What Did The Five Fingers Say To The Face? SLAP! Norwalk’s A Hell of a Bug!

I was starting to feel better. About everything. I really was. All of my pain and anguish was starting to transform into those beautiful feelings of lividity and rage. Emotions that, for me, can fuel a lot of productivity. I was zippidy-do-dah-ing along, thinking I had life licked. For once. But then life? Was like

I spent the entirety of my daughter’s birthday party last night alternating between projectile vomiting and being fetal in a chair next to the fire, quaking and dry heaving. 100mg of Dimenhydrinate produced only an effect of being really fucking tired, and did nothing to quell the tsunamis of nausea. Then life was like “you’re handling this a little too well”.

So life put me here:

It’s been about 18 hours since the onset of this horrendous bug, and I’ve lost nine pounds. Half a pound an hour! I’ll feel a little less guilty about neglecting the stairmill for the past few weeks.  Sure, my esophagus is raw, my teeth will be falling out, and my ass burns, but hey, I’m skinny!

After sleeping through my 8 am class, with much trepidation, I dragged myself to my 1:30 class where I spent the entire two hours in extreme discomfort and trying to pry my eyes open. I’ve never felt so exhausted. My guts hurt from retching and every muscle in my body aches from the nonstop shivers.

I tried to have a bit of tomyum for lunch…

Alrighty then. Clear fluids. Gotcha.

Stripper Sundays: What Happens When You Pay Your Only Employee Minimum Wage For Four Years

So anyone who knows me well and has for any significant amount of time knows that I had a side job at quite possibly the greatest retail store in history. It was a “Sexy Fashions Boutique”- a store full of magical synthetic-fibered costumes, sequinned and oddly cut dresses, and lame and fun fur get-ups. I worked for this store for four and a half years and made the same wage on my last day as I did the day I started. Not that I was expected to work HARD. Quite the contrary actually. I often passed entire shifts on the couch in the back room watching reruns of Glee or dicking around in dark corners of the internet. 

Another well known Vicki fact is that I gestate for an unreasonable amount of time. My second pregnancy crawled by, as did the hours while I sat alone in a sea of nylon and polyester. So, born out of boredom, as most of my harebrained ideas are, I decided one Sunday to play dress-up.

28 weeks pregnant. How delightful!

I

I shared this photo with a group of girlfriends (Who will be hereby known as “Your Mom”), and, of course it illicited an overwhelmingly positive response.  So, the following Sunday, I did it again.

And the Sunday after that…

Once you’ve done something three weeks running, it becomes a habit. On Sundays, some people go to church. Others read Post Secret. Some people might even take their grandma out for brunch. Not me. On Sundays I put on horrifically tacky outfits and took photos for my friends. 

Here I am as Fat C-3PO

 

And in this terrible dress with the most appropriate shape for a 8-month pregnant woman

 

I could hardly contain my laughter wearing that one. That dress cost, like, $130!

So let this be a lesson to you. If you own a small business, your pregnant employees will try on all your clothes. Or something. 

 

 

 

 

 

Did I Do That? I Did Do That: Earning My Scarlet Letter.

“Earning” was probably a bad choice of words. I’m not proud to be involved in a divorce that isn’t mine. I know that it’s not actually my fault, and aware that there must be other factors unrelated to me, but I still go through times where I am so embarrassed and ashamed to even be involved. 

And how do I deal with those feels? The same way I deal with all of them- by eating them and using wildly inappropriate humour. When I’m unsure of how to tactfully express my feelings, I let pictures do it for me. Didn’t some shitty proverb say something about pictures and words?

 

It’s horrible. I’ll be the first to admit that. But sometimes when the situation is just SO FUCKED UP that you end up coping with it in equally fucked up ways. I didn’t set out to be a homewrecker. Nor did I force or coerce anyone to make decisions. In fact, on numerous occasions, I asked for reassurance that everything was kosher. 

NOPE. Nope, nope, nope. 

 

I’m only human. Too err, and all of that. At least I’ll be the first to cop up to being a shitty person when I’ve been one. So, about that big red A…

More Princess Di than Lindsay Lohan: Thanks for the Peptalks.

You’ve all been watching me unravel for while now. And in my head Im having a public breakdown, but I think in reality? It’s ballsy. Why is this surprising to me? I AM BALLSY. I also have no concept of self-moderation, no filter, and have a palliative case of verbal diarrhea.

I also use the Oxford comma like a boss.

Actually though. The last few days have been so strange. Cathartic, really. After my post about my divorce, I was literally inundated with an outpouring of supportive comments, texts, messages and even a couple phone calls. And in the wake of that huge confession (and anti-cat tirade), I came to the realization that I am somebody.

Let’s let Mr. T take it away for a minute.

I won’t be somebody’s foo’. I am a young, attractive woman. I’m smart, and I’m funny as fuck. I don’t need to be validated by another person. For so long, I’ve let my self worth be calculated by my surroundings and not on my own personal merit. I went to school for two years for my woo-degree, and if I took ANYTHING from that (aside from how much acupressure actually hurts), it’s that my locus of control was always so external. And over the past few days, I’ve been doing a lot of introspect, and trying to stuff that locus of control back down my craw and internalize it. I am in control of my own life. I make decisions. I own those decisions.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of locus of control, this is a pretty good resource explaining it

And since I’ve done that,  I’ve become so much less Woe-Is-Me, and so much more Go-Fuck-Your-Hat. And that’s a better look for me, because my ugly cry? Is ugly. Less cry, more fuck. I think that’s a pretty good motto to live by, yeah?

Hipsters on the Brooklyn Metro: The Story of my $550 Phone Bill and the Epic Walk of Shame

Boohoo! My husband didn’t love me! Daddy issues! Woe is me!

Back to our regular scheduled programming.

So, in February, I decided that I was going to New York City for reading week. I was planning to have my earlobes reconstructed and make a little vacation out of it. So with very little forethought, I bought flights, and arranged with a super awesome friend to crash at his place in Brooklyn.

During my stay in NYC, I did a lot of aimless wandering, and riding around on the Metro. One night, I was in Williamsburg, Official Home of the Hipster, and was making an absolute spectacle of myself trying to get out of the subway station through the in door, and a perfect hip specimen came to my rescue, like Prince Charming of Brooklyn, and I was the hopeless herione in some really fucked up fairy tale. He assisted me in getting through the gates, and successfully scored my phone number in the process.

Over the next few hours, we had texted back and forth and decided to meet for drinks. Let me preface the rest of the story with an important fact: ROAMING IS A THING!

So, I meet this guy at this weird bar in the Brooklyn ghetto. I drank way too much PBR. I’m sending picture texts to my BFF. Remember roaming? Not me. So, playing wingman from 3000 kilometers away, my bestie tells me that it is, in fact, acceptable to go home with this hip stranger. These are amongst some of my first really irresponsible life decisions.

I’m going to leave the next 8 or so hours out of the story, and fast forward to morning.

I wake up with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my head stuck to this poor guy’s pillowcase because the previous day, I had my earlobes cut and stitched back together and was sporting total frankenlobes. That was the first of embarrassing events. I’m ready to leave. Being that I was married for a number of years, I haven’t really mastered a graceful walk of shame. So I poke this dude in the shoulder and I’m like “Uh, so I’m gonna take off. it was nice meeting you”. I let myself out, and take the stairs and get outside.

This is when I realize, I am not on the sidewalk. I’m in a parking area. It’s enclosed by a 12 foot security fence that’s topped with barbed wire. So I turn around, and go to let myself back into the building and find that the door is locked. No problem, I’ll just text the guy and get him to let me back in. I swipe my screen and am horrified to discover my phone is dead. DEAD DEAD DEAD.

Think, Vicki. You’re stuck in a parking lot and you have to MacGuyver a way out. You’re a smart chick, you can figure it out. My solution? I climbed the fucking fence. A 12 foot, barbed wire fence. Right next to an above-ground subway station. in the middle of Brooklyn. In broad daylight.

Pure class. Whatever. What I lack in class, I make up in sass.

Now, as much as I wanted to leave that experience behind, imagine my chagrin when three weeks later, my mobile bill comes in the mail and my husband (whom I was already separated from but still cohabitating with) calls me to flip out over my… $550 phone bill.

Remember roaming? Yeah, now you will. Forever and ever.

NB: Without a roaming package, roaming texts on my plan were $1 a piece, with more for data roaming and allllll those picture texts. SMRT.

ERRATA: Rebound would like to make the fact be known that the Very Angry Phonecall occurred while I was getting busy. I’m unsure of the relevancy of this information, but he seemed insistent that it was the funniest part of the story, so I’m editing that in.

Also, I really have to think of a more clever pseudonym for him.

Ketchup, Cats and Other Reasons for My Divorce

I don’t talk much about my divorce. Probably because it’s not much to talk about. It’s completely undramatic, anticlimactic, boring. No one walked in on the other ‘bangin’ on the counter’ or anything. Our marriage just wasn’t working. We are different people pursuing different lives.

For example; I loathe cats with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns. My husband has three. Or had, rather. One of them was wretched enough that he got rid of it of his own accord, but I still was forced to share my home with two putrid, emetic, shedding, box-shitting, litter-tracking assholes. So that was a thing.

Also, he’d ruin perfectly good meals by obliterating them with half a bottle of ketchup. It was totally insulting.

Never mind the fact that he’s vegan and straightedge, and I’m a partyrockin’ fun-haver and regularly unhinge my jaws around a Quarter Pounder before I even get out of the drive-thru.

Yes, that’s all tongue in cheek. Prior to actually living apart, and experiencing a new relationship after the dissolution of my marriage, I honestly thought this was what my divorce was about. Minor differences in values. It was months after my separation before I came to terms with everything I’d been sweeping under the rug.

I was completely unloved. Ignored. Emotionally neglected. I don’t want to paint an ugly portrait of my husband, because he really is a very nice man and a wonderful father. He was just a terrible partner for me. In retrospect, I can’t remember a time in which we were ever in love. There were times when he pursued me and I ignored it (too little, too late), but when I reflect upon the ten years we spent together, I was so much more into him than he was into me. It got old. I can pinpoint the exact moment when my eyes glazed over and lost interest. Unfortunately, your feelings of self worth can only weather so much storm. I never thought I could do better for myself. I never imagined that I’d ever feel passion and excitement with anyone. I had committed and invested so much into this that it was just too much of a burden to walk away. So I stayed. And we got married. And we had children. And we lived in uncomfortable silence for years until a stranger gave me the strength to say “THAT IS ENOUGH”.

And that couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I’m struggling- financially, emotionally, physically. I’m fighting with long-dealt with orthorexia and binge eating, issues that I thought I’d laid to rest as a teenager. I’m probably an alcoholic. I often rely on tranquilizing medications to slow my heart and my brain down enough to let me fall into a psychotropic medication induced coma.

Lets be real here, I’m totally fucked. I’m not even stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m jammed between two techtonic plates. And I have absolutely NO plan. I am running solely on adrenalin and drugs to get me through each hour, each day, each week, until I can finally get a grasp on something sturdy enough to let me take foot. So that’s where I’m at.

Sorry, I Ruined Your Sheets

It’s not a blog title you fabricate from thin air.

I briefly flirted with having a Copper-T IUD. IUD? This is Sparta. Four or five months it was installed. Is that the proper verb for having a piece of copper jammed in your uterus? Installed? I digress… So I had this IUD- because babies? Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat. But let me tell you.

IUD?

I’m not even kidding. I really, REALLY wish I was kidding. Horrific menstrual blood flow can be a real fucking downer when you’re the crowned Boner Rodeo Queen. But does it stop me? Bitch, please. Let the lady ride the buck and then pop a super plus and PTFO. And I did just that. I even woke up in the middle of the night for a freshie. But, lo and behold, 7 am came around and I felt a little.. Uncomfortable. I peeled back the blanket and I felt the colour drain from my face. Probably because it had no blood left in it because THIS.

So yeah, sorry about those sheets. They were really nice sheets.