Ahmusings

The 98% humorous musings of M. Lizabeth Currain

Tag: college

August 16, 2011

Craft Supplies

I started going through some of my junk. Mainly I’m trying to get rid of a lot of stuff, so I have less to move out of my apartment. Some stuff is easy to get rid of: clothes that don’t fit, shoes you never wear, books you finished reading and didn’t really like, scraps of paper, etc. I find the most difficult thing for me to part with is crafting supplies. I’m talking crafting supplies that I have accumulated since college–we’re talking about six years worth of stuff.

A lot of it is left over fashion design stuff, from when I thought that was what I was going to be doing with my life. Ha! If I knew then, how shitty fashion jobs were, I would definitely have rethought that whole, “I’ll major in fashion design” on a whim thing. I have a lot of left over fabric and to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll ever be doing anything with it. I’d like to, but I was never super talented at the whole wearable fashion design thing. I liked working with felt, embroidery floss, and puffy paint. Basically everything I made looked like a 10 year old girl’s craft project from the early 90s. Maybe if I had stuck with that schtick, I could have been the second coming of Lisa Frank.

 

I didn’t know fine art could induce seizures.

 

Going through my craft supply tub is like sifting through shattered dreams! If I’m not careful I am going to end up like on of those crazy hoarders that attaches a memory to the tiniest button. At least I didn’t find any dead cats in my stuff. That would have been especially troubling since I have never owned any cats.

It’s kind of interesting going through old things like that, it’s sort of a “what I used to be interested in” time capsule. At one point I was super into buttons and trims apparently. Zippers, ribbon, you name it, I came across it tonight. Also, puffy paint! I’m keeping that stuff until it dries up permanently. I’m afraid at some point they are going to stop making it and then what will I paint with? I was also very into novelty fabric–stuff with space ships and robots. Don’t ask. I know the reason, but just don’t ask. There was a period of time where I was drawing stick figure comics. Some of them were quite funny. If I had a way to put them on here I would. Although, they might only make sense to me and a few other people–they were tailored to a very certain crowd. My senior year, I got into screen printing. Finally tossed two of the three stencils I made away. I get really into things and then I lose interest, I guess. Jack of all trades, master of none type of thing maybe.

Throwing away stuff I made is especially hard, even if it’s ugly. It’s like I forget about it until I see it and then I have to think about whether or not to keep it. Some of the stuff I haven’t even set eyes on since I last moved two years ago. Sometimes I think that if I were to pay someone to come in and throw stuff away, I wouldn’t even miss half the stuff that got tossed out. Or maybe I would. It’s hard to say…and that’s why it’s so hard to throw stuff away! I may miss it! I may need that 2″ scrap of brown felt for something!

Here’s a photo that I took of some Magna Tac glue that I forgot I had left out. I think this perfectly sums up how I feel about my crafting stuff. If you forget about it, it just builds up and then explodes everywhere, rendering it useless.

 

Goodbye my friend.

 

And can I just say, that I love the fact that my blog comes up when people search “which days do people go grocery shopping in new york?” To that person, I say…EVERY GOD DAMN DAY.

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November 12, 2008

Fiddlesticks

First off, I must apologize for my absence, but sometimes, a girl has other plans. Last Tuesday, I saw Barack Obama kick John McCain’s ass in the election. It was very emotional and had me in tears that night and the next morning when I watched his speech again. Then I also watched Maya Angelou be interviewed and was in tears again. However, why do I feel like Harry was doing his best impression of Will Ferrell doing an impression of James Lipton? I think it was a very emotional time for the whole country and I just can’t believe the election is finally over and the outcome is in favor of all American’s and not those who don’t have humanity’s best interests in mind. I was glad to be in the company of like minded people–even if there were some awkward moments that ensued; perhaps at a later date I will share them with you, when we know each other a little bit better. Then over the weekend, I was reunited with my friend Sara from college. It was like old times; we hardly missed a beat. We attended two concerts–one being great. Fran Healy from Travis did a solo performance for the organization that I work for and it was awesome. The other, Creaky Boards, was good, but I think we both could have done without their obnoxious fan base the consisted of bad hair and stupid hats (see, also).

Before I go on, I must also say, that wordpress provides blog stats, where you are able to see how many people visit a day, how they are finding you, etc. The most traffic this blog gets is from people searching the interwebs for Jocelyn Wildenstein. The woman has not lost it. She is as popular as ever. It’s kind of amazing that she still has that sort of draw. In the past two days, 16 people have visited this humble blog via searching for Jocelyn. It’s mind boggling. Perhaps they are people who are given the name by their plastic surgeons and told to “Google” her, in order to persuade them to lay off the ol’ nip/tuck. She is something to marvel at–the idea that this woman has become part of our lexicon to describe or be a portrait of plastic surgery gone wrong, is an accomplishment all on it’s own. It doesn’t matter what this woman did or is doing, all people care about is how scary her face is and if it will get any worse.

On to Fiddlesticks. Fiddlesticks is this terrible restaurant that ate at in Greenwich Village a long while ago, but has remained with me for sometime. Let me tell you why. It was a spring afternoon, and I was with my pal Victor. We had been walking around for a while, and decided it was time to get lunch. We happened upon Fiddlesticks and decided, since they had lunch specials, we would just settle and eat there, instead of trekking onwards in search of perhaps, better food. Victor was wise and went with a turkey burger; I decided to be adventurous and order Penne ala vodka from an Irish Pub. UNWISE.

After lunch, we ventured on, walking the streets of SoHo, making fun of people, looking at things we couldn’t afford. I started getting an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach, and as the minutes ticked on, that uncomfortable feeling began making it’s way through my lower GI. I had this bad feeling. I told Victor that we needed to find a bathroom. Unfortunately, we were in SoHo, and nary is a bathroom to be found, because those rich folk do not have bowels. The feeling kept getting worse. Plus, it was a very sunny and warm day, which was adding to my pain. Luckily, Victor, at the time lived in the West Village. He suggested that we go to his apartment and I could use his bathroom. I would have jumped at the chance if this hadn’t of been the first visit I was making to his apartment. What an awful way to introduce yourself into someone’s home space. But I had no choice, because this feeling was only getting worse, and one wrong step or relaxation of a muscle could have ended what has turned out to be, a hilarious friendship.

Imagine a speed walker–because that is what I looked like walking through SoHo to the West Village. Luckily, Victor was a good sport through this seemingly long walk, because he has a sensitive stomach and pretty much anything that he eats upsets his stomach. This walk was probably the longest of my life. People kept getting in my way and the sun kept getting hotter; it was terrible. When we finally got to his apartment, I had to walk up 5 flights of stairs. Five flights is bad enough when aren’t about to crap your pants, but it’s even worse when you are clenching every muscle that you have. Lets just say, when the moment finally came, it was something like this.

I know this is all very graphic and some might consider it an over share, but I am only sharing because I know everyone has been in this situation at least once. I am just trying to help take some of the shame out of it. I personally hate using public restrooms for such business, but sometimes you have no choice and from the times that I have been in Barnes and Noble in Union Square, I know a lot of other people feel the same way. Sometimes, it just happens. I worked with a woman that actually crapped her pants on the train. So, you know, it could always be worse.

Out of this horrible incident came the most useful term to describe such a situation: fiddlesticks. Now, whenever you eat something, and you get that feeling in your bowels, just say that you are having a fiddlesticks moment; if your friend is any sort of friend at all, they will totally help you find the nearest bathroom.

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October 28, 2008

Post Office

I had a delightful weekend, jam-packed with excitement: A friend’s apartment warming party–there was a drunk foreigner and a transgen; doesn’t get more warm than that! As a small side note, I have not yet revealed to all you readers how much I love the transgen community. I have a special name for them, but that will be an entirely separate post sometime in the near future. However, this particular Transgen, reminded me a little bit of James St. James, if James St. James had an ongoing meth addiction. Then on Saturday my old roomie from college came down for a visit. Unfortunately the weather was completely disastrous, which killed some of the fun. Although, we did go to Shake Shack (also). Let me tell you. I walk past this place pretty much every day. In the summer, that line was kickin’, and people would be lined up practically around the park at like 1pm–now I know why. I’ve been hearing people rave about this place and now I can rave about it too. I had the ‘Shroom Burger which is a portobello mushroom that is jam packed with muenster (my fav!) and cheddar cheeses…and…wait for it….FRIED TO PERFECTION! It was delicious. Try it. If you love cheese half as much as I do, you won’t be disappointed. Finally on Sunday, after work, my associate (power adjectives to describe coworkers is all the rage) and I, retreated to the Crocodile Lounge near Union Square. You get a free personal pizza with every drink you order. After that we went to the Donut Pub. The old Polish man running the joint agreed with me that deciding whether or not to buy a house is easier than choosing a donut. So that was my weekend–I just wanted to bring everyone up to speed. I was not neglecting you.

So the post office. Does anyone remember back in the late-80’s early-90’s when the term “Going Postal” was pretty much the funniest thing you could say besides, “I’m gonna go medieval on your ass!” Well, every time I go into the post office, I can understand why they were disgruntled. Frankly, working in customer service has made me somewhat empathetic to those who harbor feelings of going postal. Customers are lame! Coworkers can be annoying! Management is stupid! It can be stressful. It’s a challenge to not throw a pen at a customer’s face when ask you to double bag a used t-shirt, because they have to go on the subway. What does that have to do with anything?! These people are cray-cray.

There is a post office next to where I work, so occasionally, I will pop in there to buy a stamp to mail my rent, or mail my brother’s birthday gift 3 months late. Now that they have that automated shipping thing, it really cuts down on time spent in the post office, unless you are behind someone that is technologically challenged. I can say, that speaking from my personal experience in this post office, it is usually the customers who are causing the delays. It is almost as if they have never mailed anything before and they don’t know how the post office works. It takes them almost 10 minutes to figure out how to mail something Priority. As I have learned, or maybe I am only speaking for myself on this, the teller, the cashier, the postal worker, etc., is only as fast as their slowest customer. So if I am at the cash register and am ringing up some confused old biddy, and have a line of people, they are just going to have to wait while she digs around in her purse for exact change. Short of snatching the purse from her and getting the change myself, there is nothing I can do.

Since I work next to the post office, a lot of the postal workers come into the store on their break. There is this really nice lady that I see pretty much every day, and she said that if there was ever a line, and I had to mail something, just to come to her, because she knows how it is trying to run an errand on your break. So today, I finally scrounged up the change to mail my absentee ballot (Obama/Biden, in case you were wondering). However, as I carefully placed that $.42 stamp on that over sized envelope, I began to have doubts that that was going to be enough postage to carry my vote all the way to Alaska where it would (hopefully) be counted. The line was long, and I had somewhere to be, and it was just a quick question, I figured I would ask and then go carefully place another stamp on the envelope and be on my way. So I stood next to the long line of people, trying to make eye-contact with my postal lady, which I did, and she waved me over as her previous customer was leaving. The best thing that has ever happened to me in a post office is as follows:

Me: I just have a quick question, is this enough postage? I just want to make sure my vote gets there!

Fav Postal Lady: Oh no! It’s too big, let me check for you. (she goes to weigh my ballot to see how much more postage I need)

Cray-Cray Line Lady: Aren’t we all waiting in line?! (I didn’t turn around, because I know better than to make eye-contact with the cray-crays.)

FPL: Excuse me? (Read that as sassily as you can)

CCLL: I said aren’t we all waiting in line?

FPL: (Sassily) Yes. And you will be called. Okay, it need’s another $.41.

Me: (Handing her my change) Thank you so much! (I start to walk away)

FPL: Don’t forget your receipt, baby

Me: Thanks! See you Wednesday probably! (running away from angry line members)

I got special treatment at the post office. I got to the jump the queue! I made other people angry by feeling entitled to go directly to my favorite postal lady. My favorite postal lady encouraged it and hates the other customers because they don’t understand the way that I can understand.

I am an elitest east coaster, who jumped the line at the post office–a real american institution–to send my ballot back home to elect Obama! I doubt what those people were mailing was as important as that.

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