Saturday, January 31, 2009

because I know everyone was wondering...

So, I do love the Duggars and their insane number of kids...I do not love crazy Octuplet mom. This is for a variety of reasons. One being that the Duggars can support their children and Octuplet mom can't. The second being that, while I do not agree with their beliefs, the Duggars believe they are doing this because it is what God wants them to do and I can respect that...crazy Octuplet mom just wanted "one more girl" and is selfish. Also, the Duggars have at least a little breathing room between their infants. Sure 8 kids under 10 is unreasonable...8 kids in infancy is fucked up. Finally, I think J'Michelle Duggar is a saint, and Octuplet mom sounds a little white trashy to me.

Monday, January 26, 2009

i'm not an addict (maybe that's a lie)


I have a confession about a secret habit. It's becoming kind of an expensive habit and I don't know how to stop it. I need to go to laundryhab....because I have lost all ability to do my own laundry. I HAVE to drop it off. Every week I say I am going to start doing my laundry again, and then I don't do it...and then it piles up and I say I'll really do it this time. I even check the little bag where I keep my quarters to see if I have enough. I plan out a Saturday where I can do it. I get all ready....and then...I go drop it off.
They eased me into it like any good dealer does. Because I was resistant..."it's too expensive", I said..."I don't want them to look at my underwear!", I said....but then I had a lot of sheets to do....lots of sheets can take a long time, and that's not personal....so I dropped them off.
Hey! I thought...that's kind of nice! They are all folded and ready to be put away...and it wasn't too expensive...not much more than I would have paid anyway. And the time saving!
So next time...I threw in some shirts...maybe some pants. And then the next time? Underwear. And it has spiraled out of control. Without having to do my underwear by myself, I have lost all motivation to do any laundry at all. And I was in denial for a long time, because it is way more expensive than doing my laundry on my own. But it's sooo nice!
I just paid $20 to pick up my laundry....and I mean, it was a lot of laundry. But see? There I go rationalizing. The fact is, I just need to face the fact that I am a laundry drop off junkie.
If this were Intervention I would need my loved ones to make a list of how my laundry addiction has affected them.
Caitlin, your laundry addiction has affected me in the following ways:
You can never hang out because you spent all your money on laundry.
You wait until the last minute to do your laundry because you think you will do it on your own and so then you run out of underwear and I have to listen to you complain all day about wearing a thong because it's your last clean underwear.
You lie about how often you drop off your laundry.
You say you can't hang out on a Saturday because you are going to do laundry but then you just nap until 4 and then drop off the laundry so you can go to the gym.
It's getting out of hand!!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

for those following my plight...


Frank is now completely gone from the apartment!
And, if you live in the greater tri-state area and want to go with me to Ikea next week to get a couch let me know. Last time it was so bad that my friend left all the shit he had picked out in the middle of the store, out of being overwhelmed. So I need the support.
I'm getting Extorp; I already have it picked out.
My apartment is going to be so less shitty! Maybe I will feel comfortable enough to have people over besides one night stands.

On that note, there is apparently a blog called I Bang The Worst Dudes....um hasn't that been my blog for like a year??
The Jezebel people think that perhaps it is a joke....but given that I think every scenario excluding the ones with STDs has happened to me, I'm inclined to think it is not.
Anyway, what an auspicious week: Worst President Ever=gone! Worst Roommate Ever=gone!

Hope lives on in Clinton Hill.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

if love is a drug i guess we're all sober

The evening security guard at my work is very friendly. Every day when I leave we chat and he gives me a stick of gum. He knows more about me than is really probably necessary for a security guard to know. A while back he asked me if I had a boyfriend and I said I did not and he said "why?!". Well, Hassan, it's obviously because no one will ever love me. Tomorrow we'll begin a series of 3 minute discussions on my choices in partners.

Today I asked Hassan about his day off, and he in return asked me about mine. I told him I had gone to see a movie. "Alone?", he asked. I said that no I had gone with a friend. He looked so heartbreakingly hopeful for a minute and said "A friend.....? A...boy? friend?" And I said that it was a female friend. Crushed. He was so crushed. "You don't have a boyfriend, right?" And I confirmed that I do not. He gave me this pitying smile and I was like, "what?". He paused for a minute..."I don't like that...you look good! You are young! You should have a boyfriend!"

Thanks, Hassan. No, really.

I have recently had yet another dating disaster, which I don't have enough distance from to blog about (making it sound much more tragic than it was)....and I was thinking that maybe I really just want to spend some time on me. Isn't there a sex and the city or something where they date themselves? I don't know. I don't watch that show.

But then I was like, my friends are already always thinking about setting me up with people ...but you know it's bad when the security guard at your work is tired of you being single....so I guess I will plod on in my ongoing quest to not date an asshole and at least Hassan will be happy.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

brother can you spare a dime



Pretty much every news story and commercial you see these days includes a phrase along the lines of "in times like these", "in hard times" or"in today's economy". I have seen the recession used to sell tickets to Mary Poppins (in times like these, you need to see this uplifting musical), car insurance (can't afford to take chances), phone plans (in times like these, we need rollover minutes). The recession is the explanation for the increase in lottery ticket purchases...and food stamp applications. People even talk about "these hard times" and the increase in obesity (people eat cheaper, less nutritious food when they broke...true dat yo...that's why there are so many fried chicken places in my neighborhood and so few vegetable options).
Anyway...this is the thing...you know how when there is a tsunami in thailand or wherever and you feel kind of bad about it, but really it has nothing to do with you, and while you realize how terrible it is you have a hard time mustering any actual empathy? Maybe that's just me? Well, that's how I feel about the recession.
It really affects me in absolutely no way...except for that now my bank is owned by Chase and I think they increased the APR on my credit card. But besides that? Teenagers will always be out of control, people will always be crazy...so my job isn't at risk. I am making more money than I have ever made...and since the previous 2 years involved me having absolutely no income, I feel like the sultan of Dubai over here AND living on pretty much nothing gave me some decent budgeting skills so I'm used to living on the cheap. I am pretty sure that the $100 I have in savings isn't going anywhere, and I'm not worried about my declining 401K because I cashed it out two years ago for grad school.

Basically, what I'm saying is....unemployment and a master's degree were my recession...and now I'm all New Deal and chicken in every pot and stuff.

I think there should be a new area of marketing...and it should be like, "Hey, you...hey, things are ok! Go shopping!"

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Target, I love you, but you're bringing me down

This is a conversation I had with my friend today:
E: I think I am going to get a bike this spring
Me: You totally should, I was really glad I got mine last year
E: Where do you keep yours?
Me: Um, ok...well....so there is this mute homeless man who I guess squats in the basement of my building? And he hoards stuff? Like, I threw out this chopper that didn't work and then he had it. And sometimes he has food back there and I am not sure if he gets it from a food pantry or the garbage. And then sometimes he has other stuff that he hoards but you wouldn't know why because it's not useful and you can't sell it. Anyway, I keep my bike back there. I keep it in the little back area where the homeless man who sleeps on a cot in my building's basement keeps stuff he finds in our trash.
E: Oh ok. Yeah, who knows why people hoard what they do.

I love Brooklyn.

I forgot to blog about my two year living in New York anniversary! It was the 8th. In thinking about it I was trying to think about my favorite moving to New York memory. And at first I was thinking about re-living the day I went from the hotel I was in to my friend's apartment and the cabbie threw all of my crap onto the street because he didn't want to go to Brooklyn. But then, this blog showed up and reminded me that of course I had to write about the worst day in my whole life, which is the first time I went to the Atlantic terminal target.

Unfortunately, I deleted my myspace so I no longer have the gem of a blog that I wrote back when the wounds of that day were still fresh and my tears barely dried. But I will try to sum it up as best I can, keeping in mind that the lens of experience and jadedness mars the ability to portray exactly how devastating this episode was.

To set the scene: It is January, 2007. I have lived in New York City (said as in Pace salsa commercial) for less than one week. This is the day that I move into the apartment that I will live in for my first 18 months here and although I don't yet know it, will be the scene of many stories to come.
I am extremely anxious and on edge about everything. I only have what I could bring with me on the plane, so I head to Target to pick up some essentials. My new roommate -- who I actually don't even live with yet -- has a shopping cart similar to the one pictured, that I decide to take with me.

When I get to Target I get a regular shopping cart and put the old lady shopping cart inside of it and go about my business. There is an escalator in this Target with a separate entrance for carts. As I head to the second floor and put my shopping cart on the escalator, I note a wall next to the cart escalator and think to myself "Hm, I wonder if my old lady cart will be too tall sticking out of the cart and get stuck on the wall?" And then I proceed to put the whole contraption on the escalator.
Now, you may have heard me tell this story before. Or you may just have sensed the foreshadowing and are not surprised, that yes the cart does get stuck to the wall. I watch in slow motion as the old lady cart begins to bend until it is completely jammed up against the wall. At that point, the Target cart tips over, spilling out all of my carefully selected school supplies. I reach out and let out a movie slow motion "Noooo"...but there is no hope. Other shoppers look on in disgust as their own carts are victims of the pileup. Several employees band together and free the cart, handing me back the old lady cart that is now at a 45 degree angle to its original formation. And I. start. crying. And I can't stop. And I'm just crying and crying and crying. But I have shit to buy, so I am shopping and walking through the store and just crying the whole time. Obviously this is going to become my normal state. Like the girl who had hiccups for however long...I will just be the girl that cries...I will have to live out the rest of my life going through every day activities sobbing.
So, with a full cart I go to pay...only to learn that all of my credit cards are declined because my banks helpfully put holds on them due to suspect spending. Nothing changes for me though...I just keep crying and crying and I leave the store. In the melee, I have lost one of my gloves, so I walk out with one hand in my pocket and my gloved hand towing the wrecked property of a stranger (where's THAT lyrics Alanis?). It is bitter cold, but my tears flow hot and do not freeze.

Bedding was included in the many items I picked out that day that never left the store. I didn't have a bed and my new roommate had been kind enough to let me take the futon from the living room into my room to sleep on, and she had even got out some sheets for me. After destroying her personal things, I didn't have the heart to ask for a blanket. I spent the next 3 nights sleeping on the futon with just a sheet...wearing every item of clothing I had brought with me, including gloves and a hat...shivering and crying until I finally bought a blanket.

For a long time I blamed the Target experiene on my own general ineptitude. But then Fucked in Park Slope comes along with their secret cameras to help me prove to the world that the Atlantic Center Target is the worst Target in the world.

Observe:
This is Part 1.

FIPS Undercover - Worst TARGET Evah (Brooklyn, NY) from Effed in Park Slope on Vimeo.

This is Part II


FIPS Undercover II: Target Sucks (Brooklyn, NY) from Effed in Park Slope on Vimeo.


I am pretty excited for III and IV

I like to think I have come a long ways since that day two years ago. But....basically...I live in a shittier apartment in the same neighborhood with worse roommates and I still shop at that Target and hate it every time. BUT I generally move through my days without excessive tearfulness. So that's something.
And now I have a bike that a mute bum watches over.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

mental/fitness

I need to go to the gym, so I am taking my time getting there. it closes at 8...sometimes I sniggle enough and successfully manage to not make it before it closes.
I guess I do kind of have a new year's resolution...I have been talking about doing a duathalon (running and biking) for like a year and a half. It had become a joke because it is this thing that i talk about and say i am TOTALLY committed to..and then it doesn't happen. Last fall I was going to do one, and then last spring, and then this past fall...But, this time I'm committed for real. There are two in April, one in Prospect Park and one in Central Park, so I want to be ready to do one of those. It's about 3 miles running, 10 miles biking and then another 3 miles running. Right now I could probably do half of that, slowly. While crying the entire time. But I'm working up to it.
Also, my mom and I are doing a bike new york thing in May where you ride through the 4 boroughs and it's 42 miles. It's not a race really and apparently you can take the whole day to do it if you want to, so it's not the tour de france over here...but it's a lot more than biking 10 miles at the gym while watching Jeopardy.

I watched Jeopardy twice this week while on the bike. On the first day the champion's interesting anecdote was that one time a female friend of his was in the hospital and he had to go buy a dress for her and announced to the whole store that it was for a friend. On day two his anecdote was that he had a dog who liked halloween....and by halloween he apparently meant that the dog liked it when kids came to the door and he would get all up in their shit. When he first said it I was kind of hopeful, like maybe the dog went and picked out his own costumes or could hand out candy to kids. But no. He liked to be obnoxious at the door and slobber all over children.
I hope that if I am ever on Jeopardy I have something more interesting to talk about than that once I bought an outfit for the opposite gender as an act of kindness and that I had an animal that acted like an animal. In reality I probably will just tell Lucy and Linus stories the whole time. Or talk about the Duggars or something.
Alex Trebec will be like "Caitlin, a social worker from Brooklyn New York...I hear you have a hidden talent? Tell us about that"
And then I would kind of giggle awkwardly and say "Well Alex I can name all 18 of the Duggar children in order of their birth."
And then I would start off all "Josh, Jana, John-David, Jill" and then he would have to cut me off and it would be embarrassing. And then I would lose because the whole time I would be replaying my interesting anecdote in my head and wouldn't be able to focus on European history.
What a disaster.
BUT if I do my duathalon I can say that I am a duathlete or a multi-sport athlete or that I have biked through all 5 boroughs in one day. It will show that I am well rounded. Anyway I better get to the gym or I will end up, well, rounded. HA!

Friday, January 2, 2009

so this is the new year, and i have no resolution

this new year feels particularly anticlimactic to me. New year's never feels like a particular starting over time for me, I think my birthday usually is, but total caitlin makeover is an ongoing process anyway. And I don't do resolutions. I think sometimes I do a little reflection of the past year in my blog, but I don't feel like it -- lots of ups and downs and changes like every other year :)


Instead I am going to write about Ruby.

Here is a video from YouTube with her talking about her Rubyisms:


I have a really low attention span for youtube videos---this one is 7 minutes and I only watched half of it. BUT if you like watching youtube videos it's a longer look.


She is just so cute and you want to be her friend and you feel angry at everyone who ever stares at her or laughs at her. And it's just kind of an interesting reaction, because if I saw someone her size on the street I would probably say how gross it was and stare. And then I would spend the next 3 days talking with everyone I know about obesity and how one gets that large, and probably my own body image issues because I like to bring it back around to me. But I like Ruby and really want to support her. And every time she slips up on her diet, I don't think to myself that it's her weakness and that's why she's so big. I see it as a normal slip-up that we all have and I want her to keep going. So. Watch it.

My other tv related comment is about the whopper virgin commercials. If you haven't seen them, Burger King is supposedly going to these extremely remote areas and giving people who have never tasted either a Big Mac or a Whopper a taste test and then I guess the whopper virgins (a term that makes me extremely uncomfortable) vote. Anyway, people are all kinds of outraged because there is all this hunger in these areas and these people are going in with basically the epitome of American excess and giving it to only a few people without addressing hunger. I suppose that's all true, but I am more concerned about their tummies. I would assume that most of these diets are vegetarian. And if they consume meat it certainly isn't all cooked in grease and shit. Isn't going to make them really sick? Is there a follow up? Does Pepto-Bismol go in with a taste test between them and Immodium? Ridic.