Try all you want, people just don’t change.  Sure, minor changes happen.  But the big stuff?  That stays the same.  I’ve watched enough relationships crumble to know that you can’t change another person.  Of course, none of these relationships were mine because I’m emotionally crippled and have serious commitment issues.  Plus I’m not so much with the looks.  But let’s open that can of worms for a blog entry when I’m super duper PMS-y.

I’ve learned this weekend that, even if I want to, I am who I am… and I will not eat green eggs and ham.  Mostly because I’m a vegetarian.  And there’s something very wrong with green eggs and I don’t feel like having my stomach pumped any time soon.

In my mission to be more free-spirited, I have been agreeing to do more things.  Some things have been easy to go along with (like drinking on a Tuesday night), other things may have taken a bit of convincing on Brian’s part.

Like camping. In the woods. Without a tent. With coyotes.  And something that could have possibly been a T-Rex.

I have never been an outdoorsy person.  I went camping with my grandparents all the time when I was a kid.  But they had a camper.  I am all for camping when I know that there’s a kitchen table that can convert into a bed in three seconds flat.  It’s not the camping part so much that I’ve minded over the years.  It’s the bugs.  Bugs love me.  Actually, let me rephrase that.  Bugs love to bite the shit of me.  On a trip to Orange Beach, Alabama one year, I came back with 32 bug bites on me.  And we were staying indoors.  Seriously.  My blood is like cocaine to bugs.

I also dislike snakes and things that could tear me to shreds, such as coyotes and T-Rex.

But whatever.  I was going to rough it Saturday night.  I had some bug spray that will probably give me horrific cancer one day, but I was excited to go camping.

After a quick trip to the WalMart for s’more ingredients and veggie hot dogs, Brian and I headed out to a hollow about twenty minutes of town.  There was a sign that said “no camping” and, under the darkness of night, we disobeyed that sign and headed into the wilderness.  Our camp site was snuggled between two giant ass rocks, one with an overhang to keep dew and rain out.  Which is good since we didn’t bring a tent.

If I ever go camping again, I’m going to need a tent.  A tent, or someone to stay awake all night on guard with a shotgun.  Hey, I may not eat meat, but I will take a coyote out.  Or have someone else do it.  I don’t want blood on my hands.

We ate baked beans and had veggie hot dogs over the camp fire.  Veggie hot dogs aren’t bad, but do not do well over open flame.  They get very… blistery. Which isn’t the best feature on a phallic-shaped food.  S’mores were made and we talked about ghosts and shit.  You know, normal camping stuff.  Then we went to sleep.

Scratch that, Brian went to sleep.  I woke up every twenty to sixty minutes.  At four a.m., I was shaking so violently from the cold that I was pretty sure I was going to die, and I clung to Brian who tends to keep a werewolf’s body temperature year round.

If I ever go camping again, it will not be in October.  It will be at least the middle of May before I agree to do any such thing.

I slept on and off from four to eight a.m. A lot of my interrupted sleep came from a combination of being terrified that I was THISCLOSE to being killed by a pack of hungry coyotes and the fact that our sleeping bag was sitting on a rock and whatever side of my body I was laying on at any point in the night would fall asleep every hour or so, meaning that I had to roll over.  There’s nothing worse than trying to outrun wild animals when your left leg is asleep.

I finally got up around 8:30 and done something that I have not done since I was four-years-old.  I peed outside.

I know that may be TMI, but that’s a huge step for me.  I haven’t done that in 21 years.  I’m quite proud of myself.  Of course, I have no desire to repeat it, seeing as how I got a bug bite in an unfortunate area for my efforts.  I’m not even kidding a little bit when I say that bugs love me.

Brian accused me of not being outdoorsy.  I agreed with him, until I retold the story at work today.  Several people seemed impressed that I camped in October without a tent and without adequate bedding.  They seemed to think that that was pretty outdoorsy of me.

Or maybe they thought it was stupid of me.  Whatever they thought, this camping trip has proved one thing:

*** This entry is being cross-posted at my new blog that I’ve started with Brian called xXy blog.  You should check it out and fall in love with us and stuff.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=owPX3r3s6t8

I may be the dumbest person alive.

Some of the keys on my laptop stopped working yesterday.  Specifically, the “down” and “right” arrow keys, which I didn’t realize I use as frequently I do, and all of the number keys except for 5 and 6.  Because I believe that the worst thing that could happen to my personal information is someone hacking into my Facebook and changing my status to something about how I eat boogers, I have most of my passwords saved to my computer, i.e. all the passwords that Firefox asks me if I want to save because I’m too lazy to type in a finite number of letters and symbols once a day.  One of the few sites that I am unable to log into because Firefox won’t save my password to it is my work email.  My work email is my primary email.  And it just so happens that one or more of the numbers in my password to that work email are the ones that have keys that don’t work on my laptop.

But that’s whatever, no big deal.  I can pick up a keyboard at WalMart for less than ten bucks.  What I can’t buy at WalMart is the smarts.

This is why I putting my name in the hat for Dumbest Person Alive.

I went to comment on a wall post on Facebook.  A coworker shared a link on how to make homemade Mod Podge.  Fifty percent water, fifty percent Elmer’s glue, for those who are wondering.   Shake it up and keep in an air-tight container for those who, like me, hate spending seven dollars on a bottle of Mod Podge.  Anyway, when I went to leave the comment, I decided to use an exclamation point after the end of “thanks”.  I pressed the “shift” key and the “one” key.  Nothing happened.

“What the shit?”  I said in my head.  Then aloud I added, “I know the “one” key doesn’t work, but that’s no reason for the exclamation point not to show…. holy hell, I’m dumb.”

My laptop started shorting out yesterday.  YESTERDAY.  It took me an entire day to realize that it’s more than the numbers that won’t show up.  It’s also things like the exclamation point and parentheses and the “at symbol”.  The only symbols that show up are % and ^.  Those are math symbols, you guys.  Math symbols.  I haven’t done math that involved percentages or taking things to the umpteenth power since the beginning of sophomore year and I’ll be damned if a shorted out keyboard is going to make me start now.  Not that I could figure it out anyway because it took me over twenty-four hours to realize that if the “two” key doesn’t work then there’s a pretty damn good chance that the “at symbol” key won’t work either seeing as how they are the same damn key.

How I don’t walk into more walls than I do, I’ll never know.

I spent four hours on Pottermore last night, fretting over what House I’d be in (Ravenclaw, bitches!) and debating on what type of pet I wanted to take to Hogwarts with me (a black cat that I have named Rupert).  Today, I have spent nearly an hour trying to find all 12 Chocolate Frog cards hidden in The Philosopher’s Stone.  I only need one more.

Seriously, it’s shit like this that is why we don’t have a cure for cancer yet.

While not nerding out over Harry Potter goodness, I have spent the past few days really trying to figure out my Halloween costume.  This time last year, I was already camped out on the floor gluing sequins to a piece of satin for my Elvis costume.

Thank ya, thank ya very much.

It should be said that the cape has been sitting in the corner of my room for nearly a year and has barely been touched, yet I still find sequins around the apartment.  I have yet to figure out how they get from my room to the front mat outside.

This year, just like Halloween ’09, I will probably have two costumes.  One for work, one for drinking.  I have won my work’s Halloween costume contest the past two years in a row, and I refuse to lose this year.  I don’t even know if we’re having a Halloween party/costume contest.  It doesn’t even matter.  I’m still dressing up.  I think I like dressing up for Halloween for the same reason I love writing: it gives me a chance to escape, to be someone else.  And being someone other than me is really fun sometimes.

Plus I really love making shit and doing crazy ass makeup.

For work, I am thinking of stealing this pop art costume.  Lichtenstein is one of my favorite pop art artists (or should it just be pop artist?  I really have no idea), and when I saw this makeup job a couple years ago, I was floored by the awesomeness.

I’m just fearful that, if I do this, I will either a) Rub my face at some point in the day and/or b) Look like I have a severe case of chickenpox.  And there’s always the worry of c) I will look like a drag queen.

The reasons why I (probably) won’t do this costume for actual Halloween are 1) I WILL rub my face at some point in the night and have red and black cream makeup smeared all over my face, clothes, other people and 2) Brian the Roommate wants to do coordinating costumes and he can stare at me all he wants, I refuse to be the Cogsworth to his Lumiere, even if it is the best animated example of our friendship.  I went as Elvis last year, and even though it was a girly version of Elvis, I think it’s best that I don’t go as a dude two Halloweens in a row.  The last suggestion was to go as Link and Zelda.  The costumes would be fun to make, but since I’m not a video game nerd, I don’t know if I’m completely invested.

That’s where you come in, blog reading folk.  What should Brian the Roommate and I go as for Halloween?  And he mostly vetoed my Black Swan/White Swan idea, so there’s no point in suggesting that again.  Sadly.

I should also say that I had no intention for this entry to go all Halloween-y.  Not that I had any idea where I was going with this entry.  Last time I was pumped to write an entry, I read my friend Andrea’s blog and felt compelled to watch Mitch Hedberg stand-up for damn near an hour and lost complete interest in blog writing.  The fact that this entry has two coherent sentences is a success in my book.

It’s amazing how easy and quick it is to fall into a new groove.

My best friend since, like, 1994 moved out of our apartment and off to the vast wilderness that is Pennsylvania at the end of June.  Naturally heartbroken and lonesome, I consoled myself the first few days alone in the apartment becoming engrossed in “30 Rock” on Netflix and having conversations with my cat past a level that is considered normal.  For people who have never owned pets or dislikes animals, I realize that talking to animals at all would be considered a weird behavior and that I would be in need of some sort of psychiatric help, but talking to your pet is totally acceptable.  And if I were you and didn’t like animals, I would be more concerned about the fact that I don’t have a soul, than some girl on the internet telling her cat that she’s just like Liz Lemon.  Quite frankly, I think the cat just wanted some peace and quiet during those first days.

And for me to stop watching “30 Rock”.  I don’t think Emmy, my awesomely fat cat, has caught the humor of the show.  In fact, I think she only sticks around because she knows she would never make it out in the wild, and to catch the little red dot from the laser pointer, of course.

This past month has been the first time in my life I’ve ever lived on my own.  That may not be acceptable since I’m 25.  But whatever.  I like having people around.  Plus, I don’t make enough money to live by myself.  Okay, correction.  I do make enough money to live alone, if I move into a basement apartment with no windows, get rid of my cat (not going to happen, no matter how bad her litter box stinks which happens to be A LOT right now), eat nothing but Ramen noodles (which is tricky since I’m a vegetarian and all of their noodles are seasoned with chicken or cow bone marrow or some shit), and change my name so the student loan company I’ve been paying every month and will continue to pay every month for the rest of my life can’t find me.  But, mostly, it’s the I don’t like to be alone kind of way.  And not in a clingy “I need to have someone around all the time” kind of way, but in the “I like to have someone to talk to and use as a human shield in case the apartment gets broken into” kind of way.

Regardless if it’s sad or not that I’ve never lived alone before, this past month I have attempted to embrace it.  I’ve still kept the common areas in decent shape, save for having Charlotte Russe jewelry on any available surface I find after a night at the bar.  But the best thing I have discovered about living alone?  And the thing that I’m going to miss most when my friend Brian moves in tomorrow?

Not wearing pants around my apartment.

It’s something I’ve never really been able to experience, having a roommate since moving out of my mom’s to go to college.  Not that I’m complaining about having roommates because, really, I’ve lived with some bomb ass people these past 7 years. Dear God.  7 years since I’ve graduated high school.  It hurts me to my core.  Anyway.  I’ve lived with some of the coolest people ever, and I wouldn’t give a month of being pantsless for those times.

But I’ve never roamed around my apartment pantsless with such reckless abandon when living with people as I have this past month.  It’s been liberating.  It’s made me more comfortable with myself.  It’s something that is still going to happen when Brian moves in and I just pray to God that he doesn’t walk into the apartment one day while I’m dancing around pantsless and singing along to “MMMBop”.

He’s probably praying for the same exact thing.

ps.  There’s a button on my page now where you can go and “like” my book, Always the Last to Know, on Facebook.  I highly recommend you doing that.  And then adding me as a friend because I have clever Facebook statuses from time to time.

I have Skype now.  And I’ve been logging in more frequently since I’ve stalked my little cousins who I don’t get to see too often out on there because, you know, I live here and they live there.  But keeping Skype open all the time has made me paranoid.   Now, to be fair, I’ve been paranoid in general since I got this computer.  It has a webcam built right in above the screen and I’m always a little worried that it’s recording and I’m not aware of it.  Then, one day, I’ll be going through My Documents and find a video and be all “what’s this?”, then open it, then have to hear what my singing voice really sounds like or see how sad I look gnoshing on pizza and declaring “oh my God, I really am Liz Lemon!” while sitting on my couch for 3253232 hours watching “30 Rock” on Netflix…

… then I will have to watch the entire video to count just how many times I compare myself to Liz Lemon.  Because I’m pretty sure I talk to myself more than I realize.  I could probably make a drinking game out of this.  Hmm.

So, I’m naturally paranoid about my computer anyway.  Adding Skype isn’t really any different than just having a webcam attached to my computer.  It’s just that now, people I know can video chat me and what if our cameras sync up and I don’t realize it and I’m dancing around the livingroom to “Runaway Baby” by Bruno Mars, which I’m wont to do at least twice a week?  Some people would have no problem uploading that right onto YouTube and then linking it to Facebook and tagging the shit out of it.  These “some people” would be my friends… or family members.  I wouldn’t blame them, of course.  Given the chance, I’d do the same to them.

Of course, most of my friends/family who are prone to dancing or acting like crazies already have videos of them doing said things on YouTube.  Which just goes to show that a good chunk of my friends and family are way cooler than me, and they should have blogs of their own and you should be reading their blogs instead of mine…

Or you should be figuring out a way to hack into my webcam because I’ve been singing along to “I Think I’m in Love with You” by Jessica Simpson like I was doing an over-the-top Broadway show for the past paragraph or so.

I’ve started writing fiction again.  I’ve been trying to work out these characters for so long and it’s to the point that the only way I’m going to figure out their story is to just write it.  So I’m writing.  The other night I wrote what may have been one of the best lines I’ve ever written.  Which isn’t saying much because my writing is pretty shitty.  But this time I think I squeezed out a diamond.  At the very least, a bit of fool’s gold.

The past year or so has really taken a toll on my writing.  I just haven’t wanted to work on any stories.  I’ve written my fair share of verses to silly Taylor Swift-esque country-pop songs, sure, but story telling?  Not so much.  I’ve been in this weird rut.  And I’m still there.  I try to be happy, just like I try to have something resembling self-esteem.  They say that if you’re not confident in yourself, to “fake it until you make it”.  I’ve been trying to do that, with my entire life lately.

I’m reaching the point that “faking it ’til I make it” isn’t working for me.  I’m rapidly approaching the “cut out the bullshit” part.  I need to get rid of things in my life that hold me back, push me down, or just make me feel bad.  And it’s got to be more than me turning off the TV when that ASPCA commercial with Sarah McLachlan and the sad animals comes on.  But it’s tricky.  Because one of the things that bums me out so bad also happens to be something that makes me incredibly happy.  I don’t know how to fix that.

It is, however, making great fodder for the story I’m working on.  So maybe I’m not supposed to fix it.  Just let it ride out.  If it doesn’t work itself out in my life, then maybe the characters in my story will have better luck.  In the story I’m working on, the main character is dealing with the same kind of issue.  She has something that hurts and she hates it, but she knows that without it, she wouldn’t be the person that she is.  But it sucks.  Oh, and that character also has a father out to kill her and a witch doctor locked up in a library.  But that’s not so important right now.  This is just one of those “what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger” kind of things…

Which isn’t always true, you know.

…

Remember when I wrote happy posts? Oi.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this before in this blog, but when I was a kid, my dream job was to be a Disney cartoonist.  You know, when I didn’t want to be a singer, actress, or that brief moment where I wanted to be a vet until I realized that euthanizing animals was part of the job too.  Oh, and I really didn’t want to stick my hand up any animal’s ass.  But mostly the killing animals part was what dissuaded me from that career.  I also wanted to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid.

The Disney cartoonist thing, though?  It stuck with me.  I’ve always loved to doodle and I can draw the hell out of Disney characters.  I remember an episode of Full House where they went to Disney World and Joey got to go in the animation studio and had a conversation with the cartoon version of himself.  Which wasn’t funny at all because Joey just wasn’t a funny character.  How they tried to pass him off as a comedian is completely beyond me.

Joey’s lack of humor aside, I loved that bit from Full House (who am I kidding?  I loved that whole freaking two-part episode and would watch it right now if I had it available to me), and it just made me want to be a Disney cartoonist even more.  This hasn’t been the only time a piece of entertainment has persuaded me to do anything.  My minor in history was partially chosen because of my love for the movie National Treasure.  That, and the six hours of AP credit I had from a high school history class.  Suffice it to say, I am heavily influenced by pop culture.

I’m an adult now (despite what my large collection of cartoons in my Netflix queue suggests) and since Disney has given a nice big “fuck you” to animation, my dream of being a Disney cartoonist is pretty much gone.  So I’ve decided that if I can’t make Disney history by drawing for one of their movies, then by God, I will own a piece of production art.  I scoured the internet last week looking for cels or concept art from The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, which are my top three Disney movies.  If I had my choice, I’d love an animation cel from The Little Mermaid, but I’m a realist on a serious budget.  I found a few pieces from the different movies, but they were so out of my price range that it was laughable.  I gave up, but still vowed to have a piece of production art from The Little Mermaid.

Now, I still intend to own a cel from The Little Mermaid, but… things happen in fun ways.  I’m on this classified list where I work.  And the other day, someone posted two production pieces from Aladdin.  One is a pencil sketch of Abu, the other is a pen sketch of Aladdin with Abu on his shoulder talking to Genie.  They are certified authentic Disney art, and a lady I work with knows the guy and vouched for him; this shit is legit.  I thought about it and decided that no, I didn’t need to spend the money.

Well, they showed up again today, and reduced a little.  I emailed the man and asked if he could wait until I got paid, I’d buy one of them, but if he had another buyer interested, to go ahead and sell to him/her.  He replied back immediately and is holding the pen sketch of Aladdin for me.  I know it’s silly and that my money could and should go to so many other things, but I am beyond excited about owning a piece of Disney history.  I told the man in an email that it matches absolutely nothing that I own, but I don’t care.  I don’t care at all.  All I know is that I’m so excited now and I don’t even have it in my possession yet.  I know this doesn’t mean anything to anyone reading this, but I’m just ecstatic.  It’s the closest I’ve come to touching my childhood dream job.

And if you want to help with my early-20′s dream of becoming a bestselling author, then you should know that my novel, Always the Last to Know, is available to purchase for those Kindle doo-hickie things for $5.99 with the promise that I have no idea if I set the manuscript up correctly.  If you’re interested in purchasing a copy, you can do that right over yonder at Amazon.com.  I’d appreciate it about as much as a Disney animated classic.  Seriously.

ps.  We all know that I’m going to end up buying both of the pieces of artwork for sale, right?  Okay then.

I haven’t written in ages.  And not just in this blog.  Aside from scribbling down lyrics to silly country songs while incredibly inebriated, I haven’t done any actual writing in months.  I kept wanting to update this blog, but wanted to make a roaring comeback and write something totally amazing.  So I kept waiting, and every week that went by without me writing meant that when I did start writing again, it would have to be glorious.  Like, Moses coming down the mountain with some stone tablets glorious.

Okay, maybe not that glorious.  But you catch my drift.

So, finally, I gave up.  And now I’m just writing.  And it won’t make sense because, I kid you not, I have spent the past 4+ hours on the internet looking at literally thousands of shower curtains.  I’ve recently moved on to bath accessories.  I skipped dinner tonight.  I never skip dinner.  Why am I on such a quest and why am I not spending all this free time trying to find a solution to world hunger or volunteering at the Humane Society or some other wonderful organization?

The answer to the me not helping out my fellow man and fuzzy-wuzzy animals:  I suck.

The answer to the shower curtain will take a little longer to explain.

My very best friend in all the world is moving away.  Far away for a couple months, then to another town completely after that.  This girl’s been my BFF since the third grade.  This friendship has lasted some 16 years, longer than both of our parents’ marriages, longer than the Friends series, and if I keep saying “longer than”, it’s going to turn into some perverted joke so let me just stop that now.  We’ve shared an apartment for the past three years.  Two of those years, we were in an apartment with another friend, but for the past year, it’s been me, her, and the 20-pound ball of cat fur known as Emmy.

Because I don’t know how to properly express (much less process) my emotions (which will be the cause of my heart attack at 28 years of age), I have spent my time since her move became 100% official planning craft projects and, as the case has been this evening, decorating the bathroom via the internet.  Which is how, after much scouring of the internet took place, I found this beauty of a shower curtain:

I found other shower curtains.  Grown-up shower curtains.  Non-tragedy shower curtains.  Those didn’t call out to me the way this shower curtain did.  And I think it’s because my subconscious is an asshole and knew that it would be impossible to match anything with this fucking thing.  Seriously.  Because I can’t do a traditional nautical theme with this curtain and also, I’m 25; my ovaries aren’t nearly shriveled up enough to entertain the idea of buoys and lifesaver wall decor.  And trying to incorporate cool little non-traditional pieces of nautical decor is equally impossible because cool little non-traditional pieces of nautical decor don’t friggin’ exist.  And if they do, they’re so expensive (and by “expensive”, I mean “more than $15″) that I just can’t make myself buy them.  The only two fun things I’ve seen have been a mermaid towel hook thing and a tin sign that says “S.S. Titanic” in small letters then, at the bottom in larger, all-cap letters “Poop deck”, which I think would be hysterical in a bathroom.  But I just can’t make myself buy it.  Because I know no one else would find it nearly as funny as I do, and most would judge me.  Even more than they originally judged me for seeing the sinking Titanic shower curtain and assuming that I have no respect for the dead and am a cold, heartless ice bitch.

But to prove that I am not a cold, heartless ice bitch and to keep with this whole nautical theme I’ve got going on right now, I wanted to share this guy’s blog with you all.  I’ve been lurking around this kid’s blog for a bit now.  I know absolutely nothing about boats, aside from what Andy Samberg and T-Pain have told me.  I live in a landlocked state; sailboats are out of my reach.  So reading about boats and sailing and the ocean from a twenty-something’s perspective (and not from Joseph Conrad and that damn “Heart of Darkness” book that I was required to read three times throughout my college career; I never made it past page 20 and I still got my degree, what up) is pretty gnarly to me.  Bo is a sailor and is currently planning a trip to sail around the world.  How cool is that?  He has recently reached out to the interwebs and asked if people would want to sponsor his trip.  I love this idea.  And since I’m too big of a chickenshit to try something like this, I am living vicariously through him.  To sponsor a mile is 10 bucks.  If you sponsor one of the first 100 miles, he’ll even shoot you a postcard from somewhere around the world.  There’s other stuff going on too, like videos and that kind of thing.  You can check all of the details out here.

I think that I have officially exhausted the topic of boats and oceans and all things water related.  And there’s really only one way to finish this entry.

I’ll write an honest-to-God entry someday soon, I promise.  But before I do, I have to ask:  Have you heard of The Original ScrapBox?  Well, if you craft and have no method to the madness, The ScrapBox is what you need.  At least, it’s what I need.  And the people at The Original ScrapBox are giving one away.  Hopefully to me.

So if you want to pine over something super extra gnarly, hope on over to their Facebook page and check it out.  And even enter in the contest to win one.  And please don’t gloat if you win.  It may break my little heart.