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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

healthcareshmelthcare

As someone who grew up with military healthcare, I have to disagree wholeheartedly with the idea that the military has the best healthcare in the country. It is an HMO, it doesn't cover all types of care and it is fairly conservative - contraception, it's an issue, especially for those not married. Just saying.

So, last night when I was watching this video, my mother invited me to one of those Tea Parties that the conservative movement has been holding across the country. I am all for free speech, and freedom of expression and making your views known to your elected leaders, but I'm not going to participate in something I don't believe in, but I find it fascinating that my mother still feels the need to argue with me about things. Healthcare is a privilege and if socialize healthcare is the only way we can achieve this, then so be it. In a society where employers aren't always able to afford to insure their employees, and in a country where they already have a limited public system, it only makes sense to make it accessible to more people.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Bonding with Posh Spice

I am so annoyed. I'm writing this again because Blogspot had an error five minutes ago. Ugh.

Anyway, I am typically against posting my dreams but last night's was really over the top.

Part one.

I am in some small town, maybe Annapolis and I see a friend of mine *Allen standing in the street arguing with Victoria Beckham. Seeing as Allen is a friend and I am nosy, I go over to see what the fuss is about. I never find out, but Posh leaves him behind but takes me with her.

Part two.

She and I stop a restaurant to use the ladies room. She thinks I'm a nosy bitch (true) but likes me anyway. We bond over our love for The Long Blondes, The Cure and British Sea Power. Unfortunately this was not enough, she later ditched me at a gas station.

Part three.

Malcolm picks me up. In my car. (note: I was supposed to hang out with him yesterday and that didn't happen. I'm fairly certain that this is why he was in my dream.)

Part four.

Malcolm takes me to the Black Cat. Except the Red Room's bar has been replaced by the downstairs bar from DC9. (Feel free to converse about how pathetic it is that I have dreams about these places and know them well enough to distinguish lacquer in my dreams.) I'm fairly certain that it's my birthday, possibly my 21st because I am sloshed and dancing with more flail than usual. At some point it is time to go home, but I'm very ornery. Then at some point Chad (America) talks me down and either Seth or Malcolm (I can't tell them apart because they have the same body type and haircut) escort me home. To my apartment in Richmond. Except because it's a dream it's about a block away and the Black Cat is in the Fan (the neighborhood that I live in).

Fin.

So, yeah. Um...what the hell was that? Why was DC9 involved? And since when do I have some sort of subconscious obsession with Victoria Beckham?

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Mr. Potato-head

So, this summer has been fun…ish. Totally. Funish. So fun that I am spending a Thursday night in my room with a flat bottle of wine and Florence and the Machine. I have turned my phone off and closed all the doors and have decided to address two of the male species. First, Mr. Potato-head and second, Gray.

Dear Mr. Potato-head,
As a rule I am usually a fairly easy person to get on with , given that whoever the other person is willing to deal with all my opinions. They usually are, but you, you have this thing where you like to address all of them and then tell me why, in your opinion, they aren’t valid. Most people take them with a grain of salt and don’t think any more of them.
It is my ability to be incredibly direct and honest to a fault that allows people to either love me or love to hate me. You, supposedly found yourself in the former category. I like these things about myself and find that in my being direct I don’t feel the need to deal with others’ inability to be direct. You are one of those people. As you may have noticed I have not talked to you for the past two weeks.
It is your complete dishonesty and indirectness that allows me to write you off without feeling the least bit sorry. Now, now, I have been more than accommodating over the past year in listening to what you had to say for yourself, I gave you who knows how many chances to redeem yourself, and you failed miserably. What’s more, is that you failed in being a friend. I may have wanted you as a significant other at one point, but that time came and went quite some time ago. Why you could not find it in yourself to be a friend is beyond me as I went out of my way to be yours.
Lying. It is not something that I choose to have as part of my life. Now, given I have lied before, to my parents. But you and everyone else for that matter will find that lying is not something that I do to anyone I know well or care about. I cared about you, and to a certain extent I trusted you, and you had to go shit all over it. You lied about petty, little things, that should not have mattered. Who you were with, where you were, etc. I was not your girlfriend, I didn’t have ulterior motives. I am curious by nature and don’t find it intrusive when I ask my friends what they’re doing. If anything I’m hoping that whatever they are doing is more exciting than what I’m doing and that they’ll invite me to join them. If you were say, driving to Roanoke to fuck your ex that isn’t my concern, but don’t claim to be hanging out in Richmond. Small things have a way of floating to the surface.
The majority of my close relations have encouraged me to do this for a long time. Some though have excused YOUR behavior, saying that it’s only because you’re so young. That’s correct, they wrote you off because you were so young, and for the most part they regard me as fairly precocious with my heart at the root of all that I do. You took advantage of that. And it is for that, that I am choosing to not include you as a significant part of my life.
Unsurprisingly enough, you have not offered an apology. Though I did ignore your calls and gchat inquiries. I wasn’t away, I didn’t have my phone turned off, I choose to ignore you completely, because I am tired of putting too much effort in to relationships, let alone platonic ones, where the other person simply doesn’t give a damn. And despite your words, yours actions have always spoken louder.


-ap

Friday, July 17, 2009

my friends are better than your friends

Between me and my roommate this morning:

Jessica: "That girl is coming to see the apartment again, really soon..."

Me: "Oh, does that mean I have to put pants on?"

Jessica: "Yeah, I did..."

Me: (putting on yesterday's clothes)

Jessica: "You don't have to put real clothes on."

Me: "I want to look somewhat presentable."

Jessica: "Well I've already met her, so I'm fine." (While wearing her jimjams)



I am going tubing on Sunday. I'm going with my gay friend, Markus. Usually I don't mention people's sexuality, race, etc, but...

Yesterday:

Me: "Who else is going?"

Markus: (lists a bunch of people I don't know, but all are male)

Me: "Are any of them attractive, straight and will make out with me and aren't put off by my being significantly younger than them?"

Markus: "Pretty much all of them. I don't hang out with the gays - they annoy me. I don't generally hang out with ugly people. I'm highly judgmental. Can't speak to age requirements, but those kinds of concerns generally fade with beer and lies."

Do you see why we're friends? And to think all it took was a lot of bourbon and crying over our deceased pets.

And all this chatting reminded me of a conversation we had a few weeks ago.

Me: "Do you like bananas?"

Markus: "I'm a gay man, that's a loaded question."


I have yet to make him a banana cake, but maybe I'll do that this weekend.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

All Grown Up

Dear Internet,

I would like to start by apologizing for not being around for the last month, not that anyone reads this, but let's pretend. I have been exceptionally busy having a life which unfortunately doesn't leave much time for blogging. And I'm sorry to those that took offense at the above comment, but let's be real, non-bloggers constantly ridicule bloggers for not having lives, though, in out defense if we didn't have lives we wouldn't have anything to blog about in the first place. Now, if I had any sort of time management skills I would have a time each day or week set aside for blogging, but again, my life is insane.

I work. A lot. Like a ton. Like all the time. And when I'm not working I am typically driving or in transition to someplace else. Travel time takes up a good portion of my life also. My week, starting Mondays looks something like this:

Monday and Tuesday - Wake up and go to work at the Going Out Guide 7 am-5ish pm, from here I find someone in DC to put up with me for a few hours so that I can avoid my parents and all the uncomfortable questions my mother likes to ask me.

Wednesday - This is the craziest day of my week. It starts like Monday and Tuesday, but I leave at 1 pm so that I can be at work in Richmond at Images by 4 pm. Then I work until 8 pm. Then I have sister bonding time, otherwise known as being overly critical of the contestants of So You Think You Can Dance. Brownies are usually a part of this. I get home around eleven and pass out, hopefully after I've brushed my teeth.

Thursday and Friday - I get up sometime between nine and ten. Eat, obsessively clean my apartment and kill all bugs I see, tell someone about the bugs I just killed, put something presentable on and bike to work at noon where I stay again until eight. Thursdays I watch SYTYCD results.

Saturday - I work from 9 am-5 pm. This sucks, mostly because of the 9 am part. It often prevents me from doing all that I want to on Friday nights, or I just don't sleep.

Sundays are a toss up depending on whether I chose to dance in DC the night before, stay with my parents, or crash in the city.

So I work about fifty hours a week and drive at least ten and am on the metro for another five each week, and as you can seeI am going, going, going, all the time. Though, this is preferable to having too much spare time. I don't deal well with having to occupy myself and when I have free time it's usually spent nit-picking over stupid things.

The Going Out Guide, or for those of you that don't know what that is, I am an intern for Washington Post-Digital, or the website. I enjoy it. It gives me an excuse to look cute most days. Their dress code only states that employees can't wear sweatpants and shorts, so most people keep it fairly casual, but I like wearing skirts and heels and being dressed better than most of the people in the office. It's comparable to going to church with my parents in that I can usually count on being the best dressed one there. I won't even get into makeup, or the lack thereof and the ill applied makeup , that's a rant for another day.

I spend my time there fact checking and calling people and getting transferred to different people and after I've done this and eventually found someone to email me a press release with all of an events information, I put it into the calendar. Then I write a sentence describing the event, these are supposed to funny, but I'm not funny so I've given up trying to be. Sometimes I write a paragraph of two in addition to the "teaser" sentence. So, if you check out the Guide, and want to know about all the county fairs in the DC Metro area I will have put that information up. And let me tell you what, people that run county fairs do not have their shit together.

Throughout the day I spend a good portion on Gchat figuring out what I'm going to do that evening. It usually involves dinner and watching a movie/tv at someone else's house. I don't know why, but I just don't do well in the suburbs. I mean, I have to be doing something and if I'm not doing something I like to know that I could be doing something that is only happening a few blocks away.

I love my parents, but they don't do anything except watch criminal investigation shows. And it's difficult to have a conversation with them without them saying something like, "If you went to church...wouldn't happen." Boys for example, I can count on my friends telling me that their a waste of time, or agreeing with me that certain ones are assholes, etc, but my mother is quick to point out that I'm too abrassive, aggressive, intimidating, not sensitive enough, not soft enough, too confident, etc. And I'm always like
what? Did you just suggest that I need to be meek and vulnerable and passive? Because I can't stand those type of people. Well maybe you should try being nice. Mother, nice? Nice is a word we've been over. It's a word that is used when you don't have anything better or worse to say about someone. I hope that people have a stronger opinion of me either way... Our conversations go on like that, unless she complains about me not liking her. She says that. And I have finally started aggreeing. Yes, Mom, I can't stand being around you. But really, it's because she says stuff like that. I mean, really? It's so depressing.

My dad is a little bit better. He isn't as intrusive. And we've gotten to the point where we can talk more openly about what I do, even if he doesn't approve, I think he's finally realized that it's helathier for us to talk to each other than constantly argue about who or what is right.

When I'm in D.C., as previously stated, I'm out most of the time. But, when I'm in Richmond I stay in most of the time. My apartment is really starting to feel like home. I have finally hung things on the walls. It's nothing fabulous, but it certainly makes a difference. I still have tons of things that I want to do.

I spent last Friday cleaning and de-bugging. I cleaned every surface in the house except for those in my roommate's room. I made a special trip to the hardware store and bought boric acid and fly tape, for our roach and fruitfly problems. The fruitflys were a gift from my mother that accompanied a pineapple. The roaches came with the apartment. You may be asking yourself why my landlord hasn't done anything about this, let me explain, roaches own Richmond. They are everywhere. And because I live on a ground level apartment, they're probably worse.

After I cleaned out all of the kitchen cabinets, I mixed cocoa with the boric acid and spooned thin lines of it around the edges of all the cabinets, into any and all cracks, holes and spaces between the wall and floorboards. Then I shot Combat into many of the same cracks and sprinkled more of the boric acid mixture under the stove and refrigerator. The fly tape was hung and has mostly solved that problem, and while fly tape is gross it's also satisfying to see all the flies that are not interrupting my breakfast anymore. The roaches and other brown bugs are becoming fewer and I am feeling better about living here.

Of course keeping the floors swept and the dishes clean also helps. We do not leave dirty dishes in the sink ever. It's awesome. We eat our meal and then wash our dishes as soon as we are done eating. I had heard of this before and seen it take place growing up when I would have dinner at friend's houses, but never have I experienced it until now. Mind you, it is largely due to the bugs. They keep us motivated.

I could go on, but I feel that most of you probably stopped reading about three paragraphs ago.

-ap