Awkwardly Social

I have tickets to go to the BIG AWARDS SHOW. I’m excited. Red carpet walking is fun.

This means I have to get a haircut, buy a dress, do something about my yuck feet (marathon training is good for the body, not for the feet), and that doesn’t seem like a long list. Right? Well, no. Wrong.

I hate shopping, and I’m broke. I have no time to get my haircut. And my yuck feet are a mystery. I cannot get a pedicure because those callouses are needed in three weeks time. But, I’m pretty sure I’ll be wearing opened toed shoes. At this point, I’m thinking me, couch, snacks and TiVo were the better option.

In other news because I’ve been undersleeping and over caffeinating, I have become a character out of a silent movie - titled, “Clutz Goes Walking.” It’s been pouring rain here. Something we Los Angelians are sort of un-used to. I was delivering something to the awesome Capital Records building last night (have you seen Day After Tomorrow? It’s in that, getting destroyed by a tornado), and in the span of three minutes, I got splashed by a passing car, slipped on someone’s Hollywood star, got my umbrella stuck in a gate I was trying to walk through, and jumped into a puddle while trying to jump over another puddle. It was simultaneously hilarious, and very, very sad.

I have scabs all over my body from running. Chafing-not just for dishes anymore. That’s my new slogan. So when Louie crawled into bed in his work shirt, I freaked out a little. Louie, without revealing too much about him, has to deal with sick people. Sick and dying people. And fat people. (Fat people other than me.) And I, being a hypochondriac don’t really like his work shirt to touch the sheets that my scabby body will soon be touching.

So I told him that. And I’m sure I sounded kind of like a panicked mom mixed with a looney bird, all, ‘Uh. Why do you have your work shirt on?’ He gave me the “This girl just gets crazier” look. But! He did remove possibly infected work shirt while reminding me that his dirty arms were also touching the sheets.

Do you think I can ask him to shower before he crawls into my bed? Or is that really crazy. Oh. It’s really crazy. I know.

(There is this photo I need to dig up for you that illustrates this point exactly. When I find it, I’ll add it here.)

When Tavia and I were travelling in Eastern Europe we spent a lot of time in Estonia. Mostly because we had an awesome English speaking tour guide, Margus, who took us under his wing and decided that he must show us the entire country. We spent a night at his grandma’s dacha, we went to every public park Estonia has, we took in an awesome sauna at his cousin’s house. I mean, the guy just wouldn’t stop with the Estonian wonders. He was from “Up with People” what do you expect? And on this extensive journey of the Estonian countryside, I had the extreme displeasure of running into a pack of swans. Swans are given the best press in the world. They are graceful, they are elegant, they are gorgeously white. Bull. Shit. They are the meanest, ugliest, dirtiest birds on the planet. This is a bold statement, considering my relationship with pigeons from Los Angeles to St. Petersburg, but I stand by it.

We were walking around this amazing manor house that had a gorgeous reflective lake behind it, and a flock of swans swimming in it. The swans were disgusting. They chased us. They taunted the little boys who were just trying to feed them. It was disasterous. I would rather face a pack of pitbulls than a pack of swans. I’m not joking. Pitbulls are earth bound, swans can fly. You do the math.

It came as no surprise to me that swans are dying left and right across Europe, victims of Avian flu. (Or as one NPR newscaster from the office of redunancy likes to call it, “Avian Bird Flu.”) I wouldn’t be surprised if little ballerinas all over the world are sadly thinking of the poor, poor, beautiful swans dying in droves of the sniffles. Let me tell you, those bitches deserve every last little cough and death rattle they get. If they cause the decline of Western Civilization through their spread of this disease, I will say to you, “I told you so!” Pigeons at least have a natural predator, the falcon. Who’s eating swans? No one. No, they are just allowed to fly around shitting on poultry farms, spreading their disease willy nilly because they have long necks. Well, the better to chop off your head, I say to you, Swanny. If the ugly duckling was treated poorly by his nest mates, it was because he was a dick. Not because he was ‘ugly.’ THAT should have been the message of the book. If you act like an ass, no one will like you, and you will turn into a bigger ass. A bigger ass with a long neck and a bad sense of humor.

And that, my friends, is why I say let the swan genocide begin.

I have to give a caveat to this post-Please keep in mind that I ran 18 miles on Sunday morning. It’s the only explanation I have.

So…you guys have heard of the ’sport’ called NASCAR, right? And you, like me, probably think it’s not really a sport so much as a way for stupid red staters to get together and ruin their eardrums watching stupid cars race around a track 200 times hoping for a firey crash. Well, I’m here to tell you, I watched a bit of NASCAR this weekend, and I like it.

I like that you can hear the drivers talking to the pit crews. I like that the announcers have no idea about what the rules are, but they stumble around trying to figure out which rule was broken. I like that you have no idea which car is in which pack, and they have special graphics to tell you. And… I like that sometimes they crash.

I’m not saying I’m going to go out and buy NASCAR tickets, or anything, I’m just saying I watched it. And sort of enjoyed it. Is that so wrong?

Louie has continued his tradition of buying me a ridiculously awesome teddy bear from a road side stand and giving it to me on Valentine’s Day. This year I got a huge white teddy bear holding crystal AND silk roses with a pillow that said “I love you,” which come to think of it, seems a little redundant. If you’ve given someone a huge white teddy bear I think they know. They know that you love them. It will scare them how much you love them. Anyway. I finally got around to unwrapping the teddy bear last night. It was creeping me out sitting all suffocated in the celophane wrapping. And truth be told, I was concerned that there might be candy in there. Suffocating candy is a travesty. Travesty!

I’ll have you know, there was no candy, but the bear, oh the bear. It was wrong in so many ways. It was holding a bow and arrow sling, but had no arrows, instead, as I’ve mentioned, it had crystal and silk roses rubberbanded to its paws. Poor bear. I started to squeeze the bear at this point. (It looked like it needed a hug..?) And realized there might be something extra inside of it. Something… drug related. Which is when I was about to rip the bear’s head off. You know. To get to the smuggled drugs. Look, I’m not an addict or anything, but I know the value of a pound of cocaine, right? And it is enough money to, I don’t know, have a party. Anyway, while contemplating how to tell Louie that I had to rip the head off the bear to get to the cocaine, I found a velcro patch on the back. I thought, “Gee, smugglers are sooooo smart!” Which is when I realized that my bear did not have cocaine in it. But something better. It had song and dance inside of it.

Dance… actually is putting it a bit - how do I say this?- nicely. It actually sort of looked as though it was, well, masturbating. Masturbating to “You Light up my Life.” Also, it blushes while it’s masturbating.

So, I have no pound of coke, but I do have an awesome masturbating bear.

The best thing about having friends who ‘have their shit together’ is that when they throw parties, they have HIRED HELP! to clean up. Can I tell you how awesome that is? Can I!? This way, when you’re leaving, you don’t feel bad about not cleaning up. I go over to Cats house now like a golden lab puppy, piddling everywhere, rolling around in my own urine wiggling and wagging my tail, from the sheer joy of not having to wash the tomatoes that I brought for the salad. (Cats has tiled floor so the piddle, it wipes right up!)

Also. It’s been a while since I’ve had alcohol. Wait, that’s a lie. It hasn’t. For some reason I got drunk quite quickly last night. Add to that burning hot oil and cheese and you instantly have a situation in which I will either A. Spill hot oil on my closest friend, B. make people kiss if they drop their bread in the cheese or C. Fall through a fake wall kicking over the table of hot oil. Only one and a half of those things actually happened. Thank the baby Jesus for Jordon whose arm I latched onto right before I pitched through the fake wall and impaled myself on a spiky fence. Cats house is dangerous, in addition to being awesome.

There’s a new game sweeping the nation. Blokus. I’ll have you know that while the pieces look straight out of Tetris, the competition is straight out of Compton (or some place where there is a lot of competition… Compton was the only thing that came to mind. Forgive me, I’m hungover.) Look, I don’t want to say Waller is a cheater, but he is. Ok? He cheats. I however. Do not.

Speaking of Waller… there is a dark side to him that has recently been unleashed. Bar. Fight. All I’m saying.

I’ve been working on an entry for three days now. That is far too long to be working on a blog entry, I’ll have you know. Far. Too. Long. It will never live up to expectations. So, I’m going to keep working on it, until, well, until it’s a novel, or maybe not, maybe just until it’s an unsuitably long post that is disappointing at best. I’ll never tell you which post it is. Just look for one that requires much scrolling down.

There is great news in the blogosphere. Some of you long time readers remember my crush on Another Drink and how I always gushed about him, and then after he left I tried stalking him but he was too good at hiding his tracks. Oh, you didn’t know about the stalking part? Weeeellllll…. there’s a long google search history there that I don’t really want to go into. Anyway. He’s back. Behold The House of Laughter and Forgetting. Now I can stalk him like a normal person.

Happy love day everyone. Especially you, Louie. I love you, baby. mmmmwwwaaaah!

Last night after an unseasonably warm day, I was driving home with my window down. LA has these amazing pockets of hot and cold air and every once in a while you’ll pass through a cool pocket that also smells like jasmine, or orange blossoms or even more rarely, lilac. And as much as I love LA, it’s nights like last night that remind me of growing up in Camp Verde, Arizona. I would drive home in my blue 1984 Mustang, with my windows down, my stereo blaring 10,000 Maniacs and there was this stretch of very dark highway, where the speed limit was 45 but you had to drive 70, and just when you make the turn to the 55 zone you’d hit this amazing pocket of shockingly cold air, where 10,000 crickets sang along with 10,000 Maniacs and it smelled like the most beautiful bouquet of flowers, orange and jasmine and lilac and lavender, all mixed together. And that, my friends, was the sewer district. I kid you not.

As much as I love LA, I can’t help thinking there is a small town out there with long dark stretches of highway, singing crickets, lilac sewers and 45 mph speed zones that you have to drive 70 in… but that dumb town doesn’t have sushi and I can’t live without sushi.

Normally I don’t like to talk about my ass. It’s some sort of defense mechanism I picked up, wherein if one talks about something they are ashamed of then that something will grow and grow, like Pinoccio’s nose. So in true WASP form I’ve learned to keep things that really truly bother me a big fat secret. My family helps with this, as we are a Secretive Lot. Unsavory things are swept under the rug.

Since I’m the black sheep of the family, I tend to have the biggest mouth about our ‘little secrets.’ And yes, that has gotten me into trouble. It has made my family on edge. But there has been one thing that I really don’t blog about. One thing that I’m super self-conscious about. One thing that if I was given one wish, I would selfishly not get rid of AIDS, but I would do this thing.

Make my ass smaller.

I am in possession of what some have called a ‘fat ass.’ I am a girl with a big butt. I cannot tell you how hard it is to write those words. In fact, I just tried to delete this whole post because it makes me that uncomfortable. I do everything in my power not to draw attention to the planet that is in an orbit behind me.

That is, until now. And only because it is a planet in retrograde. Ladies and gentlemen, my ass is getting smaller. The change isn’t dramatic, but it is noticeable. I love it. I love that I ate a cupcake and a cookie today, and I’m not even worried about it. Because I am a runner. And runners can eat whatever they want. I LOVE carbs and I am instructed, nay, required! to eat them.

This training has been the best thing to ever happen to me. Not only did I quit smoking, but I fell in love with my butt. My incredibly shrinking ass. I try to get glimpses of it in windows as I walk by. I wear super tight jeans. I blog about it!

Which brings me to my new big fear. That once the marathon is done, I won’t know how to maintain it. The planet will spin out of control and once again, my ass will be a taboo subject. I guess I’ll cross that bridge (the Bridge over the Fattest Ass) when I come to it.

I don’t know what to say here anymore. Maybe I’ve said it all. It’s interesting that this current lull of things to say is happening so close to the two year anniversary of the blog.

You guys watching the stuporbowl? I guess I have to. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just sit in my room and watch TiVo. Or Netflix.

God, this entry is boring. I’m bored of writing it.

The new Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke is good, but the title is cumbersome. How many more descriptive words do we want. It’s like we’ve gotten so used to ordering our coffee (non-fat, decaf, no whip, extra hot chai tea latte), that now we want everything to have super descriptive titles. This is my shit-box, broken down, gas guzzling, red interiored car. I’d go on, but I’m tired.

Have a good weekend folks. Think good thoughts about my left calf muscle, I have a 16 mile run on Saturday.