Have you seen this man?

I largely blame college for my pumped-up immune system. While living in a dorm I think I got and passed around more illnesses than ever before–and I don’t mean that in a slutty way at all. But I do think it super-boosted (yeah, I made that up) my immune system. How nice, you might think, to so rarely get sick. No! It has made me soft!

I’m just a big common cold pussy.

I guess it’s a hazard of the trade–what I get for passin’ the peace pipe with sickos.

(Don’t worry Alisha, you were so worth it.)

Bacon.

Two eggs over easy (except I really suck at flipping the eggs.)

Potatoes (cooked in the leftover bacon grease.)

And a bagel, with exxxxtra cream cheese.

A glass of water and a cuppa.

Is there really (REALLY) anything better than that? At least, as far as the first meal of the day goes.

Every single time December 26th rolls around, I let out a massive sigh of relief and continue to demolish a large pile of holiday chocolates, crossing my fingers that this day will go away forever.

So far, I have been unlucky. Christmas still lurks in the shadows, right around the corner from Thanksgiving, (one of the best holidays of all time) an impending doom.

In all honesty, with the amount of holidays we celebrate and observe, I wonder how many I actually care about. And so, I have formed a list of my favorite holidays.

1A. If Taylor is asking, her birthday is my number one favorite holiday!

1B. But for all intents and purposes, 4/20 is my all-time favorite holiday. This had to be somewhat expected, as the celebration of this day just includes an over-indulgence in one of my favorite hobbies (habits).

2. I love Thanksgiving Day. Another excessive day, only this time it’s the gluttony that I find so pleasing!

3. New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day–honestly, I don’t care that much. This is a holiday that is not unlike a birthday. There goes another year, and yet I don’t feel any different… However, it does sometimes feel like a renewing, fresh start, and there is usually a great party involved and your neighbors are willing to forgive you for having loud, screaming, drunk people peeing in your yard in the middle of the night.

4. For a little Latin flavor: Cinco de Mayo–for lack of anything better and because, really, any excuse to drink margaritas.

5. Earth Day, because who doesn’t love a little trash clean-up?

6. I guess, but really just because I feel like I should have more on the list, I’ll include Halloween. I have actually found that I kind of hate carving pumpkins (still) and I usually get drunk and eat too much candy, and can’t be bothered to give any away to the costume-clad little children running up onto the porch while we holler and smoke cigarettes. Also, as an alternate form of amusement, this last Halloween someone drove into my neighbor’s house–sad, but at least interesting.

The holidays that certainly did not make the list:

1. Christmas– oh you are so evil. You twist my arm into going to church, rob me blind of my hard earned money (and there is never much of it), and force me to see members of my family who I would prefer to forget about. Oh, and I forgot to add to that list the wretched music and the ridiculous decorations. Of course, I do get to hand out a few modest, well-thought-out gifts to people I love, and I do get to spend time with some great family, and so you have (very) few redeeming factors.

2. Mother Teresa’s Birthday (oh, yes, by the way, this is also my birthday.) A day that is usually built up and yet so very anti-climactic. Usually brings feelings of loneliness, some sadness (“Why hasn’t my mom called?”), the inevitable doing of chores, because you were so sure you had to day all planned out, and in it’s execution you find… it’s just another day.

3. Veteran’s Day/President’s Day/Labor Day/etc.: What strange holidays… Maybe the bank is closed, the library, the post-office… I usually don’t get paid time + a half for working them, and there are no parties. Plus, anymore, people don’t really observe them. Maybe in passing, or in a classroom, or (and more because of the good weather) you have a barbecue.

4. Independence Day: Or, less formally, the 4th of July. There isn’t much to say. I love the food, but overall wish the day would burn down–which I don’t feel would be so hard, perhaps we could accidentally shoot it with a firecracker.

5. Easter: I have more than strayed from the religion with which I was raised, and so this holiday has just become silly. Trying to find colored eggs, either hard-boiled or plastic and filled (and anymore, they put healthy treats in), never really made sense to me, and now that I’m “too old” to participate, it’s even more ridiculous. I guess I enjoy brunch, but church? No, thanks.

The moral of the story is… Well there really isn’t one, and I’m tired of typing and don’t feel like really concluding. But, Christmas sucks! And I wish there was no such thing as holiday obligation. Or Catholic guilt. Eek.

I miss you, WordPress.

And you know what else? It marks three months and five days since I last posted an entry on here… I find it seriously depressing that I can’t even motivate myself to blab in blog form. The whole idea of this was to unblock myself, write through the block, and really, I structured it in a way that would allow me to pretty much bitch about anything I’d like.

And I love to bitch.

What I’m trying to say is, I think I’m back, y’all.

I guess I will start in my childhood, in my bedroom with a slanted ceiling and no windows, and a twin-sized bed with a brown metal frame. That bed held a number of important elements of my life at the time–my pink rose comforter, my Sparky Bear, and (most importantly) the pillow I slept with every night. The former two items have become less and less prominent over the years (though I still love ya, Sparky!), but to this day the pillow has not fallen away from me. Like so many children, I found the pillow to be a sort of security blanket for me.

And this was no ordinary pillow, folks. It was old and flat and had the best, most comforting scent, and through my off times and weird childhood insomnia, burying my face in the pillow just made everything feel better, and knowing it was there when I went to sleep at night was the best kind of constant. As a small child, I would refuse to let my mother wash the pillowcase, for fear of it losing it’s smell.

(Of course now that I’m a mature and intelligent, level-headed adult, I launder my bedding more frequently. I also figured out that it doesn’t take long for that scent to come back, and sort of never goes away anyway.)

Through the years, the pillow adorned many different looks–early on it was a double-sided Burt and Ernie/Big Bird pillowcase, and then a light pink flannel one (that became so worn down it was no longer soft flannel, but the flat cotton base), a purple cotton pillowcase, a tie-dyed pillowcase, an orange and yellow striped case, and most recently a cool, very pale green, very soft cotton pillowcase.

While the pillow and I have grown apart slightly over the years, it is still on my bed every night, and it is still the pillow that I hold in the highest esteem.

And the other night, after a long drive back from Bellingham to Portland, while I was passing seemingly endless bowls (and joint, and lung hits, and etc.) with an old friend, Tank pissed on my pillow.

(A quick aside in case it hadn’t been mentioned before–Tank is an adorable, quirky, shithead of a black Pomeranian-Terrier mix who belongs to Taylor and her best friend/our roommate Angela.)

I’m sure that I don’t need to tell you I was upset. I didn’t take it personally though, since when Tank has an accident inside, he does it on the run. I guess if you’re gonna get busted for peeing inside, you might as well go balls to the wall and hit as much shit with your urine as you can, and he does.

It was late at this point, and I was stoned, so I left the laundry to be dealt with at a later time, without thinking about it too much.

Until I went to bed, of course, and found that the only thing awaiting my head now was a spare, uncovered pillow. And (aside from not only lacking my security blanket, but knowing that it was somewhere with urine on it) here was my dilemma: the idea of a naked pillow, uncased against my face while I sleep, really freaks me out in a weird, germ-phobic, obsessive way, but all of our clean pillowcases were downstairs in the laundry room, and hell if I was marching my high ass down there just for a fancy cotton sack to line my pouch of fluff.

And so, I decided to cover my pillow with a clean, soft, button-less, cotton t-shirt.

After a look through my clothes, I selected a white shirt with coral polka dots from Value Village, that I have hung onto for years but rarely wear.

I put the shirt on the pillow, and it seemed to fit well, but I was nervous that the shirt was too short, or would ride up over the pillows hips in the night and gather at it’s waist while I slept, leaving my face once again vunerable to the bare pillow underneath! (Yes, these thought processes are tiring.)

So, looking around, the best solution I could come up with was to cover the bottom of the pillow in the brand-spankin’ new blue-with-pink-roses clearance granny panties I had recently purchased from work (out of curiosity, really). Just to be extra safe, I tucked the shirt into the oversized underwear, and voila! As you can see, the outcome (as pictured above) was somewhat of a masterpiece, and a the very least a blessing in disguise!

After the completion of this piece of beauty, I named her Granny Pillow, stood her upright and tucked her under my chin (in a manner that made it look as though I was actually wearing a shirt with pink-polka dots, tucked into granny panties) and giggled while doing my best sexy dance for Taylor. Har har har.

I love you, Granny Pillow, though you really aren’t a sufficient replacement for my old faithful.

In other news, I realized today that I only posted five blog entries last month, and that really is no good.

I was shorted by a massive margin on my tax return, as the IRS  felt it necessary to “adjust” the amount of my return down to $143.

That’s it. That’s all I got.

Yes, I am definitely going to be calling that number to tell you, my dearest government, that I don’t agree with the changes you’ve made. Hope you didn’t spend my money, I’m gonna be need that back for beer, and the upcoming holiday, thanks!

Things are getting dangerous.

If you didn’t know, I have a blog entitled “Blocktherapy”–a way of forcing myself to write through my writer’s block (even if it isn’t really what I want to be saying.)

And, if you hadn’t noticed, I have been failing since going back to work.

How am I ever going to become a novelist, without also being broke and unemployed, if I can’t even keep up with a weblog while working in retail?

I suuuuck.