I'm pretty sure this was an accident.

No, the title is not referring to my pregnancy.


Seriously, I think it's official to say that I'm an adult. I don't know when this kicked in, or why, or how, but I think it officially hit me when I was walking through Wal-Mart with a cart. If you know me, or have ever gone Wal-Mart shopping with me, you'll know I am not a cart shopper. I do not stay in Wal-Mart longer than I need to, and damned if those carts don't impede upon my ability to quickly maneuver through the catacombs of the Land of Wal as quickly and skillfully as possible. I don't care if I'm buying five bags of salt for the water softener. I'll carry those sumbitches through the store like Forrest Gump in Vietnam.

But no, instead I found myself going through the pharmacy aisle of Wal-Mart (past the pregnancy tests...hey guys, remember me?) and looking down my shopping list -- yes a LIST, a LIST of things we needed to get -- strategically mapping my next move. Hardware for light bulbs then housewares to check out frames and then the back of grocery to get pop... yes, that'll work out nicely...

AND I HAD A CART. I looked like a grown-up. I was wearing my grown-up Express pants (yes, I'm still fighting the maternity clothes battle and wearing my pre-prego pants, thank God that I'm carrying Sophia high enough I can swing that) and my official looking high heels and the pregnant bump that says "Look at me, I have functional reproductive organs and I have big girl sex to utilize them!" And a list of things like light bulbs and vitamins and groceries, instead of the usual "Beer. Oreos. More makeup." Yeah. I think I am a grown-up now.

Apparently paying my own bills, getting married, and having a child weren't enough for me, but walking around Wal-Mart is the tipping point of adulthood. That Britney Spears pre-crazy song about "Not a girl, not yet a woman"? Yeah, clearly homegirl was still just going to Wal-Mart and maybe getting one of those hand baskets or something.

So take note. Somewhere in between those six easy steps, you can make mental note of "Walk around Wal-Mart with a cart." I don't know where it goes. I'll let you decide.

What I'm Thankful For...

Her.

I get by with a little help from MySpace

Sometimes I get down on myself. It happens. Life's stressful, I look like an orca whale, I can't drink alcohol, and sometimes I poop a lot. And when life gets me down, I used to partake in an activity I call Scuttlebug Hunting -- going to Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. and checking out the scuttlebugs of society. Remember when you were a kid and would move a big rock or concrete brick, and there'd be all these weird bugs that would run around from day light?

Yeah, those people. They live in the Wal-Mart, I think, and come out around midnight. Seeing them, no matter how bad life seems at that given point in time, makes me feel a little bit better. That, and sometimes you just need to go to Wal-Mart and buy some useless, cheaply made Chinese plastic doodads to feel better about life. I have like eight Kool-Aid pitchers I'll probably never use and a failed sea monkey farm as a result of these trips.

Thankfully the Internet has cut down on my need to look down on others in the Wal-Mart to feel better about myself. Thanks to the social wonder of MySpace, the societal scuttlebugs now come to me! And boy do they in droves. It fascinates me that these people actually publish themselves on MySpace, or the Internet at large, when it's so easy to just throw up a picture of Heidi Klum and make yourself into a swimsuit model with about as much effort as it takes to make a profile about your real self.

Go ahead and look at me like a bad person for making fun of these people, but you know what, it's funny, and if these people are stupid enough to put crap like this up on a public forum, then they deserve to be made fun of and used for the sake of my own sadistic self-esteem issues....

First, we've got ladies like this little flower here...


Okay, no amount of bleach to my eyes will burn this image out of them. It's haunting. Worse yet, Seductress here has a SERIES of photos like this. This is about the only one that doesn't make me physically ill, just mildly nauseous. But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this picture is the fact that she captioned it, "Peanut and I were playing with my camera..." and a few pictures prior labeled aforementioned "Peanut" as one of her children,probably about six years old. Yes, she decided to play Orca Whale Porno Time with her CHILD and a digital camera. When I become so lonely that I need my grade-school-aged child to take seductive photos of me, I expect to be dismembered and then flogged to death with my own limbs and raped by a goat... seriously, someone take note of this, because I vow to never reach that point in my life.

Then ya get people like this guy, who incidentally I went to high school with...


In his profile, he so eloquently describes himself as a "fucking POTHEAD AND A JUGGALO FOR FUCKING LIFE. FUCK MAINSTREAM BRAINWASHED SPIT BACKUP BULLSHIT." Thanks for that little bit of insight. It's even more poignant when you CAPITALIZE RANDOM PARTS OF THE SENTENCE. Also, he's a "juggalo," which for those who don't know, means he's a pothead pseudo-fan follower of the band Insane Clown Posse. His entire layout is dedicated to this band. Wow, Mike, you're SUPER COOL because you like clowns. Something people normally aren't fond of. You are so WEIRD AND UNIQUE because FUCK MAINSTREAM BRAINWASHED SPIT BACKUP BULLSHIT. Pretty sure a hyphen should be in there, but when you've got good bud and clowns around, who really needs correct grammar?

Furthermore, who needs grammar when you can have love? I present to you Mike's girlfriend...



Okay, note to the world: I don't care who you are. I don't care how attractive you are. I don't care how much you paid for them, or how good you think they make you look. GLAMOUR SHOTS ARE NEVER, NEVER, EVER A GOOD THING. Glamour Shots alone are fodder to be made fun of. Seriously. If you take Angelina Jolie, a woman that I would undeniably go gay for, tease her hair to obnoxious heights, spray paint the rejects of last season's Mary Kay line, and put some leather jacket on her, she too will look like white trash. Glamour Shots are the devil. But this treasure here is, I'm pretty sure, already white trash, so now she's just apparently half-wearing a random leather jacket and we'll call it portraiture at its finest.

And somehow in the midst of all of this, I stumbled across a lovely woman who has no problem proclaiming she loves the Lord...


... because if I could only show you -- Jesus vomited all over her page in a mess of animated GIFs and doves and crosses. You like Jesus. That's super duper. Praise the Lord. But I think even the good Lord Christ would be embarrassed by the eye-gouging display of animated, blinking graphics that you use to praise Him. Praise the Lord in song. Praise the Lord in good deeds toward others. Do not praise Jesus with bad web design.

(Hold on... still having an epileptic seizure from this crazy lady's page...)

The thing with the crazies is that they love them they's kins... this woman's page led me to her daughter's page... which is a whole new level of "Holy shit"...


Umm there's a lot just in this picture that I could write an entire megabyte in blogspace on. Easily. But instead, we'll just take a look at her "about me": "I am proud to say that I am a virgin and am planning on it till my wedding night! True Love will wait!" True love will probably also ask you to wear a paper bag on your head, lights turned off at 3 a.m. and have a few good strong shots of Jack Daniels first. Chastity and virginity are great virtues, and I can respect people waiting til marriage to have sex (after all, so you don't wind up like me with the cart before the horse... whatever, I got married to him eventually)... but really... I think genetics are giving her a big helping hand with her endeavors.

I'm agnostic (bordering and teetering on atheist), but looking at MySpace pages like these really makes me think all those crazy Christians claiming the world's about to end because the world's rife with folks like this. But maybe we all have our own special purpose in life -- to share knowledge with others, to love, to be loved, to learn from lessons life lays out for us, who knows. All I know is these people serve a great purpose for giving me something to make fun of for half an hour on my blog.

Tell Hell I'm well on my way.

The Ballad of the Hot Drunken Mess at Bar Seat 2

Hot Drunken Mess: "Are you pregnant?"
Me: "Yes.....?"
Hot Drunken Mess: "Well then you're a bitch and I fucking hate you!"

This is just the beginning of my fun tale with this fine, classy broad earlier this week.

Early in the evening, we get two ladies -- we later figure out that they're mother and daughter -- sitting at the bar. Obviously a little drunk, maybe buzzed, but they start out with a martini apiece. Then more martinis. Time passes, and soon the daughter of the duo, or Hot Drunken Mess -- HDM, if you will -- is sobbing uncontrollably. I mean homegirl is inconsolable. The bartender, from her eavesdropping skills (and later utilizing her gossiping skills with me), figures out that HDM has either had an abortion and is regretting her decision, or had a miscarriage.

Either way, a fetus was involved, but is no longer involved, and now HDM is very sad about it. A sad situation, to be sure, but sitting at a bar (the bar in a pretty upscale Italian restaurant, no less) drunk as shit with your mother is not the place to grieve. To quote Bar Bitch over at Bitter Waitress, " My mom and I usually go to the Waffle House after I get an abortion."

By this point HDM has spotted me -- an innocent bystander by all means, just your friendly dining room server with an all-too-telling bump in the gut. From where she is sitting at the bar, she has full view of the drink station (the only drink station in the restaurant). There is absolutely no way I can avoid HDM as I'm going to and from getting drinks for my tables. I can feel her staring daggers at me as I'm coming and going and finally our little confrontation -- after three martinis' worth of built up courage -- took place.

After that, every time I walked by, she would call me a bitch or a cunt under her breath, apparently very bitter that I was pregnant with a live, living, and continually living fetus, and seemed pretty damn content with myself. (Little did HDM realize I die a little bit inside knowing that I graduated at the top of my college class and yet my only source of income right now is dealing with stupid bitches like her and hoping they are too drunk to scribble anything less than a 20% tip on the credit card slip at the end of the night.)

Not long after she crossed the point of no return -- and between sessions of inconsolable sobbing -- HDM tried to go to the restroom, only to get very lost and wind up in one of our banquet rooms, which was not in use tonight but had dried flowers and other Christmas decorations laid out, ready to be put up in the morning. So she helped herself to making a bouquet, and then proceeded to parade around the restaurant, slurring, stumbling, and yelling obscenities at anyone who gave her a remotely shady eye (because after all, she was ridiculously drunk, and making just a teensy bit of a spectacle of herself).

At this point the manager tried to get her to come sit down again and feed her and pour some coffee down her gaping food hole. She responded to this by trying to kiss him. She was still sitting at the bar with her shining example of a role model of a mother when I left...


Yeah... yeah. Nights like this I go home, stare at my college diploma and cry.

New Creepy Cat Guy Sightings...

... in case you were curious:

Most recently spotted creeping around his house, following a cat, while talking to the cat. Not just "Heerrree Kitty Kitty" (that would imply that he's actually doing something to corral his cats)... no, just having a casual conversations with the disinterested cat as it slinked around the perimeters of his house/yard.

I really don't know what this guy's tripping on... whatever it is, as soon as I get this kid out of me, I want some.

(No clue what I'm talking about? Go hereand get in the loop.)

He's adjusting.

While A and I were in Vegas getting hitched, I left my dog, Bo, a 2-year-old papillon, with my mother. She has a dog of similar size and age, and they play splendidly (Bo and her dog, that is). I figured it'd be like sleepaway camp for him for a few days of fun with new friends. I thought he'd enjoy having a big backyard to run through without being attached to a cable like he is here. While there, I knew my mom would go against my orders that he sleep in his kennel at night, so I thought he'd have fun getting to snuggle under the covers with warm legs and feet at night.

These are things I expected. I did not expect my mother to ordain herself the ambassador for Canine Mental Health.

Apparently, in order to prepare Bo for the arrival of his "skin sister" in February, my mother bought him his very own baby doll. Bear in mind, this is the tactic my parents used with me when pregnant with my younger brother. But I'm also, you know, A HUMAN. But anyway, when A and I came to pick Bo up after arriving home from Vegas, you can imagine our surprise to be sent home with a stuffed baby doll that he absolutely refuses to be separated from.

Yes, Bo loves his Baby. It's almost as big as he is, and yet he drags it everywhere with him... by its crotch. (He loves to grab the crotches on his toys. I don't get it. Psychological issues from the fact that I neutered him, perhaps?) So as he drags Baby around the house with him, it gets caught up underneath him, so while strutting through the house he wants up walking all jenky-like trying to walk while stepping over Baby as he carries it.

Baby serves a number of purposes. As with all his toys he loves, he beats the shit out of it. Loves, LOVE to shake it. And fetch. He never tires of bringing Baby to you and letting you throw it, which, as A has expressed, "has amazing flying distance" thanks to the heavy head. I am wondering if I should be concerned that my dog and the father of my child enjoy playing "throw the baby across the room" together.

Also, Bo has decided Baby does not need clothes (he's stripped its clothes off and used them for a whole new set of toys), nor does Baby need hands (they're sitting on the end table as I found him chewing on them after ripping them from Baby's limbs.)

There are so many psychological issues at play here, and I can't even begin to tackle them all. So I'm just presenting the case as it is, for you to contemplate for yourself.

Why yes, I am superwoman.

Despite having a very expensive bachelor's degree in journalism hanging on the wall (and taking an automatic payment out of my bank account on the 3rd of every month), I still have not been able to find a job doing what I love to do, and at the same time making more than I currently am as a waitress. Fuck you, Alcoholic High School Guidance Counselor, for leading me to believe that print journalism was a wise and noble career choice. Looking back, I think he just told me what I wanted to hear to get me out of the office so a certain classmate of mine, his "teacher's aid", could come in and suck his whiskey-tainted penis. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's the case.

So basically, thanks to fellatio, I'm a waitress with no viable career options. No wonder I hate giving head so much.

Anyway, I really shouldn't talk down about the notion of being a food server. All things considered, it's not a bad job. I work part-time hours and still pull down, easily, $20,000 a year (which in a cheap cost-of-living market like mine, really isn't that bad). I work maybe a max of 4-5 hours a shift, I have cash at the end of the day that I hardly report to the federal government, and most of the people I work with are pretty cool. And I gorge myself on high-end Italian food on a regular basis. I really can't complain.

I'm a regular over at The Bitter Waitress forums, and after being there several months I've decided we are among the hardest working, most respect-deserving breed of people I know. So I say this to you, Mr. Hypothetical Businessman Who Thinks I Don't Work For My Money: go straight to hell. I am Super Waitress...

While others sit behind their computers in their cubicles, I'm running my ass off. I start my shift off already tired and pukey (thanks pregnancy!), and within a short period of time I am in charge of the well-being and happiness of four tables of people. Given at least four people at each table, usually, that's 16 human beings whose fate lies in my hands. And I know what's going on at each and every table, and am multitasking accordingly to make sure they stay happy -- and oh yes, if you're at one of my tables, you are, and will remain, happy. Table A needs refills, I'm already filling them at the drink station. Table B needs more bread, I'm picking it up between the drink station and my tables. Table C needs their orders taken, which I will do after I drop all this off, and Table D is ready to have their credit card run and to cash out, which I will grab after Table C's order is taken since Table D is pretty content to sit and sip on their coffee and chat for a few minutes.

All the while, I'm busting ass to get these people wined, dined, fed, and the hell out of my section so the next round of people can come sit and I can make as much money off of as many tables as I can without making them feel rushed, without their food looking or tasting like shit, and while being as cute and perky as humanly possible (despite waves of nausea -- thanks Baby!) because if I show even the slightest sign of weakness, grumpiness, nausea, tiredness, or just a hair off of the standard Crack-Addled Happiness, "OH MY GOD I LOVE MY JOB!" -- my income suffers. If you're having a shitty day, you still make the same amount of money. I don't get to have bad days.

As you look down your nose at servers, asking us questions like, "What's your REAL job?" and "What are you doing when you aren't serving?" -- um, this IS my real job and after I'm done serving I'm going to go home, do the laundry, and probably start dinner -- realize that most of us, in my restaurant at least, are college educated. We're writers, photographers, musicians, journalists, and... well, whatever philosophy majors do. We're dreamers, schemers, lovers (often with each other, we are a horny, repressed bunch), smokers, drinkers, thinkers and and so, SO much more than SERVERS.

After work, I get in my car, my feet and calves swollen and sore, my legs exhausted, and a little bit of alfredo sauce in my hair and osso buco sauce staining my shirt, and a few second degree burns on my fingers, and I drive home to my husband and my dog and I get a back rub from him while I rub my belly and talk to our unborn daughter. My apron sits in a crumpled mess on the couch, a shed superficial layer of who I am, and it will sit there unattended and unnoticed until tomorrow, when I get to do it all over again.

I would say 95% of the people I wait on are alright kinda folks. But for the rest, remember this when you sit down at your table and are greeted by a smile -- sometimes sincere and usually tired -- and remember we're people too. In fact... we're freaking amazing.

Learning to say "NO."

Being an adult also means learning how to recognize people that are just after your money, and learning to say "no" to them. I am sure I've mentioned this before, but I come from a very small town. I am, for lack of a better word, podunk. I am endearingly naive and I like to believe everyone's just a nice person. Okay, that was a big load of shit, I actually hate about 90% of the people I encounter daily -- I just hate confrontation and I get social anxiety when put in situations where I'm on the spot and need to say no.

Las Vegas is not a good place to be like me.

A and I quickly learned on our first day that everywhere you turned in Vegas, especially in our hotel, there are people from a resort called Tahiti Village trying to get you to come and listen to their timeshare presentation. I didn't know what a timeshare was, but judging by how quickly A would walk past them and/or ignore them, I assumed it wasn't anything good. But the name rang a bell and I remembered the commercials from back home with Alan Thicke telling me how much fun it was. And the dad from Growing Pains can't be wrong, right?

On our second day in Vegas we needed to go to get our marriage license (which a sidenote that maybe I'll come back to someday: it amazes and concerns me how easy that process was, but anyway...). Unsure where the license bureau was, we stopped by a little kiosk in the lobby appropriately labeled "Information Center" and asked. This is where all the trouble began.

The lady was nice and sweet and apparently we gave off a "itchin' to get hitched" vibe (could've been the baby belly, I suppose). And then the next thing I knew, she was asking if we wanted to get a gift certificate for $100 to the steakhouse in the hotel. Wha-wha-whaaaaaaa? Sounds fabulous! What happened in the next five minutes that ensued I'm really not sure. I think I may have blacked out -- all I remember thinking was "Prego want STEAK!" -- but next thing I know, we had forked over a $40 refundable deposit and were signed up for a "resort tour" at 4 p.m.

I say "we" like this was a mutual decision. It was not. I just was not taking A's hints that this was not what we wanted to do. This was all me. As he would continue to remind me throughout the remainder of the trip. And the three hour timeshare presentation we sat through, while repeatedly telling the salesman "No... no.... no, we're not interested... no..."

I mean, let's be honest. We're in our 20's, obviously have a little one on the way, and most likely, let's be real honest here, we're not loaded. Do you really think we want a timeshare for a resort in Las Vegas? No, no we don't. Tell Alan Thicke to stop telling me how fun it would be, because I'm not interested. I just wanted steak. That's all I wanted. And to get my $40 back.

A was thoroughly annoyed with me. Three hours later, we had a long, quiet shuttle ride back to the hotel. Although the $100 steak dinner the next night was fabulous -- after that he quit spitefully reminding me quite as much.

And so was the story of my first lesson as a wife: when your husband says "I don't know, I think that interferes with plans we made", heed his hints. It's like the code word "banana" when Prego's feeling especially feisty. But that's another grown-up lesson for another day.

She's an honest woman now...

To briefly explain my recent absence, you may recall that I had a wedding coming up. Yep, A and I got hitched in Las Vegas and as of about 1:10 PST on Halloween, October 31, 2007, I'm officially a married woman. He showed up to the chapel, we didn't have any guests to stress over, and we had lots of matrimonial fun in Sin City. The downer? Having to come home to 30 degree weather and my shitty waitressing job. Ah well, can't get everything you want...