Where’s my ring, Biaaatch?!

Am I the typical girl? No. I’m not high maintenance. I don’t require the latest fashions, expensive makeup, or even fancy hair products. To be fair though, I shouldn’t define the “typical girl” as a “high maintenance” girl. My apologies to those of you I’ve offended. Getting back to my point though…I like electronics more than I do makeup. I own makeup of course… but for only when I have to go to the opera with my mom or something. It isn’t an everyday thing for me. I love my Paul Mitchell hair products and that is about it. But where do I get all weepy? Thinking about getting married. I’m at that stage now were I think I might or possibly be ready to start thinking about getting married. Of course this stage of thinking leads to misunderstandings. We can be sitting on the couch, watching a romantic movie on one of our now 500 channels…AF can look me in the eyes and say, “I love you. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you” and I immediately respond in one of two ways:

“Where the fucks my ring then, bitch?”
Or
“Ewww. I’m like 26. I have the rest of life to think about getting married. You totally ruined the moment. God.”

I’m pretty sure these reactions can be statistically linked to the exact place in the cycle (of 28 days) that I’m in. I feel bad for AF in these moments because I can tell she doesn’t know where to go after this. Mostly she just rolls her eyes and, under her breath, says, “here we go again?” I guess I can take that. We have been over this conversation about a ba-gillion times. 4 years is a long time. And yes I want the ring, the dress, and the great party, not so much the actual wedding though. But most of all I want the moment. But I can’t decide if this is like me wanting kids just to name them. I’d love to have a kid and name him/her something totally cool but I don’t ever actually want to be a parent. So maybe this is the same thing. I want the romantic moment of looking into her eyes, while I get this totally awesome ring. But do I want to deal with the wedding/marriage thing? I don’t know. Ask me again in about 10 days.

Back By Popular Demand

Yes, yes I’m still having a hard time dealing with life in general. And now on to other stuff.

My sister (and occasionally AF) asks why I never flush the toilet. My response to this is that “I do flush the toilet” and the inevitably reply “umm no cuz that’s your piss right there.” Then I’m left wondering “that is so weird. Why wouldn’t I flush the toilet?” Then I realized that it is for the same reason why, early in the morning after just getting up, that I wave my hands under the faucet for a good 45 seconds before realizing that I need to TURN ON the water. At this point you may think I’m nuts or you’ve figured it out. I spend 8 hours a day (relatively speaking) at work Monday thru Friday where in the fabulous bathroom they have auto–flush toilets and sparkling automatic faucets. Mystery solved. Of course now, among the billion other things, I must REMEMBER to flush when at home. Who would have thought that I would need to remember to flush my own pee down the toilet?

This weekend I finally got to see my friends for an evening out. Since EB was turning the big 26 he wanted to go to a place that was close to home but also close to DC (so ppl wouldn’t travel so far). And so we went to Deer Park Lounge in Hagerstown. Sometimes, after hanging out with your incredibly attractive friends and meeting people in the city you forget how ugly people can be. No, I don’t mean “she’s ugly on the inside.” I mean full on ugly, not attractive, what the fuck where you thinking wearing stirrup pants ugly.

There was a drag show. They can be fun but it was a weird “fashion” drag show. Not a cool Trance music in the background drag show but more like “Here we see Miss Eata Cockwhole dressed in velvet and chiffon. She enjoys knitting, talking to friends, and getting it up the butt.” But I guess I’ve never been to a fashion, matchmaking, drag show before. It was a new experience. It was here that I realize that I do say weird and sometimes random things (although never as random as JB). My friends had just walked in and asked what was going on at the bar and I replied “I don’t know. They’re having some fashion show and playing arias and some shit.” AF says I say odd things all of the time. I’ve decided to call it “Intellistupid.” I’ve even come up with a definition:
The juxtaposition of one word that denotes the semblance of intelligence and greater cultural perspective (in this case “aria”) with another word or phrase denoting I’m still from Cumberland at heart (in this case “some shit”).

As weird and as sometimes scary (the guy dressed as an old man version of a woman pinching SD’s ass) as the night was, I realized how very much I missed the support system that I had with my friends from home.

Caution: Angst Ahead

Ever wake up one morning and not recognize your life anymore? You think that this couldn’t have happened overnight and you aren’t sure if it did of if you are just having a moment of clarity/hallucinating. Granted my feelings/thoughts/etc could be connected to the fact that I haven’t had ONE cigarette in 4 days. I miss the thinking things through and coming to a decision in a series of inhalations. When did I grow up? I’m going to be 27 (fucking shit) in a few months. I’m where I should be. In a committed relationship, have a job, “finishing” up grad school, narrowing down the industry that I want to work in, affording cooler and newer things…
Am I ranting for ranting’s sake? Most likely. But here you are reading what I have to say. I wish I could put into words what I feel like but I cannot. I’m left with fleeting impressions and thoughts that flash by. And weird shit too. Like having the urge to jump in front of the Metro or drive really fast into a wall or restraining myself from buying a new car. This of course would make sense if I was suicidal and/or rich at all. But I’m not. I just want to know “what would happen?” I argue with myself all of the time lately. And yet I never win. Am I crazy? I don’t think so. I function fairly well. Stress? Hell yes. I think I’m at that point now where one more thing will break me. School. Work. Home. Chores. Bills. Relationships. ­­_________.

Sometimes you just need someone to tell the “to do” lists of the world to fuck off for you. I should probably add that to my post-it.

Haiku! Bless you.

Who doesn't love a good Haiku?

My locker is jammed.
Parents caught me with porno.
Maybe I should overdose.

or

Take a long pencil
Jab it deep into your eye
You'll feel better soon
(from KD)

Can you do better?
Why? Because I think you suck
Do not blame me for failure

Sometimes I Hate You Too

Del. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun) was quoted by the Post saying:

"Within our public schools, there is a tendency to encourage homosexual activity, to portray it in a cute or favorable light," Black said in an interview yesterday. "This is a considerable health hazard right now. If we encourage just one child to experiment and contract the HIV virus, then we have done an enormous disservice to our children."

So then the entire continent of Africa must be the new San Fran. In the US, the fastest growing number of those contracting the virus are young women of African American decent. When are we going to get over the idea that Gays=AIDS? I hate Virginia. I hate it. It is horrible bigoted state. They keep passing more and more anti-gay laws.

No civil unions
Gays can’t have contracts (meaning that if I lived in VA I couldn’t leave AF with my life insurance or put her in my will if any evidence exists that we are more than “friends”)
No Gay Marriage
Now they have Anti Gay license plates

Do gays scare people? I don’t get it. I just want to love my girlfriend. I just want to marry my girlfriend. I have the same dreams as every other girl… beautiful wedding dress, beautiful ceremony, candles, flowers, cake… But instead I’ve been relegated to “Friend” or “Roommate” on forms and will never get to call her my wife. That is stupid. Seriously. How is my life in any way affecting your life? Why does Bob in Colorado give a shit if I’m gay? Want to disapprove? Fine. I’m still not hurting you or infringing on your right to hate me. Oh America, the land of the free (as long as you are white, rich, and Christian.) What I meant to say is “God Bless America.” I guess it just came out wrong.

Am I ready? Shhh. Trust me.

Most of you have heard of this before so forgive me. I wanted to go to grad school, sort of. But my mom, the loving and forceful woman that she is, decided that I should go and go soon. I think she was mostly worried about my “constant floundering” and lack of “responsibility.” So I decided to apply to grad school. Ever since I lost my deep and angsty depression (although I still have my moments) I have been unable to write as I was before…so I didn’t want to apply to a writing program because I didn’t think I was ready. Then I thought well if I can’t go for what I really want to go for then I would apply to something that I will have no chance in hell of getting into…like business school. Yeah business school. Then I got in. Damn it.
So now I’m half way through my program (25/48credits) and it is way to late to give up. Is it that I suck? No, not at all. My current Cum GPA is 3.85, which is even way better than what it was in undergrad (mostly due to the lack of parties, drinking, and/or drugs). Oh the memories. So anyway, I do ok in school now. That isn’t the problem. I try to do well in my classes for one reason only - competition. I’m trying to beat AF’s GPA in grad school. That’s it. Otherwise I really don’t care. When I’m in class it feels like I’m selling my soul. For instance, my Ethics class, besides being boring and a waste of time as noted previously, taught me only to pretend to be someone else in order to get a good grade. We had to make these postings on articles on Blackboard and my 1st one was quite negative and she wrote me to tell me that I got it all wrong. After that point all of my papers and postings were super positive “the world is ethical and great.” I got an A. Now, in my class this spring, we had a debate on globalization. We had to count off (1,2) to see if we were Anti or Pro. I was Anti, which is good because I am for real anyway. After the debate the teacher asked who in the class was really Pro and like 98% raised their hands, and then the others said they were the middle of the road, and then there was me. The ONLY Anti. Maybe I’m too Liberal and too much of a Democrat to ever really be part of business school. I just wish I knew what I wanted to be when I grow up.

Atypical workday

Just for the record, this is my first blog EVER. Prior to this moment, I was a blog virgin. I never tried out any type of online journal or random thought list or whatever, even though many of my friends have encouraged it. See, I am really bad at keeping in touch, so my friends thought if I had one of these things then they could know what was going on in my life even though they hadn't seen or heard from me. But it's not just my friends that I am bad with keeping in touch with. My mom used to make me call once a month when I was away at college so she could rest assured that I was still alive.

Anywho...on with the topic of this rant. I wore jeans today. Granted, it is Friday and people generally associate this day with "casual" attire day. But not at my office. There are no "casual" days here. My GF has the luxury of wearing jeans everyday (a perk of working in the non-profit sector), and I was hoping for a laid back environment like hers. Hope was thrown out the window when I started here, and I felt like a kid who found out that Santa Claus is not real or some lame analogy like that. Pure utter disappointment because I really like being comfortable and wearing jeans. But no, I am a "grown-up" and have a "real-world" job in "corporate" America (attack of the air quotes!). But after working here for 10 months and the atrophy has sunk in, I find that I could care less about the bullshit office politics. Hence my wearing jeans to work and facing an uptight, micromanaging boss. But I suppose many people have a boss like in the "Dilbert" comic strip and can relate in some sense to what I am saying. I never realized just HOW funny that comic was until I started working full-time after grad school.

The workday became more interesting when I went downstairs to the newsstand in our building for a drink. While I was in there, I noticed that porn magazines are available along with porn DVDs!!! It just made me think of a news broadcast last night (I don't enjoy watching the news, my GF does, which I find a bit weird. She's some sort of news junkie) about computers in the workplace. A big problem is not employees checking their personal email, or writing blogs, or just surfing the Internet...it is downloading porn! So I guess this newsstand is fighting the issue of conserving bandwidth by making pornographic material readily available with no downloading needed. Brilliant!

The radiant "V" on my forehead from the monitor glow has disappeared. I am a virgin no more and I do feel a little different.

What’d ya say? Put it where?

My grandmother was happy about the prospect of finally being able to hear well for the first time in several years. She is along in years (around 80) and after a constant barrage of noise (from a vacuum since she cleans for a living and still does 40 hours a week) she found that she couldn’t hear at all out of her left ear and only slightly from her right. She went to the doctor and he said that indeed they could help her out. She asked about what coverage Medicare would pay for her new hearing aids. She was surprised to learn that hearing aids aren’t covered at all because they were seen as a “lifestyle choice” and not “medically necessary.” So she forked over about $3,000 for two new hearing aids and continues to work 40 hours a week cleaning houses. At this point you may be asking yourself why I have shared this story.

Well Medicare has recently changed its stance on some drugs that are covered, as per the recent Washington Post article. It partially states:

“In fact, the decision to allow Medicare to pay for Viagra, Levitra and Cialis for senior citizens was simply implicit in the original Medicare drug benefit legislation passed in December 2003. Congress removed nine classes of medicines from inclusion in the federal benefit, including fertility drugs, weight-loss drugs, nonprescription drugs and barbiturates. All other drugs, if they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and if they are "medically necessary," can in theory be paid for by Medicare, and therefore by the federal government.”

So that means that if your doctor says that you NEED to have Viagra then Medicare will cover it. Well, thank god for that. It seems to me that “sexual arousal” would be a “lifestyle choice.” How can a doctor say that someone actually REQUIRES this? "No, no, you don’t NEED to hear a train coming or if a fire alarm goes off, but boy it would be nice if you could sustain a 5 hour erection."

Let’s be honest while we are being bitter. Men are the winners here. I don’t want to take it to a sexiest level, but seriously who else takes Viagra or Levitra? So every one of the hearing impaired older American that can’t hear a “come on” can now…well… you fill in the rest.

I am all for the enriching of each and every American’s life, but with as many budget and spending issues the Medicare/SS system has, do we really need to spend an extra $500M on sex drugs for elderly men? Let’s first decide to cover lifestyle choices like… oh I don’t know … being able to hear, for instance.

She's the Upbeat

You may notice that I have included AF (asianpixie) as a contributor. Due to my life (work, personal, and school) I don't have a lot of time to do fun things like read, watch tv, or blog. So now AF can post her own comments until she feels confident to strike out on her own. I'm a nurturer. Seriously.

I’m waiting for my Ethics grade to finally be posted. I know I got an A but I’m not sure how that will help my GPA since the class was only worth 1.5 Credits.

This is funny. Go there. I said so.

http://www.orapois.com/br/arquivos/01032005140525688g.swf

So Far So Good

It is currently around 2 p.m. and I’ve yet to have a cigarette. I feel all faint and unsure of my ability to walk a straight line. So I made coffee - lots of coffee. Now I’m shaky and unable to walk a straight line. For breakfast I made some toast with honey and ate that with my coffee. I haven’t snacked yet at all. AND I made a gym date with my friend KD. We are going to go at lunch time tomorrow and then go back to work. We feel that if we can support each other and go to the gym when we are unable to just pass by and think about going then it will be better. What it boils down to is willpower. I know that KD has it. She recently quit smoking and has done a fabulous job. So that makes just about everyone around me a non-smoker. I still really enjoy the smoking part but I’m tired of coughing up slime and not being able to walk up the escalators in the Metro. Granted, I wouldn’t walk up Dupont or Rossyln anyway because only crazy people do that. I only have a few months left to get into shape before we are off to a tropical island. I will garner attention of my translucent skin color anyway but I don’t want be a jumbo flotation device either. AND I’m desperately hoping that by loosing about 10-15 lbs will make my boob size drop as well. Wishful thinking.

So I will start this blog off with the attempt of quitting (or at least severely cutting back) smoking and starting to go to the gym.

As my mom used to say “good intentions are good, in the way of intentions.”

I'm On A Diet But I'm Starting Tomorrow

Oh the story of my life. Everyday I wake up, at least in recent weeks, with a need to hack up a partial lung. I feel gross. Not the normal “never working out” gross, but a deeper ick. Of course this has nothing to do with my need to smoke every 10 minutes and 2 at a time. No! Cigarettes are the calming and relaxing element in my crazy and stressful day.

My email just crashed. Go have a smoke and it will be better.The board meeting is today. Smoke several before heading to the meeting.I have a paper due in 1 hour. Smoke and write and the words will flow.

But I’m almost 27 (dear god) and I’ve been smoking regularly since I was a sophomore in college. I feel the need to change. A better change. I know I NEED to quit, but it is the mental preparation that is hindering in this endeavor. Honestly, I WANT to smoke. It makes me feel nice (at the time – not when awaking or trying to climb stairs). So I have decided, in compromise of my own feelings, to smoke less. Of course I still need to decide which cigarettes I can do without (meaning that people can stand to be near me).

But alas my enlightenment is not over.

Today I put on my freshly washed jeans (thank you AF) as I got ready for work (yes, I wear jeans to work). It isn’t that they shrunk, because they didn’t. They fit fine right below my bellybutton. But I look in the mirror in order to finish getting ready and I noticed that all of the skin (i.e. fat) that would normally be at my bellybutton has been forced up and over my jeans. This would be a handy development if I were frightened of people seeing the button on my jeans, or my belt buckle or even the tag on the back of my jeans. It’s like I have a mini skirt around the top of my jeans. What happened here? Sigh, those days of old. You know. When you were up at all hours of the night and day, went out a lot, and your eating habits consisted of what went with noodles, vodka, and beer. Now I eat a granola bar for breakfast, a normal turkey/cheese sandwich for lunch, and dinner. My body has not adapted well to this “normal” lifestyle. I need to start to think about maybe doing something about it. I joined a gym last year and went regularly for about a month (as is “required” with all gym memberships). Now it is just a place I walk by after work and think “I should go tomorrow” knowing that I would much rather go straight home and eat brownies. But I really do need to start going again, especially if I’m thinking of maybe possibly quitting smoking. But see it is this vicious cycle.

I want to diet some before going to the gym so I’m not totally repulsive in the changing room. I need to quit smoking before going to the gym or I could risk a heart attack. I need to go to the gym to lose weight and to help me quit smoking.

So being the American that I am, I ask “When are they finally going to make a pill that helps you quit smoking while loosing weight by thinking about going to the gym?”