I’m Pretty Sure that Lane Bryant Doesn’t Realize Their Customer Base Is Curvy Women…

So ever since I can remember, I have had one hell of a time buying clothing.  I’ve always been heavy, and I’ve come to terms that my thighs are always going to touch, my ass is never going to properly fit into jeans, and flares will always fit like skinny jeans.  I have always been able to find a way to make this work until the entire skinny jean faze came through and refused to fucking go away.

 

Please keep in mind, I have nothing against skinny jeans.  They’re great for skinny people.  But if you’re not skinny, or say, not a stick, they don’t look good.  For me, my legs are huge and they have no shape.  My mom would always tell me my legs looked like sausages, and I can’t refute it because it’s true. 

So earlier this evening, I decided to go to the Louisiana Boardwalk, which is an outdoor mall on the Red River that has every possible store I could ever ask for.  And they’re all outlet stores so they’re really cheap too, which I love.  So I went into Lane Bryant to get some much needed articles of clothing, only to find that everything in the store was half off.

This never happens.

So I’m running through the store frantically looking for pants.  All that comes to mind is “If I can find two pairs of jeans, I’m good for the next six months.”

So I’m pulling pants off the shelves and off hangers, looking at the tags, hoping and praying that they have something that will work.

Apparently, Lane Bryant no longer carries pants for the curvy fat girls.  They only had skinny jeans and skinny boot cut, which are thinner cut legs for girls who are heavy with skinny legs.  This is so not me.  The curvy pants are usually snug on my legs, I can’t even get the skinny jeans on past my knees.

I go to a sales associate and ask her if they have any more curvy jeans in stock, to which she very politely tells me that they don’t carry them anymore.  And there might be some in the clearance.

So I totally and completely destroy the clearance section looking for curvy jeans.  They had been sold.  Or they were solid white, which is retarded.  Who wears white jeans?  Seriously?  That’s just asking for a stain.

Defeated, I decide that I shall never find curvy jeans again.  Hello Wal-mart and Torrid, hope you guys haven’t given up on me either.

That’s seriously all I have.

Oh, and I almost burned my house down burning sage to get rid of the ghost stealing my socks.  Long story short, my house smells like sage and the dogs are a lot more relaxed than they probably should be.

According to Google, Sookie Stackhouse is a Drunk Cajun Fairy

When I was facebooking one day, as many people tend to do, I ended up talking to my friend Shannon, someone I went to college with and is a perfect example of what Alaskans are like.  She’s odd, funny, gun loving, outspoken, and overall just a ball to hang out with.  I haven’t seen in her in god knows how long, but whenever I message her, I always end up laughing out loud.

This is how our conversation went.  She messaged me because she posted a status that said “I’m in love with my ex” to which I was like WTF?!  So this is how it all started.

 

Shannon: It’s a game. You should have never commented. The person who likes/comments has to choose one of the following to post as his/her Status. 1. We eloped! 2. We’re getting married.3. We’re engaged 4. Wedding bells 5. Engagement ring 6. I’m moving to another country. 7. I’m expecting 8. Ultrasound 9. I just bought a new Ferrari. 10. I just got a pet Alligator. 11. I’m still in love with my ex. 12. I’m in love with a stripper. 13. I’m a stripper on weekends. Note: You cannot explain anything, just post and leave it up for a few days and INBOX only your victims. I apologize (but not really, because I was a ‘victim’ too).  Also, yes, it would be VERY bad if I were still in love with my ex. He was an emotionally abusive asshole.

• Me:  FUCK!  I guess I have a pet alligator now.

Shannon:  THAT WAS MY EXACT RESPONSE. Oh man I was hoping you’d go with Alligator.

Me: Because I’m in Louisiana?  It IS believable here.

Shannon: That is precisely why.

 

Me: If I said anything about a baby I’d get a shitload of angry calls from my family.  They’d be like YOU CAN’T FUCKING CALL AND TELL US! WE’RE VISITING and I’d be like NO DON’T DO THAT!  FUCK!

Shannon:  Right? Me too.  Ohhh man I miss you.

Me:  I misss you too.  I miss Alaska.  I miss Fairbanks.  Fairbanks was home.  Shreveport is just fairy country, but not even real fairies.  Just drunk cajuns who talk weird.*

Shannon:  Hahaha now I’m imagining disney-esque fairies with beer bellies swerving drunkenly through the air.  Bibbidee-bobeddee-buuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrp!

 

To which I laughed way more than I should have.  Then I decided to look up pictures of drunk Cajun fairies.  The only result was pictures of Sookie Stackhouse and various pictures of porn.

Well played, google, well played.

 

*Note:  When I say talk weird, I mean differently than me.  I’ve been told I talk very strangely because I’m from Minnesota, so I really can’t say anything about talking weird.

You Can Never Have Too Many Blankets (My husband disagrees)

After telling this particular story to my mother in law, she said to me, “You can take the girl out of Minnesota, but you can never take the Minnesota out of the girl.”

Truer words have never been spoken.

There has always been a million one thing Alex and I fight about on a regular basis, and it started when we were dating, and we will most likely fight about it until our dying days.

Blankets.

Maybe it’s because I’m from Minnesota, maybe it’s because I hate paying the heating bill, I have no idea.  But I believe there are a few things that make a house a home.  Pictures of family together on the walls,  the smell of food, and blankets everywhere.

Alex believes in lots of food and pictures, but the blankets he just doesn’t get.  To be fair though, he organizes everything in the house and was giddy when he got a label maker, and I believe everything should be thrown in a pile and forgotten about, so I figure this is his little revenge.

I have around twenty blankets, and I’m always scavenging thrift shops for more.  When we were in Alaska, he didn’t really fight me too much on it.  There was one day though, where we had a very thorough discussion on my “blanket hoarding,” or so he calls it.

Alex: Why do we need so many blankets?  We have the down comforter and we have two blankets on the couch, we don’t need anymore. We’re in Louisiana, nobody has this many blankets here.

Me: What if we get cold?

Alex: We have a blanket for each of us.

Me: What if the dogs get cold?

Alex: They have fur.

Me: What if people come over and they get cold?

Alex: YOU DON’T LET PEOPLE COME OVER!

Me: So what you’re saying is, we should be prepared in case I ever change my mind?

Alex: NO!  I’m saying we should get rid of all the damn blankets to make room for stuff we actually need, like new towels that match and aren’t falling apart.

Me: We have tons of towels, you told me not to get anymore.

Alex: I told you not to get anymore if you’re going to keep the old ones.

Me: And there’s no reason to get rid of the old ones.

Alex: YOU’RE MAKING THIS IMPOSSIBLE!

Me: No, you’re making this impossible.

Alex: WE LIVE IN THE SOUTH! IT WILL NEVER GET COLD HERE!

Me: YOU NEVER KNOW!

The next day it dropped to 40 degrees in the house.  And with the wind and humidity, it was actually miserable.

I think I won.

NO FAT CHICKS! (On Craigslist anyway…)

One evening, Alex and I were having a very normal strange discussion.

Alex: How do I know you’re not working and actually finding men to meet? (He says this very sarcastically, as if I’d talk to new people)

Me: Because men don’t like fat chicks here.  It’s not Alaska where fat chicks are the only chicks. *

Alex:  The obesity rate is higher here.

Me: But there are actually women here.  There weren’t women in Alaska.

Alex: This is true, but I bet if you went on Craigslist casual encounters, it would be all “Seeking BBW’s” and you’d have them lining up.

Me: CHALLENGE MOTHER FUCKING ACCEPTED!

 

So, as any normal person would do, I decide to check out the casual encounters page, thinking “Oh he has to be so wrong.”

Where dreams are turned into horror stories

 

Dude… I hate when he’s wrong about stuff like this.

I was actually kind of pissed.  After going through over 40 ads and several inappropriate pictures, All but a few of them were “NO FAT CHICKS!”

Excuse me, I’m not fat, I’m just swollen from this GOD FORSAKEN HEAT!

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go and gorge myself on cheesecake.

 

*Note: There are actually several insanely hot girls in Alaska.  Most of which are married or taken, all of which have a gun that they shoot very well.  I’ve never met an Alaskan girl who didn’t have a gun, seriously. And the Men to women ratio in Alaska was around 6:1, it was awesome.

My Dogs are Beautiful (And Retarded)

So as you probably remember, I have two dogs, a Sled dog/German shepherd mix, and a German shepherd/I have no clue what.  The sled dog’s name is Luna, the German Shepherd/unknown mix is Sahara.

Beautiful, are they not?

Sahara is the one with the black lipstick and eyeliner and Luna is the one with the Tuxedo.

A couple of days ago, they really wanted to play in the yard, and being an indoor person, I don’t quite understand, but I think it was because there was a squirrel pressed up to the window taunting them.

But I noticed that it was only in the 50s this particular day, the sun was out, and there were leaves to be raked up.  So I got my sweatshirt on, grabbed the rake, and brought the puppies to my back yard.  After about ten minutes of the whole OH MY GOD I’M OUTSIDE!, they just lay down in the yard, defeated.

I was fairly confused.  So I thought to myself, maybe they’re thirsty or hot.  So I grab the garden hose and the kiddie pool and begin to fill the pool for them.  I leave it alone, turn my back, and continue raking the yard.

After a few minutes, I decide to check on the hose, only to find this.

After watching her do this for about ten minutes, I decide to turn off the hose, to which Sahara looks very disappointed, giving me a very sad look for the rest of the hour we were outside.

The hose defeated her

While Luna decided that she needed to work on her tan

Luna getting her tan on.

Seriously Luna, you’re dark enough.

Perhaps someday, Sahara will be the guard dog that she so strives to be

So ferocious.

Do any of you have pets that do stupid and crazy stuff?

My Solution to Military Functions (Just Add Liquor)

While this really isn’t a post about the south, this is a post about life in the military.

Fun fact: When you’re married to the military, how you present yourself is directly correlated with your spouse.  For instance, if I were to bad mouth a commander to a commanders wife and talk about how the military is evil, my spouse, Alex, will be pulled into the commanders office, being asked why he was bad mouthing the commander.  To put it simply, the military does not see me as a person, they see me as a tumor growing out of my husband’s neck that is untreatable, and so they throw more money at him and give me preference for being hired on base.  It works, but it can really be a pain in the ass.

So, of course, I have fun with it.

This is where my problem lies.

You see, what many people don’t know about me is that I have horrible social anxiety.  When in public with people, I’ll have a beer or two and my social anxiety will go away, but when meeting up with people, especially people that I’m not familiar with, I have this nasty habit of saying stupid shit then blushing uncontrollably.  My friend Valerie pointed out the blushing when I went to a barbeque at her house, and that I was much less awkward than normal.  All in all, I usually don’t like large crowds, but alcohol helps my nerves.  I don’t even need to get drunk, just something to take off the edge.

Unless I’m at a function, then I usually get trashed.

You see, my first function I was told it was casual, so I went in a t-shirt and jeans with a little bit of make up just to be safe.  When I got there, nearly every single woman was wearing an evening gown with their hair and make up professionally applied.  Then people would walk up to Alex, introduce themselves, and not even look at me.  To the point where I was in tears at the end of the night.  From that moment forward, I decided that I would be too drunk to care when going to functions.

The most recent function I went to, however, I found that I really didn’t need the alcohol because most of the wives from my husband’s shop are not like the stereotypes, and since losing a decent amount of weight, I don’t stick out so much.  But I was unaware that these women were going to be so nice, so here’s how my evening went.

4 pm: Get off work, rush home, shower, shave, apply inch of make up, flat iron hair so it’s not as frizzy, find nicest shirt that makes me look skinny, lace myself into Victorian corset so I have that lovely breathy voice, wait.

5:30 pm: Alex informs me this is a buffet, to which I decide that the corset needs to go because I am NOT wearing a corset to a buffet again (that story will come later on)

6 pm: Getting ready to leave, I do a shot of whiskey to calm my nerves.

6:15 pm: Arrive at casino where function is being held.  Husband and I have time to spare so we go to the craps table and lose about $40.  I get a whiskey sour.

6:30 pm:  Feeling pretty good, insist we go to the actual bar and get a real drink.  Alex reluctantly agrees.

6:45 pm: Meet the coolest bartender I have ever met.  She makes me a drink that’s called the “Walk with Jesus.”  Makes a long island iced tea look like a bottle of light beer.  Fruity and nothing but liquor.

7 pm: Finish my walk with Jesus.  I can barely walk after walking with Jesus.

7:30 pm: YOU DON’T KNOW ME! (Translation: Where the fuck am I?)

7:45 pm:   Accidentally hit on Alex’s coworkers fiancé because she’s insanely fucking hot.  Then explain that I’m not a lesbian, just very drunk.  She laughs and I go to get myself another drink so I can blame the booze even more.  Thank God she’s got the best sense of humor of any woman I’ve ever met.

8 pm: Food is served, I have another whiskey sour and two bottles of beer.  Alex is afraid I’m going to throw up on everyone considering I’m talking about how fluffy clouds are and how the “spin is rooming”

8:30 pm: Alex has taken my wallet so I don’t get anymore drinks.

9:00 pm: BACK TO THE CASINO WHERE I GET MORE DRINKS!

I really don’t remember what happened after that, but I do remember that Mississippi stud is an insanely difficult casino game and I will never play it again.  And Craps is only going to pay out if it’s the first time you play it and you’re in Vegas.

Apparently Alex’s coworkers think I’m hilarious.  When I met them sober, I had no idea who they were.  And I see them everywhere.

 

Please note, I’m not an alcoholic.  I only drink socially.  Usually at military functions.

What do you do to calm your nerves at social functions?  Anything interesting?  Feel free to comment!

I Think A Politician Lived In Our House Before Us

So I’m pretty sure a politician used to live in my house, and hear me out.

Since living in my house, we have had a lot of really weird occurrences happen, from weird phone calls to people actually knocking on our door.

About a month after moving to my house, an army sergeant knocked on my door, looking for a young man who had recently signed his life away, but had disappeared off the face of the earth.  He listed my house as his residence.  Apparently it was the son of the people who used to rent my house.  I told the sergeant that he had the wrong house, and he showed me the papers of the person who enlisted and it very specifically had my address.  After telling the sergeant several times that these people had moved and I had only been living there for a month, he gave me a lanyard and thanked me for my time.  I saluted him in a joking manner, and he laughed and left.

Today, we had an Asian woman knock on our door, a van full of people behind her, asking if an Asian family lived at our house.  What I thought was strange is that my 6’6” husband, who is very not Asian, was the one answering the door and told her, “No, no Asian family lives in this house.”  The woman looked confused and left.

After we got our house phone, the phone rang one day and my husband answered it and a man started to yell at him on the phone.

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!  IF YOU EVER SLEEP WITH MY WIFE AGAIN I’LL GUT YOU LIKE A FISH!”

“Sir I think you have the wrong number—,” my husband started to say, but was immediately cut off.

“I DON’T HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER!  YOU GET IN CONTACT WITH MY WIFE AGAIN AND YOU’RE A DEAD MAN!”

“I HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOUR WIFE IS!”

He hung up the phone, extremely confused.

The next week we had a message on our answering machine.  Honestly, I wish I would have saved the message, because we were laughing so hard at it.  We listened to it quite a few times, so I think I have the exact wording of it correct.

“Hey baby, look, you can’t call my house phone or this phone number anymore, my wife will be catching on.  Do not call this phone number ever again, if you want to hook up again message me on facebook.  Can’t wait to hear back from you.”

There have also been bill collectors calling our house looking for the previous habitants, and while we keep insisting that they aren’t here anymore, we still seem to get an assload of calls.

I thought church goers were honest folk.  Huh.

Thoughts?

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me When A Family Member Passed Away

This is a serious post, so if you don’t want to read it, I understand.

In my lifetime, I have lost several people close to me.  Both of my grandfathers died within nine months of each other, making my freshman year of high school even more difficult than it was already. 

In general, life was hard, since it seemed my entire family decided to drop like flies all within a few short years. A couple years ago, my best friend had Hodgekins Lymphoma, and luckily, she beat it, making her the only person I know to have survived cancer. 

 

So when hearing that a family member has cancer, I tend to get overly emotional, probably more than I should.  But as anyone can imagine, it’s a tough subject to tackle.

 

To me, death is not the end, but merely the beginning of a new chapter of your life.  When a person dies, a small part of you dies with them.  After they die, every memory you have of that person comes flooding to you, suffocating you and causing the tears to flow, your chest to compress, your body to shake, and your voice to scream and not be heard.  You may run outside, screaming at the moon, wishing that you had some sign that they were alright.  You may cry into your pillow until you have no fluids left in your body, hoping to wake up to find that it was all a dream.

The days pass abnormally slowly, looking at anything near you, wishing that the person you miss would stop haunting you with pictures and objects.  You’ll feel empty inside from smelling their shirts, knowing that as soon as you wash them, if you ever wash them, that you’ll never be able to smell their sweet cologne again.  You go into rooms and remember how you laughed and cried with the person you lost, trying to keep the pain in your chest from arising even further.  You’ll be angry at everyone around you for feeling happy, because everything in your life feels so dark and dreary.

You go to sleep each night, hoping from relief from your pain, only to be greeted with either seeing the person you lost or having no dreams at all, feeling taunted and cheated because their memories just won’t leave you alone.

 

There are days where you’ll feel like you want to join them, because life just doesn’t seem worth living without that person near you.

Then will come the guilt.  You’ll feel guilty about everything.  You’ll wish that you finished that puzzle with him that lazy Sunday afternoon, or you’ll wish that you called more, or that you don’t even remember what that fight was about six years ago.  You’ll begin to resent the person you lost, simply because you miss them so much.  Life will seem meaningless, as you lay in your bed, staring at the ceiling, wishing that they were next to you, telling you that everything will be all right, when in your heart, you know that nothing will ever be the same.

Finally, one day, maybe a couple of weeks later, maybe a couple of years later, you’ll wake up and look outside and think, “Hey, the sun is out.”  Then you’ll wonder what you’ll do that day, causing you to want to leave your bed for the first time in what feels like forever.  You’ll feel the kiss of sunlight on your skin, you’ll take a deep breath and feel the air revive your tired, drained body.  You’ll laugh for the first time in a long time, you’ll cry, but less frequent, and the memories will never fade, but they won’t haunt you like they did. 

You’ll sometimes sit in an old rocking chair, remembering every memory all at once, but this time you won’t cry, you’ll just smile. 

When important days of your life come to pass, such as weddings, births, funerals, you’ll remember the person you lost, and you’ll remember how they would have made you smile and made the day even more complete.

Whether you believe in heaven or not, the person you love will never truly die, as long as you remember them.  You’ll grow older, telling stories of your loved one to the younger generations, passing on stories of how your grandfather once let you burn an entire package of bacon, and still ate it, because he didn’t want to hurt your feelings.  Or how your great grandmother was the only girl in her town who had red hair, and when the Indian chief of the local tribe offered her father two horses for her because of her hair, she was teased relentlessly for the rest of her life.  These stories will live inside you, and while right now it doesn’t feel like things will get better, I can promise you that they will.

Life will move on, whether or not you want it to.  With death comes life, and with life, death is always guaranteed.

 

Sorry about the serious post, but I wanted to post it somewhere.

 

Thanks all.

How a Murderous Cockroach Turned Me Into A Good Housekeeper

So when I first moved to Louisiana, my house lacked all forms of furniture.  At our house for the first few weeks, we had a full size mattress on the floor, a broom, a floor shark mop thing, and a dining room table we got at an AWESOME consignment store in Shreveport.  So, to say the least, we didn’t have anything.  Along with this, my husband was given two weeks after we got here to figure his stuff out, I didn’t start work until three weeks after getting here, so we spent a lot of time just sitting around our house, not having anything really to do.

This is bad when you’re getting familiar with a new area.

Not only do you learn a lot of new things about your spouse because you’ve never had this much time with him, but also, you get to see all the creepy little things in your house.

Please keep in mind, I am from Minnesota originally and spent my entire adult life in Alaska where there are no types of bugs except mosquitos and silverfish, all of which are harmless.  I had heard that the south had cockroaches, but I thought cockroaches were only about a quarter of an inch long.  Oh, how wrong I was.

One day, when I was bored out of my mind, I decided to sweep up all the dog fur that my dogs felt they needed to shed once getting to 100+ degree weather, when I sweep under my kitchen sink and I am greeted by a giant (two inch long) cockroach.

I couldn’t find a picture to justify the cockroach, so thank you Hyperbole and a half for giving me the idea of using MS Paint

When I swept it out from under the sink, it hissed at me.  Then it skittered around a little bit and stopped moving…. But I could hear that fucker breathing.

Being a naïve northern girl, I did not see it like this.

I had my ass on the kitchen door, counters on either side of me, so when I swept this cockroach from under the kitchen sink, I was cornered with nowhere to go since I didn’t have enough room to open the kitchen door to go around the house and go inside via the front door.  I was barefoot so I couldn’t squash the damn thing, and since I’m a fat girl, I can’t jump over it.

So I did the most logical thing that came to mind.

I screamed.

I kept screaming.

I seriously did not stop screaming.  Oh, and I started crying too because I HATE roaches.  My husband, the poor man, was in the middle of a very peaceful nap.  When he heard my screaming and crying, he thought I was being attacked, so he quickly rushed out onto the tile, sliding the entire way, seeing me crying and screaming in the kitchen, while he was still in his underwear.

“What’s wrong?!” he yelled, looking around for a rapist*

Being too struck with fear to even speak, I shakily pointed at the roach on the floor.

He gives me a very disconcerting look.  One eyebrow raised, the other lowered, dropping the rigidness of his posture.  “Are you fucking serious right now?”

I shook my head vigorously, unable to say another word, afraid that the hissing monster was going to eat me or worse.

I don’t think the roach was actually holding a knife, but who knows, better not chance it

He went over into the living room, grabbed my shoe, came back into the kitchen and killed it.  He then grabbed a paper towel and picked it up, to which I ran out of the kitchen crying, finding comfort in my down comforter.  Because nothing is more comforting than a comforter.

My husband takes care of the cockroach, then approaches me in the bedroom.

“Your knight in shining armor has slain the dragon… and all you do is run away crying.  Fucking seriously?  No thanks?  No ‘I love you’ and ‘You’re my hero?’”

I’m pretty sure it was a trap, so I didn’t answer.

So that, my friends, is how a cockroach has caused me to become an excellent house keeper.

Has anyone ever been cornered by a cockroach before?

 

*Note: My husband always teases me that I’m afraid some rapist is going to come into the house.  While I’m pretty sure this won’t happen, I am a little paranoid.  So when I screamed, he thought someone had broken into the house so he was all STAND BACK! I SHALL PROTECT YOU!  When it was really only a roach…