Home for the Holidays

Even though I was determined to stay as late as possible in my college apartment, I knew my rations were running low. I was out of money, food, and most importantly--booze.

Going home meant I would have access to luxuries I am usually never able to offer myself, things like scones and bread with seeds in it and alcohol that doesn't taste like acquired it from a Purell factory.

BUT.

Going home also meant leaving behind the beautiful sanctuary I had created away from my bat-shit crazy family and their twenty-four-seven drama.

Going home meant I would spend the first four hours after my arrival removing malware and viruses on all of the household computers.

But I had to. I would do it for the booze. (And my dog. My dog is an asshole but I still like her for some reason.)

So I made drive home, soaking up the sweet, sweet time I had alone and filling it with Taylor Swift’s 1989 on repeat.

I purposely did not tell my parents when exactly I would be coming home, because when I do they make it a point to call every thirty minutes to ensure that I am still, in fact, on the way home. Not only that, but they interrupt my precious music/podcast listening time and while trying to drive down the highway at eighty miles an hour I have to jumble around the car, one handed, as I try and unplug my phone from the auxiliary cord to answer it. Then, after I tell them information that they already know, I have to find my place again whilst trying not to kill myself in a horrific car accident.

After a four hour drive I pulled into my driveway. Rather than the usual escapade where both my parents come running out to tell me about all the problems they've been having with their electronic equipment, I was surprised to find nobody was home.

It was great.

I unloaded my stuff, made myself a nice, delicious cup of coffee, and smiled lovingly at my dog as she did what she does best, which is completely ignore my presence.

Hungry, I opened then fridge. And what I saw inside was this: 

“What the fuck…?” I uttered to myself.

I inspected one of the glasses and furrowed my brow upon realizing that it was full of jello.

In the eighteen years I lived with my parents I never once saw anybody eat jello. 

“WHY IS THERE SO MUCH JELLO IN THE FRIDGE” I ask my dog sternly. She did not look up. Confused, I turned around and realize what had been left on the counter:

(sorry for the potato quality)

Oh my god.

It slowly dawned on me that strewn around the kitchen were a fairly large amount of empty 32 oz. Gatorade bottles and multiple kinds of laxatives.   

What the fuck went down here before I got home?

Just as I was about to throw my hands up and scream “TOO MUCH. NOPE.” and drive back to my booze-less apartment, my mom joyously burst through the garage door with an armful of wrapping paper.

“YOU’RE HOME!” She screamed, as she dove in for a hug. “So glad you’re here, I need you to fix the printer.”

“What’s with all the jello?” I asked.

“OH!” She said, delighted. “Guess what I’m doing tomorrow?? I’m getting a COLONSOSCOPY!!!” (Even though she said it with her sing-songy voice I know she used caps lock and three exclamation points). “It says here I have to drink all this stuff at this time and not a minute later! Better hop to it!”

Apparently when you get a colonoscopy you are only allowed to eat jello and you have to drink a shitload (no pun intented) of laxative medicine mixed with Gatorade the night before. The medicine works quickly, and soon after drinking it shit comes flooding out of your body as wild and uncontrollable as the Mississippi during rainy season.

So. That solves that mystery.

She went on ranting and raving, mixing her laxative concoction together as pumped as if she were preparing a pregame cocktail before a frat party.

It never ceases to amaze me how fast she can go from (relatively) normal to neurotic. This time it happened when she realized she couldn’t find her phone. I was not surprised, as she is better at losing stuff than anyone I have ever met in my entire life.
   

“AHHHHH I CAN’T FIND MY PHONNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!” She repeated hastily, even though I was aware of the situation. Calmly, with a here-we-go-again sigh, I began to search the house.

See, a normal person might be mildly annoyed about this situation. They would stop for a second and think, perhaps mentally retrace their steps, make absolute sure they couldn’t find it, maybe take some time, call some places, or perhaps even use this thing called the INTERNET MACHINE which, if you ask it nicely, will FIND YOUR IPHONE because it can do that.  

But.

My mother just throws her hands up in the air and races around “looking” for it (and by “looking” I mean frantically flailing her body until she embodies the very essence of a clusterfuck).

Out of the corner of my eye, I see her chug a glass of her Gatorade/laxative mixture with wild eyes.

“MOM. Why did you just do that. That was NOT a smart thing to do.”

“BECAUSE THE DOCTOR SAID I HAVE TO I HAVE TO DRINK IT OH MY GOD I HAVE TO GO GET MY PHONE I LEFT IT AT THE FEDEX MAYBE OR AT WALGREENS I DON’T KNOW OH MY GOD I LOST MY PHONE I DID IT AGAIN I HAVE TO DRINK IT RIGHT NOW  I’M RUNNING OUT OF TIME.”

Great. So now my mom is an irrational, nervous, screaming shit-bomb waiting to happen. And just as I turn to go search her bedroom she flies out the garage door and into her car to go to FedEx to go get her phone. I scream after her to wait, but it’s too late.

In stunned silence, I watch her drive off, the following scene playing in my mind: At an inhuman pace fueled by an energy only my neurotic mother can harness, she dramatically busts through the doors of a Fedex-Kinkos, the double doors smacking people against walls as they swing open.  She cries out to the holiday crowd something so frenzied no one can understand it, and seconds later liters of liquefied shit explode out of her body comparable to a military-grade explosive device, while a crowed of wide-eyed, open-mouthed customers and employees drop their Christmas packages in shock.

I walk back inside and within minutes find her phone on the counter.

Too bad I couldn't call her and tell her.

**epilogue: She came home and shit her pants.(I think she made it to the bathroom, I didn't stick around to watch)

~For more fun stories about my mother see Shit My Mom Says, Mothers, and I Welcome You to a Show~

My Weekend at Fat Camp

Well, it isn’t actually fat camp…it’s a “resort” in the middle of nowhere. Literally. The town is called Middleburg. It’s almost as if the person who named this place at the “what should we call this place” meeting just stood up and was like “FUCK IT. I’M CALLING IT MIDDLE…MIDDLE…TOWN…MIDDLE…BURG. MIDDLEBURG. THERE YOU GO. I’M GOING TO CHILIS.”

And before you call me a pretentious asshole for not enjoying my stay at a resort, just remember that YOU ARE ON MY SIDE HERE.

So let me go back a little bit and explain how I got here. My Aunt is getting remarried—she lives in Virginia (about 30 minutes away from Washington D.C.) and she decided to have her wedding out in horse country. Being the adventurous little scholar that I am, I came early and spent three days smack in the middle of the great city of D.C. I was close even enough to the white house that I was able to catch a glimpse of Obama hiding in his bathroom with a bottle of vodka watching Arrested Development on his iPad.

Just kidding! (I was pretty close, though.)

Anyways, every morning I got up and went to all the museums, American History, Natural History, International Spy, Holocaust, all the monuments, it was all good fun. 

Now, I wasn’t originally going to stay at this at this “resort” but it was an hour and half drive from D.C. so my parents convinced me to stay in their room at the resort for a few nights rather than drive back and forth for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding. It’s a resort, they said. It would be fun, they said.

So I drove out to this place, and as I pulled up to the front I felt immediately uncomfortable. The bellhops were all dressed in horseback riding outfits (the theme of this place is all about horses) and as you walk in you realize the guests are all dressed in dapper suits and dresses. What the fuck? I said under my breath as I walked in and a lady dressed in riding gear pointed me towards the horse themed library which contained only books about horses and pictures of horses and little statues of horses.

So everyone knew that one girl in high school that was the “horse girl”, obsessed with them. All they do is talk about horses, what their horses eat and the tricks they can do. Horse people are pretty close to the top of my list of people that are the FUCKING WORST. They just have this annoying air about them, like “LOOK AT ME RIDING THIS THING!!1!! IT CAN DO TRICKS AND EAT CARROTS IF I DIG MY HEALS INTO ITS RIBS HARD ENOUGH!!1!! DO YOU SEE IT?? SEE HOW MUCH MONEY I HAVE?? LOOK I CAN EVEN MOVE ITS HEAD WITH THIS ROPE I HAVE WRAPPED AROUND ITS FACE AND INSIDE ITS THROAT!!1!!” 

I passed a store in town called “wealth management services”. Do you have a shitload of money and a hard time physically handling it?? WE CAN HELP YOU WITH THAT FOR A SMALL PERCENTAGE it said on a sign outside the door. (Well, it didn’t really say that but it implied that). So this resort is basically a room full of rich horse people that are taking “vacation” from their horses and money to sit in a room full of other rich people to talk about their horses and money.

This is not my crowd, I explained to my cousin, who asked me why I was hiding in the bathroom with a bottle of vodka watching Arrested Development on my iPad. She pulled me out of the room and took me for a walk around the commune. This looks like fat camp in disguise...WAS THIS YOUR PLAN ALL ALONG?? I SWEAR I'LL TAKE IT EASY ON THE BREAKFAST TACOS JUST LET ME GO HOME! 

No! She said, there are no fat people here, silly girl! Only leather-skinned divorcees and good ol' fashioned weirds!  

Are you one hundred percent positive that this isn’t rehab for rich people, then? I asked, genuinely meaning it.

Let’s play a game. Four of the pictures below are pictures of rich people rehab centers. One is the resort I stayed at. Can you guess which one it is?  

Could you figure it out? It's the last one.

DOESN’T THIS LOOK LIKE A REHAB CENTER FOR RICH PEOPLE?? Look at all that grass! What am I supposed to do all day? Sit in the grass?

Remember, I’m sharing a room with my parents. Apparently they can’t bring in a rollaway bed because of the “fire code”, so I was forced to create a bed out of extra pillows and two chairs.

I'm a god damn adult sleeping on a makeshift bed in a horse themed “resort” surrounded by grass and the worst type of people.

THIS PLACE IS MY OWN PERSONAL HELL. (Not going to lie brunch was delicious) BUT OTHER THAN THAT IT IS AWFUL 

Back Home for Winter Break

I feel bad that I haven’t posted anything in a while, so I am copping out and using a relatable comic:

SEE IT'S RELATABLE DO YOU GET IT? 

Also, I emerged from the barricades this morning to restock on coffee/vodka and ran into my mother in the kitchen. The conversation took place as transcribed:

Mom: Ah! Look at you! Finally up! Took a shower and everything! What are you doing today?

Me: I didn’t take a shower.

Mom: Then…why is your hair all wet?

Me: It’s not wet.

Mom:

AND I'M OUT!

Being a Girl is Hard

Being a girl is hard.

You see, being emotionally vulnerable is not something you can control. It’s built deep, deep down in a woman’s DNA, and it sucks so much ass.

I don’t think men understand that you can’t help it. Not even one little bit.

For example, I was in an intense conversation the other day, and I was really on my game. I was making some really competent deliveries and it was very exciting. But then I got to the end of a long speech, not particularly sad or angry, but god damn it felt like the end of 300, and I’m screaming the last words of inspiration to a group of soldiers walking into their death. It was so impassioned, and I couldn’t handle it. I started tearing up.

“Are you fucking crying right now…?” My friend James interrupted.

“NO!” I screamed, wiping the tears away.

GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, CLAIRE! I tell myself.

I start to cry more.

STOP YELLING AT ME! I tell the part of myself that just yelled at me.

Once you start crying, you lose all respect in a conversation. you are no longer on the same level. You are seen as a weakling, and there is no coming back.

 

I once walked in on my sister crying at the end of 10 years younger, a TLC makeover show. Now, my first instinct was to judge her and tell to quit being such a little bitch, but frankly, I’ve been there, many, many times.  Extreme makeover anything, and I just lose my shit at the big reveal. Houses, fat people, it could be Extreme Makeover: Your Grandma’s bathroom and I would probably tear up a little. “Look at those porcelain tiles!” I would choke out through blurry eyes. “Her baths are going to be so much nicer now! Oh my god, oh my god I’m so happy for you Gloria. ENJOY YOUR BATHROOM GLORIA. ENJOY IT FOREVER!!”

My emotions don’t even make sense. I could watch a marathon of Final Destination movies, and watch teenager after teenager die incredibly gruesome deaths and not feel a thing. BUT GOD FORBID I WATCH A FAT PERSON LOSE WEIGHT, IM GONE.

SO IM SORRY I CRY, OK!

I’M JUST REALLY HAPPY FOR HER.

SHE WILL LOOK SO GOOD IN HER SKINNY JEANS NOW.

LEAVE ME ALONE.

 

 

Weird Childhood Memories part 1

So.......................

Remember when I said I would be writing a new blog post every Wednesday?  Well that lasted a whole two Wednesdays before I was like....

In case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m a little lacking in the will-power department.

Anyways, ONWARD WE MARCH.

So what I have for you over the next few consecutive posts is a series of weird childhood memories.

So you know.....like.... when you’re sitting in the waiting room of the pediatrician’s office, the office you still go to even though you are a legal adult, and all of the sudden these strange memories start bombarding you, memories like that one time where you pooped in the pool at your cousin’s house, or like, how you used to play with marbles for hours at a time? And you didn’t even use them to play actual marbles, but you used to pretend they were a family of glass balls that had thoughts and feelings and ate food and stuff? And then you close your eyes and put your hands on your face and breath out like shhhhoooooooooooo in a sigh-type of way? And then you genuinely wonder to yourself how you actually had any friends? Like......any at all? You know what I’m talking about? Okay good. (#samepage).

Well.

This has nothing to do with that.

This has to do with the fact that I am efficient. And by efficient I mean I always try to find the easiest, most minimal way to do things whilst still doing them, with no regards for the quality of my output, only the opportunity cost of my energy and/or time. Some might call this “lazy”. And to those some I say fuck you I am efficient.

For example, when I was younger I used to play a lot of sports, one of them being softball.

One thing you need to understand is that 10 year old girls are not good at softball.

Especially the pitchers.

They were easy to distract, and if they threw four balls you got to walk to first base. When the coach told me this, I was like “NO FUCKIN’ WAY! You mean that I could just stand there and wait for the pitcher to fuck up?? And I don’t even have to run! I get to walk to first! Holy shit that’s awesome.”  (Well, that’s what I thought. What I actually said was “mmhmm” while I nodded my head.)

So, obviously, this sounded like the easiest, most minimal way to play softball, and I jumped on it.

I started finding new and creative ways to distract the pitcher. For example, I came up with the stupidest batting stance. I would squat really, really low to the ground, jut my ass out until it was aligned with my knees, and wag it back and forth, back and forth, nice and slowly, in pace with the increasing amount of head-tilts from confused lookers-on.

*If you don’t understand the picture here, go ahead and do it yourself. Go on. In front of the mirror. Alright, you did it? You see what an asshole you looked like? Okay good. (#samepage).*

I had a fucking blast, and I apparently gave zero fucks about how idiotic I probably looked. 

I thought it was so creative of me, and it actually worked!  And by that I mean the pitchers sucked and threw balls regardless of anything I did to provoke them.

My parents, god bless their evil/wonderful little souls, had to come and sit through game after game and watch me make a fool of myself.

I thought I was hot shit, but can you imagine what that looked like from the outside?

“oh my gawd, frank.” A mother in the stands would say to her husband, shaking her head. “That poor gurl....mmm mmm mmm. Good for them, though, for letting the re-tah-ded ones play.”

My parents would hear those whispers throughout the stands and shake their heads and put their faces in their hands.

*Fun fact* : my batting stance in 2003 was inspiration for the twerking craze of late 2012.  

My one-time-only facebook rant (I promise)/earplugs

You know what someone should invent? A virtual “punch in the throat” option on Facebook. Everyone and their grandmother has a Facebook these days, as I’m sure you have realized, my internet friend.

Now, I swore for a long time that I would never include in one of my blog posts a rant about Facebook, because everyone else does that.  But alas, I have reached a very special age in my life. There is an age from about 16-21 where you think you know exactly what you are doing. You are confident, you are enthusiastic, and you are pretty sure that you will one day be famous.

You see, 18, 19, and 20 year olds are just as stupid and naïve as 16 year olds. The only thing about 16 year olds is that they are legally not allowed to do certain things, like get tattoos, credit cards, marriage licensees, etc.

BUT.

When you hit 18 you can now legally do all the stupid shit you always wanted to do when you were 16. There is nothing holding you back from making really, really bad decisions. So when I go on Facebook these days, I see post after post of my now legal peers. One girl that sat at my lunch table in junior high got engaged to her boyfriend (of 7 months, I must add) over the weekend. Less than five years ago I watched that girl struggle to make lunchable pizzas every day and now she thinks she is capable of emotionally and financially supporting herself, as well as her "fiancé" for the rest of her life.

Now, what I said to her when she made the announcement was, “HORRAY! YOUR ENGAGEMENT RING IS SOOOOOOO KEWTTTTTTTTTTTT! Don’t worry that it’s one of the nine dollar ones from Walmart, girly! It’s the thought that counts!”  

But what I wanted to say was, "Anyone wanna start a pool? Pot goes to the person who guesses correctly the month/year that they will inevitability get a divorce. My guess is t-minus 72 hours after the ceremony, when they realize that neither of them can afford a cab ride back their separate dorm rooms."  

I also see a flux of people getting the most ridiculous of tattoos. “Oh god.” I say as I scroll past their enthusiastic posts. “You are going to wake up one morning when you are 37 and really, really regret that Whinnie the Pooh quote you have engraved across your entire torso.”

So nerds, get out there and go invent a virtual punch-in-the-throat option on Facebook, so I can reprimand these, stupid, stupid assholes.

I (obviously) will retain the patent, but we can split the profit 70/30.

I get the 70.

On another note, I just watched my dog shit out a pair of earplugs.

That shit cray. (#pun)

Life's Big Questions/Interview With a Toddler

So, you know how sometimes when it’s late at night on a Sunday and you are looking at the ceiling trying to fall asleep and all these weird, motivational thoughts come into your head? Things like “You know what? Maybe I should start hugging people more often”. Or "Hey. I am going to start writing a new blog post every Wednesday, because I need to give the people what they want. And by the people I mean the 3.5 people that I force to read my blog and also that one person from Bangladesh who I'm pretty sure is just trying to steal my identity." And after you say those things you totally forget about them until 11:57 on Wednesday night when Jimmy Fallon says “it's Wednesday!” and you say “FUCK” out loud to no one in particular?  

You know what I’m talking about? Okay good.#samepage

So, what I have for you is the manuscript of a recording that I made today when I was babysitting my pal Ryan. He is sometimes hard to entertain. And when I say he I mean me.

So what I did today was record a video as I asked him some of life’s big questions. Basically, I Matt Lauer’d the shit out of this kid. He mostly just stared at the camera in silence, so the video ended up being not as entertaining as I thought it would be. HOWEVER, after I turned it off, I secretly sound recorded our following conversation with my handy dandy iphone app, which I will lovingly type out for you. And by lovingly I mean I hate you.

Just kidding! (Kind of).

Me: So Ryan, how old are you?

Ryan: *he holds up three fingers and then stares at them, utterly consumed and completely concentrated. He then dramatically changes his three fingers to two fingers, and lets out a long sigh of relief. *

Me: So you are two?

Ryan: yesh

Me: Neat. So, what’s your favorite color?

Ryan: Wut

Me: White?

Ryan: yesh

Me: Good for you for going against the grain on that one. Not many people pick white as their favorite color. What do you want to be when you go up?

Ryan: ..........?

Me: You know, how your mom and dad go to work? They have jobs? You can be a doctor or an athlete or a rock star or a mediocre honey salesman, etc. What do you want to do when you get older?

Ryan: Geen.

Me: Green?

Ryan: yesh

 Me: That’s what you want to be when you grow up?

Ryan: yesh

Me: Well, to each his own, amiright?

Ryan: ...........?

Me: Alright then, then lets carry on.  Ummmm.....

Ryan: (mockingly) Ummmm.....

Me: What is your favorite thing? What makes you happy?

Ryan: wut.

Me: you know...happy? Like when you smile and stuff?

Ryan: wut.

Me: happy?

Ryan: w u t

*I can see he is struggling with this one, which is reasonable. It’s a tough question to answer until you have tasted your first sip of alcohol. I begin to list things out, things like apple juice, puppies, and Barney, all of which he replies “yesh”. I say “cigarettes” at the end just to confirm his comprehension at this point, and he still says “yesh”, so I don’t really know how accurate this interview is going to be.*

Me: How do you think Obama is running his office so far?

Ryan: *he mostly just babbles and it is difficult to follow, so I have derived a rough translation for you* : My brother Scott ran away once, all the way down to the end of the street. My parents were super pissed, but personally I thought it was a kick-ass form of rebellion. They asked Scott to clean up. CLEAN UP. Like, that’s such bullshit, right? Well Scott was just not going to take that shit. He was all like, what is this? The Help? And he flew straight out the fuckin’ door. Can you believe it? Anyways, one day I’m going pull that shit too, and it’s going to be awesome.    

*again, I said rough translation*

Me: That has nothing to do with what I just asked you, but that’s fine, let’s roll with it. What are your thoughts on gay marriage?

Ryan: meeeeeeeelllllllllllgggrreeeeee pappynanananananana wut. Applejuicebarneyscott

Me: Every, citizen has a right to his own opinion, I guess. Next question. What are your thoughts on foreign affairs?

Ryan: *picks up his toy helicopter and holds it up in the air above his head and just stares at it.*

Me: That one is pretty self-explanatory.  

Ryan: Heeeeeeecoooppppptttaaaahhhhhhh APPPPPPPPPLLLLLLLLLLLLLJUICEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

And that’s where I ended things.

As you can see, the wheel is a turnin’ up there but when it comes time to annunciate things, toddlers are a little on the slow side.

Also, it is Thursday now. DON’T GIVE ME YOUR SASS, BITCH. I WAS BUSY AND ALSO TIRED AND COULDN’T POST IT LAST NIGHT AFTER I FINISHED.  SUCK MY DICK. Or don’t. #womensrights