Why I Can't Ever Live Alone

Most graduates can't wait to live alone. I just realized that I never can.

Reasons Why I Am Too Immature to Live Alone

1. Tornado Warnings Don't Scare Me

I live in Peoria, and so far (until recently) a tornado had never come close to my house. We get warnings all the time in spring, but after years of my parents pulling me downstairs to take shelter in my footy pajamas, I realized that none of the tornadoes ever hit us. Just because they hadn't hit us yet. Because I am smart.

So, a few weeks ago when a tornado came very close, I tried switching the channels to get away from the pesky weatherman pulling an all-nighter to save my neighborhood. When my father demanded I finally come downstairs, I grabbed my laptop. And the novel I was reading. And some water. And toilet paper, for after I drank the water. And then I finally decided I had enough necessities to be safe and sound.

My brother had immediately ran downstairs and was shaking. His hand looked like it was going to fly off his arm any moment.

"Stop it," I had said while I tried to find a station that worked, but my parents yanked the remote away to watch the dedicated weatherman.

2. I Would Never Be Able to Shower

After the tornado, unfazed even though this one almost came to our street, I was the only one that stayed up past midnight. Then I realized that I didn't want to shower in the morning.

I made the adult, reasonable decision to shower now so I wouldn't have to shower in the morning. So I got a towel my mom will wash, pajamas my mother had washed, and my retainer for after the shower.

I took off my clothes, turned on the hot water, and closed the shower behind me. And realized that this was how every horror movie trailer starts.

NOTE, I said trailer. Because I'm too scared to watch the entire horror film. And instead just watch the trailers. While covering my ears. And shutting my eyes. And praying (yet not religious) until the trailer is over so I could finish my Parks and Rec.

Again, I made another reasonable decision to not close the shower behind me, and instead soak the floor so I could observe if any spirit or murderer crept in. Because seeing the intrusion could totally help my naked 90-pound body stop a spirit or murderer from killing me.

Not only am I not smart enough to realize that I could never, ever stop my own death, but I would drown my bathroom. And I can't swim.

Think about it.

3. Too Awkward to Exist

I work at a marketing company where I sometimes walk through websites with my clients. One client has a YouTube video on their home page, and they were wondering about the random video suggestions at the end of the video.

And I forgot that I was logged into my work email, so the YouTube channel I was connected to would be the one automatically created for my work email. And I forgot about all the VH1 100 Best Songs of the 90s videos I had been watching.

So the clients and I were skipping through the video on their home page and we came across four suggestions. Two of them were related to their business. One was some video game YouTube video because my boyfriend uses my laptop to watch his nerd things.

And the last one, in the upper right corner, was "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls.

The two choices were clear: Confess that these were my personal recommendations, or think that a video with a thumbnail of a girl lying on a bed was a random suggestion that would come up for all their users. Even for children and the elderly.

And I spent the next few minutes telling them that "I Touch Myself" was actually a song, and that I just listened to a lot of 90s songs. I'm still not sure they believed me, but the website is launched so I don't have to see them again, so whatever.

When they left, I immediately deleted all of my recommendations on my work email YouTube channel. Especially the Britney Spears ones. I think if that suggestion had been a Britney Spears video, I would have been more embarrassed.

Because I am so un-adult that I think a well-known pop song would be more embarrassing then a possible porn video.

5 Tips for Your Overnight Bag

On TV and in books I noticed that sometimes, women just fall asleep at mens' apartments/houses without any essentials! I was watching Trainwreck the other day with my boyfriend, and I couldn't believe that Amy didn't have some sort of overnight bag! Does this actually happen? How lazy are we, ladies, that we have forgotten the overnight bag?

Now, some girls might not want to carry overnight bags because they are bulky and too-obvious when walking home the next morning, which is why I decided to write down some must-haves for when spending the night at a guy's (or girl's) place!

1. Toilet Paper

If you are a lesbian, this might not be applicable, but guys never have enough toilet paper. And if your guy has a roommate, there's an even greater chance that the toilet paper is actually being used as paper towels, pillows, or holiday decoration. Or maybe they are competing to see who can go the longest without caving and buying toilet paper. I don't know why guys do these things, but you should be prepared.

2. Hand Towels

No matter how many times I ask, my boyfriend (of over 3 years) does not keep a hand towel in his bathroom. It's a miracle he has soap, honestly, so ladies, bring your own hand towel. Or do what I do and just wipe your hands on your boyfriend's roommate's things in their shared bathroom. Or wave your hands around the room until everything is covered in dabs of water. That's fun too.

3. A Tiny Trash Can

This is where you can store all your overnight items! And afterwards, when carrying it home with you, everyone will just assume you're a trash man! Or homeless, whatever, but the real reason the trash can is important is if you have any items (tampons, pads, skin care items) that you might need to throw away the next morning. Because some guys may not have a trash can in their bathroom (which I have seen), or, if they do, it is completely full with pizza boxes. You will need to dispose of your necessities yourself.

4. Your Retainer

Don't forget that retainer you have had since middle school, ladies! Do you want your man (or lady) to see that you no longer care for your teeth? No, so along with a toothbrush and toothpaste (again, in case the guy doesn't have any toothpaste), after being intimate with your date, make sure to have your old, crusty retainer, and make sure he sees you put it in your mouth! Not only does this tell him that you will make sure your teeth are straight forever, but it also hints that you are done and it's time to go to sleep!

5. Sleeping Pill

The younger the guy, the worse his bed is. My boyfriend still lives at home, so the options are his lumpy futon or his old bunk beds (which are too small for just one grown adult, and he tries sharing the bottom bunk with me.) You will need to find something other than a comfortable bed to put you to sleep.

Almost Losing It to My Best Friend

*Note: I change names to protect the innocently stupid.            

            Now, it wasn't my original plan to lose my virginity to my best/worst friend. In seventh grade sex ed, I was one of the few, proud students (I think there were 3 of us) who raised their hands when the guest speaker asked that day if any of us planned on waiting 'til marriage.

            Personally, even though at the time I, who hadn't appealed to any guy since grade school anyway, wanted to wait, I didn't like this guest speaker. She spent the first half of the class calling up six students and giving them cups of water. One boy had flaky, orange Cheeto remains in his cup. She then had the students pour water into each other's cups, "proving" that if you shared fluids (had sex) with six people, you would get a STD for sure (Cheeto flakes were the STD.) She then spent the other half of the class telling us how jealous her daughter's roommates are of her virgin, college daughter, who was waiting until marriage to "sleep with" (mom language for bang-bang) her wonderful, virgin boyfriend.

            I sometimes wonder if that actually worked out for our guest speaker's daughter, or if she eventually had sex with six different partners and got a case of Cheeto-flaked herpes.

            Maybe her virgin boyfriend cheated on her, causing the perfect daughter to have sex with a rebound, leather-wearing, Cheeto-eating new boyfriend.

            This was my take-away from sex ed. That, and a day when a random short, slightly pudgy man with a small bald spot on the top of his head came in and expressed his disgust for women who put out. Really, I don't know what this little, 30-something man's qualifications were for talking to impressionable kids with budding hormones about intercourse, but there he was.

            This speaker told us about how he had a girlfriend who actually agreed to have sex with him! Sounds like he was just trying to brag, right? No, instead of being grateful, he slept with her until he married someone else, a good, virginal girl!

            "Never marry the girl you sleep with," was this random, one-day educator's advice, and I wondered why he would say that to a room that was 3/5ths female.

            Don't worry, I was always very liberal and didn't take his nonsense seriously. I only wanted to wait and wear a purity ring because the Jonas Brothers wore purity rings, and Nick Jonas was hot. It was my goal to meet Nick at a concert, fall in love, wait until marriage in our early twenties, and then sit on his face.

            But then, my $6.95 faux-diamond purity ring designed by Bitten by Sarah Jessica Parker turned my finger green a few weeks later, and a few of the stones fell off. I took that as a sign. I'm big on signs. More recently, while I was reading Jen Kirkman's I Can Barely Take Care of Myself, half the flowers my current boyfriend bought for died, only one day in my care. Super sign. (P.S., I'm thinking Super Sign will be the title of my first book, or The Rectum is an Exit, Not an Entrance, and Other Negotiable Things.)

            What does this have to do with my story? Did I see a sign that I should sleep with my best/worst friend, Dallas? No, I was just kinda horny. And my mother was always accusing me of sleeping (see, mom term) with Dallas. The nerve of her! I couldn't have one guy friend, freshman year of college!? She was just an old school, out-of-touch prude! Why couldn't a guy and a girl JUST be friends!? I was so f*ing outraged about this, that I immediately went to Dallas' house and made the f* out with him!

            I also learned that every square inch of your community college is really a kissing-zone. Dallas and I made out in the common TV area, the cafeteria, outside the cafeteria, did upstairs-outsidies in the courtyard, and grinded in the stairwell.

            The stairs were actually built for this. They were ideal! Between floors, there were two sets of stairs separated by a short platform, with very obnoxiously loud doors at the top and bottom of the stairwell. Not only could we stand in the middle platform, leaving enough time to walk up or down the stairs if we heard footsteps either way, but the doors made a loud, Chewbacca-like roar whenever we were about to be interrupted.

            In conclusion, community college stairwell make-out sessions are awesome, and you should all try them sometime (unless you're a Harvard or Yale snob. Bleh.)

            Not in conclusion actually, because I have to tell you about deciding whether or not to lose it to my best friend.

            The Pros:

            1. He had experience. A lot of experience.

            2. If I didn't like the actual act, at least I knew I would like the stuff that led up to it (cause we already did the stuff that led up to it.)

            3. My mom was accusing me of having sex with him anyway (like she accused me of having sex with everyone), so why not? If I'm a slut, I might as well actually get the joy out of being a slut!

            But, then, there were The Cons:

            1. Dallas was an idiot.

            2. Dallas was an idiot who slept through all his classes and couldn't keep a part-time job.

            3. Dallas was my best friend, and what if I lost my best friend?

            4. Dallas was an idiot who had been hit by 11 cars.

            5. 11 CARS. ON HIS BIKE. AND HE KEPT RIDING HIS BIKE. WITHOUT LOOKING BOTH WAYS. I PULLED HIM OUT OF THE WAY OF A CAR ONCE. HE WAS SUPERIOR TO AND STUPIDER THAN A REALLY STUPID CAT.

            And so I didn't lose my virginity to my best friend, the 11-car-miracle-wonder boy. How did this boy never get in the local papers?

            In case you are wondering, I also never met Nick Jonas, fell in love, waited until marriage in our early twenties, and sat on his face. I did go to a Jonas Brothers concert for my fifteenth birthday, though. That is another story.

An Atheist and His Pagan Daughter Walk into a Bar,

with a priest, a rabbi, and a duck. They all get drunk on PBR, and then the atheist decides to order a REDD's Apple Ale. He points it to the priest as he drinks.

The atheist says, "Do you remember this apple?"

The priest says, "Go to hell."

The atheist laughs and says, "You keep playing with that 'hell' toy until it breaks and no one believes you."

The priest puts down his bottle and raises his arms to the heavens.

He says, "How can you not believe in Jesus!?"

The rabbi mutters, "Jesus was just a bad Jew."

The priest says, "You take that back!"

The rabbi turns to the priest and yells, "He threw us under the bus!"

The priest yells back, "You threw him on a cross!"

The duck, while slurring, interrupts, "Quack. I much prefer the god Poseidon, quack."

The pagan cheers, "Yeah!" and high-fives/high-wings the duck.

The priest, in disgust, pleads, "Why can't you see you're wrong?"

The atheist turns it around, "Why can't you see you're wrong?"

The duck says, "Quack. I need to get back to the pond, quack."

The pagan has an idea. "I'm going to pray to the God of War that you all stop fighting!"

The atheist, the duck, the rabbi, and the priest look at each other.

"Then who will we persecute?" they all wonder.

"You can go back to the Muslims," the duck offers.

Everyone high-fives. "Yes!" they cheer. "Them!"

The atheist says, "But I'm still going to hate all of you."

The priest and the rabbi nod.

The atheist and his pagan daughter leave the priest, the rabbi, and the duck at the bar.

The priest turns to the rabbi, "Jesus was right, you know."

The rabbi looks at his bill. "$7 for a beer!"

The duck says, "Quack."

Short Blog on How Selfless My Boyfriend Is, & How Selfish I Am Part 2

Setting: This late evening in my bedroom. We just finished watching 50 First Dates, my boyfriend for the first time and me for the 50th time, and I was getting ready for my pre-SNL nap.

My boyfriend: I have a question for you, Jordy.

Me: (Silence, because I am trying to train my boyfriend to continue with his stories instead of taking unnecessary pauses)

My boyfriend: (After a pause) If we had a situation like you and I just watched—

Me: I'd dump you.

My boyfriend: You didn't even let me finish!

Me: I'm guessing.

My boyfriend: Anyway, if we had a situation like in the movie we just watched, where one of us lost our short term memory—

Me: I'd dump you. Look, I guessed right! Yay, me!

My boyfriend: What!? So, I would wake up in the morning, and not remember the days before, and think we were still together. . . .

Me: And I would get married to someone else and have kids, but I would continue to text you. If you wanted to hang out, I would just say I was too busy with work that day, and suggest the next day.

My boyfriend: What!? I would take care of you! I would support you and love you, and you would leave me?

Me: (Shrugs) You wouldn't know.

My Childhood Hamster Had Balls!

    When I was ten, I wanted nothing more than a cute little hamster that would follow me to school and around the house in a hamster ball. On my eleventh birthday, I thought this wish finally became a reality when my father took me to the pet store to pick one out!
    “I want that one!” I said, pointing to the smallest, most delicate looking hamster I could find. This hamster was like the pet-equivalent of me, but better—this hamster was a redhead! I had selected a tiny orange, black, and white one just so the hamster would match my favorite new name, Ginger.
    I don’t think I wanted a hamster so much as I wanted a Ginger. Really, the whole point of getting a hamster, for me, was to name it Ginger, because I love names. As Told by Ginger was the best cartoon at the time, in my humble opinion, and naming inanimate stuffed animals, dolls, and even select corners of my house was not good enough. I got a child-sized guitar, named her Maddie, and never played her. Then I got a normal-sized guitar, same thing happened, named her Sally. Sally is covered in dust in the basement, and Ginger is dead.
    But back to the story:  I needed to give a living thing a name. I needed that type of power, to mark a living thing forever. “You!” I’m sure I yelled like a dictator in that pet store, “are now Ginger forever! To everyone! And you can’t argue about it!”
    (On a side note, this is why I don’t want children. I only think I want a house full of children so I can name a house full of children and force their first hobbies on them. I just want to force a girl to forever be called Carolina and spend her early years playing soccer, and a boy to forever be called Troy and spend his early years learning the art of dance. And then resent me for all these decisions. And they wouldn’t be able to do anything to take these early decisions back!
    I’m a tiny, tiny, fragile little girl. This is my Napoleon complex.)
    At the pet store, the part-time employee in an oversized blue polo stupidly gave a tiny eleven year old (who looked seven) the box of live hamster to hold, while my dad helped me pick out a cage and accessories. In the end, I got a large, clear tub to stare at my hamster at as long and as often as I cared to.
    I couldn’t wait to make the hamster love me, as all pets do! We took Ginger home, set the hamster up in the tank, and I ignored the new edition to my family for the next several hours as my dad took me to a birthday hockey game.
    I think this neglect so early in our relationship is why Ginger got fat. That, and I stopped taking Ginger out to roll around in the hamster ball. It was fun at first, making Ginger roll around and around as long as I wanted in a tiny room, until I noticed that little brown pellets rolling around the ball, which could fall out the ball’s cracks for breathing (why do hamsters need air? Why?)
    Shortly after this, Ginger started plotting a hamster-sized escape. We put the large tank on my tall dresser, which Ginger learned to crawl up and down out of, and into my closet. There, Ginger nibbled on the feet of my oversized stuffed animals. Because it’s not like Ginger was fed enough (over-fed, ungrateful hamster.)
    When Ginger got very obese-ly fat, I saw my first pair of balls. Being eleven and prematurely narcissistic, I assumed my hamster was whatever gender I wanted the hamster to be. Nope, oops. Ginger was a George, and I learned about male anatomy (which was good, because my parents never got around to giving me the talk after my first period. I needed this lesson in biology.)
    I also learned about death. One day, when I got home from school, I did the normal routine:  cross the hall to my room, put the backpack on my bed, turn to head back out for a snack, but as I turned my head this day, I noticed Ginger/George’s tank was missing.
    “Ginger?” I asked the air above my dresser. I still always called George Ginger.
    “Dad?” was my next thought.
    “Yeah?” he asked, nonchalantly ducking his head in my room.
    I pointed my little finger to the naked dresser.
    “Oh, yeah, I had to take that out,” my dad stated. “The hamster died.” Then he left my room to go to second shift at work, having already had a productive day of letting his daughter know that death ultimately meant nothing. Life moved on.

Mix-Matched Socks and 10-Year-Old Bras

I’m just not together enough for matching socks. Matching socks are for people who haven’t completely given up. Matching socks are for people who actually pour their cereal into a bowl, instead of eating it with their fingers out of the box. Matching socks are for people who, when they realize they forgot to brush their hair that day, don’t just look in a mirror and say Hey, good enough! Most mornings, I just try to find the same type of socks (ankle socks, knee-highs, etc.) so my feet don’t feel weird.

I hope my feet are color-blind (I know they look color-blind.) That way they won’t lose self-esteem every time I put on one pink sock, and one green.

Sometimes, I’m pretty sure I have a couple matching pairs in the piles of boxes blocking my closet. I never unpacked from college. Before you say that’s understandable, I graduated last May, not this past December. I would rather sit around listening to music before work than dig through my dorm stuff for two purple socks. I can often find two blue socks, but they are always different shades. Close enough, right?

I get even worse. Today I was wearing one of those bras a shirt just can’t cover enough. With most bras, shirts still can’t hide the outline, but this bra outline really stuck out. I looked at myself in the mirror, and knowing that I had at least 35 minutes until heading to work, I tried to convince myself that I didn’t need to swap bras.

I think this problem was because this bra was so old and the wire was bent. This was the nearly 10-year-old bra I said I threw out in previous posts (I didn’t because I’m a hoarder. Who knows when I am going to need it? Aren’t women supposed to pass training bras down to their children? No?)

I eventually swapped bras because I realized Did I really want to be this lazy? Even though the answer was an obvious Yes!, I didn’t want others to know I was that lazy. Also, because I was actually wearing matching socks today. Sure, I only had matching socks because I found a pair last week and haven’t taken them off since, for fear of never finding a matching pair again, but nevertheless, I had matching socks. I was together enough to swap out the 10-year-old bra too. Just not together enough to throw it away yet. . . .

Fun with Childhood Bunk Beds

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Discovering You're a Narcissist Through Hoarding: A Weirdo's Tale

    I’m certain I’m a hoarder. Last month I decided, again, to throw away all unnecessary things from my room. I then threw out one bag of actual trash—plastic boxes from toys I didn’t have the strength to discard when I opened them. Years ago.
    I keep every scrap of paper I wrote one line, a few words, on. This excludes most college course notes, unless there was a doodle or the middle of a poem. I have two loose-leaf accounting binders in the corner by my door. I am not an accountant and I never had any desire to account anything, but there they are. Waiting, but I’m not sure what they are waiting for.
    A pile of newspapers I have never read from my childhood rests in front of my closet, blocking passage to most of my clothes, because when I was in high school I liked to think of myself as the kind of kid who read newspapers. One Journal Star features a large cover picture of the Jonas Brothers, when they came to the Civic Center for a concert. Concert tickets were my birthday present, and I kept the newspaper as a memento of the time I picked up a newspaper featuring my favorite band at the time, and I never read any of the articles, even the one about the concert I was going to see. This was my fifteenth birthday. Next month will be my twenty-third.
    I thought I deserved a change from this life of nonsensical papers and student-less accounting books, so I bought that famous book about cleaning up your life—The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up—and I sat it on the floor by my childhood bed. The next day I awoke to better my life and read it, but the book was covered by a mass of forgotten clothes that fell off my bed. I didn’t even know I had these clothes on my bed. They were always covered by my blankets, probably since the day I brought them home from the mall. One shirt still had its tag, and spoiler alert, I never read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. At least now I know why my feet were always so warm.
    So instead, I went to Barnes & Noble to buy another book. After spending too much time flipping through a book of Hillary Clinton haikus, I made my way to the psychology section and looked at books for my hoarding anxiety. I figured if I fixed my anxiety about being a hoarder, the hoardiness wouldn’t matter because I simply wouldn’t care anymore. Instead of being free of my clutter, I would be free of myself.
    Suddenly, as I skimmed these covers, telling me how anxious people can be, I became anxious about my anxieties, and then I got angry that my anxieties made me anxious.
    Luckily for me, what did I find a few shelves below? Anger management books! Automatic relief was followed by the realization that no, I wasn’t relieved. These books didn’t make me feel any better, but I journeyed to the next bookcase, where books about changing your mood and feeling good were held. The designer of the psychology section must understand me very well, and saw how I would seek books about anxiety that would make me angry, and then I would find no relief in anger management, and I would need to learn to feel good again, if I ever felt good at all.
    On first observations though, I don’t think this book arrangement worked, because my first observation was that one of the men on these read-me-and-be-happy books was nearly ugly, and I didn’t know how he could ever be happy.
    Maybe this case was built for people like me, who think those thoughts, because the next shelf had books about dealing with narcissism, and reading about those self-loving freaks made me realize that I finally found home.
    I’m a writer. I’m a writer who used I 51 times so far in this post. I (52) choose to write non-fiction because I (53) believe that I (54) am the greatest character I (55) could ever come up with, so now I (56) know I’m (57) a narcissist, all because I (58) didn’t want to be a hoarder anymore.
    The lesson of this story is to never, ever, clean your room (wow, I (59) used your! How good for a newly-found narcissist?)
    Now I’m (60) going to go stare at myself in a mirror. I I I I I (65)

Short Blog on How Selfless My Boyfriend Is, & How Selfish I Am that I Can't Even Lie to Him About What I Would Do if I Won the Illinois Lottery Jackpot, & this Title is Longer than the Post

My boyfriend:  If I won, I think I would give each of my friends one million dollars.

Me:  That's stupid, don't do that.

My boyfriend:  Why not?

Me:  Because it's stupid.

My boyfriend:  Why would I ever need more than $10 million dollars in my life?

Me:  No, that's still stupid.

My boyfriend:  I would pay off all my student loans, and your loans too! Then we can both be   debt-free.

Me:  Aw, that's really sweet, thank you. You should buy a ticket now.

My boyfriend:  What would you do if you won that much money?

Me:  I would pay off my student loans, too.

My boyfriend:  What about me? I would pay off your loans!

Me:  I would pay off...my sister's loans. . . .

Bringing Children to Work**

I wonder if Bring Your Child to Work Day was discontinued. It seemed really popular in TV shows in the past, but I never had one. I'm assuming educators must have seen the flaw in their plan.

To them, it was a day they didn't have to do any teaching, and they still got the joy of ruining every child's evening by making the kids write a paper about their day. Win-lose, which is the ideal scenario for anyone who has to deal with little "gifts from Heaven" all day, right?

But here lies the flaw:  there are approximately 400,000 women in America who are strippers, and one strip club regular could spend $50,000 a month.*

I can just see how Bring Your Child to Work Day would work out in some reports across America:

Father enters strip club with his middle-schooler son.

Father:  Son, welcome to my office!

Scantily clad waitress seats them at a table.

Son:  I don't think I can write my report on this.

Father:  Sure you can! This is where I conduct all of my business meetings with potential male partners!

Son:  And potential women partners?

Father:  Don't be silly, Junior!

Father and son order food.

Announcer:  I hope you are all ready, because taking the stage now is our main act, Diamond! And, as part of Roosevelt's Bring Your Child to Work Day, her daughter, Chastity!

Diamond, a professional stripper, and her daughter come out on stage, wearing matching bras and panties.

Announcer:  Isn't she cute? A round of applause for our future leading lady, Chastity!

Son:  Dad, that's the girl who tutors me in math.

Father:  See? I knew you could find something school-related for your paper here! Oh, Diamond! How about some father-son lap dances before my business partners get here with their children?

The end.

On a side note, I also wouldn't want a Bring Your Child to Work Day at the hospital (I'm talking to YOU, Kitty Forman from That's 70s Show, who probably shouldn't have brought your son along on your nursing route—though, at least he was a junior in high school):

Bring Your Child to Work Day:  The Hospital

Father, kneeling down to his elementary school son.

Father:  Son, today you get to help your father put a titanium device into someone's teeny, tiny wrist!

Son:  Oh, boy! Can I play with the device first?

Father:  Oh, sure! We are supposed to sterilize these, but how does your school expect you to learn about my job if you can't finger, drool on, and throw around this internal fixation device before I put it in someone's body, hopefully for forever?

I'm sure that would work out well.

*Note, this blog post was NOT intended to insult any readers who strip professionally. I'm sure many women enjoy stripping, while there are others who are doing what they have to do to provide. I have nothing against people who choose to strip professionally.

**If you like what you read, or don't, please comment and follow (or not follow, if you are one of the don'ts)!

Awkward Sleepovers in Your Possible Future In-Laws' Basement

It all started with the sound of flapping wings above my grown boyfriend's futon in his parent's basement (his bedroom.)

 "What is that?" I ask, astonished. It is 9am in the morning and I grab my 25-year-old boyfriend's arm. This scrawny white, nearly hairless arm across my chest is supposed to save me from whatever bird or bat I think is about to fall on us and claw my eyes out.

 "It's just a rat in the ceiling, relax," my boyfriend says and goes back to sleep. Because the phrase it's just a rat in the ceiling, relax always calms us ladies down. Every time, guys. Remember that.

I then spent the next hour listening to the same flapping sound, convinced that it was a rat with wings (so a bat, I was right) that would fall through the ceiling and bite me, trying to eat its way through my skin (thanks, episode of Game of Thrones!)

Then, the sound stopped. And I got suspicious.

Or maybe it started when my boyfriend took me back to his (parent's) place the night before, and his roommate (friend who's fiancé's parents kicked him out for being a slob) was already asleep. And the smell of half-grown men after a full day of work hit me stronger than it ever did before. Sure, I always knew not to go nose-first towards my boyfriend's balls after he was working, but the tiny basement room had the strong scent of two men's smelly balls all over the place.

Since we couldn't wake the new roommate who was sleeping on the floor directly by the futon, my boyfriend went on the internet and I read a book, completely ignoring each other until 2:38am, when I read 58 pages and decided to go to sleep. And my boyfriend stayed up on the computer instead of joining me. Because we are romantic.

When the cock-blocking roomie left for work in the morning, we put Netflix on and I watched Spanglish because I have a weird thing for Adam Sandler. I don't even like most of his characters, or his singing on old SNLs. His character usually isn't my favorite character in a movie, except for Spanglish, but I have a weird thing for Adam Sandler, and when I have a weird thing for a particular actor, naturally I want to share this with my boyfriend and make him watch a movie with this guy and spend the whole time comparing my boyfriend to the actor. Because I respect my boyfriend's self-esteem and feelings.

And it all really started because I am a morning person. I like to brush my teeth, get dressed, and finish a whole day's worth of tasks in the first couple of hours in a day.

And because my boyfriend's basement-room doesn't have a door, and his parents decided Hey, do you know what we should do while our son has his 22-year-old girlfriend here? We should clean the room directly by his bedroom. I mean, have you looked at our son? It's not like he has any game anyway.

So, while I want to go to the basement bathroom unseen to get ready for the day, his parents are discussing the cleaning outside my boyfriend's nonexistent door.

"I need to get ready for the day," I whisper to my boyfriend, hoping he knows the magic words that will make his parents suddenly realize they need to go upstairs and clean their own room.

"I know," my boyfriend said as he reached over, grabbed my hand affectionately in understanding, and puts my hand on his balls. So we resume watching Spanglish while I squeeze his balls and his parents are cleaning his storage room, basically connected to his room. The room where I was squeezing his balls while watching Spanglish.

Eventually, I HAVE to get ready for the day. So I walk to the bathroom, first having to pass both of his parents while wearing my Hello Kitty jammies and carrying my overnight plastic bag.

After removing the used pad from yesterday’s underwear and stuffing those period panties in my plastic grocery bag (so, to be fair to his parents, my boyfriend wasn't going to get any action anyway), I realized that the trashcan is OUTSIDE the bathroom. Because boys are gross and apparently don’t need trashcans in their bathrooms. And apparently because even though each time before I spend the night I ask my boyfriend to put a trashcan in the bathroom, he never gets around to it.

So I walk out of his basement bathroom, where his parents could see me, holding a rolled-up pad in one hand, in my fancier, Hello Kitty-less daytime clothes, and toss it in the garbage right outside the storage room his parents are cleaning.

Now, I am typing this while watching inappropriate comedy specials on Netflix as my boyfriend and his dad play ping-pong in the now-clean storage room.

Short Blog: Stories from an Atheist's Daughter

In one of my poetry workshops in college, I felt left out. I was one of the only people who did not come from a religious background, and I could not draw from it. I was the Atheist's Daughter who wrote about how she didn't understand religion, which got laughs. And I'm the kind of person who would continue beating any old joke with a sledge hammer until it dies for a laugh.

I wrote about how church service was like a scripted play (because of the nice handouts with lines they give the sinner children of atheists) and how it took me fifteen good minutes of talking to some blond on campus before I realized he was a pastor in training and was trying to sell me on his church. And he was dressed in black with the white little square over his Adam's apple. And I'm not even sure what form of Catholicism/Christianity he was talking about. And he talked for 40 more minutes with his pastor in training buddies that popped up when they found a sinner who was stupid enough not to run from them.

I began to study religion to write more about how I didn't understand it. I bought a Bible and put it on my bookshelf, between my Qur'an and my Wiccan spellbook. I like to imagine that they get along, reading each other's passages to pass the time.

Through my studying, I began to realize that if God was just someone's neighbor today, that neighbor would probably call DCF on his ass. He must have drugged Mary in her sleep through the use of mirth or some other B.C. drug, and raped her until she was with child JUST so the child can die at the stake many years later.

I also never understood Noah's Ark. Like, if God flooded the Earth because he was so disgusted by human beings' behavior except for Noah's family, and he NEVER did it again (like he promised), then how messed up was society back then? Look at us today, God, look at us today! Was it worth it?

When I Had 2 Roommates

I am a recent college graduate, I live with my parents, and I often think of just last year, when I had a student apartment with two other senior girls. Three single gals (well, actually I haven't been single in the past three years, but sometimes I forget and momentarily think I am single, then realize that no, I am not single like them) painting the town red (but our town is already red because of all the shootings that happen here.)

What was it like being three single gals, living it up in an apartment in Illinois, two and a half hours from the only cool place in Illinois? (No diss to my man Abe, I'm sure Springfield was cool in the day of horse-n-buggies and two-feet tall top hats.)

Here is one of those priceless scenes of three wild and crazy gals I remember to this day, one year later:

Me: So, I go into the bathroom, minding my own business, doing my thing, you know—I won't go into the details, YOU ALL KNOW WHAT WE DO IN THE POTTY, DON'T LIE, GIRLS!—but I was there, on the toilet, and I hear a knocking on the door.

Roommate 1: Will you be out soon?

And I was like: Um, yeah. What did she think? That I was leisurely reading and doing my homework in the bathroom, two feet from the kitty litter boxes she never cleans out? Yeah, the best place to spend my spare time.

Roommate 1: Good, because I need to hang up my laundry to dry.

Me: Still using the bathroom and dumbfounded—Why don't you just use the dryer? 

Roommate 1: Said in disgust— They're my delicates! I can't put them in the dryer, they will be ruined.

This was one of the times I noticed the difference between me and Roommate 1—I didn't have delicates. I had $5 Wal-Mart packs of Hanes underwear and five-year-old training bras that I never grew out of. (On a side note, that is why I hate the term "training bra," because what were they training me for? To girls like me, they are just regular bras that fit much better than those I can find at the fancier local Target or Kohls.)

And I put these $5 three-packs of flower-speckled undies and training bras in the dryer. And then eventually they turn from off-white to gray. And my boyfriend deals, clearly because we never had the same type of sex life as Roommate 1.

So Your Boyfriend Thinks You Are a Toy

I'm a little person. I have porcelain doll-like skin (when I am not suffering from the adult acne mentioned in a previous post), I'm only 5' 1", and I weigh... nothing. Light as a feather, stiff as a board was based on me because I am only 100 pounds and I'm stiff due to scoliosis.

But none of this is the point of the blog. Due to my small, doll-like appearance, I have begun to suspect that my boyfriend is only interested in me because he thinks I am a toy. Here are my reasons for thinking this:

This is what his room looks like:

Toys.

Toys.

And more toys.



Now, I know this doesn't necessarily mean that my boyfriend thinks I'm a toy. He just likes toys. But let's look at this picture again:

A little blonde fairy boy with shirt hair and a green dress. 

A few months ago my boyfriend convinced me to cut off most of my hair and get a pixie cut.

And dye my hair blonde.

And then he got me a green cosplay dress.

And this is what I look like:

I'm just another Link doll!

He also went crazy when this was my Halloween costume last year:

And he likes getting me other toy accessories. You know what I am talking about; when Barbie comes with a teddy bear, or when a large teddy bear comes with a smaller teddy bear.

Unless I give my boyfriend a specific book or piece of jewelry to buy me, all he will buy me are stuffed animals.

More stuffed animals.

And more stuffed animals.

And then, instead of sending him selfies of myself, he enjoys selfies of the toys he buys me:

And I know I'm just another one of his toys.

Short Blog: Rebelling Against the Parents You Still Live With

I am a 22-year-old college graduate who lives with her parents and brother. I sleep in my childhood bedroom with Twilight and Jonas Brothers posters. I eat from a microwave, always. Cooking is for adults, and since my mother still insists on doing my laundry, clearly I am not one of those.

Many other college students have to adjust from living in a dorm to living with people who always ask "What are you doing today? Where are you going?" Here are some ways to rebel against those nosy, intrusive beings, who think just because they birthed you, feed you, and still house you, they can ask you questions! And daily! The nerve!


1. Go to bed without saying "goodnight."

That's right! I started with a big one right off the bat! I go to bed early every day because I wake up at 5am for work, and sometimes, if I have spent too much time eating, shopping, and talking with my parents one day, I put on my Hello Kitty pjs, brush my teeth with the toothbrush my mommy bought me, put in the retainer I have worn since high school, and walk directly to my room. No goodnight hugs or kiss. I'm already a grown adult asleep, at 8:30pm.


2. Use heat in the winter.

The holidays are a time for dinners, laughs, and rebelling through passive-aggressive temperature adjustments. It is usually 72 degrees in the house, and I am cold. I wait for my parents to leave to go grocery shopping, and I hike it up to 74 degrees. Sometimes 76. My parents come home. They comment on how warm it is. "Was it always this warm?" they ask. They shrug and turn on the TV. And I take that as time to adjust the temperature back down, but not without a proud smirk on my face. I fooled them once again.


3. "How was work today? Fine."

This one is simple, and it goes a little something like this:

Parent 1: "How was work today?"
You: "Fine."
Parent 2, later: "How was work today?"
You: "Fine."
The next day, Parent 1: "How was work today?"
You: "Fine."
- watch Parent 1's face churn in anger -
Parent 2, after talking to Parent 1 about you: "How was work today?"
You: "Fine."

You eat dinner in your room, across from a Netflix binge marathon. Then, you put on your Hello Kitty pjs, you brush your teeth with the toothbrush your mommy gave you, and you go to bed. Without talking about your day, or saying goodnight.

Did I Accidentally Get Married?

I recently graduated from college, and so have the majority of my Facebook friends. What I have noticed was that before, after, or during graduation was considered "proposal season." Suddenly, after graduation either most of my college loose-acquaintances are getting married, got married before finals, or recently became engaged. These are budding adults, more like pre-adults, who just jumped out of school, have internships, or are still looking for full-time employment or grad school, but they decided to go ahead and get married, despite their crushing student debt. I can honestly say that I think that kind of stupidity shows true love.

And then there is me. I seem to be the only 20-something who, yes, did graduate and celebrated her three-year anniversary with her boyfriend, but has no plans to get married now or in the immediate future.

It's not that I didn't want to marry my boyfriend originally. The idea was really appealing while in school, spending all my time stressed about homework and exams. Marriage seemed like an ideal alternative to the real world.

Of course, marriage isn't an escape from the real world and it is a lot of work. I know this, but me and my boyfriend are often accused of being between the ages of 12 and 15, so the idea of marrying him always reminded me of playing house with the neighborhood boys when I was younger. I mean, it's not real life or real marriage unless you look and function like real adults, right? And we SO don't look or function like real adults!

Also, my boyfriend looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo when he shaves. When he doesn't shave, he looks like what Shaggy would look like if he and Scooby were pretending to be lumberjacks to capture a ghost. So obviously, it's not a real marriage or real life if your long-term boyfriend looks like your favorite cartoon character.

Recently though, I have had the sneaky suspicion that somehow, in the last few months since my graduation, my boyfriend and I accidentally got married. In my opinion, you know you accidentally got married when:


1. You gain 10 pounds overnight.

This happened to me a few months ago, after starting my first full-time job. My job comes with an hour-long lunch break, which I use to eat more than I used to during the 15-minute interval between classes. I used to weigh under 100 pounds, which was just my natural weight because I am so tiny and childlike. Recently, I cracked 103.8, my personal best. I had never weighed so much in my life, and at first I was proud. This weight was probably healthier, right?

Except then I noticed that the weight just settled in my stomach. I decided to maybe invest in a gym membership just to trim my stomach a little without losing too much weight. My boyfriend agreed to it, and we made a plan to window-shop gyms together.

But then we never did. And my stomach kept growing. And instead of working out or eating better, I just kept eating my usual junk food. I'm sure he will tolerate me looking like those poor starving kids in third-world countries:  twig legs, tiny arms and chests, but then a giant lump the size of a bowling ball filled with water in their stomachs.


2. You and your boyfriend fight over who can take a nap while the other one promises to wake them up in time for Saturday Night Live.

I work M-F and have very little time to enjoy...anything really. I no longer have any hobbies or cherished activities, except watching my favorite TV show. My boyfriend usually sits with me while I watch this show, and just a year ago we could stay up late, watch this show, and then watch a movie afterwards with no issues. Keep in mind we live in the Central time zone, where SNL starts at 10:30.

Now, neither of us can seem to stay awake that late without complaining. Yesterday, I asked my boyfriend of three years to wake me up just before 10:30pm so I could take a 30 minute nap. He got mad because he wanted to take a nap too, but I didn't trust an alarm clock to wake either of us up because I don't hear it all the time and it takes him an hour to pull himself from bed. He argued that he was driving home later so he should nap. I argued that I was the girl so I should just automatically get my way, and this was my favorite show.

Somehow, I always win.


3. Date night means eating out before 6 o'clock. 

I work 7am to 3pm, and wake up every morning at 5am. My boyfriend decided to go back to school an hour away, and he has a part-time job 40 minutes away from my house. When he doesn't have classes or work, he picks me up from work at 3pm and instead of waiting to eat a romantic dinner at a reasonable time, we go out right away and then stare at my TV until it is time for him to leave.

Right now, we are watching Parks and Rec on Netflix, so at least it is a good use of time.

On the days he works, he wouldn't arrive to my house until 5:40pm-6pm, so neither of us bother to hang out on those days. Because I go to bed at 8:30pm and he likes to eat before 6pm.


I'm sure there are many ways that I am an old married woman. I yell at him all the time to pick up his socks. I get mad at him for not throwing away his trash (literal garbage) immediately and letting it sit there for weeks (weeks!)  Even though I never wore a white dress and don't have a ring I have to pretend is bigger than it really is, I somehow accidentally married a lumberjack Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

Short Blog: Fighting the Perverted Voices In My Head

Girl, Interrupted was published the year I was born.  Coincidence?  Maybe.  It had to be a coincidence for at least some of the thousands of girls born in 1993.

But for me, I don't think so.

I don't understand people's obsession with seeing inside those hospitals, even though I am reading the novel right now myself.  I also read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, but the only part of that story I thought related to me was the lead's reaction to her boyfriend's penis.  Yes, they do look like turkey gizzards.  And it never stops looking like that, our expectations just adapt!

Or maybe it's just my Sylvia Plath-crazy eyes!  I mean, if that is really what a male's "love organ" looks like, why would we put that in our mouth without cooking it for Thanksgiving dinner first?  "Where is the gravy?" I thought the first time I let my boyfriend take his clothes off in my dorm.  Luckily, or unluckily, it seemed to make its own white gravy, enhancing the illusion.

This is why I believe I have crazy eyes.  How is this belief reinforced?  Because I work at a design company, and I see things in my clients' ads that my co-workers don't see.

Today, I was working with a company that has a unique animal logo.  Their logo is all over their current website, and it is of two large animals, lets call them a lion and a horse, fighting each other.  The lion hovers over the horse, but not in victory because there is a look of determination on the horse's face, like he is ready to strike back.

Or, that look of determination can be for something else, like that fact that the lion is hovering over the horse's crotch.  And I wonder if there is something wrong with me for seeing animal porn in my clients' designs as I read this book about McLean Hospital.

A Record of Things I Have Peed In

            Yesterday I peed in a building with trillions of dollars worth of objects in it.  I pointed this out to my mother after we left the Ladies Room because I thought she would find it amusing.  It was like when I studied in London for two weeks in college, and my London roommate and I liked to count the number of castles we had peed in.  I think I have a complex where I like to mark my territory, but only on expensive things.  When I got my first full-time job, so far my only full-time job, I immediately went to an art gallery to buy my first major piece of artwork.  She cost me about $1900 with tax, more than I make in a month, and I keep her in my childhood bedroom at my parent's house, where I am staying.  Because I have no money, but I have a $1900 piece of art.

            This piece of art, which I call Natalie because at first the woman depicted looks like Natalie Portman, hangs in the same room whose door is still guarded by a poster of Jacob from Twilight.  I took my old Nick Jonas poster down before he grabbed his crotch for a photoshoot.

            Anyway, I'm side-tracked.  I like to mark my name, or bodily functions, on expensive things.  Only I can now see the Natalie Portman piece of art, and while at the Art Institute of Chicago yesterday, I peed twice.  The first time I didn't even really need to go, but I went because I was so allured by all the Greek and Roman statues they had.  So priceless, yet so broken.  The only other person I have seen who was missing a nose was He Who Should Not Be Named, and he was clearly so shamed by it that he became an evil wizard dictator.

            I knew I would pee in this building when we pulled into Chicago after a 3-4 hour bus drive.  Porta Potties lined the streets.  This was the first sight I saw of the greatest city near my house.  The other bus riders assumed this was due to an outdoor concert the next day, but to me, it was a sign.  I would pee all over this city.  I had too.  It was already filtered with Porta Potties anyway!  Mom and I got off the bus, dropped off at Macy's, and walked to the museum.  The streets even smelled either faintly or strongly of urine, depending on which street it was.

            This city reminded me of London, except London didn't actually smell like pee.  While I was in London though, there was a musical going on called Urinetown,  I didn't get the chance to see it, but I imagine now that it was about Chicago.

            It's funny that I like peeing in expensive places, but I shouldn't be surprised by how territorial my pee can be.  In Kindergarten, there was a bathroom directly in our classroom just for the sticky Kindergarteners.  One day, I sat on the big toilet, but I was always such a little child, that I at first sat tilted to steady myself. 

            That was when I began to pee.  I was amazed by how far my pee arched, and how it landed gracefully on the floor by the far wall.  I didn't even think of tilting my vagina the correct way, because I didn't know girls could even aim.  I thought that was a boy thing, so I just sat there, tilted, until I stopped peeing.  Then I got up, washed my hands, and left the bathroom.

            At the time, I thought it was ironic that a boy student should find my pee puddle.  That day at Kindergarten, we were scheduled to eat popcorn and watch a movie, but the teacher said no one would eat popcorn or watch the film until someone confessed.  I tried to call her bluff, but I saw that it was not working, so I raised my hand and called the teacher over.

            I had been too embarrassed to raise my hand right away about the pee, but I remember being vaguely proud, whispering my deed into my teacher's ear.  I was sure that she hadn't suspected a girl of this act, and that made me happy.  I had surprised an adult, and done a boy thing.  I had an eventful day, with popcorn and a movie to top it off.