Armpit acne, anorexia and electro-shock therapy

Friday, April 24, 2009 / current mood: contemplative
The other day I woke up and I had a zit in my armpit. A. Zit. In. My. Armpit. How does this happen? And ew. There goes any thought of wearing a tank top for God knows how long. Just try popping a zit in your armpit. Go ahead and just think about popping a zit in your armpit. It’s impossible, first of all, and hurts like I would imagine plucking pubic hairs would be. Why would one even get a zit in their armpit? Maybe it’s from my new Teen Spirit Sexy flavored deodorant.

So my armpit zit and I spent the evening sitting on the sofa, watching TV when a show came on HBO called Thin that was about a bunch of girls in treatment for eating disorders. It was really sad and all that. But whenever I hear about eating disorders it always makes me think about my own Skinny Girl Syndrome. I’ve been skinny my whole life, sometimes too skinny and have always been plagued with that little twinge in the back of my mind that I’m getting fat whenever I gain even a little bit of weight. Now I would never do anything about it and could never be anorexic or bulimic but not because I know it’s wrong or anything but because I lack the commitment. I just like food too much to not eat at all and when I puke, it’s a traumatic experience for me. I cry and it hurts and I can’t force myself to yak at all. Even with the finger down the throat. *sigh*

While I’m in my DVR coma with my armpit zit thinking about how exhausting an eating disorder would be Scott calls me into the other room to once again fix the Playstation. He cannot for the life of him change out the Playstation and DVD player cords. So I go in and unplug one thing and when I go to plug in the other I get electrocuted. Ok, maybe I didn’t get electrocuted so much as shocked. A little bit. But it did make my fingers tingle for like two hours.

Ssssiiiiiigggggghhhhhhh…

Monday, April 20, 2009 / current mood: eh-

OF COURSE. My satellite dish just fell off the roof. Only my dish; everyone else’s is fine. Even funnier is that it wasn’t even windy when it fell off. You know why, don’t you? Because I just told everyone how super great it was having TV again. It’s like saying “what’s the worst that could happen?” or “nothing bad could possibly happen now!” or “sure, I’ll let you trim my hair, Scott.”

I am able to watch all the recorded shit though, so that’s a plus.

More bugs…

Monday, April 13, 2009 / current mood: grossed out

Today I met what is loosely translated into a “deer killer” spider. They are called this because they jump up and attack a deer and stick their teeth or stingers or whatever they have into the deer and kill it. It was a little spider, maybe about 2 inches long, it was white all over and had 8 creepy crawly legs. But the special part is that it also had 2 arms that reached out all scary and wanting to kill me like I was a deer.

First off I was thinking, oh God, oh God get that thing away from me. (The kitchen staff at the bar had caught it and put it in a jar.) Once I was informed of the name of the creepy crawly, my case of the willies began to subside and I was overcome with the absurd notion that they had deer here in Mexico. I’ve never seen a deer. Maybe because of this spider I haven’t. I’ve seen a bunch of mangy dogs and cats, a mini-horse, some peacocks, a turkey and some donkeys, but no deer.

This reminds me of a special day back when we lived in the trailer. I was asleep and all of a sudden the door opened and Scott shoved a jar in my face that contained the biggest, angriest most terrifying white scorpion I have ever seen. I already have issues with scorpions (remember the scorpion/leg hair incident) so imagine my reaction to being woken up from a dead sleep with one of the little devils right in my face.

The next day I wasn’t even entirely sure if it had happened, I thought maybe it was a horrible dream since Scott knows about my fear of scorpions. But when I asked he laughed and thought the look on my face when I saw the monster was apparently quite a hoot. The bastard.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Saturday, April 11, 2009 / current mood: fresh

I’ve been dreading the day I would run out of my Secret Clinical Strength and have to purchase some Mexican deodorant. I dreaded this because I’ve notice that pretty much the only fragrance of deodorant they sell here is Baby Powder Fresh, which I absolutely abhor. I’m very picky about how my pits smell for some reason. I’m particular about a lot of smells, but I don’t have a “wine-taster’s" nose or palette for that matter. I can’t for the life of me smell or taste the woodsy pine berry oak flavored smokiness of whatever that red stuff happens to be in my glass that will no doubt turn my teeth and lips purple while I try to look all classy drinking it.

But yeah, for some reason, every woman in Mexico wants to smell Baby Powder Fresh. Just to think about that particular scent causes my upper lip to twitch. The stores all carry an astonishing variety of brands of deodorant, but good luck finding any that are not Baby Powder Fresh scent.

Today I squeezed the last little bit out of my Secret Clinical Strength deodorant that I possibly could. (Not sure what the “clinical strength” in Secret Clinical Strength actually means. Is this like the strongest deodorant they could make that made the lab monkeys not smell like stanky hairy animals that sniff their own and each other’s butts with glee? Which begs the question: At what point of armpit stench have I gotten to where I have to use this particular “clinical” level of deodorant? Have I arrived at the stinky monkey butt-sniffing point?)

So just when I was starting to eyeball Scott’s Old Spice, (one thing worse than smelling like fresh baby powder: smelling like a spicy old man. I try to get Scott to buy another flavor but he would just as soon be wearing Butt-Sniffing Monkey Spice for all he cares. He gets the It’s What They Had At The Convenient Store deodorant.) I found, sitting on a shelf in a pharmacy all by itself, a stick of Teen Spirit. Flavor: Sexy.

I get home, absolutely thrilled about my Teen Spirit purchase and only slightly contemplating the surprising fact that they still make Teen Spirit, and I go straight into the bathroom (because it just seems wrong to apply deodorant in any other room of your house) and put on my Sexy Teen Spirit. The only thing is, instead of a stick of deodorant or the click kind that just smooshes the stick up, it’s a liquidy roller kind of deodorant. So after rolling on my Sexy I have to walk around for 5 minutes with my arms up in the air so my pits don’t stain my shirt.

What kind of shit is that? This roller deodorant makes my pits wet. So where I was previously just smelly, I now look sweaty. This is the stupidest idea ever. Roller deodorant. And as far as making Deodorant and Antiperspirant separate entities, well, what’s the point of having good-smelling sweaty pits or smelly dry ones? It’s a big Body Odor Industry Conspiracy.

My own personal pet cemetery, Mexican and otherwise

current mood: eh

Today the dog that ate my cat just had a batch (a litter?) of bastard puppies that I can’t help but fall in love with because–hello, puppies, cute!–and also feel totally responsible for their well being. Dammit all to hell and back again. The funny thing is (and this is probably only funny to me because Mexico has made me even more insane than I was before) that the cat that this dog ate was named Cow because she looked like one and one of the puppies of the dog that ate Cow looks like a cow. So now I want this cow-dog and I’m feeding and hovering over the mom like she was mine all along and didn’t eat my little Cow.



Cow was just the latest of my pets that have kicked the bucket. I have a long torrid history of pets that just seem to all get killed in horrible ways. I feel a bit responsible in the way that I have boat loads of bad luck and maybe this is transferring to my pets in a really bad death sort of way because they are smaller than me. I don’t feel responsible in the way that I didn’t personally kill any of my pets and I did have good intentions each time I “rescued” my animals. Poor things. When I walked into the humane society to pick out my kitties there should have been someone behind me yelling “dead cat walking” as I walked from cage to cage picking out which one’s time was up on death row instead of adopting it.



Before Cow there was Chloe. She was a Mexican puppy that some waiter we met named Flash (don’t know why he was called Flash) left behind when his dad came down here and forced him to go back home to the states because he was not being good in Mexico. (People usually aren’t.) So I take the little nugget home and for the longest time I think it’s a boy dog and am calling him Efren after the nice Mexican cop that helped me get my car out of the Impound where the cops killed our first Mexican puppy, Squishy. I had Chloe a grand total of maybe 3 months in which she grew exponentially and continued to want to sleep on my head. (I am a cat person. It freaks me out how big dogs get in such a short amount of time and how clingy they are.)

To make a long story short Chloe bit it. The dust, that is. Some bastard poisoned her. Not sure why someone would go out of their way to kill a dog in Mexico that actually belonged to someone instead of the random packs of crazed scraggly dogs I’ve talked about previously. Not sure why someone would go out of their way to kill a dog in Mexico in general.

Now we will move further back in time to my first Mexican pet mentioned above. A puppy I met when I first moved here whom I called Squishy because he had a broken leg. So my boyfriend Scott and I try to fix him up and take him in and feed him and he becomes our Squishy. The cops ended up killing Squishy in the Impound. They left him in the car but did take the time to steal my prescription Coach sunglasses. I hope that whatever bitch is wearing those sunglasses right now gets strange and horrible behind the eyeball headaches each time she puts them on.

Before my move to Mexico I lived in Arizona where I lost 2 cats to evil cat-eating coyotes. One named Ragamuffin (brother to Pootie), the other Lola. My mom always tries to tell me that they just got out one day and were roaming the neighborhood and some nice family took them in thinking they were strays and are now living on a ranch with lots of other cats to run around with and mice to eat.

She told me the same thing about the one and only dog my family ever owned: a retired greyhound named Susie-Q (she came with that lame name, I had nothing to do with it). Since we were much more a “Cat Family” than a “Dog Family” my mom told me that she and my dad gave Susie-Q to a nice family in Texas that owned several other greyhounds on a ranch with a lot of land that she could run around in circles on for the rest of her retirement. My mom, bless her heart, always lets it slip out years later that the lies she tells to placate us are complete fabrications and that Susie-Q got out and ran away and they have no idea what happened to her and that she probably got hit by a car or something. It’s not that my mom is a bad liar, it’s that she either feels really bad about lying in general or she just plain forgets that she was “trying to make you feel better.”

I’m a bit reluctant to get a new pet, but not reluctant enough to not get a new kitten. And I’m not getting a new kitten to replace Cow (and Chloe and Squishy and Ragamuffin and Lola and Susie-Q) but–actually, yeah, pretty much to replace Cow. I went out to look at a batch (once again, litter? Cluster? Whole heap?) of kittens to pick one to be my “New Cow” and as I pointed to the little white one and said “That one” in the back of my mind my finger turned into the boney finger of the Grim Reaper pointing to the little white cotton ball of fur and doomed the poor thing before it even had a chance to live it’s silly little cat life. I should probably just name it R.I.P. and start making the little kitty headstone now. (Now thinking about it, what would the headstone say? R.I.P., R.I.P.?)

I’ve been told that it is my bad luck that is killing these animals and that by wanting them, feeding them or just plain being around them is giving them their death sentence. Like I was walking by this house one day and they have this sort of doofy looking mini horse thing. He’s smaller than a pony but bigger than a mini-horse. He’s brown and white and his mane is black and sticks straight up in the air like a mohawk. I immediately loved him, named him Dexter, and wanted to take him home with me. (They never said anything about pets on my lease and he’s just a little horse.) Scott put his foot down on trying to liberate Dexter from his pseudo-mini-horse poo-covered coral and leading him to our apartment where I would have proceeded to tether him to the bars on our front window. So I resigned myself to feeding him carrots and apples and petting him and talking to him whenever I pass by.

When our neighbor Mike found out that I’d been feeding Dexter he shook his head and said very matter-of-factly that we should expect a meteor to shoot down from the sky any day now and squish Dexter into oblivion. But then he was kind enough to tell me that I could name the crater left by said meteor after Dexter. If I didn’t deep down know that he was most likely right I would have kicked him in each shin. Be on the look out for Dexter Crater coming soon to Puerto Peñasco.

A How To Guide for Spring Breakers: Get Mugged, Beat by the Policia, Depress Dorky Bartenders, Banned from the Bars and Rescued by a Mutt in One Night

current mood: seriously considering a career in arson

Spring Break in Rocky Point can be a difficult time for gringos, mostly because life in Rocky Point can be a difficult time for the Policia always. So when Spring Break rolls around, it’s their chance to make a little extra cash. My boyfriend Scott is walking home on the beach the other night and is mugged by a bunch of guys. Then somehow the cops show up and proceed to beat on my boyfriend some more with billy clubs. Why? I’m not really sure. Scott says it’s because he wouldn’t give them any more money.

Now, everywhere in Mexico they are saying to NEVER EVER give a cop money because it is extortion and they are ending all the corruption by getting a new police chief, new mayor, firing all the cops in town and hiring a bunch of brand spanking new ones. It says on websites and publications and makes for good reading at the border while you are waiting in the 4-5 hour lines that if a cop should ask you for money you should not give them any and follow them to the police station where you will fill out forms and pay money for said infraction there. If they insist on being paid right then and there you are to take their name, badge number and vehicle number and report them. What it does not tell you is what you should do if said cops begin to beat you with billy clubs. No time to take down names and badge numbers from the fetal position you are in as they are pounding away on your kidneys.

About this time either a cop or a mugger (same difference at this point) tries to drown Scott in the ocean by holding his head under the water. I’m not sure how or why (he’s not even sure the exact chain of events) but the muggers and cops leave and a random mangy dog has Scott by his broken nose and drags him out of the ocean. So he’s sitting there alone on the beach, beaten, bruised and soaking wet, with a dog slurping the ocean water off of his swollen face. At some point a beach security guard shows up and helps Scott to his security car where he offers him a change of clothes and a ride home. Surprisingly, the security guard did not ask for or try to beat any money out of Scott.

Well the next day Scott shows up at a bar fairly early, being all beat about the liver and kidney and broken nose and wanting a drink, and really, who can blame him? (I personally would have been on my deathbed in the hospital with a morphine drip permanently attached to my vein.) Well the bartender of this particular establishment, who I will call Johnny Vegas, proceeds to tell Scott that he can’t come into the bar for a month because it is depressing him that Scott has such bad luck and wants him to get his life together. So Scott is getting his life together this month at the bar next door.

Also, to bring a bit of Schadenfreude into it, this year’s Spring Break was a complete bust. And not the good kind of boob bust. Nobody is coming down here because it’s all scary and rapes and murders at the border, then when you get here, it’s all mugging and arrests and policia trying to take your money. All the owner’s of bars and restaurants and whatnot are saying that all this “not true and bad press” is hurting their business.

So the bar that banned Scott had these license plates made up that say “I Survived Mexico and I’m Going to Come Back!” But what I really think they should say is something like “I Survived Mexico and All I Got Was the Clap!” or “I Survived Mexico Today, But We’ll See How Tomorrow Goes!” or “I Survived Mexico, and All That Happened Was I Lost My Money, Beat Up By the Policia, Got the Clap, Banned from Most Bars, Lost My License and Passport in the Ocean and They Impounded My Car!” That last one may be a bit personal. Except for the Clap part. What is the Clap anyway? Like syphilis?

Speaking of The Clap, I once went with one of my friends who I will call Veronica to Urgent Care after her night with a bartender for what she assumed was a bladder infection. We were sitting in the room chatting and waiting for the doctor to come in, Veronica was sitting on the table and I was in an ugly orange plastic chair by the door when she busts out with, “I hope I don’t have The Clap,” really loud and echo-y in the room. It took me by such surprised and because it was so unexpected and in the middle of a completely different conversation I began to laugh uncontrollably.

I was clutching my sides and crying and leaned forward and fell out of the ugly orange chair with a huge clatter. A few seconds later the doctor pokes his head in looking all concerned by the noise and sees Veronica on the table red faced, wide-eyed and laughing and me on the floor, tears streaming down my face next to the overturned chair and asks if everything is ok. I wonder to this day if he heard the loud declaration of Veronica’s before the big crash. And what he actually expected to find when he opened the door.

Schadenfreude (and further decent into Haterville)

current mood: evil and happy about it

I can’t help but smirk, even laugh out loud sometimes when something bad happens to certain people that I love to hate–or hate to love, for that matter. Like how great was it when Britney went crazy, shaved her head, started dating the paparazzi and beat a car with an umbrella? That’s when Schadenfreude sets in. Schadenfreude is a German word that means to take pleasure in another’s misfortune. They don’t even have a word in English for that.

I’d like to say that I in no way take pleasure in anyone’s misfortune, but who am I kidding? Who is anyone kidding, for that matter? Not a single one of you hypocrites can honestly say that you didn’t smile when Mariah went crazy and worked out on her Stairmaster in stilettos, when you see the Gary Busey psycho scary mug shot, when Tara Reid got her hideous boob job and stood there in all her drunkenly ignorant bliss with one huge round scarred tit exposed for all the world to see for like 5 minutes before someone finally pulled the strap of her dress back up. Now that’s humor.

I even get a cruel pleasure from seeing the misfortune of the non-famous sometimes. But that is usually about people that I already don’t like or have been poopy to me at one point or another. Does this make me evil? No, I think it makes me normal.

Mexican cheese: good for nothing or am I just ‘not in the know’?

current mood: confused
There are 2 large-ish grocery stores in this little town. One is called SuperVal, the other SuperLey. We live by the SuperLey. Now, I get the Val, but the Ley? I just looked up ‘ley’ in the Spanish/English dictionary and ‘ley’ means ‘law’. So it means SuperLaw. I think it made more sense when it didn’t mean anything at all. Anyway, on our first ever shopping trip in Mexico we go to ‘SuperLaw’ and we buy bread and sandwich goodies and all that junk. They have an entire isle of oil. Just cooking oil as far as the eye can see. The rest of the shelves are half empty, but cooking oil, no problem there.

One thing I think I like but not sure is that everything is sold in single servings here. You don’t purchase a 6 pack of beer. You buy 6 cans of beer or maybe 5, if you are so inclined. See, the thing is that they will ring up each and every can anyway, so just get as many as you really truly want! You don’t buy a pack of gum, you buy sticks of gum. This goes for housewares too! Don’t think you might go and pick up a set of plates or silverware. Nope, you get one fork at a time, amigo. From a giant crap-shoot vat of mismatched forks.

Later that night Scott cooks up an interesting concoction of potatoes and sausage and cheese. But the slices of cheese won't melt. Not even a little bit. We had the fuckers sitting right on the flame and still nothing.

So I eventually pick up this magazine that the cover story just so happens to be about Mexican cheeses and it actually talks about how most of the cheese doesn't melt. How weird is that? What good is unmeltable cheese? I mean, really? Well, I guess they could make fire-retardant suits for the firemen out of that cheese. I think it would be best to Super Glue the slices onto fabric rather than attempting to sew the cheese into the form of a coat. The down side is that they would probably have packs of crazed hungry dogs chasing after them trying to eat their outfits. But the flames would be repelled. So they would have to weigh those options.

On top of the cheese fiasco, we couldn’t get any grease out of the meat or cheese. (I am told that when one cooks one sometimes requires a grease sort of residue for one reason or another.) Shoulda' rethought that oil purchase...

Good times and making out with Amy Winehouse, Bobby McHottie and a Nun in the snow…

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 / current mood: sullied and unusual
When I was a younger girl I was on some sort of retreat in the snow and I loved Bobby McHottie because he was a hottie and he sang in a band and had a chick hair cut and–let’s move on. So I loved Bobby and then the bastard started to make out with my bestest friend Amy Winehouse even when she looked her worst and all cracky.

So I drove off and went to the house we were staying at and there was a nun there who may or may not have been AmyWinehouse’s mom who would only send telegrams. Not because she was all virtuous and nun-like and swearing off modern technology because she had a flat screen and and iPhone, but because she was cheap.

So then I decided to not care that Bobby and Amy are making out and Amy and I go back to our room where I proceed to tell her that my brain is mush. Even though there was no crack smoking for me. Just for her. She did start to look better after she made out with McHottie, but not much. Because standing next to him, any girl would look bad. He is a very pretty boy. A very very pretty boy.

Ummm, yeah. Dreams are weird like that.

Beat myself about the face

current mood: arrrgh
I just got a black eye from the stove.

I fell off the bed, nothing too surprising there, but the super great part is that the stove is right next to the bed (that’s another story for another day) and my head landed on it. All about the eyeball area. I remember looking down at my hands and seeing them covered with blood. So of course I start with the screaming and the woozing and the dry heaving. I'm not very good with the whole blood thing.

Eventually I finally got the courage to check out the damage in the mirror and there is a gash in my eyebrow (the good eyebrow that does what I want it to do and doesn't have freaky random hairs pointing in all directions) and a very pretty black eye. It’s always fun trying to convince people that no, you didn’t fall into your boyfriend’s fist repeatedly and the cuts on his knuckles are completely unrelated… Trying to find the positive in the situation I think at least I'll have a cool eyebrow scar now. But I doubt anything besides fucking up the good eyebrow up will come of it.

I suppose I should look at this as an extremely lucky situation in that I didn't land on the corner of the stove with my eyeball instead of my eyebrow. That could have been very bad. Seriously though, would anyone be that surprised if I fell off the bed and poked my eyeball out with the stove? I totally wouldn’t get a fake eye either. I’d get an eye patch with a skull and crossbones made out of rhinestones. Like the entire eye patch would be made out of rhinestones.

‘Cause that’s how I roll.

The mystery of The Cement Slab...

Tuesday, August 26, 2008 / current mood: bored

Every day I walk to get food, water, beer, etc. and I pass this random perfectly square cement slab in the middle of the dirt road. And every day something different is going on with this slab. I'm not sure if I'm just not 'in the know' of said slab, but there is some pretty fucking weird shit going on.

There is a shrimp guy that parks his old ass Rodeo (yellow, probably painted with spray paint) and sells camarones out of the back. Smells like you would imagine an old ass Rodeo filled with shrimp on the side of the road in Mexico would smell. So there is always shrimp residue on the slab. This would be around 2pm.

I venture out later at, say, 8pm that very same evening and the Shrimp Guy is gone with his Rodeo and all his residue, sans the smell, of course. But now there are raw meat particles on the slab. Just pieces of raw meat! From what, I do not know. I don't think I really want to know anyway. I go out of my way to avoid the Raw Meat Slab on my way home.

The next morning on my daily trek I hesitantly pass The Slab again. The meat is gone (thank God) but now there is a pile of sand the size of a human being just chilling on it. Not the same dirt the road is made out of, but sand. Like from somewhere else. Hmm. Still smells like shrimp. And there are still dirty Mexico shrimp raw meat puddles of water all over the place. I go out of my way to avoid The Slab on my way home.

That very evening, on a beer mission, I pass by The Slab, business as usual. The sand is GONE. No meat, no sand, no shrimp water. Weird. Now I don't go out of my way to avoid The Slab. It's totally something I look forward to every day. What will be on The Slab and what won't be? Who took the sand? And for the love of god, why?

My life is retarded.

Mexican curbs and airbag burns

current mood: aggitated
I've always had a thing with the cars that I own. Like a bad luck thing. Oh, don't you worry. I have examples! Just when we got a new tire and the brakes fixed in AZ on my car, we take her back home to Mexico and I swear on all that is holy the day we get back we hit a curb.

Now, if you have been to Mexico, this should not be any big deal. Shoddy masonry and what not. But no. This has to be the strongest, most well built curb in the history of mankind. I mean, it stopped us cold, deployed the airbags, pushed the radiator pretty much into the front seat. They should construct buildings in earthquake and hurricane zones the way they built this curb. Nothing would move 'em.

Just a thought.

That bitch don't scare me (no more)....

Monday, August 25, 2008 / current mood: jedi
In this wonderful land of ocean and beach and sandy goodness, of dust and garbage sculptures, of subletting from cockroaches and of no traffic laws of any kind depending on the day, the cop and the mood he is in, there are dogs. This seedy, dark underworld of dogs. Tons and tons of crazy, hungry, cracked-out, psycho, scrawny, scraggly, parched, wild, dirty, mangy, barking, scary, grodey, whiney packs of Mexican dogs. Everywhere you go, whether it be a paved road, a dirt road or a dirt covered paved road, there will be a pack of dogs trying to eat your car.

Now my history with dogs has been harrowing, at best. Your little 5-year-old head in a German Shepherd's mouth will not salvage an already shaky relationship. I remember being wrapped up in a blanket and held in my mom’s arms in the front yard of our house one evening. I do think fireworks were involved which would explain why we were all standing outside in the cold at night and caused the hell beast to freak out in the first place. All I know is, I'm watching pretty sparkly things explode in the sky one second, and the next my head is being munched on by a big scary spawn of Satan.

Now, I'm not sure exactly how it all went down or how long it actually took, but somehow my dad and my uncle ran INSIDE to grab ... things, to get the dog off of the wife and kid outside. Instead of running to the wife and kid and trying to pull the crazed dog off of us. So the dog attacks and the men run inside. In what seemed like a millisecond later the dog, my mom and I are suddenly covered in white foam, head to toe. It is also now all over the front yard and the dog is no longer feasting upon my skull but rather whimpering away looking like a giant cotton ball with legs.

Apparently, these were the weapons retrieved from the house to use as instruments in the harrowing rescue: Uncle Mike grabbed a shotgun and Dad, the fire extinguisher. There are a few things I will never know or understand about this incident. Like why a fire extinguisher is the first thing that pops into my fathers head when his wife and daughter are being attacked in the front yard by a devil dog. Or why my dad had enough time to spray us, the front yard and the entire population of hell hounds in our neighborhood with fire foam before my uncle got a single shot off? What was he doing with the shotgun this whole time? And why was I covered with foam and not splattered evil doggy parts?

The next morning Dad comes inside from retrieving the paper with such a look of satisfaction on his face. Apparently he had just watched the neighbors across the street hosing off their German Shepherd in their front yard.

Needless to say, I'm scared shitless of dogs. Especially big toothy dogs. Especially big toothy packs of crazy dogs chasing my car.

So back in Mexico, Scott decides he is going to help me overcome my fear of dogs by telling me to get out of the safety of my car and chase after the crazed pack of Latin dogs and scream bloody hell at them. He stares at me expectantly after he tells me this little nugget of a helpful suggestion and I can only look at him as though he had just sprouted an extra butt cheek on his neck or absurdly asked me the circumference of a baseball in the middle of discussing what we should eat for dinner.

So he gets out of the car and proceeds to chase and scream at the dogs and they do run away. This idiocy actually works. Now I'm all not afraid of those mangy mutts. I'm starting to feel sort of bad for them because nobody loves them. They don't even have a humane society down here to humanely put them out of their misery. They just get to hop around on broken and missing limbs chasing after me until I get out and chase them away. How weird is it, though, that they will not chase me but they will chase my car.

The best neighbors EVER

current mood: amused
Wow, there are so many things to say about my neighbors I don't really know where to start. I guess it all begins with Carlos. Carlos is special. He barely speaks English. He barely speaks Spanish for that matter. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed. But a tool, nonetheless.

Carlos comes over every day and bangs on the door. Oh, Carlos doesn't need anything. Nothing at all. Nothing we can figure out, anyway. It's like playing charades with a mentally challenged blind deaf dog, but more difficult. He brings over porn and we keep telling him we don't want it. Then he wants to borrow our DVD player to which we say OK. But no, he wants to borrow the DVD player and watch porn in our house. I kid you not.

Carlos’ family business is what you would call a chop shop. I’m not exactly sure what a chop shop does, but I know they are not over there fixing cars. It really doesn’t seem like they are doing anything useful at all with them. One day there will be nothing, no cars but their own mismatched, really sad-sounding mini van that coughs and sputters and is just begging to be put out of it’s misery, and the next there will be like 20 piece of shit cars. (My theory is that they go and buy cars really cheap from the Impound.)

Their method of chopping these cars is entertaining, though, I will give them that. They somehow manage to turn the car over completely on its roof (I always seem to miss this part) and proceed to bang the crap out it with a sledgehammer. I'm not really sure why. It's been 4 months and I still don't know why.

For about a week this goes on, all the while little car corpses are piling up in the empty field across the street. Then one day, the corpses go away and for a couple of weeks they will have nothing to do but drink cheap Mexican beer, drive around their sickly mini van and send Carlos away to try watch his porn elsewhere. The really funny thing is that when we broke our car the neighbors got mad that we didn't take it to them to "fix". I expect any day now to walk outside and see my car on it's roof looking like a dead cockroach.

Yesterday Carlos and the familia were having a yard sale. When we first moved here Carlos came over and just out of the blue flat-out asked Scott for clothes. Scott has like 283 t-shirts with stupid shit written on them (one of my favorite’s is “Too Punk for Pussies, Too Pussy for Punks” – still not sure what that is supposed to mean) so he gave Carlos a bunch of these shirts and some jeans. So we supplied them with most of what they were selling at the yard sale and they totally had no problem or shame in charging us for our own stuff. And Carlos is still walking around in his same ratty shirt and shorts sans shoes trying to watch porn in our trailer.

The bathroom of doom

current mood: grossed out
The bathroom in my trailer is scary. Mostly because the general population of our roach friends live in there. So I will sit on my bed (the folded down dinette set) and stare down the hallway at the door of the bathroom with dread. The hallway gets longer and the door farther away, just like in the movies and the suspenseful scary music plays in my head.

When I absolutely can't hold it any longer I take a deep breath and slide open the door with trepidation and fear. I stand in the hallway and do a thorough once over, checking out all four walls, the ceiling and the sink for those disgusting gigantic bugs with their little antennae all feeling around all gross. So I sit and try to pee as fast as humanly possible because should one of those fuckers show up mid-stream, I don’t like to think of the realm of scenarios that could play out.

There is one big guy that has a white spot on his back that's been here since the beginning. We (Scott) can't catch him. Can't kill him. He's like the Ultimate Cockroach. The King of Cockroaches. The UberRoach. He is so huge we could put a collar on him and take him for walk. Which is something for us to consider: finally a pet that won't die. Even if he gets half smashed, loses some legs or his head falls off he’d just go on living. It would be actual hard work to kill him. Like we would really have to try and go out of our way to kill our pet roach. I only mention this because ever since I have been in Mexico, just to be owned by me is a death sentence for any pet.

Las Cucarachas de Infierno

As much as my boyfriend Scott tries to convince me that we share our casa (trailer) with a family of "water bugs", mine eyes do not deceive me. Those fuckers are COCKROACHES. Light brown ones at that. Makes them grosser somehow. Like usually they are dark brown, almost black. But these south of the border roaches are tan. They are the non-color. Ew. Big, grody tan creepy crawlies that probably have a party on me when I'm sleeping, crawling all over my vulnerable flesh, the bastards. Doing a little cockroach jig and shit...

Personally, I think they should be paying for at least half of the rent. I mean, there are more of them in this place than us. Sure, we may have smashed a few of them into oblivion (And when I say "we" are smashing them, I don't mean me. Not even a little bit.) But it’s survival of the fittest, right? Do they even have little itty bitty roach brains? Fuckers, they probably do. They are probably totally smarter than us too. Which is why they keep popping up out of nowhere scaring the pee out of me.

I hate cockroaches more than anything, ever. Where can I go where there will absolutely not be cockroaches? As with everything I’m sure I'd eventually have to weigh the pro's and con's on that one though. Like, go here to this jungle where there are absolutely no cockroaches but you may have to deal with monkey spiders. Spider monkeys, you mean? No, Monkey Spiders. Well, why do they call them that? Because they are spiders that are the size of monkeys. And eat them. They eat monkeys. So, you know, I'd have to definitely ponder that one a bit.

Great, now I'm all itchy.

When I was in high school we lived in a city that had a scorpion problem. We would every once in awhile find one of the little bastards on the wall or counter or something. One day I was attempting to clean my room and feel as though I pull a muscle in my foot. I lift up said foot and see a huge brown scorpion looking up all pissy at me.

After the screaming and the woozing, the swooning and the dry heaving, my new scorpion friend and I are taken to the hospital. I should really clarify that he was not going to the hospital with me because I was worried I had broken one of his little scorpion legs or anything; we took his carcass to the hospital so when they give me the anti-venom for my horribly fatal wound, they know what kind of little bastard stung me. In the end all they did was hook me up to an IV, check my vitals and tell me to, for the love of Christ calm down, it’s just a little sting, you aren't going to die.

But from the moment I arrived at the hospital the only thing that I was really concerned about was the fact that my legs were hairy and I didn't want anyone else to see that I was sporting my winter leg sweaters. I mean, I was way past the prickly cactus stage and well into soft wooly bushiness. I did everything in my power to stall and make up excuses to not take off my pants and have the doctors see my hairy ape legs. I faked further wooziness. I requested a CAT scan. I complained about tennis elbow. I asked if you needed to have ever played tennis to get tennis elbow.

My mother looks at me all annoyed and tells me to stop embarrassing her and then something to the effect that the doctors won't even notice my unshaven legs because they are 'medical' and see more disgusting things every day. I'm pretty sure she was trying to make me feel better.

But I eventually did remove my pants and get into that stupid paper gown and you could totally see my underwear through it. At this point I'm hyperventilating: the shaggy legs, the tattered and faded underwear. I couldn't even feel the pain from the sting anymore. The pain I felt was from the all-awkward, ridiculously self-conscious, complex-inducing ache of shame.

The doctor was a young guy, which made it so much worse when he lifted my leg to examine the wound. I call it a 'wound' even though it was the size of a pinprick. Despite my mother's promises that he wouldn't notice the scary forest he was holding in his hand, I saw that flicker of revulsion in his eyes when he tried not to look from the bottom of my now swollen foot to my furry shin. I did not imagine that small grimace, that quick look of disgust on his face. The horror was clearly evident on my own face and they are my legs. I turn and glower at my mother for her blatant lies.

When I returned home I limped into the bathroom and proceeded to try to shave. I got one done, but the other was starting to look like I had developed elephantiasis along with a really bad sunburn. My mom finally got me to stop mowing my one normal leg and to go lie down on the sofa since the scorpion poison had traveled up to my hip asking if it really mattered at this point if my fat red leg was fuzzy or not. Those were her exact words. I agreed that it did not, but in my mind I was now concerned that one leg was hairy and one wasn’t.

I have a talent for not seeing the big picture.

Fucking drama queens...

You know, I just LOOOOOOOOOVE drama. About as much as I would love a festering STD.

I also love people that are eternal victims. That turn around every situation, whether theirs or not, and say "poor me, poor me," and expect everyone to feel sorry for them. Did I mention that these 'situations' have absolutely nothing to do with these queens?

I also totally enjoy crazy people. I don't mean genuinely crazy people because, come on, who doesn't appreciate a bona fide nut job who is sincerely batshit bonkers, right? I mean crazy like, live in a total twisted reality and then try to drag every single sane passerby into their padded white room of paranoia and eighth grade little girl logic.

I have a particular fondness for people that consider themselves to be so overly important and that are utterly convinced that what they do is so monumental and consequential that no mere mortal could ever possibly understand the significance of their creative genius and how this creativity is such a colossal weight on their shoulders that they couldn't under any circumstances ever be happy about it. (On a side note: Dude, you just play a fucking instrument and write a catchy little ditty once every 6 years or so. Quit being so fucking DRAMATIC!!!)

My most favorite, however, is the "martyr". You know the one that believes that everyone is out to get him. That every single person is planning some diabolical plan, scheming against and undermining the poor innocent musician and taking advantage of his inability to say "NO". That every evil villain out there is wringing their fiendish little hands and laughing psychotically as their devilishly elaborate malicious 'plan' comes to fruition.

Yep, I love Crazy. I also love make-believe. But when Crazy can't tell the difference between reality and the insanity going on in his own retarded head, that's when things start to get a bit too dramatic for me.

And as for Crazy, believe what you want, because I know that you love to be the victim. Blame all the evil nasties that you surround yourself with for bringing you down and "going behind your naive little back" and taking away your ability to be happy. You are crumbling. Falling apart. And people are starting to see you for what you really are. Poor you.

*sniffles*

Disclaimer: All situations in which musicians are referenced are completely hypothetical, of course.

Life is a suckfest and I don’t even care!

I've learned so much in the past year, maybe the past 2 years of my life. I've learned how mean people can be. How much you can't rely on them, even if they are friends, even family. I've learned that I trust people way too easy. I've learned that I trust boys way too easy.

I've given my heart away way too fast too many times. I've given my money and my hospitality with no questions asked. I've lost friends and been betrayed and abandoned. I've been hurt, let down and disappointed more times than I can even count. I've shed tears on a weekly, if not daily basis. I've been in such physical and emotional pain that it overcame my desire to live my life.

Most of all, I've realized that I will never learn. I will never stop believing in people. Believing in humanity. I will never be a hopeless romantic because I will always be hopeful. I will always believe in love and family and friendship. And I know that no matter how much life sucks, there will always, ALWAYS be a silver lining on those clouds. It may come in the form of an act, a word or a person.

But it will come. And possibly save your life.

Interview Tactics and Why I’m Most Likely Still Unemployed

I really love hippos. You know when they ask you in interviews if you could be an animal what would you be and you are supposed to say something thoughtful and profound like a tiger or a wolf or eagle or something. Well, I always say a hippo. Because I like them. They are funny looking and just chill all day in a pond with their friends and wiggle their tiny ears around. But if a big ol' mean alligator comes around, that hippo opens it's ginormous mouth and eats the gator with those stupid looking peg teeth. I wonder what goes through the interviewer's head when a person says they would be a hippo and gives no explanation other than they are funny looking and have peg teeth.

I love when they ask about your strengths and weaknesses. Everyone gives the same scripted and rehearsed answers like, my strengths are my positive attitude, my ability take on several projects at once … blah blah. Then the doozie (is that really how you spell doozie? Doosie? Doozy?) is the weakness. Everyone says the same thing. I'm a perfectionist. But if we were honest in these interviews, what would we really say?

Q: Jenn, what are your strengths?
A: Well, I am quite an amazing multitasker. I can do my work, write emails, design my MySpace page and talk on my cell phone while reading my latest Us Weekly and shopping for shoes online.

Q: Ok, well what would you say was your biggest weakness?
A: That's a good question. Very original. I'd have to say my biggest weakness is that I steal office supplies by the boat load. Not that I have a boat. I also don't think you could afford me. Is that a weakness? That I'm expensive?

Q: Um, ok, if you could be any animal what would you choose?
A: I'd be a platypus.
Q: A platypus?
A: Yeah. (snicker)
Q: Why?
A: It's fun to say. Platypus. Say it. It's funny. Plus, is it a duck? A beaver? A mammal or a bird? What is it?
Q: So you think that a platypus represents you as a person?
A: You know when you say a word over and over it doesn't sound like a word anymore? Platypus. Who thought of that? Like toilet. Toilet. Toilet toilet toilet toiiiiilett. Doesn't sound like a word anymore, huh.

Q: What can you bring to our company that none of the other candidates have?
A: Big hair. Really, my hair is naturally big. I would even say that my hair is almost it's own entity. It's like you get two people for the price of one. Actually, could you pay me extra for the hair? And I wear glasses for real. Not just to look smart in an interview. I'm blind as a bat without them. Don't even get me started on my night vision...

What the..?

I'm sitting here in my north Snottsdale abode smelling all like cat piss (Ragamuffin has a bladder infection of all things...) thinking about life and shit.

This past week I was involved in a feud. It was as if I was watching it and not actually involved in it. It's weird how shit starts all around you and you have no idea because you're holed up in your hobbit home being all anti-social. So it was all "I challenge you to a duel" and then you get smacked in the face with a big chain mail alloy steel metal knight in shining armor glove and get knocked on your ass before you can even say "I accept" and hit them with something bigger because they already pulled out the big guns. Or gloves. I’m confusing myself with my own metaphors.