Grocery Store

I'm going to rant about grocery store encounters for a minute.


I have completely boycotted the store near my parents' house, because it is entirely too close to where I grew up, and many, many familiar faces frequent that store. Too many. 

It's not that I necessarily dislike these people, it's just that I rarely put on my presentable face when I go to the store. I live alone, so I buy things in very small quantities, basically just as I need them. Like I may just need one half-gallon of milk, or one box of mac and cheese, or one case 6pack of beer. So in my head I'm like "no, I don't need to get dressed, I'm just going to run in for a second." And then its total awkwardface when I get flagged down by an acquaintance from years past, because not only do I look like a homeless person that may or may not be living in the shopping cart I'm pushing through the store, I never have anything useful to say to people in the grocery store. And it starts off as small talk, which is always awkward because normally if you see someone random, you comment on whatever circumstances led you both to that same place. Not really a viable topic at the grocery store.

One of the hardest encounters is with parents of people you went to school with and have completely lost touch with, but you must feign interest in their kid's life to make it seem like you care are not a total heartless wench. And you can see in their eyes that the whole time they're looking at you they're totally sizing you up, gathering information to report back to their kid. They're just sitting there, judging, thinking wow, this girl is looking rough, I can't wait to go tell my daughter how terrible she looks. And you're standing there wishing maybe you had showered, or at least washed off last night's makeup before you left the house, and knowing they're totally justified in their judging of your appearance. I mean, if it was me, I'd totally size up their kid and report my findings to my friends. And you know you HAVE to ask how their kid is doing, because otherwise you're a total jackass, so you do, and then you kill yourself.

Of course, the worst thing is if you have this encounter when you are both entering the grocery store, and you're both there for a big shopping trip. Like one of those trips after you come home and open your fridge and realize the only stuff in there is old milk and a jar of pickles. Anyone? Just me? Well on those trips you have to go up and down *every*single*aisle* and it never fails that you and this person end up on the exact same rhythm, and then you pass each other 10 times before you're done, but you've already acknowledged each other, so you just start acting like you don't see each other when you walk by. And you both know that you do. You totally do.

Grocery stores....... be afraid.

National Coffee Day

Attention everyone: The world as we know it has apparently ended. Globally, governments are shutting down and economies are collapsing. Wait, that's just us. WELL LIFE IN THE USA AS WE KNOW IT WILL BE INTERRUPTED FOR:

Those of you that do not work in the world of academia, or those that live under a rock may not be privy to the fact that today, September 29, is National Coffee Day. However, today across the nation college students, university employees, day traders, and hipsters are jumping up and down rejoicing for the most celebrated day of the entire calendar year. The drive-thru line for Starbuck's is wrapping out into a nearby intersection, and people everywhere are observing National Coffee Day by digging deep into their hearts and wallets to purchase overpriced, mediocre beverages being made by 17-19 year olds with what I can only assume is love, attention, devotion, and care.

I, unfortunately, do not drink coffee, so I cannot fully appreciate the wonder of National Coffee Day. I think coffee stinks, it always burns my mouth, it makes your breath smell bad, and it stains your teeth. Apparently, this is blasphemy.

So since this holiday does not bode well for me, I've decided to focus on the lesser-known national holiday that also falls on September 29.

Still not sure how to celebrate National Poisoned Blackberries Day other than by eating poisoned blackberries, and I don't have any real desire to do that. So I think I'll celebrate by NOT eating any poisoned blackberries.

So I hope everyone has a wonderful Poisoned Blackberries Day, and don't be sad when today is over, because we have many more wonderful holidays to celebrate over the next few weeks:


October 1: National Magic Circles Day
October 6: National "Come and Take It" Day *um what?*
October 9: National Moldy Cheese Day *every day at my house*
October 19: National Evaluate Your Life Decisions Day *also every day at my house*
October 31: National Increase Your Psychic Powers Day


Happy celebrating, everyone.

Bad Decisions

I realize that every single parent in the world thinks that they have the smartest kid out of all of the kids on the entire planet, and to tell you otherwise will probably come as a shock, but I am going to go ahead and stand by this statement: all kids are stupid. I feel like I can make this generalization with relative certainty being that I am not too far removed from childhood myself. I feel like at this point in my life, I am an intelligent, functional, capable adult. BUT, rewind 10 years, and you're looking at something completely different. Children, no matter how "smart" you think they are, are actually horribly inept at pretty much everything. And I'm not talking about kids under the age of five, or six, or seven. I'm talking pretty much up until you are 15-16 years old, you are completely incapable of demonstrating anything even remotely close to intelligence. 


A child's mind is a twisted, horrible, backward place where decisions and actions do not make sense and the decision-making process can be manipulated by basically anything. I know this because I did some really stupid things as a kid, all because in my head, these really stupid things yielded really awesome results. 


As a kid, I had basically 3 friends, one of which was my sister (don't judge.) The other two friends were girls that lived in my neighborhood. The four of us would romp around the neighborhood doing girly things like building forts, burying our Barbie dolls in the muddy creek head first, climbing trees, peeing on trees, and basically just being all-around disgusting dainty. In the summers, we had a LOT of free time on our hands. One particular summer, we were apparently feeling extra neglected by our parents and craving attention.

For whatever reason, we developed this crazy fixation on the idea that we needed presents. Gifts, toys, new Umbro shorts, Jellies, WE NEEDED THEM. My sister, being the diabolical genius/idiot that she is, was hellbent on figuring out a way for us to weasel some gifts out of our parents. She racked her brain for ideas until she finally thought of one that we all felt was absolute GOLD. Sheer brilliance. Perfection.

fall out of tree = broken arm + sad face = LOTS OF PRESENTS

^^basic arithmetic^^

My sister informed the rest of us of the plan. It was so simple, we couldn't believe we hadn't thought of this gem before. We were all immediately 100% on-board for this.

See, any dumb kid knows that you get presents on your birthday, at Christmas, at Hanukkah, whatever. What WE were smart enough to realize is that you ALSO get presents when you are seriously maimed or injured. My sister reminded us of how awesome it was when I was in third grade and I broke my knee cap, and I got to stay out of school for a really long time and watch TV in bed and stuff my face with Doritos and bacon bagels with Dr. Pepper every day (not so good for my girlish figure.)

So, we decided the best thing to do would be to just climb up in trees and jump out and try to break our arms.

And we jumped. Over and over and over again. And we would intentionally try to land on our arms to break them specifically, because we felt like broken arms were better than broken legs. We would've taken a broken leg, though. We would take what we could get.

Breaking your arms is a lot harder than it sounds. We never did accomplish any broken bones doing this, and never did get any presents for it either. I should also mention that this wasn't something that happened once or twice. This happened like, a lot. Like.... many, many, many days were spent jumping out of trees. Too many.

We weren't really looking at the big picture at the time.... kids are unable to gauge their decisions in relation to long-term effect. There is no long-term benefit to breaking your arm, or any other bone, really. There are bad long-term effects though, like the 50 lbs of flubber I put on when I broke my knee. But whatever.

Monday Night

This is what I'm dealing with right now.

The *real* Real World

Life after college is NOT suitable material for an MTV reality show. I want to talk to the guy that got to name "The Real World" and ask him why, why, WHY would you play such a heartless and cruel joke on the millions of college students that watch that show. Today is Monday, and I'm in a deep, dark, twisty, thick mood to reflect the dark and twisty Monday weather. The real world has lots of Mondays. They wouldn't be SO bad, except that in the REAL world, they happen every. single. week.


Going from college to having the realworldblues is a bigger adjustment than you'd expect. I'm having a hard time remembering why I had so many complaints during college. I am trying really, really hard to remember why I had such a hard time making it to ONE 10:30 class on Wednesdays, or why I felt like I may die if I had to go to lab, or that tests were the worst thing that was ever going to happen to me in my entire life and I should probably kill myself to avoid it. What did I hate most.... the fact that mom and dad paid for every single thing that I did, bought, and went to? The fact that some days, I had literally NOTHING to do, including class? The fact that I got to live with a bunch of my friends and go to 25cent beer and wing night on Thursdays? Sounds terrible.

If only I knew how lucky I had it. At the time, I truly did not enjoy class, lab and tests, those things served a purpose that I couldn't appreciate at the time. Those things made each week different than the last. Not work. Nope. No way. Every. Day. Same. Thing. Every. Day. EVERYDAYISTHESAMETHINGGGGG.

Don't get me wrong, I am really, really, really happy and thankful that I have a job, I know a lot of people are not as lucky. I would even venture to say that I love my job, which I feel is also something that not many people can truly say. I enjoy working where I do. I get to work with cool people doing cool things and it's not too serious and I have an office with a big fancy computer and dinosaur figurines I'm lucky. But college was REEEEALLY fun. And I can't help but morph into this horrible, evil, murderous, jealous crazy person every time I see/hear people complaining about going to school. JUST STOP. You have no idea. 

*apologies for me shooting laser/daggers out of my eyes, it's just my dark and twisty mood, promise.* So even though it's Monday, and I'm seeing a lot of Facebook statuses from students about how much Monday sucks, and their awful schedules, or their tests, or that their lives are ending because of school, just remember: there IS life after college, and it IS worse than your life now. 


Happy Monday, everyone!