Post Holiday Traumatic Stress Disorder

I hope everyone had a great holiday!

How was my holiday, you ask? Well I’m just happy it’s over and done with. My bank statement is covered in so much red it looks like a crime scene, and I’ve put on about five pounds of pure ass fat from those amazing chocolate-covered peanut butter and crack cocaine filled cookie balls that my boyfriend’s mom always makes around the holidays. I seriously want to roll into the harsh ghetto in my six fo', blast some NWA and smoke those fuckers out of a glass pipe. I’m twitching now just thinking about them.

On a positive note, I somehow made it through the season without hurling a stapler off the face of my Jingle Bell Rock-humming coworker. (Ba dum dum dum... AHHHH!)

Does anybody else feel like the 2009 Holiday Season was... I don’t know… a bit, blah? I just never quite got into the spirit. It’s almost as if a tornado of Yuletide Cheer ripped through my town, and when the carnage was over my trailer was the only one still standing. Everything holiday related just seemed like such a friggen hassle this year, and it all started when I stopped by my local Hallmark store to get Christmas cards for my family and couldn’t find the Dysfunctional Family section. All I wanted was a card that said “Hey mom and dad, even though you chose a Christmas Morning of my youth to break the news of your impending divorce, thanks to years of therapy I have almost no residual scarring or feelings of abandonment! Happy Holidays!”

Yay for progress.

Further adding to my Grinch Mood, I didn’t even get the gifts I asked for this year. May I ask what is so friggen hard about buying about a beautiful piece of jewelry and a nice piece of art to hang over my fireplace?

Clearly Santa has been hittin' the Schlitz, because here's what I got:

It's the thought that counts right? RIGHT?

On the bright side, this wollen vagina necklace is going to go perfectly with my labia keychain though.

I guess everyone's interpretation of art is different. Although I have to admit, I've taken quite a liking to this piece. I don't know, it just "says something" to me.

Something like SHIT.


Check out Regretsy.com for even more awesomely awesome art.)

Christmas Eve was pretty kick-ass. I had dinner and exchanged presents with the family and my brother's new fiance at my mother’s house and then moved on to celebrate with my boyfriend’s family. Odd thing is... I clearly remember everything that happened! Yet another friendly reminder that I’m getting old, I guess. In my early 20’s, holiday eve’s meant drinking to excess. I can’t remember a Thanksgiving Day that I didn’t run heaving to the toilet at the sight of cranberry sauce because it reminded me of the jello shots I’d done the night before. This Christmas Eve I had a few drinks, but I didn’t quite get nascar-drunk like I used to.

Christmas morning I stayed in bed until about 1:30 p.m. watching A Christmas Story on TBS repeatedly. If not for the haggling of my mother to come over to have Christmas dinner – spiral ham with a side of guilt i.e. WHEN ARE YOU GONNA GIVE ME GRANDBABIES! - I probably would have stayed there all day. To me, nothing says Christmas like lying in bed wearing just the tights and bra from the previous nights ensemble, day old makeup smeared across my face, and booze seeping out of my pores. It paints quite the picture doesn't it? Maybe I’ll make that next year's Christmas card.

So that’s my holiday sob story. It makes me long for the holidays of the past, when we’d all open gifts as a family and Santa would come knocking on the door to deliver gifts. Here’s a picture of Christmas of years past. (This is real, mind you) I think it’s a beautiful memory of my brother and Santa Claus. I just wish Santa had remembered to put his beer bottle on the table before the picture was taken. Or at the very least, removed the cigarette from his hand.

This is totally the kind of Santa that would bring you a woolen vagina necklace, no?
 
My family seems to think that maybe I’ll get more into the holiday spirit when I finally settle down and have my own family. I admit this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, and I'm not ashamed to admit that Matt's inbox is probably overflowing from all the Blue Nile links I've been emailing him. I just wish he would stop sending them back to me as "undeliverable". (It wasn't funny the first time, asshole!). I’m really starting to think that Matt will make an excellent father, and I honestly can’t think of a better man to have my kids spend every other weekend and designated holidays with. We’re leaving for a vacation in California in three weeks as our Christmas present to one another. I figure whereas we don’t have kids or custody agreements yet, we should probably try and travel as much as possible while we still can. Of course this means I need to kick my New Year's "Get Healthy And Lose The Five Pounds of Chocolate Covered Ass Fat" Resolution into overdrive. I honestly fear that if I put on a pair of shorts out there, I'm going to get mistaken for an extra auditioning for a rap video.

So that's all folks! Work's a little slow today, so I think I'm going to google “I hate the holidays” and find others to commiserate with there. Misery loves company.

Happy New Year all!

Under Pressure

I had a dream last night where I stuck my finger in a monkey’s mouth and dared it to bite me.

True to form, the monkey did in fact, bite me. And let me tell you, it freaking hurt. My frontal lobe certainly didn’t lack for imagination in dreaming up some ferocious, razor sharp teeth on those fictional dream monkeys, and let me just say that I definitely don’t want to be meeting those guys in a dark alley again anytime soon without a pair of gloves and a tranquilizer gun (note to subconscious: be more prepared!). My finger hurts just thinking about it.

I woke up this morning (late as usual) and while simultaneously brushing my teeth and peeing in the shower (I’m nothing if not a multitasker) I got to thinking that this dream is in some way symbolic of my nature to always “bite off more than I can chew” “get in over my head” and a host of other idioms regarding my work ethic, but mostly how this aggressive way of life always tends to bite me in the ass.. or in this case, the finger.

You may have noticed I haven’t been posting as much… or you may not have noticed, so in that case SCREW YOU. But for those of you who have noticed, I feel an explanation is in order. I love my blog, I love interacting with all you great bloggers I’ve since met out there in the blogosphere, and mostly I love the creative outlet that blogging provides me that I don’t currently get to exercise in my professional life. My absence certainly cannot be attributed to a lack of inspiration as I have about 65 draft emails, a folder full of half finished Word documents, and even self-addressed text messages all with great blog ideas.

Instead, my lack of posting can be attributed to the fact that I have no time. Once again, I have bitten off more than I can chew and I am now the proud owner of FIVE JOBS. That’s right. Five. Count ‘em. - One Two Three Four FIVE. In addition to my full time, 48 hour a week position, I also have two cleaning jobs, one job I found on craigslist that I wrote about here, as well as the newest one that I’ll tell you about in a moment. My boyfriend has taken to calling me Ryan Seacreast, and I’m starting to feel guilty about taking away all these jobs from our nation’s abundance of illegal aliens who need them. If I’m going to keep this up, I may have to trade in my Jeep for a 1984 Toyota Corolla with ground effects and illegal tint. It’s the law.

It’s not necessarily that I need all these jobs to make ends meet. I could certainly get by on just my salary from my full-time position, but each time I consider giving one up I have a change of heart and convince myself that the effort and exertion required is certainly worth the benefit of extra cash. For example, last week alone I made an extra $506.25 from the Craigslist job and another $200 from the two cleaning jobs. That’s some serious extra cash when you are supporting yourself, living alone, and paying off the student loan equivalency to a modest ranch house in Kansas.

So if it’s not a need for money, and if I’m already pressed for time, then why in hell would I take on a fifth, you ask? Adding further intrigue is the fact that the most recent job I’ve taken on is by far the most time consuming, yet the lowest paying of the four “extra” jobs I have. So again, why would I do this to myself? ? Because this fifth job it’s a paid writing job. (!!!) Of the four extra jobs, it’s the only one that will benefit my resume and hopefully someday lead to bigger and better things. Taking this job on means that I am officially a “paid writer” with actual published material which I’m sure most of you know is a huge benefit when trying to score other freelance writing jobs. Furthermore, since I’m now a paid writer, I can finally use the word “gig” ala “writing gig” and sound oh so PROFESH.

This new job requires me to write about retail, specifically online shopping, and most importantly - ways to save money shopping online while simultaneously promoting the website itself. I get to write with humor, and use personal, relatable experiences so I like to think it’s like Stiff Niffles 2.0, the Thrift Niffles Version. I’ve committed myself to writing five, 500 word articles per week, and though I’m certainly not going to retire of the income they’re paying me, in all honestly I probably would have paid them for the opportunity for exposure.

But let’s keep that part between us.

So now that writing has officially become “work”, I feel as though my blog has suffered the most. While I’m still actively reading all of your posts, I'm finding that there are just not enough hours in the day for me to add my own lately. I want my personal blog to be something I’m proud of. Each and every entry. I don’t like the idea of filler posts, and I’m not really an everyday blogger so I’m hoping that brief absences shouldn’t really impact my readership too much. For that matter, you could probably reverse the order of my blogs and it wouldn’t make a difference... you really don’t need to have read the first to understand the last. Blogging is very cathartic for me, so I have every intention of keeping it up and if I have to push through the same way I pushed through college  – coffee and Ritalin – then so be it.

So needless to say I think it’s going to take a little bit of time for me to settle in to the new routine, and maybe after the holiday I can determine where to cut from in all these extraneous jobs. In the meantime, I just want you guys to know I'm still alive, and stalking your posts on a daily basis. And of course... here's to hoping that my over-achiever tendencies don't end up biting me in the ass!