July 1st, 2011 5:38pm - San Blas=Drunken Paradise

Throughout our stay on Tony's Island, Jack Sparrow blasted music powered by his generator. I enjoy music as much as I do food. I was ecstatic that we didn't have to try and rig up some speakers with our supplies. Between us, we had a battery, a paperclip, and twelve bottles of rum. I delighted in the luxury of constant music. The other backpackers regarded the music with crushing devastation. For them, it was on the same disappointment level as their parents eating all of their Halloween candy.
Jack Sparrow only played his three favorite songs. On repeat. The first day, he played the same song thirteen times in a row.
"This song is a cunt bag! I can't take it anymore," Seanog yelled and skipped to the next song.
Jack Sparrow noticed and swerved towards us, a bottle of rum in one hand and the baby in the other. He started the song over and lectured us not to touch his music. For the next three days, we listened to the same three songs. It was a good run if we'd get three different songs in a row. That happened once.

Day one, Jack Sparrow stumbled around the island screaming obscenities, smoking joints, and wobbling between Israeli supermodel breasts and drunken backpackers. 
Day two, Jack Sparrow was awesome, and the leprechaun on steroids had burnt the shit out of his body. It looked like his giant leprechaun body had been dipped in red paint.
We awoke in our bamboo tents, washed off in the ocean, and congregated in the feeding area at 9am. Jack Sparrow immediately distributed beer, and we began playing drinking games. After three rounds of Fuck the Dealer, Jack Sparrow introduced us to his game. He piled a pack of cards on the top of a beer bottle. The first person held the beer, removed the top card, and passed the bottle to the next person in the circle without knocking off any cards. Whenever a card fell off, whoever had failed at life shotgunned a beer.

After a few rounds, drunken logic and invented rules prevailed. Blowing on the cards and smashing the table with fists were allowed. Chants were involved. A pink laundry clip was introduced. Whoever had the clip attached it to someone else, waited a few minutes, and then screamed, "where's the clip?!" Everyone frantically searched their backs, heads, and shoulders. You could only search yourself. If the clip wasn't located within six seconds, whoever lost chugged a beer.

Whenever someone was responsible for a card falling off, they shotgunned a beer and then everyone else agreed on another activity they had to do. Jack Sparrow climbed a palm tree, I pole danced, and one of the Canadians went under the table until we decided it was time for someone else to be the troll. 

Jack Sparrow told us that the baby's parents had died in the Kuna wars, and he adopted him. Jack Sparrow then erected a bottle of rum and chugged five sips.

That night, we sat in a circle in the sand, listened to the same three songs on repeat, and played drinking games. Drinking games are a more effective bonding method than being born siblings. As I sat on the sand, I realized how much I adore skinny dipping, especially in developing countries. As long as the locals aren't sitting on your clothes when you emerge out of the water, skinny-dipping is a sick-ass thing to do.

I walked around the island in six minutes. Israelis were everywhere, and I preferred not to display my tiny little breasts and naked body in front of the people I'd been traveling with for a week.

I stripped and dove into the water in the only spot without people sitting on the beach. I landed in coral. It was in my hands and stomach. I internally debated with the rum talking in my head. The rum won, and I swam out farther. I floated on my back away from the shore for five minutes before trying to step down. I smashed my foot in coral. Coral was everywhere. And I was naked. I floated on my back again to return to shore. When I crawled onto the sand, coral was in my arms, legs, feet, hands, stomach, and ass. A minuscule amount had imbedded itself in my face. Four days later, my ass still hurt.
One of the Canadians, we'll call him Crazy, went a little nuts on the rum. He dominated as the troll under the table, he guzzled rum like an alcoholic, he passed out on his bed with one foot on the floor, and he felt like death during the Jeep ride back to Panama City.

June 30th, 2011 12:40pm - San Blas=Paradise

On my last night in Thailand in 2008, I lost a sandal. The lost sandal resulted from a cocktail of alcohol, drinking games, and bad decisions. Walking through the streets of Bangkok, I realized how observant people are. Eight people told me, "you're only wearing one sandal," and, "do you know you're only wearing one sandal?" Others pointed to my naked foot and smiled. Yes, I was aware of the situation. I had feeling in my foot. I did know that I was stepping on concrete, trash, and dirt instead of rubber.
The same situation occurred in Panama City. We stumbled out of Luna's Castle at four-thirty in the morning to catch the Jeep. I wore one sandal, a result of alcohol, drinking games, and bad decisions. One of the guys crawled to the vehicle. The Jeep stopped off at a grocery store so we could buy supplies for the three-day trip.

"You should buy food, water, and any extra alcohol you might want," the driver said. "The money you paid for the island includes three meals, but you might want more food to snack on. You'll need to get water, because you can't drink the stuff on the island. They sell beer there, but you might want to take a bottle of alcohol between a couple of you."
When we tumbled out of the Jeep and walked towards the grocery store, the driver pointed at my feet and informed me, "you have one shoe." As if I didn't know.
We loaded up three shopping carts with alcohol and mixers. Everyone was entirely delirious on a half hour of sleep with more booze running through our veins than an anorexic alcoholic on New Years Eve. Seanog put on a Panama hat and pushed the cart around like he was a five-year-old in a bumper car. He ricocheted into shelves and displays. Bags of cookies flew onto the floor and an old woman screamed as he barreled around the corner and almost hit her.
The giant leprechaun surveyed the shit-hill of awesomeness. Bottles of rum, vodka and tequila, cans and cans of beer, Coke, Sprite, and juice completed the alcoholic jackpot.
"Ey, mate, you think we need that much?" Giant Leprechaun asked.
"Ya, we fucking need that much alcohol, ya cunt bag!" Seanog yelled.
"Ya, but, should we get water or something?"
We spent over two hundred and fifty dollars on one two-gallon container of water, three bags of chips, and alcohol. Two hundred and fifty dollars in Panama equates twenty nights accommodation. We were prepared for our three-night trip. Ed saw the cart and said, "maaaaaaaaaatte!"
I was bouncing around on a half hour of sleep and passed out as soon as we got back into the Jeep.
I woke up four and a half hours later, when we stopped near Carti Island to catch the boat transport to Tony's Island. It was magical. I had slept the deep and wondrous sleep of the rum overdosed, and emerged exhilarated and ecstatic. Everyone else hated their lives. 
"How the fuck were you able to sleep through that cunt bag of a ride?" Seanog asked me.
"What are you talking about? It was wonderful! I slept like an overdosed baby." 
"You were in a five-inch space, and we almost died."

"Huh?" I'm quite articulate when I'm still half-drunk.
"Mate, the roads were horrible. There were more potholes in them than smooth parts. It felt like the roads were intentionally shaking around our brain bits and trying to get us to vomit," Ed added.
"I got none of that, I'm telling you, the ride was a blanket of bliss."
"What the hell are you on about? You're one crazy cunt," Seanog said, and walked away, shaking his head.

We caught the boat and pulled up to paradise. Think bathtub-warm water, white sand beaches, coral reef, palm trees, and swarms of gorgeous Israeli women. The droves of Israeli men were alright. They weren't pretty, but they were hairy.
The most lesbian experience I've had was in high school when I made out with one of my friends for thirty seconds for a Cuban cigar. She was forceful with her tongue, and since that night I've been scarred. No more lesbian experiences. However, these Israeli women were supermodels. And they didn't wear bras to support their monstrous bazoombas. They were in the ocean or tanning in bathing suits, or they wore shirts and their nice brown nipples stuck out of their nicely outlined ta-tas. I found myself wishing I had a boob job. A CCCC cup size might compete with these goddesses.

Us newcomers gathered around Tony (Tony's Island), and he laid down the rules. No littering, and don't drown. Tony was actually Jack Sparrow. Jack Sparrow (Tony) told us these rules while he stood in front of the bamboo huts with a bottle of rum in his hand and a toddler holding on to his legs. 
"No running water, we have a generator for electricity. No internet. But we have music!" Jack Sparrow said, sipping his rum.
"My grandfather, he bought this island many years ago. How much you think he bought it for?"
We guessed. Five thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand, one hundred thousand dollars.
"He bought this island for sixty coconuts!" 
Jack Sparrow wasn't kidding.

June 28th, 2011 10:45am - Luna's Castle and Decisions

Luna's Castle was full of your classic mixed-nut variety of backpackers. Among them, we had an Irish guy who looked like a giant leprechaun on steroids, his friend Seanog, who threw around "cunt bag" like it was a standard phrase in the English language, two Canadian doctors, a guy from Arizona with a great smile, a good-looking black guy from London named Dat, and his skinny white friend who said "mate" every fourth word. Someone would say, "Oy, let's get lunch," or, "Hey, you want me to grab you a beer?" Ed would reply, "mate... maaaaate," and smile. 
After hanging out with him for a few weeks, I was able to distinguish a few of the many uses for the word mate. "Mate" is an appropriate response to relay agreement, excitement and incredulity. It is a term of affection, and can be used in addressing anyone, including a dad, girlfriend's sister, a friend, or the bag lady on the street. "Mate" can be used to get the attention of large groups of people, and for doling out a single beer in a drinking game. It's not as versatile as the word fuck, but "mate" has its uses.
When Dat said he was thinking of going to the San Blas islands off the Caribbean coast of eastern Panama, Ed responded, "mate!" When the Irish lads, Canadians, and Americans (myself included) said we might as well come along, Ed said, "mate! mate! mate!" I don't know if he was addressing individuals, or expressing his excitement in the form of a chant, but at any rate, we went to San Blas. 
The day before we left, we sat at the table sipping on beer while Dat flipped through a Lonely Planet Guide and told us useful things about the three-day trip. 
Dat: "There are almost four hundred islands in San Blas, and most are inhabited by the indigenous Kuna people. The islands are autonomous, so the Kuna self-rule."
Ed: "Mate!"
Dat: "The islands are actually also known as Kuna Yala, after the people that inhabit them."
Ed: "Mate!"
Dat: "It's supposed to be like Caribbean paradise. White sand beaches, warm water, coral reef, and you can walk around most of the islands in five or six minutes. There are a number of islands we can choose from. There are the Carti Islands, Robinson Island, Frank Island... I've heard Tony's Island is a party."
Ed: "Maaaaatttte!"
We went to Tony's Island. We had to be downstairs in Luna's Castle at 4:30am to catch the Jeep, and Seanog thought the most logical course of action would not be to pack and go to bed around midnight after some drinks. The more intelligent decision would be to stay awake. Around the table, we toasted to drinking heavily and not sleeping.
We played fuck the dealer upstairs in Luna's, and when we relocated to the bar downstairs, the bartender wouldn't serve me because I wasn't wearing shoes. 
"But we're in Central America. I haven't worn shoes in days!" I tried to reason with the man. 
He didn't accept my rationality. 
"You cannot be inside the bar without shoes," he said. He was German.

My sandals were three flights of stairs away, and I wanted an alcoholic beverage in my throat immediately. Or at least in my hand. I tried flirting with him. I put my elbow on the bar and my cheek on my hand. I batted my eyelashes. Well, the bar was wet. My elbow slipped off the counter, my chin hit the bar, and in the process of blinking, I lost a contact. The bartender shook his head, and I went upstairs to get my sandals. 
I know that we drank until four in the morning. I know that I woke up in the hostel's staff sleeping quarters at four-thirty. We made the Jeep! It's still a mystery to me why I woke up wearing only one sandal.

June 26th, 2011 6:01pm - June 2011 Quote of the Month

Polly: "Golden Bear, that fish is you. It's extremely long, very large, and looks a bit fucked up."

June 23rd, 2011 4:04pm - Panama City: Round 1

Panama City is at the intersection of two continents and two oceans. This is excellent for various reasons. 1: You can see the ocean from almost anywhere in the city, and 2: Panama is in close proximity to Columbia.
I wanted to travel again, and decided upon Central America, for logical reasons. Flights were cheaper than elsewhere, and I didn't know Spanish.
I'd been looking at flights for a few days and refused to pay the seven hundred dollars roundtrip that appeared to be standard pricing at the time. One night, I had taken a few hits off of Pakistan's joint, and was feeling happy and high. Everything was a little blurry around the edges, and I felt like my tongue was the size of a mammoth's. I found a roundtrip flight for four hundred and thirty dollars, San Francisco to Panama City. Amid overwhelming feelings of joy, I booked the flight. The next morning, I awoke with the realization that there is a Panama City in Florida. Five minutes later, I was ecstatic to find that I had in fact booked a flight to Panama City, Panama. This was a good start.
At the Panama City airport, I wandered in circles like a dog chasing its tail looking for a currency exchange. I never found one, but I did find a bank. When I handed over four US hundred dollar bills, the bank teller pushed them back towards me. I thrust them back at her and insisted, "dinero!" I said the word with such authority that the teller then handed me twenty US twenty dollar bills. I pushed the money towards her again with the confidence of a moron. This shoving of bills across the counter continued until someone with a grasp of the English language explained to me that Panamanian currency is US dollars. My suggestion to anyone traveling anywhere: if you do no other research, figure out what money the country uses, and if there's some historical necessity you should see, like Machu Picchu or the Panama Canal. I am proud to say that upon arriving in Panama, I did know of the existence of the canal. This was largely because I was lugging around a 698 page book that my mom's boyfriend had given me called The Path Between the Seas. In the subsequent months throughout my trip, other backpackers found it amusing to heave the Path up to eye level and read the back cover aloud. Generally, the reader would get three sentences in before two or three people would feign sleep and the rest would scream that they were already bored and to stop torturing them immediately. A few times, one of the guys would walk over to a wall and repeatedly bang his dome into the wood until the reading ceased. For the record, I found it a fascinating book about politics, economy, the French, and the creation of the country of Panama. Plus, if I ever had trouble sleeping on a bus or on a sidewalk, I'd read a third of a page and then swiftly lapse into unconsciousness.
I grabbed my bags and waited at the bus stop outside the airport holding a piece of paper with the name of a hostel that a friend of mine had told me to stay at. Buses came by, I shouted, "Luna's Castle? Casco Viejo! Old Town or something!" at them, and they drove off. Many of the passengers laughed at me as I jogged alongside the bus (not all of the buses actually stop, they just slow down enough to briskly load and unload passengers) with my bag on my back, shouting and waving a piece of paper in my hand. Panama City is so humid that after eleven bus drivers spurned me, I looked like I had just emerged from an Olympic-sized pool of man sweat. I flagged down a taxi driver, who proceeded to drive in circles through the one-way streets of the city looking for the hostel. We circled the same four-block radius in Casco Viejo for forty minutes before I got out, asked directions, and walked.

I marveled at Panama City's skyline, wine bars, upscale cafes, and the ability that resides through all major cities: certain areas smell like the excrement that would result from two thousand eggs shoved up an elephant's ass.
Luna's Castle was housed in an awesome dilapidated colonial mansion. It had everything that I deem important in my traveling life: balconies, hammocks, free internet and water, and $1 beer. 

Within two hours of arriving at the hostel, I had met some Americans, Canadians, Brits, and two Irish lads. I introduced them all to the beauty of the card game Fuck the Dealer. A half hour in, we had twenty people playing around a long table in the central area of Luna's Castle. We invented new rules to the game, the receptionist required we sling booze around our heads every time there was a social, and a twelve-year-old boy traveling with his family looked on in fascination at our progressive levels of intoxication. 
A cool chick from Oregon who was working on a boat from Panama City to Columbia was in town for the night and motivated us to go out downtown. On the ride there, she gave the cabbie drug money and he promised that he'd return. 

"Really?" Ireland said. "You just gave money to a cab driver. A cabbie in Central America. At least have some sense and give him half now and half later." 
The cabbie did return with the drugs, and we relocated to a club. Our group of caucasians was a bit out of place. I was as comfortable as I imagine I would be watching a stripper bathe her child in a vat of sperm. I just didn't know what to do with myself. I can't really dance. All of the locals upstaged me with their swinging hips and their rampant sexiness. If there was a disorder that involved semi-mentally capable adults dancing with autistic capabilities, I would have it. I bumbled along until someone took mercy on me and led me outside. 
The next day, we saw the Panama Canal. For anyone who hasn't seen it, don't get too excited. Remember, I was reading The Path Between the Seas and becoming thoroughly educated on the thirty-four years it took to build the canal and all of the intricacies surrounding the construction. I spewed off facts like an encyclopedia. Granted, I was only three pages into the book, so I had gained these facts from looking up the canal on my phone. I proudly announced little golden nuggets of information like, "some guy swam through the canal in 1928 and had to pay thirty-six cents," and "the canal is forty-eight miles long!" 

While I was largely ignored, I was impressed with my own regurgitated knowledge. I do know that when you get to the Miraflores Locks in the Panama Canal, you walk out in excited anticipation of seeing the canal. You look upon a waterway with a ship in it, and go, huh. I didn't know the answers to the few questions the guys asked me. 

To this day, I have no idea how many kilometers are in forty-eight miles, and for the love of God, I do not know what locks are. 

June 15th, 2011 8:15am - Crazy Bitch vs Psycho Bitch

• When a relationship ends, a crazy bitch will develop an eating disorder. A psycho bitch will fake a pregnancy.

• When a guy breaks up with a chick and text messages her a few weeks later saying he's horny, a crazy bitch will text back, your loss. A psycho bitch will sob hysterically for two hours and demand her friend leave the guy she's hooking up with to come over and comfort her.

• When a guy a girl's interested in visits and has to work while there, a crazy bitch will be mad. A psycho bitch will ignore the dude for hours each day. She'll pretend he doesn't exist and give him the silent treatment. She'll drop him off at her house and leave him there without a word.

• When a male breaks up with a crazy bitch, she'll post photos of her molesting other men on Facebook. A psycho bitch will set up a fake profile to be her "boyfriend." She will change her status as in a relationship with the phony profile. She will create a boyfriend to make the ex jealous. She may photoshop pictures.

• When a guy doesn't meet up at a bar he says he might go to, a crazy bitch will be upset. A psycho bitch will cry. In public.

• When a boyfriend cheats on a crazy bitch, she'll break up with him. A psycho bitch will dye her hair and buy a gun.

• After a week of dating, a crazy bitch will tell a man that she loves him. A psycho bitch will tell the dude after two days that she wants to spend the rest of her life with him. She will then break up with the guy.

• When a crazy bitch is mad, she will call her boyfriend forty-three times in a row. When a psycho bitch is upset, she will threaten the boyfriend that she will hire an assassin to brutally murder him. She will use that exact phrase.

• When a crazy bitch gets cheated on, she will put the guy's truck for sale on Craigslist. A psycho bitch will key his car. She may slash his tires.

• When a guy tries anal sex, a crazy bitch will walk out. A psycho bitch will try to stab the dude with a kitchen knife. She'll justify it by saying that she had two abortions when she was sixteen.

June 6th, 2011 8:08pm - June 2011 Photo of the Month

Panama City, Panama

June 5th, 2011 7:50pm - Communicate Instead of Pulling a Crazy Bitch Move... or Not

I loved my college boyfriend, who we'll call Aidan.
Some things you should know: 

• On our first date we went to an Asian place that served singular dishes large enough to eat dinner and have leftovers for six other meals. I finished my entire meal and the rest of his. He had the good sense to tell me that he was impressed, but the look on his face told me he was disturbed.

• We did really cool things together, like going to a public execution and accidentally burning holes in the living room carpet by knocking over the hookah.

• He did awesome things with his wardrobe and appearance, like shaving his head into a mohawk, or wearing a gas station attendant uniform he picked up at Goodwill, and penny loafers with actual pennies in them.

• He was handy at things, like helping me duct tape cardboard over my car window when it got smashed in, and getting my bike stolen out of his friend's garage.

Every year at USF, the seniors threw a pub crawl. Our senior year, Aidan and I were talking to a girl that we both knew. She said she hadn't known that we knew each other, and he replied that we had dated on and off since sophomore year. This was entirely true. At the time, we weren't even officially together. However, I was stumbling drunk and wanted him to say that we had been together since sophomore year. That would have been a lie, but that's what I had wanted to hear. Because that makes sense. When she walked away, I asked him why he said that.

"What?" he asked.

"Why'd you say that we dated on and off?"

"Because it's true?"

I grunted like an overweight big rig driver and pushed my way back to the bar. And then I did the sensible thing and ordered a triple shot of whiskey. I loathe whiskey. Smelling it makes me gag. I would rather inhale the aroma of my dog's fart. She ate possums on a regular basis. The bartender put the shot on the bar and I snatched at it as if there were sanity in the glass. I downed half the shot and immediately threw up all over the bar. The bartender looked at the vomit leaking over the countertop and pooling around his workstation. He glared at me. I recognized regurgitated sushi. I shrugged, wiped the puke off my mouth, and staggered out into the wet air of San Francisco. 

Aidan followed me. He rationally, calmly, asked why I was upset. Instead of explaining my unreasonable thought process like a normal person, I told him that I didn't want to be with him anymore. He stopped walking and said that it really hurt him to hear that. I repeat: we weren't technically together. However, I was insanely in love with him and wanted to be with him. Thus, I proceeded to inform him for the remaining eighteen blocks home that I didn't want to be with him. Shockingly, when we got to the front of my apartment, he took his hat off and threw it on the ground. He took his sweatshirt off and threw that on the ground. I fantasized that he was going to strip naked and yell, What do you want from me? as the rain started to fall. But he didn't, and there was no rain. He said that he didn't think he was going to come up. I maturely replied that I didn't want him to come up, and he walked off. 

Of course I wanted him to come up. I wanted him to come up and ravage me. Which, weirdly enough, he did the following night. We videotaped for the first time. Communication might just possibly be the important thing here. But more importantly: women are crazy. And men are nuts. 

May 27, 2011 7:21pm - May 2011 Quote of the Month

Maldy: "Going to Central America and not doing coke is like going to Starbucks and not getting coffee."

May 22nd, 2011 5:50pm - Feeling like Death

Last Thursday night, my friends and I went to a gig. I've never said that before, and I feel unbelievably cool in referring to it as a gig. It makes me feel worldly and artistically cultured. The lead singer in the band was another realtor in my office. Granted, 99% of the people in my office are well on their way to knitting, birdwatching, and geezerville, but this man was the sprightly young age of thirty-eight. I bribed some friends to come on promises of booze and interaction with AARP members.

Think Sebastopol (northern California). Warehouse + vintage clothing store + indoor stage + bar + restaurant + outdoor patio with large naked women = the Aubergine. If I'd previously known about the large naked women, I would have used that as leverage.

Instead of behaving myself and sipping on beer, I chugged coke and rums and threw back shots like a college student. I dirty danced with our receptionist and kissed my mom on the mouth. At one point I dumped an entire coke and rum on a forty-year career realtor in our office.

When we got back to our place, I was drunk, tired, and wanted nothing more than to get into bed, pass out, and snore my way into oblivion.

Instead, my friend Traitor insisted we continue the irresponsible debauchery of our lives and go to a bar.

"Absolutely not," I replied.

Traitor: "Let's go to Belve!"

Pakistan: "Absolutely not."

We went to Belve.

The next morning, I woke up at 9:30am, stumbled to the bathroom, and vomited. I could hear Pakistan puking in the other bathroom.

A few months prior, my mom had called and told me that she had a surprise waiting for me at my house. I hoped that it would be a car. It was a breathalyzer. I breathalyzed myself and blew a .16.

I straggled into the office at 10:30am, puked twice, and looked at myself in the mirror. I had put on a shirt thinking it was a dress and looked like a hungover hooker. I glanced at the time and ran out of the office, puked, and went to show a house.

When I breathalyzed myself (while driving) at 2pm, I blew a .1. I was slightly concerned, but texted the feat to Traitor and Pakistan.

By 3pm, I was feeling faint from not having consumed anything by alcoholic calories in the last twenty hours, and bought a vanilla milkshake. It was fantastic going down and fantastic coming up.

I felt mentally handicapped all day. At 5:30pm, when I went to go home, I realized I had locked my keys in the car.

May 21st 2011 - May 2011 Photo of the Month

View from Gunsight Rock

Sonoma County, Northern California

May 10th, 2011 10:16am - Shiny Things

When I was little, I liked shiny things.

My mom would take me, my brother and sister to the mall, and we would run around like the little terrors we were. My mom would attempt to take us winter shopping, and we'd be playing hide-and-seek among the clothing racks. She'd want me to try on a pair of jeans, and I'd be laying amongst dirt and dead skin on the floor underneath a shirt rack.

We would inevitably scream that we were hungry, and my saint of a mother would take us to the food court to feed us. When I was six years old, we were standing in line to order when I saw something incredibly round, shiny, and silver. I touched it. My hand lay on the silver circle for ten seconds before I felt a burning sensation. My reflexes weren't fantastic, and it took another minute before I realized that I had burnt the shit out of my hand.

The reasonable thing would have been to cry at my mom and expect her to fix my hurts. She continues to be one of the most loving, caring, understanding women in the world. Instead, I didn't tell her that my hand felt like it had been crippled in a fire. I had recently learned the child definition of retarded and thought she would be mad at me for being so retardedly stupid. Instead, I tried not to cry. Because that's logical. When she asked what I wanted to eat for lunch, I screamed, "Water!"

"Okay, okay," my mom replied.

When two seconds passed and I wasn't immediately given a glass of water, I screamed at her that I wanted water NOW.

"Calm down hunny," she said.

A full two minutes passed by before she bestowed me with a glass of water. I didn't even thank her, I just plunged my hand directly into it.

"What are you doing?" she asked, eyeing my hand inside a plastic foam cup.

"Just trying to get out an ice cube," I responded.

When we sat down, my mom's focus was on my little sister throwing food and my brother poking her. I cradled an ice cube in my hand like it was a diamond. I liked diamonds a lot - they were shiny too.

After lunch, we were in store #3 looking at cowboy boots when my mom noticed that I was shaking my right hand back and forth violently. I had thought that shaking my hand would get some air into it and make the burning stop. Because that makes sense.

We later discovered that the fast food place had been technologically advanced in the early nineties and had circular coffee warmers placed into their countertop. I had third degree burns because of a shiny coffee pot warmer.

May 8th, 2011 2:05pm - Mother's Day 2011

When I returned from Australia this past December, I didn't know what I'd be doing. My life plan had as much direction and ambition as a blind sloth. When my mom insisted that I get a phone so I could live like a real human being, I considered it. When she offered to pay for it, I deliberated my options.

After three minutes of Internet research, I was flustered and perplexed. I hadn't searched for anything online in months and the myriad of pop-ups I encountered distracted me to no end. Within thirty seconds, I had accidentally clicked a pop-up and was reading about Viagra. Upon reading that Viagra doesn't cause an erection when there is no sexual desire, I realized what I was reading, screamed "for the love of God!" and settled on the first phone that appeared on my screen: a Prepaid cell phone through AT&T. When it arrived in the mail, I tore open the package giddy to join the twenty-first century again. The phone was large, blue and silver, and elliptical. It looked like it belonged on a space shuttle in the 1970's.

After two weeks, I became disenchanted with my space shuttle phone. It didn't look anything like a real phone, and I became a subject of mockery for all of the technologically advanced six-year-olds running around with iPhones. My primary frustration, however, was that my space shuttle phone didn't work. I was living in Santa Rosa, in northern California, and I barely got service. I would sit in my office discussing the economy and the number of distressed properties with a potential client and my phone would cut out.

When I called AT&T to politely inquire why my phone calls disconnected thirty-eight times a day (I was a Realtor, I talked on the phone a lot, okay), they reviewed the coverage area.

"If you're within one and a half miles of the 101 freeway, you should have good coverage. The rest of the area doesn't look so good," I was told.

"I'm looking at the goddamn freeway out my window right now!" I insisted. "It's probably a fifth of a mile away, and I'm talking to you on the office phone because my cell phone won't make calls." I knew it wasn't the representative's fault that AT&T had shitty coverage. "Just reposition the goddamn satellites or something!" I said passionately. I didn't scream. She still hung up on me.

By April, my mom had had it with AT&T. We disconnected her AT&T iPhone and my AT&T space shuttle phone, and my mom bought us both Verizon iPhones. I was ecstatic over my iPhone. It didn't drop calls and it even took pictures (space shuttle phone didn't). My mom was not so enthused. Somehow her new Verizon iPhone magically uploaded her contact list from five years before. When she tried to rectify the situation, her AT&T iPhone erased her current address book contents and uploaded her contacts from five years before. She owned two iPhones with outdated address books. This was not ideal for a Realtor. After hours on the phone with Verizon, and directing profanity at her new phone on a daily basis for two weeks, it was too much for her. She couldn't take it. My mom went to Bora Bora and Tahiti on vacation for three weeks. For reasons that are beyond me, she left her new Verizon iPhone in a bathroom drawer and took her inactive AT&T iPhone with her. Two hours later, I received a frantic voicemail from an unknown number. It was my mom calling from the airport to say that she'd left her phone on the bus. I sighed and a few days later I picked up the phone from the bus station office and placed it in her car's glove compartment.

My mom returned three weeks later, arriving the day before Mother's Day. It was the first Mother's Day in three years that I had been in the same country as my mom. It was also the first Mother's Day in eight years that I wasn't hung over and feeling like death.

She called me on Mother's Day from my sister's phone to tell me that her phone didn't have service.

"Call Verizon," I told her.

"I don't want to go through this again, where I don't have contacts or text messages or my voicemails or notes," she cried.

My mom, brother and sister were supposed to pick me up at 11:30am. By 1:30pm, Mom was still on the phone with Verizon and Apple. I was still at the place I rented. I decided to drive to her house anyway. When I walked in, mom had her head in her hands and was staring at the kitchen counter, dejected and beyond comfort.

"Look, someone tried to break into the iPhone case," she told me wearily, pointing at the case.

"That doesn't make any sense. Why would someone break into the case? It takes two seconds to remove it," I replied and looked at the phone.

"Wait, Mom, that's your old phone. That's why the case is all scratched up. That's your AT&T phone. It's not going to have service because we cancelled that service last month."

She had been on the phone on Mother's Day for four hours trying to get Verizon service on an AT&T phone.

May 7th, 2011 11:43am - Pee Shorts

I was four pounds when I was born, and as childhood progressed, I clearly saw the opportunity to expand my girth and my dominance over smaller children. My dad worked, my two younger siblings occupied my mom, and I constantly snuck food from the kitchen. By the time I was ten, I was medically obese, and part of my daily afternoon snack comprised dessert and an American cheese, Pringles, and mayonnaise sandwich. I couldn't see my toes over my stomach, and I tyrannized little kids. All I had to do was sit on them. It was the easiest and most profitable exertion of my life. I lounged on children until they would give me their chocolate or get me their string cheese.

When my family got a puppy, Mom saw and seized a fantastic opportunity. The dog ran away, she made me run after it. My mom would yell that the dog escaped, I would sigh, shove four more brownies into my mouth, and lumber out the front door. The dog conveniently escaped four times a week, the suggested days of weekly exercise for morbidly obese children. What began as shuffling pursuits around the hill progressed to fast walking, to jogging and feeling like death, and eventually to actual running.

By junior high school, I could run. Once I realized I could run, I found that I liked winning. I ran junior high cross-country, played basketball, and competed on a club soccer team. It was kind of a big deal to do all at the same time, whatever.

One of the cross-country coaches nicknamed me Dimtrip. That's how cool I was. He had a thick blond mustache and beard, which was the universal sign of awesomeness.

In eighth grade, a restaurant called Clo's Ice Creamery sponsored a county-wide cross-country meet. A photo was to be taken of the first three finishers from each grade, blown up, framed, and hung on the wall of the restaurant. The race was two and a half miles long, and, warming up, I felt good. I jogged in a circle and told myself I was going to win. A few minutes later, I stretched and realized that I had to pee. Desperately. One of the coaches said there was no time. If I went to the bathroom, I'd miss the race. An announcement blasted over the field to get on the line. I nodded and approached the starting line, telling my bladder to be good.

A month before, my dad had made me steak and eggs for breakfast on the morning of a meet. He said it was warrior food. Halfway through the race I felt like death and decided that warrior food was not runner food. Since then, I had composed an intricate menu for race days: eat almost nothing. I had had a bowl of cereal and three french fries.

The starting gun went off, and we ran. I had three reasons for running the race as fast as possible:

1: The faster I finished the race, the sooner I'd get to eat.

2: The faster I finished the race, the sooner I'd get to pee.

3: If I won, I could hug everyone, including the boy I had a crush on.

(Side note: the last time I had talked to The Boy had been at lunch the day before. I was giddy that we were actually having a conversation, just the two of us. He was in the middle of a story when a bird shit on my head and I ran screaming for the bathroom.)

We ran through the hills, the paths, and the sidewalks that made up the race. I kept telling myself that my dad had a sandwich waiting for me, there was a bathroom near the finish line, and if I won I'd impress The Boy.

The finish line was ahead, and another girl from my team was running a few feet in front of me. I sprinted right past her and finished first. I cleared the finish line, and bent over to catch my breath, my hands on my knees. I smiled so hard I almost forgot to breathe. I looked up to see The Boy walking over with a congratulatory smile on his face. I stood upright. The Boy's presence had diverted my attention away from holding my vagina shut. When I saw him, I forgot that my bladder wanted to explode, and instead thought about how impressed he must be that I won. I thought how amazing I must seem to him. And then I peed my pants. As he approached, urine gushed through my underwear, flowed into the light grey sweatpant knee-lenth shorts issued by the school, down my leg, and puddled onto my right sock and shoe. I looked down, and The Boy looked down. I screamed, turned around, and ran away. The shorts were light grey, and urine was everywhere. My dad gave me his black leather jacket to tie around my waist. As if that would hide the pee. It did make the piss on my ass less obvious, but it didn't do much to cover my urine-soaked vagina and shorts.

Clo's Ice Creamery took their photo, they blew it up and hung it up on the wall of the restaurant. That picture hung in the restaurant until it closed down nine years later. To this day, it is the only picture of me that has hung in a restaurant, and it was blatantly obvious that I had pissed my pants.

April 29th 2011 2:27pm - April 2011 Quote of the Month

Princess: "I've decided that sex is just a fancy way of saying hello."

April 24th, 2011 4:05pm - Kicked Out

In the past four months I've lived back in Northern California, and my male standards have drastically decreased. While my standards the first twenty-four years of my life (yes, I was checking out strapping young boys as a toddler) have hovered around educated, humorous, intelligent, athletic, and attractive, now anyone slightly above the mental retardation level causes notice.
For lack of male options in Sonoma County, unemployed, illiterate, quasi-gangsters have become beneficiaries of my attentions. I'd been seeing one such man in his early thirties for a month or so, and my respect and esteem for his life plummeted every time I'd see him.

Initially, he was a hot, pseudo-skater/thug. I hadn't experienced this combination before, and I was intrigued. The first time I met him, he mentioned that he wore a uniform. This delighted me. In two seconds, I had envisioned fireman, doctor, police officer, military man, and/or Jesus. However, directly after the word "uniform," I also noticed that I had finished my drink. I screamed, "Bar! Rum!" and sprinted away from him like an alcoholic. The conversation that night never returned to occupation. It instead progressed to intelligent things, like how awesomely strong the drinks were, and how I could beat him at pool.

Over the weeks, it became evident that I would never be able to beat him at pool. He brought his own cue stick to the bars, complete with one white glove. Just one. Like Michael Jackson. He believed that The Glove caused him to excel at pool. The Glove might have been excusable if he was unbeatable. He was not. I couldn't conquer the one-gloved wonder, but many others did.

When I eventually remembered to inquire as to his uniform occupation, he said he was in law enforcement.

"Oh, you're a police officer?" I nodded approvingly. "And you carry a gun?"

"I don't carry a gun," he responded.

"So you're not a police officer. What's your job?"

"I'm security."

"Oh, well, at least you have a badge!" I nodded approvingly again.

"I don't have a badge."

"Oh. Ok, what do you do? Where do you work?"

He worked as night security three times a week at Walmart. He chased kids smoking pot in the parking lot.

He eventually confided that he owned a dog teeth cleaning business as well. I was impressed by this until he proudly divulged that the business brought in about $250 a month. In total sales. He never shared stories about his childhood. He wouldn't tell me where he lived or whom he lived with. He did mention that he'd had 3 DUI's and had been arrested twice. This knowledge did not thrill me.

One night, he was over at my place and kept biting me. Hard. I do not like biters. Gentle nibbling is nice. However, it does not feel good to have my cheek bitten into like a chicken drumstick. I told him to go to KFC. He laughed and chewed my arm.

I grabbed his face in between my hands and screamed, "Please stop biting me, it hurts!"

He chomped onto my shoulder. I sat up.

"If you don't stop biting me right now, I'm going to kick you in the head. Maybe in the trachea. Stop it. I'm going to kick you in the head. I'm not kidding!"

He thought I was kidding. His yellow teeth tore into my stomach. When he moved towards me again, I bunched up both of my legs and kicked out. They connected with his chest, and the 6'3" 260 pounds of muscle shot into the air and crashed onto the floor. It was one of those body blasts you see in action movies. He flew. With his impact, we might as well have been in a two second 7.0 earthquake. The ceiling shook. My legs hadn't kicked anything in awhile, and I had been under the impression that they would feebly connect with his body and then ricochet off like small rocks. Instead, they launched him across the room. I was shocked and working extraordinarily hard at not laughing like a fiend. I snorted and asked him in a strangled voice if he was okay. I apologized. And then I really charmed him by saying that I had warned him.

He lay on the floor in the fetal position until that statement. He then stood up slowly, put his clothes back on, and announced that he was leaving.

"Okay," I said. "Sorry!"

He left. It was four o'clock in the morning and he actually left. He didn't call me. He didn't text me. I fell asleep immediately, smiling over the fact that I literally kicked him out of my bed. I clearly never contacted him.

I ran into him at a bar almost a month later. He had his cue stick and his one white Michael Jackson glove. I ended up going home with him. At nine o'clock the next morning, a woman pounded on his door like a maniac asking if he had any cigarettes left.

"No, leave me alone," the thirty-two-year-old man growled.

It was a woman's voice, his mom's voice. He lived with his mother in a rented apartment. I haven't seen him since. I slightly raised my standards to exclude anyone who wore one glove while playing pool.

April 17th, 2011 7:05pm - April 2011 Photo of the Month

Redwood Forest, Northern California

April 11th, 2011 10:30am - Breaking in with Children

I´m a Realtor, and I try not to excessively intoxicate myself downtown while it´s still light outside. I monitor this with the breathalyzer that my mom recently bought for me. I don´t want clients or potential clients seeing me in public as a drunken shameless hussy. If it´s dark outside, my logic is that inside the bar people won´t know me. I was fully embracing this theory at Russian River Brewery, downing pints of a beer called Damnation, and arguing with my friends why the concept was superior, regardless of the fact that there are, in fact, lights inside all bars.
¨I don´t care, it´s dark and it´s okay to get drunk,¨I slurred and flung my arm in the general direction of the window. An hour later I blacked out. I awoke the next morning naked and in the process of a booze death recovery. My muscles felt like I´d been in a fight with a mailbox, my mouth tasted like I had consumed a rotting rodent, and I had mascara smeared across my face, which was nicely complemented by drool on my pillow as well as the lower half of my head. My saliva was in my hair. I groaned and glanced at the clock. It was ten-fifty in the morning, and I was supposed to show a house at 11am. I looked up the address, and the house was twenty minutes away. I called the clients and told them I was on my way but running a few minutes late. I threw on a dress, sunglasses to cover my drunk eyes, and perfume to disguise the smell of copious amounts of beer. I got to the car before realizing two things.
1: I didn´t have shoes.
2: I didn´t have my purse.
I ran back inside, doused myself in perfume, grabbed shoes and purse, and drove across town. I realized that I had left the address back at my house, so I called my mom to look it up. She texted me the address, and I didn´t feel like a complete failure as the addresses progressed and I got closer and closer to my destination.
Sonoma Mountain Road was like the goddamn Yellow Brick Road: it just kept going and going and going. I almost drove off the road twice in my haste to not look like a completely late asshole to the clients.
When I got to the end of the street, there was no For Sale sign in sight, and the address my mom had texted me didn´t correspond with any house on the street. It was 11:27am, I was over twenty minutes late, and I couldn´t find the house. I couldn´t call anyone because there was no reception. I couldn´t harass anyone through my window because there was nobody to ask. Every aspect of my life was in pain, demolished by my boozehag self. My eyeballs hurt, and the backs of my knees felt like they´d been attacked by a violent gremlin. I drove back down the street with the distinct impression that I was driving a loonybin. Seven minutes later, I saw a For Sale sign and the clients´monster van. Their youngest child had named the vehicle. They had four children.
I pulled up and jumped out, repeatedly apologizing. I noticed Child #3 lying spread-eagle on the ground crying. Child #2 had a stick in his hand and was playing a game that can only be called ¨Stab the Sibling¨ with Child #1. Child #4 smashed his head against the side of the house in ten second intervals. I ran up the steps to the front door of the house, only to notice that there was a combination lockbox on the front door. Combination lockboxes are almost extinct and technically illegal to use. The Listing Agent hadn´t provided any combination in the description of the house. I called the Agent, with no response. It was 11:38, I was almost forty minutes late, and I couldn´t let them into the house. We walked the perimeter of the property, tried all the doors and windows, and came to the conclusion that we were officially locked out. At this time, I realized that I was going to get violently ill. Within a minute. I handed the dad a bobby pin and a credit card. I said that I was going to continue to look around the house, and he should try to break in. I galloped around the side of the house feeling that the alcohol from the night before had eradicated half of the brain cells from my skull. I looked around, and then projectile vomited over the fence and into the neighbor´s yard. I struggled back to the front of the house to discover that the dad had broken into the house through the garage door.
The house was an absolute cesspool. Carpet had been torn up, walls had been punched in. Doors were missing, as was one of the bedrooms. Electrical outlets and light fixtures had been removed. The roof leaked. One of the kids walked into the bathroom and sprinted out seconds later, screaming. The other three followed suit. When questioned, they were all crying about different things.
Child #1 was in hysterics over the largest shit he´d ever seen, Child #2 over the excessive amounts of vomit. Child #3 had to pee, and Child #4 was crying because everyone else was.
I returned home and got directly in bed. Once there, I thought it prudent to breathalyze myself. I blew a .1. It was twelve-thirty in the afternoon.

March 30th, 2011 - March 2011 Quote of the Month

Sinner: ¨He´s drunk, high, and has really small sunglasses. You shouldn´t follow him.¨
T-Rex: ¨Those sunglasses are illegally too small.¨

March 25th, 2011 9:00am - March 2011 Photo of the Month

Bodega Bay, California

March 20th, 2011 4:50pm - Porn in the Office

In sixth grade, my teacher assigned some friends and I a presentation on deforestation. The only computer in the house was in my parents' room. We gathered around the computer, I typed in www.deforestation.com, and hardcore porn popped up. We were eleven, we had never seen porn. There were penises in vaginas and penises in mouths and penises up asses. Our mouths dropped faster than a pedophile's pants at the park. One of my friends gasped. Another cried. I heard my mom walking down the hallway. I tried to exit out of the site but nineteen porn pop-ups littered the screen and the computer froze. I ran to the bedroom door, slammed it shut and locked it.
My mom was smacking her hand into the door yelling for us to open it, I frantically pressed control-alt-delete to no avail, and my friend was still crying. Another friend started screaming and let my mom into the room. I catapulted my eleven-year-old body across the screen and shrieked, "It's not our fault, it's not our fault." My mom tore my body away from the computer and looked into a frenzy of particularly raunchy sex pop-ups. She wailed like a dying mother.
That was in sixth grade. Last week, a fellow Realtor wandered into my office. My mom's boyfriend bought her an iPad last Christmas. Recently he bought her an iPad case with a built-in keyboard. iPads are fantastic tools for Realtors, because we take them with us when driving around clients. If clients have any questions about other properties, the iPad delivers like a god. My colleague shook his hand at the iPad and asked me to show him the tricks.
"Please just show me a few things. Like how to get on the Internet. Show me the good stuff," he said.
I am the youngest Realtor in our office by fifteen years. As with most Real Estate offices, the agents are old. They don't have hearing aids, but ninety-nine percent are members of AARP with Viagra and wheelchairs looming in the near future. And our office might as well be in Japan, the walls are so thin. When I clicked the Safari button, a porn site popped up. Again, there were vaginas and penises and asses and mouths. There were videos. My colleague covered his eyes and started screaming, "Why is there porn? Why is there porn? Oh my God, my eyes, oh my God, why is there porn?"
I replied by repeatedly shrieking, "It's not my iPad! It's my mom's! It's not mine, it's not mine!"
Within seconds half of the agents in the building were in my office. We were both still yelling. I thought one of the elderly women was going to have a stroke.

March 15th 2011 8:40am - Boobs and Bush

After my first experience with the FIT Extreme class at the gym, my pride took weeks to recover. A roomful of geriatrics had dominated the fitness class. At the end, they had sashayed out of the class, and I crawled.

Last week was my second attempt at a class. I had been frequenting the gym at eight or nine in the evening, but this class was at 6:30pm. I walked into the changing room and it was packed. My eyes darted from boobs to bush to boobs to bush. I didn't know where to look. My breasts are so small they don't fit into a bra, so I am very comfortable being naked. Men have tits larger than mine. However, I am not comfortable being enveloped by old naked women. I stared at the ground while changing. I glanced up and I looked directly into brown hairy nipples. I looked down but could feel someone observing me. I flashed my eyes up into a three-hundred-pound forest of pubic hair and then over to a girl staring at me in the eyes from across the room. I didn't know what to do, I was flustered and confused. I screamed across the locker room at her, "Did you go to Montgomery High School?" There was no immediate response. I looked down again. When I looked up, she was looking at me like I had asked her if she injected drugs into her vagina.

"Me?" She yelled, "high school?"

"Ya," I shouted.

"I'm in middle school," she replied, smiling. She had braces.

I looked away, but my eyes connected with a brazilian bikini waxed vagina. Sweat swept into my eyes and my heartbeat reverberated through my body. There were so many naked women. I ran to the showers and directly into the largest naked ass I had ever seen. The woman had a small waist with a ginormous ass. She might as well have injected collagen into her butt cheeks. She screamed, I screamed. I wanted to cry. It was my fourth grade teacher.

March 6th 2011 3:40pm - Tahoe and a Wire

My friends and I were supposed to go to Tahoe for the weekend. They were going to do productive, athletic things, like snowboarding and skiing. I struggle to walk in normal life. I cannot strap my feet onto a board and throw myself down a hill without colliding with other objects or people. The last time I attempted snowboarding I was terrified of getting off the chair lift. I went around three times before I launched myself off the chair with overwhelming dread. I wobbled, fell over, and flew board-first into a family with three young children. I smashed into the five-year-old and smacked one of the other kids' ski poles. I lay on my back in the snow listening to the sobs of three people: the five-year-old, the seven-year-old, and myself.
This time I was ecstatic about going to Tahoe to play in the snow. I returned home from work with a handwritten list of items to pack. My desire to make a snowman paralleled my desire to one day be the mother of a small black child. I walked in to the house with a new pair of snow gloves. The microwave had been ripped out of the wall. It was sitting on the kitchen floor directly in front of my bedroom door. The oven was in the middle of the kitchen. A ladder blocked the hallway and a layer of white dust-like remnants of the wall settled over everything.
"Ummm, what happened?" I asked.

My landlord was my friend Pakistan.

"The last roommates I had somehow caught the microwave on fire, it hasn't worked in about six months, and now I'm replacing it." His voice came from the roof rafters.
I said, "alright," and shimmied around the ladder to go to the bathroom. The light switch didn't work.
"The light's out," I shouted.

"Ya, I just cut a wire."

"You cut a wire?"

"Ya. None of the outlets work. There's not really electricity in half of the house."
"Not really electricity in half the house?"
"Nope."
I walked over and looked at the place the microwave should be. There were two holes in the wall large enough to put Einstein's brain through. Wires hung out at schizophrenic angles.
"So you cut the wrong wire, we don't have electricity in half the house, and now you're looking at roof beams for answers?"
"Yep."
"You just looked at the wires, picked a color, and cut it?"
"I kind of looked it up first," he replied.
Pakistan is not an electrician. He canceled our Tahoe trip to stay home for the weekend to fix the kitchen.
As of now, it has been almost four months. The kitchen still doesn't have a microwave.

February 28th 2011 10:45am - February 2011 Photo of the Month

San Francisco, California

Palace of Fine Arts

February 16th 2011 11:45pm - I Scream when I Drive

My senior year in high school, I was awarded "Most Likely to Fall Asleep in Class." A few characters in my graduating class of four hundred provided a great deal of competition. However, I obtained the final honor by procrastination and persistence in my sleeper reputation. That, and I drank.

I almost earned the distinction of "Worst Driver." I made the final three, but ultimately my dear friend Pills conquered my efforts. The morning that our graduating class voted, she had made a left-hand turn on a red light. An oncoming car honked, she accelerated through the turn, the other car swerved, and she drove headlong into a line of idling vehicles. I couldn't compete with that.

Over the years, I've attempted to redress my missed glory. I've been cited for illegal turns, running through stop signs, cutting off officers of the law, failing to indicate a turn, having outdated registration, driving without a seatbelt, and being in possession of an open alcohol container in my car. I once had a warrant issued for my arrest because I didn't send in the processing fee after I fixed my side mirror. However, more than any other violation, I persistently get pulled over for speeding.

It's not that I forget meetings or appointments. I just assume it will take me less time to get places. I pride myself on my ability to leave later and arrive earlier than Google maps tells me to.

My Real Estate office is near the bottom of a hill in Santa Rosa called Fountaingrove. I was scheduled to show three houses located up the hill. Google maps estimated eleven minutes. I mentally allotted myself eight minutes. I got caught on the phone and sprinted to my car five minutes before the viewing.

I planned on tearing out of the parking lot and flying up Fountaingrove. Unfortunately, I was driving a 2000 Toyota 4Runner. The car had four cylinders and a lot of weight. I floored it and leaped up the hill at a steady rate of 15mph. A gorilla could have outrun my car.

Seven minutes later I was late and the hill leveled out enough to gain some speed. A bicyclist prevented me. The guy was swerving all over the road. My five-year-old cousin can ride in a straight line. He wobbled to the left and then would suddenly jolt to the right. Every time I tried to pass him, he lurched directly in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes three times to avoid hitting the nutter. The fourth time he wavered to the right, I smashed the accelerator to the floor and inched past him. The sun glinted off his red helmet and into my eyes.

"Get the f*** off the road," I screamed at him out my open window.

There was a sidewalk. I failed to comprehend why he couldn't use it.

Three minutes later, I opened the door to the house and turned on all of the lights. I was sweating and breathing like a rapist. I was wildly thankful that my client wasn't there yet. I looked out of the window to see a bicyclist ride up and dismount in front of the house. He wore a red helmet.

Feb 11th 2011 12:36pm - February 2011 Quote of the Month

Pakistan: "I should hang out with more stoner chicks. They have much lower expectations."

February 8th 2011 9:30am - A Gate and a Pair of Heels

Heels make legs look skinnier and more toned. Heels accentuate calves and provide a booty lift. Walking around in heels all day can shed an additional six hundred calories. I can't wear heels. I limp, I grimace. I look like a hunchback.

However, as a Realtor, I have to look professional. I sometimes wear those goddamn torturous heels.

Earlier in the week, I had taken a client's house key to get a copy made.

"Please bring it back, it's my only key," the seller begged.

I assured her that of course I'd bring it back.

I drove the twenty minutes from her house back into the center of Healdsburg, but then a crises erupted with another deal and I drove in a mad frenzy to my Santa Rosa office. It wasn't until five hours later that I realized I still had her only key.

Four days after that, I returned to the seller's house with the key. She lived eight miles out of Healdsburg. Those eight miles comprised a windy and narrow road lined by cliffs and massive trees. It took twenty minutes to get from her house to a normal street and civilization.

I called the client to let her know that I was coming. When I arrived, the gate was padlocked. The gate wasn't electric. It had to be unlocked and opened manually. I parked outside the gate and could see the house in the distance. I jumped up and down, I waved my arms wildly in the air, I honked the horn like a crazy person. I flashed the headlights. Nobody came down from the house to let me in. Fifteen minutes later, it was getting dark and my vision was rapidly diminishing. With my 20/400 vision, I can barely see in daylight.

I decided to hop the fence. Except that the fifty thousand dollar fence was too narrow to get my foot in and the spikes across the top prevented me from muscling my way up. A tree grew nearby the fence. How I visualized getting over the fence required gymnastics and flexibility. My limbs have the pliability of a sixty-year-old man, and I was wearing heels. I propped my back against the tree and leveraged myself to the top of the fence. I stepped down on the narrow horizontal strip of wood and hung onto the tree so I wouldn't die. The only thing I could do was jump. I jumped. My right foot caught the spiked top of the plank and I plunged five feet to the ground. I fell directly on my knee into a mush of leaves, dirt, and roots.

As I started hobbling up the quarter-mile long driveway, the seller got into her car and drove down.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I meant to open the gate for you."

"Oh, that's okay," I replied. "I just tried to hop the fence."

She looked at the grass and dirt stains covering my arms and legs. I had bark stuck to the back of my shirt. Some twigs and leaves were in my hair.

"You hopped the fence," she said. It wasn't a question.

I waited for her to say that I could get in her car and she'd drive me up to the house. She didn't ask me to get in the car. She nodded and continued driving towards the gate. I assumed that she was opening the gate so that I could walk through it on my way out. I sighed and staggered like a cripple up the long-ass driveway. I struggled towards the house and handed her the key when she had parked and gotten out of the car.

I wobbled back down to the gate, my body scratched and bruised, and my feet in agony.

When I got to the bottom, the gate was still padlocked, and my car was still outside the gate.

February 6th 2011 9:02pm - Trimmer

I had severe reservations about moving into the house that my high school friend Pakistan owned. My new room had stains on the carpet that looked like a cat massacre had occurred. A penny was glued to the wall. What appeared to be a blood stain adorned the baseboard.

In the other spare room, the previous occupant had left a television, dresser, bed, small refrigerator, some clothes, a desk, computer, and a drum set. I honestly don't know what he took with him when he moved out.

Pakistan and I posted an ad on Craigslist. It read:

New roommate needed. Cheap rent. Downtown-ish location. Fully furnished if wanted.

Ideal roommate:

* Buys me beer

* Cleans the house

* Buys me beer

* Plays darts with me

* Buys me beer

Realistic Roommate:

* Pays rent on time

* Doesn't mind ants in the dishwasher

We received a lot of responses. We got emails from women in their fifties with grown children. Old men with dogs responded. A DJ, a drug dealer, and a beautician interviewed for the room. A handwritten note on pink paper appeared in the mailbox explaining that the prospective roommate didn't have internet access but was interested in the room. We hadn't specified the address in the ad. I wasn't really down with a stalker for a roommate, and Pakistan and I agreed that he would call her and tell her that the room had already been filled.

When I asked him the next day if he had called Pink Note Chick, he said that they had talked for awhile.

"She's awesome! She's coming by tonight!"

"Seriously?" I asked.

Pakistan smiled.

"Seriously?"

Pink Note Chick came by, and she was fantastic. She was twenty-six, and self-proclaimed down to earth, nice, and clean. She said that she worked part-time trimming.

"Trimming?" I asked.

"Trimming," she confirmed.

I assumed that she meant trimming bushes. As in women's bushes. As in specializing in hair removal of the lady goods. Pakistan thought she meant trimming plants. I'm still unclear as to what sort of trimming she did.

After interviewing Trimmer, a cage fighter came by to see the place, and then we went to Third Street Aleworks for the kind of night that simultaneously causes me despair and wonder, destruction and brilliance: $2 Tuesdays.

A few hours later, I was tired and wanted to go home, but after Third Street Aleworks we went to Russian River Brewery to meet up with some friends. At Russian River our friends asked how the roommate search was going. We told them that Pink Note Chick was currently known as Trimmer, and that she was excellent.

"She's sweet. She's down to earth, nice, clean... said she parties a bit but not that often. She's actually really cool."

"So compared to the women in their mid-sixties, the ex-military man with crazy rabid dog eyes, and the guy with a tattoo on his forehead, this girl rocks?" one of our friends asked.

"Precisely. She may be a stalker, but she's clearly superior to our other options," I confirmed.

Pakistan looked at me afterwards with raised eyebrows and asked, "Trimmer?"

"Trimmer," I agreed with a nod. She was number one on the list of potential roommates.

After Third Street I was still tired and still wanted to go home, but we went to the 440 Club. Typically, when the word "Club" is in a name, there is some dancing involved within the establishment. The 440 Club in Santa Rosa is a dive. It was established in the 1950's and the interior decor hasn't changed, aside from the vomit-infested carpets being upgraded a few years ago. As a liquor store in front and a bar in back, the 440 always offers the potential for violence and the marginal appeal of ordering a drink at a window outside the bar.

My friends and I stood in a circle in the 440 talking, when an incoherent mess of a girl fell into us and onto our drinks. She threw her arms up in the air and screamed a slurred speech. The only sentences I was able to comprehend were, "This is MY bar. It's mine. MY bar."

She swung her arms around, knocked two drinks onto the ground, stumbled into the corner of the bar, and vomited.

The chick was Trimmer.

February 1st, 2011 9:03pm - I am Awesome, Everyone's Going Down

By February 1st, I hadn't worked out in two months. I had traipsed through Australia, Vegas, and Tahoe accompanied by booze slushies and cocktails. The extent of exercise that I had accomplished in those months was swimming as fast as possible in the opposite direction of a shark while diving the Great Barrier Reef. I was later told that what I thought had been a shark was in fact a very large turtle.

Starting February 1st, I joined a gym.

I ate a roast cricket a few years ago in Thailand and immediately gagged. Typically, I would rather eat a cricket than go to the gym. However, Sonoma County was flooding and my abdomen was expanding so much that I was starting to look pregnant. Someone in the grocery store last week actually rubbed my belly. I desperately needed to work out.

Unfortunately, I am consistently under the delusion that I have superior muscles. I played sports constantly until I graduated college, and I like to think of myself as an athlete. The fact that I haven't lifted anything heavier than a beer in the past three years failed to factor in.

I walked into a FIT Extreme class at Parkpoint Health Club, and I scoffed. Aside from one twenty-something overweight chick in the corner, everyone else was over the age of fifty-five. I noticed one of the men in my office smiling and waving at me. He's sixty-two.

I glared around the room, swung my arms across my chest a few times, cracked my neck, and thought to myself, I am awesome. Everyone's going down.

Within a minute and a half, I was sweating. Within five minutes, every breath was a gasp. My arms punched less enthusiastically and my legs shook. On my fourth girl push-up, I looked up at the old bag in front of me. She was doing man push-ups, elevating and lowering her body faster than I was. When we shuffled across the room like crabs, sweat pored into my eyes and I couldn't see. I missed the change direction and crashed into a man called Old Balls. He put his dry arm around my soaked shoulders and asked if I was okay.

"Water," I whispered, but Old Balls had continued shuffling and all I could discern was a blur of movement every way I turned. "Water," I murmured, stumbling like a homeless drunkard through the elderly. The last detail I saw before the sweat stung my eyes was Mayonnaise over in the corner looking at me and shaking her head.

After shoving my entire head into the drinking fountain and consuming a liter of water issuing forth from the tiny water stream, I was ready to go back inside.

I am awesome. Everyone's going down, I repeated to myself.

That was a hallucination. At the end of the class, all of the senior citizens walked out laughing and talking. I was incapable of speech and crawled out of the room.