In the past week I’ve done so many Real Adult things that I’m not entirely sure I recognize myself anymore.
First, I bought skincare products. Like actual super high quality spendy face stuff to replace whatever I was using from the drug store that made it so my skin couldn’t decide if it was oily or dry or normal or iguana.
Second, I bought a bed. As in, I’m no longer sleeping on an air mattress on the floor. I have a box spring and a mattress and a pillowtop thing that goes on top of the mattress and sheets and a duvet and a duvet cover and pillows and and and THIS THE BEST DAY!
If you know me, you know how big of deal this is since I’ve spent the past two years sleeping on an air mattress. (I know right?!?)
It wasn’t like I planned it. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and was all, “You know what would be the best of the best? If I spent the next two years sleeping on the fucking floor.” No. This, like most other eyebrow-raising things in my life, just sort of happened.
I first bought the air mattress in June of 2008, when the woman I was renting a room from called to tell me that in fact, she wasn’t allowed to rent the room to begin with and that if I wasn’t out by the next afternoon, her and her children would be evicted. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I went with the only thing I could think of at the time: buying an air mattress and sleeping on the floor of my office.
This was back when I ran a children’s summer day camp, and apparently being homeless and sleeping in one’s office isn’t exactly smiled upon when you’re in charge of young children. So I went from my office to a friend’s house, and then from the friend’s house to my own small apartment, but even as I settled into my new place I knew I wouldn’t be staying long enough to invest in furniture, especially since the place was mostly furnished already.
So I slept on the floor and told everyone who asked that it was “fine!” and “fun!” and “sort of like a continual slumber party!” Which, for the record, was a big fat horse vagina lie. Not fine. Not fun. Not anything like a slumber party. I mean, imagine having all of your sex on an air mattress on the floor.
Exactly.
I left that apartment at the same time I left that job, and I took off from Southern California to my parents’ apartment in Arizona, and then from there to floors and couches all over the country during my three months of girl gone nomad-ing last fall. The tail end of the traveling brought me to San Francisco (air mattress in tow), and 8 months later here I am, splitting a one-bedroom apartment with Jamie, living behind two folding screens in the living room, but finally the owner of an actual bought-it-from-IKEA bed.
Finally. Fuck.
And on one hand, I’m all, “Yay! I win! Life’s too short to sleep on the floor!” but on the other hand I’m like, “Gah! Too many Real Adult things at once! Who am I! Whiplash!”
But then I look out my “bedroom” window and see the ball pit on the patio and remind myself that a) I still have a very long way to go before reaching full blown Real-Adult-ness and 2) Tequila solves everything.
Whoever says money can’t buy happiness needs to order an inflatable swimming pool and 500 multi-colored ball pit balls and then get back to me.
Nothing about this is practical. We have a fucking ball pit on our patio. But you know what? Practicality is overrated. You know what else? I think you should go out and do one ridiculous thing this week that gives you the kind of ecstasy-inducing heart boner that my ball pit gives me.
Dye your hair. Eat dessert for breakfast. Paint your ceiling blue. Take totallyrisqué photos of yourself for absolutely no reason. Buy ten pairs of hot pink underwear. Just do something, anything, that makes you feel exhilarated.
What the hell is the point of life if we’re not routinely making people question our sanity while we swim around in ball pits?
Big high fives to Jeremy, Norcross, and Lauren for coming over and blowing the pool up. Big high fives to James Bond for covertly filming this video clip and for smacking my ass in the middle of it. Big high fives to Jamie for putting up with me even though I secretly ordered 500 balls to our apartment and then pouted like a child when she wouldn’t agree to sell the couch so we could put the ball pit in its place. Big high fives to The Bloggess and her red dress for inspiring this post. And biggest ever high fives to anyone who chooses wild and irrational happiness over all of the other options.
(Also, yes, I know we need more balls. We’re getting more balls. Never enough balls. That’s what she said! That’s what I said! These jokes are too easy! BALLS!)
As part of my ever-growing collection of sex toys, I’m proud to announce that I now own one that looks like a bunny. Well, not an actual bunny. Not like with a cute little bunny face. I wouldn’t touch myself with a cute little bunny face. Or an ugly little bunny face. Or any little bunny face.
Shit, this is off to a horrible start.
A few months ago, Jamie and I went on a tour of the Babeland warehouse for no other reason than the fact that if someone asks if you’d like to tour their warehouse full of sex toys, you say yes.
(That’s piece of advice number one.)
Our favorite part of the tour was the library, or more accurately “The Room Where Every Sex Toy You’ve Ever Imagined Is Displayed To Look At And Play With But No Not Like That You Weirdo It’s A Warehouse Not A Brothel.”
It was in this library (or “TRWESTYEIIDTLAAPWBNNLTYWIAWNAB”) that I first learned about Jimmyjane, a premium sex toy company that I somehow hadn’t heard about in my years of superior vaginaness. I saw their shelf of gorgeous toys and was all, “Ooo” and the Babeland girl was like, “I know right?!” and I was all, “Wait, what the fuck is that?” and she was like, “That’s the Form 2” and I was all, “It looks like bunny ears” and she’s like “It’s one of my favorite toys, would you like one?”
(Piece of advice number two: when a woman who works at a sex toy warehouse asks if you’d like one of her absolute favorite toys, you nod quickly and do a little vagina dance.)
Back at home, I realized why it’s her favorite. The bunny ears sit on either side of everything you want vibrated and the five different modes actually do all feel completely different. Also, it’s waterproof. Also, the ears are flexible. Also, it runs for 7+ hours on a full charge. Also, the manual offers a variety of helpful tips such as, “Do not use on unexplained calf pain” and “Close supervision is necessary when this product is used by, on, or near children, invalids, or disabled persons.”
Which is to say, please comment for a chance to win one of these orgasm ears for yourself, but maybe don’t enter if you routinely masturbate by, on, or near children. Or if you plan to rub your new toy up against your unexplained calf pain.
Although if you have unexplained calf pain that’s bad enough that your last resort is to try to masturbate it, you should probably see a doctor. And if you do the thing with the children and the invalids, you should probably see someone else entirely. And if you want to double your chances for orgasmic goodness while sitting in open-mouthed disbelief at a product you never ever thought would actually exist, you should probably check out this other giveaway for a $2,750 vibrator. Yes, for real. Yes, it’s 24k gold, has 28 diamonds in it, and costs $2,750.
And like, on one hand there are people in the world with no clean water and I can’t believe I’m fantasizing about using a vibrator that costs more than my monthly rent, car payment, utilities, and student loans put together, but on the other hand CAN YOU IMAGINE GETTING OFF TO AN ALMOST THREE THOUSAND DOLLAR VIBRATOR? I seriously can’t think of anything more expensive that I’d like to put in my vagina so if you win and I don’t I’ll obviously pretend to be happy for you, but my clit is going to be pretty fucking angry.
In some cruel twist of sleepless fate, I’m an insomniac who’s also allergic to almost all sleeping pills. Ambien and the like make me vomit, and so the only pills I can safely take are those over-the-counter sleep aids which, strangely enough, don’t make me sleep as much as they make me totally fucking crazy. Hallucinations, intense and bizarre dreams, hours of laying awake but not really being awake – and yet I take them, because some sleep > no sleep.
Earlier this week, I woke up in the middle of the night hallucinating off the sleep aid, coming in and out of a dream that involved being stuck in a maze and having no feet, when I realized that my jaw was unbelievably sore. Like two-hour-horse-blowjob sore. In my drugged haze, I thought, “I must be grinding my teeth down to the bone, maybe this is part of the maze” and imagined waking up the next morning bloody and toothless. What actually happened was that I woke up the next morning with so much pressure in my upper jaw that I couldn’t chew. A few hours later, I started complaining about pain in my eyes and pain in my cheeks and Jamie was all, “Um, sinus infection?” and I was like, “Oooh, sinus infection” and went to look it up online.
The glory of WebMD and Wikipedia confirmed that my symptoms did indeed equal sinus infection, although the websites also went on to suggest bone cancer and an abscessed tooth and the beginnings of going blind from infection. Which, you know, made me feel so much better and more optimistic about the overall outcome of my future.
Even better than the symptoms section is the home remedies section. According to the internet, I’m supposed to consume an unbelievable amount of garlic juice (apparently garlic is juiceable?), and I should also try irrigating my nasal passage using a syringe and sodium bicarbonate powder. You know, things everyone just has hanging out around the house.
The best though, is the section in which I do absurd things to my forehead:
“Try applying a paste of cinnamon and water on the forehead, applying a paste of ginger and water/milk on the forehead, or applying a paste of basil leaves, cloves, and dried ginger on the forehead.”
Somebody is making this shit up, I swear. Or the internet is being run by zombies who are trying to make my forehead more delicious before they bite into it and suck my brain out.
In other news, I bought yesterday’s Groupon for acupuncture, which I’ve never done and am terrified of but am committed to trying as a last ditch effort to cure my insomnia. And now my sinus infection. And maybe my soon-to-be sticky forehead and missing zombie brain.
I wonder how many ailments can be cured in one acupuncture treatment.
I wonder if they’ll charge me extra for the zombie thing.
This morning I woke up with the kind of hangover that makes me seriously weigh the pain of getting up to walk to the bathroom against the horror of wetting the bed.
I made it to the bathroom, but let’s start at the beginning.
San Francisco is, without question, the strangest city I’ve ever lived in. Which is surprising, because after 10+ years of living in New York I really did think that I had seen it all. The thing about San Francisco though, is that the crazy is brazenly out in the open. It’s proud of itself. It’s that guy who body checks you in the middle of the street and that guy a few blocks down who tells you that you have a beautiful smile, even though your mouth is closed, followed by a declaration of how he’d like to eat your hair.
This city seems to sanction its crazy, hosting street festival after street festival, continuously giving its residents a reason to be drunk outside in the middle of the day. That’s another thing about San Francisco, it’s a city full of lushes. Jamie and I were talking about this the other day, about how we don’t fit into any of the overt San Francisco cliches (gay, pretentious, hipster, gay pretentious hipster, etc.), but we do fit the quieter mold of likes-to-drink-heavily-for-no-reason-at-all-other-than-the-fact-that-it’s-a-Tuesday-and-wine-is-better-than-no-wine.
So, being that yesterday was a Tuesday, we figured we’d partake. We bought our Two Buck Chuck and did the thing where I sit on the barstool and she stands across the counter from me and we talk until there’s nothing left to say and we drink enough wine to want more wine and then we sprawl out on the couch and watch a randomly selected Friends DVD and discuss how unrealistic it is that women on TV seem to always be wearing a man’s dress shirt after sex as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, when really, I can’t think of a single situation in which I’d get out of bed and be all, “That was lovely, can you hand me the shirt you wore to work today?”
Somewhere between the DVD watching and the obsessive wine drinking, we also managed to severely burn a batch of popcorn and then “fix” said popcorn by melting all the butter in the fridge over it so that we could eat it anyway. Which is to say that this morning was rough and that it’s pretty much going to be touch and go for the rest of the day. Especially since I’m about to leave to get a Brazilian wax, something that falls near “vigorous aerobic activity” and “talking to my mother” on a list of the worst possible things to do while suffering from this kind of hangover.
Yes, this is your cue to think kind and gentle thoughts for my soon-to-be-pained vagina. Unless you’re this guy and you get your giggles from taking a bottle filled with your semen to the grocery store and spraying it on unsuspecting women, in which case I’d appreciate if you never ever ever thought about my vagina ever at all.
