The Great Pumpkins

Owooo!


Bleeeeh!


Thank you, Extreme Pumpkins, for the puking pumpkin idea. And for suggesting spraying the pumpkins with WD-40 to keep in moisture. Did you know you're not supposed to use that around open flame? Whoops.

The Single Girl's Guide to Groceries

I purchased the following items on my way home from work yesterday:

• Gum
  
• Low fat chocolate milk
  
• Egg beaters
  
• Sushi rolls
  
• Joseph’s Low Carb Wheat and Oat Bran Pita Bread

Once upon a time I made shopping lists. Now I just impulse shop.

It's been awhile since I've posted a "link of the day," so today I'm posting a link to these cool cubicle playsets. In case anyone was wondering what to get me for Christmas, here's an idea.

Be sure to check out the action shots. My personal favorite? Attack of the cubicle lizard. If only my work day was so exciting.

Courage: Or, One For the Girls

I occasionally ride the bus with a very cute man who used to live next-door to my ex. We work in the same building and run into each other frequently. I recently came to the conclusion that he doesn’t know my name, even though we’ve been saying hello to each other for years. I decided that the next time I ran into him, I’d be all flirty and say, “I suspect that you don’t know my name. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you a coffee. If I’m right, you owe me a coffee. Deal?”

Of course, I never really intended to follow through with any part of this plan. It was just a little fantasy I’d play out in my head, something Courageous Trish would do. I am rarely, if ever, Courageous Trish.

I told some people of my daring plan, and while they all thought it was a good idea, no one, no one, really believed I would have the guts to pull it off.

This morning, guess who was behind me in the breakfast line. That’s right, Cute Guy From the Bus.

He nodded and said hey, and I nodded and said hey, and then I turned to him and said, “I have a question for you. Do you know my name?”

I could tell from the look on his face that he had no idea whatsoever. He was totally dumbstruck. It was pretty damn adorable. “It’s Trish,” I said, holding out my hand. “It’s okay, we were only formally introduced once at a party and I think we were both a little tipsy at the time.”

Theresa was there too, and she also introduced herself and then promptly left the two of us alone to chat (thank you, you’re fabulous). We talked for a few minutes, and while I never managed to get out the part about the coffee, it doesn’t matter. I was able to talk to a cute, available guy who I have had my eye on for awhile.

Maybe we’ll get to know each other better and progress beyond the saying hello stage to the going out for drinks stage, who knows. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that today I was able to do something that kind of scared me. And that's something I can be proud of.

Here Comes the Rain Again…

Have you ever listened to This I Believe on NPR? Listeners write essays about what they believe and if your essay is chosen you get to read it on the air. If I were ever to submit an essay for this segment, I might write about my father's favorite saying: this too shall pass. I know it is trite and cliché, but whenever life is being crappy, I think of my dad saying, "Tricia, this too shall pass," and that really calms me down.

While we were cleaning up my basement, "this too shall pass" was my mantra.

Scot Haney is calling for periods of heavy rain throughout the day tomorrow and into Wednesday. Normally rain in the forecast wouldn't bother me except I'd rather my basement didn't fill with 4 inches of water again.

Scot, I love you, why must you torture me so?

In other news, I’ve been foolish enough to tell yet another coworker about my blog. Tom did not demand his own section, but since he does come out with amusing quotes on a fairly consistent basis, I’ve decided he deserves his own section on the sidebar. I hope that “Tom’s Tirades” will keep you entertained. (I had thought of calling it “Terribly Tom,” but that sounds dumb.) Now Tom, you’d better start commenting on my blog instead of just lurking, aight?

I may also add a “special guest star” section to the sidebar, just for other random things that people say that I find entertaining. Don’t worry, folks; it’s not becoming the Muppet Show just yet. Although Theresa and Joe are sort of like Waldorf and Statler, as they do enjoy heckling me from time to time…

I apologize for this entry being a bit disjointed, but I hadn’t planned to write anything tonight at all. I still haven’t done this week’s assignment for my writing class. We must write a scene with a beginning, middle, and end, using dialogue and description, and at the end of the scene one character must have some sort of epiphany.

This is due Wednesday and I am still not sure what I’ll write about. Yowzah. Wish me luck. Anyone have a good idea for an ephiphany?

I Am Lazy Today

Today I’m posting a poem I like by Frank O’Hara. Maybe it’s pretentious of me to be posting poetry, I don’t know. I hope it's not illegal. It's a good poem, so I want to post it.

I think this poem says a lot about writing. Enjoy.

Why I Am Not a Painter
by Frank O’Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

The Bullsh!t Avenger

Sometimes I imagine that I have an alter ego who is brutally honest. Brutally Honest Trish would tell Loud Guy on the bus to shut up, because it is 6:45 in the morning and no one cares about how much he liked Wedding Crashers. Brutally Honest Trish would tell the guy hitting on her at the bar that he’s boring and she doesn’t feel like talking about John Roberts’ confirmation hearings for half an hour. Brutally Honest Trish would tell people in the hallways not to chat right in front of her desk because she doesn’t care who won last night’s game and for the love of god, could you at least go to a conference room?

No one would be safe from her wrath.

Unfortunately, I am not Brutally Honest Trish. I am Painfully Polite Trish. I smile and nod and pretend to be interested in what people have to say even if they are really annoying and I refrain from telling Loud Guy on the bus to shut his mouth when it’s not even 7 am and everyone is half asleep and wants to kill him.

But a girl can dream, right?

So, this year for Halloween I have decided I am going to be a superhero. I’m not going to be Brutally Honest Trish, because that could get ugly, especially if I’m drinking.

Instead, I am going to be the Bullsh!t Avenger.

I got the idea while we were discussing someone’s work in my writing class. The discussion began with one woman saying, “I like your use of metaphors.” To which the teacher replied, “Which metaphors?” My classmate’s response was, “You know, all the different metaphors.”

And so was born the Bullsh!t Avenger.

Theresa helped me design and shop for my costume, which consists of a red cape, knee high black boots, a short black skirt, and a white t-shirt that has a red circle with “BS” crossed out in the middle. Like the Ghostbusters logo, only with “BS” instead of the ghost guy.

I’m sure I’ll spend most of the evening explaining the costume to people, and I’m sure most people won’t get it, but whatever. If people don't get it, screw 'em. If people do get it, then they understand the need for a Bullsh!t Avenger, someone whose mission in life is to seek out and destroy all the bullsh!t of the world.

So, dear readers, 3 questions for you to think about:

1. What is your superhero persona?
2. If you could be brutally honest about one thing, what would it be?
3. What are you going to be for Halloween?

Bailing Out

Last week it rained for 8 days straight. By Saturday afternoon I had 2 inches of water in my basement. My parents came over at 8 am on Sunday morning with a shop vac to help me bail out. By that time the water had risen to 4 inches. My basement is finished, but for once my laziness paid off. I never got around to decorating down there, so nothing that I cared about was ruined.

I had wanted to replace the carpet anyway.

It took 8 hours to bail out all the water and rip up all the carpet and get it out into the dumpster. The process went like this: using buckets, my mother and father bailed out as much water as possible. I lugged the full buckets upstairs 2 at a time and emptied them in the sink. Lather, rinse, repeat. Once the water was too low to keep bailing, my father wet vac-ed the carpet the best he could. My mother ripped the carpet into strips and put the strips into buckets to drain. Once sufficiently drained, we bagged the carpet in garbage bags and I hauled the bags upstairs to the curb.

Wet carpet, even drained, is damn heavy.

We did buy a portable sump pump, but it stopped working after half an hour. After 8 hours of the bucket brigade, I took it back to Home Depot and almost cried when they made it work and therefore wouldn't let me return it.

Did I mention I did all this on 4 hours of sleep while nursing a raging hangover?

Saturday night I went to a party, got hammered, and ended up puking at a football field in Fairfield County. The field was Astroturf, and I remember leaning over the chain link fence and saying, “I can’t puke on Astroturf.”

It’s been a long time since I got sick from drinking. Lesson: never let drunk people mix your drinks.

In other news, I was actually social last weekend and went out every single night. This is really good for me. Also, this week I had dinner with a cute guy who I was able to speak to while sober! Amazing. Apparently we are doing the “game” thing now and waiting a few days to speak again. Sigh. Seriously, I need a manual on men. Should I contact him? Do I wait for him to contact me? If he contacts me Friday and asks if I’m doing anything Saturday, do I lie and say I'm busy?

Dating. Blech.

Before I sign off, I want to thank all of you who have been reading my blog. A big shout out to my work peeps, and to friends and family, and to Satan, Schizo, and JBS. It totally made my day to see that I had 9 comments on my last post! It might not be 527 profile hits on Match.com, but it makes me happy.

Thanks for visiting and I hope you’ll stick around!

Great Literature

I'm taking a fiction writing class at a local community college. The only person besides me who doesn't have a graduate degree is an ex-stuntwoman and recovering addict. No, I am not making this up. She is easily the coolest person in the class. I kind of wanted to go up to her afterwards and say, “Will you be my friend?”

Our first assignment is to write about something in our life that is unresolved. We are supposed to dig deep into our souls and dredge up something really painful, because apparently the best works of literature are about pain and painful things.

It turns out that our teacher does not like funny. Great Literature, apparently, is not funny.

This does not bode well for me. I'm certainly all about pain and suffering. My stories rarely have happy endings and usually someone dies, but I see no reason why there can't still be funny in there somewhere.

The thing is, I don't want to write Great Literature. I just want to write stories that I would enjoy reading. The last fiction book I finished was a Star Trek novel. (It was a guilty pleasure, okay? When was the last time you picked up Tolstoy? Besides, I'm reading Catcher in the Rye now to make up for it.)

I'm sure I will end up enjoying this class. I'm just slightly intimidated by all the people who have way more education than I do. I secretly hope they are all horrible writers and I can say "Ha! Take that, Harvard!" but that is only because deep down, I'm pretty evil.

But that is a blog entry for another day. It's late, and I want to sleep. Good night.

Things I Never Knew About My Parents

My mother did a lot of traveling on her own before she met my father. This is the woman who freaks out when I go hiking alone, so I was a bit shocked to learn that when she was my age she was solo trekking through Mexico, partying with complete strangers. When I asked her why she never told me about this, she said, "You never asked."

Well, of course I never asked. It never occurred to me to ask. Who asks their mother, "Hey mom, I was just wondering, did you ever tramp through a foreign country all by yourself doing drugs with total strangers?"

Okay, I doubt she did drugs, but really, it was the seventies, so I can't be too sure.

Tonight I found out that for the first twenty years of marriage my father didn't wear his wedding ring. I explained that the purpose of a wedding ring is so that people know they can’t hit on you when you go out (although being a symbol of everlasting love and commitment might have something to do with it). “I don’t go out," my father told me, "and I don’t wear jewelry.”

My mother doesn’t think this is weird because apparently her father never wore his wedding ring either. He was a welder by trade and supposedly the ring was a safety hazard.

My father is an insurance executive. What’s his excuse?

I hope this isn't some kind of generational curse, and all the women of my mother’s lineage are destined to have husbands that don’t wear their wedding rings. If I ever get married, I suppose I'll find out.

Everyone's a Critic

Two of my coworkers told me today that the Mystic Pizza entry was not one of my best. In fact, one person (Joe) said “It sounds kinda pathetic. If I didn't know you, I'd think you weren't cool.”

Which, okay. Honestly, I agree. It wasn't one of my best entries, and I do sound kind of pathetic. But whatever, we all have our pathetic days and our bad entries. That’s what writing is all about. You really turn out a lot of crap while you’re trying to come up with something good.

But back to my critiquing coworkers. These particular two have demanded that I create a special area of the blog dedicated to their wit and wisdom.

I suggested that they start blogs of their own, but they want me to do all the hard work.

So, without further adieu, today I am proud to present “As Joe Would Say…” This section will pretty much chronicle the crazy things Joe says. It's on the sidebar above the links.

My other coworker will also be getting her own section, although I haven’t thought of a clever title for it yet so it’s on hold for the moment.

I'm counting on the two of you to try and outdo each other with ridiculous quotes. We can't disappoint my loyal readership of five.

And Joe, thanks for sort of saying I’m cool. Also, you owe me a coffee.

Now, let the games begin....

Saturday Night at the Movies

As much as I complain about being single, I think I tend to be happier on my own than in a relationship. One of the best parts about being single? I can watch chick flicks whenever I want.

This past Saturday night I chilled at home, drinking wine and watching Mystic Pizza on E!. Honestly, a lot more enjoyable than most dates I’ve been on. What a great movie. Well, okay, maybe not a Great movie, but a quintessential chick flick. And Julia Roberts had an aaaasss! Ah, the eighties, when it was hip to be fat.

The Great Figgy Pudding

Just Figgy

When most Americans think of pudding, we think of a creamy, custardy sweet advertised by Bill Cosby. In British vernacular, I’m pretty sure pudding is just another word for dessert. And figgy pudding is just another term for disgusting fruitcake from hell.

Every year our office does a bake sale fundraiser, and every year my coworker jokes that if I made a figgy pudding, he’d buy it. The joke has gone so far that my office nickname is Figgina, often shortened to just “Figgy”.

This year, I am actually making a figgy pudding. And if my coworker knows what’s good for him, he’ll shell out a pretty penny for it, because it has been the biggest pain in my ass.

Until today, I had never even seen a fig. By the time I finally found a store that sold figs, it was after 8 so the local liquor stores were closed. Long story short, my figs that are supposed to be soaking overnight in Grand Marnier are soaking in vanilla rum instead. The recipe sounds pretty vile anyway, so I don’t think it will matter much.

As you’ll note in the recipe, I can’t just throw this monstrosity in a pan to bake. I had to buy a fluted pudding pan and a roaster to steam the damn thing.

All for something that will probably come out tasting absolutely vomitrocious.

Who out there actually likes figgy pudding? If you or someone you know is a figgy pudding fanatic, please send me a brief essay expounding the joys of figgy pudding. Be sure to include your favorite figgified recipe.

Then, seek professional help.

Thank you for your assistance.

Why Being Sober is Sometimes Bad

Back in July, the ex and I took a class offered by our local outdoor outfitter. Even though I was dating the ex at the time, I was totally smitten with the instructor. I almost inflicted life-threatening injuries upon him by accident, but I'll save that story for another time.

Last month, after having broken up with the ex, I ran into cute instructor guy at the store. We chatted for a bit, and then he asked, “So, that guy you were with, was that your boyfriend?” To which I replied, “Well, he was at the time…”

“Oh,” said very cute, very muscular instructor man, “Oooohh….”

Now, at this point, I should have said, “Yes, I’m COMPLETELY available at the moment. 100% single. Unattached in every possible way. And I have no one to do fun outdoor activities with! What is a girl to do...want my number?”

As I’m sure you can guess, this did not happen. Because I cannot speak to cute men. I can speak to cute men if they are in some way unavailable (i.e. gay/married/dating someone/total jerks), but I can’t speak to cute men who are potential dating material.

Unless I’m drunk.

But I was completely sober at this point, so instead of throwing myself at this adorable man, I panicked. I babbled something incoherent and then ran away and pretended to be enthralled by their selection of wetsuit booties.

Which are pretty useful, but are by no means enthralling.

Yesterday I convinced one of my friends (the one with 527 match.com profile hits) to go to the store's annual fall sale with me to do some reconnaissance. While feigning fascination with a pair of waldies, she shamelessly checked out cute instructor guy. No ring, which I hadn’t noticed in my previous panicked state. So that’s something. Now I just have to get the courage to strike up a friendly conversation the next time I see him.

Perhaps I’ll consider getting liquored up first.