Going up

So I guess things are back to normal. I was more worried than I needed to be. But in fairness to me, I had no idea what to expect, so I think I worried a normal amount. I am afraid though that we are back to normal, and that wasn't right before. We still need to communicate and be on the same page. But at least this has taught me to speak up. I have such a hard time talking about important things, but now I finally realize I have to. Letting things slide by isn't how to live life.

In more fun news, tomorrow night we have a burlesque dancer at the bar. Apparently her theme is that women are goddesses. So me and other bartender are supposed to dress as such. I have no "goddess" type clothes, so I don't know what I'm going to do. But I just got my hair cut and it's really easy to get it curly and sexy, so I'll have hot goddess hair. And my wild eye makeup I love to do. But this dancer should be way fun. She was just on the Conan show last week, so I guess she's a big deal. I don't know exactly what she's gonna do, but she did ask for some local girls to dance with her. Who wouldn't mind making out with her. So I'm pretty excited about that.

Then next Thursday is the 3rd of July. I am kind of scared, I've never bartended in the summer, so I don't know what to expect. Up here the 3rd is the big party night because they set the fireworks off at midnight. I'm not that worried regarding my capabilities. I've worked super busy nights. What I am worried about is that we have a very green crew right now, and the other good evening bartender usually works at another bar that night. So I don't know if he'll be there. And they are currently putting in new shelves, so the alcohol is a mess, which doesn't make for very effective bartending. We have Wisconsin Slim playing, so it's gonna be packed with good people.

I had a dream last night, a long and weird one, as they all usually are. But part of it was that the bar was putting on a drag/strip show. And the event was HUGE, it wasn't at the bar, it was more like an outside concert. Just packed with people. We had a huge bar, a real stage sort of like the place were romeo hangs out in the new romeo and juliet. That outdoor amphetheatre kind of thing we don't have here in town. But it makes me want to do it.

We have a drag show that comes to town once a year, and it fucking rocks. But it's always at this shit ass bar in the valley. We are going to try and snag them for next year. They would have a better time, better people would come to the show. I would request the night off. But before that, we should do an amature drag night. I think that would be so fucking fun. You could be a guy dressing like a girl, you could be a girl dressing like a guy, or my fave you could be a girl dressing like a guy dressing like a girl:) I want to talk to the bosses about it and make it happen. It would be rad. Oh yes, rad.

In completely unrelated news, from our lovely ghetto apartment, I can hear someone playing the banjo all day long. Isn't that neat? And amazingly I don't mind. I think it's kind of funny and random. Back to our apartment. On Monday I had some freak burst of cleaning energy and cleaned the whole apartment. Which doesn't sound like much, but trust me it was. I even got the laundry off the floor in the bathroom and bedroom. And I finally hung most of my pictures. Threw away paper clutter, made the couch look nice with it's makeshift blanket slip cover, basically made it look like a home. And it does. I'm pretty proud.

And in hanging my pictures I've realized I need more. I need one more from a local artist to make her other two make sense. I don't know where to put my collection of russian orthodox church pictures. They don't fit in the living area and I sure as hell don't want them in the bedroom. What I really want is black and white body part pictures for the bedroom. Which is damn harder to find than it should be. It seems most of them were taken mid nineties and you can tell. They're just all cheesy, especially if it's two girls. So if I can't find anything good, I might go with this artist that takes xrays of flowers. They were pretty cool looking and they'd be nice and calming for a bedroom. Not as awesome as a close up of a hip, but whatever. Maybe I'll go search the net for them now.

Random

I don't know what to talk about, but feel like I should be writing. So who knows where this post will end up.

This week is definitely in my top shitty weeks of my life. What makes it so bad is that I'm afraid next week will top this one. And I've barely hung on this long. I'd estimate I've consumed about 500 calories in the last 4 days. And that might be a high estimate. I just can't eat. I'm sick with worry. I'm probably giving myself an awesome ucler, seeing how my diet is camel lights, water and worry and the daily handful of food a friend forces me to eat.

I've never been on this end of things. And I hope to hell I never am again. How can things change to so bad without you realizing it? I've learned not to regret, and I've done a lot of things in my life I should regret. But now that's all I do. Rehashing situations in my head that I could have, no should have, done differently. And one of my mottos that I usually do agree with is that all of my past experiences and choices lead me to where I am and who I am. But now, what could I have done to not get to this point? Anything?

And there is still a very optimistic side of me hoping that this point, albeit bad now, will be good in the long run. That this is necessary to move forward and be happy. Hopefully in the way I want. Like before but better. I guess in the end, one way or another, I will be happy again. But I want what I want. I only want to change the bad, I don't want to get rid of what is the best thing in my life.

Maybe one of my next posts will be happier. I fucking hope so. I can't take this anymore.

Nowadays

I haven't felt pain like this since my dad died. I don't know what to do, all I can do is wait it out. And hope. But hope hurts. But I guess that's life, life hurts too. Five more days, I can make it. We can make it forever.

Another year

Woo! I'm 27! Well technically I wasn't born until 3:50pm today, but since I'm awake from working, it's my berfday! Happy birthday to me! I'll post more tomorrow perhaps. I mean later today.

Why?!

So yesterday was fairly crappy. About as crappy as Mondays are doomed to be. But today is my day off, woo! Well I slept in, but didn't feel good when I got up. Like the sleep had made me mad instead of rested. I think it was the dreams I had. They were very angry, I had to kill someone attacking me. And waking up with a pile of boxes and laundry that I've been ignoring doesn't help my mood either. AND we didn't have any hot water, so no shower for miss stinky feet.
I finally made myself do some laundry. Our building is notorious for people bogarting the washers and dryers. Between three floors we only have three washers and two dryers. I'm on the floor with the broken dryer. Sweet! I made it through a load, only having to pull out someone sheets from the drier, which isn't nearly as bad as clothes and undies. And the sheets were dry, so I didn't feel bad about it. But when I put a second load in the dryer it had to go through several cycles. I went down to put in more quarters and someone had taken my (damp NOT dry) clothes out of the dryer and started drying their own clothes. Effing assholes! Since I was already having a bad day, I took my clothes, opened the door to stop their clothes from drying and went down another floor and used that empty dryer. Okay, maybe I'm the asshole, but just fucking wait your turn! The clothes hadn't been sitting there all day, I was actively doing laundry. I wish people could just be more patient. Or what I really wish is that we had more washers and dryers in the craphole of an apartment building.
Alrighty, off to check on the laundry. Then off to watch a game and be "happy" about it.
Sorry, I really shouldn't blog when I'm so irritated. I'm sure the next post will be better.

Fun o rama

This weekend has been jam packed o' fun! Friday night we had a four band benefit concert at the bar, along with a silent auction and wine tasting. First off, let me tell you how the benefit started. My friend Will Muldoon (I don't usually use last names, but it's the only way I say his name, I can't help it) had decided to split his stimulus between two local charities, a homeless shelter and a domestic violence shelter. That's damn amazing in itself, I just wanted a flat screen. But then he decided to put the $600 to better use and organize a benefit to make more money. He ended up raising close to 3 grand, way better than $600!
I was first on at 8pm. When I got there it was practically full. An hour later, I had three other bartenders behind the bar! That is pretty much reserved for New Years, Fourth of July, big drinking holidays. So that was great to be so busy, and my boss was one of the bartenders, so we only had to split the tips three ways. She's so great, most bosses would take a cut. And I got to get off early and have a couple of shots with a friend before going home. Super duper.
Saturday we had an amateur night that I thought I might have to work. Turns out they didn't need me. Sweet, I was finally able to drink on the weekend. Of course half of my friends weren't out that night, but it was still great. The acts were awesome. Mostly singing, but there was also a fashion show, photography of artsy naked women in nature, a reggaton rapper, two comedians (painful to listen to) and my two favorite two acts. The first favorite act was a guy named Stanley who sang an original song that was awesome and a love song about a guy. So fucking awesome. He sorta sounds like Jay Brannan and looked like a little heavier version of him. By the way, Sarah went to high school with Jay, neato huh? Anyway, this guy Stanley sings this song and I keep thinking, "Why isn't he a part of the Rendez crew? He needs to hang out with us!" Later on he came up next to me at the bar to get a drink and I gushed to him how great I thought he was. I invited him to our Half a Ween Friday the 13th party next week and he said, "Oh my birthday is Thursday." I practically flipped seeing how MY birthday is next Thursday. So we're pretty much BFF's already:) So we hung out for the rest of the show talking about how he really needs to come do cool stuff with us. I'm pretty damn excited to find a neat new person to add to our fold. Anyway, on to my next favorite act.
This totally talented lady, Colette Costa decided to do Thriller. SO FUCKING AWESOME! She came out in a lab coat with a body covered by a sheet. She sang a song about necrophelia to the music of Thriller. Then the body gets up, starts to zombie walk around the dance floor as half a dozen more zombies start coming out of the back. They all attack her and turn her into a zombie, then you guessed it, they danced! The whole Thriller dance. It was beyond words. I was freaking out, as was the rest of the bar. Maybe it's just me but I love the 80's, I looove Halloween and I really really love zombies. So it pretty much rocked my world. Big suprise, she won. The prize? $500 bucks!
After the show, Sarah and I stuck around and continued to drink. I am very happy that we both got nice and drunk for under a hundo. I mean, we could obviously get drunk for under that, but when I'm out and drinking I get very generous with the buying of shots for others. We left at bar close, stood out in the almost daylight for a while talking to various drunk friends, then finally went home. I don't know when we finally got to sleep but I almost slept through my alarm on accident. I totally heard it at 7:30, but immediately turned it off, thinking "Why the fuck did that go off? Good thing I get to keep sleeping!" Then my head popped up realizing that the alarm was set for a reason and I had to be to work in half an hour. Lame-ola! And let me tell you, I never like going to open the bar at 8am. Never. But it's usually tolerable. Today, after a weekend of huge events, the beer and liquor was trashed. I had so much stocking and general tidying up behind the bar do. I'm glad I wasn't really hung over, then nothing would have gotten done.
Sarah came down because I lured her with the promise of Newsies in Hi Def on our new big ol' flat screen. Turns out, we don't get the channel it was on. Whoops, sorry babe. But I did have a fun craft project for her and Lee to do. For Half a Ween we are using empty alcohol bottles and putting candles in them. To make them look extra awesome and creepy, I had them drip candle wax down the sides. They turned out really good. Now we need to go to the beach to get sand to fill the bottles with. And we still need to get all the branches and spray paint them so they can dry before we have to hang them. We decided our decorations are going to be haunted foresty. And I still need to figure out my Jackalope costume. Damn I can't believe it's so soon, I'm way behind.
Anywho, that was my super duper fun weekend. Oh and after work we watched the lakers celtics game. Which I do NOT care about. But it made me very very happy to watch the Lakers lose and I hope that continues. I dislike the Lakers almost as much as the Raiders. So go Celts! Plus I was born on Cape Cod, I should root for them anyway.
I'm done. My hung over fingers are not connecting with my brain signals, this post has been about as many backspaces as letters.

Stats

So when I quit smoking, I put an app on my myspace tallying how much I've saved etc. Here are the totals up until today when I bought a pack. For the app, I averaged I smoked 13 cig's a day:

Cigarettes not smoked: 548

Money saved: $191.80

So I saved almost two hundred dollars and didn't smoke about 55o. But I did smoke bummed cigarettes, so I probably didn't smoke around 530, which is still pretty damn good. Gee, I don't feel like I have an extra two hundred sitting around. I should just put $7 in a jar everyday to simulate spending it, then I would have the money. Maybe I will do that starting now.
Anyway, it's interesting to see how it adds up.

Quitting or lack there of

So six weeks ago, I quit smoking. Cold turkey, no patch, no gum. And I did really well for a while. It also helps that when I quit I had the mother of all chest colds and couldn't breath without horrible rattling noises coming from my chest. Well I got over the cold and still didn't smoke. Apparently the first three days are the hardest, after that the nicotine is out of your system and it's all mental. Uh, maybe it's just me, but the mental part is way harder. Hell if I had self control I'd be a size 4.
During these six weeks I've probably smoke about a pack or pack and a half of bummed or pilfered cigs. Not bad for someone who used to smoke a pack (or more) a day. The worst time is when I'm drinking, I get drunk and I just don't care, I want to smoke. But during the day, I really don't want to. Until the last couple of days that is.
Today I bought a pack, the first one in six weeks. I didn't have anyone to bum any from and for some reason just really wanted to smoke. So I did. And it was damn delicious. But now I have an almost full pack in my purse. Very dangerous. I don't know how to limit myself to just one or two a day. I don't want to fall back into the routine of smoking when I get up, after eating, out drinking, etc. But it's so hard. Pretty much all of my friends smoke, which isn't that bad most of the time. But when everyone leaves the bar to go outside and smoke, I just want to do it too. Especially when I'm bartending and I want an excuse to get away from lame customers. When I wasn't smoking, I immediatly didn't like the smell of smoke. My nose started working waaay better and I could smell smoke on everything.
And it's not like I don't know the danger of smoking. My dad died of cancer. Had nothing to do with smoking, but it's the same horrible death.
I always half joke that if I get knuckle tattoos, they would read DONT QUIT. Because I like smoking and drinking and I have a habit of staying in unhealthy relationships (work, personal) much longer than I should because I don't like to quit things. But it's also fairly optimistic, don't quit living, trying, doing. Maybe I should focus on the positive side and try not to quit quitting.

Busy as a spiteful bee weekend

So we moved up in the world (and our apartment building) this weekend. Saturday we moved all our crap into a one bedroom on the fourth floor. First we had to clean the whole apartment, which was disgusting. The person who moved out had been the maintenence man for the building, but decided to flake and move up to Homer. He left dirty clothes, gross food in the fridge and his creepy vibe everywhere. There was also a couch, table and two funky chairs, and an entertainment center left behind.
We had thought they would be taken out before we moved in, but we would keep the entertainment center. Before we moved in, someone came in and claimed all the furniture with sticky notes but didn't take any of it. So come Saturday, we wanted them to move the stuff out if they were gonna claim it. The dude (who is our new next door neighbor) was an ass about it, saying he would try and get it out later that day. Like we were inconviencing him by asking him to get "his" shit out. Sarah had cleaned all the furniture before we talked to him because we thought we might just keep it. So after we talked to him, we decided we should "re-dirty" it. We took dust out of the vacuum and put it all over the furniture. We found an open can of vienna sausages in the fridge and dumped them under the couch cushions. This may sound extreme, but this guy is a massive douche. He deserved it. But wait! It gets better.
Hours go by, we move all our stuff in, and he still hasn't come by to get the stuff. So we go knock on his door to ask him about it. His crack head girlfriend answers the door and starts asking Sarah about a necklace she was wearing. Weirdo. They live in a studio that is ALREADY jam packed with shit. I saw piles of stuff, possibly grow lights (greeeat, effing drug dealers) and moose antlers. Where on fucking earth was he planning on putting a full sized couch and the rest?? So he comes to the door and is totally different than he had been before, all down in the dumps saying that he guesses we can just keep the stuff. What the hell? What some weird ass neighbors we have. I hope they leave or get busted for something soon.
Back to our vienna sausage stuffed couch and dust covered entertainment center and table. Whoops! I guess that's what we get for being spiteful, we had to clean everything twice. But it was kinda worth it, just to laugh at ourselves. I had to remove the now thawed sausages from the couch. Holy ew! They looked like severed fingers.
So it was quite an eventful day, with only marginal squabbling throughout. The apartment is almost put together enough to not mind other people seeing it. Well, except either the toilet or the shower is massively leaking onto the bathroom floor. We should probably tell the landlord about that, maybe he can get the maintenence guy to fix...oh wait...nevermind. He doesn't have one! What a ghetto. But hey, it's our ghetto!