Are You There, Blog? It's Me, _____.

I've Moved.

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:36:31 GMT

You can find me at heathenly.wordpress.com

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:48:21 GMT

It's never a good sign when you start the workday by ordering $53 worth of books about freelancing.

Out, Out Damn'd Spot

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 03:14:27 GMT

My three year old has become a compulsive handwasher. The bad part about this is that you can't punish your kids for compulsive behavior or handwashing.

I had to run to the bank at lunch today (the kind in the grocery store-- and could those bastards be any slower?). They had one of those wall-mount TVs up-- because heaven forfend you should be left alone with your own thoughts for a few minutes-- and CNN was the channel du jour. I only read the little blurbs on the screen, I didn't care to try to hear what they were yammering on about. Here's a couple tidbits I caught:

--Study shows that people know that text messaging while driving is dangerous, but do it anyway.

I so wish I was typing this entry into my phone while driving.

--Study shows that America's pets now eating more and exercising less, and are heavier as a result.

I totally want to know how big the government grant was that some researcher got for this study.

I forgot what the third one was. This is news, mah friends.

Have You Met My Boyfriend, Adderall XR?

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:01:22 GMT

(NOTE: I'm in the process of deleting my stuff from Gather and saving it elsewhere-- to my hard drive, and somewhere online, in case my hard drive dies in a fiery car crash. If you've already read this, ignore it. It's old and outdated, anyhoo, since I had to quit Adderall when I began to resemble Nicole Richie in body type. I still miss my boyfriend.)

Written November 27, 2006.

As I have mentioned before, I am attention-deficit. I have Attention-Deficit Disorder. I've had it for as long as I could remember. I spent my entire childhood missing assignments because I never heard the teacher assigning them- I was too busy doodling on my arm or watching a mosquito circle the classroom. In the unlikely event that knowledge actually managed to enter my skittish brain, my attention-deficit memory would promptly discard it in favor of trivia like, "It's pizza day for lunch!"

My brother was ADHD- he had the hyperactivity component. This meant that, like me, he could not pay attention to save his life, and he stood on top of his desk at school, and sometimes yelled gibberish. Ritalin helped, but at one point he was placed in Special Ed, just so they could keep him in his seat. No one noticed I was ADD, because they were too busy watching Kevin spaz out.

Many people think ADD is no big deal. "Boo hoo," they think, "get a Day Planner and write stuff down." That would be an excellent suggestion, if only:

1. I could remember to buy a Day Planner,

2. I could remember to take my wallet to the store,

3. I could find a pen, without becoming distracted by the computer above the drawer with the pens in it,

4. I could find the Day Planner,

5. I could remember to look in the Day Planner,

6. I could trust myself to remember to write anything in the Day Planner, and

7. Was I just cooking something? It smells like something's cooking... oh crap.

I can be walking to the bathroom to pee, and I'll become distracted by something shiny. Or non-shiny. Thirty minutes later, I will be making a paper clip chain, and my bladder will be close to exploding, and I'll remember, "Oh! I was going to the bathroom!" I have yet to wet my pants due to one of my attention-deficit digressions, but it is inevitable that I will.

Enter Ritalin. I took it for a couple of years. It wears off quickly, leaving one a little fatigued. After you take it for a while, it's all diminishing returns. Besides, the pharmacist always scrutinizes you like you walked up to the counter with a scrip for a "one kilo of pharmaceutical grade cocaine." It gets old.

Finally, my doctor prescribed Adderall XR. Love! True love, I tell you! Lasts all day, no edginess, smooth as silk, and looooook at me focus! Woohoo!

It's not all wine and roses, though. My boyfriend Adderall does help me focus, it's true, but sometimes he has me focus on all the wrong things. Sometimes I focus on Gather all day long. Sometimes I'm organizing my coupons for two hours, as I sit amid teetering stacks of clean laundry that, by all rights, have higher priority than coupons I'll forget to take with me to the grocery store. If only Adderall helped me to focus on cleaning; but alas- I have yet to emulate the girl in the Don't Take Crystal Meth commercials who cleans her grout with a toothbrush in an amphetamine-fueled frenzy.

Adderall XR is my boyfriend, and he makes my life better, and my bladder thanks him for it. I just wish he'd push me toward all of the files in my briefcase, because an amphetamine-fueled frenzy of work would really make the ol' checking account happy. But here I am, Gathering instead. If I'm lucky, I'll earn $1 today. Can someone gently push me toward my briefcase?

This is my love letter to amphetamines. I love you, Adderall XR. You're not perfect, but I love you.

So Much Soggy.

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:56:18 GMT

It's all monsoon-y and rainy here, which I love. I spent an inordinate portion of my childhood praying for adverse weather conditions, and part of that desire to experience weather drama still lives inside of me. I awoke to the sound of thunder, and said aloud (but quietly), "Yay!!!"

I actually took an umbrella with me, which I never do. I figure I'm just going to get rained on, so why bother? But today I had actually taken the trouble to flat-iron some of the frizz out of my hair (stupid, stupid me), and I wanted to preserve the image of me as Put-Together Woman for a few minutes, at least.

It was a good thing I took the umbrella, because by the time we arrived at the daycare, it was pouring. As I attempted to retrieve my three year old from the backseat, thunder boomed, causing her to latch onto my side like a crazed howler monkey. "It's just thunder!" I said with enthusiasm, trying to convince her that this was all great fun.

Despite (what I thought was) strategic parking, I end up trapped in an area surrounded by no less than four inches of rushing water. "Darn," I thought, "Have to get my shoes wet!" Except that when you're in your 30's and you have to go to work, soaking wet jeans, sneakers, and socks just isn't an adventure anymore. Squoosh, squoosh went my shoes as I splooshed across the parking lot carrying a crazed howler monkey, a large bag full of various clothing and bedding items appropriate to the needs of a crazed howler monkey, and an umbrella.

Ten minutes later I managed to pry the monkey off my side (I was never able to get the monkey off my back, which is why I'm still a junkie), and was able to leave. Upon exiting, I saw a lawyer dad trying very, very hard not to curse as he neared the entrance. "Gah... Jeez... Moth...."-- at least we both knew what he wanted to say outside the presence of three year olds, but it's just not as satisfying to utter the abbreviated versions. Clearly, his fancyass leather dress shoes were not immune to the problems of splooshing through a parking lot/lake.

And here I am at work, with a fan appropriated from facilities maintenance positioned directly at my soggy little sockies. My shoes are sitting on a mysterious but very warm machine-y type contraption in a mysterious inner-workings-of-the-building type room, and may even be dry by 5 p.m. (just in time for me to walk through the daycare parking lot again!). I'm footloose and fancy free, shoeless and sockless, and that lawyer is probably miserable in his splooshy dress shoes, because if he took his shoes and socks off in the office, it would be unprofessional.

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 05:15:36 GMT

Motherfucking stapler.

Don't Report Me To NOW

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 21:47:50 GMT

But I think that calling a vagina a va-jheeen is really funny. Watch it, I say. WATCH IT, DAMN YOU!

Just not with kids around. Well, not your kids. It's okay to traumatize other people's kids now and then.

The Devil Wears Prada, and Superman Wears Maribou

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 20:31:10 GMT

My 3 year old ran up to me yesterday, wearing nothing but underwear and a white maribou scarf. "Mom, I Superman!" she said.

Of course you are, sweetie.

I Was Kerastased.

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 22:48:30 GMT

Last week I got a really, really expensive cut and color. I hadn't had a haircut in a year and a half, and an unfortunate incident (um, two times) with haircolor-in-a-box had turned my hair into yellow, brittle straw. Having thrown my first several paychecks at my past-due rent and daycare balances, I felt it was only fair to blow some of my hard-earned (ha) money on a luxury purchase. Also, a few weeks ago while washing my hands in the work bathroom, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, "Lynyrd Skynyrd!" as I saw my nearly-waist length hair touch my arms. (Aside: I hereby pledge that future blog posts will contain fewer references to Lynyrd Skynyrd.)

I called to make an appointment with the woman who cut my hair last time. She works in a chi-chi hair place where they don't ask you if you want a $20 moisturizing treatment, they just do it, and you pay the outrageous bill for fear of appearing a chintzy Supercuts kind of girl. The stylist is a friend of a friend, and the last haircut she gave me was awesome. And the haircut had been so fast. She was like one of those Teppanyaki chefs with the flying knives-- voilà! Except she used scissors. And I didn't get burned in the forehead with a flying shrimp.

Early on in this appointment I hinted heavily that I was poor. Poorer than most people in the salon, anyway. I had budgeted $140 (I hear you gasping-- yes, a decent cut & color costs that much. Get a fucking grip.), based on the prices of the last chi-chi salon I had frequented, back in the last Major Metropolitan City I'd lived in. Of course, the last time I'd been to that salon was 2002, but that is neither here nor there, I told my Budgeting Brain.

The stylist agreed that my hair was a mess. Of course she did. You never hear a stylist tell you that your hair is healthy and awesome and that you should keep right on using your $2.79 Dove shampoo. FIVE HOURS LATER, my hair looked awesome-- it was no longer Lisa Simpson yellow, it was far less straw-like in texture, and it actually had some kind of style to it. The stylist slipped me some full-size Kérastase "consultant samples"-- and when I mean slipped, I mean slipped-- it was a very covert operation, transferring those tubes and bottles. I wasn't really sure what the big dealio was, until I looked up the prices on the Kérastase website and about shit myself.

Kérastase, when translated from French to English, means (roughly), "a product line made by L'Oreal, but too fancy for your grocery store shampoo buyin' ass."

My stylist INSISTED-- and I mean, insisted-- that my poor destroyed hair MUST have the Kérastase shampoo and conditioner for color-treated and damaged hair. My hair NEEDED it, and she just couldn't bear to see me put grocery store hair products in my poor distressed tresses. She whispered to the front desk chippie to work with my budget, but to make sure that I walked out with the Kérastase shampoo and conditioner. "What's the total at now?" I asked, hoping against all hope that she'd say something ridiculous like, "$80." "$140," she said, and I blanched, because that was my whole budget, including tip. The tip would be about $30, I figure-- I mean, excellent haircut, $140 tab, and she slipped me $90 in products, so... $30 tip seemed completely reasonable. And how, just how, could I let her down by ruining her (my?) beautiful hair with grocery store hair products? At this point I was scared that my hair might fall out without Kérastase, so alarmed did my stylist seem. "This [teeny tiny bottle] will last you two months, I swear!" my stylist exclaimed. "Just use an amount about the size of a quarter!" she said of the shampoo. I remained skeptical, but agreed to buy the products.

The front desk chippie knocked off $20 (I hardly call that "working with my budget," Front Desk Chippie. I now regret complimenting your tattoo, which wasn't really all that great, but merely large and noticeable), and I signed a credit slip for $215 and some change.

I used the shampoo and conditioner for a couple days. There is no shampoo on the face of the planet that will clean my hair with a blob the size of a quarter. There is no conditioner that will make my hair snarl-free unless I use a ginormous handful of it and apply it to every square millimeter of my snarly-ass hair. By the end of Day 2, my hair felt heavy, snarled, and disgusting with the weight of the freebie Kérastase leave-in conditioner (which is, incidentally, good shit) I'd been glopping in it for two days. And so, on Day 3, I guiltily washed my hair with my $2.79 Dove shampoo and conditioner, fully expecting my stylist to rip back the shower curtain while shouting, "J'accuse!"

As I brushed through my now-unsnarled and reasonably manageable hair, I realized I'd been Kérastased.

Ooh La La

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 17:53:29 GMT

One of the glass repair guys working on our building would like to meet me.

Once again, I'm a hit with the Lynyrd Skynyrd crowd.

My phone died, and I need to charge it, but my charger is in my car and I don't want to walk to my car now. I don't know why. I don't want to have to make eye contact with my new Lynyrd Skynyrd boyfriend, I guess.

Let me clarify that I have nothing against the band Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Gambling & Prostitutes. Such Is Band Camp.

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:22:24 GMT

The following is a text message exchange between my son and me last night. He is at band camp across the state; I was in my car, driving and texting. It's totally safe.

HIM: He i get in trouble for gamble'n will you be mad at me? (Seriously, someone who spells like that, even in text messages, came out of my uterus?)

ME: Are there prostitutes involved?

HIM: Oh no but I'm up

ME: Bring home the bacon

Since he only took $6 to band camp, I expect that his winnings will literally only equal a package of bacon. Bar S bacon.

I Really, Really Hate Metallica.

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 16:15:51 GMT

So much.

Look, Ma, I'm Blahhhging!

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:15:48 GMT

I meant to do it. I even signed up at Jezus-knows-how-many blog sites. I just never... wrote anything. Fearful of my own narcissistic tendencies, publicly unleashed.

Whatever.