The Grumps

I've got a pretty bad case of them right now and I don't know why.

I've been trying to figure it out as well as the people around me I regularly have to deal with. Mom did her best by so artfully and discreetly asked me full voice in Target the other day "Are you going to menstruate soon?" The answer was no. These are legitimate grumps.

I don't like being grouchy so I've been trying to shake it off and nothing is working. My first move is almost always hanging out with friends but they've just ended up annoying me more. Next move was Disneyland. That almost always does the trick but the day ended up being a barely contained bitch-fit on my part. Movies typically trigger some endorphins but all I've been getting are bad dreams.

I had one the other night where I was in my old house in Pasadena and my brother tried to kill me so I had to flee but we were living in this apocalyptic warfare state and I couldn't get to Kansas to safely be with my best friend. We got mugged along the way and my computer got stolen and I was convulsively crying and rocking over my empty laptop case in my dream when I popped awake thinking note to self - do not watch Matrix movies AND Terminator movies in the same week. Too may post apocalyptic scenes in the noggin.

I think that the stress of looking for a job, interviewing for a job and just being unemployed is weighting on me so much that its exhausting all of my other energy that is typically put towards stuff like Patience. So as a result things that typically don't bug me are really getting to me.

Like the broken water temperature lever in the shower, typically I just deal but I almost put my hand through the shower doors the other day. Getting violent? Over the temperature of water? Who am I?

Maybe the NBA Finals has upped my aggression towards the world in general. This is why I backed off of water polo. I'm not a naturally competitive person so the only way I could rise to the water polo occasion was to get aggressive in the angry kind of way and it started to leak into every aspect of my life and I didn't like it.

I can be a very severe, critical, impatient and over baring person if left to my own means. You know how when a yard goes unchecked and tended that it gets all overgrown and brown and snarly? I become a raging demanding diva if I go unchecked. I don't like being like that at all. No one likes dealing with someone like that so I decided to change. However, dealing with this latest trial has left a lot of things go unchecked and I'm not quite sure to get a handle on them.

Like, I almost fired a friend the other day because we were on the phone and he was venting about this class hes taking with this scattered teacher that I had had before. He said he was venting to another person as well who had taken the class that I might know and then he started to attempt to describe her to me. She apparently was tall and bigger built much like myself and he didn't know how to describe girls to girls because unless they're anorexic they get super sensitive about anything you might say but I'm not too hard on the eyes because hes still talking to me right?

.........

I literally pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it like "what on earth...."

I had no response but an overwhelming desire to bring the conversation to a close and possibly erase his number when I was done.

Maybe I need a day at the Huntington. Sadly, a few hours with a punching bag sounds much more relaxing at this moment. Who am I?

I kind of want to go find a dude ranch in the middle of Montana and take a job as a cook and leave all of the stupidity of YSA life and urban living and post-grad pressures to the birds. The older I get the less I care about all of it. All I want is a dog and a garden and a nearby mountain to hike. The rat race is NOT WORTH IT! Its pointless insatiable agony for agony's sake. I can deal with hardship if I know *why*. War time is agony but you're defending your family and country. Childbirth is agony but its for your kids. This totally doesn't count for anything.

My birthday is coming up too and that's never a relaxing time for me.

I'm broke and I have all these places I want to go and people I need to see, like my very pregnant sister in law that is moving this weekend and needs help putting a nursery together and guess who can't come to Salt Lake to help? That's right. Me.

I haven't seen my best friend in a year. That is difficult.

Everything is just difficult

And feeling sorry for myself doesn't help or change a bloody thing. I know.

Things aren't all bad. I have a lot to be grateful for.

- despite the fact that I annoy them or they annoy me, I have an amazing family and group of people who love me and who I desperately love
- I'm healthy (relatively) and disease free. Getting cancer or something could put a damper on things I realize
- The Lakers are in the NBA finals
- my nails are growing in nicely
- my laptop didn't get stolen, it was just a dream
- I've got a safe and warm place to sleep
- There are no machines after me trying to kill me. Not yet at least
- I have an education
- I have a car

I have a lot to be grateful for. I'm just doing my best to shake grumps. Wish me luck.

Eye-Rubbingly Pathetic

So I'm one of those slightly manic organized people.
I'll admit it with no scruples whatsoever.

I make lists. I carry lists. I work through lists. I pretty much have, love, and operate through lists.
Some are tangible and some are intangible and one of my important intangible lists is the L's List as previously outlined.

Someone that has a permanent and labeled chair in the Loathe category, right between Political Apathy and Mean Spirited People is Paris Hilton.

The more I hear, see, read or even remotely consider her the more I want to punch a baby.

She makes me embarrassed to be human, female, and American because those are the only things we have in common.

She is seriously everything that is wrong with the human race, Americans, the Upper Class, and painted, bleached, waxed, bulimic, plasticy augmented people.

If you haven't seen the South Park episode "Stupid Spoiled Whore" its Trey and Matt's hilarious ode to Paris and it's the only thing I can think about whenever she comes up. I laugh a little but I still shake my head. Its funny but be forewarned - its an episode that is South Park at its best in a very South Parky South Parkish kind of way.

I read this article today and was having a hard time believing it wasn't on The Onion. I'm pretty sure they heard my eyes roll all the way in Sunnyvale.

What a flaming idiot of a girl. I hate to be hard on my own sex but there you have it.
"We have to get the elephants to stop drinking - that will solve everything"

Dear Paris (or person reading this aloud to Paris because shes only up to G in her alphabet book),

How about getting the hell off of the elephant's land Paris? How about spending your copious amounts of free time and sway with the press to encourage harmonious living in Nature's cross sections? How about endorsing MODERATE LIVING so that the elephants won't need to rampage through villages? That has ripple effect principles you could hang your hat on here in the US as well where we don't necessarily have an encroaching elephant problem but we do have the malignant vacuum of morals in the form drunken people that do just as much intangible damage if not more and then land their whiny cabooses in jail. You should have learned this by now. The alcohol isn't the bloody problem! Its the reasons why they're drinking - both for elephants and for yourself. How about spending 30 seconds and a making a call to your Dad or PR Agent before doing a press release to avoid looking like a pathetically ravingly idiotically sad and hopeless mess of a human being that is SO short sighted she only has a hope for a future as a weather girl that says "its hot".

Get a life Paris
Get an Atlas
Get someone close to you that will be honest with you and isn't intimidated by your hopelessly spoiled character or bank book that will tell you how it is because that's how it is and for that reason only
Get a normal car
Let your hair be it's natural color
Read a book (without pictures preferably)
Go feed the 73 million starving African AIDS orphans instead of judging beauty pageants in Japan
Or call George Clooney and shadow him for a month or two. Now there is a man who has his head on straight and uses his clout for the right reasons in the right way. Help him with raising awareness and funds to prosecute the war crimes in Darfur. And feed the 2.5 million displaced citizens still trying to survive.

Leave the damn elephants alone. If you were visiting I'd get drunk too.