House Hunting and the Hippie

OK, I’m just going to say it…I’m moving…once again, before the invention of teleporters, which goes against everything I promised myself the last time I moved and the time I moved before that. Why? Because I love being metaphorically punched repeatedly in the balls. I mean, I’m not sure what other explanation I can give you except that I’m really tired of being butt raped by my Uptown apartment complex, a.k.a. shoebox for a million dollars a month, and I’m excited to proceed to the next level with the bearded boyfriend. Yes, here I am taking the plunge again to live in sin, yet this time it’s a decision that was more calculated and made with a mind that is five years older and wiser. Any fiascos resulting from this decision will hopefully be kept at a low, perfectly acceptable pre-marriage behavior roar.

I’ve written about it on here before in 2008 AND 2010 – the crying, the screaming, the kicking, the pouting, the massive hair loss caused by uncontrollable ripping that all came about because of apartment hunting and subsequent moving of mountains of crap. This time, while I’m still neurotic about the whole process, it has yet to make me do any of the aforementioned things. The only thing that makes me cry these days is grad school. The massive, engulfing stress and lack of sleep is making me super pleasant to be around sans alcohol. When the stress of information and work overload is so bad that you lay down to sleep and your heart pounds up into your neck and face preventing any sort of rest night after night, it tends to make you a giant bitch little cranky. Just sayin.’ Stress manifests in strange ways. It’s two months until graduation, stay positive, I can do this, breathe, shot of whiskey, breathe, I can do this…yeah, you probably want to stay away until the night of May 10th…

Anyway, enough of that, back to the hilarious encounter we had earlier today while house hunting. After a gentle shove of the please-help-me-look-for-rental-houses-dammit variety a couple weeks ago, Pat has been calling to ask questions or make appointments every few days…it’s amazing how a few old pictures can make a total dump look like a palace on craigslist. We’ve seen a couple of places that have all been quickly vetoed, but today we saw a pretty good one once you looked past a few minor things…

It was a result of a drive by for rent sign sighting on a house near South Pearl followed by a quick phone call. We both took a short break from work and pulled up to the place around 9 a.m. and a member of ZZTop mixed with Grizzly Adams emerged from a beat up Chevy pickup. His tiny grey ponytail and ripped up flannel shirt accented the white/grey beard that reached almost to his stomach. My first reaction was, “Oh god,” then I told myself not to be Judgey McJudgerson because he was probably a nice old dude…and he was, as I quickly learned.

We walked into the house and it was completely trashed, at least by my standards, by the total stoner that lives in the basement. The guy that lived upstairs just moved out and basement dweller took it upon himself to take over the rest of the house. This also prevented us from seeing the basement, which is apparently finished kind of like a studio apartment. Note: Basement dweller is moving out soon and the entire house is for rent.

Pat walked past the beat up couch in the living room in front of me and subtly pointed at the floor. My eyes followed his finger and met up with a colorful glass pipe laying on the floor. Lovely. As we strolled into the kitchen, the first thing I noticed was the pizza box and random shit all over the counter. The second thing I noticed was the one hitter made to look like a cigarette laying next to the pizza box. I’m like, Jesus dude, calm down or at least put your paraphernalia away when your landlord comes over.

The two bedrooms and bathroom upstairs were empty and clean and the deck, backyard and two car garage were pretty much free of illegal substances. My ability to look past the dirty tenant and think ‘bleach, lots of bleach and this place will be beautiful,’ was pretty uncharacteristic of me, but the bedrooms were big, the closets were decent, the blonde hardwood floors were so pretty and the neighborhood is awesome. Hey, at least there weren’t dirty needles and a pile of cocaine sitting on the counter. This was actually the second place we walked into in a week that showed signs of massive amounts of marijuana usage. People just really, REALLY love their weed in Denver.

ZZTop landlord expressed how women were weird, referring to his wife, while we were in the backyard by making a funny little, rolling the eyes, throw the hands in the air gesture. We apparently have to talk to her if we want to know the rules of the rental house. As we walked from the backyard back to the front porch, Pat gestured to the neighbors’ koi pond and water feature and made a comment to which landlord man replied, “Yeah, you can just sit back, fire up a doobie and watch, heh heh.” Pat looked over his shoulder and grinned really big at me for about the third time on our tour while I refrained from yelling, “ZING!” or “HEY-O!” Things just kept getting better and better.

Then, as we said our goodbyes at the curb, landlord man inquired, “And what’s your name again?” I told him my name, he repeated it and then he said, “Niiiiiice looking,” while nodding with a big smile on his face. While I averted my eyes and turned a bright shade of pink, Pat laughed hysterically, put his arm around me and bellowed, “YEEEEAH!” I managed to utter a bit of a shocked, “thank you,” as I don’t take compliments very gracefully - I never have - especially from strangers and especially from ZZTop landlords. Yep, that’s me, the trophy girlfriend…riiiight. Maybe it will help us stand out from the pile of applications.

Moving is still a month and a half away and the location is still a mystery much to my dismay, but I’m not sure that anything – house or experience – can top what we saw today. Hopefully once pothead is kicked out and I employ my “bleach…lots of bleach…and Febreeze…and maybe Molly Maids,” theory, Pat, Andy, Maggie, old hippie ZZTop landlord and myself can all be one happy family. If not, then we’ll just have to continue the hunt and I’ll try to keep the neuroses at bay…as long as the metaphoric ball punching is kept to a minimum during the process.

Tickled

I’ve had my fair share of strange and unusual boyfriends, including the guy with botched tattoos that showered literally four times a day for fear he would get into a car accident and the people in the ER would see his “dirty butthole.” His words, not mine. My words would be somewhere along the lines of, “what in the hell is wrong with you?” And, my actions were, in fact, to run very fast in the other direction.
However, I think the story behind a mysterious object in my apartment just might top the list of strange boyfriend behaviors. I present to you, The Tickle Tag:







This seemingly ordinary tag snagged from what appears to be a T-shirt of some kind has been pinned to our board-o-random shit on our TV entertainment center for as long as I’ve lived here. It’s surrounded by beach and kickball photos, a picture of a trio of disturbing dolls ripped from an IKEA magazine, a note from Whittah’s cousin expressing her love for after hours wrestling matches, a quote from a women’s magazine declaring that we will not drunk text our ex-boyfriends, a homemade birthday card from me with Whittah's face pasted over my boyfriend's face, who was sitting next to T-Pain in Las Vegas that reads, "T-Pain says: Happy Birthday, Shawty!" Just a note, my boyfriend helped me design and create this masterpiece...best birthday card ever...And, another gem of a quote plucked from a food mail order catalog that reads, “It’s a great chicken pie, I tell you,” by Oprah. Hilarious in its unremarkable quality, yet it still appeared in the magazine because Oprah said it. She could scratch her ass near a product and the company would take it as a compliment.

All the other items were fairly self-explanatory to me, but the tag was a mystery. It took me probably a year to inquire about its significance and why it was in our apartment. I would have never even dreamed the story that followed.

Apparently, one of Whittah’s friends, who has now become my friend, also has the unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how much you like storytelling) ability to stumble upon strange men. Her now ex-boyfriend that she lived with had a bit of a sleeping problem, but instead of treating it with the occasional Tylenol PM, counting sheep or deep breathing exercises, he decided to try a more natural approach. He used this tag to tickle his face, and probably other things, to calm his jittery nerves and soothe himself to sleep. One could compare his attachment to this shirt tag to that of a security blanket as he kept it under his pillow and couldn’t fall asleep without its calming tickles.

I could just picture the scenario in my head: Boyfriend thrashing around in bed dramatically, unable to sleep. He whines to his girlfriend, "I need my tickles...NOW!" She obliges, reaching under the pillow and stroking his face with the tag while he drifts off to sleep...like sticking a pacifier in an infant's mouth.


Of course, I immediately shuddered from the heebie jeebies and said, “EW, I can’t believe I touched that thing! Why is it in my house?” As if it were covered in human excrement and crawling with spiders.


Ah, but the story wasn’t over. When our friend and Tickle Tag man broke up and she moved out, as a final “fuck you,” she snatched the man’s creepy form of Ambien out from under his pillow and triumphantly went along her merry way. Yes, she stole the sacred Tickle Tag. Apparently our apartment was the first stop on her way to a new life and it became the Tickle Tag’s new home, much to my dismay.

I guess we all have items in life that trigger memories from our past and remind us why we’ve moved on. For me, it’s seeing a stupid tattoo, for our friend, its The Tickle Tag. I’m not sure I’ll ever look at a shirt tag the same way again.

Oh, hey 2012, you snuck up on me, you bastard

I began 2011 barfing in the bushes outside of the apartment of a guy I hardly knew and began 2012 returning a dress I got for Christmas that made me look like a baby prostitute (It looked so non baby prostitute-y online). It seems as though it was a year of growing up for me. In fact, check this out:






It's a new addition to our family...







You totally thought she was mine for a second, didn't you?

Yeah, not that grown up yet. That would probably put a damper on the whole master's degree, new career thing I've been working on. This is my new niece, Kailer that was born on the 29th, while I laid around like a fatty, not working on my resume and website while on my two week Christmas vacation in KC. Essentially, I blame Jesus, this little baby, my other niece Remi, alcohol and fun people for my lack of productivity. I mean, there's always something better to do than prepare for your future when presents, babies, martinis and bad influences are in such close proximity.

After a semester of full time school, working three jobs and a particularly nerve wracking final presentation in front of the Colorado Office of Economic Development, it was a much needed, relaxing trip, that I was not quite ready to let go of. I said reluctant goodbyes, wrung out my liver and headed back to Denver a week ago. Now suddenly school starts back up in less than a week and I graduate in four months. This realization makes me go, oh holy shit, must stop laying on ass and find career!

And, so relaxation was officially over last night when I decided to unsuccessfully develop my website after a long day at work. I bought a domain in October, got busy and let it hang out for three months, which somehow screwed it up. I stayed up late in bed, sighing heavily and muttering, "why won't you WORK, you whore?" to my computer every five minutes while simultaneously shoving my boyfriend who was snoring right through his Breathe Right Strip.

After a night of dreaming about what could possibly be wrong and firebombing my provider, I woke to a blizzard and a bad mood. I came to the conclusion that I would obsess over this at work, so I stayed home to sigh and yell profanity at my computer some more. Of course, after a call to support, it started to work, then the second I hit the end button, it stopped working again. I screamed and shook my fists in the air, then looked around for a hidden camera. WHY?!

More tinkering around, cussing and a web browser update later, I was in business. It's a long way from done, but at least the stream of profanity directed at an inanimate object has ceased...

It's back to reality, an ass that is a more respectable size and a brain that is less like mush. It's a far cry from puke in the bushes and a slutty dress, but somehow just as entertaining.

Makin' it to May: Panic Attack

Right now I'm in the midst of week 4 of semester 4 of 5 semesters to complete and I'm surprisingly feeling pretty collected. Week 5 is usually a bitch, so I'm bracing for that — stocking up on wine and migraine medication, although I'd prefer something along the lines of uppers.

I'm also fresh off a trip home to KC to see one of my dear old friends get hitched. The feeling of depression that follows after a trip home is now shaken off after about a day of being back in Denver. It used to be much longer, so I suppose that's good news. I just really miss good, real friends that I have something in common with besides how much school sucks ass. There are some potentials here of course, but being in a dysfunctional marriage with a bastard like grad school limits my ability to be close to people.

Of course, I can't blame it all on that. I'm not a normal person and anybody who reads this thing or knows me on any level above acquaintance knows that. I have a dirty mouth, a strange sense of humor and most people I meet would have to snort a line of cocaine and have a few shots of whiskey before they can relate. I'm lucky to have found a few fellow, loving weirdos along the way most of which reside in KC, hence the depression after leaving. In fact, Pat (the still boyfriend, but no longer bearded : () and I were sitting and having some drinks with my friend Erin over the weekend when she started talking candidly about her trip to Romania several years ago. Their solution to not being able to shower everyday was swiping their pits and vaginas with baby wipes, "because that's where the smell would probably come from." Then, she told us a story about how her friend shat out a turd that looked just like a penis. Pat then turned to me and said, "I see why you guys are friends."

Who the hell talks about that kind of stuff so matter-of-factly in casual conversation? That would be me and the people I get along with the best. My few and far between besties. Oh beautiful, irreverent tards of Denver, please flock to me. I need some good pals. Or, those who I already know and have started to love here, bust out of your shells. I'm dying for non-business related, non-stilted, consistent conversation and friendship. There have been a few good nights here and there, so there's some hope.

However, I really wanted to write this blog about three weeks ago when I had just gotten back from KC again. Yes, I went there twice in three weeks. The first time was sort of unplanned for my aunt's 80th birthday, which was the weekend before school started. That uneasy feeling followed me on the plane back to Denver, then when I was getting my stuff to leave the plane, one of my rings fell out of my purse and a guy found it on the floor asking, "Is this yours?" I had no idea it had even fallen out, so I start frantically looking for the other one, tears welling up, and eventually found it, but it was too late. That little incident released the dread and the worry and the oh-dear-god-I-can't-fucking-do-this-anymore feelings that have been building for several weeks.

Pat picked me up and knew something was wrong immediately. Of course, I didn't really know what was wrong at the time, so we just got in the car and started driving. About halfway home, BAM, a full on panic attack hit — sharp pains in my chest, dizziness, sobbing, head between the knees, general feeling that I'm going to die right then in the passenger seat of the F-150. Denver, for me, is associated with all things new. Some good and some bad. The minute I set foot here, I was in school, shoving a round peg in a square hole as a creative girl in the strategic world of business, so it's also associated with stress. My mentality was rejecting this place.

I was pretty screwed up mentally for about three days after that. The adjustment to a complete life change is taking longer than expected. The year mark has come and gone and I'm still in part time adjustment mode. Plenty of people move away from their family, friends and home, but most of the time they're familiar with the role they will take on when they get there. I wasn't. A location change, on top of a lifestyle change, on top of a career change is the recipe for head explosion and mine has nearly do so many of times. I love it here a lot more than I hate it and I'm fine far more often than I'm not fine, so I'll count that as progress.

Now, a few weeks later, I'm good to go. When I make it to May, I have a feeling much of this will be lifted off my shoulders especially if I have an awesome, creative job that pays me triple what I would have made if I didn't ever go to grad school. That's the incentive to plow through these next couple of months.

A word of advice if you're thinking about changing your life like I did — get the wine and the uppers ready because it's a bumpy ride that gets worse in different ways before it gets better.

Damn you May, hurry your pokey ass up.

Makin' it to May: To Fly, Or Not To Fly

This is at least the third time I've witnessed it, or been in the aftermath of it — somebody flying the coop and taking people with them. This time I've sat quietly as people ran around with their hair on fire. I listen and I'm observant — that's how you learn things. I can just feel when somebody is angry or stressed and it permeates throughout the entire office. I'm also nosy, like really goddamn nosy, and I didn't have to prod very much to find out the basic details. In this case, I would have rather not known what was happening. It's that feeling where you wish for a corner office instead of a cubicle, not for the prestige and the extra room for a La-Z-Boy recliner, but just for the glorious-ness of a door that you can close allowing you to hide. Especially this time. In the past, people were pissed off and spiteful in a situation like this, but this time they're sad, upset and disturbed...

Betrayal and backstabbing — it's part of business and a lot of people's grand scheme to get ahead. It's not a practice I choose to partake in though. I've worked for terrible companies and left without making a scene — just me walking out the door at the end of my two week notice with my talent — something they can never take away from me — was statement enough. I've also worked with people who think they work for a shitty company and whine and bitch all day long, when in reality they don't work for a shitty company — their attitude is shitty and they're lazy.

We have to work from the time we're 22 to usually at least 65 — 43 years of our lives we'll be slaving away behind a desk, on the phone or in the field and if we're lucky, we'll have one or two good bosses thrown in there that we can call mentors. And, if we're really lucky we'll get to be somebody's good boss one day too. Unfortunately, the rest of those bosses are likely to be either incompetent or just mean...shitty.

Shitty companies, shitty bosses and shitty people — all causes of statement makers who decide to display a grand gesture of leaving, doing their own thing and taking people with them. The shitty people are the worst.

I've always believed in being humbly ambitious. And, before all the seasoned business people clutch me to their bosom smack me in the face and say, 'you're too young to know shit about shit,' I must say that I've witnessed this occasion enough to know that it's wrong. There's a right way to leave and do your own thing and there's a wrong way and there's no better lesson than to watch it happen the wrong way over and over again like I have.

The best Karma to have is when a company is sad to see you go, but happy that you're spreading your wings for growth. They never say good riddance, but only good luck. It's a lesson I learned a long time ago and only proves itself to be more true as I move from one stage to the next. No matter how shitty your company or your boss is, don't grand gesture yourself into a hole. Be graceful about it. Don't be one of those shitty people even if you think they deserve it. Do it the right way and you'll have far fewer ghosts following you around to sabotage your mind and your plans.

But what about the shitty people? I've never really thought about what it will be like when it happens to me. One day I will be somebody's good (hopefully) boss and it may happen to me. Then, I will have my corner office and my La-Z-Boy, but that door is not going to help me hide from anything. How will I handle it? Lawsuits, firing and threatening people, carrying around intense anger — I've seen all of that too, but none of that is the right way to handle it. Of course, bending over and just taking it isn't the right thing either. As I watch it unfold from afar, trying unsuccessfully to hide in my cubicle, maybe I'll finally get to see how to handle it the right way. However, I think Starbucks may have to substitute for my corner office some of the time. People running around with their hair on fire is quite distracting to an intern with a lot of learning to do.

Poop Roulette

Along with my lovely bearded boyfriend came a sweet, dopey black Labrador named Maggie...or Marge, depending on the mood you're in. She's incredibly smart, yet slightly retarded, but in an endearing way like most Labs are. She's special in that she loves to squeeze between you and the wall while going out for a walk, wrapping the leash around you twice instead of taking the logical way around. She farts so loud that the first time she let out a big "brrrrrrrffff," I looked at Pat and said, quite astonished, since we weren't quite to the we-fart-in-front-of-each-other stage of our relationship at the time, "Was that you?!" Yeah, sure, blame it on the dog!

I've personally banned her, and at this point, I think Pat has too, from sleeping on anything except for her own bed as she has a tendency to pee in her sleep on occasion even though she takes medicine for it. She grunts and groans and whines like Chewbacca and every morning when I wake up, she's up, either staring at me creepily from across the room or staring at me creepily while breathing heavily in my face.

I've gotten to know her quite well since I take her in when Pat travels for work. I've even kind of gotten used to her incontinence issues, but I had no idea she had a poop issue too until the other night. Yes, I'm going to talk about dogs pooping. Let's recall the number of times I've listened to mothers in the midst of potty training their kids talk about ad nauseum their grievances over why their child refuses to shit in the toilet. I love my friends who are mothers, but I can only handle hearing about the size, shape, consistency and frequency of a baby's bowel movements for so long. Sometimes we need to give the ass-to-potty, poo poo, pee pee, talk a rest and chat about more adult things...like dogs pooping.

One night recently, I was walking the two mongrels through my neighborhood while listening to one of my favorites, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals on my iPod. After several blocks, I figured they had done what they were going to do for the night and I was growing really tired of the weaving back and forth and stopping every three inches to smell something apparently intoxicating on the grass. So, I decided to reel them in, one on either side of me and walk the last two blocks home briskly, enjoying my music.

Just as we were crossing the street to head inside my apartment, I feel a tug on Maggie's side and turn to find her in the dog pooping squat position, looking up at me like it was a perfectly normal thing and absolutely not budging. She just stopped to take a shit right in the middle of 19th Avenue.

I yanked her backwards as her claws tried to clench the asphalt. Dragging her out of the busy street was not what I had in mind because I thought she would respond to my yelling and tugging, stand up and walk back to the sidewalk, but she would not leave the squat position.

I'm going, 'What the hell is this, poop roulette?' The dog had blocks and blocks to do her thing, but will only shit when she and her handler are in inherent danger. "It makes me feel ALIVE!" She would say, if she could talk. Or maybe, "hey, I gotta poop. NOW. Let's stop before we cross the street." Yeah, that would have been helpful.

She held strong, as I used every ounce of strength to pull her 70 pound ass to safety on the sidewalk, which is where she deposited a couple measly presents. I was like, "Is that all you've got?! I just risked my life for that?!" If you're going to try to kill yourself and me, at least make it worth the while...Please, by all means, shit a mountain and I wouldn't have even been mad.

No harm done, I guess, except for the dozen people or so who witnessed me wrestling a pooping dog across the street. I love dogs, but seriously, they are so goddamn retarded sometimes.





Oh heeeeeey! Der, der, der, I like to poop in the street!

Makin' it to May: Baby Executive

A few days ago while driving through the three square miles of concrete jungle in Denver — lots of parks here, ya know — I caught a rare glimpse of myself in the driver's seat in the mirrored glass of a skyscraper. I looked like a child driving a car. People probably look over and say, 'why the hell is that 12-year-old driving a vehicle?!'

Recently I've graduated from looking 16 to about 22 to strangers at first glance. I'm not sure how this happened since nothing has changed physically, so I'm assuming its the setting I'm in. Of course looking 22 with the label of intern attached to your name is not so good for a 28-year-old grad student trying to fight her way into a serious, completely new career.

It's amazing how differently people treat you in the workplace when you look younger than you really are. I've come to adopt the philosophy that you should never assume anything. Always encourage and never belittle, even in your mind, because you never know what somebody has been through, regardless of their age. Apparently most of the rest of the world does not agree with me.

When co-workers tried to send me on errands, interrupted me when I tried to talk or scoffed knowingly when I said I had one more year of school left I just wanted to grab the hair on the sides of their head, shake them and say, "DO YOU KNOW WHAT I'VE BEEN THROUGH TO BE HERE RIGHT NOW?! DID YOU EVEN BOTHER TO ASK YOURSELF THAT QUESTION BEFORE YOU REACTED IN SUCH A WAY?!" God, it's irritating. I'm already done with school and I've already had a career. This is my second career after a layoff, a subsequent long term stint in unemployment, a whole lot of other bullshit mixed in followed by a complete life do-over. Now I go to grad school full time — because I have to — I have three jobs and I'm working my ass off. People twice my age haven't had an "adventure" even half as eventful as mine. Everyday I ask myself, what am I DOING? But, like I said, gotta make it to May.

Now that the truth is out that I've aged six years over the past six weeks, people have now stopped trying to send me on errands and what not, but it's still a bit of a struggle. Recently I've been included in a lot of projects in which an intern is priledged to take part, but I'm walking this fine line between intern in the learning phase and seasoned professional. On one hand, the higher ups look to me for answers and on the other hand they like to remind me that I have a lot to learn — knowing smiles that say, 'oh honey, just stop' all around. Starting the marketing department at a company is not an easy task, especially for an intern in the midst of a career change. I know what I'm doing as far as marketing more than anybody else in the room, yet I'm far, far from a seasoned marketer. Frankly, I've been handed a job that I don't know how to do completely — just bits and pieces of it from what I've learned from school and not the whole picture from scratch. This would probably even be a huge challenge for a veteran in the field. I feel like a kid walking around in business casual, yet I know I'm not incompetent.

I want to be someplace where I'm properly coached, mentored and encouraged like an intern is supposed to be, not belittled and pressured, but does that exist in the limbo that I'm living in? It's a situation where I am glad to admit the extent of my abilities, but I was fed to the sharks anyway. I can handle it, but handling it gracefully and up to expectations is another story. Will this help me learn or only show me how badly I can fail and screw up any chance at a new career that I've worked so hard for?

Twenty eight is still pretty damn young. I've experienced so much, yet have so much to learn and I'm caught some place right in the middle — not young and stupid, but not old and wise. This place sucks. Get me out of here.

Dear god, is it May yet?