Just because it's time to celebrate the birth of Baby Jesus doesn't mean I'm going to wake up anytime soon and like hazelnut candy.

Hazelnuts, or as we used to call them, filberts.

I hate those fucking things.

I don't want them in candy, cookies, cake frosting, actually, all of the hazelnut trees could wither and die right now and fall off the face of the Earth en masse and I wouldn't be bothered.

So when one of the guys from the second floor office came down offering everybody a fabulous gold wrapped, our commercials are to haute for your t.v. but we'll show it to you anyway because you are such a heretic that you insist on saying the word filbert, piece of ground up hazelnut in some chocolate, I just smiled and said "no, thank you."

Could have heard a pin drop. As it was obvious that I was the ONLY person in the office who was not acquainted with the virtues of this filbert-based concoction, one of my co-workers sets out to convince me of it's worthiness.

"But you like chocolate." This statement makes perfect sense to her, it doesn't really follow for me however that just because I like chocolate means I am socially required to accept candy that I don't want. And the fella who is obviously trying to get rid of the filbert filled foulness smiles hopefully as he thrusts the little plastic tray back towards me.

"Well, yeah, but I don't like those." The fella with the tray looks at me like I'm crazy, then says goodbye as he walks off with his single piece of crusty crap filled chocolate glace crappola.

And all of this left me to wondering...

If that candy is such hot shit, why is he trying to get rid of it?

I skinned 2 cats alive this weekend.

I skinned 3 cats alive this weekend.

At least that's what anybody walking passed the house would think, in reality everybody got a BATH. They needed it, too.

But good Lord, listening to the three of them carrying on like they'd been placed on the rack and stretched out, I started to ask myself if it was worth it. Could I put up with a little bit of smelly rather than put up with a whole bunch of hollerin' and spittin'? Then I stopped to consider how friendly my middle baby, Harlow is. She gets up in my lap and purs when I'm reading, watching t.v., trying to do homework, etc., etc.

Nope, sorry, your behind is getting a scrub. She was the first victim, and while she raised Holy Hell through the floating clouds of non-tearing cat shampoo her little sister ran off for parts unknown and her older brother, who isn't very bright, came into the bathroom to see what was happening. He hung around watching the proceedings until it was his turn to get dunked, and that was when he started pitching a fit, trying to scratch and bite his way out of the tub. The little fucker got loose once and took off across the house, but his back feet slipped on the tile floor and he knocked himself even stupider (stupidest?) against the bar. I wagged a wet squalling cat back across the house and finished the operation.

The little one, June Bug, well, we had to find her before we could scrub her. There was no way she would answer repeated calls, whistles or chuck-chuck sounds we made. Whatever wookalars we were feeding her brother and sister to would just have to be satisfied with a two cat snack. I finally located her up under the dining room table and flushed her out with a broom towards the ready clucthes of my mom, who dunked her butt in the tub just like everybody else. Thank goodness June Bug is just too fat to heft herself out of the tub because that little beast put up one hell of a fight.

Of course, now that she's clean she's also the prissiest.

Beasts.

If you think that possibly I am busy and don't want to be bothered, you're probably correct.

Especially if I'm listening to a CD. Yep, the possibility exists that Neko Case and her Boyfriends are more interesting than you.

As a matter of fact, I'd say it was a certainty.

Hell, a Woody Woodpecker cartoon from the 1950's is more interesting that 99.9 % of the people I work with.

Humbug.

I screamed "Goddamn" a few minutes ago.

I shoved a door so hard on the way back to my desk that it shook on it's frame and then I was hateful to the twit on the other end of the line.

I feel so much better now.

Hows 'bout a tall, frosty glass of new and improved "Shut the Fuck Up"?

My co-irker talks. Constantly, about nothing.

Sometimes she just really annoys the shit out of me.

This shit is my career?

God, how I fucking hate this job.

I hate the work. I hate a good number of the people I work with. I hate all the people who utilize our services. I hate the pay, the hours, the working conditions and politics that exist in this scrubby asshole of an office.

In twelve years I can retire with full medical benefits. Given that I have a medical condition, I need to keep this job.

In twelve years I can finish my graduate degree. That shit takes a while going part-time at night.

And then I get to start all over working someplace else.

I just wonder how long it'll take me to start hating that job.

This shit is my career?

God, how I fucking hate this job.

I hate the work. I hate a good number of the people I work with. I hate all the people who utilize our services. I hate the pay, the hours, the working conditions and politics that exist in this scrubby asshole of an office.

In twelve years I can retire with full medical benefits. Given that I have a medical condition, I need to keep this job.

In twelve years I can finish my graduate degree. That shit takes a while going part-time at night.

And then I get to start all over working someplace else.

I just wonder how long it'll take me to start hating that job.

Ok, I am not down for revisionist history.

I was also raised to not speak ill of the dead, and although I don't always remember my upbringing the way I should, I am inspired to remark on the passing of Ronald Reagan.

Former President Ronald Reagan is dead.

Add that to the list of things that I won't be loosing any sleep over.

I lost an earring.

I've lost an earring.

People assure me that I'll find it when I get home because it probably fell out when I got dressed.

I know it was here at the job.

And of course it was part of a cute pair that I bought for myself, not some crappy pair that somebody else bought for me.

Damnit.

I feel like throwing a screaming fit right here in the middle of the office right now.

It wouldn't do a shit bit worth of good though.

It would only serve to reinforce some people's opinion that I really an a psycho-bitch that needs to be medicated.

Everybody please fuck off now.

Shut Up, Will You Just Please Shut The Hell UP?

I know, ok. I know.

Tony Randall is dead.

I'm sure he's more upset about it than you are.

Yeah, that soldier got a year in prison and a shitty discharge.

Hey, he got punished for being a dick and helping other people act like dicks, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Ok, Texas executed a mentally ill man last night.

And I'm wondering what Danny Glover and Jesse Jackson are up to this afternoon, they sure ain't catching a flight outta the Lone Star State.

What I did last night that I look so tired today?

What I did last night isn't your fucking business, m'k?

Politics and Breakfast Sam-itches.

There is a little place in town, it's been here for as long as I can remember.

It's called the Do-Nut Hole, and used to be owned by a family that lived here in town forever, in fact, I went to high school with the owner's daughter. Many a day my Dad would drive thru to get me a bag of holes and a chocolate milk for the road. Unlike other kids who got hyped up on sugar, it mellowed me out.

Anyway, a few years ago the original owners sold out and hit the road. Can't say that I blame them, anyway a Korean man bought it, kept the same old menu for a long time and went on about the business of selling do-nuts. Lot's of people scoffed, the place would go down hill, it'll be closed in a year, won't be long before they start selling egg rolls.

And ten, maybe fifteen years later, Mr. Kim is still selling do-nuts. (Hey, the sign reads "DO-NUTS"), he's also selling the most wonderful croissaints stuffed with a slice of cheese, a pile of bacon and the thinnest, saltiest, pepperiest scrambled egg you've ever seen in your life. They are a heartattack wrapped up in a napkin, and every morning there are pickups, mini vans, clunkers and beaters lined up at the drive thru with people waiting to purchase the fine wares that Mr. Kim churns out of his kitchen.

That would be kitchens, becuase not only has Mr. Kim kept the original place going, he's expanding.

And there isn't an egg roll in sight.

Ok, two things happened at belly dance class last night.

First, my right foot started hurting like a mutha, at one point I really wanted to cry, or throw up, either way, I was sure that one or the other would happen. Niether one did.

Second, my instructor asked me if I'd ever thought about performing. Um, well, yeah, as a matter of fact I have, even though I had no plans to ever share that fact with another living human being.

So with that knowledge she hands me one of her weighted veils so I can practice what we've worked on last night, and tells me she'll bring some finger cymbals (zills, said either zi-ll or ze-el, I'm not sure which) next week because she'd really like to start me working on that. She would have let me borrow a pair of her dance shoes if possible, but given that she was blessed with (to me) freakishly small 7 1/2 feet, they won't stretch over my size 10 puddlejumpers. This woman is so generous with her personal possessions it's absolutley awe inspiring.

And I'm also supposed to find a piece of music I'd like to work with, something that's about three minutes long or something that we can cut down to three minutes. Oh, and she's bringing me some videos next week to watch. She's got all kinds of performances on tape and thinks they'll help me. Maybe we could do some improvisational work next week if we get through the lesson. We almost always get through the lesson because I'm the only student taking the six-thirty class.

But, honestly, I've never minded being the center of attention.

So, I brought my new Natacha Atlas CD to work and am listening to it, but everything is at least five minutes, so that ain't gonna fly.

I'll find something.

I wish I didn’t have all of this computer shit at my desk.

I just really do. I waste too much time looking at the internet, goofing off with Paint and the games that came installed in this stupid fucker and all the crap that people send me via e-mail.

Enough already. I don’t want a visit from the “Wishing Frog” or whatever the hell the good luck e-mail for this week is. If I actually had ten friends who went for that kind of shit to send it too, half of them wouldn’t be speaking to me at any given moment of time and the other half I would have no respect for because they pass around that internet spam shit. Please, please don’t send me any scanned images of prayer cards, if God really wants to send me a message, there are plenty of bushes in my front yard, he’ll set fire to one of them, thanks.

That spiteful pest known as Harlow Beans PhD., bit me this morning. It was my punishment for doing something so hateful as to spend the couple of extra minutes I had talking to her. Damn me. I ran my hand down her back and gave her tail a little twist, just like I do every Saturday morning when I don’t have to literally jump over her and run out the door. Anyway, I do it on a Wednesday morning and that spicy little tart latches onto my leg with her front paws and bites me. Look cat, the Sunday paper is still on the dining room table, maybe you should check the ads for a job and a new squat, cause if you keep this act up, we may have to re-evaluate your position in this organization.

Yeah, right.

Anyway, I can’t concentrate on much lately. I need to be studying for that fecking Algebra exam instead of killing time with this shit and listening to Sarah Brightman. Shit, the next thing you know I’ll be listening to Frank Sinatra voluntarily. Jeez.

Ok, along with other things in the realm of impossibility, I have developed a silly-assed crush on a local human-interest reporter.



Now, why exactly this is, I don’t know. I’ve even found myself getting out more on the weekends and trying a couple of things I’ve seen in his reports, like belly-dancing. It’s weird, even for me.

Probably shouldn’t have even bothered to go there.

Lipstick stains on the remnants of a pineapple enpamada. The yellowy-rusty sweet bread makes the lip prints appear a much darker shade than the lipstick stains on my glass of Diet Coke.

Natacha Atlas is belting out her heart and soul in a language I don’t understand in the disc drive.

Sounds like she’s dying a slow and painful death. But it’s got a good beat and I can definitely dance to it. As a matter of fact, I’m practicing my rib cage slide right here in my chair. I didn’t go to my dance class last night as there is an Algebra exam on Thursday night that I haven’t adequately freaked-out and panicked over yet.

I need at least one sleepless night before any sort of exam that involves any sort of mathematics.

I am so looking forward to Spring Break next week. All I have to do is go to dance class and hope that I don’t sprain something.

Because, try as I might, I’m not very coordinated.

Lots of little things I need to do, make a bank deposit, write the water bill (with the frickin late charge), reapply my lipstick.

It’ll all get done.

Eventually.

March 2, 2004


I do not want to spend the rest of my life in Houston.

That being said, I really don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to finding someplace that I consider affordable where I could actually purchase a home.

I would like to have about twenty-five acres in the hill country. Some place that has lots of hidey holes that the bats could hide out in during the day, and then I could sit on my back porch in the evenings and watch them fly out on their nightly bug ingesting missions. Hence the need for twenty plus acres, the house has to be far enough away from the bat cave, as it where, so I didn’t have to smell bat guano. That stuff is kinda rank.

Anyway.

I need a big enough place to house a kennel for the dogs. I would like to give homes to at least a couple of retired greyhounds, and they would need to have a lot of space. I also would like to acquire a couple of pit bulls.

My reasons for wanting the pit bulls are not altogether altruistic. I like dogs, I actually think pit bulls are pretty and I understand that they are high energy dogs that need a lot of attention, exercise and socialization in order to be a good family dog. I firmly believe that your average shit-bird that would hop the fence and start helping themselves to whatever wasn’t nailed down or molesting the livestock does not understand that. I would like the sign that reads “My pit bull can make it to the fence in three seconds, can you?” would be enough to keep anybody off my property, and if someone decides to take the chance, I want something fierce and powerful coming after them. A running pit bull is concerted mass of sinew, muscle and raw energy, it is a beautiful thing to see.

A trespassing shit-bird getting the ever-living shit scared out of him is funny as hell to see.

That’s one nice thing about a three strand barbed-wire fence in Texas. That’s posted. Although, there are some shit-birds that don’t take the hint, and that’s why there is another fence inside that one. That’s the one that let’s you say, “one step further and I’ll blow your head clean off” with a good deal of confidence that no grand jury in Texas would indict you. That’s “whatever goes on inside of this fence isn’t a damned bit of your business”, so you really need to take your agenda on down the road.


I think I might like to have a couple of alpacas also. They are some funny looking creatures, but they also appear to be very sweet and serene as well. There’s a place outside the town I live in now that has some and every time I drive by I slow down to take a look at what they are doing at that moment.

All I’ve ever seen them doing is eating grass. Sometimes I just sit there in the truck and watch them eat grass. Every once in a while one of them will look up and watch me watching them. I wonder if she would let me pet her, but that would require me to trespass, and that’s something I just won’t do.

March 1, 2004

Just the other day, as I was standing between the stack of books at the local Barnes & Noble, I was wondering just how much of my so-called disposable income could I afford to drop on books at that very moment.

I had to choose, would it be One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or An American Tragedy, and Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. A newly minted copy of The Orchid Thief mocks me from it’s cardboard stand. Yes, I do want you, I want you in the worst way, I want you almost as badly as I desired Batman comic books when I was a kid and all my parents would buy me where Betty and Veronica.

I remember what desire tastes like now. It tastes like the bitter disappointment that comes from finding onions on your burger when you specifically asked your dad to tell them NO ONIONS and smells like the ink from ball point pens that where boosted from the post office. Pens that I used to draw moustaches and beards on Betty and Veronica, well, I visited a special kind of torture on Veronica. I blacked out her teeth and drew glasses on her face. I especially hated Veronica. She had cooler clothes than me, she got to wear high heels and lipstick, like I didn’t. And she lived in a house that was something like I knew I would never get to live in.

Bitch.

Anyway.

I knew in my heart that I would not feel fulfilled if I left the store without one of them. I had already picked them up, I had already fondled the spines, examined them for fingerprints and found them spotless and smelled the clean crisp smell that comes from a brand new book having it’s pages flipped open to a random section for a preview read.

I really should choose. I’m not in the position where a few dollars spent in books means that anybody at my house will be cast out into the street, or that my four-legged dependants will do without. Really it comes down to a matter of time and space.

If I could sit down and do nothing but read for eight hours a day, it would probably take me six months to get through my stockpile.

I am also ambivalent about choosing an Oprah book. I was reading a long time before she said it was cool, and I certainly don’t want to be lumped into the throngs of people who started reading just because Oprah said it was cool. But then it dawns on me, that thingy is just a sticker, and stickers can be peeled off.

No one would have to know when I actually bought the book.

Or, if asked, I could say it was a gift.

Or, if asked, I could say, bugger off and quit poking around in my books.

That is the response most people would expect from me, after all.

I have singed up for my second course of belly dance classes.

I used up two bottles of shower gel and tossed the empties this weekend.

I put supper together Saturday night, thereby eliminating the need to put supper on the credit card. I'm praying for more nights like that as I would really like to go to London next year.

There is an old chair sitting out in front of the garage that will go out to the curb tonight for the garbage men to haul away tomorrow morning. This was more a product of my mom's frustration than anything else. As the chair was really her auxilliary closet it really didn't bother me.

I am close to using up some of the stock piled shampoo that has been haunting the confines of my bathroom closet for years. Seriously, I have moved some of this stock piled crap twice. Had Y2K been the major disaster that some kooks thought it would be, I could have been clean for decades. I would have gotten pretty damn tired of eating grass and leaves, as I did not feel the need to stock up on canned goods, but I would have been clean and my clothes would have been clean. Even if I would have had to wash them in the river with a rock. May not have had electricity, but by damn, I would be the cleanest person sitting there in the dark.

I threw out some knickers that where put together wrong at the factory and never fit right. I really think they where two butt pieces sewn together. I did this in a clandestine manner, otherwise my mother would have wanted to make a rag out of them. No, hell no, throw them fuckers out.

Why she will argue over throwing out a lousy pair of knickers but put a serviceable but somewhat scruffy chair out in the rain for three days until the garbage men come on Tuesday is beyond me. Even though it was dark this morning when we began our commute, I could tell she didn't appreciate the "crack house" remark I made.

And these are the most positive things I can report about my life right now.

Ok, am I the only one who thinks this was monumentally stupid?

I work with a woman who's parents live in Mexico, and she went down there last week because her mom was having knee replacement surgery.

The good news is that Mom went through her surgery fine and other than the amount of time it'll take her to fully recuperate, she's good to go.

The totally fucked-up news is that Ms. Co-Worker went and got her eye-liner tatooed on while she was in Mexico. She has spent all day dabbing on antibotic ointment with a q-tip and checking for signs of infection. Not that her spending a lot of her day looking in the mirror is anything new, but to spend most of your day looking in the mirror at your newly tattoed eyeliner is just little much.

And never mind the getting it done in Mexico thing, I wouldn't get it done ANYWHERE! Excuse me, but evolution provides you with one, count them, ONE set of eyes and you should really take good care of them. And even though the eye lid and the eye are two different body parts, they are really fucking close together. Hello! Infection spreads.

She said it really hurt, but it only took about an hour to get it done.

No fucking shit it hurt. I've never had a tatoo on my ass and I know that it would hurt, and the skin on my ass is a lot thicker that the skin on my eyelids.

Stuff like this just depresses the shit out of me.

We just had a woman come into our office , she bailed out of her husband's car when he pulled over at his job down the block to pick up his paycheck and she ran to our office with a five or six year old boy in tow.

Her husband beat the shit out of her yesterday and this was the first opportunity she had to get away from him with her son. Her eye is slowly turning black and it's swollen, there are bruises up and down her arm and she would like to call her family who lives about four hours north of here for them to come get her.

She sitting at one of the officer's desks in the back of the room now, getting checked out by the local ambulance crew, one of the deputies got her little boy a soda from our machine, and my supervisor is watching out the front door waiting for either the police or the husband, I guess whichever shows up first.

The city police are here, it's fairly obvious that the woman has been beaten by somebody. But since it turns out now that the actual beating took place yesterday in San Antonio, city of Pasadena's finest isn't going to take any kind of report, they aren't going to go 1/2 a mile from here and knock on the apartment door and see if the shitbird's bothered to go home yet, they'll take her to the local battered women's shelter, she can make some calls there and try to find somebody to come get her. Of course she doesn't want to go to the shelter "because it'll be just like in California".

Excuse me, but are you going to let this joker kick your ass all the way across the country?

What's worse, she let's her little boy see this time after time.

Legend has it that Vivian Vance used to pull her car off to the side of the road everyday on her way to the Desilu Studios and throw up. That's just how much she hated her job, apparently she didn't love Lucy as much as Lucy loved Lucy.


With days like today, I understand what motivated Ms. Vance to possibly hurl her cookies on a daily basis.

If stupidity where criminal, I would be working on Death Row.

I couldn't even get my purse off my shoulder when I came back from lunch before somebody asked me a stupid-assed question that we've only been over a couple of thousand times in the year and a half that she's been working here.

I know that seems petty, small, and hopelessly stingy with the last three minutes of my lunch hour that I was planning to spend in the ladies room applying lip blam and running a comb through my hair. And if it wasn't a question that I had already answered three times this week, it probably wouldn't annoy me as much as it did.

But the pure and simple fact of the matter is that it did annoy me.

I think that Quizno's sub I had for lunch is going to make me hurl. Even if those freaky little petrified singing rats on the commercial are cute, Alfredo style sauce on a chicken sandwich is not a good idea, and I should have thought about that before I ordered it.

Gee, guess that was stupid.

If I only had a fifth of vodka.

If only I had a fifth of vodka.

I wouldn't have it for long.

I personally think it's a little crazy to want to start drinking fifteen minutes after you get to work in the morning, but I really thought nothing of it when I wanted to start drinking BEFORE I got to work this morning on the commute in.

Curse you Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and your archane rules about when liquor can and can't be sold.

Curse you to hell.

I was just told by someone pretty close to me whom I love a lot that if I had a blog she would "read it everyday!"

Um, yeah, thanks, but there is just some stuff that I don't want you reading about me. I don't mind if everybody else on the WWW reads it, but the thought of you reading it and knowing that I wrote it gives you too much power in family gathering style situations, and I'm just not comfortable with that.

And I like to remember my family history in a way that best excuses my behavior, not anybody elses.

Check this, bitch.

Look folks, the word is bitch, B- I- T- C- H. It's always been bitch, it'll always be bitch.

Please do not call me a beotch, a bat-ch, beaotch. These bastardizations of the word make you sound like a recent immigrant or someone who rode the short school bus until you learned to control your body functions and those in control finally deemed you ready for the public school system.

It's BITCH.

Son of a bitch, bitch you better watch your back, I'm gonna make you my bitch.....

Beo-tch, or whatever the hell you hollered out the car window just doesn't have the same effect as "bitch!" even though you made the illegal turn into a pedestrian crosswalk when the light changed.

The word is bitch.

Maybe you should go to the carwash now and see if they can get that vanilla milkshake out of your upholstery.

Will you please just shut the fuck up?

Will you please just shut the fuck up?

This morning I just really don't want to hear it. My holiday weekend didn't exactly go the way I wanted it to either, so let's not play the game of "Mine was WAY worse than yours", ok, because I'm just not in the mood for it.

You were sick all weekend?

Well, that's too bad. Maybe if you would lay off the beer and cigarettes a little, you wouldn't feel so bad.

You spent your whole paycheck paying bills and now you're broke?

But I see you've got a new haircut and highlight job. Oh, did you manage to cover that hot check before it hit your account a second time?

Your kids dropped their kids off at your house on Friday night and still haven't come back after them, and you just don't know what you're going to do?

Why don't you call your mom and ask her what she used to do in this situation?

Homosexuality is a sin? the Bible says so?

First off, the Bible is an inanimate object, it doesn't say a fucking thing.
Second off, aren't you glad the Bible has no verses that prohibit stupidity?

I had my first belly dancing class last night, and that shit absolutely ROCKS!

It was held in this absolutely peaky little store front, an un-airconditioned little store front that had a particle board floor that has been varnised a few dozen times and has some dippy places in it. This little place is behind the old Heights fire station that the City of Houston, in it's infinite wisdom and penny pinching stupidity, closed down a few years ago. When I got there I found that the burgular bars over the door where locked and my instructor was whirling around the empty room atwhat seemed like a hundred miles an hour while music blasted from a corner. The instructor loaned me one of her hip scarves, with finge and beads and coins no less on it, and when class started, the fat and the beads just went to flying! Thankfully, the beads and the coins made more noise than the fat did.

I was really hurting by the time I got home, and my right foot looked like something that had been attached by Dr. Von Frankenstein, so I fired up the electric blanket, got a shower, gobbled down some Tylenol and hit the hay. I was so damn tired I couldn't sleep, and I was dreading just a little bit how I would feel this morning. I passed out just about the time Vincent D'onofrio come on the screen. I like Vincent D'onofrio, he does something for me, but not enough for me to stay awake last night.

This morning I woke up feeling great. I had a little residual pain in my right foot, but nothing that I haven't walked off before.

Welcome to Our Lady of the Short Fuse

Welcome to Our Lady of the Short Fuse

This is just not the day to challenge me on much of anything.

I have had three phone calls today, all three from men who wanted to argue with me. The last straw was one that wanted to file charges against his soon to be ex-wife because she told the Houston police officer that came out to the house last night that she had filed a restraining order against the soon to be ex-husband, and once the officer had checked and found no restraining order in the system (and trust me, I know about how hard he checked) he informed the wife that she had committed a crime by lying to him. Now the husband wants me to tell him why she isn't going to jail. Hey jackass, why didn't you ask the cop that was out there last night?

Here's a clue, Einstein, she doesn't want you anymore. If she's going to the trouble of filing a restraining order, she really doesn't want you anymore. She doesn't want your company, your opinion or your laundry layng around in the floor of her house anymore. Pack up your shit and walk off. Trust me, in the long run you'll be much happier.

And two calls where from a man who wanted to argue whether or not our office figurehead was out at his house at 4 am knocking on the door to serve him with a paper.

Let me assure you, dumbass, that he was not. he wouldn't be out there at noon to knock on your door if his life depended on it. He'd send somebody else.

I'm three days into the Dr. Phil Weight Loss Challenge, two days into my own personal campaign to cut back on the Diet Coke, and 5,262 days into my career as an office grunt working for somebody who barely remembers my last name. The fog this morning completely sucked and I was fifteen minutes late to work instead of my customary ten minutes.

I work with a bunch of grown men who want to whine and bitch like a pack of three year olds. I work with a woman who has to go take her bilingual certification test today because this is the last possible day for her to take it or she'll loose her bilingual pay.

Fuck this.

On the upside, I have my first belly-dance class tonight after work and I'm really looking forward to that.

Finishng out my lunch hour at my desk.

I tried sitting in the lunch room, and I did as long as I was eating, but there is a tool show coming to town this weekend and the men I work with are all back threre salivating over air compressors and compound wrenches at ridiculously low low prices. If they would salivate quietly, I wouldn't mind, but hell no, they have to one up each other with tales of the torque wrench or the miter saw they got at this travelling carnival of tools the last time it came this way and whatever one has, well by golly damn, the other one has the same thing but he's had it longer and it works better.

Shit, will you shut the hell up? Or can we at least change the subject to shoes, something we all need and use. Or, since the sound of your voice has now started to make me as sick as this Healty Choice frozen entree I'm eating how about you just shut the hell up?

Ok, so I've made up my ind that this is the year I finally get my act together and get this gut off of me. I'm sick and tired of it. So I'm eating Healthy Choice and drinking Atkins and trying to keep my carbohydrate consumption at a minimum. It ain't easy, but I've also decided that this is the year I want to learn how to belly dance, and with as much as I've got to throw around, it could turn into a massively choreographed and well rehearsed belly flop.

You can take the girl out of the east side....

You can take the girl out of the east side, but you can't necessarily take the east side out of the girl.

For now it is a fact that I was born, raised and reared east of I-45 and continue to live in the cache challenged east side of the "Greater" Houston area. There really isn't much going on in this side of town, it's not experiencing a tech boom of any kind, we haven't had a new mall go up in over twenty years and we have only had Starbucks for about three years now. We've got thousands of nail salons offering twenty dollar acrylic nails and free fungus with purchase of a fifteen dollar pedicure. Superbowl parties on this side of town will occur at places with names like "Skeeters" and "Choppers."

So last week while I was on vacation I decided to venture to the west side of town and see what was going on over there. And yes, I refer to anytime I leave the geographical boundaries of the poltical subdivision I live in as "going to town". Anyway, I'm going somewhere to expand my horizons and the Hong Kong City Mall seems like a good place to start.

First off, it felt like I was driving to Hong Kong proper. Ok, so it only took me 45 minutes to get there cause I have a lead foot, but it was still a long drive. I got there early and got an excellent parking place, it was kinda cool and windy but not altogether unpleasant. I get inside and am greeted by the aroma of fish market and urine. No kidding, there was a puddle of urine in the mall outside the grocery store. Needless to say I skip the grocery store and head for the fabric shop.

This fabric shop has some absolutely gorgeous stuff, silks, jaquards, all kinds of stuff that I have no idea what they are and the little old lady behind the counter can't tell me because she doesn't speak much of my language and I don't speak much of hers. Between sign language and pointing we work out that her son will be back in an hour and he can help me. Ok, I've seen something I want and I'll be back in an hour. Next stop, the shoe store.

Lucite, buckles, platforms, grommets! I am in love and ready to whip out the plastic and be a shoe buying fool.

Except.

When I ask for a size 10 (yep, I' a big footed jerky eating girl) the fella at the counter says "that man's size". He said it with a smile and in a helpful tone. But I guess from the look on my face he figured out pretty quick that I want to beautify and showcase my feet, not buy shoes for somebody else. "Nine biggest size made for women." Really, ok, thanks.

Is there a Moscow City Mall in town? Maybe it I check the Sunday paper I an find a Prague Pavilion. They've got to have shoes in my size because that's where my ancestors came from.

I've got fourty-five minutes to kill until the fabric guy gets back.

I walk passed several store fronts that have nothing in them but tables and chairs and people are filling out forms. There is no window with a clerk to process the paper work or computers that I see, looks like eveything is done with paper and pencil. Whatever, by now the smell of urine and fish has been over come with the smell of institutional disenfectant and fish. Slightly better.

I go into one store that has all kinds of bags hanging in the window. Hello knock-off world. Phooey Vuitton's in all shapes and sizes, fake Gucci and Coach, the place smells like a jar of liquid vinyl. Hot liquid vinyl. "and we have shoes," the lady behind the counter indicates their selection with a sweep of her hand. Shoes? Ok, I'll take the bait and check out the selection.

They have lots of shoes all right. Rows and rows of them.

Used shoes.

Some of these shoes are so damn used that I am pretty sure I sold them in a yard sale about ten years ago. Thanks, but no thanks.

As much as I like shoes and the way my feet look in shoes, I don't covet anybody else's shoes enough to wear used shoes.

It's a thing. It's my thing and I acknowledge that.

Jeez, isn't the fabric guy back yet?

Walking the mall again, there is a restaurant that people are literally lining up outside for. I don't expect there to be a menu in English by now, but I figure I'll look inside and see what's going on.

I walk up to the window just as a guy is hanging a whole pig on a hook that is suspended over a carving table.

A whole, intact, skin is singed all over it pig.

I'm not naive by any means. I know where meat comes from and I eat it anyway. But this guy is standing there with a knife taking orders and is about to start carving hunks off this and I just don't think I can handle that. It's not butchered, honestly I don't even think it's been gutted so not only has it been cooked in some fashion with it's hooves still on and the intensines (and whatever was in them) still inside.

I've got plenty of fabric at home still folded on shelves that I haven't done anything with.

And the toll road comes out just a couple of blocks from here, that'll shave a good ten minutes off my drive.

I haul ass at seventy plus the whole way home.

By the time I get to the interstate, pass downtown and get on another section of the toll road, I'm starving hungry. The smells that assaulted my brain previoulsy have loosened their grip on my brain, and I pull into a place that serves up plenty of deep fried seafood and french fries. As I plunge a stick of fried cheese into marinara sauce I wonder if somebody would look inside the window and be completely grossed out by the sight of my eating this.

And as I savor the golden deep-fat fried goodness that is fried food I'm thinking, yeah, probably so.

Here's to home and the familiar.

I'm a little more pedestrian than I would like to admit.