And the girl wore green, and was ashamed

I lament to my husband constantly that I can't just remember the embarrassing things from my childhood off the top of my head. I have so many of them, ferreted away in my brain dome, just waiting for the correct trigger.

For instance, the other day, while laughing to myself about a lie that my son told me, I remembered how prone to lying I was when I was his age. The biggest lie I remember telling was that my grandmother owned a castle in Ireland. Peep this shit, you guys:



That's Kylemore Abbey. I legit tried to convince people that my family owned that shit....with a fucking postcard.

A.

Postcard.

Now.

My grandmother is from Ireland. And she frequently visited Ireland (she promised to take me there one day, but I got the boot from Florida before she could, and honestly, I think Bumpa's health failed not long after, and I don't think she actually went back to Ireland again), so she had plenty of real photos of this place that weren't postcards. But I brought a postcard to school and tried to sell that shit like it was seriously something I stood to inherit.

I do remember one of the school guards calling me on my bullshit by going, "Yeah? I'd LOVE to see photos of the inside."

Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinch. You know I don't have those. Good call.

I need triggers to remember things that happened when I was younger, because my immediate brain just doesn't need the information so it's all tucked away.

While doing reading for a test that I should be taking right now instead of blogging, I came across a trigger for an embarrassing memory.

I've spoken before about how much my mother loathed me, and how that loathing was super apparent if you so much as looked at me before I was 15. My mom picked out the clothes I had to wear, and thus my sense of fashion was fucking crazy warped. My mom didn't always pick Garfield faux denim shorts with elastic waistbands for me. I will give her credit and say that a lot of what she wanted to put me in were what she considered classic looks: straight leg mom jeans that came up to my neckline, and sleeveless button down shirts. She wanted me to look like every unhip babysitter the 80s ever churned out, but with worse hair and bigger glasses.

There was one shirt in particular that I fucking LOATHED. It was a green, sleeveless, button down shirt. Now, being honest, I didn't enjoy my mom picking out my clothes and forcing her bullshit clothing choices on me, but I didn't have a reason to specifically hate the shirt...UNTIL school.

Sidebar: Florida has a grocery chain called Publix. Publix is the greatest store ever created by god herownself, and none shall besmirch its glorious name. I don't eat meat, and haven't for years, but I did turn a blind eye to meat eating the last time I was in Alabama so I could have a Publix Sub. Two Publix subs. FINE FIVE PUBLIX SUBS OVER THE COURSE OF A WEEKEND. Their subs are seriously the most delicious sub there ever ever ever was for real. Derek does this thing where he sucks in drool and says his mouth is watering just thinking about any certain thing, and it drives me up the god damn wall, but I feel that shit on a spiritual level talking about Publix subs. Moving on, people at Publix back when I was in middle school used to wear sleeveless. Green. Button down. Vests. Like so:



And my sleeveless shirt looked like this:



Are they the same color? No. Does the bottom one have deep pockets like the Publix vest? No. And it doesn't have the keen Publix name sewn on the breast. But it's a green button down sleeveless fucking vest, and kids just had to pile on because making fun of my hair and my glasses and my other clothes and my gangliness and my bookishness wasn't enough, so I got called Publix Girl. And it really got under my skin, because somehow having a job and working for a living was shameful?

Anyway, I got Publix Girl hurled at me all the time by a few really popular girls. I think there was a girl named Erin, and I remember kind of admiring her because she was a gymnast and she could do aerial cartwheels, and I wanted to be able to do those so badly. Erica Morris was another girl that called me Publix Girl, she was also super popular, so if anybody was near her when she called me Publix Girl, I had a few other eager lackeys adding to the fray, creating a rousing chorus of "Publix Girl! Publix Girl!" and I just...I dealt with it because I didn't know what to say. What would I say? Stop it wasn't going to stop it. So I just took it.

Two years. Two years of Publix Girl, and I had had it.

Erin and Erica and a few of their sing-song, snipey little parrot friends were calling me Publix Girl, and this day I was just not having as easy a time letting it roll off of my back (read: I wasn't as willing to just cry hot tears behind the portables, cursing my mother to whatever gods would listen, tearing out my curls, wishing desperately to be dead). I don't know what was going on with me that day, but I think they knew I was boiling over, and I think they wanted to see how far they could push me. So they escalated from Publix Girl to asking me what section of the store I worked in, and I could feel my anger rising as each syllable hit my ears, but I wasn't ready to engage yet. The dam hadn't broken.

And then.

Erin yelled at me, "Hey Publix Girl, how much are tomatoes today?" and everyone laughed and laughed and my face got so fucking hot and I was so upset and this was when I started to cry. But I also had to stand my ground and defend myself. Anybody who knows me knows I rely on swearing to get a point across, but I wasn't using colorful, coded language yet. I had to sling an insult devoid of swearing. I had to be quick. Silver-tongued, Witty. Cutting. Precise. I had to say something that would stop all of the bullying then and there, and then make people revere me for...maybe not my fashion sense, but my ability to deliver a swift verbal blow to all of their egos that surpassed the arrows they had been slinging at me.

I balled up my fists, planted myself into the ground, and yelled back defiantly:

"MORE THAN YOU CAN AFFORD!!!!"

And then I ran off to go cry hot tears behind the portables, cursing my mother to whatever gods would listen, tearing out my curls, wishing desperately to be dead, because my fucking shining moment of standing up for myself backfired. Can you believe it? Yes. Yes, you can. They were all laughing at my retort, and obviously. I've always thought I have a deep voice, and it makes me really self conscious to hear myself speak, but when I was younger, I had a very tinny, tiny, squeaky little voice. So imagine the nerdiest girl you can think of, wearing a bright green vest and horribly high waisted pants, with Richard Simmons hair, Sally Jesse Raphael glasses, all resting awkwardly on a very tall, very gangly body, and then picture a voice somewhere between a timid bee and a child nerd, shouting across the field at all of the beautiful, popular girls with good hair, good clothes, and friends.

I had affected zero change that would trend toward the positive.

I threw the shirt away when I got home AFTER cutting it to ribbons. Had I mentioned I had tried to throw the shirt away before and my mom caught me and chastised me for it? She took it out of the trash, washed it, and I had to wear it not long after. So I destroyed it.

Kids are always going to be fucking assholes, for realsies, but it's not like I made a difficult mark.

A vegan and a non-vegan walk into a bar

Every once and awhile, I go specifically hunting for snarky assholes so I can be a pesky little cunt. Am I proud of this? Well, that depends on the outcome, I suppose.

This was a rare instance where I will say that yes, I am proud of being a snarky little cunt, because I had a very pleasant conversation with someone that eats meat that, for whatever reason, left a shitty comment on one of my dumbdumb vegan instagram groups. Most of those have been unfollowed by me because they promote bad science and holistic hokum and man, it's fucking hard enough being a vegan without schlock like that out there, with airheaded vegans reading the bullshit and just disseminating it because why bother checking a fact when instagram says it's true??

Anyway, this person made it a point to seek out a vegan instagram community and comment to stop eating soy and start eating meat. Very original, obviously, vegans haven't heard that ever before ever. I told him he needed to stop being indignant and go read some science, he responded by mocking my statement (fair enough), and I must have been in a good mood, because I responded by apologizing for being a cunt to someone with as dazzling an intellect as he had (so I maybe wasn't wholly done being cunt-adjacent), and I would love to start a dialogue with him regarding the science of soy. I could send him studies, I could send him videos breaking studies down, I could send a meta analysis, whatever he wanted. And he said sure, he'd read whatever I sent.

So, assuming that I'd send something and he'd either brush it off with fart jokes or worse, he'd just ignore it completely, I found a meta analysis done in 2010 and sent that to him, and I just kind of want to put our entire conversation on the blog (I won't put his name, though, because that shit isn't cool), because it's my blog and I want to.

Me: Here's a meta analysis of the effects of phytoestrogens on men. I don't know if you have access to PubMed, so I sent you a screenshot of the abstract, the methods, and the outcomes for you.

Them: Thank you! I especially appreciate your use of a government website. I will read the article as soon as I have time.

(sidebar: I thought he was being obnoxious, and I was about to get an earful of government conspiracies, and BIG SOY propaganda)

Me: I'll read any studies you've got to the contrary, so send them along when you've got time. :) Happy to start a dialogue!

(sidebar: and I was, because his initial response made me cautiously optimistic he'd engage me thoughtfully)

Him: Related, but not on topic: This is the article he sent me, assessed later.

Me: I'm on my way home right now, i'll check that out as soon as I'm there.

Him: Ok, I have this next one, and then I'll look on Google Scholar.

Him: The article he sent me, addressed first.

Him: The only study involving human males is the one first mentioned, though I read a note that there was a major outlier that skewed the results a bit. I concluded that testosterone production is affected by soy, but the amounts can vary greatly, especially depending on the amount of consumption and regional genetics (Asians and those of Asian descent are less likely to see adverse side effects).

Me: I was really hoping I could open this message on the website so I could type! I just read the Men's Health article, I haven't read anything else yet, but I will. My issues with the Men's Health article are as follows: it is anecdotal, and even then, a singular case study doesn't really do much to prove (or disprove) a point. It doesn't account for variables outside of phytoestrogens, like low testosterone (which can account for drastic changes in hormone production), so that story is circumstantial at best, but realistically questionable as irrefutable evidence of phytoestrogens being radically dangerous for men. Moreover, I found the study the article references, just so I could give you the benefit of the doubt. The case study is older than the meta analysis I sent you, and with research, that matters. That case study is a factor in the meta analysis research findings, and the conclusions are still that soy is not a danger to men. Additionally, the language in the case study itself concludes that that gentleman's case was "a rare and unusual case of gynecomastia related to ingestion of soy products" (Martinez and Lewi, 2008). That his case was not the norm, and is not the norm. I'm going to look for the other studies the article references, because there are no actual references cited to back up the claims at the conclusion of the article.

Him: I agree that the Men's Health article was a bit...much. But it showed the result of an extreme consumption of soy products. And alright, I look forward to reading what you find. I had difficulty finding human specific studies.

Me: Yeah, what kind of sucks is the misinformation about how damaging soy is comes from a study done with lambs. And because their digestive structures are vastly different than ours, we can't really compare their reaction to (absolutely insane amounts of!) soy to how our bodies react. So like, people who say that soy is disruptive to the body aren't necessarily wrong, they're just....they're disruptive to the bodies of sheep.

Him: I know! And there are several with rats, too. I just avoid animal studies for human issues on principle so it won't affect my view of it. Though regional genetic difference in humans can widely effect how we process food, too.

Me: I know. Science is wacky that way. One of the things the article referenced was a study done with rats and phytoestrogens that I'm actually familiar with, and the article wildly misrepresents and mischaracterizes the data.

Me: Oh, for sure. And that could easily account for the man's sensitivity to soy and his onset of enlarged breast tissue and elevated estrogen levels.

Him: Exactly!

Me: However, regional differences are generally not SO deviated from the norm as to sway the overall findings that hard. There are exceptions to this, of course, but I'm not sure this is one of them.

Him: Of course, but typically enough to discourage blanket statements. I read another article on the ability for humans to digest animal milk, and it was found that people of northern European descent are much more suited to it than others. Asians, for example.

(I am curious about this study, I will be looking it up)

Me: I'm not sure I'll be able to find this JAMA 2001 study easily...they don't give the title or its authors. It should be noted again, though, that it pre-dates the meta analysis, so I'm wary of Men's Health skewing the data presentation. And yeah, actually, my husband told me about a study in a similar vein. Something about alcohol and that it's far more difficult for certain kinds of Asians to process alcohol efficiently. Their body has what is tantamount to an allergic reaction. It sounded wild. I should find that. I found a longitudinal study on soy formula published in 2001. This might be what the article is referencing.

Him: Ok, cool.

Me: Ok, so the full study text is fucking difficult to track down. I can only find two summations of it

(what follows is a set of two photos of the summations)

Me: Interestingly, the outcome is worse for women, but only vaguely, and only just barely.

Him: That's a similar point made by the Harvard article, as well.

Me: I found the 2005 study the article references, as well. The study isn't even about if soy is bad for you, just about what synthesizes more efficiently, soy or casein. They can quote the findings that soy is secondary to casein and be correct, but it's not even tangentially related to the question of soy's impact on hormonal health.

Him: That's just bad.

Me: I haven't gotten to the Harvard article yet. I didn't want to dismiss the Men's Health article out of hand without checking up on what it cites, because that's not really fair to you, or terribly respectful of you.

(sidebar: that is a fucking LIE. I SO wanted to dismiss that shit the second I saw the url)

Him: Ok, that's fine. And thank you! I really appreciate it, though I included it mostly to make note of an extreme case.

Me: No worries! I think there's only one more study they referenced, and I'm reading it right now. Right off the bat, this study is being done on males already experiencing fertility problems, and the data collection methods are questionable. Biology may not be my academic jam, but psychology is, and this study relies on self-reporting. Human memory is notoriously unreliable, as a general rule. Even giving THAT the benefit of the doubt, the estimates they collect for isoflavone measurements in the diets are guesstimates. Uh, I should probably give you the study, sorry, I got ahead of myself.

Him: You're fine, and I completely agree with you. And they're average guesstimates, at that.

Me: So, of all the things I've read, this is the only study that presented data tables, and that's great. It's also the only one that accounts for variables outside of soy ingestion, and as it did find a difference, I'd say this is the closest thing to solid evidence I can understand the article using. That being said, the difference is not statistically significant. It's correlative, which may seem damming, but it isn't causitive. The study goes on to state instead that overall, soy and isoflavone intake increase sperm count rather than deplete it. Again, thought, correlative and not gospel.

Him: There's a lot of that in these studies. It's very frustrating.

Me: Well, there just isn't enough long term data for us to tell, unless you make the studies explicitly Asian, and that would obvious skew the results.

Him: I know, I've seen.

Me: I will fully concede that there is not enough long term data for me to say concretely that ingestion of soy is 100% safe forever and all eternity. But I would also say that about cell phone use, or computer use, or any number of relatively new things we use to excess without thinking about it. given the information we have now about soy and its effects on the human body, though, I personally feel fairly confident about it.

Him: Without conclusive evidence, it's hard to say one way or another, I agree with you. We're at an impasse, for lack of data.

(sidebar: I do want to say that I do not think we are at an impasse, I think the data is very fucking much in my favor, but I mean, the conversation is going to well, so rather than press and deny, or confirm and stay in his good graces, I switched topics)

Me: Can I ask you a question that I promise is not me being snarky or shitty, I am genuinely seeking out your thoughts because I'm interested in them.

Him: Of course! Ask away!

Me: Well wait, first. Am I correct in assuming you are not a vegetarian or a vegan?

Him: You are completely correct.

Me: Also, that Harvard write up seems pretty fair, barring what studies I can find from their article. I wish they had cited their sources, too, but it'll take me next to no time to dig those up.

Him: I thought so, too, especially because they didn't seem to have a bias and addressed both sides of the issue.

Me: Alright, so, does it concern you at all, regarding your particular concerns about soy ingestion as I understand them, that a very large percentage of soy production is fed to factory farm animals that you ingest? Particularly given how animals with digestive tracts similar to sheep have responded to soy?

Me: Again, I can't stress enough that I'm not trying to bait you, or trick you into something. I'm genuinely asking. And I will also say, in the interest of full disclosure, that I cannot find a single study showing how much phytoestrogens you are actually consuming as a byproduct of eating an animal that consumes it directly. The exposure could be minimal, but it could also be a great deal of accidental ingestion. I guess I'm just curious if the thought ever crossed your mind.

Him: Cows and sheep are very different animals, and while I'm sure there are similarities as they are both ruminants, they are different. Food intake takes several more digestive levels than ours, rendering soy or corn or whatever into an effectively new product. Though I do prefer grass fed to the average offering.

Me: I'd be interested in reading any definitive studies done on that, because I cannot find a single one regarding expression of phytoestrogens in cow milk, or any kind of animal meat (like pork. Pigs are monogastric, just like us, so it could spell trouble for latent expression). Without sounding insulting, I have to take your answer as a best guess, for now. And in fairness, my assumption that it's an issue at all is also a best guess. I have no idea if it is or not.

him: It is, and an educated guess at best, you're correct in assuming that. It comes from a small background in agricultural studies, an intense interest in everything science, and an in-depth love of food. Also, I considered the fact that when an animal digests food, the nutrients are synthesized to best fit its needs, changing original proteins, lipids, and other substances into different usable chemicals. A simple example of this is the fact that we don't get plant proteins when we eat beef.

(I...Ok. I'll just let that go)

Me: I think the thing that might be different with isoflavones is how they bond, though, and how that bond distributes itself through the body. Biochem isn't my area, though. Neither is biology.

Him: I can't say for sure, either. I'm also not one for chemistry.

Me: I will say that I didn't expect this conversation to last this long, and while I  may not have thrown them in your face, I apologize for any preconceived notions I had on how this chat would play out.

Him: You have every right to have them, there are plenty of people who share my side that absolutely deserve them. In fairness, I had some similarly for you, too. There are far too many vegans that readily spew garbage and propaganda at the slightest nudge. I assume you're vegan?

Me: I am. And I will say that an alarming amount of the vegan community of instagram...man, that's shooting fish in a barrel. They'll believe anything a vegan page puts out there. I haven't met any of the vitriolic vegans that a lot of people talk about, but I'm on their side, so I guess I wouldn't.

And now, we are talking story and just chatting like normal humans, and this is the kind of shit that makes me pleased to engage people with different views than mine. It hasn't been often, in my limited experience, that someone is absolutely willing to ingest the info you give them and figure out what's going on without just blaring their opinion in your face with startling volume and background noise. This was definitely a surprise, and a welcome one, at that.

Thanks for being a decent bro, instagram stranger. I really fucking appreciated the ability to talk it out. Even though....I mean. I still feel like the data makes me the most right out of the two of us.

Whatever they give you, stop drinking it down

While I have been enjoying all of the IDKHow I can shove down my ear gullets, the song lyric I used as my title is wildly apropos of the story I'm going to tell.

I've moved around a lot, and after my daughter's dad and I split, I moved back down to South Florida, because it was the only place I had to go. I got pretty fucking lucky that my built in friends hadn't really moved anywhere else, so I got to hang out with Amber and Kristen a LOT. I hung out with Amber more often, because she was the favored friend, so I also got in with all of Amber's other friends she had made after I moved away. It was a pretty large group, and I got along with most everybody she introduced me to. This was back when I was social and not terrified of human interaction. There was one girl that I really was not terribly fond of, though. Her name was Natalie, and it was no secret that the feeling was mutual. She didn't like me, I didn't like her, but we were civil enough to each other, so it wasn't a disruptive dislike.

I'm still unsure of what Amber saw in Natalie. Allen and I used to make fun of Natalie all the fucking time. Allen met Natalie when we were in Amber's wedding a few years later, he walked down the aisle with her, and he hated her, too. Again, feeling was mutual, and Natalie didn't give a shit about making it hidden that she hated the both of us, but I cannot stress enough: no love lost.

Natalie was...and probably still is, honestly...a stuck up cunt. No worries, I can be a stuck up cunt when the mood strikes, as well, but there was just something about Natalie's brand of stuck up cunt that really...it really got stuck in your craw. Oh right, it's because she was relentless about it, and it was her only operating system. Natalie was tall, blonde, and chubby (though Amber has told me she dropped all of her weight and she's thin as fuck now. Good for her! I bet it's made her cuntier). The kind of chubby girl who always dressed impeccably and had her hair done always and had the french tip acrylics perfectly done at all times. Not a bad way to be, but it's a definite aesthetic archetype. Natalie was also stuck up about weird things, though I cannot for the life of me recall what specifically gave me this impression, just that I had it. So that may be an unfair color to paint her with, but here we are. She had a fuck ton of pets, too. 24 of them, very literally. One of them was a big fat skunk that was white and brown instead of white and black and I fucking LOVED that skunk. It was the size of a pillow and just the tumbliest fat thing you've ever seen. She also had pomeranians, and I fucking despise few dogs harder than those. In fact, google is recommending that I make that a proper noun, and I am refusing out of principle. Suck it, pomeranians. She had birds and sugar gliders and cats and being at her house was like being at a menagerie, and it was easy enough to forget that Natalie was a malignant tumor if Amber dragged me to her house, because I could just chill out with all of her critters and forget she existed.

Amber had to be around Natalie a lot, because Natalie was getting married in Ohio and Amber was going to be in the wedding. I really only vaguely remember being around Natalie's house because of her pets, and I have no specific recollections about the heyday that lead up to her bachelorette party, because the bachelorette party was so fucking wild that there just isn't any fucking room for other information.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am currently conversing with Amber about the beginning of the bachelorette party, because I don't remember it. I only remember the last hour of it, which I remember in fucking STUNNING detail, much to my chagrin. Amber is telling me about it, because she remembers it really well.

The information she has given me so far is that the party was planned by Natalie's maid of honor, Christina. I really liked Christina, she was really nice to me. We went out a few times, just me and her and her boyfriend (I fucking loved him. I can't remember his name, but I remember him looking like Mos Def and being equally as fucking cool. Edit to update: Amber just reminded me that Christina's boyfriend at the time was named RJ. They got married, are now divorced), Christina wanted to be a fashion designer. Which I can respect as a career goal. She was serious about it, too. Her apartment had a design desk that was always littered with piece sketches, she had one of those little mannequins that you used to sew your clothing pieces with, she was more legit than anybody else I'd ever met that harbored fashion design dreams, present company included.

Amber also remembers very little about the party, but I've still asked her for her entire recollection, because it was a wild evening. Some things I hadn't remembered, a huge thank you to Amber:

- There was a lot of penis paraphernalia. This is pretty well a given, especially because, while I remember being the youngest person there, I wasn't leagues younger, and I was 21. So a very early twenties bachelorette party is going to be fuckin' lousy with dick stuff.  I feel like I vaguely remember there being a lot of penis things strewn about the apartment, but that could just be bias because Amber said it and I'm desperate to remember the first part of the evening so I can tell the full story.

- Christina had everybody bring their own shit, like their own booze and food. Now, I'm starting to think that this is something I remember, as well, and it may very well be why I was stone cold fucking sober that night. I didn't bring my own booze, so there wasn't anything for me to drink except water. I'm also wary of drinking too much because I'm emetephobic, and believe me, this information (which isn't new, I've talked about this on the blog a LOT) will play a huge part in the party later. Something that I am just now remember is a really sad, comically oversized and uneaten, bowl of Chex Mix. It was just sitting on the coffee table in a clear punch bowl, and I don't think anybody touched it. Except me, later, but it isn't time for that now.

- The party was full of other stuck up cunts, none as stuck up and cunty as Natalie's soon to be sister in law. I had forgotten about this until Amber mentioned it, but her saying so definitely triggered me feeling like a fucking outcast. I didn't talk to Amber much that night until shit started going south, and I don't remember why. I just asked her. It probably had to do with Amber being very much more social than I was, even when I didn't necessarily hate being around strangers, and also to do with Amber being more familiar with everybody involved in the wedding, so she had more people to go chat with and be polite to. I DID befriend a lady that I remember as being really nice and really cool, and very fashionable. I still remember like, vague color and shape aspects of her outfit, because it really impressed me. The top part was blue with asymmetric lines, and the bottom part was sleek and black. I think she had a shaved head, too. She was really nice to me, and I chatted with her for awhile, but other than that, I think I pretty well stuck to myself. I THINK I spent some time with Christina's roommate Jim out on the balcony, as well, but I could be conflating that with another evening. I had a bit of a crush on Jim, and I know he was there later that night, I just can't remember specifically if the balcony talks were this particular evening.

Amber has also expressed she doesn't really remember the beginning of the evening, which is a shame, because it would be nice to be like, here's what happened first, here is the lead in to the craziness, and then HERE IS THE FUCKING CRAZINESS. I like a solid linear story. Unfortunately, it appears we won't be getting that. If Amber remembers more details, I will add them as they come. But because neither of us have more details, let's get to the meat of the bachelorette party.

The dick meat.

As it seems painfully obvious (now) that this was a singledom send-off on a budget (which is super fucking funny, considering Natalie's stuck up attitude), it makes sense that the stripper, and of COURSE there was a stripper, wasn't necessarily hired from a place that was amazingly reputable, but rather was a called in favor from someone close to the group. RJ had a friend that happened to be a stripper, so RJ's friend was who Christina used for the party.

Given that the party was for Natalie, she was exempt from the "bring your own fucking booze" rule, and she got to have drinks of the booze everyone else brought. I remember taking a look at her and thinking she was god damn sloshed, and I also vaguely remember asking Amber if Natalie was going to be alright. Amber assured me Natalie would be fine. It should be noted that Amber is ALSO emetephobic. It's a pretty solid foundation of our friendship, no shit, because it's a phobia I've never encountered in anybody else but her.

So as it stands, here is the situation by the time the stripper shows up: There are decorations, there are lots of snotty girls having what I assume are conversations, Amber is flitting about talking to people, I made one friend and chatted with her off and on about the relative lameness of the party, and then. Then the stripper arrived. So, when he showed up, he wasn't dressed as a cowboy or anything, or a cop, or anything even vaguely expected of a stripper. I remember his outfit and color shapes, as well. Red top, dark jeans. There might have been a popped collar, because it was the early fucking aughts and why wouldn't there be? He introduced himself as Diesel.

DIESEL.

His stripper name was Diesel, because of COURSE it was. He had a face that had features, I don't remember them, but he was definitely fucking STACKED. Again, of course he was. He was a stripper named Diesel. A bit of completely random, totally true trivia: his real life name? Harold. Again, I cannot express enough how helpful Amber has been here, because I didn't remember that off the top of my head, but the second she said it, it clicked. I remember his name being Harold (and as I told Amber, if it wasn't Harold, it was something SUPER old sounding and equally as hilarious, like Humphrey. He definitely had an old dude name. But I feel 99% sure it was Harold) and I dined on that for fucking AGES. Of all of the professions a dude named Harold would go into, stripper seems least likely among them, by virtue of his name.

So all of us ladies gather into a concentric circle in the living room, and again, I cannot remember why Amber and I weren't sitting together, but I really don't think we were. I think I was sitting next to my new friend, and I was definitely sitting directly across from Natalie. Natalie was sitting in a chair all to herself. So, Diesel removes the bulk of his clothes....spoiler, you guys? He didn't do it with sexy panache. He just kinda took off his clothes and that was what happened. He went from Polo sporting douche to douche in a fire red thong, dancing and gyrating his way around the living room to the crowing sounds of wild, drunk ladies. As an objective observer, I can tell you that he was a fucking TERRIBLE stripper. He hadn't been doing this long, or professionally, I think he was just a dude who liked to take his clothes off and waggle his dick and balls into the faces of drunk ladies. And there's a market for that, so good for him for exploiting it, but don't try and sell a shitty stripshow to a shitty stripper and expect her to think it's good, genuine entertainment. It wasn't.

Harold's version...hang on, sorry. Diesel's version of stripping was literally the following three moves:

- Grind on a lady's lap while pouring Goldschlager down her gullet
- Grind on her face while pouring Goldschlager down her gullet
- grind the back of her head while pouring Goldschlager down her gullet

Not a huge repertoire, and if you're a sober person watching this, you get uncomfortable REAL fuckin' fast. As I did. When Harold cum Diesel finally got to me, he started inching his grinding groin toward me and I was just like, "NO THANK YOU!" and made him move along. I remember having a fucking repulsed and horrified look on my face, because what he was doing wasn't sexy, it wasn't something I wanted. It was all dick and rough grind, there was no artistry or sex appeal, and thanks a lot, but I can have a guy grind his dick into my face any day of the week. I want variety, mother fucker.

So he passed me up, and found no shortage of screaming, drunken ladies to grind and gullet, and then he made a big show of stopping at Natalie.

Now.

In my head, she is just fucking PISSED at this point. Twenty sheets to the wind, just absolutely gone intoxicated. I remember her eyes like, lolling wildly around her head, but she was still shouting and whooping and waving her chubby arms all around excitedly because some buff dude was going to smother her face with his sweaty crotch. So my recollection is a fat blonde in an armchair, eyes maddeningly wild, incoherently yelling wooooos and the other things, and Harold, nay, Diesel, sashays over and delivers the dickly goods. He goes to fucking TOWN on her body, just smearing his man meat all up and down her body, all the while damn near drowning her with stupidly gross cinnamon liquor. I specifically remember, and this isn't me trying to be funny, Natalie gagging because he didn't fucking give her any chance to breathe between Goldschlager waterfalls down her throat, he just kept the shit flowing. It was a relentless cascade of piss booze, paired with bad music and the never ending circus of Diesel's stupid cock.

I was alarmed. Everybody else was having a grand time, cheering on the show, and I snuck a glance at Amber, and I remember her and I sharing the same kind of look, and I think that's when Amber and I made our way to the kitchen area. I don't remember Amber getting her body assaulted by Diesel, and I think she had opted out because she was with Russell and it felt wrong or something. But she and I stepped away, though the apartment was wide open, so being in the kitchen still left full view of the bachelorette shenanigans. I don't remember exactly when shit went bad, but it definitely did.

I think most of the people had petered out and left, Harold/Diesel was either gone or getting dressed in another room, and I remember being in Christina's room fearing the inevitable. I fucking KNEW Natalie was going to god damn hurl, and I didn't want to be around for it. I also remember hearing everyone else in the living room reaching my same conclusion. Natalie was in a bad drunk way, and steps needed to be taken to prepare for a pretty explosive ending. I'm not sure anything sobers people up than seeing one of their drunk friends behaving in the black-out-about-to-barf way, but I heard everybody talking about Natalie, and bringing her into Christina's room, and I fucking PANICKED. Someone had already prepped the bedroom for this moment, I assume it was Christina, because there were pots and trash bins all around the bed, in what I can only presume were measures to prevent vomit from staining the carpet and having to be cleaned up. Nobody likes doing that.

I needed to fucking bail, and I  needed to bail now. So I make a mad dash for the living room, I meet up with Amber at the kitchen bar and I'm like we need to fucking get out of here NOW, and then everything happens in a blur, and here's what I remember:

- Natalie sobbing
- Natalie sobbing louder
- Natalie profusely apologizing over and over and over and over, sounding more burpy and liquidy with every sorry that fell out of her mouth
- Natalie throwing up
- ME LITERALLY LEAP FROGGING OVER A FUCKING COFFEE TABLE AND THEN A COUCH AND FORCING MY WAY OUT THE DOOR
- ME SCREAMING
- ME SCREAMING MORE AND BUMPING INTO JIM OUTSIDE
- ME RUNNING DOWN THE STAIRS SCREAMING
- It being like, 2 fucking AM and I am screaming bloody fucking murder as I tear ass down the fucking stairs of a complex I am unfamiliar with, looking for someplace safe to  hide from all of the vomit that is surely following me like an avalanche into the darkness


I do not remember how Amber reacted. I did not much care for her feelings about what was going on in that moment, because I had to get the fuck away from the vomit that very moment or I was going to god damn die. I really did jump over furniture, too. They had had trouble getting Natalie into Christina's room, because she was heavy-set, so they decided to move furniture first. RJ and Jim and Christina were moving things around to make an easier path to get Natalie into the bedroom, so when Natalie started apologizing and then throwing up, furniture had seriously been in all manner of weird places in the apartment, they were in the middle of moving the couch and the door had been open to give them angle room, and I am not trying to be dramatic when I say I jumped over a fucking coffee table and then leap frogged over a couch into the vomit free freedom of the outdoors. I really had to do that, and I disturbed the efforts everybody was making, but seriously, fuck them, I didn't care, I had the singular focus of creating a Drea-shaped void in the immediate vicinity.

And I really was yelling. I was TERRIFIED. I had spent the last hour or so knowing this was going to happen, and I think I even asked Amber if we could leave early because I wanted to go home, and because I was scared of Natalie barfing, but Amber kind of had a responsibility to be there because she was in the wedding party. As Amber was my ride, I was fairly stuck until she determined it was time to leave. And pretty immediately after the barf, Amber finally agreed it was time to fuckin' split.

I really don't fucking remember what happened after we left. I don't remember what happened at the beginning of the party. It is fucking WILDLY shitty that the only thing I really remember is the vomit and the events that led up to it, because it's the only part of the evening that was terrifying and traumatic.

Except, of course, for Harold.

If I could burn this town, I wouldn't hesitate to smile while you suffocate and die

Boys and girls, I want to talk about sexting. Specifically the photos involved, because for real, there is some shit going on that is...well...it's anecdotal and hardly concrete for anybody outside of the people I've surveyed, but that's also far from the point....it isn't good.

Being that Derek is gone for just under two months left, and that he'll be turning around and leaving for another two months less than a month after he gets home, and then after THAT he'll be heading to some kind of advancement school that will either be five months or nine months long (depending on what he decides he wants to do), it's pretty safe to say that our sex life is encountering the problem of not existing due to logistical issues. Sexting is a pretty alright substitute, though we're not so much on the text part of sext. Or at least I'm not. I used to do that shit for a job, and nothing will make sexting less glamorous and sexy than doing it for hours on end as a profession. When dudes I've dated have attempted to edge their way in with the "what are you wearing" text so we can text each other about what he's ACTUALLY doing and what I'm graciously pretending to do for his benefit, I either disregard and answer completely unsexily (i.e. hanging out with my son), or I give bare bones participation and they have never noticed enough to bitch. I've also been known to respond with things like, "cool" and "nice" because seriously, sexting just doesn't interest me. Phone sex, on the other hand....

Anyway, Derek mentioned wanting pictures of me in various states of undress for penis posterity, and with some of them I was like...I have no fucking idea how I can make that work with the focal distance of my phone camera. And he mentioned using my camera and a tripod and a wireless shutter release, but no thanks, my camera doesn't need to see that. So I was thinking about how I could manage to get what he's asking for, and it dawned on me that I needed a selfie stick. I'm not going to say buying that selfie stick was a proud moment in my life as a photographer. What I WILL say is that selfie sticks have changed the god damn sext photo game for me. I sent them to all of my girlfriends and extolled the virtues of buying a selfie stick for the sext photos they take, telling them that this shit is a revelation, and for their part they all ooohed and aaaahed at my photos (I mean, I am a fucking dish in these photos, not gonna lie) but the best part was them telling me how genius I am for getting and incorporating a selfie stick, which....yes. Yes, that is true. I am not the first person to think of this, I am a thousand percent sure, but I'm the first of my friends to think of it, and that counts for something.

The long winded point I'm getting to is this: I bought the selfie stick. I got some lingerie (but on the cheap, because like, I don't have the budget to get the kind of good lingerie that my stuck up integrity would usually demand. Nobody's got time for Bravissimo to take their sext selfies), and came home and prepared. I took a shower. I did my hair. Rid my body of unwanted hairs. I made my fucking bed, which I haven't done in months because why would I. I did my make up. I tested lighting. I played around with sext photos that were meant to look fast and effortless for three fucking hours. The results were...well, Derek seemed like, barely enthused about them, but I'll grant him that he was in public when I sent them to him, and he couldn't really verbalize his excitement about my searingly hot nudie shots the way that I was hoping he would have. Moving on, the shots looked like they had some thought put into them, and as well they should have. They DID have thought put into them.

They're also mostly clothed, because like I told Derek on the phone today, I'm not trying to give away the farm. Gotta space out the access to shots that are just full on snatch (mostly because I'm storyboarding this shit to make it look GOOD instead of just like a cell phone shot of snizz) to make him want it more? I think?

Here's what I've been thinking about, though: my entire career as a woman on the receiving end of nudes from men, I've never gotten ANYTHING that looked like it was a thoughtful dick pic. Literally every single thing I've ever gotten is just close up shot to a dick in their hand, or a shot taken while laying down, shooting head first into the wiener area. And yes, those entendres were a thousand percent intentional. Years and years and years of getting dick pics, 98% of them completely unasked for and unwanted, and I've found that not a single man has any originality in framing a shot of his penis that is sent to me as an enticement. Nevermind that I'm a tactile person (if I can't play with it, don't bother me with pictures of it, that's just rude), and nevermind that dicks are, by their very nature, abhorrent to look at without an explicit desire to look at them, it is so disappointing that I have never ever ever gotten a sex shot from a guy where it was evident he put any amount of thought or effort into it. I was telling a girlfriend of mine that if men put thought into their dick pics, I'd enjoy getting them a fuckload more, and when she agreed I decided to ask all of my girlfriends about the kind of dick pics they get. It's unanimous: you guys are ALL fucking flaking and slacking off in the dick pic department. What the actual fuck, my guys? Have NONE of you ever looked at Rate My Dick Pic? I mean, you can't now because Tumblr is for prudes, but you guys have GOT to take into account what women want to see, not just "CHECKOUTMAHDICK". I want to see dick pics where I can tell the man taking it is trying to turn me on, and isn't just thinking, "blah blah blah YOUR MOUTH".

I mentioned to a girlfriend of mine that straight men need to be looking at thirst traps on instagram, particularly gay male thirst traps, because 9 times out of 10, their thirst traps are a god damn art form. I can't speak for every straight woman on the receiving end of salacious photos, but I mean, I confer with my lady friends about the quality of my photos, I make sure they're really sexy before I pass them along because the explicit intent is to turn on the man who's going to view them. I get that mostly, the stereotype is true, and that if I send a thoughtless nude to Derek, he'll just appreciate that it's a nude, and while I'm at it, any porn he's looking at probably isn't some art house shit with bomb ass lighting and thoughtful poses that complement the woman's form to her raw sexuality, it's going to be...you know...porny. nothing wrong with that at all, I'm just saying it's not like I HAVE to go through all of this effort, because it's a man on the receiving end (if you are a man and you are not that way, it's a shame we can't exchange nudes, because my new desire for turning nudes into art is probably going to be lost on my husband). I just wish dudes would show a little more effort and a little less desperation in their nudes. Because seriously. They've been pathetic, and I've seriously done a lot of legwork into this assertion.

I mean, I did my fucking makeup. MY MAKEUP. My face is barely in the photos. Barely in the fucking photos, and I did a full fucking face complete with vegan falsies and a bold, dramatic wing.
     

That's EFFORT. That's what it looks like. I mean, not really, I just wanted to show off the wing and the falsies, because I'd never done either thing before and I am SERIOUSLY not mad at my first foray into either. (This seems as good a place as any to lament my schnozz, though. I've often made fun of my age by saying I'm too old to have tits or titties now, I have to have breasts...I've NEVER had a nose. That honker is a schnozz, through and through)

In related news, it dawned on me that it's been ages since I got a sexy selfie from my husband. He's never sent me dick pics (I did ask him for one once, but again...insurance. He's got a nice dick and all, but for real, I just...I don't really care about dick pics), but he DID go in for body shots (yum) and peek a boo groin shots (tired and played out after 20 years of dating, but yum because my husband is a fucking Adonis) and a lot of selfies, so it's strange to be on the other side of the equation. I'm sending him all of the things, and I'm getting nothing.

I used to be really sure that the only reason I got any of those photos is because he was sending them to other women, and he wanted to cover his tracks by sending them to me. That way if I looked through his phone and saw suggestive photos that I had never gotten, I wouldn't have reason to flip the fuck out and accuse him of anything he was (probably) doing. I don't know how I feel now that I'm not being inundated with pictures of him anymore. I think he's gorgeous and so fucking sexy so it's disappointing I'm not just getting random peeks at how fucking hot he is, but it's also kinda nice that I'm not like, getting all of these photos of him and immediately panicking over who he's ACTUALLY sending them to first.

This is the fucking greatest god damn song I've ever fucking heard, and I cannot stop listening to it. This band as a whole is my serious fucking jam right now.

Everything is all I have to give you, and I'm afraid it aint enough

In a move that surprises not a single, solitary soul, I have not spent the week preparing for my CLEP test. Nor have I spent it catching up on papers. I have not spent it doing anything school related, because it's a break and I am using it to the fullest. Except....I really do need to get cracking on my CLEP studying. I guess that will have to wait for Saturday and Sunday, because tonight is date myself night, and tomorrow is go to visit all of the places I have to write papers about.

I love going to the movies by myself because I don't have anybody to make commentary to, so I focus better. I have not been to a horror movie by myself yet, so tonight is a solid first for me. I'm pretty fucking excited to go see a horror movie alone, because I'm curious to see if my brain will be any more overeager to freak me the fuck out as it would be if I were with Derek (or Allen, who used to be my horror movie buddy). I'll report back.

I have FINALLY cleaned out my Lightroom camera roll, and I'm left with just a few more than 4000 photos left. It took me almost a year to clean out almost TWENTY NINE THOUSAND PHOTOS, which is no small feat, because I had to make sure I wasn't getting rid of things that would be any good later down the line. Now that that's done, I can finally finally FINALLY focus my attention on doing UTD edits on the photos I want for the website. This website rebuild will have taken two years by the time it's done (my goal is to be finished by the time Derek gets back, and I am positive I'll be done by then). I culled photos from shoots, and I have a few pages of photos that I need to edit and then upload so our website designer has all of them. Check it:

    

That might not seem that bad. It's just four pieces of paper. Some of those photos won't take more than 15 minutes (and some will be as fast as five minutes or less), but some of those photos will take an hour, at least, so it's a fucking LOT of work. Once I'm done with that, I just have to finish writing copy for the website, and designing the remainder of the pages. I'm fucking exhausted. I REALLY fucking want like, five mermaid shoots to put up there, but unfortunately, I don't have any grabs on that shit. Well. Maybe once the site is up.

I also wanted to discuss that I'm a little bit irked by something. Well, two things. Derek has been after me to record myself reading my blogs, so I thought I'd do that for him to have something to listen to while he was out at sea with nothing to do. It took me HOURS. My voice is still kinda scratchy and hoarse from it. He says he listened to them while he was sailing to Kwajalein, but he told me that he had lots of things he wanted to talk to me about, and it made him sad that he couldn't talk to me while he was listening to them. So I was like, oh, ok, well, we can talk now, what did you want to talk about? And he said he didn't remember, he should have taken notes.

Now.

I do not blog just for the fucking shit of it. It's great to blog, yes, but I do it for the conversational aspect. I've already briefly mentioned how much it hurts my feelings that not even my friends can be bothered to read my blog, and it's true. I know I get views, because I watch them come in, and sometimes it gets under my skin that I can get lots of views on a blog, but zero commentary. I mean, I'm not angling for any ol' interaction. Like someone saying "fuck you, cunto" wouldn't please me, but even something small like, "cool" or "hey" would be nice. This is something I've griped to Derek about a lot. That I just want to know who's reading my blog, and I want to be engaged just a little. So it's like, triply hurtful that he just couldn't remember any of the things he wanted to chat with me about. Particularly because one or two of the things I threw in there were kind of heavy subject matter, and I was hoping he'd have SOME kind of fucking something to say. I'm annoyed and slightly hurt he didn't. More than slightly hurt, I suppose. Especially if he's going to say that it made him sad he couldn't talk to me because of the things I was reading. Binch, you can't make a mental note? This was all in the last 24 hours. He had more to say about his viewing of Ghost in the Shell than he did about my blog material.

I don't think I'll be recording any more of them. If he's interested in my blog, he can come read it like a fucking normal person that just reads my blog and then bounces without anything to say, probably because it's all just actually random page views and nobody is ACTUALLY reading my blog. :(

You laugh like you've never been lonely

I fucking FINALLY god damn did it.

Check. This. Out.

                       

I know it's upside down. Let's see that in super slow mo:

                       

I'm sorry, assholes, have you ever seen anything that fucking good?

                    

Extra Extra! Read All About it! My tattoo is the hottest shit in town!

                                            

After a nice, cooling bath of bactine and a nice, cool rubdown with nice, cool, water, my nice, cool tattoo.

I've had a lot of stuff on my mind while Derek has been gone. In a lot of ways, it feels like he's been gone for the entire three months already, and it blows my mind to be like, "oh shit, it's only been three weeks". I dyed my hair fucking magenta to kind of externalize some of what's been looping through my head, but the biggest thing I wanted to do was this tattoo. I've been working on this for YEARS. Check it:

                             

I initially wanted the branches to twist into the bottom of the molecular chain so it would feel more organic, but I didn't know how to draw that. When I went in and talked to Al about getting the tattoo, the idea changed into what it is now. He freehanded the tree, and I just...I couldn't love this more. It isn't exactly what I wanted, but I REALLY fucking love that he made it something different, because that's kind of precisely the point of this tattoo.

I have a lot of tattoos. Of all of the important relationships in my life, the ones I don't have tattoos for are my children, my parents, and my daughter's dad. I don't have a tattoo for my children because I don't know who they are yet, and initials are beneath me, thankyouverymuch. I don't have a tattoo for my parents because while my relationship with them wasn't always non-existent, I've always been sure that their influences weren't good, and I haven't had any idea about how to contextualize that into a tattoo. I'll figure it out eventually. I don't have one for my daughter's dad because, while he is SUCH an important figure in the history of how and why I am how I am, and he's inadvertently shaped my life for the last 17  years and I truly think that deserves tattoo recognition, I fucking hate him so god damn much. Like my parents, I don't know how to contextualize that into a tattoo. Maybe the three of them can share a single tattoo one day when I figure out what justified disgust looks like.

Two tattoos have no ACTUAL meaning to me. I wish I could erase them from my body, because I like that everything on me has a purpose and a meaning. I legitimately thought one was just pretty, and I was drunk when I got the other one. The latter was my second tattoo, a stupid tribal band that goes between my shoulders. I got that in Vegas, I was 21, my friend Adam tried to tell me I was too drunk to get a tattoo and I (drunkenly, stupidly, unkindly) called him a pussywillow faggot and told the hottest tattoo artist in the place that he was going to tattoo me that very moment, and that we should meet up and fuck later. That is definitely a girl who is not in control of her faculties enough to make a solid life choice, but it happened. He didn't fuck me, either.

The rest of my tattoos, though, definitely mean something. My mermaid with tree hair (Derek calls her my tree fish) is a tattoo for Amber and Allen. My Warning tattoo is for me. My Bukowski poem is for Dan. My coordinates are for Amber. My scroll and quill, while partially for me, are more about Allen (I've never told him that, though. Or anybody else, really). My feather is for Tosh. My escape velocity tattoo is for me. My kanji is for my grandpa (and then for all of the women in my family. That was my first tattoo. I wanted to do something honoring everybody in one fell swoop in case tattoos were just too much for me to handle. Spoiler! I can't fucking get enough of them!).

This one is for Derek.

At his request, I've been recording my blogs for him to listen to when he's on the ocean tomorrow. I read through every single blog I've written in the last six years. I did it all in two days. I read the ones that I have sitting as drafts because I didn't want them to exist anymore. I read the sex blog I kept. I read the blog I kept to vent to myself about how much I was hurting over Dan, and then used to vent directly TO Dan when I found out he had been reading it the whole time. I read how cruel I was to Derek when we were first together, and how the way I treated him was just so exactly how Dan treated me, and I told myself that because I was upfront about being cruel and unavailable, that it made how I treated Derek ok. Derek has his faults, and it's not like Derek hasn't done his fair share of shit to really dig in the knife and hurt me enormously, but it's amazing to me that Derek fucking stuck it out and waited for me to get my shit together without putting any pressure on me. I don't know why he did. He says it's because he loves me and always has, from the moment we started talking on OKCupid. That's a lovely fairy story, but most of me doubts very much that that's the case. It doesn't much matter, though. My attachment and affection for Derek, and his attachment and affection for me, however fucked he's been to me...those things have kept me grounded.

Oh my god, my tiddies are schvitzing. ANYBODY FANCY A GERUND?

It's fucking hot in my god damn house. I'm on the side of the island where the breeze isn't the greatest, and to add insult to injury, the windows in my house are placed in such a way that cross breeze is impossible. The worst room in the house is the office, and I spend the most time in here. I'm sitting in front of my computer, topless as all god damn get out, and I'm still fucking BAKING. I could turn on the a/c, but it's just so fucking expensive.

Moving on.

Have I mentioned in here that I love singing? I really fucking do. I'm alright at it. I have a decent enough singing voice that I don't offend people if I feel like crooning along with something, but not so great a voice that I could have gone anywhere with it (MAYBE off off Broadway musicals, though. I sang far better on stage than I do along to radio music, and my AMT directors always said so, as well).

Back in middle school, I had a lot of friends that also loved singing. We all sat together in the lunchroom, singing popular songs on the radio. While my mom still didn't let me listen to age appropriate music in middle school, I had friends whose parents weren't fucking lunatics, and it was with my friends that I listened to Aaliyah and Robyn and TLC and Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston and all of the other totally normal, totally NOT oldies songs that my group of friends and I would sit and sing for 35 minutes every day.

I'm not trying to big myself up by saying that I was one of two stand out singers in the group, that's just the fact of the matter. While it was a fairly round robin of taking turns to sing a song you had been practicing to sing in front of the group while the rest of us served as background vocals, I got more cafeteria air time, and everybody else would often request I prepare something for the group. It's pretty obvious we were REALLY cool, so no need to ask. The other girl was my friend Randy. She was tall, very skinny, and blonde. I remember her pretty well, because my super non-worldly ass was floored to learn that she was born in Japan, and circa 6th grade, I thought to be born somewhere meant you WERE that thing, and you had to look the part, too. Randy did not look Japanese, so I was very surprised.

I'm not proud of that.

Anyway, Randy and I were the top singers in the group (I think there were almost ten of us. Maybe eight or nine girls). Sometimes we'd sing together, and anything that got me more singing time was a boon to my ego economy, so I was there for it. Except being one of two wasn't enough....I had to be better than Randy. I had to edge her out. I had to make it so nobody wanted to hear anybody sing but me, so I could reign supreme over my group of fucking nerds that sang in the corner of the lunch room. I didn't want to be obvious about wanting to be head singing nerd bitch, so I needed to really do something that would leave Randy way the fuck behind me and it would seem like everybody's free choice to leave her there.

And I knew exactly what to do.

A little aside here that's going to pretty much give away the plot: outside of listening to oldies music, my aunt had turned me on to a band that was vaguely known, but only for their commercial success: Rockapella. If you're reading this and you have no idea who they are (but are around my age or maybe a little older), they were the group that did all of the music for the TV show Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego (I fucking LOVED that show. Too bad I fucking sucked at the geography part of it), and also one or two of the more melodic Folgers commercials. They were an acapella group that did more than kid game shows and coffee jingles, but I fucking knew that nobody in my fucking group knew that shit. Hell, I only knew that shit because my aunt lucked into finding their cassette tape at a garage sale and she made a copy for me because she thought I'd like it. Spoiler alert, I fucking did, and still do, and I hate that their first CD is so god damn expensive. It's 113 dollars on Amazon, which is just outrageous. It should be noted that I took a thirty five minute long hiatus from writing this to find the website that has all of their songs from Primer available to listen to for free, and I am currently listening to Rockapella and having the fucking BEST time (I also made a bookmark on my bookmark bar, because it's taken me three years to find this website again). This shit still pops, and I don't give a shit what anybody thinks about me for listening to it. Primer, 2, and Don't Tell Me You Do are still three of my favorite nostalgia tours, they're just damn near impossible to get access to. Back to the point.

I threaded the needle for a couple of weeks, setting my ruse up slowly so it would seem more believable. And then one week, I asked for cutting Randy's place in line, because I had done it: I. Had. Written. My. Own. Song. Bitches, when I tell you that shit was buzzing over that, I am no kidding. Everybody was SO excited. Everybody railroaded Randy and agreed that an original piece should be given priority status, and it was my fucking time to shine, mother fuckers. I had spent the last couple of weeks telling them that I was trying to write music, too, because I just...gosh, I just felt so CREATIVE. And I wanted to be famous so bad, which is true. I really had wanted to be a famous singer, but I couldn't write to save my fucking life. My fellow aspiring divas didn't know that shit, though.

**As an aside, I used to harbor aspirations of being a poet, so I would write poems all the time. I remember getting up the courage to read my oeuvre to my mother one day to get an outside opinion of work that I held in the highest esteem. I was in the middle of reading my second work, a poem I held very close to my heart titled "Hold On To The Seams of Your Dreams', when my mom just crushed my spirit by breaking down into a fit of absolute hysterics, laughing at me, quoting me back to me in a way that ridiculed me, and I just kind of shuffled out of the kitchen, threw my notebook away on my way out, and went upstairs and cried. I never read my mom anything ever again, and I stopped writing poetry for a decade and a half.

I had picked out a Rockapella song weeks prior, and practiced the ever living fuck out of it. I figured out how to get the harmony parts right so it was just one note that I could cover and not sound weird, I wrote in words that made sense for some of the lyrics I couldn't figure out, I was fucking ON. THAT.  SHIT.

When they all but shoved Randy out of the way to give me wide berth, I fucking owned our little lunchroom table. I took credit for something that wasn't mine and sang the fucking SHIT out of it, and I am here to tell you that my audience was ENRAPTURED. They applauded, they loved it, they wanted me to sing it again so they could learn it and we could all sing it.

I. Was. A. GODDESS.

They asked me if I had written anything else, and wouldn't you know it, I totally had, you guys, but it wouldn't be fair if everybody else didn't get their turn, so I'd share mine on my actual turn. I had fucking roped them in, because I got top spot for the next day, too.

And that's how that shit went for four songs. I taught them the songs, I glowed and peacocked and I was their fucking god, and I lapped up every ill-begotten crumb of praise they threw at me, and it was a lot. It had to stop at four songs, though. Not because I wanted the adoration to end, but because I...well...I couldn't understand all of the words to the rest of the songs on the album, one of them was Carmen Sandiego and there was a real danger of them knowing that and calling me on my audacious bullshit, two of them were covers of songs they could ALSO know, and still another was just....it was fucking too batshit crazy for them to believe I was capable of writing. I had to play it cool enough that I wasn't called out for the liar I was right away.

And I fucking NEVER was. I picked a really fucking obscure group and lived a lie that made me so happy. I never saw anything wrong with what I was doing, because it harmed nobody and I had zero artistic integrity. I was fucking twelve.

I've wondered every once and awhile if anybody remembers this shit, and if anybody ever accidentally heard a Rockapella song and labeled me a big fat fucking liar in their head the moment they did. I seriously doubt it, though. Rockapella is SERIOUSLY obscure unless you mention Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, but nobody ever follows that up with, "hey, so did those guys like, ever release music that wasn't for a PBS kid game show". I think my shitty secret about how I dethroned Randy from a place she rightly deserved to have is going to be safe to those girls forever, and I like it that way.

goddamnsunuvvabitch

Well. I thought I had a lot less coffee in my mug. I'm talking last little sip. So I went to shoot it all back in one quick motion, and it turns out I had a lot more coffee left in my mug. And now it's all over my face and chest, and I almost choked on the coffee that made it down my gullet because I laughed so hard at myself while I was still trying to swallow all of the coffee.

Spring break is this week, so I'm using the weekend to get a few things accomplished. I have to spend the entire week studying for my CLEP test, because I fucking refuse to take an actual math class. I am so fucking math stupid, I would have to take a remedial math class first before I could even take my college level algebra class, and I still have to take my stats classes to get my degree finished up. The University of Hawaii has a different system in place for what you need to get your degree. I should have been done literally four fucking semesters ago, but after my mishaps with my bullshit adviser at UCCS I got pushed back (I'm still fucking pissed about that. I'm not sure that will go away), and then when I transferred here expecting to take a couple of courses to finish up what got fucked up in Colorado, I was less than delighted to find out that U of H has their own focus requirements that gave me another two semesters to get caught up. I am going to be doing this for fucking EVER. Ugh. But if I can pass my CLEP, next semester is my last semester and THEN I can finally get started with my Masters instead of just saying "I'm working toward it". I mean, I could still say that, but I'd be able to say "working ON" instead. Active, not passive.

I'm so academically exhausted. :/

I'm currently tossing shit from my camera roll in Lightroom so I don't have 20k photos in there. Over the last four months, I've whittled my way down to 11k. I'm expecting that, by the time I'm finally done, I'll have about 8k that I actually intend on keeping. Eventually I'll have to adopt Derek's system, and I know it, but today is not that day. I'm also regrouping the photos for the website (which also feels like a never-ending project. I can't just work on it because I have school and a life and the occasional photoshoot, and also the attention span of a dead mouse...even with adderall), so I'm selecting better photos for each of the categories we shoot. I'm going through a wedding right now, and the fucking bride has god damn gum in her fucking mouth. GUM. GUM IN HER GOD DAMN MOUTH. Girl wut. Now is not the fucking time for Chiclets. Something they never tell you about photography is how much time you'll spend editing weird things. Like the exact texture of nipples, or errant hairs off of pubic mounds, or gum out of someone's mouth. Because I've done more boudoir recently than anything else, it's really the former two that I spend the bulk of my time on. Have you ever had to adjust someone's ass cheeks in photoshop and then send the photo to everyone you  know getting an opinion on how realistic it looks? Or adjusting some razor burn on someone's vagina and seeing that the brush slipped a little but it's not really workable unless you spend hours and hours on it, then sending it to your husband and being like, "so, what are your first thoughts when you look at her vagina?" Among the questions I never thought I'd be asking, that's top five easy. But it's something I've asked about more than one vagina.

The new mouse traps I bought were quite successful! Well, insofar as they saved one VERY large house mouse. She, not a he, which I initally thought was fantastic, until I released her at wooded area a few miles away and asked myself if taking her away meant I was leaving her little mouse babies to die in my walls. I hope there aren't little mouse babies missing their mouse mom now. This shit really bums me out. I can't fucking win! I'm just glad I didn't have to see her screaming corpse on my bedroom floor, or hear her little mouse screams as my cat terrorized her to death. Look how cute she is!!!

                               
                               
And she really is a large mouse. The mice that Floopies has been getting are much smaller. That's kind of why I'm worried that this is a momma mouse, and I've just signed a death warrant on her pinkies or fuzzies. Welp. There's only so much I can do. As I was driving her to the park, a truck labeled Pest Control was driving into my neighborhood, and I am willing to bet that people are getting their houses de-moused right now. I don't understand why people just want to kill the little mice. They're so fucking cute. They  just want to live their little mouse lives, and if anybody is encroaching on someone else's territory, it's us. Plus, as my husband and everybody else points out, they live right where they're meant to. In the house. They are house mice.

It's about to be primary mouse breeding season, though. I don't quite know what to do. I don't see them very often anymore, even though I know they're around. I know they're a hazard to the house, I know they can be a health hazard, too (even though I'm really good about cleaning the counters every night and every morning, and every time I finish cooking, specifically because I'm so paranoid about their little mouse leavings. I almost NEVER see droppings, though. Only when Derek and I moved the stove to seal up the first hole. I don't see traces of them, I just see THEM). I kind of wish my property management company would call and be like, TOO BAD SO SAD YOU FUCKING HIPPIE VEGAN, WE ARE SENDING IN AN EXTERMINATOR WE DO IT EVERY YEAR. That would force my hand and I would be guilt free.

Fucking mice.

Every time your lips meet mine

I have a list of big abandoned things I want to get into a photograph. I'm pretty lucky, because I've been able to cross the bulk of them off. I think the only really big thing I have left is hospital and hotel. Derek and I came so fucking close to getting into an abandoned hospital in NOLA, we were just a few months too late. They had cleaned it out and started restoration like, five months before we got there. I was so devastated. It didn't even stop  us from trying to get in, either. We just couldn't find a conceivable point of entry. We looked twice. Parked, got out, checked out the perimeter. It just wasn't happening. 

Movie theater is another one I want, but even then, I've kind of half gotten that because I found a drive in theater that Derek and I investigated. Twice. Oh! And Asylum. But everybody wants asylum, right? No surprise there. I think "abandoned Europe" is one giant box I'd like to tick off, as well, though it's almost all chateaus. So perhaps the more accurate list of what's left is hospital, hotel, movie theater, asylum, chateau. 

Before we left Texas, we got to check a HUGE mark in the box next to 'prison', and I gotta be honest, I never thought I'd be able to explore and photograph an abandoned prison. Having the chance to do so was seriously fucking amazing, and Derek and I lunged at it. It was an absolutely wild time, and it's probably one of my favorite explores ever. So I thought I'd make a post about it. It dawned on me while I was driving around today (seriously close to running out of gas because I kept making the wrong decisions) that I started this blog like, eight fucking years ago specifically to share photos, not ramble about my relationships, both old and current. I've been fucking around exploring my feelings when I should have been posting all of my adventures. What a fucking LOSER. 

I was not expecting an entire abandoned neighborhood on the same property as the prison. The person we were with told us that the neighborhood was where the guards lived, and I was never able to properly verify that. The information I've found on the property is actually pretty fucking sparse, probably because it was home to decades and decades of human rights violations, but that's just speculation on my part. It seemed like a pretty legit factoid, as well, so I feel good about leaving it here, but with the caveat of 'this is the best info I currently have, it may be incorrect'.

I was really hell bent on getting some interesting shots of these houses, but they were mostly gutted and bland. This house, however, I almost missed. It was so overgrown, I thought it was just a shitload of shrubbery, and I was pleased to see it was an overgrown house instead. Nothing of note inside, and even this photo isn't noteworthy. I just really liked the little treat hidden inside the bushes.

It was so fucking QUIET in here. No street noise, because we were about a mile from the road, and even then, the road was just a two laner without much traffic coming or going. There weren't any critter sounds, either. No birds, no squirrels, and we couldn't talk to each other because the place was definitely heavily monitored, and we didn't want to get caught (bad news from the future!).

Inside one of the houses. Seriously gutted. Not even a comically old and dusty can of beans. Just fucking empty.

How. Fucking. COOL. Walking out of the shade of the heavily treed neighborhood and into the bright sunlight and seeing this gigantic monolith was just amazing. I was so fucking thrilled to be there, I almost didn't want to go in.

I mean, I know this probably looks big, and it obviously IS big. It's a prison. But I'm fucking telling you, this building has god damn PRESENCE, and it is so much fucking bigger in person. There is no proper scope for how massive and dense this place is.

There's a jacket hanging from the middle of the guard tower, and we legitimately thought someone was hanging out in there. We were ready to scatter, but one of us figured out it was just a piece of clothing. Panicked the fuck out of me for a solid moment, though. I didn't end up going up into the guard tower, because I think Derek went up there and there were bees. I didn't want to get stung.

                                                                 That'll keep 'em out.

The guy from our urbex group that met us at the prison figured something was wrong, because most of the litter and garbage and glass that was all over the floor was cleaned up. He got a little bit spooked about people maybe being more involved in the property, and gave us a warning to be twenty times more stealthy than we would have been. No need to tell us twice, friendo.

Not a terribly inviting view, huh? But it's prison.

I think the map on the wall said this was the cafeteria/food store area. I loved this hallway. The door at the end was locked, which was a real fucking shame, but onwards and upwards.

Speaking of upwards, this is the hallway and set of windows that anybody who's ever been to this prison (uh, in an urbex capacity, that is) takes a photo of. I took one from this angle because it seemed necessary, but I really wanted to take one from the other angle. Unfortunately, there would be some bad news in the future.

                                               Well fine. I will not. And so I did not.

This was one of the common areas, and that big tub is a piss tub. Hooray! The toilets had been ripped from the walls.

Another common area, but this one is gated in a way more obvious way. This one also had a fuckin' huge mess o' bees in the doorway, so this was as far in as I went. Have I mentioned I'm allergic to bees? I am allergic to bees.

Here are the amazing gates to the two smaller common areas.

This is probably the way wrong sentiment, but I would fucking LOVE to do a boudoir shoot in this stairwell. That shit would be fucking AMAZING. That light is god damn to die.

This is probably the only remnant we found that was proof positive people had been in here once, besides the chair at the front.

I really fucking wish I had been able to investigate every single arm of this prison. Our trip got cut WAY short, though. We came back out from our first foray into the prison to meet two other people from our urbex group that were a little late, so I thought I'd take another crack at taking a photo that would accurately get across the magnitude of this building. And I failed.

I could not get over how apocalyptic this prison felt. It was fucking surreal.

Well, you heard them. Try tounge, but hole. Derek and I had a good laugh trying to figure out what this was actually trying to say. Was it "try tongue, butthole" or a shortened version of "try to tongue butthole" or "try tongue, but whole" as in the meat delicacy?

As you can see, respirators were a must. But it was so god damn stuffy in there, because it was Texas heat, inside, no air movement, WITH a respirator AND long sleeves and pants (so we wouldn't get nasty shit on our bodies). Black mold don't fuck around, though, so we didn't, either.

Upstairs from here was the library, but no books. Just a bunch of toppled over bookcases. The school rooms were upstairs, as well, but I wasn't inspired to take any photos of them.

These are the transient cells, and these are right next to the other side of the hallway with the vine covered windows, and that was my next stop, so I could get a perspective on that hallway that nobody else was getting.

Unfortunately, that's when the bad news from the future showed up. One of our group ran in, loud whispering that there were trucks on the property and a guy with a drone and we needed to fucking leave now now now now now now. So I snapped this last photo and off we ran, making our very own prison break, which was exhilarating, and my legs got scratched to fucking shit running through fucking blackberry brambles and hiding in machine sheds and making daring breaks while we hid from the people who could get us into serious fucking trouble if they caught us on property. I think it took about thirty minutes to escape, and we all had to split up.

This is the entrance to the medical ward. This is where Derek and I hid, and it was seriously creepy in there. There weren't any working lights, but there was a hole that had something red covering it, so there was a really sickly red glow over one of the doorways. It was hellish looking. We made a mad fucking run for it after this, caught up with our group, and then we made the long trek back to our cars. We hit up an abandoned house one of the other group members had seen, and I found these AMAZING bricks that were from like...I believe 1904? Maybe earlier? They were really worth a pretty little penny, and there were a LOT of them, but taking things is against the rules. I didn't end up going into the house, though. A cop pulled a lady over a little too close to the house for our comfort, so we all left and said we'd go back to the house. We never did, though, which is an absolute shame. I kinda wanted to grab those bricks. :/

Anyway, this is about a year late, but it's up here now!