This is a ridiculous and embarrassing problem.

My current roommate is my mom (and for the record, this is not like last time when I moved in to her place; we actually got a place together). When I lived with her before, it was horrible because my mom is a hoarder and all her crap was everywhere. And she would get mad at me for being too loud at night and freak out when I had people over without telling her (even though I did tell her but she forgot... but I digress).

This time, she has to put up with my art and my fruit-bowl-made-of-chopsticks, and maybe she thinks this is payback time because I find myself nagging her to be quiet after 10 p.m., and clean up your mess, and no more friends over until you finish your chores. You keep on like this, Mom, and you'll be grounded till you're sixty-five.

I could use a few of those NOPE cards, though.

I played this game Exploding Kittens over the holidays, and despite its promising exterior ("A Card Game For People Who Are Into Kittens And Explosions And Laser Beams And Sometimes Goats"), I unfortunately cannot recommend.

The whole point of the game is to avoid death by kitten explosion. To do this, one must play nonsensical cards (Don A Portable Cheetah Butt, Take Your Friends Beard-Sailing On Your Beard Boat, etc.) that allow one to draw more cards, reverse cards, shuffle cards, peek at cards, decline further cardplay, or if you're lucky, die.

If I wanted to be assaulted by constant chaos, take a bunch of actions that only keep me going around in circles, and be in survival mode all the while, I could just keep on with my actual life. I don't need a game to rub it in.

Happy new year!

Ask Me About My Colon

I'm doing some Christmas shopping and can't find what I'm looking for, so I select a Squatty Potty instead and unashamedly carry it around the store. What do I care? It's not like someone's going to stop me and be all, "What's that?"

So then of course some guy stops me and asks, "What's that?" I matter-of-factly tell him it's a Squatty Potty. It's supposed to be good for digestion. "Does it work?" Are we really having this conversation, stranger? I pretend like I'm not familiar with the product and tell him my friend says it's life-changing, which she does. We get into a ridiculously in-depth conversation about how it straightens out the colon to achieve the desired results. I get the sense he wants to continue the conversation, but I am heading to the register. Please let this not be a new pick-up strategy.

The Bed Bath & Beyond self-serve gift wrap station is all out of big bags, so I ingeniously put two square boxes together to make the most giant box. It takes forever to assemble this and then cover it in yards of paper, but in the end it is a most glorious presentation! The staff probably think I'm making a big show of gift-wrapping to hide that I really bought it for myself.

Then I remember that I walked a mile to the store, so I walk home carrying a massive package on my head and on my side and on my other side, and when I get home my arms are so sore I almost can't pick up a glass of water (that I quickly down after all the exercise I just did).

See how my mutant box dwarfs the other gifts, and verily the tree itself!

Merry Christmas.

Eligible Bachelors Click Here For Free Gift!

Actual sentence said to me at Thanksgiving: "Do you want to be included in the couples' gift exchange?" Why... am I a couple now? Oh no, that's right, I'm the only one of the six siblings not part of a couple. Of course I said yes, because otherwise on Christmas I will have fewer significant others and fewer presents than everyone else.

So now I have fewer than thirty days to get a boyfriend and proceed to convince him that it's not too soon to meet my family. This should be a piece of cake.

On the other hand, if I participate in the couples' gift exchange as a single, I don't have to share my present... win-win.

Severe sleep deprivation + PMS = just stay in a padded room

Being sleep-deprived is like being drunk and hungover at the same time. I am probably not okay to drive and I have a terrible headache. Then add PMS into the mix and I am really a danger to myself and society.

Why is sleep so hard...

It's kind of hard to concentrate after getting shot to death.

My workplace's idea of a scary Halloween celebration was to have a "violent actor" training while in costume. I decided against strapping a weapon to my pirate thigh on this particular day.

This was no earthquake drill -- we spent almost two and a half hours on this training. First we listened to a presentation, during which we were asked how we might become aware of the presence of an active shooter. Gunshots, people screaming, people running, people bleeding, etc. Duh. Then we watched a video of a dramatized mass shooting (during which some colleagues were already crying), and then we tried to survive our own drill. Just go back to work as usual. In about ten to fifteen minutes, someone's going to come to kill you. Good luck. It's just like a haunted corn maze except that you're trying to do mail merge while waiting for psychos.

Of course no one could focus after that, so instead we discussed our options. Should we run? Do we hide? Would scissors make an effective weapon?

When the alarm went off, though, we had seconds to shut the blinds (because somehow that took higher priority than locking or at least shutting the door that was propped open), but before I could take a single step -- BANG, BANG, BANG BANG BANG (actually a guy yelling "BANG") -- my whole office was eliminated. I thought back to that dumb question the officer asked us and added one more answer: You might become aware of an active shooter when you see him in the doorway and your colleague next to you just got shot and the gun is pointed at you. I think I was casualty number three out of forty. And in real life the alarm would not even have sounded yet because we would have been the reason for the alarm. You never think you're going to be first.

We had a debriefing and then I was still supposed to work another hour. Right.

I found the training useful for people who are not first, and I can see why they left the fourth possibility -- dying -- out of the training. That's what we're trying to avoid. But if you're first...goodbye. It just seemed absurd, not only because of the costumes, but because we even have to do this at all. It's likely enough that someone's going to randomly kill us that we need to do something about it, so let's practice running and hiding and fighting. (And dying.) And then let's keep teaching people English as a second language and doing mail merge to improve their lives. Not that I have a better solution.

Oh hello crazed shooter, just a moment while I refer to my pocket guide...

I know I've said this before, but... I don't think I get paid enough.

Next they're going to kick us out for taking showers.

Sorry I disappeared for so long, but I didn't have internet for awhile after moving. Anyway, the new place is great... in itself. It became immediately evident, however, that the landlords are completely incompetent scumbags. Ever since we moved in, we have had one problem after another. Pretty much everything that can leak, is, and multiple attempts at "fixing" them have failed.

Now we come home to find this on our door:

OK, this wasn't on our door. The version minus the stickers was on our door.

These fools gave us their last key to their own property, consequently did not have access to their own property as required by law, and are proceeding to try to evict us for their own mistake.

I'm still looking for an appropriately ridiculous frame before I display this on the wall in a prominent location for the next time the "maintenance" people come over. They should just rent out our guest bedroom since they're here practically every day anyway.

I'm just waiting for the ceiling to cave in from our bathtub leak that they keep "fixing" and then get charged for it.

The cherry on top of this absurdity is that before we moved in, they changed our doorknob from one that locks from the inside to one that only locks from outside so that we wouldn't lock ourselves out and come running to them for a key. HAHAHAHAHAHA