State of the Meg—April 2012

- A lot of truly God-awful things have happened over the last few months and I don’t want to talk about it. Which is obnoxious, I realize, because then why did I bring it up in the first place? I don’t know. I’m like that asshole who casually drops it into conversation that they were molested but that's where the story stops, so you spend the rest of your friendship not knowing which family member to resent on their behalf. Not that I’m saying people who have been molested are assholes. People who are withholding are assholes. It just so happens that some of them have been molested. Really, what I’m trying to say here is that I’m an asshole who—TO MY KNOWLEDGE—has never been sexually molested. Good. I’m glad we're off to a good start.

- In other good, non-molestery news, I got into grad schools! Yay for me. YAY FOR SCHOOL! I got a creative writing scholarship to The New School, so that’s where I’ll be going. For a while I was bummed out because this means I have to turn down my spot at Columbia. I couldn’t figure out why that prospect upset me so much until I realized that in my mind, I’ve always equated Columbia with Hogwarts. I don’t really know why, considering I’ve physically been to Columbia and seen firsthand that it is in no way a school of witchcraft and wizardry. Yet on some subconscious level, I think I’ve been imagining myself spending the next two years flying around the Upper West Side with Evie on my broomstick—just writin’, playin’ Quidditch, havin’ the occasional gab session with Professor McGonagall. That said, I did the math and worked out that a round trip ticket to Orlando, two nights at the Econo Lodge, and a day pass to the The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios is $100,583 less than getting a creative writing MFA from Columbia. Soooo, that is the route I will be taking.

- HA HA! I’m just kidding, I can’t afford a trip to Orlando. If I could, I’d already be knee-deep in Kevin Yang and Gatorland by now.

- So, yes, I’m moving back to New York in July, probably. I feel the following about it: excited, scared, nervous, anxious, hopeful, loose bowels, scared. If you live in New York and would like to be my friend, that would be awesome. I sleep a lot and have a generally poor outlook on life, but I also love road trips and give good hugs. I feel like it balances out in the end.

- What does this news mean for the blog? Nothing. If anything I hope it’s going to get the blog back on track because now I totally feel motivated to write more. Chris is actually here right now to help me pick the blog up off its face and make it a part of your life again. He’s currently lying on my couch, just a tippy-tappying away. He just looked off into the distance thoughtfully, ruffled his hair, looked like he got an idea, and went back to typing. You know what? Good for him. I’m glad he worked through that. Oh, nope, he’s back to looking in the air worriedly. Now he’s fixing his sleeves and staring at my bookshelf. Back to typing. He’s got it. What a pro. I mean, I could live-blog Chris writing a blog post indefinitely, so I’m going to stop myself now before this gets any worse. (Although it’s worth noting that the only thing I can make out on his word document is “A Very Special Episode of Roseanne”. I don’t know what he’s got up his sleeve, but I am excited.)

- You know what’s a really big part of my life right now? Being livid that this exists/was recently featured on Gizmodo:

What you’re looking at is Grand Trunk’s hammock compatible sleeping bag, or as you may know it better, a SLAMMOCK, the invention I came up with in the summer of 2005 when I boldly asked myself, “Meg, what is the most comfortable sleeping scenario you can think of?” and stared back at my truth: a sleeping back in a hammock. You may also remember that everyone (including my parents) mocked me when I tried to make it a reality in my sophomore year dorm, and the inventor of The Tinge further mocked me via email because I made the extremely legitimate point that most ladies don't want to rub their junk on razor blades. And now my invention—NAY, dream!—is being sold for $180 by someone who is not me.  Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssucks.

- Yesterday was my birthday. I’m 27. Helena got me a bag of weed and Laura got me a subscription to the large-print version of Reader’s Digest, and every time I think about it I want to burst into tears because when you find two people who just get you like that, you probably shouldn’t move 230 miles away from them.

- I have two camping trips planned for the near future and I’m so excited. Slash I need to get new batteries for Hat.

- Speaking of Hat! I forgot to tell you about my new phone cover. Check it out:

I know what you’re thinking: “Is that a Real Tree phone cover?” No. It’s one step better: it’s a knock-off Real Tree phone cover. I got it for $6.99 on Amazon and it’s a major part of why I’m alive right now. I like it because it makes me feel American. I changed my ringtone to Toby Keith's “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (Angry American)” and renamed my phone Rickywayne after my favorite contestant on Heavy. Every time I plug it into iTunes it says, “Rickywayne_LEAVE ME ALONE! is synching”, and I just laugh and laugh and laugh…

- Speaking of the depressing ways I choose to entertain myself, my newest hobby is teaching myself bass lines to 311 songs, playing them, and then laughing out loud. The end.

- Chris update: Now he’s sitting upright on the couch, slumped down slightly, playing with his facial, and looking concerned.

- Chris update II: Ah, it’s because he’s hungry and wants to know if I’m cooking dinner tonight. No. No, I’m not.

- Chris update III: Chris is making a frozen burrito.

- My allergies are killing me. WHICH REMINDS ME! The Blogologues are performing my blog post A Humble Apology in the run of their current show, Blogologues: Younger Than Springtime! I’m so honored, I can’t even tell you. The show runs Thursdays-Saturdays, April 13-May 5^th at The Players Theater in the West Village. Tickets are available for purchase here, so if you’re in New York, go see it! Becca and I are going this weekend and I can’t wait! Slash, I can wait because the reason I’m going to New York this weekend is to attend an accepted student’s reception at The New School, which sounds like a lot of forced mingling/networking. ‘Ehhhhhhhh… It’s on 4/20 (~!LOL!~), so I can’t decide if I should get high before to make said mingling easier, or wait and get high after as a reward for being able to interact with people like a normal fucking human being. Or both…? 

- I got an upper endoscopy done a few weeks ago (more on that in a later blog post), and one of the questions the nurse asked before the procedure was if there’s any possible chance that I could be pregnant. I answered no, because obviously the closest I’ve come to having sex recently was sleeping through a rerun of Silk Stalkings on the TV Guide Network last month, and I swear to God, the nurse stopped writing, looked up from her clipboard, raised a suspicious eyebrow and asked, “Are you sure?” I can’t tell if she asked that because I look fat and pregnant, or because I look so slutty that I obviously lost the Trapper Keeper detailing all the dicks I've fucked lately and a baby??!!—YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE!!!!!1! Either way, I’m offended. Just slightly less by the chorus of dicks/your guess, my guess option.

- Did you know you have to take a drug test to work at the Ford’s Theater gift shop? HA HA! Neither did I!

- I don’t understand the appeal of LMFAO. Their songs just sound like technology and foolishness

- Also, I don’t care for DayGlo.

- I have to pee, but I don’t want to get up.

- Here’s a picture of Evie disrespecting my dad’s dry cleaning:

- OK. I feel like I can’t think of anything else going on in my life right now that isn’t part of a future blog post and/or horribly depressing, so this is going to have to suffice for now.

State of the Meg: Like a polyamorous relationship or trying to go blond: it’s complicated.

7 Things You Didn't Know About Me: 1-4

From an email I received last week:

Hi Meg! Longtime reader, first time emailer.

[…]

There’s this “7 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” thing going around on some of my favorite tumblr accounts and although you don’t have a tumblr (to my knowledge), I totally think you should do one! Maybe as a blog post? It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. I feel like yours would be especially interesting because of how incredibly open and candid you are with your readers. I can’t imagine what we don’t know!

[…]

- Sara

Well bless your heart for thinking seven random facts about me would be interesting. And no, I do not have a Tumblr account. I made one over the summer when I was bored, posted five pictures, and immediately deleted my account because I felt really self-conscious and wasn’t sure if I was doing it right. That being said, I will list seven facts that you may not know about me. I can’t promise they’ll be interesting, but here you go:

[OK, I’m going to stop myself right there. So, I wrote this post on Saturday night because I didn’t feel well enough to go out and wanted to get some work done. I took an Adderall and it…complicated things. Because apparently I either don’t take my Adderall and never finish a blog post because I write a little, get distracted by something shiny, write a little, PLASTIC BAG! PLASTIC BAG! PLASTIC BAG!, write a little, I NEED TO KNOW WHAT EVERY MEMBER OF THE WU TANG CLAN IS DOING RIGHT NOW! and end up with this huge archive of half-finished blog posts I hate, OR I take my Adderall and write a fucking college thesis about something inane like my favorite soup. This post ended up being the latter, so I’ve decided to break it up into three days. I’m going to post facts 1-4 today, 5 tomorrow, and 6-7 on Wednesday. The exciting thing is it’s already written (and 30 pages…What? I don’t know. I can’t stop grinding my teeth.), so you know I’m good for it.

The other thing I want to mention is that for this week and this week only, as part of an Adams Media holiday promotion, our first book, The Misanthrope’s Guide to Life, is available as a free Kindle download! Pretty sweet, right? If you lucked out because you already planned on buying it, you should totally use the money you would have spent on it to download our second book, Brainwashing for Beginners. Two books for the price of one! HO HO (w)HO (loves you? Adams Media. Not me. This makes me extremely nervous because I’m afraid we’re going to take massive royalty hits and even though our royalties are only like 85 cents between us, that’s almost an apple pie on the Dollar Menu. We’re losing pies upon pies upon pies here, people. But then again, as of Saturday night we were #25 in free downloads and A Tale of Two Cities was #26. I feel like it’s a genuine accomplishment to be able to say that you’ve fragged Charles Dickens' ass. Especially in December.)

7 Things You Didn’t Know About Me (1-4):

1.) Dan and I got tattoos together while he was here visiting last month! It was kind of crazy and spontaneous, as most things I end up doing with Dan are. (Getting tattoos, walking around New York Avenue at 2 o’clock in the morning asking hookers if they know where we can get ecstasy, LaTe NigHt PizZa PaRtieS!!1…) A few nights before Dan had to go back to Dubai, we were chitchatting and/or watching Sister Wives (obviously) before bed and out of nowhere he was like, “I want to get a tattoo.” I’d been trying to find someone to go get a tattoo with me for over a year so I was like, “YES. TOMORROW. LET’S DO IT.” and it was decided. The next morning, I completely expected him to be like, “Remember when we decided we were going to get tattoos last night? LOL!!!1!” because one night while he was living with me last Fall, we decided (under the influence of about a baker’s dozen La Playas) that we were going to wake up, rent a Zip Car, drive to a mall two hours away in eastern Maryland and buy a pug. Because LIKE, LET’S JUST DO IT, YOU KNOW?! LET’S JUST FUCKING DO IT. WHAT’S STOPPING US? YOU KNOW? NOTHING. OURSELVES! THAT’S WHAT’S STOPPING US. SO LET’S JUST FUCKING DO IT. LET’S JUST BUY A PUG. OMG—WE’RE TOTALLY GOING TO BUY A PUG TOMORROW!!! …….We didn’t. If I remember correctly, we woke up, ordered wings at 10 o’clock in the morning, watched a documentary on Mt. Everest, and catnapped.

This time, however, Dan and I were true to our word. We ended up going to Embassy Tattoo in Adams Morgan, which I cannot recommend highly enough. I’ve gotten other tattoos in DC at Jinx Proof and Fatty’s, and my best experience hands-down was at Embassy. Fairly priced, friendly, accommodating, and incredibly well done. I just sent College Roommate Rachel there last night. My artist’s name was Fernando Gonzalez and I can’t remember the name of Dan’s guy, but he was really hot, just moved here, and has shoulder length blonde hair. I kept trying to make small talk and flirt with him, but it was hard because I was also concentrating on keeping my leg muscles from involuntarily twitching and/or not vomiting everywhere. It was a delicate dance.Dan ended up getting a tattoo of a tree on his right shoulder blade because he’s a hip kid from Portland and I got this little ditty on my right foot in honor of the fightingest squad in the fightingest company in the third-fightingest battalion in the army—The Flying Hellfish.

(Such a shitty picture. And yes, this is my second Simpsons tattoo. And no, despite Chris’ constant mocking, I am not embarrassed.)
If you’re reading this and are my mom’s friend, hair colorist, or a neighbor (and I know you all are), please don’t tell her. If you’re reading this and are my aunt’s assistant (Kaitlin…), please don’t tell my aunt, who will obviously tell my mom. And if you’re reading this and are my sister, please don’t tell your husband who will yell at me and/or make fun of me (probably and) in front of mom at Hanukkah dinner, thereby ruining this year’s Festival of Lights. Because do you really want that on your shoulders? It burned for eight days and eight nights, Rebecca. It was a miracle.

2.) I’m applying to grad school. But I’m only applying to three. And all three are in the top 10 non-fiction writing MFA programs in the country. So I’m applying to grad school, but will probably not be going to grad school.

3.) I want red hair again so badly, but I can’t afford the upkeep. (Pot, yogurt, eyebrow threading. Tattoos. Replacement phones. Diamonds are a Meg’s best friend.)

Sidenote: While searching through my Facebook photos for pictures of me with red hair, I stumbled upon this vintage ’06 picture of Talia and me at a party at Anna’s house over summer break. We both had (and very much have) a crush on Anna’s dad, so we snuck up to her parent’s bedroom and…well, I’ll let it to you:

I’m still not sorry.

I also found a picture from that party where I’m rapping and using a box of Franzia as my beatbox. I’d like to say I’ve moved on from that phase of my life, but then I remember that less than two months ago, I pulled a stomach muscle vomiting old school Four Loko and broke my hand drunkenly stumbling around Ren Fest within a week of each other. I haven’t really “grown as a person” in the past five years, per se.

4.) In 2003, I accidentally and successfully rushed a sorority at a school I didn’t go to.  Even though I went to college essentially five feet away from my hometown, it was still a really hard transition for me. Being the wacky MiSaNtHrOpE!~ that I am, I was really anxious about having to make all new friends, and I chose to deal with that anxiety by driving up to Frostburg (a small state school in Western Maryland where Talia and Teresa went) every weekend instead of staying and trying to make it work at AU. As an older and wiser Meggles with slightly more social skills, I acknowledge what a poor decision that was. Thankfully I had friends at AU like Helena, Ex-Co Blogger Eddie and Ashleigh who sat me down one night in November and were like, “HEY ASPIES—MAYBE STAY A WEEKEND?” and I was like, “Ooo. Yes. Good call.” My college experience obviously improved significantly after I started staying there on weekends, but I still wouldn’t trade my honorary semester (or other weekend visits) at Frostburg for anything in the world. Because that shit was fun. Frostburg State knows how to party in a way that makes me wonder how anyone graduates from there at all. I’d arrive on Friday nights and leave Sunday morning with a hoarse voice, sore throat, bloodshot eyes, and a new absurd story. My favorite being when I rushed a sorority.

I got into Frostburg pretty late on the Friday night in question and went straight to Talia’s dorm to pregame. She gave me the rundown for the night’s plans and said that at some point, she had promised that we’d make a courtesy stop at a friend’s sorority’s rush party. “Uh, can I get in even though I don’t go here?” I asked. “Meh. Just put down my dorm number when you sign it. It won’t matter.” (I also said my major was mathematics with a minor in geography, because if you’re going to go for a lie, I say go hard.) We got to the party an hour later and as I started to pour myself a tall glass of trashcan jungle juice (because that’s how a Frostburg rush party rolls. As the owner of Hat, does it really surprise that I felt at home there?), Talia had to run out and tend to some drama that I can’t remember the details of, perhaps because I was drinking alcohol out of a trash receptacle by the ladleful at the time.

“Are you going to be OK here alone?” she asked. Knowing me well.

“PSH. I’ll be fine. You do what you have to do,” I responded, Zelko, Sunny Delight, and Rubbermaid particles filling my veins with the kind of courage you only wished you had in the light of day.

Now, truth be told, I’m actually pretty OK at parties where I don’t know anybody. I’m pretty OK at parties in general. Breaking the ice and being charming in a large crowd scenario isn’t my problem; it’s one-on-one conversations that get me. I have absolutely no problem going up to a huge group of people I don’t know and being like, “Hey, I’m Meg! What’s up?”, but put me on a first date in an intimate setting and suddenly I’m talking too much about my uncomfortably thought out “Theory on Ex-Fatties” or how I’m starting a letter writing campaign to have sex with Steve Buscemi and two weeks later I wonder why nobody ever fucking calls me back. But…yes. I’m normally pretty good at parties where I don’t know anybody, but on this particular night? I was on fucking fire.

 Knowing that I didn’t actually go to school there, would never see any of these people again, and in no way cared about getting into their sorority gave me a freedom to be myself that I have yet to experience again, frankly. After Talia left, I walked up to a blond “sister” standing nearby and struck up a conversation.

“I gotta say,” I said as I held up and tapped my solo cup, “good call going with the Sunny D. I feel like most sororities would put on airs and go with something like a Fruitopia or frozen Minute Maid, but not you. And you know what? I like it.”

“Thanks!” she said. “What’s your name?”

“My name is Meghan, nice to meet you.”

 “I’m Brittney. So, what dorm do you live in, Meghan?”

“Ugh, Frost.” [Frost was the community service dorm that both Talia and Teresa were placed in, I’m fairly sure because they turned their housing forms in late.]

 “Oh my gawd, seriously?? How can you stand it?”

“Dude, you’re telling me. Everyone pretty much just stays in on the weekend to play with their Bunsen burners and beakers, but then again it’s also close to the dining hall and I’m borderline sexually attracted to waffles, so I can’t complain.” [I don't even know if that's true.] [The dorm's proximity to the dining hall, that is. I am absolutely borderline sexually attracted to waffles.]“Have you met anyone in your dorm you like?”

“Oh, totally. I feel really lucky that I found a small group of girls on my floor that I instantly clicked with. But I guess that’s why I also want to join a sorority—I want to to make that small group grow, you know?” [I may have been, and frankly might be, a sociopath.]

“Absolutely! That’s what being in a sorority is all about! Kristen!” she shouted at another sister, “Come over here, I want you to meet someone!” Kristen came over and we were introduced.

“Oh my gawd, I love your jacket,” she said to me. “Where did you get it?”

“Thanks! It’s from North Face,” I responded.

“Oh my gawd, I’m obsessed with my North Face!” she said. “My boyfriend got it for me as an early Christmas present, but we just broke up.”

“Yeah…BUT YOU GOTTA KEEP THAT JACKET, GURL—Y’ALL KNOW WHAT I’M SAYIN’?!?!”

High fives. High fives all around. And it went on like that for quite some time. It was startling. Finally, Talia came back to retrieve me, I said goodbye to my new friends, and we went on our way.

 Later that night as Talia, Teresa and I hunt out in Talia’s room recapping the night, her friend from the sorority walked in looking extremely tired and pointed at me.

“Well done, Meg,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I just came back from a two-hour long post-rush party meeting, and at least a half an hour of that was spent with girls arguing over who would get to be your Big.”

“WOW! Seriously??” I asked, genuinely flattered.

“Yes. Seriously. It seriously took a half an hour of arguing over ‘Meg with the black hair from Frost Hall’ before I realized that that was you and had to tell them you don’t go to school here.”

“Aw, man. Brittney’s gonna be so disappointed in me…” And I meant it.

So, while I felt kind of shitty because I blatantly wasted those peoples’ time, the experience also ended up being a really good life lesson for me about what happens you stop giving a shit about what other people think of you. I wish I were joking when I say that one of my social mantras is still: “Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and rush like you don’t go to school there.”

You’re welcome.

State of the Meg — October, 2011

- Shit went down, I decided to give up on writing, I watched an inspiring video on Facebook, I changed my mind, I'm back. GUNS BLAZING. I was actually supposed to be back Monday with guns blazing, but then I realized it was Columbus Day and no one would be in the office, and Tuesday my Internet was shut off for the majority of the day because I hadn't paid my bill in a month of Sundays. Specifically three months of Sundays, which Comcast has become increasingly less cool about. But! I paid my bill and now I have $9 left in my bank account to get me to next Tuesday. If you'd like to put a tip in the tip jar, that would be awesome. If not, I've got some yogurt in the fridge and a salmon fillet in the freezer leftover from the one time I held book club in 2010, so something tells me I'll be fine.

- AHH, WAIT! BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE HAPPENS AND/OR I FORGET TO TELL YOU FOR THE 6,000TH TIME...our book, The Misanthrope's Guide to Life, is now available for The Kindle. So go download it, or upload it, or interface with it, or however that witchcraft and wizardry works.

- Re: yesterday's post:

IT WAS SO BAD, KYLE. So, so bad. Realistically speaking, I was probably hungover from Friday morning to early Saturday afternoon. I was so hungover I felt homesick. Like, there was that same lump in my throat and waves of sadness kept washing over me and I just wanted a hug from my mom. If I had a gun and a roommate, I would have asked to be taken out back and put out of my misery. On a related note, I'd like to apologize and/or say you're welcome to my Baja Fresh delivery guy, Jose. (I don't know if his name was actually Jose. That's just pure racism right there.) I finally got the energy to go online and order food at about 3:30ish, immediately fell back asleep, and woke up 45-minutes later to angry banging on my door and six missed calls on the phone I had whaled myself on top of. I then proceeded to answer the door in a negligee that in no way housed my breasts, extended a single shaking paw out the door, took my food, mumbled thank you, and shoved pork tacos in my face while watching old episodes of Wings on Netflix. And that's how it was for quite some time. So. Mr. Lethals. Not just a cute name for a drink. More of a lifestyle.

- While I'm issuing apologies, I'd like to apologize again to my Twitter followers for that obnoxious virus I got last week. I normally know better than to click on those virusy links that are like "LOL! I saw a picture of your dick on TMZ last night! Oh my god!!!! Look~!" because I've always got one eye on my dick and one eye on TMZ, but this one was practically tailor made for me:

 

GAHHHH! You got me, you bastards! You got me good. Given how Christ-awful things were going that week, it only made sense that someone was talking shit on some blog somewhere and I completely fell for it. I'm sorry. I lost a crap-ton of followers because of it, if it makes you feel any better. But you know what? That's your loss because you people are missing out on classic Evie/Meg tweets like this little gem:

evie pictures

Yeah, that's me and Evie. BFFs^max. Gettin' ready for bed. Making Blingees. Doin' face masks. I spent the last two weeks house/Evie sitting for my parents while they were in Santa Cruz and Napa (must be nice...) and Evie and I became freakishly close. We were inseparable. And I know you're interpreting me saying we were "inseparable" as like, "Oh, cool, they got a good snuggle session in here and there," but I what I mean is we were inseparable. Like, by the strictest definition of the word. She would not leave my side. I would have to walk her down to the kitchen to eat her meals or else she'd just stay in my bedroom with me all day and not eat. Typically sitting directly on my laptop. Here she is obstructing my view of the classic 1994 film Airheads:

Here is her paw:

Every time I went down into the basement to work out, she'd follow me and jump up on my chest and want to snuggle at inopportune times, like when I was climbing a particularly steep hill on the bike:

(I know I'm not anonymous anymore, but I'm sweating profusely in that picture and the Internet is forever. What do you want?)

So, yeah. No big deal. NBD, if you will. We're just two of the best friends this world has ever seen. Although it did get weird one night when I dreamt that I was back in college and couldn't remember my schedule and was stressing out, so my dream boyfriend and I snuggled on the couch and I was like, "God. This is so nice." Then I woke up and realized I was full-blown spooning Evie. Shit got a little too real, God bless me.

- My dad asked me to do two things while they were away: call Comcast and fix the Internet and set up their wireless printer. Because I already have an established relationship with Comcast (albeit a dysfunctional one), I took care of fixing that problem first. (And because I wanted to watch Airheads.) While I was on the phone with the Comcast tech, I had to go down to the basement, get on my hands and knees, and reach behind the router to unplug it. After unplugging it, I withdrew my hand and realized that I had just inadvertently grabbed a fistful of spiders. Just a whole handful of spiders and spiderwebs. I then managed to do the following without making a single noise or dropping the phone: gag and come dangerously close to vommitting, frantically wipe the contents of my right hand off on a Longaberger basket, jam the receiver between my ear and shoulder, and rip my shirt off with my left hand. I don't know why, but every time I realize there's an insect on me, my natural reaction to rip my shirt off. Even when it's not even on my shirt. This was particularly embarrassing during The Summer of the Cicadas when I was at Best Buy and thought I felt something on my back. "Megan, is there a cicada on my back?" I asked the friend I was with at the time. "Yes Meg, there is," she calmly replied. But then instead of batting the goddamn thing off me, she booked it in the opposite direction, I freaked out, hurled my purse into a rack of candy, and ripped off my shirt in the middle of Best Buy. I swear to God. Then, as I tried to regain composure and get my shirt back on, I heard this little "It's gone!" from halfway across the store in office supplies. Thank you, Megan. Ass.

Anyway, my whole point being, Chris and I worked off and on again for about a year developing a reality show with a few of dat dem der big time Hollywood producers, but they backed out a few months ago. Which is fine because, my God, the weight we'd have to lose. But every now and then a moment like that happens and I'm kind of sad I can't make a gif out of it. So much of my sadness is gif-related. You have no idea.

- I'm speaking at Hood College later this month about blogging ethics and when I told my mom the topic, she laughed-out-loud for a depressingly long amount of time. When I told my sister, she recoiled.

- Fitness First on L and 19th is on my shit list. Hot and heavy. First and foremost: we have to sign out hand towels now and they're limit one per person? Seriously? Where are we—Communist Russia?? Do you want me to till the fields and share my apartment with six of my closest comrades while I'm at it? Second and secondmost: they closed at four on Columbus Day and I walked all the way down there at 4:30 because I didn't know that and was all emotionally ready to work out and was instead faced with the harsh reality of two locked doors. Seriously? Columbus Day?? What is the point of a gym closing on Columbus Day? Do your employees need to go home to be with their families and eat their Columbus Day turkeys and sing Columbus Day carols and open Columbus Day presents around the Columbus Day tree? Shenanigans. Lazy, gym-related, Columbus Day shenanigans. AND that hot guy who's always there when I am didn't ask me out when I told him the score of the Cardinals/Brewers game the other day. I know that's not your fault because I was the one struggling to breathe and wearing six layers of sports bra at the time, but you certainly didn't help.

- While we're on the topic of policy changes, I have a new policy of my own: if you don't lock the door behind you when you go to the bathroom and I walk in on you, I refuse to be embarrassed. It's your fault, not mine. I am so sick of walking in on people in bathroom stalls and fitting rooms and having them treat me like I'm some kind of pervert trying to sneak a peek. I just have to pee, OK? I went to the bathroom, I saw a door ajar, I naturally pushed it open, and lo and behold—there you are with your pants down all, "UM, EXCUSE ME, DO YOU MIND?!" Yes! Yes I do! I don't want to see your junk anymore more than you want to show it to me! And the thing is, this happens to me more than it should. It happened to me twice this past weekend alone. Why aren't you weirdos locking the door behind you? Are you insane?? There's a lock on every public bathroom door in America—use 'em. And let me just address the obvious comment I know I'm going to get: "Oh, Meg, what barn were you raised in? You obviously knock before you go into a bathroom." Fuck that noise! Why should I knock? I'm not coming over to your apartment with a nice bottle of Merlot for an intimate gathering of friends and colleagues—I'm trying to piss at the bar. I can't hear shit over the Wilco that's inevitably being blasted anyway. Just lock the fucking door. And if you don't and I walk in—I will no longer be embarrassed. Effective immediately. EAT IT.

- Alex, Helena and I were supposed to go camping last weekend but it started pouring as we pulled into the campgrounds and we had to throw in the towel. Speaking of towels, I should have known the trip was destined for failure when I realized that I forgot Hat. (Let that speak loudly. Forgetting Hat, forgetting Larry Hagman's birthday...God. Get your shit together, Rowland.) We got drunk on boxed wine in an Olive Garden parking lot instead, so, I mean, the night wasn't an entire loss. More to the point, en route to camping, I made Helena and Alex try my Clear Eyes Cooling Relief drops and they LOVED it. "I know! It's amazing, right? That's why I blogged about it!" Helena was then essentially like, "No offense, but I thought that post was just some bullshit filler and disregarded it. I stand corrected." So, in summary, that post where I recommended you put Clear Eyes Cooling Relief in your eyes and run really fast down a hallway? It wasn't (entirely) bullshit filler. Try it. You won't regret it.

- Speaking of blog posts that didn't get the appreciation I felt they should have, I'm going to re-post the Vance Vance Revolution graphic I made. Not only do I think it's clever, it took an embarrassingly long amount of time to research and create it, and it only got like one comment that was just someone telling me to go fuck myself. So, JIM VANCE: the revolution will be televised.

- I should go fuck myself.

Current State of the Meg: Hanging on by a thread. Slash incredibly aroused by this crisp Fall weather! Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Live Fast, Die Young, and Leave a Moderately Attractive Corpse

So we had an earthquake! A legit-ass, LA gangster-style earthquake! And I was VERY much in the shower shaving my legs when it happened. Because really, knowing me, where else would I be when a 5.8 freak earthquake in DC hits? I actually kind of resent how perfectly wakka, wakka! it all was. The only way it could have been better is if I had been about to make my final move in a Jenga competition or if I was an Ace of Spades away from finishing a really impressive house of cards. But no, I was in the shower shaving my legs. And it was a time.

So I was standing in the shower, congratulating myself on successfully finishing my left leg, when everything started to shake. My first instinct was to turn down the music coming from the mp3 player on top of the John, because obviously that would shed some light onto the situation. I’m pretty sure this felt like a natural thing to do for the same reason why I can’t listen to the radio and parallel park at the same time. (Because I’m a ~GiRL~!) 

Once I had established that it wasn’t The Doobie Brothers causing my entire apartment building to shake (although, to be fair, Bose makes a hell of a speaker and Michael McDonald has got some pipes on him...) my next thought, naturally, was TERRORISM: WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE. It was at this point that I became acutely aware of how extremely naked I was and all I could think was, “Not like this.” I didn’t think about my friends, I didn’t think about my family, I didn’t think about my trademark fiery passion for life—I thought “we’re being bombed, my apartment is going to collapse, and some poor, poor fireman is going to have to fish out my half-shaved naked corpse from under my bathtub and I’m going to end up on the cover of Time like that kid in Vietnam.” As a resident of downtown Washington, DC, I’ve played out what would happen if there's another 9/11-like terrorist attack in my head plenty of times. Typically I grab my Handycam, head to the streets and alternate between delivering cutting-edge guerrilla journalism and nursing the wounded back to health via tiny, gentle sips from a Deer Park sports bottle. Rarely am I in the shower surrounded by my overwhelming nakedness, gauging how far up my leg I can stop shaving before ultimately deciding, “fuck it—I’ll wear pants.” While in completely character, it's just not the way I want to go.

As my bathtub rattled back and forth, all I could think about was this episode of Boy Meets World I saw once where Eric and his roommate move into this shitty apartment and Eric is all, “Dude, this place is going to be a chick magnet!” and his roommate’s like, “Just because we have our own place doesn’t mean girls are going to fall out of the sky!” and at that exact second, the girl from the apartment above theirs crashes through the ceiling and lands on their couch. I was 5,000% positive that my bathtub was going to crash into the apartment below mine, except instead it being like BMW where a hot girl gracefully falls onto Will Friedle’s couch, it would be me covered in generic-brand shaving cream crashing through the ceiling and squashing a gay man or three. I had to get out of the bathroom and find clothes.

I then proceeded to sprint out of the bathroom, through my closet, thereby bypassing literally every piece of clothing I own, and stopped at my bed. When I realized I couldn’t strap a Queen size bed over my genitals, I turned to run back to the closet, tripped over myself, and slammed my left (freshly shaved) shin onto the edge of my coffee table.

CASUALTIES! CASUALTIES 2011!!!1! 

As I crumpled to the floor, curled up in the fetal position, and accepted that the obstacle course that is my apartment (open studio apartment with AN single coffee table) had doomed my fate, it occurred to me that the shaking had stopped. I walked over to the window, pulled up the blinds and looked around. There was a construction crew working on the building next to mine, so I thought maybe they dropped something…heavy? But no, because the office building across the street had been evacuated. It was then that I finally thought, “Did we just have a fucking earthquake?” It was also then that I thought, “Am I standing in my apartment window at the top of the K Street Triangle gawking at people completely nude?” The answer to both of these questions, as it turns out, was yes. We had had an earthquake. And I was hanging out in the window, tits to the wind all, “Y’ALL FEEL THAT?!?!!” I’m going to skip to the end of this story and let you know that it took me a good 45-minutes to properly clothe myself. Getting on Twitter, trying to call people, and continuing to stand naked in my window like the star of the homeliest little whorehouse in Amsterdam all took precedent over walking 15-feet back to the bathroom to throw a robe on. 

The moral of the story is that I’m fine. A few picture frames fell over. The books in my bookcase aren’t perfectly lined up to the edge of the shelf anymore, which while genuinely annoying is nothing compared to my friend Dave’s fallen Snoop Dogg action figure:

While I’m glad that everyone is OK and it obviously could have been much worse and we’re all lucky and blah blah blah, this experience did ignite a fiery rage deep, deep inside of me. While continually updating my Twitter feed and waiting for AT&T’s network to get off the rag, I became obsessed with the smug-ass West Coast dipshits tweeting shit like, “Sorry DC, I’m from Fresno. This is nothing. #JustSaying”. The best one I saw was from this West Coast transplant who said something to the affect of, “Ugh, seriously MD/DC/VA? Stop calling people. I have actual work to do.” Oh, I’M sorry, asshole. I know in a perfect world we’d all be like, “SNOZZBERRIES?! WHO EVER HEARD OF A SNOZZBERRY?” and go back to licking the wallpaper, but in the world I live in where earthquakes are rare and loved ones are awesome, it feels reasonable to want to get on the horn and make sure everyone is OK. I was a microsecond away from retweeting her and adding “get in your fucking cage” before I remembered that we have a book to sell and 10% of $10.95 is $1.09 and half of $1.09 is 54-cents and the average Subway footlong is five-dollars and change, so perhaps I should stay in my own lane.

One of my biggest pet peeves in college was a group of people I liked to call “Weather Snobs”. Weather Snobs were those assholes on your floor who wouldn’t let you appreciate how shitty the weather was because they were from somewhere colder/hotter/rainier/literally anything-ier than everybody, and you complaining about the weather was a farce compared to their K-12 experience. You’d sit in the dining hall and complain about the 20-degree weather and they’d crawl over from three booths down, peeing their pants at the opportunity to be like, “You think this is cold?! I’m from ROCHESTER. In ROCHESTER we wear bikinis and flip-flops and roast pigs and thank the Egyptian sun god Ra for his sweltering rays in 20-degree weather, you fucking retard! You’ve never experienced cold weather until you’ve lived in ROCHESTER. GARBAGE PLATES! HOUSE OF GUITARS!” I didn’t think it was possible to find a more horrid group of people than Weather Snobs, but now I have—Natural Disaster Snobs. I’m not saying that yesterday’s experience could rival Haiti or Japan. I don’t expect the Red Cross to come knocking on my door today and offer to replace that wine glass that fell over or give me a Capris Sun because I look slightly parched. I am saying, however, that when you live in Washington, DC (or New York for that matter) and your building starts to uncontrollably shake for no reason, your first thought typically isn’t “ThiS iS gOiNg To MaKe FoR sOmE gNaRLy WaVeS, dude!”, it’s “Welp, they blew up the World Bank and we’re all going to die.” Sorry there’s nothing irreverent or ironic about that reaction. I'll tell you what: next time there’s a natural disaster and I want to call my loved ones to make sure everyone’s OK, I promise to do so while wearing an ironic moustache, holding a pug, riding a unicycle, standing under a string of pennants, and playing the autoharp. And instead of asking my mom if she’s OK, I’ll ask her, “What’s crackin-a-lackin’?” Can I take up your precious AT&T space that way, you fucking asshole?

…That being said, I did have people over last night for martinis and confetti cake, or Earthcake, as Helena dubbed it.

But, you know…you’re all still fucking assholes.

A Humble Apology

For all of my faults—and there are about a baker's dozen of them in total—I'm not the kind of person who's afraid to admit when they're wrong or apologize if need be. Which is why, today, I'd like to do both. Because allergies: fuck. me. in. the ASS. They're horrible! For the first time in my life, I understand the plight of the allergy sufferer and I am drunk on guilt for spending the past 25 26 years thinking that you people are the biggest pussies on the planet.

To me, "allergies" have always been synonymous with "a nasty wittle case of the sniffles". Because in my experience, that's all allergies have ever been. Sometimes in the spring my eyes get a little dry and scratchy. Occasionally I'll cough. One time my right eye got puffy and I had to wear sunglasses to class and felt like a giant asshole. But that was really the worst of it. Washington, DC is a notoriously god awful place for allergies and it's all anyone ever wants to talk about. And if there's anything I hate more than small talk, it's small talk that involves a pollen count. Your nose is stuffed up, good for you. My skin is slightly dry. I over-tweezed my left eyebrow last night. Despite just switching to a 36-dollar conditioner, I have a few split ends. If you'd like to have a conversation about minor body irritations, two can play at this game.

But really allergies are so much more than that. I feel sick all the time. I'm stuffed up, my nose is constantly running, my eyes feel like I'm wearing sandpaper contacts, my throat hurts, I'm tired all the time, I catch myself audibly wheezing in public, and the sneezing—MY GOD, the sneezing! I've sneezed before (obviously, as I am a human being) and it feels good, but this kind of sneezing is on a whole other level. It feels so fucking good and I really can not stress that enough. My body isn't just sneezing for sneezing's sake; it's getting a job done. And it's such a process: there's this huge 30-second build up filled with wave after wave of —OH, I'M GONNA SNEEZE, —AH, HERE IT COMES, —HERE IT, —OH GOD, —I, and then BAM! I sneeze. And it lasts so long and feels so good and snot goes flying everywhere and it's dirty and it's wrong and it's amazing. It's essentially a nose orgasm and frankly when it comes to orgasms, beggars can't be choosers. I get legitimately excited when I know it's about to happen. I feel a sneeze coming on and I get down on all fours, shove a carrot in my mouth, whip my hair around like I'm in a Whitesnake video, sneeze, and fuck yes—afterglow.

On the less glamorous side, I woke myself up last week scratching the hell out of the hives that magically popped up all over my arms. Now I'm left covered in these bruises that makes me look like I straight-up have the Bubonic plague. Seriously. This is a gentleman suffering from the plague:

And this is my left arm:

Don't want to have sex with me? PFFFF, fine! There's a "House Hunters International" marathon on and Lisa LaPorta just started following me on Twitter; my dance card is FULL.

The worst part about having allergies is that nothing helps. Nothing. Somehow the scientific community has figured out a way to make seedless watermelon and boner bills, yet there's not a single thing in CVS that can help me breath again. Also, when you're sick with a cold or something, it sucks, yes, but at least you know it's going to go away in a week or so. When is this shit going to go away? WINTER. It's fucking mid-April! That's insanity! Like, if I got pregnant today, by the time my allergies are feeling better, I could deliver my baby and it would be premature and the size of a Snickers bar probably, but odds are it would live. I don't know. That comparison actually wasn't as strong as it was when I made it in my head. My point is: shit's nuts. And I know the obvious answer is "go see an allergist, Meg!" but need I remind you that I don't have health insurance and my job is cracking fart jokes for PayPal donations. Remember when Carrie Bradshaw got her book advance and went on a shopping spree at Dior? Well, when I got mine, I splurged on name-brand toilet paper and I am in no way saying that just to be funny. (I got Cottonelle. And it was worth every extra penny.) Alex swears by his neti pot but...it scares the hell out of me. Nothing in the world would surprise me less than if I panicked right when the water started going into my sinuses and I choked and drown on my bathroom floor. I'm tempted to ask Alex to be my "spotter". He's already coming over tomorrow for autoerotic asphyxiation night, so I guess two birds, one belt.

More than anything though, I want to apologize to Helena. Devotees will remember that almost exactly a year ago, I gave Helena a lot of shit on the blog because she said she would consume a parasite if it meant never having to suffer from allergies again. While I'm not conceding completely and saying that I'd eat a parasite for allergy relief, I am saying that I can now see where she's coming from. I re-read that post and yeah, I had some good points, it was funny, I had a good laugh, I'm clearly a charming person, I'm stacked like a game of Jenga, good for me, blah blah blah, but I was wrong to judge her that harshly. So Helena, old friend and trusted confidant: I'm sorry. I hope you forgive me. Because I love you. And because we have plans to go to the DMV tomorrow and my license has been expired for three days now. And I hope that you want to go to the one in Georgetown and not Brentwood or South Capitol because I live in Dupont one of these things is closer than the other, WINK! I don't know how this apology turned into me being a giant selfish whore, and yet, here we are.

If it's any consolation, I think I know why I've always been so harsh to judge allergy sufferers. Growing up, whenever my sister or I complained to our mom about not feeling well, she always told us it was just allergies. Always. Like, if I had a nickel for every time my mom has told me, "It's probably just allergies" and then walked away, I would have enough money to...afford...allergy shots. Well, this is ironic. It was always just so frustrating though because allergies weren't a legitimate excuse to stay home from school. And to my mom's credit, I'm sure nine times out of ten I really was just trying to stay home for funsies, but it sucked that one time when I was legitimately sick. Because she wouldn't even consider that it wasn't allergies.

"Mom, a moderate-sized demon just clawed its way out of my lower intestine, told me he was the son of God, and went cackling off into the darkness."

"It's just allergies. Gargle with saltwater and go set the table."

And it's not like I could prove that I didn't have allergies because really the only difference between allergies and the flu is a fever and who outside of the Oregon Trail gets a fever? So, I think it was ingrained in me at a young age to equate allergies with "HA HA, you!" So really, this humble apology has turned into I BLAME MY MOTHER! And I urge you to as well. Blame her! Or ask her for advice (AskYoMama@2birds1blog.com). Either way, I've sneezed at least six times since I started writing this and I've never needed a cigarette and a nap so badly in my entire life. Enjoy your Monday.