Me: Just got out of the shower and put all the goop in my hair, but I really don’t wanna do it.
Hex: But it’s a matter of interplanetary importance! If you don’t do your hair, we don’t need to worry about 2012. The world will end today!
Me: Heh. You realize I do my hair very rarely these days, since the buyer’s-remorse haircut. It’s too short.
Hex: No wonder there are all these “natural” disasters. It’s all your fault!
Me: Wait a minute. You know, the miners DID get trapped around the time I decided I wanted to cut my hair.
Hex: Yep. I know. So? Stop fucking with the natural order!
Me: Well, come on! If someone would just pay me to do so, I’d have really hot fucking hair every day!
Hex: Since you pay me in baked goods, I’m not exactly rolling in dough.
(Get it? Dough? AHHH, I slay me!)
Hex: But you could always hold world governments hostage, you know. “Oh, you don’t want earthquakes and tornadoes and disaster? Then pay me. I’ll do my hair and we’ll all be fine. If you don’t? Hope you like Armageddon, motherfuckers!”
Me: Hmmm. I think I underbaked-goods you.
Hex: We both know it could work. And start with places that are way poor. Then? The richer countries see you’re not screwing around.
Me: Ohhh! Because Libya would TOTALLY go for that! Hell, they wanna send me money from my dead British relatives all the time!
Hex: I mean, you give a place like Somalia protection from nature’s wrath? Dubai’s gonna step up quick.
Me: Man, I picked a good geek. Hex? I believe you may have just written tonight’s post.
Hex: Just don’t discount the potential for earning cash monies. Which, if you get some, you need to share with yours truly. You can keep any cattle that countries may pay you in.
Me: So generous.
pretty sure i fucked up the equation, but somehow my hair leads to world domination -- or armageddon.
The life of an internet celebrity isn’t all that different from your own. No, really. Shitty things happen, there are fun perks in the mundane and then I give myself a tiara.
I pretended to be a corporate event planner at a hotel showcase (read: open bar) with my mother tonight. Her
my mother is overly adorable.
coworker was unable to attend and she didn’t want to go alone. The signature cocktail involved pear vodka, apple juice and lime – and was outright horrendous. Conveniently, it was also very strong.
Perk: Getting hit on by Hyatt sales managers is a very good time.
Speaking of that mama of mine, I introduced her to you with my fancy press-release skills on Sunday in what, quite frankly, might be the funniest moment of my life. Seriously, let the ego jokes rip, y’all; I was hyyyyyysterical. I promise, however, she is in fact NOTHING like Dina Lohan. Despite being the cutest baby ever (you know I was), she never once allowed me to model or do any commercials. Say what you will, we could totally all be living in Barbie’s dream house now if she did, mmmk?
Perk: Y’all, for real, my mama is incredible and I am SO glad to share this space with her. I can’t wait to hear what she says. About me. (God, I love the ego jokes. LOVE, I say.)
betsy gave me the squint-eye right until the last moment, as i was leaving. of course.
Spending the week up in Athens with Sally and Kit was ridiculously fun. Those crazy kids really are some of my all-time favorite people, and I’m totally showing back up in a month when I manage to overschedule myself into a tizzy. Like it’s not going to happen, immediately. Right.
Perk: The pups are SO happy I’m home they’re being all lovemuffin snuggly. I haven’t gotten an errant paw to the face during dog assault playtime in weeks.
I have apparently developed an interesting reaction to Benadryl. I am, and always have been, allergic to cats, despite owning them myself, and Betsy the Bitchface is no different. Pathetic with sniffles and teary eyes, sitting on the floor next to my cell phone charger, talking to my geek, Sally handed over the magical pink pills. Next thing we knew, I was producing ridiculous posts and unable to finish sentences for the shiny distractions on the television.
Perk: I’m sure it will surprise no one to learn that I gesture a great deal when I talk. Apparently my gestures ALSO get slow when my brain does, and I found myself with my hands in mid-air, a good few minutes after my mouth stopped speaking, over and over again.
As you all now know, since I’ve beaten you over the head with the information, I bought some pretty kick-ass boots this week. They are, of course, made for much more than walking, and, really, might just be for making these gams look hotter than they ever have. Unfortunately, it will probably cost more than twice what I paid for them to get them professionally cleaned. Which I so have to do, as they are really narsty on the inside.
these boots were also made for camouflage, when i need to hide in sally & kit's carpet.
Perk: They are more magnificent than any of the wonderful shoes my sister owns – which is a trend in my life right now I am so all about maintaining – and thus provide excellent currency for getting some of the fancy clothing and jewelry in HER collection to defect and join my team.
This past weekend I worked a wedding for a friend, doing everything from fancy-folding napkins to guest-wrangling to boutonniere-pinning to identifying which twin babygirl was which by the initial on her hairbow. I was offered pot, sex and to have ‘a good word’ put in for me by guests – for no real discernible reason. It was hot, understaffed, fun, awful and paid – which is good, remember, because I have a particular affinity for the cash monies. And then I managed to cut myself on the champagne foil, stick my fingers into burny hot tea candle wax and wake up the next day eleven shades of HOLY FUCK I’M SORE.
Perk: I then crowned myself (once again, this is a recurring theme in my life) queen of the stupid minor injuries, adding that night’s pains to the massive bruise on my thigh, tiny not-healing cut on my temple and the random chunk of foot that decided to remove itself from my sole. My tiara is beautiful.
My fabulous geek just got all the more fabulous: Using my site as an example of her fabulosity landed her a new freelance gig. Which is all grand, really, since she’ll get paid cash monies by these folks and I just send her baked goods. Except. Now I’m all competing with the job I GOT HER for her time. This does not strike me as equitable. And so I’m pouty.
Perk: She does, indeed, work for baked goods. (FOR ME, not for you. Tough shit.) Which is the sweetest deal I’ve ever negotiated.
Say, wanna buy some beachfront property?
It’s such a strange place to be, free of the indignance (which so is a word, WordPress, you asshole) and irreverence of my every day. I spend so much time being bemusedly outraged or in bimbo-like frustration, simply to entertain myself.
And fuck, I never woulda thunk it’d be so hard to be snarky, when you sit down to try to be.
I’m very good at judging, people. I do judgmental very well.
sincerity requires black-&-white closeups... that are apparently too small.
But it’s the new year, and there are crazy things abrewin’, family coming to town, others celebrating freedom, living in limbo with plans just out of reach.
Apparently the forming of the matzah balls brings a girl some nostalgia.
I made my soup the goishe way; I didn’t start yesterday.
Tossed some chicken thighs into a pan to start the sear.
Chopped carrots, onions, celery and parsnip.
Picked out just the right bay leaf.
Snipped parsley fresh from the garden.
I’ve been in a fight with God for years. After a lifetime of questioning and belief, spurred, actually, within myself and not from family or other pressures, it became too hard to believe.
With this new year come new opportunities, new chances to fuck up, new reasons to be kind or cruel, new people to meet, new men to fuck, new books to read, new words to write.
The temperature cools, and despite my best efforts, I talk to God. I try to think of praise or questions, to avoid those pleas within me. After all, I can’t ask if I won’t believe, right?
But of course I ask. What else is God for?
Of course, as well, it will always be easy for my hands to knead dough, to chop vegetables, to unconsciously mutter prayers.
And I’ve been mostly successful in ignoring it all, just giving up practice.
Yet now I’ve got this lens on, ever seeking that moment I’ll write about, imbue with meaning or recraft, hiiiilariously, in prose.
Which, frankly, makes avoiding introspection a huge pain in the ass.
I believe in people, just as I believe in the power of butter.
I believe in love, as I know cream & flour join to start the best sausage gravy.
I know I’ll see holiness in the actions of others, the way orange juice makes balsamic so sweet.
I trust there’s evil, just as I know, once out of every 10 or so times, I’ll overblanch the potatoes.
And I believe so strongly in these things, from toes to eyebrows to elbows to those little lines that have just recently appeared around my mouth.
I know, I know, I’m just boozily describing my naivete in florid detail. You’re welcome.
What’s really striking to me, though, is how much I believe in you, this community, with usually made-up names and craftily cropped avatars.
We present so much artifice, so many masks, and yet for some, are more honest in this life than in the ones where we actually see other people.
And fuck, I’m earnest, but I’m so glad for you.
Today, interestingly, I ask that this status quo continue. No matter how frustrating nor how angsty we all know I am. No matter how impatient I find myself, unable to write anything but the sincere. and, well, boozy.
Happy new year, my friends.
I need another drink.
