This One is About A Crazy Lady

Great day! First, stayed up waaaay late last night. Past nine. Secondly, slept in past six and didn’t have to get dirty at work. Take that how you will. I work retail. Anyway, that’s three for three. I got to work ten minutes early to, once again, try to drown myself in free coffee before my shift starts. If I actually drown, I wouldn’t have to work the day after Thanksgiving. Sad part-time jobs aside, after the coffee, I spent some time in the shoe department complaining about the state of the shoe department and those responsible. By the time the caffeine kicked in, I was in the women’s department complaining about the women’s department and mainly the people who mess up the clothes in that department (that would be you, the customer. Put it back. You can do it). To winningly make the point I (and my fellow clothes re-folders) was trying to make, the world’s angriest woman came walking through the store. She wasn’t going to stop, oh no (except to pick up a shirt and throw it down on recently re-folded table). This woman was bee-lining it to the back of the store. We could tell she was angry not only by the “hunt you down and gut you like a fish” walk she was using, but by the bitch that was in her voice. First time through, it was the Hawkeyes. The whole franchise, the concept of college football, post-secondary athletics in general, really just pissed her off to no end. She lives in Iowa friggin’ City, a Big Ten college town but can’t fathom what all the fuss is about or why she is forced to see black and yellow all year long. Move to North Liberty, lady, that’s my thoughts. Anyway, bee-lining it back through our department it was the price of groceries. She’s going to Wal-Mart because paying $10 for a $12 steak is ba-lowing her mind, and she’s less than impressed (she made it very clear you have to impress her first time around, or she’ll take her very loud business elsewhere). Again, storming through the store for no reason, Ms. Stick-Wedged-Too-Far-In was complaining about her husband trying to do house work. She paid “her handyman” $1500 to do it right the first time, so he wont have to ruin anything else. I felt terrible for who must have been her daughter and mother who sulkily ran along beside her, arms crossed, head turned away, and with only one ear open to the unabridged hate-fest longer than Gone With the Wind and the Bible and the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Sunday NY Times put together. I closed the day by hanging up men’s polos who’s color names had something to do with khaki no matter what color it actually was, bringing us gems like “khaki aluminum,” “khaki pelican,” “off white,” “red denim,” and “khaki dream.” Granted off white and red denim don’t have the word “khaki” in the title, but to further my point, denim isn’t red and pelicans aren’t khaki. I came home to make my man some Hawaiian meatballs that tasted like meatloaf and watch some Tosh.O. Good day.

This One Is About Porn

First, an anecdote: When I was younger, I told my parents I was going to see XXX in theaters with my sister. They were surprised to say the least and told me that "Triple X" meant something else to them. To me, it meant Vin Diesel.

I begin this post while occasionally tuning into a new sitcom with the girl who played on Clarissa Explains it All on Nickelodeon; I feel like this goes against some moral obligation to my own childhood. And to old Nickelodeon. Old Nickelodeon was the best, wasn't it? Man...Rugrats. Tommy could do everything with a screwdriver! I remember being seriously concerned about Tommy and the gang making it across the perilous asphalt desert that was the basketball court. I was also very concerned about "no-shadow time" unlike many of the adults around me. Despite the sheer terror I experience, I managed to take away some very valuable advice about the sun. 1. Don't play basketball in the sun. Or ever, really. 2. Wrap your t-shirt over your head to avoid complete disintegration. This particular piece of information comes in very handy when, during the few sunny months the MidWest has to offer, I step outside to burn. At least my head doesn't burn. I also remember being afraid of two very specific episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark. The one with the pool and the one with the little demon in the pictures. That's really all I care to go into. Still too soon.

I really liked Rocket Power, too. Those kids made me feel that I could skateboard and/or rollerblade really well if I wanted to, or if I had a cool gang to do it with. They, to this day, have made me want to learn to surf (again, probably very easy by the looks of it), and Otto was so totally rad that if he were real, I would totally want him to be my boyfriend. Totally. He and I would be a perfect match because once, on the show, Otto went snowboarding and he had a really bad time because he broke his leg and his let down his dad. Once, I went snowboarding, and I had a really bad time too because I fell down at the top of a damn mountain and was left there by my so called "fiance" and had to pick my sorry, broken ass up off the precipice of death and ride back down all alone while trying to see through the tears that were slowly filling up my goggles (no one could tell, though, because I have those really cool goggles that are reflective on the outside so you can't see my eyes and are therefore intimidated by the mad skills that I must inherently have and also because what you cannot see, you fear).

But more recently than both Clarissa Explains it All or my battle with gravity, the boy decided to hijack our friend's laptop and fill it full of porn of the male, heterosexual persuasion, and set his background to porn, and rename all of his programs and files to something with porn in the title, such as Internet Porn or MMO RPG Porn, or My Porn Music, MS Office Porn, etc.

This caused our friend to get proactively angry and threatening. The boy had to go back and do a system recovery from about a month ago to get everything back to normal, and take all the porn that wasn't already on there, off. Apparently XXX doesn't mean Vin Diesel to everyone.

It Takes Me So Long To Type Anything

I just got my very first touch screen, and I must say, I have no idea how to type anything. Sad is what this is. But, hey, I can blog from the phone now. That's something, isn't it?

My First Post Will Be About Tomatoes

My first post will be about tomatoes. Tomatoes because, two days ago, I had a rather existential tomato adventure, and tomatoes because I'm still reliving this adventure with some kind of retrospective delight and, even more than that, some retrospective "If I knew then..." I could have added more salt, for starters. Step one: gut the tomatoes. All of them. To taste, of course. God am I glad Ms. Joy of Cooking didn't say fish, but it was oddly satisfying at the same time. Cutting the middle out of those little guys was what I would imagine coring a jellyfish might feel like and with the same satisfaction as popping the plastic bag on a fortune cookie mixed with squeezing a Gusher until it squirts out all the juice, only with seeds. Step two was to salt these tomatoes then turn them upside-down to drain. I skipped the salt, but I suppose I shouldn't have. Such is life, though, as they say. Anyway, the recipe then goes on to very concisely coerce the cook into making wild rice, stuffing the tomatoes with the rice, and baking for a while. Then Ta-Da! dinner is served!

I'm getting married in less than a month, so, of course, the tomatoes had to represent more than just dinner. They became my future marriage and my unborn children. They were delicious, by the way, even without the salt, so I suppose that's a good sign. I added some bread crumbs and shredded cheese for a little panache, although, they could have been warmer.