Uhhh...It's December?

....seriously? How did that happen?

Was I asleep for, like, 3 months? There is NO. FUGGIN. WAY it's the end of 2011 already. That, of course, means my anxiety about the inevitable 2012 apocalypse will be setting in soon and I will be a useless member of society, either numbed by heavy doses of medication and scarcely resembling a human being with emotion ORRRRRR I'll be the lady at your local mall will the sign around her neck that says "THE END IS NEAR" handing out World War Z survival kits and thermal blankets to small children. They are the future, after all. Gotta protect that investment.

I've been busy...err....sort of. It's ski season again, so slinging drinks for another winter has begun for me...sort of. It would help our business if people didn't have to decide between mowing their lawns or going skiing. SERIOUSLY THIS IS UPPER MICHIGAN WHERE THE HELL IS ALL THE SNOW?! So to fill in my free time I've been painting. A lot. Paint tubes and half-painted canvases and half-assed encaustics are absolutely covering my living room. Poor boyfriend has to tip toe around. I simply DO NOT have the room for all my shit anymore.

So we're moving!

Hooray!

I love moving. Mister Boyfriend feels differently. It's not his favorite thing to do. I love packing and unpacking and getting to paint every room and completely redecorate. He doesn't. As soon as the TV and Xbox are set up in the new place I've lost him completely. Lucky for me, one he's on there he barely listens to me, so he agrees will all my ideas even though he's not actually listening to what I'm saying. This is a win-win situation. I get my crazy walls, he gets to play video games. Best couple ever.

The coolest part about this new place (besides the fact that we're moving upstairs from my MOM!) is that we're going to convert the whole entire attic into an art studio. My very own art studio! I'll of course let my more artistically inclined friends have a space or two up there as well, as it's absolutely gigantic and I'm a little skiddish in big, dark, empty and possibly haunted spaces when I'm alone. Safety in numbers, people. Remember that in 2012.

So, Mister Boyfriend, there will be no more tripping over paint tubes or tracing paper or blocks of wax...or stepping on paint brushes or spots of wet paint or the occasional splinter of wood lodged in the carpet from the time I thought I could probably cut through that plywood with an exacto knife. (In case you didn't see this coming: I couldn't.) I will keep my explosions contained to the upstairs area, and you will only have to see the product of my labor.

Like this one!


I'm so pissed off I made color rain from the heavens. Magic. I think it will go in our new hallway! This isn't the only one I've worked on in the past few months. No no. But some are being given as Christmas presents and cannot yet be posted on the internet. I promise, they will later.

Happy Christmas, everybody!

And a HUGE HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my Mister Boyfriend, Ro, who is 31 years young as of midnight! Here's to 70 more years of good health and great times. Love you, big time!

Off Days

I go on vacation in 5 days. My brain went on vacation about 3 days ago. My apartment is trashed. The dishes are piled head-high, I can't see the bedroom floor for all the dirty laundry, there are enough beer bottles in the living room to convince anybody with any deductive reasoning skills that we threw a giant party for college kids who drink awesome beer (we didn't), and I'm pretty sure there's some sort of toxic slime growing in and/or around my bathtub.

Do I care? Totally.

Am I going to do anything about it? No.

Why? Because the only thing I want to do is lay in my air conditioned bedroom watching old episodes of Inspector Gadget and Snorks on Hulu (only because Hulu apparently doesn't have DuckTales). I've only gotten up to pee and make coffee. I'm fine with that, except I have to traverse my way through the boobytrapped living room to get to the bathroom, and then I feel like I have to clean it, so I run as fast as I can and squint my eyes a little cuz it's harder see the big fat evidence that one day I'll end up on hoarders when it all looks like little blurs.

Anyone want to be my coffee bitch for the day? I'll pay you in spaghetti noodles (which I have plenty of), but you are not allowed to judge me because of the code 3 mess I live in. Any takers?

Matters of the Heart

My dad had a heart attack when I was 12.

I don't remember much about it, except that I was terrified when he was in the operating room undergoing triple (quadruple?) bypass surgery, and the doctor saying that if his heart hadn't been so strong in the first place, he would've been dead immediately. He was only 44 at the time. Being so young, I didn't realize that 44 was WAY too young to be running around having heart attacks, so now when I think about it my palms get all sweaty and I have to count my breaths so I don't have a panic attack. (I know it's useless to panic about something that happened 12 years ago, but I can't really choose what I freak out about so shut yer pie hole.) Since then, my dadda has been on a steady diet of turkey, chicken, veggies, pills the size of horse tranquilizers, omega-3s and stress tests. Even with all the preventative care and regular surveillance, he had another heart attack two years ago, just a couple weeks after I'd moved back to the area. I remember that one clearly. One of the stints they had put in 10 years before had collapsed. Luckily, my dad recognized the feeling and immediately told my step-mom, who immediately yelled something like OMG GET YOUR ASS IN THE CAR and brought him to the hospital, who immediately transferred him to one of the best cardiac hospitals in Michigan, which happens to be about a mile from my house. My brother called me while I was at work, and I, of course, went into panic mode. We all spent the next couple of days in and out of the waiting room, not showering, taking turns sleeping, trying to find my little sister who had gone to a concert in Wisconsin and badgering the poor nurses to go check on him but you'd better not wake him up because omg he needs his rest! Thankfully, he beat the widow-maker again, and he's back to working construction and eating turkey and making music and giving his grandkids sugar before sending them home to their parents (haha, brother and sister!). We've been extremely lucky.

My family has a terrible history of heart health. My dad's mom passed away from a massive heart attack, a couple of his brothers and sisters have undergone heart surgery, he has had two himself, and my mom's mom has had a couple of "minor" heart attacks. With that shitstorm of naughty naughty tickers all pointing in my direction, you'd think I'd be a maniac about my own heart health. Not so much. Instead, I think about my step mom in that waiting room, crying and wringing her hands and pacing and praying that her love wouldn't be taken from her. So, I'm crazy about Roan's heart. He's 30, he's got a bit of a spare tire, he eats red meat like he's a dinosaur and when he comes home from work he plays video games for hours. I'm so scared of losing him to something stupid and preventable, like sleep apnea or a heart attack or a zombie apocalypse or an intruder or a meteor strike, that I spend a lot of nights staring at him when he sleeps to make sure he doesn't stop breathing or his brain doesn't get eaten or he doesn't wander off into traffic while sleepwalking. He knew all about my batshitcrazy before we even started dating, so it's not my fault that he has to deal with it now. I drive him nuts. But for as much as I obsess about it, I don't actually DO anything about it. I don't cook at home, mostly because I'm lazy (also because I have a tremendous fear of leaving the stove on all night and burning the house down), but because we rarely agree on which of the 5 things I can make we should have. I don't exercise aside from the miles I walk at work everyday, so we don't exercise together. We drink beer and watch baseball and get fat. And that terrifies me.

He's not the one with the awful predisposition to have a defective ticker. Maybe, if I motivate myself to get healthy and get moving, it will inspire him to get moving along with me. Ugh.

Oh, and my dadda just celebrated his 56th birthday! We let him eat a steak. And birthday cake.

Ramblin'

I used to travel all the time. There were a couple of years that it was a rare occasion when I didn't have a packed suitcase in my car or a plane ticket in my hand. The first (and only) year I owned my little Lucy- a black Toyota Yaris (shut up, judgers, you didn't know her)- I put almost 34,000 miles on her. Side note: don't buy a brand new car when you're 19. It'll screw you over FOREVER and your mom will have to swoop in and play superhero and replace your windshield and omit the fact that you once hit a bear when she needs to sell it back to the loan company. I love driving through the desert and the mountains, but Kansas can kiss my butt because, seriously, how boring can your state get?! I once flew on the 4th of July and saw the fireworks from above. And it was awesome. If I'm in one spot for too long my feet get itchy. I've gotta go! I've gotta move! There's an adventure to be had and I need to have it!

...not so much anymore.

Maybe it's because I'm in a stable relationship (whoa) and I don't feel like I need to run from anything, or maybe I've just pushed my desire to go go go to the back of my mind, or maybe I actually like living in Upper Michigan and don't feel the need to go anywhere else, OR maybe it's because plane tickets out of here are like $10,989,976 plus your first born child PLUS you have to ride in a rinky dink plane with like 15 other people that totally reek of BO. Seriously, it's not fun. If it weren't only an hour-ish flight to Detroit, where I'll either have to haul ass through the airport to a terminal at the opposite end of the building because I've got 15 minutes between flights or I'll have a 6 hour layover, so I'll get drunk and make some new friends that I'll only remember talking to when I flip through my camera and see the pictures of us doing shots of what has to be Jager while an airport security guard looks on suspiciously in the background, I'd pop a tylenol or two to knock myself out. I'm a medication lightweight.

I may have developed a slight fear of flying. Gulp.

When did this happen?! When I went back to San Diego last fall for a friend's wedding I almost missed my flight out of here because I couldn't find my St. Christopher medal. I'm not even religious, I just need to chew on it during take off or the plane will skid off the runway in flames. I even have St. Christopher tattooed on my arm, but I will not set foot on an airplane or train or boat or zeppelin or hot air balloon or bicycle without that medal. It sounds silly when I say it. I can't fly without that medal, Roan! Now help me look for it or I'm not going! Or I will go without it and you'll feel really bad that you didn't help me look for it when you're at my FUNERAL! So for the next month, that medal does not leave my neck. I have a ticket to Boston to see my friends there for the first time in two years and I refuse to let myself reach critical bat shit crazy levels about the flights there and back. I'm focusing on my time there.

These are the people that welcomed me to a city I moved to on a whim, where I knew not a single soul. They made my time there hilarious and unforgettable and full of music and laughter and love and flaming bowls of 10 kinds of booze (omg Chinatown!) and $10 manicures and they made me feel at home in a city where the walls of the people are hard to get through. People like them are the reason I started traveling in the first place. I won't let a stupid fear of a stupid airplane falling out of the stupid sky ruin this for me. I won't I won't I won't. So move over, future new best friend at the airport bar, the first round is on me. I've got a long flight.

Survival of the Fittest

I've only killed 1 of the 5 vegetables I tried growing this year! Okay, two if you count my wilty brown cilantro, but it's still in the ground so I say it lives. My lemon cucumbers, however, were not so fortunate. Lemon cucumbers, you say?! That's why I bought them. Outrageous stuff those plant engineers can do these days.

Because of my history of leafy green homicide, Roan always puts his foot down when I say, "I'm growing tomatoes this year!" He always breaks it to me easy, saying something like, "I think you should try something easier first. When you get good at growing those, then you can try tomatoes. We don't eat tomatoes that often anyway. You're good at jalapenos. Get some of those!"

But, Roooooooooan! We make salsa ALL THE TIME. Think how much better it would taste if we made it with our own tomatoes!

Isn't your mom growing tomatoes in her garden? We can just get some from her.

It's not the saaaaaaame. I'll get a topsy turvy thing that grows them upside down! Those are, like, guaranteed to grow them. Even I can't screw that up.

Uhhh...you still need to water them, even in a topsy tuvry. We're not getting tomatoes this year. Let's see how your peppers do and maybe next year- when we have more room- you can grow your tomatoes. Wanna go look at the toys?

YAAAAYYYY TOYS!

Ok, I get it. My mom and gramma have bright green thumbs and I have the black thumb of death. I'm the opposite of King Midas (and can apparently still be distracted with toys, dammit.) Only the strongest plants can survive in my garden. It's cool, though, cuz I totally only want the strong ones. They make you stronger when you eat them. My muscles are gonna be HUGE.

I have a message for you tomatoes: my jalapenos look great. I'll see you next year. Prepare for battle.

Rest In Peace
Lemon Cucumbers
June 2011-June 2011

The Magic Words

If there is one piece of advice I can offer you that will save you a whole lot of heartache, it is this: be kind to the people who are helping you.

Patience and manners really do go a loooooooooooong way. If you're out of coffee and can clearly see I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off because I've got 15 other tables who need me just as urgently as you do, RELAX! I'll get there. Don't wave your empty cup around and point inside it. I can tell it's empty. I can't pull the coffee pot out of my ass when I've got a tray full of food, an arm full of menus and my shoe is untied. I'm not superwoman, you know. If you wait patiently until I have half a second to pick up the order that's been sitting in the window for 5 minutes, drop off the drinks for the 6-top that just walked in the door and take the orders of the three tables that sat down while I was taking your complicated order or returning your wife's eggs because "they're not scrambled enough," I PROMISE you, you will get your coffee.

Saying please and thank you will get you a long way, not only when it comes to your waitress or bartender, but in life in general. I always appreciate a heartfelt thank you. Just because I'm serving you some sunny side up eggs and bacon today doesn't mean that someday I won't be signing your paychecks. (No Christmas bonus for you, cup waver!) I don't care if your silk underpants cost more than I make in a week of double shifts, you can say please and thank you just as easily as the little old man who comes in just for the company and the conversation. Please and thank you will get you better service with a real smile (not the I'm-smiling-through-my-teeth-because-if-I-don't-pretend-to-be-nice-I'm-going-to-end-up-telling-you-where-you-can-go smile). It's easy and it takes no more than half a second. Keep that in mind next time you're ordering a double dry martini with bleu cheese stuffed olives even though the olives are already stuffed with pimentos and your bartender has to pop out the red stuff and fill them with the cheese every time you order a drink because you're the only one who orders them and you don't come in nearly often enough to pre-stuff them. She might be putting herself through law school with that job, and you might need her services one day.

There's a reason I love my job, and it's because of people like I had yesterday. A group of 5 young men came in, said please and thank you and were patient and kind and funny, even though they'd been on the road for a couple days and were very tired. They made my day. (In a strange turn of events, they were traveling from Boston, where I once resided, and we ended up having some mutual friends from the bar I worked at out there. Small world.) If they found it in themselves to be polite to a total stranger after long days of being cooped up in the car together and having to travel in 98 degree weather through crazy heat lightning and flash torrential downpours, then surely you can.

Or karma will bite you in the ass.

Nora Jane

Look at this little girl! She had such a great time in the water, despite how absolutely freezing it still is. My sister sure does make pretty babies!

An Unfortunate Doppelganger

Despite popular belief, I actually love my job. Food makes people happy. I make people happy because I bring them food. It's pretty simple. A lot of interesting people come through our doors and there are many I hope to see again. Unfortunately, there are a few (ok, fine, a bunch) that could take a long walk off a short pier. Or a cliff. Or to Timbuktu. Or to Big Boy. Whatever, just don't come back here. Especially if you're going to tell me I look like...


CASEY ANTHONY?!

Are you kidding me? Listen here, Old Man- it's 95 degrees, our AC is busted, I'm sweating my ass off at 7am to get you your half regular-half-decaf-with-one-cream-two-sugars-and-two-ice-cubes-because-it's-too-hot-to-drink-and-I-can't-wait-5-minutes-for-it-to-cool-off coffee, and I have raging PMS, so if you're going to compare me to someone it had better be Elizabeth Freaking Taylor or I don't wanna hear it.

"Haha, young lady," he says to me, "if you go out of town, you should watch out! You look just like that Casey Anthony. People are trying to kill her, you know."

Thank you, sir. Really. As if my anxiety isn't misplaced already (the mere thought of anything remotely apocalyptic gives me panic attacks), now I'm going to worry about being assassinated by a blue hair that had nothing better to do than follow her entire trial and was outraged (outraged!) by the jury's decision. What was my reaction, you ask? Nothing. I just stared at him.

"Uhhh...how do you want your eggs?"

"No! You really look like her! Holy cow! Hey, listen, if you wanna kill any more kids, I got two grown ones that I'd like to get rid of. I like the grandkids though."

"Scrambled then? Okay, I'll have those right out."

Oof.

I don't look anything like her, by the way. We both have dark hair. That's about it.

Mister Mister

Santa Marthita