In which I drive on the wrong side of the road and have trouble making friends

I can't drive.

Well, I guess I technically CAN, but I hate to and it usually makes anyone else in the car with me terribly uncomfortable.

This might have something to do with how I grip the wheel until my knuckles turn white, sweat a lot, and shriek when cars pass me too fast ... or maybe not.

I feel bad about admitting this and reinforcing to anyone the Women Are Bad Drivers stereotype. I'm just one woman, yo. But, I confess, I'm one of THOSE women.

I was going to say how I don't understand why people are fearful of being in a car with me because I'm a careful driver who hasn't had an accident since she was a rookie, yada yada.

But the other day I took my first adventure out on my own in my new sparkly city of Minneapolis to meet a friend for lunch. Said lunch was in St. Paul, which is very close but where I have never driven to before.

So, like anyone would, I mapquested the shiz out of it.

Now confident in where I was going, I set out. However, there was no road labeled CR-20, my first step. So, I went where I thought I was supposed to go. Which, as it turns out, took me on a long one-way street into downtown Mpls. From there I proceeded to:

* Drive on the wrong side of the road down a major thoroughfare
* Be lost for 15 minutes
* Be beeped at for driving too slow on the freeway
* Be beeped at for not knowing how to properly parallel park
* Run a red light
* Get lost for another 10 minutes
* Have to make no less than four u-turns because I was going the wrong way
* Park two blocks from my apartment so as to not have to attempt parallel parking again.

So, yeah ...

Phoenix is one big parking lot with six lanes in each direction. I'm adjusting to life in this big old city. But I'm loving that it's a very walkable city with better public transit than PHX. I will be hoping to keep the car parked as much as possible.

In all of that, you may have missed the point that I MADE A FRIEND and had a lovely lunch in the middle of all of this.

Being here has been a big adjustment for me. Moving from what was, essentially an adult dorm full of dozens of friends who would have dinner, play video games, drink beers any night of the week, I guess I forgot what it was like to be alone a lot.

So I was super excited when a friend of a friend suggested we get together.

Until the part of the conversation where she asked me what my hobbies are.

Dead Silence. Blank stare. More silence.

See, the thing is, like anyone, I like to look good, interesting, smart even, to new people. And the things is, I think I am smart and interesting.

But I don't really have a lot of things that would qualify as "hobbies." I don't run (again, why do people run? Where are they going? They don't look cute doing it. I don't get it.) or cycle (although I enjoy me a Sunday cruise if it ends in Bloody Mary, but alas, I am, at the moment, bike-less.) I don't take any classes or do things like make jewelry or knit sweaters.

So, when people ask me about hobbies, I always draw this dumb blank. But I do have hobbies. I write this blog. I love me some Twatter. I drink a lot. Which takes careful practice.

I mean, I drink a lot. I've realized that eating and drinking had become my primary hobbies in PHX. Every night was a HH, or a dinner with a friend, or having a friend over for dinner and wine.

So, now that I don't have that kind of gig going, I'm going to need some new hobbies. I mean, I used to have hobbies -- like painting and playing music and stuff. I can get that back, right? Or is it like once the girls go south, cuz, I'm not down for surgery.

This is where you come in. WHAT THE EFF SHOULD I DO WITH MY LIFE?

What's been fun for you all? I'll admit now, I'm not the most "active" person. And when I've tried to be, I get injured. So, rock climbing is probably out. Also, I'm temporarily terribly poor. So, like, diamond collecting is out. Dammit.

Help me. I'm bored.

And now you have to leave! And I have to live with a boy! (but not actually.)

OK kiddos. Tomorrow is the big move.

I’m not all the way packed. I’m certain what’s left is not going to fit in my car. Also, there is definitely no room for Barksdale who will probably have to ride in the IKEA bag with my sheets and pillowcases. Soooo, I’d say I’m pretty ready.

It hasn’t really sunk in that I’m moving. I think that will happen two weeks from now when I’m Overhunged and partied out and I just want to go home and sit on Martini’s couch and watch Celebrity Fit Club, eat tortilla soup and laugh uncontrollably when Tanisha Thomas starts screaming and runs into the desert for no reason except she just has so much anger because it’s really hard being part of the Bad Girls Club - and then I realize I can’t do that.

I mean, I’m very excited for all the “new stuff.” I’m an adventurer and an Urban Gypsy fo sho. And, I’m very excited to get to live in the same city as the BF – A guy I’ve “known” like three years now but never resided within 1,500 miles of.

Last night while lying in bed with my sometimes lover, Insomnia, I admit I did get sad about leaving Martini. I’m not ready to talk about it yet. I may never be ready. I’m much better with burying emotions behind bourbon and hot Cheetos than I am at discussing them.

For those who have followed this blog you know she and I have been through breakups, moves, illness, broken bones, and more together.

We’ve celebrated birthdays and new pets. We’ve taken trips, made fun of famous people – to their faces, been in movies, met new boys, skinny dipped, binge ate (and drank. Maybe. Nevermind), and countless other things. Really, we’ve practically lived together for the last year. People she works with think we’re dating. Which wouldn’t be so bad (Reason No. 341 why I wish I didn’t love the peen.)

Whenever I feel real emotions that aren’t happy ones, I usually pretend I’m a character from TV or a movie and react the way they would to a situation. Yes, that’s very normal. No, I’ve never talked to a shrink about it.

All I could think about last night was that line from Friends where Rachel has to move out so Monica can live with Chandler and they get in a big fight but really it’s because they’re both so sad and then Monica cries and says “And now you have to leave and I have to live with a BOOYYY!!!”

(I won’t be living with my boy, but still!)

So enjoy this because I’ve been feeling very Gellar today. I’ll see you when I get to Minneapolis.




P.S. It's my birthday today, so ... yeah. I'm 31. When did that happen? Will I ever stop sticking my face in birthday cake?

I'm stoic. I'm patient. I'm a rock. I miss my BF!

I don’t miss people.

That sounds awful to admit out loud, but it’s true.

As a baby, I’m told I wouldn’t leave my mother’s arms without screaming and crying and shrieking and balling up my fists and shaking them frantically until someone PUT ME BACK IN HER LOVIN’ ARMS, DAMMIT!

But after that yellow bus came to get me on the first day of kindergarten and I saw there was a new place, with new people, and fraking fingerpaints! And delicious cookies! And glorious song singing! And Jill, with the beautiful blonde pig tails! And Joey with the giant blue eyes and weird laugh!!! – Well, I just never looked back.

It used to hurt my mom and dad’s feelings that I could go away to camp or summer stock or, you know, go live in England for awhile, and when I’d come back they’d say, “Did you miss us?” and I’d say, “Nope, because listen to all the cool stuff I did! I was too busy to miss anybody.”

I’ve lived a lot of places and visited even more and been lucky to have an incredible life full of friends all over the world. Sometimes they say they miss me. Or they get teary-eyed and frownie when I leave from a visit. And I don’t GET it. I mean, I’ll see you soon, right? Or soon enough. And in the meantime, we’ll Twat and FaceSpace and I’ll send you emails with links to kittens frolicking in flowers with Star Wars music playing in the background. Or this.

AND in that same time, I’ll be busy making new friends and squeezing all the good shit out of life and collecting stories about weird Bulgarians I partied with who had gurneys in their living room and referred to people as “Fucking Cunts” as a term of endearment and drank cheap, piss-like champagne but insisted on squeezing fresh orange juice for the vodka so that the next time we get together over beers I’ll have awesome things to tell you about.

See?? There’s no reason to miss people, right?

That being said, I miss my VC.

In life, sometimes you say things, but you don’t really mean them. Like when I say your amorphous, hairy, drooly baby is cute. Or when I say I’d love to help you move. Or when I say I don’t know where I got The Herpe because really I’ve never put my lips on anything but my toothbrush. Wait ... that’s called Lying. My friends have been talking to me about this concept. (Oh, and I don’t have The Herpe. At least, I’m 99 percent sure of this. In case you want to make out. Which, I know you do.)

There were times during the last 10 months of this long distance gig where I said “I miss you” but what I really meant was, “I’d like to see you.” Or “I’d really like to have sex right now.” But I didn’t have a feeling of actually missing something. I didn’t even know what that feeling was because I don't think I had it before. I used to think it was about tears, and pining and all that stuff that's for the birds.

Well, now I know what it is. It’s still going to the party and still having fun but catching yourself thinking it would be more fun if that person was with you. It’s seeing that weird Bulgarian guy, wearing a shirt he’s cut the sleeves off of and drinking a drink he just found laying around and knowing that if that person were there you could just look at him in the eye and you’d both be thinking the SAME THING and that later you would sit on the couch and make endless jokes about it in bad accents. And that in the morning you’d wake up and get to have morning sex and all would be right with the world.

Someone has taught me how to miss things. Good work guy.

I'm ready to move.

An open letter to people who post housing on Craigslist.

Dear Craigslist landlord,

I have been frantically searching your well-crafted ads on essentially an hourly basis for the last seven days as I hunt for a suitable abode in Minneapolis.

I feel that in these seven days, I’ve become savvy with your lingo. I know that “garden level” is your way of saying I’ll be down in the creepy dark basement, nestled between the place where people store their Christmas trees and the place where people wash their dirty underpants.

I’m hip to your trickery. Like how sometimes you put things in the body of your post like “45 miles from the train that will take you to the busline that will eventually get you to Uptown” so that when I search for places in Uptown, yours comes up. EVERY time.

While I’m thankful for this free service that allows me to wade through hundreds of places that I would never even visit, let alone live, I have some tips that would make me, the Potential Future Tenant, very happy. If you are at all interested in achieving this, here is my advice:

Post a photo of the place. Unless you’re walking around with a circa 1993 car phone, chances are, you have a camera right in your pocket. Use it. Because if you don’t, the first thing I'm going to ask you is to please send a photo or 10. Because without photos, I assume the place doesn’t have a stove. Or a roof. Or that it’s under water. Or full of dead bodies. Or never even existed in the first place.

If you insist that I call you for more details, be around to answer the phone. Or maybe return a message. But also, consider this crazy thing most of us can do any time from nearly anywhere in just a few minutes time: email. I know. It’s kind of wild. But I think it’s gaining momentum. I believe my grandmother has even started using it.

Don’t say “we love pets” when what you really mean is that you will pay exactly $2,000 extra dollars if you own a pet. Because $2,000 is not really “OK” with me. $2,000 for your 500 square foot apartment that is already overpriced because it’s in the “trendy” part of town sounds like punishment. So maybe you should say something like “we’ll let you live here with your smelly little territorial mutt, but will do so grudgingly and at great cost, perhaps even peril, to you.”

And lastly, if the place has been rented, TAKE IT OFF CRAIGSLIST. It’s wasting everyone’s time if you don’t. Mine for calling. Yours for having to talk to me. (And I can be quite the talker. Especially when I'm "spite talking.")

But, if you don’t take it down and I do call, don’t act inconvenienced as if I should have magically known you rented the apartment three weeks ago to some lady with her 4 cats (that you charged her $8,000 extra for.) Because I didn’t know. I saw the ad on Craigslist and it said to call you.

Thank you ever so much for your consideration. Also, do you have any units available?

xoxo,
SG

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??