Girlina Chick Lit

JOB-O-LA and Man Trouble

2011-12-23T20:35:00.005-06:00

Yes, I still have my JOB JOB JOB that began in the midst of a Blizzard those first flush weeks of February, 2011. Ha! I feel Extremely Lucky. Next year I am devoting myself to becoming a better person and by giving back to The World, in addition to a Whole Slew of Other Great Things, such as writing and publishing my novel.

But Which Novel to Focus On? Oh Lourdy, who knows. I began the one about the Lonely Girl who works for a Bank and who has a Deep Crush on a Co-Worker and who Suddenly gets Kidnapped by Aliens. I like that one.

And The Other Novel I could Focus On: The Fucking Princess Handbook. Lots of my gal pals like that one. It was fun to begin. And even princesses have man trouble - did you know that? I didn't until I began to write it.

Ah yes, Man Trouble. A terrible Zone to be in. And I am in the Midst of my Own Soapy Drama/Opera. What is a good word for Drama and Opera and Man Trouble merged together? DraManOperatta. DraManOp. I will have to work on that one.

The Man I have been with does a number of things wrong. I think today my top five things that he does wrong are, and not necessarily in this order:
1. Neglects me
2. Lets me Engable him (he lets things SLIDE Downhill)
3. Has a Lack of Ambition
4. Has a Bad Temper when it escapes its cage (BEWARE)
5. At the Moment Has No Work Ethic

This might all be the same thing. I am not sure. There's got to be a word for it.

And the most amazing thing that has happened to me this year is my wonderful job. But then something incredible happened at work. They say Timing is Everything. And so it goes: I met this incredible man at work. I have developed a Deep Crush on him. So far, we haven't had to hold any Aliens at Bay trying to rob us and kidnap us, holding up as hostages, but I have managed to get his attention by doing the following (and not necessarily on purpose):

1. Flooding the women's bathroom floor causing Everyone on our floor to notice...this led to three floors' bathrooms being Shut Down. This was actually funny.

2. A string of Fires on my parent's place and having to leave work early one day. No, I did not cause these either.

3. A string of Earthquakes that he teased me about. This was not my fault though, I did not cause these.

4. Doing a great job at work.

I have noticed that this Man at Work that I have a Deep Crush on also quite possibly has a Deep Crush on me. I am not sure how deep it is. How Deep is your Love? I would like to ask him.

I do want to add that I do not cheat or have affairs. I always wait to get rid of the old one before I move on. I recently ended a friendship with a girlfriend who is having an affair with a married man whose wife has cancer. I cannot be close to someone who does this. I do not think it is right. This girlfriend is so selfish that she doesn't even notice that I quit contacting her. She does not even notice that I am strapped inside - tightly and badly - my own nightmare zone of Man Trouble. I would never cheat on my current boyfriend. And I do still love him, but Love Is Complicated. And It Does End. Sometimes badly.

Now I haven't written lately. But I am now. Now I have to Get Rid of the Old Boyfriend and Get It On with the Future New Boyfriend. It's a lot to do on my extravagant To Do List, in addition to writing a bestselling novel.

Wish Me Luck. I need it.

JOB JOB JOB!

2011-04-30T18:32:00.003-05:00

Once again, I am writing to say that I got a JOB JOB JOB! Woo-hoo! I left my pseudo-Job that I had from mid October to Feb. 4. When I call it a pseudo-job it is because of the following reasons:

1. It began as a temporary assignment to fill in for the preceding temp who'd called it one morn, saying she'd "had it with the GM and wouldn't be back," who had been filling in for the accountant who was on maternity leave. It wasn't even supposed to have led to a permanant position.

2. After I worked my arse off brown nosing (yes, post-partum depression owing to unemployment has led to my becoming a brown noser to get work) to get this job, I realized that they were going to have even More Layoffs and the chances of me getting axed was fairly high. The company wasn't doing well and I knew it from looking at the accounts and having to uber-plan for payroll AND FROM GETTING MEAN AND NASTY CALLS FROM OTHER COMPANIES' ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE DEPARTMENTS WAITING FOR THEIR PAYMENT(S).

So on Jan 7 I received a call that a hefty high powered oil and gas company was looking for contractors, so by the time I jumped ship on Feb 4 and started at this uber-amazing oil and gas company on Feb 7, I was totally psyched.

And I have been ever since. It is an amazing experience. I am thoroughly enjoying my job for the second time in my life. (The first job I enjoyed was a telecom company when I was a property accountant.) I did not think that I would ever like my job again, but I do. It really adds value to my life. I have not given myself time or energy to write much, but I am hoping this blog post will spiral me into writing more again soon.

Job job job

2010-12-16T15:25:00.004-06:00

After Eternal Bleakdom, Gloomdom and Doomdom (Not to mention Despair, Agony and Woebegone Pathetiqueness), I FINALLY got a job.

BUT (there is Always a butt somewhere, hopefully not MINE that smells though) now it rather looks as if I might lose it yet again.

Thus, history repeats itself. (I KNOW that so I stopped reading history books long ago.)

I just found out earlier today that I could lose this job, albeit not to my own folly.

I cannot help but think that somebody is playing a HUGE DIRTY ROTTEN SORDID Trick on me.

This is the reason I haven't blogged in a while. I have been seriously looking for a job all year long. I was laid off June 30 2009 and didn't work seriously until mid June 2010. Which was about a year of sleeping until noon with lines on my face. (I have got to get new silk pillow sheets!)

So I temped somewhere Hellish from June until July. Then I temped somewhere else Hellish from July until October. Then I temped somewhere new mid October until December 1 in which case THEY HIRED ME. JOB JOB JOB!

But now it looks like the company where they JUST HIRED ME isn't doing at all well b/c of this piss ass poor economy being on the rocks. They might lay me off in mid January.

At this point I am thinking that YES YES YES I should write a bestselling novel. But which one to finish?

I've got the baddate.com story I suppose I could finish that one.

I've got the Fucking Princess Handbook story which is pretty cool.

I've got the Alien abduction story which my writer's group liked.

Or I could MERGE them all together and save time and try to get the fucker published.

Looks like I am back to writing a lot more often now. Since this job job job isn't working out out out.

The Girl Who Got Away...

2010-09-19T13:09:00.004-05:00

Yes. I am the Girl who got Away.

This is perhaps what Michael Folk is thinking.

And who is Michael Folk?

Well...he is YET ANOTHER INVINCIBLE EX-BOYFRIEND OF MINE WHO WANTS TO BE "FRIENDS" WITH ME ON FACEBOOK.

Yes, yes, there are SO many of them on my Facebook! LOL! It really cracks me up when I think about it! If I ever need a good laugh - which is often - I think of this fact. It's such an odd concept for me to fathom. That scads of gorgeous guys I have dated in my youth (and even most recently of 3 years ago) are my FRIENDS.

I often fantasize about sending them messages asking them something like, "What were you thinking of DUMPING me? Especially on EMAIL? I mean, how CRUEL! Oh, and by the way, I KEPT your stupid email and I send it to my girlfriends to WARN them about possibly dating you!"

Is that even possible? To be FRIENDS with exes? Even on Facebook?

Well...these days it somehow is! Who'da thought?

So, yes, I "friended" him. (What an odd concept? I wouldn't have thought that this guy, this gorgeous guy back in the day of the late 1990's who I dated, who seemed so out of reach, the cool bartender, would want to finally be friends with me? He seemed so elusive and just so bloody gorgeous.)

So yes, Michael Folk is now kicking himself in the arse wondering about me. The one who got away.

Actually, to be technical, I am pretty sure that he just stopped calling me. He was really laid back. Lackadaisacal, really. We went out a few times. He was never the Love of my Life type though.

So all that being said, I am getting the idea that a new story could be emerging from my head about ex-boyfriends on Facebook. It might have colorful phrases and stalking and dumpster diving involved. A common thread is the girl who got away - me!

Get your stiletto in the door chick lit writer contest!

2010-09-01T22:31:00.002-05:00

I just found a great contest to share with all you other chick lit writers out there! Get your stiletto in the door chick lit writer contest! Sounds great, right?

I think so. I'm going to enter it. I'm not in Romance Writers of America. Perhaps I'll join!

The only problem I have with this is that I don't actually wear stiletto's. Ever. I can't.

It would be like putting stilettos on a milk cow and getting her to actually move in them. Is that really possible?

Can you imagine? And it's already hard to go cow-tipping, which I have done back in the heyday of my yesteryear and hearty youth (which was a long time ago since I am, after all, a QUIM - a Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middel-aged woman)!

First of all, the milk cow would just stare at you and perhaps not budge an inch if you tried to lift up her hooves to put the stilettos on her. Then she'd moo, which is the equivalent of a laugh - mocking you perhaps. And then she'd probably change her mind at the last minute and STEP on you. Eegads! Then you'd perhaps be injured and fall back into the mud (yes, mud IS involved if you are brave enough to go out to a hayfield and find a milk cow near the barn...) and curse yourself, her, and the evil stilettos. Yikes!

Anyway, I just can't wear stilettos for almost the same reason, except for the mud and hooves part. If you tried to put them on ME, I WOULD just stare at you like a milk cow, long lashes curling, chewing my cud (or chocolate!) and laugh at you. Then I'd probably sneer and push you down into the mud or whatever else was nearby.

Three reasons I don't wear stiletto's:

1. I can't walk in stilettos because I can't MOVE in them. I'm very afraid that I will trip and fall. It's analagous to a green (and very scared) paratrooper whose job in training in whats-it man-sludge army/navy/manly-whatever-R-Us is to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I won't jump, thus I won't walk.

2. I rock from side to side wearing stilettos. How can you walk if you are rocking and swaying uncontrollably? Not meaning to rock? I guess I could go dancing in them, but I wouldn't be able to walk onto the dance floor. I'd have to change from my sneakers into the stilettos and then rock. And then where would I be if the dance style changed to tango? In Hell?! Oh yeah!

3. I might be just way too attractive to the opposite sex and my beau might have to help me fend off all those men! Ugh! Who wants that? I already have my man, and trust me, one is plenty!

So get your stiletto in the door at this fine chick lit writer contest! And maybe one of us will win! Hurrah!

I'd like to make a living writing chick lit online

2010-08-31T13:12:00.002-05:00

I'd like to make a living writing chick lit (or anything at this point EXCEPT accounting) online.

Yes, it's true.

I once thought about writing serious accounting stuff, but the vernacular of accounting lingo (which is Deadly Dull) combined with THINKING about something as grainymade and gritchy made my pulse slow down drastically ("Heart Stopped Beating," I bleated blandly to them), and I had to get my friends Clarabelle, Hilda, and Ermengarde to take me to ER where I wound up being JUST FINE once I saw all the HOT DOCTORS at the hospital so then my heart started pounding quickly once again.

"LIFE! There is LIFE in her again!" Squeaked Clarabelle.

"Hurrah!" Chorused Hilda and Ermengarde.

So Death Might Becomes Others who write boring wasteland mind-numbing accounting, but NOT ME!

Which is why I must be saved from my accounting abysmal nightmare, from working here in this horrid and wretched field. It's like getting lost in a haystack and not getting found by the happiest of goats who eat said hay.

I am lost and I will write and write and write until I get paid enough to retire from accounting permanently.

The latest chick flick I've seen

2010-08-30T22:24:00.002-05:00

I just saw Eat, Pray, Love. It is incredibly inspiring, plus I LOVE any chick flick with Julia Roberts. The story makes me want to go to Italy instantly. I'd like to find the rustic beauty of the scenery where the heroine stayed, the intense beauty of the food, the glorious food of which the heroine ate. Pure pleasure!

How we get such pleasure from food! The color of it, the density of it all...the joy of it. The tastebuds going to a party!

It is now my fave chick flick of the year. I see a LOT of chick flicks. I get lost in stories.

When Sex and The City 2 came out I saw it. I feel like I have lived Sex and The City. With all my dating traumas and pleasures of it all.

EPL makes me want to travel even more than I already have. It makes me want to write more than I already have. It makes me want to live more than I already have.

And that is why it is such a wonderful story and movie.

Enough said for now.

People In Transit or the Floor Above the Unemployment Stint and Below Permanent Job Status

2010-08-28T15:57:00.007-05:00

People In Transit or "The Floor Above the Unemployment Stint" and Below "Permanent Job Status" is what this blog post is called.

After a grueling nano-year (which was ALMOST a year, but NOT quite) of being Unemployed in America, strapped slimily in the swarthy-in-grimy-decaying-pseudo-corpse-of-a-career, I grabbed the remains of my career (bloody carcass hanging off brittle bones, flailing away at the Vultures) and resurrected it Just In Time, fleeing to the Employment line at: Temps-R-Us.

Which is not always the nicest place to be, but MUCHO BETTER than the Sweaty, Uninvincible Unemployment Line.

So now I am a Temp.

No longer Unemployed.

Which is good because my Unemployment income (having twice been extended) had definitely run out. No more extensions. (Which is as cruel as getting short-sheeted at summer band camp.)

And while I am THRILLED TO PIECES TO BE WORKING AND BACK TO BEING SANE AGAIN AND FEELING VERY LUCKY AND VERY GRATEFUL TO HAVE A WONDERFUL FAMILY AND FRIENDS AS A SUPPORT SYSTEM THAT HELPED ME A LOT I DO want to point out that being a Temp is not always good.

You are neither here nor there.

You are a Person In Transit.

A PIT. And it can be the pits. The depths of despair.

The Bargain Basement of Leftover of the Used and Abused.

You have No Control over whether they will hire you or not.

And the Treatment of a Temp by Office People is very like the Treatment of a Humpbacked Igor by a Mad & Evil Scientist in an old black and white 20's film on the Big Screen back in The Day.

You can deal with people at the office who will be very very nice to you and spill their guts until you realize that you have initially become their therapist! Ugh! Who want's that?

It can be detrimental to your emotional energy and very draining to have whiny-ass friends at work.

Or that you have become (even worse! GASP!) their friend and they keep inviting you to Jewelry Parties (which are normally sponsored by some corporate company and thus are usually lame unless your "new best friend at work" is actually crafty and make their own which is very rare but my friend at IBM was like this so cool friends who are talented do exist) or Pampered Chef Parties (where you have to buy their crap or else you feel rude if you don't) or Birthday Parties with Fattening and Frosty-Girthed Birthday Cake (sometimes where everyone pitches in some money and this can pile up quickly!) or Happy Hours until you realize that if you want to be their friend you will have to be very rich to keep up because work IS their social life and you already have a social life. Or a life. This is the person at work who needs to get a life because they have made work their life. So you have to refrain from being their friend because you cannot keep up with their office political/social stratosphere so you either tell them you cannot afford all these extracurricular office party/events/social hour or make up some dumb lamo excuse like you have to pet sit for money or babysit or have a part time job or something to showcase how poor you are. Who knows. You normally have to white lie to get out of it.

It can be - ahem - rather expensive having these types of friends at work.

So you can suffer if you are a nice person. You have to not be too friendly to people at work. Know your limits.

And then there's the other side of the coin. The meanies at work.

You can deal with people at the office who will be very very mean to you for a variety of reasons. Maybe you are not hoopy-religious enough and the first thing they ask you is if you are conservative and whether you go to church or not. In fact, the first thing they might ask you, like Griselda Grunchthorpe did once:

"Where's your Home Church, sweetie?"

In which case I answer:

"I only went to church to pick up guys," with an inward sneer seething, but a polite-yet-snarky remark.

In which case, she'll gossip about you the rest of your stay at said office. Etc etc etc and it will be hell. Because all the other hoooopeee-religious assholes at work will give you a hard time. They might start putting syrupy Pepto-Dismal pink nightmare pamphlets about Jesus Christ being your Saviour, etc etc on your desk during their spare time.

In which case you can retaliate by putting Devil Worshipping and/or Black-as-Night Voodoo Doll paraphenalia on THEIR desks (of course I have NEVER done SUCH a thing, but I HAVE been tempted!) and where you can get it I have no idea. That would be another blog.

It's not that I don't like Hoopee-Religious people. I have to say that some of them are my very dearest friends and family members. I just think that work is not the place to shove crap down my throat, I'm already unindated with boring-ass work, thank you very much! I just don't like other people's stupid personal choices slammed onto me and I don't like being judged by having better personal choices than their's. Perhaps they're jealous that I get to sleep til noon on Sunday (with lines on my face if I want!) AND: It's also none of anybody's fucking business what I do with my free time when I'm not at work! If I want to sacrifice small children at the Pitchfork-Darkest-Midnight Moon on Halloween then that's MY BUSINESS.

So there are plenty of bad things about being a temp. Namely, being treated pretty shabbily. Like you are not a real person.

So my latest nightmare, after a year of:

1. trying to start a bookkeeping company (THAT doesn't work if spoiled princesslike selfish clients do NOT want to pay your rate)

2. trying to get free coffee through friends meeting friends and friends of friends at coffee shops for a year - one does not and cannot live on coffee alone, otherwise you - JUTTING - cannot - CRUNCHING - holda - SHAKING - conversation - CAFFEEEEEN/caffeine enrichment

3. trying to do this blog for a while until I realized nobody was really reading it except the few friends and family members I begged/pleaded/bludgeoned/conned into reading it, so I stopped (but I'm BACK, BABY!)

etc etc etc

So like I said my latest nightmare is Dealing with the Office Bully at Work.

She is basically what I like to call one of many types of accountants that can drive one crazy.

I like to call these types of accountants BAWCKERS. That was it. Boring Anal Wanderlust Cutthroat Klutzy Egotistical Retreads.

When I say boring I mean sludge-vomit vixen-bred snore-bore boring!

And when I say Anal I mean nose-stuck-up in the air cornucopia-stuck-up-the-butt along with a broomstuck-stuffed-up-the-ass Anal.

That’s it.

I could go on and on but I have been living this nightmare for a while now and the temp job before this one that began June 14 and lasted for six weeks was one in which I had to deal with another kind of accountant asshole: a control freak.

All I can say now is that after doing accounting for almost 20 years, I have finally figured out to Stand Up for Myself. Because, really, nobody's gonna do it for you. You have to do it for yourself.

And there are a lot of nasty-ass accountants out there. The Control Freak? She is Egotistical, Cutthroat, and Anal.

The Office Bully I've been dealing with this past week horribly and a few weeks before? She is threatened by me, scared I'll take her job, Anal, Cutthroat, Control Freaky, Boring, etc.

I could think of more acronymns for Evil Accountants, but I'm not going to right now.

I just wanted to say that I'm BACK! Back to blogging. I recently took a blogging for money class and I feel like I can do this better now.

Maybe then someday soon - hopefully - I can figure out how to make a living writing online so that I don't have to be an accountant any longer.

Hurrah!

Writers Group critique (made me pissy)

2010-04-05T22:07:00.005-05:00

If you are happy and you know it clap your hands!

And then FUCK OFF!

And then exit stage left, do not read the rest of this post, RUNAWAY, go scrub your hands to eradicate the beginnings of this post, or whatever you have to do, but just leave NOW. ASAP!

BEWARE.

This post isn't pretty.

Or Fun.

Go on your merry way, with your hard candy in your pocket, beer in hand, chocolate-lotta-love to give, your smile intact, Keep Your Hugs to Yourself, and Leave Immediately.

Click the BACK arrow on your computer RIGHT NOW.

Realize that if you are still brave enouhg to read the rest of this post, that I am QUITE PISSY...!

Because...(do read on, my friend, if you do insist that is)...

I was critiqued HARD tonight by an idiot writers group.

Freaks.

They just did NOT like my Cliffhanger Alien story.

SO.

I am going to critique THEM and any names in this posting is now their NEW ALIEN NAME.

What a bunch of slobbering idiots.

What a bunch of Snore-Bores.

What did Groucho Marx say again?

What was it?

That he NEVER wanted to be in a club (or in this case, my case, Writers Group) that would have him as a member.

Well I "coitainly" don't want to be in this particular Writers Group that would have me be one of their members.

Because, quite frankly, they suck.

They suck ass, they suck worms, they suck like voyeuristic vultures stuck to the carotid remaining arteries of sludge-vomit-vixen versimillitudes inside the vomitarium of Roman Gods and Goddesses and the leftover milky-white pain residue of anything left inside the bottom of my old grotesque college fridge...which again, isn't pretty and isn't for the faint-hearted.

It’s about 8:15 pm when I am writing this and I am a tad pissy because not only is my mortgage company blowing me off but this particular writer’s group sucked this evening.

They didn’t really warm up to my alien story, didn’t react nicely to the pace, stupid cow-faced bitch Blech!kkanna Blowhardt (such a great Alien name, isn't it?) didn’t like my story much or my word choices, neither did anyone else. She snapped her sharp teeth, gritted her grinchy nerves, rattled her rattlesnake voice and she hissed:

"I Don't Like Your Word Choices Much."

Then she burped and then hiccupped. Profusely.

Hmmm.

MAYBE THEIR BORING WRITING STYLE IS JUST TOO BORING FOR ME.

They all hated my pace and prejudged my future writing based on this and all I did was read the first chapter for gawd's sake. And it wasn't even that long.

But I don’t care, I WON’T be returning to THAT BORING ASS group.

I hate boring writers.

Especially those who do NOT like my stuff.

They cannot handle the FUNNESS of it. The thrill, the chill, the fun zip-zappiness of it all. They do not have any style themselves.

Perhaps they are actually just jealous and they have to put me down to rise up in a sordid bubble that will burble to the top of the boisterous billowy clouds, then burst! Ha! Then they fall, like the boring ass writers that they are.

Indeed.

Naturally, I will have dialogue in my writing and I DO have dialogue. Did Xenargk-Urpeeness Philzepott (another fabulous Alien name, what?!) just not get it? Or was it because I did not map out the quotes in the proper places?

Xenargk-Urpeeness Philzepott said to me, squinting squeamishly and squelching anything NICE, said slitheringly:

"Well, I am just not SURE about the pace, I think it's just TOO Fast for us, does it ever slow down? Hmmm?"

Then he paused to vomit, without even wiping his brown-yellow-green snort gurgles this time.

I must say that I was greatly offended.

He has absolutely no manners.

Naturally, my style IS different. Not everyone gets it.

I mean it made HIM vomit after all. And it made HER burp and hiccup continually.

My writing IS good. I know that it is.

So this lack of respect and lack of the LIKE, it just kinda pisses me off.

Bigtime.

I guess I am NEVER going back to the New-yuck Haven-ick group.

Pardon me while I burp. *URP*

Honestly, I thought Bonghdick Blongfick’s (yes a perfect name for this old Alien with a come-over for hair) story was BORING.

I also thought Xenargk-Urpeeness's story was BORING.

I also thought CarboCarBORla’s story BORED me but I am SO not her audience.

I also BET Blech!kkanna Blowhardt’s writing SUCKS too.

So are they even published – except for that one nice one who has gone unnamed?

Perhaps I am being overly sensitive, but why did that want to critique my pacing and wonder if the rest of my story will be having that same pace? Does it matter? Why do they judge just a little of my writing (chapter one) as the pacing for the whole thing?

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Enough already. Maybe they just wanted to make sure that I would not return. Well they got their fucking wish.

Oh well.

It’s over. I left early.

I do not care.

Not really. They are BORING writers. They are obviously not my audience. I do not merge or mix well with them.

The nice one is okay I guess.

It doesn’t matter and I know that not everything can be yippy skippy.

Tempted to put on Facebook how I am glad that I am not a boring writer. Like those others that just didn’t get my stuff tonight.

But then the nice one would see that and think that I am a snot. So won’t write that. Just won’t go back.

They will NOT be honored by my FUN writing any longer.

The Unemployment Office - a hideous dialogue? not compared to my mortgage company...

2010-03-24T23:19:00.004-05:00

CLICK! CRACKLE! SPURTLE! vibrates my cell phone.

FINALLY!

"Hallo!" I spit into the receiver of my cell phone.

Yes, I have been ON HOLD for FORTY-FIVE FUCKING MINUTES with the Unemployment People Who Unfortunately Smirk Silently (UPWUSS) BUT I CAN HEAR IT OVER THE PHONE!

Yes, I CAN! I KNOW that they are silently smugly conspicuously laughing at me, an Unemployed Accountant At Large.

"Yes, Mrs. XXX, how may I help you?" A solidly bass voice erupts coyly. I feel him smirking, this supercilious UPWUSS.

It pisses me off, quite frankly.

"I'd like to talk to someone about getting my unemployment again..."

"YESH? How may I help you?" He says, grinning in that awful tone again.

"Can you help me please?" I say, loudly but nicely. I quell my pissyness tone as much as possible.

"Well, that depends, Mrs. XXX, 'Can' denotes am I able to. Did you mean to use the word 'May' instead? Of course I may help you, if that is -"

"YES, Puhleaze, MAY you help me?" AND CAN YOU SHOVE THIS FUCKING TELEPHONE RECEIVER UP YOUR TIDY-WHITE UPWUSS-Y ASS??? CAN YOU??? HUH, HUH, HUH???

Jesus. How much more of this CAN I take?

I just want my unemployment back after losing my shitty two week temp job, for crying out loud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More to come later regarding being on hold with my mortgage company and asking to speak to someone who has not swapped their soul to satan.

Erotique Veronique Magique

2010-03-09T23:31:00.002-06:00

Vell vell vell my darlings, I have actually gotten a contract job in my field! So it appears that my career is not dead after all. Perhaps it is Undead? Perhaps it has Risen from its sordid Black-Death Crypt of the Universe, sucking the life out of its dastardly demise? At Midnight perhaps, when things go bump, when things change for the better, or is it worse?

HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"Vell vell vell mah dahlingks!" Veronique lit her cigar and pushed up her Victoria Secret Platypus Push-Me-Pull-You Bra and smiled at me.

"Got Torque?" I said, mocking her suddenly famous (or is it infamous) commercial?

"Nooooo, no, nooooooo!" Veronique exotique and erotique put her lips together and blew out her cigar, the blue curls festering into feathers and then nothingness. Just like magique. Mystique, too.

In addition to finding gainful employment, albeit temporarily, I have also received my first rejection letter from a literary agent. I submitted a query letter via email to Nelson Agency. The story query I sent was the one on this blog about the Aliens and the girl bored-to-snot in CubicleLand. The one who has the Massive Intense Crush on a VIP hottie at work. There's a witch involved as well.

No worries. A rejection email only means that I am THIS MUCH CLOSER TO MY DREAM OF BECOMING PUBLISHED. Hurrah! I am still researching erotica and whether I should attempt to write it or not. I think I should definitely write comedy. I made the writing group two Wednesdays ago laugh their heinies off. Okay I KNOW I am NOT supposed to end a sentence with a preposition:

I made the writing group two Wednesdays ago laught their heinies off, Bitch! Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Of Whimsical Distress and Erotica Blunders

2010-02-24T11:57:00.002-06:00

I am whimsically distressed and pining, wanderlust apparent, to write and become published. So I began reading erotica blunders on the 'net hoping to glean some insight in how to begin writing an erotica novel. There's some really shitty swill out there. It makes me whimsically distressed. This stuff is so bad, like bargain basement shopping at a five and dime store. It makes me think that I can write an erotica novel and get it published. I need to do something. I still haven't found a job yet in my field. But as I've stated earlier on this blog, my career is O-V-E-R. I just want a job so I can pay my bills and survive and exist. Has it really come to this, after all these years?

Last week I was thinking of becoming a PSO. For those of you who do not call 1-900 numbers, this is the vernacular and acronym for Phone Sex Operators. After careful and copious research, I found that I would have to plunk down some moolah for a land line and that PSO's make an average of - get this - $9 - $10 per hour! I could not believe this. The best way to research a new field/career zone is to go on the internet, by the way, and read forums and blogs about people already in their job/career. Several PSO's also work about 60 hours a week and some don't get paid more than $200 - $300 a week, some have been scammed, others dealt with rude/crude, socially unacceptable customers/clients, etc. I get more from unemployment, so I won't be pursuing this type of job. The advantages for a lot of PSO's seem to be that they could work from home. That part seemed nice.

So my new plan is to write erotica. Even though I do not read erotica. I have asked some of my erudite bookworm friends for help. I have two or three who read Vampire pseudo-erotica novels. I treasure their advice, opinion, and friendship. I think I can do this. I hope that I can crank out some above average erotica. I might even merge some genres to do this: comedy, thriller, etc. I do not think I will try a Vampire erotica novel though. I do not think I am good enough.

The Fucking Princess Handbook.

2010-02-04T21:11:00.006-06:00

Here's a new story I just started today. If you are brave, then read it. Beware. I am in a fucking weird mood.

Chapter One: The Fucking Princess Handbook

Today.

“You are a Princess.” I read out loud in my handbook, The Princess Handbook by Farthaquandra Cessaline III.

They might as well have titled it “The Pristine Prickly Pear of a Princess Hellatious Handbook.”

Or “Hell Hath No Fury Like a Virgin Princess.”

Or how about “Of Frustration Station.”

Or I would have titled it perhaps “Pantyhose Suck.” I had heard of those who did not have to be required to wear pantyhose. I wanted to live in this so-called Non-Pantyhose Land. Where the fuck was that anyway?

“And because of this you are supposed to always act like a Princess.” I continued to read, sitting on my bed, legs crossed.

I laughed.

“This means you never cross your legs and sit like a commoner, i.e. a NOP.” I read and then looked at my non-princesslike position and reflection in the mirror.

I snarled.

Princesses don’t snarl, my aunt Agathanine would have said. I heard her gnarly dragon-ladled raspy voice in my head.

Then I sneered.

And they don’t sneer, either, Gloria! Agathanine said again in my head. Same raspy-ass nasty voice, except louder this time.

“Fuck that!” I said. And real princesses don’t curse, either! So maybe I really wasn’t meant to be a princess.

Every day I broke a rule. But I’d recently been betrayed by my betrothed. So I had a great excuse now.

Did the fucking Princess Handbook even have a chapter about when your betrothed betrays you?

No!

This was not fair. And now the entire kingdom knew about it and everyone would be talking about it at the Ball tonight, just like they had last night.

Jerks! I was surrounded by stupid fucking jerks so why should I follow the stupid fucking rules?

It’s not like I was bending or breaking or snipping or snapping the rules in two on purpose, it just was not my true nature to follow the rules. But. It was also not in my nature to lead. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

I looked out the window at my kingdom. It was a beautiful land. Just gorgeous. Pink rivers swooshed happily below and magic grapes grew on the tree nearby, so I reached out my hand and a grape appeared in my hand, fresh and nubile and sweet.

You see I liked grapes and I liked the color pink, so my pink grapevine castle was surrounded by such. I also liked any alcoholic beverages that were pink colored, and red wine from the grapes. I was actually still half drunk this morning from the after-party last night, post-Ball bliss.

For instance, Dominique, a princess who lived next door in her castle, liked chocolate-covered cherries and rustic nearly-naked knights in some form of shining armor (somewhere on their body) so she had a pack of boy-toys who served her breakfast in bed and they always wore some rustic armor somewhere on their scantily clad bodies. Every day at 2 pm after she got out of bed, she invited the princesses over to watch her rustic armored boy-toys going at it with their nearly-naked knight-fight. She served everyone’s favorite cocktail, too. Mine was Cape Cod. I’m sure today I would get piss-ass drunk on Cape Cods because I was still smarting by being betrayed AND dumped by my betrothed.

And also my best friend, Pandora, a rather wild and tempestuous and passionate princess who lived across the street in her castle, liked steak, medium rare and all things meaty, which included beefcake men who were really muscle men, so she'd sit on her throne and have a strip show where the beefcake men would strip for her and strut around naked, sometimes while they lifted weights.

Pandora's daily strip show was totally not my scene (I'd sometimes hear the loud disco music from my tower bedroom), but it sure turned her on. I'd rather my boy-toy men be nearly naked, like Dominique's knight show. A little mystery, not weiners banging about everywhere while they danced and lifted weights. Uck.

Pandora had recently broken up with her betrothed because she was having wild tawdry sex with four of her beefcake men, wild orgies and the like. Which is why I had not seen her in a few weeks.

Every time I went over to her castle her maid told me that Pandora was indisposed. I did fear for Pandora though. She was on the verge of turning 30 and the Princess Handbook had rules about if you were not married or engaged by the time you were 30. If you weren't showing signs of getting married soon to a prince, then you would be banished. It was the rule, not meant to be broken.

If Pandora got banished from the kingdom, she would no longer be a princess and she would be stripped of her identity AND ALL OF HER MEMORIES. They would be stolen from her. She would know that she was banished but she would also not know it at the same time. She would be turned into a NOP, which was NOt a Princess. She would become a commoner. And she would not live here anymore.

So yes I was happy with my simple grapes and pink river. I did not need any naked or half-naked men to get my groove going. I had other things that I liked. I had a new toy to play with.

Princesses had help with magicians to create their image and pick their fashion and write their script of what they wanted. They hired script writers and magicians and fashion coordinators and people to help with their Coming Out Balls. Gown designers, too.

Tonight, Erlandamera was Coming Out and the theme was Mardi Gras. I had my mask and my ball gown ready. But I was not really that excited. Another party, another splurge and splatter of smack-stupid princes to sort through. Another gossip session of who would be queen next. It was rumored that it would be one of my seven sisters, Elvira, the mean, slimy one. And of course gossip swirling about my recent breakup and the recent hookup of my ex.

It just hurt.

I sneered and dropped my hand down and watched the lone grape fall slowly into the pink lagoon that was the moat around my tower of my castle.

“It’s FREE,” I said clearly, to nobody in particular but myself.

Freedom!

“I like the sound of that,” I said.

What the Princess Handbook neglected to talk about or discuss, was freedom and independence.

All of a sudden a giant ridgeback tail swooshed up near my tower window and a heady blast of air from it made me fall backwards.

I stood quickly and laughed. “You jarred me - but I am getting used to it!”

“Sorry, Princess Gloria,” Armadonna, my new pet female dragon peered into my window, her giant head and mouth curving into a smile. “You feeling better today? Still got your period?!!!”

"Hey, what the fuck do you think?" I yelled back at her, laughing.

"Well, honey, you sure got some fire in you, that's for sure!" She said, gurgling and chortling with laughter, making fire snort and erupt out her nose. "See, that's my new trick, like it?"

“Yeah, very cool. Is it time for our ride already?” I smiled and nuzzled her head. Armadonna was the new dragon in my life and much better than a prince! We rode around the kingdom every morning after my grape treat.

I just hoped I could take her with me when I escaped from this place – a recent new thought on my brain horizon. Maybe Pandora had it figured out after all and maybe she was hoping to get banished. It was just losing the memories that scared me.

Armadonna was fucking cool! Totally unpredictable. I bet she could help me escape!

Yesterday we’d done a drive-by on my ex, Prince Paul, who had been cheating on me with Princess Tatiana, a real princess slut. I’d recently been dumped by him through her! And I was still pissed about it.

I really hated this place sometimes. But Armadonna had great ideas for me. It had been her idea to do the drive-by yesterday and cause a stir and small cyclone at Prince Paul’s castle.

It surely had pissed him off since he was in the middle of making love to Princess Tatiana!

Ha!

The Interview

2010-01-30T19:58:00.003-06:00

"So why do you want this job?" The CFO asks, steely gray eyes, gnarled demeanor, hair pinned up to the snore-bore core of her six foot seven height, making it six foot nine.

I gulp.

WTF.

You see I don't actually WANT this job if it means working with HER.

I panic.

I think about my life. Why was I always picked last for dodge ball, and all the other sports? Why had the entire sixth grade class decided to laugh hysterically at my knobby, wobbly knees? Why was I such a dark horse? Why was I the black sheep in my family, a family of athetes, graceful ballerinas? Why was I here?

I actually hate marketing and this would be a marketing analyst position masquerading as a pseudo-customer service rep with shitty-swill-of-the-universe hours (4 am until noon), and very little pay.

But it was still better than nothing, and a had a heap of nasty bills to pay.

I need this.

I look at her with my most conservative, anal look.

But I blow it.

I just know it.

I just do.

That's my life. Blowing a lot of things. Competing with others and losing.

A loser. That's what I am.

And it just sucks ass.

It really does.

interview

2010-01-21T12:39:00.002-06:00

I hope my unemployment stint is over soon, coming to a close, FINITO, Exit Stage Left, Oh-So-Over, Bombardedly Leaving The Earth, DONE, Poke-Me-I'm-Done, Far Outta Here, Audi 500, Lost In Space, Breaker-Breaker Over And Out, etc.

Because I have a job interview today.

HURRAH!

I write Chick Lit and NO NOT Chiclet, like the gum

2010-01-04T15:42:00.002-06:00

So over the holidays at countless parties and so forth I talked about writing Chick Lit and what it entails.

And NO, that’s not Chiclet as in the gum!

Monday finds me now diligently writing about Chick Lit and what it is. I scour my brain trying to think of way to explain this easily to others, especially those who do not read.

Thus, I relate Chick Lit to movies.

I ask two questions:

1. Have they ever seen the movie When Harry Met Sally? i.e. Meg Ryan. If they are aware of who she is and what she's played in, then we're good.

2. Have they ever seen the movie, Bridget Jones's Diary? i.e. Renee' Zellwegger. If they are aware of this Chick Lit Phenomenon that set a full-charged blast of Chick Littedness into the Publishing World, then we're good.

If they have neither seen nor heard of either movie, or of Meg Ryan, then their eyes usually glaze over as I continue to grapple like withering apples (explain) my writing genre to them.

Since not many are reading this Chick Lit blog O’ Mine and it’s STILL lost loquaciously and sadly in the Blogosphere, I clamour to gleefully and hopefully tell them about it.

By then, this victim O' Mine at the said Holiday Party have eyes that are darting about trying to escape from me and my uber-long explanation of Chick Lit and what it is. This victim is morose and has a tendency to froth and foam at the mouth by now, saying they are parched and might they get me a drink? I usually shake my head NOPE I am not done explaining yet.

Normally by now, another person has joined us in the convo at this Holiday Party and if this new person does not know who Meg Ryan is, or has not heard of the two aforementioned movies, I now have TWO sets of withering glazed-over eyes.

Luckily most partygoers have heard of Meg Ryan. Luckily most people at parties who deign to talk to me are women and most women have heard of Chick Lit, and most of my friends who are women who are partygoers who talk to me at parties know that I write Chick Lit merged with other genres such as murder mystery, thriller, and the like.

Only one person told me not to merge my genres of mostly Chick Lit with Paranormal.

Chick Lit is literature for women, including romantic comedies. It can encompass several subgenres within the realm of Chick Lit. Mom Lit and Supersingle girl lit and many others. I just happen to merge mine with thriller and murder mystery and whatever other genre I want at the moment.

After all, I’m just a Jobless Wonder and QUIM (Quirky Uncontrollable Middle-aged Woman) who has read more than her fair share of everthing that counts and even more of whatever doesn't count to know enough about Chick Lit to write a novel or two.

Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for more stories!

PART DEUX: A Chick Lit Cliffhanger I wrote - with a Hot & Sexy Man

2009-12-21T13:04:00.009-06:00

I am beguiled by your green-eyed goddess beauty, Wilder says.

I nearly faint.

My stomping and galluping heart pierces my throat. Such a rough rider my heart is!

Wilder suddenly swings over to me, madcap-galore, crushes me into his hearty arms, swoops down for a kiss...

NO WAIT!

This isn't REALLY what's happening...that's just my fantasy, my thing to imagine. It's what I do. It's my shtick, my terwilliger-susswilliger, my universe of whaddya-want, my nonsensical faux pas; I am privy to FUN FANTASTICAL EXPLOSIONS of starbursts of wily wild wonder and grandeur in my mind's eye, in my brain! Vivid taddywonkers of joy! Vast vehemently fireworks of images, effervescent and delightful!

ACTUALLY now my boss, Grigbee Ritches, is on his way over to my cubicle, just as Wilder slides over CLOSER TO ME to watch me finish opening the envelope...

Well, Ms. Yates, how are we this morning? Grigbee's voice booms as he greets me and shakes Wilder's hand. Wilder, good to see you after all these months. I look forward to the Grand Master presentation ceremony later this afternoon. Do we have a winner yet?

I nod my hello at Grigbee. Still unable to speak. Wilder remains by my side. The envelope is ripped open. Waiting for me to pull out its contents...

Aha! Grigbee says to me. You must be the win...

CRASH!

Loud plunkerings interupt and I swivel in my seat to see five large Mastodian-like Gnarly Hairy Green Gushy-pussball-looking Aliens burst into the bank! Now there's six, now seven, now eight...they are multiplying!

BOOM!

Oh yeah, did I happen to mention that I work at a bank? The Frontier Wilderness State Grandville Largehouse Bank.

People suddenly stream everywhere. It's a madhouse! Calamity and chaos!

Grigbee motions to Wilder in sign language, for what I recall as a vernacular warning to Sound the Alarm! Everyone at once seems to be moving.

But. One of the Vulturistic-Green Gross Aliens shouts:

"Nobody move! Or I'll shoot!"

I duck down, but Wilder pulls me up and swoops me out of there quickly into his glass-encased corner office. It's a psychedelic office with mad ravaging greens and fiery oranges and cyclone yellows and ravenous reds; it's also an out-of-the-way place from the full frontal nude view of the starkness and vastness of our impressive bank lobby.

It might be a good place to hide! Wilder holds my hand, it's warm and my heart clanks and bangs rabid-fire rat-a-tat-tat against my ribcage!

People stop scurrying. Someone screams. I hear a shot erupt and echo scally-blunder blasting off into the vastness of the lobby, the sound pings up to crescendo into our starry-spangled skyscraper skyline. A scary sound!

I am afraid to look at whomever the victim is. I'm shaking. My heart's pounding again - bang bang bang - into infinity forever!

Wilder looks at me. His beautiful blue eyes dilate, with tiny-shiny black-dotted pupils. He whispers and points down on the ground:

Lie down flat.

So I do, scared-to-riveting pieces.

Then Wilder plunks down on the floor next to me, it happens so fast. He rolls toward his desk, grabbing my hand, rolling me with him, but we stop as the door to his office bounds open with a BANG! and a WONKY THUD!

I hear heavy breathing. And a deep growl.

Anyone in here? It roars.

Wilder freezes, he is so close to me, I feel his big massive body tense.

It doesn't see us...yet.

Wilder pulls me quickly under his hulking-big mahogany wood desk.

I'm breathing so heavily, panting with fear as this giant Green gritchy alien's black boots shuffle toward us like it knows where we are...it hears us, smells us probably, I can't believe that I will be possibly eaten alive any second now...

And then...ARGHGHGHGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I yell as it grabs us, there are TWO of them, whatever they are....slimy giant gritchily-green fungus interuptus...!!!

FADE TO BLACKNESS.

***
STAY TUNED FOR A STATION BREAK IN WHICH I WILL RETURN AFTER THESE MESSAGES...

A Chick Lit Cliffhanger I wrote - with a Hot & Sexy Man

2009-12-18T13:33:00.006-06:00

Here's a chick lit scene I just now wrote - with a cliffhanger so stay tuned for next time! - after watching the chick flick entitled, The Accidental Husband, with Uma Thurman and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I just love romance!

Okay so here's my new scene, as usual, with my heroine, the clueless QUIM (Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middle-aged woman) Jacy Yates:

In CubicleLand today, I sit sipping my café mocha latte at my cubicle, trying hard not to let Gloria’s moanings and grumblings get to me.

My workload is full and everyone is in a flurry today. My boss is coming back from New York and I’ve got to get my project finished. I’m working while Gloria is talking.

I’m not sure how she gets her work done. I think she bribes her assistant to do all of it for her. Or maybe she bids out her jobs on eWorkHorse.com and they monkeyhump out her work and get ‘er done, just in time…silly as this sounds, it just could be what happens.

It’s a Monday. I look around the office and spy Wilder. I sigh.

He’s across the frazzled fray on such a manic Monday, talking to someone else who’s just as high up as he is. In Vice PresidentLand. Where the norm (and peons such as myself) do not hang. Nor dare. Nor speak. Not ever. Unless spoken to.

Gloria interrupts herself in mid-madhouse rumbling-rama sentence and looks over to where I am looking - at Wilder - and she sighs as well. The man is just so dreamy.

Wilder. He is a sizzling man with the perfect fitting name. A glistening pirate of hearts. He has dark brows, smoldering blue eyes, a tan that tomorrow never forgets.

He’s smarmy sexy frothy-flirty. He is heat intoxicated up and down my spine. His voice is velvet. He is Robinhood. He is Bogie. He works at my company where I’ve toiled away for ten years. He’s never noticed me.

He was dating a supermodel fashionista extraordinaire, but I’d heard they just broke up rather tempestuously. He is passionate. He is infamous. He is also famous. He is a part-time producer for movies as a hobby; a volunteer firefighter, a famous writer of thrillers, a grand master chef.

He is a vice president at my company; he is rarely here because of traveling the world on his book tour. They keep him around for marketing purposes. He lures new clients. He is a big attraction. He is sex on a stick. He is a passionate swarthy sex-god of a man.

I dream about him night and day. Everyone – at least all the woman in my office and all my girlfriends do, too. He is a fantasy.

He can’t be for real. Real mean aren’t like this.

Except…I look up from my cubicle.

And he is walking right towards me.

Gloria stares too and stops talking.

And it takes A LOT for her to just shuddup.

So I’m at work, still, on my project, typing ferociously, and as he gets closer and closer I’m now piling up in sweat. I’m now biting my nails. I am now done typing. He sees me watching him walk towards me.

It’s been real, Gloria says. I better let you get back to it. She is such a cream puff wasteland. She’s been in my cubicle for the past hour and a half complaining about her uber-rich over-bred over-stuffed beau, Victor, and about the new supercharged SUV he’d just bought her in the wrong color. It’s an off-off-off white, when she really just wanted white.

Gloria is a spoiled woman who was/is/someday-in-this-century supposed to inherit millions from her Aunt Ermengarde. When Ermy never died in the 80’s, Gloria decided to go to college, which was a good idea because now Ermy is an octogenarian, still hanging on by a barely-lifelorn roadhouse thread.

Gloria recently decided to start dating someone rich and fancy to fit her inexhaustible shopping habit and uber-charged supercilious lifestyle. And now that Gloria’s dating Victor, she’s now hoping to also inherit millions from his family. (When they got promised-to-be-engaged, she raved and oohed-and-aahed over pictures of his four-story mansion of a house. Even though there were NONE of him.) She tells me it’s always good to have a backup plan.

Gloria is now the caretaker of her Aunt Ermy, which, needless to say, is sort of making Gloria a good person, albeit slowly. So now what am I going to complain about to my friend, Jazhette? Since nothing interesting ever seems to happen to me. I seem to find myself living vicariously through Gloria's richly extravagant life.

I am still not sure why Gloria and I are friends. It might have to do with the fact that nobody else likes her in GirlLand and I’m too sweet and too full of savoir faire to be a meanie to her, like everyone else is. Sometimes I just feel sorry for her. But she can be quite a bore and a tarty blow-hard bitch. The Magnus Opus of infantileness extremes of the world.

So now Wilder’s at my desk station, Gloria’s just left in a flurry of overdone perfume (Este Lauder), and I’m now flustered, sweatrolls farkle down my back, I wipe my brow as nonchalantly as possible and look up at him.

I’m sure I resemble a placid blank-faced cow, hopefully sans the cud-chewing numbness. I hope he doesn’t think that I am wearing all that over-the-top perfume. Este Lauder is not quite who I am. I am more of a Vera Wang kind of perfume.

My cubicle neighbor, Macie Blanders, on the other side of my work station, stops smacking her bubblegum to eavesdrop. This is quite a big deal. Extravaganza to the fullest.

Hiya, he says.

Now I can hear Macie typing madhouse-galore on her computer, she’s perhaps IM’ing everyone in the office about Wilder actually speaking to me. Etc etc.

I can just imagine what everyone’s thinking. Why her? Why NOT me? What does she have that I don’t have? Well, possibly more sweat than: a Chinese sewing manufacturer’s sweatshop, a tax accountant’s armpits, and the inimitable Sweathogs of the 70’s!

All I can do is gulp.

Boy, I feel cheesy, grubby, about twelve years old, looking up at this moviestar hotness glamourama dude, I feel grittiness; really, I feel like a kid in a candy store without coinage.

So then I just grin. It’s all I can do. Gulp and grin. I cannot speak. I’m in whimsical distress, sort of on the fence between golden parachute joy and bitter embroiled hell. Here’s this gorgeous candy and I have no wherewithal to buy it. I have no funds. My soul is normally a parade, but it’s on strike, and so’s my brain.

My Brain? Zip-oid. Nada. Zipland. KAPUT. Over and out!

You’re Jacy Yates, right? He says. Such a golden enriched smooth voice. Such a joy to hear erupt from those luscious lips of his.

Gulp. I go.

I nod. So now I’m queasy, sick, really. My face goes green, I’m sure. I clutch my stomach. I have to hold in my urpiness, a burp about to burble from my boiler-of-a-face. But I think I still have this shit-eating grin plastered on my now greenish-gurgly urpoid face.

Are you alright? He sits in the vacant stale chair in my cubicle. Nobody’s sat there for eons. Nobody comes to talk to me, just Gloria, but she’s usually pacing when she comes over, her crazoid bloody-bore antics, always about her blow-hard self. Self-absorbed that she is. And she is usually complaining about something "wretched." The divine blasphemy of her life.

She has a lot of anger and adult angst.

Don’t we all.

Um, I sort of mumble. But I can just nod.

You okay? He leans in and looks into my face. He’s so close and I breathe in the smoky scent of him.

But. It's too much for me to handle. Now I just want him to leave. I can feel the curious eyes of everyone in the office looking at us. Eyeballs boring into our backs. I do not want or need this kind of attention. I’m not used to it, for one. I’m not going to like the myriads of queries from everyone as soon as he leaves. They’ll be like, what does HE a supergod want with YOU a mere peon?

It will be like a SPIKE in my neon-thwarted stock. My stock is up. I've never in my life had this happen. Juiciness of life usually just skips over me and blunders onto the next cubicle mate. And my stock is usually half-penny-ness.

It’s okay. I know I’m a peon. I’m fine with it. I’ve been one all my life. I’m not ready to NOT be one, not just yet.

He hands me an envelope. This is for you, he says with a white-teeth gleaming smile.

I swoon. I know I am such a loon. I think I smile, but it might look like a grimace.

I reach over for it and I tear at the corners of this envelope. My mouth is dry, I am speechless. I can’t even thank him properly!

What does he want?

What’s in the envelope?

Did I win the lottery? Oh yeah, I don’t remember even buying a lottery ticket.

Death of a Career

2009-12-17T12:11:00.004-06:00

My basilisk-eyed, wanderlust once-creature-comfort career has ended abruptly.

It fell through the cracks ending up in bargain bin obscurity. When you shop at a bargainers dreamhouse, weaving in and out among useless countless off-shore off-colors of designers galore: Donna Karan purple plaid shirts, Ralph Lauren futile folds of foreverness, anything-in-abundance circa 1960 through 1989, Izod shirts lampooned into lascivious dryspell dryweave, cold whorish cotton-blended whatevers, lurid lustful polyesters, plentiful paisleys, vomitous greens/mauves/peaches, hellish hues of avenue-blues, whimsically-distressed violets, various vioin-colored old man’s cardigan sweaters, once-bitten twice-shy tawdry yellows and angry oranges, big-mouth toadstool browns, etc. don’t you just ask yourself where did all this crap come from? How did it get here? And furthermore, how the hell did I get here?

Well I happen to know that some of it fell there, just like my crash-bore accident-prone career.

Its fall was deep and crunchy, crusty and dire, harsh and severe…and it just fucking fell…

Like a bad-mouthed irritable screeching baby bird out of its mamma’s bawdy milk-residue-laden nest…

Into no man’s land.

A harrowing gumphawing Harumph! of a wasteland.

Sifted through and possibly pilfered by Jewish American Princesses at Bargain Basement’s R US?

I think not.

Smoothed-over, glossed-through, half-ass-heartily by the glassy-eyed Girl Next Door?

Nada.

Poked, prodded, and breathed-on by the White Trashy Whore Next Door?

No way, Jose!

Rather, ignored impetuously, imperceptively – icy indifference.

Which leads to…

My life is now a big galumphing gargoyle mess. It just stinks. It’s almost like my brain fell out of my head and landed with a clanky KERPLUNK!

It’s quite a killjoy isn’t it?

The brain. If you don’t use it then you lose it.

Yup. My brain.

It’s lost in an abyss of phlegm and flim-flam wading waters surrounding a castle, a moat of mired messiness with gritchy gators guarding its inky ilk. Not to mention the barnacles that have attached to my grimy brain.

So now I’ve got to figure out how to capture my brain from the wild waters in the messy moat from the bitchy beasts, and regain back my career from the blasphemous bargain basement crazy-circus hellatiousness.

It doesn’t help being QUIMMISH, a Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middle-aged woman. My gut reaction is to consume exorbitant amounts of chocolate and to redux Sex & the City reruns, i.e. to basically escape from everything evil and erroneous in my life.

I’m very good at that. If there ever was a job opening for someone middle-aged to consume large quantities of chocolate and watch girlina chick flicks and write about this stuff, then I’m game.

But. Reality does not play this game well with me. It bites back blue and hard. Insolently, even. And I have vicious teeth-marks from it all over my ravaged body.

So I don’t really know what to do about this tired tangled tragedy. But they do say that tragedy is comedy’s sordid silly sister. And I believe it.

Got Torque? On Torque-blown Tuesdays.

2009-12-16T16:20:00.002-06:00

I wrote this yesterday, which was Tuesday. I'm posting it today, which is Wednesday. Sometimes when you're unemployed you don't know what day it is. I meant to post this yesterday, so it's better late than never:

Yeah, it’s a Tuesday.

And how do I know that?

Because today I got torque! (And oh yeah, I survived Monday alright, too.)

I feel good.

I worked out at the YMCA for free (they give you three free tryouts as a guest).

I steamed like a happy new-wave frog dancing a polka (post nouveau style) in the steam room; I heated myself, blitzing like a barking bullfrog, in the sauna. Myriad permutations of animals gyrating in the desert, I see this in my mind’s eye, which is always an interesting place to be. They need steam in that desert, they need water, and they have plenty of deep-fried heat, and love.

I love steam! Bring on that cool song by Peter Gabriel regarding steam.

I love heat! Bring on that cool movie, with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro.

All this, after I walked - and run-walked - on the treadmill.

I am lost in a dearth of wild woolly wilderness of life. It seems that everything’s been squelched this year. I sift through the smoldering wreckage, and I still see steam erupting from under the embers, the cinders, and the messiness of it all.

Steam. It’s like hope. It’s a good thing.

Filing Extension for Unemployment and Fantasy Job Mondays

2009-12-14T21:15:00.004-06:00

Fantasy Job Monday

Have I mentioned FJM’s yet? I think not. Only someone like me, a QUIM (Quirky Uncontrollable Immature Middle-aged woman), can think up something this fantastic.

All you really have to do is have a vivacious, fabulous imagination.

Oh yeah, and you have to really truly grittily hate Mondays. I still dislike Mondays, even though I do NOT have to go to cubicle land world (i.e. a job in corporate America) any longer.

Mondays. They come at you full steam sometimes. Not unlike Hard-Core Hellacious Hangovers (rewind this past Sunday morning? No!).

But NOT like Full-Blown Fun-Loving cups of cappuccino, avec Full Steam and Frothiness.

So today I would rather be a Food Taster for a Chocolate Factory. This is my Fantasy Job Monday.

Oh yeah, and I applied for my Extension for Unemployment. Hope I get it.

On The Writing Life and Unemployment Running Out.

2009-12-11T12:05:00.003-06:00

On The Writing Life and Unemployment Running Out.

So am thinking about sending some of my chapters from one of my chick lit/murder myster/sexy thriller novels to a Literary Agent. Not sure yet who this Lucky Creature will be yet.

Not sure which chapters, though. Perhaps you, my gentle reader, can help me decide.

Will it be:

Cameltoes

Pussy Go Lightly

Bad Breakup in a Beleagured Bar

Am also thinking about sending something to a Writer's Contest. It would be nice to have some extra money. Especially since my Unemployment MIGHT conceivably run out this weekend. I will find out if I can get an extension this coming Sunday.

Saw a pretty cool contest for Sci-Fi writers, the L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest. How hard can that be, right? I will have to grapple with the idiosyncracies of sci-fi, the vernacular, the right ideology, the right voice, style, etc. I'm sure I can do it, I'm a Desperado, right? The good thing about being desperate for money is that you realize your talents increase by the moment.

"Will Wash Windshields for Money," am working on polishing that sign and going down to the street corner next week.

So I've been writing steadily a few hours every day, in between looking for jobs. I might also think about getting a paid writing job, possibly freelance, maybe part time at a magazine somewhere in my town. I called a gal pal, let's call her JoVial, but she hasn't rang me back yet. Hmmm. Maybe I will Facebook her instead. Suspect she prefers her online life more than her offline life.

Wish me luck. I certainly need it.

The Unemployment Office, Astral Projection, and Sex.

2009-12-10T23:32:00.008-06:00

The Unemployment Office, Astral Projection, and Sex.

I remember talking to a gal pal in college eons ago about Astral Projection (among other things collegy: Sex, Drugs, and Rock N Roll). She swore she’d done it. She is now a friend on my Facebook, although the last time I saw her she said something shockingly smarmy and rude to me. So let’s call her LouDanne Dumme since it absolutely fits her mediocrity and lack of savoir fare. What she said to me was Just Unforgivable:

You mean you’re Still Single?

Even when she caught my deer-in-headlight reaction to her cold-hearted blunder about my relationship status, like a blow-harded bore she pummeled me with pics of her kids and talked about her perfect life being married-with-kids, she reminded me of the brutal “Smug Marrieds” that Helen Fielding writes about in Bridget Jones’s Diary. And why I so relate to that book!

I’m just glad that LouDanne Dumme thinks she’s BETTER than I am so that I DON’T have to see her or swamp through hoardes of hoaky pictures of her “super-duper” sons.

I suppose if LouDanne Dumme saw me now, she’d probably say:

You mean you STILL can’t find a job?

It takes me a while to come back with snappy comebacks. Usually twenty years later I can FINALLY think of something witty and clever and debonair to say. So to her I’d say to that:

You mean you STILL have your head up your ass? Are you STILL smoking pot, too?

But then she’d probably retort:

You mean you STILL think you can dance sexy? HUH?

We all know very well that I cannot dance sexy; I just think I can because normally I dance when I drink something – a lot of somethings!

I am pretty certain that if I could Astral Project myself Far and Away from here that I would go check out The Unemployment Office to see if I am on the targeted hit list to get an extension for even more unemployment income. I really need it bad. Like a sea-faring scurvey-afflicted sailor craves Vitamin C.

Hopefully this would take a good 15 minutes to do, so I’d have time to then Astral Project myself to Italy to check out the weather, the art, the people, the sex, the fashion, and the food. I’ve always wanted to go to Italy.

I suppose I have a short Astral Project list at the moment of where I’d go:

1. The Unemployment Office

2. Italy

3. My sister’s courtroom when she does her upcoming Big Case for I have a feeling actually showing up might make her nervous. I want her to win. And I hope the judge isn't a curmudgeon.

4. All of my recruiters’ offices. I’d like to find out whether they are really trying to help me find a job, or not. I suspect not. I suspect that they are laughing at me behind my back and busy playing Solitaire on their computers at work. They are also probably masturbating to keep from dying of boredom since the economy is so sucky-ass.

5. All the chocolate factories in the world. I’ve always wanted to know how they do it. I’ve always wanted a chocolate factory. Preferably an organic chocolate factory, possibly reminiscent of the gorgeous astounding chocolate I had in Austria and Germany last summer when I was there with my wonderful family.

6. Publishing companies who publish chick lit/murder mystery/sexy thrillers, or the like. Find out exactly what they’re looking for.

7. Literary agents who help people who write chick lit/murder mystery/sexy thrillers get published.

8. Those cool people who make animated films. The process sounds fascinating. Wallace and Gromit are so great.

9. Wedding cake confectioners. I love the Fancy-Shmancy aspect of it and I just KNOW I could do it if I could see how they did it. Yeah!

10. The next big piano contest, like The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. I play piano, but I’ve never been That Good and I’d like to watch the contestants up close and personal, without having them know I was there, breathing down their fingers rolling clandestinely up and down the piano. Piano is like sex! It rocks!

So where would YOU go? I'd love to hear from those of you reading my blog. All three of you.

On Writer’s Block and Other Nightmares.

2009-12-10T00:44:00.003-06:00

Inevitably, this is what happens when a writer does not write for days; it’s called Writer’s Block, and it’s pure evil.

It is the swarthy (Harumph!) and uncomfortable equivalent of a Radio Deejay’s Dead Air.

Or a Porn Star’s Limp Whiskey Dick.

Or a Priest’s Hard-on.

Or a Femme Fatale’s Visit from Monthly Martha.

Or a Serial Killer’s Change of Heart.

Or a Vampire’s New Vegan Diet.

So then I traveled down the jaunty, hopeful, and dusty tour of my old computer’s hard drive to dredge up more - possibly phlegmatic - writing’s of yesteryear…but alas! No dice.

I found that my old writing is as bad as a college kid’s dirty laundry, which stands on its own Wilderness Land’s Two Feet.

Or as bad as that old Slaughtered Salt Lick slobbered on by the Crusty Cows and Hillbilly Horses nearby.

I’ll be back tomorrow. With or without the Nightmares? Who the hell knows.

A Stalker, a Standoff, and Some Death Threats.

2009-12-06T11:00:00.005-06:00

It’s true, my beautiful sister, we’ll call her Sheena, who is an attorney is absolutely cool (she was born that way) and is a genius (once again: born that way) and I love her tons and tons. Also: I think she’s saved my ass more than once (but we won’t get into that grisly mess right now!). This scene is dedicated to her, and I hope she LAUGHS A LOT when she remembers this event. Here it is:

Roatney Oatnonny is insane.

Well, hell, with a name like that, who can blame him?

He has always shown PDAs with me – which in his case stand for Public Displays of Agony – being mine!

So when his voice erupts on my speaker phone at work bright and early Monday morning, it is indelicately high-pitched, vulgar, and yes, in-sanest of the freakiest kind.

“But Jacy, I LOVE Youuuuuuu!”

Jesus Fucking Christ.

I pick up my phone to thwart the super-sonic dolphin-happy-hearing ranges of the three bitchy and nosy accounting clerks who work for me. I cannot let them hear.

My job is already in blowhard jeopardy as it is.

Last week Roatney Oatnonny sent a singing/juggling clown to my office, such a nutcase job to have happen to me when they already do not like me at work. And it wasn’t even my birthday so I had to make up some nonsensical excuse. Got pulled into my boss’s office about it, sure was embarrassing.

Uh, yeah, I have a stalker, I told my boss, who looked down at me under his bespectacled countenance, and snorted.

Oh really? And how did THAT happen?

Er, it’s a long story. It’s nothing I did, mind you…

Oh I’m sure! I’d like to hear that one. My boss snorted again and galumphed a chortling laugh.

I met him while I was out with my sister, Sheena. That’s how it started.

Sheena! Is she still single? I’d really like to…be single again!

Okay, well, do you mind if I return to work, we can discuss this later, Miles. I ended it without explanation.

So now my accounting clerks actually don’t notice that I'm hissing on the phone with a freakazoid because there’s always so much chaos in the accounting department, and FOR ONCE I am thankful!

Jeremiah Bravo is harassing Litliana Plutnik, the A/P clerk about screwing up his accounts payable again; Mandolynne Warbler is speaking in her loud British snooty voice – belittled harrumphs erupting – to Cheseapeake, our new-ish accounts receivable clerk. And Daisy Jo Portnal, the billing clerk, is on the phone with our senior partner, Ergle Erwood about his billing fiasco, and her voice carries like a pregnant orangutang laying blame.

“Ohmigad, Roatney.” I hiss. “You’re not listening to me. I told you several times already that I have a boyfriend. You have to stop calling me. Besides, I’m at work and I’m very busy.”

He’d first rung last week and now keeps calling me daily.

“But, Jacy, I will do anything for you.” Roatney cajoles.

“I have to go now. Okay?”

“Wait, can’t we just meet sometime and have coffee?”

“No, like I said last week, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Roatney pauses. “You said we could have coffee sometime. But I LOVE you.”

“I gotta go.” I place the phone in its cradle and proceed to throw up, on the inside. I am that disgusted. You know those little vomit burps that curdle your insides? My stomach decides to hurt the rest of the day.

Last week when Sheena had told me that some guy had left her a message wanting me to call him, but had not left his name, but did leave a number, why oh why had I decided to call him back from my work phone?

She said he had sounded gay. Keenan Smith? Terence Jenkins? If it was Terry, why would he call me? Why not Jazhette? Some other gay guy friend from my past? Borka Sloaden? Must be.

So when I rang the guy last week, he said his name crisply and clearly: Roatney. Pause. Oatnonny. Proudly. Firmly.

He’s CRAZY!

I cringed on the inside, but my voice was calm. This was the freak I dumped years ago! We talked and I made it nonchalant chit-chatter and low-key.

But then when he invited me to a Marilyn Manson concert I knew I had to get off the phone.

I just had to get off the phone. ASAP. That was my first instinct. Trouble brewing. Like waking the dead. Opening a can of sordid grisly slimy creepy crawly worms.

Oh. My. God.

No thank you, I told him, I have a boyfriend. That was my first mistake. Oh no, right, my first mistake was meeting him several years ago when I was with Sheena at a Halloween party.

Okay, well, he said, we could still go have coffee sometime, right? Right?

Well, I said at the time, just to get him off the fucking phone, sure...sometime. But I was not sincere. I remember hating him and not really being able to pinpoint why or the moment the lust turned to Bitter Revolution Hate. It was never really real hate but he just annoyed the holy fuck out of me. Maybe that’s close enough. Maybe it was the Ska dancing at the Sultan’s Ballroom. Maybe it was the shit in his tub when his toilet/tub didn’t work and his place was fucking freezing cold. Maybe it was that he was poor. And I so hated dating someone who was poor. That was no fun paying for everything myself. It was the biggest turn off ever. Anyway, I somehow I got him off the phone - he did tell me about his school and gave me his address and phone number and all that. Then I hung up but he rang right back and said Now I have your work number. Terror crawled up my spine and snarled, then creeped slimily back down my spine.

Holy Fuck.

Then I said that I had to go and I hung up on him.

The next day I had several I LOVE YOU messages from him on my voicemail that he’d left ranging from 9 p.m. to midnight. Yuck-oid.

The next day I had a few more I LOVE YOU and MISS YOU messages. Vomit Curdling in My Throat. Now. So disgusted.

The next day same thing I had even more I LOVE YOU insane/obsessive compulsive messages. Again. That was a Friday. That night I went to Barnie’s with Jazhette and drank heavily, so bothered by this. And right before Katrinka’s wedding. So I had some big burly macho-voiced tough looking guy who tells him via voicemail to stop calling Jacy Yates.

Well the next day he left about 3-5 crazed gonna-kill-your-boyfriend, gonna-kill-you, gonna-kill-you-and-your boyfriend messages. Then one more that said he wasn’t going to hurt me, he loved me, just going to hurt the boyfriend.

I wondered what to do so I played the messages for my sister, Sheena, who is an attorney and I played some of the sane messages for my family. Sheena said I needed to call the police and tell them. But I pondered this.

And now it is Monday and I just got off the phone with him again, it is torture just being at work. I did tell the girls not to answer my phone. I still do not want them to hear or know what is really going on other than some ex is bugging me. I do not want them to know yet about the death threats.

Last week I had the girls not answer my phone and said some ex was calling and even had the security guard escort me to my car the rest of the week. Was frightened to death of seeing him. Or just freaked out. Somewhat.

I decide to tell Miles about the whole thing for good, come clean and all that, especially about the recent weekend death threat messages saved on my voicemail and am in his office and ready to play my voicemail for him when Litliana accidentally answers my phone and buzzes us and says it is weird heavy breathing and she is really freaked out from him (apparently he’d been sniffing paint all night or something testicular-harming) then Miles says he will call him so I give him the number and Miles says his spiel about harassing an employee and the firm will file a restraining/protective order against him, etc.

Heavy breathing on his side of the receiver. Miles must be getting to him. IT’S ALL SO FUCKING CRAZY.

So now it is Tuesday and Roatney gets up early, armed, and starts shooting his AK-47 or whatever the fuck kinda gun it is at his neighbors. Police show up with teargas, dogs, trucks, etc. I’m at lunch with Sheena wondering about giving her his address so she can do a drive-by during this time, not knowing that he is doing this.

Later back at work, Litliana’s friend who works at the police station tells us that there is a 12 hr standoff at Yadmiral Court and naturally he’d given me his address the week before. So then I check the address and then I KNOW it’s HIM.

I freak out.

Sheena then calls as the entire firm is up in arms about this, watching the television and knowing this is my stalker. Sheena says he apparently called Burn Artin, a bigtime hotshot attorney who takes on high profile cases such as this, who originally ignored him at first until he found out it was as ”public display of affection” or rather, on television the 12 hour standoff with the police. PDA’s are not usually shown on television. Some crazy girls would say, Roatney, how sweet. Or: You really do care about me, Roatney. Probably the type of crazy girls displayed in a made for TV movies starring Juliette Lewis or Courtney, the wife of Kurt Cobain.

The twelve hour standoff ends as Roatney warbles to the ground in a wobbly mess of heartache and craziness, after having shot at several cops, who’ve also reciprocated by shooting back at him. Nobody is killed. It is like a miracle that he is still even alive. The cops are pissed and everyone I know is sorta half ass lauging at me, what a joke that this is a guy that I once dated. What a freak.

My boss, Miles, snorts with laughter and says that I must be really good in bed. Ha ha.

Sheena keeps me posted on updates on his case. He is once up for parole, but doesn’t quite cut that smarmy mustard.

Gee, like he really thought he could get away with shooting at his neighbor, and THEN the cops for twelve hours?

Anyway, he is put away FINALLY and a whole string of court sessions later, he is still trying to get off on insanity. Last I heard, he was saying that I used him. He was still ranting and raving on and on about me. For crying out loud!

I should not always return my phone calls.

I think he is still in jail. He says he wants to kill me and that he’ll get me someday. I’m waiting, oh yes, I have a gun and lots of pink silly string in my bedroom just for the right moment. If he comes after me in my house I’m going to squirt him silly and then quickly take aim and shoot. And I’ll be laughing the whole time.