Setting Writing Records

I am starting to wonder if I can garner at least one rejection every day. This would be hard because I don't really send out that much material, but if I work at it a bit, I think I can achieve my goal. I can only hope that they will all be as enlightening and informative as the one I received last week, in which I was told my story would be funny if it ended with me becoming a nun, but not otherwise. You can't argue with logic and insight like that.

On another note, I have my second writing assignment from my internship. My first was a little round up of a number of plays on Broadway with two sentences synopses of them. This went well. The second one is to look at real estate and write about some neighborhoods. I am very excited about this and I think it will be lot o' fun, even if it is not the slightest bit strange or containing foul language.

I hope I do not scare the editors away with my enthusiasm. Although if I do, I can count them toward my daily rejection tally. Every cloud has a silver lining and all that.

It's Quiet Today

Damn, I just opened a letter stating that my beloved gyn is leaving her practice. Of course, it gives no other information about where she is going. Fuck fuck fuck.

That's all that is happening.

Tomorrow is Feb. 1, a.k.a. Blog Exchange Day

Every first day of the month, Motherhood Uncensored sponsors The Blog Exchange. I had a lovely exchange in January with Dana of The Dana Files, and I am very excited to "switch" blogs tomorrow with the The Gunfighter at The View from Here.

Every month the blog exchange has a theme, and February's topic is mimicry. Participants are to " Write a post in the voice/style of a famous person (actor, singer, author, whatever). It can be an hot topic, current issue, or just a regular old post... Readers will then have to guess who you are (just to make it extra fun)." So now you know tomorrow I will be writing in someone else's voice on a different person's blog, and another person will be writing in a voice not his on my blog. I like it.

The W-2 Saga Continues

I heard nothing back from the stupid fucks at my former employers about whether they would do anything about my request to fix my W-2 so that it was my actual address, not:

Suite 1800
New York, CA 94111

. I put in a call to the office and had the following surreal conversation:

Idiot: Yes, we filed an amendment to have it fixed.
Me: When can I expect it?
Idiot: When I get it, I'll overnight it to the office.
Me: (In my head: WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? DO I FUCKING LIVE AT THE OFFICE? NO, THANK GOD i DO NOT!!!!!) Um, can you please send it directly to me? It is already significantly delayed.

Idiot: Well, I'm afraid it might get lost in the mail.
Me: (Losting patience) How do you think I got it in the first place? You overnighted to the office, where they sent it to my home after my real address was written on the envelope next to the little plastic window. I am suggesting that you overnight it to me, given that it is late and it is Idiot Fuck Company's* fault that it is late. You need to eat that $10 shipping charge.

Idiot: (Hesitating) I guess I could. But really, why do you need the correct form anyway? It's not like the IRS is going to know if you file electronically. You should file electronically.

Seriously. This is what the person in PAYROLL asked me. It seems that she does not know that a copy of my W-2 is sent to me after it is already filed with the IRS, and their records might find it odd when I fill out my forms (electronically or on paper) that I live in a non-existant town in a San Francisco zip code with no street address according to my employer records, but I claim to live in an actual residence in New York, and I only want to pay New York taxes. No, not a big deal at all, especially if I was audited.

Wine is Overrated

When I arrived home this afternoon from my first meeting as a magazine intern (!), I rushed to the kitchen for a snack. An apple with cheese is on my approved low-carb, anti-diabetes diet, and I grabbed an apple up greedily and smeared low fat spreadable cheese on it. Really, it was not the apple but the cheese that excited me so. I realized at that moment that if someone offered me shit with cheese on it, I might actually consider eating it, depending on the type of cheese. That is how much I love cheese. (Or a sign of how disturbed I am.)

Reflecting on shit-covered cheese reminded me of my last shower at my parents’ house. The water in Chicago is ridiculously hard, although it is not well water. (It’s fresh from Lake Michigan, although until modern plumbing solved some serious pollution issues, the water pumped from the lake was actually full of shit and disgusting.) Thus I always need conditioner for my hair when I am at my folks’, whereas I never use it in New York. I noticed that they had a bottle of Herbal Essences conditioner, so I dumped some on my head without really smelling it first. Herbal Essences is supposed to be so good that commercials portray sexy women having orgasmic experiences in the shower, hence I figured it would smell good.

The saying, “If you assume something, it makes an ass of you and me,” is very applicable in this situation. I don’t know what was wrong with their Herbal Essences, but it had the essence of an animal with a flower-based diet that shit on my head. I was not pleased, although perhaps if it had cheese in it, I may have nibbled at it.

Just Wait 20 Years or So, Kiddo

“Oooh, what’s this?” little me was thinking to myself while I patted Grandpa Ruby’s beard. “Good thing I don’t have one of these scruffy patched on my chin.” Ha! What an innocent fool I was as a child.

I’ve written about my potential career as the bearded lady in a circus before (Being the Bearded Lady at the Sideshow Might be Fun (Maybe?) and the connection between airplane bathrooms and chin hairs), but seeing this picture reminded me that my interest chin hair seems to have begun quite some time ago. How sad is it that I now pat my own damn chin that way, looking for stray hairs that need plucking, lest I reveal my status as a freak she-male to the world unintentionally? (As opposed to through these writings on chin hairs, where I intentionally alert people to my masculine afflictions.)

(Warning: this paragraph is full of cheesy puns.) I know that I am not the only one out there struggling to keep my chin up in the face of this assault on my feminine image. Many, many of my friends – all of us in our mid- to late 20s and 30s – who are obsessive chinnie chin chin pluckers. There’s a market that is ripe for the plucking (heh!) that, shockingly, the beauty industry has yet to exploit. Think about it: when’s the last time you saw an ad for laser hair removal for chin hair? Probably, uh, never. Sure, lasering off crotch, leg, and pit hair? Back and chest chair? Ads everywhere. You can’t open a damn magazine without some naked oiled body builder and airbrushed seductress leering at your figuratively hairy ass from the pages. “Oh, you may shave or even wax,” they smirk at you, “but our cootie and pit hairs will never grow back. Ever! Mwa ha ha ha.”

Yet the one place that it would truly be useful to get laser hair removal is my chin. I am 99.99% confident that female soul patches are never suddenly going to become stylish, but no model is showing off her hairless, oiled chin. Why is that? Damn beauty industry is so busy creating ridiculous insecurities in people (we are mammals, which by definition are warm blooded, produce milk, and have hair, although I often wonder about some people and warm blooded status) while ignoring the ones that would be useful to exploit. Fuckers.

And that does it for today’s look back at my childhood and tenuously related rant about why I hate society.

Watch Your Head: In the Dining Room

I love the utterly ridiculous chandelier in my parents' dining room. Not only is the ceiling way to low for such a pretentious item, but it is not centered in the room. Remember, I am slightly over five feet tall, and even I am at risk of beheading by that thing. I did really really love the chandelier as a kid, though. I thought it was extremely glamorous and I was impressed that it had flame-shaped light bulbs.

Other notable features of the dining room: The cereal collection on the chair in the corner. Below that chair, barely visible, is my mom's bag of bags. It is a huge plastic bag that contains plastic bags of varying size. (I am not mocking the bag of bags. I actually have several of them in my own apartment. I don't know why, but I am obsessed with finding just the exact size for an object when I need a bag. It drives me crazy to use a bag that is unnecessarily large.)

The china hutch next to the Chair of Cereal contains real china. I've also always loved their pattern. It's just classy and simple. (One wonders what it is doing at our house...) Oh, but it also contains a plastic plate my sister made as a kid. Plus lots of random glassware and hideous crystal candy dishes that my Bubbe foisted upon us. (With more to come, as she is soon moving and cleaning house. Oy vey.) Also, the top of the china hutch is stocked with office supplies and what appears to be some sort of paper bug crawling up the wall. I have no idea what the fuck that is.

The buffet is chock full of papers and gym shoes, like all buffets. No need to say more. And, folks, is the dining room at my folks house. Soon we shall visit the kitchen, a tiny preview of the wallpaper can be obtained from this picture by looking past the very bright blue folding door. (Cue scary music.)
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As an aside, the hat I am wearing in this picture is my third scary bear hat, although the ears are hidden by the chandelier. (The first died a sad death, the second was lost.) I am most displeased to report that I lost my third scary bear hat last Tuesday. It was last seen tied around my neck. When I got off the subway and reached back to put it on, there was nothing there. If you know any place to get Scary Bear Hat the 4th, I will gladly take any guidance.