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

Summer

Ahhhhhh Summer,

I love summer! It’s the most wonderful time of the year :) A time where stay at home moms facetiously joke about committing  suicide but also kind of mean it a little, and a time when children’s cute little lips turn blue. (No, you sick bastard! Not because they drowned in the pool! Because they eat a lot of blue raspberry jumbo pops! God, I can’t believe you would even think of that. You are so fucked up in the head.)

(Question: How long does it take claire to make you feel a little uncomfortable and slightly offended? Answer: About 2.3 seconds.)

I’ve been thinking lately about some of my favorite childhood memories of summer, and I thought I would share some with you...

1)   There was one summer where every day I would sit on the front lawn next to my poodle and knit potholders. I would also play my harmonica for passersby. Let that one marinate for a minute.

2)   My dad once accidently left the hot tub on for almost a week. It ended up spilling into the pool and making the pool water 98 degrees. I enjoyed this, so I didn’t tell him for another week.

The gas bill that month was an extra $535.

3)   In the summer of 4^th grade I choreographed an entire dance routine to “Hey Ya!” by Outkast. It was mostly me doing the “snorkel” and I only ever preformed it for J-Kwon. (See favorite childhood memory number 8 for reference).

4)   One summer I ate the snowball that had been sitting in the freezer since Christmas morning.

5)  I once went through a phase where I was obsessed with paper mache. I made a bunch of useless crap, from (multiple) “decorative” vases to a spaghetti bowl that you couldn’t eat spaghetti out of.

6)  I once caught a bad case of bronchitis and had to stay in the hospital for a night. I had lost a lot of weight and the doctors didn’t know why, so as a precaution I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere unless I rode in a wheelchair. I really took advantage of all my newfound attention, and also made a powerpoint about how I wanted to go to Disneyland for my “make-a-wish”. Turns out you don’t get a “make-a-wish” for being dehydrated.

7)  I used to hate how water balloons broke so easily, so I would take special, unbreakable 24” mega balloons (you know, the balloons they use to advertise at car lots?) and fill them with 30 gallons of water and leave them all over the backyard. This really pissed my parents off.

8)  I had a blow up pool toy killer whale that I pretended was a real whale. I named him J-Kwon, after the beautiful mind behind the 2004 smash hit “Tipsy.”

 

Look at that stylin' muthafucka. We were total pals.

 

9)   One summer I was mistakenly charged with the theft of some shoes and was sent to a harsh juvenile center in the middle of the desert and forced to dig holes in search of treasure. Long story short, I met a tiny, illiterate black kid and we ended a generational curse and there were lizards and peaches and stuff. Yeah, that was fun. 
 

10)I once ate two Wendy's Texas double cheeseburgers and large fries. My dad ordered the same meal except he couldn't finish his.

 

 

I'm about to tear up over here. This is getting too wonderfully emotional. Nostalgia is the like vexatious ex-spouse of emotions, always there to remind you that you are old now, and nothing will ever be the same.  

Happy summer to all, and to all a good night.

College and Other Things

Hai friends. My, my! It has been a while! I know I made an unfulfilled promise that I would be back, but this time its fo real. I swear.

I tried to post a couple of times within the last few months, however I could never seem to quite finish writing a post before I deleted the whole draft. My creative process was a little off. For example, I would be eating a breakfast taco and I would be all like OH MY GOD THIS IS SO GOOD I NEED TO WRITE A BLOG POST ABOUT MY LOVE FOR BREAKFAST TACOS. So I would sit down, write a post about how good breakfast tacos are, and by the time I got to the end I would realize that rather than sounding like  a funny post about tacos, it sounded like the diary of a 43 obese, introverted librarian that had eaten a taco that day. You see what I mean?  It was messy.

So now I just have a bunch of partially formed , incomplete posts about my life since we last spoke, and rather than just keep on keeping on I’m going to SMASH THEM ALL TOGETHER IN THIS POST IN HOPES THAT THEY WILL CONNECT LIKE PIECES OF A PUZZLE AND I CAN GO BACK TO WRITING FULL,COMPLETE  POSTS FOREVER AND THEN I CAN GET FAMOUS AND I WONT HAVE TO SHARE A ROOM WITH MY STUPID ROOMATE WHO WAS COUGHING ALL NIGHT BECAUSE SHE’S SICK AND NOW IM TIRED AND I HAVE TO STUDY FOR MY CALCULUS  FINAL THAT’S TONIGHT AND OH GOD I JUST COUGHED I HOPE IM NOT GETTING SICK FUCK ME IF IM GETTING SICK IM GOING TO PUNCH A BITCH.

So anyways, here we go:

#7 on “The Top Ten Best Things About College”: Breakfast tacos. Breakfast tacos everywhere.



 

#1 on “The Top Ten Worst Things About College”: You how pooping in public sucks because you have to be quiet and make it seem like you aren’t pooping? The number one worst thing about college is that every poop is a public poop.  Gone are the days when you can just poop carefree, you know, and really enjoy your poops.  Now it’s pooping in constant, anxious fear that someone will hear you. Because you know that if someone hears you poop, when you exit the stall they will lock eyes with you. THEY WILL KNOW THAT YOU POOPED AND THEY WILL JUDGE YOU AND BE ALL LIKE “EW THAT CHICK JUST POOPED AND I HEARD IT.”

 

 

 

Random Things About Me #11 : I am scared of very few things. These very few things do not include spiders or snakes like normal people. These things include murder clowns, squirrels that are not afraid of humans, and that moment when you are standing by the toaster and you are waiting for your toast to pop out and then your mind wanders off and you kind of forget you are waiting for toast and then all of the sudden the toaster is like BAM TOAST and you are like HOLY SHIT FUCK ME I FORGOT IT WAS GOING TO DO THAT OH MY GOD THAT WAS SCAREY. 

 

#4 on “List of Things I Want to Murder”: My roommate, when she wakes me up.

I have never had such violent thoughts in my entire life than in that split second that I’m woken up every morning by my roommate unwrapping a granola bar at 7:00am. 

#6 on “Signs That I Shouldn’t be Allowed to Eat Anymore”

The other day I found a coupon for a buy one get one free sandwich and I was like “OMG I KNOW WHAT I’LL DO! I’LL EAT ONE SANDWICH NOW AND THE OTHER FOR LUNCH TOMORROW!” but I ended up just eating both of them within 20 minutes.

#5 on “Signs That I Shouldn’t be Allowed to Eat Anymore”

 I ran out of pita chips for my humus so I just ate the rest of the container with a spoon.

#4 “Signs That I Shouldn’t be Allowed to Eat Anymore”

I opened a can of spaghettio’s with a swiss army knife and just ate them out of the can, cold. Like a homeless person.  Actually, you know what? I don’t even think a homeless person would do that. Homeless people are classier than that.  

#7 “Signs That I Shouldn’t be Allowed to Eat Anymore”

I ran out of lactaid for my cereal this morning so I just ate cake and barbeque chips instead.

 

So there’s my smash of things. Did it work? I don’t know. Who cares? Wait, I care.

SEAL TITS.

The end.