Still pretending I'm going to write a book: Chapter 3

I worry that I might be losing my "asshole" sense of humor and turning into a legitimately good person. The blame for this falls entirely on veganism. (What a cunt!) 

To get to the beginning of this story, we've gotta back up a year or so ago when I decided to stop eating animal products. I'd read in The Kind Diet and Skinny Bitch and countless issues of Veg News that when a person stops consuming the meat from fear-drenched slaughtered animals, a lightening occurs in his or her body, and the negative adrenaline and chemical dread are replaced with the ability to love and appreciate life. Essentially, compassion is born. As fast as you can Google-search "compassionate vegans" you'll be linked to story after story of how the vegan lifestyle lends itself to generosity, goodwill, peace on Earth and all that good stuff. For me... personally... well, I get it. I've had moments of pure joy and clarity where I've actually wished I could live a thousand lives just to be able to spread the gift of veganism all across the land (ewwwww I sound like a Jesus-enforcer **blech**). I've come to appreciate my family, my friends, and mySELF more than I ever have before, and to genuinely feel capable of more love than at any other time in my life-- even more than when I was pledging my soul to some boyfriend who would rather be playing videogames than pretending to want to watch Goldie Hawn in Housesitter with me for the thirtieth time. So I think they're right, really, when they say that veganism turns you into a sappy lover of all things under the sun. And I think I'd totally be on that train to sainthood with them except for... 

well... 

booze and cigarettes. 

They are the last two things denying me my hippie sunshine bliss... and the last two things connecting me to my former self-indulgent lifestyle. I know what you're thinking. "VEGANS CAN'T SMOKE CIGARETTES!!" Right? Right? Well guess what? Actually I can do whatever the hell I want to do, bitch, it's not like a fucking cult. **sigh** That was rude. I apologize. It's just that... well, you're right. It makes no sense for me to be a big supporter of saving the world when I'm the dumb drunk breezy throwing her used cigarette butt into the bushes outside the local dive bar. NO sense. AT all. It's just that-- I don't know if you knew this but-- cigarettes? Yeah. They're HIGHLY addictive. And as addicted as we are to dairy and meat products, their hold has NOTHING on nicotine, man. I gave up gruyere in a heartbeat. I stopped smoking for a month, and then all of a sudden there I was with a stinky white cancer stick in my mouth again one day in Encinitas. It's definitely a problem. And it doesn't even FEEL good to inhale a lung-ful of carbon monoxide anymore-- when all you eat is quinoa and kale, your body becomes this hypersensitive sponge of sorts, and anything you put in it is so easily absorbed that its effects electrify you like holy water on a witch. So I spend all day pampering my body with orange juice and avocados only to fill it with toxins the second I give in to my fierce nicotine cravings. And because the chemicals have no rotten flesh or curdling lard to cling to in my stomach, they settle straight into MY flesh and lard, and twenty seconds after smoking I feel like I've done five lines of cocaine (I'm pretending to know what that feels like so I sound cool) and taken a baseball bat to the head. "Why?" you wonder. Why do I still poison myself with cancerous chemicals when I appear to get no satisfaction out of it and when it is so incongruous with the rest of my chosen lifestyle? That, my friends, is a very good question. And to be honest, I have no answer, other than "old habits die hard" or some stupid shit like that. So, for now, let's just move on to my other hallelujah-blocking vice: BOOZE!! 

Ohhhhhhh booze. I'll save the five hundred thousand pages necessary to cover this topic for a later date, and I'll just touch the tip of the iceberg for now. Basically, I've been a pretty big drinker since I started tending bar in Isla Vista at age twenty-one. I went forty days last summer sans the poison, and I truly felt the full benefits of a vegan diet for the first time: I was constantly overcome by bouts of delirium at how wonderful and full of possibility I felt. (The best "high" I've ever encountered in my life was being completely sober on a plant-based diet and dancing in a bar of drunkards to Florence and the Machine's "Dog Days Are Over." Other-worldly.) Then, one day, I was at Whole Foods and saw the specific bottle of sulfite-free vegan red wine I'd enjoyed at a restaurant months before, and it all went downhill from there. I spent the evening in my writer friend's basement downing mugs of the wine and incidentally sampling a non-vegan pot brownie which resulted in my waking up in the driveway. After that, I kinda slipped back into my habit of drinking nineteen hundred after-work cocktails and such, and that feeling of absolute euphoria hid itself somewhere in my body amongst the empty calories. 

I believe that if I ditched my vices, I would slowly become more and more like the Jesus-ly vegans I read about who say "That big hat is silly!" in voices reeking of innocence and who donate the majority of their time, money, and energy (which is a LOT when you're running on clean plant fuel and unencumbered by hangovers) to making the world a better place. My liver and my lungs are just BEGGING me to do so. However, I'm finding that even as I feel less and less comforted by ridiculously strong Ketel-and-sodas-with-lots-of-lemon and more and more grossed out by the stink of chemical smoke on my hands after a cigarette break, I cling a little to these dirty habits because they connect me to my former "shitty" self. If I let go of them now, there's no TELLING where my free-falling exuberance and desire to do "good" will take me. I'm not ready for that kind of life-altering change!! Right?! I mean, I'm still the person who says the "F" word every thirty seconds, is scared of babies, and whose favorite pastime is shit-talking about strangers. If you take these traits away from me, I'll just be... WHAT? Inherently good?! 

That concept is... terrifying. Is it just another part of Growing Up that (singlewhitefemale)'s try to put off as long as possible and pretend doesn't exist, like Driving or Marriage? (Although really, I'm still not sure that those are necessary either.) I just hope that someone will be gracious enough to slap me in the mouth the INSTANT I start laughing at Good Ol' Boy humor. You know what I mean. The guys who swoop their hair into optimistic gelled shapes and then say, "Boy you sure did kick that ball real high!" and laugh like they've just completed a sketch on Comedy Central? Yeah. The second I start doing that I might need an intervention in the form of three Camel Crushes and five hundred shots of Jameson with Sprite backs. Just be ready, guys. If I'm gonna do this good-person thing, shit might get real. 

I think I have decided...

to attempt... to possibly try... to write a book. I heard my mouth say today that I should write a book... and then I realized that HEY I have nothing better to do with this time in my life, so I might as well try to do something both time-consuming and ridiculous. Essentially I'll just write stupid shit like I do for my blog... but maybe I'll end up with a copy on paper when I'm done. No big deal, guys. Anyway, here's the first random blurb I scribbled out to get the creative process flowing....


I never thought that at age twenty-five I would be living with my mother in the county I grew up in, working part-time as a daytime bartender. Oh... my... GOD. As I wrote that sentence my eyes started filling up with tears. (Note to self: no deep reflective moments while PMSing.) I mean, what the fuck HAPPENED to me??? The other day a girl from my high school class came in to my bar. During lunch, there are never any customers. I stand there cutting limes and reluctantly making painful conversation with the one-maybe-two homeless guys who have scrounged up enough change to sit on a ragged bar stool all day and make my life miserable. Sometimes standing behind that counter and having to be nice to these people makes me think I know something about how prostitutes feel. Except that they make a shit-ton of money, and all I get is the fifty-cent piece from 1952 that the guy rolled across the counter to me as a tip. Oh, and I got spit on by that one ninety-year-old dude who refused to pay for his beer and then tried to kickbox me across the bar. I'm so used to it at this point that I think I was yawning, unfortunately, when the spitting happened, and a drop of decrepit saliva landed on my unimpressed tongue. 

Anyway, so this girl came in whom I recognized from high school. She looked exactly the same. I however, have gained at least forty pounds in the last seven years, have changed my hair color a hundred times and chopped it off, and was standing in a dive bar in the middle of the day arguing with a drunken pirate when she walked in. I could not have been more different from the last time she'd seen me. I watched her and her most-likely boyfriend take a seat at the bar. She smiled at me and ordered a drink. I tried to smile, forcing one side of my mouth to spasm upwards at least for a second. "Marge?? Wow. It's me, (singlewhitefemale)." She stared at me with an expression as blank as a cow passing gas. "(singlewhitefemale... female)." Her ears perked up at my last name. 

"No way. (singlewhitefemale)??!!! You are the LAST person I would EVER have expected to see here." She didn't say it with malice. She said it like an innocent baby would say it: very matter-of-factly, with no filter or concern for my interpretation. My mind started spiraling out of control with possible meanings, foaming at the mouth with insecurity. Clearly she meant that she never thought I would fail so utterly that I would stoop to return to the cow town that I came from once I'd left it years ago... when I was "going places." I remembered Marge in high school. She was the one who started dating at a really young age. I used to tutor her in Spanish during study hall. I helped her conjugate verbs to the imperfect tense while she told me how perfect her boyfriend was. We were sixteen. At that age, I was basically a saint. I'd never smoked, never had a sip of alcohol, and the only time I'd ever been kissed by a boy I had held my tongue away from him in my mouth so that he was essentially licking my stale lunch air until he gave up and decided never to try it again. I was such a goody-two-shoes that Marge's stories about partying and handjobs made me blush and giggle at all the wrong moments because I didn't actually understand anything that she was talking about. One day she informed me that the name "Kevin" was tattooed in Sharpie across her left ass cheek because she'd fallen asleep with him after he made her "so tired," and he'd graffiti'd her. I didn't say anything, but she could see her comment had had the desired effect. I was blushing and erasing pencil marks off my desk with my head down as I put together the puzzle pieces illuminating the situation that hey, they must've had sex and that's why she was a.) TIRED and b.) NAKED. I really hated it. I couldn't beLIEVE people MY age were trying to deal already with GROWN-UP things!! The nerve. 

Because I wasn't busy dealing with penises and beer, I was a very focused student in high school. I graduated with a 4.02 GPA and left immediately in the fall for college life at UCSB. I was bright, optimistic, creative, and relatively thin when I left our high school campus for the last time. Now, staring at Marge and her boyfriend (who I finally recognized as a guy two grades older than us and the ONLY person my brother has EVER gotten into a fight with) I felt a surge of all the teenage insecurities well up within me. Well, shit. Did I really have to be THIS overweight right now?? And did I have to wear my shapeless lesbian flannel shirt and forget to even LOOK at my hair before I left the house???  But then... amazingly... as we attempted to chat about lost time and the few things we could think of to say to each other... I realized that ultimately... it didn't matter. Since there were no other customers, I was forced to stand in their vicinity and make small-talk to the best of my socially awkward abilities... but I knew that neither one of us really cared what the other was saying. I knew that I was thinking, "Wow, I don't care about you. At all." and I bet she was thinking, "Wow, you weigh like a million pounds." But other than that... so what? I no longer feared her sexual prowess, and I couldn't care less if she still didn't know how to count to diez. Yes... seeing ANYONE from high school in this town is definitely my biggest nightmare.... But I felt oddly relieved to realize that even if I am in the middle of a quarter-life crisis and have relatively little to show for the last seven years of my life... well... I think deep-down I am still proud of myself for the things I have learned and experienced and who I have become. I know it is so close-minded and straight-up BITCHY of me to think that somehow I'm better than the people who never left here, the people who stayed and married each other and had babies before we could even legally purchase alcohol. It's awful. But hey, it's not like I came from a fairy-tale family with parents who taught us how to have successful lives or anything. I think the fact that I feel full-on SHAME at being back here, empty-handed, is a GOOD sign, because it's probably the only thing keeping me at least remotely interested in still figuring out a way to do well for myself in this life. So, sorry Marge if I looked down on you in high school and if I looked down on you at my bar because actually I remember now that your new boyfriend was the biggest wuss in the whole world and I wanted to KILL him when he tried to fight my brother. Sorry if I still feel like we are worlds apart and that I hope my future is splitting away from yours in drastic perpendiculars. I have no right to feel superior. But I'll be damned if I'll be serving your beers seven years from now. 

Meat is Dead

Oh... hey... sorry.... I guess I kind of forgot that I like blogging and that it only works if you actually write stuff in your blog. I remember now!

So it's... November now.... That means that my vegan journey officially began over a year ago. Soooooo much has changed in my thinking in that amount of time. Let's go on a little journey through memory lane, shall we?

So last October my sister called me to tell me about the episode of Oprah she'd seen illuminating the problems with the meat industry and advertising the growing vegan movement. A lightning bolt struck my core of beliefs and I decided before she'd finished her sentence that I was going to join the movement and give up my baked brie cheese fetish once and for all. I started ferociously baking 20-lb cheese-less veggie pizzas daily. (I think I just answered my ever-lingering question of why I gained weight the second I became vegan....) I did this for about a month, bolstering my fierce devotion to the Veg Cause by lapping up the segments of animal cruelty in Alicia Silverstone's book The Kind Diet. At the Italian restaurant I managed in Santa Barbara, I traded in my nightly employee meal of three-cheese-and-jalapeno fusilli for a simple marinara and veggie capellini. I patted myself on the back, feeling the wings of my self-righteousness lift my compassionate feet straight up from the floor and into the wanna-be-Sistine-Chapel-replica that adorned the ceiling of our eatery.

But then... something... happened.

I guess.

I mean, it MUST have.

Because last Thanksgiving, my younger sister and I had one of our "Traditional Sister Thanksgivings" where we only have one day off of work so we stay in Santa Barbara together and get drunk and see a movie. And last year we went to the Holdrens Steakhouse in Goleta. And I got three dirty Ketel martinis with bleu-cheese-stuffed olives. And an appetizer of...

steak.




Okay? I said it, okay?!! Steak. STEAK! STEAK STEAK STEAK STEAK STEAK STEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Huh. Now that doesn't look like a real word. That IS how you spell that, right? Hm.

Anyway, what's weird is I don't remember having any dramatic vegan downfall or anything. All I know is that in October I was eating homemade paprika hummus, on Thanksgiving I was eating stinky cheese and steak, and on Christmas I was the one trying to make chopped salad and roasted vegetables the new holiday meal. I guess I just had a bumpy start, and then in December-ish I started my serious, no-nonsense commitment.

Ish.

For the nine months I lived in Encinitas, I was puuuuuuuumped on veganism. It was so easy! I was managing a veg-friendly cafe with such magic vegan ingredients as Daiya mozzarella cheese, tempeh strips, and Gardein "mock" chicken. While I mostly shoveled down big romaine lettuce salads with rice and veggies and tofu dill dressing, I never had a lack of variety of interesting and comforting foods (*cough*cough* vegan chocolate cupcakes with Tofutti soy cream cheese frosting *cough*cough).

When I decided to come up here to SLO, my same wise sister who inspired me to go veg in the first place said to me, "Be careful, that's like the BBQ capital of California up there."

I laughed. What, am I gonna be walking around downtown and trip and fall open-mouthed onto a rib?? HA. Nonsense.

And really, that's NOT what happened. No.... What happened was that about a month ago I started having gnarly red-meat cravings. And I mean GNARLY. I work at a place that serves hamburgers, tri-tip sandwich rolls, and pastrami sandwiches. Normally these things gross me out. But for about three weeks, they made my stomach grumble with desire. There was an off-putting disjointedness occurring between my watering mouth and the knowledge that the enticing aroma belonged to a dead animal's cooked carcass. Nothing about the REALITY of meat was appetizing to me anymore... but it took all my willpower not to scramble over the bar counter and rip that half-eaten, ketchup-y hamburger from the lunching accountant and smear my quivering lips all over it.

I couldn't contain my sinful thoughts anymore. I exploded one morning in a fit of fiery confession at my poor innocent mother. I told her that I was a siiiiiiiiick fuuuuuuuck and that I'd been thinking about meat every. single. day. and that I didn't know WHAT to DO about it. She recommended that I go online and look up other vegetarian's struggles with meat cravings. I did just that. And all I really learned is that for SOME reason, whenever people in online groups write comments, they try emBARrassingly hard to use big words and look like fucking geniuses. I sorted through all the henceforths, the inasmuches, and the neverthelesses before realizing that these people had nothing to do with me. And also that I hated them.

I called my wise sister and asked her advice. She recommended that I eat a big meaty veggie burger with all the fixin's. I smiled weakly. I was too far gone in my desires to be appeased by a measly Gardenburger. I was seeing red. That Thursday I went to the local farmers' market with my friend Stephen. We moseyed around the crowded street looking for a portable meal. I mumbled something in an off-handed manner about wanting something with steak and then chuckled nervously. Unaware of the internal battles over the matter twisting their way through my guts and my consciousness, he murmured politely in agreement and then bumped into me when I halted suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk, panting feverishly and pointing at a food stand with my tongue hanging crookedly out of the side of my mouth. He took a second to shudder at my demonic expression, then joined me in line for the fattening steak-and-cheese baked pastry pies I'd zoned in on. I struggled to order one as my teeth chattered in guilty anticipation and sheer manic expectation.

We sat on the curb and ate our steak pies. Stephen chatted about school and I heard my mouth say "Uh huh. Yeah. School. Got it." as my hands tried to push away my thick ethics surrounding them and getting in the way of me and my meeeeeat.

One bite. Hm.


Two bites. It tastes... good??


Three bites. But it kind of also tastes like... poop?? I mean actual... poop?


I finished the small-yet-rich dish. I blinked. I looked at my hands. I remembered Stephen. I looked at him. "Ready to go to the movie?" he asked. I nodded. I felt sad.

I sat through the movie 50/50, which was so good I forgot to think about the fact that I had part of a cow in my tummy. Well, I TRIED to forget. Every fifteen minutes, the cow took its angry hoof and jutted me right in the lower intestine. I spent the second half of the film breathing like a breeding woman (deeply in through my nose and out my mouth), willing myself not to insult the cow's memory by upchucking its remains onto the theater floor. I repented.

That was a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I have reverted to my former opinion of meat as food: not for me. I ate a bunch of sauteed mushrooms and roasted kale, and the cravings went away entirely. Just needed some iron, I guess. I really need to pay more attention to meal-planning so that I can get all of my nutrients and not walk around in an anemic haze thinking that I need to go grabbing up innocent animals and putting them in my mouth. **shudder**

It's not that San Luis doesn't offer a vegan-friendly environment. It actually is REALLY veg-friendly. More often than not, restaurants will actually say on their menus to ask servers about "vegan options." The actual word "vegan" is on there, guys! That's huge!!!! I think that what IS different for me is that in Encinitas I was surrounded by fellow vegans, and it was something that I was actively participating in every day of my life. Since I moved here... it's been such a private journey. I quietly eat my char-broiled artichoke at work and order my almond-milk lattes at Linnaea's Cafe. I politely answer coworkers' questions about why I don't eat meat and I not-so-politely roll my eyes when they try to catch me on a million ways I'm "cheating" on veganism. Yes, I'm wearing my mom's leather cowgirl boots. I don't feel bad about it, either. No, I didn't know that beer contains fish brains. I'm still going to finish my pint, thank you. And so on and so forth. I guess it's made me realize that even though veganism IS exciting and IS trendy and super rad and brilliant and all those other amazing things... it's also just a non-glamorous lifestyle that you agree to each and every day, whether there's someone to high-five you about it or not. And you know what? There's something beautiful about that. If veganism is perfection, then I am far from it. But it's nice to at least strive for something, and to so firmly believe in something that could potentially save the world. Also... I really just kinda like the almond-milk lattes at Linnaea's....

Unemployment 101

For the last ten years, I have always had at least one job. I've never been "between jobs," because before I moved cities or chose to relocate myself as an employee, I always waited until I'd found a replacement employer in order to avoid the stress of unemployment. Always, that is, until this summer. Six weeks ago, I left my full-time management position in Encinitas to join hands with my mom's tomato plants and sing happiness into the sunshine (while wearing two layers of SPF 50, of course). I had no plan, no idea, and relatively little stress about any of it. Fast forward to the present, and you'll find me wearing holey pajamas that I bartered off of a homeless bearded man for a fistful of blue jay feathers. Well, almost. Yeah, actually.

After the first week of joblessness, I bit off my hands and laughed maniacally to myself through a mouthful of bloody angst. I am used to working 40-80 hours a week (apparently), so to tell myself that my "job for now" is to paint and write and exercise feels something like telling myself to dance without making jerky neck movements and head swishes. Just not quite right. I promptly got on a train to Santa Barbara and started picking up shifts at my old restaurant. (My favorite part about this is that after eight months of being gone, when I showed up and started giving tickets to the kitchen, the chefs just took the paper slips from me and started cooking my orders without so much as an eyebrow-raise. The words "EPIC FAIL" flashed in front of my eyes when I realized they probably expected I'd crawl back someday to fake smile at tables for five dollars.)

Week number two was a good week. My mom and I had our first gallery show. My brother and his girlfriend came to help us set it all up, and all-in-all I'd say it was a success. Thanks to Sam and Sara, we were the only gallery in the Art After Dark loop known for "that bomb-ass soup!"; at one point we had almost twenty people crammed into our closet-sized space, murmuring pleased remarks about the art works through closed lips harboring the vegan summer squash stew and sweet potato hummus. For the first hour of the show, I went into no-nonsense-manager mode and silently covered the walls with all the artists' information for their individual pieces. When that was done, I looked down at my Homeless Outfit and decided I should go change into something nicer. Looking at pictures from the evening, I'm still not sure why that meant I should put on wool slippers, hippie tie-dye leggings, a baggy black sweater, and a thuggish black beanie. I was a walking upside-down funky mullet-- straight-up gangsta business on top, rainbow daisy party on bottom. Oh well. I don't think any of the people passing through even knew I was one of the two women running the show because I found out straight-away that I am not one for schmoozing. I spent the night fighting off old ladies for the last bit of soup, hiding behind tall people in shadows on the balcony, and finally, escaping for a 40 oz draft of beer from Chino's. Great success!

The third week marked my first job interview. I was VERY excited about it. The interview was for a coffee shop slash book bar slash art venue slash amazing fucking awesome establishment. I fell in love with it more and more every time I walked through the doors and saw at least fifteen pairs of black-rimmed emo glasses and a hundred different colors of flannel. On the morning of my interview, I awoke early to go for a Good Karma Run (oh okay, JOG). I gave myself plenty of time to cool down and shower and make myself presentable. The problem was that I underestimated the fatal combination of being severely out-of-shape AND being 99% albino. Two hours after my run, I was still sweating bullets, and the heat radiating off of my fuchsia face was causing my makeup to curdle.  I had no choice but to arrive at the interview with... well, with a sopping wet red face. As I shook the hands of the general manager and the owner, I don't think I even said my name. I just blurted out in a disturbingly loud voice an apology for the sheer amount of sweating that was going on, explaining that I'd gone for a run TWO HOURS BEFORE. They both nervously laughed, and I nervously sweated on their hands.

Then I blacked out.

Really. I don't remember what was said in that entire fifteen minutes. The only thing I DO remember is that they asked me questions regarding my working capabilities, and that instead of answering them I started laughing a lot and leaning back in my chair with my arms limply sprawled out to both sides, like a fat king in a royal bathtub. I laughed. I sweated. I wiped my hands obsessively over the slick surface of my face, grimacing at the handfuls of water I encountered with each swipe. Oh another question? Hey maybe instead of answering, I should just apologize for being sweaty again? Sounds like a plan to me!! And then I'll tell them that the last job I had was really easy. That's a good one, that'll help a lot. You GOT this, (singlewhitefemale). In da BAG!


When I regained consciousness I was sitting in my mom's house, staring at my phone, praying for the call that would end my vertigo and return me to anti-slip shoes and caked food on my forearms from carting around dirty plates for several hours a day. It never came. Since I had already chewed off my hands in week one, I hammered my feet into flat planks just to give myself something to do other than anything that could actually be helpful.

That weekend I returned to Santa Barbara to work yet again at my old restaurant. People started asking me why I didn't just move back. I started asking myself the same question.

In week four I got a phone call for an interview at a Greek/Mexican fusion cafe in San Luis, and I felt the blood coursing through me shake off the weight of anxiety and adrenal dread it had been dragging through my system. This interview went much, much better. I actually said some good things about myself, and I was only sweating a very minimal amount. Within two hours, I was employed, and I felt like Edward-Cullen-style sprint-running through a forest with heavenly sunlight reflecting on my diamond-sparkling white vampire chest. You know that feeling. C'mon.

Last week, week five, I started at my new job. The owner had me come in for three days and basically stand around and be a big waste of space. The only skill I perfected was saying "behind you!" whenever I realized I was blocking a hurried worker's route to a table with an armful of plated food. I clocked out each day after only a couple of hours, and I realized that the other skill I had perfected was giving myself a big worried crease between my eyebrows from all the fretting I was doing about not actually making any money. I was appointed two weekly shifts: Tuesday and Thursday lunches. **deepening of said Worry Crease**

I got a call for a job interview at a healthy-ish cafe practically next-door to the one where I'd just been hired. You know, it's funny how trying to find a job in this shitbag economy has changed my perspective so much. I used to always think that since I'm someone who works hard, I'd never have any trouble getting a job. Dude. Being unemployed mind-fucks you. I don't even know WHAT I believe anymore. As I was getting ready for this interview, I found myself staring at my reflection in the mirror. It was one of those moments where if you're a heroin addict in a TV show, you shoot up while your baby's crying in the next room and you look deep into your dark-circled eyes and grasp the bathroom sink to steady yourself in a room slowly slipping into a shaky oblivion. True introspection time. I gazed objectively at the thirty bright-colored beaded necklaces I'd roped around my neck, dangling upon a yellow floral blouse tucked into a super-girly high-waisted black skirt with pockets. My feet sweated in glittery silver flats. Bright pink lipstick. Curly ringlets in varying stages of faded hair-dye bouncing around my head. I looked like the most chipper fucking person on the planet. I felt utterly no connection to the person looking back at me for approval.

The owner of this cafe was a sharply dressed man (the uber-femme scarf lazing about his neckline reeked of sophistication) with cutting eyes and a smile that dared you to call it out on its insincerity. He exuded all cold energy. Which was weird, because he was flashing a handsome grin the entire time and seemed to be saying only nice things.... At least his chilly aura cooled my sweat glands for the duration of my time with him. I guess maybe I should've thought about what questions I might have to answer in these interviews before I was actually sitting there faced with them. Even though everything he asked me was completely standard material for a person seeking employment as a server, the questions were knocking me off my feet with profundity.

What would your coworkers say about you if I were to ask them what you're like?


I think my eyebrows got lost up in my bangs. Hm. Huh. My coworkers, eh? Hey, I miss those guys! I used to have friends!! I wonder what they WOULD say about me! They're so nice. I wish Santa Barbara and Encinitas would just move to San Luis already. I'm tired of not having friends here. Poor, poor me.... Oh. Fuck. The guy is looking at me. I need to give him an answer. Oh shit. Wait, where am I? How long have I been sitting here?!!

I finally heard my mouth say something along the lines of, "I think they would say I'm a hard worker. And that I am usually smiling... so... very, uhh, positive. They were... sad to see me go? I think? And that's... yeah... that's... yeah... the answer." I ended every response with some statement of finality, announcing the temporary end to my rambling because there was no meat to any of my statements and I could tell that that the useless bit of information I'd just shared needed to be wrapped up with a bow for him to recognize it as something tangible. As I left the restaurant after my interview, I instantly felt like the cheery necklaces at my throat were constricting my airway with their heavy optimism. I went home and changed into pajamas in all shades of gray.

The thing I never knew about unemployment was how much it fucks with your head. You're supposed to go out there and present yourself to the world as this desirable marketable object, when inwardly you're experiencing the biggest bout of self-doubt and uncertainty of your life. Hearing myself try to SELL myself to these strangers, I start freaking out behind the words coming out of my mouth. Should I even be hired? Would I hire me??? Who the fuck AM I??? Where do I fit?!! The vultures of insecurity start circling my head and dive-bombing my consciousness with jabs of discontent. And all of a sudden, I don't want to be going through the motions of all these formalities. I just want to look the interviewer in the face of his heart and say with a big sigh, "Look, I am feeling really lost right now because I just moved here and it would really help if you could give me a job so that I can calm down and feel enough stability to allow me to make some art because right now I am FREAKING THE FUCK OUT and it's really hard to be creative when my mind is on red alert with the stress of being jobless and penniless in a new town. Aight?"

But... you can't say that. You have puff up your chest, putting on airs of confidence and self-worth, praying that you possess the most potent pheromones and that your feathers will shine brighter than your competitors' so that you can be the lucky chosen one to serve food to pretentious tourists for minimum wage plus tips.

Week six. I have lost myself in The Sons of Anarchy. I spend entirely too much of my jobless time fantasizing about motorcycle clubs and mad amounts of ink, yo, and sexy muscular men shooting bad guys while simultaneously ashing their cigarettes. Mentally this week I became Jax Teller's "old lady" and was crowned princess of the SamCro clan. In reality I guess I picked up an extra shift at my new job and actually made a little bit of money. And I am leaving tomorrow (AGAIN) for Santa Barbara (AGAIN) to work for the weekend (AGAIN) so that I won't get arrested for not paying any of my bills. Maybe it's good to get away for a couple of days. As much as I love Santa Barbara, being there reminds me that I've already milked it for all that it has to offer me. (Wow, what a gross, un-veganly sentence. A sincere apology goes out to Santa Barbara's non-consenting teats.) It's nice to return to SLO with a fresh set of go-get-'em eyes and a mouth foaming with eagerness for new opportunities, though.

Well. Here's to week lucky number seven. As for now? I've gotta go. I have a date with Jax to watch season 4 episode 3 of his show.

We're kind of in love.

You're jealous.

Bitch.

Senorita Guerita

It's already driving me crazy that I can't make the en-yay symbol above the "n" in the title up there. Faaahck. I'm not sure how long I can look at that before I just delete this whole post out of frustration.

Well. Anyway. I've been speaking a lot more Spanish lately. Yep. I'm preeeeeetty much just a bad-ass now. I'm going to take you on a little journey to the very beginning of my history with the Spanish language. For me, it all started when I was in the eighth grade. Since I quit marching band after seventh grade (which I realized later was a mistake cuz there were actually hot nerdy band guys in high school, damnit), I was able to actually choose my elective class for my second year at the junior high. This was a big deal-- while I had been tripping over my shoelaces and accidentally bashing people in the jaw with my flute case, everyone else had been bonding over the generic set of elective classes, gaining coolness levels by not caring about the quality of their freshly sanded wooden bowls but more about who made-out with whom in the photo lab's Red Room. I was giddy with fourteen-year-old girl adrenaline at the prospect of rubbing elbows with non-nerds in a class other than P.E. (We called Phys Ed "PE." I'm sure that's self-explanatory, but it just occurred to me that maybe it's not. But I mean... it is. Right?) I was so tired of seeing the same faces in the desks around me in every classroom-- all the same honors students taking school a *little* too seriously in our rush to be perfect mini-adults before our balls even had a chance to drop. I yearned for a fresh batch of blood to mix with, to hear the gossip of the more sexually advanced, and to develop crushes on the "bad boys" that I otherwise never had a chance to be around.

As I daydreamed about tossing flour into the air with all the other care-free students in Home Ec, pretending not to be super pumped about learning to make a pie crust in a perfect rendition of Snow White's lacy artistry... my mother was discovering that Spanish was going to be offered as an elective for eighth graders for the first time at our school. My powdered sugar dreams slipped soundlessly through the cracks of my doughy fingers and morphed into "suenos" before they hit the floor. Yet again, I was signed up for an elective that was surely to house every helplessly nerdy try-hard student and myself. Thanks Mom.


I was surprised to find that the variety of students in my Spanish class was actually more diverse than every other class of mine. It seemed all kinds of moms had forced their kids into taking an academic course as an elective. I scanned the mixture of jocks and druggees, until SHE crossed the ugly off-blue carpet in one sturdy quarterbacker's stride and took the the center of the room.

"Hola, ethtudianteth. Mi nombre eth Thenora Borrith de Barthelona. Thoy la profethora de ethta clathe."

We stared. Some of us may have even clapped. There she... towered. At least six feet tall. Probably closer to eleven. White as can be, with a mommish style radiating a faint yet terrifying glow of sheer power and strength. Within half a minute, she had the attention of every hormone-rattled brain in that room. I honestly can't explain the hold her presence has over people. I mean, here I am actually TRYING to explain it, and I realize that it just sounds stupid. But... when she speaks in a room, you feel like you'd better listen to what she's saying, or else you're either going to get a spanking from her seriously intimidating forearm or you're going to miss out on a sentence that will be crucially important to you later in a life-or-death situation. Yeah. I guess that's the best way I can describe it.

I lapped up every word that lisped out of Senora Borris de Barcelona's lips. Though I must say that it was difficult, especially at first, to distinguish between what SHE was physically saying with her mouth and what she wanted US to say with ours. Her Castilian accent caused much confusion. I distinctly remember going through the numbers that first day: "Repeat after me. THERO."

"Thero." 


"No no no, I say THERO, you say CERO!! Okay? THERO!"

"Sssss--uhh--ther...o.... Thero?"


"NO! SAY-RO! CERO! SSSSSS-ERO!! I SAY THE 'TH' SOUND, NOT YOU!"

And it was fine until we got to numero "doth" and had to go through it all over again. Eventually the Thenora had to just abandon her usual accent and give it to us straight-up. After every lecture she gave she would lean her shadow over our desks and shout "WRITE IT DOWN!" in case any of us were so caught up in watching her large arm swoops that we forgot to take notes. We started referring to her (secretly) as The Borris. We all loved her. Well, and we feared her. I more loved her than feared her though, and inwardly I aspired to be as Spanish-ly savvy as she. I slurped up that vocabulary as if it were Nantucket Nectar lemonade (I didn't drink booze for another four years, so I had a pretty solid addiction to lemonade, and this particular brand was my bottle of choice). I got a raging boner when I discovered that the same grammatical rules I had devoted my heart to in English existed for the Spanish language as well. I could NOT get enough.

Freshman year of high school I entered Spanish 2 with a different instructor, and she chose me as her Student of the Year the first month because I was the only student to turn in a flawless paper for our initial essay. At the lunch thrown in the awarded students' honor, she found out I was a freshman and then seemed upset that she'd chosen me. I was too busy waving across the room excitedly at The Borris to be bothered by the fact that my own teacher was pouting, though. The glorious Borris sat a good four feet above the student trying to have a presence at her side. I felt a kick of jealousy for the girl she had chosen.

I took Spanish for the next three years in high school. Incidentally, The Borris was my teacher for all of them. I was thrilled. However, this is the reason that after taking five years of Spanish, I could still go into a group of Mexicans and be positive that they were speaking Mandarin. I essentially learned text-book Spain-Spanish with a Castilian accent. I studied Nineteenth Century novels and absorbed the culture of The Borris's experiences from living in Spain for eighteen years. I could write ten-paged essays about the politics of Don Quixote, but when a woman stopped me on the street and asked me directions to "El bano?" I dropped to the ground and played dead. On many occasions, I resorted to idiot-status sign language and squeaks of exasperation when confronted with someone who only spoke Spanish. Finally, maybe after four painstaking minutes scraped by, I would bust out a sentence in semi-perfect-but-perfectly-helpful Spanish, and the person would do a double-take and then I'd run away before the stress of it all gave me a heart attack. I just always worried too much about making a mistake with words. One thing I don't like is ANYTHING I AM NOT GOOD AT. True story. Swimming (although that may have more to do with the whole bathing suit thing). Video games. Marathons. The list goes on and on. And when it comes to language, I am very, VERY self-conscious. I actually feel a great deal of disappointment in myself because of the fact that I constantly end sentences and phrases with prepositions. This drives me crazy. I highly doubt anyone else cares, or that anyone was even listening to what I was saying or writing in the first place. But to imagine messing up entire sentences PUBLICLY makes me want to put on all white and go rock in a corner somewhere. Fuck that, lady you go find the bathroom yourSELF.

I took a dozen more Spanish classes at UCSB. They were less intimate than our sessions with The Borris. I didn't really care for any of the professors. They didn't really care for me. I didn't try to distinguish myself from my peers, and my learning curve tuckered itself out. In my linguistics class, I all-but phoned in my presence. I waltzed into class late one day, texting my boyfriend at the time about dinner plans (omg lol ttyl), only to find people reciting poems in Spanish that they'd memorized. I looked at my peers' faces to make sure I was in the right class, then hastily made an exit before I had to try to make up some "Rosas son rojas" shit. When did I lose my zest for the language??

It wasn't until I graduated from college that I actually put my eight years of studying the Spanish language to any use. No, I didn't travel to Europe and go running with the bulls. I was busy sucking the teat of the service industry in hoity-toity downtown Santa Barbara, whose entire back-of-house staff is dominated by talented chefs from Mexico. When you go to a restaurant in Santa Barbara, you are greeted by the young hot hostess with the dangly earrings and the side-swept bangs. She leads you to a table, where your surfer hunk of a server lists the evening's specials to you. He directs your difficult questions to the nicely dressed, slightly older gentleman with the manager's smile and efficient demeanor. When your inquisitions have been satisfied, the dreamy server returns and shakes his sun-streaked locks from his eyes as he jots down your order and you settle into your seat and wait for your food to materialize. As a patron, what you don't know is that because you changed five hundred things about your order, your server is about to have the most complicated language barrier battle of his life. Imagine being a chef, standing in front of a hot flame in an overheated kitchen in a warm town, cooking food to-order for hundreds of customers with different modifications on each ticket. Then imagine stressed-out servers shouting important specifics at you for each ticket in a language that is secondary to you. The amount of tension created by this scenario is quadrupled by the fact that the kitchen staff all have access to many sharp knives. It was this extreme environment of terse, mixed-up communication that forced me to reach into my supply kit and pull out my Spanish vocabulary. Granted, half the time the guys in the kitchen laughed at me and corrected me because many of the words I was accustomed to were either outdated or nonexistent for SoCal Spanish. However... after a certain amount of effort on my part, I was gradually accepted as a pseudo-Spanish-speaker, and a camaraderie formed between my Mexican coworkers and me. They started referring to me as la Senorita Guerita, and I proudly translated anxious new servers' requests to the kitchen, joking with the chefs at the doe-eyed unilingual lass's expense. Jajaja.

Because I prided myself so much on being a part of the Mexican community at my restaurant in Santa Barbara, I was utterly thrilled when, after our company Christmas party last year, a group of the guys from the kitchen asked me to go with them to their bar, La Copa. My female coworkers were NOT so happy about this invitation, and immediately started mom-ing me and warning me that they'd ground me if I even THOUGHT about going there, yadda yadda yadda. We'd all heard the stories from that bar. That was where the guys got so drunk that we wouldn't see them for days and all of a sudden a random cousin of theirs would be working for them until they got their shit together again. That was where married men had mistresses, and single men had hookers. And some single men had MALE hookers. And (singlewhitefemale)'s did not belong. Buuuut... in the good ol' Christmas spirit, heightened by a few yard-long Hefeweizen influences, I grabbed the arm of mi mejor amigo de la cocina and told him that as long as he would keep an eye out for me, I would go. Note to everyone: you should always, ALWAYS listen to your girl friends when they're telling you not to go do stupid drunken shit.

La Copa. Well. First of all, there were only five women in the whole bar. I was one of them. And incidentally, I was the only non-prostitute one. Aaaand the only clueless-looking white girl sitting there with a Corona in her hand and a posse of grinning Mexican dudes around her. It would have been an insecure seventh-grader's dream for the amount of guys coming up and asking me to dance with them. Well, it wasn't exactly like they asked me. They just poked me on the shoulder and nodded at the dance floor, and then stood there waiting. I said "No gracias" like a hundred times before my friend started telling them I was with him and that they needed to stop asking. Five minutes later, the same exact line of guys started asking again. I was more than a little weirded out at that point. I sat glued to my barstool of safety, my arm pressed firmly against my friend's, which I had decided was "home" in this situation. When my own coworkers started asking me to dance, I started nervously giggling and saying no, while a cold sweat was glittering across my hairline. I pressed harder against my friend's arm, willing my "home" to get up off his ass and take me to my real home. He committed an epic friendship fail and told me to dance with one of the guys. Sergio, my favorite dishwasher. Okay. Nothing against Sergio. He's a good guy. Very sweet. We joked around all the time at work, and he always helped me when I was being macho and trying to carry too much stuff or was in danger of dropping anything (which was always). So really, nothing personal, Sergio. It's just that I was watching one of my married coworkers grab the breasts of one of the hooker-ladies and squeeze them like those stress-relief balls that my boss had to keep in his desk after he had an anxiety-induced heart attack. And I was watching men on the dance floor grabbing the asses of the other hookers and putting their fingers under the ladies' skirts and I started panickinganditstartedfeelingtoowarminthebarandIjustneededsomeairandnoSergioIdon'twannadancewithyouand-- all of a sudden I was being led by Sergio to the dance floor. This is it, (singlewhitefemale). Just remember: nosenoseNOSE! groingroinGROIN!! I smiled fakely at Sergio as I discreetly practiced flat palm thrusts behind my back. As I tried to gauge whether or not I could truly smash his nose into his brain if necessary, Sergio placed one hand in my left and the other on my upper back/shoulder area. Keeping a good two feet between our bodies, he began to shuffle side-to-side to the mariachi band. I raised my eyebrows in confusion. I looked back into my junior high references, sticking back the self-defense lessons and selecting instead memories from the school dances. We were replicating the exact junior high dance that everyone jokes about, only this time instead of my preteen hormones being annoyed by the distance between us, I was fist-pumping my joy behind his neck. As I looked around, I became aware that other than the guy feeling up the hooker next to us, everyone else was mimicking our modest sway on the dance floor. Was it the traditional Mexican bar dance? If so, halle-fucking-lujah.

When we got back to the bar everyone was slapping Sergio's back in approval and they had all bought me like five hundred Coronas. I looked at their smiles skeptically, but saw in them such a genuine sense of generosity and welcoming. I realized this was the first time I was hanging out with them on their turf, and I was the only girl from the restaurant to dare to enter the super sketch-town place they frequented. I smiled back at them, picked up one of the beers, and pretended to drink it. (Come on. I might really like beer but I'm not a comPLETE idiot. That one creepy guy was coming back to tap me on the shoulder to ask me to dance again, and I needed aaaaaaall my wits about me.) A half hour later, I was chatting up a storm with all the guys and not caring if I floundered on my Spanish at all. I felt truly accepted. So when I jokingly leaned in to the lady of the night who was letting my married coworker get all kinds of handsy on her and said in my form of Spanish, "What are you doing, you're WAY better than him!" I expected everyone else to laugh along with me. This was not the case. Mister Married shoved away from her and got in my face, yelling obscenities in Spanish and thrusting his finger at my nose. My friend jumped in front of me, trying to calm him down. Tears filled my eyes as I tried to explain that I had been just joking, and my false sense of comfort shattered around my feet. Everyone in the bar was fixated on the stupid white girl causing a bar-brawl about a hooker. I decided that was probably the best time to go. My friend grabbed me and shoved our way to the exit. About twenty hands tugged at me on the way out. Not in an aggressive way, but more in a solicitous way, as if I had just been playing hard to get the whole night by telling them I wasn't interested. I followed one of the grabby hands up to the face it belonged to and saw a pair of eyes that legitimately just had a question mark there. Like, eh eh? Maybe? In the blur around me I shook my head in slow motion, and he dropped his hand, a new shadow of defeat taking over his features. Then, we were outside, pushing past more throngs of curious hombres, and scrambling into a cab. After I heard my seatbelt click in safety, I turned to my friend. "Well, tonight I learned that you should never insult a Mexican in front of his hooker." He laughed at me, shaking his head.

"Estas loca, Senorita Guerita." Then he pulled a Corona out of his pocket and started to sip on it, gazing out the window at the fuzzy Christmas lights.

Burning (Wo)man

Well, today has been interesting, to say the least.

I had just bid adieu to my brother and his girlfriend who were visiting this weekend, when my fairy godmother of sorts rushed in the front door shouting that her husband J is in the hospital with a staph infection from the Burning Man festival and that he might lose his leg.

A little Back Story. I have known SA my entire life. She is THEE most positive, energetic, magical person I have ever met. She is eleven hundred feet tall with a larger-than-life personality and a heavy Texas accent that swoops to the ground and back when she says her own very southernly-sounding name. Oh SA. I have written about her before. When I was very young, probably nine or ten years old, I had to write a paper on my "hero." I picked her instantly. Though I was too young to really understand or remember most of it, I knew that she'd battled breast cancer and she'd come out of it with both fists still swinging, leaving the cancer to die in a ditch somewhere with a bloodied lip and a bruised ribcage. The cancer had taken one of her breasts, but from it she'd gained the strength and wisdom to be a beacon of glittery magical hope for all the women around her who unfortunately fell victim to the "C" word as well. I remember hearing her say with pain on her tongue, "You can't choose the other seven." She was referring to the statistic that one in seven women in America is diagnosed with breast cancer, and she was devastated to find that women around her kept getting infected with the same disease she had just overcome. Even though my head was mostly filled with relationship gossip from the latest Babysitter's Club novel, I was touched through to the very tip of my soul with the realization that she would willingly endure all the chemo in the world if it would spare the rest of us around her. I think that was the first time I noticed the halo of white light hovering around the tips of her newly-budding curly locks.  I knew I'd found my hero.

I call SA my fairy godmother because as far back as I can remember, she's been POOF!ing into existence at my front door with whatever exactly it was my family and I needed most. Most of my clothing until age eighteen was supplied by the hundreds of Hefty bags that she'd hauled into our living room over the years. It was like a holiday every time her bouncing silver ringlets bobbed by the window, and all four of my siblings and I would crowd into the tiny living room with our pink faces lifted expectantly and our little fingers ready to pick through the piles in the official Sorting Ceremony (Harry Potter, anyone?). We would sift through the treasures, making piles for each member of the family according to who could yell, "I CALL DIBS!" the fastest or the loudest at each displayed item. This process was usually accompanied by homemade acorn waffles from my mom's kitchen and SA's exclamations of delight when my mom handed her a plate full of them topped with homemade strawberry syrup. "I must have done SOMEthing right in my life to be here in this moment," I recall her saying between mouthfuls of my mom's culinary genius. To this day, I repeat those words whenever I'm overcome by love or joy or any overwhelming nameless sentiment, and I always send a silent prayer of gratitude her way.

I wish I could say my prayers had worked. Or maybe I just didn't know what I was supposed to be praying for. Or maybe they DID work, and that's why the results from the biopsy she just had to have came back negative, proving that she ultimately (hopefully) has had the last laugh with her cell-blackening foe. I couldn't fist-pump any sort of response to that bit of news, though, because before my gallery show opened this week SA informed us all that she has two brain tumors sinking their wretched claws into a large portion of her cerebral matter. My mother, my little sister, and I all stood around her in the reverberating echo of all of our hearts hitting the floor and skidding to a halt under her shaking six-foot frame. We wordlessly placed our six hands on her head, willing whatever healing power we possess to wrap itself around her well-being. Willing God, Goddess, The Cosmos, The Powers That Be-- whatever entity is responsible for beating down resilient fairy godmothers-- to please, please spare this woman any unnecessary turmoil and please, please help her to defeat this brutal beast like she has so many in the past. And oddly... once we all recovered from absorbing the awful news, we all felt instantly that she would come out of this a victor. If anyone can overcome two brain tumors, it's SA and her rainbow aura of butterfly wings that hovers behind her, whispering a tribute to her healing powers and capacity for love.

The next day we went to lunch at the Big Sky Cafe in San Luis Obispo so that SA, also vegan, could get her organic, locally-grown, sustainable vegetable platter. She sat at the head of the table, her own head haloed by a circular tile pattern in the wall behind her, telling us stories of her experiences as a psychiatric nurse in a prison ward. She told us that she could will herself to give medical help to any criminal except for an animal abuser; that, to her, there was no forgiveness for taking out violence on an innocent animal. I held her words in the palm of my hand and then slowly, quietly tucked them into my pocket as I gazed at her pale face lit up by my fiery respect. She then added that if she had to tend to a child molester, she would "pack his balls REALLY tight" when... packing his balls... although I just realized I don't know what that even means, medically. So many stories spilled from her lips during that lunch, and we all sat transfixed by her experiences. Well, no, my sister Hannah and my mom were laughing hysterically, while my brother-in-law and I kept giggling nervously and looking from side to side at patrons chewing their food while SA yelled out yarns about wiping poop off of old mans' shriveled penises and how no one else would help the black doctors back in Texas when she was training because they all considered them "n---ers!" and such. Apparently she was THEE only white nurse who would sit at the lunch table with the black doctors and nurses, and because of this she returned home one day to find the KKK setting things around her house on fire. Jesus. By looking at her, you would never know that this bubbly woman with a memorable Southern drawl and size 11 ruby red slippers has in fact looked the Devil in the face during an arm-wrestling match and walloped Him into defeat.

So today, when SA came bursting through the door with a half-crazed expression, her voice breaking and her frame shrinking into vulnerability, we saw that she can bear any amount of pain or struggle on her own behalf: but to witness her husband of thirty-four years, her "gem," SUFFERING.... That was her breaking point. I slipped my purse over my shoulder, my hand into hers, and said, "I'm coming with you." Anything to stop the smiling woman with two brain tumors and a large scar for a left breast from crying.

Now, because of SA's current medical condition, she jokes that she's ALLOWED to be forgetful. But what the fuck's MY excuse?? There I was, helping her to scramble around her house grabbing the particular items that her husband J had requested from his hospital bed, and every two minutes we both had to stop and stare at each other with blank expressions, muttering, "What was I just looking for??" After about an hour of this, we decided we'd collected all the most-essential requests, and we headed back to the hospital, our arms laden with wicker baskets full of phone chargers and positive wishes.

On the drive back, I sat there patting SA's hand and sipping her home-brewed kombucha tea from a large Mason jar. She looked at me (while I nervously looked at the road she was ignoring) and said that I drank the tea like an addict. This was after I'd confessed that my bad drinking habits are mostly to blame for the thirty excess pounds ruffling around my body frame. I couldn't take offense to her words because SA herself is a recovering addict and is in her 27th year of sobriety. She is an avid member of AA and sponsors many people into a happy sober existence. She squeezed my fingers and announced that she was taking me to her next meeting. I screwed the lid back on the jar and started squirming with my internal discomfort. Is she right? Does she see through me to the things I've shrugged off and put on the back shelf of my consciousness? Or is she merely projecting onto me the struggles she's witnessed and experienced in her own life of overcoming a massive drug addiction? I can't know the answer. Because even as I know that I am not in danger of harming myself and am in fact in the healthiest mental state I've been in since I can remember... I know that I can only achieve so much when I am constantly handicapped by hangovers and financial duress from exhausting all my expendable income on "going out." I shudder at the slap I feel to my pride when I imagine actually attending an AA meeting. Actually admitting, to the WORLD, that I might just maybe belong in one of them. My mom and sister say they're curious and would eagerly attend one of the meetings just to see what goes on behind those anonymous doors, but... I literally shake in my hemp-hewn boots just THINKING about it. I turned to SA: "Okay, I'll go with you to ONE meeting... but I'm NOT introducing myself." She just smiled, called me "her little drug addict," and said I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to do. And left me to work out my inner demons.

Hm. I do believe everything happens for a reason. I am so glad I was here in San Luis today, here at my mom's house to answer the door when my heartbroken hero needed a shoulder to lean her shaking hand on as we marched down the hospital corridors. When she thanked me for helping her get through this one day, for writing down everything that she needed to remember so that her tumors couldn't push the information into oblivion, I looked up at her face lined with both determination and love. Gazing up at her soft blue eyes sparkling with tears and triumphs, I realized that if all I have to overcome is a roomful of strangers being privy to my affinity for Hefeweizen and cheap white wine, then, well, I can damn well put on my really large big-girl pants and do it. And as she hugged me again and I wrote my phone number in huge font for her on a scrap of paper in case she needed any moral support or note-taker in the days to come, I thought to myself, "You know what (singlewhitefemale)? You must have done SOMEthing right in your life to be here in this moment."

Bingeing Barbarians

Well now I've done it. I drank an espresso drink eight hours ago, so I am filled with insomnia and confined to the parts of my mom's house called Middle Earth because Hannah and Josh are sleeping like normal people. Every once in a while I venture into the Dark Parts of the house to look for an eraser or my hot pink lipstick, but after knocking over a glass of water and tripping over a power cord (both events causing wakeful fits of profanity) I decided to not be THEE shittiest person in the world and jail myself to my (my mom's) bedroom.

I feel like I've been spinning perpetually in a constant state of half-dreams for the last week. I left Encinitas Monday morning, tried to familiarize myself with the concept of being jobless and homeless in San Luis for a couple of days, then hopped on a train to Santa Barbara early Thursday morning to work four days at my old restaurant in Santa Barbara, only to return today in such a haze that I'm currently defying gravity.

Oh, Santa Barbara.

Now that I've actually lived somewhere else as an adult, I am finally able to see that the liver-blackening antics of this paradise-town are not in fact "standard" for communities in general. I know it all stems from the UCSB campus being a mere twenty minutes away. In Isla Vista we all brush our teeth with Peppermint Schnapps and stagger to a breakfast of Bloody Mary's and mimosas to chase away our hangovers from the previous night's keg stands and beer pong tournaments. When we turn twenty-one, we don our "nice" drinking clothes and smoking jackets and cram into overcrowded cab vans and carpool to the bars and clubs that light up State Street after dark. We don't mature from the vomiting, fist-fighting buffoons that litter the beachy streets of I.V.-- nay, we merely take our shit-storms to the clean sidewalks downtown and pay hundreds of dollars to give our debauchery some nice scenery. We Pre-Party at home to save money on liquor so that we can afford $15 nachos from Freebirds at three in the morning. Then we wake up with salsa in the corners of our mouths, brush our teeth with Peppermint Schnapps, and start the cycle yet again.

When I moved to Encinitas I had the idea in my head that I wanted to get healthy-- you know, really explore the benefits of a vegan diet, lose a few pounds, quit smoking, and lay off the empty calories I was used to beer-bonging into my ever-extending belly. And I did, kinda. In the beginning of my stay there I was really good, actually. Mostly because I hadn't made any drinking buddies yet except for my six-foot brother-in-law, and he can hold his liquor like a Sumo wrestler. Somehow it's just not the same when you're the only one saying wanna-be-profound shit after three shots of tequila. When I moved into my own place, I started baby-stepping my way back into my old drinking routine. The one where I casually open a bottle of wine while writing my first blog or dancing to Shakira by myself in my living room. And then before I knew it, I was having three beers every night after work or polishing off a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon in a matter of two hours and still acting like it was perfectly acceptable behavior. (Because I enjoy my own company so much and in fact have full-on conversations with myself and my mouth, I forget that most people view drinking alone as a sign of depression or steadfast alcoholism.) It wasn't until I started making friends and actually drinking with peers in public that I started to view my drinking habit in a different light. In Santa Barbara, when we all get together at night, the unspoken agreement is that everyone is going to get shit-faced. You can invite someone over to watch The Biggest Loser, and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he will show up with a 30-pack of Natty Light. If your friend invites you over for Craft Night, you automatically go to the store to grab three bottles of champagne for the occasion. That's just how we do it.

In Encinitas, however, I noticed that something strange was happening. When my new friends invited me over for bonfires and music, I would show up with two jumbo-sized wine boxes (naturally) and would already have a pint-sized glass filled for myself before I'd even sit down. I would chug and offer the wine, chug and offer, and then somewhere around the last eighth of the second box I'd realize that no one else had touched a drop. Everyone was... bonfiring... and musicking.... What. The. Fuck. Suddenly I became the only one shouting curse words and passing out mid-sentence with my chin on my chest, while everyone else remembered every semi-retarded half-thought I'd slurred laughingly into a blurring room. It took me way too long to realize that what I considered Normal Behavior was actually just Santa Barbaric. It took me quite some time to adjust to this more controlled, more sincere form of interacting with others. Not that everyone didn't have the most fun ever, because actually everyone I met was hilarious, intelligent, and talented, and I always felt my heart exploding with happiness and joy at being included in their gatherings. No... it was just different.... Different because everyone REMEMBERS their interactions and drinking is just a way to relax a little and laugh a little more uninhibitedly. I ended up sticking like glue to the one person I met who could drink like I could and she quickly became my partner in crime. I knew we were soulmates the first time we hung out, just the two of us, under the guise of doing some art and maybe writing a little. We went to VONS to get "a snack" and both matched each other's steps straight to the liquor aisle. We each reached for a bottle of the cheapest sparkling wine... and then without speaking, we locked eyes and both reached together for that third "just in case" bottle whose necessity is understood only by a true Boozer. From that moment on, we knew we spoke the same language. There's a certain code exchanged among heavy drinkers. When we plan to "grab a beer after work," it goes without saying that we're going to take $3 shots of Jack 'til the bar closes and we're the last ones left, smoking cigarettes with the bouncers in the employees-only back room and helping the bartenders wipe up the empty bar. "Let's just stay in and have a mellow night" means we're going to drink copious amounts of wine and share deeply personal secrets and try to figure out the meaning of life while knocking over glasses and staining our shirts with purple splotches. My personal favorite is, "Oh I didn't accomplish a lot today," because that clearly means that we were too hungover to do anything but maybe venture out to get a greasy burrito and watch abc.com shows 'til early evening rolls around and it's time to drag our aching livers into hippie pants and go to work. Much of my last two months in Encinitas was spent in this way, and right before I left for San Luis I could feel the fingertips of Santa Barbara's (singlewhitefemale) begin to warm, like her dusty corpse was beginning to revive itself with each drop of Hefeweizen coursing through her stagnant veins.

It seems, though, that over the course of the last nine months, even I had forgotten the potency of the party scene in my native land. As I mentioned before, I went to Santa Barbara for the last four days to pocket some money and visit my favorite people still there. My brother and his girlfriend also went to visit, and we had a royal reunion with all the remaining members of our crew from the past seven years. All I can really say is... well...



FUCK.


I can't BELIEVE how much people drink there. I was comPLETEly unprepared for it. My liver is still giving me the finger, and I didn't even TRY to hang with the locals after the first day. I've always been the biggest drinker around. I'm always the instigator, buying people shots just because I can't bear the sight of an empty glass in the hands of someone next to me. But this last weekend proved to me that I had completely forgotten the kind of heavy drinking that I used to be a part of. Jesus Christ, those people are fucking NUTS. My first night there we all went out with complete confidence that we could hang just like the old days. My brother ended up having to apologize for purposely spitting an entire beer onto our friend's brand-new leather shoes (he still has no idea why he would have done this) and I almost got kicked out of a late night eatery for public debauchery because they had NOTHING VEGAN and I was spinning so badly I was knocking into the hostess while berating her establishment for putting egg in  every single goddamn item on their menu. The next day, we all lay in a row on our friend Allison's floor like Charlie's elderly grandparents in Willy Wonka, moving only to half-raise our arms when passing around the camera that documented all the previous night's sins. The second night only half of us could even make it out of the house, and I couldn't force myself to drink more than a single Stella. While looking for our friend who was supposedly vomiting in a parking lot somewhere, I stumbled upon the oddest scene I have seen since... well I guess since I left Santa Barbara. It was like something out of a zombie movie. Drunk bodies were scattering across the parking lot with jerky movements. Straight ahead, a girl pissed herself standing in direct streetlamp-light, the image of her vagina free to bore itself into the retinas of any still-living person's eyes. I was one of those lucky people. To her right, a lifeless body sat staring at her in a wheelchair, close enough to be sprayed by the urine reflecting off the cement wall behind her. To my right was another lifeless body in a wheelchair, this one surrounded by gangsters in basketball jerseys smoking illegal substances and rubbing their crotches on half-naked lady legs in heels who slurred in response, their zombie-rotted tongues inhibiting their speech. And then to my left... mute forms with full bladders climbing recklessly up the walls of a port-a-potty, snarling at its occupant to come out either to free the toilet up or so they could rip out his intestines for an after-drink snack (at this point, who knows?). I should hardly mention that by the time I found my friend, it was only to see that our other friend was shaking her boobs like a pair of maracas and that the smile she gave him was through eyes deadened by five shots of tequila and that last tall Guinness I'd left her drinking at the bar. After pacing like an enraged caged feline for a few moments to shake out the creeps that had been rattling up and down my spine, I reassessed the horror film around me and realized that, actually, this was completely normal for a Saturday night in Santa Barbara, and the thing that was wrong was ME. I could no longer maintain the level of debauchery necessary to blend in to the lifestyle of my past.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with my affection for booze. I mean, it's been such a close acquaintance of mine for so long now that it is literally ingrained into my muscle memory to reach for a glass of wine while cooking, a beer after work, and a shot when something exciting happens (or not). Every time I "quit" drinking I'm just mimicking The Boy Who Cried "Wolf," and I know no one believes it at this point, especially me. But maybe things will just happen naturally as I slowly change my lifestyle accidentally? I mean, we all know my motto is WHATEVER HAPPENS HAPPENS, so I guess I should actually lean into that and not try to figure everything out as much as I do. Here in SLO, I haven't had a drink. Granted I've only been here like four days total, but for me that's pretty monumental. There's something about being surrounded by my mom's energy that makes me not want to drink. Like, if I'm hungover I'll let her down. But more than anything, I think I know the worst/best of my drinking days are over. I'm not going to pretend anymore that I don't have a huge crush on refreshing alcoholic beverages, but I think it was an eye-opening experience to be smack-dab in the middle of my former environment and realize that I no longer fit in it like I used to.

Don't get me wrong-- I fucking love Santa Barbara. And I had the most fun in the last four days that I can ever remember having. I know this because I laughed so much that my lack-of-abs are still sore. I'm actually going back to work a few more shifts this weekend, and I can't WAIT to see everyone's faces again. But I guess I should pay attention to the zombie-fearing part of me that doesn't want to lose my grip on reality so readily in the name of fun. Plus, I mean, zombies aren't vegan, so....

Or maybe I should just start training secretly in my mom's bedroom when everyone is sleeping. I'll see how many shots I can down in a five-minute time-frame before the room starts spinning and I spit up kale all over my mom's favorite floral bedspread. Yeah, I should probably just do that. Santa Barbara here I come!!!!

Happy Earth Hamper

Any time I freak out about being planless, jobless, and worried that I'm not worried enough about being both of these things, I think I need to pull out My Super Special Notebook of Secret Things that I carry with me at all times and re-read this month's horoscope that I've taped to its cover:

An important journey may bring you closer to the answers you’re in search of. If you take an actual trip, be aware of how your surroundings reflect your inner environment. In a more philosophical sense, this month is an adventure that will bring you face-to-face with some of your goals. It’s likely you’ll feel even more inspired and capable of reaching those seemingly unobtainable dreams. You can do it! This is a successful time for you. Pay attention to those inner promptings, as random as they may seem; there’s value in their message and freedom in the pursuit of them. 

Okay, so I’m here. I worked my last double-shift as a cafe manager the day before yesterday and hopped (limped heavily) into my mom’s Yaris at six yesterday morning with the last of my scraggly physical possessions to start this next chapter of my life in her neck of the woods in San Luis Obispo. 

Naturally, the first order of business after unloading my dirty laundry, cookbooks, and dead hamster Edward (story will follow later) out of my mother's car was to play a prank on my sister Hannah and her husband, who I would now be sharing my mom's house with. 

A few weeks ago my sister Shawnie told me that one of her Organic Mother friends had posted on Facebook that she wanted to quit toilet paper and had appealed to the Facebook masses for any alternatives. She received a number of suggestions. Apparently many world-savers cut up old T-shirts into squares which they use as "toilet cloths" to be washed and reused. My brother-in-law is from Illinois, and I know that because I don't eat meat and rub crystals under my arms instead of deodorant (I don't really, that's called a HYPERBOLE), he views me as a severely nutty Californian hippie. I take fifteen-minute showers daily, drink booze 'til I forget my whereabouts, and smoke to satisfy my oral fixation, but HE doesn't have to know that. In fact, I have no doubt he wouldn't be surprised if I announced that I take part in Naked Mondays and wash my hair with compost. So it was only obvious to me that now that I will be sharing a one-bathroom apartment with my sister and him, I needed to pretend that I wipe my ass with cloth squares and leave the used fabric to stew in a trash can next to the bathtub until Laundry Day. 

The problem was that I was really fucking tired when I arrived here, having only slept two hours the previous night because I have wonderful friends in Encinitas who cooked me a gourmet vegan feast and I couldn't leave their shining beautiful faces 'til three in the morning. Anyway, I was crabby and within my first two hours of being here had made both my little sister AND my mother cry, and was just generally being a raging psychotic cunt. It happens. After I fed my irritable hungry belly-beast, I decided to let my sister in on my plan to trick her husband with my good ol' classic poopy hamper gag. She was all for it, so we got a metal trash can and filled it with soiled kitchen towels and a rag that she rubbed in the mud to achieve some eerily realistic skid marks. I hand-wrote a sign that read HAPPY EARTH HAMPER (SORRY IT DOESN'T HAVE A LID!) and decorated it with lots of hearts and smiley faces. We arranged the faux poo cloths in the most unattractive manner, and then Hannah earned three gold stars by crumbling and smearing parts of a chocolate-and-peanut-butter energy bar in all the most believable places. I howled with laughter 'til my stomach reminded me it has no muscle and then silently beamed with pride at our creation. 

When her husband Josh came home from work, I was giddily holding my breath and breaking out in spontaneous nervous laughter at all the inappropriate times. Unfortunately, he apparently has the bladder of a determined camel and did not use the restroom-- I mean not even ONCE!-- the entire evening. So I fell asleep sitting on my mom's bed with my legs propped five feet above my head on a stool while reading The Ayurvedic Cookbook and temporarily forgot about my shenanigans. 

This morning Hannah told me Josh had been thoroughly put-out by the bucket of shit rags in the middle of the bathroom floor. **fist pumps** In his defense, he didn't vomit or yell or come into the room where I slept and slap me on the mouth. I mean, I would have set fire to a kerosene lamp and chucked it into the bathroom behind me as I ran screaming from the vicinity if I ever stumbled upon a Happy Earth Hamper.  So props, buddy. He was just irritated that he kept almost knocking it over and Hannah kept hearing him say "What THE FUCK!" over and over as he tried to shave and brush his teeth while little brown turd rollies were waving at him over the rim of the trash can. Heh. Heh. Heh. I was quite excited about this, and instead of applying for any jobs today I spent my time placing his bottle of body-wash perfectly propped against the darkest brown spot on the turquoise rag on top of the "hamper" to make it look like I'd accidentally knocked it in there while taking one of my wastefully long showers. I hugged myself with glee when I noticed he'd removed it the next time he used the bathroom, and I elatedly imagined the stream of obscenities that must have slipped through his pursed lips and the amount of scrubbing he must've given his hands afterward. With one last proud sigh and lingering glance at my first Installation Piece, I sauntered into the sitting room and announced that Hey, guess what, that was a joke, I don't really smear my numero dos-es on towels and leave them lying around for your viewing pleasure. Surprise!!

I was very disappointed when he just said, "Oh. Okay."

I guess what I've learned from this is that 1.) my humor is under-appreciated and 2.) I need a creative outlet and/or job. 

I'm nervous to enter the service industry again because it is an energy-sucking whore who needs constant attention and doesn't give a damn about your personal life... but I like to buy delicious organic produce and grains and legumes, and for some reason that simple food is the most expensive. Today I went on an almost six-mile round-trip walking adventure to the New Frontiers Natural Market for the first time. That place is my boyfriend. My fellow shoppers were sending me raised eyebrows and shaking their heads at me as I stole kisses from the loose-lipped leaves of the organic romaine lettuce and ran my finger passionately down the spine of the bulk-foods bins, firmly wrapping my hand around the shafts of the red plastic scoops for the quinoa, millet, and couscous. **shudder of ecstasy**


I am deciding to view my lack of concern for having no monetary income as a sign of impending success. It's true, guys. It's all happening. 


Tomorrow I have big plans to make the six-mile trek to see my new boyfriend and maybe buy a refreshing strawberry kombucha from him, finally see the new Harry Potter movie before it leaves theaters and I have to kill myself, clear a space in my mom's backyard to put up the tent that will be the designated "other room" for anyone who needs a time-out from family, and finish reading Hunger Games because now that it's about to be made into a movie and every 14-year-old girl has read it I think I wanna read it too. I guess... maybe the next day I should figure out this whole Life thing and at least draw something or fill out an application or something. Maybe. 


It's all happening. 

Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin

My stolen internet is skipping out again, so I’m just gonna type this and hope that someday soon I’ll be able to post it. Ironically I’m PMS-ing again (last time I mention my ovaries today, promise) and I’m in the kind of mood where Eminem is too soap box-y and all I can handle listening to are trumpety renditions of Bob Dylan classics. Fallopian tubes!!! (A-ha! Didn’t mention ovaries, see?!)

Countdown two weeks ‘til I’m officially leaving Encinitas. I’m debating getting rid of the majority of my physical possessions. Not like I have a lot of stuff or anything, but the stuff I DO have is really just... stuff. It’s hard though, I’m definitely one of those people who attaches sentimental value to useless crap. I got this dining room table at a thrift store in Santa Barbara for $80, and it lived in the rain and served as a beer pong table in my brother’s backyard for months, and it’s now lived with me in three different states of mental stability and three different homes. I feel LOYALTY towards it. Okay, you know what? The table is going with me! (I’m going to pretend that this entirely useful piece of furniture is the problem, not the stack of a hundred dragon books that I’ll never read again or the collection of Buddha-shaped beer bottles or closetful of “hope” clothes that I pretend I’ll be able to fit into sometime in the near future. 

I’m definitely about to get myself into an interesting situation, that’s for sure. My mom’s little house in SLO is a collection of complementing blue-and-amber glass baubles, glittering white animal statues, and colorful scraps of thoughts and wishes. If you could get into my mom’s psyche to visualize her mental essence... well-- you can, actually, that’s exactly what her house is. It’s gotta be the most artist-y spot per square inch in the Northern hemisphere. I’m hoping to walk in her front door and projectile-vomit acrylic paint directly onto a blank canvas waiting for me under the plastic white moosehead with rainbow butterfly wings that greets guests in the sitting room. I’m just feeling sooooo drawn to that creative energy lately. My heart keeps trying to get my attention by swelling with anxiety and knocking against my ribcage with stress about having no money, no plan, and no home; but either I’ve finally drunk away all my brain cells or there is some higher power trying to soothe away my fears and sweaty eyebrows and pull me steadfastly toward an exciting life change because I’m probably not neeeeeeearly as worried as I shoooooould be.... 

I think I just can’t wait to get out of this fucking restaurant business, even if all that’s waiting for me is... well... the restaurant business. I’ll take just ONE MONTH of scraping together a simple living no matter how worried I am about paying bills and stuff if it means I will receive zero phone calls about which 17-year-old made the 40-year-old manager cry or can you please work a thousand hours this week because it’s so-and-so’s dad’s birthday and hey a goat stomped on that employee’s leg and guess what that other guy read his schedule wrong and somehow that’s your fault! I thought that by working in a health-oriented cafe, I would be surrounded by a higher level of mental health as well. But it turns out, the restaurant industry is the fucking restaurant industry. All I really achieved was the realization that I am NOT. CUT OUT. FOR. IT. Which, actually, is a pretty big realization when it’s what you’ve been accidentally dedicating your life to for seven years. It’s just all I’ve known, and all I’ve felt comfortable doing because I have the most Debbie-Downerish Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder that’s always telling me I’ll never succeed in the art world or anything more independent and personal than babysitting someone else’s business. I should probably poke the cricket’s eyes out, but that just doesn’t seem very vegan-ly I guess. 

Anyway, the first order of business I hope to tackle is setting up shop in my mom’s art gallery so I can be producing art while her gallery is open for viewers because right now it’s closed most of the time. I’m pondering ways to hide cryptic sex and candy references somehow on the building’s facade so passersby will all of a sudden feel compelled to go check the gallery out, though they won’t know why. I guess then out of guilt I’ll have to have sex with them and give them vegan chocolate bars... but I’m hoping the art will stimulate them enough that it will never come to that. I then plan to start an Etsy site with wearable vegan propaganda-ish art and paintings and cards and anything my art-parched fingers come up with. (Everyone’s been telling me for SO long to start an Etsy page, so even if nothing comes from it I’ll at least feel smug and accomplished on some hazy level.) Next step is using my mom’s status as a prolific member of the Downtown Association to ogre-stomp my way into a spot at the local farmers’ market (I once heard someone on a bus say it’s the largest one on the West Coast, so I have henceforth insomuch nevertheless forever quoted that bit of news as a FACT) where I will post up with my vegan wares and flap my T-shirts in people’s faces as they’re waiting in line for some ribs with BBQ sauce. In the very least, my mom and I will get a kick out of our vegetable banners and glorified animal paintings, and we can people-watch while we sit and eat food from that one really yummy vegan Indian food stand. Once I’ve got these three things going on, I will spend my free time exercising (I’ve got forty pounds of cheap white wine and Hefeweizen to shed from my thighs), reading, and cooking. I have a list of about five hundred vegan-related books I want to read and documentaries I want to watch. Skinny Bitch ended up being one of the most enjoyable/informative reads I’ve experienced lately... but that might just be because I usually only read novels meant for horny teenagers.... I really can’t wait to buckle down with The Sexual Politics of Meat, but I feel like I have to get through this text-book-style guide to veganism I’ve been pretending to read for about seven months now. Don’t get me wrong, it’s GREAT-- very educational, full of aaaaaall the tools a person needs to be healthy and thrive on a plant-based diet. I just don’t know how long the author’s gonna make me wait before Edward shows up (Team Edward!!), and at page 167 I’m finding it hard to care about how much I’ll need to increase my calcium intake when I’m pregnant or breastfeeding. 

Oh no. 

Okay, I’m sorry, this is completely not related... and also sorry I’m even telling you this... but I just found... The Whisker. **gasp!!** Oh God, WHY GOD?!!! I don’t know if this is... normal... but I’ve definitely asked other female friends if they’ve ever experienced this and at least two out of fifty have, so... here goes. 

Every few months or so, I’ll be casually stroking my chin while staring at a wall (or computer screen), and my finger will touch a hair that doesn’t feel the same as all the other innocent peach fuzzy face hairs on my chin. No... no this hair is strong, determined, and manlier than the grunts I let out when lifting a bus tray full of dirty dishes. This ain’t no girly face hair... this here is (da dunh dunh DAAAAA!!!) A WHISKER!!! **somebody screams** It is so fucking mortifying!! If I’m ever in public when I realize that the little Hair of Satan has grown back, I can no longer behave in any sort of normal way, like everyone in the goddamn room KNOWS it’s there, and they’ve all been sadly shaking their heads at me and spitting up quietly in their napkins when the light hits my chin just right. Jesus. SO not okay. I should probably wield a pair of tweezers at all times just to avoid the catastrophic bout of extreme self-consciousness that ensues from Its discovery a few times a year. Well. I’m sorry to have ruined your appetite with my unsolicited body hair confession. But hey, animals have a looooot of whisker-hair... so maybe this will make a cheeseburger seem a little less tempting?? Ahhhh okay okay, far stretch, I know, I was just trying to pretend my scatter-brained paragraph had some sort of reason for existing other than to cause me to lose friends. 

Okay, I guess I’ve kinda killed my chances to blog about legitmate shit now, so I’m just gonna finish devouring my $15 Whole Foods salad (only maybe worth it) and pretend I don’t need to start packing and organizing the clutterfuck that is my studio.

 Oh. P.S. Sam and Sara-- if you ever visit me whenever I have a home again, I PROMISE I will have clean, human-sized towels for you to use when you shower. For real. And I might even get a shower curtain that doesn’t have things growing on it. But let’s take it one step at a time. I miss you guys!

P.P.S. I think I am on a potty-mouth bender right now, so I would not advise any Mormons to read this particular posting. Shitshitfuckfuckfuck.