cocklobster

First off, I am aware that I just posted but I wrote these entries while at home a few days ago and am now just getting the chance to share their fruity goodness. 

My father is a strange creature, convinced he is a genius just full of untapped resources. While some of his ideas are better than others, they mostly fall into one of two categories, the choices being: Hare-brained Crackpot Schemes or, (my personal favorite) Things That Already Exist. 

I love my dad and wanted to shield his insanity from the masses, but I think I am going to have to bite the bullet and give a couple of examples: 

1. A fast food chain where the food is "made like, really fast!". He would call it Happy's, and for the kids they would serve..... Happy Meals. 

2. A business where people come to my dad with their own ideas. He then critiques their ideas. Mostly though, he is just excited at the thought of using a lightbulb as a logo. 

3. The idea that somebody should speak with supermarkets and travel door-to-door in hopes of selling Acai berries. Though he doesn't exactly know the benefits or uses of the Acai berry, let alone never having tried one, he justifies this with, "Doesn't matter! People love healthy things! It's a berry!" Aha! My dad invented marketing. 

But like I said, I can think of at least two ideas that are worth following through on. The problem is, my dad refuses to take any sort of steps to put these ideas into action. I try to be supportive but it's difficult when all he does is talk about how he's a genius, and how it's society's fault for not possessing the creativity to understand him. I say: Shut up and do something already! Genius is a word my dad uses often, and something he truly thinks can be obtained through osmosis. Take, for instance, this conversation:


Dad: Charlie (friend from college, fraternity brother) is a genius! His test scores are through the roof! Now, why would Charlie be friends with me? It must mean that I'm a genius, right? 

Me: Dad, that's not how it works. And saying you're a genius but never doing anything to prove that theory is crap. I can say I'm a millionaire, but does that really make me one? What about if I say I'm Asian? Is that automatically true? 

Dad: Hm. No, you're right. But why would a genius want to be friends with me if I wasn't really smart?

Me: Didn't you sell pot in college?

Dad: Yeah, but we still send emails now. All I'm saying is that Charlie must like me because I use my mind. 

Me: Okay. So does that mean that whoever you're friends with must be geniuses because you're one and otherwise you wouldn't get along? 

Dad: No, I know a lot of morons. You know, Albert Einstein was a genius and they say he took acid. I would like to try acid, but I would need somebody I could trust to watch me. Either you or your sister. Would you watch me if I took acid?

Me: Seriously? No.

And end scene. 

I have always been a little curious about kids. Not like "where do they come from" but more like "what are they about?"
At what point do they have the cognitive skills to assert what they want? How do they ever retain the vast amounts of information being hurled at their developing brains, and what do they do with that information? How can they watch one thirty-minute cartoon and then magically know the names of every freakin' pokemon? Why is the word pee so funny when poop is just shocking?

I am the oldest of three kids but my siblings and I are rather close in age. Same goes for my cousins. It's like my family just happened to be fertile solely during a four year span. Over the years I've had relatively little contact with infants and toddlers, and the look on my face when presented with a baby is something like, "okay, now what?". I mean, they can't talk about cigarettes, forties or downloading from iTunes and likewise my binky knowledge is severely limited. 

Four years ago an event transpired that may have lead to a change from all that. My Aunt became pregnant with her first child, and nine months later she gave birth to a baby with the screaming power of a banshee and the wrinkly face of an old man (not so much Benjamin Button as the old lady tree from Pocohantas) However, this was also the time that I left for college and once again my chances at bonding with newly-formed life were thwarted, and our meetings (read: opportunities to vomit on my shirt) were limited to major holidays and the occasional school break.

Which was fine. Really. Babies are cute, they're presh, they're the future, etc. But honestly, until it is old enough to color or demand candy, I am pretty much lost. So now that my cousin is four years old and I can make out 50% of what he says (comprehension still hovering at the 25% mark) I am able to have more fun with this cape-wearing little person and conduct the anthropological studies that I was denied in the past.

Where does this all lead???

Well, said little person recently spent the night at my house, thus marking the longest stretch of time we have spent together. Please take this time to cue Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend In Me" while I paint a visual montage of our delightful antics:

Clip One: We're playing together outside Rather, he's running around with oversized plastic shovels while I am left scraping at the ground with one tiny spade. The sun in shining, the dogs are nearby, and is that a hummingbird in the bush behind us? Why, yes, it is! Life is great. The little one runs behind me, laughing, and I turn just in time to watch him hawk a loogie onto my shoulder. But man, is that hummingbird awesome or what!

Clip Two: We're on the couch, the little one wrapped in one of his many blankets and laying on me. His eyes are transfixed on the screen, and we're watching my favorite movie from childhood (Chipmunks Great Adventure, thanks for asking). "This is my favorite part," I say. It's the part where the Chipmunks, unknowingly part of a diamond-smuggling scheme, land their hot air balloon in Mexico. My cousin turns to me  and replies by removing his finger from his nose and wiping it on my arm. 

Clips Three, Four, Five, etc: My cousin in various sorts of costumes and get-ups (although his favorite is Batman) hanging on to me, launching himself over furniture, running through the hallways all the while yelling, "YOU'RE A PEE-HEAD! STOP TALKING, PEE!". 

How could I have missed out on all of that?! Rest assured, I have extracted my revenge and in twenty some-odd years, when this little devil is standing beside his bride-to-be at the rehearsal dinner for his wedding, I will collect. Big time*. 

*FYI, those are stress-balls made to resemble boobs. They belong to my sister.

 So about two weeks ago my pride took a slight donkey-punch when I was downsized from my job and joined the 7.8% of New York City's population that is without a steady income of cashmoney. At first it hadn't really hit, because I was lucky enough to have enough interviews lined up so that I felt like I still had a job/purpose/reason for changing out of flannel reindeer boxers everyday. But then I decided to put all of my (easter) eggs in one basket and go on a round of interviews for an establishment larger than any other I've worked for. 

After three rounds of interviews in just one week, I am now left with nothing to do but wait while they call my previous bosses and run all of my personal information through the system to make sure I don't have any sort of record. This should be the easy part, where I sit back and bide my time, content with knowing that I am not an ex-convict, a junkie, or Nick Hogan. 

I figured the best thing to do was to pay a visit to mi childhood casa in Connecticut, to see the pets I have not seen since Christmas and to eat a lot of free food. Much like every other post-college visit, it's taken some time to adjust to being a small fish in a pond that is not my own. Usually by the time I relax and de-stress, that's when it's time to hop on the Metro North and journey back to a land where I pay my own bills. But this time, I'm here for about a week and each day I can feel my resolve, my drive, my overall adultness giving way to the habits of a high-schooler. 

In the four days that I have been here, I have: eaten an entire box of reduced-fat cheezits, drank no less than 8 cans of Coke Zero, rekindled my love affair with television, done enough overdue laundry to nearly break the washing machine, and reasserted my power in the household (example: when asked yesterday if I would like to go out for dinner at a fancy restaurant my response was, "Eh. It's already 4:00... let's leave it until tomorrow so that I have a reason to wake up").

I'm starting to wonder how I ever lived without inDemand, and the highlight of my day was watching "BeDazzled", "Meet the Parents", and "A Very Duggar Wedding" in succession. At 2:00 in the morning. Drinking a 40oz that my dad bought for me. 

I think the biggest indicator that I am rapidly losing my foothold on being a normal, functioning twenty-something with responsibilities is the fact that I am updating my livejournal. If this keeps up, I fully expect to regress back to buying Linkin Park CDs, covering myself in Lisa Frank stickers and eventually wearing training pants. 

That's not to say that I am without goals. My next endeavor will be eating breakfast, and later on I fully intend to recreate the image below:

Those who know me know that I have a fond relationship with AOL.com. Let it be said that while I check my share of CNN.com (& various gossip blogs because it's all about being well-rounded yknow?), AOL is my first stop on the information highway. The reason being is that AOL has such a skewered sense of what's newsworthy. I always say that if the world blew up, AOL would be sure to report about it two days after the fact.

So maybe AOL is the fat dumpy highschool girl who's blog I read in order to feel better about myself. In any case, it works, and all you need to do is look at the red arrows below for proof as to why I love me some AOL:

(side note: this screen shot was taken 3 hours after the article was posted. Three hours!)

 I had a dream last night in which I had a new boyfriend who was extremely fat and pimply and just generally gross, but I worshipped him anyway. I woke up thinking what the hell, and worried that someone was trying to tell me something. 

I prefer to believe that my dream was the result of another factor, as I hear that weird dreams can occur because of something you ate before you went to bed. If such is the case, in the future I will try to avoid:

-polish pickles
-lean cuisine manicotti meal, with broccoli
-italian bread w/ half slice of american cheese 
-reduced fat cheezits
-pink lemonade flavored jolly ranchers
-Pez 
-Strawberries


Seeing as how I ate all of that within a span of three hours, it's not surprising that I dreamt of fat people. I am considering counting money before I go to sleep tonight, as to possibly dream of a rich boyfriend, with a slight chance that I could end up with a bank-robber instead.

My roommate is in France, and I keep going back and forth between liking the freedom, and feeling really alone. I find it a little unnerving being all by myself in an apartment in NYC but that hasn't stopped me from already establishing a totally ridiculous and new routine. Apparently freedom, to me, means the following:

1. Having the liberty to take 2 leisurely showers a day.
The first shower is for hygienic purposes, while the other isused purely as a means of practicing show-tunes (The acoustics in the bathroom are amazing for this). 

2. Being able to use the microwave whenever I want. More specifically: around midnight, when I eat dinner. 
Since my roommate lives in the living room and is a gazillion years old, this normally means lights out and no microwave usage after nine PM. However, I am happy to announce that tonight I will be dining on the ever-gourmet SpaghettiOs, at my own leisure! 

3. Being able to  talk to  yell at myself.
This is important because I've had a lot of accidents today which included spilling soup, soda, and the same bottle of water three times. I think you'll agree that not only do swears sound better when said out loud and colorfully, but that they're also much more effective that way. Lord knows I'm aiming to do something right and it might as well be swearing. 

4. The freedom to vacuum at 10 pm because of the aforementioned huge messes. 
Because I am a tard-ass with a f*ckballs sense of balance and too much motherc*nting stuff around (again, so thankful for #3).

5. The chance to blatantly eavesdrop on the couple next door by pressing my ear to our front door.
Do you think that's sad? I don't, not after hearing this little gem:

             Man: "NO! No! You show me no love! No love! Absolutely no consideration! I even showered today!"
             Woman: "That's not true! I pet you earlier, don't you remember? I pet you!"

6. The fact that I can do each and every one of these things.... pants-less!