Filed under: daily
I sincerely hope this week comes crashing to a halt this weekend. I’m not happy when I operate at the speed of light. I want some down time that isn’t just the twenty minutes before bed.
I have a tattoo appointment tonight and there’s three birthdays that need celebrating on Saturday. Venice welcomes my company on Sunday with an assorted cast of friends and family.
I’m charging on…
in studly new shoes!
Holy hell, my two Captcha words to upload my shoes were gastric & leaches. SICK, tinypic.com. Sick.
-CJ
Yet again, I did Vegas. This time with slightly more style and a lot more hangover.
The Paris was lovely and all, if that’s your thing. I felt like a hack, though I fit in there much more than at the Palazzo (so super fancy – the fountains are worth more than my life) where I had the opportunity to see Jersey Boys. I had no idea I would LOVE this show or be as familiar with the Four Seasons’ music. The show followed a night of drinking so heavily that the sun was well up (and baking the city to a crisp 115°) by the time I found sleep. I paid for such an event, surely. And it made a 1 a.m. bedtime in a chilly hotel that Saturday such a decadent event.
I love how damn dark you can get a hotel room. You can sleep until 1pm and THAT, my friends, is a vacation.
-CJ
Filed under: daily
He knew my blood pressure was on the rise when he told me he’d moved everything off my dresser and turned it upside down to find our newest family member, Mo.* He sent me this to show how shiny and dusted it was when he put it all back in place. I’m so completely aroused and not because his shirtless torso is reflected on the television.
-CJ
*There’s more pets. I’ll show you soon.
Filed under: daily
A real husband is a woman’s best friend. He will never stand
her up and never let her down. He will reassure her when she feels
insecure and comfort her after a bad day. He will inspire her to do
things she never thought she could do; to live without fear and
forget regret. He will enable her to express her deepest emotions and
give in to her most intimate desires. He will make sure she always
feels as though she’s the most beautiful woman in the room and will
enable her to be the most confident, sexy, seductive, invincible…
No, wait… I’m thinking of alcohol.
(from a few weeks ago. location: dark place)
I never felt like less than until I went corporate.
White Collar
The thing about my job is that it’s a contradiction. It’s the safest way to collect a steady income and to protect one’s self from (even more) exuberant medical bills. Working for someone who will pay the bulk of your insurance costs and put the same amount of money into your account on the same days every month allows plenty of freedoms. Namely, nights and weekends. But I’ve also never had to worry about whether I’d be scheduled my forty hours or if there would be enough work to collect on. I appreciate that people allow me to do this every weekday.
That being said:
My blue collar life is opposite my white collar paycheck. I break my back to fake it and still, you’d think I was deliberately defiant. The mold is unsettling and restrictive. Daily, I overhear college recaps and achievable vacation dreams. Some parents’ biggest challenges is affording the three thousand dollars it will take for their daughter to pursue a high school sport she’s never tried. Or helping them choose the right university. I’m asked questions that I want to answer with, what makes you assume I’ve ever had the same privileges as you? Are you completely unaware of the people who live a life that’s smaller than yours? You’ve got the audacity to think I have a clue. Are you giving the benefit of the doubt? What a gift! Are you trying to include me? I never wanted this membership.
You can make someone sympathize but when it comes to empathy, only a fellow blue collar knows where to look.
You drive home south but I hang a left and go north, home to my rental because I was born in the mid-eighties and my generation lottery doesn’t allot for my age to own.
Your expensive midlife crisis may come prematurely, but at least you can afford it. I’m two weeks without the medication it takes to go a day without taking my car into an unforgiving center divider and I could give a goddamn about your designer coffee with a sleeve more in tact than my used Old Navy career wear. I can’t afford my fucking meds.
I’ve got insurance but I can’t cover the co-pay.
I’ve got the car with the grinding breaks and a slow start but I’ll wave to your award winner on the road and flash my financial burden of a smile that I’m still paying for at only twenty-four percent APR.
What does it feel like to know that you’ve got it covered if the bottom falls out? How do you feel pulling from a savings account that isn’t empty? In the last two days I’ve heard from as many people how terrifying it would be to have to ask for help. Help they know is there. They’ve never had to talk themselves out of a panic attack, wondering how they’re supposed to function when prime need x runs out.
I’m not upset. I’m not even bitter and I’m certainly not envious. I know myself enough to know this: I’d forget everything I am and how I got here given enough luxury. This is one thing I’m glad I can’t afford to do.
Salads and fad diets and open toed heels and religious forwards and celebrity gossip in place of your ability to hold up one half of a real conversation – none of this is me. But I work one desk over. Someone once welcomed me to the world of designer clothing when I commented on the stitching that hadn’t fallen out on my clearance brand name pants. What’s ever been wrong with spending a quarter of that excess on a quality sewing job from the sweet Korean lady up the street? Where she works, your suits hang to dry and watch mine get repaired. You splurge on a silk noose with a pattern and sometimes I buy the brand name cereal. I don’t know who Jimmy Choo is but I can provide him with excellent customer service.
Only one in a million will succeed with quality human interaction and decency as their specialty. The sad thing is that you can’t frame that in an 8×11. You’re not going anywhere for sucking it up and being sweet. You’ll never get the step on the guy who could afford that parchment paper and ink. You get to tread water and hope someone higher up the food chain listens to your work because they’ll never hear your voice. I stare at my superiors and I know where they’re from, where they came from and how small the chance is that I’ll ever come close.
A day late and a dollar short isn’t just clever. It’s a lifestyle for some and I know them by first name.
None of it is about the money. It’s the ignorance. It’s never having to wonder about circumstances that have been clouded over all your life. They’re all raising purebreds and supporting businesses like dog bakeries. What about donating a textbook every now and again? How about making real contributions and leaving deep footprints? Thinking about how not everyone, not even most people, have lived such a privileged life?
But if you weren’t there, you can’t see it.
-CJ
Filed under: frenz
This is my broseph, Sticky, and my sisterpants, Bren.
This is the Cake of Epic Proportions and Goodness, courtesy of the much talented (obviously!) Kristi.
This is my cousin, Alex, rockin’ the best non-wig ‘do of the evening.
And this is her lady, Heidi, with the coolest tights on the block.
This is Sticky and his ladypants/photographer extraordinaire, Kim.
This is the birthday girl, Ree, and her lady friend. Had I brought ribbons they would have won the costume contest.
This is Everyone.
This is my favorite.
This is yours truly, the punk rock calamity of 1985.
This is the dance floor.
Themed parties kick ASS when you have so many awesome participants in neon.
-CJ
Filed under: daily
All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals. — Margaret Mead
Early yesterday morning, when there was still hardly anyone in the office and the air was perfectly still, when the sound of my swishing slacks is deafening on the walk to my desk and the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard is the only sound for miles… I was typing away on the one program I had opened when my tower randomly opened rather noisily, and spat the CD that Mix Master Skelly had made me (the disk drive sits vertically) and the disc went rolling on the floor, across the office like a little silver wheel, running for its life. I trailed the CD’s path with wide eyes, wondering what in the fuck had caused that little outburst. Of course, no one was around to see it.
It was all, This machines rejects The Dead Weather, Why?, Minus the Bear and My Toys Like Me, among others. Pa-tooey.
Not only has it never randomly opened, CDs never fall out. Some disgruntled employee of furniture past is fucking with me.
Also, my house is haunted by my roommate’s dead aunt.
Dead Aunt passed along a broken grandmother clock that doesn’t tell time but it also doesn’t chime at all hours, so I don’t mind it in the slightest. It’s actually super cool. It sits in the corner of my dining room, adjacent to beer and poker related paraphenalia:
One afternoon while cleaning the floors of their protective layer of rabbit and dog hairs, I moved the grandmother clock forward enough to fit a mop behind it. This was the first time that clock has been touched in the many moons since I’ve been in 2B. Within seconds of the slight, 12-15″ move, the black poker clock on the far left? SHOT. OFF. THE WALL.
Fuck you, don’t roll your eyes. There were several steps between the wall and the clock’s landing. This clock also doesn’t work and will apparently remain broken forever after that fall. It has never so much as leaned to the side, let alone fallen off the nail. The nail that didn’t fall with the clock. Dead Aunt lifted and tossed that thing with playful delight. Wild-eyed, I picked it up and inspected the damage, leaving creepy grandmother clock to my back, when one of the verticals over my sliding door, leading to my backyard, decided then would be a good time to detach from the headrail and flop to the floor, with no assistance whatsoever. Fed up and slightly freaked out that the next item would land on me or break something I treasured, I announced loudly, “OKAY, I’M SORRY.”
I softly pushed the large clock back into her place in the dining room. I’ve yet to touch it again, as she’s clearly comfortable there, regardless of dust underneath. The verticals only ever fall out when roused by walking through them or they catch on each other when I open them. The poker clock hasn’t moved since. We’re at peace though I wish Dead Aunt could like, play cards or something.
-CJ
BFF Ree turned thirty on the fourth of July and a number of us celebrated by way of 80s garb and copious amounts of booze. My gift to her was to hire a photographer friend to capture the evening so there’s four jillionty more where these came from, all of much better quality. A preview:
birthday girl & my sister
birthday girl & Kiddo
It was like, totally rad.
-CJ
