Author Archives: Lashawn

Season Two, Episode One: Of Changing Seasons, NYC, and How Apple Maps is the Smartphone Manifestation of Me and My Fabulous Navigational Skills

Posted in Humor, Random, Technology, Travel by

It’s September, fall is in the air and life is full of changes.  With fall comes new seasons of all our favorite shows, so I present to you…Season Two of Chasing Lala.  Enjoy.

I got the new iPhone 5 today in the mail.  I may have shrieked like a girl upon opening the box and realizing what was inside–my boyfriend had mentioned something about a possible surprise for me this week, so when my mom said that there was a package for me on the dining room table, I figured it was something of the Bret-centric variety…However, Bret does not work at Apple, so when I pulled out the sleek black box (Apple is not one to skimp on the aesthetics of a product) that was nestled inside the boring brown box it was shipped in, I had a very childish moment akin to opening a present on Christmas morning and realizing it was what you had been bugging your mom and dad and grandma and various mall Santas for all along.  So I shrieked and activated it as soon as I got a case and screen protector for it.

My first thoughts?  It’s crazy light and I love that the screen is bigger and not as harsh on my eyes.  Splendid job, technological nerd wizards at Apple.  I salute you.

I’m probably going to draw the ire of tech nerds all across the fair planet that we call Earth when I say that I really didn’t notice anything major beyond the navigation service change from Google Maps to Apple Maps, the loss of YouTube, the size of the screen and subsequently the size of the phone itself, and the weight of the phone. Still does most of the stuff that my lowly 4 did back in 2010.  It is, however, one damn fine looking phone 🙂

My new phone leads me to my next tangent (try to follow me, I know I tend to jump from topic to topic just as rapidly as I do in non-literary life).  In exactly 12 days (but who is counting?) I will be leaving on a jet plane to the beautiful, gritty, insomniatic city that is New York City.  Well…Manhattan, but when you think of NYC, you think of Manhattan, and probably Brooklyn.  And maybe Queens because of The Nanny and Kevin James (I got the theme song to The King of Queens in my head when I started typing his name, haha).  Oh my god I am sooooo excited.  Beyond excited.  I have wanted to go to New York ever since I was five, and what could be better than going with my fantastic boyfriend, whom I haven’t seen in nearly three months?

I promise to post pictures and I was thinking of doing sporadic little blogettes, if you will, throughout the day while we are there.  It’ll be sort of like Twitter but in blog form.  I did most of the planning, and there is so much I want to do:  the 9/11 memorial, Times Square (our hotel is like ten minutes from it!), Central Park, the Met, the High Line (this really cool park system built on the old high line train tracks that run through part of the city)…lots of food and shopping and just making some potentially awesome memories.  Some of my family on my dad’s side lives in NYC so it would be really nice to be able to meet up with some of them for lunch or something just to see them.

Also really hoping Apple Maps doesn’t get us lost and consequently robbed like that one episode of Sex and the City where Carrie got her Manolos stolen right off her feet.  I am really bummed that they removed Google Maps, but when in doubt there is Bret’s phone and it’s GPS, which hasn’t gotten us lost yet–I don’t know why I am so worried about navigational services when it is pretty much an unspoken fact/rule that I am not allowed to give directions.  Ask any of my friends…I suck at it.  We always get lost, which is a pretty spectacular feat seeing as I have a freaking map powered by a satellite to guide me.  I think I am just mildly anxious about getting lost or somehow separated from Bret in Manhattan and not knowing how to get back to the hotel in one piece because my phone’s GPS sucks.  Pretty ridiculous, but still.  Crazier things have happened.

Hmm…feels a bit like a cliffhanger 😉

Welcome to Season Two.

Season One, Episode Thirty-Two: Of Boobs, Cheetahs, and Justin Bieber

Posted in Comedy, Health, Humor by

So I joined a gym last month.

I am so guilty of this. I am in an imagined one-sided race with people at the gym and they don’t even know how intense the competition is 😛

I’m not really an athletic person–I got a D- in gym my freshman year of high school, and that was after the A’s and B’s I got on the written tests.  (Deduce your own conclusions from that.)  I’m rather clumsy and uncoordinated.  I’m that girl who trips over her feet and gets visibly flustered, yet does it again roughly fifteen minutes later–I love flip-flops, but I tend to catch the tops of them along the sidewalk for some unforeseeable reason and I always wind up stumbling.  I can’t catch, and my throwing skills are pretty sub par.  If I go to hell when I die, I will spend copious amounts of time being forced to play volleyball and badminton amid the fire and brimstone–my older brother is the athlete of the family, and I am okay with that.

But anyway, I joined a gym.  I figure that a little physical exertion never hurt anyone, and as long as the activities I participated in didn’t involve a single ounce of athleticism I’d be okay.  So I have gone quite a few times, and I like it.  I prefer the elliptical because it feels like fancy skiing (if I knew what skiing felt like, haha) and because it’s a guaranteed sweatfest.  Well…it was.  After the first few times my body got used to it, and I exercised the other day for a half hour without breaking a sweat.  No bueno.  So I hopped off the machine in search of a cardiovascular workout that would make me look like a sweaty mess.

I tried the stationary bike.  I got a little sweaty, but I had to keep messing with the seat because I’m short and I couldn’t find a good height to sit at…plus I kept sliding off the seat because it was at an angle (and it made my ass hurt later.  Now I see why the fitness magazines tell you to bring your own cushioned seat cover.).  I casually made my way over to the treadmill and stared it down for a good thirty seconds–I’m sure the other gym-goers probably thought I was insane, but there was a method to my madness.

I am not a runner.  Not necessarily by choice, more or less by my lack of athletic prowess, my questionable coordination, and the fact that I can trip over nothing.  Oh…and did I mention that I’m a 34DD?  Yeah, that too.  So I turn on the treadmill and put it at 3.5 mph, a good speed for getting my walk on.  The chick next to me is running at a speed of 9.3 mph, and not to be outdone, I crank that shit up to 5.9 mph, bust out that Justin Bieber song that I’m embarrassed to admit I really like (“As Long As You Love Me”), and start running like a cheetah.


…Make that a cheetah with huge boobs and lungs not used to running.  I lasted about a minute and a half before I had to slow my shit down and walk without looking like a winded old lady.  Fighting the urge to hunch over and gasp for breath, I walked it out and attempted to find my inner Usain Bolt.  I made it for about two minutes this time before my chest started screaming at me to stop–it wasn’t that I was out of breath, to my partially winded surprise I actually had found a decent rhythm and was doing okay.  It was my boobs who were threatening to cause a chesty revolution and attack me.  Now I’m used to having to double up on sports bras and the such when I exercise, it comes with the territory, but that day’s choice of a strapless bra underneath a Target sports bra wasn’t getting the job done.  Nay.  I’m sure the boys in the gym enjoyed the show, but I was in pain and I had to jump off the treadmill and call it a day.

Sweaty and broken, I immediately Googled “how to run with big boobs” and found all kinds of sites where girls complained about running with large chests and how it really sucked.  It also seemed like they were running in search of making their ladies smaller–I like being chestacular, I would just like to be able to run without being in pain.  So I have decided to go on the search for the Holy Grail of Sports Bras.  I hear compression bras are the way to go, but I need a really spectacular one to lock these babies down, or my half-assed dreams of running will never be fully acheived.  I have received suggestions of trying the VSX line by Victoria’s Secret, or even Under Armour, which I think I will test out in the upcoming weeks.

Speaking of running, I’ve decided to participate in the Cleveland edition of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.  It’s Saturday, September 15.  I won’t be running in the 5k, but I will be doing the 5k walk.  I’m collecting donations and my goal is $200.  If you feel like donating, please click here.  You don’t have to feel like giving a lot, even $5 will help.

I have mixed feelings on the Susan G. Komen Foundation after all the crap happened with Planned Parenthood funding earlier this year, but I have friends who lost their mothers to breast cancer when we were in high school, one of my former co-workers’ mother had a double mastectomy due to breast cancer, my boyfriend’s mother and sister have both suffered from it, and no woman (or man, for that matter) is immune from it.  I feel like we need to make strides to find a cure for breast cancer, hopefully in my lifetime.  If you choose to donate, thank you and I appreciate it.  If not, please just take the time to do monthly self-exams and stay vigiliant.

Season One, Episode Thirty-One: Heartsick Wanderlust

Posted in Art, Random, Travel, Writing by

I miss Chicago…and everything that comes along with it :\

Siiiiiigh.

 

I hate that it’s going to be almost October before I get to go out there again.

Season One, Episode Thirty: Mid-Season Recap

Posted in Parenting, Random, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing by

Time flies when you’re living life.

In Niagara Falls, Canada back in May.

I hadn’t realized that April was the last time I blogged!  I suppose that in the rush of everything positive that has gone on over the past three months, I just didn’t have time to write.  The casino opened May 14, and the shift I had been on up until last night made it damn near impossible to do anything but work and sleep–I worked what we call “sunrise” (a more pleasant-sounding spin on the more depressing-sounding graveyard shift), and when you work from 1 am to 9 am, you find that blogging ranks pretty low on your list of priorities 😛  But anyway, life at the casino is great.  I love being a dealer, it’s pretty fun to just essentially play games and interact with people for eight hours and get paid.  I’m surprised at how comfortable I have gotten dealing roulette;  if you had thrown me on a roulette table back in April I probably would have burst into tears (as a matter of fact, back in April I did burst into tears on the table in class) and froze up.  Now I can easily tell you how much five straight-ups (175) and 7 splits (119) are (294), all in my head.  I actually enjoy dealing roulette more than blackjack, and the people that I’ve known since the original Table Games Service Academy (Dec. 2011 to Feb. 2012) can tell you how much of a 180 that is!  It’s great to work with people I enjoy and actually feel appreciated, something that I never once felt at the dealership.  I have no stress and I’m relaxed…I love it.

Other that, one would say that my life is wonderfully mundane.  Nicky is getting so big!  He’ll be in second grade in three weeks, and he’s only 11 inches shorter than me–that doesn’t say a lot for me, but 50 inches is a pretty huge achievement for him 🙂 He’s had a summer filled with climbing the tree in our front yard, swimming in his friend’s pool, playing baseball, and just being a little boy with his entire summer vacation ahead of him.

Nicky during Marine Week back in June. He has had an awesome summer so far!

My boyfriend and I are still together and are pretty happy.  He went home in the middle of June, and I went out to Chicago for a few days this past month to see him, which was great because I love the city (and him, but that’s beside the point :P).  We’re pretty confident that we can make this long distance thing work.

I also lost nearly 20 pounds since February, I’ve gone from 160 to roughly 145-147 pounds.  I’ve joined a gym and am trying to be a lot healthier in my eating and lifestyle habits.  I feel great, and I love how I feel.  I was thinking about losing 20 more, but I don’t want to lose my curves, so I might drop about 10 to 15 more and build muscle.

I actually didn’t notice how much weight I’d lost until I took the picture on the right at my boyfriend’s house in Indiana.

I have every intent of being more consistent with this blog now that I am on swing shift and have more time during the day to get things done.  I’m actually going to sign off now to go eat dinner and get ready to go to work…Til next time, XO!

Season One, Episode Twenty-Nine: Chasing Charming

I loved Disney movies as a child.

I loved to sing along with the songs, and I adored the princesses, especially Jasmine and Belle. As a gap-toothed, messy haired eight year old, I loved that Jasmine decided she’d run away before marrying someone she didn’t want to (I just found the idea of marriage ridiculous since you know, all boys were gross and had cooties) and I loved that Belle would rather help her kooky dad with his inventions and read books all day instead of being interested in that jerk Gaston (because, yet again, all boys were gross and had cooties). I will admit, that even at eight, I was fascinated with the idea of a happily ever after, where all your dreams came true and all the wrongs were made right by true love’s first kiss. I had no idea how unrealistic that was.

Belle is my all-time favorite Disney princess. She was the only one who didn't care that girls who could read weren't considered cool. And she was the only girl in her town who didn't fawn over that bastard Gaston.

I had a fairly good idea that life didn’t actually work out like it did in The Little Mermaid or Aladdin. There was no magical Genie, full of jokes and goodhearted cheer, who would make all my wildest fantasies come true. I wasn’t going to rub a lamp and become a princess or marry Jonathan Taylor Thomas. It didn’t work like that. I also wasn’t going to be attacked by a crazy lady who was half octopus. I was pretty grateful for that 😛 But still, I loved the idea of finding my own Prince Charming, this amazing and beautiful and perfect guy who was going to sweep me off my feet and we’d get married and have a happily ever after of our own. I figured that I’d find him eventually, and when I did, it was going to be the greatest thing ever. I’d have the big stupid house with the white picket fence and the two kids (one girl, one boy) and the dream car and the obligatory golden retriever and life would just be friggin’ grand.

...Because in 1996, JTT was part of every girl's happy ending.

Yeah…life doesn’t work like that. And if it does, Lord have I kissed enough frogs to warrant me my freaking happy ending. My son’s father was a class act who was separated from his wife and swore he was going to get divorced, and I was stupid enough at 18 to believe him. He wound up leaving me to go back to her twice, the final time being after she had a kid exactly ten months after my son was born. There have been guys who turned out to be crazy morons who may or may not have beat their past girlfriends. There have been guys who couldn’t kiss their way out of a well-lit paper bag with the exit clearly marked. There were guys who were even worse in bed. There were guys who strung me along, guys who just wanted to be friends with benefits, and guys who turned out to be racially confused drug dealers. I’m only 26, and I have to admit that I’m tired. I feel like I deserve a happily ever after.

Frogs may be cute, but they are NOT good kissers.

And I kind of wish that Disney had put more effort into the realism of the “happily ever after”. Why not show what happened to Belle and the Prince after they got married? All we saw was them dancing at the end of the film. Why not show what would happen once they got comfortable and Belle realized that the Prince wasn’t going to be all sweet and romantic like he was when they first fell in love? Why not show Jasmine getting frustrated because Aladdin wouldn’t take that damn monkey outside to poop? Why not show Ariel laying in bed, wishing that Eric would get the hint that she wanted to have sex instead of him watching Pawn Stars again and falling asleep before midnight? I wish they had showed us girls that it’s not easy, that the idea of a happy ending takes work and patience and a healthy dose of rationality. Maybe then people wouldn’t give up on a relationship the first time you have a huge fight. Maybe then we wouldn’t rush into marriage and rush into divorce even more quickly than we rushed into the wedding. Maybe we wouldn’t be so preoccupied with the end game of our relationship…maybe then we’d focus on the now. I’m learning that the now is the best part of being in love with someone. When you focus on the end game all it does is stress you out and cause you to feel like crap.

My boyfriend is here on business; that’s how we met. I knew from the beginning that he was going home after he was all done here in Cleveland–home being roughly five and a half hours away. It’s not crazy far, but I’ve never been in a long-distance relationship before, and honestly, the Internet really hasn’t been much of a help in telling me all the fabulous ways for us to stay together (But really, is the Internet ever really helpful? Really.). I’ve had people tell me it’s not going to work, while others have said that it most certainly will, if you are willing to put the time and effort into it–I’m more than willing to try, but Jesus Christ, I wish that there was something that I could have referenced as a child that I could draw upon now to make me feel better once he leaves in June. Seriously, Disney, you need to come up with a modern princess who I can relate to. Right now, the only princess I’ve got is Emma from Once Upon A Time, and she doesn’t even know she’s a princess, damn it!

Pfft. Try telling her that there's such a thing as a happily ever after. Emma'd believe that as much as she'd believe she's really a fairy tale princess. And then she'd probably kick your ass.

All I know is that I can’t be the only one who is tired of chasing after a guy who doesn’t really exist. Perhaps I’ll stumble upon Charming when the time is right. Maybe I already have 🙂

Season One, Episode Twenty-Eight: Of Hangovers and Poetry

Posted in Random, Writing by

Blehhh.

Nothing ruins a perfectly sunny day off like a friggin’ hangover.  I slept it off til almost 12:30 this afternoon, and while the headache has finally left my cranial premises, I still am dealing with this annoying twinge of nausea.  And I have wasted said day off in the confines of a itty bitty hotel room.  Yesterday I went on quite the jaunt around Downtown Cleveland, walking around in the chilly April sunshine and taking pictures and composing random poetry on my iPhone.  I don’t have too much to talk about today, so I’ll share my impromptu poem I came up with yesterday.

 

This hotel room

Makes me feel claustrophobic

–it’s far too narrow–

Cramped and brown

It makes me vaguely apprehensive

The angle of the windows chokes out the sunlight

But if you crane your head

–just so–

You can catch a glimpse of the lake,

A tiny sliver of sparkling gray-blue beauty.

I’d rather be outside

In the windy chill

At least the sunshine is warm

When it shines down on you.

 

This park bench is prime real estate

The wood feels cold under my jeans

And the far too big windshirt that I surreptitiously stole from my boyfriend

The wind blows in off the lake

–and honestly, anyone who thinks that Chicago is the windiest city has never been to Cleveland in the spring–

Which shimmers like a murky blue jewel

In the late April sun

I sit on this bench, under the pretense of reading

–I’ve got a Salinger novel in my lap–

But really, I just couldn’t take the claustrophobic brown crampedness

Of that goddamn hotel room.

 

So I sit here, fingers chilled

The wind ruffling the loose hairs that lay against my neck

The air a vague combination of exhaust and manure and springtime

And I think

Because that’s what you do when you’re alone on a bench in a park

You sit and you think

And I watch the people and the cars

Hurrying past, off to live another day in their mediocre adventures

The wind comes up again and I think I’ve decided

That perhaps I should move my contemplation to a less windy location.

–“April 24, 2012 5:33 pm”

Season One, Episode Twenty-Seven: Naughty Bloggers and Quite Possibly the Shortest and Most Random Post to Date

Posted in Comedy, Humor, Random by

I have been a naughty blogger.

It’s been what, like almost a month and a half since I last posted?  For shame!

In my defense, however, things in the life of Lashawn have been pretty hectic, and in a good way 🙂  I’ve been training for the casino opening, and I have to say that although my roulette skills need some serious tweaking, I could probably deal a successful hand of blackjack in my sleep.  We open in like 26 days or some shit…super excited, but hella nervous.  It kind of feels like how I used to feel before going on stage and singing–butterflies in my stomach, heart pounding, a general feeling of excitement…all under the nagging urge to vomit.  Fantastic.  I’m sure I’ll do fine once I get my girlish nerves out of the way, which should hopefully be the first few hands at the blackjack table, or the first few hours I’ve dealt roulette…because god forbid I have another tear-filled breakdown at the wheel again like I did during training on Sunday.  We will just be optimistic and hope for the best.

I’ve also been spending time with my gentleman lover (hahaha that sounds so awkward and horrible, yet awesome at the same time–makes me think of Anchorman).  We have done pretty much a whole bunch of nothing, which sounds boring but is actually pretty splendid.  We did go on some fancy schmancy art walk through Tremont the other night, but neither of us was really impressed with it, which leads me to believe that 1.) we are neither cool nor hip, 2.) we don’t know crap about art (although it really seemed like the theme of the evening revolved around taking random photos and either framing them or screenprinting them onto a large canvas, and then selling them for like $250 a pop), and 3.) it must be an acquired skill that neither one of us possess.  We ate dinner at a restaurant that was virtually non-Lashawn friendly (meaning it was super trendy and had super gross food on the menu), but the appetizer and the bread was yum, so it wasn’t entirely a crap dinner for me.  I also got chocolates from my favorite little chocolate shop (Lilly Tremont) and cupcakes (A Cookie and a Cupcake), so the night wasn’t exactly a culinary bust.

I shall post more frequently, I feel kind of like a deadbeat parent…which shall never happen again.  I am going to post a delightful picture for you from our hipster date.  I think I could frame it and sell it for like $50, hahaha.

Season One, Episode Twenty-Six: Saving the Invisible Children

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

This is what a seven year old should be doing, not being trained how to kill people.

This is my son, Nicholas. He just turned seven last month. He loves tornadoes, Ramen noodles, and cats. He plays softball and is learning how to read. He’s never known anything except being surrounded by the people he loves.

This is because he lives in America. He will never really understand how lucky he is to be an American–I am twenty-six and am still discovering on a daily basis how lucky I am to have been born in the United States. I don’t think that most of us realize, even among the rising gas prices and political games and the unstable economy, just how incredibly lucky we actually are to live in Ohio or Indiana or Colorado or Alabama or Washington or any other of the fifty states that comprise our nation. In our country, children can be free to be children, they can be free to play out on the streets and go to school and learn without the fear of being taken from their homes and taught how to kill against their will. If Nicky had been born in Central Africa, his life would be very very different.

At what seems to us the very young and innocent age of seven is seen as the perfect age to be taught to shoot a sub-machine gun and mutilate people in the eyes of crazed warlords. In Uganda my son could be yanked from his bed in the dead of night and be forced to kill me and my family or be killed himself. He would be taken from his school, his friends, everything just to become another faceless, nameless child soldier, nothing but empty collateral to “armies” such as the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda or the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council in Sierra Leone. My son would be pumped full of drugs and be promised crazy, unattainable things in return for carrying a gun that would be roughly half his size and kill innocent people. If he thought of leaving, he would be tortured or mutilated or murdered in front of his fellow “soldiers”. All at the age of seven. It disgusts me.

I watched a video earlier this evening from a nonprofit group that I have been supporting since at least 2007, Invisible Children. The nonprofit uses film to raise awareness of the abductions and abuse of children in Central Africa, namely the children recruited to serve in Joseph Kony‘s LRA. Their main goal is to capture Kony, hold him accountable for his crimes, and end the LRA. The video, “Kony 2012”, asks us to bring Kony to the forefront of our international media and asks us to use social networking, among other tactics, to help lead to the capture, arrest, and conviction of Joseph Kony. I found myself choking up several times during the thirty minute video, especially when they focused on Jacob, a Ugandan boy who had witnessed his brother killed by Kony’s regime, and Gavin, the filmmaker’s young son, who couldn’t understand why someone would have children kill.

Here is the video. It’s gone viral since its release on March 5, garnering over 44 million views on YouTube and roughly 14 million views on Vimeo:

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

Joseph Kony was indicted for war crimes in 2005 by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. His regime has been accused of abducting and forcing over 66,000 children to fight for the LRA since 1986. Invisible Children has called for people to come together and spread the video online and to donate to the cause. I am impressed at the speed of how the video and the message about Joseph Kony has spread. #kony2012 is one of the top trending topics on Twitter, and I have seen the video numerous times on my Facebook news feed. I hope that the actions of the people help to find Kony and bring him to justice. No child should feel like Jacob has, that maybe it would be better to be dead than to live in a world with the constant threat of evil men like Joseph Kony.

I believe that every child should get to live a childhood like my son. Every child should be able to lay their head down on their pillow at night and know that they are safe. No child deserves to become invisible.

Season One, Episode Twenty-Five: One Day I Will Get Slapped By Julia Child’s Ghost

Posted in Comedy, Culture, Humor, Random by

I am a picky eater.

I always have been, I most likely always will.  My list of things I won’t eat probably outnumbers the list of things that I do eat by a landslide.  I’ll share a general consensus of the things that I don’t eat with you just so that you can get a ballpark estimate of the way things are for me at mealtime.

  • Fish, shrimp, shark (I suppose that could be fish, but I just think it deserves its own spot on the list of things I don’t eat), mussels, oysters, clams, lobster, crab, sea urchins, porpoise (you never know)…pretty much anything that swims and/or dwells in saltwater or freshwater ecosystems.  I can’t do it, it’s gross.  And it smells.  And I really loved The Little Mermaid and I don’t want to chance eating Sebastian or Flounder or one of Ariel’s cousins or whatever.  Judge away, but you all remember what happened to that crazy French chef who tried to turn Sebastian into Ariel and Eric’s lunch.  Just sayin’.

    Pfft. Les Poissons indeed.

  • Steak, shredded beef, cubed beef, anything that is essentially NOT ground beef.  Not really sure how or why this quirk came into being, but I’ve tried steak and thought it was gross.  It was too chewy.  Perhaps I need to try a slab of cow that has been cooked medium well or better and slathered in cheese and bacon–the steak I had was medium rare or some shit, and was NOT delicious.  Maybe I was too busy thinking about how reddish pink the piece I was chewing was, or maybe I’m just not fancy or cultured enough.  I don’t know.
  • Poultry.  That includes chicken, duck, quail, grouse (whatever the hell that is), pheasant, Cornish hen, and turkey.  Pretty much anything with wings that lays eggs.  I do, however, eat eggs.  But only scrambled and with cheese.  No negotiations.  I do remember that I used to eat Chicken McNuggets as a tot, that I adored them with sweet and sour sauce.  I remember why I stopped eating them too–I was at a McDonald’s down on Euclid Avenue waaaay back when I was 4 or 5, maybe I was a little older, I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I took a bite of that crispy morsel of chicken dipped in that golden sauce and into a bone.  I bit into a big hunk of chicken bone.  I freaked out in a quiet fashion and spat it out into my McNugget box (I was very classeh).  I remember telling my mom that I was full of chicken and just wanted my fries.  But I never ever ate chicken again after that day.
  • Pork.  Well…I eat bacon, sausage, and bologna.  And chorizo.  Anything else…no dice, as Charles Bronson would say.
  • Most vegetables.  I will eat ketchup, potatoes, etcetera, etcetera…I’ve started this new thing where I blend up veggies and mix them with meat or whatever so that I get the nutritional benefits without actually having to see the vegetables on my plate.  This goes back to an intense dinnertime showdown between five year old Me and my dad and a plate of cold and slimy Popeye spinach.

    Yuck. Twenty-one years later it still grosses me out.

  • Most fruit.  I’m trying, though.  I think if I can’t see it in its original form, I’m good.

I have reason to believe that I have an irrational fear of trying new foods or trying the foods listed above.  I seriously freak out.  I’ve smacked a fork away once or twice when faced with the seemingly inevitable prospect of trying pork ear or steamed kale or whatever.  I like to think that I look like a lioness backed into a corner.

What?!?!?! You want me to try the Grilled Palm and Garlic Heart Puttanesca? Noooooo!!!! Rawrrrrr...

So, as I said, I’m picky.  Insanely picky.  My boyfriend, however, is not.  He loves food, especially fish and veggies and fruit and weird grains that I’ve never heard of.  We go to fancy restaurants and I think he gets embarrassed because I have to critically analyze the menu for something that I will remotely try.  I unapologetically eat like a five year old.  I love pasta, so usually they have something pastalicious on the menu and I just tweak it to my culinary whim.  I’m sure I sound like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally when I order.  I like going out with him to eat, but honestly I would just like to go to some seedy little Mexican restaurant that makes great tacos or a fabulous quirky place that makes amazing grilled cheese that rocks my world.  I like simple comfort food.  I may eat like a five year old, but it works for me.  I like eating mac and cheese and burgers and pancakes and waffles and cookies and grilled cheese…And I do try new things, I just have to adjust them.

I’m sure it drives him crazy, I’m sure it drives everyone who has eaten with me crazy.  I just like to think its another one of those quirks that makes me me.  And I’m sure I’ll broaden my horizons more as I get older; I already have expanded my culinary horizons by leaps and bounds since I was five.  I just need to do it on my terms.

Maybe one day I’ll just go ahead and try the Duck Meatball Soup.

Season One, Episode Twenty-Four: Chubby Babies Wielding Arrows and Slutty Streetwalking Mailmen

Posted in Comedy, Humor, Random, Writing by

I hate painting my nails.  I always inevitably wind up smudging a nail somehow.  Usually it’s when I think my nails are dry and then I figure it’s safe to go pee and I smear them trying to carefully take my pants off.

Hi.

Well, anyway, I am sitting here contemplating an idea for a story that keeps tickling my synapses and researching ghost towns and drowned towns and thinking about how deliciously melancholy the idea of an entire town under water is.  I’m also thinking about fairy tales and possible names for my main character and how bright my nail polish is (China Glaze lacquer in Pink Voltage.  It’s very very neon pink.) and how much I liked the pilot episode of Smash that I just watched on Hulu.  The mind of a writer is a fantastic thing.  We multitask.

These are obviously not my nails because they are not smudged. No, these are phantom nails I found via Google.

It’s Valentine’s Day.  Yay.  This will actually be the first V-Day that I will not be at work or watching sitcoms over a bowl of Ben and Jerry’s.  I’m excited.  I’m not exactly sure what proper Valentine’s Day etiquette is, but I guarantee you that I will screw it up somehow.  I’m not exactly a particularly classeh ladeh.  Part of me keeps reminding me that there’s a new episode of New Girl on tonight and that I have chocolate gelato in the freezer.  To that schlumpy sweatpant-clad part of me, I say nay.  I will go get overdressed and put on an acceptable amount of makeup and venture out into bitter cold and snow to have a good time.  I’ll be like a hooker mailman (I just giggled at the mental image), but instead of mail I will be delivering…joy.  Yes.

Hmm. They look as though they were delivered some joy by a fat cheeked baby wielding arrows or a hooker mailman.

In other news, my unemployment was rejected on supposedly justifiable grounds, and I am not really wanting to fight the decision, although I have been advised by everyone and their mom to fight it until I get it.  I don’t really feel like fighting with my old boss.  That is a battle not worth fighting because I’ll just wind up getting pissed and I don’t need the stress.  I had four years of that shit and I actually like not having to deal with her anymore.  I might reapply, but if the state ruled that the firing was allowable, I highly doubt that I will receive any compensation.  Just saying.  I don’t feel like wasting time over $165 a week.  Hell, if I have to I’ll apply at Target or something to tide myself over until I find out what is going to happen with the casino.  I applied for state benefits, so I’m just waiting on a response from them.  I highly doubt that I will get rejected when my gross weekly income is nada.

I just thought I’d drop on in and write a quick post because I have been neglectful of a lot of stuff as of late.  This whole days blending together thing is really becoming an issue.  I’m mixing up my days of the week and sleeping a lot.  I think I need to find a routine hobby so that I don’t turn into a crazy person.  Maybe I’ll join the gym so that I have to actually leave the house on a regular basis.