Love is Stronger Than Kim Kardashian

Today I'd like to tell you about one of the longest, most fulfilling, and most fruitful (specifically: melon-y) relationships in my life: my relationship...with Midori. I discovered Midori shortly after my 21st birthday - a simpler time, a more relaxing time, a time when I believed there would be more to my future than endless decades just biding my time waiting to fall into the gaping black maw of death. We were all so very young then. And Chili's was offering something they inexplicably called "Meltdown Floats", which were essentially little test tubes of designated fruity liqueurs that would be brought out with your margarita so you could add them to the margarita. I always thought it would be more appropriate to call them "Here, Mix Your Own Damn Drink". But I digress (often and with gusto). So I learned early on that Midori takes an ordinary margarita and makes it a magical candy-flavored journey to a land where fully functional inner ears are for losers. And in the intervening years, I've learned that Midori can do much the same thing to Sprite. Or seltzer water. But I still like it best in margaritas.

Now, lest you believe the hype of my Twitter account and/or this blog, I should point out that I'm truly not the alcohol-soaked lush I pretend to be. I like booze, but that's largely because it's still kind of a treat for me - I don't drink every single day, so I see it as a special occasion! This is also why my last Midori purchase was on July 4th of last year, fully 9 months ago. In fact, there's still a little of that sweet green nectar in the bottle, but it's not enough to make a full midorita. Plus I'm trying to run up my credit card bill at the moment so I can earn more reward miles and/or murder the bothersome party of my choice*. So I figured, "What the hey! I'll pop into my favorite boozitorium and pick up a bottle of melon-flavored bliss!"

This is pretty much the only liquor store I go to, so I know exactly where the Midori is. I went straight to the shelf where my emerald green love awaited me...and I froze in my tracks. Because I saw this:

Blurry photo due to enraged shaking/screaming "AWAY FROM MY BOTTLE YOU OVERINFLATED AIRBAG!!!"

In case it's not clear (and why would it be, as that may be the blurriest picture ever), that's Miss Kim Kardashian, endorsing MY booze. I was livid. I was confused. I mean, I believe in voting with my dollar, and I would love nothing more than if hiring that woman as a spokesperson was guaranteed to lose any given company at least 10% of its usual revenue. But could I walk away from Midori? After all we've been through? I agonized. I stood in the aisle, staring at the bottle, thinking, "If I pick that bottle up, and I take it to the counter, and I pay the man, I will be a person who has bought a thing that Kim Kardashian told me to buy. And people might see it in my fridge! And they might think, 'OMG she bought something because Kim Kardashian told her to?' And then I won't have any more friends!" It was a serious dilemma, to be sure. Thank God grade school had prepared me for this moment: the moment I looked Kim Kardashian in the little bit of her face that was still visible around all the eye makeup and said, "Kim Kardashian! Imma buy this bottle of Midori, but I'm gonna do it because I want to! NOT because you told me to!" And I needed to tell all of you that, because if you come to my house and see the Midori in my fridge, you need to know the whole story.

*This is a reference to the ongoing trial of Hemy Neuman, who did his murdering less than 2 miles from my house, so I've been watching the trial with great interest. Basically, on Thursday, a Psychiatrist Who Actually Expects To Be Taken Seriously After This Is All Over testified in front of God and everybody that Neuman didn't know right from wrong when he shot Rusty Sneiderman 4 times at point blank range, and this was due, in part, to the fact that "he had $75,000 in credit card debt". By this logic, if you owe Visa at least $75k, you can kill whoever you want and not be held responsible. Therefore, MOMMA'S GOIN' SHOPPING!

Don't Drink the Water Eat the Queso

I've been back from my vacay for a couple of weeks now, and while I don't want to turn my whole blog into a travelog, I had two pictures I wanted to show you. Be warned that they depict the Best Thing That Happened...and the Worst Thing That Happened. I'm gonna do the Worst Thing first, so take a moment to brace yourselves:

DON'T LOOK AWAY! We have to confront these things.

Sigh. I had Mexican food for lunch one day every day. And on the day when I ate at this place...I mean, I'm not gonna name it because the people were incredibly nice and the margaritas were the best I've had, but...but...

THERE ARE ROOT VEGETABLES IN THE QUESO! WHAT? Seriously! I ordered queso, and I got queso...plus carrots and radishes. RADISHES! Is this a Mexican restaurant, or a Beatrix Potter story? As you can well imagine, I was appalled. And naturally, I got up and stormed out immediately. *OR* I only ate some of it and just ordered another margarita and wouldn't have been able to "storm" anywhere without falling over. Who can remember?

OK, deep breaths. Let's switch to happier thoughts, shall we?

What are you doing...the reeeeeesssst of your life? North and South and East and West of your liiiife....

My Dream Vacation Fridge. See, I bought this bottle of wine because what'm I supposed to do? NOT have a glass of wine no further than 6 feet from my bed? But it's a rosé (oh shut up you snobs), which meant it had to be chilled. I figured this was going to be a pain in the ass, so I was so happy I nearly burst into tears when I found that my room fridge had a custom-made wine slot! Right there in the door! Not only that, but as you can see in the picture, there is also a dispensing slot for fermented liquid yeast drinks, if you wanted to drink those for some unfathomable reason. At this point, I'm seriously starting to question the footprint and energy use of my massive 2-door fridge/freezer. What is it all for? All I need is this tiny booze-slot fridge. I guess what I'm saying is: I've finally found love. Happy March everybody!

Take a Whack at the Paiñ-ata!

I have a two problems:
1. Like so many 21st century Americans, I suffer from periodic bouts of depression
2. I can't stand to drink hard liquor straight up

These may seem unrelated, but let me tell you they are not. And I inadvertently proved it during my most recent episode, when I got into a habit of trying to dull my sadness with an evening drink. My poison? Margaritas. Therein lies the conflict. I'll explain...

Let's say you're an angsty, artsy type, prone to bouts of horrific depression. Your friends probably know this about you and keep an eye out for the warning signs. As a result, when you get near rock bottom, you might have an exchange like this:
YOU: What's the point? I don't even care anymore. I've got a fifth of JD, and that's what I'm having for dinner.
YOUR FRIEND: A fifth of JD?!?! For dinner? That's it, I'm coming over!

But when I get near rock bottom, it looks more like this:
ME: What's the point? I don't even care anymore. I'm already on my third margarita.
MY FRIENDS: Rock on!! Three margaritas before 2pm? You're livin' it UP!
ME: I guess. If you call this living. I think I'll double the tequila in the next one.
MY FRIENDS: HELL YEAH!!

A margarita just doesn't work as a cry for help. If you're drinking something light brown that burns your throat on the way down, that's the universal sign for "I NEED SOMEONE TO TALK TO". If you're drinking something dayglo green that tastes like a lime Jolly Rancher, it's the universal sign for "I NEED TWO BACKUP DANCERS AND A KARAOKE MACHINE".

Not only that, but you can't cry into a margarita because the tiny umbrella deflects most of the tears. Even if you manage to get one or two in there, all you did was save yourself some money on salt. At the end of the day, it's the liquid equivalent of bringing up the rear of a conga line to "Hot Hot Hot" at a funeral - it looks ridiculous. I might as well get myself some crazy straws to complete the effect.

Lucky for me, my depressions never last more than a week or two, and if I have to be bad at something, "being an alcoholic" is one of the things I'd most like to suck at. So...win! The only downside is that I look utterly ridiculous for two weeks. But that's really not so different from my non-depressive state.

Serious Part Real Quick-Like, Though:
I've had these little bouts of depression off and on for twenty years now. I'm lucky that they aren't so bad that I require medication or have to put my life on hold - I manage to keep working, improvising, and blogging in spite of the temporary chemical imbalance in my brain/salt imbalance in my margaritas. But there are a lot of people who have it way worse than I do, and if you're one of them, please please please make sure you ask for help when you need it. Just do what I do when my friends mistake my Margarita Depress-tival for a Fiesta-val: pick someone whose last birthday cost you at least twenty bucks and send them an email that says "LITTLE HELP HERE?" in the subject line. Then tell them what it is that you need - a chat over dinner, a quick phone call, a sleepover party, five rides on the Dahlonega Mine Train at Six Flags, help finding a therapist...or even help figuring out what you need! That's what friends, family, some coworkers, and all suicide prevention hotline workers are for ;)

Oh, and I don't really endorse self-medication with alcohol. Just so we're clear.

Please. Someone. Save Me From Myself.

I went out and had a lovely evening sharing a pitcher of margaritas with a friend tonight. Margaritas always make me feel happy, bubbly, and flirty, so I came home thinking "I know! Maybe I'll get back on one of the free dating sites and see if there are any good possibilities!"

Why did I think that? Sure, it was partly because of the margaritas. But mostly it was because I am a brain-dead idiot with the memory of a gnat. Because I JUST rescued myself from match.com! Why would I go and get back into the same stupidity again?!?! On the plus side, I've now had a hearty laugh and been gently reminded of why the margarita flirt-high should be allowed to pass unindulged in the future.

First, I get on the dating site and look around. I spend a good hour just laughing at the terrifying and/or sad profiles and congratulating myself on avoiding this mess. Then, just as I'm about to give up, I see someone halfway decent.

Next, I decide I might as well put up a picture and a 2-sentence summary of myself. Just in case he was interested. You never know.

So I post the picture and get started on the profile...

ME (thinking): Hmmm... what's the first thing people notice about me... lemme think...

SITE NOTIFICATION: Euthanizer666 is checking you out!

ME: Uh-oh! I wonder how I turn that off. I don't need a pop-up window every time...

SITE NOTIFICATION: Beelzebub72 is checking you out!

ME: Yeah, this is exactly what I DON'T want to...

INSTANT MESSENGER: MILFHunter said: So what are you doing up this late? Wanna chat?

ME: Mother of God, how do I make it stop?!?! MINIMIZE! MINIMIZE!

iPHONE (sitting on the desk by the computer): *new email sound*

ME: New email? From whom? OH GOD NO!

EMAIL: RightGuy4U has sent you a message! Message text - Good evening good lookin'...

ME: *vomits into the wastepaper basket* Where was I? Oh right. The profile blurb...

iPHONE: *new email sound*

ME: New email? From...crap.

EMAIL: 35RestrainingOrders has sent you an erotic poem in the original French by Pierre de Ronsard! His profile says he doesn't speak French, but he is attempting to pass this off as an original work!

ME: Dammit! Where are the email settings?

SITE NOTIFICATION: NiceGuy is checking you out!

iPHONE: *new email sound*

INSTANT MESSENGER: Rico_Suave said: Voulay voo cooshay avec moi? Ha ha! 

Pretty soon I begin to feel like I don't need a date; I need an exorcist who specializes in Apple products.

I want to stress that this has nothing whatsoever to do with how I look, and it is NOT (repeat: NOT) the ego boost you might think it is, if you've never been on a dating site before.The first time you set up a profile, this happens (and it happens to ALL of us), and you think you might have seriously underestimated your hotness. But soon you realize that there are about five hundred guys out there whose entire strategy consists of finding whoever is new to the site and bombarding her with seriously weak pickup lines. They don't care what she looks like and they definitely have not bothered to read her profile, because they don't care who she is or what she wants. The messages they send are evenly divided between something along the lines of "Your so beautiful" (note: this is the entire body of the message and they ALWAYS make that grammar error) or something more like "I see we have a lot in common..." (this is pretty much NEVER true).

It's the Fresh Meat approach, and I can't imagine that it has ever worked, but I guess its devotees know something I don't. Mostly it's just the most irritating thing ever, like a denial-of-service attack on my love life. From the wikipedia entry on DoS, emphasis mine:

One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communication requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable.

I suppose it's just as well. I have an awful lot of sketches to write/edit in the next two days. And any time I don't spend on sketches really ought to be spent making ginormous glossy posters of myself to be distributed to every Mexican restaurant in the metro area, featuring big black letters that say "DO NOT SERVE MARGARITAS TO THIS WOMAN".

DISCLAIMER: There are nice, decent, real guys on these sites who really do read women's profiles before blindly assuming that mutual desperation will be a sufficient basis for a relationship. It's just that you don't hear from them until the first week has passed, and this post is about the first horrifying seconds after posting a photo. So don't yell at me. I didn't make the rules.