Junk-Food-Saturday

Ugh.

UUUUUGGGHHH.

Yesterday was a gastro-intestinal nightmare, the lazy man/woman’s amigo, the busy-bee’s bonus – JUNK-FOOD was in OVERLOAD.

I could revel you with everything I ate but you might get sick on your computer monitor.  Oh, who am I kidding.  Of course I’m going to post it here.  Why else would I bother talking about it?

A.M. – Frosted Mini-wheats and OJ.  Yumm.  And still healthy… ish!

P.M. – Coming home from Census taking, stomach screaming, Must. Stop. Get. Del Taco.  1 Macho Taco and a Coke later = happy belly!

(Then the snacking commenced)  Including but not limited to:

Grody-gross Funyuns (sometimes it feels good to be bad) Klondike Bar (What would you doo-OO-oo…) one slice Kraft Cheese, more crunchy onion flavored crispiness, one donut dunked in milk.

All capped off by DINNER:  One Arby’s junior sandwich and a potato patty (just $2 from the dollar menu, dudes)  and a  SLURPEE the size of Connecticut at the movie theater.

Woof.  How’s your tummy?

The crazy news?  I feel totally fine.

But I don’t think I need to do it again any time soon.  🙂

Cell-Pic-Fun

Alright, I’ve taken a few silly pics on my new Droid (LOVE IT!!!)  and kept forgetting to upload ’em…

Cat-in-the-Box

I don’t know what it is about cats and boxes, but put the two in a room and it won’t be but a moment before they’ve merged.  Midnite loved this side-ways box so much that she growled at me when I took it away.  Not the “I’m gonna’ eat you alive” growl, but the “You kind of suck right now and I might ignore you for the rest of my life… or until I forget what I’m upset about which could take – Hey!  Did you see that bird out there?!” kind.

This is my dad in my side-view mirror following me to the tire store… Nothing says “Don’t lie to me, tire guy!” like a grumpy biker.  Car update 2,097, btw?  BACK IN THE SHOP… and I’m falling a little too eagerly in love with the loaner they gave me – a brand new Subaru Forrester.  Nothing quite hits home just how crappy your own car is than to be sitting pretty in something you can’t afford.  (sigh)

Awwww!  It’s a Road Runner… sitting on a fence.  Awwww!

A blurry, softy, sunset pic… One thing about AZ skies: They really light up.  I remember when I was younger the big seller at all the AZ tourist shops were these thin sand and water devices… You’d turn them over and an air bubble inside would make sure the sand drifted slowly, painting this beautiful sunset desert landscape.  It really is pretty enough here that people loved the idea of bringing a little interactive version of it home with them.  Now, if we could just do something about this damned wind…

What can I say?  When the Hamm-it-UP mood strikes…    I found this carazy rubber grill glove in our massive (too massive) Fry’s Grocery-and-Everything-Else store.  After posing for 4 minutes while my mom tried to figure out how to use my cell’s camera (without turning me into a hundred blurry pixels) I decided that the unpleasantly clammy feeling inside the glove was definitely NOT worth the cool rubber index finger and exciting ribbing design.

This is the avery at the hotel we stayed at in Pheonix.  I can’t but look at it without hearing a little voice squawking… “Pigeon Date, May 9, 2010.  It’s been 547 days and we STILL haven’t managed to dig our way out.  Lacking opposable thumbs, I can see why the plan was doomed from the start.  Frankie and Johnny have taken up a petition to start pelting the pooper-scooper guy everytime he comes in, but our meager tools (birdseed and feces) seem only to amuse him.  The Cat, that vixenish night-prowler, continues to taunt me… sing-songing ‘You’ll never get past these vicious little claws!’ ”

There’s a children’s story in there somewhere… but I’m afraid my current state of mind would be to infer that it’s better on the inside where the food and fresh water comes to you.

And that, my friends, is all for today…

“I am looking for a very good screenwriter”

I got this email the other day: (You have to click on the screenshots to actually read them- I didn’t know how to make ’em fit correctly)

To which my initial response was (mentally speaking) Yeah, get in line sister.  Ain’t everyone in LA got some kind of “Life changing” story idea?  EVERYONE?!  But I wrote back- you never know what people are all about…

Her response:  (by the way, it doesn’t look like it’s here, but click on it and it will open up to read)

Wow!  Talk about a hard sell!  But there is just nothing here that makes me want to get involved.  Sounds like a lot of work for no pay, and in all honesty, if I wanted to work for free, I’ve got plenty of my own ideas that I believe in, that I can develop free from the restraints of adhering to someone else’s “Vision” and, with less drama.  Because let’s face it, doesn’t this whole letter just scream “DRAMAAAA-(tongue hanging out)-AAAAH”?

Now, is the producer I’m working with buying me yachts?  No.  But he’s taught me a lot (as did the ghostwriting job before him!) A lot about what you have to be willing to put up with and bend to when working on someone else’s material.  Most lay-people have an idea without any notion of the amount of work it takes to actually develop that idea into a workable, compelling story.  Most lay-people lack the skills necessary to ride the wave from idea (seed) to full blown dramatization (tree) – and instead you wind up trying to make something akin to a story out of a hard lump of unwieldy potential (stunted log-bush thing that needs to just be put out of its misery)  Most lay-people fail to recognize that asking me to devote months or years even, of my time to a project, for free, is like asking an architect to draw up plans for a house, a super-awesome mansion that will be the envy of the world, for free – You wouldn’t do that, would you?  And here I’ve spent my whole life amassing the skills necessary to be able to create something that (most of the time) stands tall, strong, and dramatic – how about a little respect?  (And if you’ve got a few minutes, check out this hilarious post by veeery successful screenwriter, Josh Olsen A History of Violence, on what it is like to be asked to read material all the time by people like Little Miss Email here.)

Which is to say, in all likelihood, were there pay attached, I could scuttle my own projects to the side and at least take a crack at listening to her further.  I fgured my response would either elicit a real offer of some sort, a confirmation of budget, or silence.  Instead I got this:

Now, didn’t she just validate all my concerns?

High risk… HIGH RISK?  I am living HIGH RISK of my own, why on earth would I want to absorb hers?  I moved home to live in my parents’ house so I could focus on my own writing sans LA pressures… I poured my Sallie Mae loans into a high-risk, big-dreams education with no gaurantee of return.  I handed my twenties over to a city that eats people for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert.  I have risked everything to get where I am now… all in the hopes that tomorrow it will all begin to work, to make sense, to fill up the coffers as it does my heart and soul, and she wants to talk to me about risk?

But no, she doesn’t want to talk to me about anything… she’s just looking for a really good screenwriter.

And really, I think it’s a pretty amusing exchange.  She’s got some guts, some determination, and she sounds like a godamned saleswoman – maybe she will find someone to help her get her project off the ground.

But it ain’t me.

Anyone want her number 😉

Census Porn

Look, I’m all about the illusion of love-at-first-sight… it’s what so many good stories are made of.  But I don’t especially believe in it.  Sorry, all you effing insane crazy romantics, but it’s kind of a lot of caca (bullshit sounds better) that we writers fry up and dress in daisies to appease your hunger pains… you dig?

So, imagine my disgust at the little sex vulture in our training class:

DAY 1- Let’s call him “Dude” – Dude is annoying: lots to say, very little of it of any quality.  Repeat, ANNOYING.  Day 1 he chats it up with the cougar in the back.  I have fantasies of turning around and sealing their lips shut with my laser-eyes.  Instead, I stare straight ahead and try not to scream.

DAY 2- Wouldn’t you know it if Dude doesn’t plop his ass right down next to me?  In the front row?  Suffice to say I was NOT surprised when he got up and relocated at the break – I’m sure my “I find you repulsive” vibes were messing up his cool-cat bubble… He meandered over to another lady of chatting and giggling style.  I enjoyed the empty space.

DAY 3-  Dude and Chatty McGee spend the entire day canoodling over their census training booklets.  Dude spends the entire morning with his arm draped around the back of her chair while she reads off his manual and spends the morning rubbing his thigh (According to Poor Lovely Person Stuck Sitting Behind Them All Day)  PLPSSBTAD also informs me that from her vantage point said hand alternated between mid and high/upper thigh, and that they also “snuck” smooches in to their training/groping/grossing-the-rest-of-us-out session.

DAY 4- I’m forcasting a violent break-up in which she throws her government documents at him, delivering massive papercuts, and equates his junk to our standard issue No. 2 pencils.  Either that or they’re going to make a baby right there on the floor.  (gag)

Let me just say this – after 3 days of official government training, I’m duly impressed with my own ability to stomach sleaze.  I mean, these are adults… adults who apparently never matriculated beyond the gland stage.

I’ll just say it again… GAG.

Apparently my Good Sense of Humor Beats out any Sense of Pride

I don’t remember the last time I peed in the bush… I remember being told stories of how my grandfather would refuse to stop the car when on road trips, making my grandma pee in cups or whatever was on hand.  I don’t know how she did it, or why she didn’t then club him over the head with her newly warmed bottles of piss – that’s what I would have done – but these stories have always horrified me.  Which is not to say I haven’t had my share of camping or hiking tinkles… I’ve even had a drunk “But I gotta go NOW” moment on the Sunset Strip ( did I just admit that?!)  But I haven’t had to “make water” in the outdoors for YEARS, years, years…

Which is why, as I departed Prescott on my way to LA, I was flabbergasted at the bad-bladder-cocktail my inept sense of self, dismal planning, and now-empty travel mug, had created.

I was going to have to pull over.

My first thought was “Hell no, I ain’t puling over!  You see all that desert out there?  What is someone, some pervert, has a little crow’s nest all set up near the yucca…  just waiting for this kind of highway panic?  He whips out a rifle and picks me off… he films me and posts it on youtube… he laughs.  (Aparently in my mind, all highway pervert you-tubers are male)

Anyway, no amount of nay-saying by my brain was going to get my bladder to shut the hell up.

So I stopped.

I pulled over…

I opened both passenger-side doors so I could create a little three-sided Not-A-Potty for myself and just prayed that my overactive imagination was wrong, and that there wouldn’t be any glinting on the horizon from rifle sights, video cameras, or grody old man sunglasses.

And then I peed.

For about  FIVE whole minutes… or two.  I don’t know, it felt like FOREVER.   I mean, just WHAT the HELL did I drink this morning?  I don’t remember guzzling a gallon of anything… yet there it was, erupting (sorry, but it was) from my bladder with the most indelicate kind of joy…  “FREEEEEEEE AT LAST!!!!!”

I’m sitting there squatting there thinking “Please, don’t splash.  Don’t splash. PleasePleasePRETTYPRETTYplease, Don’t splash!”  while my legs are gasping “Hey, lady, maybe you should take us the gym a little, huh?  Too much time at the computer is making for a painful perch.” and my bladder, my happy relieved bladder, could care less about any of the bodily/neurotic conversing happening around it.

The wind whistled beneath my bum, cars flew past with nary a hint of stopping to see if I needed help (Oh, my GOD, can you imagine?!  Horror!) and I was ready to dry off the used parts and get back in the car, when it struck me curious… what does one do with their non-toilet-paper when one is peeing by the side of the road?  I mean, my GOD, I’m not a pooch.  I don’t carry baggies…

All this as I’m struggling to hike up my pants and crawl back into the car without standing upright and giving the cacti a flash of my fanny.

So I did the only thing I could think to do… I left the tissue there:  From tree-pulp you came, which is of the Earth, so… ummm, to Earth you shall return.

And as I pulled back onto Highway 89, happy to have avoided wetting my pants but embarrassed to be 30 years old and not have the foresight to have stopped at the gas station 80 miles back, I took a gander in the rearview mirror.

There was the evidence of my visit- dancing across the road, carried off by the wind.

Borrowed Truths

I didn’t write this, but I feel like I did…

1. I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on #5. I’m pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue-Ray? I don’t want to have to restart my collection…again.

13. I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. “Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this – ever.

15. I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Damn it!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voice mail. What did you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

16. I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

17. I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

18. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

19. Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.

20. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

21. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

22. How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear or understand a word they said? ‘

23. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent an A-hole from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

24. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

25. Is it just me or do high school kids get dumber & dumber every year?

26. There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far..

27. As a driver I hate pedestrians, and as a pedestrian I hate drivers. and they’re all bigger idiots than me!

28. Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

29. Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time!

Cat-log

Day 5

The Humans keep looking at me and making kissy faces like they think it will make everything better.  Don’t they know I don’t have time to for circus tricks?   We’re in enemy territory here, extra vigilance is required at all….  Did you hear that?

Ahh, landscapers.

Okay then.

Where was I?

Oh yes,VIGILANCE!  Not to be mistaken for vigilantes… although some hard and fast cummupance is what’s waiting on the other side of my door if these country cats try to step in unnanounced.  I mean, you look at me, and you look at orange-face, and who’s got the upper hand?  Him?  Because he’s all cutesy, wide-eyed and wouldn’t know his own growl if it met him in the sandbox?  NO.  You can’t be running around fraternizing with the enemy – you’ve got to keep your hackles up, learn to growl while your walking into a room and then plop down like you own it.  Size helps.

I’m huge.

I’m telling you, I don’t know what The Human was thinking bringing us here, but she seems totally oblivious to the danger.  These cats are watching us, they’re crafty, and the little one even smelled my tush without permission!

And I see them, wagging their human claws at me with little tsk, tsks dribbling from their naked lips- the hypocrisy!  When just the other day I saw the Hairy One make The Human move out of his favored spot.  And they say we’re territorial!   I’m just trying to stake out some boundaries… a little place of my own.  Is that too much to ask?

Ahhh, Man!  There Orangey goes again!  Frolicking about with the little cat like they were kittens.  Do I have to do EVERYTHING myself?

Sorry kids, gotta go bust up the party.  It’s Real World time, and these hippie dreamers need some Black Ops training.

Midnite, OUT!

Missing Shoes and Santa Socks

I don’t know where my shoes are.

My dad and his buddies unloaded the moving truck while I was driving over, they loaded it all into the garage, into the crevices and spaces that were available, so there are boxes behind things like his motorcycle, and a large cabinet mid-construction, and other big heavy things that I can’t see through.

Somewhere, out there amidst the mess, are my shoes.

Sure, I thought it would be a good idea to pack a little carry-along bag, a bag of necessities- my toothbrush, clean change of clothes, etc.  But what wound up in the bag were a pair of sweatpants, two pairs of socks, my phone charger and flip flops.  I moved, painted, and cleaned in one shirt.  Gross.  Then I got home where it was friggin’ SNOWING, and all I had for my feet were my flip flops!

Now it’s a few days later and thankfully I’ve located/unpacked the majority of my clothes… I’ve even managed to sort out my sock and underwear drawer, but the shoes?  Well, let’s just say these little piggies are chillin’.

Hence the Santa Socks.

You see, I woke up in the middle of the night with cold toesies, stumbled over to the sock bin and pulled a pair out.  I woke up this morning with chuckles at what I found on my feet.

Christmas in April.

Indeed.

Scraps!

I’m moving, I’m busy, my shoulders and lower back ache from lifting things improperly (WITH THE LEGS, GIRL, WITH THE LEGS!)  But I have just had a few too-unusal to ignore encounters this weekend to keep to myself:

– I stayed up till 2 a.m. Friday night in perparation for the THRONGS of people I thought would come raging into my apartment to buy my goodies… I got up at 8, made some tea and waited… and waited… and just about the time I was falling back to sleep?  Two CaRaZy ladies rattled my door.  I got up, let them in to a “You’re door’s locked!” that evolved into a running commentary on every blessed item they picked up “That’s interesting, not bad, oh I don’t like that” and “But where would we put it?” for about 5 minutes until they stumbled upon the “FREE” box- a box full of rotten old cell-phone parts that my roomate left behind, some party napkins, and some old phone line-  EUREKA!  CaRaZy, the younger, had found what she was looking for.  It was, of course, all junk, but one woman’s garbage is another’s treasure it seemed.  CaRaZy, the elder, was non-plussed.  i think it went a little like this: 

“What are you going to do with that stuff?  We don’t have room for – ”

(younger interupting with force) “I WANT IT!”

And that, as they say, was that.  The ladies took off with their box full-o-junk, a couple of hoarders.

– I had a dream in which I and three others were stuck in a plummetting freight-sized elevator.  Everyone was upset, but when I looked to my right, Oprah Winfrey was right there with us, freaking out.  I turned to the other two people and shouted with a little too much good humor “Well, if we’re gonna’ die, at least we get to do it with Oprah Winfrey!”  I totally woke up laughing!

– Nicky and Corey got married last night.  It was lovely, it was elegant, the food was delicious and the dancing fantastic.  I broke my shoe (one less pair to pack) and got a blister the size of a half-dollar on the side of my foot- I have slammed it into several boxes and even dropped a wall fixture against it today.  Moral of the story:  Sometimes you just gotta’ kick off your heels!  Especially when your toes are crying

–My couch, beloved blue beast with reclining ends, just got bought by a Fraternity.  YES. IT. DID.  That poor thing has no idea what it’s in for… oh the things it will see.  I gave it a pat and a little “good luck” knock as the two boisterous young men carried it away to it’s new home.  I can only hope that as they make it their own, they do so with clothed and tidy butts.

And that’s about it for the updating… for now.  Oh, wait, there is one more thing:  I HATE PACKING!

Penis Straw

Yes, you read that correctly.  Here’s the deal: last night was my dear friend Nicky’s Bachelorette party.  Now, Nicky is doing it up big this year, not only is she marrying her best friend and long time love, but they’re also having a baby!  So, with baby bump leading the way, we couldn’t do anything that got us into too much trouble… or so I thought.

The night began with riotous giggles over the hilarious Mac-A-Weenie pasta (Last time this little culinary magic made its appearance was at JJ’s bachelorette party.  She got a box of the stuff as a gag, and apparently put it in her pantry.   About three months after that, while making pasta salad for our Thanksgiving pot luck, she ran out of noodles and decided, out of sheer necessity,  to use the box of penis pasta.  A good male friend of mine at the party was really digging the flavor until he looked closer and sputtered a little something like this “Mmm, yeah, everything is really goo- what is that?  Is that…That looks like a c*ck.   What kind of macaroni salad is this?”  Well played, JJ, well played!) 

We also had a blast with the penis tattoos, everyone had to stick one on- cleavage, shoulder, FACE.  Yes, my bestest friend forever and ever, put hers on her cheek.  This is just one of the many reasons I love that girl!  She’s got balls.  Literally.  Right there on her face.

Anyway, the night was a big success, and we all laughed our pretty little a$$es off. 

But then there were the straws…  the glow-in-the-dark penis-shaped straws (with, I’m afraid to say, some fairly unshapen balls) that we drank our sangria from.  Yes, it was ridiculous, yes it was fun, yes it took me a drink or two before I could actually bring myself to use it… but use it I did – and then grab them we did, as we took ourselves, and our straws, to the piano bar and fresh drinks down the way. 

And this bar…  it was rife, no, make that RIFE, with pups… “I just turned 21”  kind of pups.  We were like cougars-in-training, and we got hit on ALL NIGHT LONG.  Now, how about that for ego boost?  10 years older than everyone in the bar, and still drawing ’em in like flies.  It was fantastic. 

We drank our new drinks with our special straws, and laughed when the guy talking to Nicky thought her wedding ring and baby bump were sexy enough to lean in even closer.  It was grand.

Only, I didn’t drink my new drink with my special straw because I couldn’t find it – thinking it had sunk to the nether reaches of that bottomless-pit I call a purse, or else fallen out on the walk over – I sipped from the glass like a, well, like a lady.

Then this morning (and here’s where all of this pays off)  I had a meeting with two older gentleman on a project I am writing.  I had a meeting in which I needed to take notes.  I had a meeting in which I had to rummage through the bottomless-pit-I-call-a-purse for a pen, and damn if that little punk-ass bit of leather and mystery didn’t spit the Penis Straw right out on the table where it bounced not just once, but twice, and then did a little spin before clattering to the hard-wood floor.

Glow-in-the-dark penis-straw at our feet.

Try explaining that. 

Just T-R-Y!