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.)
For whatever ungodly reason, having moved to NoVA has completely disrupted my sleep schedule. Not in an "I-stay-up-until-3-AM" kind of way. No, that I can 100% handle. Kind of. In college, I distinctly remember routinely staying up until 4 AM, getting AN wink, and waking up cheery for my 10 AM class. While I don't think I'd be quite so chipper with 5 hours of sleep under my belt, I'm sure I'd be able to tough it out. No, moving has somehow made me get into the habit of waking up unreasonably early every morning. Right now, it's quarter of 8 in the morning, and I've already been awake for an hour and a half. And I don't even need to be at work until 9. And my commute lasts all of 10 minutes. This does not compute.
This isn't necessarily a problem (Think of all the wildly productive things I could do with my mornings!), it's just that I'm seven different kinds of useless before eight o'clock in the morning. I can plan in my head any number of activities for my newfound hour and a half of downtime in the mornings, but they all fade into oblivion as soon as I open my eyes in the morning. Example, this morning, having just woken up, I stumbled into the bathroom to shave. Put toothpaste on my razor. Minty fresh skin, check!
But seriously: let me tell you exactly how my mornings play out currently: 6:30 Wake up. 6:31 Look at clock, realize I've woken up at 6:30 AGAIN and groan audibly. 6:32 Turn over, put pillow on head, and try desperately to fall back asleep. 6:48 Accept I'm not falling back to sleep and curse loudly at the clock for mocking me with its cheery green numbers. 6:49 Take covers off to get out of bed, realize it's freezing in apartment, get back in bed. 7:02 Muster up enough balls to sprint the 10 feet from my warm bed to a warm shower. 7:03 Turn on shower, sit in bathroom waiting for shower to warm up. 7:10 Realize I dozed off. 7:11 Get into shower, stand directly under warm water until I have the energy to lift my arms to grab the shampoo. 7:36 Mentally scold myself for taking a 25 minute long shower. 7:45 Finally get out of warm shower into frigid bathroom. 7:47 Shave, put on deodorant, become an otherwise acceptable member of society hygiene-wise. 7:50 Try to find some sort of "business casual" outfit from the hundreds of lazy college freshman clothing I own. 8:12 Eat breakfast. 8:20 Leave insanely early to catch the Metro to work because what if today is the day it kills someone and therefore I'm late.
Honestly, I wish I was joking. But I'm not. That's very much what my mornings are like every day now. In NY, I'd casually roll out of bed 15 minutes before I had to be at work, hustle into the shower, throw on some clean clothes, and head out the door. I'm not saying I want to go to there again, but maybe I want to go to there.
On the plus side, if I became a human sooner than 7:45, I'd have an entire hour to myself in the mornings! That could be the most revolutionary hour of my entire life. Think of all the possibilities! You can't? Well don't fret, because I've got this handy list of all the possibilities right here!
1. Go to the gym. This is obviously the most prominent example of something that I could do in the morning. Every night before I go to sleep I think to myself, "Alright Chris, tomorrow is the day! You're going to wake up, throw on work out clothes, and head to the gym! You can do this!" Then there is a small fanfare and ticker tape parade in my head to get me more amped about going to the gym. And every morning, when I open my eyes, I literally just give the finger to my work out clothes and roll over. Think of all the benefits to going to the gym in the morning: endorphins, getting into better shape, etc. Plus it's super convenient to have a "gym" (or fitness center, aka AN machine) in the building. Sure, I can be a Positive Polly about this now that I'm actually awake and a functioning member of humankind, but in the mornings at 6:30 my only thoughts about the gym are: "You're going to get so sweaty. And it's probably crowded. And you'll be on the treadmill for 5 minutes before wanting to throw up your kidney." Needless to say, I am a negative person before I've showered. Some people need to drink coffee; I need to stand under running water for an extended period of time to wake up.
2. Write. God, this is a fool's errand. I'm not funny on a good day. Trying to be witty before the sun comes up is never going to happen. That's like telling an ostrich that it can fly IF it flies before it's morning meal. (See? I'm making ostrich-related similies! Even I don't know what I'm talking about!) And I'm not talking about just the blog here. My friend Emily and I had a steady email rapport during my work days in NY. Since I haven't had time to email at work at my new job, I've tried to email her in the mornings before heading out. Since moving here, my emails have quickly devolved into rants about why tables have four legs and long strings of curse words. It's not exactly what I'd call a fun email to read.
3. Watch the news. Here's a viable option, you'd think. I know as much about what's going on in the world today as a newborn baby: where I just was was so warm and dark, where I am now is cold and bright. I want to go back. Back in NYC, I watched NY1 with Pat Kiernan every morning (when I wasn't running 15 minutes late). He's just so soothing and maybe I have a huge platonic crush on him and I might be following him on Twitter. Is there anything of that caliber in NoVA. I'm not saying NY1 was a particularly great news show, but I do not need to watch people yelling at each other about the news in the mornings. I'm already yelling at inanimate objects; more people yelling is just apt to make me crankier. Which would make me the most popular person in my office.
4. Read a book. This actually might be my favorite idea so far. I like books. I like reading. This is a low impact activity to do in the morning that does not involve sweat, my personal humor, or people yelling. Here's the trouble: you remember that feeling you get when you're trying to read something for class, but all it's doing is putting you to sleep? You're eyes start to cross, you realize you've read the same sentence about 15 times and the repetition actually makes sense to you, your head is nodding. Ok, this would happen to me at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. What makes me think I'm capable of staying awake while reading a book at 6:30 in the morning. Not to mention I just woke up and cannot open my eyes any wider than a squint. Let me just pull out War and Peace. This seems like a brilliant idea. (ALSO: I have a bone to pick with Arlington, VA. Why are the libraries only open 9-5 M-F?! WTF? Sorry, nerd rant over.)
5. Prep food for dinner. Hm, not a bad idea. I've been cooking a whole lot more lately and I've been loving it. There's just something about food that you make that always makes it taste better. And think how much better that chicken would taste if it were marinating all day! Wait, this would involve the use of a knife. Prior to 7:00 AM, probably not a good idea. Veto.
6. Take up a hobby. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'd like to get involved in a hobby. Preferably one that won't turn me into an eccentric recluse. Like ship in a bottle building. Or anything that could classify me as a hoarder. Knitting and crocheting involve far too many sharp objects for me to use so early in the morning, plus I'm about 60 years too young to think about taking up knitting. (I'm sure some of you out there knit. Or build ships in bottles. Or collect stamps/porcelain dolls/Beanie Babies/bellybutton lint. I'm not making fun of you, I'm just saying these things aren't for me.)
Welp, I've effectively talked myself out of any possible morning activity that could take up an hour of my time in the morning. I just need to reconcile myself with the fact that I'm not a morning person. And I never will be. It should also be noted that I do not drink coffee, nor do I ever intend to start. Would that vastly increase my productivity in the morning? Maybe. Would it also stunt my growth? YES. And that is a rock solid argument if I've ever heard one.
Dear My Brain, please explain to me why you will not let me sleep lately.
Seriously.
If you could give me some sort of sign or indication as to why you feel the need to keep me up at all hours of the night, I'd really appreciate it. Did you really want to see that infomercial for the Showtime Rotisserie again? I know you love to chant "Set it and forget it!" with the studio audience, but I'd really like to sleep. And once we finally are able to fall asleep, you decide that the asscrack of dawn is the perfect time to get up and get out of bed. If you could let me know you're reasoning, that'd be great, because then I could shut it down, and we both could finally get the rest we deserve. As it stands right now, I am too exhausted to lift my leg up over the tub in the mornings to get in the shower, so sometimes I'll just turn the water on and sit in the bathroom until I feel like I've heard enough water running to count as a shower. I have a matching 5-piece luggage set under my eyes right now. It's not pretty. They don't just call it beauty rest for the hell of it. And to be perfectly frank, I need some of that, because I'm starting to look a creature that would live under a bridge and ask you a riddle before you can pass.
What I don't understand is why you woke me up at 9:30 today. You and I both know that we don't have to be at work today. That ship sailed on Friday, when I finally told my job to peace out after 2+ years of getting hated on by nerds. We both know that this week is our only time to sleep in, because for some reason I told my new job I could start this monday. Oh wait. It was probably because I was so damn tired that I couldn't be slick enough to ask for an extra week off. Way to go, us. Way to fucking go. And what's worse is that now we have an actual commute to contend with in the morning. We're talking a fight your way onto a crowded metro at 8 in the morning commute. To get to our "business casual" office by 9 AM sharp. We can't just roll out of bed at 8:55, throw on the first article of clothing our hand touches and casually stroll to the office anymore. So we're going to have to start to get a little bit more sleep. Because if I have to shave every morning now, and I'm exhausted in the morning, I might slip and cut my carotid artery. Those five bladed razors are just four more blades of death when you're bleary eyed and shaving. And think of how pissed you would be if I accidentally killed us. I know I would be mildly upset.
I wish you weren't so resistant to falling asleep. You won't even let me drug you into sleep. While Meg can take 6 Tylenol PM and pass out in her nightie, those Tylenol PM would not have the same effect on me. Even if I was also wearing a revealing nightie and expecting the maintenance man to show up. (Sidebar: everyone knows Meg only claims this was an accident. She 100% intended for a porn plot to play itself out in her apartment.) The last time I tried to put you under using medication, you refused to fall asleep and I spent 4 hours feeling like I'd just chugged a keg. To the point of me being so out of it that I was legitimately scared. Why, brain? Why couldn't you just take the medicated hint and let me sleep? No, instead we were awake and trying to gchat with some people, which consisted of me palming my keyboard for 15 minutes, typing words with an inordinate amount of vowels and punctuation, before finally giving up and admitting defeat. Sure, you shut down our fine motor skills, but my body is still awake and kicking. It's not fair. Come to think of it, every time we've taken medicine that makes you drowsy before bed, you think it's funny to stay up, regardless of the drugs coursing through our veins. Tylenol PM, Nyquil, what have you. Nothing will make you go to sleep when you're supposed to. But the one time I take Sudafed before going to the movies because I was feeling a little congested, you pass out right after the opening credits. I still have no idea what movie it was that we saw. I have a vague recollection of Meryl Streep maybe being in it. She might have had a kinky threeway with Andy Dick and Rin Tin Tin, that's how little I know about the movie. Thanks a lot. That's eight dollars that I'll never get back.
We're going to need to change this little repartee you and I have going on, because it's getting pretty tired. And I don't mean that in an ironic way. I know that right now you're probably just feeling a lot of emotions about the upcoming move. I think that's normal. If we weren't nervous, I'd be a little bit more concerned. But really, we just have to make sure we catch out train on Saturday and we're good to go. And the only way we're going to do that is by getting some sleep this week. Because if you choose to let me sleep in on the one day we have something to do, it will not be a pretty sight. I will go Fight Club on our ass.
So, in conclusion, please act right and let us sleep a little bit more tomorrow. It's all well and good that we're up now, because it's sunny and we should probably get out and do some New York City related activity while we don't have to work but are still living in the city. Had we slept in today, we would have missed a solid three hours of sunshine, which has been mighty rare these past few weeks. Can't waste any of that. Now that I've finally given you the piece of my mind I've been hanging on to, let's work on cooperating better in the future. Deal? Deal.
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