That's NOT What She Said

I have this fantasy where i'm one of those smoky, sultry babes that has a witty double entendre to reply to every remark, no matter how mundane or inconsequential. In my fantasy, a routine remark on the weather can turn into a steamy make-out session in seconds, because my words are so saucy and seductive that i create an atmosphere of constant eroticism and irresistible sensuality.

In reality, the responses that usually occur to me are less "sexy and witty" and more "awkward and slightly horrifying". Fortunately for me, i manage to keep the vast majority of these remarks in my head. Fortunately for you, i have compiled them here. 

Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?

John: "I'm updating my webpages."
Me: "I'm updating my vagina."
What? No. That's not sexy. That's not even a thing.

John: "I just like to manhandle you sometimes."
Me: "I like to handle your man. Your little man. Your penis."
Stop. Just stop talking. If you have to explain it this much even to yourself, it's not sexy.

scars, 1

I attended a writing retreat last January. One of the workshops was about writing biographies and memoirs, and the woman leading the workshop gave us several prompts. One of those prompts was to write about how we got our scars. This is what i wrote that day:

The scar on my left index finger was incurred during an unbelievable bout of stupidity. I had been painstakingly whittling something for weeks, despite having no whittling talent or training and nothing but a battered Swiss Army knife to work with.

But it was my latest obsession, and i took any and every opportunity to work on it.

One day, we were at a stoplight. I knew it was a long light, so i pulled out my tools. So engrossed was i in my work that i didn't see the light change. The old Ford Windstar minivan started moving with a lurch, and the knife blade slid smoothly into my finger.

I stared at it for a moment, watching the blood bubble up around the blade. It had gone in horizontally and lay under my skin. Then it clicked: i had a knife in my finger and it hurt.

I don't remember what i said to my dad to alert him to the emergency. I do remember him yelling at me as he tried to find a place to pull over. Our first aid kit was empty except for Band-aid wrappers and some calamine lotion. Dad found an old Sunday school paper to wrap around my finger until we got home.

I never finished whittling that thing. I think it was going to be a doll. I've long since lost both the block of wood and the knife, but the scar is still visible as a pale, slightly curved line on my left index finger.

Why I Can't Go Out In Public 2

Or maybe i just shouldn't go to Fuji anymore. Clearly, i get in a lot of trouble at that restaurant.

Clarissa and i were having lunch there a few weeks ago, as a combination farewell date/sushi eating lesson. I hadn't been sleeping and, if i remember correctly, hadn't had my coffee that day. Consequently, i was a little out of it.

This thing, but less crumpled and more folded. And more soaked in Coke.

As we chatted and i sipped my soda, i glanced at the glass and noticed something white in the ice cubes. I very smoothly and surreptitiously fished it out as Clarissa was telling me a story, and unfolded it. It was the wrapper from my chopsticks.

I stared at it for a moment, until Clarissa noticed i wasn't listening anymore and looked to see what had distracted me.

"Did you just take that out of your drink?" she asked.
"Yeah," i said, still bemused.
"Do you want to get a new drink?"

Here's the thing about Fuji: the soda comes in a can. They bring you a can and a glass of ice with a straw. So it would have been difficult for them to miss it a folded chopstick wrapper shoved into the ice cubes. Then again, i missed it and it was my soda. But still, where did the lighter fluid chopstick wrapper come from? (Arrested Development? Anybody?)

I thought about all of this for a moment. I also tried to remember what i had done with my wrapper when i removed it from my chopsticks.

"Um, no," i said at last. "It's just a wrapper, and i've already been drinking from it, so i can't imagine that i'll suffer any ill effects. Plus, i'm not really a hundred percent certain that i didn't put it in there myself and just forget."

Clarissa stared at me wordlessly for a minute.

"I'm really tired," i explained. "I do weird things sometimes when i'm tired."

But you know what, Clarissa? It's not even that weird. People do things like that all the time: leave their car keys in the freezer, put the empty cereal box back on the shelf, forget their child at WalMart, whatever. Sometimes you get distracted and do something that seems logical at the time and only strikes you as odd in hindsight. So stop judging.

And by the way, totally still alive. So it was fine. And i ate at Fuji today and spilled nothing and found no weird things in my drink. So, progress?

shopping 6/15

• Puffs Ultra Non-Lotion 3-pack
• Pennzoil full synthetic 10W-30 motor oil
• Olay age defying classic daily renewal cream

Yep. That was everything. I made a trip to Walmart specifically for these three things and no others.

Red M&Ms Really Do Taste Better

I know, there's no flavoring associated with the colored coating. It's just food coloring and sugar. My brain is hard-wired to interpret colors as flavors, and red is my favorite color, so i think that they taste better when they really taste exactly the same. In a blind taste test, i wouldn't be able to tell one color from the next.

Except that the red ones are clearly superior.

Notice how all the other colors are supporting the red one.

I have carefully researched evidence to back up my claims: Mars (the company that makes them, not the planet or the god) makes more red ones than any other color. I know this because i have started buying bags of their peanut butter M&Ms to keep in my desk for when i need an afternoon sugar/protein boost. I bought a bag at the end of the summer, and as it was running out, i replaced it with two bags of the "fall colors" candies. These were, in their turn, replaced by Christmas ones, which were replaced by Valentine's ones.

Each of these bags contains a variety of colors, but they all have red. Furthermore, they all have a higher proportion of red to other colors.

How do i know?

So orderly and delicious.

Because i like the red ones best, and because i am slightly (extremely) OCD, i eat my M&Ms in reverse spectrum order. I also count out the exact same number each time for my serving. This means that when i eat the non-seasonal ones, i eat two of each color: brown, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Twelve total. The fall ones have four colors: brown, dark yellow, red, and a dark purply-red. This means that i eat three of each of these, and i eat them in this order: yellow, brown, purply-red, red. Christmas is red, dark green, light green, and white; again, three of each, and dark green-light green-white-red. And Valentines are three each of white, light pink, dark pink, and red.

The significance of this is that when the bag is new, i always eat the same number of each color. But some colors run out faster than others. I compensate by eating more of the other colors to ensure that i eat exactly twelve every time. I often compensate with the red ones, because they are my favorite. Yet red is always the last color to run out.

You could explain this in one of three ways:

• I am delusional.
• Mars knows that people like red best (Kool-Aid's default color is red, as is Hawaiian Punch, Twizzlers, and many popular fruits like apples and cherries), so they make more red ones than any others in order to subconsciously trigger consumer's brains to think that M&Ms are inexplicably slightly better than all other candies. This is also why the original M&Ms spokescandy was a red M&M.
• The Mars company is actually located on the Mars planet (the red planet) and owned by the Mars god (god of war).

I suppose it's possible that this is all coincidence. Maybe somewhere in the world, there is a person who never gets any red M&Ms, or at most, one or two per bag. Well, if that person is you, and you are reading this now, i am not going to share.

shopping 3/13

• 1 citrus air freshener
• 12 rolls toilet paper
• 1 box penne rigata
• two boxes various condoms
• 1 bunch asparagus
• 2 artichokes
• 1 rutabaga
• 1 bouquet small red lilies

Sometimes i wonder what the cashier is thinking as he or she rings up my purchases.

Writing Retreat, Day 2

The scar on my left index finger was incurred during an unbelievable bout of stupidity. I had been painstakingly whittling something for weeks despite having no whittling talent or training and nothing but a Swiss army knife to work with.

But it was my latest obsession, and i took any and every opportunity to work on it.

One day, we were at a stoplight. I knew it was a long light, so i pulled out my tools. So engrossed was i in my work that i didn't see the light change. The old Ford Windstar minivan started moving with a lurch, and the knife blade slid smoothly into my finger.

I stared at it for a moment, watching the blood bubble up around the blade. It had gone in horizontally and lay under my skin. Then it clicked: i had a knife in my finger. And it hurt.

I don't remember what i said to my dad to alert him to the situation. I remember him yelling at me in a panic as he tried to find a place to pull over. Our first aid kit was empty. Dad found an old Sunday school paper to wrap my finger in until we got home.

sketchy things i have done

Camping

Once, when i was really little (like 4 or 5), my family went camping. Our particular campsite was a little removed from the bathrooms, which were on the other side of a little creek. One day, i needed to go to the bathroom. No one else needed to, so i decided to go alone.

Have i mentioned that i have a really terrible sense of direction?

Several hours later, i was wandering on the OTHER SIDE OF THE CAMPGROUND, crying and alone, and with (i was little, okay?) dampened drawers. A lady in a car stopped and asked if she could help me. I got in her car, and she took me to the bathroom. When i got out, my mom was there.

Tattoo

When i decided to get my second tattoo, one of my downstairs neighbors recommended a friend of his. My roommates and i drove to a slightly ghetto neighborhood and met the guy at his house. He explained that, while he was fully licensed to tattoo, his parlor was temporarily closed for a board of health violation. Apparently, the piercing guy was under investigation for performing a procedure he was not licensed for. According to my roommate's friend, the piercing guy was fully licensed, but the bitch at the board of health had it in for them. So he took us into the back room of his house, where i laid on the couch to be tattooed.

Turned out fine, by the way.

Bacchanal

When i was in Spain in 2007, i was invited to a "bacchanal". I was excited to see reenactments of Greek mythology, and was slightly disappointed to learn that, instead, it was just an insane party on the outskirts of town in an abandoned warehouse. (Man, i'm a nerd.) However, the warehouse was sort of decorated inside with fake grapevines, and i'm pretty sure Bacchus would have been thrilled to attend this shindig. I was going with two girls i had met the day before, the cousins of the woman i was staying with. They spoke very little English, and i spoke very little Spanish. Also, i couldn't remember their names. I think one of them was Laura? No, that was their friend.

We stopped on our way to buy two huge bottles of rum and two 2-liter bottles of Coke.

Throughout the evening, we drank all of what we had, bought some beers, and also shared whiskey and coke with strangers. My companions smoked some weed and offered it to me. (I declined.) Laura also did a few lines of coke in a van. She spent much of the rest of the evening (actually, by then it was early morning) asking me in broken English if i was mad at her for doing hard drugs.

At around 7:30 am, we got a cab back to their apartment and slept for a few hours.

Senior Week

When i was twelve, my cousin Lynne (thirteen at the time) was about to move to Utah. So our grandmother took us, along with Agelseb (12) and our friend Renee (13), to the beach. It was senior week, so the whole town was crowded with drunk and/or high teenagers hooking up on every available flat surface. Most of them were at least eighteen (or sixteen, with fake IDs), but several were older. And then there was us.

Our grandmother let us go out at night alone, as long as we didn't wander out of sight of the hotel. Lots of drunk/high boys tried to pick us up, but Agelseb's shrill declarations that we were twelve kept us (relatively) safe from harassment. We were just lucky that we didn't encounter anyone drunk and/or sketchy enough to risk jailbait.

Agelseb nearly gave our addresses and names to some guys with a video camera, though.

Theo

One time, i hooked up with a friend of mine while another friend slept on the floor next to the bed we were using. Yeah, that was gross.

Barnes and Noble

One time, my sister was visiting me at college. My boyfriend-at-the-time and i took her to B&N, because she and i both had Christmas gift cards to spend. Since none of us had a car, and the bus didn't go where we needed it to, we walked. About three and a half miles. In the dark. Next to and across three-lane highways. Without a map.

Redneck Roller Coaster

When i was seventeen, my friends Agelseb and "Fay" and i decided to have an adventure. The back roads are long and winding, and when you go around them fast it is VERY DANGEROUS. And really really fun.

But we were the good kids, so we always drove safely on those roads.

But Fay was about to start college, and i was about to go to Europe, and when i got back Agelseb and i would be starting college, and we figured that this was our last chance to do something young and reckless. In retrospect, we were wrong (but almost right, since we almost died). As i have since discovered, life is full of chances for dumb adventures.

We were driving far too fast around a bend when Fay lost control of the car. We were skidding toward someone's living room window when she yanked the wheel and sent us skidding toward the ditch and trees. Suddenly, we were safely on the road and the car was still. We still don't know how we survived. I still haven't told my parents.

classy as shit 2

Today, i was eating a LeanPocket for lunch. Yeah, i know. Back to LeanPockets. Anyway, i was standing outside and talking to a friend, and when i took a bite, a huge glob of cheesy chicken goodness fell out on my sweater.

I looked at my friend, looked at my sweater, and proceeded to eat the LeanPocket filling off of my cardigan.

classy as shit 1

Last night, i got home at 10:30 after a late class and a trip to CVS for a binder and hot chocolate mix. I knew i'd be up late with homework, and i was also starving, because i'd only eaten a small sandwich and a bowl of soup at 12:30 and had had nothing but M'N'Ms since.

The meal was lovely: steak, mashed potatoes, and sauteed asparagus. I had a California white wine to go with it.

But since i was already so tired, and would already have to wash so many dishes, i wanted to reduce my workload as much as possible.

So midnight saw me sitting at the kitchen table, writing lesson plans, and swigging wine straight from the bottle.

Just because no one died this time doesn't mean i had no reason to be afraid.

So i recently went to Maryland to see my brother and the rest of my family. I roadtripped down with Agelseb and Adam's girlfriend (we'll call her Vicky), but i flew back to Boston.

Here is what i wrote in my journal on the plane:

Guy next to me on the plane has a teardrop tattoo. Holy fuck.

Just barely made my flight. Like, i think they held the plane for me.

Teardrop Tattoo Guy is filming out the window of the plane. I think he's filming the wing. He's holding the camera by his head so that people walking past can't see it but i can see the screen if i sit just right and he's filming the wing.

Shit. Am i going to witness an act of terrorism?

Okay. I didn't die. I may have been overreacting slightly. It's been a very stressful week.

Also, i accidentally left my phone on for the duration of the flight, and we didn't even have any turbulence.

Teardrop Tattoo Guy really did film the wing of our plane the whole way from Baltimore to Philadelphia. Probably doing research for a future attack or something. Maybe. Or maybe he was just taking a film class.

Why I Can't Go Out In Public

Today, my boyfriend and i went out to lunch to celebrate five months of not trying to kill each other. Or at least, of not succeeding in our attempts. And also because i was hungry and it was lunch time.

While trying to demurely sip my miso soup, my hand started to tremble, because i was super hungry and i get shaky when i haven't eaten enough. Plus there's a tiny tremor in my hands already so being hungry makes it way worse.

Google images

So instead of returning the spoon to the bowl and waiting for my hands to stop shaking, i tried to bring the spoon to my mouth super fast before i spilled the soup. But it was one of those huge Asian soup spoons so there was a lot of soup and i couldn't take it all in one bite. Plus it was still really hot, and when it touched my tongue my hand jerked violently and soup sprayed across the table (most of it landing miraculously in the bowl). Then i started laughing and accidentally spit out a piece of seaweed. As my boyfriend looked at me sympathetically (no doubt wondering how big of a jerk it would make him to break up with me because he suspects that i am mentally handicapped), i gave him sad puppy-dog eyes and said, "You know the worst thing about what just happened? It's not the first time that this exact thing has happened to me in this restaurant."

Then we were walking back to my office and had to take an alternate route because there was some road/sidewalk work going on. I didn't notice it right away and almost walked into the giant patch of dirt and loose rubble and traffic cones. John pulled me away (like you do with a small, not-very-bright child) and said, "Don't walk in the dirt!" (He said it in a cheery, warning way. Not yelling. You can't tell the difference when you don't have vocal nuances.)

I tried to say that i didn't mind walking in the dirt, but somewhere between my brain and my mouth those words got tangled up in my pigheaded streak and manifested themselves as "But i WANT to walk in the dirt," and i let go of his hand and took one step on the dirt and then went back. Again like a small, possibly mentally handicapped child.

He just looked at me and said, "You only did that because I told you not to, didn't you?"

I glanced down coyly. "Maybe. Yes. Maybe."

And then when we were outside of my office, standing on the (very public, high-traffic) sidewalk, i tried to unzip his pants without him noticing.

It really is a miracle that he hasn't dumped and/or killed me yet.