Wednesday Is The Day I Don't Get To Watch Television At Night Because Of Stupid College. I Hate College.

1) When I refer to being in my "office" when I'm writing this, you should know that what that really means is that I'm perched on a blue and white striped couch with a laptop on my knees. The "office" is the room where my "I live alone" living room came to die in Randy's "I live alone with better shit than yours" house. So it's me and this couch and a table with a cigarette burn in it that I think makes it look hard and beaten and tough-loved (you know, for IKEA), three bookcases with maybe eight hundred million thousand dollars worth of ebay books, two velociraptors made entirely out of seashells, a plaster-of-paris chicken and some other stuff that I refuse to live without. Oh. A bowl with ceramic frogs on it. And right now I have a glass of red wine resting pensively on a paperback book on the couch. Place your bets. I bet celsius. Minus seven.

2) The highlight of my day today was a conversation I had with Jen in which we discussed potential ideas for my impending Renaissance Lit paper. "Impending" in that it was due about an hour from RIGHT THEN. Jen had the immeasurably brilliant idea that I should make my paper a performance piece. I won't go into the gritty details, but it ended with me in a tee-shirt that said "My Whole Family Just Died Of The Plague And All I Got Was This Disease-Infested Tee Shirt", walking around with a tallboy of Meade in a woven grass basket and carrying a club for killing bunnies. I think in the piece I ultimately get hit by an oxcart. No matter. Oxcart... plague... rabies... whatsey whosey. I love Jen.

3) The girl that sits next to me in class went on and ON about her addiction to coffee this evening. She giggled and purred and all-around couldn't BELIEVE how much she craved coffee! She had always told herself that she wouldn't be like her mother and drink coffee all day but... here she was! Giggle! Purr!
She was sipping on a Starbucks caramel mochachino as she admitted her horrifying addiction. I... I can't even find the words, people...

Psychic Croissants in... Taking One For The Team!

I stumbled into the kitchen this morning feeling particularly peckish. Scrambled eggs and cottage cheese! With hot sauce! As usual! I was reaching under the counter for the scrambler pan when I heard a muffled throat clearing. Slight, yet haughty. Polite, yet arrogant. I rolled my eyes and turned around. Sure enough. White bag of croissants. Rustling.

"What, man?" I asked, exasperated. "I told Randy I didn't want croissants! You're not for me, you're for Chris. And he's still sleeping. So keep playing word games or whatever." And I turned back to the stove. But it's never that easy.

"Um...?" began the bag. "But, why, though? I mean, you know, why?" That damned cherry-filled.

"Because you're huge! You're just a huge, big, giant ball of dough! With.. cherries. And icing. And anyway, you're Chris's."

The bag tittered. "Actually, Chris isn't going to get up for another four and a half hours. And then he's not going to feel well so he's going to go sit in the steam room at the gym." That fucking cream cheese-filled. "He'll give two old men a sinus infection. One of them will have to take Ciprofloxacin. "

"Guys, no. Stop it. I'm having eggs."

"You're out of eggs."

Shit. No point in even looking, then; cream cheese-filled is never ever wrong.

I look at the bag. The bag looks at me.

"I have an icing heart on me this time!" sings cherry-filled, rocking back and forth. And what am I supposed to do then?

"You're going to eat us both," reports cream cheese-filled happily. "And then later, you'll be brushing crumbs off of your shirt and you'll get a big croissant flake up your nose. You'll smell croissants for like three hours." And then they both burst out laughing like little schoolgirl croissants.

Psychic croissants: always right, but a sense of humor like a bag of rocks.

Not Much To Report, Squadron B.

We did a lot of cleaning yesterday; there was a lot of shit that had to be thrown away if we were ever going to make Randy's "all foosball all the time" room a reality. We don't clean well together, though; Randy is a keeper and I'm a thrower awayer. We started out fairly judicious with one another but as the afternoon wore on I'd find him cradling a bent wire hanger like a sleeping infant and weeping, and he'd catch me frantically throwing everyone's ski clothes and baby pictures into the garbage. It was all worth it in the end though. A whole room devoted to a three-legged foosball table with no ball. We're grownups.

UPDATE: You know that the foosball table is way too close to the wall when, while foosing with a tangerine, you get stabbed in the liver by the overzealous defense.

The Do-It-Yourself Car Wash: It's Humiliation Attached To A High-Powered Vacuum, Complete With Water In The Face!

1) My car smelled like six-year-old Marlboro smoke, fiberglass insulation, hot sand and standing water. The dust layer was so thick on the inside of the windshield that when the sun was just right I kept almost hitting people in front of the Safeway. I had become entombed in dust, and strangers pushing carts shouldn't have to die (or fall down hard) because of it. It was time. And since I was particularly quarter rich this morning, I decided that I would treat the Nissan to a spa day.

2) I should have cleaned the interior out at home, probably. Anybody else carry around a locked metal box full of diaries from when they were ten? Or three umbrellas? IN ARIZONA? And a bottle of conditioner exploded in the back seat. I didn't know that was back there. Pretty happy about it, though. A big puddle of congealed conditioner isn't ghetto at all. I never thought I'd be the girl who has to say, "Oh, wait! Let me LAY SOMETHING DOWN FIRST."

3) Let's talk about the vacuum.

Ask me how many times I got tangled in the vacuum hose.

Ask me how many times I tripped over the vacuum hose and fell down.

Ask me how many times I sucked my own hair into the vacuum.

Ask me how many pennies the vacuum sucked up and then made horrible loud retching sounds about.

Okay. I'm done talking about it now.

4) There was a guy next to me who had those fake bullethole stickers all over the side of his car. HA! HA! NO HE DIDN'T! He had REAL bulletholes all over the side of his car! I went from eye-rolling condescension to eyes-down minding my own beeswax in 2.2 seconds. When the water was dribbling out of those holes I kept expecting to see internal car parts slipping through... a tiny bolt, maybe some oil. Cars aren't human, though, so when you shoot them they don't crouch over and cry or demand to get taken to the emergency room or faint or scream that they're not ready to die. Although this car did seem to favor it's other quarterpanel a little. In a badass way. And it had a teardrop tattooed just under it's left headlight. So I'd hate to see the other car.

5) Yeah, I got pretty wet.

6) Hey, but I didn't spray under the hood this time, so I shouldn't have any $570 electrical "what the fuck did you do" issues like I did LAST time. You know. Fool me once.

7) I felt pretty stupid wiping ArmourAll on my multi-cracked dash. The car was polite though, and didn't scream "how 'bout a little bit of that, like, FOUR YEARS AGO???" the way I worried that it might. I think that was nice. That the car could be the bigger person.

8) And the whole thing only cost me $83.25! I'm so glad I didn't let somebody else do it for $15! Then I might not have gotten wet, hurt and scared! And I'd have TWO WHOLE HOURS to fill! Good decision!

9) I got a library overdue notice, an outstanding parking ticket and my student loan interest bill in the mail today. I rock.

Today! Except for anything after 10:22! Because I haven't done that stuff yet! Awwwwyeah. Bragging about my grasp of space and time!

1) I woke up in the middle of the night dreaming that someone was driving a Volkswagen over my skull. I was lying in a mud bog in the rain, and this kid kept backing over my head with his car. Needless to say, I woke up with a stomach ache. In my brain.

2) I spent a lot of my afternoon perched on the couch relishing in my brand new AIM lifestyle with Jen and staring out at the godforsaken terror that is my office. When I finally did get around to cleaning and organizing (read: when Jen signed off) I made a lot of progress, I think. I decided to keep the glass bunny and the glass octopus and the glass beaver and the glass piggies and the glass horses and glass ladybugs and the fish bottle opener and a box full of rocks and a snowman made out of shells on waterskis and I threw away all of my W2s, my life insurance information, my 401K packet, my LSAT scores, my GRE scores, my transcripts and a bunch of blank paper. I think it went well, and I feel better about life in general now.

So, you know. Priorities.

My classmates this evening were focused on Robert Lovelace. Very academic discussion: half the class was of the opinion that he probably did have a porn mustache, half the class vehemently thought that he did not. I couldn't say myself, really; I made my contribution hours before when we were talking about Robert Herrick. I try to make only one really long, multisyllabic genius observation per class period. The rest of the time I look around and act bored with the peasantry. I call it my "No one understood the first brilliant thing I said so I'm done talking" look. I don't know if it's working, but it feels pretty good. Anyway. I couldn't have been interested in the class discussion tonight (porn reference or no porn reference) because it took every single ounce of attentive dignity I own to NOT EAT the Hershey's kiss that happened to be laying on the floor next to my feet. It was all wrapped in its foil still, except for that one corner. And it still had it's proud little Hershey flag, even! That was the hardest thing I've ever done, not eating that chocolatey morsel. Man, I hate school.

UPDATE: I'd like to point out here that I did, in fact, type "Robert" Lovelace when his name is actually "Richard". You'll also notice that I spelled "Hershey's" correctly. And "chocolatey". I think.

Some Stuff That I Did While Waiting For My Tires To Be Rotated Yesterday That Was Not Reading Ben Jonson's Lyric Poetry:

1) Played Tetris on my new "pimp daddy mack" (mac? I'm so uncool.) cell phone. I hate the stupid square blocks! HATE. THEM.

2) Checked my email thirty-four times on my new "big ballin' on chrome" cell phone. Thanks for all of the comments! I read them in the Discount Tire waiting room. The old woman that looked like a witch and the harried mother of three apparent squirrel-children were extremely jealous.

3) Practiced forging Randy's signature. He keeps trying to show me how but I suck. You know how there were the kids in school who always had their parents' signatures down? Not me. I'll get it though. My Junior Felon status is just that important to me.

5) Called my cell phone service people and screamed about my bill. I can't even fathom how I owe them $274.

I left the bag of new phone books outside for two months. Chris brought them in yesterday even though I tried to stop him. I finally opened the bag today and found one big whitepages, one big yellowpages, three dead crickets and five tiny, pale yellow multi-directories. My phonebooks made babies! Interracial ones! Awwwwww!

Let's do another list of stuff that makes me uncomfortable.

1) I got to go to the James Taylor concert on Saturday, and I got to sit in the sixth row. This in and of itself did not make me uncomfortable. This made me happy. I really like James Taylor; I have forever. What I failed to realize (and here comes the uncomfortable part) is that I don't casually "like" James Taylor; I "psycho love" him. I sat in the sixth row and cried like a wee little infant. For like an hour. So if you were sitting in, say, the fifth row, and someone behind you was openly weeping for way more than an ignorable period of time, that was me. Hi.

2) When I'm at Costco browsing through the books (when I say "browsing", I really mean "holding little personal chicken standoffs with unsuspecting customers to see who will get out of who's way first". So I guess I mean "standing". Standing defensively. Near the books.) and I suddenly hear "take it where you want to go... just take that ass to the floor... pop something move something shake ya tail feather..." blaring with the force of a thousand Escalades on twenty-fours, I know that it's time to move to the other side of the store because R has found an on/off switch on a stereo that works. And, apparently, the volume control. And it makes me uncomfortable that I have to abandon a perfectly good standoff that I was totally winning. So if that woman with the cart from yesterday is reading this right now, YOU DIDN'T WIN.

3) I really, really wanted a Costco hotdog yesterday, but when I got to the front of the line the chick in front of me had gotten the LAST ONE. I told Randy and he said that he would push her down and take it for me. I said no, that's okay. Thanks though. But I thought later, "What if he was only kidding? What if I had said, 'yes, push that bitch down and get me that dog,' and he had flinched and said 'no'?" Hmmm. Uncomfortable.

4) I was at the gym today, and I kept seeing this woman with the most amazing legs. And a fantastic ass. And the tiniest little waist. And every time I saw her she was on the lat pull-down or the calf-raise-- all machines that were facing away from me-- so imagine my surprise when I caught up with her doing crunches and she was a fucking GUY, YO. When you factor in my grieving disappointment, this particular chain of events prompts an uncomfort so complex and convoluted that you can only nod at its magical web. Of uncomfort. Able. Ness.

Google Fiction! Searches Incorporated Into Brief And Awesome Tales!:

Francine pushed open the door to the gym purposefully, her gym bag in tow. It was five-thirty on Monday; if a large crowd was what she wanted, she'd never get a bigger one than right now. For weeks Francine had been coming in here, peddling her ass off, doing her stupid bicep curls... all for shit. Francine could give a fuck about her physical well-being; she was in this for one thing and one thing only-- the men. Cheaper than a dating service and a good way to check out the merchandise. A seven year contract? Sign her up! But so far... nothing. In her Hanes sweatpants and tent-like tee shirt, Francine blended into the background. What she needed was some PUNCH. Some FLAIR. Something that screamed out "I'M HERE, BOYS, AND I THINK YOU SHOULD TAKE ME HOME WITH YOU BECAUSE I'M SICK AS HELL OF RIDING THIS FUCKING BIKE." So on that Monday evening when she strode into the gym, every pair of eyes stopped watching the news and the game and the Seinfeld and stared open-mouthed at Francine in her shiny new erotic sports bra. Francine smiled. It might have been the patent leather. It might have been the blinking lights. Hell, it might have been the exposed nipples. Whatever. Francine had a hunch she wouldn't have to pedal very far tonight.

SERVED.

Randy's ex-girlfriend from like nine years ago "stopped by" last night. She's one of those who wants nothing to do with a guy until he's with someone else-- namely me-- and now it's birthday presents left on the porch and "Do you have so-and-so's address?" phone calls. Now, I really don't care that she "stopped by" at nine-fifteen to get a signature on a job referral; I had my awesome pants on and my hair looked fucking great. The problem is that I was momentarily flustered and I lost my groove and I made my Jello wrong. I didn't know you could even MAKE Jello wrong. Apparently you can. I poked at it for awhile this morning. It's definitely wrong. I can't believe I wasted all that... water. I told Randy that she disrupted my Jello chi and he said that I should sue her for wasting my flava. I think I probably will.

Mini-Lists! Yay!

Number of hours I spent at the bar this morning: one.

Number of hours I spent at the bar today total: Ha Ha! Trick question! Three hours.

Thanks to a freakishly premature cholesterol test tomorrow, the number of drinks partooken: no drinks.

Verifiability of the word "partooken": seven degrees of verifiability.

Consquentiality of the word "verifiability": eleven degrees of consequentiality.

Number of epochs I could play this retarded game seeing as how being at the bar for three hours not drinking has apparently had a "lock the puppy in the garage" effect: far too many epochs.

Jedi Chicken's response to camera violently chasing him: supernatural Jedi flight. Only flappier.

Number of years it took me to get a self-timed picture of my tattoo as per our compromise: Dude. Hard.

Number of pictures I've taken of boobies: Celsius.

UPDATE:

Number of crazy-ass autistic bitches who literally BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF ME AND TRIED TO STAB ME BETWEEN THE SHOULDER BLADES WITH A BIC PEN WHILE I WAS WORKING ON CHRISTMAS EVE SIX YEARS AGO that I JUST SAW at the Federal Express office with her apparently totally incapable caretaker mother: JUST THAT ONE.

Some Things I Meant To Tell You:

Did I ever tell the story about how I went outside to suck spiders off the house with the ShopVac only to be immediately attacked by a flying cockroach which caused me to step on and squish a long pink snake? Barefoot? Worst forty seconds outside in the whole history of outside. I think the snake was running from the roach, too. Well, not so much running... but you know. It makes me sad that maybe the snake thought we were a team. "Oh, no! Let's get out of here!" I killed my team.

I bought a new camera yesterday. From Sam's Club. I could no longer handle the agony that is taking pictures with the "Relysis Dimera" Completely Bullshit Hit-it-On-The-Ground-A-Few-Times Plastic Camera. I've already got a whole list of things I need to take pictures of. Like cacti and mountains and an INS agent for Scott. And I've been stalking the Giant Mystery Chicken, but I sense that he's on the move. He's like the Jedi of Chickens. I must clear my mind in my quest for the Chicken Jedi.

I think I definitely ate too much Jello yesterday. I ate all of it. "All" is usually an indicator of "too much". Surprisingly enough I don't really want any Jello right now.

Monday-Rific!

We'll start with all of the arm-pinching fun I had at Home Depot. Because Home Depot is a mega-conglomerate ruled by psychic robots*, and if I don't put them first I'll open the door one day and find psychic robots in orange aprons with "Hi, My Name Is JK-U26" in black marker on the pockets and they'll have stern psychic robot eyes and I'll get a good talking to about priorities. Which I don't need. Not from psychic robots. Not again.

1) If I had to foster a guess as to when this particular trip to the Depot started going downhill, I would say that it was when I got caught sitting in my car in the parking lot jamming out to New Edition's "Cool it Now". Usually when anything that great comes on the radio it's on the station that's 97% static and 2% unbearable screeching and 1% cool-ass music and I have to hurry up and drive due east as fast as I can to keep that precious 1% of cool-assness, but yesterday it was on a station that I actually receive. So I could park the car and then luxuriously freak out under the watchful gaze of, say, twenty roofers. It's amazing how many truckloads of roofers you don't see when you've got your eyes closed. Even when they're right in front of you.

2) Almost got run over by a forklift. Self-explanatory. Stupid forklift.

3) Ran into my ex-fiance's father. That was nice. It fell neatly into a category that I like to call, "I'm Not Going To Recognize You At All Until Three Minutes Into This Conversation, And Then My Realization Horror Will Be Stamped On My Face Like I'm Hester Fucking Prynn". I think that pretty much sums that up.

That should be all about Home Depot. I don't really remember much that happened after #3. Let's do the doctor's office now, because Monday-rific was the day of the now infamous "throat scoping".

1) Hi, could you make sure that you schedule me an appointment on "Ghetto Day"? Because I want to sit in the waiting room with thirty people who a) are raising their crackhead daughter's freakishly out of control kids; b) think that screaming "stupid bitch" at the receptionist is going to have any positive effect on their wait time; c) allow their crackhead daughter's freakishly out of control kids to push a food encrusted, one-wheel-taped-on stroller into my legs repeatedly.

2) Oh! And I'd like to wait for an hour. Awesome.

3) So, what's worse than having a tube shoved down your throat? Having them go in through YOUR NOSE.

Wow. Wasn't expecting that. When I told my mom about it she said, "Oh, I know. I had that done once and they had to use the 'infant scope'. They said my nostrils were 'childlike'." ... (I don't know how that's pertinent but I thought it was worth mentioning.)

4) The doctor still can't see anything. Which means that he wants me to do a "barium swallow", wherein I swallow barium (go figure) and a lab takes x-rays of my esophagus. Hmmm. The farther along I get into this, the more I KNOW that there is food stuck somewhere. Seriously. All of this looking for "lesions" or "masses" or "tumors"... I just know that I'm going to end up having a CAT scan so that we can all point to a pinto bean. Everyone thinks I'm saying that to "reassure" myself that nothing's seriously wrong. Not the case. It's a bean. No one listens.

This has nothing to do with anything, but I've recently rediscovered the perfection that is Jello. While it may seem as though I was occupied throughout much of yesterday, you should know that fundamentally my brain was consumed with a Jello making timetable. In order to maintain a suitable stockpile of Jello gelatin you have to be strangely diligent in your planning. That four-hour setting time is a bitch.

* My brother worked for Home Depot for a couple of weeks. When I asked him why he quit he answered, "Mega-conglomerate psychic robots, man. I couldn't fuckin' hang." That seemed fair.

Night Out With A Chick That Makes Me Nervous And A Guy I've Never Met! SHA-KAH!

1) Compromise is a healthy part of any relationship. Like with us. When Randy and I are in the bathroom getting ready to go out at the same time, and he wants to listen to talk radio on some AM alien channel and I want to listen to classic rock, we compromise. And listen to classic rock. Please. As if there's even any negotiating room there. It's like saying "Wow, that's a great car. I'd like to buy that car from you."

"Well, okay; what have you got?"

"This dirty twig."

2) Randy absently called "Pearl Jam" "The Jammers" for short. "The Jammers". After glancing at my incredulous face he then quickly explained that he had talked to Eddie Vedder on the phone earlier and that Eddie asked him to try out "The Jammers" in conversation and see what people thought because the band is thinking about leaning in a new direction. I asked if that direction was the direction of fruit preserves, and Randy said he didn't know, that it wasn't his idea, and that if I wanted to call Eddie and question him I was more than welcome. His number's on the caller ID.

I couldn't say a word. How could I combat that sort of evil genius?

3) But! On the way to the restaurant I did get to use my "perfect comeback", the one I've been savoring and ripening. Here's how it went:

R: "Should we turn right on Camelback, or take Indian School?"

ME: "Who do I look like, Rand McNally? Figure it out!"

Then I laughed really hard and grabbed his hand and told him to turn on Camelback. I thought it was hilarious. He thought it was sort of funny. But he didn't think it was funny later, and this morning he doesn't even really remember. I'll probably stop asking him about it this afternoon. Or tomorrow.

4) Dinner itself was fabulous. The restaurant was amazing and the food was divine. I couldn't really get a feel for Kim; she stared dreamily at her man all night while sipping a single glass of chardonnay. It was shockingly tame. The Captain even came over for a few minutes to gladhand. I thought that was nice. You know. No hard feelings.

5) Oh, the ride home! The top down and the air on, Van Morrison magically on the radio, me in my Katherine Hepburn pants and finally letting my "hair guard" down... when we got home and saw that there were thirty kids in the backyard making s'mores over the firepit and chilling a keg of Coors Light, well, damn. It was seriously as though I had called ahead.

If you have some time go and watch the Lint People. If you're like me and have an unnatural compassion for lint, then keep in mind that this is rated Lint R for Lint Violence.

I'm going to give it a shot.

I went to the doctor yesterday about this "object in gullet" issue, and I just love it when I show up for a doctor's appointment with my hair back, no makeup on and in a Star Wars tank top and then the doctor turns out to be FUCKING HOT. Shorter than me, but hot. I don't think I would have impressed him if I'd had my shit together really... I mean, when a guy pulls your tongue out, wraps it in gauze, then shoves a mirror-on-a-stick down your throat and makes you make "hee hee hee" and "eh eh eh" noises until you start gagging uncontrollably, well, that's the opposite of sex appeal. He couldn't see anything, either. He wants me to visit him on Monday at his actual office (as opposed to the university bandaid cattle drive) so we can do that whole "scope" thing. I'll be the one with the hair and the shiny, shiny lipstick, thanks.

Okay. I'm spending the rest of today cleaning the jungle patio and figuring out this digital camera from 1943. I bet a lot of you didn't know that there were digital cameras in the 1940's, but there were. This one. It's made out of forged steel and tire irons.

HA! HA! Somebody Stop Me From Eating My Own Hand While In The Throes Of Hysterical Laughter!

1) I took my "I Am SO Not Engaged" ring back to the store of purchase to have it sized. The young uber-cool dark-haired gay man in the smooth blue suit said that he didn't think that they could successfully size that particular ring for me. My ring finger is the size of a kindergarten learning pencil, and in order to make this ring fit my finger, they're going to have to take out some stones.

HA! HA!

Not even a remote possibility, Mr. "$150 Haircut Boy".

2) My post-op chemical face is a peely, melty disaster. My skin is all coming off. And I can see big flakes of it out of my peripheral vision. So in class today I kept self-consciously clawing at my nose. And explaining to people that the reason I was shredding my face was because I was peeling like a three week old banana. I got no reassurances. I got a LOT of stares. And one girl helped me with some skin that I had MISSED.

HA! HA!

I was right! I'm a 93-year-old rattlesnake. With a little snake walker and snake skin cancer. And all the other snakes go "ew, gross" when they see me, and my own grand-snakes cry when I hold them in my feeble but loving snake arms.

3) I left class today and, since I was lucky enough to get to park eighteen miles away from anything pertinent to my life, I got to walk by the law library. Dark outside + lights inside = expensive, comfortable chairs and an espresso bar visible to all of the retarded, not-law people walking by.

HA! HA!

I spent four hours camped out on a sofa in the MAIN library that smelled like scalp and dirty earrings! You're reclining on a leather chaise with an iced mocha? GOOD FOR YOU, SMARTY PANTS! LET'S ALL HEAR IT FOR FUNDING!

4) While upstairs in the ghetto library selecting a nonfiction French work for my graduate language exam, I noticed a section labeled "EASY!" with crayon colored posters. I'm not kidding. There were signs done in fucking CRAYON that said EASY on them, pointing the way to the picture books. That section was adjacent to the "Sixteenth Century French Theorists" section.

HA! HA!

CRAYON! Oh my GOD. It's so hilarious it's utterly horrifying.

How To Graciously Accept A Ring From A Man Given That:

A) He Is SO NOT Proposing To You Right Now

B) You SO DO NOT WANT To Get Married

This can be an awkward situation if you let it. It's important to let your mutual understanding of everlasting singlehood shine.

1) You'll know your gift is a ring the second he hands you the wrapped package. If it's not an engagement ring (oh, and it's not) then he will have wrapped it in its original square box. If it is an engagement ring, the odds are that he's thrown the box away and the ring is a) nestled in a sweaty pocket; b) embedded even now in your sandwich; c) tied around the neck of some stuffed animal. So, having deduced the contents of this, your heavy square present, get your shit together.

2) KEEP TALKING AS YOU UNWRAP. If you stop talking then all of this fucked up anticipatory "opening a ring" tension runs in and starts hanging out. Talk and rip. Talk and rip. This is crucial. If you get all quiet and breathy he's going to start fingering his car keys and glancing toward the garage. He might think you're about to cry, which is NO GOOD. See number three.

3) NO CRYING. Under NO circumstances are you allowed to shed even the tiniest sentimental tear. Don't mist up, even. If he sees tears he's going to feel like he has to explain that he is NOT asking you to spend the rest of your life with him in a blessed and holy union of souls. And that's going to suck even if you're not jonesing to walk down any aisles, either. Because what do you say to that? "I know"? "No, me too"? So don't fucking cry.

4) In lieu of crying, make conversation about how WONDERFUL the ring is! A ring! YAY! We love rings! "God, I love the setting! You know what this will go perfectly with? That bracelet of mine with the stones and the thing and the clasp... and I love this part here and I can't believe how well it fits and it's kind of like that ring we saw in San Francisco at that crazy little place next to that other place but this is so much more sophisticated..." ... yeah. You see where I'm going. Keep it close to the ground.

5) This could be the most important thing right here. And you can probably guess what it is. You're gonna open that box, and you're going to IMMEDIATELY TRY THAT SUCKER ON YOUR RIGHT HAND. As far as you're concerned, your left hand was eaten by wolves. Don't even use your left hand to put it on; use your mouth.

I can vouch for all of this personally. I got a gorgeous ring from Randy for my birthday and neither of us is under the impression that there's a wedding to plan. I tried this all out on an ex-boyfriend years ago. Who, as luck would have it, actually was proposing. I guess that'll teach him to propose to a girl on Christmas Eve. Who doesn't want to marry him.

Yesterday: The Day That Nothing Happened.

My aesthetician (it sounds sort of snobbish to call her "my" aesthetician; she's not really mine. I don't keep her chained by the ankle to the sofa waiting for my next aesthetic emergency or anything. She's only "mine" in the sense that she lets me give her money in exchange for pretty much nothing.)...

Ahem. My aesthetician decided in her infinite wisdom that since I'm 28 now it was time that we begin doing chemical peels. Because apparently 28 is the new 57. While I'm sure that this decision was reached purely out of genuine concern for my potentially horribly yet largely invisibly sundamaged face and not at all out of, you know, evil, I did find it odd that she comped the first one. Just like a heroin dealer chillin' by the monkey bars. So yesterday morning I let this woman apply three layers of acid and glass shards and fire ants onto my face, and because that wasn't unpleasant enough it all cemented itself onto my skin in this sort of lemony splinters way, and then I couldn't wash my face until midnight. Oh. And it was orange. Awesome. So pretty much I fucked around on the computer all day. School work? No thanks.

And as far as the "object lodged in gullet" mystery, well, the doctor this morning seemed to think initially that I had some food stuck behind my tonsil. As attractive as that scenario is. But then she tried to look into my mouth and see the offensive mass and couldn't. She thinks that this is because I'm an alien life form with a completely foreign esophagal system, and that I now need to see an ENT for a "scope job". I think it's because she was using a flashlight with all of the illuminating power of a flower and a pencil to hold my tongue down. So who's to say. For what it's worth, though, I'm casting my vote for eggs. Probably scrambled.

We were all watching CSI last night as per household mandate when we came to the realization that a crime scene investigator can solve any mystery or answer any question as long as he has a small glass vial with some stuff in it, and an eyedropper full of Miracle Clear Question Answering Liquid. Apparently ANYTHING can be determined by carefully placing the eyedropper with the Miracle Liquid into the Vial of Questions. What is this liquid?

"Did Andrews kill his wife?"

"Hold on." (squeezes a drop of clear liquid into vial, shakes vial.) "Sure did."


"So? How did Thompson die?"

"Hold on." (squeezes a drop of clear liquid into vial, shakes vial.) "Oh, man. He was hit over the head with a lead pipe--the kind that plumbers use, not the kind used in construction-- four times, and then someone spit on his chin and wiped it away with a purple hankerchief that was handsewn in 1985."


"Who's going to win the Superbowl this year?"

"Hold on." (squeezes a drop of clear liquid into vial, shakes vial.) "Oh, fuckin' A. Dallas. Again."

You think you do but you don't.

If you happen to be outside sucking spiderwebs off the house so it won't look like a Halloween party complete with "gen-yew-wine eggsacks" and the Shop Vac you're using suddenly gets really, really... not sucky, that's going to be a problem that you want to take care of right away. With something other than your hand.

Hey, and that "E! True Hollywood Story" on Jenna Jameson is two hours long, bro. That's two hours of porn without the porn. It's like "trick porn". So I suggest that everyone only watch it just that one time. Spending more than two hours on fake porn is clearly a waste.

I've got this thing in the back of my throat. It's like... a thing that I can feel when I swallow. I'm on the verge of thinking that it's a part of me-- like a tongue wrinkle or something-- because I've had it for maybe a month now and if it were anything foreign my whole head should smell like horse ass by now, and it doesn't. I'm pretty sure. Anyway, I'm going fucking crazy. And I can't believe that I have to call my doctor because I've got a tongue wrinkle. I think I'll not call it a "tongue wrinkle" when I go to the doctor.

I had to throw the rest of the cheesecake away today. It was all played out. I opted to throw it away in the "big can" outside (I'm not sure why; it occurs to me now that I might have been secretly afraid that I would EAT IT OUT OF THE GARBAGE if I left it inside the house) and I'm holding the lid open with one hand and banging the cheesecake plate against the can to dislodge it but it won't budge because the crust is stuck so I hold the lid open with my elbow and start scraping cheesecake into the garbage with my other hand and then the Arrowhead water guy walks up. And I have to SIGN something. Of fucking course. Then the guy goes, "I would have taken that off your hands for ya." And I had to answer, "No, dude. You don't want a piece of that."

Birthday Weekend: Getting Better In Every Way By The Motherfucking DAY.

or

Birthday Weekend: Yes I'm Still In My Pajamas, And No You Can't Have Any Of My Quiche. Get Away From The Quiche.

1) It turns out that I was only wrong that one day. My birthday was in fact on Saturday. I was hesitant at first, but after the grandparents called "old school grandparent tandem style" and we all talked over each other about me and birthdays and bass boats and carpet, and after they fought with each other a little while about fried chicken and chipmunks while I watched TV, and then after my crazy aunt called and talked to me for an hour and a half about Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter, and then after my mom called me and told me to get my ass over there, well, then I knew for sure.

2) My mom made me a quiche! A birthday quiche! Which is weird! Because I don't like quiche! She doesn't understand why I don't like it; "it's just eggs and cheese and bacon and broccoli and evaporated milk and butter and crust and grass clippings and peas and nails! You love cheese!" So I have this giant quiche that I'm all emotionally attached to now but that I'm probably not going to eat. I've been stroking it through its seran wrap. It's getting a little... warm.

3) She also made me a cheesecake! A birthday cheesecake! Which isn't weird at all because cheesecake is my favorite thing ever. There's not as much "gentle stroking" going on with the cheesecake. It's been more of a "see how fast I can get the cheesecake's pants off" relationship. I keep barging in to the refrigerator and begging for quickies. The cheesecake is starting to look a little sweaty and whorish, all fork-raw around the edges. It kind of turns me on.

4) Thanks everybody who sent me a card or a birthday email! You guys are awesome. I would send you all a piece of quiche but it would be too heartbreaking. Plus it would poison you. And I think it's safe to say that I'm not giving away cheesecake. I'm no cheesecake pimp.