Sexy Librarian

As of late I've been wearing a LOT of INSIDE clothes. Gym clothes. Yoga pants. Running shoes. Sweats. So today when I finally got the chance to go out IN PUBLIC, even running errands, I felt the need for a little spit and polish, if you'll pardon the expression. I ended up wearing a checkered black and blue dress that was short-- I had to wear shorts under it.. I paired this with some black knee high socks, my black wing tip shoes, and of course, my new slightly larger glasses. The ensemble was a little risque, a little schoolgirl. With my hair down and gigantically poofy (or as we say, serious) I was feelin' pretty styled.

"Let me put on my slightly larger glasses!"

That's when I walked into the little library close to my house. I strolled up casually to the lady at the front desk: "Excuse me? I reserved a book online about...10 minutes ago. Would it be on the reserved shelf already, or would it still be out with the other books?"
Short dress. Knee high socks. Hipster goggles. This woman thought I was a BIMBO: "....Did you reserve it at /this/ library?"
"Uhm. Yes."
She told me it was probably still on the shelf.

I wandered over to look for this particular fitness book. After checking for a good three minutes (small library), I divined that it wasn't there. I even checked the new arrivals: nada. So I returned to the desk, dreading every step. "Uhm...I couldn't find it." She turned her attention the computer, fingers set of the keyboard.
"What is the name of the book you're looking for?"

"It's a fitness book," I assured her, then with extreme hesitation and a lowered voice, "it's called..... Look Better Naked." She gave me THE LOOK. The one you get when you know someone is judging you. In my mind, she was sure I was a porn star in training. Next I was going to ask for the Little Book of Big Blow Jobs. After a few seconds of searching on her computer, she pointed out that when there isn't enough room for books, they put them on TOP of the shelves. Something I had failed to notice until I made myself red in the face by asking this SLIGHTLY elderly, bespectacled librarian for help finding infamous naughty books. She assured me she would help me find the book if I couldn't and I walked over there, past two rows of people on computers, who may or may not have heard the entire conversation.

There, sitting on top of the shelf was Look Better Naked, a book by the editor of Women's Healthy magazine that covers everything from nutrition and workouts to skin care and confidence boosting. My only checkmate was that instead of signing my own books out at the kiosk, I proudly presented them to the librarian at the desk.

So in a few weeks I will in fact look, or at least FEEL better in the buff. But you're just gonna have to take my word for it. Until my professional porn career launches, there just won't be any nude pictures of me on the internet. (To Mom finding this blog and seeing this post, somehow: JUST KIDDING.)

Photos: August 5-7

August 5th. Cowboys & Aliens.
It's my goal to figure out a way to wear this hat in a real outfit without looking like Indiana Jones. Also, to marry Sam Rockwell, because he's adorable, no matter what movie he ends up in.

August 6th. The Hill.
Every day when I drive home from work at night and the streets are a little empty, there's a big hill. My favourite thing to do is speed up the hill, then to take my foot off the gas and bomb down it with nothing but gravity to accelerate. I love the speed and the freedom.

August 7th. Cat's Eye View.
The after work nap!

Annnnd I missed the eighth. OOPS. I'll just have to update with two pictures on one day or something....

4AM Rambles

I like staying up late because it affords me the time to sit with my own thoughts, without distractions and write, think, make plans. When I'm up late I can dream about the finish line, the films and stories I'm not yet writing. I can think about the acoustic guitar I want to learn to play, and the people I miss with more clarity than in the chaos of daytime. I can really get down to the marrow in the bones of what I want, or need. Things that seem unclear suddenly emerge like they're really obvious.

What I need to do with my future. What I want from life. What I feel about who, and why. Sometimes the hard thing is admitting to these revelations, because they're not what everyone else wants or needs to hear. Sometimes, they're not even what I want to hear, especially if they mean putting myself before pre-made plans or notions. Things that might mess with other people.

The pressure to appease the other people in my life is manifest in a diagnosed social phobia/anxiety disorder that I try not to let define me. Every now and again though, it allows me to open up, especially to other people. I found out two of my co-workers also suffer from anxiety today and it immediately put my heart out to them in a way I don't think I would have connected with them otherwise.
It seems like almost everyone I know has suffered through, or is suffering through some kind of anxiety of the times. At dinner I asked my parents if this was the case 30 years ago. Were people just more quiet about their problems because mental illness was taboo? Or is the internet age breeding directionless heart broken kids with carpal tunnel and happy pills to keep them upright during the day?

Staying up late also affords me the brilliant ability to ramble for paragraphs, a constant stream of thought sort of thing. I don't think I should write much longer, it's 4AM. We'll be back to your regular programming soon... I'd just post this because I'd hate for all these thoughts to go to waste somewhere.

Sticky situation.

WARNING: This post is NOT safe for you if you're uncomfortable with talk about lady parts, waxing, swearing, (you can see where this is going) and other fun things of such nature. If you want to stop reading now I'll leave you with this picture of my pussy....cat rocking his PRIDE bling and then you can have a little giggle, wander on your merry way, and leave the rest of us to our debauchery.ANYWAY. Now that it's just us, let's get down to it. I've written other blogs about the adventures of waxing BEFORE, but I'm too lazy to dig them up and anyway, today was a particularly comical episode in the Life of Riley. For reasons unknown to myself today, I felt the need to pare down the savage garden a little bit. Whether it was for the beach trip I may or may not be taking, the short SHORT shorts I'll be wearing to hot yoga tomorrow, or just general insanity, I may never know.

What I do know is that I had strips from a home wax kit my friend bought and left at my house awhile ago. I looked at them and thought, "Hey, cool! Why not?" So I stripped my pants off (because I ALWAYS wear tearaways) and got to work. These particular strips were low maintenance. You only had to warm them with friction. It kind of looked like I was trying to start a fire.

I peeled the strip open and applied it to the freshly trimmed greenery downstairs, only to realize: holy SHIT this stuff is sticky. Ohmygod this is going to hurt. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. So I did what I had to do and took it off. But because I wussed out, I did it slowly. (I'm one of THOSE band aid people.) And it DID hurt, regardless. When I looked at the sheet, a few hairs were hanging out on it pathetically. Otherwise, the damn things had been pretty ineffective... Mostly due to the fact that I am LAME.

That's when I came to the horrible realization that I had a sticky, glossy candy coating of wax on EVERY. SINGLE. HAIR. Horror. I imagined all the horrible things that might get stuck in my pubic hair if the problem wasn't attended to. So I hopped into the shower and tried to wash it off with soap. Nothing. Expensive facewash. Nothing. Bodywash. Nothing. Shampoo. Nothing. It was like the episode of the Simpsons where Lisa gets gum in her hair and Marge tries everything from Peanut Butter to Baba Ghanoush... If that episode were to take place in my crotch. I hopped out of the shower (the towel stuck to me) and hurried into my room.

If I couldn't save myself, the internet was going to have to give me answers. Moral of the story: GOOGLE IT. Also, if you EVER for ANY reason have problems with removing wax from your skin, the trick is OIL. Any oil. I used baby oil. Google said olive oil, vegetable oil or canola would also do the trick. So now, the name of the game is learning to SHAVE the South Pole, or else, paying someone who will NOT pussy out when it comes to making me feel pain by riddling my nethers with hot wax and linen band aids. The end.

Photos: August 1-4

August 1st. 15 minute break.

August 2nd. Walk the tracks to the store.

August 3rd. Late night.

August 4th. Dimoitou!

Sitcom

I am a character in a sitcom. I'm am convinced of this because:

A) I get into situations you would find in a sitcom.
B) I react like a TV character, this meaning... Not rationally. (Also, a lot of the time I see the people around me as characters in their own lives. I'm like Abed from Community, and the way he analyzes everyone like they're on a TV show. Whether this is healthy or not really remains to be seen.)

For example: Today at work, we were finishing up our money counts so we could all go home for the night. I dropped a nickel on the ground counting out my till and it was like the scene in A Christmas Story where Ralphie's dad has to change the tire on the car.
"Ohhhhh fffffffuuuuuuuu-dddgggee..." I said.
"Were you just going to swear? Were you going to say fuck?" My manager asked.

Then she went on to say that I'm so NICE and sweet and innocent. So much so that when I swear she finds it surprising. (This is where everyone I know in real life bursts out laughing. I have a bit of a profanity problem...especially when I'm driving. The word 'sluts' comes into play a LITTLE too often.) In fact, my manager called me the Preacher's Daughter. Not the naughty misbehaving kind-- the GOOD kind. I was shocked, and to be honest, appalled. I guess that's the kind of image I project at work, being happy all the time. I always try to be as nice to people as possible... So don't ask me WHY I found this label surprising or offensive. It was one of those irrational things sitcom characters do. I immediately wanted to begin swearing like a sailor, just to make a point. Just to prove that old line from Fight Club: you are not your job. You are not who you ARE at your job.

I spent my drive home imagining ways to prove that I'm NOT a goodie two-shoes, in hypothetical ways. They started out hilariously small, such as not charging people for bags, or wearing bright coloured converse. Then they started getting more extreme: caught shoplifting. Speeding tickets. Losing it in an aisle and trashing items off the shelves. I'm actually thinking about writing a mini pilot episode, just to stretch my writing legs. I'll call it: THE LIFE OF RILEY! (Which was already a sitcom in the 1950s, but shush.)
This isn't the first time I've thought this way: that I'm a character in a TV show. In fact I'm pretty sure I've ranted to my friend Josh about this fact a couple of times. Josh specifically, for some reason.

Like the time I thought a guy at my internship was asking me out for coffee, when really, he was asking me to GET him a coffee.

Or the time I went to see 127 Hours with a friend-- not the kind of friend I was comfortable crying around-- and had to keep myself from all out BAWLING at the end of the movie. Awkward central.

OR the time when I-- oh geez. You get the point here. Life is comical. It's only a matter of time before I start hallucinating a laugh track, I get my own theme song and some wacky neighbors move in next door to fuel the fire.

POST: The Sixtieth

Post the sixtieth: wherein the author of the blog must acknowledge her own vajayjay and the fact that it sometimes makes her do stupid things. Or shall I say, it ENTITLES her to do stupid things.
Let us start at the beginning.

I was up early today to take Kacy to work, and then to go to work myself. I haven't seen 7AM since the run, or my last morning shift, but I don't REALLY remember. Imagine my dismay when I cruised into work at 8 and my manager told me that I was two hours early. That I wasn't supposed to start until 10! D'oh! Since they're trying to keep hours under control, working early wasn't an option and I wasn't about to drive back to my house only to come back. Instead, I popped into the Starbucks down the street, got a latte and sat out on the patio in the early morning sunshine. I sipped it and enjoyed and read the Runner's World magazine I had gotten from the library. It kicked me in the butt and inspired me with running inspiration.

That's when I made the ultimate mistake. I went shopping. On a day when I felt everything was taking a downward slant, I decided sunshine therapy was just NOT enough, and retail therapy might help out. I wandered into a nearby Winners, and since I've been on the prowl for a nice larger bag for a little while, so I went right to purses before anything else caught my eye. That's when I was sucker punched by gender clichés. I saw THIS bag. Subtle, classy, a little badass and a little hippie. Matt and Nat, although two weeks ago were completely unknown to me, make their bags out of recycled materials and vegan leather. It was PERFECT. It was GORGEOUS. The snap open and close hinted at something classic. It was also 74$ on sale, something I never in my LIFE would have spent on a bag. But girls, if the media is to be believed, have many vices, whether it's bags or shoes or hats or...anything. This bag was different. SPECIAL, OKAY?


(Source.)I left without it, but I went to work trying to find ways to justify it to myself. I started thinking about how I WOULD be working two jobs soon. About how I graduated recently, and maybe, just maybe I could buy myself a little gifty-wift? I started working out a system of how many dollars a kilometer was worth, and paying it off to myself by running those kilometers at the gym. This bag was literally following me around as I went about my work day. I don't know why. All I know is that when I clocked out, I drove right back to that Winners, made a beeline for the bags and GASP. My prize was gone. It was GONE-- oh. No wait, someone had just moved it onto a different hook. I was both thrilled and horrified that it was still there. Because the idea had taken a mind of it's own, I had no choice in the matter, I was buying the gaddamn bag.

I marched into the line with some kind of resolve, a grim look on my face, like I'd been issued a dangerous task. I was actually in the line for a few minutes, giving me a few chances to bail. But I couldn't bail, no. I was a woman, fulfilling my destiny. Buying the most expensive bag I'd ever even CONSIDERED purchasing. On the regular, I am a cheapskate. I have trouble spending 25$ on ANYTHING, let alone one measly bag. This was three times that.

When I got up to the counter, I regaled the story of my saga with the bag to the cashier. How I had seen it, loved it, been stalked by it, and then had returned to claim what was mine. It had to be some sort of ancestral story shared by my fellow vajayjays, because the other cashier looked over at me with big, sympathetic eyes and nodded slowly. "I had the same problem," she confessed with a wistful smile that made me think that HER bag was her one true love and they had been married last summer and now have a couple of lovely coin purses together.

When I swiped my credit card to pay for it, I didn't feel a thing. The guilt I usually associate with spending any money on almost anything was nowhere to be found. Girl sees bag. Girl loves bag. Girl sells soul for bag. I'll be sure to style it into an outfit so y'all can weigh in on my latest investment.

What've you treated yourself to/splurged on lately?