Dusty's Cupcakes

Amy Sedaris, cup cakes, rabbits, computers. How could it get better?

He's getting married

Oh my gatos they would air Jason and Molly's wedding on ABC. And even though I was really good about not watching the recent season of The Bachelor with Jake (didn't watch any episodes, didn't google news it, didn't read blogs about it, etc), I so totally have to watch Jason tie the knot. Even if he was an ass to poor Melissa.

So once again, ABC is going to suck up my time. Two whole hours. I swear to you, this is it. No more. I better get in the shower because it starts in 28 minutes.

Drive-Up Window

It was like I was thrown into the depths of the dragon's lair, the spitfire of the broiler, the screams, the heat of the flames, and then, the cool breeze of the open window.

I worked the drive through window of McDonald's.

Never thought I'd write the above sentence. But I had to. My school had a fundraiser, and since I did not participate in McTeacher's night last year, my guilt swallowed me whole, like how a ravishing man might eat a McChicken burger in one bite.

I showed up for my shift at 5 o'clock, and the place was packed, like a Styrofoam peanut in a UPS box. But I guess it should have been, considering half the school's students and their parents were there. I just opened the staff door and went behind the counter. Nobody asked who I was. Within five minutes I was yelling out names with the gusto of a circus ringmaster. Here's your fries, here's your shake, here's your single serving of chicken nuggets, your double cheeseburger, and your triple bi-pass ticket. Here's 650 mg of sodium and 274 fat calories. Here's a bunch of mashed cow bits shaped into a patty.

Then who appeared to be the manager walked up to me and said, "do you feel comfortable asking for money?" I eyed him suspiciously and then said, "what do I have to do?" feeling a bit dirty. But to hell with everything, right? I'm working behind the counter of McDonald's for god's sake.

I follow him into the pit. Where the truth is being microwaved and the lies are being shoved into a paper sack with a happy face on it. He explained how I would stand at the window where people paid and ask them if they wanted to make a donation. If they did, I'd write their name on a little flier saying they contributed. Easy enough. I stood next to Bea, the drive through girl wearing the headset. I plastered on a smile and was ready to hit up anybody who drove by.

You never knew who to expect. It might be a cheerful mom type who gladly donated, or maybe it would be a man with five teeth and a long orange beard. Maybe it'd be a muscle man wearing headphones while driving, and you'd have to repeat the question because he couldn't hear you. Perhaps it'd be a blond high school girl, or a skater boy who just wanted his McFlurry. Whoever it was, I asked them all. I mentally kept track in my head of how much I made in direct donations, and after standing at the window for 40 minutes, I raked in about 65 bucks.

While I was standing there, though, waiting for the next car, I started looking around. I read all the little secret notes McDonald's writes to its employees, like how they should never say "Is that all?" but instead should suggest another purchase. When someone asks for a shake, they are supposed to respond "is that a large chocolate shake?" I read about how you shouldn't make the customer wait, and instead you need to put the money on top of the register and give them their change ASAP, and then log in the exchange after they drive up to the next window to pick up their food. I saw nuggets coming out of giant plastic bags, and buns coming out of toasters like clockwork.

When my shift was over, I ran to my car in the opposite parking lot, hit the gas, and didn't look back.

Saturday Binge

Tomorrow I am eating anything I want. Specifically, french toast for breakfast, pizza for lunch, possibly fried rice for dinner, and some Ben and Jerry's fish food ice cream if I can get my hands on some. It's all part of my new diet. No, really.

My roommate Natalie and I are embarking on a journey to "get cut." Haha, the old me would think, because I eat chocolate and bread everyday of the week. As part of our high protein plan, the sugar and white carbs really needed to go. I'll be honest, I basically ate pasta every day for lunch. And not the home made kind, the frozen box kind with high sodium.

I know for sure Natalie is lifting and pressing and squatting more than me at this point, and we are taking a similar but varied approach in eating. Like, she forced me to buy and eat cottage cheese. Okay. So I lie. She totally didn't. She showed me how much protein was in it, and since I had no idea what I was going to be eating for breakfast on this plan of no bagels or cereal, I had to do something. I bought some and made myself eat it. Boy, I tell you, it worked. I ate it every morning for breakfast, and it really curbed my need for a morning snack. I'm not sure if this is because of the high protein, or because I was still feeling nauseous from swallowing the stuff down at such an early hour. I'm trying the same thing again next week, only I'm going to pretend like I like it.

I am semi-mostly following the diet plan of lifestyle design god Tim Ferris, who has a blog which he so cleverly titled The Blog of Tim Ferriss. For the nitty gritty details, you can read his meal plan post. And here is a link to all his body related posts. In short summary, this is what I am forcing myself to eat:

Instead of yogurt and a bagel for breakfast, cottage cheese and a bit of fruit.
Instead of a granola bar for a morning snack (which, btw, had more sugar than a rice crispy treat), some peanut butter.
Instead of yogurt, a fruit cup and a frozen microwaveable dinner compliments of Smart Ones, I am actually packing vegetables in my lunch, eating a lot of black beans and soy products, and mozzarella cheese.
Also, a lot of eggs.

In short, torture, really. No chocolate. No sugar. Blah. No really. Like, it hurts. Like, I stare into my cupboard and think "What the %&#@ am I going to eat?"

But there's this catch. You get to eat whatever you want on one day. It actually is supposed to trick your metabolism or whatever. Who knows if it really works. But I figured I'd try it for a month.

So you know, I'll let you know if I get ripped.

If I had it my way

This is what my work day would look like:

8:30 wake up
9:30 start work in my home office
9:31 check vital e-mails because that's important
9:40 read fan mail e-mail, because of course I'd get loads
9:55 work on drafting a novel
11:00 take a ten minute break to go pee and eat a snack, because a lot of people actually get breaks during their work day, not just a 20 minute lunch
11:10 do some research for whatever it is I'm writing about
11:40 draft some more on novel
12:00 read some of my favorite books for inspiration
1:00 eat lunch and mull over what I just read
1:30 be inspired and write some more
2:30 lay on couch and day dream, because that's where a lot of my ideas come from--making up scenarios in my head
3:30 jot down ideas
3:45 work on a short story, drafting or revising or editing
4:45 work on submissions (cover letters, going to the post office to mail things, inquiry letters, etc)
5:45 eat dinner and do whatever I want
9:00 ish write a blog post

Notice I would still work over 8 hours, because there is a lot to do, even if you're not a teacher.

I really need to work to actualize this dream. Because it sure sounds a whole heck of a lot better than what I did today.

Cuatro Cosas

1) Walking With Dinosaurs was amazing. Awesome lights, cool effects, real-life looking dinos. There were a lot of little kids wearing green foam dino hats, but whatever. My chair wasn't sticky.

2) I went to a Mongolian grill for lunch with relatives on Saturday, got a fortune cookie, and the numbers on the back were 4 8 15 16 23 42. Okay, so actually they were 2 7 13 17 33 49, but what if they had been the Lost numbers? I want to make a bunch of fortune cookies with the Lost numbers and hand them out to people I know who watch the show.

3) March is going to kill me. I'll tell you why sometime later this week when I have a lot of time on my hands, like from 7-9pm Friday. Natalie knows, because we are both conspiring together.

4) I have to work at McDonald's on Thursday. I never dreamed this day would come. If you are anti fast food, you should just donate $100 to my school so I am not forced to participate in McTeacher's night.

You Probably Don't Know Who You Are

I still think about you now, even though you're gone. No, that makes it sound like you're dead. And you're not dead, you're just away, living some other life that I am no longer a part of. I felt guilty, because I hadn't thought about you for a long time, and then I remembered everything.

And the remembering stung. Like when you get lemon juice in your eye, only this time, it was my heart. 

At first, I thought about you everyday. Then I thought about you every week. That drained down to one or two times a month, and then I stopped. I think I stopped because I couldn't take it. All those times I thought of you, I prayed for you. Then that stopped too. I know. I'm lame. But it was hard for me, because I'd keep praying the same thing over and over, and I didn't see you, so I didn't even know if anything was changing.

I wanted everything to change for you. Or go back to the way it used to be, I guess. I wanted to tell you in person that I thought you were brave, that I knew all of this was hard for you. Mostly, I wanted you to talk to me about it. I think that was what was difficult for me. You never wanted to talk to me about it. You never said anything. But I knew. I knew too late, that's all. Because by the time I put all the clues together, by the time I had it figured out, you were gone. Or I was gone, depending on how you looked at things.

But I want you to know that I am thinking about you again. Sometimes I want to be like The Giver, you know? And take all those memories from everybody. But then I know I'd be bad at it, because what I do have is overwhelming. That's why I stopped thinking about you. I should probably read that book again. I read it in seventh grade, and a lot of it didn't make sense. But when did anything ever make sense in seventh grade?

Just like how I prayed for you all those times and never found out if anything ever changed for you, I won't know if you read this or not. In fact, I'm probably counting on "or not." But I guess that's okay. The important thing is that I'm remembering.

The Good Parts

I already told you, read When You Reach Me. I said I wanted to read it all over again so it would make even more sense. I've never re-read a book immediately in my life, usually I wait a few months. Sure, after I've finished I might go back and re-read all the good parts, but not cover to cover. I started re-reading When You Reach Me again. Seriously. Find a library card. 

"I...map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It's all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never," (2).

"I was named after a criminal," (7).

"While she listened, Belle made me a turkey sandwich and gave me about ten chewable vitamin Cs because she though I sounded nasal," (8).

"Nice tights," I snorted. Or tried to snort, anyway. I'm not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it," (10).

And that part about the ring with diamonds all around it? How each diamond is like a moment, and they are all happening at once? It doesn't matter where or when you came from, because when you jump to a moment, you're there. There is no time in the moments, it's the jumping from place to place that is the time. I'm still thinking about all of this. Reminds me of The Time Traveler's Wife. All the moments are happening at once. It's the people that move. It doesn't matter when you leave. It's just whether or not you get there that matters.

Holey Swiss cheese, I love books.

Today during lunch

Somebody started eating an apple, but didn't finish.

 

Just kidding. Not in my class. We like oranges.

On using shovels for purposes other than grave digging

I always seem to be missing some tool, device, or knowledge that would complete my domestic bliss, if I had it. A month ago it was a rolling pin, but we problem solved with a full wine bottle. Two months before that, it was a ladle, which I improvised with a measuring cup. This time, it was a shovel.

I had to bury the dead.

Just kidding. But I am a pro at digging animal graves. Living in the country where my sister and I adopted every possible creature as a pet (which led to their untimely death), taught me how to grieve quickly, dig a hole, slap a cross together with two sticks and some twine, and etch a tombstone with a sharp rock. But I digress.

My mother dearest gave me a rose bush for Valentine's Day. She's the only living organism on the planet (all the others being dead in their animal graves), who loves me, and I had neglected planting her token of love, due to the fact that I had no shovel, and I wasn't about to go all paleolithic and start clawing at the earth with my hands.

The day she brought it by (February 12th), I had planned on asking my sister or Handy Dan (the neighbor) if I could borrow a shovel. It was a long weekend due to President's Day, and I had all intentions of burying the thing, er, I mean planting, on Monday. It was even a decent day. The thing was, I forgot that my sister would be at work, and I had neglected to pick up the shovel beforehand.

All this to say the rose stalk and roots (because it's not a bush yet) sat on my back patio for a week. My mother warned me when she gave it to me that it would die if I didn't plant it immediately. But sometimes your brain or your schedule doesn't work out, so immediately ends up being 8 days later.

It was a gorgeous day today, and I had my sights set high. I would weed my bark chips (because there's not enough there to call it a flower bed), pick up the pine branches that had fallen, and plant those rose roots.

I dialed my sister to see if she was awake yet. No answer, but she did finally change her voice mail greeting to say her new last name. And she took off that liar part about how she'd call you back. I resolved to start on the weeding and branch picking-up, and then call again when I was done.

An hour and brownie break later, I called again. Then I just drove over there, because she didn't answer, and I figured she must be outside. Upon arrival, I discovered no one was home. Both her and my fake brother's vehicles were gone. I went home and maybe checked Facebook or watched trashy MTV shows or something. I can't quite remember. Actually, I was probably reading C.S. Lewis.

Finally, I called my fake brother and he told me that he was at his grandma's house and that Jess, my real sister was at a business workshop. I said "thanks for nothing, you marrying into the family has really helped me a lot." But then my sister called me a half an hour later while on a break, and told me where the shovel was, and how it wasn't locked up, it was just being guarded by three Rottweiler dogs, collectively weighing 289 pounds.

After going to her house again (btw, she lives two blocks from me), I sidled up to the six foot cedar fence. I heard barking. "Hi Thor," I said. "It's just me. Your Aunt Jo Jo." I could hear him sniffing. I struggled with the latch and then opened the gate. His big scar face head made me think for a second that I was in the ER with mutilated patients. Jess told me he had gotten in a fight with his brood, the young and viable Squishy, but I had no idea it was this bad. One of his eyes had practically been ripped out and then stitched back in, and hair was missing from behind his ears. I won't get into the details of how the fight happened, but just know that Squishy weighs 118 pounds, which is more than me, if you really want to know. He's a force to fear.

So I'm shoving Scar Face out of my privates, trying to walk to the dog kennel, to get the shovel that is supposed to be near it. Thor's really excited, because he's had no friends for a week, since he was in rehab. I see the other two dogs are locked in the kennel. I spy the shovel, grab it, and manage to sneak out while Thor is distracted chasing a butterfly or something. Or maybe he was taking a poo, I don't know, I didn't look back.

I locked the gate, put the shovel in my car, and drove home to plant my rose bush (which remember is really some roots and a stalk at this point). Only it wasn't actually that easy. There are a lot of extra steps you have to take, but I'll spare you the details. This isn't the home and garden channel.

Read This

I understand now why When You Reach Me won this year's Newbery Award. I read the whole thing in two days. From page one you are intrigued, trying to solve this mystery. It's not a mystery book, but the narrator of the story isn't telling you something, so it doesn't make sense, and you keep reading to figure out what it is that the narrator knows but isn't telling you yet.

The whole book is good, but then at the very end it all makes sense. And as soon as you're done reading, you realize you need to read it again, because when you do you will look at everything differently, now that you know.

It was easier to follow than The Time Traveler's Wife, but still makes your head hurt a little bit.

At this time 15 years ago

This is what I was thinking. Another great treasure from The Files of...

Commentary:


Shaggy is my stuffed bear. I used to celebrate her birthday and throw her parties, too. 

I wonder how much allowance I got. It was probably 50 cents. Notice my budding Spanish skills. 

Yes, my family would often dress up in costumes before going to Pizza Hut. And it was always great! Can I point out that mysterious Y. after the word letter? What does that mean?


Man, was I pissed I never got that Valentine! My sister Jess and I were freaky for Legos. We played with them during the winter months when it was too wet and cold to be outside.

I'm also really glad that I am mentioning horse's butts here. Patches was the neighbor horse. She probably was catching some disease. Some white butt disease. Good thing I noted it. 

Okay, so that whole Indian thing at Pizza Hut. I'll tell you what really happened. We used to do Book It! where you read to earn pizza. We were supposed to come to the group dressed as the character of our latest book. Apparently mine was Pocahontas or something. 

And that was what was happening 15 years ago, mid-nineties.