Category Archives: Funny

holiday shopping finale

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Yesterday, I went to the mall to get the Christmas presents for myself, courtesy of a check my mom sent me last week. It’s kind of an annual tradition in our family. Problem is, the last few times I’ve been shopping, nothing has really looked cute on me. (This is entirely an issue with my self-image and not the clothes, and I know that.) But I also know that I would’ve gotten hell if I had used my Christmas money for something like groceries or utility bills, so I was determined to find clothes that I liked. I hit at least 9 different stores, but by god, I found a few things that didn’t look too awful. So hooray for that, Christmas shopping is officially over for me.

For the most part, my encounters with mall employees were pleasant or unnoteworthy, except for two little things that I thought would make funny anecdotes. Number one: While passing through the fragrance section of a department store, I stopped to smell a couple of things I hadn’t seen before. As I started to leave, one of the fragrance ladies jumped out with her little piece of paper that had been sprayed with perfume to offer it to me. I’m actually a big fan of this type of marketing, as opposed to the women who try to assault you by spraying you with the actual perfume. Sure, give me the piece of paper, I can throw it away in 5 seconds after I’ve decided I don’t like it. I’ll be much happier doing that, rather than having to take a shower to get rid of the smell.

So she comes up to me and says “New fragrance?”, and starts to hand me the paper. As soon as my hand touches it, she says in a voice about 10 times quieter than before, “… by Paris Hilton.” Doh! Too late now, I’ve already agreed to take the piece of paper by reaching for it. There’s no backing out of this little perfume transaction at this point. The funny part was that she was so clearly embarassed to have to push Paris Hilton’s perfume on people, I almost didn’t hear her say the name over the mall noise. So I took the paper and walked away, and it took every ounce of self-control in my body not to sniff it, turn around and say “Gee, it doesn’t smell like skank ho.” And of course, because I fought the urge and didn’t say it, I then got a wicked case of the church giggles in the middle of the mall. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud. I’m sure people thought I was nuts.

The other incident took place on my way out. As I finished shopping, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten in something like 7 1/2 hours. I skipped hungry, and went straight to “If I don’t eat something now, I’m either going to faint or kill someone.” So I decided that on my way out of the mall, I would stop to get a pretzel dog. [Aside: If any of you have not yet experienced this most wondrous creation of the mall food court, do so immediately. It’s like a hot dog, only more buttery and salty. Translation: heaven.] There was a kiosk in the middle of the hallway that had perfumes and lotions, and as I walked past it, the guy working there asked me if I’d like to try something. I don’t know what it was, he had a bottle of something blue in his hands, and I wasn’t listening – I was a woman on a mission. I shook my head and said “no thanks.” That’s actually excessively polite for me when I have low blood sugar. Then he says, “Can I ask you something?” Um, ok. I stopped walking and turned around. He said, “Are your nails real or fake?” I was so confused, I don’t know why I didn’t realize that this was part of a sales pitch. I said, “They’re real,” and held my hand out to show him. He grabbed my hand and started to pull me toward his kiosk. He said, “Can I show you something that would be just amazing for your nails?” This guy obviously had no clue that he had just taken his life into his own hands by delaying me on my Quest for Pretzel Dog Bliss. So I gave him my biggest, sweetest “I’m being polite because that’s how my parents raised me, but if you don’t let go of my hand this instant, so help me, I’m leaving this mall with one of your eyeballs as a rearview mirror decoration” southern girl smiles, and I said, “No.” Very firm, no room for negotiation. A fleeting look of terror crossed his face, and he let go of my hand. I decided to let him live, despite the fact that I would’ve been at least 10 seconds closer to my pretzel dog if he hadn’t stopped me. Oh well.

Also, I have to give a shout-out to Sally over at Catoptric, who now has me completely and totally hooked on Project Runway. If any of you haven’t seen it, tune in immediately. The bitchiness is rampant. Rampant, I tell you! It’s so great. There are two of the gayest gay men I have ever seen in my life on that show. (And I used to be friends with a drag queen, so that’s saying something.) There’s also a guy on that show with cornrows, who I find oddly attractive. Which is kind of alarming, as I’m not typically a cornrow-loving kind of gal. Last night, they got rid of the girl with the constant sourpuss look on her face. And thank god, I was tired of looking at her, and her dresses were ugly.

GBC Topic: Worst Kid I Ever Baby-Sat For

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There are actually two stories that I have to relate on this topic, although one kid wasn’t as bad as the other (probably because I only baby-sat for her once, rather than multiple times). First, the milder kid story: when I was in college, there was one semester when I was overloading my classes so I couldn’t really pull off an actual part-time job. Instead, I worked for a baby-sitting agency. How it works is that the parents call the agency, request a sitter, and the lady at the agency calls her sitters to find out who’s available. It was great because it was totally flexible; I could turn down jobs if I had an exam the next day, or take it if I knew that the kids would be asleep early enough that I could study while I was there.

One night, I had a baby-sitting job that was two suburbs away (I was living in Memphis at the time). The parents were aging hippies; they struck me as the type of people who were too busy using recreational drugs and “finding themselves” to bother having kids until they were in their late 40’s. So they had one daughter, a 6 year-old named, and I swear to God I’m not making this up, Happy. This was not a nickname for anything, the actual name on the child’s birth certificate was Happy. And as one might expect, she was the most miserable brat I had ever encountered in my life. She screamed, she cried, she threw temper tantrums for 5 solid hours. I couldn’t get her to go to sleep, either, she was still awake and screaming when her hippie parents came home.

So on the way home, I passed through the suburb between the town where the hippies & their evil offspring lived and Memphis. This was a town where the cops are known to be horrendous assholes. I was speeding, but I don’t remember how badly – I think I was doing 55 in a 40. I got pulled over, and I was kind of resigned to getting the ticket because I knew I was wrong, and I knew that cops in this town never let anyone off with a warning. The cop came up to the window, and I told him the story of my night – the bratty kid named Happy, the hippie parents whose house smelled like patchouli, my resulting migraine, and the fact that all I wanted to do was go home & go to sleep. He actually let me go. I couldn’t believe it. In fact, everyone in Memphis who I told this story to didn’t believe me when they found out where I had been pulled over. The thing is, I’ve gotten out of tickets before (and since) this occasion, where it was probably because I was cute and flirtatious and all that. But on this particular evening, when I had been withered down to nothing and looked like hell and didn’t have an ounce of flirty left in my exhausted body, I think I was just fortunate that I happened to come across the only empathetic cop in that entire town.

The other kid was one that I baby-sat in high school. Actually, I should just leave the kid out of this and mention that these were definitely the Worst Parents I Ever Baby-Sat For. The dad was in his mid-50’s and very wealthy. I’m not exactly sure what he did for a living, but he traveled a lot, and he was gone almost every weekend. The mom was in her late 20’s, classic example of a trophy wife, and she liked to go out drinking with her girlfriends on the weekends when her husband was gone. I should mention Mom’s standard outfit for these particular evenings: Aqua-Net teased hair, purple spandex top, matching purple spandex mini-skirt that barely covered her ass, matching purple eye shadow (all the way up to the brow, baby), whorehouse red lipstick, and stilleto heels. Keep in mind this was around 1991, and hair metal was still pretty big in Mississippi. She looked like something out of a Whitesnake video. She usually came home so falling-down drunk and coked out of her mind that she would give me anywhere from $50 to $100 for being there for 4 or 5 hours. (She’d then offer to drive me home; thank God I only lived 4 blocks away, because I would never have gotten in a car with that woman.)

The money is really the only reason I kept baby-sitting for them, because the kids were horrible. Well, the 3 year-old was fine because he was too young to understand how dysfunctional his family was; the 9 year-old, however, was a terror. I think his behavior is most likely what is classically defined as “acting out.” Here’s a list of stunts this kid pulled during my time as his baby-sitter:
* He rode his bike into the garage where the handle “accidentally” scraped the side of his dad’s black Mercedes. (The scrape spanned the entire length of the car.)
* He would dangle himself from the 2nd-floor landing and threaten to drop if his wishes weren’t granted immediately. I finally figured out this game and just walked away. He’d eventually pull himself up.
* He would open and slam his bedroom door repeatedly, then lock himself in his room when I went to tell him to stop. I eventually found the parents’ tool box and removed his bedroom door knob completely, so he couldn’t lock himself in anymore. (I noticed in my future baby-sitting jobs that his parents never put it back, either.)
* He set his own tree house on fire. My friend Allison was baby-sitting that night. She was inside with the 3 year-old and didn’t know anything was going on until the fire truck pulled up in front of the house.
* He ran a permanent magic marker down the big screen TV. It was one of those old-fashioned projector-type screens, the TV was totally ruined.
* He spilled a two-quart jug of grape kool-aid all over the white leather couch and white carpet in the living room. (Another example of how the parents were jackasses: why on earth would you have a white living room when you have 2 little boys in the house?)

Eventually, the entire family moved to Arkansas, and I assume found some other baby-sitter to torture. I was sad to lose the extra income because it paid way more than my other high school baby-sitting jobs, but I was grateful at the same time. By my calculations, that kid is about 21 or 22 years old now. I wonder how he turned out. I also wonder about the mom, if she ever grew up and cleaned up her act. Who knows. It’s interesting to imagine, though.

A letter to myself on the occasion of my 13th birthday

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Ok, I don’t want to write all day so we’ll just hit the important things that you need to know. The next few years are going to suck, but you’ll be a better person for having survived them. One of the most valuable pieces of information I can share with you is that in a couple of months, you’re going to have your first “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret” moment (you know what I’m talking about). From that point on – listen closely – never wear white shorts. Seriously, you’ll thank me later.

School stuff: High school is going to be absolutely horrid, but mom eventually caves in and lets you go to the Ed Center for a summer so you can skip your senior year and graduate early. Of course, then she wants you to stay in Jackson because you’re only 17 when you start college and she thinks it’s too young for you to leave home. And that’s fine. The community college that you’ll go to for a year is a good place to get some of the more basic boring classes out of the way, and it’s pretty easy to make straight A’s there. As for the rest of college, here’s some advice: Don’t go to M!ssissippi State just because Dad went there. Trust me, Starkville is not your kind of town, and you are going to hate it there. Also, don’t go to M!llsaps. You think you’re living in your sister’s shadow now? At M!llsaps, you’ll not only end up with at least 2 professors who remember her and love her and accidentally call you her name all the time, you’ll even end up living in the exact same dorm room she lived in. Here’s a tip: You’re meant to live either in or near a big city. Your closest bets are either Memphis or New Orleans. Choose Memphis. You’ll end up making friends there who you’ll keep for the rest of your life. Also, when you get the chance to go live in Washington, DC, during the summer of 1995, go. You’ll meet one of your best friends there.

Music: Stop listening to hair metal right now. Seriously, just stop. It’ll save you years of cringing in embarassment later. And whatever you do, do NOT cry when you find out that Jon Bon Jovi got married, because your brother will mock you about this for the rest of your life. In a year or two, you’re going to discover grunge, and you’re going to make a proclamation that someday you’re going to live in Seattle because that’s where all of those cute rock boys live. Believe it or not, you actually do end up living in Seattle, but it has nothing to do with grunge. In fact, by the time you move there, you don’t even listen to grunge all that much anymore.

Family: Right now you have 3 grandparents left. They’re all going to be gone before you turn 21, so appreciate them now. Same goes for your great aunts and great uncles. As for Dad, you eventually come to an understanding with each other once he finally learns to back off of you about your weight. Your whole family gets very close in the next 15 years. Right now, I know Tracy drives you crazy because she treats you like you’re just her baby sister, but she’ll end up saving your ass more times than you can count later on. You and Chris get a lot closer in high school, because you have to share a car and you end up hanging out with a lot of the same people. You also start covering for each other and lying to Mom & Dad when one of you is up to no good. He turns out to be a pretty cool guy after all (who’d have guessed?). And Mom is just Mom. She’s your rock now, and she will be 15 years from now. Some things don’t change.

As for boys, you’re going to be a late starter, and then you’ll make up for lost time with a vengeance. It’ll take you a long time to figure out which guys are bad for you (hint: everyone you date in 1997), and which ones are good. Trust me, in 2004, you’ll meet the best of the good guys, and you’ll be very happy.

Good luck these next few years, 13 year-old me. You’re going to need it.

Love,
28 year-old me

exploding sheep trucks

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I got the pictures from our trip to Atlanta posted – it seems kind of strange to have all of these happy smiling photos for a trip that was, overall, anything but happy. But my family’s get-togethers are always pretty fun, no matter how shitty the reason for the get-together may be. And there are some really good pictures in there, which is why I wanted them online.

So, this week had an interesting side-note. On Tuesday morning, Scott called and asked what I was doing on Wednesday night. I didn’t have anything scheduled, and he told me to leave it open, but it was a surprise and he wouldn’t tell me what it was. So Wednesday night, I meet up with Scott & Ted and we start walking toward some unknown venue for some unknown event. Turns out that Robin Williams was playing at the Showbox in Seattle, apparently trying out new material in small clubs. Somehow, Scott managed to get tickets, which is amazing when you consider how big an act Robin Williams is, and how small a venue the Showbox is (I believe the sign at the door said max capacity was in the 900 range). The show was really funny – except for the stupid bi-atch sitting next to me who I swear NEVER shut up for the entire show because she talked to her boyfriend the whole damn time. Even after the woman in front of me turned around and asked her to please keep it down because her talking was kind of distracting, she still kept on yakking. I wanted to punch her in her big peroxide-blonde head.

Oh, for those of you who are wondering, that subject line relates to a story that Dave told me earlier this week. A guy on his way to a local fair crashed his truck, with a trailer full of sheep, on the hill on Dave’s street. The truck caught on fire – the guy got out & was ok, but the sheep were slightly singed. Not hurt, though. The neighbors all rounded up the sheep, and apparently there were chunks of slightly burnt wool scattered all over the road. It’s one of those stories that wouldn’t be funny if anyone (or the sheep) had been seriously hurt, but because everyone got out ok, I thought it was hilarious. And I think “Exploding Sheep Trucks” would make an AWESOME name for a band.

Anyway, this afternoon marks the beginning of Bumbershoot, which is a huge 4-day music festival here in Seattle. Dave and I are going this evening, and I just got a phone call from Krissy and she apparently wants to tag along, which should be interesting.

I wonder if his name is Homer

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I want to hang out with this fella. I’d be willing to go down for some beer and doughnuts, too.

On another subject, one of the things on the agenda when Kris arrives is to go on a road trip. Originally we were going to go to Mount Rainier – however, it looks like it’s going to be cloudy with scattered showers in Seattle this weekend, which means that the mountain will be completely rainy and too cloudy to see anything. And the whole point of going is for the amazing views. So I was trying to figure out an alternative road trip, and I came up with the San Juan Islands, which is a small cluster of islands between Washington and Canada that’s just a short drive plus a ferry ride away. I found this website, which has this interesting little factoid about one of the islands:

“The Orcas make their home in the San Juans typically from late April through the end of September – sometimes longer. They can be seen from land, most likely from the west side of the island at Lime Kiln Point State Park, also known as ‘Whale Watch Park’ – the only such park in the nation, or from a commercial whale/wildlife boat.”

Are you kidding me? We can go whale-watching!! How cool is that?? I’ve never seen an orca in real life! That is too cool!! I freaked out when I read that yesterday, and I have been super-excited ever since. I cannot wait until Saturday, that’s going to be so awesome.

Side note: Today is the one year anniversary of my blog. Happy 1st birthday, PooBou.com!

geeks + pop culture = uh… something weird

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This morning as I was walking to work, I noticed something strange as I approached my building. The sidewalk widens out quite a bit in front of the building, so cars can pull up onto it – it’s a 30 minute load/unload zone. I spotted this huge black Suburban, which wouldn’t have been all that noticeable except the personalized license plate said “FABPRTNRS” and it was trimmed in hot pink maribou (explanation for the guys: that’s the fluffy feather stuff that they make boas out of). Perhaps more conspicuous than the SUV itself, was that in front of the SUV was a camera crew, complete with crane microphones and all. The Suburban backed up, sped forward, screeched to a halt, 5 of the gayest-looking men I’ve ever seen hopped out, they did one of those sports huddle things (all hands in the center and they yell something in unison), then they ran into my building. The camera crew filmed the whole thing. The weird part is that it wasn’t the guys from “Queer Eye”, but it sure as hell looked like that’s what they were filming. I ran into one of my co-workers outside and asked him what was going on. He was like “Oh that, it’s some internal Microsoft thing for one of their meetings or something…”

Did I mention that we share a building with Microsoft?

I have to say, I was kind of disappointed. There are a few dudes at work who are in dire need of make-overs, I was kind of hoping that the Queer Eye guys had come to Seattle. But alas, it is not to be. Still, that is one of the strangest things I’ve seen all week.

Apropos of nothing: last night I got a paper cut on my right thumb when I was opening my mail. This morning, when I went to get my bagel out of the toaster (Friday is free bagel day at work), I burned my left thumb. I am such a klutz.

Tonight, I’m going to see Scott boogie down with his Emerald City Swing group. Tomorrow, I’m going to explore the thriving metropolis that is Duvall, WA. I feel bad making Dave drive 45 minutes into the city every time we go out, so I’ve volunteered to go to the boonies. If you guys don’t hear from me again, it means I’ve been attacked by a roving gang of alpacas. I hear they’re all over the place out there.