Not just vulnerable.

I was talking to my sister today about how tired we were, and I got the feeling that while we were certainly talking about the physical, we might have been talking about quite a bit more as well. She described it as, “When the clerk at the store yells at me for being too quiet and not being able to hear me, rather than get angry, I want to cry.” I hear that, mama. A good cry can cure what ails ya, but you got to watch out for a bad cry. One where you kind of think, “I don’t want to be doing this right now,” but it’s just that sort of end-of-your-rope, broken and beaten down feeling where a little tear wells up and you get a slight lump in your throat, but it never materializes into a release of what’s pent up, and that little tear kind of dries up before it gets the chance to roll down your face.

I know I will get shit for not being more positive, but I’m tired. I need a change. I think mostly it’s career-related. But damn, maybe I need some drugs or something. Because deep down I know a lot of this shit is just depression, plain and simple. I’m a hard worker, so shouldn’t I be able to work hard at something that doesn’t make me feel kind of like I’ve given up every day. I’m ashamed of myself for what I do, because I haven’t accomplished what I want yet, and I’ll be damned if I have the foggiest of which way I’m supposed to go to get there.

I know my life is good, and that’s the part that pisses me off. Why can’t I figure out how to be happy about that? I want to be excited about each day, not just this feeling of, Oh, vacation is in a month, I’ll just look forward to that. Basically that means I’m just wasting all those days in between. If there was just a day when I wasn’t sitting at my computer in my office at 9:30 at night, wishing I could join the living. Maybe I’m just disappointed in myself because I know what I need to do, I just can’t man-up and do it. I keep looking at that bank statement and realizing that I’m sort of stuck here for the moment.

And what’s worse, why am I even putting this where people can read it? Ugh, pathetic. I gotta go, the phone’s ringing and the last of my one tear just dissipated. Crawl back in there feelings, I gotta go to work.

So summer in New York City is upon us again.  Does anyone else get weirded out in the summer when wet stuff just drips on you from the buildings above? And you keep telling yourself it’s air conditioner water. Just a little H20 from the AC unit overhead. It’s cool, you think. It’s cool. But what if it’s not? I mean, in this city, nine times out of 10 it probably isn’t. Shudder, moving on.

How about that garbage smell though, huh? Or the fact that I spontaneously start talking like a stand-up comedian? No, but for reals. Smell bad. However good summer in the city is for your tan, that’s how bad it is for your olfactory. Today I had a lovely close encounter of the stinky kind. I was stumbling to work with my shoes full of pebbles, because that is what happens when you wear cute little flats in New York in the summer. So just as one gets embedded in my right big toe, and I turn to hop down the stairs to the subway, I feel something cold and wet spray across my lower legs and ankles (I was wearing capris lucky me). Simultaneosly, a huge bag of garbage flies directly in front of my eyes and goes whizzing past on to the ground. I look down and see that my feet are covered in what seems to be old coffee and God only knows what else, which is spraying out of the airborn garbage bag. But before I can react two more huge bags of trash come shooting out of the subway stairwell, spraying their filth on unlucky passersby. Garbage was literally exploding out of the subway. When the garbage men were finally done throwing the trash up the stairs I was able to go on my merry way, even though one of my feet had rotted off from the sheer toxins found in garbage juice. EW! Now I’m an amputee goddam you. “Oh her,” people will say. “That’s just stumpy, the garbage juice lady. She got hit bad.”

Have you ever seen that episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon is considering moving to Cleveland, and the deciding factor for her is when a bum spits into her mouth. This was kind of one of those moments for me. I want to move to Cleveland, where people throw their trash away, rather than their trash being thrown at them.

In other, less disgusting news, there’s some new pix up at Flickr if you want to see the results of the new camera I got Justin for his birthday. He says I really bought it for myself. I say, no comment.

Well, they really did it. They made the caveman show. Proof of the pilot’s existence here. Apparently it “actually has something to say about race relations in Amerca.” Thanks, but I think I’ll just watch X-Men for that. I am going to jump in my car, bust my feet through the floor, and flinstone my ass far, far away if I ever catch this thing on TV. Does ABC now stand for Absolutely Batshit Crazy? zing.

Overheard today…

(Girl) “MySpace is soo lame. I think it’s for losers…” (Gets distracted by TV) “Ooh look! I haven’t seen that book jacket design yet for the new Harry Potter book. That one must be the special publishers’ adult edition.”

Ah yes, definitely the reigning authority on what is, and what is not cool.

Seemed to be the advice of the day at my future sister-in-law’s bridal shower this weekend. My sister and I astutely pointed out, albeit under our breath, that going to bed angry can sometimes be your best option, because in the morning…he will be sober!! How about let’s work it out then?

The second most popular bit of advice seemed to be something along the lines of, always pay lots of attention to your hubbs, spend a lot of time together and have weekly date nights. Not surprising then, that my make sure you take plenty of time for yourself advice didn’t go over so well. Not that kind of crowd. OK. I guess considering myself lucky to have a man to love me isn’t my life goal. But after the shower, I realized that I’m not really into that whole bag. Gift bag that is.

Did you know that a bridal shower is a bunch of women sitting around a room watching another woman open presents? That’s it. Really, that’s all there is. Oh yeah, and finger sandwiches. At one point I leaned to my sister and whispered, “Why can’t we be guys?” I mean, I want a six-inch hoagie, strippers and a sporting event outside. Well, maybe that’s not exactly what I want, but I would definitely pick that one given the two apparent pre-wedding party options. I always want a six-inch hoagie though. Always.

Also, Justin’s birthday was yesterday. We went to see the Daily Show. It was fun. I paid him lots of attention, we went on a date, I didn’t go to bed angry and I baked. Man I would make a good wife.

What’s good: Riding in the bow of a ski boat that’s going so fast you can’t hear anything but the wind, or see anything but the water, and you forget how you got so stressed out in the first place.

What’s bad: Riding at top speed in that same boat moments later, after hearing your name screamed in distress, to rescue your entire family, who have just tipped over in a sailboat in a Titanic-like scene in which your mother is clinging to a piece of wood that I believe was a floorboard from the vessel. Everyone is drenched and shivering in nearly freezing waters, your boyfried has stripped down to his underwear in an attempt to jump in and save your kin, the sailboat is filled to the brim with water and barely staying afloat and you are pulling on arms and legs to throw people to safety. Reminds you what it’s like to really be stressed out. Something along these lines, except without the wetsuits, and everyone floating in the frigid water is a loved one. Yay.

Driving home from Lowe’s, new air conditioner in the back. Sun’s out, warm enough to drive with the window’s down, not so hot you need the A/C. Listening to music, there’s no traffic on the BQE. Riding shotgun with my head resting back on the seat, looking out the window. Listening to friends chat beside me, I’m hit with the briefest, yet most real and perfect happiness for a fleeting moment. Then just as quickly it is gone. I still feel fine, but I can’t hold on to those few seconds where everything feels just right. I will spend the rest of the day hoping to feel it again.

I’m a little junkie for my happy. I don’t get the perfect high very often, and afterwards I spend my days chasing after it. I don’t know what makes it come and I don’t know what makes it go, but I’m definitely ready to ride it as far as it will take me.

Honestly, the only things that are the same about these two people, besides the fact that they are both Courtney Love, are the lipstick and the purple eyeshadow. She’s almost unrecognizable. Do you think she’s had any plastic surgery?? Very un’hole’some, if you know what I mean. And I’m pretty sure you don’t.

Here’s Courtney.

Here’s some plastic lady with a giant black flower growing out of her sternum.

The bathroom at my “new job” stresses me out. It has not been remodeled, or perhaps even touched, since the mid-70s. It looks exactly like the bathroom did in the mall when I was a kid, when that bathroom was brand new. It’s got a carpeted seating area with couches, and mirrors all around with ledges on which to place one’s makeup, or handbag, or stapler. Whatever. The toilet seats are those really old black ones that look like they might be actual sanded ebony. The kind of toilet seat that’s so old it is a completely different shape than the paper toilet seat covers offered in the dispenser. So when met with said cover, about 40 percent of the toilet seat is still bare. The flushers are about eye level, and the paper towel holders are chrome boxes with slits in them…like a napkin dispenser at a diner. This is ‘the ladies’ that time forgot.

I’m struck down with nostalgia every time I walk in there, because it reminds me so much of shopping with my grandma as a kid. Watching her re-apply her lipstick while I fondled a new Barbie doll. It honestly makes me kind of sick to my stomach being in there. And no, the smell of untouched 30-year-old toilets doesn’t help.

There’s also this broken hot water knob on one of the sinks. I know this very well because I don’t pick up on things very quickly and I still go to the same sink EVERY TIME. It’s this old clunky silver thing that kind of resembles a dulled ninja star, and it just comes off in my hand whenever I grab it. I fear that out of extreme fatigue and long hours I’m just going to keep it in my hand one of these days and accidentally hand it to the cashier to try and pay for my lunch. But usually I just drop it and it clangs against the pedestal porcelain sink.

I’m thinking of asking my boss to meet me in the lounge area as the conference room for my next review. At least then when I don’t get that raise I’ll know where to find an easily accessible weapon to throw at his head.

We meet eyes across the Entenmanns rack. One eye Clint-Eastwooding each other down, the other fixed on the one register with no line. My third eye, had I one, would have been staring down a stack of All Butter French Crumb Cake. Now there’s a product I can get behind. It advertises itself as being at the same time ‘all butter,’ yet with ‘zero transfat.’ That’s like making a dessert called ‘Zero Calorie Lard Nibblers.’ Ballsy Entenmanns, I like your style.

So anyway, there we were, with the staring. Me and this blue haired old broad. She was closer to the register, but I knew I had youth and speed on my side. So I booked it, carefully balancing the birthday cake for my co-worker on one hand. I barely beat her to it, but wimped out at the last second. Had I been in just a slighty bigger hurry I might have been able to bring myself to push an old lady out of my way. But as luck would have it, I was actually running early. So I give her the, “No I insist, you go first.” And she gives me the gentle old lady thanks that really means, “No durr, bitch.”

She throws down her plastic to-go container holding a total of one piece of lettuce from the salad bar, and a bare nekkid roll that is not wrapped in a bag or nothin. The cashier tells her he’s not bagging it for her, because he doesn’t want to put his hands on her food. I thought this was a rather nice gesture on his part. I’m not sure I was conveying that message though, through all the foot tapping and heavy sighing.

I thought for a minute she might just take the roll and stuff it in her pocket, for her and the birds to snack on later. But she bagged it herself…really…really…slowly. Then there was some confusion about why she was being charged $7 for a $2 purchase. Maybe, the cashier told her, it was because she requested $5 cash back. Ding, light bulb goes on…really…really…slowly. First of all, when did I become designated birthday cake buying girl at work? And second, next time nanna is getting pushed out the way.