Sometimes, things are just awkward.

Unless I grew up calling an adult by their first name, I don't think I'm alone in thinking that I prefer to call most adults by their last name, (a.k.a Mrs. Brown). Yes, they may feel like old farts, but you know what? Most of them are. I get that you're trying to be nice being on a first-name basis with me, but I'm nowere close to your age and you're my superior, so just do me a favor and let me call you by a proper title.



Meanwhile, Dusty came home today. He looks better, but he's on all sorts of kitty painkillers so he's mostly wandering around in a daze. Sometimes he eats, sometimes he falls asleep while sitting up, and sometimes he growls at the wall. Yup, he's high as a kite!




Those yellow tubes are keeping his wounds from getting infected, or something along those lines. I get to hold him down while my mom squirts water in them to flush them out. I'm the luckiest girl in the world.



Now that he's home, mom thinks every move his makes deserves commentary and/or celebration. Every five minutes i get to hear things like "Dusty's eating! LOOK BECKY, DUSTY'S EATING!!!!!!!!!!" and, "DUSTY HAD A LITTLE POOPIE!" He also gets unlimited Fancy Feast, so maybe things aren't so bad for him.


Sadly, not much else happened today.

Yesterday I Met The Asshole

Sometimes, people stumble into your life who you think will be interesting and compelling people, and you really WANT to like them, but they just end up being total douchebags. I met this person yesterday. He was, as I may deem, "The Typical Asshole."


The TA (Typical Asshole) came into my life as I stumbled my way out of my friend's apartment in my hungover stupor. Clutching a solo cup of tin-like tap water, I went to find my friend who I assumed would be on the deck smoking a cigarette. He was indeed, and half a set of steps down peering up at him was the TA. My friend gave me a relieved look, as though someone else would be able to keep this person occupied while my friend snuck out of the conversation and back into the house. I was in no mood to indulge this douchebag, so I was happy to oblige by perpetually picking fights.


Here is an amateur sketch of the TA in all his glory.

Basically, this guy thought he was a Jim Morrison reincarnate and made it a point to prove how in-touch with nature and out-of-touch with evil technology he was. At one point, I answered my cell and he goes "Man, I wish I was more in touch with technology." To which I said, "I picked up my fucking cell phone. That's not exactly groundbreaking."

Eventually, the cell phone anomaly turned into this sort of conversation:
Me: So, how do you remember all your phone numbers?
TA: I don't. I only carry my phone, like, once a week. It's my little sister's and has a picture of Johnny Depp as the background.
Me: That's gay. So, do you have a notebook for phone numbers or something?
TA: No. If I need to, I'll write numbers in the margins of Kerouac novels or something.
Me: Wow, how deep and pensive. Just kidding, it's gay.


What is the point of writing numbers in Kerouac novels? It's like this guy was desperate to insert the fact he reads Jack Kerouac somewhere into the conversation and this seemed the most appropriate.


Inevitably, the conversation turned to weed. He used this time to interject how he used to smoke so much weed it eventually gave him a euphoric feeling, and he understands now why Jim Morrison wrote "Riders on the Storm." Not only did my friends and I not know the lyrics to understand what he meant by the ridiculous statement, but we didn't care, and he knew we didn't know or care as well. It was like we all knew we were never going to be on the same page, yet he kept offering up these random tidbits like the two of us were eventually going to get wide-eyed in admiration and express how advanced he is for a youth.


By this point, my friend and I were bleeding from the ears and were about ready to start punching each other in the face to do the other the justice of being rendered unconscious so we wouldn't have to listen to this idiot talk anymore.


I sincerely hope this TA doesn't plague the apartments the entire year, which is where I'm living. I also hope this is a lesson to not try to prove how indie and deep you are at 10 a.m. after a long night of drinking. I'm not up to indulge you in such speak, so stick to things that we know...like when we want to go to Dunkin' Donuts.

My dog is overweight.

My family has a long history of overfeeding its animals. It's not that we're bad pet-owners, in fact, it's the opposite. We're too nice to our pets, so whenever they give us sad kitty or sad puppy eyes, we take this as an opportuinity to valiantly win their affection back. We do this by feeding them until they can only slosh around on the floor like amoebas.

While it's pretty damn cute when we had a cat double it's normal weight (Rest in peace, little Fluffy), an obese dog that thinks she is a cat is not as great. Particuarly during thunderstorms, when she absolutely flips out and climbs onto anyone close to her...and since i'm home and jobless all the time now, that person is usually me.


I love my dog, i do, but she has a serious weight problem. We thought at first maybe she was just husky and it was all fur, but then she got shaved and she is really just a fat dog. She doesn't seem to mind though, so I guess I'll just go feed her now.

Calorie-Free Powder is not suited for strenuous exercise

I'll be the first to admit that I enjoy a completely synthetically engineered glass of a sugary drink. Powdered lemonade, powdered fruit punch, powdered semi-orange-juice-like-but-not-really powder...all delicious. But i mostly use these powders to drink more water, because, really, forcing myself to drink water when I am not thirsty or eating is kind of hard for me.


To save a mere 30 cents or so, I bought the generic version of Crystal Light Fruit Punch Drink Mix, shown here:

mm..it's like my childhood condensed into a teeny packet of sugar-flavored methdust!

I like this stuff. It compels me to drink large quantities of it while unseemingly consuming large quanitites of water. Yes, I'm also consuming large quantities of aspartame and/or Splenda (i've never even looked to see what the artificial sweetener is), but that's irrelevent and beside the point.

Anyway, As i finally took the time to glance at something more on the box besides the name, I stumbled upon these interesting little tidbits the marketic execs at Great Value Headquarters decided to stick on there:

Well, that's nice of them, in case I was thoroughly confused about how I wanted to drink my faux fruit punch. But seriously, let's analyze their suggestions.

1.) A picnic in the park. I can totally swing with this. Good idea, marketing people! This fruity drink is refreshing and totally easy to dump into a pitcher of water for you and someone else who hasn't had real fruit punch since they were eleven. The other party would probably be happy to know of your health-conscious decision, assuming you let them know they're not actually drinking real fruit punch. If you don't, you're a real ass.

2.) Your kid's soccer game. Okay, so picture this: your recreational soccer team, The Bumblebees, just had a hard loss against The Thunderbolts, and you're totally bummed. Actually, you really got your asses kicked...it was like 0-7 and the other team was just passing the ball around at one point, maybe even kicking it to you guys and then falling into fits of convulsions so somebody on your team could dribble down the field and find their way into the goal. Anyway, you guys lost badly. But wait! There's light at the end of this tunnel, and that's the treats the moms bring at the end of the games. Usually it's something like Gatorade and packets of Gushers, so you'll be replacing your deep-seeded depression over defeat with a sugar-high that'll have you hanging from the chandelier when you get home. Wait, what the fuck is this stuff? Mom, why are you dumping that disgusting red powder into that jug of water? Can't we all just have Powerade? Why are you handing this shit out in little dixie cups? Basically, as a mom, if you're that calorie-conscious that you impose your shitty drink that you've accepted as delicious because you're an adult onto not only your child, but his/her entire soccer team, you fail as a parent. Give them what they want, lady. Hawaiian punch. In separate cans. They've got a few years left to drink that crap before it goes straight to their asses.

3.) An energetic hike up the mountains. This one is a serious "WTF?" You spend an eight hour trek huffing and puffing up a significant incline with your significant other, and you decide to take a break for some food. I'm not a nutritionist or anything, but I've heard something along the lines that calories give you energy. So, honey, did you bring us anything nourishing? Well, no. I thought that after all this intense cardio-work we could have a nice pitcher of CALORIE FREE FLAVORED WATER!! Fuck sandwiches, fuck trail mix, we're going to lose 5 pounds today whether it kills us. We're not even going to drink refreshing, regular water. We're going to dump artificial sweeteners into it until sweet powder comes out of our eyes and bleeds from our toes. Now keep hiking, you fairy-boyfriend.

I guess I thought a little too much about this, but the entire concept was so laughable I had to devote an entire post to it. Some things just leave an impression on you.

Dusty's brush with death

My frantic mother came home last night telling me that our cat, Dusty, was MIA.



If any of you have a normal family you might know that this, for cats, is not a big deal. Cats tend to mosey in a direction for 10 minutes before realizing they're lost and tend to just kind of find their way back. I told my mom to relax, and after 12 years of having two previous cats who were famous for wandering, I figured it wasn't a big deal.



But to quell her fears, I trekked around the neighborhood, kitty treats in hand, calling for the cat while shaking the treat bin. It was like a distressed mexican fiesta...for felines.



No luck. This tactic usually worked for my previous cats, so I started to get a little worried. However, one of those cats was obsessed with me, so he lived to respond to my every beck and call. (I'm not kidding. He used to throw himself at my bedroom door for hours until I let him in.) Regardless, I gave him the benefit of the kitty doubt and went inside to make dinner. My mom, meanwhile, was a total wreck.



One think you need to understand about my mom is that she's a nurse, so she's incredibly caring and nurturing, which pretty much makes her the greatest mom in the entire world. However, she has chosen to make her cats honorary children, so she must nurture the shit out of them as well. Which, by the way, they totally love. Dusty waits patiently outside her bedroom door every morning in hopes she'll emerge sometime soon. He doesn't have too many things to fill out his day.



Anyway, my mom's instincts told her that Dusty was somewhere in the house, while my dad was galumphing around declaring the cat "Coyote Food," which wasn't helping things. My mother set out ripping her hair out while simultaneously scouring every nook and cranny for her baby.



Lo and behold, Dusty had curled up under a couch in the basement, and he was NOT a happy camper. He looked something like this:'

Yes, Dusty was found completely disoriented and sitting in his own piss.

Mom dragged him out of his self-declared grave and immediately took him to the emergency vet, where they found bite marks on his stomach and back, indicating some extremely large and extremely hungry creature which much larger teeth attempted to eat Dusty during the night. I imagine this is a traumatizing experience.


Hopefully my cat has not completely lost his mental stability and is able to much a full physical and emotional recovery, and we definitely will be sealing the kitty door up for good. Mittens, our other cat, may disapprove, but I'd rather have him cry and whine in the house (which he CAN and WILL do) for three years while staring longingly at the front door he cannot open with his little kitty paws than find his kitty skeleton in the backyard.


Poor little kitty. At least he's ok!

My short lived burrito-rolling career

It's been about two months and I've called it quits with the burrito rolling business. Yes, my friends, I am out. This chaotically run Chipotle that has disgraced the coveted number one title of being the first in Connecticut needs to be shut down, bulldozed, and reopened as something better. Qdoba, perhaps?

So, I left.


And now with my newfound free time, I had more fun this weekend than I have the past 2 or so months combined. I missed going out, even just drinking, and I'm glad i have my life back.

and now i'm ready to move back into UConn. I'm sitting here watching America's Got Talent with my mom, and this show sucks. It's not only incredibly boring, but nobody on the show actually has...well, talent. That makes for a poor premise and even poorer result.

Thusly, I have poured my passions into writing for the Journal Inquirer...or at least, whatever passion i have left for doing work when I'd rather be outside. And recently, I've been writing an article about peaches and all the fabulous things to do with them. What i've learned: peaches are definitely just peaches, and there's nothing more to do with them than you probably originally thought.

So yes, this is a lame post and I'm sorry, but without a camera in-hand 24/7 (I feel awkward photographing every detail of my life), pictures might be rare. Maybe I'll start drawing..maybe I won't, since I have no talent whatsoever in that area.

Au Revior!