"...and it's all a mystery"

While driving home from work one day last week, I stopped the car in teh middle of the road to call Indie 103.1. Boy, was it ever worth it. I won tickets for Laura and me to see The Flaming Lips with Gnarls Barkley and Cat Power on New Year's Eve. We are So.Fucking.Excited.

Today on my lunch break Laura and I are going to Joann to buy quilters' scraps. We have plain black tank tops, and are going to decorate them with robots and aliens for the concert. I know. I’m actually going to be wearing a homemade shirt on New Year’s Eve. It’s worth it, though, because this is really special for Laura. We’re going to take a disposable camera and get people to take tons of pictures of us together for Laura’s scrapbook.

Hey, that’s another thing: since when does Laura scrapbook? Isn’t that an old lady hobby?

Oh, and in case you missed it: I will be wearing a home-made shirt on New Year’s Eve. I’m just that cool.

Of Spiders and Men

So a few days ago, Laura woke me up in the middle of the night because there was a spider on the floor outside my bedroom. I yelled for her to spray it with hairspray and cover it with a cup. Then I opened the door, and she was just fucking shaking. So I got a wine glass and replaced the mug she had used to cover the creepy so we could see what was going on with him. He was not moving. He looked dead. Laura walked away and started crying (she was very, very tired). I didn’t’ trust mister creepy, so I took a Macy’s box and slid it under the glass to pick him up with the glass still trapping him, and he freaked the fuck out and started running around in circles. I stifled a scream. I closed my eyes, pressed my temples, composed myself (somewhat), and then sat there for probably an hour doing battle with cardboard and such before getting him into the toilet for flushing.

If Laura and I were normal, we could have squashed senor creeps with a shoe and been done with it, but that’s not how we roll. We roll pussy-style, and probably always will.

So: yesterday.

Laura called me at 4-ish, freaking the fuck out because she tossed all the Christmas stuff in the box the Christmas tree goes in to get it out of her way while she cleaned (we will, on occasion, clean our place of residence--maybe once or twice a year). Then, she saw a spider on the box and tried to spray him with poison...but did not succeed before he crawled INTO THE GODDAMN BOX THAT I HAVE TO FUCKING EMPTY TO PUT AWAY THE TREE. You cannot comprehend how horrible this is if you don’t have at least a basic understanding of my terror of all things with legs numbering >4.

Our solution? We're going to go ahead and clean the whole apartment; then, when the last thing to do is put away the tree, Laura's friend Matt is going to come over and empty the box for us. Yeah. We are just that pathetic.

Oh, one more thing: Laura woke me up at 3:00 last night because she couldn’t find her Starbucks hat. She’d been looking for two hours. I got out of bed and started looking, and she found it within four minutes—literally four minutes. It was funny.

Honestly, though, I think she found it before I got up. It was behind the couch, and I think she was too scared to reach behind there and pick it up without me out there. Because of, you know, the spider thing. She is so, so, so, so cute.

Jesus. Pick a season. Fuck!

I have basically no money right now. Like, seriously…I’m super poor. I make plenty of money, but until Little Maggie Mae starts making some money she can’t really afford to chip in for bills, so I’m just kind of paying for everything.

So to save money, I cooked for us—for like, a week. Then I realized that I’m 22 and don’t want to have to cook every night until I have a passel of brats to fatten up…so I set about finding the perfect inexpensive pre-prepared meal.

Aside: Trader Joe’s has some delicious shit that you just have to heat up for 15 minutes in the oven, but that feels suspiciously like cooking, you know? I was looking for something that required absolutely no effort on my part.

Guess what the perfect food is. No, really—guess. GIve up? You'll never guess it. The perfect food is a McDonald’s Happy Meal with Apple Dippers (yum!) and milk. Plain cheeseburger for me, McNuggets for Maggie Mae.

So it’s last Saturday, Laura and I buy our Happiest of Little Meals and head out to run errands.

By the way, the adorable toys McDonald’s is giving out right now are these hilarious little creatures that play music. And by “hilarious” I mean “fucking annoying”. Particularly when my little sister gets her hands on them. I spend a lot of the time in the car gritting my teeth.

So we’re mid-errand when we get a call from our (my) friends Andrea and Lucie. These are two of my favorite girls, like, ever. I adore them. So they’re about to go to IHOP to eat and want to know if we would like to join them. We’re stuffed to the fucking brim with Everything that is Wrong With America but want to see the girls, so we agree to go to the blue shack with them.

We had tons of fun. They have dubbed Maggie “The Angry Cupcake” because she is either sweet, bubbly, and hilarious or the most dreadful, irate swamp creature you’ve ever met. And she can switch between the two in a second. It’s charming, really.

So we’ve been sitting at the table for about ten minutes when Andrea gets a phone call. She talks for about 10 minutes, then covers the mouthpiece and says, “My cousin’s psychic! Isn’t that great? It runs in my family.”

I L.O.V.E. my friends. This was one of the most perfect moments of my life. Seriously. I mean, who says shit like that?

So Maggie, Lucie, and I chat for a while, Andrea gets off the phone, and we pay the bill and leave.

As we’re driving out of the paring lot, Lucie comments on the unseasonably 75 degree weather. Andrea’s response? “I know. Jesus. Pick a season. Fuck!”

Cutest.Thing.Ever.

Darwin stuck in the tree.

Halloween Update

I didn't end up dressing up for work. I'm just that lame. Seriously--I even drive a green Taurus. I should just kill myself and be done with it.

For Mike's agent's party, however, I did dress...as sexy Cinderella. Super cliche, right? I didn't even care. I looked hot, and that was all that really mattered at the time.

My Gradual Descent

Rilo Kiley has this song called “A Man/Me/Then Jim”, and the Chorus goes, “It’s just the slow fade of love/And its dark mist will choke you/It’s my gradual descent into a life I never meant/It’s the slow fade of love.”

For about the last year, every time I heard that song I cried. Every single time. I was just listening to my Rilo Kiley CD, and when that song came on…I smiled. I cannot even begin to tell you how relieved I am by this.

Office Party

Lat year for my office Halloween party I went as "lunch". It took 3 hours and 10 Trader Joe's bags to actually make that thing, and I was jsut so so so so proud of it.

...But what the hell am I supposed to wear this year? People are actually saying, "I can't wait to see what Katie comes in," because I'm the crazy weirdo in the office.

I'm going to go to those Halloween Super Stores after work today in hopes of finding something seriously discounted...but I'm not really intending to actually find anything good.

Here's the thing: I'm hearing that this year there may be a $100 prize for the best costume.

PLEASE.HELP.

Oh, Katie

I took my lunch break at 10:30 to buy snakes for Halloween. I thought I was being smart and beating the lunch rush. No. I was not. The line wrapped around the inside of the store. There were loud fucking kids and people who spoke no English all over the place. The only way to do battle against these sorts of people is to be an annoying white man, so I called Mike and talked loudly on the phone for about half of the 40 minute line, and I basked in the irritated, hateful glares of my fellow patrons. Score one for the white man!

Then, when I was driving back from lunch, Brand Boulevard was closed because there was a bomb in a building or something. I work on Brand Boulevard. Ugh. I wanted to fucking die from the traffic.

Side Note:

I was sitting in the office much later this afternoon when we found out that the closure of Brand was a bomb threat (and thus probably the fault of a white or arab man), not black people shooting each other again (which was the obvious assumption)…and I almost talked a manager of another department into evacuating us TWO HOURS AFTER THE WHOLE THING WAS OVER. He said he would do it if Kris would run through the lobby screaming, “I’m on fire!”

Kris is a selfish bastard.

I finally got to work (an hour and fifteen minutes after clocking out), and realized, while in the elevator, that one of the snakes was hooked onto my purse. I set it on my desk and forgot it was even there.

Until Suzy and Carol came over to my desk to discuss Halloween (girls love this shit), and they noticed my snake.

So Suzy and I realized that our mission—should we choose to accept it—was to freak out as many people as humanly possible over the next few days.
There’s a girl in accounting who is seriously annoying. She’s one of those retards who leave clients messages that run too long, and she has to call back to leave a second message to sum-up and apologize. Obviously this girl was our first victim. The girl has an inkling that I H.A.T.E. her (I give her “the look” a lot), so it was up to Suzy to carry out the nefarious scheme. She waited until accounting girl was looking in a mirror and playing with her hair, then set the snake on her shoulder. The girl patted it with her hand for a second, became absolutely horrified, tilted the hand mirror so she could see what she was holding, and SCREAMED. I mean, we’re talking Janet Leigh in the shower screaming. It was one of the greatest moments of my entire life.

--

I wish I could just wear my Sexy Cinderella costume to all 3 parties instead of just one, because now I’m thinking I don’t want to be Electra…mostly because Mike, who is 41 and literate, had no idea who she is…so no one will even get it. The idea of having to explain my witty costume to so many people is just horrific…So now I’m using the same costume, but going as Cleopatra…with 2 snakes biting my breast, since that’s how Shakespeare says she killed herself.
To this end, I dyed my hair dark brown and chopped it to my shoulders last night. And wasted my lunch break on snake-buying.

I’m an idiot.

Things I hate

You know who I hate?

The people at those fucking kiosks in the mall.

I do not want you to give me a lavender hand massage. I do not want you to clean my jewelry. I do not want you to scratch my head with that spider thing. I do not want my hair straightened. I do not want to make a helicopter fly up, up, up.

…but most importantly, I did not drop that scarf. That is your scarf. You’re trying to sell it to me. I see your game; I know that you want to hook me in with your sexily accented, “you dlop tis?”, and frankly, I’m insulted. I probably own 50 silk scarves. I love them, and wear them on my head all weekend. Your scarf was ugly—no no, not even ugly; it was hideous. I own a blue and burgundy scarf with pictures of big clocks and chains all over it, and I am telling you that your scarf was tacky. Think about that. Just get the fuck out of my way with your hideous head coverings and let me enter Sephora so I may buy the palest shade of foundation ever conceived by god or man.

Oh, and calling me "pretty lady" won't work, either. I own a mirror; I know I'm pretty--I always have been-- and I am not flattered. Work on getting a better sales pitch than the guy leaning out his truck window, ok, hon?

Side Note:

We walked by the Halloween store, and the hideous mannequin in the window was wearing a Tinkerbelle costume. About 10 seconds after we passed it, Laura said, “I kind of want to claw my eyes out now.”

Why I Love My Sarah

A while back, Mike asked me whether I thought I would be friends with my sisters if we weren’t related, and I said absolutely…even though we are So.Different.

…Especially Sarah and me. See, I’m very liberal, and my only conservative tendencies are…well, Goldwater Conservative things, like believing that the government should not interfere int eh lives of the citizens any more than is absolutely necessary.

Sarah is an Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Fox News Republican, and I genuinely loathe those people. I honestly believe that if you follow their bullshit ideas there must be something seriously wrong with you.

So how could Sarah and I be friends?

I just got an email in a thread with her and Skye, and in that email I found the key to our friendship:

When Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out, Skye couldn’t afford to buy it right away, so Sarah downloaded it and copied & pasted every single page—all 800-odd—into emails. Just so Skye could read it. I mean...that’s not even nice, you know? It’s fucking…the sweetest thing I think I’ve ever heard.

So there you have it.

I love you, sister!

Dear Woman Who Won’t Shut Up About Her Stupid Fucking Kid,

We all know that you think your daughter is a genius. We all know how funny you think it is when she says things like, “Get with the program, Mom.” Guess how we know. No, really—guess. Take a fat fucking guess how the hell we know that you are amazed by every little thing your daughter does. That’s right: because you tell us.

Your daughter sounds like a moron, which is just shocking considering your staggering intellect.
Let me break this down for you:

1) She will not win the national spelling bee. I know she won her class spelling bee because she studied real hard, but the she LOST the one for the fourth graders from her school. I mean, she couldn’t even beat the 6 other retarded 9-year-olds from her grade. STOP TELLING ME SHE IS PROBABLY GOING TO WIN NATIONALS NEXT YEAR.

2) No one cares that your daughter is the only student in her class with two “jobs” because she was such a good hall monitor they made her a classroom monitor as well. To be honest with you, this little girl of yours sounds like a real douche. Once a rat, always a rat, and rats don’t have friends.

3) The snobby, rude little comments she directs your way are not endearing. They really, really, really aren’t. She is a spoiled little brat, and probably has no friends and will die alone…which brings me to

4) That face. Seriously. I know that all parents think their children are perfect and beautiful and all that (I like to think this won’t be true of me, by the way—I’ll love my children enough not to need to lie to myself about their attributes), but she looks like her head was attacked by a flock of rabid bulldogs.

Now that you have been equipped with this knowledge, you are to refrain from boring me with asinine stories about your little moron. Seriously. I don’t care how Asian she is, she’s just not a genius. She maybe be one of the only two Asian girls in America who are both ugly and retardedly stupid…but them’s the cards she was dealt.

Seriously. Never, ever, ever speak to me about your fucking child again. Ever. Ever ever ever.

Best Regards,

A Concerned Co-worker

I’m going to Mike’s agent’s Halloween party Saturday night, and I’ve been really struggling with finding a costume…the last night when I was going through my closet to find my glass slippers I came across my wedding dress…which looks kind of like a Greek goddess gown…so I’m going as Electra. Why Electra, you ask? Why not Medea, or Antigone, or Athena, or Venus…? I have to go as Electra because my date is 41, and I really need to make the “Daddy issues” joke before anyone else can, you know?

So last night I was watching Heroes (So.Fucking.Good. I've only seen an episode and a half, and I am completely hooked) when I got a text message. So here's how my text conversation began:

?: "HI there-how r u?"
K: I’m well. Who is this?

Side Note: I hate text messaging because I can’t stand to use the shitty grammar required to respond with any amount of speed.

?: Rolls royce-very shy blonde guy!
K: [ugh. That fucking douche from Friday night.] Right—because the car is the important thing. Seriously, I’m rolling my eyes at you right now [it took me like, 25 minutes to type all that into my phone].
?: I was trying to help you remember me-did u get my email today?
K: I did.
?: And u didn’t write back because…..
K: I was busy.

I’ll spare you the rest. Seriously, this guy is 39 years old, and he’s trying to ask me out with text messages about his car. And for me this isn’t like, oh look at our witty banter! See how we argue but we’re really in love…just like a screwball comedy!” I am genuinely irritated by him…mostly because he seems to be one of those guys who womanize to make up for their insecurities. Add the Rolls and Porsche in there, and you’ve got some serious overcompensation.

More importantly, I think I’m going to cut my hair short and dye it dark again. I’m tired of the blonde-ish light brown thing. I’m going as Cinderella for JoJo’s Halloween party, though, so I want to wait until after that.