15% Is Not A Good Tip

Has your life become empty of meaning? Are you spending less time rearing your children and more time drinking alone?

I’ll tell you why:

I haven’t blogged in a while.

Heartbreaking, I know. But here’s what’s up: Due to my monthly loan payments costing more than my rent, I’ve recently begun a second job

…drum roll please…

waiting tables.

This is me.

It’s possible you’ve never waited tables. It’s possible, in fact, that you’re a Kardashian and have never held any menial, shit-pay job whatsoever. Not to worry, though: that’s where I come in! Pull out your trapper keeper and start taking notes, because I’m about to slap your ass with some serious spanks of knowledge.

If you’re an asshole, here’s how to prove it next time you go out to eat. Some ideas:

Avoid looking into your server’s eyes…like…at all. Okay, wait, actually there’s some modifications to this rule. Is your server a robot? A house plant? An ottoman? If so, ignore this suggestion. However, if your server is a human, go ahead and look at him or her when speaking. Maybe, like, you could talk to your server the way you would talk to, like, another human being. (I know – I’m blowing your fucking mind right now.)

Point at what you want on the menu instead of using your words. If I had a nickel for every time someone said, “We’re going to share one of these and then have this, and I think I’d like to start with that,” I would have like four dollars. Do you know how much shit I could buy for four dollars? When you point to shit on the menu instead of actually using the gift of language and sound, I want to teach you to read. Sound it out.

Avoid using words like, “Thank you.” When your server drops something off at your table – say, a new soda or an entree or an extra spoon so you can share dessert (as if sitting on the same side of the booth wasn’t enough of a HEY WORLD WE’RE IN A RELATIONSHIP, please go ahead and share some shit as well), do me a favor and don’t just continue with your conversation as if your diet Coke appeared by magic. Take a hot second to utter the phrase (wait for it) – “thank you”! I know you can do it. Otherwise, expect just a tiny bit of poop in your tiramisu.

Complain about shit that cannot be fixed. For example: some restaurants feature outside seating. If one more mother fucker complains to me about falling leaves or rogue bees, I’m going to flip your table. Also, I’m going to punch you squarely in the throat.

Start your complaint with, “I never complain, but…” Do you know what you did there? You just lied.

Do obnoxious shit. For example: tonight, my husband and I enjoyed a lovely late dinner on the outside patio area of a restaurant. We started eating at around ten pm, long after the sun had set. Inexplicably, a couple seated near us demanded that the large table umbrella near their chairs be raised to cover them. If you’re wondering whether it was raining or sunny, the answers are no and no. There’s no rhyme or reason here, just obnoxious people doing obnoxious shit.

Tip 15%…or less. Listen, here’s where you’re probably thinking, “Pardon me? 15% is an excellent tip, and besides, I shouldn’t be required to pay my waitress!”

Listen, I get it. In fact, I actually agree with you! We live in a pretty ridiculous society which demands that you, the consumer, not only pay for a service, but also provide the paycheck for the person who executes that service. It’s bullshit. In a perfect world (or, in like, almost every other industrialized country), companies would pay their employees a living wage and tips would be superfluous.

Unfortunately, we do not live in such a world. That’s where you come in.

Here’s the thing: the tip you leave your waiter or waitress doesn’t actually go to your waiter or waitress. Part of it does, yes, but some of it also goes to the busboy, the bartender, the food runner, the host or hostess. Let me break it down for you:

Let’s say I work a waitressing shift in which I only have one table. The total bill for that table is exactly $100. My total sales for this shift, then, is $100. At the end of my shift, I tip a percentage of my total sales to the runners, bussers, bartenders, and hosts. In some restaurants, this is as much as 8% of the total sales. So, back to my $100 table. Even if this table leaves me zero tip at all, I still have to pay out 8% to the other people who helped me serve that table. Therefore, if I receive zero dollars on a hundred dollar table, I’m still tipping out eight dollars out of my own pocket.

Sucks, doesn’t it?

So do everyone a favor and leave a good tip – I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that any time someone leaves less than an 18% tip, a kitten gets punched in the face.

Please, don’t leave a bad tip. The kittens are in your hands.

Why You Should Always Write “Amputate This One”

The other night, some friends and I were discussing emergency room horror stories (which is actually pretty redundant and could just be called “emergency room stories” since they’re all horrible) and I recalled this little charmer from my days working on a college campus.

One evening, while living in a dorm (ahh, the start to all great stories), I was awoken by a student crazily pounding up and down the hallway, banging on doors and yelling about baseball. When I confronted the ruckus (shaking my fist in the air and shouting, “You meddling kids!”), I found a kid with a mangled hand and pants around his ankles (because, really, where else should your pants be when you’re bleeding profusely in the middle of the night?).

It turns out he had broken his hand either A) in a barfight or B) while punching walls made out of cinder blocks instead of letting me sleep. (Oh, if everyone received such a punishment for waking me from my slumber.) Either way, he needed medical attention, and being the contractually obligated compassionate person I am, I accompanied him to the hospital.

If you’ve ever been to the emergency room for literally anything, and you’re not a Kardashian, you know what happened next: for the next six hours, my charge slumbered on an uncomfortable chair while I fluctuated between irritation and MIND-NUMBING HOMICIDAL RAGE.

Just before I was going to set the place on fire (screw the sick and needy, I was TIRED), my drunken friend was wheeled off into X-Ray. While I toyed with the idea of breaking off my own arms and using them to beat bystanders, a nurse returned and told me that we would both have to wait another hour or so before they could assemble the cast and set us free.

Fine.

I end up napping on a discarded hospital bed when they finally take him for his cast, and when they return him to me he’s so sleepy and half-drunk that he immediately falls asleep while I speak to the nurses. They give me his discharge paperwork, we talk about cast maintenance, and we all say our goodbyes.

It’s close to seven in the morning, and I feel hope inside me beginning to swell and bubble up to the surface, wondering what kind of world will greet me outside the hospital doors. What has happened in my absence? Cures for cancer? Flying cars?

I wake up my wee friend so we can depart, and he groggily takes in his new cast. As we say goodbye to the nurse, my buddy mumbles, “Can I just ask you a question?”

“Of course,” she says.

He pushes up the sweatshirt sleeve of his non-plastered hand to reveal a bloodstained, claw-like talon.

“Why did you put the cast on the wrong hand?”

And that, my friends, is the story of how I ended up murdering dozens of people through sheer force of hate.

Just kidding.

No, instead, I took another nap while they broke off the first cast (off of his perfectly undamaged, clean hand) and administered a second, onto the hand that was basically screaming, “I am clearly the hand that is broken. Seriously. I’m literally covered in blood and I look like somebody chewed me up and then rolled over me with a car. Stop looking at that other hand. It’s obviously fine. This couldn’t possibly be any more clear. Wait, what are you doing?? That hand looks PERFECTLY FINE!! Stop putting a cast on it! Stop it!! Wow, you’re really doing it. I can’t believe you just did that. You are a stupid bastard.”

The end.

 

That Time My Dog Ate:

• raw meat
• dirty shrimp tails from the garbage (as opposed to those really pristine clean shrimp tails that live in their own shrimp palaces and have shrimp maids)
• coffee grounds
• milk cartons
• the paper that sticks of butter come in
• toenail clippings
• shoelaces
• gloves
• hats
• Steve Madden sandals (two pair)
• Victoria’s Secret bras (she really only goes for brand names. She’s like The Real Housewife of Ruining My Shit)
• an entire EOS lipgloss; you know, the kind that come in the cute egg-shaped containers. The weird kind that are full of wax rather than dog food.
• eight hamburger buns (I know you’re thinking, “Big whoop, I could do that.” But it was all at once. If you’ve eaten eight hamburger buns all at once, without a burger between them, and you’re not a dog, that’s super weird.)
• a box of cocoa
• a bag of Hershey’s Kisses with foil wrappers
• 16 brownies (you know that whole, “omg chocolate KILLS DOGS” thing? Yeah, this bitch laughs in the face of danger)
• a used tampon (found in the STREET, mind you)
• popcorn
• chicken wings
• chicken bones
• indiscriminate bones found in bushes, likely belonging to diseased rats and the undead
• literally anything sticky
• grass
• dirt
• snow
• yellow snow (especially yellow snow)
• piles of her own fur that collect in the corners of my apartment
• her own vomit

Things my dog will never, ever, EVER eat, under any circumstances:

• vegetables

Brought to you by this embarrassing drunk.

 

UPDATE: I totally forgot the time she finished off two white russians. The drink, not the people.

Things That Make Me Want to Punch a Baby, Volume II

You know what I’ve been meaning to do? Write a list of more things I hate! Obviously, Volume I of Thing That Make Me Want to Punch a Baby was just the tip of the rage-filled iceberg, and thus, I present you with Volume II. You’re welcome.

• Dog hair. Just…all of it…everywhere.

• Everyone’s aspirations on Pinterest. Spoiler alert: your life will never be that awesome. Ever. Your kids won’t ever fingerpaint your portrait in your super organized and expertly labeled kitchen while you bake organic free-range vegan chicken nuggets out of homemade hemp seeds and your husband chops wood in the backyard to carve into floor to ceiling bookcases lined with black-and-white family portraits you took yourself. I DON’T BELIEVE YOU.

This is not your pantry. THIS WILL NEVER BE YOUR PANTRY. And don’t even act like you would bake a cake and then shove it in that drawer. You most certainly would not.

• People who try to make you prove that you know things. For example, I went to Florida State University. Whenever I say, ‘I love FSU!’ or even so much as root for the teams, there’s always that one guy who’s like, ‘I bet you can’t name the running back on the 1994 football team.’ Um, you’re right, I can’t. Do you know what I can do? Smash this beer bottle over your head and then shank you with it. I’ll let you live if you can spell the name of the sixteenth president’s dog walker. Dick.

• Weather forecasts. Why is that even a thing? Many a day I’ve stood under a plexiglass train station awning, unsuccessfully trying to shield myself from a torrential Sharknado-style downpour, only to have my iPhone weather app look like this:

You’re a fucking liar, iPhone weather app.

• Pickles, because I don’t understand them and I think they taste like everything that’s evil. We might not agree on this.

• College tuition. Like, what exactly am I paying for? I mean, after you pay the professor and, like, heat the classroom, where else is that money going? It’s not funding my textbooks, or my laptop, or, like, getting me a job, so I guess that’s where I’m confused. Do you guys really need $80,000 from me and all my friends? I feel like this is some sort of Ponzi scheme, and at some point I’m going to show up to class only to find the doors boarded up and the word ‘Suckers!’ scrawled across the front.

• Mondays. They’re the worst. Actually any day that involves work is sort of the worst. Weekends should be 78 days long, and then we should all put in a hard day’s work before the next 78 days of BBQing and sleeping in.

• People who write TO their babies or pets on Facebook, a la: ‘To my kitty cat, Martin: You’re the best cat ever, and mommy loves you so much! Happy birthday, xoxo.’       Um, if your cat or dog or baby can read your Facebook, you need to send them to work and be making some money off that shit.

• The fact that there’s an episode of Mtv’s True Life called, “My Boyfriend’s Fed Up With My Weight.” This pretty much sums up my feelings about that:

• People who don’t wave at you when you let them in front of you in traffic. Maybe this is a Southern thing, but if I let your ass in, I expect a wave of acknowledgement, a wave that says, “Thank you for this. I can never repay you, but I will never forget you.” And then I will smile and feel pleased with myself for doing such an extraordinarily good deed. (But not before some other asshole tries to jump on the bandwagon and also pull in front of me, as if my generosity of spirit is a free-for-all. Not today, buddy. Back of the line for you!)

• Stubbing your toe SO HARD that you’re afraid to look down because you’re sure that half your foot is missing and is now a mangled stump in a pool of foot-blood. (And then, like, two seconds later you’re completely fine. Wtf.)

• When people randomly talk out loud in your vicinity because they clearly want you to comment. For example: you’ll be sitting at work or in class or on the subway and someone is reading the newspaper next to you, let’s say. And you’re both minding your own business, but then that someone says something like, “Wow, that is unbelievable.” Not directly to you – that would be too obvious. No, this is more of a sneak attack, a not-so-subtle subtle plea for acknowledgement. And then you keep not commenting so they become more aggressive and say, ‘I just can’t believe it!’ while giving you the side-eye of desperation. They might add a, “What an interesting story,” or “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” all the while expecting you to finally leap from your seat and shout, “WHAT IS IT?! WHAT?! TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW BECAUSE I AM SO CURIOUS BECAUSE I HAPPENED TO OVERHEAR YOUR EXCITED EXCLAMATIONS!”                                                                                                                                                                                                             Well I just won’t do it. I see right through your little game and I refuse to participate.

• Competition shows. If we follow reality tv to its logical conclusion, the only possible outcome is The Hunger Games: Sing For Your Life.

• Romantic comedies. They’re, like, awful. Also, I don’t care what romantic comedy you’re going to see – I can tell you how it goes. Dude and chick meet. They don’t like each other at first and just can’t see eye to eye! (Oh, the shenanigans and misunderstandings that ensue.) Eventually they realize they’re madly in love and come so close to living happily ever after, but then one of them (the dude) does something stupid or wrong or awful (but not so awful that we stop liking him!) and someone else (the chick) finds out about it and boy is she mad! And she cries and then they’re apart but – wait! – the guy returns with a grand romantic gesture (think flash mob, heartstopping proposal-even-though-they’ve-been-broken-up-this-whole-time, or something to do with a dog) and everything’s cool! I just saved you $11.50.

This Week In Pictures

So a lot of stuff has gone down recently. Some of this stuff is funny, and some of it is not funny. Since you’re probably way too busy and important (with things, like, oh I dunno, a job and adult responsibilities) to keep up with everything, and since I’m pretty much glued to my couch watching Lifetime movies, I’ve decided to do you a solid and sort it all out for you.

You know what happened this week that was decidedly not funny? My dog eating shrimp tails and coffee grounds out of our trash can and then…um…gassing us out.

Also not funny: the fact that Eva Mendes is apparently seven months pregnant with the son of God. Ryan Gosling, I thought we agreed that you would only impregnate me.

Additional non-funny recent events: That World Cup score. I know like….absolutely nothing about soccer except that it involves really nice, sculpted calves and sweaty South American men with thick curly hair…I forgot what we were talking about.

You know what is funny? Last week’s Supreme Court ruling about Hobby Lobby and birth control (I’m pretty sure telling people you shop at Hobby Lobby is all the birth control you need, but whatever). It’s funny because it’s such a ridiculously laughable decision, but it’s also not funny because half of the members of the highest court in America basically told women to go fuck themselves. (Cuz you can’t get pregnant that way. Duh.)

That about wraps it up for This Week In Pictures.

Also, I lied about there being pictures. Sometimes I lie. The world is a cruel, disappointing place. It’s best you learn this now.

The Politeness Curse

Recently, Pantene produced a commercial about the compulsion of many women to constantly apologize – for everything. It’s a great ad, so much so that when it depicts a woman starting a conversation with her employer by saying, ‘Good morning,’ rather than, ‘I’m sorry’, my mind was blown because I had literally never even thought of that.

Basically, women are pretty much conditioned to constantly apologize for taking up space. I know this, you know this.

But today, while getting my eyebrows waxed, I had an idea – a musing, if you will – about how I manage to take this compulsion one step further with a little problem I like to call:

The Politeness Curse.

Why do I feel that no matter what anyone does to me, I must not only show gratitude, but make sure they feel wonderful about it?

Some examples:

When I was in college, I got my eyebrows waxed once in a little hole in the wall nail salon. I generally have pretty thick eyebrows, especially then, and I like them that way. However, the salon employee immediately explained to me that my eyebrows were too thick and would look better much thinner. I said, “Oh, I like them thick, I just want them cleaned up a bit,” and she said, “Okay, we make them thin.”

My skin went cold.

Nonetheless, do you think I argued with her? Do you think I said, “Excuse me, but I’m paying for a service and I would like it carried out a certain way, please”?

Answer:

Who drew those on my face?

Whenever I get my hair cut or colored and it doesn’t go the way I wanted, I will literally sit in disguised horror as the stylist adds pink highlights when I ask for brown (true story) and say nary a word about it. Even when the chick stands back and is all, what do you think? Without fail, I will respond with: “Perfect! I love it. Thank you so much.”

(If you ever give me a gift and I say those words, in that order, I hate everything about it. Sorry.)

If you’re a waiter and you bring me a veggie burger (gross) rather than the steak fajitas I ordered, I will approach the situation like this, “Um, I’m so sorry to do this, but I don’t think this is what I ordered…….”

I will then wait uncomfortably until you come to my aid, hoping you’ll say, “Oh my gosh, you’re right! Let me grab your fajitas.”

If, instead, you say something like, “Nope, you ordered the veggie burger. I’m certain because I never write down orders and just keep track of everything in my mind like a Jedi,” there’s a good chance I’ll say,

“Oh. Of course. So sorry.”

To make matters worse, I should probably mention my tipping compulsion.

To be clear, I spent years in the service industry and think that tipping well for good service is an absolute obligation, not a choice.

My problem is that, if you shave my head bald when I ask for a trim, I will thank you profusely before tipping you 20 percent.

Why?? Why do I do this?

The worse example of my need to please everyone in spite of myself is this:

Before I got married, a good friend came with me to shop for a wedding dress. We went to the trunk show of a designer well out of my price range, at a boutique well out of my price range, just to see different styles.

Within five minutes of being there, my very dear and very pregnant friend dropped the drink she was holding in an opaque travel mug (which the employees, like myself, had probably assumed was water). To our abject horror, the cup was full of a hot pink smoothie, and when the mug hit the ground its contents spewed heavenward like a cartoon geyser with Wile E. Coyote trapped on top.

Smoothie went EVERYWHERE. This is not an exaggeration – thick pink liquid literally seeped into the intricate vintage lace of at least five dresses.

My heart stopped. I considered shoving innocent bystanders out of my way and simply running for my life.

Alas, my 8-months-pregnant friend was in no shape for running, and so we resigned ourselves to whatever consequences the store employees would see fit.

Happily, one of the employees was lovely. She explained that these were sample dresses which couldn’t be sold anyway, that they would simply be sent for cleaning, and that everything was all good.

The other employee?

She wanted us dead. Not just dead, actually – I imagine she wanted to hold our heads down in a bathtub filled with strawberry smoothie until we stopped struggling.

She, of course, was the woman assigned to help me try on dresses.

(You’re probably thinking, why oh why would you stay to try on dresses?? Answer: I felt bad and couldn’t think of a polite way to simply leave. I was kind of just hoping my girlfriend would go into early labor.)

Anyway, I ended up trying on a couple dresses, all the while subjected to the saleswoman’s hateful remarks about my girlfriend (“That’s the worst thing anyone has ever done. She should be embarrassed”) and myself (when I offered to pay for the dresses to be cleaned: “Don’t you think you’ve done enough? You can’t fix this”).

Do you think I said, “Hey lady! Relax! We said we were sorry!”

Or

Do you think I allowed the woman to put me in a $3,000 dress, a $700 sash, and accessories which came to a grand total of well over $5,000?

And then, when she said, “So are you going to buy something after all this or not?” do you think I said, “No thank you, Rude Saleslady.”

If you imagine that’s what I said, you haven’t fully grasped my politeness compulsion.

I took out my credit card (which was not intended to pay for my dress) and agreed to spend over $5,000 on a wedding dress I didn’t really want because I felt bad.

This is not normal.

If you’re balking at how ridiculous I am and what a terrible decision that was, have no fear: my dear smoothie-loving friend saw the terror in my eyes, pulled me aside, and said, “Do you even want this dress?” To which I responded:

“I don’t know.”

(Seems like a reasonable way to feel about a $5,000 purchase, right?)

My friend immediately informed the saleswomen that we would not be making the purchase while I stood cowering in my own fear, barely holding myself back from screaming, “Like me! Like me Rude Saleslady!!”

So my question is this:

Is this another generally female habit? Do you do this? Am I a lunatic? Why must I not only apologize for other people’s issues, but then fall all over myself to make sure that the other people feel good about them?

That’s it for today. If you don’t like this post…I’m really sorry.

You Thought She Was Just Taking a Bath. What She Did Next Will Amaze You.

Well kids, it’s about time for another inspirational song installment here at LiterallyNuts. Last time, we responded to Jason Derulo’s questions about our butts and our jeans, and we kindly asked Snoop Dogg not to “take it out” and “wipe it off” around us.

Today, I heard a brand new, ever-progressive song on the radio. The artist is a woman named Tove Lo. I have never heard of this person, because I’m old now. (I hit 28, and suddenly every major recording artist and Oscar winner is like 12 years younger than me.)

If you, too, are 28 and no longer know what the cool kids are listening to, here’s a picture of Ms. Lo for reference:

She’s sad because you don’t know who she is.

You may have noticed by now that I super love it when the media portrays women as strong, independent individuals rather than sex objects and idiots, and so of course I knew I loved this song the moment I heard the words “I threw up in the tub.”

Without further ado, I present to you the lyrics to Tove Lo’s “Habits” (with my constructive comments and suggestions, of course!).

“I eat my dinner in my bathtub
Then I go to sexclubs
Watching freaky people gettin’ it on
It doesn’t make me nervous
If anything I’m restless
Yeah, I’ve been around and I’ve seen it all”

Honestly there’s so much goodness going on here that I’m going to have to do this bit by bit.

“I eat my dinner in my bathtub”

No one does this. No, seriously, literally no one does this. It’s unsanitary and really just an accident waiting to happen. Also it’s weird.

“Then I go to sexclubs”

Okay…people probably do that.

“Watching freaky people gettin’ it on”

Is that what you do at sex clubs? Isn’t it quicker just to download porn?

“It doesn’t make me nervous”

That would make me nervous, for a number of reasons. I would probably be like, “Am I bothering these freaky people? I wonder if I’m making them uncomfortable. Should I ask them? No, they’re pretty busy. I don’t think I should touch anything. This is yucky. Where’s the buffet?”

“If anything I’m restless”

Have you tried knitting?

“Yeah, I’ve been around and I’ve seen it all”

Oh, so you have tried knitting. Fair enough.

“I get home, I got the munchies
Binge on all my Twinkies”

Do they still make Twinkies?

“Throw up in the tub”

Why are you BACK in the tub? Do you have anything else in your house besides a tub? Do you have a bed?

“Then I go to sleep”

In the tub, I’m assuming.

“And I drank up all my money
Tasted kinda lonely”

Maybe you should try drinking beverages instead of money.

“You’re gone and I gotta stay
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Spend my days locked in a haze
Trying to forget you babe
I fall back down
Gotta stay high all my life
To forget I’m missing you
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh”

Ohhhhhh so you’re high. You definitely should have said that earlier. This all makes so much more sense now. Especially the Twinkies.

“Pick up daddies at the playground
How I spend my daytime”

Soooo, like, are these actual daddies? Of children? Are they at the playground with their kids? Because then I think they should probably stay with their kids. If they’re at the playground without their kids, then you 100% should not talk to them.

“Loosen up the frown,
Make them feel alive
I’ll make it fast and greasy
I know my way too easy”

This is a terrible idea. Stop doing this. Also where are their kids during this time?

“Staying in my play pretend”

By “my play pretend” you mean the tub again right?

“Where the fun ain’t got no end
Ooh
Can’t go home alone again
Need someone to numb the pain
Ooh”

But your tub is at home! You love the tub.

“You’re gone and I gotta stay
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Spend my days locked in a haze
Trying to forget you babe
I fall back down
Gotta stay high all my life
To forget I’m missing you
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh”

So, like…is this what music is now? Seriously? Just words that don’t really go together and don’t make any sense and we’ve all just decided to sort of accept it?

I’m gonna go throw up in my tub.

How to Tell if You’re a Grown-Up

So I keep wondering when that grown-up switch is going to flip. You know, the one that will up my maturity quotient and make me suddenly think and behave like an adult.

I’ll go to bed a 28-year-old child and, overnight – flip! – I’ll wake up a 28-year-old mature adult ready and able to do mature adult things.

I’ll know it happened because instead of waking up and thinking of all the possible excuses I could give to call in sick to work (let’s see…did I already say my dog died? What about my grandma? Who else can I kill off…) and hating my alarm for existing, I’ll be a morning-loving work-ready woman of the world. I’ll eat something like a bran muffin for breakfast (to stay regular) and go for a quick run to stretch my glutes. (I don’t know what glutes are.)

I’ll jet off to work calm and rested, not hungover and pissed off. I’ll seamlessly balance being a team-player with being assertive and confidant, and all will applaud my work ethic and my many living family members and pets. (Because I’ll have stopped killing them off…you get it.)

When I get home I’ll clean the beautiful house I was able to buy after learning how to save money (and also how “mortgage” works and how one can buy a house and not actually own it for like forty years and why that makes any sense at all). And when I clean, I’ll actually clean, like with solutions and chemicals and rubber gloves, not the way I do it now, which involves a lot of pushing things under my bed and sweeping up a bunch of dog hair and then kicking it under the couch.

I’ll do laundry more than twice a month and wash my sheets more than…um…

….

Listen, I really don’t wash my sheets a lot. I won’t bore you with facts and data.

Anyway,

I’ll suddenly be able to invest money and do my taxes and know the meaning of terms like “money market account” and “disposable income” (I mean, isn’t that, like, all income? If I dispose of it all on shoes and can’t pay rent it is). I’ll do things like eat balanced meals, even on weekends, and my husband and I will eat dinner at the table instead of on the couch watching Bar Rescue.

I’ll recycle and give money to charity. (And I won’t take “charity” to mean “the liquor store” like I do now.)

I’ll respond to inquiries about jury duty rather than just ignoring them and hoping the FBI has more important things to do than arrest me.

I’ll join a co-ed kickball team and we’ll spend weekends enjoying good-natured tournaments. I will not become overly competitive until everyone refuses to play with me.

I’ll stop wearing flip-flops that are impractical and I’ll start wearing sneakers everywhere, because they’re just better for you.

Obviously, my maternal instinct will kick in (it’s gotta be in there somewhere, right?) and I’ll not only be desperate for children, but have total faith in my ability to raise them to be protective members of society and not serial killers and sociopaths. I won’t think about all the drinking and traveling I can afford to do if I just avoid buying things like diapers or baby food.

I’ll stop watching things like Catfish: The TV Show and start watching things like CNN and The View.

I’ll stop sleeping in until 1:30 on weekends and instead will get up at 7am to get the most out of my day! I’ll go to bed at a reasonable hour every night, but before I do, I’ll always brush my teeth. I’ll even floss them! (That’s gonna hurt like a bitch at first, though. It’s been a while.) I’ll lotion myself up every time I get out of the shower and I’ll use eye cream under my foundation. I’ll never go to bed with a full face of makeup and false eyelashes because I’m too drunk to find a sink.

I’ll put gas in my car before the light’s been on for 27 miles.

I’ll stop using credit cards as my secret unlimited savings account.

I’ll have plans for the future that are more defined than, “Let’s figure out what we need to give up to pay rent this month.”

I’ll stop pouting. I’m a big pouter. Also, I’ll be able to kill bugs myself instead of making my husband do it while I scream in the corner.

I’ll keep up with dentist appointments and eye appointments and always get my yearly checkup. (Full disclosure: I probably haven’t been to the eye doctor in ten years, and haven’t been to the dentist in like three. Luckily I’m probably going to go blind soon, so having no teeth in my head won’t even bother me.)

I won’t even want to watch seven hours of Law and Order: SVU in one sitting while eating pints of ice cream in my pajamas. I’ll be like, “Ew, seven hours of Law and Order: SVU in one sitting while eating pints of ice cream in my pajamas? Gross. Let’s go get mammograms and colonoscopies together instead. Because we’re grown-ups and you can’t be too careful.”

As of today, though, I’m still just a giant adult-sized infant, whining when I’m hungry and occasionally peeing myself. I’ll let you know when the switch flips.

Pizza Is Better Than Exercise

I keep wondering if I’m ever going to like working out.

Or, at the very least, to stop hating it so much.

You know those people who bounce around in $124 lululemon stretchy shorts and say things like, “I love working out!” or “I have to exercise every day or I feel totally gross!,” or “I ran an extra four miles this morning just for fun!”

I hate those people. Also, I think they might be liars.

If you happen to be one of these liars: Shut up already. We get it. You shudder at the idea of binge-watching tv for seventeen hours straight and the thought of gluten makes your skin crawl.

No problem. More pizza for me.

You love breaking a sweat and probably do it without a single hair falling out of place. In fact, your sweat is probably more of a “glisten,” adding a bright, healthy glow, while mine is like someone hung me by the ankles and dipped me into a vat of liquid funk.

(Disclaimer: I don’t mean “funk” like the good kind, like the “bring in da noise, bring in da funk” funk. Just to be clear.)

Basically, while you and your perfect, non-sweaty hair look like this at the gym:

I look more like this:

I mean, working out is awful, right? Can’t we all just agree on that? Mr. Literallynuts and I have been exercising regularly for about two months now, and I’ve been waiting for that moment while I’ll be in the middle of a particularly gruesome workout and suddenly – BAM! – like magic, all my homicidal visions of burning down the gym will fade away and will be replaced by images of toned kittens and puppies. I’ll think, “Man, I love when sweat covers my eyeballs and I can’t see!” or “Feeling like I’m going to pass out in a pile of my own vomit is the BEST!”

Alas, this hasn’t happened. Instead, I continue to hate working out for literally every moment that it’s occurring. I hate the idea of it, I hate driving to it, I hate completing it, and I even hate that moment afterwards when my husband’s like, “Great job!”

Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me, actually, until the gym and the horror that happens there is behind us and I’m safely on my couch. I’m sore and I plan to watch at least fourteen hours of uninterrupted S.V.U.

I worked out for, like, twenty minutes. If that doesn’t earn me sixteen donuts and a week of television in bed, I don’t know what will.

A Naked Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes

So I had a dream last night that I went back to graduate school.

Naked.

In the dream, I was heading to one of my favorite classes taught by one of my favorite teachers. I was running late and freaking out about it (punctuality is much more important to Dream Me than it is to Real Me – Real Me would’ve just been like “Meh, I’m late…may as well just head home”), and when I finally found the classroom (you know how you can never find anything in dreams), the door was locked.

I knocked on the door, and my professor came out into the hallway to talk with me about being so late.

At this point, I realized I had forgotten to put clothes on. Like, any clothes at all. Like, bare-ass newborn baby nekkid.

Since this is obviously inappropriate, I tried to cover myself up with my hands, but I have less hands than I do lady-parts so it was a struggle.

So anyway, my professor comes out into the hallway and says,

“I can’t let you come in without clothes on. I already let it slide the first time.”

Um…what?

Apparently, Dream Me has had this problem more than once? And that first time, everyone just “let it slide”? How did Dream Me get to class that way? Did I drive, or take the subway? I can sort of understand being naked on the subway because once you’re on it, you’re pretty much stuck there. But if I drove to class, then couldn’t I have stopped at TJMaxx and bought myself some pants?

These are questions which have no answers.

So back to the dream:

I get really upset that my prof won’t let me into the classroom and I start crying. (What this means about feminism and female sexuality and the human anatomy, I’m not altogether sure.) My professor feels bad for me (I mean, I am Crying While Naked, which we all know is the worst and most humiliating type of crying) and kisses me on the forehead. Now, this seems like a huge invasion of personal space considering my ass is out, and I’m pretty sure Dream Me could sue him and the school for this, but whatever.

The weird thing is, I actually am going back to grad school, and tomorrow I have a meeting with my favorite professor to discuss the logistics.

I’m a little concerned now that this dream was actually a premonition and I’m destined to ride the subway bareback tomorrow. If you could be a doll and shoot me a text in the morning reminding me to cover my hoo-ha before I leave the house, that would be swell.