Caterwauling

I felt so good after the first time I said everything that had previously been going unsaid (due to me being a downright puss else trying to keep the peace), I think it’s high time to attempt to unwind from the stress monkey that I’ve become again.

THE FIRST HAPPY HOUR TODAY: MEETING NOAH

I just want to brag that I got to meet the beloved babalah himself, Noah. (Scroll down for photos that simply can neither contain nor fully convey the Absolute Cuteness.)

For as ridiculously, utterly adorable this kid is in photos? About 70 times more so in person. Congratulations Amalah, and thanks for letting me meet him!

If I could guarantee mine would turn out that absolutely perfect, I *might* even want to have one someday. 😉

THE SECOND HAPPY HOUR, BOTH TODAY AS WELL AS IN A SERIES INVOLVING ADULT BEVERAGES

My workplace has started organizing happy hours; we had our second one tonight.

I was there for about an hour by myself, drinking bloody marys and socializing with the regulars (serious props to the guy who was drinking beer-and-tomato-juice — not for that drink (ugh) but for getting the manager to bring me horseradish for my drink. Yum!).

In between conversations, I was scribbling errant thoughts to myself on the back of gas station receipts that I have cluttering my wallet. (I have more receipts than I do dollar bills. Sad.)

A couple of guys and gals from the office did end up showing up — five out of 200. I suppose we are going to be the “happy hour” crowd from now on. 🙂 Same place, next month — right guys?

While I had fun, of course, I found myself missing the old happy hour crowd from when I worked at Easter Seals — we didn’t make much money, but we somehow managed to drink a lot. Beer was cheaper back then, I guess. 😉

GHOST OF HAPPY HOURS PRESENT

John’s posted some photos of our recent Old Town blogmeet.

Seriously, next time I am so totally requesting that someone cover me with a llama head — I hate myself in photos. Especially when I’m sitting down. Ugh. But everyone else looks splendid, so I’ll shut up now. Thanks for posting those, John!

GHOST OF HAPPY HOURS PAST

Talk about clinging to the past — I have few photos hanging on my walls at home that were taken after that time when I worked at Easter Seals — I had the most fun of my life back then, and nearly every photo I have is of the group of friends drinking at this bar or that bar.

I was one of the major instigators (and perhaps the grand goddess of them all) when it came to getting the masses together to get drunk.

God, those were the days — Howard, the other Dawn, Rob, Lynda, Melissa, the other Melissa, Mike, the other Mike, Crystal, Chris (ah, Chris. …), the other Chris (lord, we had a lot of duplicate names!) and so many others used to join me in barhopping like the world was ending. Not like we were sober enough to notice. 😉

We used to have parties at our homes, too — Howard had the best setup, what with a full BAR in his basement, but I did OK. I always had fun cooking and cleaning for DAYS beforehand. Like, I used to take days off of work so the apartment and food would be perfect for my friends.

FUTURE HAPPY HOURS — SEND RECIPES!!!

Speaking of party foods and such, I’ve volunteered to host a “Carnival of the Recipes” for New Year’s. (See Ted’s for an example.) I’m trying to work up a theme involving party foods and holiday decadence — send me your recipes and I will feature you and hopefully send some traffic your way for the holidays!

We have a variety of kitchens at work. The weird thing is, I rarely if ever use the kitchen that’s located smack-dab in my very department.

At my old job, I would never hang a right out of my office, because my boss and her secretary were situated about 100 feet to the right, and beyond were two people I really just wanted to avoid at all costs.

I had a corner office, so I’d shoot out of my door to go around the floor the other way, else I’d beeline straight for the stairwell across from me, go upstairs and then drop down on the other side (usually to go visit my friend Shan or to go to the bathroom or whatever errand I needed to run).

In effect, I really went out of my way to not be seen and/or otherwise engaged in a conversation. Because one person would always be trying to sell some products for her kids, two would try to get me to gossip and I didn’t trust either one (besides, they made up gossip all the time — I technically never said a word to them but somehow was one of their favorite conversation topics) and, overall, I just viewed it as avoiding landmines.

It wasn’t anything overly personal against any of them — I was just pretty good at keeping myself out of trouble..

So here I am now, working with people I genuinely like and possibly even adore, and they are all situated to my right. As is the kitchen.

The weird thing? The highlights of my day are when I get to talking with any of them — this is a funny group, and no exchange goes by without a zinger that lights up my day.

Yet I still go left.

Old habits die hard, I guess.

God, I’m strange. 😉

I was just rushing to grab a closing door today when I realized, “Why am I in such a hurry?” I mean, what is it about the fact that a door is open and is *just about* to fall shut that terrifies us so?

OK, granted, the fear of getting one’s fingers caught is one thing, but the handsome stranger who was going through it saw me and waited with a smile for me to scamper toward said door. I had all the time in the world, yet it was like I was in a hurry to go nowhere.

Or, like my mom always says when you ask her where she’s going, “Nowhere, fast.”

It reminded me of a few nights ago — I was behind some moron in Old Town who was trying to make a left turn from a right-hand lane. I could have passed on the right, of course, but I would have hit an oddly placed medial strip. I didn’t bother, of course, because I knew I wasn’t exactly rushing. But there was something about that idiot consuming MY air and taking up MY space that put this insane rush of adrenaline in me and really annoyed me.

Anyway, why is it that some of us let our blood pressure skyrocket when — if you think about it — we’re not heading anywhere good or even anywhere we really even have any grand desire to go? Or, worse, somewhere we’ve already been?

My guess is that we’re trying to keep ourselves from running in the opposite direction. 😉

I was just in the shower, thinking how marvelously quickly the week has gone, when I realized it’s only Wednesday morning.

*thunk*

It’s kind of like when you wake up screaming but realize you’ve been awake the whole time.

Anyway, here’s some tunage for today. It’s my way of wishing y’all a happy hump day.

On another note, I was thinking how when we have wonderful weekends (as I’ve been experiencing lately), that makes the weeks seem kind of crappy because all the errands that normally get run are sitting around, staring you in the face (laundry, post office, cleaning, etc.) until another weekend rolls around.

But then again, great weekends give you the strength to get through a week in hopes that the next weekend will be even better than the last.

Reader Poll Monday

Enh. I usually do ’em late Monday/early Tuesday anyway. I’ll forgive ya. 😉

Ooh, how weird you should ask. I’ve been sort of mentally gearing up for NaNoWriMo, and I’ve been thinking about my characters as I’m drifting off to la-la land. I just want the opening scene to come to me so that the rest of the book will fall into place. That’s how I’ve survived the world of journalism — if you can write a great nut graf (lead paragraph), the rest of the story flows.

Failing that, any ol’ sex dream should suffice. 😉

Mostly. I don’t want to get stuck in neutral, y’know? I want to always be up to something — I believe in collecting experiences. I’ve been rendered inert in too many life situations — I have a lot of lost time to compensate for.

Besides, when I get a brilliant flash and/or a burst of energy, I have to run with it else I will completely lose interest in it. “Strike while the iron’s hot,” as they say. It’s really hard for me to pick up a project that I’ve put down, even if only for a second.

Gimme the peppers. And a salt shaker (salt will make the hotness less insufferable). I used to work in a hot sauce store — always a treat to give macho assholes a sample of Dave’s Insanity on a toothpick and watch them cry for their mommies. 😉

Black, with a little cutout in the back and a tiny hot-pink bow at the top of the cutout.

Honestly, Mom never did anything to embarrass me — we are too close in age for her to have acted like anything other than a sister. My grandparents may have done stuff, but you tend to associate that with their age and the generation gaps in general.

Sometimes my grandfather ends up touching himself in public, but it’s because he’s got prostate issues and it’s almost like he’s shielding himself protectively rather than doing anything lewd. But while I know this, nobody else does, so I’m sure it may freak out innocent bystanders.

Oh, come to think of it (and my grandmother’s spirit is SO going to strike me dead!), but the family ate out one night at this, um, budget-friendly steakhouse. Ugh. My poor grandmother got violently ill on the ride home and screamed and moaned the whole way. We pulled up to the house, and she hopped out, holding her ass in both hands. Let’s just say that she paved the driveway and the whole length of the basement with whatever she’d eaten that day.

I have never been able to so much as drive past said restaurant since. Or, for that matter, look at the neighbors in the eye. Not that any of them had any class, mind you, but I was a teenager and seeing a bona fide shitfest scarred me for life. 😉

Lipo.

An awesome black velvety blazer from Kohl’s. They were buy one, get one free, and I am between sizes, so I bought two. I will likely give one to my mom, though — the woman never buys herself a blessed thing.

Well, Dawn, if you could ask yourself any question, what would it be? Well, Self, thanks for asking. Why don’t we talk about WTF was I thinking last night when I bought dinner in Maryland and didn’t eat till I got home to VIRGINIA?

I think that’s an excellently mindless topic for this crazy-busy day.

Seriously, I stopped on Rockville Pike to grab some chow. Some dickhead crawled up my ASS while I was trying to get a parking spot in a strip mall, so I couldn’t actually get into said spot. So I floored it, almost killed a pedestrian and *hallelujah* found a spot in front of a totally different restaurant that I’d never tried before.

OK, so I ordered to go because, come on, who the hell wants to stay in Maryland any longer than one has to?

So, 30 miles later and a few traffic jams as I passed through D.C., I was so hungry I could scream, yet I knew better than to unwrap the glorious mess that’s neatly packaged and tempting me from the passenger-side seat because I would have probably never moved from my spot on the interstate.

And when I get home, the cats are all meowing and shit because they were hungry. Like, hell-OOO, so was I!

I threw their crap-ass dry cereal junk into their bowls and proceeded to snarf in my dinner in like 60 seconds. Of course, the girls realized that I had something WAY better than I’d given them, so I had to put up with them trying to put their paws in my chow. I don’t know how I’ve raised such rude children — I’d never try to eat out of THEIR bowls! 😉

How’d jury duty go?

Packed weekend — full of friends, fun and food. What more could a girl ask for? Or, as I like to call it, living life instead of blogging about not having one. 😉

See, not all bloggers are dorks with no lives — we dorks DO have lives, thankyouverymuch. 😉

SATURDAY NIGHT’S ALL RIGHT

Really enjoyed a blogmeet at the Union Street in Old Town — I mean, how many times in your life do you get to stroll into a restaurant and announce that you are with the Llama party? 😀

The thing is, I’ve done various blogmeets, and it’s a toss-up whether you will walk away with a bigger blogroll (which I did) or whether you can’t read a blog again because its owner spends way too much time writing and not enough time polishing basic social skills.

Before JournalCon last year, I’d had images in my mind of some people as I read them — I’d thought their prose was dazzling and stuff. But I found that some, you’d want to have a drink with. The rest? You’d want to pour a drink on.

But alas, Saturday night’s company was way too good, and looking at my blogroll (separated into “Friends” — people I’ve met — and “Imaginary Friends” — people I can’t believe I haven’t met yet), that was the night that nearly tipped the scales in favor of me actually knowing more cool kids behind their cool blogs than not. Now to move more names up into the “people I know” column!

IF YOU AREN’T READING THESE PEOPLE, CLICK THROUGH — I’LL SAY ‘YOU’RE WELCOME’ WHEN YOU COME BACK

I didn’t talk much because I was so ridiculously fascinated with this magnanimous crew — talk about the walls bursting with enough IQ points to solar power D.C. for the next decade — wow!

I mean, we all know I think Ted is brilliant, but you know you’re in for an evening of pure entertainment when you put him in a room with other such grand personalities as resident Llama Rob and honorary Llamas John (who assembled this outing from Texas), Maximum Leader, Princess Cat, Lysander, my buddy Buckethead and Matt (I’ll be expecting a blog debut from him by our next meetup!).

I hear Nic would like to get the masses together for a Caps game — count me in!

BECAUSE A DAY WITHOUT ME BITCHING? A SYMBOL OF THE END OF THE WORLD. ALLOW ME TO VENT, SIMPLY TO SAVE THE PLANET

The only lowlight to the evening was the fact that there was a table with a frillion little children next to us. (I swear, I said a prayer when I saw big bowls of ice cream being served to them — I curse you, sugar fiends!) I actually became so frazzled by their shrieking that I actually had to go downstairs — to the bar to get a little piece and quiet. Yes, you read that right. 😉

Just before I fled (temporarily, of course), I was happily splitting my attention between two ridiculously riveting conversations when I started fantastizing about assaulting one of the moms. All the kids were at one end of the table and the adults comprised the other half, and the adults were doing a spectacular job of not noticing their brood. (As were the classy folks at my table — I guess when you have kids, you become much more patient. Single people like me with only four-pawed critters? More apt to let them play with a case of Mace.)

But this one mom — sheesh. She apologized to the other party in the room we shared (not to us), saying, “Sorry if they are getting on your nerves. They get on ours, too.”

The hell?!?! Control them, then! Fool.

It was hard, but I really resisted pelting her with a salmon cake. 😉

SPEAKING OF INANIMATE OBJECTS

No, I’m not talking about FEMA — I’m talking about rocks (and not the ones in Mike Brown’s head).

I got a hot-stone massage this weekend. It was brief, as I am not made of money and cannot afford to pay to be molested by strangers for long periods of time (*damn*). I am so totally going to have to budget for it (less cat food-buying, of course — my girls shit way too much as it is).

ONE LAST THING

Ate at the brand-new Dogfish Head restaurant. The prime rib was fabulous, as was the Punkin Ale. Back in the days, I used to go out in the fields to go pumpkin-picking. Fuck that shit — I’d rather order it up from the comfort of a nice, warm barstool.

There are a few Delaware locations, but if you’re up for hiking up to Gaithersburg, Md., Dogfish provided us with great service, fantastic food and even better specialty beers.

Mom has now called me twice to ask me to refresh her with the name of the place. “Honey, was that Dogbreath? Or was it Fishhead?” 🙂

(I’ll kick your ass if you tell me I shoulda filed this section under “inanimate objects.” She’s animated enough — just blonde.) You understand, don’t you?

Subtitle: Going through the motions

It’s long and drawn-out — what do you expect? Skip to the last section for a summary, if you wish — this post is about not doing what you don’t want to do. I’ll kick your ass later. 😀

If there is a life lesson with which I am more familiar than any other, it is that joy and pain are not the slightest bit mutually exclusive. Yin and yang and all that hoopla — we’re always bouncing between one extreme and another, often simultaneously.

But therein lies a purgatory called quietude (that’s what I call it — it’s when you’re just hanging in there, waiting for the next thing to happen that will swing the pendulum in one direction or the other.) And that is where I have been finding myself, of late, more often than not.

‘E’-MOTION SICKNESS

When I talk about “going through the motions,” I don’t just mean pretending that you’re having a grand old time in the sack (see: pizza theory, the). I mean that it seems like we’re always trying to cover who we really are and what we really want, just so that we do not annoy or offend or, god forbid, make waves.

Because waves? Can pummel us, fill our lungs with water and, in essence, take us under to where we don’t know where we are or how we can escape. If we even want to, that is.

And I hate to sound like a petulant child, red-faced and clenched-fisted, stomping my feet and hollering like a demon, but I had one of those revelations recently that we waste so much time trying to care — or even pretend to care — and for what?

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been awhile since I’ve gotten my claws sharpened, so I made an appointment for yesterday afternoon. Note that word appointment.

Normally, I make my appointments early in the morning. But I had stuff to do early in the day and decided that I wanted to go in at 3.

Anyway, I don’t exactly go to the most upscale place — the price is right and my technician does beautiful work. And when I walk in, everyone knows me. It’s like “Cheers” but instead of beers, I simply get high off the fumes from the acrylics.

As this is not a place in hugely high demand, they get their lion’s share of business from walk-ins who happen to be in that shopping complex. I refuse to do that — I make appointments because I always seem to be on a time schedule. That, and the whole point of the endeavor is to feel important and special and, ultimately, pampered.

That said, we almost had a throwdown at the salon yesterday. The entire waiting room was filled to the brim with women. I walked up to the front desk, signed in and waited outside for five minutes until Helen came to get me.

I sat at her nail station while she ran to wash her hands. At which time, six very ghetto broads started YELLING. At ME.

“We was here first!”

“Who you think you is, BIATCH?”

“You wait yo’ turn!”

(I told you it wasn’t upscale.) 😉

And let me tell you, I was more than ready for a big ole throwdown — I have a lot of misdirected (and, frankly, undirectable) emotions that are more than happy to manifest in a girlfight.

I looked right at the one I figured was the meanest, and in my patented dead-calm voice, I said, “I have an appointment. Do you?”

Her response?

“Oh no she di’in’t!!!!”

(People still SAY that?!?!)

What I find entertaining is how they’re ready to rip my hair out, not just over me supposedly getting my nails done first (like there aren’t 12 other manicurists without appointments), but how they acted like it was my fault that my manicurist came and got me. Although, let’s face it, if she got to choose who she worked on first, I doubt any of them would have won that round. (Besides, I tip extraordinarily well — who wouldn’t pick me? lol)

I had a mind to reach past Tracy’s head and beat those bitches senseless with the appointment book — where my name had been listed for QUITE a few days.

You know, when I feel I’ve been wronged in some way — to the point where I am motivated to share my concerns — I normally (politely) direct my inquiry to the receptionist or someone in charge to pontificate why it is that someone else got preferential treatment when, clearly, I had been waiting longer.

Unless it’s in a grocery store, at which point I will gladly attempt to shove my shopping cart up their asses or, at least, scrape their heels a bit. 🙂

Anyway, the Ghetto Fabulous crew was finally pacified when my manicurist heard the commotion and confirmed to them that I did, in fact, have an appointment.

I was there longer than any of them anyway — they all got the cheapie $10 manicure special and were out the door (thankfully). But I sure got the hairy eyeball turned toward me as they waddled out together.

At which time I pulled my most serene smile out of my ass for each of them. 😉

I hate assholes, but I will ALWAYS out-class them. Because it is not that hard to do. 😉

Meme stolen from the lovely Bayou:

Google thyself, inserting name and the word “needs” (i.e., “Dawn needs”). And while anyone who knows me is well aware that what THIS Dawn needs is simply a stomach-slapping, hair-pulling, back-scratching, bottom-spanking good time, well, the Internet has other things to say about what exactly it is that I need. … Read the rest of this entry »