Southern

After living in denial for about a decade, I have finally come to accept that I am, in fact, one of those species known as a southern woman.

This has not been an easy path. I have tried desperately to pursue other roads : Grunge, Euro-trash, Australian (apologies to those who were with me on THAT road), but to no avail. The childhood videotapes do not lie. I did, and still do, say INsurance and not inSURance. And unfortunately I have to say that word a lot to Yankees. Who point it out.

I appreciate the recent observation from a fine man that I, like characters in many great films, have risen up from my southern roots to become a refined professional woman. Like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Although I hold this fine man in high esteem, he seems to ignore the fact that I am hardly a refined professional and I'm pretty sure I was never a prostitute. But I guess I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless.

When I was growing up, I loathed the thought of becoming just another girl who wanted the boy, the big house and the baby. I loathed it so much I even started loathing the people who did want it, including some of my closest friends. Nothing chilled my heart more than yet another friend getting married or pregnant before the age of 18. Oddly, although they would be living with their parents for years, many of them saw this as a bonus. Probably because their parents had big houses and that rounded out the three lifetime achievements.

I'm a little ashamed about how haughty I've been. There's a part of me that wants to understand how happiness can consist of episodes of Top Model and dishes made from canned foods that have no nutritional value whatsoever. There's a part of me that would just like to step into the mind of the average family woman of my age rearing children and trying not to notice how the years are flying by and they still haven't taken a vacation anywhere other than Myrtle Beach. But I can't. I did, just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, hoist myself up by my bootstraps, move on to bigger things and make a big fat success of myself. And NOT by sleeping with men for money.

But I am, at heart, a southern girl. I love the country with its neverending tobacco fields. I love bluegrass music, I love cookouts and boat rides and the way people who don't even know you call you pet names like "sweety" and "honey". I was in 4-H, and know how to help birth a calf. One of my best friends in high school had an old slave graveyard in her backyard. I know that the only tomatoes worth eating are those from a neighborhood garden. I grew up on SunTea and SunDrop. And I never go anywhere without brightly colored clothing during hunting season.

What's separated me from admitting my southernness has been a hesitation to admit that at one point I may actually want to settle down and have a family of my own. Okay, now I can admit that. Step one.

However, the bigger part of me that shys away from admitting to being a typical southern female probably has to do with the fact that they adore tragic situations and they adore praying. I do not love drama or praying. Actually, that is untrue - I probably do love drama on a subconscious level since I am always getting myself into situations that cause undue drama, but that's actually not my intention. That's just psychopathy.

I am not the type of person that sucks up people's misery with a shade of schadenfreude that borders on glee. I will never forget my sixth grade year when not one but TWO boys who sat next to me in class died and the girls in my class, probably like their mamas, were just falling all over each other to tell me the news. They could hardly contain themselves. It was truly disgusting. And the worst was they asked me to pray with them. I wanted to tell them I had already gone through the whole child death thing a couple of times, and so I know that praying does fuck-all.

These days, I like to live a secret life poised on the edge of tragedy, but I do not want to tip over because then I'll have to hear the dreaded words "I'll pray for you."

You'll PRAY for me?? Wow, thanks. How about giving me some money instead? Or better yet, develop super bionic powers to keep my child from almost drowning but now being permanently handicapped, my boyfriend from beating me, my son from becoming an addict, my daughter from being pregnant and my cable from going out. I'm sure prayer is going to stop the cancer from growing, the fibromyalgia from aching, and the hairdresser from picking out the wrong shade of blonde.

All this praying is taking up too much time while doing too little. I know. I've prayed, I think. At least I've closed my eyes and thought about God for awhile. Mostly what he'd look like dressed as a woman, but I'm sure that counts. In the end, I got the feeling that I had done something about as useful as making a wish before blowing the fluff off of the dandelion. And most of my prayers for other people have never really worked out, because well, they're just words. And I feel bad because it's like I've instilled a false hope or something.

But at the core I'm still southern. And when, like today, I learn of some crap roll of the destiny dice landing on a good friend, I do what a good southern girl always does. I sign the card "You're in my prayers."

And then lie my head on the table and sigh.

Mardi Gras

You have to understand, when you live in New Orleans the aspects of Mardi Gras that so obsess the out-of-towners are completely lost on us. In my little NOLA world, the pleasures of the old MG are a far cry from the sins the tourists seek. MG for me is simply a time to get a mini vaca, and to have a good excuse to leave work early because I live 3 blocks from the parade and have to get back at least 2 hours before or I get barricaded out or some freak parks in my spot. And the parades started Thursday and run through Tuesday. The downside is I won't be able to actually leave my block during that time period, but I'm stocked up and all the parties are within walking distance.

Work's slow anyway, and spring is coming.

I went to Khaos, Endymnion and Muses last night with my 55-year-old neighbor who's one of my closest friends. In the middle of muses, with teams of roller girls skating by she suddenly turned to me and asked "What's a cameltoe?"

This was not a random question. One of the derby teams calls themselves the Camel Toesteppers, and she had read an article in which the captain said she got the idea for the name when she tried on a pair of gold lame shorts that were too tight. Still, I wish the article had expounded on the meaning so I didn't have to end up giving someone almost twice my age and fairly conservative a lesson in fashion no-nos involving female genitalia.

But I bucked up and did it as nicely as I could. "It's when your pants are too tight so you can see the outline of everything underneath."

"Oh." Pause. "I always thought camels had three toes."

Jesus

I believe in him.*

*Not for real though. But it made a couple of people who read this blog happy so let's just leave it at that.

Sleepmailing

I stumbled upon this little ditty today.

I love how the last sentence says "may have been triggered by a prescription medication." Hm, wonder which one it was.

Oh come on! EVERYONE knows that when you pop the Ambien the weird prose just starts a-flowin'. Half of this blog has been written after I pop my nightly sleep companion, although I do come back in the morning to puzzle at what I've written and try to salvage it through correcting multiple grammatical and spelling errors.

And Ambien texting? Well, I happen to have a very fresh example, from a friend who's turned into an insomniac and decided to get a prescription, while scoffing at my wild Ambien tales.

Last night, 3:27 am:

"Ambien does not work to keep from going very bad things. Feel better we have been greatly equalized. Just don't make me leave mork."

Wow. And I hope this doesn't mean she TOOK it at work, because she's an ER doc and that would really suck.

I advise you kids that Ambien is a wonderful drug when you need sleep. BUT before you take it:

1. Turn off all electronic devices. Okay, you can keep the lamp on.

2. Turn all cells phones to "off".

3. Make sure your laptop is completely shut down.

4. Do not start listening to nostalgic music that reminds you of someone you needed to forget, nor think that sentimentalities will come across well in your state.

4. If you are going to take a bath, do it BEFORE taking the pill as pretending to be a mermaid underwater may lead to an accidental drowning.

5. Put the warning label about retrograde amnesia EVERYWHERE, because it DOES happen and pretty consistently.

I am not a (raging) alcoholic, and know when to stop before I "black out," but I guess being on Ambien is my black out. Luckily I keep myself locked in my place away from harm (except the time I went on a mini-gardening rampage), but then again the damage of telling someone that you want his children just ONE INNOCENT TIME will come back to haunt you forever. Because he will constantly remind you of it and ask when you're going to start working toward that goal and the whole thing just makes you want to take an Ambien and call him back and fall asleep on him while he's saying something meaningful.

Zolpidem, comme je t'aime!!

Award

So, my "Elevator" series just isn't living up to my expectations because as soon as I got excited about it, interesting stuff just stopped happening on the elevator. Mostly it's been the usual shit, like I get on the elevator, retreat to my little corner where I lean against the brass bar with my foot crossed in front of my leg, foot perked up on the toe in studied poise, then get off the elevator, and then repeat until I reach my final destination. When I am going down, I push my heels firmly into the floor of the elevator to make sure it passes the floor where Sucre guy lurks or I stare at my blackberry, or I do both simultaneously.

Once in awhile, some old man talks to me about the weather. Or I'm stuck with an awkward acquaintance - like the lawyers from the firm that I didn't take the offer from and who were kind of jerks about it. Where Sucre guy works. I pretty much hate that floor. Although, in retrospect it does make me feel better that Sucre guy only got that job because I decided not to work there. Ha!

Anyway ... I thought instead, I'd start a new series called "The Ass Hat Awards."

Why? Because "Ass Hat" is one of my new favorite expressions. I also like "Ass Clown" but for awhile it was the entry on my cell phone for my ex and so now it is not as gender neutral as ass hat.

Anyway, the premise for this is very simple : I am often surrounded by ass hats and it's obvious to me that they need some recognition for all the extra effort they put into being outrageously obnoxious.

No, I'm not talking about those people who breathe down your neck in line, or who don't put the little bar thing down on the belt at the grocery store so your produce gets mixed up with theirs, or the people that never learned a turn signal. These people all need special training of course, but none of them quite get to the level of "Ass Hat."

Why?

Because an Ass Hat is someone that is so completely in need of the adoration of others and power that they become ridiculous caricatures that no one in their right mind would ever respect, be friends with, or sit next to on the plane without earplugs. Pomposity, self-importance, delusions of grandeur ... you got it.

Ass hats are mostly harmless, unless you realize that they will, in fact, suck hours of your life mercilessly away in trying to attempt to impress you. In my case, this is quite serious, because there is no way in hell I can even fake being impressed with Ass Hats, which usually means they won't fucking stop. Or once they give up they'll tell everyone I had sex with my science teacher or something as revenge for me not being impressed.

Today I did a favor for a friend who is still in law school, and volunteered to judge an appellate competition downtown. This is my first time doing such a thing as a real live attorney, and as I had done a few of these competitions myself, I knew what it was like to stand in the competitor's shoes. I also knew that I had fuck-all experience with anti-trust law (the case), and so planned to be respectful, courteous, and direct in my questions while in my role as judge.

Enter Ass Hat. Ass Hat is a girl who went to school with me. I actually thought she was kind of nice, but apparently the six months that we have been licensed to practice law have turned her from a shy chubby girl to a condescending smug self-important jerk in a very tight Banana Republic Suit. She was downright nasty to the competitors, asked me snidely if I had a job yet, turned up her nose when I named my prestigious firm, and commented at least 5 times during the competition how her partners kept calling her, and she really needs to get on her secretary more often, and she had to take a client to lunch. It was an awful lot to come from a girl who I knew didn't even graduate with honors. I was also nice enough to not point out that her firm had attempted to hire me, and I turned them down. Probably another job opening I created.

So, this is obnoxious. But the part that makes her the Ass Hat for this particular day is that during the entire time, while we were sitting in the actual Federal District Court, in the judge's seats, during a competition where public speaking and intricate argument was the main focus, the bitch was smacking loudly away at a wad of gum.

Ass Hat.

Elevators (III)

The South is notoriously good about always letting women off of the elevators first. The only people who do not seem to respect this code seem to be manual laborers from the North, but we don't get too many in my glass tower, so most of the time the fact that I will get out of the elevator that much more quickly is so satisfying.

Until I realize that the real reason is so that the men who are left behind can check out my ass.

I become increasingly convinced every social nicety includes covert evil. Or sex.

Fertility

No, really. Stupid stupid stupid bitch.

Television

I got stuck in a radiology department today because my doctor's office had failed (twice) to remember to fax over orders and found myself eerily glued to the tragedy that is early morning television.

Unlike retards who think the Price is Right equals memorable television, my childhood consisted mainly of reading novels. There was something inherently eerie about the plastic cheerful people who told us both empahtically and nonchalantly that a serial child rapist with a machete was on the loose and then would switch to talk of a what a celebrity's baby was wearing. I have no taste for it. I still don't.

I would've gone for reading material, but all they had was Cosmo. After reading an article wherein the likes/dislikes of some nobody television actress were laid out in detail (she likes the beach and her dogs, she doesn't like bad people and her biggest fault is drinking too much coffee) the TV seemed like a way to swerve imminent death by head explosion. Mistake.

Things I learned from watching television from 8-9am:

1. People are morons. But I learn that from about a gazillion other things, so let me be more specific.

2. We prize women who are bright orange. This reminds me of a girl I went to school with. She had platinum blonde hair and bright orange skin - one of the finest examples ever of every surface of your body being aesthetically altered by a bottle of chemicals. Normally I wouldn't hold this against her, but she was kind of a bitch. I didn't know those anchorwomen, but they were bitches too.

3. During the commercial breaks these commercials came on for what to deliver to your sweetie on V-day. One was for a teddy bear and the other for a pair of pajamas.* In the ads, a girl receives either of the above items in the office. All of her girlfriends are extremely jealous and say affirming things like "I wish I had a boyfriend like that."** The next scene is then the girfriend clicking champagne glasses next to classy guy who sent her that classy package and then the door suggestively closing with a "Do Not Disturb" sign. Final pan: the boys in the office scrambling madly to order their own teddy bears. I'd like to think this ties in neatly with the first scene, and that the jaelous pumpkin women will soon be getting their own deliveries and lots of intra-office sex violations will ensue, but maybe that's just kind of lobbing them one. Also, the whole thing was porn quality.

But sadly, I suspect that many fine Americans have found themselves drawn to that website today in order to charm the pants off of some shallow office girl who worries more about looking good in front of her office mates than whether she should REALLY be having sex with that guy.*** Alternatively, the website probably does pretty good business drawing in shallow office girls who aren't having sex with anyone but still need to impress their colleagues by having things delivered to themselves. Actually, I have a lot more respect for the latter category.

4. Coldplay won a Grammy. Okay, whatever your feelings on that (and really, do you need to have any?) I have complete and utter contempt for awards of any type. I'm a little tired of the "everyone should win so let's invent more and more types of awards so everyone who's licked some serious arty ass can get something." To be fair, this extends to other types of awards as well.

Anyone who knows that Amsterdam won a Booker Prize knows that the people who pick these winners are getting drunk and doing the following: 1) They load a revolver with one bullet. 2) They put all the names of the nominees (who were selected from a fishbowl filled with every "edgy" person who wrote a book whose title is only one word) on a target in some back room of the Library of Congress; 3) they pass the revolver around to each person who takes a shot at the name they want to win (usually based on the amount of syllables in the one-word title rather than reading it); 4) the person who gets the bullet in a name wins; 5) if no one hits a name with a bullet, the prize is then based on the choice of the person who might have stuck the gun to his head during the whole process to be funny.

The Nobel Prize? Yeah, there's a lot of humanitarians' wives that are basically screwing their do-goody husbands to the top.

5. Apparently, peanuts are really important. So we get kind of upset when we can't have any due to a salmonella outbreak. So upset that we send the FBI in on them wearing bullet-proof vests because it's not like the FBI has anything better to do than scream "Hands in the air!" to a bunch of peanut warehouse workers. Also, really dumpy women who run food banks are now worried children will starve. My question is why are children eating primarily peanuts? I'm sure this fine country has lots of other staples to offer them. Like corn syrup. Or all those long words on the side of the candy bar I'm pretending not to eat. Did the woman have to get that upset that private donors will not be shipping her disadvantaged children gallons of peanut butter? Unless ... yeah, she's probably been eating all of it.

Not that I don't feel sorry for her. I once got really addicted to peanut butter this one summer. I really have no idea what the deal was, except that I was swimming 3 hours a day and like to eat things out of jars with spoons.**** It got to the point where I started packing on pounds and my father had this intervention where he kept taking it away and hiding it (because he couldn't live without it either - takes one to know one) and I kept finding it and eating it and putting it back. Then he would find the empty jar and get really upset - worse than when the cleaning lady found that bottle of vodka under my bed - and I'd have to hear a long lecture about how much of a good thing is not really good. All of this was ineffective until we got mice and Dad started using peanut butter on the mouse traps. That pretty much cured it after I almost broke a finger or two.

On another side note, things have not being going very well for me lately (not in tragic events - just mounting daily annoyances) and today I tried to commit suicide by Reese's peanut butter cups. It did not work, probably because that's not really peanut butter. My taste buds know the real stuff.

*This disdain does not extend to those cakes you told me you were going to have delivered to my office when you were in NOLA last weekend.
**It should be noted that all of these women are orange.
***Although if she knows she should be having sex with the guy, looking good in front of the office mates is clearly alright.
****I am aware that the Booker Prize does not apply to Americans, so you can see just how much this winner-selection is completely arbitrary! I mean, why not have it somewhere slightly more British?
*****Like many others, I have also experienced this same issue with Nutella and it took an entire 12-step program for that one.

Lists

It is very rare that even my nearest and dearest friends manage to out-do me on the list-making front. I am queen of the lists. I list everything. Sometimes I make lists about the lists I need to make. Or make lists the sub-part of other lists. Occasionally they even hyperlink.

Lately my new thing has been post-it lists. As an added advantage, I am able to post these on my wall, and then change them up as things take priority without the necessity of revising the old list (or even more soothingly, rewriting the whole thing). This also helps to make what is a potentially classy office into something reminiscent of those horrible cubicles that my undergrad classmates slaved away in somewhere in San Fran during the dot.com boom.

They also creepily remind me of the time my sister decided to write a funny "Ode to E." to cheer me up and stated that I would climb the corporate world post-it by post-it. Unfortunately, she was wrong. I am climbing nothing but my wall in order to find an empty space where I can put yet another post-it.

The worst is, my lists are so focused on detail that they actually take longer to write than to perform. For example, an item on my middle school personal hygiene list was "Let liquid deoderant dry." Fortunately, I followed that item with activities that did not involve exposing non-dried liquid deoderant to any surfaces so at least there was some logic involved.

I am perfectly aware that list-making is a sign of OCD. I am also aware that most people with OCD accomplish a whole hell of a lot more than the people who point that out. So, suck it.

However, no matter how pathetic my lists have been (attributes of the man whose child I wish to bear, sordid side jobs that could help me pay off my student loans, people who probably want to sabotage me), I recently found one that made me feel a hell of a lot better. It was posted on a friend's refrigerator, and listed her New Year's Resolutions. She was quite discomfited that she left it there for all to see. We, her honored dinner guests, were delighted.

The list was written on the reverse side of a sheet pulled from a Far Side calender. And from the ragged handwriting and spelling and grammatical errors, she was probably three sheets to the wind when she wrote it.

The first entry was : "Drunk less."

The next (and last) entry was "Get disabillity insurance."

Hm.

Breeder

I've recently realized that my issues with children may not be so much about the kids themselves (who are strangely bearable at zoos -- probably because the ape house desensitized me).

No, my issues are more with some of the idiot parents who decide to spring offspring from their incapable loins.

For example, this stupid bitch.

You can't even take care of your first litter yet you have a publicist??? Please, someone take her ovaries away. And kick her in the stomach for good measure.