I was nominated by the lovely, Carrots In My Carryon to participate in the Love-Hate Challenge. I am pretty freaking stoked to do this, because there are so many things I hate. Yup. Hate. This doesn’t make me a horrible person, it makes me particular and tasteful, just in case anyone was wondering. Also, hate is just a word to describe a particularly strong emotion. If anyone feels things too strongly, it’s this gal.
Don’t forget: I will be listing 10 things I love as well, so calm down.
I guess I’m supposed to list the rules before I begin my assault at all horrible things.
1. List 10 things you love
2. List 10 things you hate
3. Nominate others to do the same thing
Yay.
I will be starting with the things I hate, so I can end with sunshine and rainbows.
So, here we go…
1. I freaking hate, HATE repetitive throat clearing. It grates on my nerves and tests my patience. It also makes me wonder if the throat-clearer is doing it on purpose distinctly to annoy others. Why else would one need to clear their throat 80 times in 10 minutes?
2. I hate when a stranger burps in close proximity to me. On the airplane the other day, a dude sitting next to me belched and didn’t cover his mouth. I almost went ape shit all over him. I DO NOT want air, laced with your stomach contents, entering my nostrils, or any opening on my body. Cover it up or swallow your nasty face fart. Please and thank you.
3. I hate, detest being hot. It makes me sweaty. It makes me cranky. It makes me feel like poop. If I could walk around with a fan, constantly blowing cold air on me, I freaking would. I don’t even care how insane it would look. Quite unfairly, I always run hot. When most people are bundling up in their cardigans inside a movie theater, I am suffering from boob, and every other kind of crevice sweat you can imagine. I don’t even want to think about how monstrous I will behave when going through the “change” *shudders*.
4. I hate Walmart. I mean, who doesn’t, but I would win, hands down, for haterest of the haters. I am very proud to say, I have not been in a Walmart for a year. I could say it’s been a lot longer, if it weren’t for a certain friend who convinced me I’d find what I was looking for if I just broke down and went. She was right, but I hated every snotty-nosed-child-screaming-adult-pant-shitter-inept-employee-picking-their-ass second of it. It’s just a more peaceful world when Katie doesn’t have to frequent that hellhole, mmkay?
5. I hate people who pretend like they’re listening, but they’re mentally making their grocery list instead. Don’t ask me about my weekend, or upcoming plans if you have no intentions on really listening. If you don’t really care, that’s cool. I don’t really care for small talk either, if we are being honest. Let’s not waste each other’s time. Just don’t ask, if you aren’t really good at feigning interest. Some people can tell. Alright?
6. I hate the smell of latex. I’m gagging right now, as I type. Eckgrr…I hate that I have to choose between latex stanky hands and prune fingers when doing the dishes. Both are curses from the devil. Life really is unfair.
7. I hate polish sausage. Growing up with a Polish (oh, excuse me, Lithuanian) father, meant polish sausage at least once a week. I.cannot.stand.that.ish. Cannot. It’s made with fried potatoes and onions, which are otherwise quite tasty, but when cooked with the sausage, they taste like feet with a side of bad breath. I started hating polish sausage when after asking my dad what we were having for dinner once, he said, “Pig snouts”. I had JUST seen pig snouts at the grocery store and I thought he was serious. I had nightmares consisting of snout-less pigs dancing on potatoes that night and that was it for polish sausage and me.
8. I hate doing laundry. It’s the most depressing, endless chore, hands down. You can spend an almost entire day, one of your precious days off from work, doing mountains of laundry. Once the last sock has found its mate and the last wrinkled shirt is hung, you feel satisfaction for precisely 30 seconds. You then realize that you will be needing to do this arduous bullshit again in just a week’s time. Deflated is putting it mildly. Then, your boyfriend finds a pile of clothes hiding under the bed, and you wonder why you even try to be an adult. It’s too much work.
9. I hate autocorrect. With a fucking passion. 9 times out of 10 it’s so far from being right, it’d be laughable, if it weren’t for the fact I’ve been trying to type “irreversible” for 10 ducking minutes, to no avail. Smartphone, my ass! Shut!
10. I hate people who smoke right outside stores or places where other people need to walk. I make it a choice to not smoke and fill my body with toxins. When asshole in the Nascar jacket feels the need to smoke right next to the entrance to 7-11, I want to fart directly in his mouth and see how he likes it. I bet it wouldn’t be so enjoyable.
Now for the freakin sunshine and rainbows.
1. I love being pampered. I’m all about massages, pedicures, manicures and scalp treatments. If I could afford to get a massage and a pedicure every week, it would so be happening! If I could hire someone to give me a head massage every night, well, better start applying!
2. I love talking to myself. I don’t answer myself, so it’s OK. I’m not that loony. If I’m particularly stressed, I talk it out. It’s no biggie. Except when you get caught…years ago when I was living in BFE, I was driving home after a pretty craptastic day. I was going at it, in the car, calling out all the stupid people and things I had to put up with that day. I thought it had been a pretty successful chat. I got home, parked, and resumed my afternoon without thinking about my little tirade in the car again. Later that evening, a friend posted on my Facebook that she saw me driving home and, “You must have been listening to a really great song, you were singing and dancing like there was no tomorrow”. I bet that was a fucking sight. Now, I reserve any talking it out for home, when no one is home.
3. I love freaking sprinkles! LOVE THEM. Most normal people think they are disgusting and taste like chalk. I think they are the prettiest, tastiest, most lovely little morsels ever created. To me, the most beautiful sight to behold is a cupcake with light-as-air buttercream frosting bespeckled with rainbow sprinkles. Pure perfection.
4. I love being at home. I am an introvert at heart, so where I am happiest is in my fat pants, on my couch, with my Netflix. I love going out for lunch with friends, going shopping, lounging at the lake, but those things are really only fun because I know that after them, I get to go home and take my bra off.
5. I love getting new, feel-all-the-feels music and getting in my car and driving. For some reason, new music sounds best in the car. I turn it loud, roll the windows down, and let it go.
6. I love talking to my mom. She listens, like really listens. So many people, and i am guilty of it too, don’t listen to listen, but to respond. Most people don’t really listen, because they are waiting for their turn to speak, or they are thinking up what they want to say next. My mom is a rarity, in that she listens with not just her ears, but also her eyes and heart.
7. I love the shit out of watermelon. I can easily eat half a small watermelon in one sitting. They are sweet and so satisfying. I also don’t feel too guilty about horking out on an entire watermelon, because they are like 90% water. Right??
8. I love carbs. If I could subsist on bagels, pasta, cupcakes, belgian waffles, sticky rice, and fries, I totally would. I know I could survive on these tasty-as-shit carb bombs, so I guess I meant to say, if I could eat these things and not get more fat, I would be the happiest girl in the world.
9. I love clouds. Like, I am obsessed with them. I take pictures of clouds, on the daily, add filters, and the hashtag “cloudporn” like that annoying person we all try to ‘unfriend’ on Faceboob. I am sure no one looks at my cloud pictures like they are works of art. They are pictures of clouds with an unnatural tint to them, thanks to Instagram. They are nothing special to anyone else but me. I love them. They are my babies.
10. I love teaching, because kids are funny little things. They don’t mean to be funny, and that is precisely what makes them so damn funny. One of my favorite quotes from my students was from a 3rd grader I had last year. She loved to write and tried to use phrases she didn’t yet understand how to use properly. it was incredibly endearing. She was writing about something unbelievable that happened to her over the weekend and said, “Teacher, it was so crasy, it blew my mind off”. That is pretty crazy! There is truly a never dull day in the life of a teacher.
There you have it, folks, my top 10 loves and hates. Now, I nominate Cat in the Cactus because her and Carrots In My Carryon are my faves!
Tag: love
Sister
It was just a usual Sunday evening, you know the kind…homemade spaghetti, repetitive arguments, and loving banter. Every Sunday evening, without fail, I would join my parents and brother for a family meal. It was tradition, and a necessity (I always had tons of laundry to do).
On this ordinary Sunday, 7 years ago, the phone rang. I was lounging on the couch, not wanting to move, for fear I would explode from the copious amounts of carbs consumed. My brother was sneaking a cigarette on the back porch. My parents were having their after dinner guilt cigarette in the garage. The call went to the machine. Out of nowhere, a voice.
Dad, pick up. I know you’re there. Dad…
I sat up stick straight. Surely it was a mistake, a wrong number? But, something felt familiar about that voice. It was my voice. How many times had I called my parents and left the same exact message?
My brother came around the corner from the living room, and just stared at me. I stared back.
In a trance, we walked together to the garage. We just stared at our parents. They knew. They knew we knew.
Well, here we go, they said.
Here we go.
From then on, my life was drastically altered. On that lazy, regular, nothing-special-Sunday, I found out that I had two sisters. Sisters.
I don’t want to get into the why’s and how’s of the happenstance that one who had yearned for the connection of a sister all her life, in fact, had sisters all along, yet didn’t find out until the ripe old age of 25. I will say that my dad was married before my mother and he had two daughters. The divorce from his first wife was not pretty and thus, you have two seperate families, existing a continent apart from each other.
How can a mother tell her daughter that she has sisters, sisters she will likely never meet due to the circumstances surrounding their father’s estrangement? Especially when that daughter really wanted a sister named Summer and she cried as if the world were ending when she found out her new sibling was a brother, named Jarrett (does that make me a bad person?)
I never connected with the sister who called looking for our dad, but through her, I found Tracy.
How can I express how I felt during the hours, days, months after first speaking to the sister I always wanted, until that humid day in Philadephia when I first laid eyes on her? I don’t think I have the literary ability, or its impossible to articulate into words the emotion felt when you finally find your kindred spirit.
We spoke every day. Our conversations were filled with questions, so many questions.
What is your favorite food? What kind of music do you like? What is your favorite color? Who are you? Who have you been all these years I didn’t know you?
Despite never being raised together, Tracy and I share likenesses that are uncanny. Despite the fact she’s 16 years older than me, we are like long-lost twins. I could go into every way we are the same, but it may not mean the same to you as it does to us.
I was sweating profusely and didn’t sleep a wink during the entire red eye to Philadelphia. Meeting someone for the first time is always scary, but to meet your sister for the first time? Maddeningly nerve-wracking. Doubts plagued my thoughts.
What if we don’t get along? What if it’s awkward? What if…
The second I laid eyes on her, a sense of knowing crept though my veins.
Why of course, there you are.
I knew her. She was my sister. Never having met her, yet she was always there, being my sister. Through every lost tooth, knee scrape, broken heart, she’s always been there.
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Ugly Sleep
Don’t get me wrong, I adore waking up to my boyfriend’s adorable sleeping face. Most days. Yes, I love feeling his warmth against me as he peacefully dreams, and all that mushy shit. But, let’s be real here. Those memes that paint the picture that love is sleeping like you’re one big romantic pretzel are bullshit.
This looks fucking awful. I bet his breath smells like hot Limburger cheese.
Let’s be honest, here. I’m going to paint a true portrait of what it’s like to share the same bed with someone.
First, I’m going to break it down to how sleeping with your significant other changes during the different stages of your relationship.
In the beginning, during that fateful “first sleep”, you don’t actually sleep. Instead, you lay perfectly still so as to not wake the other person. You don’t want to portray, so early on, that you sleep like an epileptic Tasmanian Devil. Not yet. Additionally, you fail to sleep because you must concentrate on never opening your mouth. No one likes a mouth breather, especially after you’ve had chicken cesear salad for dinner.
Not only must you keep your mouth odor to yourself, you can’t, for a second, allow your body to relax. You don’t want your bowels to believe it’s “a go” to expel any gas. Farting on your first night together, especially if your fart smells like hot salad, would be the absolute worst thing to happen.
Eventually, you relax enough to actually sleep and you feel euphoric that you shared such an intimate, beautiful thing together. Cuddling sometimes occurs, as does morning kisses. Either you don’t smell each other’s breath, because you both secretly brushed your teeth prior to “waking up”, or you’re too happy to care your breath smells like something died.
Somehow, your communal sleeping habits move from nose-breathing picturesque statue and sickeningly romantic, to something so ugly. So scary.
When my boyfriend and I first started dating, I was so scared to pop the fart cherry. You know, getting past that first fart in front of the same person you don’t let know you pluck hairs from your chin? It was so scary, and so painful. If the gas was too intense, I would pretend I left something in my car, so that I could go outside to let them fly. I recall a time when he, too, used to be embarrassed to fart in my presence and would actually say, “Oh! Excuse me!” Gone are those days.
Like easing up on farting in each other’s presence, so has our sleeping-with-someone-new-rituals. Nose breathing all night long is just not realistic, so full-on-gaping-mouth breathing complete with drool is what’s happening now. You don’t really know someone until you’ve smelled breakfast, lunch, and dinner on their breath.
The idea to write on this topic came the other night when, while rolling over, I almost lost an eye to the corner of my boyfriend’s man-sized pillow. It’s this behemoth down pillow with really poky corners, sharp as tacks. I secretly think that’s how he’s going to do me in. Who will ever be charged with murder by pillow corner?
As I laid there, feeling grateful I still had two eyes, I pondered how the way we sleep is the direct opposite of how every “love meme” says its done. As I listened to his even breathing, mixed in with a fart here, and a fart there, I wondered how we got past that too-embarrassed-to-be-a-real-human stage. I figured it all comes down to the fact that it hurts to hold farts in, and breathing your morning breath into someone’s face, is just another way of saying, “I love you”.
When your relationship has made it past the first, surreal, romantic “get a room” months, sleeping gets real and it gets ugly. If you can honestly say you or your significant other has not farted in bed, laughed, and said, “I was just warming up the bed for you, because I’m romantic as shit”, you’re a fucking liar. If you don’t wake up looking like Amy Winehouse, after a binge, you’re an alien. If you still sleep with your mouth as far away from your lover as possible, give it up. Pretty sleep is no way to live. I don’t love my boyfriend any less because I recoil when his frigid toes touch me in the night. He doesn’t find me less attractive even when dried drool cakes my eye shut. We both understand we don’t have to sleep like horny teenagers to be in love. “Ugly sleep” wins over shitty “pretty sleep” every time.
We all wish we looked like Snow White while sleeping. Just like having Kylie Jenner “asshole lips” is unrealistic, so is looking pretty while snoring.
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Blanket Yoga
Guys, I just discovered Restorative Yoga, and it is the best thing ever. EVER.
A few days ago, my aunt and I were discussing my new yoga journey. I was trying to express to her how hot and challenging my yoga sessions have been. How do you, in speaking words, explain a hot that is suffocating? How do you adequately explain to someone that during your yoga-ing, you wish you were never born? How do you do this, and at the same time express that you love it in a very masochistic way? I think that she is still worried for my safety and well-being. I guess I did not explain myself properly.
So, this was how she invited me to be a part of her yoga experience. Let me just quote her:
“It is all very calming. When I leave, I feel like I just had a massage. You lay down the whole time and they cover you with blankets…”
Blankets.
All I heard was “blankets”.
I asked her, “Do you mean to tell me, when you do yoga you get to lay down the whole time? You get blankets?”
SHUT.THE.FRONT.DOOR.
I truly thought she had to be lying. Who has ever heard of “Blanket Yoga”? I was intrigued, and thus, I attended with her yesterday.
I would like to make it clear, and to absolve my aunt of all assumptions made about her character, by saying, “BLANKETS”.
No shit, during restorative yoga, you practice your breath and lay down. The whole time. It was better than any exercise or health class I have ever taken. I did not expel one drip of sweat. I did not have to spray down my mat with a hose after, and I did not have to wash my hair. It was beautiful.
At one point, we made ourselves a makeshift lay-down chair with blankets, and enjoyed just relaxing for a good 20 minutes. During, the instructor came around and gently laid eye pillows, scented with lavender on our closed eyelids, and then she covered us with blankets. She tucked me in.
I cannot fully express my love of this yoga session thoroughly. I do not have the literary skill.
All I can say is that I will be attending “Blanket Yoga” from here on out, for all eternity.
Thank you, Auntie Dana, GOD BLESS YOU.