Guest blogger!

We have a guest blogger this week! It's all very exciting! And she comes all the way from Cleveland! She shares with us a traumatic tale...



Danielle recently invited me to share a poor decision that I've made. One coping mechanism that I have developed over the years in order to allow myself to go on living in spite of all the poor/embarrassing/mortifying decisions that I've made is to simply block certain things out. I've gotten quite efficient at blocking out bad memories. It was really hard to come up with something to write about because I've forgotten events prior to last Saturday. In fact I've become so efficient at shutting my brain off that I'm afraid the more vital brain functions are getting affected. Here is an example:

I am very strict about preventing shower curtain mildew. I try to enforce a stringent policy of always leaving the shower curtain closed and nice and spread out and airy so that it cannot collect mildew. Enter the main obstacle to my attainment of Shower Curtain Utopia: the Fiance, a creature whose main goal in the morning is to get to work on time which apparently prevents him from closing the shower curtain properly. On one particular weekend morning, (we are residing in Pittsburgh during this time), I slither into our bathroom like the sleepy slug that I am, ready to embark upon my morning routine. There I go, brushing my teeth, putting my toothbrush away neatly, my eyes are almost fully open at this time, here I am making sure I have a towel ready for after my shower, off I go to turn the shower on, I turn toward the bathtub---WHAT? the SHOWER CURTAIN IS OPEN? I am angry. I check the curtain for signs of mildew. Nothing there yet, I am momentarily placated. My shower ensues, it is relaxing. Lather, rinse, repeat. I am looking forward to the day ahead. I turn the water off. But...something is amiss. I thought I turned the water off, but then why do I hear water running?

My eyes quickly dart toward the sink, which is steadily overflowing. The faucet merrily runs like a babbling brook, onto the bathroom floor and into the carpeted hallway outside the bathroom. I step out of the bathtub onto the little red bath rug, even though it is completely underwater and it makes no difference whether had I stepped onto a bath rug or into a swimming pool.

Fiance and I spent the good part of the morning cleaning up. We exhausted all the absorbent materials in our home (1/2 roll of paper towels, a mop head) and set up a fan to dry the wet hallway (it took 4 days to dry). Even though I've lost my credibility as the guru of bathroom cleanliness, I still compulsively pull the shower curtain close whenever I get the chance.

---Q

Cooking

My little sister just got her permit three days ago. This has made all of us nervous, particularly me and my father because it is our cars she is practicing on since my mother's is currently more or less in a coma. My father is even more nervous than I am because, well, he was the one who took my sister for her very first driving lesson. Yesterday afternoon I told my sister I would take her driving, so we went to inform my father we were going out. He immediately jumped up from his chair and said, "Oh no, no no no. I will go. Not you. No. Highly dangerous. You are not equipped. Your sister will kill both of you and your mother will kill me. Unacceptable." So I said, "Okay then. I guess you two will go and I can stay here and make myself food."
My father immediately sat down again and squinted at me accusingly. "Explain 'make yourself food."
"I was thinking I would cook some eggs."
"Oh no. No, no, no, no. You'll burn the house down. Kill yourself. No more house. Your mother will kill me. Now I can't leave you alone..."

My father now faced a terrible choice. Which was more potentially fatal? His teenage daughter's second attempt at driving, or his 24 year old daughter's attempt at cooking?

In the end the problem was solved when he forced me into the backseat of my own car while he taught my sister how to drive, effectively preventing me from touching a stove AND monitoring my sister's every move.

A good solution, clearly. But what stands out to me here is the fact that my father believed me making myself eggs was equally as or MORE dangerous than my sister's first attempts at driving. It's a problem that has plagued me all my life, that I have inherited from my mother. Between the two of us, we've set at least 7 fires in various places--stove, oven, toaster, microwave. On one notable occasion, I set a salami sandwich on fire.
Another time while making cupcakes I mixed up sugar with salt. That is a lot of salt.
Knowing my weakness, one time while baking a cake I tried laying out all the ingredients before even beginning, checking them off a list, making sure I had the correct amounts of the correct things all in a line on the counter. When I took my cake out of the oven awhile later, I discovered that it was completely flat. Completely. I was very puzzled, until I turned around and found that all of the flour was still sitting nicely on the counter, waiting to be added.
Pasta. Oh, pasta. I can't tell you how much pasta and how many pots have been burned and destroyed in this household, between my mother and myself. We have an attention problem. Set the temperature on high so the water boils faster, forget we are making pasta two minutes later, occasionally go so far as to leave the house, return and discover blackened bits and one livid father/husband threatening to beat our heads in with his beloved and dead cook ware.
I have lost so much blood over cutting carrots and tomatoes and chicken and yes, even opening a tin of biscuit dough. You know those easy open Pillsbury tubes? Not so easy open to everyone.

These days, I get much of my food by wandering downstairs whenever I am hungry and announcing loudly what I am going to cook for myself. Wherever my father is in the house, he will come running, shouting, "I'll do it! I'll do it for you! Get back into bed! Watch TV! Go to the mall! Come back and it shall be all done!"

As far as I'm concerned, this is a perfect system, because I hate cooking as much as it hates me.

This evening I was thinking about making something from a recipe I found that sounded good, but I realized what a TERRIBLE DECISION that would be, and figured it was much safer to write about cooking than actually attempt it.

I think I'll wave the recipe around my father and declare loudly how I am about to start trying it out.

Camp

I have had a lot of jobs over the last ten years, with quite a bit of variation. Assistant Gymnastics Instructor. Sales clerk. Babysitter. Software Tester. English Language Assistant. Coldstone...person. French teacher. Volunteer Coordinator. Caller at a calling center. English Language Assistant and Volunteer Coordinator top the list as my two favorite positions (with the lowest salaries), babysitter and and software tester are down at the bottom at least favorite (with the two highest salaries). The job at the calling center is the only one I have ever quit, after lasting only three days. I would have quit after the first fifteen minutes, but my supervisor was so damn attractive I tried to stick it out. I don't regret having any of these jobs. I can look back on each one and point to ways in which they helped me further my career, develop my interests, or at least help financially.
Except for one.
One job I look back on and think, Why, why, WHY did I ever do that to myself? It made me cry nearly ever day. It paid next to nothing during the time in my life I least needed money. It made me physically sick. I didn't like the people I worked for and few of the people I worked with.
Summer camp counselor.
Every day for eight weeks during the summer after my freshman year of college I got on a school bus at 7:45 in the morning and went on an hour long journey, gathering children who routinely vomited each and every morning before arriving at our destination. I have a phobia of
vomit. Even just knowing someone in the same building as I am is throwing up is enough to make me sick enough to do it myself. Obviously I did not fare well on these bus rides.
And this was before camp even BEGAN.
Once camp began I often had MORE children vomit throughout the day. Sometimes in the pool. I do not know WHAT parents were feeding their children during the summer of 2004.
It was either burning hot or raining. I had kids running off into the forest. I had girls shrieking over centipedes. I had boys sticking their butts on one another. I had food fights and naked children running about trying to pee on things and at least one girl per day who cried unintelligibly over something incomprehensible and three hypochondriacs and a lot of snot and blood and tears and parental notes and YOU try getting sunscreen on hyperactive 6 year olds with ADHD and a bizarre obsession with running around NAKED.
AND I had to get in the pool.
In a bathing suit.
It was the most horrific of all nightmares.
In the middle of it all, I had to sing this song repeatedly:

Beaver one beaver all let's all do the beaver call
Beaver two beaver three let's all climb the beaver tree
Beaver four beaver five let's all do the beaver jive
Beaver six beaver seven let's all go to beaver heaven
Beaver eight beaver nine CLAP CLAP it's BEAVER TIME!


But you know what the worst part is? The most ridiculous, awful,
insane part of the whole thing?
I went back the next summer.

Retail. Oh GOD, Retail.

Yet again, I begin an entry in this here blog with an apology. I am very aware that this entry is a couple of weeks late, but I am also aware that it is far more prompt than the last entry was. I take this as a positive sign. A few more months of haphazard shit, and we will have turned me into a regular blogging dynamo.

Apologies aside, this week's entry is about the magical world of retail.

Let me make something clear here. I don't have any particular problem with shopping. I approve of shopping, in a general sense, even if I myself am not as an avid a shopper as many of my friends. Working retail is another story altogether.

I work in a local independent lingerie store, neither Victoria's Secret, nor Fredrick's of Hollywood. It's a cute little place with an excellent selection of bras, panties, and cute little things, and in many ways it's not a bad job. I'm selling things I like in a store I approve of, for a boss I generally think is pretty awesome.

That said, retail is like high school. No matter how good your particular high school is, it is still high school, and therefore it is terrible. No matter how good your retail job is, it is still retail, and therefore it is terrible. It is also, for the most part, unavoidable. Yes, you could go into the service industry, or become a nanny, or just go straight for the gold and become a hooker, but for the most part, retail is simply what you do when you aren't qualified to do anything, and when you're poor. I am both of those things, so retail it is.

Retail is a poor decision for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, retail is a poor decision because it forces you to interact with other people. Now you may be thinking, “I don't get it, Rachael, I like people!” You are wrong. You may think you like people, but that is because you don't work retail. If you worked retail, you would realize that people are terrible. They are smelly, inconsiderate bastards who talk on the phone while you ring them up, thrusting their credit card in your face, and babbling away at whatever halfwit was stupid enough to have answered the phone when these inbred underwear buying hippos called.

People are also gross. Incredibly gross. A truly surprising amount of the time, they're not actually looking for underwear. They have wandered in off the street, taking a break from their evidently constant masturbation, hoping to find sex toys to shove in their every orifice to distract themselves from the emptiness of their broken, greasy lives. For the record, all of these disgusting, mutated examples of pseudo-humanity are male. They are also apparently incapable of distinguishing between Adult Mart and a high end, reputable, classy lingerie store. The presence of women not bearing the telltale signs of herpes should really be a dead giveaway.

People are also cheap. Really cheap. Women come into the store with bras that are literally falling apart on them. They complain about spending forty dollars on something that will actually separate their nipples from their belly buttons. They hang around for two hours, showing me far more of their pustule-encrusted wrinkled rolls of fat than I would EVER under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES like to see, and then only buy ONE FUCKING BRA. If I were on commission, I swear to you, you would have seen me on the news by now, wielding a bloody knife and growling.

IN SUMMATION: I didn't hate people until I started working to retail. I walked in there my first day, bright eyed and bushy tailed, innocent and sweet, and retail has killed all that love. Beaten it out of me. What a shitty decision. Ugh.

Strike

I'm on strike. Again. For reals this time.

Glasses

I started wearing glasses at nine years old. They were turquoise and large and I looked very silly. But at nine years old, I felt pretty super cool wearing them because as far as I was concerned, they were a mark of smartness. The mark of someone smart enough to come up with a better word than smartness. Cleverness? Intellectualism? Whatever. Point was, I was less concerned with looking attractive and more concerned with my teachers liking me and writing nice notes on my tests.
Obviously as I grew older my priorities began to change and suddenly adding glasses to the mix of giant fluffy hair, legs of disproportionate size to my body, and practically translucent skin was terribly unappealing. So I stopped wearing them.
But...could you SEE? you might ask. The answer is no, no I could not see. From age 12 to age 16 I wandered around in a cloudy haze, not even completely sure of what my friends looked like, which occasionally caused minor problems when I arrived late to the cafeteria.
At 16, I changed my life by getting myself contacts.
I hate wearing glasses. I hate the way they look, I hate the way they feel, I hate the way I have to take them off and on when I eat or read so I don't get a headache. Also I hate the way they look. But for eight years now it's all been okay, because I wear my contacts most of the time.
And then June happened. June did a large number of unhealthy things to me, including giving me the Eye Infection That Would Not Die. The doctor tells me it is minor, and it certainly feels minor, but it means: No Contacts. For an Indeterminate Amount of Time. Thus far an Indeterminate Amount of Time has been very nearly two months and is beginning to look more like an Interminable Amount of Time.
Here we come to the Poor Decision Making. While I was a teenager, wandering around totally blind was acceptable because I was a teenager, and teenagers are stupid. Now, however, I am 24 years old, and for a month now, I have done a lot of stupid things without wearing my glasses. Going on walks, to dinner, to bars, to clubs, on dates...
It is one thing to go out with your close friends and say, "Just make sure you don't leave without me" and another to be on a first date standing painfully close not because it is a key part of your seduction technique but because you are afraid if he moves much farther away you won't be able to pick him out of the crowd.
This, clearly, cannot be allowed to go on. And yet my vanity is so monstrous that I cannot overcome it with common sense. So I'm trying uncommon sense. I went out and spent money I don't have on an expensive pair of chic red designer glasses in the hope that my love of wearing things that are red and expensive will trump my hatred of looking at myself in glasses.
The most smartest solution possible. Clearly. We'll see how well it works after I finally pick them up this week.

Bathing Suit!

What with the insanity that has recently become my life, I did not find a topic for today's post. Rachael and I have been spending a large amount of time with each other and, more recently, with her new foreign exchange student. Actually, there is a poor decision for you. I demanded his hand in marriage this weekend, which is probably something I should not have done, the fact that he is only 19 not withstanding. And I do mean demanded rather than asked. Though he believed I was joking. So I'm just going to have to try again this weekend.
But news! Between picking up strangers in bars (okay, maybe another poor decision?), having trouble parking (I PARKED RACHAEL'S CAR), getting lost (Rachael stopped paying attention to the streets and started paying attention to Ke$ha on the radio), freaking out the exchange student with the size of our cheeseburgers, and other shenanigans, WE BOUGHT A BATHING SUIT. Rachael made me drive out to the far reaches of the far reaches of the edges of the city and I found the absolute only one piece bathing suit in a size below a 6 and I promptly BOUGHT IT.
No swimming today though. Trip to FunFest! Where fun will be had by everyone but me. I will be busy running around shouting "KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF!" "STOP HITTING YOUR BROTHER!" "STOP TELLING YOUR SISTER YOU ARE GOING TO KILL HER!" "STOP TELLING YOUR SISTER YOU ARE GOING TO KILL HER BUT IN SPANISH. I UNDERSTAND SPANISH."

Omigod, Shoes

So it's been a while since my last post. For those of you who feel slighted, wronged, or let down by this, may I refer you to my first post, in which I detail how I am a killer of blogs. You were warned.

That said, I am not ready to accept my inevitable defeat, and am finally going to post something worthwhile on here.

Here goes.

The poor decision, which has led to blinding, consuming addiction, and which I repeat on a near daily basis is the decision, nay the need, to purchase shoes.

It began innocently enough, and, as a point of fact it's all my parent's fault. Mere moments after my birth, soft cuddly baby booties were placed on my innocent feet, and something in my head clicked. Angels sung, lightning flashed, climax was achieved! Or something similar. I'm not one to quibble over details.

Years passed. Shoes came, shoes went. Little hand knitted sandals. Those tacky little jelly things that were so hip in like 2001 and that they're trying to bring back for some reason. An enormous pair of Union Jack platforms with these tacky tacky laces that I bought at Hot Topic and thought were the shit. These adorable green bowling style shoes that I wore until my mother threw them out. Black corduroy ballet flats that cost all of three dollars. About a million pairs of flip flops. My first pair of two hundred dollar boots. Excuse me, I need a minute to compose myself.

Alright, I'm back.

The point is, that shoes are amazing. When I see a good pair of shoes, I go all weak at the knees. And I'm not talking about comfort here. I'm not talking about function. I'm talking peep-toe fuck-me pumps. I'm talking platforms. I'm talking patent leather. I'm talking orange strappy sandals. I'm talking foot crippling, blister giving, ankle breaking, stairs falling, heart stopping fabulous fucking shoes. I may need another minute.

I suppose I should refocus myself. This entry isn't supposed to be about bragging about how fabulous my new cork platforms are, or how cute my ankles and calves look in those hot little green booties I bought last month, or how many fantastic pairs of shoes I have (at last count, a paltry 35 pairs). This entry is supposed to be about poor decisions, and defeating them. Turning poor decisions into opportunities for learning. For growth.

AND SO, in the spirit of growth, of literacy, and of giving it the old college try, I am facing my addiction.

I admit it. I admit I have a problem with shoes. I admit, that when pressed, the decision over whether to buy groceries or to buy a fabulous new pair of pumps becomes rather more difficult than it really ought to be. I admit that I have fantasized about last season's amazing Prada heels with the ribbons ohmygod. I admit that I have theorized that if I were a pair of shoes, I'd be these fantastic printed silk pumps by Pucci that I saw once in Vegas and have obsessed about since. I admit that I have cooed at the windows of particularly nice shoe stores as if they were full of goddamn puppies. I admit it.

And I do not regret it. Poor financial planning be damned. Nordstrom is having a sale next week, and there are some seriously cute boots in their catalog. Who's with me?

-Rachael

Poorly Thought Out Promises

Outside of a few forced hours as a camp counselor, I have not been swimming in about 12 years. I have several reasons for this. 1) I do not like being immersed in water. 2) I get cold in the water very quickly and feel quite miserable. 3) Have you actually watched exactly how much snot kids leave behind in public pools? I have. 4) I hate wearing a bathing suit. I know, I know, long legs slim waist, NOW people are all, "Oh I wish I had your figure!" Where were those people in my formative years? During the years when my self esteem/self perception was being formed I was surrounded by people who mocked me, told me I looked "disgusting" and like I "should be dead" and was offered help for my imagined anorexia by complete strangers. I have about ten billion issues at this point in my life in this general area, but that's not all that relevant. The relevant part is, I have a horror of appearing in public in a bathing suit. Which is why, I DO NOT EVEN OWN ONE.
I have stated before, I work with children. This summer, part of my work with the children is taking them twice a week to the community pool. And of course, they all want me to play in the water with them.
I love my children. I adore them. I would do and have done a LOT of things for them. I would get over my dislike of water immersion, and I would deal with being cold and miserable, and I would try very hard to forget about all that snot. The bathing suit thing...that's pretty deep rooted. But these children, they can get me to do anything for them. So only one week into swimming, after swearing up and down that there was absolutely nothing those obnoxious little brats could do or say to convince me to get in the pool, there I was promising them all I would go out and buy myself a bathing suit JUST so I could swim with them.
This was already a Poor Decision. But then I took it further. They were so whiny and so...large eyed and C and A and M and J and all the others make those FACES and when they do that all I want to do is make them HAPPY so I told them that if I failed to do as I promised I would just get in the pool in my CLOTHES.
I really thought I would have a bathing suit by tomorrow. I did try. I went to all kinds of stores. The thing is, whoever designs bathing suits seems to think that if you are a size 2-6, you want to flaunt everything. As far as I can tell, no one even MAKES one pieces for those sizes anymore. And not only are there no one pieces, the two pieces are so tiny that it would be less scandalous to run around in my smallest under garments.
I technically still have this weekend, but I'm quite busy and not at all hopeful and running out of places to bathing suit shop.
I am in trouble, you guys.

Making Decisions

Sometimes you make perfectly good decisions, and everything goes terribly wrong anyway. Sometimes a bad decision you made a month or a year or five years ago suddenly causes everything to go terribly wrong in the present. Sometimes good things come from bad decisions and bad things come from sensible well thought through decisions. Sometimes you have no clue whether a decision was a good one or a bad one.

And sometimes you meant to make a decision in October that you did not for various reasons and even though you don't regret it, you know you can't just let it go again because this time you will regret it.

I have things keeping me here until the end of the summer, but at the end of August, I need to leave.

1) Do I move to D.C. like I have always wanted to because I love the city and want to be near my grandmother and also the east coast?

2) Do I move to Chicago because the city is okay and I could live with Alexa and be near my sister?

3) Do I call the French Embassy and ask to be put on a list of candidates to fill in for the assistants who cancel in August so I can go back to the life that still sometimes keeps me up at night missing it?

Any one of these could end up being a Poor Decision and that is why they terrify me. Sure I love D.C., but it's expensive and I have no job. What if I don't find one? Will I be okay living with strangers? What happens when my good friend there finds her way back to New York and leaves me possibly friendless? What do I do after I've spent all of my savings and still have no job?

Chicago is pretty cool, and I can live with my Alexa and torment my sister on the weekends that she is not traveling the country with her swords, but it's expensive and I have no job. Also, it is damn COLD in the winter. And far from many people I do not want to be far from.

I miss France desperately, and I miss the excitement, the food, the language, the uncertainty and the drama, the travel, the adventure, my friends and my students. But I remember the angry emails and the tearful phone calls home, I remember missed buses and lying officials, I remember strikes and everything being closed on Sundays and Mondays and Wednesday afternoons and sometimes Saturdays and occasionally Thursdays. I remember bleeding money and yelling at completely apathetic kids and suffering through cold showers and washing my clothes in the bathroom sink. France is almost always a terrible idea, but it is my very favorite one.

So now what?

Hopelessness and Desperation Lead to Insanity

Jobless, futureless, and emotionally devastaed, Alexa and I did indeed move to France, though we each went our separate ways, to become English Language Assistants for apathetic French teenagers.

I left the United States with my eight million pounds of luggage (maybe that's an exageration. But it did weigh 130 pounds and at the time I only weighed 105) and a shining hopeful heart.

By the time Heathrow finished with me I had been crying for four hours straight to the point where crying had made me nauseated, I had caused a bit of a scene after yelling at the girl behind the airline counter and subsequently hurling my undergarments at her and her co-workers who stepped in to save her, I hadn't slept in 38 hours, and it was beginning to dawn on me that I had left absolutely everything in the world I knew across an entire ocean.

The future, once again, looked bleak.

However, soon enough I arrived in Toulouse, the city of my heart, a city I knew and know better than any other city in the world, and I began to feel that perhaps things were about to start looking up.

I took the shuttle from the airport to the train station, where I was to take a train to my new home, Moissac.

The woman at the ticket counter told me that due to a strike, the only train to Moissac was leaving at a 4:$5, but there was a bus that left at 2:00 that I could get on. I thanked her, got the ticket, then walked the block to the bus station. With all my luggage. I sat there for nearly an hour before I noticed that my bus wasn't coming up on the schedule screen. I went up to the desk to ask about this phenomenon and was informed that I had been sold a ticket to a bus that didn't exist. I got my luggage and dragged it back to the train station and went to customer service. The woman told me that yes there was a bus, but since it was an SNCF bus and not a TER bus the bus people just didn't know about it. But if I waited around gates 18-25 I would see it eventually. So I dragged my luggage back to the bus station.
Aftter at least an hour of waiting, I found an SNCF employee who explained to me that the bus really did not exist.
I started to cry.
I was still crying as 2:00 came and went with no sign of any bus. I dragged my luggage BACK TO THE TRAIN STATION and went back to customer servcice and this time a different woman told me that there was no such bus and that my ticket was for some train that left at 4:45. Which, incidentally, would put me in Moissac JUST after the school closed for the weekend and JUST after I could no longer get a key and would be locked out for three nights.
I was crying as I purchased an international telephone card and still crying as I used a payphone to call my father in the US.

"Blluuurrg aaaah hello??"

"DADDY I WANT TO COME HOME GET ME HOME I AM IN TRAIN STATION WITH A FAKE BUS TICKET I DON'T LIKE IT HERE."

"Danielle? It is four in the morning."

"JUST GET ON THE INTERNET AND BUY ME A TICKET TO THE UNITED STATES. IMMEDIATELY. NOT EVEN A REAL BUS TOO MUCH LUGGAGE."

"I can't understand you."

"HOME! PLEASE! NO MORE FRANCE!"

"Four in the morning. Deal with it. I have faith. In you. Good night."

"I WANT TO TALK TO MY MOTHER."

Click.

I was left holding the receiver and my luggage and a ticket to a train I wasn't sure would take me to a destination I wasn't sure I wanted to go to.

The rest of the trip was equally horrifying, and among other things, I ended up throwing 110 pounds of my luggage at a very surprised and very angry French man in a suit standing at the bottom of the wrong flight of stairs.

However, despite the continuing pain, anguish, and near homicide, I did eventually arrive in Moissac.

And as the train pulled into the station, my exact thoughts were:
Oh. My. God. I left behind everything I know and love for THIS?
Because the train station was rotting away in front of me, the houses looked abandoned and weeds were taking over everything and it just looked like death.
I got off the train, and remembered the instructions that had been given to me: take a cab.

Take a cab? Take a CAB? WHAT CAB?

My cell had run out of batteries, I didn't know the number of a cab company (as it turned out, Moissac has one cab company, and that cab company has one cab, and that cab is almost always in Montauban). It was getting dark, there was no payphone and even if there was one you need a special card for it WHICH I DIDN'T HAVE.

I decided then that if I survived until the next day I was going right back home and never going back to France for the rest of my life ever in protest of the existence of the entirety of EUROPE.
There is more to the story, but this is becoming long, so in the interest of time I will say this. I eventually, after some more anguish and suffering and another day and a rooster, made it to my new home where I immediately met a girl who was to become one of the best friends I will ever have in this world who immediately did not like me. The school year started, and I had amazing students, worked with amazing teachers, met amazing people and did things I still don't believe I did. I made friends with people from 8 different countries, traveled to 9 countries, danced all night, showered in champagne, straddled two continents, watched the sun set over the sea from the steps of the Temple of Poseidon.

The bad decision wasn't moving to France. It was deliberately deciding not to spend a second year there by rejecting the position I was offered. It is the only decision I have ever made in my life that I truly and utterly regret.

What do you do with a B.A. in English?

When I was 4 years old, I decided I wanted to be a veterinarian. My parents were supportive enough, though skeptical, and bought me a little doctor play kit that I used to treat my stuffed dogs, bears, and squirrels (I don't know how many squirrels see veterinarians in the real world, probably not that many).
When I was 8 years old, I realized I could not be a veterinarian for two simple reasons. 1) I am nauseated by the sight of a knee scrape and 2) I can't stand animals.
I went through a brief period where I wasn't sure what to do with my life, at which point my parents pushed three careers: 1) Lawyer, 2) Doctor, 3) Computer Engineer.
Doctor was quickly, though regretfully, given up by my mother when she saw my reaction to seeing a paper cut. Lawyer was also given up when it became clear my attention span/ability to remember anything at all was not going to be sufficient to get me through law school. Computer Engineer should have been given up first, seeing as the simplest addition problem has always made me give way to tears and tantrums, and electronics wither away or explode when I walk into a room. My father still naively (stupidly) hopes.
By 10 I had settled on writer, and this is what stuck through all the years of middle school and high school, despite protests from everyone from my parents to the neighbors to strangers at dinner parties. Everyone told me writing could make a very nice hobby, but I ought to go to school to learn a useful (boring) profession like Business, Engineering, or Medicine. That way, I could get A Job. Have a Career. Live life not In A Cardboard Box.
I explained, quite reasonably and rationally, that there were plenty of jobs out there for graduates with an English degree in the publishing and editing and freelance writing! I didn't need to make a huge salary, all I needed was enough to pay the bills and save a bit each year for retirement. I WANTED a mansion and a jet and a private tennis court (not that I even play tennis) but I didn't NEED those things. My parents did not agree with me. They gave each other Looks. But I did what I wanted, because that is what I do.
I graduated from a top ten university with my B.A. in English and rushed off to get the JOB OF MY DREAMS only to discover that very few people in this world need anyone with a B.A. in English, and the people that did have use for one already had at least ten.
You would not believe the number of cover letters I have saved on three different hard drives, nor the different versions of my resume.
Most of the time I don't believe it.
Suddenly, in May of 2007, I did not only NOT have a job, I had loan bills, car insurance bills, health insurance bills (Oh, wait, no I didn't, BECAUSE I DID NOT HAVE ANY HEALTH INSURANCE AT ALL), credit card bills (interview clothing never worn, professional looking shoes never worn, coffees at coffee shops with wireless internet where I wrote seven million cover letters daily, a new laptop when the old one crashed losing every cover letter I had written thus far)...the future did not look bright.
Four days out of college, I was excitedly applying for jobs and dreaming of the amazing new path my life and career was about to take. I had friends, family, a degree...golden prospects.
Four months out of college I was still in bed at 3 in the afternoon in my parents' house, terrified of so much as taking a shower because God forbid I slip on the soap and break a limb, because without health insurance I was just going to have to let myself drown in there.
My friends with degrees in finance and marketing and engineering and graphic design were already installing themselves in their new apartments, beginning to pay the loans for their new cars, working hard to get a promotion. My other friends moved on to law school and medical school.
"Why didn't you TELL ME?" I cried to my parents (still in bed, shouting to be heard downstairs). No response, because my parents were busy shaking their heads, lamenting my naivete (stupidity).
It was around this time that I had a genius idea. I did what I do with all of my genius ideas. I called my dear friend, who has a B.A. in French, (Yes, yes, let's all shake our heads at her and move on).

"LET'S MOVE TO FRANCE!"
"..."
"NO SERIOUSLY, LET'S MOVE TO FRANCE!"
"Can we also go to Iceland?"
"What?"
"We should go to Iceland. They have a great website."
"OKAY!"

But that is a story for a different bog post.

Babysitting

I have mentioned my problem with saying yes to things I shouldn't (Yes, I'll buy that insanely priced sparkly candle! Yes, I'll buy credit card life insurance even though my monthly bills average $25!). So it should come as no surprise when I tell you, Ooops I Did It Again.

My job puts me in contact with lots of children and occasionally their parents. In April I was approached by the mother of a 6 year old boy and an 8 year old girl who wanted me to babysit in the mornings from 6:30 to 8:30 and take her children to school.

I hate the morning. I do not deal well with the morning. My numerous former roommates/family members can attest to the fact that I often say very strange things, gesticulate wildly, make high pitched noises, and rarely remember any of it later in the day. All through college I made sure never to have a class before 10 because I knew that anything before then was useless, as I wouldn't remember any of it. In France as a teacher most of my days started around 11, and I doubt it is a coincidence that the only class I had all year that I did not care for was the only one I had at 8 in the morning (To those students, I apologize. It was not your fault. Mostly.). As a teacher here, I suffered. I used to drive my sister to school in the mornings, and she still claims to people that it is a miracle she is still alive. She's probably right. I don't remember those drives.

It was a miracle when I found the job I have now that starts at 10:30 in the morning. It is perfect. I get out later in the evenings, but I don't care, because I can function like a human being during the day and don't have to deal with the horrors, pain, and illness the early mornings bring me.

So why, when this mother asked me to babysit for her at 6:30 IN THE MORNING, did I agree to it?

Money, you probably said. And while there are a lot of things I would do for money (probably a shocking number of things) this woman offered me next to nothing. It was a monthly rate, and when I did the math, it evened out to $3.75 an hour. Which is ridiculous.

In the end, I made another offer, and when I did THAT math, it evened out to $5.75 an hour. Now, when the average babysitter averages $10-12/hour during normal hours, why, in God's name, would I ever, under any circumstances, agree to do this for 2.5 hellish months of my life?

Dude. I have no idea. None. I could always use money, I make minimum wage at a part time job and I have many bills to pay. But this really did not do much for me financially, and was, on top things, causing me to be barely able to get through my days and to be completely unable to get through what should have been fun weekends.

PLUS, 6:30-8:30 in the morning is the WORST TIME to answer Justin Bieber trivia questions, watch Justin Bieber interviews, and have Justin Bieber sing-a-longs.

God I hate that boy.

I can't lie though. I adored those wretched Justin Bieber/Sponge Bob loving creatures. I liked watching Victorious and iCarly with my eyes half open, and I even liked making them eggs for breakfast.

And I only set off their fire alarm once.

And when their mother asked me to come back next year, I came THIS CLOSE to saying yes.

Vanceburg, Kentucky

This isn't about bad decisions. This is just about decisions, and how little ones lead to more little ones lead to more little ones until you end up in Kentucky with a towel over your eye leaning over a pharmaceutical counter.

I was in Vanceburg, Kentucky this weekend visiting my friend Elisabeth, when I developed an eye infection and had to go to the pharmacy to see if there was anything around that might help me. I had a nice chat with the boy working there, and I lamented, "I'm a wreck, and here I am on vacation." He looked at me and said, "Vacation? In Vanceburg, Kentucky? What on eart would make you take a vacation here?" Good question. Vanceburg is off in the woods, over hill and dale, comprised of four streets, maybe, with one pharmacy, one restaurant, one historical house, and no laundromats. No one in their right mind would go to Vanceburgh, Kentucky on a vacation. So why on earth WAS I there?

I thought about it. First I went back to the year I spent in France. Then I realized, no, it went further than that. So I went farther back to choosing Wash U as my univeristy. But no, it went farther than that. I kept going back until I finally found a starting point, at 3.5 years old.

I'm going to go through the list.

When I was 3.5 years old, I could already spell most useful words, so when my mother and grandmother wanted to say things they did not want me to understand like "ice cream" and "bedtime" they spoke in French. I was terribly indignant because I felt this was unjust and rude, after I worked so hard on my spelling so that no one could keep secrets from me. So at an early age I decided to learn French.

Because I was so adamant about learning French to get rid of all clandestine activity in my family (not that it actually helped, as it turns out, but at the time it seemed like the solution), I became very excitable over and involved in the subject, and continued learning it until I could claim greater fluency than my mother.

Tangential to this, I decided at age 10 to enter a story contest in McCalls Magazine, which I won, which gave me $1000 to do with what I pleased. I decided that I would save it for 7 years to do an exchange program in France when I finished high school.

When I finished high school I decided to go to Washington University where I decided to continue studying French.

Because I decided to go to Washington University, I was given the opportunity to go back to France for a semester abroad either in Paris or in Toulouse.

Because I had loved France on my exchange program, I decided to go back.

Because I do not like Paris, I decided to go to Toulouse.

Because I decided to goto Toulouse, I learned that it is the most wonderful city on the planet.

Because I decided to major in English Literature instead of anything useful, I graduated college with no job and no prospects.

Because I had continued studying French in college I took a class taught by a professor who told us all about a program that pays Americans to teach English in France.

Because I adored France and specifically Toulouse during my semester abroad and also I had no job and no prospects I decided to apply for the program that pays Americans to teach English in France.

Because I chose to go back to Toulouse, I was placed in a town in the Academie de Toulouse called Moissac where I was roommates with a Spanish language assistant from Madrid.

Because we got along so well, I decided to visit her in Madrid that summer.

Because I went to visit her in Madrid, I met her friend Elisabeth.

Because I got along well with Elisabeth, we exchanged email addresses.

Because we exchanged email addresses, we wrote to each other for a year before she decided to come work as a Spanish teacher in the United States.

Because she came to the U.S. and the government placed her in Vanceburg, Kentucky, which is only 5.5 hours from me, I decided to visit her.

And because my eye hurt me while I was there, I decided to visit the pharmacy where I was asked this question and forced to think about all the decisions that led me to that moment.

And those were the decisions that only led to that one, little moment. Not even a big moment. And there were tons more tiny details in there that all contributed. Like I only knew about WAsh U because my mother had gone. I only decided to learn French because my mother and grandmother chose to annoy me. I liked Toulouse. I could have hated it, and none of this would have happened. And what if Elisabeth had not happened to be around in the city the three days I was in Madrid? Or I had decided not to go to Madrid at all? Or my Spanish roommate and I hadn't gotten along or we had been placed in different towns or I had been put in the city like I originally wanted...

I would never have gone to Vanceburg, Kentucky and I probably would have seen a doctor about my eye.

Which hurts.

So maybe this was about bad decisions after all.

Delinquents

I know I said I'm on strike, and I am, but the strike has lasted much longer than I thought it would, and there's been something on my mind for rather awhile that I wanted to discuss.

The tone of this blog is mostly lighthearted and often downright silly, but this is something serious that has been bothering me for months.

I work for a non-profit with children and adolescents in a wide variety of areas and ways, and one of the things I do is work with teens who have been sentenced to community service for various crimes, from fighting in school, to stealing bikes, to breaking and entering to assault. I fondly refer to them as My Delinquents.

Everyone can (probably) agree that breaking into people's homes, dealing and doing heroin and meth and etc, destroying others' property, and assaulting classmates are bad things. But it doesn't follow that the kids who do these things are bad kids. Not necessarily. In the last few months I've seen between 20 and 30 of these kids in and out of here. There crimes and their sentences have been extremely varied, and so have they.

The problem with this is that I can't say much about anything, but I can at least say that I have had boys and girls come through who were friendly, polite, sweet, hard working and seemingly responsible. Working with them I can have great conversations, and after a few days or a few weeks I still can't imagine what they could possibly have done to get themselves sentenced to as many as 100 hours. I've had a few favorites over the course of these months, kids I was actually sad to see leave even though I know it's probably better if I never see them again.

Example. I had a girl come in with 20 hours for getting into a fight in school. I really liked working with her. She was nice, liked to chat, did everything she was asked to do with no attitude, always smiling. Towards the end of her time with us, I asked her, baffled, what she could possibly have done to get in trouble. She had gotten into a fist fight with another student in school over something that student had said to her. I won't repeat it, but I agreed that the other student probably deserved a few punches in the face. However, actually doing it, especially in the middle of the cafeteria, was a POOR DECISION. She agreed with me.

She left, and even though I missed her happy presence, I was hoping to never see her around here again.

She came back last week with another 20 hours.

I had a boy awhile back with an insane number of hours. I still have no clue what he did, but all the clues point to it being something particularly bad. He too was a favorite, and definitely is missed. Fortunately though, I do really doubt he will be back. I hope I'm right.

This job really brings home the idea that a single bad decision can completely turn things around.
It's upsetting to watch these kids make these decisions that now put them in my care, and will possibly someday put them in jail. Or dead.
That's really all I have to say.

Writer Strike

Though today is Wednesday, I am not posting. I am not posting again until Rachael posts ONE of her overdue posts. Or any post.

Do Not Marry Justin Bieber

I hear the name Justin Bieber nearly every day. Either the little girl I babysit in the morning wants to play Justin Bieber trivia during the car ride to school, or the little girls at work are mooning shamelessly over his pictures on the internet, or his horrifyingly awful music is on the radio as I drive home at night. My kids own books filled with photos and the facts of his life, they wear t-shirts with giant Justin Bieber faces on the front, they make me watch Justin Bieber interviews at ridiculous hours like 6:30 a.m.

Justin Bieber's favorite sport is hockey. His favorite color is purple. He likes spaqhetti. He is 16 years old and has a girlfriend who my little girls insist is stupid because they found a picture of him kissing her. "HOW DARE HE!" they shriek in heartbroken agony every time one comes up on the internet. Yet despite this betrayal I continue to get handed drawings of little families labeled, "Me, My Husband Justin Bieber, and Our Child." When I told one 8 year old that perhaps this boy was a bit old for her, she gave me a disgusted look, rolled her eyes, and said dramatically, "Danielle, I would marry Justin Bieber even if he was as old as TWENTY ONE!"

That is dedication indeed, my little friend. I am sorry I mocked your impending romance.

Wait, no I'm not.

Because marrying Justin Bieber is a POOR DECISION. Have you heard the kid speak? I don't know about the rest of you, but being as in tune with this little fluffy blond boy as I am these days, I found the video now going around (and by found, I mean it appeared in the headlines on the MSN homepage) of an interview he did in Chicago where he did not know what the word "German" meant. It was repeated to him several times, and finally shown to him on a notecard. His interviewer did have a nice thick New Zealand accent, so I gave him th benefit of the doubt until he looked at the word on the notecard and responded, "German? We don't say that word in America."

This is who they all want to marry? My little girls who I am mentoring and educating and slowly but surely SMASHING all the "aint's" out of their vocabulary, they want to align themselves with that little banged creature? Throw all my teachings out the window? It hurts.

Let us take, for example, one of his recent songs. The main verse: "Shorty is an eenie meenie minie mo lover...shorty is an eenie meenie minie mo lover...shorty is an eenie meenie minie mo lover...eenie meenie minie mo catch a shorty by the toe..."

God help us all.

But let's go back to the German business. As horrified as I am by the footage of this interview, what horrifies me more is that though poor sad fluffy looking Justin Bieber (seriously, have you seen this kid's hair? I have. A lot. Every day. These girls probably have more than one shrine in its fluffy honor) is being mocked all over the internet as one more stupid child star that should have been in school all this time is that he is in fact REPRESENTATIVE of the average intelligence of 16 year olds that HAVE been in school all this time! I ought to know.

I do not doubt that 75% of my own former students would have reacted the same way given a similar question. We are talking about kids in a wealthy, top rated school system, classrooms filled with (supposedly) some of the brighter students the school had to offer. We are also talking about kids who were pretty sure Europe was a state in Canada, had never heard of Berlin or Buckingham Palace, and probably couldn't locate Australia on a globe.

If you are one of those former students who has somehow found this, don't worry sweetheart, you're part of the other 25%.

Point is, there are a lot of poor decisions being made in the world these days, only one of which is marrying small boys with girl voices and too much hair. The big one to me now is what we are teaching our children, because whatever it is, it's not working. Maybe their math skills are better. I can only hope. Because as far as I can tell these days, Justin Bieber is educating half of our youth, and Lady Gaga is educating the other half.

We are all more or less doomed.

Taking the Easy Way Out

Maybe I didn't get into Princeton. Or Harvard. Or Brown...Dartmouth...Amherst....

Whatever. I DID get into Washington University in St. Louis, which was ranked #9 in the country the year I started by people who (theoretically) knew what they were talking about.

Incidentally, we were rated #2 for food quality.

As a top 10 American university, WashU wanted me to complete a well rounded and diverse set of courses before giving me the beautiful diploma I now have...somewhere. Hopefully in the house. I couldn't just take English lit and foreign language classes, which is what I would have done had I been left to my own devices. I was required to take math and science and history and learn quantitative Analysis skills, and Cultural Diversity skills, and Social Diversity skills, and lots of other skills, many of which involved diversity. This meant that I took two women's studies courses against my will (one of which was responsible for the second nervous breakdown of my life wherein after studying for 92 hours memorizing 115 articles, verbatim, along with their authors and dates of publication, I met my parents at the airport for my very first break, tore 115 notecards out of my coat pockets and flung them in the faces of my extremely surprised family and sobbed as I was dragged out to the car mumbling and gesturing incoherently). It also meant that I took two astronomy classes taught by a wonderful German professor with a sense of humor and a love of handing out A+s for what seemed to me like very little work. He must have been doing something right though. I may have done very little work, but that man made ME understand many Scientific Concepts. Someone should probably give him a medal.

Sadly though, I needed three science classes to complete my liberal arts education, and this is how I made a Poor Decision.

First semester freshman year a class called Dinosaurs was offered. The class was only taught once every 3-4 years by a visiting paleontologist and had the reputation of being the easiest possible way to fulfill a science credit. "You watch The Land Before Time! And there are no tests! And then you get an A!" This was how the class was described to me. I imagine there may have been slightly more to it. But not much, from what my friend who did take the class that year has told me. She strongly recommended it.

The class my first freshman semester filled up before I could even register. Despite the fact that I could have finished my science requirements any time over the next six semesters, I did not. I waited until the very final semester of my college experience to see if that Dinosaur class would be offered again.

It was. Final semester, final year, I was scrambling to finish my major and distribution requirements. I was taking 2 upper level English literature classes and 2 upper level writing intensive courses and...Dinosaurs. I knew the paper writing and story writing and reading was going to be time consuming and exhausting. In the final two weeks of that semester alone I turned in over 90 printed pages of various facts and fictions. Thank goodness I would have at least one nice and easy class!

The professor had been described to me as youngish and energetic, so when an older, sedate man nearing his 70s with glasses and a soft voice stood up in front of the lecture hall and told us he was our professor, I already knew that things had gone horribly wrong.

"Professor------ has been...called away...suddenly. Yes. So he will not be here. At all. He has...gone. I will be teaching! I understand that Professor---------- had...certain methods for teaching this course. He and I have very different approaches, I think."

I knew then for sure, in that moment, that all was lost.

It was the semester of nightmare. I had to READ about creatures with long names. I had to...TAKE NOTES. Notes! I am an A student, always have been, capable of speaking 3 languages and writing lucid and engaging papers on a variety of subjects (mainly literature), got through calculus in high school and several AP science classes. But if you look at the large majority of my college notebooks you will find mostly drawings of fairy princesses, descriptions of the scarf the girl in the corner is wearing, lines from poems and stories that came from completely different classes, and a lot of little hearts. My Dinosaur notebooks, however, are filled with all kinds of words and ideas that I did not understand, do not understand, and undoubtedly will never understand.

I got a D on one of those tests. A D. I do not get Ds. I got a D. Will I be over it in ten years?

No.

I was up late nights studying. There a few times I had to turn down going for ice cream in order to study. The situation was out of control. I spent hours doing readings and homework and going over notes trying to make sense of them.

As it turned out, the fun, easygoing professor was "called away suddenly" because it came out that he had either sexually assaulted or sexually harassed some of his female students on some field study trip somewhere. Which is why our poor new professor was so awkward about explaining himself to us.

It was the hardest class I took in my four years of college. Or, at least, it was the one that I most begrudged the effort. Worst decision I made at WashU, trying to take the easy way out. Of course, the whole thing could have been avoided if Professor Whatsisface had just kept his hands to himself and his pants on.

The State of Pennsylvania Makes My Poor Decisions For Me

As a disclaimer to all of our legions of dedicated readers, this entry is not going to be about a poor decision of either Danielle's or mine.

This is not to say that this entry will not deal with a poor decision, it will, but the fault here really is not either of ours. The fault in this particular instance lies on the head of the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles, a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen (lady? gentleman? anyone?) I simply cannot accept the blame for having received my driver's license, as it is really not my fault. PennDOT should simply have taken one look at me, a fresh-faced seventeen year old, striding pridefully into the DMV to take my learner's permit test, and shown me the proverbial door.

Alas, for hedges, turkeys, and gearboxes everywhere, PennDOT allowed two thoroughly unqualified persons to lay their hands on those unholy little plastic cards.

Between the two of us, we have been driving for a combined eight years. I've had my license for almost a year (June 4th, soon to be designated Dead Car Day, a national holiday) and Danielle's been driving on her own for seven.

Now, while Danielle has never had an accident per say, I would consider her the more... lethal driver. While she didn't actually kill that turkey she hit, she probably shortened its life considerably. The poor thing must have developed turkey PTSD, and spent a week or more huddled in it's little turkey home, shuddering and losing feathers by the pillowfull, gobbling to itself in horror. Also I've never run a red light. Danielle has run two. Two. In one night. What a rebel.

I myself have a near-perfect driving record. Since getting behind the wheel of a car, as a learner's permit wielding seventeen year old (I was a late bloomer, sue me) I have only come close to killing a bush, not an animate creature, and have only had two little accidents. And only one of them was as a licensed driver! I feel strongly that my permit-holding record should really be expunged and never mentioned again. And that second accident really wasn't that big a deal. I mean, it only cost $5,000 to repair the car, nothing, really.

As to our general record as drives, I feel that Danielle has made by far worse attempts at parking than I have. In fact, seven times out of ten, I simply refuse to park whatever it is I'm driving and make my passenger do it for me. Which inherently makes me a more successful parker than Danielle. And I consider my ineptitude at going forward when on hills, a mark of creative gear shifting, an art form really. I am choosing to engage in an act of surrealist driving, in selecting what would be called by the unwashed masses the “wrong” gear. No, dear friends, my gear choices are a mark of my belonging to the true avant garde. The forward thinkers, if not the forward drivers.

In short, I refuse to take any blame at any time for any accidents or mishaps or adventures or flagrant if unintentional law breaking perpetrated by either of the authors of this blog.

It's clearly PennDOT's fault.

You bought what?

A few weeks ago, Rachael and I went into Victoria's Secret so that she could make a return. It was supposed to be a simple in, out, go find ice cream procedure. But while Rachael was making her way to the cash register, a salesgirl approached me.

"Hello! Today we're having a special event! With each purchase of $10 or more, we are offering FREE gift certificates which could have up to $500 on them! You are guaranteed at least $10! Guaranteed! It's a great deal, because-"

"Let me stop you right there," I said. She stopped. "I was sold more or less as soon as you walked up to me, and I'd hate to have you waste any more of your time. I'm going to go spend money now."

She laughed a bit, and walked away, happy with her skills as a salesperson and probably amused at how stupid I am.

Of course, my idea was to buy something for the minimum of $10, but of course Victoria's Secret doesn't sell anything for $10, so I spent a ridiculous sum of money on bits of strings that are hardly effective at anything. But was I angry? Upset? Annoyed? No! I was quite pleased with myself, because I was going to win $500! Because the nice lady told me so!

The deal was you could not reveal how much was on the card until April, so I got to carry around that cardboard representation of potential and hope in my wallet for a month before discovering that like millions of women across America I was stuck with a card worth $10 in a store that doesn't sell very many things for under $18.

Did I learn my lesson? Hopefully...but probably not. Let's be honest. This is not the first time I have done something similar. Or the second. Or the third. Or the fourth...

We can go back nine years to a day Rachael and I were at the mall (has anyone else noticed Rachael as a common denominator?) and we wandered into a candle shop which has since gone out of business so don't bother trying to find it.

Somehow, I found these neat candles shaped like blocks that glittered and proclaimed that as they burned, they melted away into the shape of a medieval castle. Inside the castle was a TREASURE CHEST filled with up to $50!

The saleswoman saw me looking at it and told me how cool it looked, and that the odds of my finding $50 were actually quite high! Plus, sparkly!

SPARKLY.

Oh yes, I bought the sparkly castle candle for a truly obscene amount of money. Actually, I'm not even going to tell you how much. That's how ashamed I still am. Though Rachael will tell you quite gleefully if you ask her. Rachael's note: I'm saving that particular detail for future blackmail.

I took the candle home, burned it in front of an audience (audience=9 year old sister) on the kitchen table, pried the little plastic chest out of a messy wax blob that looked nothing like a castle (unless that castle had been beset by a tornado, a hurricane, four dragons, and nuclear war in quick succession) and discovered (of course) a single silver dollar.

Despite the fact that I spent a truly ridiculous sum on money on a chunk of sparkly wax and underwear I could probably make myself by tying bits of string together, these are relatively minor things.

Things aren't always so minor.

When I was 16, I had to activate my credit card (yes, I had a credit card, yes, I paid my bills myself. I had a job. So there.). I hated calling people (this was during my period of allergy to human interaction) and begged my father to do it for me. He insisted that I needed to learn independence and phone calling skills and other skills.

I called, and for whatever reason, got a real live human being. I have never spoken to a real person since, not even when I've really wanted to. You always get those damned machines. In any case, he went through the normal activation steps and then said, "Would you like to purchase life insurance?"

Occasionally I display short bursts of intelligence, so I said, "No. Thank you."

But he was a salesperson, and probably being recorded, so he said, "It's a great idea, and for very little a month!"

I said, "Uuuuhhh..." and that was the beginning of the end.

"This way you protect your loved ones for being stuck with your credit card debt should anything happen to you. You wouldn't want your family to be saddled with your debt at a time when they're grieving."

I am a kind-hearted individual, and I agreed that it would indeed be cruel of me to leave my parents with the burden, especially after losing me.

"They pay nothing, it all just goes away. And the cost to you is minimal!"

I was a young, perfectly healthy teenager whose credit card bills were averaging $20 a month. But we all know how this ends. I bought the life insurance policy and was proud of myself until I hung up the phone and broke the salesman's spell.

"Shit," I said.

I went down the stairs to find my father, who said, "See? Not so bad, was it?"

"Uuuhhh..."

After I explained incoherently, and then again slightly more coherently, and then again coherently enough for a human being to understand, my father called up Capital One and yelled at them for harassing a sensitive (stupid) teenage girl until they canceled my new policy. After my father yelled at me for being stupid (sensitive), he reassured me that in the event of my untimely demise he would not feel unduly burdened by my $15 to $30 debt.

I am older now, and less likely to purchase life insurance. Unless the salesperson is really good. Or moderately good. Or talks to me.

Blogs

Rachael did in fact write a post for her day, Friday, but never posted it.
Which, given her subject, is ironic.

Dear Rachael,
This is your brainchild. Get your ass in gear. Stop moping.


Rachael's post:

All Americans are brought up with delusions, given to us by our parents, our teachers, and certainly the media. I am no exception to this rule. To this day I believe that if I went in to politics, I would be a success, and would inevitably be swept quickly upwards to the presidency, on a platform of common sense, environmentalism, and educational and family law-related reform. Doubtlessly I would start small, working my way up from the PTA to the school board, to a sweeping and near unanimous vote for mayor of whatever city I have chosen to make my home. After one stellar term in office, I will become governor, and breeze my way as some sort of absurd middle-aged prodigy into the White House, where I will be beloved by all, no matter their political persuasion.

Either that, or my very first screenplay will win a Golden Globe, and an Oscar. Or two.

I harbor these delusions in a truly American fashion. My upbringing has drilled into me the idea that success is inevitable, unavoidable, and intended for me in specific. I am a precious snowflake, different from every other snowflake, and destined to become the crowning snowflake on the misshapen snowman that is American history. With such lofty ideals as these, it is no wonder that I am repeatedly deluded into thinking that I am interesting enough to self-publish.

I read somewhere that Facebook is the ultimate form of propaganda. On Facebook, we put the things that make us the most attractive, and leave out the crap we're ashamed of. For instance, in my “favorite books” section, I have “Underworld,” by Don DeLilo, an impressive tome several thousand pages thick which makes me look much smarter than I really am. I have neglected to include some of the books that really defined my world view when I was a kid, the books that I truly obsessed over, namely the “Redwall” series, and these books about this girl who becomes a knight in some cracked out fantasy land by Tamara Pierce. (Danielle's Note: OH MY GOD THE LIONESS SERIES I LOVE THOSE BOOKS I OWN THEM ALL. Ahem. Carry on.) I fucking loved those books, let me tell you, but there are no fantasy novels on my Facebook page. Except “Harry Potter.” That shit rules.

My Facebook page is similarly devoid of any reference to the myriad blogs I've attempted to maintain over the course of my life. Pages full of teen angst, near illiterate observations on the world, and ludicrous photo montages found around the internet. If one were to read the first lines of the vast majority of my blog posts, one would assume (rightly so) that one were reading the musings of a near-bipolar self-absorbed idiot whose moods fluctuate like the movement of the earth's crust. Every mood of mine is documented in a manner commensurate with the gravity, permanence, and significance of said mood. A chipmunk running into my on-campus apartment? HAPPYHAPPYHAPPY. A tick on my leg? OHMYGODYOUGUYSTHISISTHEWORSTDAYOFMYLIFE. Only occasionally do I have anything at all of interest to say, the rest of the time is very American self-delusion that the minutiae of my life is interesting at all.

Another facet of my previous blogs is their eventual petering out. My most recent blog, rachaelgoingmormon.blogspot.com was abandoned mere months after I began it, with the best of intentions, and even the most direction. And I still crashed and burned.

All this begs the question: why on God's green earth would I assume that anything I have to say this time is of interest, or will be anything other than semi-literary near masturbation?

This is a bad idea isn't it....

When Danielle Met Rachael

I went through an Awkward Phase between the ages of 7 and 10. Then I went through a Particularly Awkward Phase between the ages of 11 and 17. By 18 I managed a Slightly Less Awkward Phase and around 22 I gradually settled into where I am now, which is the As Good As It's Likely To Get Phase.
During my Particularly Awkward Phase, I had this problem with people.
The problem was this: people terrified me.
All people. Teachers, students, salespeople, waiters, my friends' parents, occasionally on particularly bad days my friends themselves. Talking to people, or having them talk to me, or having them look at me, or acknowledge in any way my presence, was enough to make me cry. Although at least not usually in front of them. I would have trouble breathing, my heat rate would increase to a hazardous rate, and my throat would close up as though I were having an allergic reaction to conversation.
This made it difficult for me to do normal things growing up, like go to parties, get a date to the prom, or go outside. The entire goal of my life (besides getting into Princeton) was to be as completely unnoticed as possible.
I was succeeding quite admirably at this (I'll bet 50% of my high school class wouldn't recognize my name or face) when one day, in the fall of 2001, I began to fail.
I was a percussionist in the the Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestra (all part of the master plan of getting into Princeton). It was my third year, it was break time, and I was reading a book in my seat between the xylophone and the timpani while everyone else went outside to chat with their friends. Despite it being my third year, I had no friends to chat with because the idea of chatting with any of the others long enough to make friends was enough to make me reach under my seat for a paper bag.
So I was used to be alone during breaks, reading increasingly trashy fantasy novels, and the very last thing in the world I expected from life was for a girl with fly-away blonde hair and large glasses and brightly colored clothes to plant her feet in front of my chair, thrust out a hand, and loudly declare, "Hello, my name is Rachael. Welcome to my presence."
I did not put down the book to shake her hand, but I did look up and stare back at her. She was smiling in a friendly way, but the only thing that kept me from bursting into terrified tears was pure shock.
I must have said hi, though I don't remember it, and instead of going away so I could cry, Rachael sat down and began talking, and I nodded, and we continued this way until break was over.

I hoped she'd never do it again.
She did.
Over and over and over again. And I couldn't make her go away.

So I decided to be her friend, and spent much of the rest of high school hiding behind clothes racks and in bathrooms and yelling "Rachael! SSSHHH!" a lot and occasionally crying.
Now though, here in my As Good As It Is Likely to Get Phase, I sing inappropriate pop songs with Rachael in the streets, encourage her to say ludicrous things to strangers, and frequently make her do the chicken dance with me in populated areas.
However, I still will not go back to the Gap with her. There are limits.
Since this blog is dedicated to poor decision making, you may be under the impression that I consider deciding to be friends with Rachael a bad decision.
No, but the bad decision lies within the story of our meeting.
Rachael has always known exactly why I became friends with her. Because she made me.
But for the longest time I had no idea why she had picked me to welcome into her presence.
"You were the only other girl there with bangs," she told me a few years ago.
I had forgotten about my straight across bangs that frizzed everywhere and showcased the large cowlick on my left side.
They were a TERRIBLE DECISION that I persisted with for many TERRIBLE YEARS.

But I suppose it provides us all with a lovely, neat, obnoxiously sweet little moral, that good things can come from particularly bad decisions.

Also, I didn't get into Princeton. But that wasn't Rachael's fault.

Poor Decisions 101

We here at Poor Decisions with Danielle and Rachael make poor decisions.

Most of the time.

What we buy, how we eat, which living organisms to park our cars on, whether or not those shoes really do work with those jeans, these poor decisions are our bread and butter. Occasionally, however, we make monumentally poor decisions, like, say, buying life insurance at age 16, or buying a pet mouse in middle school, or moving to France.

One way or another, our poor decisions have shaped and...enriched... our lives, sometimes giving us brief glimpses of the afterlife. Usually when merging. Danielle's Note: when RACHAEL is merging.

We're going to be updating this thing on a regular basis, at least twice a week. Look for Danielle on Wednesdays, and Rachael should be sending you something to brighten your Fridays, although given her track record, we're not holding our breath.

We hope you enjoy reading our posts. Actually, if you work for any major television producing studio (NBC, CBS, Lifetime, whatever) we really, really, really hope you enjoy them. We're both drastically underemployed and criminally underpaid, given what astoundingly talented writers we are. We'd love to sell out for you!

Especially if you give us ponies.

-Rachael and Danielle