brownies for brekkie...

i had brownies for breakfast.  brownies and coffee make for a fantastic morning meal...if you feel so inclined, i highly recommend it.  the only anticlimax to this seemingly wonderful situation was that dad (yes dad, i live at home, bite me), when asked to bring home brownie mix for his period-ravished, chocolate-craving daughter, brought home the cheapest betty crocker shit-in-a-box excuse for brownie mix he could find.  men pay no attention to detail.  seriously.  i urge you to visit the baking goods and cake mixes aisle of your local grocery store...there are like 13,000 different varieties of brownie mix.  there's everything from the just-add-water-and-cook-in-the-microwave version to the ghiradelli triple chocolate brownie mix from heaven, and trust me, a woman on her period wants the latter of those two options.  

i'm pretty sure dad went into that grocery store thinking chocolate is chocolate, saw a bright red box (the ghiradelli box is generally brown-gold in appearance and not as visually striking), and checked "brownie mix" of his grocery list for the week.  there's nothing wrong with this line of thinking...if you're a guy.  but if you're a girl, you are intimately acquainted with the different varieties of brownie mixes as necessitated by the monthly hormones that rage through our bodies making us erratic, emotionally-unstable, bloated, chocolate-jonesing animals once every 30 days. touch my pan of brownies during the last 3 days of my period and i might sacrifice your hand to Menstruses, the ovary goddess.  

now, i'm not as elitist as i may seem.  obviously i know what i want, ghiradelli is what i want, but surely i am a reasonable person and i would settle for something like the duncan hines chocolate fudge, or, if we're going with betty, her dark chocolate version provides the consumer a packet of hershey's chocolate to stir into the batter for a bit of additional-chocolatey-goodness.  a little extra effort that i truly appreciate.  but i do think that there is a problem when i go to pull out my first brownie and the bottom half of the pan is so oil heavy that the brownie leaves a residue on my fingers.  isn't that supposed to be mixed in?  i don't think its supposed to sink to the bottom in the 24-27 minutes i leave the pan in the oven unattended.  

but this is exactly what happened to me two days ago when i went to eat my first brownie.  i had to wash my hands immediately for fear i'd touch my face and initiate the next great blackhead invasion.  i didn't say anything to dad because i didn't want to sound ungrateful, but i've decided that that man just can't be trusted when sent to the grocery store.  unless you show him exactly what you want before he leaves the house, he has no clue what to buy.  i will write "whole grain bread" on the list and he'll come home with brown wonder bread.  tell him you want vanilla yogurt, he'll bring home just one cup because you didn't tell him exactly how many to buy. you tell him to bring home brownie mix and he brings you a box of vegetable oil-rejecting brown powder.

i love to do the grocery shopping.  it's my favorite domestic activity.  my laundry will remain on my floor for weeks at a time, i can't be bothered to put the dishes in the dishwasher, and i can't hem a pant leg worth a damn, but i can tear up a grocery store.  i scan labels for trans fat and look for chips without hydrogenated oils.  i find the granola with high fiber, the low-fat yogurt, and the OJ made with real fruit juices.  my cart will be filled to overflowing with produce and cereal, chicken and mom's nasty sodium-laden lean cuisines and i know i could keep going if six people lived in my house instead of three. it's an addiction, the grocery shopping. but i'm pretty damn sure i'd bring home the right brownie mix...

ode to shauna...in b flat...

today is shauna mccarthy's birthday...my friend...my ladybug...my roommate forever. i would like to pause for a moment and honor shauna with a few words detailing some of the many reasons i consider her to be the most amazing human to have ever walked the planet...

shauna wears pink goulashes in the winter time and pants throughout the summer...

there is a starbucks cup permanently attached to her hand...

you don't have to ask, she will do all of the grocery shopping and then refuse your money when you try to pay for your half...

she wears ladybug stickers in her cleavage...

when shauna is stressed, she bakes.  and if it is fall, she bakes the greatest pumpkin chocolate chip cookies you've ever tasted.  and if she lives with me, she always saves me a container of the uncooked dough so i can eat it while watching a movie...

when i lived with her, shauna always let me steal her clothes and they were c-u-t-e cute...

she can tell you where every single privately owned coffee shop in reno is located...even the ones tucked away behind trees and brick houses...

she must be the most patient person alive because she never killed rascal...even when he peed on her floor and chewed on her blankets...

only shauna knew what i meant when i said, "it's day three..."

she will make you feel like the resurrected Christ if you give her a thirty dollar gift card to trader joe's...

you'll never find a better person to share a glass of wine with...

her ass is AMAZING!!!

one of shauna's hugs is like getting a hug from everyone you know all at once...

contrary to popular belief, shauna will let you know that a denim jacket can go with everything...

one word...bangkok...

she may only have twenty bucks to her name, but she will buy you coffee and lunch before she'll put gas in her jeep (which is big pimpin' by the way)...

oprah is her hero...

when i create a non-profit in africa, she's going to do my PR pro-bono...

if you live with shauna, there will always be fresh flowers in your house and you will always want to come home...

i met shauna while pulling my first set of all-nighters in reno.  she brought us energy drinks and candy bars.  i thought she was an angel...

she will interview all of your potential boyfriends...

no one makes turquoise look so good...

she has this dance where she looks like she's in the marching band...

when shauna gets embarassed she turns beet red and it's the cutest thing you've ever seen...

she's not a cheerleader...she's a heckler...

she won't make you feel bad when you've had a little too much to drink and you stumble over your words even though she wants to laugh her guts out...

and the final reason i love shauna mccarthy and think that she's the greatest human to have ever walked the planet is this: she is the kindest and most servant-hearted person i have ever encountered in all of my life.  her love is true and she forgives everything...literally EVERYTHING.  she spends herself for everyone she meets and her own needs are an afterthought...something she'll get to if she ever has an extra minute.  you look in her eyes and see how people are supposed to be...you share a home with her and you live in a place that radiates affection...you become her friend and you have found selflessness embodied.  

happy birthday shauna...may you reap what you've sewn this year...

love, hugs, and ladybugs,

your roommate

guest teacher...

i am a babysitter for the clark county school district.


a few years ago the school board decided to change the title of my position from "substitute" to "guest teacher." the motivating notion behind the switch was that the new designation would garner a greater amount of respect and compliance from high school students accustomed to treating the a fore mentioned with as much deference as you might provide an unwanted house guest. but for all their noble intention and in their infinite wisdom, the school board forgot one very important thing: to tell the kids about the change. so the uninformed students remain ignorant to the fact that i'm supposed to be treated as an honored visitor in their classroom, instead of playing the substitute's usual role: stand-in without a clue.


call me an optimist, but i'm sure that if someone told them i wasn't just a piñata for their verbal assaults and that instead i was to be offered a seat and cup of tea with biscuits upon my arrival, the students would be more than willing to indulge me. they would study dutifully and do their work diligently, grasping for my every word during lecture because my time with them would be brief and they knew they may never get another chance to taste of my brilliance.


of course i'd indulge the little underlings and regale them with tales of my travels and experiences since high school, all which seem insatiably desirable to fifteen and sixteen year olds held captive by nevada’s public school system. i'd teach them about the history of the world and the literary cannon in such a way that they would stay hours after school to listen to my musings. they’d ask me to teach supplemental classes at the neighborhood starbucks and give them an additional reading list filled with the literature i felt necessary for their most profound character development…books by david sedaris, vladamir nabokov, and hubert selby jr.

but i get no respect. i’m lucky if the kids remember my name, forget the literary cannon and the personal enrichment I might afford them, instead i get nothing but grief. all this because I’m the substitute…

on vanity...

i woke up a few mornings ago with a mondo zit on my chin and another one on my left temple. i found this completely disconcerting as i am now a twenty-four year old semi-adult who took acne medication for years in her teens in order to prevent things like this from ever happening. the appearance of an unwanted blemish is to make a mockery of the years of saturday mornings i spent in blood pathology labs at the crack of dawn, waiting alongside henderson's most feeble senior citizens, in order to prove something i already knew: no i wasn't pregnant and yes i could have my next month's accutane prescription.

to add insult to injury, even after my diligent efforts with a too-expensive facial cleanser from origins and clean-and-clear's oil sucking persa-gel, i woke up today with three new white-headed-demons cursing my face. i didnt sleep much last night and already hated my life, so the presence of five not-so-subtle pimples scattered about my grill didn't really make the morning any better for me.

how is it that a zit...something smaller than a dime...can completely ruin a girl's day? i mean seriously? zits kill me...zits and bloating. when i am bloated i want to hide under my covers all day because the prospect of trying on everything i own in order to find something baggy enough to hide the upsetting roundness of my belly is too terrifying to consider. this is why i don't think i'll ever get pregnant. i wont be able to handle getting fat.

hope tells me all the time that she can't wait for me to be a mommy. she's been telling me this for something like six years now. she rambles on and on about how i will be so patient and good with the little buggers, i will spend my life in devotion to them, and i will love them with all of my heart...blah blah blah. she will continue to sing my everlasting praises until the intoxicating fumes rising off her never-ending supply of optimism so overwhelm her that her voice jumps an octave as a result of some kind of weird excitement-induced overload and her words become inaudible to anyone incapable of picking up frequencies likened to those produced by a dog-whistle.

i appreciate her faith in me, really i do, but what i think hope fails to realize is that i'm far too vain to carry a baby. the idea of my stomach sticking out so far that i can't see my flip-flops is insanely distressing. if i have to choose between being preggo and wearing a size 6...i pick the size 6. say what you will about the miracle of life and how none of the bad stuff like morning sickness and midnight pickle cravings matter when compared with the joy of raising a child... i'm not buying it. i went to europe this summer and gained five pounds. i feel the extra chub every time i move and i hate the way my clothes fit now and i cringe inside every time i sit down and realize my thighs are bigger than they were three months ago. i can feel the extra fat sit like sludge on the chair and it makes me flinch as i think about how much i can work out over the next week in an attempt to remedy the situation.

in college, i lived off cheese quesadillas and animal style fries. it was hard work losing the extra fifteen pounds i put on while i was in school and no one, not even my potential future child is gonna get in the way of me keeping it off. call me what you want, but  i do not want to reproduce. i have no problem with kids...it's pregnancy i can't be bothered with.

blog without reason...

so i always blog when i travel. i'd like to say that's because i love to update everyone on my happenings, but truth be told, my main motivation is my own lethargy. i simply cannot be bothered to email everyone. it takes too much time, costs too much money at cafes, and requires way too much effort on my part. blogging made sense...write one thing and put it in a place where everyone can see it. it seemed so generous and wholistic. really, i was doing everyone a service by posting my ramblings on the internet, wasn't i?

but really, the best part about blogging was this: if you didn't get updated, it was your fault...not mine. my job was to write, your job was to make sure you checked the blog every week. blogging put the responsibility on the reader, not the writer and in that subtle switch, i was absolved of any blame i might reap for not keeping someone in the loop (which is a persistent habit of mine). it seemed brilliant.

but as convenient as blogging was for me, i never continued after i came home. it seemed so narcissistic, in the way posting the details of your life on myspace or facebook is so tragically self indulgent. it's actually contrary to my ethics to participate in such activity because i feel like those things infuse our generation of significance-seeking worth mongers with a false sense of importance. i'm all about confidence...and i'm all about confidence as a LEARNED behavior...but i think the kind of life and opinion sharing made possible by the internet is only a hindrance to something that's actually worthwhile.

so if i believe all that, why am i blogging now? good question. i suppose i don't really have a good reason except that i need to be writing everyday. it's good for my sanity and an excellent deterrent to the implosion of my brain.

i have a friend who always bugged me to continue my blogs after i returned home, but i never did. i always wondered why? what was the point? i had a trusty old journal to write in...so why was it my responsibulity to entertain those in my social circle? where did i ever get the idea that my writing was mildly entertaining in the first place?

it's probably because i seek approval of my opinions just like the next girl. i'm a significance-seeking worth monger out to leave my signature on the world; my own proverbial "sydney was here" signmarker. so the truth is finally out there: i'm arrogant and vain and become insecure if what i think is challenged by one of the many people in my life that are smarter than i am...but so is everybody else...so i don't care. we can all be insecure together.

so i guess i'm going to blog now...i hardly ever work anyway so i might as well do something productive with my time.