Caustic Cupcake's Creepy Cupboard

I can't believe how many comments this whole bunny-naming saga has generated!

So far, Figment has three votes, Hyphen has two, Fang has an overwhelming six, Gargamel has one, Sugarplum has three, and Parsley and Stew are tied with four, but I just can't name it Stew.

But I just thought of a new one: Hester! What a great name that would be!

We're going to the vet on Thursday to get her all checked out, on account of her having been out amongst the wild bunnies.

This should tide you over for the time being:

Labels: Bunny

First of all, to answer a question from the comments: oh hell yes it will be a house bunny. I always wanted a house bunny! For now she has to stay in the cage when I'm not home because I haven't bunny-proofed the house and she's not litter box trained yet, but when I'm here she's hopping around all over the place and getting into all kinds of stuff!

Now for the names. Far from helping the situation, you guys have introduced so many good names that now I don't know WHAT to do. I'm terribly impressed by your creativity and unexpected interest in naming a stray rabbit. The 62 names I have either received or come up with thus far are as follows:

' (Apostrophe)
Azrael
Basil
Bugs
Buncephalus
Bun o' War
Bunnicula
Cadbury
Carrie
Cassoulet
Cerberus
Charlie
Chupacabra
Cottonball
Cottontail
Cujo
Cuniculius
Заичек
Evelyn
Fang
Ferdinand Magellan
Figment
Flopsy
Foo Foo
Franken-bunny
Gargamel
Ghost
Ghostly
Grace Slick
Hazel
Hyphen
Igor
Interobang
Jello
Jessica
Кролчик
Lemon Boy
Lewis Carroll
Louis Pasteur
Mopsy
Mr. Stripey
Parsley
Patchouli
Passover
Peter
Roger
Roma
Rosemary
Runny Babbit
Samara
Seabiscuit
Scuffle
Slipper
Søren
Snowball
Stew
Sugarplum
Thumper
Tipsy
Tiny
Umlaut
Zombie

Despite overwhelming support for Bunnicula, I have narrowed it down to these: ' (Apostrophe), Fang, Figment, Gargamel, Ghostly, Hyphen, Parsley, and Sugarplum. Vote in the comments!

Labels: Bunny

Labels: Bunny

Okay, I'm going to school now, but before I go, I'd like to implore you guys to help with naming the bunny because as long as I am alive and on this earth, it will not be Gargamel. I repeat: THE BUNNY WILL NOT BE NAMED GARGAMEL.

It's a tiny white one with black tips on its ears, but I don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet. It apparently likes tomatoes.

Suggestions?

Labels: Bunny, Cleaning Out The Cupboard

My landlord's little son wanted to take the bunny home to show his mom, but they said they'd either bring it back tonight or in the morning. The bad news was that I wasn't prepared. I don't usually keep bunny supplies around the house and I don't think I can be faulted for that.

So I went to Petsmart, and it was closed, so I went to Petco, and it was closed, and I was starting to wonder who I'd have to blow to get a bag of bunny food on a Sunday night when I remembered my old pal, Target. Target coughed up a bag of bland-looking bunny food (better invest in some carrots), a small bale of timothy hay, bedding, and some sticks for the bunny chew on (yeah, I felt pretty stupid buying sticks, but at least I know they're safe sticks). While I was there I accidentally bought a black fleece blanket printed with little white skeletons.

I also accidentally bought some chicken nuggets from Wendy's on the ride home (at least they fit in with the general theme of my diet today, which has been primarily Halloween candy and coffee). I wasn't going to stop there, but I must have been so distracted thinking of names for my new dependent that I turned in the wrong driveway.

At first I thought I was going to name my new pal Bun-cephalus, and then I thought maybe Seabiscuit would be better, or, for that matter, Bun o' War. Mostly, though, I'm leaning away from the historical horse names and more towards something cute like Tiny or Sugarplum or Cottonball. Junket has already cast a vote, several times, all of them adamantly, for Gargamel. I am open to suggestions (as long as they aren't from Junket and they aren't Gargamel).

She is actually here visiting at the moment, and having read that, added: "Name it 'Gargamel'. It's the best name for a rabbit. Admit it." Moments later: "What the fuck do you have against 'Gargamel'? It's the totally happening name for a rabbit." Because, you know, there are happening names and un-happening names, and it would really suck for the bunny if I accidentally gave it an un-happening name. Upon reading her own quote: "IT IS."

Returning to the chronological narrative. Three phone calls happened after I got home with the bunny food. One of them had to do with a bunny. Two of them had to do with breakups.

The first one was from me to Mr. Mollusk in response to a text message. It didn't go as badly as it could have. That's not to say it went well. We talked about how we're doing. I said I'm happy for him, and he said he's happy for me, and actually, we're all lying, and this is why people who broke up recently (such as within the past decade) probably shouldn't talk to each other at all. It doesn't matter how we're doing, and nobody cares if the other person's happy about it. Isn't that the whole point? That the other person and their feelings don't matter anymore? Then there's nothing to discuss; there is only subtle psychological torture, of the other person and of ourselves. The compulsion to have these conversations comes from the part of the brain that's also responsible for picking at scabs, touching hot stoves, and other pointlessly self-destructive behaviors.

The second one was from my kind-of-new friend. She called me in tears, saying that she didn't know who else to call. At first I thought maybe something had happened to the ch!nch!lla, but it turns out her boyfriend had just broken up with her. She said he broke up with her because she was more attatched to him than he was to her. Coincidentally, I was not only just in one of those unbalanced-affection situations within the past couple months, I JUST GOT OFF THE PHONE WITH THAT SITUATION. So we talked for a while, and I think I cheered her up some, but I definitely have to call her tomorrow.

The third one was from me to the landlord asking where my fucking bunny is inquiring about the current location of the newest tenant. He said the bunny will stay at his house tonight, and should be waiting for me at the store downstairs by the time I get home from school.

Labels: Bunny, Lovelife, Mr. Mollusk

It's 4:40 in the afternoon and I'm sitting around in my pajamas drinking coffee. This is wonderful: I didn't miss a whole lot last week when I was eating naught but crackers, toast, Tastykakes*, and water because I honestly didn't even want to eat the crackers, toast, Tastykakes and water, either, but nevertheless I would have killed for a fucking cup of coffee. Ironically, the coffee would have killed me back, I'm sure, so I refrained until one morning when I woke up feeling totally fine, and now I'm boycotting all liquids that aren't coffee-based. I bathed in coffee this morning.

I'm letting myself off the hook for doing nothing but drink coffee and enjoy my fine pajamas because I worked last night, and it was rather strenuous doing the b4rtend-y things I normally do but while wearing fangs. I asked if I could dress up for work, and they consented under the condition that my costume involved cleavage. So I got all vampired-up with blood! and fangs! and a cape! (and cleavage.)

There's a Halloween store a few blocks from my apartment, and an hour before work I took a trip over there (not my first). This year, I bought the finest fangs money could buy. They come with their own case, fit individually to my teeth, and are guaranteed to last for years. I assume the guarantee is for people who aren't wearing them year round and/or actually biting other people so I won't hold them to it, but I will say this: in possession of fangs so durable and dependable, I have a feeling I will be tempted to suddenly start wearing them all the time some time around, say, March, with no explanation or acknowledgement of their presence, just to throw everyone off.

I also stopped at CVS and bought a bunch of expensive candy to give out to the undeserving customers. A few other people showed up in costume, too. It was fangtastic.**

The customers were watching one of the Halloween movies on the TV behind the b4r and I wouldn't watch.
"That makes no sense," said one of the managers. "I would expect you to be into horror." I can understand that. I'd kind of expect me to be into horror, too. But horror flicks already have a solid place on the ever-expanding list of things I don't believe in. Considering all the awful things that can and do happen to people, I think you're damn lucky if you can make it through life without having to witness a lot of tragedy or brutality. So far, I have. It feels like such ingratitude to evade that kind of suffering and then seek to witness it willingly.
"You're covered in blood," pointed out the manager.
"This is fake," I argued.
"SO IS THAT," he gestured towards the TV where Michael Myers was stabbing someone in the head.
"But this is for fun," I said, and then tried, rather uneloquently, to make the point that you're expected to suspend your disbelief when you watch that. When people look at my vampire costume, they see fake blood. When I look at a horror movie, I don't see fake blood- I see blood, and I hate it.

I never want to see somebody die that brutally and not have to turn my face away.

OH MY GOD, this post is getting interrupted right now because the landlord found someone's pet bunny snacking on tomatoes in my garden and he wants me to keep it. THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME IN THE 23 YEARS I HAVE BEEN ALIVE.

I have to go to Petsmart. I'll be back later.


* I can't believe I didn't write about this sooner: I was advised by a medical professional to eat Tastykakes! That will never happen again. TO ANYONE. She was asking if it always hurt when I ate, and I said well, no, I'd had a Tastykake for lunch the day before and felt fine for a while, and she said sure, they're pretty bland, you should stick with those! and I am ever so disappointed in myself that I didn't ask to get that in writing. Diagnosis: Unknown Variety of Menacing Virus. Treatment: Tastykakes.
** I'm sorry. It had to be done.

Labels: Bunny, Cool Punk Rock B4r, Every Day Is Judgement Day

Two things regarding this site:

1. If, sometime over the past few days, you showed up at the Creepy Cupboard and were prompted to enter a username and password for some other website, it was because I stole a photograph from their page and was using it on my sidebar. Photo removed, problem solved, my bad, nobody cares anyway.
2. My computer has been super crash-prone recently. It's been tough to identify a correlation between anything I'm doing (or not doing) and the subsequent crash, simply because it happens SO. FUCKING. OFTEN. that really, it could be anything (every time the clock in the lower right-hand corner of the screen contains a 2 or a 4? every time the light on the corner out front changes from red to green?) However, I'm pretty sure that one thing I do that pisses the computer off on a regular basis is starting iTunes when Blogger is also open. Am I the only person who can't listen to music and blog at the same time? I like to think that I am; it gives me that warm martyr-y feeling inside.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about friends. Because I HAVE ONE. NO, REALLY, I DO. I went over her house last night and we carved a pumpkin.

This wouldn't be so extraordinary, I guess, if it weren't the second time I'd been over her house. We kind of hit it off in public speaking class last year, hung out once way back when, and it turns out, to my delight, that we're fucked up in all the same ways with just enough of a smattering of different individual issues to make the conversation interesting. This semester we wound up having a class together again, and re-bonded through mutual mockery of the professor mutual appreciation for the subject matter. That's how I found myself hacking at the thick rind of an innocent vegetable last night, discussing the pros and cons of various antidepressants, noting that stabbing a pumpkin into submission is great stress relief (also, it is way more legal than stabbing some other things), and sharing pre-bedtime makeup-removal techniques (hers: facial cleansing wipes; mine: complete laziness).

Our jack-o-lantern had one really big angry eye (her idea) and a serious excess of jagged teeth (my idea). "Wow! We've never had a cyclops jack-o-lantern before," said her dad encouragingly. Some parents might have said "What the hell did you guys do to our pumpkin?!" but hers are of the same brand as mine and now I love them.

We also played with her ch!nch!lla. That is not a euphemism for any deviant behavior on our part; she really has one and it tried to steal my purse. I was hoping that it would keep holding on so that when I left I could just conveniently pick up my purse and take the ch!nch!illa with me, but, perhaps sensing my intentions, it eventually let go and hopped back into its cage for a nap.

Then we laughed ourselves stupid watching television when Keith Olbermann revealed that 34% of Americans believe in ghosts and 31% of Americans believe in the president's wartime leadership. (That is so telling, and I think I need TV again, because look what I'm missing!) Speaking of beliefs, it is true that we have some radically different ones (socialism: oh, hell no), but the important ones are similar, such as that Coral Fang is the pinnacle of awesomeness (procure a copy before you have to go through life another second without having heard it... you might also want to get it before Brody Dalle punches you in the face).

This might only make sense to you if you are also in this social position: I find it a little weird to make friends with people who already have friends because on any given day I don't. I've re-written this paragraph a couple times and I can't do it justice. All I can tell you is that if two social dead ends connect, there is none of the confusion or loose ends or unpredictability that they don't want to encounter on someone else's preexisting social grid but that they know would be there. It's comforting, to me, to make friends with people who also have no friends, even if I know it won't last very long (for reasons none of us can nail down); if it could we wouldn't all be friendless to begin with, if we could fix it I wouldn't be writing this paragraph, and if it were enough of a problem to consume me I would have written much more about it before now... although maybe not seeing it as a problem is part of what makes it a problem for people like us.

Anyway, I told her that I hung out with LoPro, who was also her teacher, and she threw a fit, because as far as gossip goes, this is understandably excellent.
"When were you going to tell me?!" she demanded.
"It just happened yesterday! I told you today!" I said.
"CUPCAKE. YOU COULD HAVE CALLED ME AT TWO IN THE MORNING FOR THAT," she said, and that is how I know we are friends.

Labels: Insanity

Tonight I went out for pad thai with Logic Professor and then we hung out at my place until midnight.

It was awesome.

That is all.

Labels: Logic Professor, Lovelife

All signs point to Cupcake.

I know I promised to not blog about the CPRB as much, but really, not much else is happening outside of the lingering Virus That Defies Explanation- you remember, the one that produces no noticable effects except for ALL PAIN, ALL THE TIME; my record-breaking Tylenol consumption does not warrant a post in an of itself (although my subsequent liver damage might, but that's probably a ways down the road). So I offer you this awesome CPRB story.

Last night, a bum came in and was asking customers at the b4r for money, so the b4rback (who is a very sweet kid) kicked him out, saying "Come on, man, you know you're not supposed to be in here." So the bum shuffled off indignantly, only to return an hour later with, mysteriously, a couple packs of raw bacon to try to sell to the customers. This time the b4rback was less nice about throwing him out.
"Why are you trying to fuck up my hustle?!" yelled the bum on his way out the door.
"Nobody wants your fucking bacon!" yelled the b4rback. "Get out!"

We watched him go across the street to another bar and walk in there with the bacon behind his back. It would have been really funny if he'd come out counting money, sans bacon. The b4rback wanted to know why he hadn't stolen a more marketable product like, for instance, Tylenol, whose market has exploded in the past week. We reflected on the irony that now that we'd been thinking about it, everyone at the bar was craving bacon.

I wonder how the conversation would have gone the next morning over breakfast if one of us had bought the item in question.
"I didn't know we had bacon."
"We didn't. I bought it from a bum on XXXX Street last night at one in the morning for a dollar. It was kind of warm but that doesn't mean it's not fresh- that was only because it was down the front of his pants when he was stealing it from Wawa. Why aren't you eating?"

Junket and I have unofficially decided to be evil pals again for the sake of spite, revenge, and subterfuge. This comes after a long hiatus of doing our own seperate things. Sunday morning we were standing around in the parents' driveway discussing... something, possibly involving the strategic application of octopus tentacles to some deserving individual's mailbox... when our father stuck his big, round head out the front door and squinted at us in his customary manner. "You're up to no good," he declared suspiciously. Our reply was something along the line of OBVIOUSLY.

I sometimes forget that there is another person out there who shares my exact feelings regarding the dissemination of justice. I get to worrying that my penchant for bizarre and comical revenge is unusual, and that I alone bear the task of suppressing it... when really, I'm not alone, and rather than suppressing my penchant, I should be busy driving the getaway vehicle around the block a couple times to give Junket enough time to apply the justice. By justice I mean tentacles.

Our revenge isn't thoughtless; to the contrary, it is well-planned, with its assorted implications thought out ahead of time, our own wrongness understood, the consequences already accepted in the event that we get caught... actually, what am I talking about? We can't get caught. How could we get caught? Who's going ask, hey, did you guys adhere a cephalopod to my electric bill? Do you recognize these tentacles that I found attatched to my quarterly bank statement? Is this your invertebrate?

Of course, we have other methods. It's a good thing, too, because now we can't use this one, seeing as how any Google searches like "Who stuffed a fucking octopus into my mailbox?" will lead right here.

I am glad that we're back on the same page again. A couple months ago Junket wrote an email which included this:

"I figure if there's one other bitch out there as vindictive as I am and with a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit like I have and who is into Hardcore Retribution, Perhaps With Rappelling Gear, it's gotta be you."

You guys have no idea. It's almost Mischief Night. We have matching hoodies. Watch your mailboxes.

Labels: Family

All I'd like to say about this past weekend is that I never heard of a stomach virus that could keep a person in unrelenting pain for five days but hey, you learn something new every day (or every five days, such as the case may be). After throwing up in the bathtub Thursday night I thought well, I'm done puking, so I'm getting better. I was wrong. In any event, I like to pretend to stay positive. Jul has promised me, from her own experience with the Virus That Defies Explanation, that one of these mornings I'll wake up feeling fine. If not, she'll be hearing from my lawyer.

But no, really, I am feeling much better this morning, and thankfully, too.

Coincidentally, my nephew has taken to calling himself Dr. Thumbscre.ws and doling out advice in a deep, serious voice. He might have gotten this from visiting the pediatrician, or from TV, or maybe even from overhearing my parents' answering machine. My mother caught him addressing the houseplants on their little table by the front window. "Hello plants," he said in his deep little doctor voice, "I'm Dr. Thumbscre.ws." The other day I was perched on the edge of his sandbox, clutching my abdomen and bitching to Jul, when the baby came over to my corner with his little orange bucket of sand and told me that Dr. Thumbscre.ws could make it better.
"HOW?" I moaned.
"With dirt," he said.

Today I'm going to do all the things I should have already done by now (but was too busy laying around in bed to do). Blogging. Homework. Decorating for Halloween, for the love of Graf it's only a week away! Laundry. Painting my nails. Bill-paying (Verizon wanted money WHEN?!). Reading "The Fall of the House of Usher" for class tomorrow. What's to read, anyway? Depressing house, inhabitant goes crazy, house explodes: done! Technically I could have read this while I was laying around in bed, because, you know, there's nothing like reading Poe to cheer a person up. But, for some reason, I didn't get around to it.

* UPDATE! *
My sister called to tell me that she asked Dr. Thumbscre.ws about where he works. He works in an office, and in the office he has a blue pen, a brown pen, and a motorcycle. We don't know what he thinks doctors do all day.

I didn't go to school today because at 2:30 in the morning I was puking in the bathtub. In hindsight this was not only a terrible idea, but an extra-terrible idea, given that a suitable alternative, i.e. the toilet, was just inches away and I chose not to take it. I had time to reflect on this as I cleaned the bathtub at 2:35. While it is true that in those types of situations you tend to aim first and analyze later, I'm pretty sure it won't be happening in the tub again.

That whole first paragraph would make a great note to be excused from missing class.

And of course, it wasn't as bad as that time at the Bakery when I puked OVER the toilet and had to clean off the wall. This makes it sound like I spend a lot of my time throwing up, but really, I can only recall having thrown up three times in the whole time I've been old enough to clean up my own vomit (coincidence?).

But seriously, from about midnight to dawn last night was one of the most intense six hours spans of my life, and it wasn't until hours later that I could lie still long enough to fall asleep (I don't remember when that happened, so presumably it was the very instant I quit my horizontal acrobatics). That was a new experience for me: being tired enough to sleep but unable to do so due to the continuing compulsion to writhe around in agony.

I called Jul at 4:30am to bitch and complain whine and cry inform her that we might have a common ailment. She was just in a similar position the other night (actually, for a few nights), and was told it was either a gallstone or an ulcer or something. I maintain that, actually, we have a third condition, because gallstones and ulcers aren't, to the best of my knowledge, contagious. I call this disease dysjulcupentery. Yes, I just stuck our names in the middle of "dysentery". I am not a doctor. It was either that or "cholcupjulera".

Of course, it could be the case that she still has whatever was wrong with her, and I just got coincidental food poisoning, or CFP for short. (Mom: don't eat the crab dip.) (Even though it was delicious.)

I also text messaged Mr. Mollusk extensively; as my nicest and also most recent ex, he is the designated recipient of all such pitiful text messages- for example, "sick- throwing up- not happy", "my tummy hurts :-( can't sleep. so sick", and my favorite, the simple "I AM DYING". He offered to ride the Racing Snail over with some Pepto-Bismol and pat me on the head and stuff, but I declined for a variety of reasons, the most prominent of which being the chance that I'd just wind up being a raging bitch to anyone who tried to be nice to me. Then I'd feel guilty.

He did provide some good responses, though: "I'm worried. And I don't like it when you're unwell or unhappy. Hope you're asleep." I never said the man wasn't sweet.

I really wanted to go to math class today, if nothing else. "I won't even get dressed," I told myself. "I'll just show up in my pajamas and look at some statistics for an hour and then drive back home and die." Then I thought, "Well, if I can't even make it to math class, at least I'll be able to get some stuff done around the house, like cleaning (except the tub, which has already been cleaned) and decorating for Halloween." Right. It hurts being alive right now; I'm not decorating a fucking thing that isn't within arms reach of my bed. Since that's obviously not happening, I'm going to quit blogging and get back in bed with Mario F. Triola's riveting Elementary Statistics (Tenth Edition), and possibly die in its statistical embrace.

Labels: Family

Yesterday I showed up at the CPRB with falafel and french fries for lunch, and just kind of stood around for nine or ten hours. It was pretty boring.

Then the CPRB was like, "yeah, just kidding about the boring," and went back to normal all at once.

It turns out that another band I love was playing across town, and I missed this one, too.

Some of the regulars came in fairly well covered in blood, insisting that they hadn't done anything at all, and wanting to wash their hands off in the sanitizer sink behind the b4r, to which I responded with an emphatic OH, FUCK NO, but handed over some towels soaked in sanitizer solution and also provided a round of free shots. It turns out that the regular who does work on the building, the one who periodically goes off his psych meds and loses his shit and thinks that everyone is after him, had lost his shit again; sometimes it's minor, and sometimes it's not, and they'd dealt with him according to his level of crazy. At least he stayed outside the bar.

That was when I got slammed and ran out of glasses to make drinks in. I found out that I know how to make drinks I didn't know I knew how to make- or, at least, I can fabricate reasonable approximations and the customers will drink them if they know what's good for them because if they didn't I might cry there would be repercussions. Incidentally, I made an absolute killing.

Shortly thereafter our mentally-ill mascot showed back up, and the bouncer went outside to deal with him. Truly unbalanced people scare me to the bone sometimes because they don't always have a good perception of when they should back off, and I don't know how you're supposed to subdue people who aren't afraid of anything. He was already leaking blood all over the sidewalk when the bouncer went out there. The cops were called, and they sure were polite and friendly even as a blood-dripping madman screamed vaguely threatening nonsense on the street outside (I really have to give them credit for that). People crowded the doorway trying to see what was going on outside.

I love the way watching a crowd can tell you so much about what's going on. There's a beautiful and absorbing ripple of tension when something's about to happen, and sometimes I don't know how we all know it, but it makes me feel like we're all great at being human when we know not only that something's up but also which way to look.

During the rush for the door, some people knocked over a trash can full of empty bottles and, exasperated, I yelled "PICK THE FUCKING THING UP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" and to my utter amusement, THEY DID. To me, this is the main difference between being a w4itress and a b4rtender. It never gets old. I'm afraid this is going to have an irreversible impact on my personality.

At the end of the night, while I was still catching up on washing the sea of glasses (can glasses reproduce? I'm watching them with a wary eye), drama broke out when one of the b4rbacks who wasn't working pulled a knife on Mr. Mollusk- neither one of them knew who the other one was, and I think a lot could have been avoided if they had- but nobody got stabbed and everyone went home, although right now I'm not sure who my friends are.

Now I'm going over my parents' house to help make waffles. My sister tells me that last night, as he was going to bed, the baby asked what waffles are made of. When you think about it, that's kind of a tricky question, so she's going to show him. I forget what her exact words were, but she said she didn't want him to think they were made out of their own element like wafflonium or wafflamide.

I'm getting pretty sick of writing about the CPRB. Perhaps several of you (and there are only several of you all told) are also getting sick of reading about the CPRB. Admittedly, the rest of my life isn't as interesting or dramariffic, but most of it means more to me than a bunch of surly drunks. The good news is that I'm off for a week, so unless I get called in I shouldn't have anything to say about the b4r. Next post: all nephew.

Labels: Cool Punk Rock B4r

After dinner last night, I thought, "I need chocolate." (I think this a lot of the time.) So I whipped up some Zombie Apocalypse Cookies, except I dumped in some cocoa powder and remembered the salt this time around. They weren't bad. They weren't incredible, either, but I'm getting there. It's a little hard to determine my progress when I keep inventing new variables to fuck up. It reminds me of this time when something important and show-ruining was wrong with the s0und system, back in my spe4ker-slave days; as I was trying to determine which component had decided to say "fuck you, Cupcake" that particular night, the guy I'd hired to help load in kept switching things out- cables, mics, power cords- and I came dangerously close to strangling him with an XLR cable before I sent him to go sit in the truck... because for every new thing you introduce while trying to fix a s0und system or a cookie recipe- every new thing that doesn't fix the problem- you have introduced one more thing that could also be wrong, without being able to tell because the first thing hasn't been fixed yet, and now the first thing probably won't get fixed, either, until you return everything to the way it was when the whole system first went to hell. Is there term in cookie-making comparable to signal fl0w? Ingredient flow, perhaps?

They were kind of sandy. "You beat them for too long," said my mother after I delivered the cookies to their house. I am amazed that she knew that just from tasting them.

In all, the Chocolate Zombie Apocolypse Cookies were a success.

My nephew was there, and in rare form, but unfortunately I have to go get my learning on, so that'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Labels: The Imminent Zombie Apocalypse

You'd think that my interactions with ex-boyfriends would fit neatly into one of the two categories heretofore described, those being:

• Pretty sad- laced with doubt and regret and mutual loneliness, sometimes characterized by lamprey-like sock-crying (see link).
• Exquisitely hateful- imploring the heavens to deliver a well-timed and accurately-aimed meteor capable of reducing him to a smoking crater.*

There appears to be a third category:

• Coolness- what happens years after the fact, when the dust has long since settled and the paths of all interested parties have sufficiently diverged.

I found this out last night when I met my old high school sweetheart at Denny's to catch up. I hadn't seen him in something like four years, and now everything's cool. Weird, no?

It was a little sad to find out that he's no longer a teenager, but he's definitely still himself. This would be a good place in the post to say something about closure, or perhaps soul-searching, but it doesn't really apply. We just got some pancakes and chicken fingers.

True, I hate Denny's, but I was willing to take one for the team. At least three of the Top Ten Worst Meals Of My Life were at a Denny's, including #1, and possibly more that I have blocked out of my memory. Furthermore, I haven't been to a Denny's that wasn't staffed by depressed-looking, depressing people, nor have I been to a Denny's that didn't edge me just a tad closer to suicide than I had been before entering.

But last night I wasn't really there for the chicken fingers and anyway, there was a chance that the scenery would turn out to be fitting. If our get-together had turned out to really suck, I wouldn't want to have to avoid a perfectly good diner ever after just because of that (yeah... you know there's a restaurant you can't bear to go to anymore, and you know the other person probably can't either). Denny's had no favor to lose in my mind.

Like I said, though, it was pretty cool, and now I face a situation I've never encountered before: having a pleasant memory associated with Denny's.




* Where's my fucking meteor, Heavens? I asked for that bitch years ago! I will file away as evidence that there is no higher power the fact that my ex-boyfriend is not yet the smoking crater that he deserves to be.

Labels: Better Living Through Uprooting, Exes to Grind, Lovelife

Today is Latin Day because there's a test due. I would love to know whose idea declensions were so I could go spit on his grave. Maybe I should just go spit on Rome as a whole. Do you know how many birds that would kill with one stone?!

But no, really, Latin is awesome. My understanding of English- and Spanish- deepens at the end of every chapter when I read the vocabulary. So that's where that stupid word came from, I think.

We got our statistics tests back. The professor graded them mercifully soon after we took them, but then dragged us over the coals for about fifteen minutes at the beginning of class while he reviewed the high score, the low score, the median grade, the standard deviation, and OH MY SUFFERING CHRIST JUST HAND OUT THE FUCKING PAPERS BEFORE I DIE.

I got an 84. To me, that's swell.

In un-school news, I got my state taxes back. If you'll recall, the first time around they mangled my name on the check, so then I had to call the government a thousand times and do a song and dance and sacrifice my finest goat to the governor and send a special letter with all of my personal info via elephant caravan, and to tell you the truth I was getting a little worried that they weren't going to send anything back to me, and then I'd call up and say "hey, where's my f-ing taxes, gov't?" and they'd be all, "what taxes? we didn't get any such letter from you" even though I'd hear my letter-bearing elephants trumpeting in the background. But the other day a check showed up, and I also got a letter with an apology in it (!!!) saying that my tenant rebate was on the way, too. Woooooo!

Better fix myself a cup of coffee (which is less about caffeine, I should add, and more about ritual, comfort, and procrastination) and get back to the declensions. Fucking declensions.

P.S. I talked to Mr. Mollusk last night, and he offered to help me with my Latin, which sounded like it would be super helpful, but I know what would happen: I'd start off being cool and platonic and have everything under control until that inevitable moment when I would attatch myself to his leg like a starving lamprey and cry into his socks.* Some people are good at transitioning into friendship with their exes immediately after the breakup, or at least pretending to be cool with everything during the transition. I am not one of those people.

* I would not really do something that embarassing. Not at all.**
** Yes I would.

Labels: Higher Education, Statistics

Down the street from the CPRB is a music venue. I used to go to shows there when I was in high school. Last night one of my favorite bands was playing, and I was working. Bitterly, I might add. When I drove by before my shift and saw the name on the marquee, my stomach did a little flip. I should have gotten someone to cover for me, but it was probably sold out anyway. There was a little while, when I was setting up the bar, that I hated myself: I took a shift over a show. Where have my fucking priorities gone? Who the fuck am I?

It being a cool punk rock band, and my place of employment being a cool punk rock b4r, there was some overflow. There's a board on the wall where the b4rtender writes her name and the specials for the night, and mine said: Cupcake (IS GETTING YOU DRUNK INSTEAD OF SEEING THE BAND)- $5 glasses of wine! The customers were sympathetic. I was still bitter.
"Going to the show?" I asked a few.
"YES," they resonded eagerly.
"Oooo, I'm sorry, I can't serve you," I said, and they laughed, and I served them anyway, and they all promised to come back and tell me how it was. The downstairs b4rtender said she'd show me pictures; she was getting done work in time for the show.

The manager looked at the board long and hard but didn't say anything and didn't make me erase it, either.

Some of the security from the venue hang out at our b4r, and one of them had to endure my bitching. Then he dropped a bombshell: if I wanted to go to a show, all I had to do was let one of the guys know ahead of time, then show up and tell the door who I was and where I worked. It didn't matter if the show was sold out, because I didn't need a ticket. HOLY FUCK, I AM A VIP. Okay, I might not be a VIP, but I have a foot in the door.

This actually made my night temporarily worse because I was trapped right across the street knowing as much, until a little seed of hope sprung up in the back of my mind: if business was slow during the show, maybe I could sneak out and catch a couple songs. We exchanged phone numbers and he promised to text me when the band went on.

Four hours later, I got the text message: Just went on, ask for ___ at the door. Hes my boss, he said cool. So I begged the manager to watch my b4r, and he stood there thinking about it for a year and a half. I added "...for every cigarette break I never took over the past six months." Then he acquiesced, and I nearly knocked him over with a hug before sprinting down the steps and out the door onto the crowded street (nearly knocking over some of those people, too).

Another b4rtender from one of the b4rs across the street was leaning against a wall smoking a cigarette, and he asked if I wanted to come in for a shot of ginger ale.
"I have to go see the band and get back to work!" I yelled, and said I'd stop in on my way back.

I asked for the boss at the door, but the bouncer said he wasn't around. "Are you Cupcake?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Go ahead in," he told me. So I got my wrist bracelet, and I did.

I caught two and a half songs near the edge of the pit, trying to absorb as much of the dark and fast and loud as I could, and then I had to tear myself away and head back down the street. On my way I stopped in at the other b4r, and asked the b4rtender if we were doing that shot. He did Jameson and I did Sprite. "This is the only b4rtender I've met who doesn't drink," he told the customers next to me, then all five or six of us toasted to nothing in particular, we drank, and then I had to split.

Things were still pretty quiet when I got back.
"How was it?" asked the manager.
"It was awesome," I said.

Labels: Cool Punk Rock B4r

Bits and pieces of the week:

• You'd think that the customers at the D0nut Shop have been waiting for their coffee for six months and nobody else thought to get it for them since I left. There was talk of abandonment, and of despair, and it was all a big ego boost for me. I promised to stop by and at least have a cup of coffee now and again. What was more flattering was that a few people I didn't even know exclaimed "You're back!" when they stepped up to order their coffee and d0nut. If I have a place in this world, I think it's making coffee for everyone.


• Speaking of coffee, the next time I lose my keys or forget where I parked my car or neglect to show up somewhere I was supposed to be, I know where to place the blame: years of memorizing individual coffee orders. We were all surprised, I think, that when I saw So-and-So coming, I made his large coffee with two Splendas and extra cream just like always. "How did you remember that?!" people kept asking. I DON'T KNOW, but that order just took up a little piece of my brain that I fear will never be reclaimed.


• Geek Fest, 2007: the other night I hung out with my old logic professor, and it was awesome. Now I have to pick up all my trash so he can come over here and see the Creepy Cupboard (then again, that wouldn't be the true Creepy Cupboard experience, would it?).


• R u alive. Was at post .saw ambulance in ur drive That was the text message I got from ExBf, who if he was doing what he says he was doing was at the post office next door and saw one of the neighbors getting carted out under a white sheet. (No, I didn't text him back.) In all the time I lived here, I saw the neighbor once- ONCE- so when I came downstairs and saw his front door open, I knew right away that something had happened to him. It was the neighbor who filled up a recycling barrel with empty beer cans every week by himself and only came out at night. Empty as it is, I'm starting to think this building might be cursed.


• Yesterday was Junket's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JUNKET! I got her a faux skeleton in a mesh sack, and a teeny tiny cake with one little candle in it. Is it just our family, or do all siblings give each other bones as birthday presents?


• As one neighbor just shuffled off, another shuffled in, and I might have to shuffle this new one off myself. He showed up on my doorstep the other day to introduce himself, which was kind of surprising because I'd originally assumed that the new neighbor was a pack of wild dogs, or at least one super-dog like the Hound of the Baskervilles. No, he is an actual person, and he came up to apologize for all the barking that was going on next door and assure me that he was only dog-sitting for a couple weeks and the dog was going to get used to the place and stop barking soon anyway. LIES, all around!


• The other night at the CPRB, I went upstairs to use the bathroom and there were people fucking in the other stall. IT MADE MY NIGHT. I was going to leave them alone, because they weren't hurting anyone, but after I gleefully related that information to the b4rback, the happy couple got kicked out, and they left seperately.


• The next time I went upstairs, someone was selling weed right in front of the bathroom door and I had to tap them on the shoulder and interrupt the deal so I could get by. I don't mind them doing that, but good god, at least pretend to keep it on the DL, you know?! Go around the fucking corner!


• Late in the night, Mr. Mollusk stopped by on his scooter, which he has named The Racing Snail, to give me a Wawa Mach W energy drink (with the disclaimer that he knew I might not drink it but that IT WAS WAWA-BRAND! which is pretty cool) and a pint of Ben and Jerry's creme brulee ice cream, and said he knew it had been a long day and besides, it made him all kinds of sad to think of me running after the ice cream truck and going home empty handed (I hadn't thought of it that way, myself). Wow, was it ever confusing. It was tremendously sweet, but I wondered why he was doing this after the breakup instead of before it (ounce of prevention, anyone?), and I wondered if maybe he wanted to get back together and whether or not that would even be a good idea, or maybe he was just being a good friend, and it all made me kind of sad because it was so good to see him and if he's realizing the error of his girlfriend-neglecting ways now, well, that's just really unfortunate timing, and him showing up at all made me miss him more than before. I haven't been able to sort any of this out in my head, and I probably never will.


• I took a nap this afternoon after putting in some time flinging d0nuts, and now I have to go throw my laundy in a dryer before heading off to the CPRB, which has still not been decorated for Halloween.


• Neither has my house. I should really get with that.

LAUNDRY TIME!

An hour ago we took our first test in statistics, and it's scary, because I don't know how it went.

I answered all the questions, which is a good start, I guess. But see, I always think all my answers are right at the time, otherwise I wouldn't have written them down. This corresponds to the explanation for a lot of things I've done- why did I say that, and that, and that? why did I leave my bike on the sidewalk? why did I subscribe to Woman's Day? why did I ever go out with him?* why did I accept/quit/get myself fired from/decline that job?- which is a sorry "it seemed like a good idea at the time." Math tests are just like any other opportunity for me to go down the stupid path, except although my bad decisions in math class have almost no bearing on my actual life, their true embarassing nature is so much more undeniable because it has been proven mathematically.

I try not to be afraid of taking math tests because I tell myself that even if I get in over my head, there must be some way of sorting it out. THERE HAS TO BE. The pre-test comfort of knowing it can be sorted out is balanced by the post-test uncertainty of not knowing whether or not I sorted it out right.

Some of my answers have be wrong- some of them always are!- but I felt equally sure that each was right when I was taking the test. This casts doubt on all of them. Now I have no idea how many of them I might have calculated right into the ground. There have been times when I finished early and strode off into the sunset feeling triumphant and then got cut down by an F when the paper came back, and other times when I couldn't wait to get the grade so I could get the failure over with as soon as possible and got back a great grade that left me wondering, like Max Bialystock, where it all went right. Even more confusing are the times when I got what I thought I would get and didn't understand how that could have happened.

In something like history, I can take a wild leap- and sure, sometimes it's too wild, like my recent claim that William the Conquerer invaded England during the Hundred Years' War, which actually happened over three hundred years later, which also earned me a big red NO!, exclamation point included- but it's possible to sort of graze the mark. And even then, at least I know that I'm only going to graze it. I know when I don't know the answer because I either do or I don't.

There are no answers to memorize in math, and no wild leaps I can take in an emergency (that I know of anyway), and sort of grazing the mark as far as this thing goes would so not get me any points. I can't make up numbers. I have to get to somewhere specific, somehow, and when I do, I think it all adds up, and as far as I know it all added up this afternoon, and in my mind it will continue to be that way until such time as I have to look at my actual grade. It's like Schröedinger's test score.

Do I feel like I've increased my chances of doing well on a test that I already took by preparing for the worst after the fact? Do I think that my grade just got better after I wrote this self-defeating post? You bet I do! If you'll excuse me, I have to go light some incense and walk backwards around my statistics textbook three times.



* Don't worry, Mr. Mollusk, that wasn't about you.

Labels: Higher Education, Insanity, Statistics

It's two o'clock in the morning. I have to wake up in three hours. WHY AM I AWAKE? I DON'T KNOW.

I went to bed at a totally reasonable time but it didn't work. I'm not an insomniac; WHAT THE FUCK? SLEEP IS MY HOBBY, DAMN IT. Perhaps it was the dying wish of the turkey that I ate for dinner (in the form of a sandwich) (okay, fine, I ate it straight out of the package like an animal) (with the refridgerator door standing wide open because now that I am an adult my mother can't tell me to close it because she's not even here HAHAHAHA) that his death not go unavenged in some small way and now I am paying the price. Perhaps I'd already subconsciously started my internal "sleep is for the weak" pep talk a day early. Or perhaps I just hate myself. Someone showed me this great cartoon a couple days ago and now IT IS BITING ME IN THE ASS EVER SO HARD, and no, despite the fact that it would be terribly clever of me if I could manage it, I did not wake up in the middle of the godforsaken night just to link to the cartoon.

There was a thunderstorm earlier, it was awesome, and I'm glad I was awake for it. But now the thunderstorm is gone and this? This is just the part of the night that's quiet and dark. The part when I'm supposed to be sleeping. And, if you did not already gather as much not only from the content of this post but also from the fact that I am indeed posting instead of being in bed, I AM NOT SLEEPING.

Labels: Insanity

There were lots of things I should have done yesterday that I didn't, such as put gas in the car and pack lunch. Then again, there are lots of things I should be doing all the time that I don't. Today I decided that putting gas in the car and going home to eat lunch would benefit me more than going to literature class. So I did, and now I feel better.

Being at the d0nut shop was awesome. Then I stopped at my parents' house for thirty seconds and got to hug my nephew on my way to school.

I'd better throw on my CPRB shirt and go catch a math class before work.

"You'd be a life saver if you could work in the morning," the Boss said this afternoon. "I have no one. I'll be by myself, and you know how the mornings get." So I agreed to do it, and now I've signed on to spend 21 hours w4itressing, learning, b4rtending, or driving in between the previous three activities. We'll see how miserable I am by the time the Cool Punk Rock B4r closes tomorrow. An accurate measure of my state of mind, I think, will be found by comparing the number of customers I throw out to the number of customers who actually deserved to be thrown out. If all the customers I throw out deserve to be thrown out, then we can assume that I was fairly with it right up until the end. If the majority of the people I throw out don't even have a chance to order their drinks, let alone get out of hand, then we can assume that I was bitter and tired and spiteful and I shouldn't have picked up the morning shift. And if by the end of the night I start flagging people who are walking by on the other side of the street, who may or may not even be heading for our b4r, just in case they decide to get out of hand somewhere at some later point in time, then we can assume that I totally cracked, on account of not having done this in a while. You know, working myself to death.

However, I had a great time seeing some of the customers today, and I'm excited about seeing everyone in the morning. I was reunited with my old nemesis pal, the detergent that works in mysterious ways:

It was a little trippy that I forgot where some things were and knew that I should have known, or when I went to grab something and it wasn't there because it had been moved in my absence (this happens every time I'm away for longer than a month). It was kind of like being in one of those dreams that seems to have no purpose other than for your mind to fuck with you ("I know this is my house... but it isn't."), or like being high, except that even though there were d0nuts everywhere, I didn't feel the urge to eat all of them by the armload.

Now I'd better get it together with the declensions so I can take this Latin quiz online, then go to bed.

Labels: Cool Punk Rock B4r, Higher Education, Intoxicology, The D0nut Shop

After school today I took a ride over to the d0nut shop. The owner was sitting at the far end of the empty counter, reading the newspaper and eating a bagel.
"Whoa, that was fast," he said, and I gave him a hug and asked what's up. I'd gotten his message in between classes and figured that I might as well drop by and see what was going on; it was closer than home, anyway.

Besides, I miss my guys. The morning crowd is more or less the same as it was on my first day. When I started I was 17 and didn't know how to w4itress. The ornery old men customers had been sitting in the same seats and ordering the same things every day for almost twenty years and didn't want to have to explain what they wanted to another new girl. "W4itressing is easy. There's nothing to it," the owner assured me, which was the first of MANY, MANY LIES he would tell me over the next few years, including, but not limited to, exaggerated claims regarding the freshness of The Product, promises to pay me in a timely fashion, and deliciously incriminating rumors about the other w4itresses.

After a few years of inhabiting the same cramped kitchen, the boss and I got to know each other pretty well- probably too well, and I'm sure that if it ever came up we could blackmail the living fuck out of each other in a stalemate that would last until one of us died. Likewise, after drinking our coffee together in the morning, sometimes seven days a week, the customers and I got pretty close. "I'm married to the store," I told them all the time. "You guys pay my bills, I make you all breakfast in the morning, and I always have a headache."

Yeah, I miss everyone. I was happy to see him, but disappointed to see that he was alone.

The store itself doesn't ever really change. There were the shiny coffee pots, the ugly orange tile, the picture of JQ eating a d0nut as big as his head that I taped to the wall, my old crayon-drawn signs, and the suffering houseplants that the owner trusts the w4itresses to keep alive (which they never do). It's like home, but with more dishes to wash, and with Gr33k music playing all the time.

He filled me in: some sort of illness or injury has befallen the current full-time w4itress, and he's stuck without a girl for at least a couple days. Do I have time to help him out? No, not really. I don't want to get up at 4:30 on Wednesday morning, fling d0nuts until it's time for school, get educated until it's time to b4rtend, and then b4rtend until 2:30 am. But he's stuck, and I feel guilty for having been away for so long, and to be honest, I'm jealous that the other w4itress gets to see the guys every morning and I don't. Also, I clearly am a masochist and I haven't done anything self-destructive in a while. So I'm definitely going to help out tomorrow. We'll take it from there- I don't want to wind up accidentally signing my life over to the business again.

And let me be clear: I will help with the w4itressing, but I WILL NOT MAKE THE F-ING D0NUTS ANY MORE. It was fun for a week or two. Then all of a sudden I hated life. I spent four years serving them and still ate one (or two... or three...) every day; a couple weeks of making them, and I've been wary of d0nuts ever since. Yeah, they look innocent enough sitting on the tray. But after I frosted row after row of them and powdered stacks of them for hours, hundreds of them, they started to look kind of menacing.

That and at the time I was coming straight from the Nightclub to make them, as it was the middle of the Money Saving Death March, thought I was tough, and wouldn't give up a shift unless someone dragged me away from the proof box kicking and screaming and trailing sprinkles. I know what I was thinking. The d0nuts have to be made at three in the morning and I'll be up anyway, so... WRONG.

I'm excited to be going back for a day or two. Better dig out my trusty apron.

Labels: The D0nut Shop

Or, more specifically, the intersection that giveth me a cool car accident the other day can also taketh away the Mr. Softee truck.

It's true that I hesitated when I heard the music- was it coming from the road out front, or the side street? Would it speed away as soon as I got downstairs? Did it sound like it was moving? And would I have to put on shoes?

I'd just gotten out of the shower at 5:20 in the afternoon and was standing around in my damp pajamas and wet hair with no socks or shoes, and was also thinking, do I really need ice cream? Do I have time to locate footwear and money and possibly brush out my horrifyingly snarled hair? My delayed reaction was a result of having just slept for eleven hours; I went to bed around dawn and woke up at 5:00, laying sideways with my face against the wall, pissed off at having missed an entire day of sunshine (as far as I know), wondering if I would have woken up if I'd suffocated myself, and vowing to resume taking vitamins (eleven hours?!). So by the time I'd washed off the bar filth showered and first heard the sweet song of Mr. Softee, I was still a little out of it. Then I saw two dollars laying around on a shelf and took it as a sign. YES, I thought, YES! I NEED ICE CREAM FOR BREAKFAST, LUNCH, AND DINNER. Snatching up the money, I sprinted barefoot down the front hallway out to the highway.

I looked to the left, then to the right. I could hear the music. No truck. Deducing that he must be on the side street, I started that way, across the metal cellar doors that inlay our sidewalk, with my two dollars. (By the way, I don't get a cellar, and perhaps it's for the best. Do you know how much more stuff I could stockpile if I had a cellar?! I would have everything neat I ever saw at a yard sale!) I was so close! I just had to make sure he saw me in time and didn't drive away!

And right before I turned the corner, the light changed and Mr. Softee turned the other way and sped off down the highway with his hideous siren song still playing, leaving me barefoot and wet and still clutching my two dollars, now trying to hide the money in my other hand so that all the cars stopped in the other direction didn't see the total embarassment that was me getting blown off by the ice cream truck and having to sulk back to my apartment in my pajamas. That's a grown woman, I imagined them thinking. She should be ashamed.

Now I'm sitting here with a cup of coffee and I can hear him on the other side of the neighborhood, taunting me from afar. Whatever. If you need me, I'll be at the grocery store, getting... something.

We were walking back from Jul's friends' house last night after being fed dinner and letting JQ run wild with their son, who is only a year older than he is. JQ couldn't be crammed into the stroller (he is not only strong and limber, but also superbly screamy at times), and thus was riding on his mom's shoulders with his little hands on the top of her head while I pushed the empty stroller.
"Lom-house," he pointed out as we passed the corner store, and my sister explained that it had been known as the lom-house ever since the time when they bought limes there.
"I should pick some up," said the baby to himself.

It's probably a safe bet that he doesn't know what limes would be used for, doesn't have a use for them himself, doesn't have the money to buy them, and wouldn't know how to buy them, but he should pick some up. He surprises us every time he opens his mouth.

The other day, his mother muttered "Jesus," and the baby chipped in "CHRIST!" He knows his own last name, and adds that sometimes, too, when we call him by his first and middle name.

To my amazement, he knows his birthday. HE'S TWO AND A HALF; hell, it's only happened twice! I was asking JQ's little friend about his birthday last night, and then I thought I'd explain to JQ that he has a special day, too. As an example, we'll say it's May 14.
"Do you know when your birthday is?" I asked. "It's in May."
"Fourteenth," he chirped, and went back to his toy.
"THE BABY KNOWS WHEN HIS BIRTHDAY IS," I announced in the doorway of the dining room where my sister and her friend were talking, and then I went back to try to determine whether or not he was actually a super-intelligent alien being raised in our midst.

After dinner, he was sitting on my lap at the table, and he handed me the leaves he'd pulled off the top of a strawberry. "Seaweeds," he told me, then stood up on my legs and told me that he was taller than I was. (Then he threw the strawberry, but that's not essential to the story.)

The coolest new thing that he says is "It's my own personal thing that I do." He got that from when one or more grown-ups explained that everyone has their own personal places and that nobody is allowed to touch his. So now if someone says "Why are you jumping up and down?" he'll reply matter-of-factly that it's his own personal thing that he does. If someone tries to take something away from him he'll inform them that it's his own personal thing that he has. All of sudden, he's developed a sense of entitlement and we gave it to him. Way to go, grown-ups!
"Are you dancing?" Jul asked him last night.
"Yes," he said. "It's my own personal thing that I do."

Sometimes, he makes fun of us telling him not to do things. "No-no, Cupcake," he says accusatorily. "Don't do that! Go'way!" It's with this same tone of voice that I've heard him say "What the hell, Mommy?"

He is nevertheless a sweet and thoughtful little kid. He says please and thank you and likes to share his food and toys. He wants to help with whatever the grown-ups are doing. When we left last night, he gave his little friend a hug goodbye. And at home, earlier in the evening, I saw him carry a water bottle over to a wooden horse; sticking its nose in the top, he said "Here you go, Horse! Here's your drink!"

Labels: Dr. Thumbscre.ws, Family

I was setting a bowl down on the kitchen table when I heard the unmistakable crash behind the building. There was a quick but fierce debate with myself (lunch! no, car crash! but lunch! but... they might have hit my car! but it's too late to do anything about it and it's not going anywhere and my food is getting cold! but I can reheat it!) before I left my lunch where it was and strode out onto the long wooden walkway. My kitchen door is wedged between two buildings at the end of the walkway at the top of the stairs. Now that the air conditioner is gone I like to leave the window and door open all the time, and it kind of feels like I'm living in a treehouse. A treehouse of the damned.

Along with a small handful of other brazen rubbernecks curious neighbors, I walked into the perfect car crash.

First of all, it was practically in our yard, which sure was convenient, although I wish I'd had the foresight to drag down a kitchen chair. It also happened to be a terribly impressive crash, with steam rising and lots of car bits scattered around at the foot of our driveway. Lastly, everybody got what was coming to them. How often does that happen?

For instance, the friendly, nice, patient woman whose car got scraped in passing was allowed to leave with a minimum of interference. The innocent man who was involved in the actual head-on collision kept callously insisting that he had somewhere to be- dude, that priority just flew right out the fucking window in a rain of broken glass when someone slammed into the front of your Jeep, and this is more than what you would call an inconvenience- and was made to wait around doing nothing for a suitably long and boring period of time. The culpable individual- a dazed and nonsensical man in his 50's- was dragged off in handcuffs and his car was smashed up plenty.

The interesting part was when the cops found all the drugs in the car, and I do mean all the drugs. Kneeling by the driver's door, my new favorite cop ever pulled a big plastic bag full of many smaller plastic bags- "crack baggies", if you will- and looked up at his partner in un-crime. "Jackpot," he said. We were thrilled.

He straightened up, smiled, and waved at our little gang by the sidewalk. "Have a seat," he advised. "It's another beautiful day in the paradise that is Cupboardsburg." A little later, he added, "Do you see this? Don't let anyone tell you your tax dollars aren't at work."

"I like him!" whispered one of the neighbors.
"I KNOW!" I said.

Eventually, after the fucked-up driver was carted off to jail and his leaking, shattered car was being towed, I got tired of standing around in the sun, said goodbye to the neighbors, and went back to my lunch. I think it's awesome that I was just standing around in the kitchen without looking for excitement and the Interesting came to me.

Labels: Flat Life

One of my favorite customers last night was the middle-aged woman (what was she doing at the Cool Punk Rock B4r?!) who ordered a glass of wine and then asked for a to-go container. I had to open a brand new bottle of wine for this broad- it's hard enough to open a bottle of wine without looking stupid, let alone opening the fucking thing with the added pressure of being the person who is supposed to know how to open a bottle of wine without looking stupid, even though truth be told I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO OPEN A BOTTLE OF WINE WITHOUT LOOKING STUPID- and then she drinks two sips and wants to take the fucking thing with her? I was so glad she asked such a patently ludicrous question because it gave me an excuse to make fun of her, whereas I couldn't make fun of her just for ordering wine, even though I wanted to because she was the harlot who made me dig out a corkscrew and look stupider in public than I do ordinarily.
"I'd love to, but it's illegal," I said sympathetically. You know, as if I felt sympathetic in the slightest.
"But I promise I won't tell anyone," she said. And then I threw the entire bottle at her.

"It's going to sit there for a year and turn into vinegar," said the b4rback, rather bitterly referring to the now open bottle of wine that was purchased in the CPRB's recent (and ill-advised) wine campaign. "We should open all of them."

This all reminds me of one of the more embarassing moments of my cockt4il w4itressing career, when a table of customers at the old nightclub ordered a bottle of wine, and then took it out of my hands to open it themselves because I was doing such a bad job of opening it without looking stupid. Although I had to sit through a couple tortuous Wine-Opening For Idiots videos at a steakhouse where I used to w4itress before going to the nightclub, I didn't learn anything except that there are an infinite number of ways you can fuck up.

When I have to open wine, I break out in hives. I am temped to simply smash the neck of the bottle on the edge of a table to bypass the cork altogether.

Someday I'll make my fortune by inventing a program for restaur4nt and b4r employees called "OWWLS: Opening Wine Without Looking Stupid". It seems to me that it's so much less important to be knowledgeable than it is to simply not look stupid. It doesn't matter if you know what the angle of the sunlight hitting the hats of the people harvesting the grapes was if you can't get the fucking foil off the top of the bottle.

This will be, of course, after I have learned the art of OWWLS myself.

Labels: Intoxicology

It's like the post-game recap, but sadder. I'd been doing totally fine for ten days (since I saw him last), but this morning Mr. Mollusk and I had that talk- you know, the "Where Did It All Go Wrong?" talk that you only have when all concerned parties know deep down inside that it's truly irreparable and there's no point in trying. This is evidence that my time-worn strategy of abandoning things without looking back, expecting not to feel anything, doesn't always work.

Yesterday I was doing fine and now I FEEL LIKE I GOT HIT BY A CAR.

Labels: Exes to Grind, Lovelife, Mr. Mollusk

Okay, so I'm not saying goodbye to all my worldly goods. But it is high time I got rid of some of the things that I'm not using now and I wouldn't need to use if the Zombie Apocalypse descended upon us tomorrow. Today is my day off, and as long as I'm doing the laundry, this is a good time to sort out some clothes to go to Goodwill, such as:

• Clothes that, to be realistic, didn't fit me when I bought them, either
• Mysteriously reappearing clothes I haven't worn in years and could have sworn that I threw out in 2003
• Clothes I never technically wore in the first place
• Clothes that were never actually mine, that I never gave back, AND that I never wore
• Clothes with more holes than fabric
• Ugly clothes that I bought strictly for their ugliness when I was feeling very punk rock

So far, I've also carried out two computer monitors, an ab-lounger, and a trash bag full of clothes. I feel better already. Next up: ExBf's television, a DVD player (no use without the television, I suppose), two keyboards (musical), one keyboard (computer), three more bags of clothes, a bunch of moldering cardboard boxes that I swore would come in handy one day, and some games and books and stuff. If my father wants that old yard-sale reel-to-reel that I never used (and about a krillion reels to go with it), they're all his. It weighs more than I do, so regardless of how ambitious I'm feeling, I'd rather not have to rent a crane to haul it to Goodwill. It's a miracle I was able to get it into the house to begin with.

The Great Closet Purge of '07 was interrupted by a welcome phone call from Jo (and her bird Meeko), who, along with my mother, constitutes the Caustic Cupcake Cheerleading Squad. She calls me from time to time not only to gossip but also to remind me that I'm awesome and can do anything I put my mind to, which leaves me feeling all positive and capable; good thing, too, because Jo accepts none of my rickety excuses for failure.

I'd better get back to it. Disposing of my worldly goods, that is. Not failing.

Labels: Better Living Through Uprooting, Flat Life