Plenty Of Stinky Fish

Plenty of rotten fish, spineless fish, slimy fish, cheap fish, dull fish, ugly fish, dumb fish, and late fish. 
But it's better known to the general public as 'Plenty of Fish', a dating website. Some refer to it as P.O.F. Or more realistically, once you consider how fast the actual date will make you want to disappear from the restaurant table, 'P.O.O.F.'.

This is a dating website that should be avoided at all costs. But that’s redundant. All dating websites should be avoided at all costs. However, there was this one stray fish who somehow snuck through the cracks. Recently, I've become one of these people who despise hours of lengthy emails and text messages. Why drag out the torture, when so much can be determined from a phone call. Especially when for women, a bad voice on the phone is an automatic deal breaker. So I’d personally rather just get on the phone and see if we either a} can have a stimulating conversation, and as importantly b} make sure his voice doesn’t sound like he's had a recent tracheotomy. 

We talked on the phone, and his voice passed inspection. It was fine, but the conversations being spewed by the voice were more or less the audible versions of a bottle of Ambien taken with a handle of whiskey. Beyond underwhelming and borderline suicide inducing. Like I was on the phone with my dry cleaners, trying to muster up some type of physical chemistry by discussing the chronological history of a lint brush.


Shoot me.

He asks me out for that coming Saturday night. Not for dinner, heaven forbid, but just to meet to see if we weren’t revolted by the sight of each other. I was already revolted by the inane conversation, so I couldn’t imagine the actual personification of this conversation resulting in a bigger, more gaggier revulsion.

Crap. Now what.

Well, I was meeting some friends out later on that evening, so initially, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal to meet up for a few drinks prior to that. And as everyone that's done Internet dating knows, you need a plan; If it's going well, you just stay out. But for the inevitability of it going horribly, you must prepare. This is done by first prepping your friends that within the first 10 minutes of meeting your date, you might be bolting into the public bathroom to send them the infamous S.O.S. text message, instructing them to call you immediately with some sudden, fictitious broken down car stories, or possibly some type of life threatening emergency that can only be resolved by you and you only. (You know, "she needs a kidney and we're both the same blood type." I don't know. Make it up.) So it's vital that your friends be kept apprised of the dates status, via live stream Tweets, so you can flee on a dime if the need should arise. 

And it always does.

I'm beginning to think that my dates must think my friends are the most accident prone, organ dependent, needy cluster of people on the planet.

OK, so the boring guy and I pick a time. 8:00 was my original time, but he said he was hoping to spend more time with me, even though he must've heard me hacking into my toilet as he said that.

He asked if we could do 7:00. A bit early for my comfort level. I was hoping to drown out his dullness in a bustling room of colorful alcoholics a little later on. But then again, meeting him a little earlier would leave me a greater bed of time to make fun of him after I left.


7:00 he wants? 
7:00 it is.

I walk into the bar, 6:59 P.M. I wait until 7:05, sit down and politely text him letting him know there's parking right next door, and I’m sitting at the bar. I also tell him he can’t miss me, since at 7:00 on a Saturday night, I’m of course the only asshole in the entire place ( the edited version of that ).

He sends me a text back: “Be there in like 15.”

Wait. What's that sound? I hear an umpire. 

He yells: “Strike 1!”
(Actually Strike 27 if you count the grueling 10 minutes of lame phone conversation, but let’s try and forget that for now. Because even starting at 1, come the end of this date, the umpire's coming down with an acute case of laryngitis).

I don't get this. A full-grown man asks out a full-grown woman. He bumps up the time a full hour earlier. I practically run over every squirrel and baby groundhog to get here on time, and ...“Like” 15??

I’ll be gone in “Like 13 and a half”.

Unreal. A 40 year old dude that can't be on time. Disgusting. This is why I usually date younger guys. The older ones are so irresponsible.

I take out my card and order a drink. An apple-pear martini.

And now I need to kill "...Like 15 minutes". 

Let the friend texting / man shreddage commence.

Just as I was just finishing up my second drink, and texting my friend that I wasn't staying any longer, I feel someone tap me on my shoulder. Here he his.

34 minutes late.

No apology, no acknowledgment of being late, and a severely annoying poke on my shoulder.

(Umpire: “Strike 2!”)

I turn around and see he’s wearing a beigey/grey t-shirt that was so wrinkled that by comparison it made a Shar-Pei puppy look ironed and starched.

(Umpire: “Strike 3!)

Me: “Oh hey, how are you. I’m sorry, did we say 7:34? I thought you emphatically said 7:00."

He kind of smiles, makes a stupid shrug with his shoulders, and basically ignores the question.

(Strike 4!)

The bartender asks him if he’d like a drink. He orders a Bud Light, (Strike 5!), and puts it on my tab, and then tells me I look exactly like a girl on TV (who I look nothing like), that he has a mad crush on.

(Strike, errr…13!!!)

Not only was he wearing a t-shirt that rivaled a ball of aluminum foil that was sat on by an elephant, and somehow peeled itself back open and molded into a homeless persons shirt, but I glance down and see he’s wearing a pair of ancient filthy sneakers, which were being tickled by pants that were so shredded at the bottom, they could’ve been used in a car wash in replace of those soapy dancing car noodles. Except unlike the car wash dancing soap noodles, his stringy pants noodles didn’t look like they ever had a proper introduction to soap.


At least be one. Either late. Or sloppy. If you’re always late, you better make sure you dress to kill. If you’re a fucking slob, you better be an on-time fucking slob. But whatever you do, don’t be a late, unforgiving, sloppy, cheap, tab-hijacking, boring, car wash noodle fucking wearing slob. Just a helpful dating tip.

Maybe it was a blessing. Because after nights like those, I always seem to find God again.

I'm sitting there thinking, “Please Dear God. Please God. Please. God? Don’t make me sit here any longer than I have to. My mother fell down a flight of stairs when she was pregnant with me, broke her water in her first month, laid in bed with me for 8 months, and I survived. I was on my death bed with Lyme disease for over 3 years. I’ve been tested enough. And I’m pretty sure I genuinely can’t make it through this horrid date / t-shirt disaster. Please God, set the restaurant on fire so I’ll have to run out mid sentence. If you do, I promise from now on I’ll just have sex to make babies. See you in church on Sunday. Swear. (Sorry God. No swearing.)"

I'm sorry but whether we want to believe it or not, first impressions are everything. That’s why when you go on a job interview, you don’t show up wearing a track suit, eating scrambled eggs with an armadillo in tow. And casual is one thing. I'm all for casual. Casual is great. Jeans and a nice button down or a pull over. But from head to toe, he was wearing something more like it was pulled-apart. This was like Friday Casual Dress Down Day at the oil refining factory.


Shoot me again. But this time do it so it actually pierces my front temporal lobe and kills me quickly.

And if this is him when he’s trying, what’s gonna  happen after 5 dates with him. 10 dates. When he's comfortable. He’s gonna meet you out in a used contractor bag and banana leaves for shoes, that’s what'll happen.

And guess what, if you’re going to show up looking like you pulled an all nighter with your drinking buddies, your intelligence and personality best be off the chart. And like I said, he was about as exciting as talking to a wet cotton ball. A wet, wrinkled cotton ball. Now I can at least die knowing, if a cotton ball were to talk, I’d know exactly what it would sound like. And it'd be late.

At this point, my normally talkative self apparently decided to go into hibernation for survival purposes, and was replaced by a reticent, bathroom-going, coaster-playing, bitch. (FYI guys…when a woman goes to the bathroom after meeting you for the first time, within 5 minutes of saying hello, she’s leaving in 10 minutes.)

He finally finishes his first shitty free drink, and orders another one. I think this time around he went for the upgrade and got a Pabst Blue Ribbon, and evidently decided to simply rollover the previous "Ordering Beers On My Tab" plan.

(Strike…what number are we on?...)

The depth of boredom in talking to this guy in person, actually made our previous phone conversation about road signs in Yonkers or guitar parts or whatever it was, seem like we were previously unraveling the origins of the universe. So for the remaining 5 minutes, I joyfully brought up guitar parts.


After a painful 45 minutes of what seemed like death by fire ants, I tell him I have to leave in a few minutes to meet up with some friends for dinner. "Have" being the integral word.

He asks me if I’d like another drink.

I said: “Awww no…that’s kind of you, but I’ve already bought myself enough drinks tonight. And I also want to be sure that when I tell my friends about you, and I’m throwing up, they know it’s because I’m describing you, and not that I just have liquor poisoning.”

The S.O.S. call finally comes in. It's my awesome friend, who upon my death, I shall bequeath all my worldly possessions 
(Which at that point could've been within 5 minutes). The call. That beautiful, "sorry dude, gotta go!" call. I stood up, shook his hand, bullshitted something about "nice meeting you", and left leaving a dust trail like the ones where Road Runner is being chased by Wiley Coyote.


The next day he called and asked me out for the following weekend.

I simply told him I couldn’t do it because he had way too much laundry to catch up on.


Clueless fish.

;)~

Just A Normal Story

“Ooh Look guys! There’s an enormous alien squid that must’ve dove head first into the ground, died upon impact and has been rotting there for days, leaving his many legs, sticking out of the ground, all dried up and shriveled.”

“Mom. That’s just a big tree with no leaves on it.”

Poor kids. Their dreams of having a normal soccer mom have long been squelched and replaced with visions of alien squids invading the yard and frequent pleas to “here, take a bite of the dog cookie and tell me what it tastes like.”

Normal moms pack their little kids lunch bags with Kraft Lunchables, a Diet Coke, and a comic book. Not with organic rice krispie treats made from dehydrated carrots, a Do-It-Yourself home condensation kit for water, and the Time Magazine issue titled: The Dangers of PVC’s in Bottled Water; The New Way Kids Are Dying. 

I think it’d be an eye-opening experience to be normal. To look at a tree, and see, just a tree. To Tivo Glee and watch it later as you eat your microwaved Ramen noodles. Invigorating. But for some reason, I wasn’t granted this opportunity. I often wonder if it’s because when my mom fell down the stairs when she was pregnant with me, she ruptured my Normality Sac. But whatever the reason, I missed that elevator, and got the next one.

When you’re normal, you think normal thoughts, do normal things. Enjoy a hot dog, go skiing, you trust doctors, eat Goldfish crackers, one day buy a Black Lab, and have 2.4 kids. I'm clearly abnormal because I just had 2 kids. Couldn't deal with the heartache of raising a forth of a child. 

When you're normal, you get a normal job, file your taxes before the 15th, you cut your grass on the weekends, and you don’t obsess over looking for bugs in your brocolli. You sip egg nog during Christmas,and you never, EVER, get out of your car to yell at police officer because they gave you a ticket. Though I do admit, that was necessary and cathartic.

When normal people, say, want a waffle, they just make a waffle, and eat it. Normal people aren’t thinking of how if they quadrupled the batter recipe, they could make one giant waffle, that E’ggo could use as an employee shoe cubby down at the waffle factory. That would be probably be considered the precursor for psychiatric evaluation or the result of a staph infection that rooted in the brain somewhere behind your eye socket. But I still think the waffle shoe cubby could make millions. And lighten up corporate America.

Normal people love to fly in airplanes, the whole time thinking of arriving at their destination refreshed and already decompressed. They laugh, and sleep, and eat bags of peanuts while casually planning their business lunches. I fly planes eating bags of Xanax while manically planning my funeral as I'm mopping up my armpit sweat. I also generally demand the window seat so I can stare at the engine looking for sparks. Excuse me, but there’s zero reason to feel normal that you’re in the air unless you’re either a canary or a virus.

On a normal weeknight, normal people watch American Idol, Lost, and laugh and share stories and opinions about the characters and plots. While I’d rather sit on my couch and write a poem about how my dad never showed me he loved me, and hid the Twinkies on me when I was 7. And for the record, if friends are what you’re looking for, discussing your emotionally damaging childhood is bad bar conversation. Usually noting that my immediate people periphery ends up 9 feet away from me, appearing that I confessed to them I was diagnosed with Small Pox. The poem however, is actually coming out good. It’s called 

“My Stinky Dad and His Stinky Fucking Twinkies.” No anger there of course, but I've digressed.

I am however, very happy to discover that there are a few miscellaneous entries to my daily life that haven’t yet deviated from the completely normal zone.

Clipping my toenails, for example, has fortunately still remained a rather normal experience. I set out to clip 10 toenails, and when I’m done, miraculously what I have is, 10 gross, clipped toenails. I’d be lying if I said at times I wasn’t tempted to make something out of them, like maybe something reminiscent of a popsicle stick house, and then give it to my dad for Fathers Day. But I usually shake it off and opt for a more straight forward thought…like the thought of accidentally clipping and severing a main artery from a hangnail, and uncontrollably bleeding out in the shower without ever having the opportunity to custom design and order my headstone in the shape of a large cement toe. But for the most part, the act of clipping toenails, pretty much mentally stays on point.

No easy task though. Instead of letting my mind run free like a death row inmate that spotted an open door, I just intently focus on my toenails, say the words “ clip toenails” over and over again, and try and think normal thoughts. But often what comes out are all the different words you can make with the letters:

 “n-o-r-m-a-l t-h-o-u-g-h-t-s.”

“Hormonal thugs”, being one of my favorites.

I’m not sure this is too normal either; Sometimes I attempt to swallow a few vitamins at the same time, and somewhere between the vitamins reaching the back of my throat, and the glass of water meeting my lips, my throat snaps closed like a submerging whales blow hole. It immediately goes into a frozen state of instant paralysis thinking of  the irony of choking to death while doing something healthy. So shut, it remains. I’ll stand there for what seems like days stranded on a desert island, with a mouth full of water and vitamins that are slowly disintegrating in the back of my throat, until I mentally trick myself into believing it’s something I'd have no problem swallowing. Like a wedge of strawberry shortcake the size of my foot. And then finally, the spastic vitamin ordeal is over and I swallow them. And miraculously survive. Normal people swallow their vitamins in one gulp and march off to work without already going through a dry run of the steps necessary to successfully employ The Heimlich Maneuver. 

Thinking normal thoughts. Gee, life would certainly be much easier. Words would remain the words they were intended to be. A donut would simply remain “a delicious donut”, and not some government funded, masterminded plan to get me fat and permanently reliant on diabetes pharmaceuticals. Don't argue with me on that one.

A kiss would remain just a kiss, instead of some twisted subplot to steal my uvula and sell it on the black market.

The funny thing is, although I rarely feel like I’m the quintessential, normal, female, I know somewhere deep inside of me, I’m as normal as it gets. Really deep inside though. Like get on your head lamp. We’re going coal mining.

So how do I really know then? Well because I love way too many normal things. Like long walks, being with meaningful people, eating fresh strawberries, a great meal, the smell of clean sheets and freshly cut grass, a warm shower, a long kiss, hearing “I missed you”. But then again, I also love the smell of fresh horse crap. And Bam, there it is. Bye-bye normal, out the window you go. Nice to have briefly met. Now go play outside with the dried out alien squids on my lawn.

;)~

Shoveling Out My Inner Snow Angel

6", 9", 12", 14", 27". 
No, this is not a story about awesome penises. 

It's about snow. 
Lots of it.
All month. 
All week. 
All night long. 
Inches and feet and yards of it.
This has been the Northeast. 
More frigid than your ex, feeding a snowcone to a polar bear.

In one week alone, we've all seen the hundreds of pictures of buried walkways, snow entombed barbecue grills, frozen faces, and mammoth white humps enveloping everything from pets to what was once your only means of transportation.

I don't know about you, but I'm happy when there's just enough snow to make a cute little snowball to stuff down someone's pants. Perfectly content. I don't really need to be able to recreate the entire city of Moscow with just the snow surrounding my mailbox, to be happy with winter's offerings. 


But then of course, we have 'those other people'. 
You know, the one's who just can't seem to get enough of it.

We all know at least a few of them. Ever notice when there's a major Nor'easter looming, ready to dump 3 feet plus of paralyzing snow, close schools and bring businesses to a standstill, there's always those giddy-ass snow people who change their Facebook statuses to :

" Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!!!!" ?

Fair to say the 'psyched it's snowing' faction of people, aren't single moms with high Italian emotions, 200 foot long driveways and a bulging set of spine discs. Nor are they in any capacity, the actual people doing the shoveling of said snow. That's pretty obvious because singing any type of happy song doesn't go together with rearing up, and tossing 46 pound loads of frozen ice over your broken back in 12º weather, 4 hours straight, 5 weeks in a row while snot is secretly running down your socks. 
Hating, and wishing the Northeast dead, to the violent sounds of death metal, is probably more accurate. 

But the reality is, the jolly, chorusing snow people have taught me something very, very valuable; 

'Learn to see the positives'.

That's a great idea.

Hundreds of cars stuck in icy sink holes, fun plans cancelled, backs severed, ankles snapped, cars sliding off the highways and careening into telephone poles, sinking into ditches, on the surface just seem so burdensome. But what they really are are simply unconventional opportunities for joyful expansion. 

Snow storm, after snow storm, after snow storm, are really just enchanting winter experiences. 
It's just a matter of shifting your perspective.
So from here on, I'd like to stay positive and share my focus on the more uplifting particulars of being inconvenienced by snowstorms, and try and bring my complaining about it to a complete halt.

Positive, okay. I know I can do this. 

Well first off, on a superficial note, compared to the snow, I now look much tanner than I had before. So that's a positive. Someone actually asked me today if I was half black. 
But now compared to the snow, my teeth that I used to think were pretty white, look like I spent the week sucking on charcoal briquettes. 
But since I'm on a quest to stay positive, I'll still celebrate the fact that I'm seemingly bronzy, when in reality, in department store lighting in early February, I'm more like the color of jarred mayonnaise.

I've also been blessed with the opportunity to manually dig 6 foot deep, 200 foot long, war trenches and erect snow forts without the threat of an actual war or having to see my friends get blown to pieces. So this is a really positive experience! The only minor inconvenience is just a few useless discs being thrown into permanent misalignment. Nothing that being hunched over for a week without a paycheck or two won't resolve. 

And considering I live in an antisocial town where shooting people and hiding has become rather high on my bucket list, I know this trench building skill will one day become an exceptionally useful skill.

Also, as a result of trying to claw my way out of the house from restlessness, I've stumbled upon a new beautiful shade of crimson. It's called dried blood. Quite lovely, and very much the same color as a ripe pomegranate, so I might end up doing the whole living room in it.

Oh and did I neglect to mention that I feel sexy and alive now that my body is permanently suited up in clothes that look like I'm going on a whale harpooning expedition? 
Well, I do.

And in spite of the fact that I've been suffering from dreaded Cabin Fever, or House Hepatitis (I don't own a cabin), and have periodic bouts of Cardiac Shovelitis, I still always make sure I have time for romance. Being incapacitated by all this snow is no excuse for not seeking out, positive, romantic experiences. Sure, no one can drive here to come see me. But you just need to be willing to make a couple of concessions. Mine have been to date fat, round, white men that have carrots for noses and random decomposing fruit for eyes. Not much better than my usual dates, fyi on that one. So I've even made room in my upright freezer for us to cuddle. 

Further proof that snow immobility and isolation has catapulted my social life in an ascending direction. 

And who would be so foolish as to not appreciate and see the positives of owning a multitude of domesticated, 'grass only', fragile dogs during an Ice Age revisit. 

Currently sequestered to living on a terrain where nothing shy of a herd of Musk Ox could survive, I now see this as a wonderful, serendipitous opportunity for my 3 dogs and I, to truly bond and get to know each other. Maybe curl up on my cozy, wool rugs, that for the past four weeks of this beautiful, magical snowfall, they've consistently relieved themselves on.

See if it weren't for the picturesque, 3 acre wonderland of white snow, caked up to my door handles, I'd never really have the opportunity to know my dogs on the clinical level that I do now, watching them pee on my slipcovers. Or know how much actual shit, a cup and a half of Chicken and Rice kibble actually yields. 
In good weather, I have no way of knowing this. Because normally, those answers are sadly lost outside in the green, sweet smelling grass. But thanks to the giddy snow Gods, I thankfully now do. Once more, the angelic heaping piles of snow have provided me this wonderful rare opportunity to seek out the positives and see nature up close and personal. 

So as well as my cleaning and screaming skills graduating to the next level, I'm also blessed to get a low cost education in Veterinary Gastroenterology. To elaborate on the aforementioned example, I now know that before you pick up dog poop from the rugs, it needs to sit, and air dry say, for approximately 4-6 hours, so that picking it up off the rugs, doesn't mean, smearing it up, off the rugs. Just passing along the many positive data of my Snowed-In-For-A-Month research, people. Wouldn't want to be the only one hoarding all the happiness. 

Meanwhile, back at the carpet lab, after the 4-6 hours, miraculously, the dog poop has aggressively evaporated to nearly half its size, and is now happily bone dry and much akin to a Pompeiinian artifact. And voila. Smear free removal at your disposal. See, unlike Bill Nye The Science Guy, who threw away all his precious years in prestigious colleges around the world, in merely 4-6 hours in my living room, I was able to garner information regarding the oxidation and natural dehydration process of fecal matter, and in succession, simultaneously discovered the fine art of subduing the gag reflex. Thank you oh glorious, low pressure front, winter wonderland, arctic tundra of a fucking backyard. 

Looking forward to 6" more of positivity tomorrow.

So, "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow".

;)

~dawn