i have bird lice, and it’s ok.

fuck shame. fuck embarrassment. fuck not being able to ask for help when you need it because your problem is weird or gross or unsanitary.

i am DONE with it.

when i was a kid, i was ruled by shame. in the 5th grade, i told everyone i didn’t know how to swim so that no one would see the explosion of stretchmarks on my hips and thighs. i didn’t even know what they were, i just knew that they were ugly and abnormal and that i should hide them and quietly hate my body for betraying me. which did, for YEARS. even as an adult, i have never owned a bathing suit that wasn’t skirted.

and there was another time in 3rd grade when i poured AN ENTIRE BOTTLE OF PINE SOL on my head because i was worried i might have head lice (i didn’t) and was too ashamed to ask my mom to look. i guess i’m pretty lucky that i didn’t blind myself.

i know that i’ve been writing about stuff that is gross and weird lately. i know that there are probably more fun things to read about. but i just get so tired of everyone being to scared, or polite, or embarrassed to really talk about some of the crazy shit that just happens as a byproduct of being alive. life is gross and scary sometimes, but it’s even worse if you think you’re alone.

so without further ado, let me tell you about my weekend.

a long overdue apology/thanks.

i’m kind of an asshole.

one time, i got married (for like a year), and i didn’t even send out thank you notes to my family. and can i just say, that even though the wedding was in 2007, i still feel guilty about it ALL THE TIME. if you’re out there wilson family relatives… i’m so sorry. i burn with shame and regret.

but here i am anyway, being a jerk again.

a few weeks ago, a reader named sue contacted me about the makeup project, because she had scored some free blush she wasn’t going to use. AWESOME. except it took me a few days to answer her, and i felt like a jerk.

AND THEN, she contacted me again… and i got busy and didn’t respond. jerk +1.

AND THEN, she showed up at the swap drop off with makeup… and i wasn’t there to meet her.

AND THEN, she showed up at the swap with a beautiful bounty of makeup bags, and i finally got to say thank you, and  made a jackass out of myself. i believe my exact words were: “i so want to hug you, but i’m worried about invading your personal space”. she excused herself swiftly.

AND THEN, she emailed me again, and i decided that i wanted to thank her by writing a blog post about how awesome she is… and it took me 2 weeks to do it.

so sue… I’M SORRY! i know i’m kind of a jerkwagon, but i didn’t want to let another day go by without thanking you for your incredible gift. sorry i’m so spastic, but it is in no way a reflection on my gratefulness for your generosity.

top 10 reasons why i suck at gardening.

when i first started my garden about a month ago, i was on top of the world. things were growing! i was making life! i would eat salad like a boss all summer long!

almost like sex fantasies, i would imagine myself harvesting shining and plump red tomatoes and pornographically large cucumbers (ron jeremy grade produce). it would be glorious, and things were going so well!

and then, shit started to go wrong:

1. neighborhood cats started digging in my seed areas, killing whole squares of crops (i lost 3 squares of lettuce and one square of carrots).

2. my tomatoes won’t pollinate. the flowers just turn brown and die, and the bees never come. i only have the 4 tomatoes that were already pollinated when i got the plant.

3. my peppers are dying. the little pepper buds are just shriveling and falling off.

4. my cucumber is taking over everything. i find it’s spindly tendrils wrapped around every other plant in the bed- strangling them all slowly. although to its credit, it’s the only thing that’s actually producing any sort of vegetation.

5. my green beans have nothing to climb up, and they are OUT OF CONTROL.

6. my pumpkin just doesn’t look right. it has leaves rotting off and flowers dropping like crazy.

7. my butter lettuce keeps getting ass pounded by the rain and is looking very very sad.

8. i tried last weekend to install some barrier plants to try to keep the cats out (brussels sprouts, cauliflower, & iceberg lettuce), but i don’t think the brussels sprouts are supposed to be yellow.

9. maybe planting 5 heads of iceberg lettuce in one square was a mistake?

10. the basil seems fine, but i don’t eat that much basil.

basically my gardening euphoria has quickly descended into gardening shame and disappointment. maybe i should read a book or something, but i don’t even know where to start. i just feel very overwhelmed and very at sea. i could ask the lovely soul who helped me plant it in the first place, but i don’t want her to be disappointed in me! basically, i am castrated by my lack of knowledge and fear of failure.

i thought that gardening was supposed to be relaxing!  somebody please, FIX IT.

*no, that dead garden picture isn’t mine, but you can check out the “progress” of my garden on my flickr page. i haven’t taken any pictures of the really tragic stuff, but you can picture them in your mind’s eye (don’t forget to make ’em extra shriveled).

the edge of extinction.

ok folks, it’s time for us to have a serious sit down discussion about the ikea bus.

the first week of ticket sales was exciting. after the first few days, i had 13 people already and it seemed like things were all systems go.

and then, they stopped going.

i  was stuck at 13 tickets for almost an entire week. and the worst part was that people kept asking me how it was going…

i’m a firm believer that it’s never good for business to tell people that things aren’t going well. so i would say things like “it’s going, but i wanna sell that shit out!” or “it’s coming along, but there’s still room!”. it’s a little awkward. and i’ve been feeling a lot of shame about the fact that it’s not going better. both because i don’t like failing at things, and because i really really do want it to happen.

i sold a few more tickets last week, but just a few. and sadly, my attempts at getting some press coverage turned out to be completely balls. so here i am, stalled out at at 16 tickets (i made the boyfriend promise to buy one, so i could say  17 and not totally be lying).

i’m not sure what happened. 58 people liked my press release on facebook. the eventbrite page has almost 600 page views! and everyone and their grandma keeps telling me what an awesome idea it is. so what gives?

bad timing? no money? not the right time to buy a couch after all? i have no idea.

the truth is that i’m scared. if i can’t get up to at least 25 (preferably 30) by the 7th (that’s THIS THURSDAY), i’m gonna have to cancel. the problem is that the money is mine, and if i don’t get the bus filled , that money still disappears. and i have student loans and a mortgage that can’t let that happen.

i don’t want to beg you. begging isn’t classy. more than anything, i’d like to gently remind you to buy your ticket now if you’re planning on going- or at least send me an email telling me that you’re definitely coming. and i’d also like to warn all the fabulous folks that did buy tickets, that there is currently a high likelihood that the trip will be canceled. so, spread the world to your friends and neighbors if you want it to be on. and if anyone knows a media outlet that might give the ikea bus a little lovin… now is the time to call in some favors!

resolved.

i was lucky enough to come into a bit of an xmas windfall this year. nothing earth shattering (most of it went to bills and to my saving’s account), BUT i decided to give myself a small allowance to spend on whatever i wanted. DANGEROUS. it could have been anything, or everything… i have a bad habit of burning through cash without really paying attention to where it goes, or really caring too much when it’s gone. i’m all like “oh, that’s was fun”, instead of feeling the intense sense of guilt and shame that keeps most people from getting in financial trouble.

the last year has overall been a good one for my financial evolution. this was the first year in over a decade that i didn’t use my credit cards even once. i also managed to have a savings account with actual money in it for more than 15 minutes. on the other hand, i didn’t pay off my credit cards as much as i would have liked, i didn’t manage to keep the majority of the money in my savings account, and i still didn’t start an HSA.

so for 2011, i have only one resolution. it isn’t to save more, or spend less, pay off the credit cards, or even open an HSA… (although all of those things are certainly worth keeping in mind). my resolution this year is just to PAY ATTENTION. wherever my money travels should take me this year, i would like to be watchful and be thoughtful about every dollar i spend. i’m thinking about leaving my debit card at home, giving myself a cash allowance, being more careful about monitoring my mint account… but it doesn’t really matter what i do, as long as i’m being vigilant.

i decided to lube up my resolution and get started a little early with the aforementioned windfalll. instead of just throwing the money into my checking account and going apeshit on whatever i happened to find first, i sat down and really thought about things that i wanted, needed, and would generally be too cheap or too broke to afford the rest of the year. here is what i came up with:

looking a little pastie.

a couple of months ago, i took my top off in a bar full of strangers and lived to tell the tale. i promised to give you all the full rundown sometime in the indeterminate future… well, that future is now- and this piece is 2 STRUTs for the price of one (one as a STRUTter and one as a not so casual observer). it’s posted on over at the observer, but their direct link is a little screwy right now, so you can find the piece in its entirety below. and in case you’re local and didn’t get a chance to see/feel/taste/participate in the carnage that was my  STRUT performance, i’ll be shakin it one final time tomorrow (october 14th) at geno’s. come support/join/ogle me, or at least come point and laugh.

Confessions of a late night STRUTter- A lesson in bringing it.

As a woman on a firm trajectory toward her mid-thirties who packed on an extra 30 lbs. 2 years ago and is still using “I got divorced” as an excuse for her somewhat doughy physique, one might not guess that I’d be jumping at the chance to get mostly naked in a room full of strangers. Two months ago, I probably wouldn’t have guessed that either. But then, burlesque happened.

i spy- bargains and sadness.

this fucking economy. over the last 3 years, i have watched the streets of this town morph into something that i don’t recognize anymore. exchange street alone is a complete stranger with its consignment and discount shops mixed amongst the last few surviving high end stores. not that i don’t appreciate the bargains, but it feels like i notice a new STORE CLOSING! or GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! or maybe EVERYTHING MUST GO! sign pretty much every day. after having your business alive in this city for so long, i can’t even imagine what it must feel like to have to paste that sign up in your window. i assume that there’s a lot of shame and regret. a lot of wishing that they could go back and have that “it’s a wonderful life” chance to do it the right way this time… or maybe it’s just a relief to be done with it? struggling small businesses can be like large monsters in the way that they eat up time, resources, energy, and hope. whatever the case, shuttering those windows and signing over your lease to some dude who thinks he has a better idea has to be an emotionally pummeling experience. i know it breaks my heart every time, and i just shop there. well, i used to shop there.

this past week, 2 of my favorites made the casualty list.

the north star music cafe had such a benevolent purpose! delicious local (mostly veg & vegan) foodables! flexible performance and music space for all! a few months ago, the owner ran a small fundraising campaign to help pay off some mounting business related debts, and i think we were all really hoping that was the end of it. not so. thursday afternoon, the news broke on twitter that they were shutting down for good on sunday. goodbye adorable hippie girls serving me bagels. goodbye sweet vegan reuben. goodbye people in this town trying to do something with purpose, integrity, and love. maybe i’m being overdramatic, but i’m super bummed out.

second on the list (do we need to start making a dead pool for portland businesses?), is cunningham books in longfellow square.  always carefully organized and stuffed full of beautiful and pristine picture books, this was a regular stop on my local hunt for nancy drews and 80s art and fashion books. i spied the 30% OFF STORE CLOSING sign on sunday afternoon, and the excitement over possible vintage book bargains was totally clouded with the confusion and disappointment i felt to find out that they were closing. too pricey? too far from downtown?  not enough revenue to be had selling old books? i don’t know. it’s possible that they don’t even know. sometimes you can do everything right and still fail. small business is vicious, and i wholeheartedly admire anyone who has the iron cojones to actually give it a try.

anyway, sorry this post is such a bummer. consider it your “buy local” lecture of the day. if we don’t support the businesses that we love, they will disappear. it’s fucking crazy hard out there right now, so open those wallets and go get yourself some local whatever (might i suggest some gently used he-man figures, or possibly a chocolate covered twinkie?).

have you recently lost a favored local establishment to this crap economy? tell me about it. and let me be the first to offer my profound condolences.

getting wasted.

for me, busy pretty much always equals lazy. i tend only to the most pressing items on my checklist, and everything else just falls away into the land of half-assed-ness (a woefully untidy land filled with frozen pizzas and unpaid bills). as most of you already know, this last week was fucking nutsuo for me. well, one of the big things that i’ve been copping out on is grocery shopping. i haven’t even been glancing at the deals, and i vaguely remember something called a “grocery list”, but i couldn’t tell you what it is or why people use them (maybe i should google it?). anyway, whenever i go to the grocery store sans planning, things fall apart in a huge way. i somehow managed to get all the way to the checkout line before i realized that i had not thrown any dinner food in the cart.  i had however grabbed a weirdly disproportionate amount of cheese.

every week, i clean out my fridge when i put my new food in, and i’ve noticed over the last few weeks of freestyle grocery shopping, that i’ve been throwing a lot away. basically, not planning ahead, not sticking to my budget, and not being more aggressive about my couponing= refrigerator disaster! DISASTERRRRRRR! we’re talking expired food in sealed containers- never to be touched by human hands (wasteful!), or 1/8 consumed and then swiftly forgotten, only to grow a topography of mold so vast that would impress the national institute of health (wasteful AND unsanitary!). let’s just say that in this household, i make a lot of jokes about how i’m growing a new boyfriend in old containers of sour cream.

but it made me think. there are so many things that i repeatedly buy, and repeatedly waste. the prices may be low, or they may be wrapped up in good intentions for my health, but i’ve decided that in the interest of the health of my bank account, i’m placing the following 8 items on the no-buy list:

1. baby carrots: whenever i’m trying to lose weight, i always buy a bag of baby carrots. they seem convenient, healthy, easy to prepare, and otherwise perfect in every way… except for one thing. I AM NEVER IN THE MOOD TO EAT BABY CARROTS. NEVER!!! thus, they are sentenced to get slimy in their protective sack while they languish in my crisper drawer. there’s probably a purgatory somewhere full of baby carrots that i’ve inadvertently killed.

2. greek yogurt: firstly, shit is expensive. at roughly $4.99 for the big tub, i have somehow yet to learn my lesson that even though i enjoy it sometimes, i don’t enjoy it enough to be harboring 17.6 ounces in my fridge every week. why am i plagued with such horrible food denial? it’s been 32 years of waking up and not wanting to eat fresh fruit and greek yogurt for breakfast (which is what i assume skinny people eat- i’m more of the eggs, cheese, and heavily buttered toast school). why would this week be any different?

3. anything “southwest” style: i really need to put together a little southwest style donation box for the food pantry. my cupboards are choked with soup and rice mixes and god knows what else… cheap isn’t really that cheap when i hate the product, and  it’s taking up valuable cabinet real estate.

4. any vegetable that i don’t have definite plans for: hell hath no fury like impulse produce. unless it belongs to a specific meal, i need to learn to back the shit away from the zucchini just because it “looks good”. instead, i need to remember that it will look much less good when it’s forgotten and turning into brown goo in the back of my fridge (behind the food that i actually do eat, mostly cheese).

5. hummus: i buy this to go with the baby carrots. clearly, it does not make them any more enticing to me, it just gives me another product to throw away.

6. fruit out of season: sometimes i’ll really be craving grapefruit or pomegranate at the wrong time of year, but i’ll buy it anyway even though it’s super expensive, a little shriveled, and has probably spent at least a week on a boat being shipped in from some tropical island. what i’m really craving is FRESH fruit, but my tiny dinosaur brain doesn’t understand that. those pathetically dried up examples of fruithood are never going to look/be appetizing enough to make it into my mouth. my house is merely a pit stop on the road to wasted fruit hell.

7. lip gloss: i have a drawer full of lip gloss (no joke, it’s like a fucking arlington national cemetery for discarded lipcolor in there), yet i still wear the same one every single day. seriously, when did i get so stupid?

8. underpants: in one of the true hallmarks of extreme laziness (if there was an olympics of laziness, i think i could win. although, i bet everyone would be too lazy to show up to the competition.), i have occasionally (i mean often) been known buy new underwear rather than do laundry. this isn’t exactly a grocery item (although i have on an emergency basis bought some extremely ill fitting hanes her ways at the grocery store), but it is ridiculous, and i should really still knock it off.

writing this list has filled me with great shame. please tell me i’m not alone! maybe it would help if i slapped brightly colored price tags on all of my food, so that when i’m reaching for something more desirable (like butter or cheese- 2 things that never get wasted in my house), i know how much money i’m wasting in neglected produce? ooh, or better yet, i can draw sad faces on all my healthy food, and give them little speech bubbles that say things that make me feel guilty for not eating them…

cruel summer.

this heat is killing me. just because i haven’t been in grade school since the 80s doesn’t mean that i don’t remember what that last few weeks of school feels like just before summer vacation. come mid june, my body has a pavlovian response to the first really hot days of the season. i lack concentration. i stare out the window aimlessly humming vacation by the gogos. i abandon my work shoes beneath my desk and pad around the office barefoot. why on earth do we train our children to expect that life comes with 2.5 months worth of vacation, when it usually comes with 2.5 weeks at best? it’s fucking summer vacation yo, and i should be at the beach.

while i’m quietly languishing in the air air conditioned cubicle that is the shackles of my adult responsibilities, i thought maybe i would twist the knife a little harder by thinking about all the things that i would be taking to beach if i actually got to go:

the swimsuit is obviously imperative. however, if perhaps you’re still carting around 30 excess pounds of divorce weight, something skimpy from the victoria’s secret swimslut line doesn’t exactly do the job. i don’t know about you, but i’m not really interested in helping redefine the term “inappropriate ass coverage”.  however, i also don’t desire to be encased in a sacky lycra cocoon of modesty and shame. nestled somewhere in between the two, is the retro suit. draw attention to the tits, cover the lumpy bits.  swimsuits are stupid expensive for how little fabric they involve, and a nice looking retro suit can run upwards of $100. my secret, newport news. yes, a little dowdy, a little dated, and with a healthy side of 1980s hooker. basically, somewhere in between the softer side of sears and fredricks of hollywood. randomly though, they have an awesome selection of swimdresses, some of which are even kinda sexy. oh, and around $50 or less.

although it is definitely always important to know where your towel is, it is perhaps the very most important at the beach. i don’t know if it’s the fact that i grew up in the 80s, and that my mom always bought me jc penny knock offs of the cool clothes, but i am LOVING these lacoste beach towels. somewhere underneath this aging art school kid exterior, there’s a prepster screaming to get out. sadly, as my mom well knew, preppy is pricey. a better bet would be to toddle over to target and pick up a myself an attractive pedestrian towel. do you think the alligator affects absorbency?

once you’ve got your suit and towel, you’re gonna need somewhere to stick it. i’ve been coveting one of these vintage style pan am totes pretty much forever, but who the fuck pays $90 for a beach bag? or pretty much any bag that isn’t encrusted with semi precious gems or at least filled with free donuts. a more practical and almost as attractive solution is the good ole ll bean boat & tote. classic, sturdy, affordable! and you can’t go wrong pimping that maine economy. seriously, half the people i know either work there now, will work there over xmas, or were working there until very recently.

well, those are pretty much the 3 main food groups of shit you need when you go to the beach (and i’m so easily distractable right now that 3 is pretty much as high as i can count without wandering off in another direction) , but you should also strongly consider some other less interesting beach bag accouterments such as sunscreen, maybe some sort of hat, something to promote hydration, a really trashy book, and of course like 17 wacky noodles. did i forget anything?

well, somehow that bummed me out more than i thought it would. my own summer vacation (one whole week!) doesn’t actually happen until august, so i’m pretty much fucked until then. maybe i’ll just lock myself in my room and watch a summer place (have you been bad with girls johnny?) on loop for a while. or maybe i’ll just let jasper from the simpsons sing me the theme song until i black out. bananarama was right, summer is the cruelest season.

12 minutes, 2 am.

my sleep schedule is all f-ed up. i slept for 12 hours last night, and now it’s almost 2 am, and i’m still not sleeping- despite needing to be at work and functional in a mere 6 hours. so i thought i’d take this last 12 minutes before the clock strikes 2 to poop out a quickie post- just to say that i did. i present to you, my weekend in spending- in 12 minutes or less (or possibly slightly more):

there was a 40% off everything sale at the gap outlet in freeport. i erroneously assumed it would be better than the old navy 30% off everything sale… what i learned is that they didn’t have much to offer in the markdown area, and everything else was near regular gap prices. despite the angel voice whispering in my ear “that’s how they get you!”, the devil voice still spent $80 on a pair of jeans, a dress, a sweater, and a pair of shorts. well, it is supposed to be 84 degrees on tuesday…

j crew on the other hand had a decent sale rack that was take an additional 30% off all markdowns. score. bought a fat concealing flowy top and and a shiny gold belt that i decided couldn’t possibly be leather… but probably is. feeling heavy vegetarian guilt, but too attached to belt to find out for sure.

wacky mac should have been free at shaw’s this week… except that i couldn’t find it anywhere. is there no wacky mac in the state of maine, or am i just looking in the wrong place?! *seethes with frustration* no major grocery deals scored this week.

i fully attempted to buy a $3.97 copy of maid in manhattan at bullmoose today, but shame was too great. me being uncool isn’t really a secret, but bullmoose always makes me wish i was hipper than i am. or at least wish that walmart carried $3.97 copies of maid in manhattan.

now that i’ve learned that dairy queen has butterscotch dip, it was another 2-DQ weekend. i’ve been to every DQ in the area at least once, and i’ve noticed that the pricing is not standard. westbrook DQ- i don’t care if you do have a brazier (your fries suck BTW), time to nudge those ice cream prices DOWN. the topsham dairy queen is making you look bad.