Holy CRAP, it's cold!

E-mail to a friend-

...

I can't believe I'm whining about 60 degrees, but dayam, it's cold in here.

I shot myself in the eye with parmesan cheese from my Caesar salad. No, I don't know how in the hell I managed that. I have the coordination of a blind, three-legged bulldog with a sinus infection. Opposable thumbs are wasted on me. For future reference, parmesan cheese in the eye is not comfortable.I also had penne with prosciutto, olives and sundried tomatoes in a parmesan cream sauce. A LOT of penne. I now look like this:



And I'm still gonna eat the baklava I ordered, too. Then I'll probably explode and they'll find me in a week when the house starts to stink. My cats will have taken to gnawing on my digits for survival. It will be all over the papers. I'll be the exploded pasta-and-cat-lady.

I won't be the crazy cat lady, though, because the woman who lives in the brownstone on the end of my row already has that title. She has five cats on one floor, four (or six, or something) on another floor, then more cats and some dogs on the main floor. I'm guessing that the basement is just where she stores the cat litter. The neighbors in the brownstone next door to her don't like her because they can smell her house from their house. The other reason that they don't like her is because she's crazy. I've met her. She is. I told the Indian guy next door that she scared me. She scared my movers, even, and they were mostly big scary Russian dudes with tattoos on their necks and their knuckles. Did I tell you that one of them peed all over my upstairs toilet and didn't even flush? He was nasty. And American. The Russians didn't pee on my stuff.

So anyhoo, I have to tell you about this guy on the train tonight. I was coming home and was waiting for the N train in the station at 59th and Lex. I'm standing there reading Time magazine and looking mean so nobody steals my shit or gets in my personal space bubble. Okay, I wasn't looking that mean, 'cause I was reading and listening to music and I'd just had a massage and was feeling all happy and limber. Apparently my butt was tight today, because K--- (the massage therapist) damned near put a fist-dent into my left asscheek trying to work out a knot. She even "wow"ed over it. She's been my massage therapist for over two years, so I guess she gets geeked when I have a knot in a new place. No, not "happy ending" geeked; she's a nice straight girl from Ohio who can't eat dairy. Just geeked that I've brought her a fresh challenge. Yeah, I know, that has nothing to do with the subway guy. Back to the story (my train of thought tends to derail like it just ran over a suicidal homeless guy holding a vat of corn oil, I swear).

I'm reading my magazine and listening to my NOT-AN-IPOD mp3 player and in my peripheral sight (which, as you know, we city-dwellers hone until we have a 240-degree field of vision), I see a suit kinda sidestepping over to my imaginary-line-boundaried section of the platform. I ignore him, of course. He could have leprosy eating away at his face and I wouldn't know because I'm NOT GONNA LOOK AT YOU, PERVERT-IN-A-SUIT-TRYING-TO-HIT-ON-ME-IN-THE-TRAIN-STATION. I just knew that's what kind of sidestepping it was; it's different from regular "fuck, this platform's getting crowded" sidestepping. It was 7:00 PM in midtown, for crying out loud. Pleeeenty of room on the platform, and I don't take up much space, so it's not like he was forced into proximity with me. I could see the whites of his eyes flickering (via my superhuman city bitch peripheral vision) because he was looking at me. You know what I mean; it's just one of those things you pick up on subconsciously.

The N train comes screaming into the station because the MTA only hires maniacs to drive the trains. The on-the-job-sleepers they put in the booths so you have to rap on the glass to wake 'em up when you need an updated map.

Seriously, see? I don't make this shit up.





Okay, that was another derailment. Back to the suit who may or may not have leprosy eating his face.

I can tell this guy thinks I'm gonna head for the right-hand car from where I'm standing, and he starts to step in that direction. I, being the hardass (literally! yay!) that I am, immediately circle to the left and get into that car instead. Suddenly I see a flash of doe-brown and suit guy comes diving into the train behind me. I take the seat immediately to the left of the doors (it's one of the three-butt-divot seats) and he takes the divot on the other end of the seat. There's one neon orange plastic butt-divot between us.

More eye-white flashing. I know he's looking at me. I move my hair to the left side so I can't see him doing it anymore, but then it starts hanging in my face and I can't read about Muslims in Europe who want all Americans to die in a horrible fashion, so I move it again.

More eye-white. Okay, fine, motherfucker, I'll fucking LOOK at you.

I glance over at the guy. Sho'nuff, he's looking at me.

I go back to reading about Muslims.

I feel him still looking. I glance over again. Yup, still looking at me. To cover for the fact that I just checked to see if he was still looking, I now look across the car and watch a fat guy with duck lips wiping something on his suit pants. I think it was eye boogers, because he had his glasses off and his hand was coming down from his (duck-lipped) facial area when I first looked over. More wipey-wipe from duck lips. I snort and go back to the Muslims. Now, of course, I'm not comprehending anything I'm reading because eye-white guy is still looking at me.

The train pulls into the 42nd St. station and eye-white guy gets up to get off the train. I'm happy because now I'll be able to read about Muslims without having to worry about some aging frat boy trying to find a suave way to hit on me on the subway. Maniac MTA train driver apparently decides to take his sweet slow time pressing the damned button to open the fucking doors, because they're not opening, and I can still feel eye-white looking at me. I look over. Yup, still looking at me. Then eye-white gives me a big-ass smile. Well, that really is very nice, and flattering and all that stuff, and I'm safe 'cause he's gonna get off the train anyway, so I give him a quick smile and go back to the Dutch Muslims. Eye-white dude is gripping the pole waiting for the door to open. He's gripping it with his left hand. Which has a nice gold ring on the third finger. Yeah, I smelled that ring when we were still back at 59th St., you putz. What, do I have "fuck me, I don't care about your wife and bratlets 'cause I'm a big WHORE" written on my forehead? Go home and boink Muffy missionary-style while she bitches about the broken toilet; I'm reading about world events here, dammit.

Of course, after he got off the train, I decided that he was actually looking at me the whole time because I had a big black smear of subway grease on my forehead or something. (Must've been 'cause of all that "'cause I'm a big WHORE" crap written on my forehead.)

Because that has really happened to me before (not the big whore thing, the subway grease smear on my forehead thing), but that's another story.

So now I spend the rest of the ride freaking out every time I catch somebody looking at me because I'm convinced I've got crap on my forehead or my massage therapist smeared my lipstick all over my face or something. Of course, I won't pull out a mirror and LOOK, because I don't want these people who think I'm a dumbass with a smear on her face to also think that I'm a VAIN dumbass with a smear on her face. Besides, when this Asian girl started plucking her nose hairs with tweezers, I was so fascinated by the fact that she was doing this that I forgot about my smeared face. She didn't even flinch. She'd just stare into her little mirror, locate a target nose-hair and yank that fucker right out. It was like a car wreck; I just had to look. Okay, yeah, another derailment. So anyway...

I didn't have anything on my face. He was just a dink.

Mmm, baklava...

I'm such a loser...and my cat gets piss shivers

Yeah, this was an e-mail, as well. I swear there's more to my life than my frigging cats. Honest.
...

Okay, so this speaks volumes about my inability to filter even the most mundane detail of my life out of conversations with others, but since I just literally stood in my hallway laughing for five minutes, I had to share...

I had locked the computer for the night and was headed downstairs to do, I don't know, whatever the hell I do when it's too late to go out and do anything but too early to begin the nightly battle with sleep. As I was about to go downstairs, I realized that I needed to clean the catbox, so I did the pathetic-cat-lady scoop-the-poop thing and went to get more litter to put into the box. When I came back, Jacka the Hut was squatting in the box peeing like an Irishman the morning after an all-night green-beer bender. There was a looooong gushing sound, then a series of squirt-pause-squirt. Pause. Squiiirt. Pause...tinysquirt. Pause-squirt. Squirt.

That alone probably would have cracked me up, but what really sent me over the edge was that the entire time while I'm standing there with the container of fresh litter waiting for him to get out of the box, he's peeing and making what I can only describe as kissy-faces. He's puckering up his mouth like he's about to air-kiss Kathy Hilton, and he's doing it over and over again, roughly timed to coincide with the pause-squirts. I think he was offended that I was standing there laughing like hell at him. He gave me a dirty look afterwards.

I'm so pathetic.

Kids Love Me!

This is an e-mail I sent to a friend.
...


So, I was about to head down to the corner store to get beer (I'm nurturing the drunken Viking plunderer-cum-seeding-of-the-Celts portion of my genetic heritage today)...
My retard cats have decided that since they now have an entrance directly to the street, that they are Great White Hunters and that the outside world must be explored and pillaged. Their 'pillaging' consists of me putting them on leashes (gawd, that's so pathetic, but to assuage my 'cat lady' fears, I tell myself that lots of people in New York put their cats on leashes) so that when they decide to tear off as fast as their fat asses can move them, I'll have a way to pull them back in.

When they saw me headed for the front door, they glued themselves to my ankles, so I stuck the leashes on 'em and opened the door. They were about to go ripping down the stairs until they noticed that a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom) and her two munchkins were down on the sidewalk. Jacob, my incredibly ancient scrawny runt who rules the herd, walked right out (he doesn't get a leash because he is well-trained and won't take off and is too damned old to do so anyway) to investigate. Natasha, the Maine Coon slut who bares her belly at anybody who so much as looks at her, strolled out and began lolling at the top of the steps so that she could listen to all of the "ooh, pretty gatos!" praise coming from the street. Jack, the lardass Siamese (seriously, he's an ox; he makes the dog downstairs look like a malnourished sewer rat in comparison) was immediately crippled by fear of the little boy standing there and crouched by the door with his pupils blown up to the size of frisbees.

To make an already long story short, Robbie (the little boy, who is two-going-on-three) was not only totally enamored of the critters, but decided to follow me back into the house when I put the "gatos" back inside because he wanted to stay with the crazy cat lady. The little girl (seven months old) showed me her two teeth in a giddy series of happy "ooh, new lady to look at" grins as I steered her older brother by holding onto the top of his head and turning him in the direction of the door.

I have a tendency to steer little kids like that. I'm not sure you're actually supposed to do that to them, but they always seem to get a kick out of it and their parents never seem to get pissed, so I just keep doing it. Of course, it's probably the fact that I grab 'em by the tops of their heads and start moving them around like weebles that makes them then follow me wherever I go. Anyway, little Robbie threw a classic writhing, squalling temper tantrum when his mom came up and brought him back downstairs so that I could go get my beer to support my dissipated wino lifestyle. Then he followed me to my mailbox and wanted to come inside again. I knew it was true love. I finally got him to go with his mom by promising that he could come back to see the gatos tomorrow but that they (the cats, not the smidgets) had to go to bed now (which, aside from eating and shitting, is pretty much all they do anyway [again, the cats, not the kids, although that's pretty much what kids do, too, aside from enamoring themselves of strange neighbor ladies]), telling him that I was leaving and then starting to walk down the street.

[Editor's note: Holy crap, can I produce run-on sentences, or what?]

When I came back from the store, the mom and her kids had gotten as far as the corner. I waved at the little boy and said, "Bye, Robbie!" He had already forgotten who I was and stood there completely baffled as to how I knew his name. If I hadn't felt like the now-scary "lady who stays home all day and only goes out to get booze", I'd probably have stood there laughing my ass off, but I figured that I should get myself and my brown paper bag back home before I scarred the poor kid with premature exposure to Beck's.
Yeah, I leave a real lasting impression. He just wants me for my cats. Story of my life.

Stuff I would have thought was obvious

Originally posted (by me, duh) on Craig's List Rants & Raves on 5/11/05
...

Now, y'all are free to ignore any of the below, 'cause god knows a lot of you already do, but what follows are a few helpful instructions I once never would have seen myself feeling the need to distribute.

1. If you have foot/nail fungus, don't wear sandals. Or at least wear socks with 'em. Yeah, you'll look like a tourist (or my grandpa). So what? At least you won't see people like me making little retch-faces when they glance down and notice that ghastly yellow-clawed thing you call a toe. And if you have dirty feet, wash 'em. Six months' worth of grime crusted under your toenails is NOT sexy, and when you make those "hey, you're kinda cute," googly eyes at me, I'm just gonna wrinkle my nose at you like you smell bad. Because your feet sure as hell do.

2. If you fart on the train, don't think nobody knows it was you. I knew it was you, you nasty motherfucker. I felt the little puff of warm air from your ass, 'cause it was six inches away from my head. That's not funny. No it isn't. What are you, in fourth grade? It ISN'T. Would you fart on your mom's head? Okay, then go fart on her head instead of mine next time.

3. If you accidentally run into somebody on the street, apologize. You might just improve somebody's mood for the whole damned day, and then they might be nice to somebody else, who might be nice to somebody else...you get it. How much does it hurt your little vocal cords to say, "oops, sorry," anyway? Hell, you might even get a date out of it if you're cute and s/he's cute and y'all are being all cute and nice and apologetic to each other. Now, if you run into somebody on the street on purpose, that's a whole different story. You just have issues.

4. If you like to ride up the escalator and I like to walk up it, don't get pissed at me for doing what I can to keep my butt from growing out of control. My walking isn't hurting you, and I'm sure as shit not judging you (even if you do have a huge ass and could probably stand to walk up once in a while, and I'm not saying that you do), so what's the problem? Me walking up the escalator hurts you, how, exactly? I'm skinny. I'm not bumping your shit, and I'm not stepping on your feet, and I make a huge effort to hold my bags in front of me so they don't bump you, so seriously, what's the problem?

5. If you blow your nose on the sidewalk by pinching one nostril with your finger and then blowing out of the other one, don't get offended when I say, "NASTY!" It is. I can say it if I want to. If you don't want me to say it, don't blow your fucking nose on the SIDEWALK. This isn't a cornfield, and we have these things called "tissues" for sale all over this damned city. Hell, if you promise not to blow your boogers underfoot ever again, I'll BUY you the Kleenex. Forever. Seriously. Give me your address and I'll have drugstore.com deliver 'em every damned week if you want.

Ditto for the whole rumbling dredging up of lugies from what sounds like your goddamned anus and hawking 'em out right there in front of my feet. Do you know how much nasty yellow phlegm I have to step around every day? God, people, go to the doctor, because that should not be coming out of your body unless something crawled in there and died. Like a gerbil, maybe. Just swallow it. It won't kill you. The dead gerbil didn't.

6. If you're walking down the street smoking a cigarette and I walk around you, don't give me nasty looks. I'm trying to keep that monkey off my back, that's all. I don't hate you because you smoke, because I smoked. I just don't want to do it anymore, and I don't like it when your ashes blow into my eye. That stings like hell and when I get to work, people think I'm crying. Well, I am, but that's just because my job sucks.

7. If you're sitting across from me on the subway, don't try to look up my skirt. I know you're doing it, and I guarantee, you're not gonna get a crotch shot. I'm gonna start putting socks in my underwear so you think I'm a trannie if you don't cut it out. Then I'll sit there with my legs wide open, and I'll give you a big ol' drooly "come hither" grin, to boot. I still won't fuck you, though.

8. Skeezy bleached-orange-hair Wal-Mart reject who held the doors open on the train so your apparently retarded boyfriend could wander around the platform gawking at all the pretty metal and peeling paint before finally getting on so that you could then jump on him, wrap your legs around his scrawny waist and dry-hump him for three stops: don't do that. Yes, I glared at you until you got off the train. So did about twenty other people who just wanted to get the fuck HOME. Did it make you uncomfortable? Good, because the conductor telling you to let the doors close apparently wasn't enough to break through your trailer-park-inbred hormone-haze. If I want to see that kind of shit, I'll go to the Ozarks, which is apparently where you came from.

9. If I can hear your bass-thumping gangsta rap music even though BOTH of us are wearing headphones, you're going to be deaf in ten years. That is all.

10. If you walk your dog all the time because you think it will help you pick up women, it's probably not gonna work. At least you're not making those nasty kissy noises at women walking by, so you do have that going for you. And your dog is really cute. I'm still not gonna fuck you, but your dog is really cute.

11. People at the bodega whose female pit bull launched herself at me and tried to hump me horizontal over and over again as I tried to extricate myself from her paws' vice grip around my thigh: you might want to take her to the vet and ask WTF that's about. Your dog is a lesbian, and she's REALLY horny. I believe you that she never does that. Really. Uh huh. My massage therapist asked how I got the bruise on my thigh, and I really didn't want to say, "a randy pit bull tried to make me her bitch, but her tail was wagging the whole time because she's friendly."

12. Don't rub something out of your eye on the subway and WIPE THE EYE BOOGER ON THE MOTHERFUCKING POLE. I SAW that shit. I could see that thing from eight fucking feet away. Do I really need to explain why that is just WRONG?

13. Don't pick shit off your head and eat it. You know who you are. We all see you do it. You do it in meetings for Christ's sake. The worst part is that you look at it before you eat it, as if you're evaluating its tastiness. Do you really not understand why nobody wants to be around you? Take a shower more than twice a week, too. You bathe on Sundays and Thursdays. We can tell. Wednesdays SUCK in that office because of you.

14. Don't wobble down the street yammering into your cell phone and pissing off the people who are trying to get past you but can't because you're weaving like a drunken seaman on a wet poopdeck. Trust me, your conversation is about as exciting as shit in a barnyard, and the next time you do it I'm going walk really closely behind you until I freak your shit out. I might breathe really hard on the back of your neck, too. With my mouth open. After a big cup of coffee. Isn't that annoying? Well, you're the aural equivalent of coffee breath.

15. If you sit next to each other instead of on opposite sides of the train, you won't have to YELL to each other, and the rest of the passengers on the train won't know about your "babydaddy's skanky ho" and how you caught chlamydia from him because of her "triflin'" ass. Maybe you should just quit fucking him.

16. Let me out of the elevator before you rush headlong into it and give me a concussion when all I'm trying to do is drag my ass into that soul-sucking habitrail we call "work". If you let me out, then you can get in, and nobody gets hurt. Otherwise, I'm going to start wearing a hockey goalie's mask to work and headbutt the first yahoo who tries to get into the elevator while I'm still trying to get out. Then I'll stomp over to my desk and sit there all day making Darth Vader breathing sounds while hunching over a stack of papers with my arm crooked around it like schoolkids do to keep other kids from cheating off their tests. I will, of course, make sure that the mask matches my belt and shoes, because I don't want to look sloppy.

I would've made this twenty items, but I think I blew my wad for the day.

Blogs are stupid, but WTF

Sometimes I write shit that cracks me up. Sometimes I write shit that I want to keep for posterity. Sometimes I just need to dump the endlessly derailing train of thought in my head. Here's where I'm gonna do it.