Career Change

TLC is definitely not letting me down today.

First, Say Yes to the Dress marathon, and not because I'm obsessed with getting married. I am, however, obsessed with people who are obsessed with getting married. The tears! The anger! The strangely hysterical high when they find the right dress!


Then, my first encounter with Extreme Couponing. Who are these people? They spend a minimum of 30 hours a week clipping coupons in order to add to their miniature supermarket basements full of bizarrely useless items.

One lady had over $4,000 diapers. And no babies. No kids, for that matter. She did, however ring up $1,200 dollars worth of groceries that she paid two dollars for. Oh, it's remarkable for sure. But what about the carpal tunnel in your scissor hand? What about the 300 boxes of cereal you have stacked in your bedroom? What does that do to your sex life?

Actually, after watching these people, it probably enhances it.

But probably most importantly, what about the fact that all of the food you just got for free is terrible for you? They say, "It's impossible to find coupons on meat or milk or produce. I don't buy anything full price."

You sick, fascinating person, you.

Then, there was Hoarders which needs no explanation. Sheer horror. Pure entertainment.

And finally, finally, High Stakes Sweepers. Super friendly people obviously high on Sweepstakes crack winning cars, vacations, beanbag chairs, and thousands upon thousands of dollars in straight-up checks.

Their idea of fun is taking their kids around the neighborhood on recycling day to take the caps off of Coke bottles. "People are throwing away winning opportunities!" one lady said. "We often win more pop, but then we get more bottle caps!" The circle of life, ladies and gentlemen.

Oh, and before you judge me too harshly, you should know that I definitively turned off the There's Something About Pipa special that came on midday.

She's attractive, she's royalty, and she exhibits no obvious psychotic behavior.

No thanks, TLC.

Another post about toilets

Last Friday started like any other day at the office. I walked from the subway to my building, climbed the stairs, and murmured hello (not too loud, not too soft) to the other people in my vicinity.

I then set my bag down at my desk (folding table), deposited my lunch in the fridge and turned on my computer. Task of the morning: read the 524 messages sent to the general inquiry email address that I'm responsible for checking.

Need help optimizing your website for search engines?

Delete.

I haven't received my membership card in the mail and it's been 2 whole hours.

Forward to someone who cares.

Do you guys sell heritage livestock?

Delete.

After about an hour of similarly mind-numbing work, I decided it was time for the first bathroom break of the day--not because I needed to go, but because that's how you break up your day when you work in an office.

Everyone does it, and every place of business has an inter-office bathroom rhythm. Test it out. The girl with horn-rimmed hipster glasses that works in some unidentifiable department?

She goes every morning between 10:02 and 10:10.

The middle-aged secretary who wears white sneakers for her commute? She throws her stuff down and goes to the bathroom the second she walks in the door.

Anyway, I try to change it up as much as possible--you know, keep things real. On this particular day, I decided to take my break a little earlier than I typically would. I mosied down the hall, turned the corner, pushed open the industrial metal door and walked to my favorite stall (you have one too).

I pushed the door with my fingertips, drawing the ritual out as long as possible. The hollow door swung open to reveal a perfectly clean toilet, untouched toilet paper and bubbles still floating in the basin from some kind of lemony-smelling detergent.

I'm not going to lie: I felt joy. Not "I just aced that test!" or "Free bagles this morning??" joy, but a different kind of joy. A tiny but pure burst of excitement.

I, Holly, was the first person to use the bathroom that day. Judge me--I don't care. Because I know that it has (or will) happen to all of you and you too will feel happy.

Moaning in public

Please forgive me for the subject of this post. I can't help it--I had to write about it.

Two days ago, I went into the public restrooms at Target. I walked in an innocent girl with a full bladder, and walked out a changed woman. Here's why.

The first thing I noticed as I rounded the corner was the guttural noises coming from a stall. Which stall? I don't know. They were frightening enough to send me into the first one. My first thought was, Oh my god, there's a man in here.

I stood, in my stall, listening for further clues. They came quickly by the way of heavy, heavy breathing. Breathing so heavy, I thought maybe someone was having a baby in the toilet, you know how they do on that show I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant?

The breathing was soon punctuated by moans and grunts of a wide variety. We got the pitiful, high pitched moans, the low angry moans (moans with a purpose). And just when I was starting to think I should find help: silence.

I stood (still with a full bladder) in my stall and waited. Seconds passed. And then, in the silence of the florescently-lit bathroom, I heard her/him/it say softly, to themselves:

"Ah. That is nasty."



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Death by syringe

I have felt, for the first time in my life, the urge to kill someone.

I'm not talking about that feeling you get when someone annoys you. Not that "God I could kill you" thing you say when you're frustrated with someone.

I felt the blind, bubbling-over desperation of true violence.

And, appropriately, it has to do with the love of my life, the reason I wake up in the morning, the most important thing in the world: my dog Sulley. You may remember him from my very first post on this blog and this adorable photo:


If you know me, you know that I would do anything for this dog. So, last Sunday, when he ran underneath the horse trailer in hot pursuit of a his fellow corgis, caught himself on a piece of metal, and slit his back open from one end to the other, I lost it.

I knew it was bad when my Mom screamed, "HOLLY! WALK AWAY!"
You see, I'm not too good with blood and injuries when it comes to animals. Humans, I can handle with a little gagging. Animals? Call the psych ward.

Needless to say, Sulley was in need of immediate medical care, and since we now live in the middle of nowhere, it was a race against time (really, dying flesh) to get him to a vet in time to have surgery before too much damage was done, blood was lost, etc.

Look at me talking about this calmly. I almost seem like I wasn't upset, don't I?

Well I was. I was hysterical. I almost hyperventilated. I sat in the back of the car, as my mom drove us to the nearby metropolis of Hampton, and sobbed. And Sulley looked at me, with his human eyes, and said, "It's O.K.! I'm O.K.! Don't be sad!"

So I cried more.

We finally arrive at the Hampton Animal Hospital and my mom rushes inside to tell them we have an emergency. She comes out, with her calm, cool, nurse self and says "They have a private room waiting for him. Let's go."

Turns out the "private room" is the intermediate room between the waiting room and the actual private rooms. It's probably where surgery would occur in a real vet's office, but instead the glass-fronted cabinets are full of model tractors. I start shooting my mom panicky looks because I'm too upset to verbalize anything.

I was on the brink of hysteria here. I'm pretty sure my mom was thinking, "She can't get any more upset than this. She'll calm down soon." But boy was she wrong, because she didn't know the immensely overweight, bad perm-job, clumsy handed vet tech was about to walk in.

Vet tech, upon seeing the edge of Sulley's wound from under my mom's truly superb wrapping job: Oh. My. God.
Me: death stare
Vet Tech: Mmmmmmmmmm. (Shakes head side to side slowly)
Me: death stare at Mom
Vet Tech, squatting down to look at the edge of the wound more closely: Oh dear god. Oh, ugh. We're going to have to put him to sleep. (She meant anesthesia, but poor choice of words, ma'am.)

She then proceeds to stand up and look at us with her eyebrows raised and her mouth pursed.
Vet tech: Is he...friendly? (disdainful look at Sulley)
Me: He's hurt. He's not himself.
Vet tech: Well my god. I just don't know about this.

And she exits the room.

I don't think she understood. I don't think she saw the fear, the pain, the rage in my eyes. I also don't think she saw that I saw the box of needles sitting on the counter. And she certainly couldn't see the little film that was playing out in my head, where I grabbed a needle, pushed it against her jugular and said,

"I will puncture your life with this needle if you don't see my dog immediately. I don't care if I go to jail. I don't care if the cops come and shoot me dead right now. You WILL fix my dog and you WILL do it right now. Is he friendly? Of course he's not fucking goddamn friendly. He has carved a hole out of his back the size of a basketball! Let me carve a wound like that in your back and see if you're friendly when I shove my fist into it!"

I am not a violent person. I am not an angry person. But for that moment, I could have been.

Luckily, the vet came in shortly afterward and had this conversation with my mother.
Vet: We can't see him until after 1 (it was 10:30). I have patients lined up.
Mom: Well this is an emergency.
Vet: But we weren't expecting you.
Mom: Isn't that the definition of an emergency?
Vet: Well I'll lose customers if I turn them away!
Mom: Forget it. Let's go Sulley.

And we did. We got in the car and drove an hour to my aunt's clinic, The Coastal Veterinary Clinic, where they saw Sulley immediately, and miraculously stitched him up. The had to remove a 2-inch wide, 6-inch long rectangle of skin and fat to close the wound. I told Sulley he got liposuction and not every dog gets the opportunity for plastic surgery, but he was too woozy to understand.


That's my dog on the improvised stretcher they made for him to get to the car. I would post pictures of the actual wound, but I know my Dad reads this blog and if there's one person in the whole word who can't handle injuries more than me, it's him.

You're welcome, Dad.

Oopsie

I never finished that post about the tacos, did I? I never finished so many things I said I was going to do on this blog.

Sigh.

I had some good material, too. You're just going to have to trust me on this one. But now it has evaporated out of my little pea brain and I'm going to have to start fresh.

I got a new blog, a real professional-lookin' one that uses my real name and doesn't talk about digestion problems and cussing out old ladies. But the more I post on it, with its sleek interface and complicated dashboard, the more I miss old faithful (this blog).

So I've come to the conclusion that, being unemployed and freshly graduated and all, I am going to keep this blog to vent. I mean, that's what it's been about this whole time, right? I guess I need one blog to write my serious work, and one to express the real me.

And then maybe I need a therapist to diagnose me with multiple personality disorder.

Oh! And before I forget, those tacos were reeeeeeal good.

Who knew?

When I decided I was going to visit Jeremy in Austin for Spring Break, I started doing research.

I'll give you a few guesses as to what I researched.

History?
Nope.

Art museums?
Nah.

Live music venues?
Sure didn't, despite the fact that my visit coincided with SXSW.

I researched breakfast tacos.

This is not entirely my fault. I started off just researching food--any and all kinds--but all everyone wants to talk about in Austin is breakfast tacos. So I played along--I read my fair share of blogs, websites, and magazines. Tacos versus burritos, bacon versus chorizo, egg versus potato.

I mean, doesn't everyone do breakfast burritos? And aren't they the same as breakfast tacos? I've had a burrito or two from Parker's here in Savannah, and it wasn't too bad, but it was no biscuit.

But hey, I'm always game. So I started out the week with a couple of different breakfast tacos from different places--some at the farmer's market booth, some at a coffee shop, and I'm going to say it: I was unimpressed. They were perfectly edible, and tortillas are quite handy for making ingredients portable, but I just didn't get it.

I didn't get it, at least, until Jeremy and I pulled up to this spot on Friday morning.











To be continued...

Someone get me out of here.

I thought this was just a gymnastics job. You know--point your toes, lift your chin--things like that.

Wrong. Apparently the kids I teach at the JEA (Jewish Educational Alliance) didn't get the memo.

I pride myself on being an educated, worldly young lady but I'll admit: I lived the first 18 years of my life without ever meeting a Jewish person. Thank you, small town South Carolina, for not preparing me for what just happened.

Not all of the kids who take gymnastics at the JEA are Jewish, but many of them are. The girls wear skirts, even at gymnastics, and the boys wear yamakas, even at gymnastics. It was my third or fourth week teaching these kids, specifically the 8 - 10 year olds when this happened:

One girl and two boys are arguing in whispers while standing in line to do their warm-up jumps. I, being the authority figure and resident badass, say:

"Guys, guys. No arguing in line."
Little girl who is, at this point, quite red in the face: "Coach Holly?"
Me, watching the other kids bounce down the line. "Mmhmm?"
Girl: "Is there such a thing is Jesus?"

Oh shit.

Boy who has uncanny ability to catch his yamaka while upside down: "Blake said there was no such thing as Jesus."
Blake looks at the ground shamefully.

I kind of look away, hoping they'll get distracted by my next statement:
"O.K., everyone straddle jumps all the way down!"

I glance at the trio out of the corner of my eye. They're looking at me with bewildered, painful expressions on their little faces.

And how, do you think, would someone like me (who has been to church a grand total of 10 times in my life and who has met a grand total of zero Jewish people in her life) answer such a question?

"This is gymnastics class. We only talk about gymnastics here. Get back to work."

Nice, Holly. Nice.

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