holes.

The day I graduated high school, I got my nose pierced. I remember the rush I felt as I entered the tattoo/piercing parlor in an otherwise nondescript strip mall mere minutes after leaving my congratulatory family lunch at our regular haunt. The monarchs in my stomach were crazy a'flutter and I was flanked on either side by my besties, there for moral support. The chili con queso was still thickly layered on my esophageal glands when I signed away the regular future functioning of my sniffer and endured one huge pang of guilt. Before I knew it, I was punctured. I left the shop with a new hole in my face and the sexy piercer's phone number. Twas an ordinary silver ball that adorned my snout that day and let it be known, I was one cool cat. Pretty kitty. Foxy feline. You get it. A tomcat.

I'd lived my whole life up to this point as an upper-middle class white girl with a duo of endangered, overbearing vultures (read: parents) endlessly preying on my frequent lust for reckless abandon. There was plenty of dead meat for them to gnaw on between my past-curfew drunken returns home and the car I allowed an acquaintance to total, and I'm happy to say I fulfilled the middle-child obligation of making their lives a living hell. Needless to say, I spent a majority of my high school dayz in the slammer. Kidding, my room. Grounded. My rebellious streak had always been present, and anyone close to me knew I loved the element of surprise. Over the course of my senior year, I asked my parents multiple times for permission to pierce my nose and each time I was brutally rebuffed, sent away to scowl in my room with the lights off, music blasting. They were SO UNFAIR!

I'd dreamt of having a nose-ring forever. I thought it'd make me seem older, more experienced, bad-ass. My fantasies were filled with delusions of grandeur surrounding a metal rod slicing through my prized cartilage and with college on my horizon, I could think of no better time to shock my kin. And so I went.

I think I knew even before the deed was done that I was, in a word, fucked. My parents are no push-overs and I don't think I've ever actually gotten away with anything scandalous. Except that one time I smuggled a male caller across the border of my room via window. Now its public knowledge. Regardless, I knew ma and pa would be P-I-S-E-D when they saw what I'd done with their perfect creation. What was I thinking?

 I made it overnight before I was forced to look my elders in the eye. I'm fairly certain my mother's jaw completely unhinged upon seeing my new addition. It wasn't until I scooped her tongue back into her mouth and she was able to speak that she promptly chose not to in favor of the dramatic turn-around and storm off reaction. Ah, disappointment. Worse than the pain of death. I got out of there real quick-like, only to receive a phone call from my father mere moments later requesting my presence at an impromptu family lunch. His cool, calm voice was reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter's and I knew immediately I was to be verbally skinned alive. News travels fast.

Insert Jaws soundtrack here. Daaa-dum. Daaa-dum.

Before my bee-hind hit my chair at the table I was promptly instructed to remove the stud within 24 hours or I was not permitted to leave home for college. That thing was out of me faster than you can say "over-reaction", and I'm relieved to say I made it to Austin three months later. Its been four years though, and over the past few weeks I've been feeling sporadic tinges of regret that I'm inching toward real-life and have no extra holes to show for it.

I have two more months to live as a carefree young radical and damnit, I'm taking advantage of it.

Mom, Dad; it'll be out in two months. Pinky swear.

what's your sign?

Fate is something many women take really seriously. Be it in love, luck, fortune or hardship, I find that females often attribute happenings to some ambiguous, predetermined course of destiny; their own exclusive kismet, if you will (as it turns out, you will.)

You know the expression. "Everything happens for a reason." Surely in some circumstances the phrase is comforting, especially in serving as a form of validation in cases of misfortune or uncertainty. Lady Luck takes a back seat to life's auto-pilot, and we're left living out our days in cruise-control.

Its as if we're suspended--women on wire, waiting for our stars to align. We're loitering in the purgatory of our own minds waiting on the world to change, and while we wait, we read our horoscopes.

They're everywhere. Daily newspapers, iPhone apps, widgets and even the most reputable of magazines, among them Us Weekly and Cosmopolitan. For many of my friends, reading a daily horoscope has become the way they start their day, sometimes even determining their outlook for the following twenty-four hours. My mom reads her forecast in our home-town newspaper, but "only if it has at least 3 stars", indicating a positive fortune for the day.

Our signs go much further than daily predictions, though. In this day and age, many people take their horoscopes extremely seriously, and live their lives by the guidelines of the stars. I know women who will not date anyone born in a conflicting astrological sign, citing that the relationship is pre-determined to fail. Says who, I ask? Gandalf, the Keebler Elf and Papa Smurf, answer the future psych patients.

I have to admit, though, I love reading about the characteristics of my signs to see what the heavens assume of me. I read them and smile inside. Virgo tells me I am gentle (okay), caring (yes), delicate (debatable, but sure),  helpful (totes!), loving (very!), needy WHAT?! Who is this prude bitch to say I'm needy? I'm not needy! So not needy. Am I needy? Tell me I'm not needy. I need you to tell me I'm not....fuck.

For whatever reason (see: sanity) I've never been able to take the cosmos too seriously. Sure, I look at my horoscope when its presented to me, but I take its advice with a grain of rock-salt and go on about my business. I like to think that the course of my life is a result of my own decision-making and not at the will of a few gassy balls in the sky. No one likes flatulence, least of all when it moonlights as something as beautiful as a star. I don't need a dipper to help navigate my existence, be it big or little, and I would never wear Orion's belt; so not my style.

So while I enjoy a night of star-gazing as much as the next hopeless romantic, the constellations and I butt heads when it comes to happenstance. Still, I'll read at the end of my People Magazine and silently wonder if there's any truth to this madness.
I'm only human, after all. Kidding, I'm dancer.

lip-sync.

It's Halloween week! Garth and Kat everybody!

the pack-rat.

My roommate Arielle is truly one in a million. She's fun and crazy and I love living with her, but over the course of our shared inhabitance, its become glaringly obvious to me that Ari has a problem.

I think the first time I noticed something was off was when I first walked into my apartment and found myself welcomed (granted, with open arms) by a family of sock monkeys. And while I appreciated the hospitality of these primates from within the walls of my own home, I had to wonder: who had given them a key?! A key exchange is a sure sign of a committed relationship but these monkeys hadn't even taken me on a first date, much less professed their undying love to me. But before they could fling their cotton poo at my face it hit me (an idea, not the poo): Arielle! I didn't even know she was dating!

Turns out they're just stuffed animals, but the point is: why does this 22-year-old woman have a gang of great-apes co-existing in our cubby-hole of a residence? Because she loves them, that's why. Reason enough for any toddler. And so I let it slide. I could live with them. We're all mammals, right?

It wasn't until I entered her bedroom five seconds later that I began to realize the truth about Ari: I am living with a hoarder.

Oddly enough, many of the most influential women in my life have been pack-rats.

My grandmother has toiletries from the early 70s still occupying the shelves of her vanity. Yes, vanity. Oh, it's expired by 20 years and is secreting foul odors? Put some Windex on it, I'm not putting a half-full can of Aqua Net to waste!
My sister still owns shoes from her middle school days. Who knows, maybe netted Chinese slippers are on their way back!

And now Ari.

The sock monkeys are only the beginning. In her cell, Arielle's got gadgets and gizmos a'plenty, whosits and whatsits galore. You want thing-a-mabobs? She's got 20. But who cares? No big deal...she wants mooooooooore.....Anyone catch that Little Mermaid reference? I know you did, Ari. It goes perfectly with your Little Mermaid pillow. Remember that from elementary school? Still chilling bedside. Word.

Arielle also maintains an obsession with the Olsen Twins to this day, evidenced by a box of every single magazine cover featuring MK & A since 1999. I'm not kidding. Joining them in the box is a folder (cover graced by Ashlee Simpson, thank you very much) packed to the gills with articles from the past five years about looking good naked and "how to make him hot". A task, by the way, that needs no accompanying article. The penis is a simple, simple organ.

I try to rationalize this need to retain old pages of magazines, which, mind you, haven't been read since they were ripped from their intended home-binding. Is my dear roomie especially concerned that print publications are dying and simply likes the feel of a good glossy on her fingertips? No, that's just me. Maybe Self and Women's Health are on the outs; does this genius know something that I don't??

I immediately panic, run to my room and begin violently ripping the best of October's Playgirl to shreds, stuffing the close-up shots of oiled ramrods into my memory box. Mid-orgasm I realize: I don't have a memory box, who am I kidding? That's what my brain is for. And another thing: if I want to see a naked human form in November, I can go out and get it in the very next edition of my favorite magazine, and I guarantee you it will be a similar anatomical sculpture to Mr. October.
 Why then does Arielle not realize the same of her box of outdated articles?

I pride myself on my ability to really connect with people, and I love helping others with their issues. I think I give good advice, and usually I'm able to break through, regardless of the grip of old habits. This one though has proven difficult to crack.

As I looked around Arielle's room today for inspiration with this post, I saw years upon years of memories, and a woman that is at her absolute happiest buried in piles of papers, trinkets and small reminders of her past. And while I get the hives just thinking about having so much shit all up in my personal space, she wouldn't be my Ari without her two pill bottles filled with old fortunes. Hoard your little heart out, babygirl. I love you just the way you are.

 

dog lovers.

My friends Mia and Kelly are lovely, wonderful people. When it comes to their bitch Mabel, though, these two get crazy.