My Imperfect Life

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered my Halloween costume, eager with anticipation and all overly excited about the upcoming dance/costume party that the local bar has every year. Everyone in town goes, and it’s always hilarious to see who came up with what, and of course as every good girl knows, Halloween is the perfect opportunity to dress like a tramp and get away with it.

And, if you clicked on the link, you know my Mad Hatter (Alice in Wonderland style) costume is completely, utterly adorable. Except NOT when I tried it on. I show-cased it for my best friend K, and the conversation went something like this:

Me: “What do you think?”
K: “Oh my god.”
Me: “It’s cute, right?”
K: “You should replace those numbers with a dollar sign. You look like a ten dollar whore.”
Me: “What!?”
K: “It doesn’t even cover your ass!”
Me, getting panicked: “But it covers the model’s ass! Or it looked like it did, anyway!”
K: “Sure, I bet she’s a size two. You’re not. I can see your entire ass. If you bend over…you’re going to flash the room. You should send it back.”
Me: “I’m going to modify it. My grandma’s going to help me modify it.”
K, looking incredibly doubtful: “I wouldn’t wear it.”
Me: “It’s THAT bad?”
K: “People are going to grab your ass all night long, calling you ‘Sweet Cheeks’. OLD MEN are going to grab your butt.” (She proceeds to demonstrate, complete with grope and leer).
Me: “But I can’t send it back! I’ll just lose ten pounds before the party. I have two weeks.”
K: “Just don’t stand on my porch under the red light.”

So. We can glean two things from this discussion. a) I am a slow learner, and b) K is a ruthless truth-teller. She actually referred to my costume (or me in my costume, rather) as SKANKERIFIC. All caps. Just like that.

The thing is, I didn’t realize when I bought the damn thing it said 69. I mean, the costume is tramped up enough, as if they need to add WEED AND SEX into the ensemble? It’s bad enough my butt cheeks are well below the bottom of the flouncy, Vegas-showgirl style mini-skirt.

And now you’re thinking, listen to the ever-wise K and send it back already. Except I stubbornly (read: stupidly) want it to work. So instead I am going to exercise like a crazed anorexic zombie and also modify the skirt, adding an extra four inches of fabric to it so my butt is adequately covered. Also, I’m going to reinforce the stitching on those little brass buttons, because now I’m planning for every worst case scenario possible, and I can see myself bopping along to Air Supply and then PING, off goes the button keeping my boobs contained, at which point my bottom would be the LEAST of my worries.

I mean, I’d at least like to look like a $50 hooker.

This weekend, I’m taking off to Havre to celebrate my sister’s fiance’s 21st birthday bash. Which should be fun, especially since H made homemade root beer schnapps, and oh yeah, I’ll be wearing clothes. Everywhere.

It’s a perfect autumn day outside. It’s the type of day that makes people smile just to see it. The sky is a cloudless blue bowl. It’s just breezy enough to be comfortable, and just bright enough to be cheerful. Some of the trees remain stubbornly green, but most have given over to fate and stand bare, with dying leaves in shades of red and gold blowing around their trunks.

My mother loved days like these. If she were here today, she’d be raking piles of leaves for us to jump in, and then, giddy with laughter, she’d jump into the pile herself. She used to kick us out of the house, claiming it was too nice to be indoors, and then she’d make cocoa and chase us around the yard. Days like today always make me remember her, and smile.

It’s too bad I don’t have a camera (stuck at work) or I’d take a picture and share it with all of you.

Sometimes, I like my job - and then there are days like today, where I am forced to re-evaluate the intelligence of ever getting out of bed. I mean, HONESTLY. Do I need to work, and pay bills, and get dressed when what I REALLY should be doing is mummifying myself under a heap of blankets, shoveling in Ben & Jerry’s, and muttering oh-so-gratifying insults about MY INSANELY RUDE, STUPID CO-WORKERS?

Actually, they’re more like…superiors. Not directly, but close enough to make me grit my teeth and pull my hair and violently wish for a 5th of Jack. DANIELS, I say! And I don’t even like Jack Daniels.

All day today it’s been nothing but what a failure I am, punctuated with sighs of disgust and eyerolls and snide comments. Yes, clearly HIS misinterpretation of my explanation makes ME the moron. I mean, everyone knows that.

Complaint #1: I am not responding fast enough on the radio.

What the hell? The only way I could possibly respond faster would be to lunge across the room the EXACT second I hear the mike key and slam my fist down on the connect and breathlessly ask, ‘Yes, of course, how else may I kiss your ass, OH MIGHTY GOD?’

I’m not slow. At all. I hear someone request our county and I immediately respond, so whatever crack aforementioned co-worker is smoking, it must be GOOD shit.

Complaint #2: I am not making myself clear.

Well, jeez, I guess I could buy a blank notebook and DRAW A PICTURE, complete with color-coding, but then they’d just bitch and moan about how I don’t know my proper place, because we don’t have any sexist, egotistical, know-it-all bastards working here - of course not!

Complaint #3:  I am too polite, and it is not professional.

Yes, it’s completely wretched of me to say ‘thank you’ on the radio. Technically, the FCC prefers us to keep unnecessary air time to an absolute minimum, understandably, but…this is ANYRURALTOWN USA, where our biggest issues are cows blocking the road and occasionally someone getting locked out of their car, if you get my meaning. The reason the FCC doesn’t like people hogging air time with trivialities like good manners is because if something serious were to happen (say, a bomb threat) and it was missed because I was running my mouth handing out thank-yous like candy at a parade, GOODBYE JOB. But that’s an extreme scenario, which would NEVER happen, mostly because we don’t sit on the radio saying thank you all goddamn day, BUT WE SHOULD because then we might actually have something to do with ourselves, as opposed to say, listening to our puffed-up superiors assess our so-called short-comings.

Admittedly, I’m not the best dispatcher in the world, or even close to it. I can’t possibly be, as I work in a rural area, and will never get to experience the full scope of my responsibilities. BUT. It would be nice if instead of harp harp harping on me because of their personal issues, or whatever is causing them to have a bad day, they would SUCK IT UP and leave me out of it. Is all I’m asking. Is that too much? I think not.

I stole this meme from ‘Messing with Texas’ (see blogroll). I was bored, and now so are you. Ha! I’m an evil mastermind.

4 jobs I’ve had:

shoe salesperson
mailroom clerk
waitress (for four terrifying hours - my clumsiness knows no bounds)
911 dispatcher

4 Movies I can watch over and over:

Never Been Kissed
The Wedding Singer
Armageddon
V for Vendetta

4 TV shows I like to watch:

House, MD  (mmmm House, mmmm)
America’s Next Top Model (I admit shamefully)
Law & Order Special Victims Unit
The Closer

4 places I have been on vacation:

Seaside, Oregon (several times, it’s my favorite)
California
Arizona
Montana (when I lived in WA)

4 favorite foods:

raspberries
chocolate ice cream
warm, gooey chocolate chip cookies
mashed potatoes

4 websites I visit daily:

the google page
all the ones on my blogroll
wikipedia
sephora.com (i am a total makeup junkie)

4 places I’d rather be:

Ireland (always wanted to go there)
London (would like to eventually live there)
Italy (co-worker went, bragged about how gorgeous it is and incited my envy)
Seaside, Oregon

Last night I went to a wedding reception for one of the girls I went to school with, and whoa boy, we Montanans sure know how to throw a P-A-R-T-Y. There was a live band, balloons and icicle lights, and an endless parade of people topping off champagne glasses…all in a quonset, on a farm in the middle of nowhere. There were outhouses for taking care of business. Outhouses and champagne…only in Montana.

I saw a lot of the people I went to school with. Some of them I was glad to see, and some of them I’ll be happy to go for another few years without. We all drank too much, and danced poorly, and despite all of our reinforced Kindergarten teachings, almost no one kept their hands to themselves.

I slept at my friend’s house. She was sweet enough to wake me up this morning armed with a cup of coffee and an Advil, which is one of the reasons I like her. I hate that hungover feeling. That sort of dehydrated, fuzzy, dizzy feeling that makes me want to guzzle water and climb into my shower and live there for a week, with warning signs posted about it being an alcohol-free zone.

And after our shared coffee and unfortunate recap, I had NO desire to get back into my stinky beer clothes, so I stayed in the pajamas she loaned me, tugged my sexy (er, uncomfortable) black boots on, put my coat on, and staggered outide into daylight with an armful of clothes and my head ducked in shame - especially when her mother-in-law, who was all dressed up for church and smelled like flowers, politely offered to drive me home. Talk about a taxi-cab confessional, OY.

Anyway. Showers and greasy food are GOOD, that’s my motto.

I might as well join up with the cast of ‘The Office’ over here, because we pretty much do nothing all of the time where I work, and I am always getting urges to attack my boss’s forehead with our stapler, and oh, I have this whole sexual/romantic tension going on with my much unavailable co-worker. I wish I was making this up.

The co-worker, who I will call…for lack of something better, let’s just go with C, shall we? Okay then, C is considerably older than I am. Let’s say about twenty years. He’s attractive, but not spectacularly fit or good looking for his age or anything. I just like him. Really, a lot. And I don’t think I’m imagining the looks he gives me, if you know what I’m saying. Anyway. He’s single, seemingly well-adjusted, and very kind in a grudging sort of way. We talk a lot, and share bad jokes (the basis for any relationship if you ask me), and he’ll do spontaneously sweet things once in a while. Just to be nice, IF YOU KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING. Good grief, someone get me a gag. Not that it will help.

I had a dream about him night before last. I was standing in front of this building (maybe a diner of some kind) and watching traffic on this big freeway, and I started noticing all of these black motorcycles with little gold decals on the back that looked like dotted S’s, and then one guy pulled a gun (for anyone who’s been reading, this is in keeping with my getting shot at earlier this year) and shot at me, grazing my arm. I gave a very girlish shriek and ran into the diner and called the cops, at which point…you guessed it, my white knight showed up. Except for some reason, I went outside to wait for him and was still getting shot at, and they were barely missing me, and then C showed up and took my hand and we ran up some rickety metal stairs and he pulled me over the ledge of the building, onto the roof (I guess the idea was, they couldn’t see us but we could see them?)…where he rolled on top of me and planted a very hot, very hesitant kiss right on my mouth. And not to go all soft porn on you, but every detail was vivid. Very vivid.

And I’ve had these sorts of dreams before, where C and I run into each other and then we’re suddenly kissing, or worse, and I am not usually such a hussy in my dreams! And I have a boyfriend, practically. By the way, I apologize for the whole ‘Mr. A’ nonsense, and I’d just like to add that I don’t actually DO drugs. I swear. From now on, we’ll call my almost-boyfriend B. Thank god, right? And sadly, I have never had a single soft porn dream about B. What’s the matter with me? Does anyone else have dreams better left unmentioned (too late now, oops) about their co-workers, or am I just a freak?

Saturday after I got off work, I hustled ass home to straighten my hair and add makeup to my face, so I could drive to Havre at break-neck speed and get to the mall before it closed to buy a cute top for my date, and still be on time for dinner - and then ultimately the poker game at my brother D’s place.

D is typically lots of fun to be around - he has a sense of humor, he likes to make things happen (snowball fights, ball games, poker tournaments) and he’s never too annoyingly over the top.

My date, who I’ll call Mr. A (oh my god, his abs, they are fantastic - and stop making fun of me for the cheese ball nickname) took me to Canton’s, the local Chinese place, for dinner. Where it took them FOREVER to serve us, despite my earlier frantic pace. So long, in fact, that on the way out to D’s place (his house is about fifteen miles out of Havre) I warned Mr. A that they might ask invasive and inappropriate questions, such as: “What took you so long, you get a room at the motel?” and “Are all of their clothes on straight?” etc.

Which, of course, they did. And then it got even worse, right up until D grabbed my hand and put it on my date’s very nice ass. Oh my god oh my god oh my god, the humiliation. I am loud and mouthy in public as a sort of defense mechanism, but deep down (or not so deep) I am a big, mushy ball of social nerves and prudishness, and OH MY GOD I cannot believe he did that.

But worse, I felt bad for Mr. A, who is probably used to normal human beings, and hadn’t had many previous encounters with my crazy family. He was all red and quiet and embarrassed, because he’s one of those normal people I was mentioning. And we, we are so clearly not.

Anyway, the poker tournament was fun, even though I lost pitifully - my losing could have been directly connected to the seven beers I had, cough cough. Note to self: control and restraint in the future.

Needless to say, even if I had wanted to jump Mr. A, I wasn’t doing it shacked up in my brother’s basement, and not after all of that pressure to perform. Sheesh.

Okay, I hate to bring up what is probably a very tired topic for most of us, but WHAT THE HELL? Chris Crocker, that guy from YouTube with the blond wig who went on and on and ON about poor, mistreated Britney Spears…he’s getting his own reality TV show. Seriously.

I love how people are always asking why movie stars and the like are going completely out of their minds, saying and doing the most bizarre and/or inappropriate things. Wait, I KNOW the answer to this - because it sells, and they become richer than they already are. Or, in Chris Crocker’s case, they get their own train-wreck reality show, which people like me might happen upon while channel surfing and then immediately get the urge to drive spikes into my eyeballs so I never have to see anything like it again, EVER.

I fear, before it gets better, it will only continue getting worse.

I have a car. I don’t own it, I’m just using it until my finances are in the way of allowing me to purchase my own. Which will hopefully be soon, because although I’m very thankful to be mobile, oh my GOD this car is a BEAST.

It’s a beige Buick Electra - I’m not sure what year it is, what do I look like, some kind of car-obsessing expert? But it’s long. It’s so long it might as well be three cars in one, I’m not kidding. The trunk area is a small car, the riding area is another small car, and the hood…well, I feel like whenever I turn I’m in imminent danger of running into anything in my path. And it gets better - the Buick is NOISY. Not noisy like a regular big-ass car, noisy in the way that makes people crane their necks to stare in my direction and see why there’s suddenly a jumbo jet taking off from US 2.

So, if I had any issues with being stared/gawked/gaped at, now would be the time to get over it, because it is impossible NOT to stare at the Buick and the whack-job crazy enough to drive it. I would stare at whoever was driving (and naturally expect to see a little old man or woman) if it wasn’t ME. On the plus side, the seats are wide and cushy, and if I ever wreck, I’m fairly confident the indestructible steel frame would protect me, and demolish any of the newer, compact cars.

Someday, I will be the proud owner of a compact, sexy car in a bold color that goes fast and corners beautifully. Until then, if you hear what sounds like the apocalypse barreling toward you, don’t worry, it’s only me.

I went to the eye doctor on Tuesday, for all the obvious reasons: my contacts prescription was quite obviously outdated, my glasses were even more outdated than the contacts, and, oh yes, I was forced to because I got an eye infection and my last pair of over-worked contacts became unusable.

I’ve been seeing the same doctor, code name Rock, since I got my first pair of ugly-ass violet colored glasses at age seven. He always sings to me, because, he says, I have curly hair and remind him of ‘Annie’. And, you guessed it, he always sings…”the sun’ll come out, TOMORROW, bet your bottom dollar that - ” Yeah, you get the point. He sings it loudly, in front of the entire waiting room, but who cares? He’s embarrassing HIMSELF, not me. Or so I tell myself, when I’m drilling holes into the cheap floors with my blank, humiliated stare.

Why do I subject myself to this torture, you might be wondering? Well, that’s easy - I don’t have insurance, and Rock lets me use a payment plan so that I don’t have to go hungry while forking over the cash for expensive lenses and even more pricey appointments. Although I SHOULD switch doctors, because…

I started noticing a few years ago that whenever I go in to get my eyes checked and need a stronger prescription, which happens every time (by the time I’m forty I’m convinced I’ll be totally blind), and then recieve the new and supposedly improved contacts in the mail, they are NEVER quite as strong as I need them to be. One eye, usually my right, is always just a little bit blurry. Which makes me INSANE, because hello, didn’t I just pay through the fucking nose for perfect vision? That is in fact what the contacts are for - to CORRECT my vision, giving me the magical ability to see 20. 

On Tuesday I was determined to get the exact prescription I needed, and made sure to be very specific and firm when he was clicking the annoying clicker thing and asking me which set of letters was clearer, flipping them back and forth back and forth until I was dizzy and ready to stab myself in the eye and escape. And what does he do? He starts saying, every time I tell him which one is clearer, “Remember, if the letters get smaller, the prescription will be too strong” and “Amber, you don’t want the letters getting smaller” and “Which one did you say? Which one? Are they smaller, now?”  Because CLEARLY I am incapable of deciding for myself which set of letters I can SEE.

Nonetheless, I was optimistic. Until I got my new contacts on Thursday, and after elatedly sticking them to my eyeballs, realized MY RIGHT EYE IS STILL SLIGHTLY BLURRY. Which one, he asks? I’ll give him which one! And now the responsible thing to do would be to call his office and bitch, and explain that the right contact is still not quite up to standard, but oh why bother? I’ll need a new prescription in a year anyway, at which time I’ll go to a new and improved doctor who will hopefully not assume I have no idea what I’m saying and knock the prescription down a few notches to suit his assumptions.

Aside from that, I went to Great Falls this week and got the most AMAZING jar of cuticle salve, called: The Savannah Bee Company 100% Natural Beeswax Hand & Nail Salve. And oh my god, it is the best ever. Three days ago, my cuticles were the sad, bleeding victims of my teeth…and now they are smooth and mostly healed. After only three days! Yay. Also, for the $9 it cost me, the tin it comes in provides plenty. Yay.

Still more exciting (I can just see you all, clinging to the edge of your chairs with bated breath), I got the third season of HOUSE on DVD! And ah, the blissful sloth I descended into to watch all twenty-four riveting episodes in a single mind-numbing marathon. If you haven’t started watching HOUSE, you should. Be warned, Hugh Laurie weilding a cane and popping off with caustic, witty comments while simultaneously being all puppy-dog vulnerable is more of an addicting combo than you might think. Which is why I don’t watch the show during the actual season, but wait for the DVD release so that I can gorge myself.