Skinny jean Dreams Do come True... in Record Format....

Have you ever seen a pair of jeans that you just MUST have? They are so cute, so soft, so cheap, so perfect except for one thing: they don't quite fit, YET. As soon as I start getting back into my gym schedule again, they will fit, you rationalize. The next three months will be a no potato chips zone you promise. So you go ahead, all in all it is a good deal. These jeans won't be on sale when you actually fit them. So you're saving yourself money in the long run, right?

It all sounds perfectly rational EXCEPT when you get home and realize you have a whole closet of "One-Day" clothes. Every morning when you look over your wardrobe of clothes not yet ready for public consumption you sink lower and lower into a hole of depravity and the first thing you want to do is reach for a bag of Old Dutch Ketchup chips.

So instead of faltering into a sea of ketchup-stained excess you hide those "one-Day" clothes away so you are not confronted with everything you are Not every time you open the wardrobe in the morning. Every once in a while when you are looking for a screwdriver or you randomly get an urge to polish furniture they pop out of their hiding place. The red pumps that are one and a half sizes to small but still so cute!!! The hot pink jeans that will make you look like a high-class Fergie when you can finally manage to get the last button done up.

Usually this type of shopping is a bit like throwing money into a black hole, but on the rare occasions that it actually works out, you feel like the frog prince. You get a surprise bunch of new clothes that you didn't ask for or remember for free. What could be better.

I started taking the same One Day approach to records when I was about 14 years old and saw a DJ spinning for the first time. He was everything I was not at the time: cool, calm, hot, mysterious. But "One Day," I would be. And it all started with records. I remember going into Boom Town Records as a bored teenager and giggling with my pubescent friends over who was the hottest cashier. We pool our money and spend hours pouring over records and sometimes even bravely asking for some help. The tiny fact that I didn't have a record player, didn't mean much at the time. The covers were cool and "One Day" I would have one, and it would be awesome!

I was often scoffed for my predilection towards vinyl. I may not have had a player yet but I still knew a deal when I saw when and I knew a classic album when I saw it in a sale bin for $0.99.
Finally, this Christmas after 13 years of scouring record bins and scooping up free records off dirty sidewalks, my skinny jean dreams of a record player have come true. And it is glorious.

Yesterday I listened to the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack like three times. And then I played a little RedMan and then two Happy Days Albums. Sure I had to keep turning the record over a\every thirty minutes or so and some times the music sounds like it is two chipmunks singing on speed but it's definitely worth it.

My One Day dreams of a record player are now a reality. Now about those skinny jeans.......

Comes in Flashes.....

So for the past few years, I have been researching crazy people. You know reading books on crazy people, looking up crazy people symptoms on the Internet, watching TV shows about crazy people; sometimes I even go to this one coffee shop on Pandora and Government and people-watch because it's where a lot of street people and other medicated types work and congregate.
There's one common thread: it comes in flashes. Sometimes you are crazy and sometimes you are not. Sometimes you feel happy sometimes you feel sad and sometimes you feel nothing. That is when you should start to worry.
Most people who know me would say, that I often feel both very sad and very happy. I mean I cry at soap operas and I cry at concerts and I cry at long distance commercials and you-tube videos. It's been that way for a while.
Those same people and most aquaintances would say that I often seem happy. I am quiet, sure not I also smile and laugh a lot. It's ying and yang, baby.
But lately I have been waking up feeling so empty. For a while I thought I was hungry but I soon began to realize even potatoe chips didn't satiate the feeling in the pit of my stomach. I would watch a couple of hours of TV and have no idea what I had just watched; or read a magazine cover to cover and not be able to recall what a single article was about.
I feel a bit antsy and out of sorts; like I am watching myself but not really in my body. Not exactly a call for alarm yet. But it is sure unnerving.

Do You think of Me?

Do you think of me once in a while?
When you are sad or feeling blue?
Do I remind you of things that make you smile or even laugh out loud?
Like when you step outside to get the paper and you get a bit of dew between your toes
Or when you eat cookies in bed and read girly magazines?
When you think of me once in a while?
Is it good or is it bad?
Is for just a second or maybe a bit longer?
Do you want to talk or just leave well enough alone?
When you think of me once in a while do you think of what I did wrong or what I did right?
Do you think about how I might look now or how I looked then?
When you think of me once in a while, Do you wonder about my family, my friends, my health, or my happiness?
When you walk down the street do you sometimes think you see me and then try to catch my eye?
Do you think of me?
When you hear a new song or watch a new movie do you wonder what I would think?
Do you ever think of me?

Five-Day Old Pizza and Maxi Pads.....The Long Anticipated Conclusion....

I'd seen Greg's filthy basement suite a few times before, so I'm not sure how my overly-dramatic pubescent head morphed the smell of dirty laundry and half-eaten food into the mirage of vanilla-scented candles and freshly laundered linens; but so goes the mind of a girl who for years well past her teen cursed herself for not sending a b-cup bra to Luke Perry for him to autograph instead of her real Warner's A-cup sports bra.

But even in hindsight, the suite was messier than I'd ever seen. I guess the honeymoon was officially over. There was no more hiding stuff in closets or behind the couch, this was Greg; this was Greg's filth: love it or lump it.

So I loved it. I loved it with all I had. I just closed my eyes and tried to remember the lines from every schmaltzy first-time teen love scene I could remember. Downing that half bottle of jack really helped me get into character. We weren't two rebel without a cause teens in a condemned basement tryin to fumble our way through baseball metaphors; we were Brenda and Dylan at the Bellagio on Prom Night; we were Diane Court and Lloyd Dobler in the back of the car after graduation. We were anyone we could think of to be except ourselves.

Because we were embarrassing. There was hapless clothes pulling; there was awkward shifting and accidental hair-pulling; there was outright shock and full-on staring; and most unexpectedly there was a surprise visit from my Aunt Flo that was not only unexpected but unknown until after the fact.

The look of horror on Greg's face is something that haunted me for years to come. Any delusions of his cool exterior and sexual experience fizzled into nothingness as I tried to explain that sometimes "Aunt Flo" came unexpectedly and I swore up and down and even looked up for him on the Internet that he was not going to 'catch anything' from me.

I guess the copious amounts of drugs and alcohol consumed that night did nothing to ease the tension of the awful conclusion to our soap opera rendevous. There was no closing our eyes and pretending anymore. I thought I was going to literally pass out from embarrassment. I seriously was periodically checking my pulse and putting my head out the window for some air. Greg was so red. Not just red in the face; his whole body was red with embarrassment.

Everything was way too real. There was blood: on the bed; on my clothes; on him. Then I started to notice other cracks in the facade. There was a moldy pan with what seemed to be old mac and cheese next to the night stand. there were about three empty pizza boxes at the foot of the bed. There were fruit flies buzzing around a heap of dirty laundry.

While Greg was in the shower "decontaminating himself," I was becoming more and more aware that I was not in the penthouse suite of the Bellagio or even the comfortable back seat of a car. I was in a pig sty and I was starting to feel itchy and nauseous. I suddenly started to notice three tiny pink marks on my thigh. I scratched them and they almost instantly turned into red protruding welts. I couldn't take it.

I called my dad and asked him to pick me up. When Greg got out of the shower he was a bit less disgusted with me but still none too pleased that I had somehow become "allergic" to his place.
"you've been here before, and never had anything like this happen!," he grumbled, still stumbling from the booze and the atrosity that we had both participated in." Well his place had never been this disgusting I thought. And I'd never spent more than twenty minutes at his place before. And I'd certainly never done anything like whatever we had just done at his place before.

He didn't put up much of a fight. We both wanted the night to be over. Neither of us could look the other in the eye. Greg locked up the basement and decided to spend the night on his parents' couch. He left in such a hurry but I was too relieved to see him go to care.

No hug, no kiss not even a wave goodbye; just a random nod in my direction. But I certainly wanted no bodily contact with him at that moment. I didn't think I wanted any bodily contact with anyone ever again.

Five-Day Old Pizza and Maxi Pads.....PART 2.....

Some people describe first love as euphoric and all-encompassing: an exhilarating magic carpet ride that takes you to all the most beautiful places in the world. I would say, not so much. First love is full of missteps and awkward moments intermitten with gooey feelings of attachment and overall horniess. But I wouldn't say I'm a pessimist; more a realist. Let's face it 98 per cent of first loves last a good 6 months longer than they should due to a contagious attachment disease, I like to call Awkward-repetition-avoidance-itis.

I mean, who hasn't comtemplated overlooking the ocassional sexual daliance due to the fact that a) you don't want to go through the whole body positions/body image/bodily functions comfort dance with another new guy; or b) you don't think you will ever be able to afford an apartment as nice as the one you two share, on your own.

But sometimes awkwardness comes upon a hill called horrific embarrassment. For most people, their innate awkwardness would give way to control and thus, they would be able to avoid horrific embarrassment. But when first love awkwardness is coupled with habitual cocaine usage and unbearable PMS cramps, you get a case of horrific embarrassment, or as I like to call it, the tale of Five Day old Pizza and Maxi Pads.......

There was something about Greg that screamed bad boy with a heart of gold. He still had his learner's license when he first met, but he had blacked out some of the letters on his "student driver" sign so it said, instead,"Stunt Driver." Very cool, that was Greg. Very loud, very forward, very abrupt; but very, very cool. He didn't have many friends, which seemed appropriate. Not everyone was in on this secret: Greg was very, very cool.

Greg was the perfect antidote to everything that ailed me. I was mischevious and ready to rebel against anything and everything in my path. I had spent too many summers looking for the perfect Dylan MacKay to match wits with my improbable Brenda Walsh. My own personal Luke Spencer to sweep me off my feet and carry me away from my abismal existence as a wallflowerish Laura Webber. That was one problem straight off the bat. We both watched far too much TV to understand what a real relationship with drugs and curfews and naked bodies and unreturned phone calls would be like.

There was nothing Greg could do that wasn't absolutely perfect. Sometimes I would break a date with him and not return his phone calls just so I could make him mad and hear him scream to me how much he loved me. He loved me a lot. He would scream it from rooftops; outside my house when I was grounded; on the family answering machine so everyone in my family could hear it.

He loved me so much that when I finally got the courage to admit to him that I could not sleep over that night because I had a visit from"Aunt Flo," he was actually relieved. At least I was not falling out of love with him; or worse falling in love with someone else. Besides, it's all part of Mother Nature's plan, right?

So despite my better judgement, and with a lack of understanding what a night at Greg's place would really entail, I preceded to prepare for a sleepover. I left my house that night with stars in my eyes and dreams of a magical night filled with candles and soft music and rose petals. When I returned less than 24 hours later, there were no more delusions of grandeur in my head. Just the all-emcompassing fear that if Greg ever broke up with me I might have to relive that horrific embarrassment all over again with someone new.........

Five-Day Old Pizza and Maxi Pads.....PART 1.....

You know how the plucky heroine always seems gets herself into some cringe-worthy jam and then she has to comeclean and get a bit embarrassed but it doesn't even matter because everyone always ends up liking her more for her honesty?

Why is it never like that in real life? How come dumb Baby can tell hot Patrick Swazye she "carried a watermelon" and STILL end up with the guy and everyone rooting for her? How come the Shopoholic can fully plan and pay for two lavish weddings in separate countries and then is just given a playful shove when she admits to her financier fiance that she just wasted like$50,000 and 100 of hours of time planning impractical weddings?

Real Diasters are never that cute and are never resolved tidily. Real disasters involve PAIN, HUMILIATION, and LIFE-THREATENING EMBARASSMENT.

Real disasters involve missteps and drunken decisions and flared tempers and, sometimes, sometimes, if you are really and truly unlucky in love and life, sometimes they involve five-day old pizza and maxi pads....

Hello, LOVER.......

You are my new favorite. Forget all the others. They never meant anything to me compared to you. You are sleek and small and fast and everything anyone could want. So you're not hot pink. That's okay. Silver is just as nice and prolly a little more grown-up.


Which is prolly something I should try to be. Grown up. Not blowing my paycheque on my lunch hour and buying toys.

But WHATEVER!!! you are sooo hot!