"Certainly Edith was no Gertrude Stein. [...] Still, she was quite funny and in my experience funny people are seldom stupid."*

   Well it should come as no surprise that Lindsay Lohan’s most recent foray into film, Lifetime Original’s Liz and Dick, was truly terrible. And I loved every heinous minute of it. It was so cringe-inducing that I had to pause on occasion to take deep breaths and remind myself that no one was forcing me to watch it (I've only had to take deep breaths on these films in the past: American History X, The Exorcist, and The Haunting, which should give you a good idea of how truly wretched Liz and Dick was. These other films were either gratuitously violent and/or horror films. yep). I could’ve turned it off at any moment, but it was the proverbial train wreck: super awful but so utterly impossible to look away. I mean, seriously, it was soooooo bad. And so good, you know?

   But I won’t spend any more time on the issue. It’s tedious and lame and not too many people care about it besides me.

   Let’s talk about someone EVEN YOUNGER than Lindsay Lohan who has is all going on.

   I’m in love (in a mostly non-sexual way) with a woman. Her name is Lena Dunham and I'm pretty sure everyone knows who she is and what she does and please, can someone figure out how she and I can be friends?

From Vanity Fair. An imaginary interchange between Paul Ryan and Lena, which I chose to cut out because it was weird and not in the good way.

   Here’s the thing about Lena: she writes/directs/stars in the show (Girls, on HBO) that I should’ve written/directed/starred in. You know why she’s writing it and I’m not? Because she’s a) the genetic product of two artists from New York; b) she’s brave and completely willing to make a fool of herself/plumb the depths of her real-life for comedy; and c) way more talented and funny than I could ever hope to be.

   I love dark comedy and I love painfully awkward moments (just this evening, Gabe described my life as a "Comedy of Errors"...so true). I love watching pseudo-intellectual people sitting around having conversations about seemingly unsolvable first-world problems that don’t actually matter in the grand scheme of life. And Lena Dunham's show revels in these things.

From the news. A.K.A. Us Weekly.

   Why, why, why isn’t she my best friend? I’m probably too old to be her best friend, but she’s not too young to be mine. And even if she never wants to be friends, I would be more than willing to get her coffee and rub her feet on set between takes. Seriously.

From Marie Claire.

   And they say the Millennials have nothing to offer. They've got it all going on over the previous generations: they know everything about social media and new technology and how to build an "internet presence." What do I know? How to type in the fashion that has been taught to secretaries since the invention of the typewriter? (It's true: my class in high school was the last to take a semester in "keyboarding": in this class we LITERALLY learned how to TYPE. The year after that our high school got computers that were made post-1983 and then they taught all the subsequent students computer programming and how to use the goddamn Internet.) They say the Millennials don't know how to focus, that they think in text format and therefore can't comprehend long sentence structure or fathom how to read a book. I say: does it matter? No one's ever wanted to offer me money for my thoughts on an 1100-page novel. And seriously, I read long books all the time. NO ONE CARES. Because knowing how to read is the modern day equivalent of knowing how to poop: everyone can do it, and you should probably keep it to yourself.

   Anyway, Lena is willing to be ugly and gross along side being cute and adorable and brilliant and I think that takes some massive ovaries. She's my idol and if anyone knows her, please ask her to be my friend. Even if it's just on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or whatever else is going on that I'm too old to know about.

*From Snobs, a novel by Julian Fellowes. He's the bloke responsible for the writing of Gosford Park and the creation of Downtown Abbey.

"What the hell are you driving here?" "We had a small fire last night, but we caught it in the nick of time." "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" "Funny enough, I was just talking to my friend about that. Our speedometer has melted and as a result it's very hard to see with any degree of accuracy exactly how fast we were going."*

   I regret the decision to write about Planes, Trains and Automobiles in my last post. For those who haven’t seen it because they care nothing about culture or the world in which they live, it is a movie about a man (Neal/Steve Martin) who is attempting to get home to Chicago from a work trip in New York in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. In New York he stumbles upon Del (John Candy) a shower ring salesman who inadvertently poops all over every attempt Neal makes to get home. The two wind up traveling together on planes, trains (though I honestly don’t remember a train part—but I’m sure it’s in there) and also in automobiles. And it’s rough. It takes days. And Del is a slobbish buffoon who makes life hell for Neal, who doesn’t really have the holiday spirit (Thanksgiving holiday spirit, not Christmas) in his heart to begin with. But then it stops being funny and gets sad and I can’t stand it. Intrigued? Because you probably should be.

Neal and Del have an accident. (Photo)

   I regret my decision to bring this movie up because I’m pretty sure I planes, trains and automobiles-ed myself by even mentioning it. It’s like saying Candy Man three times or mentioning the name Macbeth in a theatre. It’s bad luck and/or certain death. I’m Irish, was raised Catholic, and spent the first 28 years of my life in theatres so it’s okay for me to be superstitious to a decidedly ridiculous degree. I have no choice in the matter and can't do anything about it, anyway. Just ask my Tarot deck and my Ouija Board.

   The shit started with a phone call around 12:30 on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. It was Primetime Shuttle calling to inform me that my shuttle would be arriving at 1:05 pm instead of 1:20. That was surprising in and of itself because I’d scheduled the ride for 1:50. So despite being butt-naked and just out of the shower (you're welcome for that imagery) I had to bust ass to get ready on time and having done that, I sat on the couch and turned on My Best Friend’s Wedding to pass the 5 minutes until the shuttle arrived. At 1:25, I called Primetime Shuttle and said, “Hey, not to be a pest, but where the fuck are you? I’m already to the part where Cameron Diaz sings karaoke.” And they said don’t worry, the driver will be there at 1:35. Then the driver called at 1:45 and said he was 5 minutes away. So I went outside and waited and he showed up at 2:10. (He also took a truly asinine way to the airport and had trouble realizing he was driving a conversion van and not a Camaro and nearly killed us about 8 times. Whatever.)

Traveling image: Best part of Thanksgiving. I walked with my family at Neale Woods. Omaha skyline in the background. Traveling on foot seems to be the best mode of transit for me, across-the-board.

   So then I got on a plane to Las Vegas and sat there for four hours due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control. I really don’t know why the flight was delayed so long. They never told me. But the Las Vegas airport is an especially depressing place and flights never leave on time from there, so I don’t know why I keep going back. Oh yeah, and I had to spend my eating money on tampons because…well, for obvious reasons, and the tampons cost way more than normal tampons and they were embarrassing to buy in a way they never are when I buy them at Target.

   When I arrived in Omaha, it was 1:40 in the morning. Normally Omaha's Epply Airfield stops receiving flights around 11:30. It's two terminals and 2 random dudes running baggage to the carousels. Seriously. So I called my Mom figuring she’d be glad that I’d gotten in 20 minutes earlier than expected, but she didn’t answer the phone. Because she was asleep. Which is totally fair because it was 2 in the goddamn morning. But she kept not answering her cell, so I finally called the home phone and no one answered that either. When she called me back at 2:06 a.m. I was relieved because most of the people were gone…and so were all of the (3) cabs. It wasn’t that big of a deal—she’d set her alarm for another day. And my mom doesn’t regularly keep finding projects to work on til 2 in the morning like I do. I blame it on Las Vegas, but more than that I blame it on the fact that I wrote about Planes, Trains and Automobiles right before I flew home for Thanksgiving. 

An Omaha gas station. Also loosely related to travel.

   Then on Saturday I ate lunch at Runza. If you’re not from Nebraska, there’s a good chance you don’t know what Runza is. Don’t worry about it. It’s kind of embarrassing, but all you need to know is it’s a fast-food place and my best friend Michelle wanted her boyfriend, Danny, to try it since he’s not from Nebraska, god love him. So I met them and ate Runza and then left and promptly backed into a car. Now, I didn’t back into the car going very fast. In fact I was going about .25 miles per hour. But I backed into a parked, empty car and then parked and got out to survey the damage. I circled the damn car and inspected it’s rear-end and saw no damage. While I was doing this, a family inside was watching me and laughing. I thought that was mean. But I saw no damage to the car so I left.

   Well, the highly-amused family of four must’ve been madder than they looked, because I guess they took down my license plate number and four hours later the cops showed up at my parents house looking for my mom.  I asked what they were there for and they said it was for a hit-and-run. And I said, “Oh, that wasn’t my mom. I guess you’re here for me.” And then they said they weren’t going to take me to jail (perhaps only because my mom said, "You officers aren't going to take my little girl to jail, are you?"**), but that they probably should and they gave me a citation and now I have a lawyer and I’m a big-time criminal. IT IS ILLEGAL TO HIT A PARKED CAR AND NOT CALL THE POLICE, REGARDLESS OF DAMAGE. Lesson learned. I’m an idiot. Again. Still?

   Did I mention we were on our way out the door for my dad’s birthday dinner? Happy Birthday, Dad! Guess what? I’m still a fuck-up at 30. Thanks for working hard every day so I can go out and raise your insurance rates during one of the 20 days you see me each year. Let's go eat fancy dinner!**

   My lawyer (that feels kind of grown-up to write…in a sad sort of way) says that it’s good that it was 1 in the afternoon at a Runza and not 1 in the morning at a Taco Bell, because the cops had/have no reason to think I was boozing it up and then running away. He says lots of people in Nebraska get drunk and hit cars and then go home and by the time the cops catch up with them they can say they got drunk at home. I was not drunk or drinking, but the whole event made me want to start drinking. And it cast a dark shadow on my favorite week of the year and I still feel really bad all-around. And I didn’t have the heart to write about it until now. I’m remorseful and, as is so often the case with me, full of self-pity.

   And I can’t help but think about scenes in movies like the one in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles where Del falls asleep in the rental car and somehow simultaneously starts a fire and ends up driving into oncoming traffic and they barely escape with their lives. Where’s the gruesome, icky and yet somehow also monotonous aftermath scene in the police station and the follow up scene in the lawyer's office? These events seem funny in the movies, but they really suck a whole lot in real life. And you know what else, they’re embarrassing moments that stick in your brain and run like reel-to-reels for days and days on end.

   Today I flew home to Los Angeles. It was uneventful, thank Shiva. I did however see the following text exchange on the phone of the woman seated next to me:

Incoming: I need drugs. And help.

My seatmate’s reply: Drugs I got. I don’t know about any help.

   Anyway.

   Needless to say, I think I’m pretty much traveled out for this year. Since January I’ve been to Denver, Phoenix, Omaha, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Omaha again, Chicago and now Omaha. It’s a miracle I didn’t relive that entire movie. My luck has officially run out. I’m a grounded eagle. I may never fly again.

   P.S. Sorry for being such a Debbie Downer.

*An interchange between a State Trooper and Del in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987). 
**Despite my failings as their daughter, my parents are truly amazing, supportive, incredible people who keep loving me and being nice to me anyway. Which I don't think they are legally obliged to do at this point, seeing as I'm well over the age of 18. So my Negative Nancy attitude aside, I think I have to acknowledge that I'm VERY LUCKY INDEED. 

***As a tie on to this more-sane (saner?) train of thought, I'd like to tack on this link to Gabe's recent blog post, which put things Thanksgiving- and other-related into a bit of perspective.

"I've got eyes to see with, ears to hear with (or fly with), arms to hug with, lips to kiss with, someone to adore. How could anybody ask for more? My needs are small, I buy them all at the 5 and 10 cent store. Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for."*

   You know what the world really needs? More movies about Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving could also use some more songs. I’m really trying to think of songs about Thanksgiving, but aside from “Plenty to Be Thankful For” from Holiday Inn and the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, I’m coming up empty. And it sucks because all the radio stations and department stores stomp right over Thanksgiving and start acting like its Christmas the day after Halloween.

Post-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving: see? At Em's in Chicago.

   And oh Christmas with it’s terrible songs. (I wrote about that last year so I won’t go into it again.) It’s a travesty because Thanksgiving is AMAZING. It truly is AMAZING. It’s an entire holiday devoted to eating wonderful food and begrudgingly acknowledging your blessings between bites of turkey and pie. All kinds of pie! (Seriously: apple, pumpkin, rhubarb, chocolate, pecan: whatever kind of pie you want, Thanksgiving’s probably got it! Pie!) And after that you take a nap and maybe you wake up and watch football, or maybe you go meet up for drinks with friends who are in town for the holidays just like you. And you don't have to go to Church!

I made these out of pumpkin! Why is it only available for 2 months of the year?

   I did a little research on the Interwebs and came up with a few familiar movie titles, and some not-so-familiar movie titles that will allow me to start celebrating Thanksgiving really hard now that we’re in the final stretch to my favorite holiday of the year. (This is, of course, not including the much-anticipated post-Thanksgiving premiere of Liz and Dick starring my arch-rival Lindsay Lohan.)

   Here’s a familiar one: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987). I’m really fond of this movie, even though it kind of tugs at my heartstrings towards the end, and I don’t like movies that try to make me feel stuff. But I love me some John Hughes, so this gets re-watched every now and then. And now the time is just right. Plus, I love just about every movie John Candy ever made. Steve Martin’s all right in my book, too.

   Here’s a not-so-familiar one: ThanksKilling (Jordan Downey, 2009). Now this movie sounds fascinating. It is described on imdb.com as follows: “A homicidal turkey axes off college kids during Thanksgiving break.” What’s not to like about that premise? It’s high time the turkeys of America got their revenge. And college kids suck, everyone knows that.

   Familiar: Holiday Inn (Mark Sandrich, 1942). Granted, the focus ultimately ends up being on Christmas (largely due to the musical finagling of the decidedly Jewish Irving Berlin: goddamn that song “White Christmas”!), but it is a musical about EVERY holiday and there is that whole delightful musical number where sad, lonely Bing Crosby talks about all the things he has going for him.

   Not-so: Son in Law (Steve Rash, 1993). Remember when Pauly Shore was a movie star? I do, because Encino Man was one of my favorite movies at that time (and I was planning to marry or seriously befriend Brendan Fraser), and also I thought he (Pauly) was wildly talented and seemed very sweet deep, down inside. But this isn't about how I have terrible, near-constantly bad judgment about men. Anyway, this truly raucous, awful film came out during those few short "Pauly Years," and it is vaguely tied to Thanksgiving. So…there’s that.

   Familiar: Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986). This is one of those really awesome Woody Allen movies from the eighties that doesn’t seem to be about anything, and maybe isn’t, but still somehow keeps coming back to the same Thanksgiving celebration at the same house each year and somehow winds up seeming really good and fulfilling. Like turkey and potatoes and PIE! Plus, Dianne Wiest is always amazing. 

   Not so: Boogeyman (Ulli Lommel, 1980) is vaguely centered around the Thanksgiving holiday. Without watching this movie again, I can’t tell you much. I think that perhaps the 1980 version that I saw is not the one that takes place at Thanksgiving, and maybe that’s the remake that happened in 2005. I will tell you this: the Boogeyman haunted my childhood. I slept with the closet door firmly closed until 2011, and I will NEVER WATCH THAT MOVIE AGAIN, despite not truly knowing to this day what the fuck a boogeyman even is. But do you want to know the best part about the Boogeyman? It's the definition: “An amorphous, imaginary being used by adults to frighten children into compliant behavior.” And what more is there to be thankful for than the power we adults wield over unsuspecting, ignorant children? Mwah ha ha ha ha! That’s really what Thanksgiving is all about. I guess. What was I even talking about? I think I’ve gotten away from my point…

I made this from pumpkin, too. It's pumpkin soup. So good. Pumpkins for the whole year! Thanksgiving keeps pumpkins alive past Halloween! Thanksgiving is the vegetable's answer to the no-kill animal shelter.

   Some of the Internets tried to say that Pocahontas was a Thanksgiving movie. Yeah, maybe if you love bad music and you really want to feel remorseful about all the shit that went down in the 17^th Century that you can't control and had nothing to do with. I say: move forward. Let’s not remember too hard about the shenanigans that went down at Plymouth Rock and try to focus a bit more on being grateful that we have so much pie to eat. 

*This song is from Holiday Inn and written by Irving Berlin. It's kind of cheeky and not altogether sincere, but it is one of the only Thanksgiving songs that exists. And I'm super grateful for it.  And for Holiday Inn (the movie, not the hotel chain...okay I'm grateful for both. It's Thanksgiving, for chrissakes).

"Some people are cut out for champagne and caviar. I'm more the beer and pretzel type."*

   It is a truth universally acknowledged that things tend to be more awesome when you have money. You can have your own chef, trainer, masseuse or pool. Better yet:  a mega bus that has room for one hundred of your best friends and offers them each a DVD/Xbox 360 console at their seatback. I heard that Snoop Dogg got that for one of his kids, just because. 

   But other things are awesome, too. You can pay all your bills at one time, for instance, instead of pacing them out through the month. Because you have all kinds of money in your bank account(s). You can take a trip whenever you feel like it, even if it’s just a trip to Council Bluffs, Iowa. You can fill up your entire gas tank instead of filling it up 3 gallons at a time. You can buy your underwear somewhere other than the clearance bin at Kmart. Money is kind of awesome. And no, it can’t buy you love (unless by “love” you mean “sex”, because it CAN buy that), but it can buy you pretty much anything else worth having. 

   I don’t, at present, have very much money, but I’ve started a list of things that I’m going to have when I have money, and things that will convince me that I am indeed financially stable. And I intend to be very wealthy one day. I hope that day comes before I’m 85 and don’t give a shit anymore, but that’s a train of thought for another time.

   Here are things that will prove to my future self that I’m finally classy:

1. I will have tissue boxes, and not just toilet paper for blowing my nose. When I’m sick, I treat myself really well by buying a nice, big box of moisturizing facial tissues. BUT AT NO OTHER TIME DO I BUY THESE. The rest of the time I blow my nose with plain old toilet paper. Why? Because facial tissues are an unnecessary luxury that I can’t afford. Whenever I’m at someone’s house and see a box of tissues (especially those fancy name-brand tissues like Puffs or Kleenex), I know I’m at the home of a wealthy person. Especially if they have tissue boxes THROUGHOUT the house/apartment/yacht. And when I see them I act like a yokel at a fancy hotel: I stuff them in my purse. For later.

This drawing represents money coming out of a tissue box, FYI.

2. I will have champagne in the fridge for “just in case.” I saw that in a movie once and it stuck with me. At the moment I’m the kind of person who, if I had champagne in the fridge, would drink it long before “just in case” happened. But I think that has to do with my poorness. I think that if I were rich I wouldn’t worry so much about never having the opportunity to drink champagne (or eat sushi) again and I would definitely save it for when one of my friends came over to tell me they’d just published a novel or landed a starring role in a Broadway play. Those are champagne celebrations, and I will definitely have some on hand for when they happen. 

3. I will have Andes Mints on hand at all times. When my Aunt Mel was rich, she had a mini fridge in the basement of her big, beautiful house on Candlewood Lake in Omaha. The mini fridge was tucked inside a big, wood-paneled bar and there was always a box of Andes Mints in the door. Because that house had walls with paint so expensive I wasn’t allowed to touch them, a pool table in the basement, all-white furniture, an INDOOR balcony and a lake in the backyard, I’ve always associated Andes Mints with wealth. And subterfuge. Because I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to be eating those mints. (Side note: Andes Mints are great because they’re way more chocolate than mint.)

4. I will have a den or “library” in my Rich Person home. Books show that you are intelligent. And if you are intelligent, you probably know a lot of things. And if you know a lot of things, you are most likely rich. This library will be like Henry Higgins’ library in My Fair Lady. It will be two stories and feature a spiral staircase and a phrenology skull. It will have tons of really hard-to-read works of nonfiction that I will rifle through just before company arrives in order to make it seem as though I read about String Theory in my spare time. But it will also have a Young Adult Section with a couple of beanbag chairs where I will do my ACTUAL reading.

5. I will always have things to eat in my fridge. Never will there be a day, like so many days in the past 10 years, where I open the fridge and try to figure out what to make out of pickles, cream cheese and hummus. Condiments will be condiments and not dietary staples. 

   I think it’s in everyone’s best interest if I am wealthy because I tend to be very generous, especially when I have been drinking champagne. So if we all do a group prayer, this can be come my reality and the trickle down will make your lives immeasurably classier.

*The quote is from I Love Lucy. I too love beer and pretzels. So much. Seriously. So much.

"I can't stand whining. I can't stand the kind of paralysis that some people fall into because they're not happy with the choices they've made. You live in a time when there are endless choices...Money certainly helps and having that kind of financial privilege goes a long way, but you don't even have to have money for it. But you have to work on yourself...Do something!"*

   I’m afraid (though not literally like when I watched Hocus Pocus by myself on Halloween night) that this is going to be another one of those posts where I just update you on the random musings of my life without any direction or point. My brains aren’t cooperating these days, so I’m just going to sum up the state of things. Without further ado:

1. I don’t want to sound like a bitch (though, to be fair, I am a bit of a bitch) but Lindsay Lohan’s downward professional trajectory has somehow made me very smug and happy. I’m sure jealousy is somehow involved. Whenever I see posters for her made-for-TV movie Liz and Dick I am simultaneously excited to watch the shit out of it and really elated that she’s sunk to the level of movie-of-the-week status. I mean, here was a girl who had a great career going and she just completely blew it. What a dope. However if I’d had the career she threw away, I’d be so amazed by myself and convinced of my invincibility I probably would have done EXACTLY what she did. And maybe that’s why I feel so damn joyous when I see the promos for Liz and Dick. I’m just really glad it’s not my face up there. Failing for all the world to see. (And to be ultra realistic, she’s still doing better than 98% of the actors in this city.)

2. These graduate school applications are totally kicking my ass. I think I’ve over thought the essay portion to the point where after 4 drafts and 7 people reviewing it, my essay looks like hieroglyphic swirls with occasional sketches of monkeys with light bulbs over their heads thrown in for good measure. Also, check out the length of that run-on sentence. I can’t write for shit anymore. My fingers work but my brain don’t.

3. I went to Chicago last weekend and realized that I miss autumn. Real autumn with the leaves changing color and the smell of smoke in the air (not smog, smoke) and warm, fuzzy coats and scarves and gloves and hats and biting winds and gray mornings and raking and all that. I don’t really like being cold but I miss having seasons. It’s “Fall” in Los Angeles and all we’ve got to show for it are a bunch of morons in parkas complaining about the 60° temperatures and the fact that the wind occasionally blows a palm frond or two into the street and the damn city won’t send someone to pick them up so we have to do it our damn selves. (Which does kind of suck because those things will shred your hands into a million pieces.)

Fall. For real.

4. I went to see Skyfall with Chad the other night and it made me even more anxious/eager/determined to travel somewhere. Why don’t I have any money???? Why??? I DESERVE to have lots of money so I can promptly go to Istanbul or Shanghai or both. And if the James Bond franchise is to be believed, you can find amazing parking spots anywhere you go in either of those cities. Maybe I will move there because free parking is hard to come by in LA.

5. Check out how American I am: The other morning I was eating a slice of American cheese in the bathroom while I got ready (as you do) and I set it down on top of my New Yorker (which, I’ll admit, is also a bathroom activity) and it stuck to the page in a really bad way. The cheese still tasted fine, but the article’s all fucked up. 

Bathroom activities.

Here's a close-up. Gross.

   Anyway, talk about first-world problems. My life is a dream and I would like to make this seem less like a blog post about complaining incessantly and more a blog post about my astute observations about life. As long as you readers take it that way, we'll be fine and I won't have to alter my world-view at all.

*The quote is from Hillary Rodham Clinton. And she's right...the money part does certainly help. 

"Technically I'm a freelancer which is pretty much a modern day cowboy. And I live like a cowboy by buying quality, locally-made jeans. Also by eating beans out of a can. Due to impatience."*

   There isn't much I want to say at the moment except that I felt the need to acknowledge my one-year blog-aversary. Blog and I are still together. Still going strong. Happy anniversary to us! (And apologies to my family members and friends who thought I'd have given up on this by now so they'd stop being forced to read this crap.)

   Also, I want to address this tampon ad:

   I don't believe that having my period would keep me from rocking this yoga pose. What would keep me from rocking this pose would be my weak, pathetic arms and complete lack of coordination. Also I don't know yoga.

*Quote from 30 Rock.

"My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be."*

   It’s getting awfully hard to pitch a decent fit. It often seems that the second I walk out of a room to make a point and slam a door behind me, I suddenly have to go to the bathroom. Leaving my room to go back to where everyone else is still sitting so I can use the bathroom takes something away from the drama of stomping out.

   Sometimes you really want people to know that you’re sad or angry but you’re too passive aggressive to come out and say, “I’m sad” or “I’m angry.” You want them to guess it, and they can’t guess it if you come right back into the room. You haven’t sulked long enough to make an impression. It just looks like you went back to your room to get something and now you’re rejoining the conversation.

   It’s also not as cool to deliver the punch line to a joke brilliantly, only to turn around and run into a wall. Then everyone’s just laughing at you instead of thinking you’re incredibly witty and clever.

   Occasionally you want to tell a joke and leave the room immediately so you don’t spoil your delivery by laughing at your own joke (tacky) or by continuing to talk after the punch line. But when you run into a wall, you’ve become the punch line. They’ve completely forgotten what your joke was even about because you turned directly into the goddamn wall, you idiot. I want to be more graceful.

   Along this same line of thought, it’s awkward to get up for water when you have people staying with you and it’s morning. If you get up for water, they might think you’re ready to start your day when in actuality you’re just really, really thirsty (due to last night’s alcohol party) and would like to drink some water and then go back to sleep for another hour or so. But once they’ve seen you, you feel compelled to get up. So you decide not to get the water and you just lie in bed and everyone loses: you’re still thirsty and because of that you’re not sleeping. Your guests are in the other half of your apartment wondering when you’ll get your ass out of bed.

   And—to keep this train of thought rolling—I think I’ve probably always been the kind of person that needs to have the last word. Whenever I’ve gone through breakups, I can’t just ignore the emails and phone messages telling me what I’ve done wrong. I always have to respond so the other person knows what HE did wrong and how he’s misunderstood the situation.

   All of these issues go back to the same basic premise: I’m still not a grown-up. I thought when I turned 30 a couple months ago that I was, but it was mostly smoke and mirrors.

   I have gotten a little bit better as I’ve gotten older.  And I can often fake being an adult if I’m trying to impress someone. I can feel myself wanting to make jokes that aren’t funny and holding my tongue; reminding myself that no one will find said jokes entertaining (least of all me). I’ve learned to stop responding to the emails and texts, because when you do that you’re just feeding the flames of the big, crazy bonfire. I’m trying not to be the last person at a party. I am attempting to shut up a little more often. It’s hard. I’m learning. 

   Here are some signs of my maturity:

I've kept this aloe plant alive. I've never been able to do that in times past.

I take vitamins and fiber supplements. Very mature (in a number of ways).

I fully intend to vote tomorrow. Incredibly responsible.

   But I can’t seem to stop trying to make a dramatic point whenever I feel that I’ve been wronged. Maybe it’s the fault of that ill-considered theatre degree I received. Maybe it’s because I’m a Highly Sensitive Person (that's real...finally my life is explained!). But in some fucked up, perverted way it makes me feel good. It’s sort of like when I used to cry to manipulate my various boyfriends (or just boys that were friends). Part of me knew I was doing it but that part of me also didn’t really give a shit. I wanted what I wanted and I wasn’t too terribly concerned with how I got it. I don’t do that anymore (another sign of maturity!); but I do make theatrical exits, stomping out of rooms and slamming doors. Maybe I’ll get over that too, eventually, and just talk to people directly when they act like turd burglars. But the chances aren’t good. And I think it takes a certain level of maturity to recognize that. 

*Quote is Eminem.