Everybody Have a Taquito

Summer's already more than half over, guys. This sucks. 

This sucks because school is starting soon and school usually equals work for me. Not, like, a lot of work because I am a champ at doing as little work as possible. 

But presumably some amount of work will need to be done in order to obtain my stupid college degree. Ugh, effort. Effort is the worst. 

But, yeah. Summer. I have had various adventures so far, each as wacky as the last. 

(I will level with you. That is a lie. There has been minimal wackiness. Most of my adventures have involved me being by myself and watching a lot of cartoons. Like...my little brother and I watched every episode of Ninjago. The fact that he was there makes it a tiny bit better, maybe, but I was legitimately invested in it after a while. I'd give it three out of five ninja stars. Watch it if you have a small child and are not allowed to play video games with the small child in the room because of "blood" and "violence" and "no, Danielle. Just no." Anyway.) 

A little while ago, my sisters and I had a girls day for my little sisters sixteenth birthday party. Unfortunately, this involved pedicures. I really really really do not like it when people touch my feet. Like, I'm weird about it. Or weirder than usual, I guess. It's like going to the dentist but for feet. They even have the same lil drill and stuff.

So, when I was there, instead of getting a pedicure and biting back screams of horror the whole time, I spent the whole time chilling in the corner. Like a boss. A really awkward and uncomfortable boss. Yeah.

Anyway. My last year of school is coming up. The fact that I have no life plans after that is probably kind of concerning. Like, I'm legitimately concerned. I'm being serious about this. I am seriously worried about the lack of plans I have after college.

Am I going to do anything to combat this problem? Probably not. My usual problem solving philosophy is to ignore things until they go away. Sometimes it works, sometimes my water gets shut off. So, you know, pros and cons.

Speaking of problems, my parents had a talk with me about my drinking problem the other day. And by drinking problem, I mean my problem with drinking way way way way too much apple juice. 

I just really like it okay? I can stop any time I want. I don't have a problem, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. 

Yeah. Between this and all of the cartoons, I think that I might actually be five years old. 

But, legit, like the only place's I've driven myself anywhere this summer were various grocery stores to get juice and literally nothing else. And yes, before you ask, it was necessary to go to different stores every time. Do you know what happens to people who become "regulars" at grocery stores? You don't?

Well...neither do I. But I don't want to find out! 

I know how working at boring, minimum wage jobs is. It involves a lot of standing, staring and judging people. There is so much judging at grocery stores. So much. And I don't want to be that weird girl who buys gallons of apple juice. That girl is going to die alone in a house full of cats who will eat her corpse. 

I don't even like cats that much.

Urgh. My life, you guys. My life. 

Oh, adding to the things that make me a literal five year old, I have been stupid obsessed with laser tag lately. I have like no money and I have been spending all of that no money on laser tag. 

I REALLY LIKE IT YOU GUYS. 

It's like a video game but in real life. I'm actually reasonably good at it. I mean, most of the people that I'm shooting are in elementary school, but they're littler than me so they're smaller targets! They have the advantage! I am almost positive that the average elementary schooler is smaller than me. 

They also play a lot more Call of Duty than me if the way they were swearing was an indication. Also, they called me a n00b like three times (the l33tsp34k was implied). 

Also, they were super mean. I told off one of my friends for, like, relentlessly attacking this little guy. "Don't shoot five year olds!" Was my precise phrasing. I remember this because after I said it, the kid I was talking about turned around with this completely disgusted look on his eyes and shouted, "I'm seven and a half!" with so much disgust in his voice that I was surprised I didn't spontaneously combust under the sheer force of his hatred. 

Then he called me a bitch. 

So I shot him. 

I don't like that word, kid, unless I am the one using it. 

But, yeah, other than being called mean names by seven and a half year olds, laser tag has been a huge success. Five out of five. Would recommend. 

Hmmmm. 

Well, that's pretty much all I got for y'all right now. I could go on, of course. I could always go on. I have a problem with over-sharing and also I am pretty sure I have some form of attention-deficit-ness that makes long, unconnected rambles a thing that I am very excellent at. 

But, I figure you have loved ones or at least taquitos to get back to. 

But, real fast, while we're on the subject of taquitos, does anyone want a box of 57, wait, 52 frozen taquitos? I meant to buy a box of twelve and I got a box of 57 instead. Who even needs that many taquitos? I certainly do not. I mean, I've had them since, like, February and I've eaten five of them. 

I'd have a taquito party or something, but that would involve effort and we all know how I feel about effort! 

I like taquitos more than effort. And I freaking hate taquitios. So, so, so much. 

I should go. I'm getting unreasonably angry about the money I wasted buying that many stupid taquitos. I'm probs going to go shake my fist at the sky and shout "TAAAAAAAAQUUUUUIIIITOOOOOOOS!" In a dramatic fashion. 

Shut up, it is totally justified. 

Laters. 

Bad Choices are the Best Choies

Guys, I finally understand why people under twenty-one are not allowed to do fun things like drink and gamble.

 I kind of think that adults over twenty-one should not be allowed to do these things either, if I am being entirely honest. 

Let me elaborate. This weekend, I made a lot of bad choices. 

So many that I have decided to declare last Friday night as Danielle's Night of Really Bad Choices! (Note: there is capitalization involved because the choices were Really Bad and I felt like the extra emphasis was necessary.) 

But, no. It was just a night of really bad financial/life choices all around. First, my sister and I went out to expensive dinner and my wallet was sad about it. My stomach was happy because it was steak and I love steak, but that is another matter entirely.

 I also had several fruity girly drinks with dinner because I am an adult and I can drink fruity girly drinks without shame. They were really expensive and did not actually contain all the much alcohol. After like four appletinis (best drink, by the way) and a strawberry margarita, I was slightly buzzed, like, at best. 

I have no excuse for the fact that we went to the casino afterwards. Like, no excuse at all. But, yes, my sister and I went to the casino and I lost all of the money I had in my wallet. 

It wouldn't have been so bad if I would have lost it all, like, straight off the bat. But there was a point where I was legitimately doing a good job and winning money! I started off the night with thirty bucks.

 When you're a poor college student that is actually a lot of money. That is half of a power bill right there. Or a third of a grocery bill, minus the name-brand fruit juice. 

I lost ten of it real quick. There's a machine called the Zodiac Sisters and let me tell you, they are some fickle bitches. I've been to the casino three or four times and half of those times the Zodiac Sisters are like falling over each other to give me all of the money. My dad and I won a hundred bucks one time. It was great. I bought a pizza. 

But, no, other times they are just coldhearted and terrible fake people who take my ten dollars and give me nothing back. That's what happened this weekend. All of my money...poof! Gone! It was like magic,  but not the good kind. Dark magic. Evil magic. 

So, yeah. Ten dollars all gone. Three and a half bottles of name-brand crangrape juice. It was a dark ten minutes for me. 

But, once I got over that and stopped wailing in despair, my sister and I decided to play blackjack. Blackjack is a game that I am terrible at. I panic and do incredibly stupid shit like hit on an 18 or stand on a 12. 

But, no, my sister is super helpful and will usually stand next to me and tell me things like, "no Danielle that's stupid don't do that why are you making these choices no do you hate having money no no stop." So it works out. But, there were only two seats left and they were far away from each other so I had to rely on my own horrible decision making skills for once. 

I didn't lose all of my money right away. I started with twenty, got up to fifty and then refused to stop playing until I was back to zero. 

I know. 

I know. 

I know. 

I am not a functional adult and I do not make good choices. I've got that. I am crystal clear on that fact. So, yes. I left the casino minus thirty bucks which, when you make minimum wage like I do, is equal to about a whole shift of making stir fry. 

But, to celebrate our crushing and complete defeat, my sister and I went and got cigars flavored like tropical fruit. They were terrible, made me gag and I smoked mine anyway dammit. I am an adult I am so allowed to smoke cigars flavored like tropical fruit if I want to. 

After that, we almost got tattoos, wimped out on getting tattoos, went back to my apartment, watched mediocre stand-up comedians on netflix (none of them were women because women are terrible at stand-up) and ate lots of cookie dough ice cream. 

Bad choices! All of the things we did were bad choices! 

It was fun, though. 

But, yeah, the next day the people with the apartment above me made some bad choices of their own. And by the people above me, I actually mean the water-heater above me. It broke, leaked and ruined my bathroom ceiling. I woke up, went in to get a shower and saw hunks of drywall hanging down like flakes of skin hanging off of a gigantic, shedding lizard. 

I don't know.

It was unpleasant, water was still leaking down and I got hit in the head with a piece of ceiling. I called my landlord to fix it, as one does, and the maintenance guy came over, which was good of him. What wasn't good of him was how he went upstairs, stopped the leaking and then just kind of skedaddled without even kind of fixing my ceiling. 

I had to call back later and then they told me that I should be able to handle the whole "slowly crumbling bathroom ceiling" business on my own. Um, no, landlord people. That is not a thing I can do on my own. I do not have a husband or a boyfriend or even a close brofriend who I can force to do it for me. 

Even if I would have decided to date that midget little person dude, this would still be an issue. He couldn't have reached the ceiling. I mean, on a scale of one to Colorado, it is not that high, but still. That midget dude was really short. 

But, no, I can get by on my own usually. 

I can do a lot of things that most girls would have their male significant others do. I fixed a bottle-opener-shaped hole in my wall. I know how to replace fuses. I can grill burgers like a champ. I know how to fly-fish for gods sake, but I cannot fix my holey bathroom ceiling by myself, landlord. 

I was very whiny and persistent and they said he'd come back on Monday. I'm pretty sure they did that to make me stop calling them. The problem was that this was on Saturday. I didn't get to use the shower for like two days. It was horrible and I hated it. 

Anyway, my ceiling is fixed now thanks to my maintenance guy. I gave him a fist bump and told him thanks. I'm pretty sure I weirded him out. 

Whatever. 

Right now, I'm kind of chilling out in the library and avoiding thinking about work. I do not want to go to work. Do not want. 

See, I usually enjoy my job. Making stir fry is the bees knees or some other saying that means cool, but is more relevant socially. Fly? Swag? YOLO?

I don't know. 

But, no, whenever the weather is good, people decide to make the trek out to Elliot, the dining hall where I work. And the weather is really good today, guys. 

Work is going to suck, hardcore. It sucked yesterday too. I worked in the dishroom, so it was already less fun than usual. But we had so many people. Usually, we have like two-hundred and some-odd customers. That's a usual night for us. Last night we had 380, which is just insane. We haven't had that much since thanksgiving dinner last semester. 

I saw dishes in my dreams last night, guys. I'm pretty sure there is still nacho cheese lodged underneath my fingernails. 

Working in dining is so very glamorous. 

Later. 

Juice, Polygamy, Screenplays and Appletinis

Sup.

It's a Thursday. It's cold outside.

So, you know, the usual things are happening. Bad weather, day that ends in y...check marks all around.

But, I turned 21 this week. So that is an exciting thing that happened. I drank some appletinis and bought some beer even though I really hate beer. So...I have that now. I'm not going to drink it, because it is twelve kinds of nasty, but I have it. And I am legally allowed to have it.

So suck on that, everyone younger than me. I might be likely to die sooner than you, but I have beer! Legally!

Right now I'm awkwardly lingering in a Starbucks trying to kill the forty minutes or so I have between classes and work. I figured it was write a blog or work on a screenplay, so...

Oh, you think I don't have a screenplay?

You're right. I don't have a screenplay. I have, like, a dozen of them.

But anyway, I wrote a pretty fabulous paper on polygamy the other day. And by pretty fabulous, I mean that halfway through, it turned into a self-righteous rant about how it was Perfectly Fine to be single and about how other people shouldn't force their life choices on me, oh my god Mom get off my case.

Yeah...

I probably should have rewritten it, but I didn't start it until two in the morning the night before. So really I'm just lucky I wrote anything at all. It was a bit of of a mess though, I'm not gonna lie. I think at one point I combined, like, three different sociologists into one mega-sociologist.

It worked for the Power Rangers. Why not sociologists?

I'll let you know about my grade. I wonder if it's possible to give someone a negative score for an assignment.

Anyway...time for a story.

Before I tell this story, vosotros need to understand something. I have a weirdly intense, probably majorly unhealthy, love of fruit juice. Two particular types, apple and cran-grape, stand above the rest. If I don't have a bottle of each in my fridge, my mental state is less than ideal.

I honestly think I might be a little bit cripplingly dependent on cran-grape and apple juice. They are literally the only items on my grocery list that I buy name-brand. I have money in my monthly budget set aside for juice-items.

My first alcoholic beverage was an appletini because of the possibility it might taste like apple juice.

But back to my story!

So, I turned 21 Tuesday. I had a bottle of wine that I got from my parents for my birthday and I decided that I was going to open that sucker and have a glass. I'm 21, dammit. I do what I want.

Because I am a liquor novice, me and the bottle opener got into a bit of a tussle. And by bit of a tussle, I mean I threw it at my wall and now I have a hole in my wall shaped like a bottle opener. So I gave up on the bottle opener and used a knife to cut the cork in half like a really lame ninja or something. Unfortunately, that made the cork fall into the bottle.

So now I had a bottle of wine with bits of cork floating in it. It was really, really frustrating. I laid down on my kitchen floor for a while and my cat Commander Shepurred started chewing on my toes. I needed a place to put my stupid wine. And I had ruined the stupid cork.

But...what was that? And empty apple juice container in my fridge? What luck!

And it was lucky. Until this morning when I wanted a drink of apple juice. The wine was vaguely apple juice colored and I was tired enough that it passed. So I just took a big drink of of it. Of wine. That I thought was apple juice.

It was literally the worst thing that has very happened to anyone ever. I spit wine all over my kitchen.

I had to eat, like, half a dozen waffles to make myself feel better.

Anyway, in other news, the ladies at work have started to offer me rides home. Instead of being a normal human and saying something like "oh, no thanks," or, I don't know, accepting the rides so I don't have to walk a mile and a half to get home, I felt the need to explain why I hate accepting rides from other people and that my Danielle-brand of craziness that makes me unwilling, or let's beyond honest, actually physically unable to accept help from other people.

I just really hate depending on other people for things. For anything at all. A lot of me wants to get a medical degree so I'll never have to ask a doctor for help. I hate ordering things in the mail because it means depending on another person to deliver the things to me. I hate asking my landlord to fix things because it means admitting that I can't fix the things by myself.

I have problems.

Problems that require me to go now and not twenty minutes from now because I am too stubborn to take the bus.

The snow awaits.