The Napkin Diaries

obviously, all of us have our ways of dealing with stress, life, morons, etc. we all definitely have signs that these types of things are headed our way, too. recently, i have been having terrible dreams that people are trying to kidnap me, hurt me, or vandalize my car. and i've also been encountering debilitating migraines for days in a row.
you may be thinking that i would be crawled up in the fetal position in the corner by this point, but i have chosen an amusing array of alleviating tactics to combat my horrid stress. first, there is the champagn spritzer that i was so kindly introduced to via megan at the pool yesterday. thank god for $4 champange and fresca. who knew? this reliever helped me not feel fat in my bikini, allowed me to dismiss the fact that i have no income or money in general, and conclude that apartment leases and managers are crooked and lawyers can be a real good thing.
GSN can be accredited for stress relieving tactic #2. i mean, how can i possibly worry about idiots that go into the esso looking for me still or if my loan is being approved when classic shows like family feud and whammy are on tv? i'm way too involved in helping players chant for big money to be concerned about my own ishures. not issues.
lastly, i've always been aware that i'm weird. i'm okay with that. the way i chose to forget about pending problems completely validates my weirdness. instead of studying or crying or drinking, today i chose to groom my eyebrows. with scissors. now, for those of you who know me well, you understand that i cannot cut a straight line and that most of the time i cannot cut anything at all due to my left-handedness. i also have a tendency to get angry and attempt to cut my hair and end up with missing chunks. however, i mananged to successfully leave most of my eyebrows in tact and well-positioned. but i mean really, who honestly puts scissors to their own face when in their right frame of mind.
at least i realize that i'm seriously on edge and stressed out. but i appreciate myself for not being a basketcase about it all. however, i have found it challenging to be your own counselor... i'm thinking i might buy some coloring books or paint the apartment next.

So a few days ago, Erin went to check the mail. Pretty normal event. Well, this time, she heard this crazy cat screaming at her from the bushes around the corner. She kinda called the cat to come toward her, and low and behold, guess who came back from the dead?? Twister! The crazy ass cat is still alive. I mean. she stunk like hell and was horribly disheveled, but the littlest beast was okay!

The Return of Twister did a number on Tucker. He got all stressed out when she came back because I think that he thought that she had died. That, or he caught something sketchy from her. Either way, Tucker got sick in a hurry. He's been hacking and experiencing eye ooze for a few days, so we figured it was time to call the vet. Oh, and he lost his voice. Sad.

This morning when I was getting ready, he came into the bathroom with me and jumped into the tub. He actually does this a lot; but this time, he just sat in there and stared at the faucet. Dave and I shrugged at each other and figured we'd turn it on to see what he did. Well, he coughed a little, then stuck his face under the water to get rid of the eye ooze. Smart cat.

Dave and I took the beast to the vet this afternoon. What a freakin' ordeal. Gah. First, we had to fight Tucker to get him into his cage. The bastard absolutely would not go in! So, I put on the collar and leash and decided to carry the brat downstairs. Ugh. I now have bloody shoulders from that idea... So we finally get him and us into the car and he freaks out, which is weird because he is usually good in cars. So there was white cat fur all over my black interior. Awesome. Well, about half way to the vet, I realize that I am riding on empty. Shit. The next time I looked at the gas gauge, there were no bars left! Way shit. The last thing I needed to do was run out of gas on Highway 123 when its 100 degrees outside and I have a very panicked, sick spaz of a cat with me. Luckily I made it to the vet. Now we had to get Tucker inside. We finally shoved him in the cage... by taking the top off... and went inside where we were greeted by Hobbles, the 3-legged cat. I find it wildly hysterical that the vet owns a tripod cat named Hobbles.

So Tucker has some upper respiratory infection that costs me $60. Blah. We leave. We think all is well and we can calm down. Nope. We forgot to lock the door to Tuck's cage and he came bouncing out into the parking lot. Ahhh! Luckily, he didn't run and just got real low... get low get low get low... We scooped him up, encountered more bloody shoulders and got the fuck in the car.

Now, the question was: can we make it to the gas station across the street?? Yes, we can and yes, we did. All the while, Tucker was trying to scream and panting. I was bleeding and sweating and coughing from the Tucker fur I'd ingested. Dave was well enough to get out of the damn car to pump gas. We made it back in one piece, surprisingly, and now both my boys are taking a nap on the bed from their rough ass vet visit. What a disaster...

Life has been a little on the crazy side lately. The craziness accounts for my lack of blogs, which I apologize for. I made a huge decision that will pretty much effect the rest of my life as I know it. And I'm actually very okay with this decision...

I'm moving to Charleston with Dave.

Man, I love how that sounds. I'm not sure what I will do about my Master's degree. I'm not sure what kind of job I'm going to get. I'm not sure about a lot of things. The one and only thing that I know I am sure of is Dave. So we will pack up and leave in the middle of May. And I'm not going to look back. We are both so excited to be making such a huge step in our relationship. I cannot wait!

I haven't decided if I am going to keep the blog or not once I move. That decision is still pending. I feel like I'm finally growing up -- which means I don't really have all the funny drunk stories anymore. Either way, yay! Really really big YAY!

No, I didn't fall off the face of the planet or simply forget that I used to keep up with this blog thing. I've been insanely busy with work and school that I honestly haven't had a chance to sit here and humor you. And sadly enough, funny stuff really hasn't happened lately. Bad stuff hasn't happened either. Just stuff.

Spring Break was so amazing. Dave and I had such a wonderful time together - it was really nice that just the two of us decided to do something low-key. As you may or may not have known, Dave and I went to Madiera Beach, FL with his parents (they paid for everything. way sweet). We had decided we were going to drive down Friday night, stay at a hotel and finish the drive on Saturday since it was a 609 mile drive. Eww. Well, we hit Gainsville, FL around midnight and decided to call it quits. Little did we know that it was the biggest damn Hot Rod car show collaboration in the Southeast that weekend. Crap. We had to drive another 80 miles before we could find a vacant, unsketchy hotel. By that time we were already in Tampa and it was like 3 am. We stopped at just about every exit that had hotels and all of the bastards were full. Way blah. We ended up in this sweet Sharaton suite for the night. We couldn't really enjoy it though because we were both so delirious and exhausted that all we did was pass out on our humongous California King squishy pillow-covered bed. Eh well, at least there were inside hallways and English speaking people there... So we laid on the beach, ate fabulous food and goofed off for an entire week. Awesome

In the past 14 days, I've been at the Esso for 10 of them... some with as little as 6 hours in between shifts. Gross. So needless to say, I'm exhausted and quite sick of drunk men. Well, I'm always sick of drunk men, but I'm exceptionally sick of them, currently.

Yesterday was my official first day of summer (i.e. I drank beer at the pool for hours on end...) Yay, summer! There was a whole slew of awesome people out there too -- Erin, Leah, Joe, Shawn, Stephanie and Kristen. We basically all just made fun of each other and got sunburn. Believe me, there were grounds for making fun too -- examples include the following: Leah brought a Mason jar to house her wine that she drank out of a Budweiser cup; Shawn compared me to Humpty Dumpty because I had to sit on the ledge to get down, rather than just stepping down like he did; Joe hooked up with a slightly random girl, who proceeded to tell me, and of course I had to tell him that she told... and I told everyone else, too. Oops. Then I got a cooler of freezing ass cold water dumped on me. Thanks, a-hole; Leah brought ghetto ass speakers to hook up to her i-pod for all to enjoy; and Erin burnt the piss out of her boobies. Good day, man.

I promise that I will try to keep up with this things better. Interesting stuff should be happening tonight, actually -- Asian Jayson and Forty Friend Zach are both in town. And later this week the following will occur: Dave's birthday, a visit from Emily and a trip to Charleston. Prepare for storytime people. Prepare.

This was one of the best weekends I have had in a really long time. And by best, I mean drunk. Interchangable words, really. So, Jayson came into town Friday night. We went to Monterray's at like 6:30, where Joe and Jayson were already drunkish. We started this conversation about how we wanted to buy a kiddy pool and sit in it with rubber duckies and beer.

It progressed to us wanting to buy one of this bigger pools and turn it into a hot tub... and keep it in Dave's room since he was out of town this weekend. Then we embellished. Imagine that. We said the damned thing would probably fall through the floor and Dave would hurt us using his spy techniques for ruining his room. Well, Jayson chimes in with, "quick, I need a 2x4 and some pantyhose!" Apparently, this was his genious solution to our hot tub falling figuratively through the floor. We didn't understand either. But damn, did we find that to be the funniest comment of the weekend. Everything that happened, the solution was "2x4 and pantyhose." Oh no, I spilled my drink; I have insanely dirty feet; an old mistake just walked into the bar -- regardless of the situation, the solution remained constant.
And that is funny. Because of the funniness, I took it upon myself to create a scroll of sayings from the evening. I kept a napkin rolled around a pen and whipped it out anytime someone said something worth remembering.

We went to Esso after Monterray's, where Joe took the liberty of berating one of the girls that works there. She had no idea she was the victim of such ridicule, however. Joe decided the girl looked like a dinosaur based on the largeness of her forehead and positioning of her snout-like nose. Poor girl. This conversation also progressed into a hypothetical about velociraptors. Something about "velociraptors killing a fucker." However, at the time I could not spell this word, so I used phonics. The conversation went like this:
N: is that how you spell it? and pointed to my attempts -- valasa raptor
Jayson: just claim you were using phonetics, bitch.. when you write your blog
N: i don't know how to spell that either!

Joe told me that my spelling attempt looked more like a type of salad dressing choice than a flesh-eating beast. By the way, the picture is Joe's demonstration of the dinosaur girl. Eh. We had our fill of making fun of people and watching Jayson do dumb things, like light his broken cigarette at the end and at the spot where it was broken... and smoke it, and went to TDs. Immediately when we walked into TDs, I felt particularly out of place. This was because everyone in the bar was wearing orange t-shirts. I thought we perhaps had crashed a private gathering. No. Turns out these maniacs were trying to create a $1000 bar tab to get their names nailed to the wall. Whatever. We got free drinks out of it, so cool. This group of girls walked in all decked out with one wearing a sash and tierra. Jayson screamed "Happy Birthday!" The girls turned around and were like, "no, it's a bachelorette party." Jayson responds, "Happy...... Marriage?!" Oh Jayson. You're so drunk. We finished the evening at Tiger Town. By this point we were all wastecases and I no longer can recall particular incidents for you beacuse its blurry from this point on. Sweet. We had high hopes of making it to Tiger Tails Friday night. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we got shit housed and decided that Beezers and bed was a much better way to end the evening.

Saturday, Megan decided to road trip her happy ass up here. Do the math: Jayson and Megan in town + Joe and Nicole in full fledged bar star mode = drunk. We went downtown already buzzed from playing Power 37 minutes (as opposed to Power Hour). We started at TTTs where Jayson picked up some notepads that were randomly strewn across a table. Beckoning him, of course. He drew us a picture of the 4 of us, anatomically correct of course - me with big hair and big boobs, Jayson short with squinty eyes and Joe and Megan. Ha. He was like "What are there 4 of??" Without skipping a beat, I screamed "Ninja Turtles!"
WTF? So we were the 4 Ninja Turtles. We went to Overtime early to get our signature spot -- the front booth/couch area. And we got so drunk so damn fast. Probably because little miss Megan decided it would be awesome to come back from the bar with a mind eraser and a black & blue shot. Thanks. Keep in mind that these two shots sperate fuck my whole world up. Combined, back to back none the less, makes for seriously fucking up of the world. I went buck freakin' wild. Like, so ridiculous that I was dancing on the couch because, apparently I was too good for the floor, with these two huge black guys who made me kinda look like that scene from Night at the Roxbury. I got sick of stabbing holes in the couch.. so I took off my damn shoes. Gross. Who does that? Really. Didn't even phase me, either; seemed like the most logical idea of the night. Can I please mention that my feet are still black and I scrubbed them for about 30 minutes in the shower today. Ewww. I kinda shudder when I think about what has been on that couch. Then I walked to the car barefoot too. Smart. I honestly can't really give specifics for Saturday night either. All I know is that I did a horrid job trying to take pictures, I had huge hair, Kevin and Leah were there and we danced our asses off. Like I said best/drunkest weekend in a while. I love it.

*to prove my drunkness, I completely failed to mention that the one and only Stephanie was there too. She informed me with this IM:
takenoteladyso...my dancing skills didn't make it into your blog...haha...i felt sure that i created an equally bad scene with my booty skirt and cowboy boots that i for some reason felt were appropriate while i drunkenly contemplated going to OT....you and i were quite a pair on that couch. hahaha your pics of your weekend entertain me!!
and Steph, now that you mention it, I do recall you helping me create a fantastic scene on the couch. So thank you for reminding me (sorry that the Mind Eraser did it's job and I failed to include you in the debauchery). And yes, as I recall, you did help create an equally ridiculous scene. Which is all the more reason I love you.