Kristabella: Full of Snark Since 1977

Posted By Kristabella on August 6, 2008

Tuesday night I was supposed to go have a chat with my therapist. I didn’t go last week because of the sales conference. At my last appointment 2 weeks ago, I wrote down my appointment time for this week on a slip of paper in my purse. It said Tuesday at 6:45.

So I showed up. Tuesday at 6:45.

She was all “I have you for tomorrow at 6:30 PM. Can you do it then?” My first thought was “no, because I was supposed to come Tuesday at 6:45!” But then I said no, but I could come later. So we agreed at 8 PM on Wednesday night.

Earlier in the day on Tuesday I was emailing with my mom and I was all “I think I’m done with therapy. I really don’t want to go. It feels like such a chore. It shouldn’t feel like such a chore.” And as my mom always tells me, do what you need to do. Which, awesome non-advice mom! I’ll remember that the next time you fall down the stairs at Wrigley. (Kidding! Hi mom! Love you!)

As I left my non-appointment on Tuesday night, I realized that I had to quit my therapist. She’s a nice enough lady and I think she’s good at what she does. But really, it shouldn’t be a chore to go every week. I shouldn’t be excited for the weeks I can’t go.

Now granted, therapy isn’t like going to a bar and knocking back a few cocktails. Now that is fun! But from my last experience, I also know I didn’t ever dread it. Sometimes I worried I would have nothing to talk about (HA!), but I never had that overwhelming sense of dread of going.

So I decided on my walk back to the train from my non-appointment that I would cancel this week’s appointment. I made up some excuse about dinner reservations and that I couldn’t make it.

But I do have an appointment next Thursday. And that’s when I’m going to tell her that her services are no longer needed. But because I’m too nice and she knows my damn weaknesses, I’m going to say that I don’t have any free evenings at ALL the rest of August and that I have no insurance come September 1. So we’ll have to sever our relationship for the time being. And I’ll make promises to call her once I find a job and start back up with her. Which will all be a BIG, FAT LIE.

It’s really not her. I’m just not really focused and motivated enough to be delving into this again. (Any armchair therapists are welcome to psychoanalyze this.) If I’m going to be paying for this service, I should be invested in it. And now, I just don’t have the time. I’ve got too much shit going on. And also? Her calling me sweetie all the time is really starting to irritate the fuck out of me.

So when I get a new job (hopefully one with benefits) I’ll look into starting my therapist search again. I really think you have to be in a place where you WANT to go to therapy, not just go and pay a $20 co-pay for the Jolly Ranchers on the table.

But boy oh boy am I going to miss the FREE Jolly Ranchers.

Category: Therapee | 33 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on August 5, 2008

Random thughts on a Tuesday night.

Or, why I love using bullets!

• Is anyone watching Big Brother? Am I the only one who hates Jessie and wants him to be exiled to the island that Tupac is on? Let Tupac take care of business and pop a cap in that irritating, immature douchebag’s ass.
• My interview today was lame. I was only doing it help my half-sister out, which she owes me big time for, by the way. One, because the directions on how to get in the building were not clear so I spent 15 minutes trying to find the front of the building. Did I mention it was humid and about 90 degrees and I was in a suit?
• It is an insurance company and I didn’t realize there were still really stuffy companies out there. Every one was in a suit (except my sister). I knew the minute I saw that, it was not going to be a place I wanted to work.
• My suit pants don’t even fit. I had to fasten them close with a safety pin.
• The woman I met with was recruiting for sales. I didn’t know this until after I said “yuck, sales. I could never be in sales. Sales people are pushy.”
• I clearly have awesome interview skills.
• Thankfully by this time I didn’t care because hello! Stuffy suits!
• And then I went to work. I got there at noon.
• Only because it was 173 degrees in my house and there is air conditioning at work.
• That is telling you how hot it was in my house. Because a normal person would have worked from home.
• Walking through ankle-deep puddles in flip flops will make your feet and shoes wet. And then you will get a blister on the ball of your foot because plastic flip flop + water + humidity + a lot of walking = FAIL WHALE.
• Don’t eat Fiber One bars when you have to go to work. Trust me on this. It’s a weekend thing. A weekend where you plan on not going anywhere.
• Or a night time thing. If your bedmate prefers dutch ovens.
• I was up with my kiddies kitties until like 2 AM because OMG! Lightening! Must jump 20 feet in the air every time it thunders!
• And I also might have been a little afraid of hearing sirens again.
• I am finally working my way through my Google Reader.
• Looking for a JOB is really cramping my blog reading lifestyle. The comment spreadsheet is feeling a little neglected.
• I clearly read too many blogs.

Category: Land of Random | 29 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on August 4, 2008

As I sat down tonight to write my post, I was hit with a bad case of writer’s block. You see, I’m totally in a funk. I really hate going in to work each day. Last week at the sales conference was not easy. I know I’m constantly complaining about how hard it is to go in to work every day, knowing my days are numbered, but last week was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was expected to do everything and wasn’t offered a lick of help. And not ONCE did someone ask “can I help you with that since you’re doing the job of THREE people, and yet you are only one person?” Or maybe someone would like to ask “oh, hey, maybe I should know how to do that for the future.”

I got none of that. And every time I was in the back of the room applying for jobs, typing away on my laptop, I got glared at. Because apparently I was supposed to sit in the back of the room and stare into space and fall asleep in my chair.

But then I really didn’t want to write a post about that. Because you guys are all “SHUT UP WOMAN! WE GET IT!” And yet when I go to talk about something different, I can talk of NOTHING ELSE.

Well, until tonight. I now will be talking about how I ALMOST DIED IN A TORNADO. Because OMG! I ALMOST DIED IN A TORNADO TONIGHT!

Well, not really.

But, as I was sitting here booting up WordPress, the lightening and thunder started to get really bad. Not really raining too hard, but I was convinced if I got too close to the window, I would be electrocuted. So I put the cats by the window to see how bad it was. (They are like my portable weather vane.) Simba’s hair is still standing on end.

In the meantime, I figured I should probably stop watching basic cable and maybe turn on a local station. And then on twitter, Jules is all “TORNADO. GOING TO MY BATH TUB.” And I was all “that Jules, she’s such a kidder. You shouldn’t take a bath when there is a bad storm and/or a tornado.”

And then the lovely gentleman on CBS 2 interrupted and told me “OMG! THERE IS A TORNADO HEADING TOWARD THE CITY! WE NEVER SEE TORNADOES GO THIS FAR EAST!” And then I laughed and checked out Fox online and their Live Power Doppler because I’m obsessed with it. They have a running chat on the right side of the page and there are some crazy people in the Chicagoland area, let me tell you. And somehow they all have wireless access.

As soon as I booted up Fox’s website the tornado sirens went off. Let me say that again, THEMOTHERFUCKINGTORNADOSIRENSWENTOFFHOLYSHITBALLS!

I have lived in the greater Chicago area almost my whole life, 21 of my almost-31 years. So I know bad storms. And I can honestly say that besides the sirens going off at 10 AM the first Tuesday of every month (that’s when they test them. And yes, if you live here you know that. And no, I don’t know what will happen if there is ever a tornado at 10 AM on the first Tuesday of some month. I think the world will implode) in that time I have maybe only heard them go off a few times in my life, like once or twice. In fact, I always wondered if they would be loud enough to hear. Oh, shit yeah, they are loud enough to hear.

So the tornado sirens go off. And what do I do? I CALL MY MOM. Because, I have no fucking clue where I’m supposed to go. I literally was running around like a chicken with its head cut off because I was all “should I close the windows? Should I turn off the lights? What about the cats? Should I shut down MY COMPUTER? Should I PUT ON PANTS?”

My mom calmed me down and said “go to your laundry room!” And so I did. And I left the windows wide open, put my laptop in hibernate mode and wished the cats the best of luck. Because they were about to go on one wild ride.

Down in the laundry room, I met a handful of my neighbors. Including the pot smokers. And let me tell you, they are impressed with me. I showed up in too-short shorts (it’s HOT in my house people), with cottage cheese legs as far as the eye could see, and a wife beater and generally just a hot sweaty mess because I decided to cook in 90 degree weather. But hey, at least I had pants on.

My neighbors are very nice. The good pet owners packed up their kitties and brought them down with them. Apparently they think CLEARLY in natural disasters. I DO NOT.

We chatted and decided we should throw a party for all of us some time in the near future. One that DOES NOT INVOLVE FUNNEL CLOUDS. Funnel cakes are OK, though.

We were down there for about 30 minutes until the storm passed. I got back up to my apartment to find the cats THROWING A PARTY! No, they were hiding under the bed. And the windows I left wide open? Created a Lake Titicaca in my living room, all over my chair, a blanket and the cat’s scratching post.

So thankfully nothing was damaged, I still have a roof over my head, two cats and MY LAPTOP. Whew. AND! I got a blog post out of it!

And now I have to go to bed. Because I have a fake interview tomorrow. Well, not completely fake. I’m going to meet some recruiter at my half-sister’s office because if she got six people to come in, she got $500. I figured I would go because maybe it will turn into a job. Because that would be the easiest job search ever. Plus at the very least, she’s totally buying me dinner.

Category: A Day in the Life of Me | 37 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on August 1, 2008

Do you remember those Choose YOur Own Adventure books from when you were a kid? Well I wanted to test my skills as a fiction writer, so today I am participating in Nancy Pearl Wannabe’s CYOB – Choose Your Own Blogventure. Click here to start at the beginning and read away, choosing your story as you go.

(Previous section can be found here.)

“Aww, fuck,” Aaron yelped as his ass hit the ground when Zombie Beej dropped him. He saw the back of Zombie Beej’s head as he ran down the street just like a kid who just heard the tinkling of the ice cream truck down the block.

Zombie Beej took off in the direction of the noise, almost immediately re-thinking his decision not to eat Aaron’s brains. He ran over to the side of the house on the corner of the block where he saw a tall model-like woman messing around in her back yard with an axe. Upon closer review, Zombie Beej noticed that this beautiful woman was chopping down her tree into small sticks.

As if on cue, the woman looked up and saw Zombie Beej staring at her, drool and blood dripping from his mouth. She yelped out and then immediately picked up two of the sticks she had just chopped and started clacking them together.

CLICK CLACK CLICK CLACK

“Stay away from me,” she yelled at Zombie Beej. In between her yelling and screaming, she clicked and clacked those sticks together frantically, as if something magical was supposed to happen.

CLICK CLACK CLICK CLACK

“Why are you clacking those sticks together?” Zombie Beej asked her, amused by her quirkiness.

“It’s well-known lore that clacking these sticks together will keep the zombies away,” she stated, proud of her zombie knowledge, and for her use of lore in a sentence.

“Did two little twin girls give you that information?” Zombie Beej asked. “Because I’m pretty sure that is straight out of The Parent Trap right there. Someone played you, honey.” And then he laughed until so much drool came out of his mouth it soaked his worn Boston Red Sox shirt.

“Well, then smartypants,” the woman said, “why don’t you tell me how I am supposed to kill a zombie.”

“Mawfwahuhuhwahfuhnn,” Beej answered.

“Oh my God! Was that just zombie speak for how you’re going to kill me?” the woman asked in a panic.

“No, sorry, I tried talking with peanut butter in my mouth,” he said. “What I was trying to say is that it is common knowledge that you could have easily killed all these zombies with one swift blow to the neck with your axe there.”

Right then Zombie Beej heard the screeching of the tires of a car heading in his direction. As he turned to look to see where the car was coming from, he noticed that Aaron had hobbled over after being dropped on his ass and was reaching for the axe – the axe that Zombie Beej had just said was easiest way to kill zombies. “Brilliant,” Beej thought to himself. “I am so SMRT.”

Aaron snatched the axe off the ground and immediately lunged at Zombie Beej, trying to aim as close to his neck as he could, so he could decapitate his zombie ass.

But just as the axe was about to make contact with Zombie Beej’s neck, Beej picked up one of the sticks of wood on the ground and held it out in front of the axe that was cutting through the air, getting rather close to his skin. He got the stick up just in time to have the axe glance off the wood and just miss cutting Beej’s carotid artery and ending his lonely, zombie life.

Feeling victorious with his quick thinking, Beej started thinking about the beautiful woman who originally was chopping wood. Beej realized he didn’t even know her name. As he turned around to ask the beautiful, lanky blonde what her name was, he saw Shelley come out of nowhere, jumping out of the Popemobile wielding an axe. Before he could even take in a breath, the axe sliced its way through the skin around Beej’s neck and he was instantly dead in a bloody heap on the ground.

Shelley, proud of her job well done, looked over in the corner of the yard to see Aaron cowering like a baby in the fetal position covered in drops of Zombie Beej’s blood.

“Shit never gets done right unless a woman does it,” Shelley said as she grabbed Aaron and the woman as they hightailed it out of town in the Popemobile. “But thank God I have a good story for my blog post.”

El Fin

Category: All Things Blogging, CYOB | 13 Comments »
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Posted By Kristabella on July 31, 2008

I’m a homebody. As if you didn’t figure that out by my constant bragging of my bouts with The Lazies and my love of reality television, the internet and booze.

I generally can only manage being away from my own home for a maximum of 4 days. It is why BlogHer was perfect for me. It was just enough time away from home, but not too long where I was scratching out the eyeballs of complete strangers on the street because “I can has goes home now? Plz? PLEASE, MOTHER FUCKER! TAKE ME HOME NOW!”

That is why these sales conferences are hard for me. I am lucky enough to stay at the hotel. (Yes, it is lucky since I live seven miles away so really, not all that necessary for me to stay here.) I enjoy staying in hotels, especially for free. I love the king-sized bed. I love that I don’t have to make my bed everyday. And when it is the end of July in Chicago and 100-mother-fucking-degrees, I LOVE THE AIR CONDITIONING.

(I only have a window unit in my bedroom. Which I try not to run, except for when I’m sleeping because that bitch costs a lot to run because it doesn’t shut off. So my TV watching is usually done on the couch with two fans blowing on me with sweat coming out of places I really don’t wish to mention on here.)

So it is a nice break to stay here. No cats stepping on my face, waking me up at all hours of the night. There are fresh towels everyday. I can leave a mess all over the sink in the bathroom and it will be cleaned up by the time I get back to the room. And also, have I mentioned the air conditioning? And the thermostat that is permanently set at 64 degrees? BECAUSE IT IS.

But I’m ready to go home. I normally get like this the week of a sales conference. It is a lot of consecutive late nights and long days and a lot of logistical stuff. On top of it, this conference is horrible because I don’t want to be helping anyone because have I mentioned I am NOT GOING TO WORK HERE? And I have to sit in the back of the room and listen to the product training for the umpteenth time and this time I don’t even have to feign interest because I don’t even have to learn this information.

Tonight I went home and dropped in on my kitties. I did this for a few reasons: 1) I didn’t want to go to dinner with my co-worker, 2) it gave me a good excuse NOT to go out and party and be horribly hung over tomorrow and 3) it has been hotter than blazes here and I was sure my cats were dead in a corner of the apartment.

I ended up staying there for a few hours. I just watched some TV, ate my dinner, fed the cats and gave them more water. And as relaxing (and HOT!) as it was (which, I know, who finds their own home more relaxing than a HOTEL) it made me sad to have to come back here. Because I just wanted to sleep in my own bed and go into work at my normal time and not butt-ass early and not have to worry whether lunch and breakfast were going to be delivered tomorrow.

But then I remembered that the air conditioning is free here. So I trudged my ass back to the hotel. I know, woe is me.

:::

Just a heads up, tomorrow is the second edition of NPW’sChoose Your Own Blogventure. I’m participating this time around, so Friday at 10 AM EST, check out NPW’s site to start the adventure off. And then choose away and hopefully end up here at some point.

Category: All Things Blogging, Whine & Cheese | 19 Comments »
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