Good News

So being at church today was one of the most uplifting days I have had in a while. In my personal experiences with church during my lifetime, you usually walk away feeling guilty, hopeless and down right nasty. Not today. Not ever again.

I go to a church that is anti-religious. I had never heard of such a thing before but I don't think I can ever go back. Religion is such a man-made thing. All those people in church taking their mental attendance, sizing you up and down as you scoot your way down the pew. I never really understood all the stand-up, sit down, fight-fight-fight either. I am a Christian and never in anything have I ever read did Jesus or Moses or anyone recite the Nicene creed, sing any sort of ritualistic song or pull out their special polyester robes before they could be presentable to God. So why the heck do we do it? I wonder if God is sitting up there, impatiently nodding us through all those rituals so he can get around to the important part- getting close to us.

My pastor went stone-cold on religion today. It truly is a serious detractor to what God and Jesus really wants from us. I'm not much of a bible beater but I do think there are some great things you can take away from it. One of those such things is the book of Romans. If you think Christianity is all a bunch of "don't cuss, don't want anything, don't lust, don't drink (including caffeine) and sit around chanting and using strange "thou hallelujah" language, this is something for you to read. Here's my quick synopsis: We ALL sin. That sin makes us feel empty, lonely and downright nasty. God knows we sin and he knows we will continue to sin until the day he kills us off, because that's how it is. You can try to be as righteous and pious all you want; you're just wasting your time and more importantly, missing the point. Jesus wants us to have a relationship with Him so he can take care of that sin for you and make you right with God. The sin becomes His problem so you can be free and others can see that and get to know Him too. The End. That's the Good News. I've heard that phrase my entire life and never truly understood it until today. What great news! There's no way you will EVER live up to the laws God gave us. He gave us those laws so we would realize how much we need Jesus. So stop trying to be something you can't and get to know Him! He'll change you and that feeling of nastiness and worthlessness will disappear like vapor. No more worries about the attendance sheet, or if your Izod shirt measures up. No more feeling worthless and that He hates you because you got wasted or lied. He knows you'll probably do it again and wants to hang out with you anyway. Now that is some Good News!

Frustrating Freaking Drivers

If there isn't anything more aggravating in this world, it is oblivious drivers. And what's sad is that unlike breeding, someone actually gave them a license. I'm usually a pretty cool and collected person EXCEPT when it comes to travel. Its because I can't keep my finger in its holster that I've never put my church's sticker on my car.

You've been there. You're already five minutes late and you are stuck behind a man in a pickup going ten under the speed limit in the exit lane for the ramp to the freeway. Regardless that you are 0.6 inches from his bumper, he's just bouncing along with absolutely no one in front of him until you reach the next solar system. So you decide to be patient- he could be some one's grandpa. That is until his blinker flips on and he begins to exit the exit ramp because despite the nine signs pointing to the highway, the exit only sign, and the directions painted for sixty yards on the asphalt, he's still not sure he's on planet earth. That finger just itches, don't it?

Then you have the rambling housewife. She's my favorite because she's always driving a luxury SUV that will haul the German army yet she's got one lone kid in the backseat semi-watching Dora on the headrest. And I have a theory about all cars in general: the more expensive the car, the slower it goes, despite it's performance technology. But anyway...you can spot the rambling housewife from a mile away. That's because you will need a mile to get your car to decelerate enough to keep from hitting her. So you're on a rare break from work where you have to run a quick errand and you're traveling down the highway making good time, when you must slow down from 70 to 35, kinda like coming out of warp speed in Star Wars. The daycare on wheels that you can't see around is cruising at the speed of smell. The left lane is hustlin' like pimp in the Bronx and everyone behind you is swerving into the ocean current of the left lane leaving you wedged behind Mrs. Oblivious 2007. As you finally begin to cruise past, you glare into the daycare to get a glimpse of the problem. There she is: sporting her Ed Hardy ball cap, her hot-pink, Juicy Couture velour jumpsuit, and big, fake french-tipped fingernails crawling down the road TALKING ON THE PHONE. You can't shoot death rays from your eyes because you have no eyes. They have erupted into flames blazing out of your skull. You contemplate the finger, but there's a five year old in the backseat. Besides, house mom wouldn't see it. She's on her bedazzled phone.

It's one thing if you were texting and ignorant to what's going on around you because, duh, you're looking down. But when you're using the phone? You obviously don't need your eyes to talk, but for some people, even though their eyes are facing the road, you know they're not seeing a dang thing. Lately, I have found much delight in honking at texters because it scares the crap out of them. But my ultimate favorite is the person reading a book. Yes, reading and driving. I want to know who the author is and the title of the book that's worth crashing your two-ton death machine at 70 miles per hour. I've seen it.

Last but definitely not least, is the most aggravating offender of all: being stuck in the passenger seat. Have you noticed how awful it can be to ride with others? Some ride the brake or pulsate the accelerator so you feel like you're on a ship at sea. Or they refuse to take directions from anyone else in the car until you're hopelessly stuck downtown. And to the fear of even some creatures in hell, they can drive faster than you while pulling out their phones to check their scrabble game. Advice fore myself: It's just best to drive yourself, Panama.

E is for Enough Already

Facebook and Twitter and all of these social media portals have opened up a new realm of possibilities for all sorts of things. You can meet old friends you had when you were six and lived in another state. You can converse with celebrities when in real life, you'd get fish hooked by a bodyguard for trying to look in their general direction. Heck, you can even become a pretend farmer on some dumb game app and then go tweet about how you saved your cow from a barbed wire fence. One thing that is has also done is open up a HUGE, WIDE box of tissues for every complainer and whiner in the universe. I don't do well with either one.

I don't like whiners and complainers for one simple reason: THEY ACCOMPLISH NOTHING. I'm a do-er kinda gal. I get high on efficiency. Complainer containers are the complete opposite of this mantra. The major complaint that is really irking me right now is the BP oil disaster. No one is arguing that this is completely awful. It's ruined an entire region ecologically, economically and socially. Complainers, however, sit around and flappin their lips about how evil the oil and gas corporations are and how its the fault of the rich BP CEO. But really, this could have happened to any of the oil corporations we employ. They use man-made equipment and human-designed processes to get oil out of the ground, so bottom line- it's destined to fail. Which means we have to come up with man-made ideas to resolve said catastrophes. This calamity occurred and guess what- it'll happen again. That's a fact. So do the complainers contribute ideas on how to fix it? Do they assist in the clean up or even give a dime to help environmental groups with the mess? Of course not. Then you've got the whiners who are the blamers. "Let's blame it on BP, no, the President. Wait- blame it on the former President. We've got that down pat. This is all an dubious plot for money makers to make more money." Where does the blame really lie? I believe it lies directly in the hands of you and me.

We, and especially the complainers and whiners, don't want to have to get up off the couch to turn on the DVD player, so we just leave it on standby. We don't want to plug the phone charger back in tonight before bed- that's a hassle. Leave it stuck in the wall, charging nothing all day. Who wants to wait sixty seconds for your computer to power up? Hibernate it, baby. I love the wind in my hair, so let's take a drive just for the hell of it, instead of using up those useless calories we drank last night and getting some exercise on our bikes. And heaven forbid you must wait five minutes for your house to be arctic freezing cold when you get home. Make sure you run that air conditioner ALL DAY LONG. We are the problem. Did you know that if any of your electronic devices has any sort of LED light on it, it can pull up to 70% of it's active load even though your not using it? Yeah, like that red light on your hair straightener after you turn it off. They have a ten dollar tester at your local Radio Shack if you don't believe me. In the U.S. we are fat and wasteful. That's why everyone hates us. We have no respect for what it takes to live. Why the crap are we drilling so much? Because we use so much. Correction- we waste so much. If we weren't so dang careless, we wouldn't be in this mess.

If you don't like what's happening int the Gulf, remedy your part in the blame. Program your thermostat, unplug your crap, use less stuff. It's as simple as that. For the complainers and whiners, check yourself. Make sure you understand how much drilling costs and how much life-threatening work goes into keeping your flapping face cheeks cooled off. Be aware of the countless hours and extraordinary intelligence it takes to get your car one block to the Quik Trip for yet another high-calorie coke in that petroleum-based cup in your hand. And before you continue nagging about how no one is doing anything, I dare you to even try to come up with an idea on how to fix it while good people like my friend Lisa work two shifts a day managing the relief well being built and actually doing an enormous amount to get this situation fixed. Make sure you pitch-in before you start your bitch-in.

D is for Debauchery

D is for Debauchery which generally comes about because of drinking, which also starts with the letter D. It isn't always necessarily the case, but most of the time, they are seen holding hands. Debaucherous drinking can be anything from drunk karaoke and home-grown poker nights to full on slathering someone in paint before taking them dancing or squirting each other with dish soap and running through sprinklers. Anyway, its usually perceived as fun, until the next morning at least.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning it, but I'm not gonna lie and say I haven't participated. I just don't participate with the voracity or frequency that I used to. I remember for my twenty-first birthday, I took eleven shots of various types and combinations of hard liquor, had a bottle of champagne before I even left my house and finished off the night drinking a pitcher of beer. The next morning, I threw it all up, brushed my teeth and went to a football game. Looking back on that, I can assuredly convince myself that I am supernatural. I should have died that night, but instead, I was eating a hot dog by noon the next day. Now, if I drink a glass of red wine while cooking dinner, rest assured I'll be popping aspirin in the morning and trying to self-inflict a coat hanger lobotomy. Completely forget the hot dog. It would come right back up and double as fish bait.

In my younger days, I enjoyed getting pissed and going dancing regardless of the fact that I had lost all control of my limbs. It gave me reasons to wear viking helmets, spout my innermost private thoughts, and fall down, all with a perfectly good excuse. To a sober outsider, I was what Jesus calls a fool and sadly, I must agree with Him. In my mid-twenties, after an entirely virgin Friday night, I woke up one blessed Saturday morning feeling wonderful, like birds and mice were going to sing and dress me. It was at that point, I knew I had grown up and I've pretty much rolled with that ever since. And since I'm old lady and get sick to my stomach after one beer, I choose my libations wisely. I prefer a high-calorie, over indulgent tipple that if imprudently consumed, will tear you apart at roughly 4:00AM. So here's my decadence:

Chocolate Martini

• 1 shot Kahlua
• 1 shot Vodka
• 1/2 shot Bailey's Irish Creme
• 1 1/2 tablespoons Coffee Ice Cream
• Chocolate Syrup
  

Put everything but the chocolate in a shaker. Shake it until its blended well. Pour it into a martini glass drizzled in syrup. Enjoy it slowly and revel in your shining dignity and aspirations of a painless tomorrow.

C is for Cancer

Death has come for me.
He is perched at the edge of the forest with his horsemen.
I have heard their thunderous footsteps off in the distance, breaking the loamy, dew covered ground.
And now they sit before me, come to claim their bounty.

Yet their equine, they prance, dancing as if spooked.
Their riders, they hesitate.
In the gentle, shadowy forest looms an ardor of willpower, of might.
It rolls quietly from me like a fog, thick and dense, consuming all within its reach.

There in the forest I plan my battle.
Slinking not from shrub to arbor, hiding from my foe, I stand, facing him, in the sunlit clearing.
Though undoubtedly he will posses my body in the end, death wavers.
He waits.
He stumbles in his confidence as my rolling fog threatens to envelope the foot of his steed.
For before us lies a battle, one of depth and profound length.

Ahead of him in the clearing he spies his reward, his aspiration- steady and focused.
Valor radiates from within this small warrior, my mission unwavering, my preparation immaculate.
My exuding power undoubtedly conferred from my King.
He has assured me victory in the end.

Death, being aware, he quivers.

Sunlight glistening from my auburn locks, I taunt,
"Come and get me."

B is for Brothers

If you are a female who grew up in a house of brothers, you have a glimpse into the reality of what its like to be kidnapped by psychopaths and tortured until your release. I had two of them and I was right in the middle. Not a day went by that there wasn't some sort of suffering either verbal or physical.

My younger brother mainly just annoyed me. I spent much time alleviating my frustrations from my older brother by taking them out on him. I once gave him a wedgie that ripped his underoos. I was shocked at how easily they split and how strong I was. He was not. But mostly we screamed and yelled at each other. My older brother was a much different story.

I had a cowlick. It was slapped daily. He had a bull whip. It was used daily (until confiscation). He had a science kit. My hair was blue. He found that if you touched the rim of the stove and the metal strip on the toaster, you could restart your heart. I got to test it. I threatened to tell mom about his girlfriend coming over while he babysat. I spent 4 hours locked in a toy chest. The first time I ever shaved my legs with a razor, I clipped an artery. Too bad for me, my bathroom was on the backside of the house across a great expanse of carpet upon which he was sprawled watching TV. With blood cascading across my foot, I shakily asked him to go get mom. He took a look at my foot then told me to go get her myself. He brought home a snake that was loose in the house for a month. He skipped Thanksgiving to play basketball. He lit the neighbors yard and a rivals tree house on fire with fireworks. He shot my toddler brother with a BB gun at point blank range. Never a dull day.

Now that I am older, my brothers are 180's from their former selves. My older brother gives me golf lessons and financial advice. My little brother and I can now speak and is my greatest protector. He's also the greatest source of motivation for my spiritual life. The trials and tribulations they bestowed upon me made me the woman I am today.

A is for Augmentation

Is it just me or is there just a ginormous growth of breast augmentation these days (no pun intended)? I remember when breast amplification was for the rich or deformed. Nowadays, I'm starting to feel like the rejected member of the babysitters club. Every where I look there is a great or not-so-great pair of jubblies bouncing down the sidewalk and I just wonder where the funds come from.

I myself have a pair of natural apples. No, crab apples. I'm a petite gal so they work well for me but every now and then, when the right dress or bathing suit comes a long, I wish I had more like..... grapefruits. So I make grapefruits. Yep, I am that girl. I'm broke so I have a pair of gel filled falsies that look much like chicken cutlets that help me fill my top and shallow bucket of physical self-esteem. I used to wear them under my cheer uniform back in my professional days and tried to bribe God not to let them fall out on the field in front of the audience of 5,000 in mid performance. I finally just sewed them in figuring God wasn't all that hot on bribes. They helped balance out the badonkadonk I trail behind me. So knowing the high one can get from having a great pair of milk wagons, I get why everyone wants them. I just don't understand what some women do with them.

I can only dream of the elation of having a near perfect/perfect rack. I would love to fill out sweaters, sweatshirts, heck, even a tank top with more than something that resembles tapioca filled sandwich bags. But I have a beautiful friend who had the simple desire to just feel more feminine emerge from her enlargement with the unquenchable desire to dress like a porn star. Is it the silicone that turns common fashion sense into justification for wearing your mono-kini to wal-mart for a toilet paper run? I'm not saying all hypermammiferous women do this because I have numerous friends who sport their new moon pies in good taste. But it just seems that more and more some women just lose their frontal lobe and start dressing like their selling donut advertisements rather than going to the PTA meeting. Those are usually the ones with titastrophes, anyway making it doubly worse.

So to all you beauties sporting your newly purchased knockers sensibly, I salute you. I am jealous. I would love to be Boobs McGee without my matching barbie doll water beds shoved in my bra. But alas, I am a "don't fix it if it ain't broke" kinda girl. I'll wait for my possible future offspring to wreck 'em first. I just hope I don't emerge looking or dressing like Pamela Anderson.

Why every single person over 30 has herpes.

Yes I know its been a while and no, I have not contracted and spent my time nursing any std outbreaks. I've just been crack head busy and today, after finding myself hopelessly unemployed and expressing my dilemma to a close friend, I sit and ponder why she would try to render my desperation with the ever so jovial, "Well you know you wouldn't have to worry about this if you could just get your boyfriend to propose" comment. What a kick in the nuts. Now I'm jobless and a circus freak. Thanks for the grant of fortitude.

Why is it that all married people think the cure for all the maladies of the single world is to douse it in "get married gasoline" and light it up, baby? Do you really think we are that stupid? Me having to smell someone else's waft of bowel movement coming from the hall bathroom will not lessen the dissatisfaction of my GED level income. Their persistent case of anti-folding disease of the three loads of laundry rumpled on the washer will not desist the desire to slit my wrists about gaining two pounds. And chances are, I will still have to mow the lawn after he calls me his princess. Momma didn't raise no fool. Paint all the pictures you want everyone to see about how marriage solves everything and I'll show you think stink face of a woman smelling turds and a burnt match.

The way to help any singles feel better about bumps in the roads of their lives is to not treat them as if they have some tropical disease from which all humanity runs. Get real. Tell them how you hate it when his lips flap back and forth when he snores or tell them about her stained underwear floating in the sink after an unprecedented crimson tsunami crashed upon her shores. Better yet- just talk about your EXACT SAME life problems, like mortgages. But for gosh sakes- we don't have rampant herpes, invisible friends, or as Bridgette Jones puts it- scales under our clothes. Please stop treating us as so. And stop treating it as if being single is easily "fixable" because you know we've always dreamed of being proposed to while holding him at gunpoint. I love the unsolicited advice- "What are you waiting for?", "The good ones'll all be taken", or my personal favorite, "You ain't gettin' any younger" as if my only self worth and purpose on this planet is to reproduce and stretch my vagina to unrecognizable proportions. My uncle is the worst about it. He once told me, at Christmas dinner nonetheless, that my standards were too high, when truth be told, I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. For my birthday, he stated that all of God's creatures were made male and female so that they could fall in love, get married and reproduce (I personally would like to see seahorse nuptials if that's the case). He followed that peculiar statement with the hope that one day, I too would be one of God's normal creatures. That, my friend, starts the spiral that alcoholism is made of.

Marriage will not "fix" singles for there is nothing to fix. My life's frustrations will still be there whether or not I "get my meat hooks in him and show him I'd be a good wife" (You'll notice that was a quote). Single status is not a disease, fixable with antibiotics or random setups with other single humans that aren't fit for jogging alone much less dating. And increased age does not constitute the last form of legal slavery. We're all getting older. So please be kind maybe even borderline sensitive to your local singles. They deserve love too.

What Cyndi Lauper and Rob Thomas have in common.

So I’m sorry I haven’t been around lately. Life has been a backhoe and I am the dirt. My brain is currently in repair mode from said digging so I apologize in advance.

So my boyfriend and I were having an in-depth discussion about Rob Thomas’s song Someday and the debate was “what does he really mean about the lyrics ‘Someday, maybe, we can live our lives out loud?” I thought about it and I deduced that it was about Human Biology.

Biology is the study of life so it goes without saying that Human Biology is about the study of life in humans. But it’s the proverbial life that I am talking about. So this is my version of Human Biology. Open up your textbooks to page 298, please.

Our lives are so inhibited, so covered up, so pre-fabricated. We want so badly for others to see us as special, unique, or at least par with everyone else that it can literally suck the life out of you as you try to paint some façade you think will amaze others. Tiredly and usually lonely, we stop and think, “What would really impress them? What would make them gush to random strangers about me?” Bottom line is, what would you gush to random strangers about yourself? Who are you? Why sit around thinking about these things and conjuring up this lackluster forgery of yourself when there is an arsenal of whacked-up crap inside you that’s sure to make you conversation worthy?

I like Chapstick. No, I love Chapstick. When I cook bacon, I love fishing out the little pieces floating around in the grease that’s left behind. They are almost as good as the bacon itself. I try to sing with Sammy Hagar daily but his voice is too high for me to match and I ponder that every time. I really want to learn how to play the guitar so I can play Panama at a recital and impress my brother, but I haven’t been able to find the time so I play a lot of air guitar in my car, generally at stop lights. When the mood strikes me, I slide around my boyfriend’s hard wood floors because he’s got lots of open space and that is fun to me. I wear old, worn out underwear to bed because they are hands-down the most comfortable of undergarments. I absolutely must take a shower after going number two because I just feel disgusting which means I never crap in public. So if you walk into a rest room and it smells like death, I can guarantee it wasn’t me. I prefer fresh air to air conditioned at any time or temperature so therefore I drive with the windows down and the heater on full blast if I must. I am going back to school to be a PA. Not sure if I’m smart enough but we’ll find out. When I started that project, it was to prove to everyone around me that I was smart and successful and could do anything I wanted. I gave that up because no one but me really gave a crap. I’m doing it now because I am beyond excited to share my love for science and knowledge with other people so they can help themselves.

Some of those things are pretty odd and I ought to feel embarrassed and intimidated to share them with anyone and everyone, but I’m not. That’s who I am and there’s enormous freedom in not hiding that. It takes way too much effort to constantly hold up that revolting mural we’ve painted for everyone else when a unique and exclusive assortment of Human Biology lies behind it.  Put down the fresco and as Rob Thomas says, live your life out loud.

Contraction, Contraction, What's Your Function?

Since I've already voiced my opinion on having boobs, monthly blood hemorrhaging and occasional raging infections, I thought I'd remain ever so classy and fair to give my take on the excruciating and laborious toleration of uterine torture. Wouldn't want to leave any body parts out.

This topic was spawned because of my waking this morning at roughly 4:56, feeling as if I had just had my appendix taken out, or was maybe sporting a fresh, newly installed colostomy bag. Upon wiping the sleep from my eyes and clambering my way into consciousness, I realized I simply had cramps. For the next hour, I flopped around in my sheets like fish in the bottom of an old, mildewy canoe, squinching my eyes thinking that maybe if I pretend to be a boy, I could sleep a little while longer. No dice.

After getting ready at the speed of smell, I stepped into the frigid Oklahoma/February weather and felt my lower abdomen convulse and I gripped the siding of my house for support. It stopped me dead in my tracks much like Jeff from "Today's Special" when his hat fell off. Too bad a good ole "hocus pocus alimagocus" couldn't get my uterus seizure to desist and go skipping happily down the sidewalk to my car. So needless to say, my prostaglandins continued their poisonous drip while my subconscious drove my car to work. With tunnel vision, I sat in the drivers seat and went to my happy place, taking quick, short breaths as I was sure my my lower half had been severed off and was somewhere lounging in the back seat. I tried to contemplate what actual birthing contractions might be like. I envisioned my belly peeling open like a banana and spewing forth acid and piranhas. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what its gonna feel like.

I've always thought that having a male ob gyn would be weird because how could a man really know what cramps felt like? I could never quite verbally illustrate it justifiably until today. Gentlemen, you know that feeling you get in your gut after a hard night of cheap beer drinking or maybe your fourth meal entree of sum yung guy from the chinese takee-outee? That feeling like something's coming for you. Something really, really bad. It's that feeling right before the onslaught of the green apple splatters, that intense wave of anguish and torture where you are instantaneously paralyzed, on the threshold of passing out and the only thought running through your mind is whether or not you can possibly take your next breath without crapping yourself or crying. Yeah. That's what our baby maker does, encompassing our entire lower half, waist to knees, EVERY MONTH. So if she gets stroke-faced occasionally or if she collapses and writhes in agony like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, cut her some slack and don't get all weird. You now know just. how. bad. it. can. be.

Planes, Trains and Sociopaths

Every time I step aboard a plane (which isn’t often on my meager salary) I am captivated by the mystery of what lies ahead. Like a five year old, I stare at the engine, the wings, the rickety tray in front of me and contemplate how this is all going to work. The wings always seem too short to send this fourteen thousand pound lump of steel, plastic and human flesh hurtling through the air. I spend a lot of time on each flight going over the aerodynamics of it all just to give myself some comfort and revel in the fact that I might be smart.
What is even more mystifying is the social aspect of each flight. Hundreds of strangers sharing the same air, all destined for the same location, even if just temporarily. The flight I am on now is no different. I’m sitting here in awe and overly aware of how rude people can be in an already uncomfortable situation. Why make it harder? We all want a nice easy trip. So we stopped in Dallas on the way to Houston when a toadstool of a woman waddled at the speed of smell down the narrow aisle. The 22 people loaded up like pack mules behind her were leaving. She was just switching to a better seat. Despite the fact that half the plane was backed up behind her, she decided she needed to use the bathroom. Like a ten pound bowling ball, she started rolling back through the line of people without so much as an "excuse me" as if she were the queen of some foreign country. From what I could tell, the only thing she was queen of was high calorie food. Was the mean of me? I’m sorry.
Then there was the elderly lady getting on the plane. The short Indian man sitting next to me had taken a trip to the lavatory when she tried to sit down in his seat. Politely I said, "Ma’am, I’m sorry but I think a gentleman was sitting there." She turned at me with her cold, glassy eyes and impatiently said, "Do you think or do you know?" Taken aback, I uttered, "Pardon?" She huffed and repeated herself, pacing her words in case I was retarded, "Do-you-think-or-do-you-know?" As I felt my fangs unsheathing for the first time in my life towards a senior citizen, I turned to her and bugged my eyes like my father used to when I was in trouble as a kid. In my best southern "I’m gonna kick-your-ass- politely" tone, I replied, "Oh, I know!" I wasn't certain about the Indian guys situation but I sure as heck knew I didn’t want to sit next to what could possibly be Omarosa’s bitter and odious step-mother during my vacation voyage. However, her absolute hatefulness did completely erase the discomfort of sitting next to the largest man on the plane on the first leg of my flight.
It goes without saying that when everybody wants to get to their destination and no one wants to be hassled or bothered, don’t go bothering everyone else like you’re the only one on the planet. Especially when you are in such an enclosed place and so many people can give you a collective beat-down. It’s just not smart or safe. On that thought, I look out the window and see glimmering snow and ice careening horizontally past my window, looking eerily like a roadway at night. It soothes my anger and I set my thoughts about small minded people behind me to dream of the warmer weather that awaits me and the radiant, pure smile of two-month old baby boy that awaits me at my gate. Ahhh….. How flying should be.

I'm ashamed of what I did for a Klondike Bar.

It's that time of year again when we hang our heads in shame and realize that we can barely see our toes. I, myself, chose to gain five lb's over the Christmas season by overdoing the party list and consuming large amounts of cheese, wine, topped with chocolate, more cheese and more wine. I am by no means overweight, but I currently feel like a pig in a blanket when I get dressed in the morning.

I just love how it goes down every year. You go to the New Years Eve party and there's the size double-zero girl with perky, perfect C cup rack horsing down a bowl of ranch dip and a family sized bag of potato chips. Then there you are, starving next to the veggie tray, eating six whole baby carrots and dreaming of punching her in the face Fight Club style and you momentarily consider it as a rational idea until you remember that she's your friend. The next morning you hit the scale and immediately slit your wrists with your cuticle clippers because you gained a pound for each carrot and currently look four months pregnant. You plot out exactly how many hours you can reasonably go without eating before passing out or nibbling off a fingertip and fill your day planner with well-intentioned gym visits. At least, that's what I do.

I've finally gotten to the semi-levelheaded stage of getting up early to work out and have started eating healthier. I went to Wal-Mart to buy a workout DVD and was stopped for shoplifting because they thought I was walking out with a pair of basketballs shoved in my dress pants. Turns out it was just my ass. So now, Jillian Michaels is kicking those basketballs every morning as I gasp, wretch and wish to die. So far, my waistline hasn't changed much but it has successfully reduced my knockers into a pair of badminton shuttle-cocks that are very much reminiscent of my pre-adolescent years. But here's another thing about working out and eating healthy that drives me crazy- you're hungry all the damned time. I swear, I used to eat a Sonic kiddie burger and I'd be good for lunch and dinner. Now I'm eating radicchio salads with lemon juice dressing and finding that it's only true purpose is to make me more ravenous. I'm so hungry I'm chewing on straws, pens, paper clips and other various office supplies like a little crazed donkey in a lettuce patch. It makes me so agitated, my school kiddos are fantasizing of the day I give up and go into full-on binge mode just so I'll stop gnashing my teeth and stomping around like a t-Rex. They fear getting their fingers too close to me. So bottom line, I'm miserable but wistfully awaiting that magical day that I start to see some noticeable change. The day when my jeans fit more like jeans rather than leggings. The time when my stomach will have finally shrunk enough that I can blissfully enjoy only eating one cube of cheese. The moment when my skinny thighs make my shuttle-cocks look like boobs again. So raise you Nalgene's full of water and Benefiber and toast to better days! Cheers!!