Vegas Baby!

Tonight I drive myself, Liz and another friend to Vegas. I have been to Vegas exactly 3 times in my life and haven't loved it. Quite the opposite actually. For years I couldn't figure out why, I like booze and shiny things, the end. I think I have recently discovered why: each of those times I was in a committed long term relationship and unable to engage in an age old Vegas tradition of putting my tongue in a stranger's mouth.

I have solved that little problem by becoming a spinster. See, there is an upside to living alone with cats and 80 pounds of cat litter. I knew I would find it one day. And that day? Is tonight. So watch out Vegas, there is a carload of mildly angry at men (ok, mostly me) girls headed straight atcha.

A Scene From the Day

A coworker asked me what I am doing for the Long Weekend. My response was 'Vegas!'... this was the conversation that followed:

Her: Don't let them have all your money!

Me: Oh, I don't gamble at all. I drink.

Her: Oh, so you'll just hang at the nickel slots?

Me: No... at the bar. Closer to the alcohol

Her: You are going to pay for drinks in Vegas?!?

Me: No. I'm a girl. That's why God invented boobs.

She had no response to this.

I then went home and signed online. A 24 year old I used to work with IM'd me, catching me off guard. Apparently he thinks I am 'awesome' and wants to take me to dinner. I am being courted by a fetus. Oh and while sitting outside at a restaurant the boy who most recently broke my heart got stopped at a stoplight 2 feet away from me. It's been that kind of week.

I Know How to Party

This weekend would make any spinster proud. I went to Target on Saturday night, alone, at 9PM. It was me, 5 other women buying cat food and a gaggle of gay men. It was wonderful. Then the next day I woke up, went to CostCo and bought 80 pounds of cat litter. Gentlemen, the line starts on the left.

Seriously, it was a great weekend, but it should have been dubbed Bargain Spinster Fest 2008. Liz introduced me to the incredibly wonderful world of Big Lots. I had never been to one and now I may move in. I got 19 bags of stuff for I believe a dollar 50. Yeah. We followed up that feat with CostCo wherein I bought giant industrial sized items. Let's just say I have enough Parmesan cheese to least me through the next ice age. I don't think I'll have to shop again until December and I am ok with this. More than ok. I am ecstatic as I lift my giant 38 pound bottle of lotion onto the counter and place it next to the world's largest bag of croutons. No joke, the bag is roughly the size of my torso and upon seeing it in the store I let out an audible gasp of glee. I really, really like croutons. Ergo, the bag should last me through the week. Maybe.

On another note I took my cat to the vet. The vet wants to put him on Prozac. Yeah. I think if anyone in my house is getting happy pills it should be me and not the gay italian cat. I am considering it though as mostly, I want my future online dating profile headline to read 'My cat is on Prozac, how are you?'. It really is a wonder I'm single.

Ouch Ouch Boogie

Here's something fun, imagine if you will that you are sitting at home on your one night in, relaxing and decide to clean out the text message in box in your cell phone. Since it's 2008 this message box fills up in a week so you have to constantly prune. You go back through the messages and boom, 40 messages from the boy who most recently broke your heart. Messages you thought you deleted but apparently did not. Messages that were once incredibly cute and flirty. Now? Now the messages are Bad. And Painful. And now, you do the ouch ouch boogie. Which if you are me means deleting them and then text messaging friends about the motherfucking sadness. Friends are good and I love mine dearly, especially when they respond to the messages after 4 weeks of messaging about pain and say that I am awesome. And I can't even drink of the vodka as tomorrow's is girl's night and my liver needs a reprieve.

Ok... maybe just one.

Stupid phone.

Monkey

Yesterday I woke up happy. I woke up happy because from 7:15 until roughly 8:30 I thought it was Friday. It was not. I even rocked out to Journey on my way to work, welcoming in the weekend in the proper way. It wasn't until I was pulling into my office that my heart broke into a thousand pieces and I realized it was in fact only Wednesday. Stupid brain.

Last night I covered up my Only Wednesday pain and went to Mortified (hyperlinks are oddly broken but it's on my blog roll). There are occasionally moments so funny I have to share them with you, internet people. This girl was reading her journal from age 13 when she uncovered this gem: I saw the smallest man ever today. At first, from far away, I thought he was a monkey. Then he started speaking in spanish and I thought, wow, that's a really smart fucking monkey.

Yeah. Take that in for a moment. And then giggle for the next day or so while muttering what may become my new catch phrase 'that's a really smart fucking monkey'. It's what I planning on doing all day today, yet another day that is not Friday.

This Should Be Interesting

A good friend and I have discussed taking improv classes for years. Either he bails or I do for some reason ranging from too broke to not enough time. Today he IM'd me saying he was finally signing up and he was doing it at this very second and registration was closing momentarily. So before I could think and talk myself out of it I said ok, please take all my money and sign me up as well. And then I had a panic attack. I was due for one anyway as it's a day ending in y.

You see, I don't like standing in front of people and I decidedly don't like the pressure to be funny on command. I freeze up and start talking about things like the Cuban Missile Crisis or Oprah. In other words out goes the wokka wokka and in comes the horribly unfunny girl who looks as though she will simultaneously cry and pee her pants. It didn't used to be like this, back when I was young and really stupid, but now I truly know what it's like to look like an idiot so I have The Fear. But the way I see it, I can stay in my apartment and meditate on my motherfucking sadness some more, or I can go make an ass out of myself for 8 weeks. I chose option B. I start next week which means more panicked blogging and really who doesn't like that?

Did You Know...

That if you sit around, eat cheese and drink vodka ALL weekend, you will gain weight? I for one am incredibly shocked. And sore from squeezing into now too tight pants. However, the tight pants not withstanding, it was totally worth it. This weekend I had an impromptu girl's night, saw a really horrible-so-bad-it's-comical play, and read three books about pants (I am 12). I did not go to the gym as intended, I did not clean and I did not act like a responsible adult. And I liked it. A lot. All weekend's should be like this. Well like this but without the weight gain, because if we are dreaming, then why not dream that cheese is a diet food?

Nesting

The apocalypse may be near my dears as I have an overwhelming urge to clean. This makes my mother happy and me one very confused person. All I want to do is burrow inside my apartment and clean out every drawer. Throw out the shit I have lugged from state to state, apartment to apartment and just be done with it. I'm sure it's very symbolic and whatnot, all indicative of my mental state and need for order and a semblance of control. But still... I have never wanted to clean in my life so I have determined it's a sign of the end of the world. Hug your kids and do a shot of vodka, as tonight I clean.

Sometimes I Find Myself Funny

Today I had to fill out the information sheet for my ten year high school reunion. I took great pleasure in my answers which are probably not what they expected. I am not sure if anyone in my small town, very conservative graduating class will get the joke but when I read them to my mom she laughed so hard a little pee came out (or so she claimed).

If you could relive one moment from high school, what would it be?
I was fat and had bangs, so none, thanks!

What are your current hobbies and interests?
I spend a lot of time alone with my cats, drunk. I chase after unavailable and uninterested men and then talk to my therapist about it. Sometimes I go out to dinner.

Now, I don't know why but the sometimes I go out to dinner line makes me giggle a lot. And I think it'll look good next to everyone else's answers which I fully expect to be 'go to church and take care of my 18 babies'. I'm a classy girl.

Nothing But Skill and Grace

This afternoon I had a big time meeting with some very important people. About oh, 7 minutes before said meeting I knocked over a just filled glass of water. You see I didn't just knock it over, I knocked it directly on to me. Thus I had to go to the meeting looking like I had just come from a wet tee shirt contest wherein I had also had an issue with bladder control. I walked in and...silence. Finally one gentlemen cleared his throat and said 'have a little accident?' I nodded and pulled the wet hair out of my face and took my seat. At this point we dialed into the conference call. The camera zooms in on me as I turn my head to sneeze. The camera then malfunctions and freezes catching me with my mouth open, head slightly thrown back and eyes screwed shut. Luckily the other people on the call could still hear us, so we continued... with my face, ten feet wide, frozen in a sneeze on the screen for the duration of the call.

It's always fun to walk out of a meeting and about thirty seconds later hear the whole room burst into laughter. Luckily, I am used to looking like a giant jackass (though generally less wet) so I laughed too. Then I came home, put on dry clothes and wrote about it on the internet. And then I ate cookie dough as I am 12. A 12 year old with access to vodka.

Poke Ya in the Eye

On Saturday I had drinks with Liz. I was, shall we say, in No Mood. We had just gone chanting which is supposed to relax you and make you happy to be alive. It instead made me want to do bodily harm to people. Specifically the dude sitting next to me who corrected my pronunciation during a chant. Apparently I was saying a D instead of a G. So I stopped chanting and instead had long and involved fantasies wherein I poked him in the eye and called him a dirty hippie. This I think was not the point of chanting but it brought me joy so whatever. After this Liz decided I needed vodka post haste. Lots of it. Preferably in a funnel directed towards my mouth.

So off we went to an odd Polish bar, got the vodka and sat down. This is when we encountered a real and true example of LA Douche Bag. He danced in the middle of the bar, poorly. The man clearly thought that he should be on So You Think You Can Dance and perhaps due to too much Polish vodka thought the bar was actually an audition stage. It was not. It was a mildly crowded bar with no one else dancing. He did the arm wave, he did the I'm going to slide on my feet poorly, he did the really unattractive butt wiggle. He spilled his drink on me. He thought everyone was watching him, impressed. Perhaps others were, as perhaps others were mentally slow, but I? I had elaborate fantasies about poking him in the eye which really brought the night full circle.

On the giant plus side the bar had a huge TV which showed the Olympics. I really, really love the Olympics. Liz found out just how much when during the women's relay I screamed 'Pick it up Torres!', out loud, at a bar. For a while though I had convinced her to scream out 'USA!' with me, but then we got silver and thus didn't yell and instead had more vodka which I think was ultimately the right choice.

Things I Recommend

If you are in the scary doctor's office and they keep you waiting for 2 HOURS I recommend the following to recover:

1) vodka

2) curse a lot in front of the fancy Beverly Hills doctor. I recommend the phrase 'I bled like a motherfucker' as that one tends to illicit the furrowed brow and nervous laughter

3) vodka

4) when doctor makes a joke about how you hate him due to the wait, give a terse smile, nod and then work the phrase 'gone to shit' into conversation. This will bring forth more nervous laughter but bring you joy (only if your heart is as black as mine)

5) peanut butter and jelly on a spoon, no bread necessary (bet you thought I was gonna say vodka, huh?)

6) vodka

Yesterday was stressful. Actually it was Stressful, capital S. However things are looking good. Very good and no where as scary as the doctor's made it sound on the phone. It may, in fact, be fixed with pills and possibly a small procedure. One that would put me under and I would get to miss work for a day. Mmm... chemically induced nap and a day wherein I don't have to wear pants and pretend to be an adult. What more could a girl ask for? Oh right, vodka.

Ouch. Stop That.

I had, on my birthday, declared 28 my best year yet. Apparently the universe took this as a challenge to try and kick me very hard in the proverbial nuts. Repeatedly. Yesterday I got my initial test results back from some blood work and kids, it's scary. So scary in fact that they are sending me to a new doctor with an even scarier title. Hearing the man's specialty made me start to shake and cry and in my office. Then I came home, opened the emergency box of Girl Scout cookies and cried some more. So bear with me for a day or so while I try and wrap my brain around the fact that today I have to go see an oncologist.

A Scene From the Day

Today Liz and I had golf lessons. Even after lessons I am still beyond horrible. In fact the 7 year old next to me at the driving range couldn't help but roll his eyes after I somehow launched the ball straight up in the air for the third time. However, I still really like golf as A) you get to hit shit and B) afterwards there are cocktails. While drinking said cocktails we had the following conversation that brought joy to my heart.

Liz: You know, technically what we did was not golfing. By calling what we do 'golf' we would be bringing shame to the sport. I think I actually glof.

Me: Honey, I aspire to glof. What I do is flog.

If you don't find this funny I recommend drinking a very strong drink involving the vodka, then reread it.