a major reason to be cheerful this season

I was the evil granddaughter and managed to get out of the christmas eve at granny's house. Every year, my dads siblings get together on christmas eve to open presents and measure each other up. My dad's siblings are freaks. I'm not a huge fan of any of them. As I've said before, I would gladly disown them. So this year, I told Granny that I have "plans". Yes, granny, I know I'm now single. Yes, I know I have no friends. Yes, theres nothing open on Christmas eve. But HELL YES, I have plans.

Mom is still debating whether or not to hate me or love me for this one.

Holiday cheer be damned, shut the hell up

In the name of holiday cheer, they've allowed local people to perform at the mall. By perform, I mean sing and dance holiday related, uh, things. After a couple weeks of these performances, I've determined that A) my town is devoid of any musical talent or B) the people with talent have enough sense not to flaunt it at the mall. Either way, I've gotten to exercise my Mockery and stretch my Sarcasm to lengths previously unknown. I even have it in me to make fun of small children dressed in elf costumes. I would hate to think that I'm being bah humbug but its just in my nature to make fun of things cheery and cute...and typically offkey.

DEck thE HaaaalLLss wiTh EarPLuuuUgS.

Thank you.

So its been a week or two...

What's been keeping me busy, you ask?
A whole hell of a lot of nothing.
Like what, you ask?
Cartoons...
Uh huh.
Uh, reading books...
Ok...
Work...
Yeah, that's a given.

Ok. I'll admit. I've been a lazy sack of poo. I'll see what I can do about that.

It's heeeeere...

It’s official. Winter has arrived. This week it managed to snow. This means several things:

1) Entire days of listening to my dog growl at the foreign substance falling from the sky.
2) Fearing for my life when I get on the roads…not due to the snow but from the university student drivers who have never driven in said snow before.
3) The scantily clad mallrats have to dress warmer and finally put some damn clothes on.
4) A new circle of hell is going to be declared for evil holiday shoppers and the general rude population.
5) I can keep working on my non-tan.

Uh, hooray?

On the outside looking in

As many people do, I hope to (someday) be in a relationship that is beautiful and fulfilling. It’s something that most people want. Sadly, through my adult life I have seen an unfortunate phenomenon for some couples. The circle of people around the couple is not supportive and sometimes even brutal.
Case in point, a friend I cared for very much was a woman in her early thirties. She was the most devout woman I have met and her warmth extended to not only those in her faith but to all people. She also suffered from a nervous disorder but never let it affect her warm disposition. She managed to find her equal during our friendship. What people saw as a complication was that he was 8 years her junior. People criticized them and deemed their relationship ugly and inappropriate. She would talk to me and tell me how wonderful it was to find someone and then cry about the terrible things that were being said about her. The couple was ultimately outcast with the exception of a few close friends. I was so happy for them when they got married but it saddened me to see so many faces missing at the wedding.
I’ve seen similar treatment repeated in my own life, the lives of my family members, and the lives of friends. Straight, gay, mixed race, mixed background,, mixed religion, colorful pasts – all have invited the criticism of those surrounding the couple. I wish people would reserve judgement and just be happy. Granted, sometimes beautiful relationships fall apart. Sometimes they appear doomed from the beginning. But for the sake of the people they care about, I wish they would just rejoice and be supportive. Life is too short and love too scarce.

Tis the season

With the advent of November, my thoughts have instantly fastforwarded to the upcoming holidays. While Christmas has its definite perks, as I’m getting older, Thanksgiving is becoming my favorite holiday. It has the benefits of Christmas without all the spending of money. The largest perk of Thanksgiving is getting to spend time with my family. While I was banished to the outer realm known as Kansas City, time spent with my family became more and more precious. I’ve managed to maintain this appreciation even since moving back and being smothered at every possible moment by them (and I mean that in the nicest way, seriously). Now when I say “family” I feel the need to clarify. I am NOT one of those people that thinks that if you share blood, you’re family. In my mind, I have already detached most of my blood relatives from my family. I don’t like them as people and really don’t feel the need to pretend to in order to keep up appearances. I’d rather not invite them to functions and enjoy the festivities, but that’s just me (I try not to be a horrendous bitch around these people for the sake of those who DO have to deal with them. I’m not totally heartless.).
On the flip side of things, as my siblings and I have gotten older, we’re expanding the group of people I DO consider family. They are people that I may not be related to directly but I like them genuinely and have no qualms inviting them into our quirky little group. Some are the significant others of my siblings, some are the families of their significant others, and some are just random stragglers that get invited to functions wholeheartedly. I’m more apt to consider these people my real family, people who choose to be around rather than are forced into it by social norm.
So going into this holiday season, I would like to extend my warmest fuzziest feelings towards those I consider family. May this season find you happy and healthy and hopefully sitting across from me at the table. And to those I don’t consider family…I hear Denny’s has a lovely holiday menu.

Oh for cute...

One of the perks of halloween is being able to hand candy out where I work. Here in the midwest, snow for trick or treating is not unusual. To accomodate years such as that, the mall I work in has a couple hours dedicated for the kiddles to come around in costume and ask for candy from the retailers. Its fun for everyone and it keeps the munchkins warm.
Typically, I'm not really kid-friendly. With the exception of my nephew, kids make me a little stressed out and I just don't know how to interact with them. While I sometimes wonder if this is a sign I'm a sociopath, I think the realistic explanation is I'm just not that mother type. At any rate, my boss decided to give me the job of handing out the candy and interacting one on one with the lil noseminers. I spent a good two hours acting cheerful and talking in what I've mocked as "the mother octave"- that high, singsong voice that comes over women when they're talking to children. It gave me a headache. After being tsunami-ed with cuteness for a couple hours, I came to realize something. The idea of having children becomes less fearful with one simple thought. If I could put them in a cute little frog or lion costume for thier entire childhood life, I think I could handle it. Granted, they would be bitter and maladjusted adults but by god, I think I could handle them if they were cute, cuddly, and in a sugar coma for most of the time. Its a thought.

The Siren call of the "Real World"

This weekend turned out to be full of ups and downs. I managed to go out on Friday night and then spent the rest of the weekend holed up, playing warcraft. In a sad conclusion to my weekend, two of my favorite people from the game have decided to call it quits to spend more quality time in the real world. While I'm sad to see them go, underneath it all I'm jealous as all get out. They've got things more pressing than pixels to keep them busy.
If you couldn't tell, my effort to make friends is just barely creeping along. Granted, I did go out on Friday. But I'm not sure if I consider it significant. I didn't know anyone at besides my boss and had to have a couple drinks in order to talk to anyone. And now that its over, I'll most likely never see any of them ever again. It happens. I'm painfully hopeful that when I start classes in the spring that things will change. In the meantime, I'm spending time with myself, wondering why sarcastic redheads aren't more in demand. Maybe the market is flooded...

Blantant sarcasm is the sign of a good friend

Or so it would seem from the comment boards on my recent posts. Yes...I've been MIA. Yes...my posts have been a little scraggly. Yes...I was abducted by aliens and just recently returned. Okay, maybe not the last one. I'll be the first to admit, when I scoot up to my laptop in the evenings, typically my blog is the last thing on my mind. I get sidetracked by my new toon on Warcraft and just get sucked in...next thing you know, its 1 AM and I need to get to bed in order to be at work on time. So I'm gonna try something. I'm going to leave myself a little memo hidden in the wallpaper of my laptop. It will say, BLOG FIRST YOU IDIOT. Hopefully, this will curb some of the sarcasm from the peanut gallery...but who am I kidding.

Just in time for fall...

my dog is asking to be turned into a scarf. This morning while getting around for work, I heard a suspicious cracking noise from the other room. I come around the corner to find my dog chomping on one of my newest favorite cds. After screaming a few choice words, I realized that my dog is incapable of that guilty look that most dogs are highly skilled at. Not even a FEIGNED SENSE OF SHAME. She is currently sleeping peacefully on the couch. Damn dog.

Why are people such jerks?

I ask myself this a lot. More often when I'm at work. What makes one person feel the need to be rude to another? I used to run into this a ton when I worked at a big box pet store. I had one lady shove a cart at me because she was pissed that we were out of her dog food. Today a woman complained with big angry drama at me because she had to wait so long. I am but one person. I can only move so fast. I was doing all I could not to take her glasses from her, crush them into tiny pieces and tell her that maybe at the next place she wanted them fixed at, they wouldn't take nearly so long. The anger just stayed with me for the next hour or so that I was there. I can see how the jerk-ness can just travel around. I was doing my best not to let it seep into other areas of my day but everyone just kept pissing me off after that. I left work and headed for the only remedy that I'm aware of. Puppies. Yes, you heard me. I went home, let the dogs out and just ran around and played with them for a half hour out in the sunshine. And when I came inside, I made chocolate chip cookies. Real ones. Not the diabetic crappy ones I made the other day for the sake of my parents (sorry mom, but they ARE truly nasty) but the REAL ones. I ate cookies and took a catnap with a REAL cat and by george, I felt pretty good after that. So here is my proposition for world peace. Send everyone a puppy, some sunshine, and some real-ass chocolate chip cookies. The world would be a better place.

work work work work work work work

See a trend? Yeah, that's where I've been a lot lately. Not busy, just there. I've been reading a ton of books and pondering all of life's mysteries. Unfortunately, none of those mysteries are very interesting so they aren't blogworthy. Guess that, too, is one of the mysteries of being a mystery. Perhaps something of interest will happen this week. Keeping my fingers crossed.

If I need to tackle anyone in my sleep, I'm ready

With the temperature change as of late my body has taken notice in one painfully peculiar way. I've been clenching my jaw tighter than a block of cheese at a surfing contest. Yes, I know that made no sense. The pain is radiating to my brain, I tell you. I pop in now and then to make a conscious effort to unclench. Soon enough tho, the dull ache creeps up and around my head. I only do this when I'm cold. I don't shiver really, I just clench down like a pitbull. Stress, you ask? No no, when I'm stressed, I grind my teeth. Totally different. So in the meantime, while my stupid face is getting used to the season, I've taken to wearing my football mouthguard looking thing. No, this isn't the ginormous, rubbery, brightly colored mouthguard. This is the slim, streamlined, sexy mouthguard.

Trust me on this.

Brains have seasons too

Along with the onset of autumn, I've noticed a little change in my thought processes. I'm spending more time in daydreams, spacing off, and thinking about anything and everything. Nothing frantic, just a constant lull where I spend the majority of my time just thinking. And nothing too deep either. I spent a chunk of time today thinking about why people buy greeting cards. It was borderline stupid.

i need to watch more tv and kill off some of these brain cells.

What do you do when you're not plotting his death?

At my job, there used to be a girl I worked with previously for a short time. She was high energy, a little self absorbed, and constantly babbling about "my boyfriend". We all knew him, he is the infamous douchebag who thinks he's a hottie. Yet, regardless of the fact we knew his name, it was always "my boyfriend" this and "my boyfriend" that. Her life revolved around her "boyfriend" in an almost tragic way. While I was on a temporary hiatus from that job, things went sour between the two love birds and she ended up moving back home, out of state. Since then, she has taken it upon herself to wage war against her ex. She's sending pictures of her kissing other guys to his coworkers and anyone else who's email she has. She's posting slurs and slams all over her myspace. She's gathered a pack of cronies who sign off all thier emails and posts with "we hate Larry*".

This all seems to me...a little on the pathetic side.

Ok. A LOT on the pathetic side.

I just can't understand this mentality. What is it that makes you want to tear up someone to little bits who a couple months previous, you wanted to give your whole heart and soul to? And in such an immature and ridiculous way. And she has FOLLOWERS. I just don't get it. Are people really so bored in thier own lives that they have to join the misguided battle of someone else's dead relationship?

Perhaps this is why singlehood is the best thing for me right now. I am not ready to get into a relationship merely for the fact that my mind is not prepared for the psychotic outlash that it must endure following the dissolution. I'm sure it takes months of meditation and blackmail gathering in order to wage such a war of stupidity. I'll just stick with the boring day to day of being calm and rational, thank you.

*Name changed to protect the endangered.

Slutty witches and one night stands

I traipsed through the halloween costume shop today and was dismayed. Maybe I'm getting too old but all the costumes seemed to be based in innuendo or just plain skimpy. What happened to the days when you were supposed to be scary, not perverted? Granted, I thought the One Night Stand (a nightstand base with lampshade hat) was kind of clever, but the rest just seemed 'blah'. My next thought is what do the day to day slutty people wear for halloween? Do they dress in conservative suits and prim pant ensembles? Its an entriguing thought. I'm half tempted to stop someone slutty and ask them but I would hate to be the person to let them know that the rest of the world thinks they look slutty. I'm not ready to be a Dr. Phil. Oh man, now THAT would be a scary costume idea...

If the fear of touching you weren't so strong, I'd slap you.

My latest job adventure has me working in an optical shop inside a mall (hold all "oohs" and "ahs" til the end, please). While the nonstop people watching has its entertainment value, the entertainment ceases when the freaks decide to break the line and wander into my shop. There is one in particular that regularly crosses this line and I'm reaching my limit of politeness. This one is an older gentleman, appears relatively normal but his history within this mall makes him a disturbing breed of ick. He's been kicked out for stealing women's underwear and the gals at Vicky's filed a complaint against his loitering in the vicinity. After a short-lived disappearance, he's come back. Typically he just roams but once a night he wanders into our store, regardless of who is working. Be it me or my 6'5 male counterpart, he stops to get his glasses cleaned. How dirty can they really be if you're in here every single night, I mean really. Last night I was ready to end it all. He sat down, made himself comfy, and handed me his glasses. I took them to the far opposite side of the store, cleaned them and brought them back to him. If I tell him to "have a nice night" this is his cue to leave and typically he does so somewhat promptly. Last night he decided to be "asleep". I told him a good five times to "have a nice night" until finally he "woke up" and went on his way. If this is his new trick I'm tazering his sorry ass.

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be creepy fuckers.

Drinking coffee with my psyche

A few years ago, I briefly dated a guy that was very like-minded and we could talk and debate over pretty much anything. I say briefly because we were so like-minded that we were equally stubborn and refused to bend on any point of disagreement. It just didn't last. While I haven't seen the guy in person for a couple years, he regularly visits me...in my dreams. Now before you scoot closer to your monitor in anticipation of a juicy story, they aren't that kind of dreams. Everytime he appears, he and I are merely talking. We're sometimes at a coffee shop, sometimes walking around a park, sometimes sitting on a bench but always talking. In the morning I remember the conversations. They're like those you would have with any other friend. Catching up, talking over current situations, and getting advice. I've come to the conclusion that this old boyfriend happens to be the face my brain puts on my inner monologue in my dreams. When I need to talk something out with myself, here he is with his lovely face to give me the good or the bad news in his typically logical and sometimes irritating style. Its sometimes very frustrating to talk to him because in the waking world, I hated being wrong when talking to him but in dreamland, the bastard is always right. At any rate, he and I get together to chat every few weeks or so. He's kept updated on each and every aspect of my life (the good, bad, and ugly) because for some reason, he just knows.

A recent dream meeting with my friend over dinner has left me a little perplexed. We talked over many of the things going on in my life, per the usual, and then he told me he had some news. This is not usual. He told me that he was getting married and he wasn't sure how much we would be able to talk anymore. He did want me to meet his fiancee though. She materialized at the table, another person from my past. In the real world, we were all in the same social group although she and he were hardly the types to be seen together, but I digress. Back at dinner, she was very friendly and apologized that she might be monopolizing him in the future. And then she just faded out and I was left looking at my ex in complete confusion. He told me he still enjoyed talking to me and would try to make it in the future but I just needed to be lenient.

Now...I'm just not sure what to expect. Did my brain seriously decide that it needed to bow out gracefully from our little talks? Am I getting another person to talk to (I really hope its not the fiancee, I wasn't that fond of her in real life)? Why, in the midst of my SearchingForFriendsLoneliness has my brain decided I need to stop meeting with even a figment of a friend? This can't be normal. I wonder if my insurance covers cat scans...

Hoooo boy, can't wait!

One of the downsides to working/living indoors is that constant fluorescent "blah". I got to work with sleepy tunnel vision and by the time I'm leaving work, I'm alert but its typically dark out. This morning, while driving to class, I realized that the sunlight is changing. We are officially heading towards autumn (I say officially because nothing is official until I take notice). This realization brings two very distinct feelings to mind. 1) HOORAY, I love autumn and can't wait! and 2) Aw shit, winter is coming WAY too early. While its easy for me to wallow in the impending misery that is winter, I'm going to try and be an optimist and think only of autumn.
Here are just a couple of the things I truly love about the Season of Slow Leaf Death (think it will catch on? I'm emailing Martha...):

1) The leaves now blend in with my hair color, helping me hide in the wild.
2) I can drink hot coffee again without sweating.
3) People start burning things and it smells nice.
4) All the crazies congeal at the football stadium making the rest of the town nice and peaceful.
5) Being able to comfortably wear jeans again prevents people from gawking at my abnormally pale skin.
6) My dog takes it upon herself to wage war against falling leaves. They typically win. I laugh.
7) People start wearing long coats. The world looks classier in long coats. Just a thought.
8) Drizzly crappy days where you can sit in the coffee shop, read, and eavesdrop.
9) Those really bright windy days where you can just walk all day.
10) Soup, stew, and homemade bread.

Consider this my help wanted ad

Since moving back, one of the most startling realizations is how utterly and totally alone I am. I swear I'm not being a drama queen. When I moved to Kansas City, I left behind the few friends I had and started anew. The friends left behind were those I had in high school and to some degree, it was just a natural progression of things. Being back, I miss those friends I made in KC and find myself at a loss as to how to find new friends. I live in a college town and that has its benefits but looking around, I am acutely aware of what a couple years age difference can mean. Add to that what I consider my oddities in preference and the relatively small town I'm in and I am just having a hell of a time finding people who have similar interests. I have made a couple of friends online through gaming. I really enjoy talking to them but it's starting to pain me to do so. I get along so well with them that it frustrates me that I can't actually go places with these people or talk things over in a face to face situation. Ya know, do things that friends would normally do. It's almost a sad kind of heartbreak.

And so I'm at a loss. I'm not sure where to go or what to do in order to find people who have common interests. I have this awkward mental picture that its like picking people up at a bar..."Oh, I see you like (insert book/band/movie/food/muppet*) , me too! Ya wanna hang out?" Its a sad and desperate mental picture. So help me, people. Give me some advice. At this point, I'll take all I can get.

* I really don't look for people interested in muppets. That would just be too odd, even for me.

Not a beneficial weapon in fighting colds...

So I've been sick. Nothing new there. As most can relate, sometime sleep doesn't come easily when you're dying of the plague. But as a word of warning, here is something that doesn't help one iota.


Don't have one of these placed at the foot of your bed. More specifically, don't have one that is ready to bark her fool head off at anything and everything that may make noise in the night. That includes you blowing your nose or making random death groans. You will regret it.

I almost made it...

through the entire summer without getting sick. Until today. My sinuses have become the hottest vacation spot for all kinds of nastiness and I'm not particularly thrilled. My annoyance is so great that I did the 30 minute pharmacy line boxstep just to get the really good drugs. Add to that the 15 seconds of terror where I thought the man behind the counter was going to do a strip search because of my out of state driver's license...seriously man, I feel and look like hell...do you really think I'm a meth cook (wait, on second thought, don't answer that).

So two gallons of orange juice, half a box of the good drugs, and a box and a half of kleenex and I'm thinkin I'm getting better. I'm not, but I'm thinkin it. I gotta work tomorrow and if I think happy thoughts, perhaps they will come true. In all likelihood, I'm gonna sneeze all over some little old lady and get written up for my bad customer service and not following dress code by strapping a box of kleenex to my belt. As long as her name is Mildred. I wouldn't feel so bad if my writeup had the word Mildred in it.

Gonna need more drugs...

May I suggest a Gilette?

There's this guy where I'm working. I don't work with him directly but he stops in now and then. Today, he stopped in looking rather shaggy. I had a coworker comment on it and he promptly replied, "Well, Brad Pitt looks like this all the time". Sugar, you are not, nor will you ever be, Brad Pitt. Shave the pimpstache.

Idiot.

What's new with you?

For those who may have visited my previous blog, I've decided that perhaps I should update you on what has been going on. For those who never knew me before...well, consider this your introduction.

While living in Kansas City, I was a manager at a big box retail pet store. I loved it quite dearly and upon moving back to Iowa, I decided to try it out here. The catch to trying it here was that it also involved an hour commute one-way and god awful hours (getting up at 3 am to make it to work by 5 was painful...). After giving it a couple of months, I decided that I had had enough of retail and should try going back to school.

Yeah, going back to school. I already have one degree in the high demand field of archaeology. Super cool, mind you, but it doesn't really pay the bills. Not a whole lot of people care to know what died in their back yard about 10,000 years ago. So I am going back for something more worthwhile. At this point, I'm not really sure what that is but I'm willing to start slow to give myself time to figure that out.

I'm also a recent divorcee. Not a bad thing, just different. He and I are still good friends and I suspect that life will be much better for both of us this way. Life is too short to be unhappy for too much of it.

So that is the nutshell version. Boiled down further, I'm just adjusting to moving back to my home town, going back to school, and starting life over from square 15 ( I mean, its not like I'm going back to kindergarten or anything).

I wouldn't recommend it for a perfume, but...

Are there certain smells that remind you of good times? Ya know, baking cookies reminds you of the holidays...a certain cologne makes you think of a family member...the smell of decaying fish reminds you of summer. Yeah, that last one. Maybe its just me. This morning I took Bug for a walk at a local nature preserve and as we were rounding the lake I caught a whiff of that weird fishy, pond scummy smell. It hit me as that summer smell from my childhood when we would go visit my grandparents. They used to live on a lake and that smell would just hang in the air. I could remember climbing all over the slimy rocks, every once and awhile coming up on a rotting fish. Yeah, those were great times.

My other favorite it the smell of exhaust fumes. Yeah, I'm a farm girl. It always reminds me of when I was a kid and we waited for the schoolbus. My siblings and I would all be hangin out and my dad would leave in the pickup. As he'd drive by, we'd all get washed in exhaust. To this day, that smell reminds me of frosty, fall mornings.

I wish we could take scratch and sniff pictures.

You look familiar

Some out there may know that I previously had another blog. It covered my short married life and all that it entailed. Trying to add posts just left me staring at the cursor and wondering how to add chapters to a book that started in one genre and was going to end in another. It just kept troubling me. And so here is my solution. No longer just adding chapters, I'm just going to start a new book. Call it my sequel. Welcome to my mellow chaos...