z-y-z...

What do the following words have in common?

Trump
Starbucks
Walgreens
Bronx

They're all really, really fun to stay backwards. Try it with the kids!

Smooooooooth

As noticed by my eagle-eyed husband:

Dunkin' Donuts must have REALLY high hopes for their strawberry-banana smoothie.

Mmmmm memo

To: Baskin-Robbins
cc: IHOP, Jamba Juice,

Please consider renaming some of your more popular items. While ordering "Truffle in Paradise", "Rooty Tooty Fresh n' Fruity", or "Berry Lime Sublime" is certainly more "fun" than asking for chocolate ice cream, pancakes and fruit or a smoothie, it does lead to a certain loss of pride when the scooper doesn't speak English well enough to tell the difference between the flavors, thus leading the customer into doing an ice cream pantomime pointing dance while yelling "No! Not Perfectly Peach, I want Maui Brownie Madness! Madness! Maaaaaaaaaadness!!

I await your prompt attention in this matter.

Very truly yours,
The girl that just wanted chocolate ice cream with some damn rainbow sprinkles.

AWESOME

My unemployment benefits have officially dried up. The meager little check New York State has been sending me once a week is now no longer, and while it was well below what I made as a human being with some kind of worth, it paid the rent and sometimes allowed me to sleep at night. Sometimes.

I knew my claim couldn't last forever, and I had actually managed to extend it for several months past it's projected end-date. I've been keeping a keener watch on my finances lately, so I won't be fucked six ways 'til Sunday...yet. August will be interesting. The 17th will be my first anniversary of being a total loser with no job, and I'm already planning on hiding under the bed. The odds of any of the zillion jobs I've interviewed for to suddenly call me are getting lower by the day and I've already started stockpiling Fruit Roll-ups.

Speaking of that, I'm also hungry, but I'm afraid to go into the kitchen, on the chance that I'll spill lemon juice and salt into the gaping wound that is my ego, pride and self-esteem.

What am I?

The thing that irrationally bugs me about those character generators is that The Real Me never looks like The Cartoon Me. According to Designher Gals, this is what I look like.

Starting from the top, the maker gets one or two things right. I do, in fact, have red hair, and even though it's being represented by more of an orange, I can get behind the fact that Fire Engine Red is even further from the truth. Continuing on down, as long as the black t-shirt and denim skirt came from Old Navy, we're three for three, and those flipflops look suspiciously like Reefs. Apparel-wise, the DG is spot-on.

However, If my bangs were that cute, summer 2000 wouldn't have included several billion bobbypins, gallons of hair gel, a variety of hats, and much gnashing of teeth when I finally said FUCK IT and went to work in a bonnet while my bangs grew out. I am also not six feet tall, and don't posess Cartoon Lesley's impressive phyisque. I mean, I wish I did, but even if I gave up cheeseburgers starting now, she still has a good seven inches on me and my last growth spurt was in 9th grade. Look at her arms, they hang to her knees! She could snake a toilet with those things!

I finally hit upon the one doll maker that really, truly reflects what I look like. I dare anyone who knows me to tell me this doesn't look eerily like me:
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It amuses me to no end that even on the internet, I'm sitting with the kids from South Park.

Express train to nowhere

Confidential to the man smashed up against on the uptown #6 this evening:

I'm flattered that, although we've never met face-to-face, you so obviously already have feelings for me. You've touched me in a way most never have, and it's clear your affections are hard...core. But it could never work between us; we're just too different. I like showering and brushing my teeth and I'd never dream of forcing my interests on you. That's never good for fragile, new relationships like ours.

And so, I bid you farewell. If I don't get off here, I'm certain that by 125th Street, we'll have ended badly. Best to do it on a good note.

Kitchen-ette

Just because the combined counterspace in my last several apartments totals less than 5 square-feet doesn't mean I can't cook. It just explains why potatoes are cooling on top of the air conditioner, chopped veggies are balanced within the dish-drain and the toaster is doing an admirable job of guarding the bread.

One year

A year ago today, this is what we had for dinner.

This weekend, we unwrapped the top layer and finally got to taste it. Despite the fact that it was kosher before freezing, it was more than edible after defrosting.

Except for the fruits on top. Those felt like snot.

Not-so-Friskies

She's been in and out of the vet all this week with her sick cat.

Is this going to be one of those Animal Planet garter-snake-with-a-tumor thing?

Oh yeah. They said it's either cancer or fatty liver disease.

Her cat has a fatty liver?

The first thing I thought when she told me...

Don't say it.

Paté?

Caté.

Oh my god, that's brilliant AND horrible.

We're going to hell.

CAT hell.

Grande 'tude

If you're going to rebel, refusing to order by tall, grande or venti isn't the way to do it. Oh sure, you're a badass for demanding a medium, but at the end of your coupe, you're still at Starbucks in Gap jeans, wearing Keds, drinking a triple-shot soy vanilla caramel macchiato with extra whipped cream. Doesn't exactly go with raging against the machine.


The revolution WILL be caffeinated.

Never enough

I found out today that some people I knew in my formal life as someone with a job have moved on from Company A to Company B. Company has been looking for employees for some time, but clearly, not me, because I've never gotten so much as an auto-respond from my resume. Of course.

I like this particular bunch of people and good for them for leaving our old cube farm before they caught what I got, but a growing part of me is sad. And jealous. And annoyed. And upset. They had perfectly good jobs, ones someone once sacrificed several others so they could keep them and they go and get more? I don't want to call it greedy, because we all have rent to pay, but...what about me? When is it my turn? When will there be enough for me? When will I get to stop hearing about everyone else's good fortune and finally have some of my own?

Do the 'do

Lately, I've noticed a rise in girls sporting mohaws. There were the goth girls on NJTransit, who had worked so hard to sculpt the rainbow-streaked masterpiecea that they glared at anyone who looked their way because god, they didn't do this for YOUpleasepleasepleasenoticemeSTOP STARING AT ME, PIG.

On the 6 train the other night, there were two sitings, a blonde that looked like the 'hawk may have been an unfortunate side efffect from sleeping with her head in a Kitchenaid. It was hard to tell.

The final entry was the most impressive, for the coordination factor alone. A black woman with short hair, had bleached the top, dyed it yellow and green and spiked it. She was wearing all black, but her eye makeup, jewelry and flipflops all tied into her 'do and it looked pretty damn cool.

I don't know how long it takes or how much product is involved to do the 'hawk right, but I do know that the odds of me trying this one out are pretty low.

2C

My neighbors (2C) have, at any given moment, approximately 47 people living in their apartment, and only one set of keys between them. Thus, when someone needs to get upstairs, they just ring the buzzer.

Buzz.

Buzz.

BUZZ.

BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzz buzzbuzz buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzz

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuzz.

Lucky for us, this can be heard throughout the entire building. Someone will buzz them in, which is followed by someone (or several people) crashing up the stairs to pound on the door.

Pound.

Pound.

POUND.

POUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUND
POUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUND
POUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUNDPOUND.

etc.

It's really nice to listen to, several times a day. Even better when they turn the tv up to 11 at 7am on Saturday mornings.

Money for nothing

It's that rare moment in the month where everything is in it's place. The rent and bills are paid, COBRA has gone out, and there's just enough money leftover to let me sleep at night. It doesn't last forever, but for now, it's the sweetest feeling in the world.

So what's mine?

The more I think about it, the more I know I need to change my outlook on life, but I'm not sure how. I got married almost a year ago, which was and continues to be, fantastic, but then I lost my job last August and work has been few and far between since then.

I didn't realize it at the time, but a more-than-healthy significant portion of my identity was wrapped up in that job. It defined me, as what I did for a living, as a title and as a person. I know in the most important schemes, I didn't deserve to lose my job, but a voice inside me, lurking even in the best times, constantly reminds me that hubris is a very bad thing and I was certainly proud of that job. Maybe too proud.

I know that when/if I ever get another job, I'll long for the nights of staying up late and waking up without the alarm, but the reality of that existence, is that it's lonely. I spent almost every day, alone, without much to do. The house is clean, the laundry is done, and the fridge is full. Everyone is at work, and I'm left here, staring at the walls, left to my thoughts, which is a bad place to be.

I want to be happier, I really do and I know it's all tied in my feeling useful and accomplished, which is what working gave me and now that I don't have that, I don't know where to go from here. I don't know how to recreate that feeling of having a purpose without anything to do.

Quack

I dreamt last night that we had a little pet brown duck named Patrick. He lived happily in our tiny little apartment and quacked a lot. I somehow managed to litterbox-train him and he had a blue kiddie pool where our bar currently lives.

When I woke up, I was more than a little disappointed that it was just a dream. When we win the lottery, I'm definitely going to have to make this one happen. He was a nice duck.

600 lb. polar bear

Upon discovering the sabotaged Egg Beaters this evening and not wanting to get Tylenol'd, omelet plans were scrapped in favor of pasta with the already-prepared potatoes and toast. I haven't had this much white flour since I worked on the low carb show.

Irony, noted.

It's goin' rain

I got caught in the first really good thunderstorm of the summer while walking home last night. I had 4 blocks to go, when the skies opened up and the rain came sheeting down. I was soaked to the bone in 30 seconds, but, while the sidewalks rolled up and people ran for cover (sidenote: ladies, that Gristedes bag on your head isn't doing you any favors, hair-wise or other), I slowed down, and took it all in. The water was warm and I was wearing shorts and flipflops, going out of my way to step in all the puddles.

When I got home, I was dripping wet. I left my wet clothes in a pile in the kitchen and immediately got into the shower. While it had the nice-smelling soap, it wasn't nearly as good as the rain.

For me, summer is like Hannukah, Christmas, Halloween, my birthday and the last day of school, all rolled into one.