Slippin' on Some Slipperz

December 12, 2010

So first thing this morning I’m walking down stairs and I slip. Our stairs are metal and covered with grip tape. The same kind you put on skateboards. The exact same kind. Two of the steps don’t have any grip tape. We’ve been meaning to fix that for – oh, a couple of years.  It’s usually not a problem. But, today I was wearing furry slippers and that bare metal step was covered in butter. No. No, it wasn’t. But it felt like it. It was bound to happen. I’ve traveled these metal stairs both sober and drunk many times over the last 4 years and never took a spill until today.  No damage. Luckily, the Libra gift of balance evens out my clumsiness with my quick, life-saving reflexes. As fast as my legs flew out from under me – my left had gripped the rail and my right forearm landed on a step – holding my back 1 inch from the corner of the step.

I froze in that position for a long time. Reason 1: I was letting my brain catch up to reality that I was alive, not broken and paralyzed and not bleeding to death from the head. Reason 2: I was staring down at Corban on the couch -  playing some brick-breaking game on his phone – waiting for him to LOOK UP WITH CONCERN!!

He did. He looked up. But not right away. This was not a silent fall. My arm and two feet slammed down on those steps pretty hard. Right above his head. Maybe he thought I dropped a basket of laundry. Hm. OR MAYBE HIS WIFE ALMOST DIED ON THE STAIRS.

I’m fine, so I got over it.

But then I did it again a few hours later. I really did. I fell twice. Second fall blame goes to Stubbs. He likes to cut me off while walking up the stairs. Especially if I’m off-balance because I’m holding multiple bags of groceries. Jerk always has to be first. Everyone in this house is an asshole today.

Then I spent all day making food for the week. We got a cool, late wedding gift from his aunt. It’s a buffet style set of 3 crock pots. You can slow cook three separate entrées at once. Add my regular crock pot to that and that makes FOUR. So I research FOUR new recipes to make. The idea is that I wont have to cook the rest of the week. Viola, right? NO. Because they all sucked! All of them. They all turned out tasting terrible! Now I have a fridge FULL of disgusting food to eat all week. Yayyyy.

I’m also afraid of my house and my dog.

Who has two middle fingers and hates December 12th?

Picture it.

Bye.

An Open Letter to Everyone

October 2, 2010,

Today Corban firmly decided that he doesn't want to have children. His main fear is that once the kid turns 16 it's going to try to kill us in our sleep. He needs to stop watching the news. Anyway, I told him I was okay with that. I've been giving a lot of thought to what kind of parents we would be and concluded that it would be years of "Good Cop, Bad Cop" ... resulting in me being the asshole with the baton and Corban as "Mr. Hugs & Candy".

I have discipline. I don't spoil. When I say no I mean it and I enforce consequences to broken rules. Corban will let the little monster have whatever it wants as long as he gets to sleep longer and watch the game in peace. This would result in me abandoning both of them and not picking up the phone when daddy's little monster calls asking for bail money.

Corban was offended by this. He changed his mind and challenged me to a kid-raising competition. He said we now must have two chilren. I raise one and he raises the other. No cross-parenting at all.  See which one turns out to be a better human being. I shook my head and turned on the news.

Part two:

We came up with the lamest reason for having a kid. Stubbs probably has about 6 years left to live - if he's lucky. I know he's not a child, okay. Yes, we're dog people, but we're not "Our Dogs Are Our Kids" people. We know that we can't leave a baby alone in the house with a bowl of food and the toilet lid open. We know the difference. But shut up, we love him. And it's hard knowing that we'll be forced to see him die in just a few years. It's hard to mentally prepare for it.

But... we also know that if we DO decide to have a fleshy human baby - we are going to fall ridiculously in love with it - it will change our lives dramatically and we will finally see Stubbs as just a dog. Sooo... it may be a good idea to go ahead and make a baby before Stubbs dies. You know, to ease the pain.

This was an actual thought of mine. Have a baby... for the purpose of cushioning the blow of our dogs death. Solid reason to introduce a new human being into the world.

Part three:

The other day I was TRYING to facebook and download music and Stubbs wouldn't stop whining and pawing at my leg so I flipped out and yelled  "WHAT?  What do you WANT? I gave you fresh water! I put cheese in your dog food bowl. We went for walk AND I gave you a pig ear! What the hell do you WANT from me???"

At that moment Corban and I silently stared at each other from across the living room knowing what we must NOT do. What we are so obviously not ready to do. 

Part Four:

Quit asking us when we're having kids.

Funk-shun

written August 9, 2010




Big news. I finally chewed off the last stub of acrylic from my fingernails. I hate fake nails, but I hate the way my hands look in photographs even more. When you get married, Photographers zoom in on things like the rings or the bouquet, which are both, unfortunately, near my fat fingers. The day before my wedding in St. John I went to a salon and endured the stink as a woman glued a plastic tip to my nail, then used a mixture of liquid and powder acrylic to sculpt and cement some “pretty” to the tips of my short, chubby fingers. 

It helped. It gave my paws the illusion of delicate femininity. Something I don’t really have. As much as I wanted to look dainty in my wedding dress, I just couldn’t pull it off. Shoulder muscles and boobs spilled out of the top and most of the pictures show bad posture and “mah guns”. Now, I’m not fishing for compliments here. I generally like the photos. I’m just saying… I’m stocky. I’m no wimp. My husband knows he can count on me to help carry heavy furniture up three flights of stairs without whine or incident. It’s the way nature made me. Durable.

This isn’t to say that I don’t have grace. I’ve been told by friends and supervisors that I’ve handled certain situations very “gracefully”, but that has nothing to do with being a woman. Diplomacy is a skill genetically dealt evenly to both male and female genders. I’m glad I have that. I just wish I had grace in the form of long, slender calf muscles and elegant ballerina arms as well. 

I say that, but then I think about who I am. I’ve always picked function over form. I didn’t like to wear dresses as a little girl, not because I didn’t think they were pretty, but because I’d wanted to do flips over the high bar at recess. If ballerina arms meant I couldn’t throw a curve ball I wouldn’t want them. I can appreciate something nice looking, but if it fails to deliver what it’s selling, then I send it back.

My hands looked prettier with nails, yes. But, I couldn’t type with them. I couldn’t open the plastic thingy on my phone where you plug in the power cord. Couldn’t pick my nose properly, couldn’t pull a magnet off the fridge and could NOT get a satisfying scratch going. I needed my paper-thin, brittle nails back. They are definitely ugly, but pretty nails contributed to 90% of my typos in the last couple of months. I just can’t live like that. Long live function.

PS: Spell check is letting “thingy” get by? Really? Spell check... you're starting to lose your pretty.

Once You Birth It ...

written March 4, 2010




I know I've talked about this before, but I can't remember if I've written about it. 

Our bodies make things. Fluids, phlegm, sweat, urine, dook and babies… and I think a universal rule applies to all these things. The rule is: Once it leaves the body it can never break the barrier of re-entering. Almost everyone agrees with me on this. But there are exceptions. 

It is acceptable to touch your own loogie with your tongue while it’s still in your mouth. That’s not gross. Why? Because it’s still a part of you. It’s still a part of this fluid-y, fleshy blob of DNA, bones and goop that make a human being.

It’s acceptable to pick your nose and let the tip of your finger touch a slimy boog in your own warm nose. That part isn’t gross. Not yet.

The problem comes once these things become airborne. The minute they are birthed, the minute their temperature drops to meet the air around them; this is when they become disgusting little entities of their own. 

This is when they are not allowed back. The more seconds that pass that the booger sticks to your finger, hardening and forming a personality, the more repulsive it becomes. Get it OFF you!

Kids don’t understand this. Some eat their boogers. Some – mostly little boys - would do things like spit loogies in the air and catch them again in their own mouths. Or see how far they could slowly drop/stretch a loog before sucking it back in. Or sometimes it’s not kids; it’s the drunk guy at a party in high school who drank his own piss for $50. Anyway, it’s something that girls seem to understand as WRONG way before boys.

Oddo added to this once saying he feels similar about women’s hair. It’s so beautiful and soft when it’s still attached, but on it’s own… all wet and stuck to other things in clumps – it’s just a filthy mess.

Now… it gets a little confusing when we think about fluids from other people. For some reason, if you’re attracted to someone, it’s okay if they stick their tongue in your mouth… and so forth …and so on…

But no matter how kinky your thoughts just became, I’m guessing not many couples enjoy sitting around trajectory spitting into each other’s mouths. 

I’m just saying. There’s a rule. Like all rules, there are exceptions, but the basic, common principles are the same. If you excrete, emit, ooze, leak or expel something from inside your own body into the atmosphere – there’s usually no coming back.

The Beef Jerky of Bread

written February 27, 2009




I’m not writing this to start a fight. I’m not writing this to fuel the ever long fire between the North and the South. I’m not. It’s just my own – southern opinion being expressed here. It’s something that’s perplexed me my entire life and I feel that if I just get it out now, finally, once and for all; I’ll feel so much better. 

*Sighhhh 

So. Tell me. What the hell is so great about a flippin’ bagel? 

Hm? I don’t understand it. Hard, rubbery, chewy bread? Really? Why is it awesome? Have you ever HAD a biscuit?? Or a croissant? Or a fresh-baked roll? A fresh doughnut? (I mean FRESH – like Shipley’s – not manufactured fresh like Crispy Cream. (Oooooh, I also have a beef with Crispy Cream but I’ll save that for another day.) 

I’ve tried. Really, I have. But every time I’m 2 minutes into the never-ending chew of the bagel – I just want to spit it out. I think it’s a southern thing. We like warm, soft food that’s easy to masticate. Oh, and butter. We like butter on our warm, soft bread. An oven-fresh roll has almost no weight. It sits in your hand like an airy thing from heaven. It smells sweet. You can give it a little squeeze and it will slowly bounce back – like memory foam. 

A bagel is hard like STALE bread. You could hit someone in the head with a bagel and piss them off. You could chunk a role at someone as hard as you could and not furrow a brow. There is a restaurant here in Houston where the waiters actually throw rolls at you from across the room. It’s fun. Rolls are happy things. Look at the Pilsbury Doughboy. Happy fatty. Soft. Giggly. 

A bagel is trying too hard to be too much. It’s like someone wanted to eat 15 soft rolls – so what they did was stack them – and then smooshed them down to a compressed piece of toughness and then let it dry out a little before they ate it. 

Why would you do that??? 

Okay – maybe I can understand it this way: 
When I was a little girl I would take a slice of bread, remove the crust and then smoosh it into a little doughy ball and eat it. That’s sort of like a bagel. I also used to go around my neighborhood with a bucket and collect all the dead cicada shells from the trees and then take them back to my room and hang them on my curtains. It was weird, I know – just like eating compressed bread. The fun was in the making of the ball - not the eating of it 

I want to add my co-worker, Michelle’s two cents – which I think make another valid point: 
“Perhaps the standards for food up North depends on how well it travels. In large, cold metropolises food needs to make it from point A to point B and withstand the elements. A bagel starts out as cold, hard and disappointing so by the time you arrive at your destination you can eliminate being let down by your breakfast food as it was pretty disappointing to begin with.” 
—Michelle Stidman 

I keep going back to the image of The Pilsbury Doughboy vs whatever the Bagel Man would look like. The Doughboy is smiling and giggling and hugging children. The Bagel Man is just standing there all tough and hard like a bouncer at a Choad Bar. If you poke his belly he’ll break your fucking finger. Nobody wants to eat that guy. 

In closing: Please, make me understand. I’m open to the idea that I’m missing something huge. Maybe I’m just not DOING it right. I tried. I was in NY for a month last summer and I still… just didn’t get it. 

Until then...Long live the Kolache! 

Demonic Cravings

written in 2005



Last night I became very VERY aware of the 5 pounds I’ve gained in the last 2 weeks. I could just feel the extra weight and it was making it uncomfortable to sleep. It felt like my belly and thighs had been stuffed with 100 water balloons and gravity was trying to pull them though my skin, through the mattress and onto the floor. THAT is was “retaining water” feels like. I hate to be one of those girls that talks about PMS and all the insanity that comes with it, but I gotta write this one down. I won’t go into the insane hormonal misfires of the brain. We’ve all seen it. Girls ACTUALLY develop a split-personality during this week. We just do. I’m just gonna tell a little anecdote that describes the cravings: 

Driving back to work after lunch today, my split personality just popped up next to me in the passengers seat of my car. As I took a right onto Hawthorne Street she said,

“No, no, better idea… take a left and go get a caramel machiato from Starbucks. Yes, right now. Get a grande. Oooohhh, and one of those big chocolate muffins. Yeahhhh. Extra whip cream.” 

“But I’ll be late getting back to work and I just fed you a tuna sandwich, cheese, olives and some wheat thins. And lets not forget the whole gut issue we had in bed last night. Forget it.” I said.

…and then there was silence and she stared at me with burning eyes and I could feel the hissy-fit bubbling up inside her. It’s kind of like telling Rainman that he can only have 4 fish sticks and not 8. It’s ugly.

So yeah, she starts banging her head violently against the dashboard as I skip Starbucks and pull into work. As I walk up the steps to my office she leaps onto my back and wraps her arms tightly around my neck. Then, in her best Linda Blair voice she coolly whispers that if I don’t put some form of grease, fat or decadent-processed-sugar-product into my body soon that she will posses my body and force me to eat that near-molded piece of cake that’s been sitting in the refrigerator at work for almost a month now.

“Jesus, FUCK, I hate you, Ok, I’ll see what I can do.” 

I know my co-workers talk about me when I’m not there. They must. 
• Hot chocolate, (because we have a machine at work that makes that) 
• Extra butter popcorn,
• 3 bite-size Milky Way candies 
• A Dr. Pepper & half a kolache that was left over from breakfast.

…All this AFTER my lunch break. The rest of the day at work I just sat there in disgust as that little beast sat in the corner of my office picking kernels out her teeth and fondling her full belly-gut. I couldn’t look at her because I knew that if I did she would just smile at me with chocolate stained teeth and say, 

“Your self-respect is in here, Dianne. Would you like to leave it message? I'll see that she gets it…”

It all Starts with an Apple

written sometime in 2006




So – my car gets broken into about every other night. I say "broken into" – but it's more like I leave the doors unlocked and allow them to go through my shit. It's better this way. It saves me money. You'll understand shortly. You see, in my neighborhood it's an unwritten rule that if you leave your car parked out on the street, the covenant house street kids and/or the bums are going to break in. Their favorite approach is to bust out a window, thus I purposely leave my doors unlocked. This benefits both of us. I don't have to pay for a new window; they don't risk cutting themselves and getting skeeze blood inside my car. I guess it benefits me a little more. I don't leave anything in my car of any value. They aren't looking to steal the car – that's become obvious. Every other morning I find my glove compartment open and my maps and paper work scattered around my front seat. They help themselves to the change in my cup holder – well, only the silver stuff. They leave the pennies. I don't blame them. I'm not sure what they're hoping to find. A little money, wallet, maybe a gun, I don't know. But I'm always sure to disappoint and I feel bad about this. You see, I'd like to help them. I have 3 huge trash bags full of NICE clothes in the trunk of my car and every time I see one of those kids sitting on the side of Valero, dirty, sketching and smelling like vomit – I want to offer them some new clothes. At least a clean shirt. But I don't. Why? I'm chicken shit and I don't much trust a junkie. I also don't want to insult or piss them off. I get a flash phobic fear of one of them jumping up and throwing me against the wall, rubbing and dry humping me and yelling, "You don't like my clothes? You think I stink? Take that bitch! All over ya. Uh uh uh uh uh"


Or I just get the feeling they wouldn't be as appreciative as I'd hope. You see, I find real joy in slipping on a fresh shirt smelling of Downy and it really brightens my day. But I don't think my idea of an uplifting moment has any comparison to the feeling of a fresh crack toke or heroin poke. They want money and I'm not giving them my goddamn money. 

But I still want to help.

SO, I've decided to start leaving "treats" for them in my glove compartment. My fantasy is that it's the same bum that continually rummages though my car. I want to help him. Maybe tomorrow night, he'll find a shiny apple in my glove compartment. Next night - a banana. Add some vitamins (they like pills) and maybe a protein bar. He'll learn after a while that these gifts are for him. After a while he'll become healthier. Then I'll start leaving him clothes. Start off with a clean pair of socks. Undies. Work my way up to some collared shirts and so on. Toothbrush. Bar of soap. And when I think he's ready – I'll leave a few blank job applications. He'll fill out a few, brush his teeth, put on a clean shirt maybe drop them off at McDonalds or Burger King. Get's a job. Work hard. Eventually become Assistant Manager. Move out of the lot behind Mary's. Find an efficiency apartment and a girlfriend…

And one day I find a note in my car that reads: Thank You. 

And I'll feel good.

Hey…

shut up.

I know how unrealistic this all is. But I like to dream. When I get inside my car in the morning and notice the missing apple – I'm going to smile and ignore the strange smell and put my fantasy into motion. In reality, know they're making crack bongs out of my apple and maybe using the bathroom in my seat. I know this. But I don't like reality. I like to live inside my head and make up stories. It gives me something to think about while stuck in traffic.

Soap Gets in Your Eye

this was written a very long time ago.



"Let's take a shot," said Mowbray, slapping his hand on the table then turning towards the bar.

"No, I can't," I said. "I've already had enough and I have to go to work in the morning."

"Ahhh" he scolded. "You'll never make it in business with that attitude, Cupps."

Ben Mowbray was teaching me more about comedy than the act itself. This kind of drinking took place every Monday night for most comedians. Open Mic would end around midnight and then everyone would trickle over to another bar and drink heavily until 2am. The excuse, "I have to work in the morning" didn't mean anything to most of them. This was a Monday night, Houston comedy ritual, so drink up, shut up and save the whining for Tuesday morning.

Well, I wasn't good at it yet. I was suffering. It was 8 months into my first professional Graphic Design job out of college when I started doing stand-up comedy regularly. My first time on stage was during college and I enjoyed it for a few months, but had to stop for it was affecting my school work. After graduating and establishing myself at a reputable firm, I started writing jokes again and hitting the open mics and doing small shows around town.

I was also newly single and living on my own for the first time and having a blast. Probably too much of a blast. An irresponsible kind of blast. I had not yet tamed the double life of professional by day, comedian by night. Actually, the comedian by night life was winning. I was writing and performing all the time and my actual graphic design work was suffering. It was hard to focus on a hangover.

"Don't go to work, tomorrow" says Mowbray. "Call in sick."

"I can't." I whined. "I've called in sick too much this year. I feel bad about it."

"Come on." He said. "We'll make tomorrow a fun day. We'll sleep off the hangovers and go find some fun in this stinking town. Think of something you want to do but never have time for. We'll can go to Frankel's and try on Halloween costumes. We can…"

"Ohhhh," I perked up, "You know what I want to do? I want to go to the Orange Show! I've been itching to go there forever and no one will go with me and…"

It didn't take much for me to change my mind. I told Mowbray to make that two jaegers and to help me make up an excuse to get out of work.

I needed a good one. No colds. I had already used the allotted two colds, cramps, "tummy issues" and dentist appointments' anyone should have in one year. This had to be serious, but not too serious.

After ruling out stolen car, family death, and hysterical blindness we decided on something simple, yet powerful. The next morning I would wake up with Pink Eye.

Why? Because you don't have to disguise your voice for Pink Eye. You don't have to hold your nose so that you sound stopped-up like with a cold. You don't have to have whimper like an old man when you complain of all night "stomach/restroom" issues. With Pink Eye you just have to sound slightly annoyed and say you are going to the doctor. No one wants you in the office when you have Pink Eye because it is highly contagious. The same thing goes for leprosy and if that was a common overnight virus caught in America and cured with an inexpensive clinic visit and a prescription for drops, I would have used that instead.

After my morning phone call I slept until 10am. It was a beautiful October Tuesday. I called Mowbray and asked where we were going first. I made coffee, got dressed and waited for him to come pick me up.

The Orange Show was as strange as I hoped it would be. It's hard to describe. It's like an abandoned carnival attraction. It's free to the public, I think. We just walked right in and looked around. I know I'm being vague in describing it to those who have no idea what I'm talking about and I'm doing this on purpose. I never knew exactly what it was before I went and I don't want anyone else to either. We'll leave it at that. Trust me; it's not the important part of this story.

On the way to Frankel's to try on costumes I received a phone call from work. I didn't answer it. I was at the Doctor, right? I ignored it, but started to feel a little nervous in the stomach. I lowered myself in the seat of Mowbray's car. Surely, no one saw me. The fear of being busted is nauseating and I didn't want to think about it.

At the costume store, Mowbray bought a cheap, plastic cigarette holder. Think Audrey Hepburn. He began using it immediately. I think I bought fake skin make-up.

In the car again it was a little past noon and I think we were headed to a bar when I got another phone call from work. I decided to answer it.

It was Debbie, the receptionist. She told me that Jerry, my boss, needed me to come in today. It was very important. Our company had scheduled a photographer to come out and take pictures of us for a book that was being published about Graphic Designer's in Houston. This was the only day the photographer could be there and I had to be there for the photo.

I had completely forgotten about this.

I knew I couldn't get out of it. The Pink Eye wouldn't matter. Anyone at my company can use Photoshop to retouch a photo. I could be photographed at an angle that hid the eye. They just wanted me to show up and take the photo and then I could leave again.

I was in deep shit.

I was panicking, but calmly told her I was just leaving the Doctor's office and I needed to change clothes and put on make-up and that I'd be there in an hour.

I hung up the phone and turned to Mowbray with a look of fear. He was already on the phone and leaving a message for his friend, Mark Babbit, a well known previous owner of the Laff Stop. I won't say he's a bad man, but let's just say he was probably a good person to call in a situation like this.

"Babbit, this is Ben. I have 45 minutes to give Dianne Cupps Pink Eye. Call me back."

Click.

Babbit never called back. We made a quick stop at CVS where Mowbray ran inside the store looking on the backs of bottles for the words: Don't get near your eyes. I sat in the car thinking about resumes and job interviews. He came out with a small bottle of lotion.

We got to my house and I changed clothes. I didn't have much time and needed to work fast. Before squirting lotion into my eyes I decided to see what I could do with make-up. I dabbed pink blush around the lids of my eyes and it looked really great – except that the powder had shimmers and flakes that glistened in the light. I needed hospital Pink Eye, not Studio 54 Pink Eye. I washed it off.

Next, we stood on my front porch and Mowbray smoked an entire cigarette as I peeled back my top eyelid and made him blow the smoke directly into my eye.

This didn't do anything.

We went back inside and into the restroom to look for something else. I was looking inside my bathroom closet when he walked up close behind me. I turned around and stared right into the nozzle of a bottle of Lysol spray.

"NO!" I screamed, and ducked and hid my eyes. "You'll BLIND me!"

He put the bottle back.

We looked some more.

"Soap" he finally said. "You're going to have to rub soap in your eye."

I felt like crying.

We both stared at the bar of soap sitting on the sink. Mowbray turned on the water faucet and wet the tip of his middle finger.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

He rubbed his wet finger over the bar of Dove a few times and said, "I can't let you do this alone."

And with that he looked in the mirror, stretched open his upper eyelid, looked down and smeared his soapy finger across the upper white part of his eyeball.

He dropped to his knees. I could tell he was holding in a scream. His entire palm was pressed to his eye and his face was turning inside itself. After a few deep breaths's he stood up, removed his hand and looked into the mirror. His trembling, wincing eye was dripping with tears. It was swollen…and it was pink.

"Fuck it, here I go." I said.

I had about 10 minutes to get to work. I followed his steps.

Wet the finger.
Run the finger on the soap.
Pull open the eyelid.
Rub the soap in the eye.


Scream.
Cup my hand under the faucet and fill it with water.
Tilt my head sideways and throw water in it.
Try to fit head under faucet to flush eye.


"STOP!" yells Mowbray. "You can't wash it out or it won't turn pink!"

"I can't!" I cried. "It burns too bad! I'm freaking out! I can't do it!"

I relaxed and tried again, but to no avail. I kept washing it out.

It was time to go and I felt defeated. My eye was a little poofy, but still no pink. I got into my car and drove to work thinking of another lie to add on top of this one. I decided on a pretty good one. I would tell them that I thought I had pink eye, but was wrong. I had been irresponsibly sleeping in my contacts and had woken up with a bacterial infection. The Doctor gave me some eye drops and it would clear up quickly. That was believable and that's what I would say.

But I still made one last effort. In the two minute drive from my house to work I rubbed and poked and pulled on my eye like a crazy person convinced that the government had implanted a spy chip inside it. The closer I got to the office the harder I rubbed. I even allowed myself to scratch it a little with my finger nail. By the time I parked my car my eye felt swollen and sore.

I walked into the office and made sure to squint just slightly at everyone. I didn't overdo it. Just a pathetic little wink. One person told me my eye looked puffy and I told them my rehearsed lie about the bacterial infection. The photographer was set up and waiting for me. I turned my eye slightly away from the camera and we took the pictures.

I felt so busted. I knew in my heart that everyone knew I had lied. Maybe they didn't, but from that day forward I felt like the girl in the office that lied to get out of work and everyone knew it. What a loser.

I think it ruined me at that office. Seriously. I was already letting bad personal habits affect my work. For months they didn't trust me to take on any large projects of my own and I didn't blame them. I wasn't mentally focused at all. Then, on top of it all, I felt like the office liar. It eventually got better, I cleaned up my act and stopped partying late at night, but I ended up quitting a year later for a good reason.

It makes sense that something like that would happen to me. I think it "sums" me up. It makes sense that there's a hardbound book floating around Houston showcasing the top design firms in Houston and I'm in it. Proud. Smiling and trying to look professional, but actually a little hungover with a bungeye filled with cigarette smoke, soap and lies.

This will be a testament to the duality of my character, set in ink, forever.

I miss you Ben Mowbray. Thank you for a great story