WELP!

Well, well well, look who showed up today. ME! Your west coast rambling undiagnosed A.D.D. blonde-haired (sort of) blue eyed nightmare. Hi. How are you? Been better? Same. I’d apologize for not being a constant in your life these past few months but I’m working on not saying sorry anymore so…deal with it…she says with a hint of a question as if she’s sorry for saying it at all. I try not to label anyone or anything but if I had to describe the world right now in one word I’d say unhinged. Even Mother Nature is like $#@* this. Fires, hurricanes, earthquakes – she is not happy. There’s a baby car seat that’s been on the sidewalk outside of my apartment for about a week and I think it’s symbolic of where we’re at as a society – defeated and exhausted with a little bit of HUH?! Remember when people were stockpiling gasoline in garbage bags? That feels like a decade ago. Are we in hell? Is this an episode of Lost? I’ve been saying for years this place needs a revolution and it doesn’t feel like we’re that far off. Do I need to invest in a musket? Am I finally going to get to punch someone in the face? I have found solace in my writing and disappearing in books. If you’ve seen White Lotus, the scene where Connie Britton is trying to read in bed and her husband is pretending to be an ape and she isn’t phazed in the slightest – that’s me while shit seems to be hitting every ceiling, floor and wall around me. If you’re having a rough day, I recommend Olive Garden and an Escape Room. Free therapy, seeming accomplishment, endless breadsticks and very cheap magnum bottles of wine. I’m so midwest basic sometimes. Did I mention the cheap bottles of wine?

Along the lines of being basic, I will say I’m a bit old school and not too amused by where we’re headed technologically. Everything is on a screen now. My eyes hurt. I mean – does anything turn me on more than a library? Not really. I see bookshop after bookshop going out of business and it hurts my heart. I love books and letters and it always makes me scrunch my nose when I see a table full of people on their phones. As secure as we all feel, I feel like the more we rely on technology the more vulnerable we become. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve never seen a room full of people when the WiFi goes down. I think Teslas are dumb. It’s like a spaceship on wheels and we all know how I feel about space. I don’t need a tracking system in my car. I know where I’ve been. The keyless thing is a lot – I was locked out of my mom’s car and sat in a parking lot for I don’t know how long and then my friend’s mom came up and pushed one button and I quit. And I full on realize I’m the equivalent of an old lady with a flip phone yelling at the sun right now but was putting a key in the ignition really that taxing!? You know what’s taxing? PEOPLE. I had to call my credit card company this morning and here’s what I learned about me. I will spend more time figuring out how not to talk to someone on the phone than it would take to just call them. I don’t know when speaking to other humans came with anxiety for me but I will avoid it all costs. When people actually call me I assume someone is dead or they’re drunk.

I was told recently that I’m a ‘rule follower’ and I’m sure if my mother is reading this, she just choked on something. I mean, I pull the tags off pillows, sometimes I turn my phone on before the plane has landed and I skipped a lot of classes my senior year of college…like…a lot. I’m a combo platter for sure. I have a lot of mixed beliefs, politically, so I took a test to figure out what I was exactly, and it said I’m a Constitutionalist so maybe that does make me a rule follower. But I do jaywalk, I drank for a decade before I was 21 and I think the census is stupid. Yeah, I said it! They know where we are. They know who’s living where. And by they I mean the government that continues to Big Brother our lives in disguise as technological advances advertised as personal perks that we pay for. And that’s not a conspiracy theory, them’s just facts. Heart beats, voices, preferences, location – all access pass, baby. So I suppose that makes me a tiny bit of a Libertarian. I’m also a Cancer, a volunteer, a romantic and an idiot according to several reputable sources. I am many things. I’m like a build-a-human. I am also a convicted, educated and occasionally funny woman with my own upbringing, lens and beliefs who not only understands but expects that others may not feel the same way. If Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle can be friends, anyone can get along. #facts

Just when we thought FL was going to win the trophy for Hot Mess of the Year, TX was like, hold my beer. As if there isn’t enough going on already. Concerts and Tours in TX are being cancelled in protest. Bette Midler thinks women should go on a sex strike – like some kind of modern day Lysistrata. I mean, in theory, it could be a more effective approach. I’m not going to get into the fundamentals or even mention Planned Parenthood, which provided your girl here with years of healthcare when no one else would, but here is my problem with all of it. A woman can contribute to creating a baby to full term once a year. A man could potentially impregnate multiple women in one day. The world record for most sex in a day by a single person is 919 times which sounds like the worst day of anyone’s life but whatever makes you happy I guess? So then I googled how many times a man can skeet-skeet in one day and all I could find was a record of 16 times in one hour. Whoever monitors my google searches has to think I’m a dumpster circus. Anyway, going off that number, technically a guy could impregnate 16 women in one day which could potentially be 5,840 babies a year – so can anyone explain to me why the focus has always been on female reproductive rights? I’ll wait. You wanna mandate things? Mandate adolescent vasectomies, which can be reversed. It’s exhausting being this logical.

If you’re still curious why America is the way it is after reading the previous paragraph, you’ve clearly never driven, flown on a plane, been in a grocery store parking lot, attended a concert, hung out at a bar or spent the day at Disney World. What I’m saying is you’ve never been in public. See also: the internet. Specifically ‘the milk crate challenge’. Michael Jordan’s used underwear is up for auction. A man bounced on an inflatable ball for more than 10 miles for a Guinness World Record. I had a nightmare couple ask me if the two seats next to me were taken while there was an ENTIRE PLANE of empty seats! If only someone had taken a picture of my face the moment before I said, ‘are you serious?’ while blatantly looking at the plethora of empty seats including the empty row directly behind me. I was livid. That’s not how planes work. I hope someone zip-ties a grocery cart to their car one day. Because they are the type of people who when a grocery lane opens and they’re last in the current line will rush in first – see also: buttholes. If things work out the way I want them to and I get my island, entry will require you understand sarcasm, return your grocery carts, understand and follow the exit order of deboarding a plane, use the left lane for passing (or right pending on where you live) – hence the term PASSING LANE, know how to hold a door open for someone when they’re less than 10ft behind you entering the same door, give up your seat for those older than you (65+), know and use the words please and thank you frequently, believe in the power of a good cry. And that’s just the first screening – oh don’t you worry, I’ll be contacting all of your exes. No buttholes allowed.

If you ever want to feel severely out of shape and terrible about yourself while you sit on the couch, WATCH TENNIS. I mean these people are sculptures. You know how some sports, there’s all sorts of shapes and sometimes it’s like – oh, you play sports? Not the case with tennis. Beyond the caliber of play which has been phenomenal, I’m particularly fascinated watching the ball boys and girls whose job seems to align with the stress levels of a brain surgeon. It’s tennis balls – everyone calm down. It’s a very regimented, precise system – I still don’t know what makes one tennis ball better than the other. Darting around, essentially trying to be invisible and they’re mostly teenagers – the anxiety I get from observation is palpable. What’s the audition process? Are they volunteers? Are they paid? Trying to find these answers on the interweb, I got a lot of conflicting answers ranging from not paid at all to 7.75/hr to $700 for Grand Slam – so the verdict is still out. I don’t know what kind of person would ever want to do that and it all feels a bit illegal. Regardless, I’ve found an appreciation for tennis I didn’t have before. I still love hockey and how blood and missing teeth are a part of the game but there is something lovely and proper about a tennis match. The fans are still drunk, they’re just quiet drunks who aren’t screaming and chanting

**knee lap** WELP! I should probably be going. If you still haven’t figured out who you are in the last year or so, see how you react when you turn around and a puppy has your $200 pair of sunglasses in his mouth. You’ll learn very quickly. Everyone keep your head up, stop generalizing, be honest with yourself, ask questions, trust your intuition, watch tennis this weekend – amazing things are going to happen. I’ll be somewhere in the midwest celebrating the fact that my brother found someone who finds him attractive in a forever type of way. In summary, I’ll be drunk lakeside surrounded by estrogen. In the words of a poem my sister wrote about me in 8th grade – send moneys. And last but certainly not least, a giant standing ovation to Pineapple Express Mission doing what our government failed to do – blame the suits, not the troops. Until next time my chinchillas xx