a day in the life

8:00 AM Bitchslap alarm.

8:09 AM Bitchslap alarm.

8:19 AM Turn off alarm and grudgingly roll out of bed. Jesus, it's freezing in here! I check the thermostat and it's 56 degrees in my apartment. I turn the heat on and then do the pee-pee dance to the bathroom. Ah, sweet release...

8:25 AM I weigh myself. Boy, that's an unpleasant surprise. Yikes. But to quote Jason Love, I'd like a nice body, but not as much as I'd like dessert. I enjoy food far too fucking much to deprive myself...well, within reason. Okay, USUALLY within reason.

8:26 AM Oooh, that milk is smelling funky, and not the good James Brown kind of funky. Instead of cereal, I have a Fiber One oats and caramel bar and a bottle of water for breakfast. I check my favorite websites and do the Yahoo crossword puzzle.

8:50 AM I always shower at night and wear very little makeup, so it doesn't take me long to get ready for work. I sing along to The Misfits as I get dressed. Strangely enough, The Misfits always remind me of my mom because she actually liked them. I must have had the only mom in the world who preferred The Misfits over They Might Be Giants. She HAAAAAATED TMBG. I think the lead singer's voice bugged her. Anyway, it always cracked me up when she'd start singing "I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch, you better think about it baby!"

God, I miss my mom.

9:15 AM I walk downstairs, toss the nasty milk into the dumpster, hop into Ginji, and drive to work.

9:25 AM I pull into the parking lot and speedwalk inside. Somebody from the other company that shares our building gives me stinkeye, presumably because of the way I'm dressed. Hey, bitch, we have a casual dress code, okay? Your approval is neither desired nor required.

9:30 AM I start up my computer, put my lunch in the break room fridge, and get to work. The temp who sits on the other side of me is hacking and sneezing. I'm grateful for the wall between us, because even though it won't protect me from the germs she keeps thoughtfully spraying into the air, at least I don't have to look at her. She's got a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle.

9:45 AM One of my coworkers, L, is sweet but quite possibly one of the stupidest people I've ever met. Yesterday, she forwarded a cloying e-mail to our department about a dog being put to sleep and how it taught the original writer a lesson about life and love and blah blah.

This morning, there was an e-mail from L saying "I feel bad about that e-mail I sent because M's [other coworker who was out of the office yesterday] dog died on Sunday so please don't bring it up to her because she's very upset."

She cc'd M.

AWKWARD.

10:15 AM My goddamn Outlook keeps crashing. It's a good thing that this project my boss has me working on doesn't involve e-mail at all.

OH WAIT IT DOES.

Great, my coworker refilled the pail on her desk with more Halloween candy. Before, it was Starburst, which I can easily ignore.

But Twix?

Twix are my Golgotha.

11:15 AM I head out on my morning walk, pleased to see "my" egret Shiro out front. It's 70 degrees and the sun feels wonderful on my bare arms. I could walk all day!

11:30 AM ...but I can't. Now I'm back at my desk, sulkily staring at my inbox and nursing a bottle of Fiji water.

12:15 PM I eat lunch at my desk: a PBJ sandwich and a Coke Zero. This isn't my official lunch break, but my "real" lunch break is at 1:15 and I'd be chewing my arm off if I waited until then. I check in on Maru and then return to the sucky suckiness of my ass-sucking project of suck.

1:05 PM Fucking Outlook! Stop crashing every two seconds! Screw it, I'm taking an early lunch.

2:00 PM I'm back at my desk and procrastinating, as is my wont. On my lunch break, I did a full circuit around the parking lot. Ever since I was harassed by a carload of teenage boys, I take my lunchtime walk around the parking lot instead. I figure those little douchenozzles were on their lunch break too, since there are two high schools within walking distance of my workplace, so if I avoid going out into the "wild" at around that time, the odds of a repeat occurrence are much lower.

It's not so bad, though. Most of it is shaded by the trees all around the property, and it's so big that walking around the entire thing takes me about 25 minutes, even though I walk fairly fast. And last week, I saw two kittens, one gray and one white and orange, crouched under a car. I tried to lure them out, but they ran away. Usually my animal sightings aren't quite so exciting, though; lots of squirrels.

When I got back inside, I had about 20 minutes left, so I took my book and bottle of water to the break room and read. Now it's time to get back to it...

3:15 PM Wow, I actually managed to make a colossal dent in my workload! I reward myself with a nice walk and, upon returning to the building, a bag of pretzels, a Coke Zero, and some quality websurfing.

5:55 PM I spent the last few hours alternating between being productive and (figuratively) picking my asscrack. Now it's time to make like Bob Marley and blow this joint!

...goddamn, I'm pissed about Prop 19. Such bullshit.

6:00 PM Thanks to epic marathons of Crafting Mama, I've got the bug to do some crafting of my own, so I drive to Michaels and wander the aisles. I finally decide upon scrapbooking because it reminds me of when I was a kid and kept enormous sticker albums. (Specialty: unicorns.) I decide to start off with some basic items and skip the ultrafancy shit like $20 paper punches. I still wind up shelling out $30.

I leave Michaels, grab a quick bite to eat, and hit up a nearby store that specializes in candy and soda from around the world, i.e. the greatest store in the history of evertime. I buy an assortment of goodies, plus a bag of imported Dutch black salted licorice. I'd rather eat a warm dog turd than black licorice, especially SALTED black licorice, but Daddy-O's girlfriend is Dutch and loves the stuff, so I thought I'd tuck a package into the Christmas parcel I'll be sending him next month.

My final stop is the library, where I pick up two books that are being held for me (Smile by Raina Telgemeier and Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane), the DVD of Pontypool (which, oddly enough, Netflix doesn't have), and a scrapbooking guide. Then I read the latest issue of New York magazine before checking out and heading home.

8:55 PM I pull into my complex, get my purchases out of the trunk, and grab the mail: two catalogs, some junk mail, and the new TV Guide. Could be better, could be worse. I go inside, put my stuff away, boot up my laptop, and check the usual websites.

10:00 PM Shower time. I grudgingly shave my legs because I have a massage tomorrow night and don't want to force the masseuse to run her fingers through my lush legpelts.

10:30 PM I have decided that I am wildly in love with my Turbie Towel. I saw them at CVS, but they were something insane like $15, which, I'm sorry, it better do my taxes if I'm going to spend that much money for what's basically a super absorbent hand towel. But they were on sale for $5 last week, so I got one, and it's awesome. My hair is the thickness of baling twine, so it takes forever to dry, but this towel has cut my blowdrying time in half. Yay!

Anyway, after drying my body/hair and liberally coating myself with lotion, I get into my woobs, get myself a bottle of water, and check my e-mail and OD. I think I'll hop into bed and read until I fall asleep.

Night night...