This has actually been a big thing for me in the last few weeks… “self forgiveness.” I was recently forced to make the toughest decision of my life and sometimes I feel like hitting myself over the head with a stapler, because I’m not sure I did the right thing.

Lately, I feel like I’ve really been struggling with the concept of “let it be.” I curse myself for my lack of self confidence and my inability to be content. I carry on a facade of being “happy go lucky,” which is usually true in the moment. It’s later on, once my brain takes some time to process things that I go on this irrational rollercoaster of emotions.

It’s not only my mind that I have to forgive myself for, my relationship with my physical self has always been a bit rocky.

I don’t think I’ve been particularly kind to my body in the past.

I have starved it and overfed it. I’ve allowed myself to drown in alcoholic binges. There have been times in my past where I’ve gone on blind food binges.
I haven’t always respected myself when it comes to men. I’ve consciously let myself be taken advantage of.

I know that I have some issues, but I think I do a pretty good job at facing them. At least I have self awareness, but I’m not always sure that’s a good thing. There’s quite a bit of truth to that old saying “Ignorance is Bliss.” Oh Plato, you genius you.

I doubt there will ever be a time in my life when I’m not struggling with myself… when I’m not punishing myself or pushing myself to be better at life, but I do hope to get a little bit closer to being content.

Anyhow, I really have been enjoying reading the “Post It” Tuesdays, but really don’t think I could condense my bitching into a single post it note even if I tried. Though I would love to try if someone would be willing to tell me where you get these “post its.”

I guess for now I’ll just go with “slightly longer than a post it note Tuesday.”

___________________________________

Dear bloggers who do post-it Tuesdays,

How do I do this? And by how, I mean where do you get the post it’s? I’m sure it is very simple, but I am computer illiterate.

Please and thank you,

Wants to be a member of the cool kids post-it club

________________________________

My beloved dog Stella,

As much as I love you and love to cuddle, I cannot really be expected to do so when you smell like sour milk. I am not sure whether or not you have been sprayed by a skunk out there in the country, or if you have been purposely rolling around in cow patties all day, but either way… your scent has become intolerable. Even after putting you through the struggle of a bath, you have continued to smell of rotten cow carcus. I have no choice but to exile you from my bed.

Your ex-cuddle bear,

Cold at night

___________________________________

My bathroom,

Please get your shit together.The bottom of the toilet has been leaking for weeks, my make up drawer is straight up hanging there by a tiny piece of wood, and the shower takes about an hour to drain. I try to treat you with respect and you just keep on making my life more difficult. I really can’t afford the time or effort needed to call a plumber or to fix your problems myself.

I suppose will take blame for pouring the hot wax down the sink causing it to get clogged,

Mistook hot wax in a candle burner for hot oil!!

_________________________________

Dear Pizza Hut Delivery guy,

How dare you?? My sister, my dad and I drove around for over an hour looking for a pizza place that was open on Thanksgiving night. We finally gave up and settled on Denny’s.  Precisely 2 minutes after I ordered my biscuits and gravy, you walked in holding a stack of warm, fresh, pizzas. My Thanksgiving was already on the shitty side, and you had to come in and rub your deliciousness in my  face.

Shame on you,

Didn’t need it anyway

___________________________

To screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski,

I hear that you been given the task of writing both the remake for Forbidden Planet as well as the very anticipated screenplay adaptation of World War Z. Don’t fucking blow it. Please.

Trying hard not to judge you by your work on Ninja Assassin,

Film nerd

__________________________

Dear purse,

I know people talk shit about the state in which I keep you. I do it for both of our own good. One of these days I will be able to fulfill my master plan of being able to pay rent from the change that collects at the bottom of you. Either that or spend an entire day playing Photohunt and Tic-Tac Trivia at the bar.

-Doing everything for a reason.

____________________________

Impulse buy facial mask,

You promised to moisturize my skin while leaving it more firm and with less wrinkles. As far as I can tell you are a scented wet paper towel with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth. Speaking of the holes, the ones on your masks are not designed to fit the facial structure of any human. I can’t get it to stay on  my face unless I lie down, and frankly, I feel it made me look like the dude from Silence of the Lambs.

Why did I buy 6 of you!?

-Buyers remorseful

______________________________

Dear Kitchen,

Thank you for letting us destroy you this weekend in a massive food fight. That was the most awesome time I ever had in our house, though I’ll never be able to eat off your counters again without imagining smears of gravy and mashed potatoes.

Sorry, (not)

Still has potatoes in her hair

I have either gone out of town or had really big plans the last few weekends- and I’m not sure my body can take any more. I haven’t been able to afford the time or money to get a vaccination to void off the aporkalypse  and I’m a little afraid I’m getting ill, but even more afraid that this lack of sleep is sending me on the fast track to my own personal zombie apocalypse.

I don’t even think that made sense.

But dude, if I really was in the zombie apocalypse, I would frickin love to mow down some zombies! Ever since I saw Zombieland I have imagined that every person on the side of the road is a zombie, and it is my personal duty to smash them into jelly!

I wonder if it is really true that cows and llamas can mate and make hybrid “cammas” that are so stupid that they have to be put out of their misery…

Ooooh! I should see if my roommates want to make a fort in the  living room tonight and eat cheese and crackers for dinner.

Yes…  this is what my brain has been doing to me all week. I’m just going to quit thinking now. But I won’t leave you with just a mumble jumble of a post, because if you are here and still reading, then you deserve to see something of worth… so I’ll do my best.

In light of my new tradition of FML Fridays,  I now present to you with a few images of the hurricane that is my life, that I feel that you should see if we are going to be friends.

If you don’t want to waste your time seeing boring ass pictures that depict how disgusting I am, I suggest you skip to the bottom of this post, where I will truly mortify myself with a video or two.

First, I introduce you to the way that I live… my room.

I mmeannn… the way it just happens to look right now.

My room has been hit. By hurricane me. Sooo sad.

I swear it’s not usually this bad, and honestly it is driving me crazy. I’m going to have to spend a good amount of lovin with my room this weekend.

It doesn’t stop there, welcome to my closet.

My closet also has the swine and is throwing up all over the place!

But wait, at least I make really awesome art! (sarcasm, my friend.)

My wall o' "attempt at creativity"

What’s that you say? You want a close up? I’m not very good at taking pictures either, but I’ll do my best!

And by art, I mean a collage tree.

More, you ask?

Yeah, those were just postcards that I cut and pasted (and then painted a coat of glitter over, of course.)

And yet more “art…”

Yeah. I made a collage of butterflies. What of it?

Oh and don’t worry, I have been destroying furniture since 1996.

Oh yeah, you know you want one!

And now,  I introduce you to my car.

If you can spot my glasses you win a prize. Really, I need them and they're missing.

It’s not always like this (yes it is) but I basically live out of my car and I haven’t had the time nor the energy to clean it out in these hard times. To make matters worse, there is a dead animal of sorts rotting beneath all this nastiness, and it smells of the high heavens. It has rained for the last two days, and I’m fairly sure the moisture in the air has increased the stench ten-fold. I’m also pretty sure that if I got pulled over, I would be arrested for murder. My “there must be rotten food in my trunk” excuse would quickly be dismissed.

But before you completely go off judging my car, and myself for that matter,  I feel  I should re-introduce you to this:

Dashboard Jesus!!

Dashboard Jesus puts a smile on my face every day. However, my car has recently taken on the act of bouncing violently whenever I’m in idle, and it makes Jesus do inappropriate things that make me feel a little bit uncomfortable.

I should also probably tell you that I come from a long line of nerds.

I look like I wasn't happy about posing for this, but that was just a pose.

Have I told you that when I was young, my mother loved to wake me up by blaring the Star Trek theme song, and that I actually kind of liked it? Her most recent act of nerd-dom, is her new found love of Second Life. (Don’t kill me mom!)  I didn’t know much about it until recently, but you can apparently make an avatar that is anything from human to Giant mummy squid. Your options are unlimited. My mother has chosen to make her avatar be an elf, which I actually think is really cool. Well, that may seem irrelevant, but she has recently taken an obsession to all things elven. As I was walking out to leave my parent’s house a few weeks ago, my mom stopped and asked me to put on elf ears for a few pictures. I feigned annoyance for about 5 minutes before I agreed. I(I was really excited inside to get to wear these ears.)

And then she took the liberty to photo-shop me into a piece that she calls, “The Whispering Elf”

(I liked it so much it' is my current facebook profile pic)

Have you met my mom’s tattoo?

NOT as big in person. (pleasssse don't kill me mom!)

I don’t know if you’ve realized it, but I have a very close relationship with vodka…

That is enough to bring on depression.

And in case you haven’t seen enough, I really cannot sing, which is sad- because I realllly love to do so.

I promised you, way back  during my first month of blogging- that I would post these.

Just for a little background…. This was a weekend back in July, when I was going through a break up and not feeling very good about myself, hence probably why I started this blog. On that particular Saturday night, I went to my roommate Jake’s  mother’s birthday party. They rented out a bar and even went so far as to hire a singer to perform. It was awesome! At some point in the night, someone had the bright idea that if they could get me up on stage, it would cheer me up. Well boy did it ever.

This first video is when I first went up and sang with the hired singer, Archie, who had (I am guessing) never sang “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.” By the sounds of it, I haven’t either.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

And if you haven’t had enough, eventually after exhausting the hired singer, I started inviting other people to come and sing with me. Here is one of my roommate Jake and my rendition of  Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It’s bad, but if you can stick around to the head banging, it’s kind of funny. (at least to me)

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Just for shiz, if you’re still interested and insane, (I literally took over the microphone for the remainder of the evening) here is a final video of my roommate Denny and I singing “You’ve Lost that Lovin Feeling.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

That is all folks. Now excuse me while I go hide in a closet and cry.

Despite the fact that it’s Monday and I have come down with what I can only assume is the  swine flu- I’m still smiling about the craziness that was my weekend.

My friend L.A. and I decided to road trip it down to Austin to celebrate my little sister’s 23rd Birthday. My sister is all kinds of awesome; but other than fabulous taste in music, our habit of chewing on small pieces of plastic and the way that we both eat our sandwiches upside down- we have very little in common. Even so, she’s my best friend in the world and I don’t think I would survive without her in my life. Like, literally.

Though she is 5 years younger, she has definitely learned to take on the big sister role in our relationship. I’m not going to go into details because like I said, we are complete opposites- and as much as I love being the center of attention- I can bet you that she is blushing just reading this.

But just so you get a better picture of how different we are, my little sister started off the weekend offering to be the designated driver. On her birthday weekend. I don’t think I have ever offered to drive whether drinking was part of the deal or not. Needless to say, we were not evil enough to take her up on this offer, though we still managed to double her on our alcohol intake.

Friday night we went to a little bar on 6th street. Since it was ACL weekend, everywhere was a little more crowded than usual and the clothing was about 20 times more interesting than usual. My favorite outfit of the night was a girl wearing a cape over a tank top and panties. Awesomeness. Definitely something you will never see in Dallas.

LA. and I spent most of the evening obsessing over the fact that we were damn near 6 years older than all of my sister’s friends. I think we both still look fairly young, and there is no question that my sister and her friends are at least 10 years older than us if your basing it on maturity, but I couldn’t help but feel a little cougar-rific. The highlight of my evening was when a someone said they thought I was the  younger sister, though they were clearly just humoring me. Or maybe they overheard L.A. and I playing the “Penis game”… you know, the game where you can be the most obnoxious by yelling Penis the loudest. I always win.

When we got back to my sister’s apartment on Friday, we were all pretty tipsy. But we were smart enough to buy liquor to drink after the bar, so we dove right into that and then proceeded to call every person in our phones who had lived in or maybe just visited Austin in their lives. After we pissed off several people’s wives and woke up several children, L.A. got a hold of a very drunk guy who said he was 90% sure he could get us into A.C.L. the next day. After our initial excitement wore off, L.A. and I got into a physical fight over whether we would go see Dave Matthews (her choice) or Ghostland Observatory(my much better choice) because they were playing at the same time. My sister had gone to bed at this point and was abruptly woken to the sound of my body slamming L.A. into the foot of her bed.

that's my "gonna kick yo ass" face.

It turns out the bruise on my right shoulder and scrapes on my left legs were gotten in vein, because the asshole who said he could get us tickets, definitely did not get us tickets.

We spent the greater portion of Saturday drinking water,  watching tivoed shows from last week, and eating copious amounts of Thai food. For about 5 minutes we thought we may just couch it for the evening and watch some Gossip Girl (shhhh) on DVD, but my sister mentioned that she had never had a martini. Twenty three years old and never had a martini? Deal breaker. We took turns dying our hair with boxed hair dye (L.A. could now be Carrot Top’s obnoxious twin sister,  I look like a witch, and my sister’s hair looks maybe 3/4 of a shade darker than it was,) showered, tried on about 30 outfits a piece, and left to go out wearing the first outfit we tried on approximately 3 hours later.

**Looking back, removing the hair dye from our hair really would have been a much smoother process, had we taken actual showers…

The night ended up being a ton of fun! And we did get our martinis, though not everyone was has happy about them as I was… The first pic is of us pre- first sip of dirty martini.

The following picture was taken immediately after our first sip (and my sister’s last.) My sister’s (far left)  face: Priceless.

The rest of the night was kind of a blur. I do know that L.A. and I, being the ever so proper house guests that we are, invited a bunch of people to come over to my sister’s apartment after the bar. We finished off that bottle of vodka, and  as usual, I acted inappropriately . You see, the dress that I was wearing was the sort of material that you can’t really wear underwear with unless you want the world to see rolls of flab in extremely unbecoming  areas. And I apparently should be banned from not wearing underwear with dresses for life, or should not be allowed to drink with people who I do not know very well.

I guess I owe an apology or two.

My dear sister,

I had a wonderful weekend and I am so happy i got to spend your birthday weekend with you. I love your friends, your roommate, and your apartment. Thank you for making sure L.A. and I didn’t leave the bar with any strange people. Thank you for telling your friends that I don’t usually act like this and that it was the drunkest I have ever been. I know you hate to lie, but this one doesn’t hurt anyone, and it helps your sister from coming across as a complete ass. I’m sorry that I fell of the chair into that plant on your back porch. But mostly, I’m sorry I flashed my panty-less hoo-ha at your friends. Even though most of my friends laugh when I do that, I realize now they may have a different sense of humor than my friends do, and I should have at least asked first. I hope that you won’t be too scared to ask me back!

I love you!

Your  favorite (and only) sister in the world,

Carissa