Over the past 9 days I’ve gone through so many emotions. I’ve felt irritated, empowered, angry,  depressed, and weak. There have been a few days when I haven’t been bothered at all, then others when it was all I could do not to flip out. I’m not gonna lie… I even broke down on Saturday and had a few puffs (after a few drinks) but I don’t think it set me back much. More than anything, I want to be healthier. Eventually I want to be disgusted by cigarettes- but for now, if I can cut myself down to a few puffs a week, then I think I can be ok with that. In fact, more than anything, I’m just proud of myself for not going postal on everyone who smiled at me and told me with their clean teeth and untainted fingernails that they were not addicted to smoking… that, and for not gouging my own eyeballs out with a number two pencil. I’ve also upped my pen chewing 123%, but I think I can deal with that.

I don’t know whether it’s the quitting smoking or the turning into a  28 year old woman, (and I use that term loosely) but lately I’ve been feeling like doing a little more soul searching than usual. For an example, last Thursday night I HAD to go see the meteor shower. At about 10:30 pm I dragged my roommate LA and Moops out of bed and made them drive me 45 minutes out into the country so that we could have a clear view of the sky. We drove forever, and finally found a patch of grass on the side of the highway to spread our blanket on. The three of us lay there  side by side in peace, trying to understand the vast arch above us. This lasted about 7 minutes when we begin to get bitten my gigantic Mothra-esque creatures, which made me remember the podcast I had listened to earlier that evening about ticks and the diseases that they carried. Just as we were gathering up the blanket, I saw 3 shooting stars which sent the three of us back into a trance for about 30 seconds until a cop pulled up.

This cop wasn’t your run of the mill city cop, no siree. This man was old, walked with a limp, and even wore an old fashioned badge. We didn’t freak out as we ususally would in cop sitchyeeatshuns, because for once, we weren’t actually doing anything wrong. He explained that he “had got a tele that some der folks were layin out on der road.” I kind of wanted to hug him because he was the first person I’d seen in at least a few days that could have walked straight out of a movie. Regardless we left, and I was forced to continue my soul searching elsewhere.

 (I took an ambien this evening and the majority of that previous paragraph was written in southern-cop accent, in case you couldn’t tell.)

Later that night, I decided to try to meditate. I put on a guided medidtation cd that I bought a few years ago when I decided I wanted to be a Buddhist, but all I could think about was how hairy my toes were and how much I wanted to go downstairs and eat some tuna salad and maybe even some popcorn… so after about 5 minutes of feigned calm breathing, I went downstairs, shaved my toes and ate a bunch of food. FAIL.

Some friends came in town this weekend and we spent the majority of our time playing Mario Party, which in a way a meditation of escaping reality, but for the most part I forgot about my quest to become a better person. Sunday night we went to see Eat Pray Love, which got me thinking all over again. Not necessarily about the movie… it was ok and all and I kind of want to lick Javier Bardem from head to toe, but all in all the whole thing seemed a bit contrived. I didn’t read the book and I don’t know much about the author, but it irritated me a bit that this whole story was based upon a woman who was most likely paid a book deal to go on the “quest” to find herself. But still, it made me want to do so even more. But what can I do?

I don’t really believe in bullshit self help books (no offense to anyone who uses them) but I was feeling like I didn’t have any other options, so this morning I broke down and downloaded “The Secret.” Yeah, that book that everyone and their great grandmother has read and apparantely became millionaires after reading it. I’m about half way through, and I have very mixed feelings. One the one hand,I agree that positive thinking is a.. well positive way to live your life. The more positive you think, the more active you are going to be in trying to reach your goals (though the book claims that all you have to do is “believe” that you will  become the person you want to be, and that you are that person already, and then acracadabra boom hiss your wish will be granted. )the better chance you have of actually obtaining them. But on the other hand, I have always believed that once you picture a scenario in detail- then there is a 99% chance that that exact scenario will never play out in that exact manner. If it did, wouldn’t that be some sort of deja vu space/time continuim fuck up?

I don’t know, but I think I’m thinking about this too hard. I don’t think these books are meant for cynical, questioning people like myself. I will try to apply more positive thinking to my life, and I do think that I could benefit from meditating more often, but I also think I need begin to work things out on a more rational level. My own way. I don’t have it all planned out. I have goals (see my last post) but I don’t have a clue about where I want to be in 20 years. I would like to be financially stable, but I don’t spend my nights dreaming about being a millionaire. I don’t have a dream job, I don’t have an innate desire to have a family at this point in my life… so maybe I just need to start with my small goals.I’m going to devise my own self-help stragedy. Like quitting smoking. I can do this. I will kick this. (Check out my positive thinking, yo). I’ve quit other things before. So perhaps I shall start with something small to help my cause. Maybe I should list out all the things I’ve quit before.

Here we go.

*I quit chewing on my knuckles at the age of four. Granted my doctor told me if I didn’t he’d cut them off. Also take note.. this was the first clue I had an intense oral fixation.

*I quit going to algebra my sophomore year of college because it stressed me out and cause a 3am breakdown when I ran out of lead of my mechanical pencil.

.*I quit watching Lost after the second season because it was stressing me out that nothing. ever. happened.

*I quit my job at the costume shop because my boss was a misogynistic blow hole, who made me pick up sequins while down on my knees in a mini-skirt and wouldn’t let me go home to get some sanitary help for my lady problem. He also told me I was stupid because I couldn’t work the cash register.

*I quit eating most dairy products because they make me feel like there is an angry, drunken, bowling team in my belly.

*I quit my job at the sandwich shop because I lost a nail in the vegetables and I was  probably going to get fired when they found out.

*I quit caring and talking about politics when I realized both sides are liars, but mostly because I wasn’t sure that I even cared.

*I’ve quit reading the Twilight series, Harry Potter, and every biography I’ve ever started. Mostly because of commitment issues.

*I quit going to my trainer because I had a crush on him and I found out he was like 6 years younger than me and I didn’t want to be a cougar at the age of twenty seven. Also I needed an extra $125 a month. Also because I don’t like people telling me what to do.

Hmmm… I’m sure there’s more but I’m tired and so I think I’ll quit writing now. I think we’ve established that I’m pretty good at quitting things. Especially things that suck. So now I just have to apply that to smoking, I suck on cigarettes, right? So technically they kind of suck (or blow)… Either way, I think this helped. If for nothing else, it’s helped me see that I don’t deal with stress very well, which is precisely why I smoked for so long,

Oye vey this ambien is making this confusing and I’m getting stressed again. More on this later, maybe. I’m off to suck on a lozenge, which is a word I still haven’t figered out how to pronounce.

Tootles.

Just when I thought I had hit a massive wall, the internets once again made my world seem a million times better. Thanks so much for all of the encouragment…. as always, you never cease to surprise me. (in a totally awesome find 2 prizes in the bottom of the cereal box sort of way.)

I really try to stay positive, and as much as I know it feels good to vent, most of the time I try to stay away from the serious stuff here on the old blogster. It’s not  because I don’t want to share these things, or because I’m afraid of straying too away from the funny, but I mostly refrain from talking about the personal stuff because it forces me to deal with it… and I spend a great amount of my time avoiding things in my head. I hope one of these days I will get around to really getting some of this stuff off my chest, but for tonight I’m going to continue avoiding it…

Speaking of, I’ve gotten back into listening to podcasts, and I feel like I’m learning so much. My roomie LA just got me into this podcast called “Stuff you Should Know,” and boy I’m realizing there is so much stuff I didn’t know. Like did you know that there are real life zombies? Or that there are people who literally dedicate their lives in these modern times to figuring out who Jack the Ripper was?  Or that the guy who originally started McDonald’s actually has the last name Kroc? Or that the Amish allow their young people time to run free and live with the regular people and that most of them return home? I actually already knew that last one, but only because of that Harrison Ford movie “Witness.” It’s a really great movie, but I really wish the Harrison Ford character had been played by Jeff Bridges.

In fact, I think you could really take any of those middle of the road old-ish guy actor movies and replace the lead with Jeff Bridges, and you would have an exponentially better movie.

Take “Pretty Woman” for example. Now put Jeff Bridges in Richard Gere’s role. Not the Starman Jeff Bridges, but “the Dude” Jeff Bridges. I bet he would have had a lot more fun with prosty Julia Roberts. Or what about Twister, one of my favorite movies ever? Can you imagine if Bill Paxton was played by hippie Jeff Bridges? As the tornado swept in and took out that outdoor movie theater, he would have been all- ” Fuck no tornado, that theater really tied the whole fuckin town together. Fucccckkkk man.”  Or I dunno. Maybe my old-ish man crush on Jeff Bridges is really getting out of hand. I can’t stop listening to the “Crazy Heart” soundtrack, and I’ve watched “The Fisher King” like 4 times this month.

Don’t worry John Cusack, you’re still my number one. I’ve watched Serendipity pretty much every night for the last two weeks as I was falling asleep. I don’t care what anyone says, cheesy as it is… “Serendipity” makes my heart beat. AND it also influenced me to read my favorite book of all time “Love in the Time Of Cholera.”

Wow, I’m clearly random tonight. I guess that’s what skipping out on blogging for nearly two weeks will do to a girl. I have this whole notebook of things that I’ve been jotting down that I want to talk about, and I’m going to try my damndest to spread it out over time and actually put up some decent posts, but so far, not so good.

In other randomness, I tried something this weekend that may have changed my life. (And no I’m not talking about cutting off a fish head, though that DID HAPPEN!) More about that later.

THE EYES KEPT BLINKING EVEN WHIST DECAPITATED!!!

You see, I grew up being completely obsessed with chocolate milk. Not the kind that already comes mixed up for you, but chocolate milk of the Nestle Quick powder variety. Even as a toddler it was my favorite. Before I could even say “Mommy,” I could say “chocolate milk.” Not really, but I did say “dark Nah” which was my word for chocolate milk.I can’t explain to you the level of my love for chocolate milk, but I can tell you it used to be right up there with ketchup. In fact, I even drink it differently than I drink other drinks. It’s like I drink it from the back of my throat instead of out of the front of my mouth. Never mind, that all sounds kind of gross.

Regardless, Chocolate milk is a very important part of my “World O’ Happy,” other wise known as the things that are my most favorite in the whole wide world.

At least 2 times a day until I was 14 I would pull up a chair to the kitchen counter, get my favorite light blue plastic cup from the top shelf, and pour 4 heaping spoonfuls of chocolately goodness into my milk. It would never fail that at least one of these spoonfuls would end up on the counter, stuck in the cracks for my parents to wipe up later. At some point in my early teens when it became clear to them that I would never become a clean scooper, Nestle quick was banned from my house forever. One day, I went into the kitchen to stir up my favorite poison, only to find that my powder quick had been replaced by the syrup.

Nomaam.com. Syrup chocolate milk just isn’t near as yummy. It doesn’t provide you with a mustache that has a real-life grainy texture. You don’t get the same lumps at the bottom of the glass that you can lick out with your tongue.

I bought the powder Nestle Quick for the first time in my adult life not too long ago, and was really disappointed to find that it just wasn’t the same. The magic was gone. It could be partially because I can no longer drink real milk, so had to mix my quick with a soy substitute, which is great with cereal, but it just doesn’t seem to mix well with powder. It really sucks donkey ass.

So this weekend, as LA and I were loading up on liquids to cure our hangovers as we headed out for a long day of fishing at my family farm, LA got really excited when she came across a bottle of YooHoo.

She’s all like, “OH MY GOSH, I haven’t had Yoohoo in like a million years, this stuff is like crack.” I’m like, “EWWWW, that’s like fake chocolate milk without milk in it.”

“YOU”VE NEVER HAD IT, HAVE YOU!?!?”

“Nope… Why would someone drink fake chocolate milk? It’s like that Dave Chapelle skit where that kid wants “sugar water purple” instead of Sunny D.

So she finally talked me into trying it. I woman-ed up and tried Sugar-water brown… and it was delicious!!!! I’ve spent the better part of this evening googling recipes to find out how to make my own version, since I’m poor and also because I like to make my own versions of these things. Turns out there is a reason I like it so much, and it DOES have milk in it.. kind of.

All the recipes I could find look like this:

• 1/2 cup instant chocolate drink mix (Nestle Quik is best)
• 1 1/2 cups nonfat dry milk powder
• 3 cups water

Ahhh the magic of chocolate milk is back.

And so am I. Mostly.

I’ll be getting back to the dares and my regular posts very soon. I’m still getting used to my new job which is a thousand times more busy than my last job, but in a great way. My8 hour day feels like 3 hours. It’s going to take a little getting used to.

Well I have them.

ALOT.

And this week seems to be one of them.

In fact, this whole year seems to be a big fat turd of a year. I’ve already started writing 2010 on my dates because I really just can’t wait for it to start.

A quick break from my whining. Do we say two-thousand and ten, or twenty-ten? Or is it two-oh-one-oh??? The plaguing questions we endure as we come to the end of a century. And who decides anyway? I guess Obama does. Lucky bastard. I’d say twennny – teyen, byatch.

Ok back to bitching. Because it’s my blog and I can do what I want. Plus I laugh when other

So far this week I’ve spilled at least 3 drinks, drove up on a curb nearly hitting two cars and a family (for the second time this month) stepped on my $300 pair of glasses, I completely failed a salmon dinner, I effed up everything that is possible to eff up at work (and convicts could do this shiz,) I lost my phone charger (but have already replaced one this month so don’t want to spend $30 for another one until I get paid,) I overdrew my bank account, and I just locked my keys in the car whilst it was running (trying to charge up said phone with car charger.)

Update*** The AAA guy looked like a really old and drunk Santa clause. I didn’t tell him. But I wanted to after he hocked a big one that landed on the hood of my car (that he laughed and then nearly choked to death about) and then told me “I oughtter take yer down by that there pond and give ya a whoopin.”

-I realize I should probably be using semi-colons not commas, I don’t care.

Bad ugly Santa.

Oh and like two seconds ago? I was carrying my fourth serving of delicious tin cheese popcorn to my desk in a napkin, and my napkin hammock somehow came apart. Don’t worry, I followed the five second rule. I left the kernels that I couldn’t get back into my napkin within five seconds on the ground so that the cleaning ladies would have something to do tonight.

Let’s not forget I’m 99.99998716729% sure one of those bishes stole my laptop.

On top of being at the peak of my hurricane season , I have just been a glass cage of emotion. I don’t know if it’s just this time of year or maybe I need some meds., but the slightest little things have been setting me off.

A few examples…

*I cried when I had to call in to work hungover. I get really nervous about these things,

*I cried when my boss called me after hours before listening to his voice mail… I was sure he knew I was hungover… turns out it was just his wandering if I wanted some deer meat.

*I cried during all seventeen Lifetime movies I watched this week.

*I cried listening to the opera boy on NPR the other morning.

*I cried listening to Kissmas on Kiss FM (where they give lots of free shit away people who need it, mee tooooo???)

*I cried after I picked up my gray sweatpants from the ground to see what was on the ankle, and then held it up to my nose and accidentally wiped (what I found to be) poop on my nose.

*I cried when I found out my bank account was overdrawn.

*I cried at that  fricking Travelers insurance commercial with the dog…

*My sister and I had at least 2 cry sessions on the phone, she cried because she was stressed about finals and boys, I cried because I hate boys and because I cry whenever anyone else is crying to me. And also because of that whole “our parent’s are fucking splitting up and Christmas isn’t going to be the same thing.”

Despite all of my tears and frustration, there have been A few moments where I have realized what this time of year is really about. A few times that tears have come to my eyes out of happiness, when I realize that I am so lucky, that I have so much. I know that everything will be alright. I know that I am loved.

And now I await the calm after the storm. It’s been a hell of a ride, 2009.

__________________________

And most importantly , Happy Birthday Daddy! I know I have not always been the easiest child to handle, but you have been the best dad that a girl could ask for.

I know things aren’t easy right now, but I am here for you now and always. I have leaned on you for 27 years and it’s about time that I step it up and return the favor for the rest of my family.

It probably doesn’t always come across how grateful I am, but really- I couldn’t have survived my

life without you!

I love you with all of my heart and thanks for putting money in my bank account!

Let’s make 2010 twennny – teyen, byatch the best year ever!!

Love,

Your pumpkinhead

Make sure you check back to Lilu’s Archives… they are the best things you’ll read all week!

I’m not usually the type of girl who likes to kiss and tell. O.K., that’s a lie. But I’m not the type of girl who likes to talk about sexual experiences all over internets, especially on a site that my parents frequent. So today I’m going to tell you a story that happened to a, ahem, friend of mine.

Once upon a time there was a girl named… lets call her “Cari.”

She was young and naive and only a Sophomore in college.  Although she was not quite twenty-one, Cari had just began to get the full extent of how crazy night life in college could really be.

One night, Cari went to a bar with some friends. She had been kind of talking to a guy (lets call him Dave) who worked at a local bar, which was kind of awesome because he could sneak her drinks. By kind of talking, I mean that they had made out once or twice, but had yet to take it beyond first base.

At the time, Cari was still pretty naive when it came to sexual experiences. She had kissed her share of boys, but was not the kind of girl to go home with almost strangers.

This night, because of the ridiculous amount of drinks that she sneakily inhaled, she decided to make an exception.

Dave was quite a bit older and willing to take the drunken Cari back to his house to take care of her. He was quite the gentleman and even stopped to get Cari lemon lime Gatorade on the way to his house.

Once they got there, things got a little hot and heavy. Not to the point of actual intercourse, but to the point where clothes were taken off.

It was around this point that Cari passed out into a dark and dreamless sleep.

She woke up very early in the morning with a horrible cramp in her stomach. It was not the type of cramp that could be mistaken. She really had to take a shit.

At this point, Cari was still laying on her side under the covers. She wanted to try to sneak out of bed and into the bathroom so that Dave wouldn’t wake up to the sound of her using the restroom. She could feel his presence right behind her, and hear the sounds of his heavy snoring behind her head. She shifted to try to move without disturbing the hairy man next to her.

As she did, she noticed something very strange.

“What in the hell is that!?” she thought as she started to panic. It seemed to Cari, that there was something lightly resting upon her butt cheek.

“Nononononononono! This cannot be happening!” Cari thought as she tried to figure out a game plan.

You see, the pain in Cari’s stomach was so intense, that she had come to the conclusion that she must have laid a turd in this strange harry man’s bed. What else would be resting gently against her butt cheek?

She thought maybe she should just run out of the door, hitchhike back to her apartment, then convince her parents to let her transfer schools.

Tears came to poor Cari’s eyes as she realized that she had really done it. Her life was over. She was about to leave all of her new friends, and all because she decided to get drunk and poop in a well known bartender’s bed.

“There has to be another way,” Cari thought…. “AHA! Maybe I can just scoop it up and throw it in the trash without him noticing!”

Cari knew that this would be very difficult. From what she could tell, it was still in it’s solid form. She had been very careful not to lean back and damage it in anyway.

She finally gathered up the courage to very carefully reach behind her back and scoop it up.

Very slowly and carefully, Cari scooted her hand underneath the poop, hoping with all of her heart that she would not leave any remains  behind.

It was in that moment that Cari made the best discovery of her life.

What she held in her hand was not in fact a turd… it was in fact, just Dave’s penis.

Cari quickly woke Dave up and made him drive her home, where she was able to use the restroom in the privacy of her own bathroom.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The end.