Coffee is a Satisfied Person's Chocolate

I eat chocolate. Expensive, foreign, dark, extra-dark chocolate. And I do this nearly every day. Otherwise my diet is one of super-foods and grilled cheese. I'm saying that I am more or less a healthy eater and limit my junk food most days of the week. But this chocolate thing is a thing I cannot kick. So I have a theory.

I need a boyfriend. Its a chemical thing, chocolate and exercise aren't cutting it these days. The reality is that the more chocolate I consume and the more exercise I get the more I need. It's an ugly cycle for my wallet and for my schedule. I'm working sevenish days a week again and that cuts into treadmill time.

I've tried switching vices. Coffee is the closest I can get to a replacement but with my heart and all I shouldn't really be having any caffeine so I cut back and poof I'm on chocolate again. I try just a little but either my brain or my will power always fails. I was considering going to the gym before work but lately I've been going to bed at 8:30 or 9:00 so that getting up at 5:30 won't be a drag and I'm barely making it though the day. I could beg for full-time hours at my more agreeable job (I want them and I don't you know) so that I could create a normal routine.

That Dress Doesn't Make You Look Like a Giant Tubular Barney

Oh, no, my bad, it does. But the good news is it doesn't make you look fat because you can't see your waist or your hips. Because seeing my waist which is ten or eleven inches smaller than my bust (no lie, my friends) would make me look like a tub of lard covered in bacon fat and smeared with potato starch. I'm not saying I'm a thin lady but I am saying that the maxi dress I tried on at work and disliked because it was shapeless and floor length got the gay sales lead's approval for the "can't see your waist or hips" reasoning.

I don't expect all gays to know anything about fashion but this fella claims he went to FIT. And I know, when he tells customers this I usually tell them I went to FIT as well . I didn't, just in case you didn't know that already. But I do know (sometimes) what looks good on and what doesn't. So when I say "it's comfy but I think I look fat plus there isn't enough boob room," don't tell me its a good look. Also don't say that its the dress that the very large chick that can't wear human sized clothes could try after saying this dress is, kind of, a poor way to say it looks good on me.

Black on Black

You know how old people do that squinty thing and hold things at arms length so they might read it better? I did that yesterday. Yes, I was wearing my glasses at the time, and yes, new lenses were the one thing I splurged on in my uninsured state. So why couldn't I see the tiny writing on the credit card that wouldn't read the way normal credit cards read? Because it was black on black.

Lets go for some diversity y'all. I don't care the color but there needs to be contrast for the sake of all peoples involved. Segregation of colors never ends well. We know that. So all you smooth operator credit card companies with your super cool monochromatic card designs take a history lesson and add in something "different." That includes you Ann Taylor!

There Are Two Red Cadillacs in the Parking Lot

I've run into many a strange thing in my years of customer service but lately I have been pleasantly surprised by people's ability to surprise me with more strangeness.

Since I am now working at a bank I have to deal with some sensitive info, like I did when I worked at the doctors' office (good times) an one would think that because of my access to said info I would be treated with a smidgen of respect. And I'll tell you know most people are nice and polite. Thats one of those things, one person stands out when their not, ruining everyone's reputation in the process.

Anyhow, the other night I was working the drive-up after hours and a woman sent me a slew of rebate cards. I was puzzled and told her that I wouldn't be able to process them and she should come back when the lobby was open and someone more knowledgeable could help her. And in response I got:

Mary said you could do it.

And I replied that I'm sure there was a way but in the drive-up after hours I could not. She said:

Then get Mary to do it.

And as pleasantly as I might I informed her that Mary doesn't work in my bank. To which she said:

There are two red Cadillacs in the parking lot. One of them can help me.

And I should have said, "Oh, you like those? They're mine." or "I bet the dentist would be most excellent at depositing rebate cards into you're joint checking account." But instead I was all apologetic. Funnily enough two days later the same woman showed up in the lobby and insisted that Mary help her. Mary was called and indeed there was a way to do what she wanted but the manager, assistant manager, Mary and some others were needed to put their brains together and figure it out.

I also had a man talk to softly at me through a window and when I asked him to repeat himself he was all like "mamemant or Lincoln" and I was like "I'm sorry?" and he was like "mahenaahdnn, he was the 17th president of the United States!" and I was like, "You mean Andrew Johnson? Why didn't you say so?" How good am I?

I hope that my cheeky retorts come to me faster so that I don't have to shame myself by apologizing for something I couldn't do one way or the other. Also thank you US history for helping me with that one. I never though you'd be so good to me!

The Burden of Immense Wealth

Did you know I am immensely wealthy and well loved? Did you also know that my overflowing bank account and brimming social life are the reasons I still live at home over a year after graduating college?

I know, it is rude of those who have to complain because in all honesty all you who are reading this wish upon a falling star every night so you can be more like me and yet I am not content. Pooh. This is my burden to carry. And I shall bear it will sincere lethargy.

Apparently today I'm taking my wealth to Costco because my wallet needs a good letting. No, this is not a personal errand, it is that of my mother who knows I was supposed to be paid yesterday (key word: supposed) and because I have yet to pay her rent thinks me a lazy freeloader.

I think I may vomit.

Also in my great freeloaderness I must clean the house each week by myself or I must hire a maid. Because I work six days a week this should work out well.

Diving

There is something to be said about having a good bar to drink in. I think we should all be so lucky to be like the folks on the tele who walk downstairs from their fancy apartments and land in cozy pub type bars where everything in their lives unfolds into a nice mapped out something or other and the drama is cleared up in 24 or 48 minutes depending.  I happen to live in a place where no such bar exists.

The bars in the nearest town (because I don't actually live in a town) are either way too pricey from my two-job, seven(ish)-day-a-week salary or leaving me wondering if I should have rewashed the glass before having someone fix me a drink. And while I complain about these places they're not that bad, a coked up waiter might be the worst of it, that, or the possibility that I will be stuck for forever in the parking lot because it is so full people stopped parking in parking spaces.

All the bars in this little place are always filled to the brim with people who are willing to drink in any and all of these establishments. Though I'm not entirely sure that it's the dive bar thing that they are looking for, plenty of people with plenty of money land in the cheapest holes.

Last night as I observed one of these places I realized that maybe it's not the money. It's more likely the acceptance of whatever that attracts people to these places. They are the only place where it is acceptable for an NFL player and his ex-cheerleader/playboy posing wife to hang out with a possible she-male and his/her pantie-lined male companion.  It's also a place where adult women can get their spouse plastered and while sitting on his lap be petting another man's pants. Your pants don't have to reach your shoes, your hair doesn't have to be real or tidy and who cares if your camo doesn't quite match, we can't see you anyways.

These places also have the highest under 45 crowd which is probably the second reason we go to them. You might see someone you know, in the high school reunion sense and they won't be your friends from preschools parents (or will they?).

I look forward to the day when I can go to a bar I like. Where the air isn't so heavy that everyone who returns from the bathroom must sniff loudly and rub their noses as the reenter the bar.

NYC in the Winter

I always promised myself that I'd get back to New York on a regular basis, it is so close and all. But until last weekend I hadn't been up there since the end of my freshman year of college. Somehow every time I visit the city it rains and it's cold.

And when it's cold it doesn't even have to be bitter to be biting. Saturday night after waiting, fruitlessly, by the stage door for two hours and then a eight or so block walk my feet were grey from the cold. Grey. As in the socks and boots I had on were no longer sufficient for keeping my feet warm.

This time I have to pat myself on the back for wearing a longer coat. So what if it was a little off style wise, it looked good, and kept my bum warm for the majority of the time.

I did do NYC wrong this time though. Nothing was planned. Nothing, more or less. But next time it'll be much better. I shall have ideas and there won't be rain, or cold, I hate the cold.