Well Who Knew?

According to my stats, one person in Russia read my blog, along with two in Europe. I've gone international!

(This is just from a listing of my page views. In all honesty, these poor souls probably stumbled upon my poorly written crap and their lives will forever be damaged. I choose to think the more optimistic fantasy that strangers actually read this shit.)

DON'T RUIN THIS FOR ME GODDAMMIT.

I have friends! Yay! I feel slightly less loser-rific!

Standing on the verge of some great truth
Where I’m finally in my place
But I’m fumbling still for truth
And it’s cluttering my space
Casting shadows on my face.

I live my life by music. My car is full of CDs and the radio is always on. I can’t work out or run unless I have my IPod, and I have 10 years of choir under my belt. These past two years, I slowly put together a playlist of songs that resonated with pretty much every emotion I felt. It was usually what I listened to when I’d lie on the couch in a ball and cry, stare blankly at the ceiling, or (and I confess this with difficulty), lie in bed at night and contemplate the possibility of not waking up, and thinking it wouldn’t be so bad. (*NOTE* Don't freak out on me people. No one needs to be talking me off of a ledge anytime soon. While I did wish to just go to sleep and never wake up, it never crossed my mind to take a proactive approach to it. Calm yo ass down.)

And though I have the strength to move a hill
I can hardly leave my room
So I’ll sit perfectly still
And I’ll listen for a tune
While my mind is on the moon

One in particular is a song I heard in an indie flick, Away We Go, with Maya Rudolph and John Krazynski. Pretty much as soon as we left the theater, my sister and I went and got the soundtrack (translation: she bought it on ITunes, and I subsequently stole it in one of my periodical pillages of her laptop. Shut up.). Anyway, the name of the song is called Wait, by Alexi Murdoch. To me, the song asked the all-important question of, when the shit hits the fan, and I just can’t be this awesome person for you, will you still be here for me when I need you? Will you wait for me?

If I stumble, and if I stall
And if I slip now, and if I should fall?
And if I can’t be, all that I could be
Will you, will you wait for me?

I loved this song when I first heard it on the soundtrack. And it struck a chord in me later when I asked someone that very question, and his answer turned out to be no, he would not. For a time he feigned attempts to stay in my corner, but truthfully he was slowly backing out of my life until he finally turned tail and ran. And that’s regrettable. Devastating at the time, but I have grown so cold and distant to that particular chapter in my life that I can’t help but feel only distant anger mixed in with pity.

‘Cause everywhere I seem to be
I am only passing through
I dream these days about the sea
I always wake up feeling blue
Wishing I could dream of you.

At the same time, there are others who I asked the same question, and their answer was (and I get the feeling it always will be) that they would. If I have learned anything these last two years, it’s that you truly do find out who your friends are when you are at your lowest moments. The ones who force you to go to the gym and sweat out your misery (Buckner), the ones who surround you with new faces and new possibilities (Therese), the ones who go out and get ice cream or cheap steak with you at midnight (Rick-Nachooooo!), the ones who will drive through LA 5:00 traffic just so you can see the bench from 500 Days of Summer (Brian), the ones who will listen to you on the phone when you call with hysterical tears (my fabulous Nino!), the ones who invite you over for dinner and let you cry on the couch (Anne, Vanessa and Lucy). Even those who, if they didn’t live in Oregon, would show up at your door, slap you in the face and tell you to quit being such a whiny pendeja and shut up already (do I really need to name names with this one?). Anyfuckingway, before this gets all Oscar-Acceptance speech-ish (it already kinda is. Should I be wearing a dress instead of a Transformers T-shirt and jeans I've had since high school?), All of the party people I just named are full of The Awesome. There is a special place in my rotten, dessicated little heart for all of them, and as soon as I win me the lottery, I will buy them all some hookers and booze.

So if I stumble, and if I fall
And if I slip now, and lose it all?
And if I can’t be, all that I could be
Will you, will you wait for me?

(Ed Note: Don't ask me what brought this on all of a sudden. It's a temporary moment of insanity where I show emotions for some reason so just take it as is.)

This is why I'll never be an adult.

I would be lying if I said I never want to get married.

I know I can be all fire and brimstone and shit, and I sure as hell love having my own little hovel I can call my own, but on occasion, it can get a little dull.

However, as much as I’d like to make some poor sucker miserable one day, I’m not so sure about the actual wedding part.

Once, when Lucy first got engaged, she, my mom and I were sitting around discussing some wedding shenanigans. Probably talking about, oh I don’t know…place settings? What color underwear Lucy will be wearing? Whatever. In the midst of this, my mom turned to me with a blissful sigh and said, “Just think, one day we can plan your wedding!”

My reply? “uh…can’t I just elope?"

Mom: (with angry mom death stare) "that is NOT funny."

Me: "Well, isn’t that what you did?"

This was apparently the wrong answer.

Lucy’s wedding was the shit. We had tacos, piñatas, a load of booze, no bouquet toss (which I detest); my dress cost $30, and I got the do the Carlton dance. There are a few ideas from her wedding I might borrow, like not having a bouquet toss (again, HATE), tacos, and most definitely piñatas. There are a few other details though, that might earn me a court order barring me from planning my own wedding:

1. The wedding party will walk down the aisle to “The Final Countdown”, while I will walk down the aisle to “Get Down Tonight”
2. A bouncy castle, sumo suits or a ball pit. Possibly all three.
3. If I don’t get tacos, I want an In n Out truck.
4. Having the groomsmen and the bridesmaids do a dance-off, a la West Side Story, complete with snappy fingers. They can decide who will be the Jets and who will be the Sharks.
5. All the groomsmen will wear eye patches.
6. At the reception, have midgets walking around with sombreros that are also chip and salsa receptacles.
7. Have my first dance be "Stayin' Alive", complete with choreography.
8. Be married by a priest that sounds like the one from Princess Bride (if I get hitched at La Purisima, this is entirely possible), and he HAS to say, "Mawage is wat bwings us togevah, today"

Don't hate just because you didn't think of it first.

Mischief Managed.

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Un Rinconcito en el Cielo

I fucking hate funerals.

I know this is a redundant statement, because in all honesty, who (besides morticians, funeral directors and just creepy people in general) likes them? It’s like a really bad party where everyone gets together to reminisce and cry about the stiff, regardless of whether they were a good person or a worthless shitbag.

In my lifetime I have only been to six funerals, and yes, they were ALL good people. I would not have gone if they hadn’t been. I am sometimes honest to a fault, and I despise hypocrisy. I have said before that when certain people (who I have the great misfortune of being related to) snuff it, I’ll subsequently throw a party to celebrate that they are no longer around to poison society. At the very least I might attend the funeral to make sure they are dead.

Two months ago, I went to the memorial service of a dear, dear friend who was practically family. During the service, people were asked to share any stories or memories they had. This led to several church members approaching the pulpit to talk about how much of an inspiration Raul was, how strong he was in his faith, what a firm believer he was, etc. This I will not, or ever, challenge. In the face of a terrible and, eventually losing battle, Raul was strong and never lost faith that God was with him, no matter what was going to happen. He was a great kid and would have made a great police officer.

As a child, Raul was a right pain in the ass.

My parents were the best man and matron of honor at Raul’s parents’ wedding. My only memories of that day were waiting FOREVER at the park for the goddamn pictures to be taken already, and getting my chair upchucked (with me still in it, thank you very much) by some drunken fat guy trying to catch the garter. That shit hurt. Fucker. Anydangway, we have pretty much known Raul since his in-utero days. He was an adorable kid with eyes full of mischief, chubby cheeks and a bucktoothed smile that told you he was up to something and you’d better damn well run or hide the valuables.

Whenever my parents announced Raul and his parents were coming over, we’d groan internally and quickly go through the house, putting the breakable stuff on high shelves and locking our bedroom doors so we wouldn’t get our stuff stained, broken or set on fire. He is the only four-year old I have ever seen ride a full-sized mountain bike. He was driving before I even got my learner’s permit and left more girlfriends than I can count. He repeatedly asked my dad when they were going to steal a cow and make tacos.

Once, when I was around 8 or 9 years old, I was lying on the living room floor on my back watching TV. Raul was about 3 or so, and consequently weighed about thirty pounds, or whatever the average weight is for a toddler. Cue the running jump on little toddler feet, followed by a powerful leap, landing a perfect cannonball on my exposed torso. I deflated like a Goodyear slashed by a crazy ex, and at that moment, truly understood the meaning of ‘having the wind knocked out of you’, except it felt more like ‘having the wind (and any other internal organs) mercilessly pounded out of you by an insane and rabid child’.

He was stubborn, mischievous, occasionally obnoxious, always entertaining. He was also sweet, brave, and unfailingly kind.

I will always think of him as my guardian angel.

Holy F*cking Shitbags Batman, It's HOT!

You wanna know how hot it was last week, kids?

So hot, I ate hummus with my finger (I was hungry too, obviously) because I didn’t have any pita chips, did not want to venture outside in search of pita chips and sure as HELL did not want to turn on the oven to make pita chips.

So hot that I opened my freezer several times to put things in it, only to leave said freezer door open and let cold air blow over my simultaneously dry and sweaty face.

And, more importantly, so hot that I didn’t wanna use my own potty.

Anyone who knows me knows that there are few things I am squeamish about. Burping is funny. I have seen, touched and smelled many icky things during my time as Da Man and I have no qualms with discussing them. Preferably with REALLY delicate people, and the more inappropriate the setting (weddings, people’s parents’ houses, church) the better. I am also bothered by the fact that in the 2-year duration of last relationship, I heard Boy burp once (he claimed it as an accidental hiccup) and I absolutely never, EVER heard him fart.

My family adheres to a particular saying, one that, if you have been paying attention kiddos, I used as a previous blog post.

“It always comes back to poo.”

We could be having a Socratic seminar about the situation in Darfur, or the condition if public schools, or church gossip. Somehow the conversation will somehow make an eventual transition to doody. We’re just those kinds of somistificated peeps

There are however, certain things I AM squeamish about, things that I myself will admit are kind of…well, off.

1.) Being touched by anyone who is not related to me. There are very few exceptions to this rule, and most of them are either female or gay. Everyone else pretty much needs my blessing. If I am familiar with you, I might make the contact as short as humanly possible (a high-five maybe, or a knuckle bump?). If you and I are strangers, expect to get yerself a one-way ticket to I-kick-your-assville. My mom would be happy about this because my don’t-fucking-touch-me-Asshole attitude means I ain’ts no skankalicious hobag.

2.) Dead aminals. I see squished bunnies, mice and lizards on my running trail all the time and it always makes me cringe inside, and on the occasions that they are directly in my path and I don’t see them until the last second, I yelp and leap out of the way so I don’t step on them. I also go around them when driving, or direct Fig over them so I don’t hit them with my tires. I accidentally rode my bike over a baby bird once at the park when I was a kid and the incident has haunted me ever since (read: it gives me the yuckies).
Oddly enough, dead PEOPLE don’t bother me. When I was in the academy one of the happy fun time field trips we took was to the county coroner’s office to watch an autopsy. When we filed into the hallway and I first spotted the little nekked Mexican man lying on the table, for a split second I thought, “Holy guts and ballsacks, it’s Dad’s brother So-and-so!” (It turned out not to be, but the fact that for that second I thought it was and felt no sadness told me what a real cold bitch I is.) Anydangway, we stood around for an hour or so watching this guy get cracked open and various organs and slimy things taken out and measured. After we walked out of the building and piled into the Mysterymobile, I promptly announced I had a hungry and wanted a cheeseburger. With bacon.

3.) Feet. In my opinion, feet beat out armpits, taints, underboobs or any other nasty part of the body you can think of. They are the ugly sisters of hands. Granted, they do most of the work, what with carting my ass around all day and repeatedly being slammed into the ground when I feel like running around, and on occasions when I am bored and I’m going to shower afterward anyfuckingway so everything will invariably be clean eventually, I will take out those little toe separator thingies and put color on my toenails. Mostly because when I try to paint my fingernails I almost always get bored while they dry and try to read, learn sing language, or do origami and I fuck them up. Plus I am Veiny Manlyhands so painting my fingernails pretty colors just looks fucking stupid. But yeah. Dry feet, crusty feet, fat feet, flat feet, fake feet. Grosses me out. On the plus side, for you mens out there, if you decide you hate yourself and want to hang out with me a lot and stuff, this means I will never, EVER ask you to rub my feet because that’s just really gross. That also means however that I will never touch yours.

4.) Warm toilet seats. Growing up, I always wanted to be the first one in the bathroom so I could sit my bare ass on a cool, unsoiled (ha) commode. To me, the fact that it was still cold meant it was sterile and unpolluted by anyone else’s buttgermies. I DETESTED using the bathroom after anyone else. If Jeebuz himself came over and announced he had to blow a holy dookie I probably would have told even the Son of God that no, I did not want to sit on a toilet that felt warm and slightly oily and he was just gonna have to wait, even if that meant I wasn’t getting any fish or bread.

Remember how I first started this post and I mentioned I didn’t like using the potty when it was hot? Well in the span of this entry I wrote about the weather, feets, not being skanky, and the academy. I also talked about poo.

It always, ALWAYS comes back to poo.

I Is Flexible

I told myself I wouldn't pull another entry from my archives, considering I only have two archive entries left. Scratch that. After posting this, I will have one entry left. So sue me. It was 109 degrees today. Too hot to wear pants, let alone think. This is yet another entry from last year, during my first adventures in unemployment. Enjoy!

I’m not sure what’s worse. Just how bad daytime TV is, or the fact that I’m sitting here watching Kathy Lee and some token black lady who acts white talk about their weekends in the Hamptons.

I have now entered the profession of Full-Time Slacker.

I would like to make it perfectly clear that I have tried to avoid that. The day after I got sacked I got up (eventually) and began looking for both temporary and permanent employment. I called every Starbucks in the area and finally found one that was looking for hopefuls whose sole aspiration was to wear green aprons and make 90 Caramel Frappachinos for spoiled high schoolers. Bingo! Health insurance! Unfortunately the search for a second job yielded very little, unless I wanted to earn money convincing Orange County’s virgins and night owls to, "call this number to chat live with sexy singles!"

Which is why I now find myself on the couch almost daily watching badly dressed single moms trying to find their babydaddies, or even badlier dressed 14-year olds telling the world that they wanna have a baby and there ain’t nuthin they mama or nobody else can do ‘bout it.

Which brings a dilemma: go out and have a damn life but be tempted to spend money I don’t have, or stay in all day to the point that I start to creep out the neighbors? All I do at this point is go running and then to the gym, and there’s only so much of that I can do. But this is starting to get serious. I’m now weirder than our pot-smoking neighbor who plays rock at 4 in the morning and who we once found in the pool at 9:00 p.m. yelling about how Jesus was from Lebanon and that “those damn towelheads were all haters.”

I know! I’ll try that Bikram Yoga stuff my friend Therese is always raving about. Sure, I’m not allowed to wear socks and the room is set to 105 degrees, but it’s just stretching for ninety minutes! How hard can it possibly be?

Finding the place is easy enough. The receptionist greets me and I pay her the $29 for the 2-week intro package.

“Have you done hot yoga before?” She asks.

Actually, I had done yoga at some other place a few months before. It was a little dull and I felt I never quite fit in on account of the fact that I wasn’t Korean. Plus, after a few sessions of dancing around to “It’s Raining Men”, I decided to find a new yoga joint that was more yoga-ish.

The receptionist directs me to the exercise room and recommends that I find a spot to set my mat and towel down. The whole room feels like a hut in central Mexico in the dead of summer and smells like an 8th grade boy’s locker room after a game of flag football. Seriously, haven’t these people ever heard of air fresheners? All people do in here is sweat. You’d think they’d have the foresight to spray a little Febreeze now and then. To make matters worse, the whole room is lined with mirrors so I’ll be able to see myself try to put my knees around my neck.

People are beginning to trickle in for the last class of the day. I unwillingly take note of every midriff bared to reveal a perfectly taut tummy. I glance at myself in the mirror. There’s something wrong with these mirrors. Are they supposed to make you look squat and round? I almost expect to sprout hair on my feet and prance away to The Shire with Elijah Wood. Although if he shaved the gnarly facial hair that wouldn’t be so bad. And no foot hair. Ew.

The instructor walks in and of course she is tall and toned. She launches right into the class and now I’m grateful for the mirrors; without any instruction I have to look at the people next to me to know what pose to do next. There are a couple of exercises I am able to do well and others that I could do if I did away with that skeleton I am so keen on keeping. By the time class is over I look like I got locked out of my apartment during a sweaty rainstorm. I get in my car and immediately my body heat fogs up all my windows. I’m damp all over so I lean forward as I drive so I won’t soak into my upholstery. Note to self: bring a towel tomorrow.

This is how each of my days now progresses: I get up thinking I have something to do, when in reality all I do is run and then go sweat in a giant sauna for an hour and a half. I try to change it up, like riding my bike to my yoga class. It’s a few miles away so I consider it time well spent, until after three days my left shoulder starts to hurt and I realize I’m badly sunburned. Worse yet, with my variety of sports bras and tank tops over the last three days my back now looks like the lattice pattern on top of a pie. Plus, I have a mountain bike, which means the seat is as hard as a rock and my butt now feels like the jail snitch’s. And I hate carting the yoga mat around in my backpack, which isn’t big enough to carry it so I have this huge black tube hitting me awkwardly on the back of the head as I pedal. Driving is okay.

As the last few days of my intro package comes to an end, I realize I can stand longer in bow pose (balancing on one foot with the other being held up above your head. No, I never got that high up), I’m getting closer to the splits and I can kneel on the floor and then arch my back so that I’m almost lying down, staring at the back wall. Impressive! It makes up for the constant flow of hippies that come in wearing Crocs and drive away in their Toyota Priuses, the flatulent people who let ‘em rip and hope no one notices (newsflash: the room is dead quiet; we can HEAR you!), and that odd dude who thinks its ok to come to class in his Fruit Of the Looms.

I am flexible! I am pliable! I am…about to finish my yoga membership. Shit. Evil bastards! This was their plan all along! Draw me in by showing me the crazy contortionist crap I can do and then ask me to join for five times the amount I originally paid. I’m onto their diabolical plan now. Unfortunately for them, I was willing to shell out the $29 for the intro classes, but there is no more blood to squeeze out of this unemployed (albeit now flexible) turnip. And with that, my hot yoga days are over.