Recreational Stalking

Or you could be coy and call it  “Being Interested In Your Friends’ Lives.”  Either way, I bet most do it.  I loathe everything about Facebook, yet I’m guilty of it from time to time.

I will admit, I cruise around looking at strangers’ pages. Sometimes they have their shit locked down like Fort Knox and that never ceases to make me eyeroll. “Yeah, cuz NO ONE but special people can know you had green beans with your dinner.”  Other times, they have *everything* on display and you kind of wish they would have hid it.

Oddly, I hardly ever even look for coworkers on Facebook.  I won’t say I haven’t ever.  Cuz there are a few. But often, I guess I get enough of them from 9-5.

Sure this is short, but I have run out of things to say on this topic.  Just this:  next time you are bored, randomly pull up a FB friend and start clicking around on their friends. You’ll be amazed at what you find.

Out With The Old …

THE EX BOX

I just finished reading an article about stuff from a previous relationship.  Not the emotional crap but the actual physical crap.  To pattern one’s life after the Gilmore Girls, one should box up everything “HIM-ish” and put it in a box …forever.  In the words of Dylan Moran “It must be kept so it can never be looked at.”

I skimmed through the comments after and all the ones I read seemed to be along the lines of “No. Just get rid of it. As soon as you possibly can. LIVE IN THE NOW!”

When I realized I was thinking about writing on this topic, I got up and walked around. As I passed through the rooms of my apartment, I had some things jump out at me, remembering that they came from one or another with whom I had a relationship in the past.

Yeah, I have still have that shit.  It’s *my* shit.  None of it is like pictures of me with that man in heart-shaped frames; it’s just stuff.  Some of which is stuff that is used for something specific; though, yeah, some of it is just sentimental crap.  But I keep it because I like it.

I would venture to say that Mr. L might not even be aware of where most of my stuff came from.  I would also say that I doubt he cares.  I’m guessing IF he were to concern himself with it for even a moment, he’d probably think “that’s just something else of her shit. I don’t care.”

I’ve never ran down a list of my possessions to him and where each thing originated because I do not keep it *because* of that relationship.  I keep it because it is mine and I like it.

That’s not to say I have every tiny memento from every date I was ever on with every guy in my life.  I don’t keep a lot of tokens OF the relationship and I keep nothing that belonged to *him*. I could absolutely understand him having an issue with stuff like that.  THAT kind of thing would seem to me as though the other person was ‘waiting on the ex to come back’ or ‘unable to fully move on.”

When my ex husband and I were still dating, and we had first decided to move in together, I remember we were at his apartment packing for this to happen.   It seems funny now, but I remember we got into this hours long screaming fight.  One of very first *big* ones.  Because he was in the kitchen packing and I walked in and asked him what he was doing.

“Packing the dishes?”   “Why would you do that?”  “Because people eat on dishes, typically”  “If you think I’m going to have second-hand WHORE PLATES, you better guess again.”   And it was on.

That phase of the fight really didn’t last very long.  Ten, fifteen minutes max. What dragged it on for hours is that a few minutes after we’d settled down and went back to packing, I was futzing around in his closet and happened to find a cute black skirt.  Holding it up against myself and checking it in a mirror, I was all “OHHHH! This is cute. This is SO MY SKIRT NOW!”  For clarification, it belonged to “The Whore,” not him.

But it was immediately on again because if I were unwilling to eat on “WHORE PLATES,” I shouldn’t want to wear a “WHORE SKIRT.”  And I never could get him to understand why it was perfectly OK for me to choose to take over something that formerly belonged to her but she left.  He had no problem with my doing it in regards to him.  Yet it was absolutely not OK for me to be made to settle for her cast-offs.  Obviously, though, since this is a story about my ex,  I see how the latter bit of that sentence applies here, too.

As I was typing that little jaunt down memory lane, the rightness of one of those comments in the original article struck me.  It was along the lines of “if she had completely erased every bit of her previous relationships, I wonder how quickly I’d be wiped clean too.”  I absolutely agree.  I can’t help but wonder how unimportant those past relationships must have been if someone can dismiss every aspect of them.

 

 

Music That Makes The Baby Jesus Cry

Most of the time, I have pretty good taste in music.  I realize I’m offering an opinion about myself and I also realize that I can name people who would disagree with me.   To that, all I have to say is  “….”

I could easily say that most of the music I really like is empirically good music.  Even if it isn’t to everyone else’s taste.  I’m not even going to get into examples of that because that isn’t what this one is about.    And frankly, I’m not interested in having that shit be judged.

This post is about something else.  This one is about that other music.  The music I’m ashamed of.  A lot of people would call that “guilty pleasure” music.  Everyone has some of that.  Here’s the thing though: I’m not even a little bit ashamed of my guilty pleasure music.

I’ll shout it to the world.  Yes, there are some Britney Spears songs I love.  Dirty, misogynistic rap just makes me happy.  I have a soft spot for boy bands.  And omg, I *LOVE* Beyonce.  I am even fine with a few things that perhaps SHOULD make me ashamed.  The example that comes to mind first: Vanilla Ice, “Ice Ice Baby.”  Yep. Love it. Don’t care.

It actually puzzles me how I can be *there*, yet there are a few things that I do not really dig people knowing about.   The first of those things that come to mind is Katy Perry’s  “E.T.”  Yeah. Love it.  But it embarrasses the hell out of me.  Like, I’ll always shut it off if I think other people are within ear shot.

I often stroll into my mom’s house with my phone blaring whatever I happened to be listening.  I start giggling every time I remember the time I rolled in playing “Step Yo Game Up.”  Her eyes got *really* big.   My music playing carelessly is what she’s used to so when she entered the kitchen as I came into her house fumbling to quickly turn off my phone. She immediately got super suspicious:

“WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING? I KNOW YOU’RE NOT CONCERNED CUZ IT’S PERVERTED”

“uhm……………………..I don’t wanna say.”

“Oh.  Now you’re totally going to.”

“E.T.”

“…What’s that?”

“Katy Perry and Kanye”

“…………………………………….yeah.  You *ought* to be ashamed.”

I’m not sure what it is about some “bad music” that makes it ok and other “bad music” that isn’t ok.   I just know that I ought to think the latter sucks.  I absolutely do.  But I love it anyway.

I don’t mean to end this on a threatening note…Ok, yes, I do:  most of you whom I know that are reading this:  Don’t even try to judge me.  Don’t forget, I know your secrets, too.

A Thought

This is the Card:

 

This is the Card on LOLCats:

 

A Little League World

Yesterday, I started playing a new video game that Mr. L got me.  Yes, I did say “video game.”  I know. I was just as shocked that I wanted it and that I wanted to play it.  After messing with it here and there all afternoon, I realized that I had “won”  *seven* of the twenty-five achievements the game passed out.

I was not impressed, frankly.  I am terrible at it. I’ve never played in my life and suddenly, this game is all like “you rock, Layls!”  Hardly.  I mentioned it to Mr. Luke, along the lines of “Yeah.  Seven accomplishments? I really don’t think I’ve been playing this game long enough to have accomplished *anything.”   He made the comment that many games had gotten very patronizing in the “awards” they toss around.

At first thought, it sort of makes me sad, actually. Because it means less to try hard to actually make an accomplishment in that forum.  Especially if all you have to do is hit “start” and the game tells you you have really done something big.

But then it makes me a little irritated, too, because it seems to go hand in hand with this mindset that people seem to have lately that “everyone gets a trophy” and “There are no losers; only winners.”   Well, to that I’ll say the same thing I said to Mr. L last night:  “it’s going to be a rude awakening for the spoiled little bastard when he gets out in the real world and realizes that in “real” life,  not everyone gets a trophy.  And furthermore, very few win. Most lose.

Living The Game

This morning I was walking down to my parking lot to my car. I was admittedly off in my own world thinking my thoughts. One of the thoughts was that I had neglected to bring a small bag of trash I had meant to take to my the closest dumpster.  As I walked towards my car that was away from the dumpster, I heard something ominous.

I stopped and slowly glanced back. I was looking down as my glance moved across, because admittedly I was thinking “raccoon or rat or something I do not want to see, anyway.” I do have a tendency to rush into a scenario that isn’t best case. It didn’t even occur to me it might have been a cat or a dog. I mean, seriously, a cat messing in trash????

Thing is, when I got to looking, I saw hooves.  So I stop and turn around fully with my jaw hanging on the ground.   There are TWO (in my mind) HUGE deer messing with the trash in the dumpster.

Truthfully, the two deer in question were sort of giving me the same look. Now that’s what happened outside of my head. On the inside, I was all scanning the parking lot frantically, looking for the wizard.

Yes, I said “wizard.”  For a split second, I had wandered into a game of Magic, The Gathering.   I was really afraid for a second because what the hell was I going to do when they both attacked me in just a moment.  And of course they were going to attack me.  Why wouldn’t they?

After a moment, I remembered it was just a game, cautioned myself that perhaps I was playing with the cards a little too much, and got in my car.  When I started it, one of the deer flipped out and flew up in the air to jump up on a retaining wall and then fly over the fence.  He, of course, left his partner in crime to keep staring at me. Although, truthfully, now he was the one the one that looked terrified.

As I pulled the car out and drove toward him, he starts running. Now I’m “chasing” the deer in my car. I moved slowly and eventually he hit where he could turn into someone’s yard.  That was just too, too, WAY TOO MUCH wildlife for me.

So Awkward

This is unprecedented.  Two posts in one day.  However, as I hit “publish” on the first one, I remembered something that I had told myself earlier I should make sure I jotted down.

Today in a meeting at work, a local strip joint came up.  A legendary local strip joint, though in actuality, you might call it more “notorious” than “legendary,” to be truthful.  We’ll call this place “dirty nasty strippers R us.”  I don’t even remember the context of the conversation because as soon as the name came up, I recalled one of my more awkward moments in life.

Once, at the casino, I was sitting in the smoking break room with a couple of coworkers. We were hanging out talking about just the normal pointless bullshit that people talk about.  It was a guy, a girl, and myself. Now I remember myself as being iffy on the girl, but she was dating one of my friends so I had to be nice and I really liked the guy. He was nice.

So the girl starts bitching that she was going to be alone that weekend because her boyfriend was at some bachelor party *thing*.  Just blah blah blah and she was not happy about this because there were going to be lots of strippers and IT COULD JUST BE TERRIBLE. Now, the guy was just “awww, there there”-ing her as I just pretty much sat there and tuned out her whining.  But pretty soon, I guess I felt obligated to contribute *something* to the conversation because I was like  “….well where are they going?”

“DNS-R-Us”  the girl was almost in tears as she shared that tidbit.

Well then I could immediately be helpful.  “Oh! Well in that case, you have nothing to worry about. Have you ever SEEN those bitches?  Just completely “rode hard and put away wet.” Every one of them.”

Which by the way, I was (and still am) always thrilled to get to work that phrase into a conversation.  It was one of those things I overheard my father say once when he didn’t think I was listening.  (I was always listening. Cuz he never said anything *interesting* when I was in earshot.)

So ok.. Back to my story.  Well, I no more than say that when the girl visibly cheered right up. I was leaning back in my chair,  satisfied at a job well done when the guy sat up completely straight in his chair.  ALL KINDS OF OFFENDED.   “………………………………my WIFE worked there as a stripper. THAT’S WHERE WE MET.”

“…………………..oh wow.. well, now, this is awkward.”