Awkwardly Social

I have a lot to say, but I don’t have time to say it.

1. Allie gave me the best birthday present. She cleaned the apartment and hosted a dinner party.
2. I ran into Louie’s dad while I was running. My voice raised 30 octaves. Why do I do that? I sound so fake and annoying.
3. My dad is a CPA, making me ashamed of my panic attack last night in which I convinced Allie and me that we owed $1000 to the government. I’m retarded.
4. I eat two lunches now. The running is making my metabolism super hungry.

La!

(Waller, just skip this one.)

My uterus is pissing me off. More than usual. She’s making me about 10% less cranky than I was in the first week of quitting smoking and about 45% more cranky than I normally am the week before the dot. My boobs are huge and sore. Three sports bras aren’t even enough this week (for running). I went on an eating binge last night the likes of which I haven’t partaken in since I finished grad school, the kind where I stood at the refrigerator and just ate and ate and felt guilty and hoped Allie wouldn’t walk in. And today, to make matters worse, the bitch is commenting on people’s blogs. Mine included. It’s disconcerting.

But! I have a theory. Last weekend was spent in Las Vegas, smoking capital of America. (Smoking capital of the world, I believe, is either Moscow or somewhere in China.) I didn’t smoke one cigarette. I didn’t even have a drag of someone’s cigarette. I longed for them and I thought about it a lot, but I didn’t do it. The trouble is, just being in a casino, especially the older ones (like “The Trop”) where the ventilation isn’t so good, you leave there having smoked at least half a pack of unfiltered. So I think my body is quitting smoking all over again.

Or I’m a total bitch and my period is going to take me down next week.

Sometime in the future, there will be kids sitting around smoking weed, wearing berets and drinking whiskey. Those kids will talk about us, the most fucked up generation. We had it all, we had a hip name (Gen X), we had college degrees, we had cool jobs that took us to the most awesome places, but we were all big fat liars. Jason Blair, Stephen Glass, James Frey, and all the rest. We wrote what we wanted to, said it was true, but it was all a fucking lie.

We will be called the Embellishers. I’m guilty of this too. I cannot tell the whole truth anymore. Every story has to be bigger and funnier and more outrageous than the next. I used to think this was because I was the second child. I had to embellish in order to get any goddamned attention. Now I know it’s because I’m a product of my generation. I am the best (and worst) liar. I must tell 100 lies a day. Some of it is self defense, but honestly (ha) most of the time I just do it to get by. I’m so used to doing it, sometimes I don’t even realize I’ve done it until someone says, “No you didn’t!” and then I stop, think and remember, no, I actually didn’t. Then I lie again and say, “Yeah! Of course I did!”

Look, we wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. Clearly, even after the Glass and Blair incidents we still get into trouble (I’m looking at you GWB…) and yet, we don’t come out and say, “Fuck, I fucking lied. I needed the people to believe this story, so I made up facts.”

I know why we do it. We do it because we are also the generation that gets told every damned minute we try to do something creative or innovative, that we are just an echo, a shadow, a pale imitation of what has come before us. Do we have a choice? Fuck yeah, and we choose to be liars. Because it’s cool. It’s fine. Our GODDAMNED President gets away with it, why can’t we?

Truth be told, I could give a rats ass about James Frey and the fracas that is surrounding that book. Did the book change public policy? Did the book send us to war? Did the book spy on people illegally? No. The book made some goddamned housewives cry and now Oprah is mad. What I’d really like to see is all of us (you, too, Oprah) getting up in arms about a group of “Swift Boat Veterans” smearing an actual war hero with lies, getting furious about a string of lies that mislead Congress and our country into going to war, not about a goddamned memoir.

Please.

We lie. Everyone does it. (I lied at least twice in this very post.) Our generation just happens to do it and make buckets of money, not kill thousands of men.

There’s a sore throat sneaking up on me. I was feeling all high and mighty the past couple of weeks, hearing about how everyone was getting sick and I was Super-Healthy. And then I came home from Vegas.

There’s a certain magic about Theraflu. It has a specialness that cannot be achieved with Nyquil. It doesn’t give you the dizzy’s it just numbs you and gives you the sleeps. And I heart it. Even though it kind of tastes like dog vomit that has been watered down with urine. Not that I would actually know what that tastes like. It’s just a guess. It’s nasty. But sort of sweet. And then as you keep drinking it you sort of like it. And that’s what I imagine being held hostage by some semi-evil people would be like. You’re scared of them at first, especially because they’re making you drink your own urine with dog vomit in it. But then you start to like them because they tell a good joke (it’s in a language you can’t understand, but the way the other hostage takers are laughing you know it’s hilarious, and they tell it so often you have it memorized, you know exactly when the punchline is coming, and you intend to have it translated when you get home, that is, if they don’t kill you first) and by the time they have secured your ransom you know you’re going to miss them.

Because these guys made urine dog vomit taste like home. And really, that’s all you can ask for in a hostage situation.

Tiny recap

1. I have friends with great pharmaceuticals.
2. The Tropicana has rooms with mirrors on the ceiling.
3. Once you turn thirty, you no longer care about the hip club - because you hear it has a line.
4. My friends love to gamble.
5. One of them has an inner force that he must feed called “Gamblor.”
6. Generous, generous friends.
7. I might have picked the most expensive restaurant on the strip for dinner, but it was totally worth it.
8. Drunk men in casinos loved my new jeans.
9. I heard Happy Birthday said to me 20 million times.
10. Craps is called that for a reason.
11. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, unless you bring home evidence.

Last night I went shopping. Because people in their thirties don’t have only one pair of jeans. Bonus, I discovered that people in their thirties find awesome sales on J Crew jeans. Also, people in their thirties are totally still trying to find a pair of designer jeans that don’t A. show ass crack, and B. make them cry.

I also did laundry last night. Because people in their thirties come home from their vacations with clean sheets, and clothes to wear to work on Monday.

People in their thirties are so… prepared.

but, there is a down side. People in their thirties still stay up too late watching Battlestar Gallactica and then press the snooze a few too many times.

I’m off to Vegas.

If you go out drinking tonight, toast one to me, in my thirties.

You were kind of fat.
Not like, super fat,
but there is definite chunk happening in those early photos.
And the middle photos.
And even some of the late photos.

Drink, drank, drunk - all achieved ad nauseum.
Drinking became fun again.
Really fun.
Throwing up out of cabs fun.
waking up in my own vomit fun.
That doesn’t sound like fun.
And then it wasn’t fun.
But by the end it was fun again.

My, oh my, twenties, you really were distraught.
There was much hand wringing.
And letter writing.
To boys who never intended to make you love them.
And boys who never knew you existed.
I hope they don’t still have those letters, twenties.
Because some day, if someone reads those letters to me-
I’ll be embarrassed.
Or maybe not.
Maybe I’ll think it’s funny that I wrote a free verse poem to
Marcus Russell about how he broke my heart.
And actually gave it to him.
And he kept it.

We moved a lot, twenties.
Nine apartments.
I only wish I could have made it an even ten for some reason.
That’s not a regret.
Just a wish for symmetry.

I don’t really remember the beginning part of you anymore.
I see the fat photos and think -
What was I eating?
And then I remember how Jack in the Box became a regular feature.
Morning, noon and night.
And how I would order a Diet Coke with my Super Sized Jumbo Jack.
That makes me think the early part of you, twenties, was a bit…
misguided.

The middle part -
Oh. Well.
Grad school was awesome.
And then I hated it.
And then I loved it.
And now I’m paying for it.
And honestly -
I wouldn’t do it any differently

Because if I never went to grad school.
I never would have met Jen
And then I wouldn’t have been set up with Louie.
Which brings me to the end part.

I owe a lot to the end part of you, twenties.
Mostly because wine became palatable,
But also because my friends started aging
and they did it sort of awesomely.
And gracefully.

And I fell in love.
For the first time.
I didn’t know it would be like this.

I’m glad you’re over, twenties.
I liked you, sure.
But, I didn’t “like you” like you.
You were over rated, twenties.
I’ll say it.
It wasn’t awesome like the movies make it out to be.
It was more -
Awful.
And lonely.
And scared.
And super fun.
And then hangovery.
And self conscious.
And overreactive.
And melodramatic.
Like my teens, except with credit cards and my own apartment.

I’m not really going to miss you, twenties.
I mean. Maybe a little.
But not as much as some people do.
You’ll get over it.
I promise.
I did.

I was talking to Louie about things I am awesome at. And one of them happens to be sleeping. “I am super good at sleeping,” I told him. “So, good, I would medal in the team and individual categories at the Olympics, if they ever decided to make that an Olympic sport, I mean… Sleeping is just as important as archery in my mind.” Louie blinked and began “Ignore Tamara While She’s Being Crazy and Say Things That Will Make Her Think I’m Listening” Phase I. (I always catch on in Phase I, so Phase II doesn’t exist. FYI.)

This exciting little story has been placed here to let you know that I’ve suddenly become a slight insomniac again. Louie had no idea that I once had serious trouble sleeping. Like, watching Pensacola: Wings of Gold re-runs at 4am kind of trouble. (Which, by the way, totally had me captivated…) And, now at 4am I am wide awake. I’m sure part of this can be blamed on Louie. Louie leaves at 4:00AM every morning. So, the alarm goes off then, and I have to be awake enough to reset the alarm because I don’t trust Louie to set it right (I still have some control issues to work through, to be sure) and then I fall back asleep. Or at least I used to. Now I’m waking up even when Louie isn’t there, looking at the alarm clock. Questioning my ability to set the alarm correctly and obsessively checking it to make sure it’s right. Then I fall back to sleep. Sort of. Add to that the 30 minute night terror episodes I’ve been having, that aren’t really night terrors but are pretty terrifying that wake me up every night 30 minutes after I fall asleep having me in serious belief that my house is crumbling around me and everyone in it is going to die and it’s all my fault.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m not making the Olympic Sleep Team at this rate. But can you imagine the awesome story shit-bag Bob Costas could cobble together if I did in fact end up coming back from this and was a super strong contender? It would be quite the tear-jerker - “An insomniac with persistent night terrors, now approaching a medal round…”

Of course, I first have to get them to consider this event for 2010. Yeah, it’s a winter sport.

I have this thing I like to do. I type in words I like plus dot com and see where it takes me. Usually some advertising company is hogging up the space, but today I found people more paranoid than myself. And it was awesome.

Unreasonable

Louie and I were watching the Golden Globes in my bedroom, while Allie watched it in the living room. (Don’t ask.) Allie’s tv was just a fraction ahead of mine. So we had a nice echo going on. I would scream, “Put on a bra!” Right after Allie would scream it. (Dude, Drew, seriously, you aren’t 15 anymore. The ladies need a little help.) There was a lot of yelling in the Allie-Tamara household last night. A lot of yelling.

I turned it off before the final hour of rushed presenters rushed through their lame one liners. Christ. You people are actors. Act like it! The damned people receiving the awards were 80 times funnier than the presenters. Who had rehearsed! And had writers write their lines for them! Hugh Laurie. Awesome. Steve Carrell. My favorite person now. Sandra Oh. so adorable. I want to put her in my pocket (and also, have her give Ellen Pompeo a brownie or two, covered in butter, and made with lard. Jeez that woman is scary thin.)

Speaking of brownies. I’m starving.