You know how people always claim that they hold everything inside, pretend everything’s fine when it’s not, until the very last possible moment, when they can’t POSSIBLY hold it in anymore?

Yeah.

That ain’t me.

I’m the kind of person where when something happens to me, it happens to my whole goddamn world. No one escapes it.*

I had no idea when I wrote this post about Liz Lemon-ing my way through jury duty selection… I had NO idea what the next two weeks would hold in store for me.

The benevolent judge looked me in the eye, and asked if there was any reason I could not be a fair and impartial juror.

Oh, how I wish I could have lied.

But I couldn’t. I didn’t.

And eight days later, I set a man, a man accused of shooting an 18 year old girl through the heart, a man I believe to be a killer in cold blood…

I set him free.

Yes, there were twelve of us. Yes, we did what the law instructed us to do.

Yet somehow, we all know justice wasn’t served on Tuesday, April 12th, 2010.

I don’t believe in God. But somehow, I believe that poor girl’s sister when she said it’s in his hands now.

Maybe in some way, karma and God are the same principle.

Eventually, the nightmares will stop. With time, the victim’s mother’s tears, the prosecutor dropping to her knees at our verdict… they’ll fade from my memory.

But to that young, beautiful girl who had her entire future ahead of her…

I will never forget you.

None of us will, we dozen who held the opportunity to make your brutal and senseless death just the *tiniest* bit right, in our oh so very tied hands…

And failed you.

*(Dear B, you are a saint. Smooches.)

Sorry. The “aughts” was just such a great name. It’s going to be hard to let go.

Anyhoo. I think resolutions are for quitters, or something, so I’ll be doing these MY WAY.

Which is, of course, totes different from the way I ever do anything else.

(B, I can hear you laughing.)

My (Not-So-Resolution-y) Resolutions.

1. Start wearing more bling.

I’ve never been good at wearing accessories, be it of the sparkly/shiny, nail polishy, or badass hat/scarf/insert other French thing here. I HAVE them, it just never occurs to me to WEAR them. Matching is hard, yo. Most mornings I’m just trying to remember to wear a bra and some mascara, never mind make sure I have my brown watch on with my gold earrings, or whatevs. But I could probably stand to look a bit more, ahem, put together.

Either that, or start working from home and never, ever wear pants again.

God, option two sounds GREAT.

2. Call my sister more.

She’s pretty awesome. And she’s the only one I’ve got. And she gives me MAD SHIT when she calls me and I don’t answer and then email her back a month later with a link to some tardy cat video. I know, redic. Fine, woman. I will call you every damn day and ask you alllllllllll about your JOB SEARCH (holla? Anyone in Beantown hiring a genius, incredibly funny 23 year old?) and your LOVE LIFE and your BOWEL MOVEMENTS until you’re screening my calls because you don’t want your friends to hear me yelling about your stools. So there.

Love you mean it.

3. Never, ever, ever drink Firefly sweet tea vodka again.

No, really. NO, REALLY. I am still hungover from Saturday. That stuff rips me up. Firefly going in, FIRE coming out. Just sayin. *dies of death*

In fact, I think I may take January off from drinking, in honor of both shrinking my ass, and this awesome Scottish dude I used to work with in a Maggiano’s who always did it “just to make sure he still could”. I’m pretty sure Scottish dudes are wise, or something. Especially ones with as many awesome “this guyyyyyy!!!!!” jokes as he had.

4. FOUR? Whoa, whoa, whoa, little overachiever. Let’s take this slow. Mama’s still hungover, remember??

Happy New Year, lovers.

P.S. Did you vote for me yet in the 20SB Bootlegger Awards? You totally can. Til Sunday. I won’t even get mad. Swear.

I’ve been waiting to share this oh-so-LiLu moment with you guys for a couple weeks, partly because it’s humiliating, and partly because it’s taken me that long to go back and get a very necessary picture for full-effect-y-ness and all that. Shocking, I know.

SO.

It was a particularly grey day, the nasty kind where it’s sort of misting sideways, you know? DC has been ROCKING those lately.

Dear Weather Spirits: Please stop. Or at least make it SNOW so we can have a day off, yes?

It had been one of those, how do you say, “looooooooooong days” at the office, and all I wanted in life was to be on the couch with these fools. I dashed through the disgusting, frizzy-hair inducing mess outside towards my bus stop, and quick-like-a-bunny’d up underneath the protective shelter area with the other sopping wet Washingtonians.

As I shook out my umbrella while simultaneously trying to look up when the next bus was coming (thanks to Restaurant Refugee for showing me http://wmata.com/mobile !), I suddenly realized that I was, quite rudely, standing directly in front of someone and boxing them against the wall of the crowded (emphasis on crowded, here) shelter.

I whipped around, very clearly exclaiming,

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry! I didn’t… see you.. OH.”

Because I had just realized that I was apologizing to a quite famous lady…

ON AN ADVERTISEMENT.

With many, many witnesses around to see.

Yup… no doubt about it. I had just publicly- and loudly- apologized for standing in front of an ad for the Joy Behar Show.

In front of, oh, a dozen or so Washington business-types.

I AM SO AWESOME.

At least it wasn’t Hassel-butt…

I know, Rosie. I KNOW.

Sigh. I need a cup of cocoa and a hug.

***I’m going to decide whether tomorrow will be a Post Secret-style TMI Thursday based on how many entries I get, so send ‘em in now! Instructions here.***

We all know how this game goes… basically, whenever my friends get so offensive it shocks even me, I save it in my cute little “Shiz” gmail folder to share with you at a later date, entirely at their expense.

Love it.

Past “Shiz My Friends Say” here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lexa was less than thrilled when she saw this picture of me from my Costa Rica album… and it wasn’t because of my massive sunburn.

New comment on your post

Author : lemmonex

Comment:  Please tell me you did not PET those mongrels. 

I responded by chat…

Me: there were multiple times we were sitting at dinner and i had feral cats SNUGGLED in my lap
Lexa: OMG
Me: hahaha
Lexa: i am sorry but that is really gross
Me: i know
Lexa: no hugs for you
Me: i washed my hands!
Lexa: those scabies burrow
Me: i’ll let you know if it starts itching
Lexa: gross
Me: they wanted pets!
  who am i to deny them pets!
Lexa: uh huh
  when all your hair starts falling out
  and you start frothing at the vagina
  those pets will not be cute
Me: FROTHING AT THE VAGINA
  hahahahahahaha
Lexa: ha
   thats for shiz your friends say material there
Me: oh i already flagged it

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You should know that my friends Katie and brad have a good-sized mutt that everyone in their “up and coming” DC neighborhood refers to as a “WOLF DOG!!!” whenever they take him for a walk.

Me: okay 
  you will appreciate this 
  i was just walking through my hood
Katie: uh huh
Me: girl sitting outside at a coffee shop has a huge dog with her 
  boxer or something
  the halfway house is next door 
  one of the guys leans over the fence 
  and yells at her
  “i thought they outlawed ponies in this neighborhood!!!!”
Katie: HAHAHAHA!
  that absolutely beats wolfdog
Me: i mean he was being playful 
  but i just died 
  and all I could think was WOLF DOG
Katie: hahaha
   i get it EVERY time we walk
  either directly or i can hear it being whispered
Me: hahaha
Katie: where are all these people seeing actual wolf dogs???
  we live in DC
  i should just start saying yes
  and that he hunts babies at night for his dinner
Me: hahaha please do

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I spent a lovely Saturday morning catching up on my guilty pleasure TV…

Me: OMG
Maxie: what???
Me: THE MAYOR IS A CHILD MOLESTER
Maxie: who the dc mayor?
Me: THE KIDS IN THE BUS WERE ON HIS LITTLE LEAGUE TEAM
  no
  veronica mars
  duh
Maxie: OH HAHAHA
  for a second i was concerned that you cared about politics
  it was rocking my world and not in a good way
Me: hahahahahhaha

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Lexa told me about the St. Bernard her family had growing up…

Lexa: the st bernard was actually a good dog
Me: they’re so sweet looking
  big teddy bears
Lexa: right
  she was actually very gentle
  only dog we ever had that i fucking liked
Me: hahahaha
Lexa: best part
  i dont know if i told you this
  my mom has a big RAINBOW STICKER on our car
  for the dog
  ie
  my mom drove us around in a big gay car
  in small town RI
Me: hahahahahahahhahahaahaha
  in the 90s
  before it was cool to be gay
Lexa: right
  my mom was a visionary
  i call her the harvey milk of north smithfield
Me: hahahaha!
  thank god she’s better looking

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Life is good when you surround yourself with entertaining people.

Happy Monday Wednesday!!! Hooray short week!

You know how when people go on fabulous vacations to sunny and exotic places, and they come back and they’re all “it was a-maz-ing and so gor-geous and I’m all tan and glow-y from the rays of the sun!”

And it’s really freaking annoying because everyone else has just been doing the same ‘ol, sittin at their desk, looking at that freaking motivational poster of a cat “hanging in there”, and kind of wish the cat was hanging ITSELF because at least then you could laugh about something- I mean, not that hanging kittens are funny, but hey, it WANTED to go, and it’s really much more fitting with the office atmosphere?

Or something.

Anyhoo, I’ve decided that instead of a JOYful CHEERful OHEMGEE look what I did while you were toiling away at your desk jobs! post, I’m going to take a slightly different direction with it, and tell you all about every last thing that went terribly, horribly wrong.

You see how I love you?

Let’s do this.

1. Thursday, we arrived in Costa Rica at midnight, and grabbed a taxi to a hotel nearby… only to find that it didn’t exist. Our driver took us to the exact address… and it was a cemetary. $75 dollars down the drain later, we gave up and stayed at the stupid Hilton.
2. We bussed up it to Arenal Volcano and hot springs the next day, where we hiked up an enormous and treacherous mountain to NOT see lava at dusk… and then hiked back down in pitch black darkness. Believe me when I tell you it’s a miracle no one lost a limb.
3. While lying in said hot springs, I slowly realized the jacuzzi-esque water felt like it was scalding me… which turned out to be a side effect of the INCREDIBLE sunburn I had already obtained on our FIRST day that covered 75% of my front. Somehow, my knees were 8 shades pinker than anything else. ??????

Finally, we made it to the beach, where we planned to stay for a week of glorious sunshine. Surely things would be relaxing and easy here on out, right?

By mid-week, I had the following afflictions…

1. A NEW sunburn, this time on my entire back side
2. Approximately 53 gigantic bug bites covering my legs and arms, that were about 1,000 times itchier than your average bite, and therefore I was constantly scratching them open because the PAIN FELT BETTER
3. A “sun rash” of tiny red dots on my arms and neck
4. The beginnings of a very unsexy cold. At the beach. In 85 degree weather. AT THE BEACH.

At least one day when we were body surfing, I took a quart of sea water up my nose, which pretty much cleared my sinuses out.

It rained our last two days at the beach, and after a zillion hours of traveling, we finally caught a cab home at Reagan, only to discover the driver had just let out the world’s stankiest, rankiest assplosion of a fart. It smelled like the farts of someone who’d used an entire bottle of Sex Panther. He should’ve knock 2 bucks off the rate for that shiz. BUT, we got to home sweet home in one piece.

So, yeah… all in all?

It absolutely couldn’t have been any better, and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

I have approximately a kajillion pictures… this is pared down from almost 500. So I apologize, but have at it, hoss…

Costa Effin Rica

Update: I just realized you guys can COMMENT on the pictures. Dum dum dum……

Last Friday, I had the grave misfortune of attending… dum dum dum… a “Work and Time Management” seminar. You see, I work at one of those huge, incredibly bureaucratic companies where, come Annual Review time, you’d better have some concrete thingamabobs to put on that form that represent trying to better oneself.

I know, I know. Total BS. But whatevs, mama needs a raise. So I’m playing the game, see?

The seminar was from 9 to 5, aka alllllllllllllllllllllllllll goddamn day. So I knew going in it would either be a great thing (i.e. an easy day off work), or complete and utter torture.

I grabbed a coffee and a seat with a few ladies I recognized from my department. I immediately noticed the four “drawing boards” strategically placed at the corners of the room, just screaming “WE ENCOURAGE ACTIVE PARICIPATION!!!”

And the sense of dread set in.

Sure enough, at 9 sharp, a rotund woman in a pants suit that did nothing for her gathered herself at the front of the room, and clapped her hands together sharply.

“Goooooooooood morning!!!”

It was all I could do not to shout “VIETNAM!” at the top of my lungs. The room gave her a half-hearted, “I haven’t had my coffee yet” bedraggled response.

I already knew what was coming.

“I know it’s morning, but you can do better than that!!! It’s FRIIIIIIIIIIday!”

Seriously, lady? SERIOUSLY? That line hasn’t been funny for the past two decades… and I’m willing to bet, neither have you.

She spent the rest of the day giggling at us like Mrs. Butterworth on happy pills while choking on corporate buzzword after buzzword.

“Urgency versus importance!” “Stressful work environments!” “Time management tips & tricks!”

At 10:40, I finally managed to escape long enough to tweet my despair…

“In a seminar w/ teacher Mary Fucking Sunshine. I honestly do not get how one can be so full of PEP and GLEE and STEREOTYPICAL CATCH PHRASES.”

I was just waiting for her to refer to us as her “special people”, a la Billy Madison.

But the most annoying part of it all? It actually wasn’t her. It was the dumbass robots around me who bought every last bit of it, hook line and sinker. The sympathetic nods as people sob-storied about working til 9pm, eating lunch at their desks, even having insomnia from getting up at 3am to handle correspondence with our Asia and Pacific branch.

Um… WHAT? Why??? We’re all assistants. I know what you get paid. Why on earth would you do that to yourself in a dead end job? Didn’t anyone ever teach you to keep the bar low??

After a couple hours of talking about our feeeeeelings, Mary pulls out her handy dandy self-developed “Time Management Matrix” tool, outlining the four categories ‘tasks’ should be labeled as in order to identify their priority in our “work plans”. Whatever, right? Let’s just get this over wi-

And then someone actually tried to ARGUE with Mary that the categories were wrong.

<Insert world’s biggest, huffiest sigh of agitated disbelief here.>

Do you really think the lady who MADE THIS UP is going to say, “Oh hey, glorified secretary, you’re right! I’ve been going about this wrong for 15 years! How silly of me to have been teaching this all over the world!”

It’s a good thing there weren’t any sharp objects in that room. I think I would have been the first person to off another human being with a stapler.

OOOOOOOooooo. I just got the email to complete my evaluation of said course…

This? Should be fun.

*evil cackle*

It’s bad enough that everyone is posting about being  So Excited! About! Fall! The only reason I’m even slightly glad it’s getting colder is because I’ll reallllllly enjoy being in Costa Rica in a few weeks. After that? Hell. Frozen over HELL until what, May? As much as I try to convince myself that winter’s all about snuggling under a quilt from Gramma with the one I love, giving each other Eskimo kisses while we sip hot chocolate next to a fireplace…

It’s freaking NOT.

Winter sucks. All of it. At least in Massachusetts we could pretend to go skiing on one of our “mountains” every once in a while, which in no way made up for five months of ice/snow/sleet/hail/freezing rain, but at least flying down a hill on a Sno Tube while you fear for your life and the possibility you might lose an eye in the woods at the bottom is kinda fun.

(What can I say. I live dangerously.)

But here in the District, there’s no snow to speak of. It’s just gray and mush and God’s frozen tears covering the land, while I try not to get plowed (twss) by the 42 bus on the walk to work. Because, yanno, the busses are always FULL when it’s cold and gross out, so there’s no point in waiting for one to zip by you.

At least they’re heavier when they do kill you, so it’s over quicker, I’d imagine.

But none of these things account for why I truly hate the weather getting colder. These things are a nuisance, to be sure, but I am a Masshole, after all. I will live.

No, my friends. The reason I REALLY hate the chill of the months that end in ‘Ber, is because of my one true nemesis…

EL PUMPKIN.

I can just hear it mocking me… it and its little green ghouls!

The evil, evil pumpkin and I go way back, to the time it made me hurl an entire Thanksgiving dinner at the tender age of ten. And I ask you to consider, my friends… what was the last thing I’d eaten?!

That’s right, my friends. PUMPKIN PIE. All I saw for the next two hours of food poisony vomiting was that cinnamon-speckled orange goop, mocking me as I prayed to the porcelain gods.

Now the very smell of those repulsive, stringy, George Hamilton-colored innards make me gag and run for cover. I’d rather sit in John Goodman’s fart stank cloud than be in a room with El Pumpkin.

I spend every holiday meal in fear of the end, when an evil convert of El Pumpkin may try to voraciously foist their master’s gelatinous pie form upon me, banking on my good manners that I will be unable to refuse. The pie is the most offensive of El Pumpkin’s pulpy shapes, but not the sneakiest. Oh no, my friends. That honor belongs to the one and only…

PUMPKIN SCENTED CANDLE.

That’s right, people. As if the pumkin pie and the pumpkin cookies and the pumkin bread weren’t bad enough, now El Pumpkin has found a way to infiltrate my BREATHING AIR. He’s gone biological warfare on me, folks.

But alas, it doesn’t end there. As one final grand insult to injury, the corporate demon Starbucks has joined forces with The Dark Pumpkin Lord, and somehow devised an evil potion that has all of the people nearest and dearest to me constantly singing the Pulpy Prince’s praises! The Facebooks and the Twitterings are haunted by one deadly phrase… Pumpkin Spiced Latte. It would seem that only a few strong souls are able to resist its nutmeggy charms… and we are so overwhelmingly outnumbered, the fight ahead of us seems impossible.

But somehow, some way… I must rid the world of the mind controlling chemical “Pumpkin Spiced Latte,” and free my friends from the control of the evildoer, so that we may live our sad little wintery lives in peace once more.

I am so freaking sick of SHOULDS.

Hitting my mid-20s, a lot has changed. Lemmonex and I talk openly about coupons for the grocery store, for chrissakes… and we’re not making fun of little blue haired ladies who use them. B and his friends in the financial industry discuss their retirement plans… and they actually have one. My doctor has started to nag me about extra calcium and weight training, because apparently I will perish into a pile of dust at 42 without said things.

Isn’t just making a home cooked meal every now and then enough? Isn’t making it from paycheck to paycheck without having your account fall into the negative enough? Isn’t cardio four times a week enough?

Because it’s a helluva lot more than I was doing at 21 or 22. But no, apparently… it’s not enough.

It’s never, EVER enough.

I am a big girl now. Officially, whether I like it or not. I have a home with a man and we have things and bills and living creatures that we pay for all by our bigass selves.

And it’s taken it’s toll… I feel it every day, in little ways. I feel guilty when I forget to take my multivitamin. (And simultaneously, like a dork for having them sitting on my desk at work.) I feel guilty when I realize I went a whole weekend without flossing. I feel guilty every time I walk by my company’s credit union where I really should open a credit card and transfer my high interest balance from the evil that is Capitol One… but it’s been almost a year that I’ve been walking by, and I’ve never made it inside.

These are all things I wouldn’t have dreamed of worrying about just a couple years ago. And now little “responsible” things like this weigh me down just a little more, every day.

“We are old,” Lemmonex and I say to each other once a day, whether we’re getting excited about a cheap homegoods store she found online, or the fact that we wanted to shoot ourselves in that bar Saturday night when we were elbow to elbow with all the “kids”.

We used to be those kids…

Now we’re wondering “if anyone still says that” and why on earth they don’t know what Hammer Pants are.

I wrote this post not so long ago about “Doing the Splits into Grown Up World”…

Looks like I’ve taken one more biiiiig, slippery step down this slope into “adulthood”.

Oh, well. I plan to undo at least half of the new “responsible me” I’ve discovered next weekend as my birthday present to myself.

Life is hard.

Okay, so.

If you’ve basically ever been here to my corner before, you probably know that about 95% of B’s and my weekend time is generally spent pantsless on our couch, drinking beer and trying to make our cats wear bumblebee hats. (And if you don’t know me by now…)

I kid, I kid. If you just read that sentence, you’re pretty much up to speed.

ANYHOO, this particular weekend was spent with all four of our parents.

No, like, ALL of it. (I know.)

And I love them dearly. I do. But between a trip to Baltimore (Go Sawx!), a two hour trek to Eastern Market on a twisted ankle, a late night at the DC Improv, and a movie here or there, I could die dead right at my desk right now and pretty much be totally okay with it because at least MY EYES WOULD BE CLOSED AND I WOULD NOT BE MOVING.

Heaven.

Note to self: Next time? Take Monday off from work.

P.S. to self: Don’t let there be a next time.

(Kidding, Mom. You are my everything.)

Anyhoosits, my point is that I am fucking tired. So, here… have some bullets.

Go on, take them. They’re not rollover or anything!

(God, I hate those commercials.)

• If you know me, you know that I adore the DC Improv with all of my heart and soul. Saturday’s show did not disappoint, but they never do, and here’s why. I’ve probably been there a dozen times, and lately I’ve noticed that this guy Tim Miller is almost always the host/MC/first comic up. And he. Is. HILARIOUS. Honestly, I think he’s better than the headliner most of the time. Find a way to check this man out, y’all. His regular set is amazing, but my favorite thing about him is his ability to play off the audience for, oh, ten minutes at a time. To me, THAT is the measure of a great comic. And he gets an A+++.

(Did I mention he was funny?)

• Today might, just might, be my two year Blogoversary. Woot. I WAS going to do something really cool to celebrate, but then I happened to notice that I’m only a few hundred away from hitting the 20,000 comment mark… and frankly, I think that’s a helluva lot cooler. That marks the fact that this is a community; a place where discussion goes on. And frankly, I’m a lot more proud of having created that. So, when I do hit that mark, I’ll be having a giveaway THEN… because obviously this is all about you, not me. Also? The giveaway is entirely awesome, boozy, and a little bit illegal. What’s not to love?

(Oh, hi Feds… how you doing? Um, it’s not THAT illegal… I promise to check people’s Facebooks to make sure they’re 21! Swear it! Hey, why are you looking behind m- oh, of course I’m not crossing my fingers! Come on now… who even does that anymore… I’m almost 26 years old, for chrissake’s. Let go of my arm! KNIBB HIGH FOOTBALL RULES!!!!!!!)

• Speaking of turning 26 in LESS THAN A MONTH, Maxie and I have chosen a venue for our wedding/co-birthday party. It will be UPSTAIRS at Stetson’s at 16th and U Street at 9pm on Saturday, October 17th. So stick THAT in your hat. Or in your calendar. Mostly in your calendar. Or your calendar’s hat. I’m not picky.

As of right now, we have out of towners from Colorado, Los Angeles, Florida, Detroit, Boston, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Toronto, and CHICAGO!!!! traveling to hang out with the already enormous D.C. crew.

(Gwen, you don’t even KNOW what bananas looks like. Let us show you it.)

That’s all I got. Excuse me while I go collapse now. In the FACE.

***Update: Doods! My site caught swine flu and was down all day yesterday. It should be up and running fine now- vaccinate your children!- but do me a solid and let me know if you notice anything wonky, mmmmmkay? Xoxo***

While watching Real World last night (the Cancun scenery serves as a constant reminder of the 10-times-more-gorgeous place I will be in two months)…

Costa Rica, you are seriously my life motto right now.

Anytwaddle, so a few of the roommates end up having a threesome in the bed next to a fourth sleeping roommate. And when she finds out the following morning, she is, as she so eloquently put it, “Totally weirded out”.

Me: Oh, that would totally freak me out too. Ick.

B: Why? It’s the same thing as if it happened in your college dorm.

Me: No no no. In college, you have rules! Socks on door knobs and such- you have to come to a prior understanding about the rules of shared-room sexin’.

B: No way. Freshman year, my roommate Dave came home with a girl. I was sitting up, wide awake, watching TV. He took one look at me and said, “Going to bed, B?” You better believe I said “Yup” and turned out the light. And then, a few minutes later, I heard her say “You’re roommate’s not asleep yet!”, so I did what any good friend would do… and began fake snoring.

Me: Well, okay. But that’s more dude code than anything else. That wouldn’t really happen with girls.

B: Why not? Girls need love too.

Me: I know, but A) we would probably have figured out some elaborate smoke signal system so we wouldn’t be in the room at the same time and B) no guy who’s about to bang would EVER care that her roommate was still awake.

B: Touché, my dear. Touché.

Thank god I’m not college anymore.

I had, let’s see… I think the technical jargon is “A BOMB” dropped on me this weekend.

The lovely woman that I call “Mother” stumbled- entirely innocently- onto this little corner of the interwebs.

The best part? She was worried when she found it… yeah, she was worried, about ME being upset, that I would feel like my privacy had been violated.

Now that’s a great Mom.

But you all know that- I’ve told you before how amazing the ‘rents are, and how lucky I am.

I’ve watched a few of you (Desiree, shine) go through the mess of the parents finding you out. How could it not make me think about what I would do in the same situation?

And I’ve always said I would stand by this place. I’m not ashamed of anything on these pages. The good, the bad, the sexy, and the ugly… it’s all true, and it all made me the lovable crackpot you see here today. It’s the story that brought the people I love into my life.

Besides, I started out reading the fascinating blogs of a couple “working” or otherwise sex-i-fied women… And their parents supported them. (Though I bet that discovery was a lot more painful than my own…)

I am proud of what I’ve done here. Honestly, I would have preferred to share it from the start. But asking my mother to keep a secret from my dad never seemed fair, and there are some things a father should never know about his little girl.

So what did Mamakins say? What was her reaction when I called her?

“I’m glad you’re writing.”

Best. Mom. EVER.

So, everybody say hello to the woman (partially) responsible for the TMI Thursday-ing (Mom, don’t click that) crazy pants LiLu you know and hopefully love. She is going to be stopping in from time to time, WHEN I TELL HER SHE CAN. Because she is awesome, and for some reason, she wants to see the mess her baby girl has created on this little slice of the internets.

(Besides, now when Maxie and I finally make it onto Stephen Colbert, it won’t be a shock when you see me dancing to Charlene on national television. That was gonna be your Christmas present!)

So wave with me, y’all;

“HI, MOM!!!!!!”

(And, um, thanks for pretending that this is different from any other day.)

As most of you know, B and I made our way to a destination wedding this weekend. The desination being Bumfuck, Virgina.

(I keed, I keed. It was in Lexington, at Washington & Lee University, and I was actually quite enamored with the town- it reminded me of a smaller Chapel Hill. Positively quaint, in a word or two.)

So, yeah, once we got there, it was delightful.

Catch that? Em-fah-sis on “ONCE WE GOT THERE.”

Our plan looked good on paper. B is a groomsman, and needs to be at rehearsal at 5pm. We take half days and leave at noon, meet at Reagan to pick up the rental car, and hopefully beat the weekend traffic out of the city.

Easy peasy puddin pie, right?

Yeah. Not so much.

At approximately 11:45, my office blows up with requests. Requests that I cannot put off til Monday because it just so happens that I work at a Very Important Place (thank you, thank you), and I am still relatively new and in the “trying to prove myself” phase. Read: I am a chump.

Meanwhile, my cell phone is ringing off the hook as B discovers that A) it is taking him forever to get through the car rental place line so I should just metro out to Ballston and meet him there, B) the car rental he non-refundably purchased through Priceline will now not give him a car without an airline ticket, C) No, really, they actually won’t, so I need to find a car rental nearby and make it happen (keep in mind I haven’t driven a car in two years and don’t have insurance of any kind), D) Okay, he found a different service who will give him a car, so back to the metro to Ballston plan. (Did your head just asplode??? Cause MINE DID.)

And the whole time, my ass is being handed to me at work with request after request… WHILE I’m trying to get out the door with my entirely overpacked and too-heavy suitcase. It’s how I do. (“How” being foolish.)

After finally escaping and schlepping myself around town and the metro, we get into our sweet little Hyundai rental. It is after 1 now and we have approximately 3.5 hours to make the alleged 3 hour drive, so we kick the Elantra into high gear… (by the way, an Elantra in high gear = oxymoron).

And promptly spend an hour in bumper to bumper traffic. Not even endless MJ on the radio could make us feel better.

Finally free of the clusterfuck, we haul ass to Lexington, and I plug the address he has written down that is not the hotel into the GPS, assuming it is the site of the rehearsal.

We get there at 4:56…

And realize it is the country club, where the RECEPTION will be held in about three hours.

Thanks to Bernadette, my BBerry (Bernie for short), we find the address for “Lee Chapel” and make it across town in five minutes flat, showing up at 5:01, two steps behind the bride. We are sweaty and smelly in our wrinkled work clothes… but more importantly, we are a whole lotta WIN.

We make it through the rehearsal and dash to the hotel to shower and change before the dinner. B rips open his suitcase to locate one of the TWO brand spankin new white shirts he has brought. He pulls out shirt 1…

To find it covered with shoe polish. Shiny shoes FAIL.

Annoyed but not yet beaten, he digs for shirt 2… at which point, he realizes it requires cufflinks.

Which, of course, he did not bring.

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll use the crappy pins that came with it, and just wear your jacket… and, yanno, try not to stab yourself when they’re taking pictures. You don’t wanna flash an O face that will be in their wedding album forever.”

Fresh from a two-second shower, I reach for my $15 yet-super-cute Forever 21 cocktail dress, tug it on, and turn to be zippered.

Halfway up, the zipper jams. The cloth is being eaten by the teeth and there is no Up, no Down, no Passing Go and Collecting $200. This. Shit. Is. STUCK.

I twisted. He yanked. We prayed. I made a sacrifice of our hotel room toiletries to the Goddess of cheap dresses. Nothing doing.

Fifteen minutes later, both of our index fingers were blistered and bloody, and he ripped the goddamn thing off me [insert skanky hotel sex here, if we'd had time] and I pulled on a Paris Hilton pink J Crew sundress that all the girls at the wedding probably A) own and B) wear to the BEACH, not, yanno, REHEARSAL DINNERS.

Whatevski. Wine- I mean, the blood of Christ (it was a SUPER religious wedding- the Mother of the Bride actually converted me to Quakerism, I think. I’ll have to check my pamphlets) fixes all, no?

Nevertheless, as soon as we actually MADE it to the dinner, the rest of the weekend was a blast. Despite the fact that I have never, ever seen so much seersucker/bowties/Lilly dresses in my life, everyone was just freaking delightful and I couldn’t have asked for a more fun crowd of complete strangers to hang out with.

The highlight of the actual wedding for me, I have to say, was far and away the best man’s speech. The groom’s twin brother is the kind of guy you take one look at, and decide that A) He is a CHARACTER, and B) It is my life goal to be that guy’s best friend by the end of the night. It may be because I was a little tipsy, but this made me laugh so hard I almost peed a little bit. And, he was kind enough to provide me with a copy of it for your amusement… I only wish you could see him deliver it, but this shall have to do.

Best Man’s Toast

Twins have a special bond.

Sometimes we’re best friends.

Sometimes we’re mortal enemies.

But we are always twins and mostly, best friends.

Let me tell you a story.

When we were eight, our parents shipped us off to summer camp for two weeks. The first night, I was too scared to get out of my sleeping bag and I wound up peeing in my bunk.

I slept in that wet sleeping bag for the next two nights.

Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I crawled into my brother’s sleeping bag with him. He didn’t object, and so we wound up sleeping together for the rest of the two weeks.

The thing is, the other kids in the cabin began calling us “homosechuals”…

We didn’t know what that meant, so we asked our parents when they picked us up, and they told us…

We were surprised.

Now I’ve gotten over my fear of the dark, and he has chosen someone else with whom to share his sleeping bag.

To my brother and his bride, I love you both and I wish
you the best that life has to offer.

Beautiful, no? It’s okay, I know you’re chopping onions right now. Let it out.

The other highlight of my weekend?

Happy freaking Monday, y’all… at least we have Friday off! Look, it’s Tuesday already! Magic!

(Btw, ladeez, don’t forget to enter my Hello Kitty vibrator giveaway if you haven’t yet! Thru 11:59 PM tomorrow.)

This weekend, B and I became scientists on a mission to find a cure for the epidemic known as “A Case of the Mondays.”

Or, we got drunk and forgot that we’re white for a little while.

Either way, you were promised a very important video today. For those of you who missed this weekend’s dose of the fugly, we discovered the new dance craze sweeping the nation and just had to share it with you. Please witness, “The Stanky Leg.”

We were so entertained (read: drunk) by this tomfool-tastic atrocity, B agreed to share with us his own white boy version of this creative and outside-of-the-box dance routine. Mostly because I begged him to and he is the best boyfriend ever.

The first try didn’t go so well…

But never one to give up, B chugged another beer and tried again… this time with what can only be described as SUCCESS.

My favorite part has got to be when I yelled at the top of my lungs, “YOU GOT THE CLAP!!!”

I *may* have taken a shot at the white girl version of the Stanky Leg, but that shiz is never seeing the light of day. I am hereby conceding that B is far more black than my lilly white ass could ever hope to be.

This has been your installment of the LiLu & B hour. The things we do for you guys…

Happy Monday, lovers! Hope this brightened it up a little bit.

(First of all, can I just say that today is definitely a vagina-freezing kinda day?? Yeah, I took the metro. Who loves you, my little hoo-ha?)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last week, my coworker (the one who’s training me) was out sick for four days with the malaria that’s going around. As such, it was up to me to handle everything for the better part of a week. While coming down with the malaria myself. And keep in mind that I still have only the smallest idea of what I’m doing at my job. I was constantly bombarded with requests barked at me by important people that sounded like gibberish (I hate acronyms), and every morning when I came in there was a pile of emails and memos and important documents that needed to be printed, organized, and distributed to the proper places… (of course, I’m still learning what those proper places are).

So, yeah. It was incredibly stressful and a little piece of me died approximately every hour when a new request I didn’t understand came in. One morning, I was sitting under a pile of papers the size of my head (if I was an elephant), and the head of my unit strode by. He was holding a Strictly Confidential office memo; a summary of one of my boss’ mid-year review. He asked me to make copies and distribute them in sealed envelopes to all the heads of the entire department. (You know, like the guy I made an ass out of myself in front of by singing karaoke at our holiday party.) Then I was to return the original to him.

Great! I thought. Something I definitely know how to do. As I was making good headway, I put the memo aside and continued sorting the mountain in front of me (which was probably my first mistake).

A half an hour later, all the emails and assortment of documents had been printed, organized and sent off to their respective destinations. Proud of myself, I sat back in my chair and looked back at the clean desk, satisfied.

Wait a minute. Clean? Desk? Holyshitfuck what have I done?!?

I looked around frantically, trying to recognize the words “Office Memo” or “Strictly Confidential” on the few remaining pieces of paper around me, but it quickly became clear that it simply wasn’t there. My heart pounded as I imagined having to go back to the head of my unit and say,

“Oh hey, bossman, remember that REALLY IMPORTANT STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL memo you threw my way, oh, an hour ago? The one that you signed off on, all official-like? And told me to give ONLY to the most important people in our whole department? The one you put FACE DOWN on my desk because it’s SUPER PRIVATE, i.e. no one else should see it, even a little bit, at ALL?…

Umm… got another copy on you?”

Omigodomigodomigod. So not happening. Way to build street cred my first day on my own, no?

In a panic, I pulled out the hundreds of pages I had put in the mailboxes to go out (thank the baby Jesus they hadn’t been picked up yet)… and looked through them all, one by one, thinking I must have stapled it onto the back of one of them.

15 minutes later? Nada. Nothing. Zip zilch. I put the piles back into the mailboxes and slumped over my desk, contemplating the pros and cons of admitting defeat… or throwing myself out the window. And the window was looking pretty damn good.

Suddenly, something blue glinted in the corner of my eye. My recycling bin! Surely I wouldn’t be that careless… that foolish… that whole-heartedly IDIODIC.

But since I know myself, I reached into the depths of the blue monster and pulled out the huge pile I’d tossed in just that morning… to reveal the Strictly Confidential, Super Important, Don’t You DARE Throw Me Away Official Memo, smiling up at me from the very bottom.

I made a noise akin to a humpback whale releasing 9 million gallons of water from his blowhole. My sigh of relief was surely heard by the angels in heaven themselves, who had clearly been watching over me (I guess everyone gets a little protection during the holiday season, no matter how naughty they’ve been…)

I quickly copied and distributed the memo, and handed the original back to my unit director with far, far too big a grin. He probably thought I wanted a cookie, but his “Ummm… thanks?” was all I needed to hear.

Other than “Here’s a shot of tequila, you’ve earned it!”, that is.

I have not slept in two months.

Correction: I have not slept for more than a couple hours at a time in the last couple of months… unless heavily sedated with Tylenol PM. And I’m not big on self-medicating, unless it’s recreational (read: booze), so there hasn’t been much of that either… nonetheless, even my blessed Tyl PM has seemingly started to not work. I don’t want to get a prescription for sleeping pills… that just seems like total avoidance, and thus a waste of time and money.

When I’m (ahem) intoxicated, I will perhaps be lucky enough to pass out, but only to wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and lie awake until the alarm goes off at 7:30, watching the minutes tick by…

When I’ve not been drinking, I don’t even have the luxury of passing out. Those nights I’ll usually manage to finally drift off around 5am and grab a couple of hours before getting up for work. If not, there’s always the interwebs (how many of you have noticed me commenting at 5, 6 a.m. before? Yeah, that’s not a typo…) I’ve got hours and hours of Sex and the City, 3rd Rock From the Sun, and random horrible MTV/Vh1/Oxygen/Bravo shows that B won’t let me watch around him, mostly because they are seemingly mindless enough to put me to sleep… but they usually don’t.

Last night I slept for a couple hours in the evening… but woke up at midnight. I saw 5 am roll around before I was finally able to sleep- on and off- again, and in the interim I watched Britney Spears’ entire “For the Record” Special, a Bad Girls’ Club episode, last night’s new Girls Next Door, a RERUN of Real Housewives, and some other crap I’m too ashamed to admit. (Pssst, Katherine? Thank you for CatHouse! That shiz is hilARious.)

My insomnia is rotting my brain.

Two months ago, I figured it had to do with general anxiety, exhibited by the chest pains I was having. My doctor told me it was either anxiety or heartburn… and I knew it wasn’t heartburn.

I decided said anxiety was probably related to my unhappiness with my then-job. So, I went job huntin’. I tested, I interviewed, all the while… yup, still not sleeping well. Clearly, it was a product of the stress of job-hunting, no? But then I found a great job, a much better job, a job that I was excited about! Problem solved, right?

When I still wasn’t sleeping, I thought maybe it was the starting of said new job, in conjunction with worrying about holiday plans (whose house for Xmas, etc.), and the pressure of meeting B’s parents for the first time over Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving came and went, and was a delightful affair. I didn’t say anything too foot-in-mouth, and it was a relatively relaxing weekend of card games, movies, and home-cooked food. B agreed to come to Christmas with my family, and I was ecstatic. Surely, now I would be able to rest?

When I continued to jerk awake in the middle of the nights, worries and tasks flying through my mind accompanied by little shocks of adrenaline that completely prevented sleep, I thought, “Well, the holidays in general are always stressful… so much to do, and I haven’t even started shopping!” Nevermind the fact that going to Costa Rica had essentially bankrupted us since we got back… and everytime the paycheck came that was FINALLY going to take us out of the red, something else came up.

Honestly? I have everything. I love my apartment, my man, my family. My paychecks from my new job are coming in (with a raise that finally gives me a little breathing room to boot). Maybe I can’t shop or frequent restaurants the way I used to, but I can still afford to go out with the friends I love and spend some quality time boozin, talking, loving life.

A lot of my Christmas shopping is done or in the works. I love wrapping and giving (!!!) presents to the people I adore. I love traveling to upstate New York every year to be with my whole family, and I couldn’t be more excited now that B is coming with me to experience it. I love holiday parties and decorations and the pointsettia in my living room and my sad but sweet Christmas tree and the two adorable ornaments my mom sent so that we would have some “real” ornaments that came from loved ones.

I don’t mind winter or snow. I like a reason to snuggle up and get cozy.

So, yeah… you gotta ask, right?

What. The FUCK. Is Wrong With Me???

Update on this:

I just bumped into the big HEAD HONCHO of my department on the way up to work.

I said hi.

He saw it was me and cracked up laughing, shaking his head.

Let’s hope that was good laughing…

UPDATE on the Update:

I just got this in my email:

“Dear Colleagues,

Please visit the new web site for sharing departmental social activities! Enjoy the first batches of party pictures that have just been uploaded:

http://www.insert_terrifying_link_here.com

Regards,

Your Office’s Resident Gay”

I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared to click…

So, I will admit that I was a little disappointed that on our trip, we did not see A WHOLE SHIT TON OF MONKEYS. I really, really wanted to play with monkeys. And, you know, braid each other’s hair, pick bugs off one another, throw our poop at each other- all the stuff monkey bffs normally do at their slumber parties.

Sadly, the only monkeys we saw preferred to dance out of reach in the canopies of the rain forest, wholeheartedly spurning my advances and anguished declarations of love. Devastated, I buried myself in a dark hole of Imperial beer and Chilean sauvignon blanc, and pronounced the entire trip a bust unless a monkey threw a crusty turd at me before we left the country.

It was our last day in Costa Rica. Slowly making our way back to San Jose after white water rafting the Pacuare river, (which has been declared one of the top five most beautiful rivers in the world- no big deal), we drove up to the peak of the Irazú Volcano (the highest active volcano in Costa Rica). And yeah, it was pretty damn cool (both literally and figuratively- we watched the car’s thermometer drop from 28 degrees celsius to 14 at the top).

So, yeah, the principal crater (above) is apparently 1,000 meters wide and 300 meters deep, or in layman’s terms, pretty freaking amazing. Which makes it all the more sad when I tell you that this did not impress me nearly as much as the OTHER thing we found at the top…

SQUEEEEEEE!!!!! I have absolutely no idea what these things are, and I don’t care. They look like a cross between a retarded badger and a kinkajou, but B and I quickly dubbed them “Volcano Monkeys.” Mostly so that I would stop pouting about the lack of feces in my hair, I suppose.

These things were as friendly as a purebred (i.e. inbred) puppy, dancing and weaving in and out of the smitten Asian tourists, greedily nibbling the jalepeno corn chips from the fingers of adults and children alike. It’s like when asshole tourists come to D.C. and feed the pigeons, but I couldn’t help it. I mean, you just try and resist this face:

Maybe we chased them all over the top of the volcano, squealing every time we got them to break out in a reluctant trot, their ridiculously oversized behinds swaying endearingly behind them. I’m not saying we did, I’m not saying we didn’t. You can’t prove it.

It really, really, REALLY is great to be home. Unfortunately, I don’t even know where to begin… so I suppose, in a somewhat unpredictable stroke of logic, that I’ll begin at the beginning.

Last Friday morning, we flew into the airport just outside of San Jose, and like two idiots, planned to spend the night there and experience the nation’s capital city before getting an early start the following morning. BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG mistake. If you ever go to Costa Rica, head straight to your next destination from the airport, no matter how tired you are. Especially if you’re tired. Nothing will drain you like San Jose. TRUST.

Here’s what it looked like driving in:

San Jose is a living nightmare of a city, multiplied by 4000 times if you’re a tourist. Multiplied by 19000 times if you’re a tourist in a rental car. I have no words for how dreadful our time spent in this city was. If you’ve ever been to the dust bowl that is Mexico City, imagine that. (Everyone else, imagine Adams Morgan, only everyone hates you and you’re covered with an inch-thick coating of grime, cigarette smoke and pollution. To breathe is more painful than to not.) Everything is a clusterfuck of cars, trucks, scooters, and pedestrians, and everyone has the right of way. Now imagine all the roads and sidewalks are 1/4 of “normal” size. Now imagine that within your first 10 minutes in the city you see this, urinating and/or masturbating, on the side of a building, for the entire time that he is within your sights:

Yes, that is a Santa Claus hat. No, I have no explanation for it, seeing as it was 75 degrees and sunny. This was, however, a different bum from the one we encountered a few moments later, who asked us for some spare change. Because I hate coinage, knew that the colones in my pocket were worth fractions of pennies, and wanted to feel cultural and interact with the locals, am a very generous human being, I gave him the small handful of the silver coins weighing down my clutch.

Without even looking, his closed fist felt the weight of each and every coin, discerned its value in less than a second, and inexplicably, without even looking in his palm, he spit a U.S. $0.25 back in my face and walked away. Stunned, we looked at each other, trying to be offended… but mostly we were just really, really impressed. I mean, you can’t argue with that kind of skill. The man was clearly much better at his job than I am at mine.

If you read the comments prior to our departure, we planned to head north to the hot springs of the Volcan Arenal, (please forgive the lack of Spanish punctuation; frankly, my dear, I don’t have the energy); followed by a day in the cloud forests of Monteverde, and then on to the Pacific Coast. SOMEHOW, mostly through an inconceivably unknowingly very, very stupidly) venture headfirst into the worst of it.

By the grace of el bebe jesus christo, we stopped at a Tourist Info booth in San Jose and asked for directions to Arenal. The very sweet lady (the first truly kind- to us- person we had met in Costa Rica) laughed at us, showed us the many, many newspapers documenting the devastation that was the western half of the country, and told us to head for the Caribbean coast immediately. The mountain range dividing Costa Rica prevents the horrific weather of the rainy season from reaching the eastern coast, and as she put it, the beaches there were “Sunny, sunny, sunny.” Please imagine this phrase with a magical and lyrical incantation to it, as we spent the subsequent drive chanting it to each other as we watched the car’s external thermometer rise to a balmy 30 degrees celsius on our way to the unbelievably glorious beaches of South Caribbean Coast Rica.

Our drive looked something like this: (I tried to capture the weaving in and out on one-lane roads as trucks barreled around the corner towards us, but it is

impossible to do with a Canon Powershot 300)…

Here is the moment when we came around yet another inconceivably sharp bend and thought we would collide with a broken-down banana truck:

We drove through the mountains to Cahuita (below), a one-”road” town on the Caribbean coast, where the largest living coral reef in Costa Rica is located. There were about 20 buildings total, half of them hotels, the other half bars and restaurants. We met a certifiably crazy yet remarkably endearing Vietnam vet named Wallace Price, which is an amazing story in and of itself, and which I think B can do more justice to than I.

In Cahuita, the beach meets the rain forest, which is protected as one of the country’s many national parks.

We saw monkeys. We saw sloths. We saw lizards and crabs and birds. We met an wonderful couple from Vermont, who we spent days in Manzanilla and Puerto Viejo with. We met them like this, as we walked down a path and came upon them staring unblinkingly up at a palm tree:

Branson: “Hey, have you ever seen a sloth??”

Me and B: “NO…?!?!?”

Emily: “You wanna??”

Ummm… duh?

The next four days were a blur of sun, beer, and bodysurfing. I tasted the most wonderful food I’ve ever had in my life, (mostly B’s, since he out-ordered me on EVERY single meal,) and saw the most gorgeous landscapes I’ve ever laid eyes on. It was disgustingly romantic, incredibly FUN, and worth every goddamn penny we spent.

More to come…