Okay, it’s about time I created a ‘Dirty Hippies’ label

I’ve been patiently waiting to update everyone with a few pictures from my weekend, but they’re trapped on my best friend’s camera, so you’ll just have to read the text version for now. I’ll spare you long-winded details, but I had some fun events this past weekend, and some even greater photographs. Friday night I went to The Polish House for Polish dinner, Polish beer and hanging out with some Poles. Not, I’m not Polish, in case you were wondering. But you can become Polish and hang out in their private club for $1! Now that is a steal during these hard times of THE.RECESSION.

Saturday I went to crazy friend Wen’s birthday party (he who loves to have me as a back-up dancer in his videos)… as a hippie. What is it with hippies? I feel like I’m always talking about them. Maybe I’m a little bit more hippie than I like to admit. I was certainly a dirty hippie on Saturday. Why, oh why, you ask?

Saturday night I was SUPER rushed to get ready for the birthday party because my friend was picking me up at 7:30pm on the button. I arrived home, unshowered, with seven bags of groceries at 7pm. And, I didn’t know what to wear. A really awesome trifecta, if you ask me. After throwing on approximately five different outfits, I settled on a grey tie-died sweater, skinny jeans and tall, brown-suede boots. I gave myself a once-over in the mirror and realized that the sweater was a bit off-the-shoulder, so you could see my bra straps. Eww. That is one Carrie Bradshaw fashion statement I do not agree with (right next to the duck feathers on the butt) – bra straps are tacky. So I did the trick us girls learn in junior high while changing in the girls’ locker room for P.E. – a little slip and duck of the arms, and I threw my bra on top of storage drawers in my bathroom. “I’ll just throw a strapless on while I’m finishing my make-up” I thought to myself. I continued to run around like a chicken with my head cut-off, and barely threw my groceries in the fridge with enough time to slip out the door and into my friend’s car.

It wasn’t until I had arrived at the party, hung my jacket, said my hellos and took my place in line at the bar that I realized I.HAD.NO.BRA.ON. OMG. I panicked and quickly tried to call my friend who was arriving at the party later, but she didn’t have a bra in her car. Looks like the girls were standing alone on this one. Yep, I officially hung out at the bar all night, braless. And Bestie Amanda had a great time gently poking my braless boobs and snickering at me. Hussie.

Who has two thumbs and is officially a dirty hippie? Yep, this girl.

Stay tuned for my adventures in not shaving my armpits or legs!

Currently Feeling: In love with my recent lunchtime Maximum Sculpt classes. It feels so great to have my workout done so early in the day!
Currently Anticipating: Date night tonight with salmon teriyaki dinner.
Currently Wanting: Another slice of lemon cake that’s sitting in the break room.

I did it, I said FART on my blog

I’ve recently been attending a yoga class at my gym on Monday nights. I’ve always wanted to do yoga, but have never found the time or money for it. This week I finally unwrapped the pink yoga mat I purchased approximately eight months ago that’s been in my car, if that tells you anything. I think the increase in stress and anxiety in my life led me searching for someway to relieve it – and I’ve always heard yoga does the trick. So I signed myself up.

So far, it’s been really great. I love the special yoga room at my gym that has equipment to borrow, like blocks and straps, so I don’t have to buy them, and the giant windows gently let downtown Seattle twilight the room. I love that the yoga teacher plays relaxing music – but not just “ding, ding, ding” and babbling brooks – a couple weeks ago she busted out “Us and Them” by Pink Floyd. (A personal favorite).

But really, I have a dilemma with this whole yoga thing. I seriously only concentrate on not-farting the whole time I’m there. Yes, I know it. I just said FART on my blog. Gross. But, “girls give off just as much methane gas from farting as men” or something, which is what my boyfriend told me once to ease my embarrassment about farting myself awake while lying asleep in his lap on the couch. (Yes. He was awake; so mortifying). The problem with the girls farting vs. guys farting thing – even if we’re on level playing fields there – is that guys get away with it. They don’t care; they don’t give excuses, and they certainly don’t get embarrassed. But us girls, oh no – we’d rather die a slow and terrible death – or kill someone – than fart out loud in public or, for most of us, around a boyfriend. (I will never be okay with opening doing this with a boyfriend, and for those of you who think it’s a part of being comfortable with someone, I will argue you to the death).

So the whole 75 minute class, I’m thinking about how freaking.embarrassing it’d be to fart. But yoga forces you to bend and contort your body, often times holding and squeezing muscles with your butt high in the air. There’s times when it’s all I can do to prevent a slip. It’s stressing me out! I tell yeah, I join yoga to ease my mind from the stresses of life, and I spend the whole time stressing about farting. I need a stress-reliever from yoga. Or from farting.

Namaste.

Currently Feeling: Super relieved to have Mexico figured out.
Currently Anticipating: A crock pot dinner tonight with Bestie Amanda.
Currently Loving: Soy crisps with Laughing Cow cheese.

Portrait of a Seven-Year Gap

I’m sure most everyone is aware of the (what I deem annoying) 25-Things post that has been circulating around Facebook the last couple weeks. I have been tagged to do it countless times, but I rarely have the interest to read through all 25 details about someone or the time to do it myself. But last week, my sister tagged me in one she wrote, and since she’s my SISTER, I figured I’d better read it. This was number six:

I have a sister who is 6 1/2 years older than me, and we have different dads but somehow we’ve accomplished being the same person. I’ve always envied her for our similarities and even more so for our differences.

That, I tell yah, made my week.

My sister is fashionable, social, beautiful and athletic, yet she’d probably never list “writing” as her forte. But to me – the writer – I don’t think she could have written two sentences that would have touched me more.

See, while we are, in fact, six and one-half years apart, I’ve really rounded it to seven my whole life. Seven years is quite effectively a huge gap. While I was going through my awkward, self-conscious junior high days and learning about crushes, popularity, body image, feminine products and the good ole things D.A.R.E. always told you to keep away from, she was starting elementary and just learning how to read a book and count money. While I was in high school, worrying over homecoming, driving, first boyfriends, sex, Physics and college, she wasn’t even in junior high yet. She would come home with her friends – some with braces and awkward puberty weight – and I’d roll my eyes at their conversations. “Argh. SOOO annoooying,” I remember thinking, and probably saying to her face on more than one occasion. I made fun of her obsession with Spice Girls, and her love for all things Pokemon.

It seemed as if the scope of our adolescent issues couldn’t have been further apart – she was always my little sister and never someone I could confide in or considered a friend.

Then when I moved home from college, she’d borrow my clothes without asking and wake me up late when I had to get up at 4 a.m. for the opening shift at a coffee shop. I was annoyed that she didn’t have respect for anyone’s space or schedule. I spent more time ignoring her and yelling at her in those eight months than I had ever done our entire life.

When she did reach the sex, drugs and rock n’ roll phase, I was there to beg and plead her to dig her heels into the dirt. “I’ve been there! Don’t do it!” I felt like a mother – I felt awkward talking to her about sex; I didn’t want to imagine her getting in a car with someone who’d been drinking; I wanted to tell her how ridiculous smoking pot and getting the “munchies” was. I was the boring, prudish older sister. “No, but really, I’m cool, I just don’t want you doing the same dumb stuff!” I wanted to shout.

It seemed that our lives were never going to be in the same chapter – I’d always be two jumps ahead of her, or we were just two different people.

But something happened the summer before she left for college last year. Because she was going to no longer be at home, we started spending more one-on-one time together. She’d come over to my apartment to spend the night, or we’d jog around my neighborhood together. Suddenly it was as if the gap that had been there for nearly 20 years of my life was closed within one summer. And I realized in the midst of all this time I hadn’t been paying much attention to her, we had turned into the same person. The same music, the same love for fashion, the same independent nature, the same relationship ups and downs, the same social proclivities, the same bad spending habits. While I always wanted an older sister to be friends with and confide in – to offer me her shoulder of wiser ways – I find myself being that person. I find myself calling her to catch up, being interested in what she’s doing on a weekly basis, and even more so interested in hanging out with her – one-on-one – when she’s home.

And while I’ll always be two jumps ahead of her in age and experience, we’re no longer two different people; we’re scary close to being the same. I’ve always understood our differences, and now, even more so our similarities.

Currently Feeling: Snacky. Snacky. South Beach Chocolate Cookies. Mmmm.
Currently Anticipating: Yoga tonight. I love working out in a dark room, closing my eyes, deep breathing and feeling STRONG.
Currently Reading: “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” by Stieg Larsson.

Two Tickets to the Butt Show

Last night I went to the buttlet. I mean ballet.

A friend of mine called because she had two tickets to George Balanchine’s “Jewels” at McCaw Hall and wanted to invite me last minute. “Why not?” I thought. I’d never been to a ballet before (outside of The Nutcracker, which is more of a play with a lot of child dancers), and figured it be good to check it off my list. We hit up happy hour on Queen Anne, downed a couple glasses of wine and walked down to McCaw Hall, where we took our seats, only 16 rows back from the stage, right before the curtain rose. I quickly flipped through the program. “Jewels” is apparently a classic ballet and George Balanchine a famous composer, which I didn’t know. All I could focus on was that it was plotless (just dancing to classical music without a storyline) for nearly three hours. Uh, oh. What did I get myself into?

As the ballerinas tinkled out of the side curtains – so did the ballemen. Is that what they’re called? Well, either way – I was NOT prepared. No way, no how. Those guys are seriously not wearing more than what looks like white paint on their legs, buttocks and package. Imagine if I left the house this morning with nothing on but a top and sheer pantyhose. It is SO distracting. You can see every muscle and dimple in their butts, which are like Jenny from the Block size, as they turn and twist and prance across the stage. I’d compare it to soft porn.

Here’s my night at the ballet in a nutshell:

Pretty green ballerinas dance out, following by ballemen in white pants and poofy sleeves. Oh look at how they sway their butts arms. Tinkle, tinkle. Sway, sway. LOOK AT HIS ASS. Tip-toe, twirl. HOLY SHIT; IT’S HUGE. Curtain.

Intermission: We guzzle a glass of white wine.

Ooh. Red and gold. Out come the ballemen again in white pants and puffy sleeves. Sassy jazz music. I like this butt dance better. OH MY GOD HE JUST BENT OVER. Tip-toe, arabesque, dance, swish-sway, big smile. Wow. The primo ballerina is amazing. I SAW A DIMPLE! I SAW A DIMPLE! Curtain.

Intermission: We guzzle a glass of white wine.

Sparkles bedazzled everywhere and pretty tulle tutus – and here they come again in white pants and puffy sleeves. Oh, five ballemen at once. I don’t know what to do with myself. FIVE BUTTS, FIVE BUTTS, CENSORY OVERLOAD. Ooh they’re so strong and big. Yeah baby. LOOK AT THEIR EYES, LOOK AT THEIR EYES. Butt. Curtain.

All in all, baby got back. Er, I mean I’d definitely go back.

Currently Feeling: So sleepy. I want to take a nap like right meow.
Currently Anticipating: Seeing my BF tomorrow when he flies home from Montucky!
Currently Loving: SparkPeople.com

Lions and tigers and hairs, oh my!

Something has been bothering me for quite some time now… and while it might be a little too crass for some of you, I just have to bring it up.

It has to do with bushes. No, not George, although he’s bothered me for quite some time also. The bushes I’m talking about are approximately half a foot south of your bellybutton.

What I’d like to know is when it went from being socially acceptable to have a big, hairy bush to NOT being socially acceptable. Because I’m pretty sure the latter is much more the case now.

I think about this all the time when I’m at the gym. I try really, really hard to not pay attention, but most the time, the sizes of bushes in the locker room freak the shit out of me. Bestie Amanda and I were recently talking about this – there are women at the gym, sometimes even in as early as their 30s, with an embarrassingly amount of pubic hair, and I just.don’t.get.it. Are 20-somethings the only generation who are concerned with this? Do you become unconcerned as you get older? These ladies walk around, proud as hell, boobs flapping and four inches of puff. (One time, I caught a naked lady in front of the bathroom mirror, leaning over and washing her armpits. So not only was she showing her bush to all, but her boobs were flapping back and forth from the scrubbing momentum. It was slightly disturbing – end tangent.) I’m not all about the nakedness in the gym locker room. I tend to be a little bit more discreet. But if I did prance around naked, I wouldn’t be sporting a bush the size of the Tongass National Forest.

I can’t exactly place my finger on when I learned that trimming was expected; I just knew. Clearly, however, it wasn’t this way a short time ago. When, exactly, did society’s norm transition and how the hec did something like that come about? I mean, I’m sure you’ve all seen 80s porn movies, a big bush was popular back then! Is this similar to the fad of shrinking women? Like how in the 1800s it was popular to be all rotund and squishy, and now being bony and poky is popular? Are little girls going to start needing Brazilians at age 12?! (Or age 10, whatever it is now with all the hormones in meat).

The whole thing kinda grosses me out – and conversely, if you’re a guy. The same thing is expected. Let me let you in on a little secret – I’ve had countless conversations with women who were appalled that the new guy they were dating didn’t manscape. That’s right manscape.
Whatever planet you came from that taught you it was necessary for women to trim, but not men, is the same planet George Bush came from, and that era is OVER.

Bush IS out.

Mama’s gotta eat a cheeseburger, officially

I think I realized today that I am unofficially an emotional eater.

I eat when I’m happy. I eat when I’m drunk. I eat (a lot) when I’m in love. I eat when someone sneezes. Because something even that minute makes me hungry. I eat when I see food ads. I eat when it’s in front of me. I eat when I’m bored. I eat when I’m full. I eat when I’m drunk. (Oh shit. I already put that. I must be drunk). I eat when I’m watching TV or working or typing or reading.

I also eat when I’m stressed.

My boyfriend is going through one of those major life thingies today. (Which I may, or may not, elaborate on later), which has caused a great deal of stress for me today. I tried to put it off by watching CNN and being really excited for America this morning. But even then, I was checking my phone every three minutes. Next I tried reading through the 25+ blog posts in my RSS feeder, while simultaneously checking my phone every five minutes. Then I made a trip on foot to Nordstrom’s to pick up the free make-up that’s been advertised, while checking my phone every two minutes.

I’ve done approximately 4,329 things today except work because I.just.can’t.concentrate. Ever have those days? Sometimes I worry that crane operators, airplane pilots and brain surgeons have those days, and then that’s when I start to panic about driving, flying and cancer. But that’s a whole nother post, saved for when I might want to talk about just how neurotic I can be.

So then finally somewhere between thinking about death by flying or cancer from Web-MDing myself, my boyfriend sends me a text message that’s he’s fine, but “doesn’t want to talk about it.”

Well shit. What am I supposed to do? Sit and continue to worry all day?! So, of course I sent back: “That’s ok! I understand!” But what I really meant was:

Cheeseburger.

Even though I’d already eaten my *meager* lunch of Campbell’s Healthy Request (ie: nothing but broth, that’s why the calories are so low), CHEESEburger was like mentally throbbing through my brain.
Must.eat.cheeseburger.to.survive.
Clearly this need for a cheeseburger is directly related to stress, which clearly makes me an unofficial emotional eater.

So I frantically started Googling “burger” in “said name of my work building downtown.” We have like 201 restaurants and little places to eat here, but NOWHERE that sells an effing cheeseburger.

Come on! Mama’s gotta eat.

Finally, I found a relatively nearby restaurant that sold a $12 cheeseburger because this is THE.RECESSION. and clearly restaurants need customers so bad that they’re discounting everything, or something, and clearly I don’t need to worry about living out of that cardboard box anytime soon. So I ordered and ate the $12 cheeseburger, and all 12 pounds of the fries that came with it.

And now I kinda want to curl up in a ball on my couch and…

EAT.OREOS.

We’ll see if I make it out of this one alive. I could be the next candidate for one of TLC‘s fat shows, yah know. And then you could all talk about how you knew me when I was skinny and how it all started when I became an unofficial emotional eater.

Currently Feeling: Headachy from all the carbs, probably.
Currently Anticipating: Using the free Lacome Fatale mascara I scored today. It’s supposed to make my lashes look 3D?! How do they do that?
Currently Wishing: Bestie Amanda wasn’t in the &%@$# Caribbean. How selfish of her to be vacationing when I need her!

An open-ended letter to an important part of my future

Dear Marriage and Babies,

You give me hives.

I wish I was being facetious. I’m not. Lately, I increasingly feel anxious – like I’m going to have a god damn panic attack and be admitted to the loony bin –when I hear about a friend getting engaged, or how you, Marriage, are “a lot of hard work” or even worse, divorce. And I’m teetering on stark-raving crazy, Babies, when I hear about how hard it is to have you, the whole pregnancy gig, postpartum depression, etc. I start to feel a bit short of breath, and this big ole uncomfortable, nervous lump forms – like a butterfly in my chest.

Yesterday I read Dooce’s post/discussion about what’s more difficult, Babies or Marriage. She wrote about how she *literally* checked herself into a mental hospital six months after experiencing you for the first time, Babies, and how she’s been through countless hours of counseling on her own and with her husband, to improve you, Marriage. Well, it all just gave me that constricted, hives feeling again. And I want to shout, “Don’t Make Me Do It, Captain!”

I bet you anything, if asked, Dooce would say it was ALL worth it. Everyone would. But, I don’t buy it. I mean, I’ve heard speeches from people who have lost limbs, been addicted to painkillers, or been through cancer, and they all say they wouldn’t change anything because “it makes them who they are today.” Great. Congratulations. That still doesn’t mean that I want to experience what they did. And right now, I’m not sure that I want to experience you, Marriage or Babies, anytime in the next decade.

I want to live in my carefree 20s forever, and never cross the bridge into your unchartered adult waters. I never feel old enough for either of you. When I hear about people in high school who are married with babies, I screech, “But we’re only TWENTY-SIX!” And this year it’ll be, “But we’re only TWENTY-SEVEN!” And I’m sure I’ll be singing the same tune at 28 and 29 too.

See, I know I want both of you, SOME DAY. It’s just that that some day is always in the future, even as the years go by. When will I feel PRESENT about you? I try to talk to my girl friends about how uncomfortable or not ready I am for either of you, but half of them give me the countdown speech:

Well, we need to have Babies in our 30s because if you have one in your 40s, then YOU’LL.JUST.DIE, and you want your first kid at 30, 32 at the latest, and you want a few years with your husband before having kids, which is 28 or 29 – and you probably want to be engaged for at least a year or more before Marriage so that’s 26 or 27, and you, ideally, want to date your potential husband for a couple years before getting engaged, so you should have met him, like, yesterday.

And this is supposed to make me feel better? My anxiety just increased 10 fold.

Everyone wants to know these days if I can picture myself with my significant other and you, Marriage. “Are you guys going to get MAHWIED?” is all I hear. The eff if I know. It’s not that I can’t see myself with him, necessarily, it’s just that I. don’t. think. about. it. I know some hopeless romantics are reading this right now and saying the quintessential Polly Prissy Pants line, “Well that just means he’s not THE ONE for you.” Riiight. And they know this because…they read it in their crystal ball?

Really, all I can think about is keeping my sanity. And my bank account. Cause it’s damaged enough as it is. And by sexy suede boots, expensive makeup, luxurious lingerie and more earrings than you could count. NOT by 14-tiered mascarpone cakes, house payments, diaper service, nannies or sippy cups. And the latter list is SO much less appealing than the first, so I’d rather not trade. Thankyouverymuch, Marriage and Babies.

So please, please, can I drag out these “single” 20s for as long as possible? And can my friends stop giving me the countdown speech, or can you cover my ears every time there’s any dose of “reality,” along the lines of cracked nipples or losing the *spark* in the bedroom, coming my way? Cause really, what about that gives me something to look forward to? I’d like to live in my little 20-something bubble, without either of you, for as long as humanly possible.

I’ll get back to you when I change my mind.

Thanks,
20-Something

Hanky Panky

A personal – and extremely important – mantra I’ve tried to follow through my life is: Never run out of underwear or socks.

Because I only do laundry about once a month, sometimes even longer, this has led to a ridiculous amount of socks and underwear. Except, I just keep buying and buying, never purging through the outdated or worn-out ones. Which, in turn, has just allowed me to go even longer without doing laundry. It’s a vicious cycle, I tell yah.

Because I mostly wear heels, my socks tend to be in fair-to-good condition. But, some time this year, I realized that I have some SKANKY underwear that are just. not. appropriate. What if I were to fall down a flight a stairs, land in a sticker bush, and they had to snip off my pants to free me? OR here’s an applicable one – what if I woke up, in a nightie and skanky underwear, to a room full of firemen who just busted my apartment door down?

No bueno. One must be prepared, at a moment’s notice, to flash a cute pair of undies.

So, I started an Underwear Overhaul mission–I buy 20 pairs, I throw 20 pairs away, in shifts, until my entire SKANKY underwear collection is replaced with Come And Get Me Tiger underwear.

Except, I failed my mission in a major way. First off, I started and never finished. Secondly, I started to feel so CLEANSED from my anti-SKANKY underwear mission that I just kept throwing away and throwing away. Because of this, I’m short of underwear during my lengthy periods of not doing laundry, and recently I’ve been on a majah underwear shortage.

I don’t even know who I am anymore.

This week, it’s got real bad. I failed to do laundry last weeked since lying on the couch, nursing my wine headache, seemed like a far better option. During the week I’m too lazy to do laundry after work, and even I were forced to in these desperate times, I don’t have quarters. So, for the first time in eight years, maybe NINE, I have to resort to my granny panties.*

And it’s been awful, just awful. All week, I’ve turned to the side on the escalator, scurried quickly ahead of someone in the hall and tugged on the back of my jacket, thinking that everyone behind me is staring at me because there’s a HUGE red neon sign on my back, blinking:

“PANTY LINES.”

“PANTY LINES.”

“PANTY LINES.”

I tell yah, I don’t know how women lived in the years before the thong was invented.

So tomorrow is payday, and I’m heading out to buy lots o’ new silky drawers. Cause that makes SO much more sense than doing laundry, natch.

*By granny, I don’t mean white or flowered. I just mean “full butt.” I am strictly a thong wearer. If you’ve seen my bubble butt in person, you understand why, in now way, am I interested in adding another layer of fabric under my pants. I stuck by my thong guns even when an ex kept begging and pleading for me to wear full butt underwear instead of thongs. Now THAT contradicted everything I was taught about boys up to age 18.

Currently Feeling: Like I’d rather just not face reality.
Currently Anticipating: The yearly pre-Turkey Day drunken festivities tomorrow.
Currently Loving: eRewards. I’ve earned $16 that I can redeem in Borders Bucks by just filling out the occasional, annoying survey!

Man-in-Uniform Syndrome

Last night I walked to one of my neighborhood’s most spectacular Thai restaurants with my new roommate. What better way to get to know each other than over plates of Phad Thai, curry and peanut sauce? Cold fall days spent inside with good food is the perfect recipe for conversation.

Inevitably, the topic of men came up. I asked about her most recent relationship and if she’d ever been in love. She rattled off a short list of guys who hadn’t worked out, but went into a little more detail about a doctor she dated while training as a nurse. Whooo… total Grey’s Anatomy style. Now this is getting good. Apparently they had kept it quiet from the people they worked with at the hospital (hello, Meredith and Derek?!), and suddenly he broke it off one day without an explanation. Two months later he came sulking back to “clear his conscious” and explained that he’d been cheating on her and had gotten another girl pregnant. When she finally came clean to some of her coworkers, their response was, “Ew. Why did you date him? He dates a lot of nurses.” (Just like McSteamy?)

She vowed to me that she’d never be so stupid and naive. And admitted that part of her thought that just because he was a doctor and a professional, she didn’t think he was capable of such childish and thoughtless behavior.

Man-in-uniform syndrome.

I thought about this on my way into work this morning. Nearly every day (unbeknown to my boyfriend), I drool over all the men in their pressed business suits, coordinating ties and shiny shoes. A certain best friend of mine drools over guys in a construction uniform, but my weakness is definitely for a man in a business suit. “Oh, if only my boyfriend came over every night, and I had to loosen up his tie a little bit,” I often think to myself.

Another case of man-in-uniform syndrome.

Just because these men are “business professionals,” tied up in shiny business suits like my own personal walking Christmas gifts 365-days a year, doesn’t mean they’re incapable of cheating, lying, thieving and all other general sinning. But somehow, their suits make them seem so.

So, I’ll take my man for now, who I know is good on the inside, even if he is suit-less on the outside.

Currently Feeling: In need of a weekend at home.
Currently Anticipating: Girls’ night tonight with Becca, Amanda, and the Dolphins.
Currently Wondering: Why did the dragon have to show up?

I sat next to a Gold Digger

Yesterday morning, the guy sitting next to me on the bus was picking his nose.

Now, the city metro is never a normal place. You can, and must, expect the weirdest behavior ever…people screaming, ranting, talking to themselves, picking fights, half-clothed, drunk or smelly. My favorite is the people with multiple bags of garbage. The bus has to stop, take five minutes to drop the handicap platform and raise it back up, just so this person can pile their bags or wheel their cart of garbage onto the bus, and then ride the bus for four blocks in the ride free zone, only to start the whole platform rigmarole again.

But, this guy appeared to be “normal” by all of society’s standards. I am very picky about who I choose to sit next to every morning. I walk down the isle, shifting my eyes back and forth, scanning each person for the less-creepy looking seat partner. This particular guy appeared to be in his 20s, was neatly dressed and was reading The New York Times.

But the whole time, out of the corner of my eye, I could see him digging, then he’d drop his hand, and out of my peripheral vision, I’d watch him roll his fingers together and then kinda flick. Five minutes later he was back to digging.

Really? I mean, really. Do you really think that nobody – people in the back of the bus and people packed in the front – can see you picking your nose? Or do you just not care?

That is a total disregard of caring about what people think of you, which sometimes I wished I had 10% of.

Currently Feeling: Grateful for certain people.
Currently Anticipating: American’s Next Top Model and Project Runway.
Currently Loving: Having someone at home to talk to and watch TV with.