Lose a Fatty

For my friends, my family and my amazing therapist, who wouldn't let me let the squid win. And Joe Manganiello, for being shirtless. You always hear about "anxiety and depression" as a pair. Laurel and Hardy, peanut butter and jelly, anxiety and depression. One rarely enters the spotlight without the other. But while I have worked incredibly hard to overcome (or, at best, learn to live with) my anxiety, depression rarely hit me. A bad day, yes. A bad job that created a few months of awfulness? Sure. But never anything longer than a summer. A few years back, though, I lost whatever spark had made me me. Getting out of bed exhausted me. I wanted nothing to do with my friends, my hobbies or -- honestly -- my life. I didn't want to stop living. No way. I just wanted to hit pause until I could reignite that spark and feel OK again. I was depressed. And it felt a lot like treading water. <Prepare yourself for a really long extended metaphor.> Imagine you'r

Narrative style inspired by too many episodes of The Golden Girls. Picture it. Pittsburgh. 2017. A young woman very close to middle-age but still in denial about it goes to a hip little independent bookstore to see her favorite lexicographer (yes, she has one) read from her new book. The weather? Perfect. The parking? Strangely easy. Her mood? Elevated. All is right with the world. The store is lovely and the girl easily spots the word nerd friend she's meeting near the front of the room. She sits. She talks. She gleefully laughs at the Dictionary Lady's word jokes. She tries not to laugh too hard because the crowd is small and the chairs aren't sturdy. She enjoys hearing the Dictionary Lady read the chapter of her book that's all about defining one word: take. Even though our middle-aged heroine read the chapter a few weeks ago, it's just as entertaining the second time around. (Defining "take" took the Dictionary Lady a full month!) After the rea

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls. Step right and enjoy this last post of my Lenten experiment. You're reading post 40. And while I technically went beyond Lent (it ended Wednesday night, I'm told by more religious folk than I), I consider #40in40 a success. Generally, we learn things from experiments, and I certainly did. So what have I concluded, you ask? Let me tell you. Writing is hard. I've always known this — after all, I write all day, five days a week. (In some form. Not always a ton, but words are put together and published in some manner nearly every day.) I've always hated people who think a glass of wine and moonlight lead to divine inspiration and words that magically appear on a page. Those people are fakers. Writers know, and now I understand more deeply, that developing ideas is hard. Not falling asleep at night and writing instead is hard. Trying to be interesting or amusing or emotional is hard. I don't have a big audience, but I also didn&

At the beginning of this Lenten blogging journey, I made a pie . It's only fitting, then, that my penultimate post be the goodies that I made for Easter today. Peanut butter eggs. Not bad for a first attempt. First, I decided to take a crack at making homemade peanut butter easter eggs. The result? Not too shabby. They look lovely, but the filling is only so-so. Next time, I think I'll just use my sister's buckeye filling recipe for the peanut butter part. Also, I used semi-sweet chocolate for the outside, and they may have been better with milk chocolate. But regardless, they're adorable and definitely edible. My mom also instructed my sister and I to "bring our favorite thing" to Easter lunch tomorrow. She's going to have all the real food handled, so I thought showing up with a giant tuna noodle casserole might be ridiculous. (I LOVE tuna noodle casserole. In fact, I think it's what's for dinner tonight.) I narrowed it down to stuffing (

(Read this post first.) A neat footnote to my previous post is that the Good Friday Jesus Christ Superstar tradition arose from the events surrounding the spring of my senior year in high school. Good Friday that year (multiple decades ago now. Sigh.) was also Ivy League decision-letter day. And, back then, Good Friday service began at noon and lasted until 3 p.m. Of course, we went. And our mail arrived around 2:30 p.m. So I had the entire service to wonder whether a thick or thin letter from Harvard would be waiting in our mailbox when I got home. Not only was I desperate to go to Harvard, but my boyfriend had received his letter the day before — and had gotten in. I felt like my whole future and our whole future depended on what sort of mail I had. I did not think about Jesus during the service. I thought about Harvard and Carnegie Mellon and Allegheny College. Where would I go if Harvard said no? What would the financial aid packages from the latter two schools look like and c

Every Good Friday, I bust out my Jesus Christ Superstar CDs and have a giant, possibly blasphemous singalong to what I consider one of the finest biblical musicals ever made. (Close second, same creator: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.) I think we can ALL agree that there is no better way to celebrate the tragedy and ultimate triumph of Our Lord and Savior's last week on earth than by belting lyrics like these at the top of your lungs. "What's the buzz? Tell me what's a happenin'. What's the buzz? Tell me what's a happenin'. What's the buzz? Tell me what's a happenin'. What's the buzz? Tell me what's a happenin'. When do we ride into Jerusalem? When do we ride into Jerusalem? When do we ride into Jerusalem? When do we ride into Jerusalem?" All against the backdrop of a bitchin' 70s disco groove. There's also my favorite song, "This Jesus Must Die," with gems like "What th

Because I cried the whole time I wrote the last post. I occasionally enjoy the symphony Where Beethoven and Gershwin speak peace to me. But my side mirrors quake And my windows all shake When I rap about A-dot-Ham's legacy.

I first met my oldest, now-19-year-old nephew when he was about four days old. I thought he was pretty cute. In one of those memories that stay with you as a Polaroid of when life was good, I remember my grandparents -- all of them still alive -- converging on my parents house on what was probably Labor Day weekend to meet this new little chapter in all our lives. He peed on my dad. He seemed to like me. All in all, I was pretty thrilled with the little dude. We'd go on to have a lot of good times, this kid and I. I sang "Little Bunny Foo Foo" a bazillion times to calm him down. I gave him cookies when maybe I shouldn't have. I walked into a room and caught him pulling himself up for the first time so he could inspect the fish in my dad's aquarium. I rocked him when he had colic. A few years after he came around, we both met his brother. We liked him too, but I think we both wondered what this meant for us. We stayed pretty tight. He learned to talk in a hurry

You're innocently minding your own business, driving to see some friends. You hear a song on the radio. "I know this band," your brain says. "I know it. Oooh, what are they called???" You keep driving. Meanwhile, your brain is working so hard that you can almost smell the smoke, but you're stopping at stop signs and watching for jaywalkers, so you're preoccupied. "YES!" It reports back. "THESE PEOPLE ARE CALLED THE CIGARETTE LIGHTERS!" <three blocks later, more sheepishly> "Wait. I was wrong. They're the Chainsmokers." Close, but no cigarette lighter.

"That mask. That heavy breathing. I can barely contain myself when he's around. He's so sexy." Said no one ever. Look, Vader has a lot going for him that some girls might like. That whole bad-boy-kills-people-with-his-mind thing can be very attractive to a certain kind of woman. But one thing I think almost everyone would agree on, though I can't say for sure, is that the mask ain't where it's at. Which is why I held off on getting a CPAP for years, even though I knew I needed one. At the time, I had huge concerns that my "bed partner" (as the medical professionals call them) would find the whole thing so off-putting that he'd be done with me in a matter of weeks. I finally talked to him about it and he said that he'd rather I be able to breathe than die in my sleep. So I jumped through all the testing and insurance hoops. I slept at home with a bunch of sensors taped to me. I slept in a sterile medical room with so many w

There's no terrible, worse kind of day When the bathroom's a staircase away. And your stomach is mad. And your knee is a cad. So you lay down in bed, where you stay.

Sweating. Cramping. Blah. At least I didn't vomit. Feel better today.

It's sunny outside but I'm inside. And I feel like my brain may have just died. My ear hurts like hell. I can't even spell. And now seems like a good time to imbibe.

This assignment is making me batty. I'm hungry and angry and catty. My words are a mess. I'm starting to stress. And my hair is disgustingly ratty.

"Look at where you are. Look at where you started." We're a week away from Easter and I'm something like 13 posts shy of achieving my 40 in 40 goal. Sigh. Rather than accepting that I'm a big ol' failure (Bitch Brain is working hard these days), I'm instead determined to somehow make this happen. Posting twice a day may cut into my online shopping time, but I'm determined to do it. The lesson here is that time does fly as you age. At the beginning of Lent, which this year started on March 1, it's easy to forget how quickly five weeks and change can go. Easter's late this year, but sometimes Lent starts in the heart of February, when I'm convinced winter will never end. And while in those years we still may have a chilly Easter, the early spring flowers have usually shown some signs of blooming, the grass is growing and the earth is coming back to life. It's a welcome transition but it happens fast. And this year, all the time I th

The ladies' locker room at the YMCA is practically wall-papered with signs saying "Shower Before Entering Pool!" A few months ago, they had a sign or two, which I promptly ignored. But since they have them all over the place now — wisely placed along the path one traverses to the pool, and then on the door to the pool itself — I started hopping under the water for a quick rinse before I plunge in.  Today, I was one of two women in the pool NOT wearing a full face of makeup. (There were like eight ladies total.) I had no idea that lipstick and eyeliner played such a huge role in getting a good workout. I've been doing it wrong all along, I guess, pushing hard through the water. Sweating. Challenging myself. I'd probably be way more successful in the water exercise arena if I sauntered into the water done up in foundation, blush, mascara, liner and whatever else constitutes a full face and just sort of floated around a bit. I bet my asshole knee would be all bett

Today I learned that I'm done tutoring until fall. I'd really grown to enjoy my sessions with the kids and thought they were developing a strong appreciation for writing and reading. But they're increasingly busy and will be traveling during the summer. I'm going to miss those little dudes. <Giant Sad Face> <Aside: If you need any writing services or a writing tutor for someone, I know someone pretty awesome who suddenly has a clear calendar and needs some cash.> Anyway, since it's National Poetry Month, I thought I'd share some poems I wrote during a tutoring session earlier this year. The seventh grader was tasked with writing a haiku, limerick, sonnet and epic poem on any topics he chose. He's a big fan of (1) picking a serious topic and then (2) writing all his poems about that theme. (We did a similar assignment during the election, with some amusing results.) He gets stuck in his own head too much, so I turned any poetry assignment li

Spring! Yay! My neighbor mowed my lawn today, and with the smell of grass in the warm air and baseball season in full swing,  I immediately felt compelled to do what all normal people do this time of year: stock up on spring beer. Most people I know like all the trendy pumpkin beers and stouts and whatnot that hit the shelves in the fall. Gag. That stuff is gross. But I love me some spring beer. The problem is that by the time it's actually sit-on-the-porch-swing-with-a-good-beer weather, the spring beers are gone and Octoberfests  are out. (I blame you, pumpkin drinkers, for fall beer creep. Calm the hell down and drink in season.) If you're a spring or early summer seasonal person, you have to think ahead, sometimes by a few months. So off I went today, to my favorite Giant Eagle, on a quest for Troeg's Cultivator, a delicious helles bock that's everything good about beer. It's sort of malty and a little bitter. It's rich without being heavy. It's th

Today, the universe reminded me in about 16 million different ways that, for the most part, we're all just doing our best to get by in life. Consider — The administrative assistant processing expense reports, knowing her father might be nearing his end in intensive care. The account representative making phone calls to collect past due funds who is terrified that her ex-boyfriend, who has grown increasingly violent, will be waiting somewhere, sometime to hurt her with more than just his words. The usually happy-go-lucky coworker who just ended a long-term relationship and is walking through the world shell shocked.  The woman busily checking websites, worrying about what addiction is doing to her parents. The scared, homesick serviceman. The quirky dude selling sporting goods who is desperate for a career change. I'm not one to preach, but humans live in groups for a reason. Sure, it might have started evolutionarily so we could physically protect each other and co

I'm in the running for my place of employment's "Outstanding Staff" award. It's kind of a big deal. OK. Not really. But it's an honor to be nominated and read the nice things someone wrote about me and submitted to the awards committee. Being beloved does have a downside, though. I received a few notes of encouragement today, which was lovely! But then a woman — who once yelled at me until I cried and then hugged me because I was crying and, I'm not kidding, started yelling at me again — walked into my office and came around my desk. Before I knew what was happening, she'd kissed me on the cheek and walked back out of my office. GAH! Just say no to workplace kisses! Later, I saw my boss and said, "Listen, it was super nice of you to nominate me for this award. And I do appreciate it. But Cheek-Kissing Lady just swooped in here and kissed me on the cheek. So please. Don't do anything nice for me ever again, OK?" He laughed and sa

Entitlement, thy name is Old Guy Swimming at My Gym. I love my YMCA's pool. It's not glamorous, but it gets the job done. And because it's not glamorous, it's not too busy. I headed back there today after a few months out of the water and it felt great to be moving again. I don't quite have my kick back yet -- my knee is still kind of an asshole -- so I mixed water jogging with other upper and lower body exercises to get an interval workout in.  Everything was going swimmingly (groan!) and I was working hard when this old dude showed up. I've seen him before. At least a year ago, he came in with big scuba goggles and, I'm pretty sure, spent the whole time checking out ladies' butts under the water. He's bad about personal space and sort of gives me the heebie-jeebies. Luckily, I've generally been in a lane when he was around. But today I was jogging in the big open space for water exercise when SPLASH, he jumped in to the pool right besid

In the Loseafatty world, we get paid once a month. Some months, you get lucky and direct deposit hits around the 28th or 29th -- if the last day of the month is Sunday or Monday, for example, our money hits Friday. Then other months, you fight it out to the bitter end. March is a bitter end kind of month. So here are actual signs from my real life that my paycheck hits in about four hours. Keep in mind that I'm a single-income homeowner with student loans, so making one check stretch for all the things ain't easy. I have $8 in my checking account and $1.50 in cash/coins. This doesn't count change in my VW bug bank, though. I only roll that when things get really bad. I didn't have anything to take for lunch today, so I had to find the cheapest campus food that would keep me full the longest. Or just not eat. I chose the first option, but it also sort of made me sick, so tonight I'm just sitting around moaning. I'm out of popcorn. (Gasp!) I'm out of

I had to break up with my physical therapist today. Talk about awkward. I started PT for my old lady knee (I call her "Edna") about a month ago. I've seen some improvement, but I felt like the therapist was a little ... off. She seemed rushed if I had to leave my 9 a.m. appointment by 10:30. She continued to give me more and more exercises to do at home, while doing little more than ultrasound and some electro-stimulation moves in the office. How did she fill that 90 minutes, you ask? Well, I'm a talker myself, but she took the cake. So much information. So much justification of treatment decisions. So. Much. Talking. She's a nice woman so I kept it up, but I reached my tipping point on Monday. My knee had started catching weirdly. I'd be walking all confident and normal, and my knee would catch and jerk. I can easily walk it out, but it was new and weird. I thought for sure she could help. After about 20 minutes of watching me walk and talking about hamst

Since birth, I've been a "bad sleeper." Mom would work for hours when I was an infant to get me down, just to have the slightest thing startle me awake again. (Note: 'Slightest thing' was often my sister, who liked how I'd throw my hands over my head and scream when I was startled.) Apparently I fussed a lot and I breathed strangely. They tell stories about propping the crib mattress up so I'd wheeze less. I snored like my dad, didn't sleep through the night, frequently woke up in a cold sweat from nightmares. Sleeping, the most restorative thing we can do for our brains and bodies, has been the bane of my existence. Despite promises from my pediatrician that I'd grow out of all this, nothing has changed for me as an adult except that I'm old enough to know that I'm chronically exhausted. I wear a sexy Darth Vader mask every night that's supposed to keep me from suffocating in my sleep. But even with the mask, I'm pooped. The sl

Friday night, I broke my own "nothing but jammie pants and the couch on Fridays" rule and headed downtown to meet a friend for a talk by some editors of "The Onion." After an amusing opening schtick and a way-less-interesting Q&A with the audience, we hit up a nearby restaurant for a snack and drink before parting ways. That ways-parting happened a lot later than I'm used to downtown, but since it was one of our first really lovely spring-like nights, the streets were still pretty busy within a block of the restaurant we'd gone to. I'd lucked out on parking and had snagged a spot in the garage in that block -- kind of a miracle because I generally have terrible luck parking, my feet were super sore from standing for two hours in pinchy boots at a retirement party earlier that evening, and the ballet, symphony and Public Theater were all in business that night. Unfortunately, the elevator with the easiest access to my car was around the block, and

For a little less than a year, I've been helping two amazing tweenage boys become better writers and readers. I still feel like the world's worst teacher -- I don't have formal lesson plans, and sometimes we just work on homework assignments together. But the experience has offered up enough wins that I keep at it. The best day, by far, was when the three of us acted out a scene from "Much Ado About Nothing" and the kids actually GOT the humor. Their laughs and smiles played through my head as I left their house that night, and I gotta say, I had a little swagger in my step. Obviously, I am awesome. Another win? The fifth grader, who just wrote an essay a few weeks ago about how much he wants to be a mathematician, now wants to be a journalist. I'm not saying I'm a miracle worker, but I'm just about the only writer he knows. So...I'll take it. At the same time, I don't want to be the reason the kid ends up in a dead-end, no-promotions-on-th

It's been three weeks since last we were together, Facebook. And in my breakup letter, I offered the old platitude that it wasn't you, it was me. Truth is, it really was you all along. Some distance has helped me see that you're a time-waster. A black hole of lost energy and effort. You put people into my life who didn't need to be there. You wielded unyielding, gleeful control over me. Your constantly fluctuating "What should we show people today?" algorithm meant that every encounter I had or post I saw was what you wanted me to see. You manipulated my reality. You're like the worst boyfriend in the history of the world. Really. I know. I won't say that being without you has been easy. In fact, I caved at the one-week mark and used my work account -- where I have no friends, no photo and exist only to post things on one page -- to slip through a back door and stalk someone. And of course, I saw what I didn't want to see and I felt terrible

Being female in the workplace ain't no picnic. Sometimes it's such a challenge that I even use words like "ain't." In my 16 years out in the world, I've had four situations with male colleagues that have necessitated managerial, HR or police intervention. And in each instance, I always spent days or weeks or even months thinking "I bet I'm overreacting. I'll just wait and see what happens." I'll wait and see what happens after a colleague stands two inches from me and screams in my face, spittle splattering my skin as veins throb in his bald head. I'll wait and see what happens after a coworker uses his body mass to pin me against a wall so I can't escape from him at a work party. I'll wait and see what happens when a former intern appears in my office to physically intimidate me, follows up with an angry email about my failings as a human being, and then begins calling my office extension endlessly and hanging up. I

From my last post, you'll know that I attended the memorial service for my aunt today. What I didn't tell you in that post was that my family ALMOST BOKE THE PEW during the service. No one owned pews growing up, obviously, but my family always sat in the fourth row of the left center section, sandwiched in between two other rows of family members. Pap's older brother and his wife and kids and grandkids sat in front of us; his younger brother, whose wife just died, played the church organ, but his kids always sat behind us. We were a row behind where we used to sit, so I'm going to blame the pew's weakness on my cousin, who deserves it for tickling me with palm fronds every year well into my 20s, when he was a grown-ass man. But I digress. I don't come from small people, and we were shoulder-to-shoulder in our row. Big shoulders. Some big people, myself included. Before the service began, a pew in the far left section of the church gave a huge CRACK and the

I walk through the world feeling like a mutant sometimes. Between my short, stocky build and my curly hair, I certainly stand out in a crowd. I have no neck, sort of like Fred Flintstone. I have giant shoulders. My eyebrows, left unchecked, meet in the middle and arch like Dracula's. I have flat feet that are notoriously icky. Both my laugh and my voice carry for miles. But today we celebrated the life of my dad's aunt, who died about 10 days ago after six months of pain and suffering. She's one of my favorite relatives — married to my pap's little brother for 58 years. She directed the children's choir at church when I was so small that I tripped over my robe. (I'd go on to sing with her in different capacities until just a few years ago.) Her kids, all way older than I am, tormented me during church well into our adulthoods. They're a great family, full of kindness and compassion (aside from tormenting me). To see their grief and experience it with them

It's strange how much drama a seemingly harmless philodendron can cause. The one I'm talking about takes up a small shelf in a corner near my sink, but it wasn't always mine. It lived at Email Dumper's place, but wasn't thriving there. He didn't give it the light or water it needed, then tried to throw the poor plant away. But it wasn't even close to dead! Just a bit wrinkled. If the plant could have talked, it would have been all "I'm not dead yet! I'm feeling better!" But alas, it was heading for the dead wagon when I stepped in to save it. I think everyone has a weakness for something. For a woman I work with, it's stay cats. My sister is a sucker for sad dogs. I've never been that way with critters, but god help me if I walk near the clearance plant rack at Home Depot. I'd buy them all if I could, and give them the good soil and sunlight they deserve. The poor plants don't ask to be neglected and then rejected becaus

Or, How I Spent My Sunday Carrie Bradshaw set every woman up for disappointment. Well, maybe not every woman. But if you were, say, in your 20s when Carrie was living it up in NYC as a fabulous single gal in her 30s, there's some degree of letdown the morning you wake up, check your Sunday Staying at Home outfit in the mirror and realize that not only are you older than Carrie was during the show's run, but your life has taken a sharp turn away from anything resembling glamorous. Take, for example, my aforementioned Sunday Staying at Home outfit: yoga capris, t-shirt and a sweatshirt because my house felt like a meat locker. Not too bad, but my green and red plaid socks definitely clashed with my brown Aztec-print slippers. And my unwashed curly hair exploded out of my beat up headband in an untidy mess. My Old Navy-meets-Kohl's ensemble? A far cry from Monolos and Gucci. Then there's my Sunday routine. While Carrie might have had some pretentious "brunch&quo

Everyone has sad days. Today is one of mine. Since my new recliner joined the household two weeks ago, I've relished its warmth and comfort. I've (almost nightly) napped in its embrace. I've gone so far as to call it a hug for my butt.  But that doesn't mean I've forgotten my old La-Z-Boy.  We were together 12 years, which is the longest relationship of my life, I think. I paid a coworker $40 for it, and my family helped me haul it up the 32 steps to my apartment. Covered in cat hair (achoo!), it looked older than it really was, and I worried that maybe I'd made a bad deal. But I borrowed a Little Green Machine and cleaned the hell out of that sucker. Once it dried, it was my go-to seat in my apartment. (I had a couch, too, but the chair was comfy!)  When I bought my house, the chair made the three-mile trek over from my apartment with my hand-me-down couch — the extent of my living room seating options. God only knows how many hours I sat in that

No really. Daylight saving time. These guys know. Believe them. It's not daylight savings time or daylight-savings time or even (though it used to be the case) daylight-saving time. It's daylight saving time. Period. (Just like it's not Paneras, a personal pet-peeve. Why do people pluralize or possessive-ize stores and restaurants?? GAH!) If you're writing to someone to ask them about a meeting and need to clarify time zone, you're now in EDT if you're on the east coast — Eastern Daylight Time. I think if you're in the state of Indiana, you're still on Eastern Standard Time. When everyone bitches about losing an hour in November with all their "OMG! I hate daylight savings! It's so dark when I leave work!" what they really hate is transitioning back to standard time. I take a lot of razzing for being OCD about this stuff, but when you've spent as much time as I have editing other peoples' news stories — often with embargo

Hello readers! My blog analytics tell me interesting things. First of all, hardly anyone reads this thing. And that's fine. I'm doing this for me and as a way to collect my writing, ship it to an agent and try to pay off my credit card debt before I die. But it also tells me that something like 15 percent of you access this page via Internet Explorer. I can only assume that you're in some kind of parallel universe time-travel situation where it's 1997 where you are, but you can still access things in the future. Maybe you're a special agent sent back in time, stuck with their technologies but empowered to read what's happening in 2017? I have no idea. But for the love of god and all that is holy, find a different browser. Please. No really. IE stinks. Even writers like me know it. Thanks, Loseafatty

I had a big day out this past Saturday, so I treated myself to a big night in with popcorn and a movie from Amazon. (Side note: How awesome is it that we can rent movies without even leaving the house? It seems like not that long ago I stalked the video store in my hometown like a poacher hunting rhinos, waiting for someone to return "A Few Good Men" so I could rent it for the umpteenth time.) Back to my story. Because I'm 100 years old and still recovering from the horror that is "Manchester by the Sea," I rented "The Secret Life of Pets." In those glorious 90ish minutes, I found my spirit animal: Gidget, the Pomeranian.  You're probably thinking, "Hey, I know you in real life, and you're not small and you're not fluffy." But that's not why I think she's my spirit animal. For starters, she's perky. She's got spunk. She's tiny but she doesn't let big obstacles get in her way. She talks really fa

A bitch lives in my brain that no one ever sees. She very rarely reveals herself to the outside world. But she's always talking to me, about me, against me. She hates the shit out of me. And I have a helluva time shutting her the fuck up. I don't know where she came from, but I'm pretty sure she's the love child of Fat Kid and Small Town. Bitch Brain came to life as my protector. She knew it would be easier for me to navigate the (horrible, cruel) waters of elementary and middle school if she was always one step ahead of the insults. How in the world could I be hurt by real people if Bitch Brain kept up a steady stream of negative chatter about how ugly I was? How could anyone ever make me feel insignificant if she was always telling me that I would never be good enough anyway? Bitch Brain served her purpose and got me through school without too much damage from other people. But by the time I left both Fat Kid and Small Town behind, we'd become so close tha

It's literally one of the prettiest things I've ever created. Just look at this thing. I've had an overly Mondayish Monday. I'm overwhelmed by personalities at work.  No matter how hard I try to project an outward appearance of nonchalance, the best neutral look I can muster really screams "YOU ARE A COMPLETE MORON, YOU MORON." Or I just avert my eyes completely and concentrate on my notebook.  Family stuff? That's rough too. On top of all that, I also realized that the only people of the male persuasion who seem interested in me are uninteresting. They like to talk about themselves. They could have the same conversation (monologue) regardless of whether or not I'm even in the room. I've had too damn much of that. Yet I keep finding myself in situations where I feel trapped into making decisions to spend time with people like this.  In short, everything seems like a big fucking disaster some days. Today was one of them. But ye