Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude: pleasure taken from someone else's misfortune

Let's give it up for the Germans y'all. I experienced Schadenfreude and then learned the word all within 15 minutes. Where does one go to learn such wonderous, worldly, words? One goes to Avenue Q. I went to the play on Tuesday with Leslie and we had a blast. The puppets were great, the songs were great, it was applicable to our lives and cutting edge (well, cutting edge if I was in New York and it was five years ago and I was 23). The best part was the 'Bad Idea Bears' these two cuddly, pastel colored faux Care Bears that give you the worst advice ever.

"What are you doing Princeton?"
"Don't look for a job, go get some beer"
"Yay! Beer!"
"Better get a case instead of a six-pack, it's a better value and you don't want to waste money"

Yes, yes. The Bad Idea Bears are brilliant. They say what I say, but in higher, cuter voices. The bears' greatness was followed closely by schadenfreude and best of all, the song about schadenfreude. Maybe I'm just a sucker for high-brow culture, but I can't stop singing it.

Now, minutes before the puppets explained schadenfreude, I experienced it. The universe, she knows what she is doing. Here is how it went down. Funny song, funny puppets, funny song, funny puppets, intermission. Y'all know it gets rough at intermission. You have 15 minutes to grab your five pre-ordered gin and tonics, go the bathroom, and eat an overpriced bag of m&ms. So, I don't fuck around. When the lights go on, I am off and knocking people over to get to the drink shelf. I am all business.

So, I'm at the Orpheum. I have my drinks in hand. I head to the bathroom. From the top of the stairs, I look down and see this long line of men. Shit. If there are men waiting in a bathroom line, that means the women's restroom is going to be at least 20 times worse. Shit. Shit. Shit. But wait.

Wait. I make it all the way down the stairs and see that there is no women's restroom line. Let me break this down for you:

1) really long line for the men's restroom
2) no line at all for the women's restroom
3) ??
4) really

First I looked around for Rod Serling. Then I was overtaken by happiness. Happiness that comes from a bad, bitter place. Happiness that comes from watching boys fidgetting in the bathroom line. Schadenfreude.

Under Stating the Overly Obvious

"Dog fighting is a bad thing"~Michael Vick

T.v. has been letting me down. I thought t.v. liked me liked me. Lately, I have been feeling cheap and used. And not in a sexy, role-play way.

I normally don't watch t.v. in the morning, but I was desperate to get the visuals from last night's 'Man Whore with STD' episode of Dr. 90210 out of my head. I should've stuck with the man whore. There I am drinking coffee watching Michael Vick give the lamest apology ever. Dog fighting is bad? Seriously, that is what your publicist and manager have helped you come up with? That is not going to stop Peta members from making you their prison bitch for the next 1-5 years. News flash, the following are also bad: genocide, floods, and super low-rise jeans that don't hide your muffin top.

Luckily the universe is about balance. On the plus side of things: pina coladas, making love at midnight, and whiskers on kittens. Let's hear it for the kittens for keeping order in the world!

TMDTTE (Things My Dog Tried to Eat)

(Things My Dog Tried to Eat)

• Buttons off of my hand-made raggedy andy doll


• cat poop


• my work badge


• my laptop power cord. Let's talk about this one for a bit. What that means is I am sitting on the couch watching educational t.v. ('Rock of Love'?, The Two Coreys'?), and then my laptop goes ZUZZ. I look down and see a tiny dog with chocolate colored eyes staring at a power cord that has bite marks on it. The dog is fine. The power cord is dead (chihuahua: 1, working from home: 0). It gets worse, of course. The next morning at my job at the HR Farm, I have to call IT and tell them. "Hi, yes, my dog ate my power cord." "Yes, I am sorry. Yes, I will keep her away from the new power cord when I get it. Yes, and the laptop. Yes, and the blackberry. Yes, and the badge."


• my MAC lipgloss
  

Picture Day

Nothing puts the fear in me like picture day.

This goes way back. Kindergarten. I get the worst case of chicken pox ever recorded. I am out of school for ever. The day I come back? Picture day. Now most parents read the mail that the schools send home. Not my momma. I show up to class, still scratching, wearing overalls, and find out it is picture day. It is important to know that I was not a big fan of the overalls. I would cry and mope whenever my mother dressed me in something that I thought looked like 'boy clothes'. The overalls were, hands down, the worst of it. Kittens, when I say I was born femme, I mean BORN femme. It's picture day. I'm in overalls. I am barely un-chicken poxy. You can see the misery in the picture. It's palpable.

Things today, not much better. I just started working at the HR Farm. And I love the HR Farm. But, sometimes they push me. I get to work; No warning. I get an email saying they are going to take my picture today.

Surely, now that I am grown-up-ish, picture day should not be as bad. No. Not true. You should know what I'm wearing. I'm wearing a light blue and orange top that frankly looks like a smock. Remember in grade school when you wore the arts-n-crafts apron so you wouldn't get your clothes dirty when you finger-painted? It looks like that. All my outfits can't be winners. So, I'm in an apron, with a messy (not on purpose messy, but due to me being lazy messy) ponytail. And they insist on taking my picture. They will not be talked out of it.

I pretend to finger comb my hair; I put on lip balm and then snap. Picture taken. I don't know how bad it looks. Normally, I would get picky, insist on seeing it, reshoot if needed. Not this time. I mean, how good could it get? The only solution is to figure out a way to replace the photo with my Glamour Shots from the mall.

Well Protected

That's Galileo (Lil' G). She is head of security at my house. Don't be surprised by her innocent look. If you come to the door, she will growl at you. She is just that brave. She rests all day on the pillows so that she can protect us all at night. Before she came to the household, my only protection was Lolita. Which is to say, not much protection at all. Lolita will let you break in, Lolita will show you where extra keys are hidden, Lolita will help you load the stereo in your car, you just have to pet him. He is what is called easy. Also called slutty, but that would be rude.

Last night the orange kitty from across the street wandered into the yard. Thankfully, Galileo was on duty and on top of it. She went to the french doors. Growled and hissed and made the mmmmwwwwrrrrrw sound until the orange kitty left. Lolita, in his non brave way, noticed I was awake and tried getting petted instead of trying to help protect us all. Fondue kept sleeping.

No, I do not like being woken up in the middle of the night by the mmmmwwwwrrrrrw sound, but when I finally fell back asleep after tossing and turning for an hour, I never felt safer.

Welcome To My New Blog Home. Please Take Off Your Shoes

Kittens, I know you miss me. I know you hate that my time gets all taken up with work, sleep, and pet juggling instead of taken up with you.

I hear your cries. I have created a blog for you. Just you. Only you. And those other people, but ignore them, this is about US.

Now you no longer have to wonder how badly my dating life is going, what trouble I have gotten myself into, or what my dog has tried to eat. Now you can read all about it.

I think this finally proves how much I love you. Please stop sending all those flowers.

TMDTTE (Things My Dog Tried to Eat)

The weekly installment of TMDTTE:

pony tail holders (yes plural, I am a slow learner)
my underwear (clean)
my phone (treo, not blackberry)
MAC makeup brush
wood shavings from the cats' scratching post
grocery bag
my underwear (dirty)
piece of tinfoil that my burrito was wrapped in

Bad Mutha

There is a chance that if I had a baby, I would be one of those people that leave their baby in the car. There is a chance I would be competing with Brittney Spears for mother of the year. Outrageous!

I try to be an adult. I progressed through different levels of pets. Goldfish, lovers, cats. I'm not doing so great at the dog level. I cut myself slack when I first found Fondue. I didn't beat myself up for forgetting to feed her on occasion or even when I completely forgot I had a dog and just stayed at work until midnight. All those times. After all, I was new to the dog world. And she found me. I didn't go looking for a dog. Surely an adjustment period is understandable.

Thing is, here it is seven months later and the dog still suffers. Yesterday, for example, I forgot that my aunt who normally checks in on the dog mid-day was working. So I didn't come home for lunch. Nope, I went to Target at lunch, just to browse the Libertine collection and see if there was anything new worth buying. Then I stayed at work a little later than usual. Then I went to the gym after work for my 20 minute power workout (people, you don't get abs like mine without putting in the time). So, um, I show up around 8:00 to find one excited, annoyed chihuahua and two pissed off cats that look like they had been chased and nipped all day.

Also, today I dropped two chocolate chips down my shirt while eating at my cubicle. Then when I was fishing them out, two of the sales guys walked by. At that point I started randomly typing on my computer to look busy. I'm not sure what this story has to do with the dog either. Sorry.

Yes, Again

This whole internet thing that all the kids are talking about? Over. Rated.

I think we were all hoping I had learned my eHarmony lesson when I could not manage to spell my name correctly. Alas, kittens some lessons must be learned over and over.

Some lovely man has patched his way through my drunken personality profile and seen me for the diamond in the rough that I truly am. It was that or the fact I managed to slap up the hottest picture of myself that I could find to compensate. A good photo angle and a tub of liquid eyeliner can do wonders for a girl.

eHarmony makes you work for love. For someone like me it seems like a lot of typing just to pretend I have morals. You have to send questions and answer questions and all this other bullshit until you can finally type a proper email. At this rate I won't get laid until I'm 70.

Alas, not all of us are equipped enough to use computers for grown up conversation. I managed to type some crazy epic email. I was just being all stream of consciousness and was totally going to edit. Totally going to go back and make it look, well, coherent. Until.

Until in mid sentence, I accidentally sent it. My good friends at eHarmony only allow controlled communication. What does that mean? It means I couldn't send another email saying "oops, typeing is haard for me, sorrry ;)" It means, it was sent out and I had to just deal with it.

I know that it might be best this man sees me in all my glory now. But really.

Don't Drink and Type

I get it. I get it.

My life is an edgy, badly written episode of "I Love Lucy". In my circle of friends I would love to be thought of as the sexy one, the fun one, the smart one. There is to be none of that. I am the goofy one.

It starts with a beer or two. I have no tolerance. I drink the beer and decide to get myself up on eHarmony. Sober this has never appealed to me. I think I'm a better fit for those personals on Nerve or The Onion or a phone number written in eyeliner on random bathroom walls. These mainstream dating sites get all insistent that you use your actual age, which severely cuts into the barely legal action I am gunning for.

So, I get myself up on there and start answering the questions. I type. I save. The next day I notice that I have spelled my own first name wrong on the profile. Not only is it a common name, but if I get in a bind it can be easily found on my driver's license, library card, in the bible.

Then I can't change it. I have to write a gdamn email to eHarmony asking them to correct it. Asking them to please correct the spelling on my common, easily spelled first name. Because I just couldn't get it right the first time.

Those poor guys that see my profile and want to date me. How could they possibly know what they are getting into? God knows what that so called personality profile says. I'd be amazed that I got anything correct on there.

If I said it once kids, I'll still say it again: Don't drink and internet date. Just. Not. Worth. It.