Seriously, dude, who spends half the day outside on the balcony… so glad that I’m busting my ass inside while you’re out there killing yourself.  Must be nice.

Are smokers a protected class now?  Employers must have ramps for the handicapped.  Now they must allow you to carve out an hour of your day to inhale tar and poison.  How does that even work?  It’s a proven fact that smoking is icky.   Why can’t I get multiple 10-minute breaks each day to go out on the balcony and smack myself in the face with a frying pan?  I mean we’re both taking valuable time away from the company to damage its employees.  Or, better yet, maybe I should be able to counter your death toll by getting an extra hour off my work day to go to the gym and eat carrots.

Reward the cancer suckers and ignore the health conscious.  Makes total sense.  Watch out smokers, I think drinkers and stoners might be next in line for equal rights.

You see these tickets in my hand?  They say front row.  This means that you shouldn’t be standing between me and the stage.  Because now that would put me in the second row and would make my tickets liars.  We can’t have that.  So move.  Go back to your seat.  You didn’t pay to be here.  I did.  These nice people next to me did too.  You’re in my bubble.  And now I have to say something to you because lord knows I can’t let you get away with this.  Oh, you’re just going to be a moment?  See, now I feel like you and my ticket are both liars.  Now I can’t enjoy the concert because I’m envisioning me punching you in the back of your head.  And the nice guy on the stage with the guitar came here tonight to play music for my enjoyment, I mean for everyone’s enjoyment (I’m not that self-centered), but one less person is enjoying it at the moment.  The one who’s envisioning punching you in the back of the head.  So move.  Go back to your seats and out of my swinging range so I can go back to the guy with the guitar on stage.  Maybe convince your loser boyfriend to get a real job so he can actually buy you good seats.  It will save us both some trouble in the future – me from fixating on how much I hate you while missing out on some great music, and you from getting punched.

I get to the DMV and before I even park, there’s a guy goin up the down aisle. Hello guy going the wrong way, you shouldn’t even be allowed to enter the building if you can’t follow the arrows on the pavement before you even get there.

Get inside. Old people o’plenty. Hobblin’ around, reminding me how dangerous it is to leave my house when they’re out there sharing the road with me. (side note: throughout my life, my mother and I have tried to petition that old people should only be allowed to drive on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10 and 2. That’s plenty of time to get to the beauty parlor and pick up your meds each week. This leaves the rest of the week for me to get run over by stupid drivers my own age… Maybe I need to petition for a putting make up on and driving or douchebag raised truck day of the week too. But I digress…). So all these 10-and-2ers are slowly approaching the counters… squinting to read the eye chart, misplacing their paperwork in the 10 foot walk from the waiting area to the window. Then I watch this old man get up after his number was called (24). Mind you, he was sitting by me in the vicinity of window 10, 11, and 12. So it’s only proper that he start heading toward those windows and then on to the single digit numbers. No sir, 24. Go toward the bigger numbers. Sure DMV, renew that license of his. You’re right, maybe he has a better sense of direction when maneuvering a two thousand pound steel boat on wheels.

Then there’s the thug life kid who sits down next to me in the waiting area. I know I’m quick to judge and sometimes looks are deceiving, but this kid had tattoos on his face. Thug. Life. And it must have been laundry day at his house because it looked like he had to borrow cousin Tiny’s Dickies shorts – you know the cousin with the 52″ waist. So this kid plops down between me and Susie Homemaker and her two precious towhead toddlers. Naturally, he busts out his phone and proceeds to catch up on the latest gangster rap videos on YouTube. Loudly. Four’s a good age to learn about slapping ho’s and using the f word as both a verb and a noun, right? Sure! So I contemplated saying something to him about his obnoxious music and his lack of respect to those around him. I couldn’t tell what was more unbearable: him subjecting impressionable minds to such filth, or the fact that it might have been the most terribly auto-tuned piece of ear torture that I’ve ever heard. But what if he tried to shank me? I mean I was twice his size and probably could have taken him. But the kid had tattoos on his face. Even I’m not dumb enough to take on that challenge.

Then there was the ghetto lady who was yelling about getting the run around, the screaming baby, and the creepy old guy who walked around making awkward small talk with everyone in his path… but that’s just a typical day for me… not much to write home about there.

Really, I just need to live somewhere where I can just pedal everywhere. It’s healthier… for my sanity.

We show up and toss everything on the table, and throw our 6-pack of warmish beer in the fridge.  More people show up.  Another 6-pack fills the fridge and more munchies pile onto the kitchen table.  More people show up.  Empty handed.  Rude.  Ok, maybe you’re not staying very long.  We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Then the empty handers start digging in.  And then they walk into the living room with my beer(s) in their hands.  Oh, hey, glad to see you’re enjoying my beer.  Oh, it’s not really that cold?  Hmm, well that’s because we just put it in there.  No, I don’t want it back after you’ve already taken a swig out of it.  Feel free to help yourself to more food that you didn’t contribute to.  Oh, you have to leave?  So soon?  Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.  Douches.

Then I see it.  My stolen beers.  Half empty.  Both of them.  Scattered around the house.  You steal my beer and you don’t even have the decency to finish them… and you can’t pick up after yourselves!?

Party. Foul.

Company runs contest. Sore losers of contest take to the interwebs and write crazy defamatory comments on said company’s social media webpage. Defamatory comments are immediately removed. Positive and uplifting comments remain. More defamatory comments appear which leads to the complete banning of angry commenter. Letter is sent to company by angry commenter, accusing company of censorship. And of being un-American, of course.

Now, I’m no expert on the Constitution of this here United States… I’m not sure I even remember being in a US History class ever. But! I did get an A in my upper division Mass Communication Law class in college. So I’m pretty sure I had, and still have, a fairly firm grasp on the 1st Ammendment (and on the legal boundaries of ambulance chasing in order to get a story). From what I can remember, it says that the government cannot arrest me for running my mouth in print or in the middle of an intersection somewhere.

And I’m definitely not an expert on censorship, but I do know this… If you spray painted the N word on the side of my house, I have every right to paint over it as quickly as humanly possible. And if you spray paint “some really nice pretty lady lives here” on the side of my house, I can choose to leave that up and visible forever (as long as the penmanship is attractive and the color matches my decor, of course). My house, my choice of what words are printed on it. So go back to your house and freedom of speech it up and write all the nasty things you want on your own walls. Just be careful of slander and defamation of character… I hear people can sue for crap like that.

You can have a cell phone when you’re old enough to pay for one. Or when you’re driving. Don’t worry, those will come at the same time because you won’t be driving until you can pay for that too.

You’re in 6th grade. I didn’t have a cell phone in 6th grade. Trust me, there’s no reason for you to have one. You see, I’ll drop you off at the mall and pick you up in this same exact spot in two hours. You will be there. You have no reason to call me in those two hours. No, you won’t need to call me to ask if you can stay 15 minutes longer. You will be there where I dropped you off. On time. Because if you’re not there, you’re never leaving the house again. And if there’s a real life emergency and you really do need to reach me on my mommy-funded cell phone, you can go to the rent-a-cop and ask for real life assistance.

Sorry kids. Thems are the breaks.

This is an odd reality to face, though, considering the fact that throughout my entire high school career, I wanted to talk like those Dawson’s Creek kids.  Let’s be honest, I still do.  I just love me some creative text.  Words and language are a beautiful art.

Despite my random word use, I’m normally a stickler for grammar.  I groan at the misuse of “they’re/there/their”.  “A lot” is 2 words.  And while I overuse certain words like “apparently”, and exploit ellipses, I still take the time to type out full words in my text messages.

With that being said, I’ll admit that I’ve finally come to accept the plethora of slang and abbreviations being produced by our generation amongst tweets and facebook posts.  But seriously, folks, no one needs to include “fam bam” or “woot” in their vocabulary.  Those two words drive me insane.  What the hell is the “bam” part anyway? And who actually says either one of those phrases in real life?  “Oh hey look, apples are on sale.  Woot.  I should make a pie to bring to my fam bam.  Woot.”  Stop.  For serious.

I mean, I understand why I’m better than some people… I pay taxes, follow most rules (the important ones), recycle, hold doors, donate blood, etc… But you… you’re not special.  You don’t get to cut up the shoulder while the rest of us wait in this huge line to get off the freeway.  You don’t deserve 2 parking spots in a packed lot.  You don’t get to send 1 lackey to save your spot in line, and by “your spot”, I mean “space for your massive posse”.  You don’t get to bring your 23 items thru the express line.

Mike and I were on our way back from Vegas after a holiday weekend and traffic was at a standstill.  Then someone decided to use the shoulder as a 3rd lane.  Why not, right?  I mean, it’s not like that lane’s for emergency vehicles or anything important.  I asked Mike to pull closer to the douchebag so I could roll my window down and ask him why he felt he was entitled to create his own lane… as part of my sociological experiment, of course.  But Mike said I didn’t even have a notepad or a pencil… how could I be conducting any sort of experiment.  I produced a napkin and a pen I found at the bottom of my purse.  Apparently that wasn’t official enough for him.

Seriously, do these people ever “get theirs” in the end?  Does Guy-Who-Uses-Shoulder-As-Lane and his buddy Guy-Who-Cuts-In-At-The-Last-Minute-In-Front-Of-Me-At-The-Offramp ever get punished?  Do they ever feel bad?  I’ll never know until I ask.  Someone find me a notebook and writing utensil please.  Or maybe a clipboard… those always make you look more official.

So we isolate a small section of the design and bring it with us to our first cake tasting.  “We can’t do that on a cupcake”.  I’m sorry, what?  Why not?  I’m pretty sure my mom and I drew bunnies on Betty Crocker cupcakes with one of those squeezy tubes of frosting when I was in the 3rd grade.  I’m pretty sure it’s not that hard.  “Let me take it to the baker in the back”… “Nope.  Too much work”.  Too much work?!  I’m PAYING YOU to do work.  This a business, yes?  And please explain to me why you have an insanely detailed aardvark cake in your portfolio but can’t draw some simple hearts on a cupcake.  “Well ok, we could do it, for an exorbitant amount of money.  We’d have to print it on rice paper and glue it on some fondant and they’d all look the same, and by same, we mean like plastic”.  Pass.  I’m not really going for that Baskin Robbins “print my kid’s face on this sheet cake” look for my wedding.

Bridal show.  Cute cupcake vendor.  Show them the design.  “Nope, we only do that big poofy swirsl of frosting on top of your cupcake… but we can sprinkle some colored sugar on top of it if you want”.  Pass.

Florist recommended a baker down the street.  Potential.  The girl in the shop sees our design and says “yeah, we can probably do that.  Here, email our boss”.  Not so much.

FINALLY find a bakery that will do it.  Sold.  They tell us it’s super easy.  SEE!  I told you I wasn’t asking you to make the stupid cupcake knit me a scarf.  Oh, but it takes you 3 weeks to reply to my emails?  Figures.  I guess this is the price I pay.

Now, invitations.  We found these invitations online months ago and have basically based our entire color scheme, website, cupcakes, flowers, etc. around these invitations.  The other night, I started laying out the wording, picking the font… I think I finally got Mike to agree on something.  I selected the quantity I wanted to order and saved it in my virtual shopping cart so I could double check everything with fresh eyes the next day.  Oooh!  “Order Sample”.  Free sample!  Hell yes.  2 days later, a flimsy piece of copy paper shows up in my mailbox with my cute little mini hearts and dotted lines design horribly printed on it.  Worst nightmare slash blessing in disguise.  I’m pretty sure I would have died if I had ordered 100 of them.  Let the local printer hunt begin.

Chain printer.  Can I come in and see your paper samples.  “You can check out all of our options on our website”.  Oh really?  I was unaware that we were so technologically advanced that I could actually FEEL the quality of your paper thru my laptop.  Fail.

Local printer.  Website claims “if it’s on paper, we can print it”.  Apparently they meant “if it’s on paper, and you want 5000 of them, and they don’t happen to be wedding invitations, we can print it”.

Local printer #2.  Jury’s still out.  Keep your fingers crossed.

I seriously didn’t think this was going to be so hard.

I took my mom to go wedding dress shopping recently… I’ve been putting it off long enough and kept getting “unfortunate” stares from people when I mentioned I was getting married in May and still hadn’t tried on a single dress yet.  I had browsed different styles online and had watched enough episodes of “Say Yes To The Dress” that I could probably start a new career in dress consulting, so I figured I was as ready as I was ever going to be.

I was pretty set on a shorter dress, but was open to a floor length dress, but definitely no train.  And no veil.  I’m the complete opposite of most of those girls on those dress shows… I didn’t want to be a princess.

Dress #1: Strapless tea length lace dress.  Looked pretty in the picture.  Looked like I was wearing a tablecloth in the mirror.

Dress #2: Strapless tea length satin gown with floral/beaded detail and an empire waist.  Adorable.  A little 50s feel.  But I just didn’t feel like a bride.

Dress #3: Strapless (sweetheart).  Full length.  Satin.  Chiffon.  Lace.  Beads.  And a train.  A stupid train.

Dress #4:  Strapless chiffon A-line with empire waist.  Where’d my figure go?  I kinda look like I could be preggers in this one.  What?  Many of your pregnant brides pick this dress… pass.

I put Dress #3 on again.  There really was no other dress in the running.  It fit me perfectly.  But that stupid train.  Gah!  But I look so pretty in it.  Dammit!  I hate trains.  But I look sooooo pretty!  I hate when I fall in love with something I was so adamantly against from the start.  Yes, yes, this is the dress.  My mom’s crying.  It must be the dress.  Ok, fine.  I’ll get the one with the train, but still no veil.  I’ll still walk out of here with one victory.  Nope.  She put that damn veil on my head and dammit, here we go again!  I hate veils.  But I looked soooo pretty!

So I’ll see you on May 21st… with my train and my veil.