Doooooode.

I start my new job on Monday, which is, like, in less than five days.

Five days is kind of my default "Oh shit, this is coming up soon" measuring stick.

Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to it because although I quit my job that was boring as fuck, I discovered that Unemployment...it's nothing but a new boring job.

No joke, my house is torn apart, I have new pets, I rearranged our bedroom, I made beef pot pie from SCRATCH. Except the crust, but fuck making crusts from scratch.

Unemployment is boring as fuck.

So it seems I'm starting a job and seem to vibe well with management, which means all of my coworkers will all be fun. I can only assume the entire department was hand-selected to be super awesome like myself.

Or, super insane/brain injured like myself.

Could go either way.

Because part of unemployment involved selling all of my work clothes, business casj, as they say, my fairy godmother Veronica treated me to lunch and some mad Elite Repeat consignment clothing swag. This place is so fun because they have a wide range of sizes and styles, all in pretty exceptional condition, many brand new or with dry cleaning tags, and very well made brands like Tahari silk tops, Banana Republic khakis, and tailored wool pants, satin-lined, and made in Romania. And all of these items are reasonably priced. And they're soft like bunnies.

It was so nice to see Veronica and have a happy afternoon, because it was after I attended a memorial service for a dear friend's fiance. That was tough, for a lot of reasons. But it was lovely, and there were peacocks and balloons, so basically it's the kind of memorial service I want, except at mine there will be kegs instead of ministers.

Irish style.

I also scored big at Goodwill on Thursday, several pairs of like-new business casj pants and lots of tops that are both A)Work Appropriate and B)Cover my "Fuck" tattoo.

Good luck I'm having, right?

HA.

Today, I was out in the yard and I was smoking because I was walking Scary, so basically it was selfless smoking. (I resolve to tackle my resolutions in a REASONABLE time frame. That is why in lieu of smoking cessation in 2012, I set a more reasonable goal of Learn to Smoke with Left Hand.)

Anyway, I was outside with Scary and a big dog charged at Scary like WHAT, and there was screaming and kicking and biting and people yelling.

It was like watching UFC, if Brock Lesner (big dog) was fighting Papa Smurf (Scary).

In that case, someone DEFINITELY forgot to weigh those fuckers in before fighting commenced. The big dog had her in his mouth, and at one point I was terrified she was a goner.

Fortunately, she's gonna be fine, one trip to the ER Vet later. She's just bleeding all over my house and stoned on doggy drugs. And half bald. And terrified of her own yard so won't go potty.

She's refusing to eat. And I'm not talking dog food, I'm talking slow-cooked beef roast. This fat girl has gained a lot of weight this winter, and let me assure you it's because she bases her entire life motto around somehow earning or stealing a tender, juicy cow muscle.

In the fray, I got bitten.

Once we FINALLY got her out of Scary out of his chompers, I scooped her up and tried to get to my back door - granted, I was straight up panicking by that point, partly because I was having Cujo flashbacks, and also because I saw my mother nearly get mauled to DEATH by a dog she knew once, and partly because I thought Scary was dead or dying. She screamed at first, but towards the time we got her away from big dog, she'd stopped making much noise.

So I started foggily towards the back door with her in my arms, and immediately, the big dog charged me, lunging up to the level of my outer biceps, trying to get his teeth on Scary. I was bitten on both upper/outer arms, and while the punctures were more "scrape and bruise" than "House of 1000 Corpses, I can assure you that they still hurt like a motherfucker.

Fortunately, I know the dog's shots were current, so as long as I keep my wounds clean, I can continue boldly on into the Land of No Hospitals in 2012.

Hopefully, the soreness in my arms abates before I report to duty on Monday. Accounting departments are extremely arm-use-centric kinds of places, thanks to the modern marvel known as a ten keypad.

Wish us luck and non-infected puncture wounds!

Night of the 1,000 Martinis

I'm pretty sure I'm only moments away from being crushed by a grand piano, or possibly struck by lightning or of being accidentally poisoned by Poison Control because they thought my name was on their list of "people to poison", but really I just wrote the list. What I'm saying is there is no fucking way I'm getting off this easy. Somehow...some way...the Universe (that asshole) will make me pay, and I can only hope I don't need to take a dump when the moment comes.

In the world that I live in, I should, by all laws of nature, be lying in bed with a pillow over my face to block out the light of the hateful sun which should feel like the devil trying to pierce my skull and burn my brain matter. I should be getting (painfully) out of bed every once in a while and violently retching into the general direction of the toilet. My ass hole should be mysteriously tender. I SHOULD BE HUNG OVER.

But I am not hung over, although I am suffering from the post-binge Hunger which requires very specific food remedies, none of which are in the fridge at the moment because it's not very often that I need a bucket full of deep-fried tater tots and a cheeseburger the size of my head.

After the weekend I've had, the fact that I didn't wake up and find myself dressed in a sombrero on the lawn of Graceland lying beside a walrus in a space suit...well, that's pretty fucking incredible. THAT'S HOW MUCH I DRANK. Oh but not even I could compete with the drunkest of all, a friend whom has never been mentioned here on this blog because...well...you know. But after Friday night...she must be named, and by that I mean she must be given a fake name because knowing me is kind of like being in the opposite off the witness protection program, times vaginas.

This photo, taken before we even started drinking martinis, should have been a red flag.

This photo is literally the essence of my weekend: blurry and obnoxious and way too much fun.

Everybody, could we please have a round of applause for the only woman who has ever drank me under the table...Red! So tell me, Red, how did you find it within yourself to consume so many pineapple martinis?

Well, Cat, I think it was kind of your fault.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm...how so?

Well, Veronica and I planned the evening in honor of your birthday.

Oh, I see. And did you at any time discuss with Veronica the plans for Friday night?

Of course. We planned to go see Sex & the City II and make it a Girl's Night.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I see. So did it occur to either you or Veronica that perhaps you should check to see when Sex & the City II opened in theaters? Or did we find out at the last minute when I tried to find show times and couldn't.

We thought it would be in theaters by the time we had our Girls' Night.

But you were mistaken, weren't you?

(Veronica: Objection! Leading the girlfriend!)

I withdraw my last comment, readers. So what you're saying, Red, is that we ended up at the bar of The Melting Pot because we were unable to go see Sex & the City II because it doesn't open until May 28th, is that correct?

I guess so.

And then we ended up at Prohibition where you drank my blueberry martini, is that right?

The part you didn't spill on me, yes.

And then you disappeared with Veronica into the back of a limousine without any previous discussion of doing so, and the limousine full of big, black men deposited us on the sidewalk in front of Seven where we bypassed the line of people and entered directly through the VIP entrance into a club that was also full of big, black men who continued to provide alcohol to all three of us, once Veronica was positive that we hadn't been drugged. Does that sound accurate?

I think I bought my own drink, but yeah. Pretty much.

And did all three of us manage to offend three entirely different races of people that night?

Yeah, Veronica told our server, who was Indian, that he would probably be really good at computer work, and then I told the guy who brought us to the club in his limo that he was a douche for wearing a suit and tie in the middle of the night, and then you asked a big black guy if he realized he was chillin' with three white chicks adrift in a sea of black women.

Yes, that was awesome. So who declared her predisposition to consume martinis that evening?

I'm pretty sure it was Veronica.

But you agreed.

I see where this is going and I still say the whole thing was your fault.

How so?

By being born. You made me drink those martinis by being born.

I cannot help that jesus put me on this earth to be an inspiration to others, Red. Do you hate jesus?

You're the one who doesn't capitalize "Jesus".

Meh, he was jewish. Well, Red, thanks for being with us today. I'm so glad I got to listen to you vomit all weekend. We should do it again sometime.

PS ~ Next time, we're totally making out. Unless you're puking.

Here

I have shit to do, ya'll, and I am not even joking when I say that I'm so wound up with anticipation and twisted tight with anxiety about an ever-growing List Of Shit To Do, Or Else that I feel as if I'm crawling all over the walls and hanging from the chandelier, and I don't mean that in the good way. Actually, so far as the chandeliers go, I mean that literally because Gray and I began to try to install a new, sparkly, pimp-smacking, daddy-mackin' light fixture that Veronica purchased for our dining room.

And then early twentieth-century electrical work happened.

So now I need to stop and try to explain to the good people in the aprons at the hardware store that I need this adapter thingy that I know exists, if only by the sheer force of my will that it shall turn out to exist, because otherwise we're looking at needing a new ceiling box, which will require a saw (it's plastered in place, thanks to early twentieth-century plaster work) and I'm pretty sure I'm not down with sawing a hole in somebody else's ceiling, even if that someone knows me well enough to poop in front of me. By accident. In her pants.

I'm also finishing up two weeks of homework before we leave on Friday (did I mention we're flying to motherfucking CALIFORNIA, bitches? Because if not, then consider yourself foresworn. Wait, is it foresworn or foretold? Foreskin? Foreplay? I think I mean forewarned, although now the prefix of "fore" has totally lost its meaning and looks like a made up word, kind of like the word "here" did after I finished writing the essay below.)

Which brings me to the essay below. I'm so busy that you losers are stuck with reading recycled posts. I guess technically it's not recycled so much as it's reworked. Renown? Rehashed? Re-FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

I (re)worked this piece for an assignment in my creative writing class. The original piece (wow, aren't those bulleted numbers fucking FANCY?) can be found here. Enjoy.

I started in the corner house in Bellflower. That was where we had citrus and plum trees and where my dad built the playhouse in the back and he bounced us on the eucalyptus limb in the front and I found a dead sparrow and we buried it after mommy told me about God. There our neighbors had an avocado tree and my parents were happy together and I felt the earthquake as I sat watching robot cartoons in the den and the walls started shaking and the white figurines on the shelf fell and shattered on the floor, like lovely plaster bombs detonating around me.

Then came the condo, where I called 911 just to see what would happen and hung up when the woman answered and I pretended to be lost in sleep when daddy came upstairs but really I was wondering how he knew what I’d done. I was there in my bedroom when another earthquake sloshed the fish bowl so hard that Teabag and Fleabag nearly spilled onto the carpet and I imagined their demise would be blamed on me and so I was relieved when the shaking stopped and the fish stayed put. It was where I tried to pee standing up just to see what it would be like and where I played doctor for the first time, with Shane, under his bed, because he had a skate board and hair so blond that it hurt to look at it.

Then we drove a long ways from the beach and all four of us squished in the front seat of the moving truck and I realized you could get so hot that it actually hurts and I lost my best friend, the stuffed cheetah, left him at a gas station in the desert. We came to the house on Cannock Lane which was my grandparent’s house and my daddy paid cash so we could live there, and that was where my sister and I raised ourselves after daddy went back to California and mommy’s new boyfriend was younger than I am now. There we walked to the lake and jumped off the docks, the last one down was the best, but we always watched the water for moccasins that glided on the surface like S-shaped Jesuses. That was where I believed my playmate, the woods, was alive and magical and once I saw a thick snake, midnight on top, cotton on the bottom, wrapped around the phone pole like a slick pile of licorice whips and it reminded me of French braids, in the yard where Jingle fell out of a very high tree and had to wear a neon pink cast on her paw.

Then, sadly, we lived with a friend so my mother (no longer mommy) could go back to college after she was let go, and that was the house where all shared one bedroom for years in the neighborhood where I fell in love with the boy down the street who is now married happily to someone else and living somewhere distant from our block where he liked to push my face into the snow. That was the unhappy house where I read an article in Seventeen about cutting and I got inspired and where I walked three blocks to middle school every morning and saw the cat in the road with its eyes bulging upward in total defiance of gravity.

Next came the new husband's house where I had my own room, so I tried out the new school for three months and decided that home schooling was for me, a bad decision, because of which I showered three times a day and still never felt clean. That was where I lived when I got my first job at Kisor's Grill & Bakery and went to the church where I learned to hate God. That was the house where my baby brother was conceived and then everywhere we went, people assumed I was a teenage mother and it made me proud in a way I never understood. That was where I fell in love with his big forehead and bigger smile, where I left at seventeen (because they couldn’t stop me) and never wanted to return.

I moved in with my boyfriend and his parents and I cranked the heat up to ninety degrees once when I was hung over and shaking and sitting in the bathtub with my clothes on. I’ll always remember that I had sex in the backyard beside their bedroom window and liked that it was risky but hated that the night could see us. That was the house where I was left in charge of ironing his father's shirts and Dockers and ties while his mother was at the Mayo and where I felt like a part of a real family for once, useful, but also like I was being tested.

Then we left for Stanley, where we lived in a heated yard shack for two months while I worked first as a housekeeper and then as a prep cook at the lodge and I talked to the does on my walk to the kitchen each morning where they stood along the narrow road, ears at attention. That was where I jumped off a boulder into the glacial lake and finally understood what “glacial lake” meant, where I got sun poisoning in the paddle boat and where I thought I was free for the very first time and I sailed on a rope swing out over a two-hundred-foot ravine and wasn't afraid on the same day that I drank a liter of vodka and wasn't hung over, which is how I knew that we had to leave.

Then we lived in a basement which is where I hosed his vomit off the driveway and gave him a bath without waking the family, where my nephews were born and where I broke down and cried at the dinner table because I missed a spot with the lawn mower and they thought it was funny. That is where I lived when I watched Teletubbies and learned to drive stick and I we could hear them making love through the ceiling.

At the apartment I paid all the bills by myself which set the precedent for paying all the bills by myself and I once I called the cops because I was drunk and somehow it made sense at the time and it was there where my boyfriend accused me of being a lesbian because I finally made a girl friend whom I met where I went to college for the first time. I worked as a waitress at the Mall of America and after my shift I rode the bus to the apartment, which is where I helped an old lady get up off the floor where I found her laying where she'd fallen by the laundry room on the third floor which overlooked the pool where the ducks lived.

I bought my first house three weeks after I turned twenty-one and it happened to be that I loved my neighbors as much as I loved to guess what type of crops would grow in the field behind us each spring. There, I took pride in my lawn, at least up until I got "the call,” then I lived alone with the dog for long months which is probably why I called the escort service, but only to talk. Then my sister came to live with me so that I wouldn’t be alone and it was later that I met my Jill who was there when my niece was born and came home wearing pink for the first time to that house where I fell in love for a third time and I told my husband I wanted a divorce. I never wanted to leave but couldn't afford to stay.

Then was the apartment where he and I moved in together, alone for the first time, and where it was tiny but we didn’t really notice because it had a dishwasher and we had each other. That was where we smoked, then quit, then started again until I got pregnant and we moved across the hall in pursuit of a second bedroom, which is where I lost the baby before we’d even turned in our key to the one bedroom place. But there I learned to bake wheat bread when I wanted to forget we were paying for an empty room and we hung the curtains from IKEA without any yelling at all.

And now we are in the new house where I can garden in the warm months and where we grill our dinner almost every night, even in the winter, dinners which we eat in a real a dining room that I can paint if I want to. Now he can mow the lawn with his IPod cranked to Pantera while I wash the windows and laugh at his sorry excuse for a voice, and we are one block from the Mississippi and I can step out the front door and run as far as the elementary school and then back, moving the air all around, until I get home.

Statistically Unlikely

Here's what not to do:

Don't decide to lay around on the couch and watch an entire day-long marathon of The First 48 on A&E, particularly when the first episode takes place in Minneapolis, Minnesota and particularly when you are home alone in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Especially when darkness falls around 4:15 p.m. Especially when you can't remember where you put your can of pepper spray.

Most definitely don't remember that you live only blocks from the Mississippi River or that Veronica warned you never to jog on the trails after dark because of the occasional murder. Don't obsess about the locks on your doors and windows, and definitely don't hide behind the armchair if a solicitor knocks on your door.

Forget all about the Chantix-induced psycho dreams you're likely to have in the wake of viewing multiple dead bodies and blood spatter and suspect interrogations and hearing the words "ligature" and "exsanguination" over and over in one day. You don't want to know about those dreams in advance. Trust me.

Don't start thinking about the movie Zodiac when you get up to pee in the middle of the night. This will not help you fall back to sleep quickly. Refrain from jumping at shadows and peeking out the blinds at 3:00 a.m. There's no one out there. That you want to know about, anyway.

Definitely DO NOT record future episodes of The First 48. You don't need to watch any more of them.

Here's what you SHOULD do: Keep extra underwear on hand. You know, just in case you ignore all my other advice.

False Alarm, Except Alarm Implies "Bad" and This Would Have Been Good. Ish. Right?

Dude, you do not even want to KNOW what I did yesterday.

Sometimes I'm amazed by the level of self-persuasion I'm capable of inflicting when, against all odds, with the chances stacked against me, like, 99.99999%, I still manage to convince myself that maybe...just MAYBE...I might be pregnant.

Ladies, please tell me you know what I'm talking about here! Please tell me I'm not the only one who has purchased an EPT for no other reason (realistically speaking) than because (apparently) I like sticking things into my urine stream for exactly five seconds and then wondering where to set the fucker so it doesn't drip pee all over the floor. (According to the instructions, it must be 5 seconds. NO MORE!! NO LESS!! OR BABY JESUS WILL DIE!)

Mostly this whole "maybe I'm pregnant" thing was so ridiculous because I've been on the pill forever. Not only have I been on the pill, I've also been "suppressing" so I haven't even ovulated (YES. I SAID IT. Get over yourselves men, like "ejaculation" is such a great word) in probably close to a year.

But still. This Chantix shit makes me so incredibly nauseous and gives me a sharp headache every fucking time I take it (once in the morning, once at night). I was expecting the Look Out! She's Got A Gun! kind of side effects, but I didn't read the fine print closely enough to realize I'd be more likely to have to Take A Deep Breath So You Don't Blow! side effect.

And when else do people get nauseous? WHEN THEY'RE PREGNANT. So right there I've got a totally (un)reasonable piece of evidence to prove that maybe I spontaneously conceived via the magical fallopian express, or something.

Plus! Plus! Yesterday, I got...THE HUNGER. I'm not even kidding you, it was back with a vengeance. It was such a deja vu moment that I forgot one of the side effects of not smoking is shoving food into your face hole during every waking moment.

Hello Weight Watchers. Please watch me closely.

I can't even explain what came over me but once I recognized The Hunger feeling in my tummy, there was an explosion of images in my mind. Images of pink, fatty leg bits and big, gummy mouth bits and drooly smiles and ohgodhelpmebabysmellnomnom!

I started rehearsing how I'd tell Gray when he got home from work. How could I make it as awesome as the first time? I didn't even have a "My Daddy Rocks" bib this time, ya'll! Would I skip class to tell him? Veronica & Co. were already headed into the cities for the holiday and would be at the house by the time Gray got home from work. I should tell him before! Definitely before!

I practiced telling my professor why I had to miss class (she was understanding and congratulatory, if you were wondering). I counted the months from my approximation of when I may have conceived and realized we'd be having a summer baby. August, actually. I thought what a perfect month that was to have a new baby.

And that's when I decided I needed to take a pregnancy test. Just to be sure.

So once I'd decided it was kind of, sort of, not really but maybe possible that I could be pregnant, then I started finding other "evidence" to support my theory. Like that we had sex once. And that I missed a couple of days of the pill and didn't start my period.

And BECAUSE I SAID SO.

It was the oddest experience, buying a pregnancy test this time. Last go-round, probably because of all the sex I was having, I felt like the cashier was judging my whoredome and sizing up whether or not I was old enough to be a good mother. This time? It was almost like she rolled her eyes and though, "Girl, puleeeeeze. You ain't pregnant! You be on the pill. Why you be wasting this money? Psh!" Oddly, she was an elderly white woman.

And you know what? She was totally right. I even fucking donated a dollar to juvenile diabetes at the counter thinking maybe that would be a sign of my pregnant-ness. How many people who deprive the kids of a dollar and then go home and piss on a stick and then really regret it? DOZENS, at least.

But no. I wasted that damn dollar on those damn kids, and they're not even mine!! On the up-side, I can get wasted tomorrow without all those pesky developmental side effects.

It Appears I've Become the Kind of Girl Who Asks the Internet for Decorating Advice

I'm totally obsessed with weddings right now, thanks to the bouquet incident, a fact which is both pathetic and inappropriate, and therefore perfectly in keeping with my character.

Apparently I'm making my co-workers uncomfortable by assigning them personal attendant duties (someone has to wipe my ass, I won't be able to reach it through the layers of taffeta) and detailed instructions for the bridal showers they are responsible for planning (of course I want 10,000 white doves to perform on a tiny stage made of clouds. This IS my ((second)) BRIDAL SHOWER, dammit, and I ((probably)) won't ever be getting married again ((again)).

My girlfriends are begging me to find a project that does not involve researching the different variations of butter cream frosting. Gray is begging me to stop looking at tuxedos (apparently he is opposed to wearing a lavender bowtie, but if there's one with SKULLS on it, hook the brotha up!) and come back to bed, it's 3:00 a.m. for the love of god, who am I planning to marry, the goddamn Man in the Moon?

For some reason, everyone feels I should actually get engaged before they spend any time or money planning my wedding. Selfish, huh?

Because I'm so selfless and giving, I've decided to carry on wedding plans in secret (plans which must involve embezzlement in some form, because CHRIST have you seen how much fucking CAKES cost these days?!), and concentrate my visible energies into choosing new paint colors for the living and dining rooms at Longfellow Deeds.

The color of the walls isn't bad. The problem now is that there are many spots that need to be touched up, and I don't have any of the matching paint to use. Plus, I kind of want a new color scheme that ties the living room, dining room and "eggplant" kitchen together, and that makes the GORGEOUS new tile around the fireplace sizzle. I installed that myself. God, I'm awesome.

See the pretty blues and grays?

The tile is EXTREMELY blue in person, especially in dim lighting.

My idea is to use one of the paler, grayish blues from the tile to paint the living room walls and a darker, slate-y blue from the tile to paint the fireplace surround and the dining room. The trim and mouldings will remain white throughout the house.

The couch is beige.

Clearly, since my midterms, papers, class presentations, job, car trouble, baking, cooking, cleaning and fall yard work aren't enough to keep me busy, I NEED A PROJECT. Painting seems the saftest, although I've also considered making some formal drapes like these.

But...but.....BUT!!! What colors should I choose? Should I tape off the barrel vault and paint the ceiling, or leave the huge mass of OH SO WHITE up there? The rug is about as maroon as a rug can get, as is the front door (kinda), so what to do with those?!

Keep in mind, this house belongs to Veronica, not us. We are forbidden from doing what Gray wants to do, which is to paint every square inch black and then have a muralist recreate a biblical hades scene on the ceiling. If we could somehow work real brimstone into the design, he'd be down with that, but he'll settle for a CD of screams set to "repeat".

Please help me think of options! Or you might wake up tomorrow with a really bad hangover and a brand new, crazy Minnesotan wife.

Yes, I DO realize that's redundant.

Chewin' On That T-Bone In the Sky

R.I.P. Bailey

We miss you already, Stinkpot.

The Trouble With Trusting A Fart...

Before we get started, let me remind you that there is still time to enter my blogiversary giveaway!

I debated long and hard about whether to share this story with you all because...well...it's pretty fucked up and due the nature of this revelation, many of you will have a hard time looking me square in the eyes from this moment forward. I must admit, that's no great loss to anyone, but it will make me uncomfortable because then you'll be forced to focus directly on my schnoz, and that like doesn't happen enough already, asshole.

On the other hand, I am sure many of you will high-five me and declare, "This brave, self-less woman had the courage to crawl into the stinking depths of my inner being, grasp the sinewy tail of my darkest demon, and to wrench it free of my soul and out into the light of the day where it will melt and scream in agony! You, Cat, are my fucking hero!"

Or maybe not.

I even went to Facebook for help: Cat "wonders if there's REALLY such a thing as "too much information". I think people want to know, you know? Do they? I do. TELL ME."

To which everyone responded, "Yes there is such as thing as TMI, but we still want to know anyway." So basically yes. But no.

In the end, I opted out of sharing the story. It is the only way to retain the solitary shreds of my self-respect and dignity. This revelation is better left untold, a secret among many, hidden from the prying, judging eyes of the Interweb.

And then I remembered this post, wherein the last of my dignity up and bailed on me back in December. So now I figure, what the hell? Why not. It might make someone incredibly uncomfortable, and I've been known to go to great lengths to cause discomfort.

So here you go. You're welcome and I'm sorry.

I remember this time, it must have been in 9th grade, when my best friend Sara came from Virginia to stay with me for a week during summer break. We were too young to drive, and thus spent most of our days slathered in facial masks, painting our toe nails, calling Josh Wright on the telephone, and video recording every single second of our time together. And no, it was not the sexy kind of video, perverts.

We arranged to be dropped off at the movie theater to see some flick and meet some boy, and therefore had to stand outside and wait for my mom to come and pick us up after the movie was over. Of course, Sara and I did our best to "lean sexily" against the side of the building, and "appear to be older than we were", because of the things that matter, those are the two which matter most to ninth grade girls at the movie theater.

As we stood there in the hot night air, leaning our little hearts out against the brick wall of the building, we noticed two elderly couples exit the theater doors together and make their way down the sidewalk towards us. It was obvious that the couples were together, on some kind of a double-date, and all four of them were laughing: hysterical, belly-style laughter. Santa Clause laughter.

We were never able to glean the source of their mirth, be it the movie they just saw or some other instance of hilarity. They shuffled slowly along, whooping and hollering and crying and occasionally leaning against the wall to catch their breath, which is what I presumed one of the old ladies was doing when she stopped and braced herself against the wall.

Except that instead of catching her breath, she spread her legs and peed.

PEED!

She just let her bladder go right there on the sidewalk in front of god and fucking everyone. Which caused the troop of gay old friends to laugh EVEN HARDER.

Needless to say, my friend and I were beyond horrified at this spectacle, unable in our youth to imagine a time when our own bladder might fail us or a situation which might call for such extreme public humiliation. Perhaps even worse was the response of the old woman's date, who simply gripped her arm when she had finished watering the cement and steered her on down the sidewalk, all of them still laughing and bellowing to beat the damn band.

We stared after them, jaws unhinged and resting on our shoes, watching as they reached the car and the woman spread her legs once again and finished off her business right then and there behind the car door. It seemed to me that there were gallons - neigh, OCEANS! - of piss coursing out of that old woman. It was a sight to behold.

Then she gathered up her skirt, got into the backseat of the car, and they drove away.

I didn't sleep for a fucking week, let me tell you. There is nothing so terrifying to a teenager as the thought of growing old and losing control of your body. It simply cannot be, this "aging" thing you speak of. Look at me! I'm perky and elastic-y and simply fucking glowing with the light of a thousand unicorns! I will never be that old. Right? RIGHT!!??

And so now you might understand why, when recently I made a stop in the restroom to pee, I had a stroke and died on the toilet when I...saw.the.SKID MARK.

I literally floated up out of my body and looked down upon my soiled garments and thought, "Whose ass is that? Surely that is another person's ass. For my ass would never behave in such a manner. I demand to know whose ass I am wiping!"

And when finally I accepted that it was, in fact, MY ass, the memory of that old lady and her oceans of piss flashed before my eyes and I realized, maybe for the very first time, that I will one day clutch my belly as uncontrollable laughter causes me to shit myself in the movie theatre while on a date with a prostate cancer survivor in a toupee, and probably with a prescription for Viagra that he often confuses with his styptic tablets.

After this realization, I sent my grandmother a package of diapers and a sympathy card.*

*Actually, the first thing I did was text Gray because he was having a really bad day. And suddenly he realized that his day wasn't so bad anymore because at least he had clean boxers. And then I told Veronica, whose response was, "Are you actually TELLING ME THIS?"

Now I Want To Make Him Into A Hat

All of the wild animals in our back yard are turning white. WHITE. I'm pretty sure there's a serial Animal Bleacher running amok in the Longfellow neighborhood, and I'm going to DO something about it.

I cannot stand idly by, waiting for some kind of Cruella De Ville wanna-be to destroy another innocent woodland creature's chances of hooking up with other woodland creatures. STRIPES WERE MADE BY GOD, people. It's just not natural to take that away from them. It's all they have: they eat acorns, for christ's sake.

And I'll be damned if I'll let a white (animal) supremacist infect the superior, liberal group-think of our closely knit, bluer than balls, upper-middle class community by heartlessly and repeatedly dunking helpless animals in a giant vat of bleach. Or maybe it's peroxide. EITHER WAY. It's just wrong.

I began noticing the problem a few weeks ago when I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Albino Squirrel. At first, I thought he was a Swiffer Dust Wand, just blowing in the breeze, so I almost chased him down and snatched him up for use inside the house. I'm on a budget, don't judge me.

But do you see? THAT RIGHT THERE is what the government likes to call RACIAL PROFILING. It happens even to the best of us. I've made my peace with my faults.

Recently, I began seeing other albino squirrels and then I realized that maybe there is a whole family of blind, white squirrels and that they're crowding out the regular old grey squirrels which is totally possible because when I was in Vancouver, all I saw were black squirrels, GIANT ones, and it was sort of ironic because I don't remember seeing any black people the whole time we stayed in the city, but now that I think about it, it totally makes sense because Vancouver is surrounded by all that ocean and everyone knows home boys can't swim.

So remember when I told you about the raccoon? Well, I didn't mention this part because it sounded so ludicrous at the time that I wanted to spare Gray's reputation and only post about the fact that the raccoon scared the manhood out of him, but now that I know that a serial Animal Bleacher is on the loose, I feel it's my duty to flesh out these details. I didn't tell you the part of the story where Gray exclaimed that the raccoon was white. Like ALL white.

Being the rational, animal-color-knowing woman that I am, I said, "Psh. It must have been a opossum." (Now that I typed "opossum", I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use "a" or "an" in front of it because I know you use "an" when the word starts with a vowel, but in this case the vowel is silent, and it sounds funny to say "an opossum" out loud. God, English is hard.)

But he insisted that it was, in fact, a WHITE raccoon. I was convinced he was mistaken. Until last night. (Pretend there's dramatic music emphasizing my suspense-filled pause right here...)

Last night, I was sitting on the deck with Gray & Veronica* when I heard a creeping noise from the direction of the driveway, which I immediately assumed what the sound of the devil coming to take my soul, but when I strained my eyes into the darkness...a pair of yellow eyes strained back, and everyone knows the devil's eyes are red, so clearly it was some kind of animal.

Gray also heard the noise and when he turned to look, the animal's head popped briefly up so that all three of us could see that it was a gigantic WHITE raccoon.

I raced to get a flashlight so that I could seek out this mysterious creature and marvel at it's lack of markings, and just as I knelt on the ground with my face under the deck, Veronica decided she wanted to stomp from above and "scare it out". AT MY FACE.

I quickly abandoned my raccoon-level post and retreated to bed, but as I lay in the darkness, those glowing raccoon eyes haunted me. "Help me, I've been bleached by a madman," they said. "I am no longer welcome at home and must live amongst the herd of albino squirrels across the street. THEY EAT ACORNS," those eyes said.

Then and there, I resolved to stop the monster that is stripping the Longfellow creatures of their respective markings. Whoever he is - whatever he may be capable of - I will find him and I will put an end to his twisted games.

And then possibly I might have him color my hair. I don't know, we'll have to see how it plays out.

*So I asked out landlady-slash-roomie what she wanted me to use as her anonymous blog name (obviously, nobody wants to be associated with this particular blog), and she came up with Veronica. I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to write her as the Archie version or the Mars version.