Ava's New Fave Hiding Place

Here is how I know Ava was meant to be my dog: she, like me, goes through weird phases. Like one time, in college, I went through a phase where I listened to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" non-stop everyday for about two weeks. I don't know how my roommates kept from murdering me. Likewise, Ava went through a phase where she would climb behind my entertainment system and just sit, staring awkwardly at me while I watched TV:

It only lasted a day, so I'm not sure if you could properly call it a phase, and I'm pretty sure she was back there because that was where she hid her rope toy, but you know what I mean. ANYway, she is now doing another weird thing, and it's been going on for the past few weeks: hiding under my bed. Actually, it's not so much as hiding as it is just hanging out. Earlier this week, when I was watching a movie, Ava abandoned her traditional post on my lap to go lounge under the bed. When I came home from work (I get out at 1p.m. every other Friday because my company is on summer hours, holla!) she came out from under the bed suddenly, in a manner that said, "Well, hello, I wasn't expecting to see you so soon." Here's what I think she does under there in ascending levels of ridiculousness:

-sleep

-rehearse her plan of action in case of burglars or if the maintenance man comes for a surprise (to her) visit

-think about the cute boy dog down the street

-contemplate her life and debate whether or not she is behind in what she has contributed thus far, as opposed to other dogs her age

-write in her secret doggie diary

-plot her escape

-plot to take over the world, Pinky and the Brain-style

Looking over the list, "plot her escape" is kind of silly. Why would she plot her escape? I MADE HER CHICKEN BROTH POPSICLES, SON!

Deal of the Weekend!

I've never been a label snob. I've always been more concerned with getting a good deal than with the name on the tag, my mindset being that if it's cute, fits well and is an affordable price, who cares if it's Chanel or Mossimo? There are, however, two luxury labels that I adore, and I've been wanting to own a piece of each for awhile: Tiffany & Co and Dooney & Bourke. I crossed Tiffany off my list a few years ago via a somewhat unwise and impulsive purchase (that I don't regret one bit). Today, I crossed Dooney & Bourke off my list in the exact opposite fashion: running the numbers and making sure that it was a purchase I could actually afford instead of just slapping it on a credit card and telling myself I'll worry about it later.

I'm not a huge handbag person, but I love Dooney & Bourke. It's the same reason why I love Tiffany & Co.: it's such a classic style. Dooney & Bourke handbags go with anything and class up even the most casual of outfits. I've been itching for one, and have been keeping my eyes peeled for a good deal. I've had a few close calls. I saw a handbag at a TJ Maxx in Kentucky, but it was a crazy orange color and ugly as hell. I saw a wallet at Marshalls, but no handbags. I almost bought a bag at a consignment store in Kentucky, but I wasn't crazy about the cowboy boots and spurs design and my friend Monica pointed out that it was kind of tiny and couldn't hold very much, and if I was going to drop $50 on a purse, it should be able to hold all my things. She was right, so I sighed and put it back on the shelf. It wasn't meant to be.

Today all that changed. On a lark, my friend Ali and I went to Macy's to look at some rings that were on sale. Before we left, I wanted to go by the handbag section just to see if there was anything good. Lo and behold, an entire table of Dooney & Burke purses were on sale! They were only in two color schemes and designs, but they were the styles and designs I loved: simple and classic. Problem was, even at the clearance price of $146.25, it was still out of my price range. A sales woman saw us browsing and was using all her methods of persuasion to try and get me to buy the bag, and asked if I had any coupons. I said no, and Ali jokingly asked her if she had any coupons to offer us. The sales lady said no, but that she was working with another customer who had some coupons and that she'd ask her client if she would give me one. Her client did, and gave me one for 20% off. On top of that, I had $37.65 credit on my Macy's credit card, bringing the grand total of the purse to $87.54. Totally in my budget. Let me put it another way:

Original price of the bag: $195.00

Clearance price: $146.25

After 20% off coupon was applied: $125.19 (including tax)

After $37.65 credit is applied: $87.54

Total savings: $115.65

Who's the (wo)man?! This girl.

I love my bag, and the great deal I got it for makes me love it even more. I'm proud of myself. Instead of impulsively buying it, I took my time, crunched the numbers and was prepared to walk away if it was too much. And now I have a nice handbag and zero buyer's remorse. Life is good.

Show Me How You Burlesque

Actually, don't show me, because if you are anybody other than the cast of Burlesque, you will probably look like this and embarrass all of us. Speaking of embarrassing, you know what movie wasn't as embarrassing as I was expecting it to be? Burlesque. Transition. Nailed it.

Don't get me wrong, this movie won't win any awards. The plot and dialogue could have been written by a hyperactive second grader who was just given a giant chocolate bar and a 2-liter bottle of soda. It's basically Coyote Ugly without Tyra Banks and John Goodman, but it wasn't as bad as Coyote Ugly. I know, I know--WTF, am I right? Here's what separates it from that other movie about a small town girl (livin' in a lonely world) who took the midnight train heading anywhere moves to the big city to follow her dreams: the dance numbers. The performance sequences in Burlesque make the gals in Coyote Ugly look like a bunch of drunken Okies just bumbling around, salivating like Pavlov's dogs whenever their eyes land on a sweat-stained fiver wielded by an overweight businessman smack dab in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Allow me to utilize a visual aid:

Low self-esteem! Daddy issues!

Flashy! Pretty!

Hot mess! White trash!

Sexy! Sassy! Sophisticated!

Are we on the same web page now? Anyway, I basically gave away the plot earlier, but here's a more detailed breakdown: Christina Aguilera plays Allie, a small-town girl from Iowa, who moves to L.A. to follow her dreams. She stumbles upon the Burlesque Lounge and is immediately all, "OMG if I don't become a performer here I will slit my wrists!" But then Cher is all, "Hold up, homegirl, don't think you can come in my house with your dreams and your hope! You know what I do to dreams and hope? I shit on them. That's what I do. This is me, shitting on your dreams and your hope. Buh-bye." Allie then is like, "Oh, hells naw," so she gets a job as a waitress at the lounge, where she spends most of her time watching the show, yet still manages to get people the right drinks. I don't get it. I also don't get all the staring that goes down in this damn movie. This is pretty much the first half hour:

"OMG, I wanna be up there."

"OMG, I need to be up there."

"OMG, I would sell my body in a sexual way to be up there."

"Seriously, who do I have to bang to get up there?!"

After more staring and pleading, Allie eventually annoys Cher enough to get a spot as a performer. But that's not the end of the story! She finds herself in a love triangle with a bartender named Jake and McSteamy from Grey's Anatomy, she steps on the toes of a rival dancer played by Kristen Bell, she pals around with Stanley Tucci who reprises his role from The Devil Wears Prada, and she helps Cher keep her club from going under. Phew! That's a lot for a girl from Iowa who has been in the City of Angels for a month, two months, tops! It can pretty much be summed up like this:

"Gosh, you're pretty."

"I am McSteamy! Have sex with me!"

"I'm the gay mentor who everybody looks to for support!"

"I hate that tramp!"

"I'm Cher, bitch! Respect!"

"Yay, let's dance and be sexy!"

Still, though, Burlesque was pretty enjoyable, and the costumes and performances are hot. If you want a movie sans plot holes as big as sinkholes, go rent Kramer vs. Kramer or Philadelphia or something. But if all you want is to have a good time and watch pretty girls in pretty clothes prettily strut around on their pretty little legs, then give Burlesque a whirl.

Teen Kitty Adventure #1, Part Two

So it took longer than a week for me to get this written and posted. Sue me. If you're all confused and like, "WTF is a Teen Kitty?" checkity-check out part one here.

***

The day just got weirder for Eleanor. She had an insatiable craving for milk. When Mandy pushed her down the bleachers during gym, she landed on her hands and feet effortlessly, not a scratch on her. Cats were inexplicably drawn to her. She was also incredibly acrobatic and clairvoyant. The other students also noticed the weirdness surrounding Eleanor and started calling her Teen Kitty. The nickname stuck.

“Hey. Teen Kitty. Stop meow-ing and let the others have a chance at answering the question,” said her English teacher.

“But you specifically asked me.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. You said, ‘Eleanor, what does the streetcar symbolize in this play?’”

“Well, now I want you to shut your yap because I’m tired of your mew-ing, okay?”

Work wasn’t any better. Everywhere Eleanor went, the cats followed, and her supervisor took a peculiar interest in her.

“Eleanor, do you feel okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

He nervously rubbed his ruby cat ring. “Something’s just…different about you, is all. Did you make it home okay last night?”

“Yeah.”

“No accidents?”

Eleanor felt uneasy. She didn’t like his prying, and somehow knew that disclosing what really happened to her the night before would get her in trouble. So she did something she never did: lie.
“No, no accidents.”

“Then where is your car?”

Shit. Eleanor forgot she walked to the shelter. “It was…stolen.”

“Stolen?”

“Yeah, by some individuals from a low socioeconomic class.” She shook her head dramatically. “This town ain’t what it used to be!” She hurried to go clean the litter boxes and avoid further questioning.

“Stolen by individuals from a low socioeconomic class my ass,” muttered her supervisor as he watched her walk away.

***

It took Eleanor longer than normal to clean all the litter boxes, and when she finally started collecting her things to leave, it was almost midnight.

“Good thing it’s Friday,” she mumbled to herself. “At least I can sleep in tomorrow.”

As she walked past her supervisor’s office, she saw that the door was closed, but the light was still on. She heard a muffled voice, and, curious, she tip-toed over and pressed her ear against the door.

“What do you mean, you haven’t found any of those cats?!” her supervisor said, obviously agitated. There were a few seconds of silence then, “We need to find those cats! You know what an army of radioactive cats could do if they wound up in the wrong hands? God forbid anybody gets bitten or scratched by one. Actually, I think one of my volunteers may be infected…Well, she’s always been Coco Loco, but now she seems different…more…catty…No, not in the typical woman way! Literally, she’s taken on cat-like characteristics! When she’s around, the cats here go apeshit!...Listen, I’m done talking to you. Your ass doesn’t go to sleep until all 11 of those cats are found, you hear me?” This last sentence was punctuated by a metal clang, probably from slamming the phone into its cradle. Eleanor stepped back and hurried out of the building, allowing what she just heard to marinate in her brain.

“I’ve got to find those cats before they do,” she said.

***

The next morning, Eleanor set out on her cat-finding mission. She started off by going to the scene of the accident. As soon as she stepped foot into the woods near the intersection, she was besieged by colors and sounds. Pretty soon an image took shape in her mind; she was having a vision. She saw the cats wandering down under a bridge overpass by the river. For the most part, they were alone, save for the few bums who camped out there and who would occasionally say things like, “Shut up, you damn cats!” and, “Your carrying on sounds like my late wife Myrtle! May the bitch rest in peace!” Then it was over.

“They’re out by John’s Pass,” she said to herself. “I need to get over there!”

She began running.

***

She got there to John’s Pass in 15 minutes.

“Holy shit, can I run fast!” she exclaimed. “I’m like a cheetah! And I’m not even out of breath!” All of a sudden she heard a chorus of meows and ran in the direction of the sounds.

“There you guys are!” she said when she got to the cats. The cats immediately fell silent and watched her intently. She did a quick count. “…8,9,10. But my supervisor said there were 11. Isn’t there supposed to be one more?” she questioned the cats. The cats all looked behind them to the riverbank, where a feline body lay limp and motionless, obviously dead.

Eleanor wiped tears from her eyes and put a hand over her heart. “My brother didn’t make it,” she said sadly. “Godspeed, Friend; I just know you’re having a ball chasing mice in that big litter box in the sky.” She looked at the rest of the cats. “Follow me. I know a safe place.”

Like the pied piper, the cats formed a line behind Eleanor and followed her to the local laboratory that studied things like global warming, nuclear radiation and birds caught in oil spills.

“Trust me—you want to study these animals,” she told the stunned scientists. “Some weird chemical was spilled on them or something.” With that, she left.

“Now to take care of a little business,” she said to herself, and started walking in the direction of Kitty Loves.

***

Stayed tune for the (not so) thrilling conclusion of Adventure #1! And if you know of a way I can make Teen Kitty even MORE ridiculous, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email! Obviously, I'm not taking this too seriously! ITALICS AND CAPS LOCK AND EXCLAMATION POINTS FOR THE WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!

Weird Quirks

Lately, I've been thinking about the completely random things that I do and think about, and came to a realization: I've got a lot of weird quirks. And I have no idea where they come from. Here are a few cases in point:

1. For the past two days, I've listened to nothing but Avicii's "Penguin" on repeat. I don't know if I find the repetition soothing, if it makes for good background noise while I'm doing my work, if I just really, really, really like the song, or if it's a combination of all three. All I know is that I really have had no desire to listen to anything else, and when I do try to listen to other songs, I keep going back to "Penguin" and then proceed to listen to it 50 times in a row. You'd think I'd be so tired of this song I'd slash my wrists if I ever heard it again, but so far, that's not the case. It's like I'm weirdly hypnotized by it. I'm listening to it as I type up this post, in fact.

2. My mind always goes to worst case or craziest scenario. Example: Let's say I'm out walking my dog and I smell something foul. Here are the possible reasons for the odor in ascending levels of crazy:

-garbage

-compost pile

-stagnant water

-feces

-dead animal

-dead animal wrapped in garbage laying on top of a compost pile with feces and stagnant water

-decomposing human body

Guess where my mind goes 99.9% of the time? The last one. Hand to God. I smell something bad and I immediately think, "Holy shit, what if there's a dead body buried nearby and it's decomposing?" Then I get into a moral crisis: "Should I check to see what the cause of the smell is? What if I don't and it turns out to really be a decomposing human body and someone out there is getting away with murder because I don't want to bother to check? If I don't check and it actually does turn out to be a decomposing human body, is my soul forever damned to the fiery pits of Hell because I just kept RIGHT ON WALKING?! DOES THIS MAKE ME A BAD PERSON?!" It should be noted that when I reach this level of ridiculousness I realize how silly I'm being and give myself a reality check. To date, I HAVE NEVER CHECKED FOR DECOMPOSING HUMAN BODIES. I may be a little morbid and crazy, but I'm not THAT crazy. Not yet, anyway.

3. I have a love/hate relationship with my saxophone. I played the alto sax from 7th grade through the fall semester of my sophomore year in high school. I both loved and hated it. My parents loved it because they thought it would help alleviate my asthma (a theory which has yet, to my knowledge anyway, to be supported with actual scientific and/or medical research). I loved the idea of playing it, but I hated actually practicing, which is probably why I never did it outside of class and after school band practice. Despite all this, I still cannot bring myself to get rid of it. It sits in its case in my closet, collecting dust, rarely being brought out. Sometimes I'll get all motivated and swear to myself that this time I'll put effort into playing it and learn how to play jazz until I'm crazy good. I tell myself that I'll practice after work every day, buy new reeds that will be easier to play on, and really dedicate myself to learning how to master my instrument. It was during one of these fits of motivation that I took out my sax, put it together, looked at it, decided I'd really rather do something else like read, or watch TV, or look at the grass grow, and subsequently took it apart and put it away. Other times I'll play for a total of ten minutes before deciding I'm over it. Yet I have this sentimental attachment that prevents me from getting rid of it.

4. Sometimes, when I'm really tired, I'll write instead of going to bed. Tonight is one of those nights. But now I'm going to bed. And if you wake me up, I will probably be really bitchy because I hate being woken up. So DON'T DO IT. Bye bye.