Guess who's back. Back again.

Here's what you've missed since 2012:

- I moved to New York City and spent a delightful three years living with my long-time best friend, Eileen, in a converted two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side. Very Broad-City. Too many stories to choose from. Good thing I have your attention for a few more months LOLLoloLOLOL.

- I went to grad school from 2012-2014 at The New School and assistant-managed (sort of; I was in what we call a KEY HOLDER position in the retail biz 💅) the Upper West Side Paper Source location. This is, of course, lolz for two reasons: 

1.) I spent many a shenanigan-filled year working at the Georgetown location in college and again after I was controversially fired by Boss #1 and #2 in the aughts for BLOGGING. AT WORK. Though, now less of a source of paper and more of a source of tacky desk tchotchkes owned by a questionable Saudi oil conglomerate, old P. Source has always been there for me in tight financial spots, and I thank them for that.

2.) It gave me a free pass to live out my Kathleen Kelly You've Got Mail Upper West Side retail cosplay fantasies in a very real, very other-people's-money-involved kind of way. 

- Grad school was a laborious process, but at least I didn't make any friends. I actually do owe the New School creative nonfiction writing MFA program a debt of gratitude (and tens of thousands of actual paper dollars) for helping me open up and write four chapters of a dark humor memoir I would still greatly like to finish one day about my life as a lady with vulvodynia. 

Vulvodynia, if you don't know, means that VAGINAL INSERTION during SEX is very extremely painful for MY VUVLA. This pain has been on my radar well before my (delayed) SEXUAL blossoming; TAMPONS were/are painful, too. A pencil. A toothpick. Or less sharp and more appropriate things like fingers and dildos—any touch is painful. It makes SEXUAL INTIMACY tricky. Because then you do that classic thing where you think no guys will be interested in you if they can't easily bang you out, so you either don't date at all, OR you do date, but, for reasons you're still trying to work out in therapy, you don't tell your partner that it hurts when you have sex, and eventually you start resenting them because they want to do something that hurts you all the time, and you start dreading seeing them at all because now you're in a full-blown relationship with someone who wants to marry you and stick his shovy dick inside your tender puss for the rest of your life and—Ack! Cathy! You've done it this time! And you never learn!

Because now you're 34 and still single, and everyone wonders why, because there has to be A Reason, and you want to be like, I COULD BE MARRIED IF I WANTED TO, I JUST HAVE A BROKEN COOTER AND I CAN'T GET ANY DOCTORS TO TAKE ME SERIOUSLY BECAUSE THEY ALL THINK MY "WOMAN PROBLEMS" MUST BE FROM REPRESSED MEMORIES OF BEING MOLESTED, EVEN THOUGH I'VE NEVER BEEN MOLESTED. WHICH I KNOW, BECAUSE I CALLED MY MOTHER ON THE TELEPHONE IN 2012 AND ASKED HER.

So, yeah. It's like a whole thing. 

- In 2015, my literary ambitions slowly derailed when work took over, and I've been working full-time in the fashion/e-commerce/branding/writing/marketing game ever since. I've been meaning to start a new blog for years and years and years, and yeaaaaaaaars, and years and years and years, but it never felt right. The timing was off. I was too busy with work. I wasn't inspired. Nobody would read it anyway. I'd have to design and market it all over again, and now I'm a branding and writing professional, so it has to be bigger and better than before, and goddamn do I hate a high bar. There were multiple efforts to start this bigger, better, more professional blog, but they never came to fruition because, ultimately, I was paralyzed with fear.

But now it's 2020 and I know what actual fear feels like. Until 11 days ago, I still lived in New York in the cutest, smallest, baby studio on the top floor of a walk-up on the Upper West Side you ever did see. (One block away from Eileen!) Now I'm back home in the DMV, living in the guest room of my sister's house in Virginia with her and her family until question mark. (BTW - I acquired two nieces since I saw you last.) 

And the thing is; it's fine. I work, I get high, I play with my nieces, I chill with Becca and Geoff, I eat way better than I would ever have at home. I take long meditative walks and listen to podcasts. If this extremely privileged experience is the totality of my coronavirus experience, I'm fine with that. But I also know that this is just the beginning, and I'm anxious about what comes next. So, I've landed on three ways in which I can be helpful during this awful experience:

1.) Do the grocery shopping for my elderly-as-fuck-so-stop-going-to-the-bagel-store-every-morning-Richard-Rowland parents

2.) Help Becca and Geoff with the kids AND provide stoned commentary on true crime docu-series, nightly

3.) Blog. Because I sure as shit know this helps me, and I hope it helps you cope with this ridiculously inconvenient, scary, awful bullshit, too.

I have no idea what I'm going to write about. I'm rusty. Everything is still going to riddled with dumb-dumb spelling and grammar errors and it's going to look dated, but I don't care. Because while I am scared, it's not about this anymore.

Welcome back. See you tomorrow.

Meg
@meg4lyfe

Fuck Work, Unless You’re Hiring

Weeeeeeeell, I’ve got some good news and some not-so-good news. And then some more not-so-good news. Let’s go in reverse order:

I did not get the job I thought I was going to get. During my interview, it was strongly implied that I would get a second interview. Instead, they’ve elected not to acknowledge my emails. So, there’s that.

So now, having run through all my friends who have friends who might be hiring, I’m ready for the next rite of passage for this generation: I’m moving back in with Dad after Giant Camel’s and my lease in Philadelphia is up at the end of July. So, there’s that. I’d talk about how I feel about all of this, but since most of our readers are within five years of my age, I’m going to assume you know how I feel.

Now, the silver linings:

-       I’m going to keep looking for jobs, mostly so I can say I’ve been looking, BUT having already mentally processed the defeat of having to move in with family I’m going to concentrate on writing during my last while in Philadelphia. I have my eye on a couple of moneymakers (greeting cards and the much-discussed romance novel), but I also plan to do more blogging, and I have a few more projects in mind. This will be good for me, in that a) I won’t go crazy, b) one of these might make money, and c) then I can hold my tattered little manuscripts out to my father, stepmother, readers, and potential employers and declare, “See? I wasn’t just playing Playstation and crash-dieting and crying! I created.”

-       I get to go to the Texas State Fair in the fall, and to the Chickasaw Indian Casino for my birthday. I’m pretty sure that for my eighth birthday my father took me to an arcade and gave me some money to feed into loud machines covered in blinking lights for a minimal shot at reward. Twenty years are as an evening gone…

-       I get to dish about the crappy temp job I had last winter. I withheld it because I didn’t want prospective employers to find the blog, read me aggressively sassing a job, and decide I was unfit. Now I am exponentially less sanguine about prospective employers even looking at my resume, let alone my cover letter, let alone checking to see if I even HAVE a blog and wrote three books, so what the hell. For months I’ve had little bits of paper floating around with notes about that job, and now I can throw them away.

So, as you might remember from my post about Dawn Davenport being my spirit animal, I worked at a large, poorly run tech company. To cover my ass I won’t name it, but the name is as stupid as “CompuCom,” so should you draw any conclusions from that… My job was to load mobile phone apps onto mobile phones, see if they crashed and were in the correct language, rinse, repeat. Theoretically, this might have been a fun job, but. Most of the apps weren’t in English, resulting in a lot of “fun” with Google translate trying to find the keyboard shortcut for those letters only one language uses, a la “Ѭ.” Even before I began, random layoffs raged – the guy who trained me went a week before I did, which is incomprehensible. So there was a strong slasher-movie aspect – every day you’d show up and someone else would be gone. And most of the remaining people were either assholes, lunatics, or some new and exotic combination. So imagine me getting up at 4:30, taking a two-hour bus ride, then sitting quietly in a freezing office writing up, in extreme detail, why an application (we did not test APPS on PHONES but rather APPLICATIONS on DEVICES) to find a nearby bus station in Stockholm didn’t seem to work, but I couldn’t be sure because it was all in Swedish, all the while having no job security and the worst English-speaking coworkers I’ve ever had. Also, we had to flag things that might offend Islamic sensibilities or annoy the Chinese government. I can honestly say I find both of those things extremely difficult to predict. So you can see why I needed to try to mine it for humor.

Some of the best apps:

-       A body mass calculator that, if you typed in the information wrong, gave the reading “INFINITE BMI LOL YOU ARE OBESE”

-       An ovulation tracker that you could set to text your husband when your eggs were ready: “Honey, get home quick!” I got in trouble for not flagging this as potentially offensive to Islamic sensibilities.

-       A numerology “thing” that told me that, according to my name’s numerical value (verbatim), “looks like you should be peep-year-old aunt bath bar next door.” No clue about Islamic sensibilities, as usual, but this offended the hell out of me.

-       I plugged something in wrong and got an error message reading “OPERATION ATTEMPTED ON SOMETHING THAT IS NOT A SOCKET.” Of all the metaphors for my sex life…

-       A soundboard of clips and sound effects from “Young Frankenstein.” I thought I had my headphones in while I was testing it – turns out they weren’t pushed in all the way and Madeleine Kahn was just screaming away for fifteen minutes. The fact that no one mentioned this to me tells me all you need to know about that office.

And my co-workers: One guy wore a purple-and-leopard-print Santa hat around all day, indoors, in January; on guy ostentatiously backed into a parking space in a VOLKSWAGEN JETTA (if you’re parking in a LOT, your car isn’t good enough to do that); and my supervisor typed interoffice messages in this font. Everyone was queer for sanitary wipes and used them many, many times daily – on their hands, on their workstations, on each other for all I knew – as though they knew I was deliberately not washing my hands after I peed. A poster in the breakroom (it had no chairs in it, but hooray for posters!) advised us that we could donate blood at the nearby Fluid Processing Center.

Fluid. Processing. Center. That’s a slippery slope, isn’t it? Crazy John’s Discount Fluids. Flow-n-Go EZ Fluids. Fluids r’ Us. And then when it gentrifies: the Fluidry.

So in short: fuck work, unless you’re hiring in the North Texas area. I’m available August 1^st.

My Hagman's Keeper

EFF! Eff for two solid reasons:

1.) Tonight is the release party. Which is a good thing. But still, eff. Here are the answers to some frequently asked release party-related questions!

Q: Where is the party?

A: The Big Hunt. 1345 Connecticut Avenue, NW. It's next to Cafe Citron and...something else that I can't remember. Which is odd, considering how much I'm there. Is it next to something else? I feel like it's next to that random non-profit that's always playing a PSA outside the building and never doesn't scare the shit out of me when I walk by it late at night. Seriously, I don't know who you people are or what you do, but get a Twitter account. It does the exact same thing but doesn't make me think I'm about to get raped.

Q: So I just walk in the bar and you'll be right there?

A: No, I will be in the bathroom snorting a line of Xanax off of Chris's tittays. Slash our party isn't in the main bar area. Go in through the main door, walk past the bar, and take an immediate left. If you hit the kitchen, you've gone too far. If you're upstairs, you've gone too vertical. If you're on the roof deck, you're not listening to me at all, so maybe you deserve to stay up there and think about what you did.

Q: Will you be selling books at the party?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because we'd have to front the money to buy them from the warehouse and that's not an option right now. I'm currently drinking seltzer for dinner and not because I'm watching my girlish figure, if you know what I mean.

Q: Tell me more about the free shit you've promised.

A: Our publisher, Adams Media, was kind enough to send like, 15ish awesome books to give away to the first 15ish people who show up. I'd give you a concrete number, but the books are on the table across from my bed and I'd have to do a slight crunch to see over my chair and count them.

Q: Meg...I want to be on your side, but it's just genuinely difficult when you say things like that.

A: FINE. Nineteen. Nineteen books for the first nineteen people who show up and are not related to me and/or in my immediate circle of friends. Also, there are four copies of our book in that count, so if you didn't have time to buy a copy, come early and you might get one for ~fReE~! I'll throw in another one from my personal collection to make it five. Alex will be waiting for you when you walk in with a few Trader Joe's bags full of books. First-come, first-serve. 

Q: Can I take one of the bags when you run out of books?

A: No. I use them to do my grocery shopping.

Q: You don't buy groceries.

A: Well, I use them to buy wine and hummus when I'm feeling sassy.

Q: Can I take Alex?

A: As long as I get my bags back...

Q: So the party starts at 7:30?

A: Yes.

Q: When does the reading start?

A: The hilarious Tim Miller is going to "get the party started" (<--- God I hate myself) at 8:15, and then we'll hop on the mic, say thank you, do a quick reading, and then sign books.

Q: What will you be reading?

A: BONUS MATERIAL!!!1! We'll be reading a scenario from the original manuscript that got cut because it was too risqué.

Q: Risqué?

A: Well, less risqué and more flat-out offensive, but risqué sounds sexier.

Q: What's the dress code?

A: Super casual.

Q: What will you be wearing?

A: Fuck if I know.

Q: How's your unibrow zit?

A: HORRIBLE, obviously. And I went to Sephora yesterday to buy like, burn victim grade cover-up and got it one shade too light, which is un-fucking-fathomable.

Q: Is the book available on Kindle yet?

A: No, but it will be.

Q: When?

A: I'm not sure. I keep emailing our editor about it, but he doesn't know either and I get the impression that he's irritated by the entire situation too. So I'm sure me emailing him five times a day to be like "MATT!!! WHEN'S THE KINDLE COMING OUT?! MATT!!! CAN I HAVE MORE MONEY?! MATT!!! WHY WON'T YOU LET ME USE THIS ABORTION JOKE?!" isn't helping. But, you know, that's just my way of saying "I like you".

Q: So who's coming to the party?

A: EVERYONE.

Q: Really?

A: Well, everyone I know.

Q: So I should go?

A: Totally. Take Friday off. Get blackout drunk. Make out with one of my friends. Say hi to me and watch me ramble at you for fifteen minutes because when I get nervous I ramble.

Q: I'm excited!

A: I'm a cunt hair away from a bleeding ulcer, but I'm also excited.

Q: Welp, see you tonight.

A: Yay!

2.) I would like to apologize to everyone for being too far up my own asshole buying cover-up and researching today's weather forecast to realize that yesterday was Larry Hagman's birthday, a.k.a. the holy holiday of HAGMAS. I'm mortified. Just mortified. Thanks to readers Charles and John for reminding me. God. I'm seriously pissed at myself because I could have done a really good birthday post Tuesday night. Instead, I wrote this:

OK, OK, OK, wait a minute...Instagram shares your photos? With random people?? Is the world aware of this?! Because I sure as shit wasn't. Thank God I didn't take a bunch of MySpace photos of myself from extremely flattering angles with my breasts tumbling out of my blouse because Lord knows it was tempting. REAL tempting.

Then fell asleep, woke up at 3:45am having a panic attack, watched season one of Breaking Bad to calm down, subsequently convinced myself I had lung cancer, fell back asleep at 8, woke up at 1 and was late to meet Alex for lunch. So, at least I achieved that. I'm sorry, Larry. I'm sorry I let you down, I'm sorry I let my readers down, I'm sorry I let Patrick Duffy down, but most of all, I'm sorry I let myself down. I hope you had an excellent 80th birthday. (80!!!!!!!!! Please just let me hold you in my arms...)

In conclusion: Merry Hagmas to all, and to all a good night!

We'll shut up about the writing the book, I swear. But first...

That's an excellent question. Answer: Chris and I can produce really funny content really, really fast. So you should hire us and/or agent us 'n shit. Because I'm sick of doing soft-shoe in front of various metro stations to afford all the eyebrow and upper-lip threading I require to look like a halfway normal human being. So...tell a friend. If your friend is an agent, that is. If not, please don't tell your friends that I can't afford hair maintenance. BECAUSE I CAN. It just takes some shufflin'.

Speaking of our "career", I was telling my dad about an article I read on Jezebel today about how Jon Stewart's writing staff only has two women and Conan's only has one, and it prompted this conversation:

Meg: I want in, Dad. I want in, and I want in bad.

Dad: Well, write a letter to Jon Stewart.

Meg: 'Eh...that sounds like a whole...thing. But I did tweet that I'm free and Chris is gay, so we'd be 2 birds, 1 diversity hire.

Dad: PLUS EVIE IS KIND OF ASIAN!!1!

That last comment is never not the funniest thing I've ever heard for the following three reasons:

1.) I appreciate that my dad is so desperate for me to get a job, he's actually willing to throw his cat into the mix if it makes me even slightly more hireable.

2.) I'm completely in love with the mental image of us kicking in the door to Jon Stewart's office, slamming our hands down on his desk and being like, "Alright, Stewart, here's the deal: I'm a lady, [points to Chris] that kid's gay, and our intern is a five-year-old Tonkinese cat from Jersey with a serious attitude problem. We're a learning disability and a pint of Cherokee blood away from a full ride to Sarah Lawrence—you hiring us or what?" And then security comes in, escorts us out of the building, and bans us for life. Like most of my fantasies, sexual or otherwise, it's bittersweet and takes a sharp left turn at the end.

3.) I also really like imagining of the three of us as the Planeteers, except instead of summoning Captain Planet when we put our rings together, we make a funny, gay Asian woman. So, Margaret Cho, I guess.

And now I leave you with my Ten Photos That Summarize the Past Four Weeks, à la Chris' post yesterday.

Week #1:

Week #2:

Week #3:

Week #4:

This was also the week that constantly doing the Tim Gunn deep-in-thought hand gesture

and the head-in-hands-why-am-I-such-a-fuck-up? motion

finally caught up with me and I developed a pimple above my lip in the exact location of a "Monroe" piercing and one between my eyebrows that was so big, it actually cast a shadow, thereby making it look like I have a unibrow. Composite photography shows I looked something like this:

The unibrow zit is obviously still lingering because it wouldn't be an official 2birds1blog event if I wasn't sweating profusely and/or breaking out in some sort of heinous fashion. I don't have "snake bite" piercings or a chest tattoo, but we've got two more days until the big show. It's still anybody's game.

Four more to go...

I'd like to say I didn't download instagram for the sole purpose of taking that artsy photograph of a Sue Grafton novel, toilet paper, and Pepto-Bismol, but why lie? The app was free and it summarizes a time in my life so perfectly. Stress-induced diarrhea and solvin' mysteries on the terlet: September 2011. Amen.

"My mother, that's who I need"

I'd like to address the following comment from last Tuesday's post about my parents abandoning me on my sixth birthday to go to Monte Carlo:

So when I first read that, I was like, "BAHA, amazing pop culture reference. You are my new best friend," and replied saying as much. But then as the day went on, I started worrying, "Wait, maybe Jocelyn wasn't excited that my life shares a common thread with Troop Beverly Hills and really was accusing me of trying to pass off a TP storyline as my own...?" And let me tell you something: nothing gets my goat more than people accusing me of shenanigans. Because why would I lie to you? Why would I make shit up? Do you know how much effort it takes to make shit up? Too much. That's why this isn't Meg McBlogger's well-researched, Regency Era murder-mystery blog; it's Meg McBlogger's "today I choked on cantaloupe and played with my Aspie's Clip. It was a day," blog. One of these things is easier than the other.

(Side note: Speaking of accusations of shenanigans, about a year ago I got an email from a guy asking if I was actually "a real person," and it was the biggest mindfuck I'd ever experienced. My reply derailed at an almost impressive rate: "Dear [Said Guy]: I'm pretty sure I'm a real person. Or as a real as anyone can be sure they are. Because I suppose there's always a chance that none of this is actually happening and this is a simulated reality created by machines like in the Matrix, or we exist only in the complex fantasies of a kid with Down's Syndrome like in St. Elsewhere, in which case, no, I don't exist, but that means that that you don't exist either, so why would you be questioning my existence in the first place?" And that's when I had a panic attack and ran away from my computer like a small child because someone who has as many anxiety problems as I do should never think about that much about their own existence. But for the record: I am a real person. I am a real person, who just took a real Klonopin. While doing real breathing exercises. In a real hot shower.)

So, yes, I was pissed, but I was willing to let it go because I'm working on this new thing where I don't let blog comments and/or emails control my life to the point where I'm calling Tulane Chris on a semi-regular basis with bad acid reflux in the Self-Help section of Barnes & Noble asking him to bring me Zantac and hold me. But then I went out to dinner with my parents tonight and my mom was like, "CAN YOU BELEIVE SOMEONE ACCUSED YOU OF MAKING UP THE MONTE CARLO STORY?!?!" and it opened up that can of worms all over again. But thankfully for all of us, I recieved this email about an hour ago:

From: mom  

Subject: monte carlo

hi meg, 

you know that i don't like to invade your professional life, but i feel that i have to set the record straight for your readers. here goes.  

i realize that much of the time meg lives in her own world, a world inhabited by helper monkeys and fox dogs, and we love her for it. however, her tale of woe regarding a certain trip to monte carlo is absolutely factual. come on, readers, did you really think that things like that only happen in movies? i do take exception to the term "vacation". it was a business trip. a really nice business trip, but business none the less. despite all of the trials and tribulations, real or merely perceived, you survived. do you even remember that i went to england by myself when you were two years old, leaving you with...of all people... your father?! mothers do go away, meg, but most of the time, we do come back. i love you like a peacock loves rice krispies. 

mom mcb

(Hehehe...she threw in an inside joke. Peacocks.)

OK, look: I know my mom was trying to have my back there—and bless her heart for doing so—however, there are a few points I'd like to address:

1.) Diane: you are a lambchop for referring to this little goat 'n pony show as my "professional life". I know we've had our differences (specifically that you abandoned me on my sixth birthday to stretch out on a yacht like a cat in the sun for two weeks while I went on a hunger strike and contemplated the meaning of life,) but you're the best.

2.) Maybe I wouldn't have to live in my own world if this one didn't suck so much. (HAHAHAHA! I legitamtely just laughed-out-loud at my own emo-ness. That felt like something Dawn would say on Buffy.) (← Fag.)

3.) A BUSINESS TRIP. A "BUSINESS" TRIP. Are you kidding me? a.) What business is Dad in that he just has to jet set off to Monte Carlo for weeks on end or else he'll lose his job? MI6? Formula-1? High-stakes poker? Last time I checked he was in HR. b.) OK, let's just say hypothetically I'm willing to accept that Dad did have a business trip in Monte Carlo because it was the late 80's and everyone was going on lavish business trips and doing rails off their DeLoreans, it still doesn't make a lick of difference! You were gone for two weeks: one week was supposedly for "business" and one week was for funzies. My birthday fell on funzies. FUNZIES, MOM—FUNZIES.

4.) Your trip to England in no way compares to Monte Carlo. (God, how obnoxious do we sound right now? I'm 10 seconds away from deleting this entire post, throwing Turtle Rapes Shoe up for tomorrow and working this out in an emergency therapy session where they already think I'm a middle-class piece of shit just by virtue of being there.) First of all, as you yourself pointed out, you went to England. Not you and Dad, just you. And while I agree that Dad demonstrates a "unique" level of responsibility with his children (i.e. the time he paid me $5 to snort a line of fresh cracked pepper, I did, and subsequently burst into tears, ran upstairs and shoved a Q-tip so far up my nose I thought I was going to give myself a labotomy,) at least AN parent was there! If I couldn't have been with both of my parents on my sixth birthday, one would have been acceptable. Because you know what wasn't acceptable? Spending my birthday with some Bible-thumping Army wife who was all, "HEY, HALF-BREED JEW HEATHEN! GUESS WHAT I GOT YOU FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY? HORN POLISH AND A NOSE JOB! SEE YOU IN HEL!" Six. Years. Young.

5.) I don't actually have a fifth point, I just prefer to go out on odd numbers.

So. Yeah. Thank you for having my back slash I still don't forgive you slash you never apologized slash if you did, I wouldn't forgive you. So, you know, food for thought.

At least we'll always have that Girl Scouts orienteering trip when you got overzealous and took me and my troop on a short cut through the canyon, only to discover that the bridge was out, so I—cocky from my gymnastics lessons—decided to walk across a fallen tree to get to the other side and fix it, which was a good plan until I twisted my ankle and got stuck halfway across (classic Meg), but ever the loving mother and fearless troop leader, you conquered your fear of heights to get across the tree, save me, and ultimately SAVE THE DAY.

And attracted by your newfound confidence, Craig T. Nelson decided he wanted to hit that again.

THE AND.

Middle School: Hey, at least it wasn't when I peaked?

Uh, so the world of e-commerce is slightly more complicated than I thought. Specifically because I've decided to Jew out and order everything in bulk and set up the store and handle the inventory and shipping myself. Because let's not lie; I've got the time. That and I don't need an e-pimp taking the majority of my hard earned sorr about the bag money. I saw Hustle & Flow. I know how that shit works. Plus, if anyone's going to monetize off of the severe emotional trauma caused by "sorr about the bag," it sure as shit isn't going to be Cafe Press. I don't remember them wiping away any tears after the incident or taking the X-Acto blade out of my shaky little talons.

I think my mom is 97% sure that my little 2b1b merch store is going to be audited by the IRS within it's first two minutes of being open. And honestly, I don't blame her. I'm a wile, shifty little character, to say the least. If I'm trying to get from point A to point B, I'm pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to get there no matter what corners I have to cut or which morals I have to throw to the wind. I mean, need I remind you that I recently dreamt I exchanged unspeakable sexual favors involving my parents' shower for a role in the fictitious 2010 remake of Shag? My subconscious cooked that up, looked it over and said, "Yep. Seems about right." and threw in the towel. Some people call this characteristic "being a horrible person"; I call it dedication.

The point being, I can understand why my mom would think I'd try to dick over Uncle Sam upside down and sideways. But, surprisingly, I'm not. I'm being responsible. I spent the better part of today researching this whole LLC/Inc/sales tax/income tax/we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way tax, thing and I won't open the store until it's all figured out and I know that all of my ducks are in a row. Which sucks because everything's designed and looks sexy and I want to show you guys now now now! But no! Must. be. responsible. Which is why I keep sending manic emails at all hours of the night to our good friend Nate asking him 9,000 questions (accompanied by delightful Leverne & Shirley clips) about the world of e-commerce. Nate's been super helpful and nice about taking time out of his day to answer my questions, despite having just been fired himself (TWINSIES!!!!!1), so if you get a chance, you should totally head over and check out his store. Thanks Nate!

This afternoon (in between doing tax research and masturbating to the sorr about the bag design) I started feeling overwhelmed by my e-commerce confusion, so I decided to take a break and make myself a relaxing cup of chamomile tea. You know how a scent can take you back to a really specific time or moment in your life? Like, white musk reminds me of 8th grade OBGC field hockey season, "Very Sexy For Her" reminds me of Junior year of college and Dolce & Gabanna "Light Blue" reminds me of slicing wrists in New York? Well, the smell of chamomile tea instantly transported back to sitting on the couch with my parents at 8pm on a weekday night, watching TV and sipping chamomile tea while trying not to cry and/or have an anxiety attack because I had to go to school the next day. But not just any school—middle school.

To say "middle school was hard for me" is such a gross understatement that it's just laughable. My middle school experience was straight-up traumatic. I am in no way saying this just for effect, but I would rather suck Paul Simon's dick for days on end with a stadium full of anonymous blog commentors watching and emailing me their in-depth critiques of my fellatio techniques than relive even five minutes of my middle school experience. That is how much I hated it. Elementary school was elementary school, high school was awesome, college was irritating but still fun, and middle school? Middle school was the equivalent of being emotionally waterboarded for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 3 years in a row. Why was middle school so traumatic for? Well, truthfully, I had a few things working against me:

- For the better part of middle school I had braces, board shorts, less than mediocre hygiene skills and a perm. I mean, what part of that doesn't scream "middle school was hard for me"?

- I went to Farquhar Middle School in Olney, Maryland. (Or, Farqueer, if you will.) Farquhar is what every middle school in America must have looked like in 1972. Nothing in Farquhar has been updated since the Nixon administration and the walls are painted in neon yellow and powder blue spirals so when you walk down the ramp from the library to the cafeteria, it honestly seemed plausible that this all just might be a bad acid trip and at any point it's going to wear off and you'll wake up safe in your bed, far, far away from this pre-pubescent Hunter S. Thompsonian nightmare.

To up the creepy factor even further, Farquhar was located on a plot of land isolated in the middle of a cornfield, in the middle of a forest, in the middle of a small town in the middle of Maryland. Every morning on the ride to school, there was this disturbing moment when the bus would turn from Dr. Bird Road onto Bachelor's Forest Road and as you approached school, the only thing you could see on the horizon was a small, rundown, brick building, surrounded by nothing but ominous cornfields back-lit by the eerie red morning sky. Shit was fucked up. Like going to school wasn't hard enough, we had to do it on the set of a Tim Burton period piece.

- Children at that age, specifically girls, are down-right cruel. I could expand on this topic but it would go some place very real, very fast.

- OK, I'm going there: I had a bully. I was bullied. I'm scared to say her name because the mere thought of her puts me right back in those board shorts, but let's just say that it rhymed with Schmessica Schmith. Schmessica Schmith was total a cunt to me. I think that might have been because she was kind of a cunt in general, but she caused me a lot of anxiety in middle school. (Side note: I just found her on Facebook and she scares me just as much as she did in '96, if not more. Mostly because her Facebook photo utilizes the Photoshop charcoal filter. Snobbery. Proceed.)

The only specific example of her cuntyness that I can think of is this time in 6th grade gym class floor hockey unit, I was talking to one of my "friends" (and I put that in quotations because I clearly didn't have any) and this "friend" was complaining about how weird this kid in our class Jonathan Bligh was and desperate to join the conversation, I was like, "Ohmygawd, I know. Jonathan Bligh is such a prick."

Now, looking back, I seriously misused the term "prick" there. Jonathan Bligh was like, a painfully shy nerd with glasses who kept to himself in the corner and did puzzles. I think referring to him as a "prick" was giving him a lot of credit. The truth of the mater was that I didn't know what the word meant; I was just really eager for a chance to use it. And when I did, Schmessica Schmith just so happened to be walking by. And being kind of "schwite shrash," Schmessica Schmmith did know what a prick was and shamelessly made fun of me for misusing it and for making fun of Jonathan Bligh in the first place. Because glass houses Meg McBlogger, glass houses.

I realize that Schmessica Schmith making fun of me for misusing the term "prick" during a game of floor hockey doesn't seem that traumatic, but trust me, it was. (Side note: I just found Jonathan Bligh on Facebook and according to his picture, he just got married. Mozel tov, ya old son-of-a-prick!)

Another one of my middle school bullies was this short, stout African American girl who's name escapes me right now, but she scared the shit out of everyone, including me. Even in high school. She was always screaming at someone and being really aggressive and confrontational and just generally really unpleasant. (Jesus Chris, what the fuck was her name?? Ali and/or Eileen: I expect a text when you read this.)

Now, the halls in Farquhar are very, very narrow and one day in 8th grade, said girl was standing in front of her locker with all of her shit—her jacket, backpack, books, purse—carelessly strewn about the floor. BY COMPLETE ACCIDENT, I stepped on a tiny corner of the hoodie of her jacket, didn't notice and continued to walk on.

Suddenly the girl got all up in my face and screamed, "AWWWWWWWWWWW HAAAAAYYYYYLLL NO, BITCH! [Said girl is now AN single inch away from my face with her own.] You do NOT. Step. On a black woman's clothing."

I swear to fucking god.

I like, peed my pants. I have never been so scared in my entire life. I was like, "WHAT?!?!?! HOW DID RACE GET INVOLVED, MA'AM?!?!?!" and ran into my social studies class and hid until the bell rang. Jesus Christ. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people?

- I stand that Farquhar had specifically evil teachers. I know everybody looks back and thinks, "Oh man, my teachers were the worst!" But seriously, Farquhar was like, oddly chock full of horrible teachers. I'm specifically thinking of my 6th grade writing teacher, Mrs. McVeigh. Jesus Christ. What a waste of a vagina. I remember one day we read this story that was from the perspective of a thorn talking about how great it is to be a thorn and how it felt bad for the rose bud, so then we had to write a story from the perspective of something typically considered ugly or undesirable and what it felt sorry for. Everyone did their stories on weeds and shit, but I wrote mine from the perspective of the wrapper of a liverwurst sandwich and how it felt sorry for the so-called "delicious" smelling popcorn bucket. (Imaginative and hungry; even back then.)

When Mrs. McVeigh asked for volunteers to share their story, my little Meglet hand shot up immediately and I was picked to share with the class first. Shortly after I started, Mrs. McVeigh stopped me and told me that there wasn't time in her class for "these funny little stories" and if I wasn't going to take the assignment seriously, I might as well not do it at all. And oh my fucking god. To this day, I am still livid that upon hearing this, my mom didn't call her up at her home, during dinner and tell her to suck a rock and die. I mean, what's the point of having hippie parents if not for calling close-minded teachers and telling them to suck rocks and die?! When my kids ask me why they have to go to a weirdo School Without Walls where they're graded on a sliding scale of Tibetan prayer beads and hugs, this is the story I will tell them. And they're welcome.

- The combination of all of the above made it impossible for me to sleep at night because I was so consumed with anxiety about school the next day. It was bad. I wouldn't sleep all night and then the next morning, the combination of anxiety and lack of sleep would make me sick to my stomach and I'd routinely vomit all over first period. (Again, I didn't have any friends for the better part of middle school?—SHOCKER!)

We tried everything to cure my insomnia naturally—aromatherapy, noise machines, classical music tape after classical music tape after classical music tape, therapy sessions for my anxiety, herbal teas (which is where the chamomile tea flashback comes in)—and the only thing that worked was getting a lava lamp. Let me repeat that for you: the only thing that cured my debilitating anxiety and insomnia was a lava lamp. I swear to god. One day my parents took me to Sharper Image in Lakeforest Mall, we picked up a snazzy silver lava lamp with neon pink lava and from that night on (for a considerable amount of time), I was lulled to sleep by the zen-like amorphous shapes of its neon pink lava and it's warm glowing-glow.

...Do you know how much I internally struggle with this? Do you know what a complete douchebag I feel like because my body's natural Ambien is a lava lamp?? I mean, was I Shaggy in my past life??

I don't even remember why I started talking about middle school in the first place now. Why did I do this to myself? I'm completely lost in a series of anxious flashbacks. What was I talking about? Merch store -> more difficult than I thought -> taxes: whaaa? -> overwhelmed -> chamomile tea -> flashback to middle school. YES! OK. Well, so, yeah, in a nutshell: middle school was hard for me and I wouldn't go back for all the tea in China. Specifically all the chamomile tea in China. ZING!

(Yes that ZING! was forced, but I have now completely lost my concentration and all I want to do is curl up in a little ball, listen to the Spice Girls' Spice World on repeat, channel my 6th grade self and forgive.)

UPDATE ON THE DRAMZ!!~

Remember yesterday when my bosses were like, "Hey fuck up! We're coming in this afternoon to have A TALK with you, so start shitting your pants now!"? Welp, THEY DIDN'T SHOW UP! That's right. I sat here all day on pins and needles, stomach dropping to butt every single time the elevator doors opened, for nothing. That being said, I know for a fact that Boss #1 is coming in today because she has a meeting from 3:30-4:30. So I guess THE TALK will come after that? Ugh, I don't know. My stomach is killing me. I feel like I'm a little kid who's done something wrong and I'm waiting for my dad to come home and punish me. I wonder what Boss #1 will think when she comes in and finds me in a onesie holding a belt with hot tears streaming down my face?

So, this TALK can go one of two ways: they're either going to straight-up fire me or they're going to chew me out for what happened yesterday. And the thing is, I'm going to have a very hard time not telling them exactly where they can shove their wood samples if it's the latter. Because what happened yesterday was genuinely not my fault to the point where it's almost comical. Almost. Here's the deal: we have this random old table in our backroom that's on wheels. Boss #2's mom (who shares the same first name as Boss #2, which I think is slightly odd) came in yesterday to pick up the table. She came in, I said ¡hola!, pointed to the table, said ¡gracias! and went back to my desk. Unfortunately, old Boss #2 Senior didn't unlock the wheels before rolling the table out and scuffed up the floor pretty badly as a result. But for the sweet love of Hay-Zeus Christo, I only just found out that we even had that table, nevertheless that it had locked wheels! Shouldn't Boss #2's mom have noticed the wheels weren't moving and, oh I don't know, unlocked them? Or said something to me? In the words of my mother: "Meghan, you've got a mouth; use it." (That's what...she...said? Shudder, shudder. No. Not when it involves my mom and my mouth.) So that's why I'm in trouble. Because "I" ruined the floors. I seriously felt like I was on glue when Boss #2 yelled at me yesterday. All I wanted to do was break down and scream, "BUT YOUR MOM DID IT!" Unfortunately it's way harder than one would think to pass the blame onto your boss' rickity old mom.

What I'm chalking all this mishegoss up to is it's just one more time when I have to shoulder the blame for something that's not my fault because I'm the office's whipping boy. Or girl. And that shit's gettin' old rull fast. Yes I need a paycheck, but I also need to not have an ulcer anymore. So if I don't get fired today, I'm going to quit. That's a lie. Well, I don't know. Maybe. Oh my god. Zantac and Puppy Cam are the only things keeping my shit together at this moment.

OH AND BTDUBBS! This is my Washington Post horoscope for today:

Aries March 21 - April 19

For Thursday, January 21 -Testy? Cranky? Who, you? Just because the planet in charge of your sign just so happens to be Mars, the ancient god of war? No way. It's not that you're irritable. It's just that 'the opponents' -- those of us who happen to inhabit the extra space in your world -- are just so darned uncooperative. Don't take any guff from these intruders. Put 'em right in their place.

OH. SHIT. The Cliffs Notes for that horoscope would simply say: Bitches better ACKRITE. From your mouth to God's ears, Washington Post. However, I sort of want to hold onto this job a liiiiittle bit longer for one reason and one reason only: Russell the Homophobic Co-Worker. Shocking, I know, considering we've been on the outs recently, but we had the most bizarre and intriguing conversation yesterday. I haven't had a non-work related conversation with Russell in a month of Sundays, but suddenly yesterday he walked over to my desk and said, "You know, my birthday is at the end of the month, I accept gift cards." I managed to cough out a courtesy laugh and said that was "exciting" for him. "Yeah, well this birthday is a big one for me. A really, really important one." "Do you mind if I ask how old you're turning?" I asked, thinking it must be 35 or 40. "37," he answered. Huh. 37. I wouldn't really define 37 as a "big" birthday in people's lives. It's not really a milestone. That's actually the most random age I can possibly think of. These thoughts in my head were reflected in the "HUWHHH?!" look on my face. "I made myself a promise a lot time ago that I would do something by the time I'm 37," he explained. "I said, 'I gotta do this. And Imma do it when I'm 37. [Slams fist on table] That's my deadline.' Gotta do it. And I'm ready to do it." He stopped talking. I stared at him with an "—AND??" look on my face but he just looked down and continued organizing his papers. "So.........what are you going to do?" I asked. "Oh I don't think it's appropriate to tell you," he answered and walked away. AND WALKED. AWAY. Are you fucking kidding me?!?!?! How evil is that?? Why would you bring it up if you didn't want to talk about it?! Wouldn't it just be easier to just not say anything at all? It's like when people tell you that somebody told them a secret, and you're like "Oh man! What is it?" and they get a smug look on their face and are like, "Oh I can't tell you." THEN WHY DID YOU BRING IT UP?! Christ. However, the wheels in my head started turning later that afternoon and now I'm wondering...what if, at 37 years young, Russell the Homophobic Co-Worker is going to come out of the closet?? I mean, the man is outrageously homophobic and once said he doesn't eat cream cheese because it "tastes like sperm." I don't think it's that far of a reach. I've always suspected he might be a Down Low Brotha. The thing is, if I get fired today or quit before the end of the month, I'll never know! The curiosity would drive me insane! Is it worth staying in a job I despise just to find out if Russell is indeed a big 'ole homo?

Gah. Boss #1 just walked in. Guess we'll find out...