State of the Meg—July, 2010

- 'Eh...I've been going through some stuff that I don't really care to talk about, suffice to say I learned (yet again) that it's not a good idea to suddenly try to wean yourself off anti-depressants. In my defense though, I did take AP Psychology in 2002. I got a 3 on the exam, a B- in the class and remember three things from the entire experience:

1.) The story of Phineas Gage, the guy who was working on a railroad in the 1800's, when a tamping rod shot through his brain and turned him into a real asshole. (And truthfully I only remember that story because I think "Phineas Gage and the Tamping Rods" would be an excellent band name.)

2.) That thing when you're just about to fall asleep but you jerk awake because you feel like you're falling is called "Myoclonus."

3.) "Rooting" is when you poke a baby on its cheek and automatically turns and searches for the nipple.

So clearly, I think we both see why I thought I was qualified to make executive decisions about my own mental health.

- And speaking of good band names! I refer you to the following email I got this morning from my sister:

Do you remember that one time when we looked up what time the sun was going down because I was walking back to VA and we found the term “civil twilight” and I said it was a great name for a band? Well someone stole my idea! http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2010/07/civil-twilight-civil-twilight-cd-930-club.php

Bastards.

Bastards indeed. However, that's exactly what I always imagined the band "Civil Twilight" looking like. Exactly.

- And speaking of my sister and depression! Last week's quote of the week went to her when she met me at work after I emailed her and asked if she would come over and give me a hug. She showed up within five minutes (aww...), and I took her to a discreet corner of the greeting card section and proceeded to hug the crap out of her. It was nice and reassuring and I'll ask you to reserve your judgment, thank you. I'm not a robot. Sometimes I need a good skip and a good hug. Plus, I like my co-workers, but I don't think we're on please-hold-me-in-the-card-section terms. Yet.

After we hugged it out, this conversation transpired:

Becca: What's going on you, dude? You haven't been blogging.

Me: I don't really know, but something's up. I've been significantly more depressed than usual. Like sleeping 17 hours at a time, depressed.

Becca, unfazed: ...Isn't that kind of normal for you?

And you know what? Touché, madam.

- I bought a Gillette Mach-3 razor the other day because it was on sale at CVS with my extra savings card and my legs have never been this smooth in my entire life. Ever. It seriously blows my mind. If I ever had physical contact with a member of the opposite sex, I'm sure he would appreciate it. In the mean time, I keep catching myself zoning out and absentmindedly stroking my legs at inappropriate times, which only makes me feel slightly like a child molester.

- And speaking of sad single woman stereotypes, guess who's getting a cat for the next six weeks? THIS GUY. No, no, not Evie. (I wish.) It's my sister's best friend Laura's brother's cat. Laura and her husband Chris were supposed to cat-sit her for the summer, but unfortunately she got in a vicious fight with their two other cats and perhaps lost an eye? So who do you turn to when you have a one-eyed cat that needs to be unloaded for a summer? Meg McBlogger, that's who. Truthfully I'm more than happy to help Laura and Chris out and I met the cat last weekend and she seems nice enough. She's a calico. Her little pirate eye broke my heart. However, I take offense with her name—Cashmere. I just have an issue with sharing an apartment with anything that sounds like it should be a featured weekend dancer at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club. Here are my top-3 choices for what I'll call her:

- One-Eyed Willie

- Chester Copperpot

- Sean Astin

So far I'm leaning towards the latter.

- In the continuing battle of Meg vs. Common Everyday Metals, I'm allergic to the back of my name tag at work. Normally I wear a cardigan or a cami under my shirt at work so the metal doesn't touch my skin, but it being July in Washington, DC and all, it hasn't really been layer-appropriate weather recently. So now I have a rectangular shaped welt on my chest that's flaking and constantly itches. It's really, really cute. Sometimes I catch people staring at it and I want to be like, "IT'S NOT SCABIES—I JUST HAVE A SEVERE ALLERGY TO NICKEL AND AM TOO EMBARRASSED TO ASK FOR A SPECIAL HYPO-ALLERGENIC NAME TAG AND PAINTING CLEAR NAIL POLISH ON THE BACK OF IT DOESN'T HELP!" But that wouldn't really make anything "better," so I let 'em just assume I have scabies instead. That's the state of my life right now—I willing let people believe I have scabies.

- Speaking of work, we sell a birthday card that has an illustration of two beavers holding a log that says "Happy Birthday!" and the description when you ring it up is "Happy Birthday 2 Beavers". Everytime someone buys it, I pee myself juuuuuust a little bit.

- In the continuing battle of poverty, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that I picked up 10 extra hours a week at work because I sent the most Desperate Debbie email to my managers begging them to throw any leftover hour scraps under the table for me. Thankfully, they were very generous. The bad news is that I'm still not making enough money to make ends meet, so I turned to the only place where a young, working woman can make a few extra dollars without compromising her integrity—Craigslist.

The Haunted Ghost Tour thing didn't pan-out, so I answered an ad for a health study on smoking that promised to pay $100. Now I'm not a "smoker" per se, but at this point I'd get on all fours and eat a pack of Marlboro Reds if you gave me 100-bucks. But alas, I hauled ass to NIH on my day off only to find out that my lung capacity is too good and I was turned down. Thus I call shenanigans on my mom for telling me that pot damages your lungs just as much as cigarettes and expect $100 retribution in the mail any day now. Kthnx.

- Feeling extra desperate recently, I decided to parooze the Craigslist adult gigs because sometimes you luck out and find some schmo who gets off on really random and non-sexual things and it's like, shit—I'll let you watch me do sudoku for a half an hour as long as I'm fully clothed and we do it in a Barnes & Noble, you know? Who am I to judge? Unfortunately all of the adult ads have been too sexual to consider recently, which is unfortunate, but does remind me of one of the biggest disagreements Ex Co-Blogger Chris and I have ever had in the history of our friendship.

When we were roommates in Brooklyn, I found an ad for a guy who would pay $500 to come and clean your house (fully clothed) and all you had to do in return is berate him while he did it (also fully clothed). I thought I had solved three problems with this ad: 1.) lack of money; 2.) anger management 3.) the hard to reach grease caked around the burners of our stovetop.

I drafted an email to this guy and out of courtesy told Chris what I was doing and he was having none of it. He refused to let me do it because he thought the guy would kill me. Meeting him halfway, I told him he could be there when it happened, but that only made it worse because apparently the guy would "kill him too." Here was my argument for why it was a good idea and Chris was wrong:

1.) Our apartment's messy; you wanna clean it up?

2.) $500. (I mean, yes, this was a pre-Recession world we were living in, but even back then that was a shit-ton of money.)

3.) Spending a Saturday berating some repressed Wall Street weirdo while he scrubs our toilet and we watch and eat Craisins sounds like the most fun thing I humanly can think of. If it doesn't to you, perhaps you're not the man I thought you were.

4.) $500.

5.) I grew up watching HBO's Real Sex; the people with the weirdest fetishes tend to be the most corn-fed, middle America, harmless, normal people.

5.) $500.

6.) I will give you that anyone willing to answer a Craigslist fetish ad has to be slightly eccentric and open-minded, but serial killers don't get off killing those kinds of people. They go for the normal, girl-next-door type who answers an ad from the guy who has an extra ticket to the Jason Mraz concert tonight and is looking for a LTR. That girl isn't expecting to get killed; she's expecting a night of grade-A crooning. The fetishist at least somewhat expects to end up a lampshade. And where's the fun in that? Where's the element of surprise? Jesus, watch an episode of Profiler or something.

7.) $500.

In the end, the fight escalated to "if you answer that ad, I'm moving out," so I decided to concede and forget about it because I'm such a good person. But I still kind of resent Chris for it and bring up this fight whenever possible. Obviously.

- I was at work the other day and a family of very obvious tourists walked in a started looking around the "Fun & Funky" table. On said table, we sell a book called Farts: A Spotter's Guide. It's basically a little noise machine that makes various farting noises attached to a book that explains what each kind of fart is. (I got it for Talia's birthday and it was the hit of the party. Mind you this was the party with the gin bucket, so the bar was already raised pretty high.)

The patriarch of the family picked up the book and started shaking his head disapprovingly. (Mind you he looked like the kind of guy who asks his son if he's a "queer" for not wanting to play football, but then creeps into his room at night to make him touch a completely different kind of pigskin, if you know what I mean. An Intervention Father, as I call them.) So he has the book in his hand and is shaking his head at it when he sternly says, "Farts. Farts, in our Nation's Capitol," puts the book down in disgust and walks away.

Thus, my new moneymaking scheme is to write a hit children's book called, Even The District Farts! and make a million dollars.

Good day to you, poverty.

State of the Meg: SCABIES!!!!!!1