doahleigh - Holy Waste of Teabags!

In the kitchen, while cutting fruit to make smoothies…

S: [quietly sings a line of a song]
B: Did you just burp?
S: No, I sang.
B: Oh.

I knew I had a pretty sorry singing voice, but wow.

During the summer of 2003 I lived in a small town in Wyoming. My-boyfriend-at-the-time was doing an internship at a golf course, and I, always up for an adventure, tagged along. Got myself a job as a “cart girl” at the same golf course and spent two long days on a Greyhound to get there. The golf course was owned by some rich dude and had been built on old farmland. My-boyfriend-at-the-time, myself, and another intern got to live in an ancient farmhouse left standing on the property. It was so disgusting and old, but it was free.

We often showered at the golf course maintenance building because the water at the farmhouse smelled like rotten eggs. We had to do our laundry there too. And we rarely cooked because all of the pots and pans were grimey and rusted. What furniture the house had was old and dirty, as were the carpet and walls. Sometimes at night I literally had bugs crawling in my bed. The moths were the worst though. At night we walked blindly to our bedrooms because turning on any light would attract a swarm of moths. We’d find them all over the walls, on the toilet, in the shower. Eventually we learned to plug in a nightlight, positioned above a bucket of soapy water, before going to bed. In the morning we’d find literally hundreds of drowned moths in the bucket. I hated those damn creatures.

But this story isn’t about moths. It’s about the case of the cake-eating ghost, of which I was reminded this morning while reading Sarcomical’s cake post. That summer, my-boyfriend-at-the-time had to get up before dawn every day, but I often didn’t start my shift until 2pm. So one morning I decided to bake a chocolate cake. I don’t cook, but box cake mixes are one thing I can handle. After baking, I left the cake on counter to cool and went to work.

When my shift ended at sundown, I went back to the farmhouse and checked on the cake. Sure enough, a huge corner piece was missing, so I went upstairs where my-boyfriend-at-the-time was sleeping.

Hey did you enjoy the cake?

What cake?

The cake I made, the chocolate cake, the one in the kitchen.

I didn’t see a cake.

Whatever, you had a piece. Wake up, are you still sleeping? Come on, the chocolate cake. You ate a giant piece of it.

I didn’t have any cake.

Then who did?

And we began to consider who indeed. It wasn’t him, it wasn’t me. We ruled out our roommate because he was out of town that week. Nobody else lived there, nobody else even came there. Moths perhaps? But they couldn’t possibly be so neat and tidy as to eat away a chunk of the cake at a perfect ninety-degree angle. Could they?

After much contemplation, we decided it must have been a ghost. And we were dead serious (wait was that a pun?). There was no other explanation for an entire corner of the cake to be missing. We lived in an old farmhouse, and apparently whoever had died there before we moved in really enjoyed Betty Crocker’s chocolate cake. We went downstairs to investigate. Yup, a piece was missing. There was the knife that was used to cut it. No fork or plate though. Apparently the ghost swallowed its cake whole.

That night we went to bed knowing there was a ghost in our house.

In the morning, we saw that the cake had not been further disturbed. Ghosty was full I guess. My-boyfriend-at-the-time left for work, early as usual, but he called me soon after leaving. When he had gotten to the golf course, he was greeted by a coworker:

Hey man, thanks for the cake. It was delicious!

Yeah. No ghost. Instead, one of my-boyfriend-at-the-time’s coworkers had stopped by our house, reason unknown, in the middle of the day. He saw the cake and thought, what the hell? He rummaged through our kitchen drawers, found a knife, and cut out a giant hunk of a freshly baked cake. At our house. In my kitchen. My cake!

Who does that?

Let’s rewind. I wrote the following back on June 5:

Speaking of Brad, I’m happy to announce that last night he found out he was accepted into the school he wanted. This is really good news because it’s the same school where I was accepted for a graduate program. Certain other circumstances—circumstances that I can’t discuss here unfortunately—need to fall into place before we can take advantage of these opportunities…

Well today, three weeks later, pretty much none of those circumstances have fallen into place. I thought in three weeks we’d make some progress, especially since we’ve been working on this for so many months, and because time is running out very quickly.

I try to stay positive because everyone tells me to, they say when you think positive!, everything works out for you. So that’s what I’m doing. Or trying to do. Mostly though, I spend my time freaking out.

The worst part is that I have so little control over the things that need to happen. And neither does Brad. We both do everything that we can possibly do, but mostly we have to wait and see. This wait and see crap? It’s killing me. I don’t do well with wait and see. Wait and See, they can both kiss my ass. Or more aptly, kick my ass, as they’re doing now.

I can’t see the other side of this yet, but I know it’s there, somewhere. I can’t wait to be on the other side.

My earnings at Day Two of the garage sale:

$2.00

Total earnings for the two days:

$4.75

Money spent on or at the garage sale:

$8.00 (signs and stickers) + $17.00 (Saturday’s lunch for the crew) = $25.00

Amount repaid to me for lunch and materials:

$18.00

Total profit from garage sale:

$4.75 + $18.00 - $25.00 = -$2.25

Conclusion:

Worst idea ever.

It was frustrating because people kept buying all of Brad’s old crap and hardly glanced at my nice things. I had nice clothes, things that I just don’t wear, on sale for a dollar, but nobody paid attention. Meanwhile Brad was selling ancient headphones with a built-in radio that may not have even worked anymore. He made more than $60, over half of the total earnings for the entire sale.

I’ve learned that people aren’t on the prowl for nice things no matter how inexpensive. What they want, truly, is crap. Strangers’ useless crap.

Oh pardon me, things just went a little crazy in my life there for a moment. It’s all better now. Sort of.

I have nothing to write, but I thought I better move the clown a little lower on the page because apparently there’s a real clown phobia among my readers. Yes, I call you my readers, but it’s more like My Readers, all official and stuff because I like to sound important. I am important, right My Readers?

Oh hey, I thought of something to write. Brad and I decided to help his parents out with a garage sale in exchange for being able to sell some junk in it. Not only did it cause lots of undue stress for me, mostly because of bad timing, but it also cost me about eight bucks in signs and pricing stickers. That doesn’t sound too bad. And it’s not. Until you consider that Brad just texted me and reported that so far, at the end of Day One of the two-day sale, I’ve made a total of $1.75.

Which means, My Readers, that I am $6.25 in the hole. And unless I nearly quadruple today’s earnings in Day Two, I will walk away from this thing having lost money. Here, buy my crap! I’ll pay you!

I hope that bit of good news was worth getting the clown out of your face.

Update: Brad just reported that he was wrong, I actually made $2.75 in Day One. Great, only $5.25 to go and I’ll break even.

Gather ’round children. Auntie Shanny is going to tell you a story about how being selfish never pays off. Listen up now.

When I was a little girl, I used to watch the Bozo Show on tv. It was a simple show with a creepy clown who picked kids from the audience and lead them through silly games of coordination and skill. My sister and I loved this show and we always dreamed of being on it someday ourselves. You can imagine our joy when one day our mother announced we were going! to! the! Bozo! Show!

I have no recollection of where this was being taped or how we managed to get on the show, but I distinctly remember standing backstage in a holding room with a billion other youthful fans. My mom stood close by while we waited for directions. Suddenly a lady walked in right in front of me and yelled above the shrieks of the children that YOU ALL NEED TO LINE UP IN FRONT OF ME! QUIETLY!

I was conveniently standing right in front of her, so I was automatically the first in line. My sister, Andrea, two years younger than me, was second. We all got cardboard crowns to wear for the show, and the lady who yelled at us to line up quietly sat down to write numbers on our crowns. I was to be number one as I was first in line, but my mom kindly suggested that I allow my darling younger sister to be first. Wouldn’t that be a nice big sister? But I told her no way, I was first in line, I was number one, I get to have a number one on my crown, NOT HER! So I got the number one one my crown, ha!, and she got number two. And off we went to assemble in the studio.

The show was going nicely, a few kids were selected to play games, and my sister and I watched with wide eyes. Then suddenly Bozo made an exciting announcement: one lucky member of the studio audience would be selected to be the Prince or Princess for the day. He or she would get to be Bozo’s little assistant and win all kinds of glorious prizes. Now kids, everyone take off your crown and look at the number written on it. See it? Okay now Bozo will draw a number and if it matches yours, you get to be my helper! Ready?

See where this is going yet?

Bozo drew the number two. My sister’s number. She got to be the Princess for the day, all because I wouldn’t let her cut me in line. She spent the rest of the show following Bozo around, chasing ping-pong balls that the uncoordinated children couldn’t manage to toss into the buckets, and collecting a shitload of prizes. Me? I sat in the audience pitifully wearing my Number One crown.

I was given one opportunity to shine, however, when I was selected to participate in one of the activities. Each participant had to ride a tricycle in a figure eight around two barrels full of balloons. Then you got off the trike, grabbed a balloon and popped it anyway you could. Back on the tricycle, figure eight, pop a balloon, etc. The person with the most popped balloons at the buzzer wins. No problem, I thought. But apparently I wasn’t very good at the balloon popping thing, and by about the third go around, I was seriously behind my competitors.

What did I do? Kick it into high gear and win the whole thing? Try my best and have a great time anyway? Get innovative with the balloon-popping techniques and smother my competition? Nope. What I did was intentionally fell off my tricycle and pretend to be severly injured, tears and all, so they would be forced to halt the game. On television. My sister was the Princess and I was the hack who faked an injury to avoid losing.

I think they inserted a commercial here while my mom came out to check on me. After I was diagnosed as completely unharmed, I was sent back to join the audience while my sister took her place on her Princess stool, right next to Bozo himself.

Kids, the moral of the story is, well there are many:

• Don’t be a selfish bitch because your little sister will always get better stuff than you no matter what.
• Number one isn’t always the best. Sometimes it just sucks.
• If you’re losing at something, don’t fake an injury. Because people will see right through that shit you idiot.

In a Subway restaurant:

Awkward teenage girl: Um, I think I want chicken.
Sandwich artist: Okay, do you want terriyaki, chicken breast or bacon ranch?
Awkward teenage girl: The first one.
Awkward teenage girl’s mother: Terriyaki? Are you sure? I think that tastes kind of Chinese-y.

She went with the terriyaki anyway.

Someone recently told me about a quick and easy routine to eliminate arm flab. I have plenty of arm flab to eliminate, so I thought, hell, I’ll try it. A few days later Brad and I went out and bought some hand weights in 5 and 10 pound denominations.

For fun, Brad thought he’d do the weight routine with me. Ain’t he supportive? My intention is to start with the fives and work my way up to the tens because the point is to tone, not build muscle. Brad started with the tens.

But see, Brad doesn’t have any arm flab. When I pointed this out, he said, Sure I do. Look at that! And he pinched a centimeter of skin underneath his bicep.

Excuse me, I said, but that is not flab. That is skin. This is flab. And I grabbed a handful of my arm.

Brad responded by doing one arm curl with the 10lb weights, and poof! whatever fat cells he might have had just melted away.

Good for you hon, I replied. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have about 850,000 more of those to do. And then I threw a 5lb weight at his face.

On Monday I responded to a few search phrases that have brought people to this site, and somewhere in there I mentioned that Project: Grow Back Eyebrows wasn’t going so well.

On Tuesday I lost the pair of tweezers that I keep in my makeup case, and I have no idea where they could possibly be. I use them almost daily, and they have lived in my makeup case for years. Now they’ve completely disappeared.

On Wednesday I took the tweezers from the bathroom medicine cabinet, the only other tweezers I own, and put them in my makeup case.

On Thursday I discovered that those tweezers were missing, too. And again, I have no blasted idea where they might have gone. They just vanished.

Either my makeup bag has developed an appetite for shiny metal and has taken to eating my tweezers for lunch, or Brad has been stealing them in an effort to help me quit plucking. Or maybe the world is just trying to tell me something.

It took me about a eleven million hours, but I finally uploaded all of my trip pictures to Flickr (Phoenix and San Diego). I never really wrote much about the trip besides some highlights and a long description of Brad’s hospital visit, and now the trip is practically a distant memory. I’m still not going to go into any detail, but I will share a few photos so you can see just how cool my business trip slash vacation was.

In Phoenix, when I wasn’t working, we spent a lot of time at the pool. And even though we didn’t see much of the actual desert, our hotel did a great job of recreating it in the form of a Cactus Garden. Other than hang out at the resort, we took shuttles and trolleys all over Scottsdale to see what it had to offer. A lot of shopping basically. I hate shopping, so we didn’t buy anything, but we had a good week anyway.

My first day in San Diego was actually spent in Los Angeles, namely Hollywood Boulevard, where I took far too many pictures of the star-studded sidewalk (because really, who cares?) and met the likes of Batman and Michael Jackson.

The next day we romped around San Diego all day, seeing the sites. It was my first time seeing the Pacific Ocean and I was inspired to attempt to conquer my fear of heights. I failed. But I also had my very first In-n-Out Burger, of which I approve.

The third day was called the Desert Drive Day, but actually we drove through of variety of terrains: mountains, rocks, deserts, plains. The best photo opps were in the desert though, where I began a series called “Trash in the Desert.” Look for a book to be published soon. I also captured a lot of the beautiful flora (fortunately we encountered no fauna because desert snakes equal not cool).

My last day in San Diego was spent at the zoo. Of course. I wanted to see everything though, which meant over six hours of walking. Fortunately Erica and Ronia were up for it (actually Ronia was pushed in a stroller, she’s kind of a baby like that). The zoo has so many cool animals, and if you pay attention, they have some really interesting plants as well. Erica says Dr. Suess used to visit the zoo to sketch the plants, and then used them in his book illustrations. But of course, my very favorite part was the elephant exhibit (is it wrong to say animals are exhibits? It feels wrong) because I’m best friends with them.

Most of the trip photos on Flickr are friends/family only, so if you refuse to jump on the bandwagon, too bad for you. If you do jump though, add me as a contact and get an all-access pass to my pictures. Hot.

I don’t usually pay much attention to my stats for this website. I used to, obsessively for awhile, but it got boring and I realized it didn’t really matter. Today though I happened to look through some of the search phrases that have brought people here, and I realized that some of my guests are definitely not getting the information they’re seeking when they visit my blog. Here’s a look at some of the dead end inquiries:

What do girlfreinds [sic] do in a relationship?

Hell if I know! I try to figure that out every single day, and believe me, I do not have the answer. I know what I do—get annoyed a lot, complain, ask for more attention, kiss, hug, encourage, laugh, bitch, and snuggle, among other things—but I’m certainly not the poster child for the ideal girlfriend. You’ll definitely want to look elsewhere for that.

signs that your boyfriend is going to propose

He gets down on one knee and pulls out a ring? Other than that, I have no idea. And I don’t plan on knowing for quite some time yet. Check back in a few years.

how long would overplucked eyebrow take to grow back

Couldn’t tell ya. Because… yeah that’s not going so well. Quite a few people stop here in their search for a solution to overplucked eyebrows, so I feel kind of bad that I can’t offer any advice. I considered posting a recent picture of myself for comparison, but basically my eyebrows look exactly like they did back in October:

male genital exam…..what to expect.

I’m sorry, is it not clear that I’m a woman? I can tell you all about the female version of this exam, but I don’t know much about what happens to the boys. I’m pretty sure there are no stirrups involved. Or speculums. Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s much less uncomfortable and awkward than ours. So stop complaining.

photos of a pelvic exam pap smear

Seriously? You want to see photos of this? Sorry, but I didn’t bring my camera into the exam room last time I was there. Next time I’ll try to remember, I promise.

The first four books of the Metaphysics from Aristoteles

Who the hell is Aristoteles?

how to write initials for hyphenated last names 

Ah yes, good question. One I may be interested in someday depending on what we decide to do about the kids. Let me know what you find out.

how to draw women with fat rolls

Okay well, I’ve never tried that myself so you’re not going to find any examples here. But I could pose for you if you’re willing to pay me. I take cash, check or jelly donuts. You know, to keep up the fat rolls.

mario i don’t wanna know

Yo, I don’t wanna know either!

On the last leg of my recent trip, the flight from Denver to Detroit, I sat near an interesting woman. She slept throughout most of the flight but woke up in plenty of time to completely tear apart and discredit my relationship with Brad. She was telling me about some list, a list that tells you whether or not your man really loves you. She listed all the criteria, and even though Brad passed with flying colors, she still insisted that we weren’t for real.

Why? Because I had no ring on my finger. We’re not married after two years, we’re not even engaged, and what! he hasn’t even given me a promise ring (uh please)? Then something is amiss and I need to jump from this train heading nowhere. Fast.

I explained that I am putting off marriage just as much as Brad, and that we’re doing that so as to not make the same mistakes almost every single other person in our lives have made. That didn’t help. She then decided the fact that I’m not interested in getting married means that I don’t really love him. We just don’t love each other, bottom line.

We went on like this until I was walking off the plane and she was waiting to get her carry-on out of the overhead compartment. Before I left though I got her email address and said I’d write her when I either a) get married to Brad, or b) break up with him. I actually emailed her earlier this week so gmail would store her address, and she emailed me back to say that despite her grilling, by the end of the flight I had convinced her that Brad really was a “List Man.”

Which prompted me to look into the so called List. Turns out she was talking about a book called The List: 7 Ways to Tell if He’s Going to Marry You in 30 Days or Less. Oh I see, this list tells me if he’s going to marry me, not if he really loves me. This is a book for women who desperately want to get married, not necessarily for those of us who want a meaningful relationship with a man who loves us. Two totally different things. For the lucky ones, they’re synonymous, but in reality, people get married for all kinds of reasons, often the least of which are love and devotion.

So basically this lady was saying that because we weren’t married yet, didn’t want to be married yet, and weren’t planning to be married anytime soon, then something was wrong with our relationship. But why? Does love always have to equal marriage?

My sister told me a story about a couple she met on a recent flight. They were celebrating their 40th anniversary by flying out west and getting married. For the first time. They were together 40 years before they decided to get hitched, yet somehow my relationship isn’t real because we aren’t married after two.

I don’t think my plane lady meant any harm, she was actually really funny and energetic. But I wonder why so many people assume that if you’re in love, you get married and if you’re married, you’re in love. I love Brad, and yes I’ll probably get married someday, and yes probably to Brad. But why did I feel like I had to work so hard to defend our relationship the way it is now?

The funniest part is that at some point this lady had been married to someone who wasn’t exactly a “List Man,” and she divorced him ten years later. And during the trip from which she was then returning, she had had herself a little vacation fling. I think that was point: she had waited around for some guy to marry her, he finally did and they eventually divorced, and now she’s having the time of her life. I think she wanted me to either get married or realize it wasn’t gonna happen and start having fun. Well thanks, but I am having fun. And I’m not even married. Imagine!