Grinning lobsters and Teeth Vomit (I have GOT to stop drinking before bed)

I may have had what qualifies as the WORST DREAM EVER last night.

I should tell you I have never been a good sleeper.

Between the ages of 8 and 13 I both walked and talked in my sleep regularly. I would scare my girlfriends by sitting up straight in the middle of the night and holding entire conversations with Abraham Lincoln with my eyes wide open.

Once, my mom looked out the window just in time to see me walking into the woods behind our house. When she got to me, I told her I was going to the Mother Ship. Then I started crying. (My grandmother filled my head with a lot of alien talk as a child. Don’t be jealous that I’m one of the “star people” chosen to leave the planet on a shiny space low-rider and lead a new planet of space people, who she always described as being something of hybrids between Lady GaGa and Noam Chomsky. No! Crazy does not run in my family…)

Now I have chronic insomnia. Which is OK because I can stay up late finding gem YouTube videos like the one above or playing Obechi and shouting things at my computer like, “Yeah bitch! Who’s a tricky little polka dot now?”

Apparently I have a lot of rage. AND I have a lot of bad dreams.

In this dream, I was prego. Like really gross pregs where your belly is so big and your skin is stretched so tightly it reminds you of that moment right before a marshmallow bursts because you put it in your microwave on a Saturday night because you drank too much wine and no one is calling and it seems like the only thing that can possibly fix the sadness of this situation is a s’more, but you just end up cleaning sticky sugar off of everything and sobbing a little, because really marshmallows have no business in the microwave.

Anyway, during this obvious night terror, my boss was telling me that she had talked to everyone in the department and decided that they wouldn’t be allowing me to move to Minneapolis. She was saying things like: “We just don’t see you as very valuable” and “We hate your clothes.”

And we were sitting in what I swear was a Red Lobster. And the lobsters in the tank were grinning at me. And I started crying and I couldn’t stop crying and I got up to use the restroom and kept banging this gigantic belly against tables and knocking over people’s fancy “table wine” and they would just stare at me like drones with crumbs of those delicious cheesy garlic biscuits all over their faces. And when I got to the bathroom I started throwing up teeth!

Awful, right?

What does this mean?? Discuss!

Work at home: Take one

My office is closed today due to severe weather.

Now, I know I’m going to feel really bad when I hear that some sweet old lady got stuck in the mud for nine hours and had to eat her way out or someone’s darling Pit Bull got washed away with the flood waters, but seriously: I live in Phoenix, it rained, and they closed my office. As a gal who grew up in the Snow Belt, in a place so rainy that I could count the sunny days in a year on my fingers and toes, I just cannot wrap my head around this. If I had a nickel for every time I explained what a tornado warning was yesterday I’d have … 20 cents.

Anyway, being the lemons to lemonade kind of girl I am (that is not true) I decided to use this day at home to prove just how productive I can be in a work remote situation. (See yesterday’s post for why.)

I will document how this goes today.

6:30 – Alarm. Convince myself that I don’t need to get up yet and that I wouldn’t really get up at this time even if I WAS going into the office, so I should probably sleep another hour.

7:30 – Alarm. Again. This time I hum along to the ringtone of shmexxxy Matt Berninger singing “So Far Around the Bend,” stretch, kiss Barksdale on the head, rub his weird hairless belly for a minute, and think to myself, “Let’s do this woman!”

8 – Make coffee. Wash face. Consider shower and clothes. Decide not showering and staying in scrub pants and Modest Mouse t-shirt is one of my benefits for working at home.

8:30 – Start this blog post. Tell myself this will be a motivator to do something today, because how embarrassing would it be to have to admit to all of you that I ate peanut butter right out of the jar with a big spoon and watched Everybody Loves Raymond in my PJs all day?

8:45 – Eat peanut butter right out of the jar with a big spoon. It sounded good, OK? Don’t judge me! Breakfast is the most important meal.

9:07 – Realize I haven’t started working yet. Shiz. I have had A LOT of coffee, though.

12:09 – Go me! Three hours working. Drafted website copy for a giving appeal I’m developing with adorable babies on Valentine’s for that upcoming nasty holiday. Check. Drafted thank you letter in anticipation of all the generous donations we will receive. Check. Checked email and responded. Posted to company Twitter and FB accounts. Check and check! Rewarding myself with lunch break out of this apartment!

12:11 – Realize I never showered. Staying in for lunch. Mmmmaybe showering. Let’s not get too ambitious.

1:05 – Contemplate cocktail. Decide on getting back to work. (Still not showered).

2 – ish (yeah, that’s where we’re at with this) – Working like a good drone. Then decide that the fact that I’m still technically in bed, even though I’ve been working is making me feel like a miserable bum. This will not do. Get distracted looking at cute home office furniture online …

2:30 -- Back to work. Home stretch. That I’m still not showered is increasingly annoying. Grossing myself out.

4:12 – Can’t take it anymore. Shower time. Maybe bath. So I can multi-task by catching up on 30 Rock while getting’ clean. A good work at home lady knows how to juggle important tasks.

4:42 – No longer smelly or greasy. All of my major work “to dos” were accomplished. It’s Friday, is it so bad to wrap it up early?

So, this didn’t go so bad. I’ve learned some things. I think morning showers are still a good idea. Makes me feel more human. And a coffee or lunch break out of my bedoffice is necessary. Otherwise, there’s way more talking to myself than is acceptable, especially while I’m wearing scrub pants. I look like a mental ward patient. In all, productive day. I can do this, for sure.

Fellow WAH-ers, please share tips for getting it done away from the office. Please and thank you.

Inner Mean Girl Smackdown

I have spent a lot of my life psyching myself out of doing things I want to do because I think I can’t. Or that I’ll be a big ol’ failure. Or that people will laugh at me -- which is a ridiculous thought for a lady who falls down as much as I do.

About two years ago, after some of those Big Moments that make the “Life is short” thing really sink in, I decided to stop that. I decided that, hell, if I wanted to join the roller derby, then dammit, I would. Yes, I’m barely pushing 5’2”. Yes, I’m barely 110 fully clothed in winter. Yes, I haven’t worn a roller skate since Red Red Wine was in heavy rotation on the radio (do people still say “radio"?) That adventure ended horribly, to be sure, but …

I digress. It hasn’t been easy to adopt this new attitude. Anyone who has made it to 30 with something of a perfectionist outlook on life looks at the N-word as the dirtiest one there is. And I mean “No.” Get yer mind outta the gutter.

Why is “no” such a scary word? Why can’t we just hear “no” or “I don’t agree” or “I don’t feel the same way” or “Your body will never be capable of doing that so please stop before you kill yourself,” process it and move on to the next thing?

My friend, Martini, likes to say that we each have an Inner Mean Girl who likes to tell us “no” or to whisper sweet nothings about how we aren’t enough – pretty, skinny, funny, smart, flexible, whatever. It’s the voice that tells you you can’t without a logical reason.

Well friends, I’ve been bitch slapping that lady around lately. This week we had our latest throwdown and I think I’m the winner. And it’s part of the big changes I hinted at yesterday.

Y’all know I have a BF, VC, who lives a real far way away. Well, that sucks.

Other things that suck: dirt, cactus, snakes, 127 degree weather, sweat, Scottsdale, endless suburbs, ruined high heels due to melted asphalt, astronomical rent, dry air, hipsters, $15 martinis, Ed Hardy, serious lack of decent music, people who take PTO because it might rain.

So, I started thinking about moving eastward. Because thems my roots and I miss them. But I wasn’t very serious about it. But then, I was. That was my 20 second recap of my thought process over the last four months. You’re welcome.

Job hunting should have been on my list of things that suck. I tried that. Again, wasn’t too serious, then was. (are we sensing a pattern?) Then I had a wild idea. I’m really good at my job. And my company really likes me. And I work on a computer and phone with so little face-to-face contact that sometimes I have whole conversations in my office WITH MYSELF and no one notices.

So, why couldn’t I do my job from Minneapolis?

Inner Mean Girl: Woman, that’s so crazy. Why would they do that? They’ll just find somebody else to put her lumpy butt in that chair of yours.

Me: Your mom!

So, after about a week of mulling it over and talking it out with my Mirror Self countless times, I went to my supe with my thoughts – AND she totally agreed. I am an asset! They would like to work something out!

So details are being worked out and I don’t want to be premature (and I’ll keep you posted!), but I feel this is a time of triumph over NO and I’m super excited.

I’m curious about your experiences with the N-word. Are you all as scared of it as I’ve been? And what have you accomplished when you’ve pushed past that fear??

My Love Harder (re)post. And, I'll never neglect you again (maybe)

So, I wouldn't be surprised if no one is really reading this blog anymore. I have been woefully neglectful of it.

I guess the reasons I started it -- to fill up time in my sad single life, to share plain old awful dating stories, to laugh at myself so I didn't cry (too much) -- just aren't the focus of my life right now.

I do have some big changes happening. And, after some great news on the writing front (details to come, I hope!) and a fantastic conversation with a writer friend who may not know just how much he lit a fire under this wee behind, I have made a resolution to write more. However, I think it will look really different from this existing blog. I'll probably even change the name (and I am taking suggestions!!) I hope you'll consider still reading. Purty please. With sugar and stuffs?

In the meantime, I know I'm way behind, but I was inspired by Shine Out Loud today to repost this message.

I recently told someone just how much I cared about him kind of out of the blue. Well, maybe to him ... not me. Ain't that the way is works? It was nerve-wracking and I definitely had many "Oh shit, why the hell did I just do that???" moments as soon as it was out there in the universe.

I did it for this reason: Because you never know what's going to happen tomorrow, as cliche as that saying is. It's completely true. And when we don't take the moments to tell someone how awesome they are, we might not get them back. So, please read this and tell the people in your life how swell you think they are whenever you can.

My friends think I'm that crazy girl who sends flowers for no reason, or invites them over for impromptu dinner parties, or mails them a diorama, or whatev. But, as long as I know them, they'll never have to wonder about how I feel about them.

So, I think it's super awesome how the blogosphere banded together to send happy thoughts to some people who really needed them!
Please read Brandy's story below and send her and her sweetie happy thoughts! And check out Cleveland's A Plum to see some of what has happened since Brandy's December post.

My name is Brandy. And I have a blog.
And a plea.
I use my blog to showcase the crazy I meet everyday, share the stories of the kids I teach, and document my love for tequila, dairy products and the abdominal muscles of Ryan Reynolds.
Rarely do I talk about personal issues on my blog– as personal as the dude that I adore. But I need your help. And it involves my dude.
He’s a guy who made math comics for my class, so they would love learning about addition. He’s the guy who sends my friends gift cards when they are having hard times, who remembers every story I ever told him, who was the first person I celebrated with when I got a teaching job.
He’s the guy who sent flowers to me at school– dozens of my favourite pink roses just because he loves me. He’s a guy who has spent a year patiently explaining (and re-explaining) everything there is to know about football during the important games when silence is preferred.
He’s made me word puzzles and comics and stayed up late playing Scrabble with me (even though I beat him almost every time). He’s listened to me cry about school and family and jobs. He is everything I never knew I needed and everything I always knew I wanted.
I realize this all sounds dramatic, a Lifetime movie in the making– but this is life. Right now. And I’m throwing away any hint of ego and am humbly asking for you to pray or think kind thoughts. If you are able to pass this on, thank you.
This isn’t a call for sympathy or a plea for pity. It’s just one girl hoping you can think positive thoughts for the person she adores. If my current heartache provides you with anything, let it be the reminder that life is short, love is unbending and no one knows what could happen next.
Thank you for reading this, and if you haven’t already? Please tell someone you love them today.
I did.

And guess what? I lurve all of you, too! Write me notes! I miss you.