Congratulations, you're still in the running towards becoming America's Next Hot Mess

Forgive me Blogland for I have sinned. It has been 20 days since my last confession, I mean blog post. I have been a right mess and until recently was in no mood for much of anything other than playing endless games of Big Kahuna Reef (it's like Jewel Quest except with seashells and tikis) or watching endless amounts of mindless, syndicated television. Here are 2 important things that I have learned:

1. Tyra Banks is an ass.

2. I need the company of other human beings.

During the first couple of weeks in September I morphed into a weepy, be-sweatpantsed, mascara smeared, unemployed lady-blob.

Early last week I almost reached the tipping point and was moments away from an apathetic and joyless life consisting of eating all my food straight from a can and wearing nothing but mumus, but thanks to a kind email from Gwen with a picture of a kitty, the hope provided by an online Oracle class offered by my local community college, the company of my good friends Jogger and Ladette, and a well timed, real job opportunity I was able to start snapping out of it.

I shook out my pony tail, showered, got dressed again, and put on make up.

I started doing all those things that I had planned to do in order to take advantage of all the free time I had. I started making the bed every day. I finally took down and washed the living room curtains. I got my cholesterol checked (high, but not too bad) and made appointments for teeth cleaning and an eye exam. I even sucked it up and applied for unemployment (even though everyone kept telling me you can't get it when you were a temp, which turns out not to be true) and discovered that being on the dole isn't so bad.

Yes. This upswing lasted for about 4 days.

Just when things were looking up for me I was suddenly and violently shoved back into my sweatpants. I was struck back down into raccoon eyed, ponytail hell by what I can only assume was the flu. I don't know what kind of flu, but to please Gwen we'll call it the Heiney Flu (H1N1) although it could possibly simply be that it's a rotten head cold and I'm a big baby.

Anyhoo... What the hell man? This is like the 4th or 5th time I've been sick this year. Fuck. I like to think of myself as a hale and hearty type, but since last Tuesday I've been wallowing around in my jammies wheeling around a sickroom humidifier, that I rigged up on an office chair with a bath towel to catch any spills, with me from room to room. My glamorous entourage of late, in addition to the humidifier, includes the following:

1. A giant box of tissues with lotion.

2. A bag of sugar-free cherry cough drops.

3. A bottle of saline nasal spray.

4. A tube of medicated lip balm.

5. A box of the most potent decongestant available over the counter. It's the kind from the locked cabinet at the pharmacy counter that you have to sign for because people make crystal meth from it. My philosophy about cold meds is that if it isn't harmful to pregnant women and I'm able to operate heavy machinery then it's no good. I want the hard stuff.

6. A plastic grocery sack filled with all my used tissues - I call it "the sad sack".

So today I'm finally starting to feel a little bit better and I'm learning to live without the humidifier (it broke anyway - I'm sure I wore the fucking thing out) and the meds (I ran out). I started back up again with my online class and found my way back to my blog.

That's all I have the strength for at the moment. Stay well and keep busy.

Love, Lady

Friends Like This

Making friends is so easy when you're a little kid. Pretty much all you have to do is live near someone your age and boom - companionship. It's like, hey nice bike, let's play fort. Easy.

As a grown up proximity alone does not a friendship make. I mean, I'm friendly with most of our neighbors, but I certainly don't want to invite them over to play fort, let alone talk to them for more than 5 minutes. I'm fond of the neighborly smile and wave from afar.

Even when I am able to determine that I have a few things in common with someone, I have to build up to committing to hang out, meet for dinner or drinks or what have you, and even then it's sketchy.

Making friends as an adult is a crap shoot. Start to make friends with a new person and even when things seem to be going great and you're getting along the next thing you know they try to recruit you to sell Amway for them, invite you to their next Klan meeting or try to get you baptized.

It can be terrifying because not only does this loony have your number, now they think that you are friends. Then I have to be the dick in the situation and be all like "I'm sorry I can't come to the quilting bee/cockfight/candle party, but I'm just crazy busy for the rest of my life."

The scariest thing anyone ever said to me in an overly eager tone was "we should be friends!"

Back off freak. It doesn't work that way, and besides you don't just blurt out a sentence like that. Weirdo.

I realize that I am dazzling to look at and have been entertaining you with my captivating, dry wit at this cocktail party non-stop. Don't get me wrong you've been a lovely audience, but I cannot make a commitment to a friendship based upon this encounter. I need facts. I need a list of hobbies and interests. I need to know that you are not going to go home from this party and dress your pet ferret up like Snow White and then leaf through your collection of clown porn.

Not to say that I'm not weird or that my friends aren't all freaks. I am weird and my friends are all weird, but we're all the same kind of weird, just in different ways. A certain je ne sais quoi of weird. Whatever it is - it works.

Anyhoo.. at this point I feel I'm rambling on a bit so I'm going to wrap it up. I'm sure you have deduced from reading this blog I don't have many close friends. The few that I do have live far away. I was missing them all very much this long Labor Day weekend and was thinking about how hard it is to make friends when you're an old weirdo and how lucky I am to have such great old weirdo friends.

Yeast Pilot

They won't have me to kick around anymore... fuckers.

I didn't mean you. You are lovely and not a fucker. Not at all. I love you man. No the fine folks at Large Corporation are the fuckers. You are marvelous. And looking fantastic by the way - have you lost weight? Well, whatever you're doing, keep it up, I'm serious, you look great.

Anyhoo... my last day at Large Corporation is Friday and I have mixed feelings about it. OK. Not really. My feelings are not mixed. I'm feeling pretty solidly shitty about it from all angles. I've been furiously looking for another job and have had a couple of interviews recently, but at the moment I'm in that place where I really hate to be - in suspense.

The world has gone all topsy-turvey, I'm at sea and have no idea what my future holds. It's frightening. The only thing I know for certain is that I cannot work for Large Corporation anymore. Fuckers. Not you.

Meanwhile I'm trying to make the best of a sorry situation and have been socializing like crazy and exchanging digits (in case my elderly uncle Dan is reading this - Uncle Dan I'm referring to phone numbers and email addresses, not fingertips, calm down old man) with my fellow contractors and we have been meeting for drinks after work on an almost weekly basis. Drinking is fun!

Also fun, last Wednesday instead of going out for drinks after work my fellow contractor friend, and soon to be married lady, Ladette and I threw back a couple of margaritas at my place and I gave her a cooking lesson. Under my careful tutelage she made baked rigatoni and a gorgeous Caesar salad. Overall it was a win-win situation. She got to learn 2 easy recipes that she will be able to use the rest of her life from the short-cut master (Rachel Ray and her 30 Minute Meals can suck my balls) and I got to pompously bluster on and on about how smart and great I am and showcase all of my excellent kitchen gadgetry.

In other news - I need to make an announcement to some folks who are contributing to news stories about the economy, I think I know who you are, and it goes a little something like this:

Please stop claiming that every kind of sales industry is a barometer by which we can measure economic recovery. So far I've heard stories about how monitoring the heightening or declining sales of heavy equipment, lipstick, home furnishings, and now the last straw - today I heard a story about how the sales of men's underpants is an economic barometer. It's not. I promise you it's not. At least not more than the sales of anything else.

When the the news story referred to the MUI, a.k.a. the Men's Underwear Index I swear that my head burst into flames. Stop it all of you.

Now that I've got that off my chest, and thank you for listening, I can tell you about Yeast Pilot.

Well, actually I can't tell you very much about Yeast Pilot except that I have no idea what it means, but it was written in dry erase marker on the schedule board of the woman who sits in the cube next to me and I must have walked by and read it about 100 times last week.

Intriguing no? Say it with me... Yeast Pilot.

Most likely it's some new kind of nutritional supplement that Large Corporation is planning to produce and market to whoever they market that stupid shit to.

I however have decided that it is a terrific new slang insult.

Douchbag? So passe.

Say it with me again - Yeast Pilot.

All the cool kids will be saying it.