puppy love

So there's this new dude in my life. He's sort of immature, has way more energy than I do but still loves to take naps with me, and has recently been keeping me company on my runs (side note: is running going to help me get some of my ghetto booty back? I swear it's been shrinking lately and I'm really not okay with that). If you haven't figured out by this point that I'm not talking about a human dude, than take a little gander at this picture and all will be explained:

Pretty cute, right? Don't let him fool you though, he's trouble. He can (and will) basically break out of any enclosure he finds himself in for more than half an hour. I keep him from breaking out of his crate by securing it with five carabiners and a chain. He's pretty bad ass. Other than this massive case of separation anxiety he's got going on, dude's pretty chill.

So the other day Rose and I took Charlie on a little trip to Home Depot to pick some shit for her boyfriend (you KNOW we weren't in there shopping for ourselves. So NOT our brand). There we were, waiting for some super friendly employee (ok seriously, what is WITH the people who work at that store? They're all so damn happy, it's like the Disneyland of home improvement warehouses) and Charlie decided that right there in aisle 13 was as good a place as any to take a shit. Naturally, Rose and I went straight to freak-out mode. "SHIT! Get rid of it before someone comes over here! Hurry!" So as she's yelling at me and I'm frantically digging through my purse for something to pick it up with, Charlie is kinda just hanging out, eating popcorn off the floor, scratching his balls, whatev...like it's no big thing. Naturally neither of us has anything practical on us that could be used to pick up Home Depot dog shit, so quick as a whip I empty out my purse and spy my extra pair of panties in the zip up pocket. Yes, I'm one of those girls. I like to be prepared, all right? You never know. Don't judge. Or do, it's cool. . And since I'm single, and since I've been sort of seeing someone, or whatever, they were a NICE pair. But you do what you gotta do.

I now own one less pair of sexy red panties, so thanks for that Charlie. You're lucky that you're cute as hell.

keep your chin up, baby!

As long as I can remember, my mom, aunt, and grandma have fawned over my chin (weird...I know) because I was blessed with the Dye dimple. Apparently I have the exact same chin as my maternal grandfather, whom I never met as he died when my mom was ten. I like to think that he'd find me to be  pretty great, had he ever met me. Because, well, I am sort of great. Each time someone gives me advice on my current life situation and tells me how proud they are that I was true to myself, I am also usually given  advice in the vein of "Keep that chin up, baby!". I often find myself wondering if people look at my chin when they say that and notice my little dimple and also what advice my grandfather would have to offer me.

In an effort to, ahem, "Keep my chin up", or what have you, I have recently been..rendezvousing with someone from my past. Most single girls I know have that someone. The someone that is great to pass a few hours with, the someone that makes you laugh and offers you various pleasurable distractions when dating is the last thing on your mind and anything with more emotional involvement than a few hours of stupid TV and time between the sheets is much more than you're willing to commit to. This is a someone that you tend to not talk to for long periods of time, the periods of time in your life when you're half of a couple. Then something happens and there you are staring your single self right in the eyes again, and well. You do what you have to do. This someone usually tends to be single at the same time as you. Single karma, I guess.

Last night, after a few hours of blissfully mindless and emotionless fun with that someone,  my heart apparently decided to stop pumping the right amount of blood to my brain? This led to an immediate black-out after standing up, and I shortly thereafter came to, realizing why yes, I did just blackout, fall, and slice my chin open to the bone on some guys nightstand. And yes, I am wearing only my sexy underwear (and no, I certainly was NOT drunk. No really. I wasn't). After a phone call to my friend who is a nurse ("How many glasses of wine did you have?" and "No I'm not gluing it closed! It's on your FACE, go to the ER!") and closer examination of what I must say was actually a very clean slice right down to the bone, I decided that $200 co-pay or not, I do love my pointy little dimple chin dearly and a scar-free face is worth much more than a couple hundred bucks, right? I mean after all, I do have insurance and I surely do not want to march back into the dating world with a scar on my lovely face!

As I was sitting in the ER with my beloved Mini-J, having that little dimple chin stitched right back up, laughing (and yes, I admit it, crying just a tiny bit) I turned to her and asked "Please tell me that blacking out in my panties, falling, and slicing my chin open to the bone in the apartment of the guy I'm currently screwing is the lowest point in my life right now. It's going to get better after this, right? I mean, RIGHT?". Smiling, she reassured me in only a way She, Rose, and my mom can do and I immediately felt better. We laughed about all of our misadventures in dating and decided that when we compile a book of stories regarding such topics that it should definitely have the word post-apocalyptic in the title. My nice ER doctor (side note: his name was Dr. Weed. This incident happened on April 20th. 4/20...beloved to potheads everywhere. I kid you not.) interjected to ask me why I thought I passed out, "Do you think you drank too much?". I told him no and explained that I thought it was probably a combination of a bunch of different things that had happened throughout the night and the fact that I had been having a weird heart palpitation. Then, of course, he asks me what those things may be? I literally said: (before my nearly non-existent filter had time to boot up and actually work) "Wellll, I was on this like date, or whatever. And I drank a glass of wine in the hot tub, theeeeen there was about twenty minutes of strenuous aerobic activity..." I looked over at Mini-J snickering in the corner and mouthed "Did I REALLY JUST SAY THAT TO THE ER DOCTOR?" To his credit, he just continued quietly stitching up my dimple chin and listened to Mini-J and I talk about my dating life, or lack thereof. As he stitched and listened and my chin inadvertently drooped down as I conversed, do you know what that nice man said to me?

"Keep your chin up!"

Oh, buddy. If you only knew...

friday night conversations

Rose: "So, basically, I have to get a second job and the first 800 dollars I make is going to my parents."

Rose and I have been friends since before I can remember. She says she was out shoveling snow with her dad in their new neighborhood, and I was across the street at my house doing the same thing with my pops. She came over, asked if I wanted to be her friend, and the rest was history. We have the relationship that only close girlfriends can share, one that is strengthened by the fact that it took root in the early stages of our life when we were completely innocent.Those were the days before we knew that broken hearts physically hurt or that life is full of amazingly diffcult decisions. Before we found out that people die, that the world stretches far beyond the boundaries of our old neighborhood, and that love is not in fact all we need.

When we lived together, our little house that was shared with the other point in our triangle of codependancy (shout out to bestie numero dos Mini-J) became a homey little den of emotions and general irresponsibility. Por ejemplo (is that real Spanish? is it??), there was the year neither of us had the money to renew the tags on our cars, so we just...didn't. This non-payment led to problems, namely, we lived on an extemely busy street and with only one driveway spot one of us ended up parked on that street everyday, which of course led to multiple parking tickets. There were also the numerous arguments and deep, irritated sighs about who got to park in the driveway ("but I got three tickets last week and I don't have ANY MONEYYYY"). As you have probably surmised, the parking tickets didn't so much get paid as forgotten about under car seats with lost diet coke bottles and used as decoys that we put back on our windshield to avoid further ticketing.

This would be why Rose now owes her parents a cool 800 bucks. I guess she never went ahead and paid any? of those tickets, got a big 'ol boot on her car, and had to shell out nearly a grand to get it removed. Let that be a lesson to all of us irresponsible car owners. Naturally, after she told me about getting a second job as some sort of homeless youth counselor I asked what that would entail. "Oh, they give me a van. So I am going to drive around in a van all day and try to convince kids to get in it." The previous statement is humorous for a number of reasons, but mainly because it was spoken without a trace of joking. "So you're keeping the refugee after-school program, too?" I asked. "Yup. The one where I walk around the halls looking for black kids and then trying to get them to talk to me."

I couldn't make this stuff up. Well, actually...I certainly could. But that would be so stupid.