I am moving!

Oh, crap.  I am at it again.  Different blog.  Different subject matter.  Same old stubborn-ass Carrie.

The Passion Monkey

Check it out.  'Cuz you know it going to be awesome.

it is not you, it is me.

I know that many of you have all been anxiously waiting for my next blog.  I know this  because I get people emailing me practically every day, begging me to write.  But, to the shock & awe of pretty much everyone I know, I have a life.  I have been focusing on very important things like crossword puzzles and online forum “discussions” about who was the best Captain of the Starship Enterprise.  {Jean-Luc Picard.  Duh.}  Oh, and I am going back to school.  There is that, too.  

I need to focus all my brain cells on becoming a rocket surgeon.  (I am in the accelerated class for geniuses, of course.)  I will definitely write more in the future, but I will be changing the focus of my writing.  Instead of focusing on me, me, me, (there is quite a lot of humor there) I will be writing about more worldly topics such as women’s reproductive rights, equal rights, world hunger, and other boring stuff like that.  When I do start writing again, I will let you know and link to the new blog.  And who knows?  Maybe I will write more silly stuff here.  I make no promises.  I prefer to avoid responsibility.

I have also “quit” FaceBook.  It is such a time-suck.  If you want to invite me to your sex party, please send me an email, or better yet, call me.  Just sayin’.  There for a while I was putting silly stuff on FB every day and having a blast making people laugh.  But then I realized, being popular on FB is like sitting at the cool table in the cafeteria of a mental hospital.

Anyhoo, this is me signing off for an indefinite amount of time.  I will leave you with this timeless piece of advice for women:

Never date a man who writes in ALL CAPS.  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man who cannot find the caps lock key will never find the clitoris.

~Me

ways to make me hate you

You tune out when I am in the middle of a conversation.  Really?  That is so rude.  I may like to ramble a bit, but what I have to say is important.
 
How can you run out of energy after only a couple of hours?  That is just weak.
 
You send crazy text messages.  Do I need to receive “K” five times in a row?
 
My friends aren’t important to you.  How can you forget them after all this time?
 
How can you not be able to multi-task?  I am not asking that you solve world peace and chew gum at the same time, but being able to hold a conversation and schedule a date simultaneously would be nice.
 
I know you play songs I hate on purpose.  Not cool.
 
Sometimes I really need you to be there for me.  Like that time you failed me when I was stuck in a ditch in the rain?  That really sucked.

For these reasons, and many reasons I have chosen to keep to myself, I am moving on.  I have decided to upgrade.  I am getting a smartphone.  Your uselessness as a “stupid” phone has irritated me for the last time.  You remind me of my dishwasher ~ I have to wash the dishes before I load it.  You are useful only when I baby you.  And that, my dear stupid phone, is why I am saying goodbye.

to grunt and sweat under a weary life

I am not a runner.

See exhibit A and exhibit B.

I am a fighter.  When life gives me lemons, I launch those mother-fucking lemons at whoever pissed me the fuck off.  Yo. 

A long, long time ago (last year) when life was literally kicking me in the taco, I got a wild hair up my ass to run a half-marathon.  It was:


1.)  my way of focusing on something other than the big pile o’ shit that was my life
2.)  therapy  
3.)  my way of fighting to stay afloat in this crazy thing we call “life”.

{Side note:  When my life flashes before my eyes, I hope it is not the special extended edition with all the deleted scenes I have blocked from my memory.}


You see, when I run, I have this unlike-Carrie, out-of-body experience and I am able to process my deep-seated neurosis issues logically.  (Full disclosure: I use the term “run” very loosely.  It is more of a hobble, hobble, foot-drag.  Imagine Igor crossed with Verbal Kint in a potato sack race.)  When I am running, I am able to easily come to terms with life’s problems and formulate a reasonable and practical way to work through it.  I feel like I can accomplish anything!  Bring it. 


Contrary to when I refuse to get out of bed and wind up with graham cracker crumbs in the sheets and I am surrounded by used kleenexes and my face looks like a bloated whale carcass.  When this happens, everything seems insurmountable and my life is about to implode on itself and I am going to die of a broken heart like Padme.  (If I’m being honest, and I think we all know honesty-that-will-come-back-to-bite-me-in-the-ass is a specialty of mine, sometimes I still refuse to get out of bed.  But, I digress...)


Anyhoo, in my mind, a half-marathon made sense.  Now, I couldn’t just Forrest Gump my way through this.  I had to have a plan.  It was either have a plan and stick to it, or die a slow and painful death whilst running the half.  (I could just imagine it: my legs cramp up and my body collapses 20 feet before the finish line and I would be trampled to death because I would be, of course, in first place.)  


This was not amateur hour.  I commence to researching, planning, and researching some more and I work out a schedule that would combine cross-training with a couple of short runs* during the week and a long run** on the weekend.  My mileage during the long run would increase by one mile every week, winding up at 13 miles a couple of weeks before The Muther-Fucker of All Races.


*short runs are normally about 2 to 4 miles
**long runs can be anywhere from 5 (depending on where you are starting) to a gazillion miles


So I began my training for my first half.  In August.  Now, certainly it isn’t as hot here as some other places.  (Like Texas.  Death Valley.  Hell.  All about the same.)  But it does get hot and muggy; this is The South.  And I must say so myself, I did amazingly well at sticking to my schedule.  Which is a feat in itself because it interfered with my beer drinking time.  My precious, precious beer drinking time.  I ran, I cycled, and I ran some more.  I ran in the heat, in the cold, in the rain, and in the dark.  I mainly ran on beautiful Asheville days.  (Asheville has an average of 212 sunny days per year, with an average high of 85.  Heaven!)  My favorite place to run is around my neighborhood.  There are majestic views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, friendly neighbors that cheer me on, and most of my routes force me to do a loop, as opposed to an out and back, where I am more likely to get tired and turn back early.  ‘Cuz I can be a total wimp when I start feeling pain.

 Picture of the race taken by an Asheville Citizens Times photographer.  Used here without permission.










When the day came of The Muther-Fucker of All Races, I was ready.  I was pumped.  Booya.  This shit is about to get real!  My awesome friend drove me there, and drove to different spots of the race to cheer me on and get pictures of me.  For the most part of the race, I kept a smile on my face.  I ran with the 2:30 pace group and they were a bunch of nutty girls that would hoop and holler the whole way and make inappropriate sex jokes.  My kind of peeps.  

Then, somewhere along the back half of the race, I lost the pace group.  I want to emphasize that this half-marathon took place in the mountains.  This is not flat land.  I am guessing the elevation gain was probably over 1,000 feet.  The map does not lie:

The last three miles were incredible painful; the last two miles were beastly; and the last mile was just downright cruel.  There was one point within the last 500 feet of the race where I turned a corner, knowing I was so very close, and looked up a steep muther-fucking hill that must have been a 30% grade.  Death could have opened his dark arms in my general direction and I would have run into his embrace willingly.  (Okay, I may be exaggerating just a bit.)

 

 cartoon drawn by The Oatmeal

When I finally crossed the finish line, I practically fell into my friend’s arms and said something along the lines of, “DO NOT EVER LET ME DO THAT AGAIN.  SERIOUSLY, PUNCH ME IN THE FACE IF I TALK ABOUT RUNNING THAT DISTANCE AGAIN!”

Race results: (I was beat by two 70 year-old wrinkly people.  Now that is humbling.) 

So, after all the pain and suffering and torture, I will definitely be running the same half-marathon again this year.  I am that bad-ass.

cartoon drawn by The Oatmeal

 Maybe I am a runner after all.

postcards from the edge

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I lived in a cozy two-bedroom basement apartment.  I say cozy because it was small, but just the perfect size for me.  I had a spare bedroom that my friends could crash in and that is also where I kept the litter box.  (Now that I think back on it, this may have been a contributing factor as to why my friends never crashed there.)

As with any basement/lower level apartment, my apartment came fully loaded with an upstairs neighbor.  Now, I have lived in apartments with upstairs neighbors before, but this dwelling was special; it was a regular house turned into apartments.  This place was not exactly built for “sound proofing”.  And my upstairs neighbor, we will call her Athena*, was flat-out, sponge-nut crazy-pants.

Now, I will give her some crazy-points, because she was going through a divorce and gawd knows everyone gets a little crazy during this inevitable point in life.  In the short time she lived above me, I developed an eye twitch that still flares up to this day when I think about her.  I think that if I wasn’t already a well-rounded individual (ha-ha!), Athena’s antics might have been enough to make me go postal on her ass.  I want to share with you exactly how wakka-wakka it all was.  

Her two prepubescent boys would come over to visit on a somewhat regular basis and they would commence to hold serious throw down, UFC style, wrestling-grudge matches.  I know this to be true** because I could hear the bell at the beginning and end of each match.  And then at one point, I think Athena and her new boyfriend were taking break-dancing lessons.  Yep.  I am positive that is what those two were doing up there.

She always, always wore heels.  I think she went to the shoe store and demanded the store clerk pick out for her the loudest possible heels.  And the way she walked, you would think she weighed 350 pounds.  Nope!  This woman was probably 95 lbs soaking wet.  And she had a shit-ton of energy.  So she would walk, in 140 decibel heels, back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  And back and forth.  I really have no idea what she was doing up there.  Could she not carry more than one thing at a time?  Did she find it necessary to transfer all of her household belongings from one side of the house to another, only to do it again the next day?  It was this kind of poignant and deep philosophical questions that kept me up at night.

Wait, no!  That wasn’t what was keeping me up at night.  It was sponge-nut crazy-pants.  Let me describe a typical Friday night for you.  By the time I rolled into bed after boozing it up with my friends, I would be ready to sleep like a security guard on night shift.  But, Athena would have other plans for me.  Because sometime around 12 am, I would hear maniacal laughter and she would commence to re-arrange the furniture in the room just above me.  I have no idea if this was her bedroom, dining room, or smoking parlor, but this is the room she would regularly re-arrange.  When she was done with that around 2 am, she would commence to dragging an industrial size chain back and forth across the room.  Then she would take all the books off her shelves and toss them in the corner, one by one.  Which in case you hadn’t guessed it by now, that corner was right above my bed.  By now, she would have worn herself out to get a little shuteye sometime by 4 am.  

As soon as the sun would start showing her magnificent rays, Athena would be up, running around wearing heels and vacuuming the room she just rearranged the night before.  Don’t get me wrong, she was a very considerate person.  She would normally wait until Sunday morning for her regular indoor basketball games.  In heels.

*Names not changed to protect the innocent.  I find it ironic that Athena is also the goddess of war.

**Any time I claim something to be "true", you just never really know, do you? 

married men: the last frontier

I was recently catching up with a friend of mine that lives in DFW.  (Texas, that is.  The state that can honestly say it is hotter than the asshole of a dying star.)  She is happily single, fosters pugs, and absolutely cracks me up.  (She also threatens to punch me in the taco if I don’t update my blog often enough, but I digress...)  She has a particular tidbit of wisdom that inspires me:  “I don’t like dating men.  It cuts into my grooming time.”

Because really.  Dating sucks and will quickly degrade any normal person’s dignity.

As we were catching up, we were discussing dating and I explained to her that I haven’t had much luck in like, forever.  Here is the newest little tidbit of wisdom from this wise, wise woman:

“Single men are stupid, fickle, and stupid.

Honey you just need to find an older, married man.  They are 1) unhappy in their marriage 2) VERY excited to get any attention, especially that of a younger woman 3) always buying you pretty things from Victoria’s Secret 4)  most interested in giving you pleasure in bed so you allow them to come back 5) absent most of the time.

They are perfect.”

The moment my morals take a back seat to my desolate love life, I am finding myself an older, married man.

places I found love

a wet nose

in the eye of the beholder

in my Google reader

at the bottom of the laundry basket

a cup of tea

the arms of a friend

the last place I looked

deep in the woods

in the force

on my knees

beside a stream

in passion

at the top of a mountain

a wagging tail

at the soccer field

the heart of my arch enemy

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

by the bonfire

in-between twisted sheets

over a beer

in the hospital

in a song lyric

at the Christmas parade

driving aimlessly

in a painting

on Wikipedia

while getting lost

while dancing

in a smile

in a book

an unspoken word

a soft touch

a kiss on the forehead

in a laugh

mid-orgasm

in the grocery store line

a pecan pie

a child’s eyes

dinner on the table

on a roller coaster

on a bike

300 feet above the ground

scaling a 5.8 trad climb

at a roller derby match

on a bench

in Oxytocin

on a beach

in a child’s drawing

on a post-it note

over a shared bowl of ice cream

over a shared bottle of wine

in a momentary glance

in hope

love is not always romance.  sometimes love can simply just be.

mail bag: letter with a heart

Every once in a while, I receive an email from a loyal reader.  (I phrased it that way to make you think I have more than one loyal reader.)

Hey Carrie!  I am glad you are updating your blog again.  As a fellow writer, I am concerned about the next time you have writer’s block.  When that day comes, here are some questions to answer.

<3, Amanda

1.  If they made a movie about your life, who would play you?
When (not if) they make a movie about my oh-so-ever-oober-fascinating life, they would have to make it an epic movie.  I am talking about long shots of me riding a magnificent horse over the horizon towards the camera, the wind blowing my hair as I longingly look wispy-eyed toward some random thing off-screen, and a soundtrack to top all soundtracks.  I am talking about a soundtrack that would combine the talent of Sound of Music with the genius of Purple Rain and a little dash of Rocky Horror Picture Show thrown in for pzazz; this would all be arranged by Trent Reznor.  Finally, to answer your question, none other than Natalie Portman would play me, a quirky single girl learning to navigate her way through the big city of Asheville.  I think the climax (I said climax!) of the three hour film should be the throw-down death match (think Hunger Games) of the three men that have fallen madly in love with me.  Cuz, you know, it should be a realistic epic movie.  And during the filming of the movie, Natalie Portman would have a huge girl-crush on me and we would have one of those crazy, high-energy, three month, “experimental” love affairs, only to end when I remembered that I have an affinity for The Penis.

2.  Who do you want to marry?
I am too smart/stubborn/slightly retarded to subject myself to the bonds of matrimony.  And I certainly don’t want to have to go though the hassle of changing my name again.  That is just a pain-in-the-ass.  I plan on keeping the following people as my love slaves to do my bidding:

Jon Stewart: he will keep my mind entertained.
George Clooney: he can accompany me around town.
These guys:

Names are unimportant, but they will handle the entertainment.  ‘Cuz one is not enough.  And if I set fire to something whilst cooking (yeah, right), they will be there to save the day.  I am practical like that.

3.  Are you still on match.com?
Good gawd no!  That was a disaster of epic proportions.  Mistakes were made.  But, as with anal sex or a friendship with your dad's new girlfriend, I urge you to give it a chance.  

I mean yes, I would like to find love* and all that jazz, but online dating sucks big fat penises.  Wait, no!  Sucking big fat penises would be enjoyable (like that would ever happen...)  Online dating is like getting your fingernails ripped out and while being subjected to bloated pigeon farts at the same time.  Both, I would imagine, would be excruciatingly painful and horrible.

* (I really just mean sex** on a regular basis with one person.)
** (Mind-blowing sex, of course.)

4.  Are you planning on running another half-marathon this year?
After training during the summer when it was hotter than the sun’s love-hole, after practically puking up berry-flavored Gatorade and snot from pushing too hard, and after getting smoked by two 80-year-old wrinkly people during the race, when I crossed the finish line of my first half-marathon last year, I told my friend, “DO NOT EVER LET ME DO THAT AGAIN.  SERIOUSLY, PUNCH ME IN THE FACE IF I TALK ABOUT RUNNING THAT DISTANCE AGAIN!”

So, probably, yes.

5.  What is on your bedside table?
My alarm clock, which sounds like a screech owl getting mauled by a hyena.
A rock that is etched with the word “strength” on it.  (Just in case I forget to be as stubborn as a teenage mule.)
Maya Angelou’s The Heart of a Woman.  Great book so far, but because I have the attention span of a goldfish, I also have:
Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.  I am a huge fan of Hemingway and this is the only book I haven’t read by him.  But for some reason, I can’t concentrate on it and enjoy it like I normally would.  My mind starts wandering to solving world hunger* and I can’t focus.

* I am really thinking about the cute guy I met at a party last Saturday or whether I have a pair of boots to match my outfit I want to wear tomorrow.

6.  Are you ready for the zombie apocalypse?
Yes and no.  I can probably live in the woods for a while.  I can start a fire without matches, build a lean-to and “theoretically” trap animals.  But, I am perpetually lost, so I would be turning circles in the woods.  And, not to mention, the woods aren’t really the best place for a zombie apocalypse.  I need a barricaded bomb shelter with tons of automatic weapons and a vicious dog; none of which I have.

7.  Could you ever go over to the darkside?
I can be bribed.  I hear they have cookies?

8.  When was the last time you fired a gun?
The last time (and “technically” the only time) I have fired a gun was this last summer.  My buddy is a fireman and was appalled to learn I had never fired a gun, so he took me to the shooting range.  This shooting range was special; it was in the middle of the woods, the target consisted of a crude body-shaped wooden cutout with a bulls eye painted on it by the hand of a three-year old and a coffee can for the head.  I think Ted Kaczynski’s cabin was near there.  But that coffee can was demolished by the time we got through with it.  ‘Cuz we are badass like that, yo.

 

enthusiasm is for chumps

I get excited over things that some people might consider mundane.  I get overly thrilled when I go to a restaurant and cock-sauce is already on the table, when I get any new outdoor gear (which isn’t often because my job pays bupkis), and when I find a penny made in 1977.  

-drawn by The Oatmeal

My enthusiasm probably annoys the hell out of most people I know.  Case in point:

I am at a get-together the other day and I overheard someone saying, “Who was that Fundamentalist lady that was pied in the face on television?”  I totally abandoned the conversation I was currently having, ran across the room, practically pushing people out of my way to get in on this conversation.  I blurt out, “IT WAS ANITA BRYANT!  SHE MADE IT LEGAL TO FIRE TEACHERS FOR BEING GAY IN FLORIDA!  The anti-discrimination law was overturned 20 years later.  20 YEARS!  BITCH DESERVED GETTING A PIE IN THE FACE.”  

Only no one was impressed with my infinite knowledge and they just kind of looked at me with their mouths slightly open.  I just lowered my head and turned around to help up the old lady I had stepped on in my mad dash to show off my mad trivia skillz.  This scenario is pretty much par for the course in my life.  I get really excited about something and can’t wait to share it with the world.  Because how could everyone not want my opinion/facts/random useless knowledge about LGBT rights?  Psh-shaw!

I was pretty embarrassed about my faux pas.  But, hey, who are we kidding?  This is normal for me.  Anyhoo, this guy walks up to me and asks me if he can buy me a drink.  I shrug my shoulders and say yes, because even though he really isn’t what I would consider “pleasant to look at”, it takes balls to walk up to a woman after she commits a huge social blunder.  We get to talking and I realize that I am not still standing on my soapbox; he is a foot shorter than me.  No biggie, really, but I have to lean over to hear what he was saying and his breath smelled like a combination of an ashtray, the devil’s asshole, and a goat fart.  So, we are standing there, I am holding my breath trying desperately to avoid his noxious breath and he asks me if I have read John Updike.  I tell him that I had never read anything by John Updike, but I did see the movie Witches of Eastwick and this totally counts, thinking myself incredibly hilarious.  While I am chuckling to myself about my sharp wit, he rambles on about how I had not lived until I have read Updike.  He went on to blabber in a condescending tone about how Updike was one of the greatest literary figures and his rich, unusual, sometimes arcane vocabulary transcends time, blah, blah, blah.  Then Stinky Breath leans over to me and asks, “Do you like Vespas? Because you can ride on mine if you want.”  Um...  Unsure how to respond to his serious offer to let me ride on his Vespa, I looked at my watch, and made some incredibly lame excuse about forgetting I had to be somewhere and practically ran out of there.  This time, that old lady knew to get the hell outta my way.

These are the kind of guys that are attracted to me.  And the guys I am attracted to?  Totally not interested in me, total flakes, or still in love with their ex.  Ugh.

So, my plead to the Valentine fairy?  Go fuck yourself.

 

sh*t single girls say

Um, I really do hate Valentine's Day.  Thank very much!