mmmmm bop

Today, for some ungodly reason, my dear friend Joel who sits one cube over decided to rip the cellophane off of his newly recieved HANSON-LIVE album and play it for the whole office to hear. I am now having 7th grade flashbacks of the day that Mary Margaret Williford and I sat in Health class talking about the middle Hanson brother (he was the hottest) and how there was a rumor that they were moving to Charlotte and thinking of going to our school (this was totally false of course, but it caused so much pandemonium among the under 15 crowd that finally Hanson called into the local top-40 station to put the rumor to rest. It was a sad sad moment in all our lives.). I also remember that was the year that self tanner hit the market, and all of us were slightly streaky with visible splotches on our hand and around our ankles and knees. Hotness.

Anyway, here is a quick game of catch-up: I am moving back to Charlotte. My Midwestern boy-toy Joe has been hired to teach 7th grade U.S. History and Upper school Psychology and AP Psychology at Providence Day. But most importantly I have been asked to take a free trip to Belize to stay at a five-star resort and write about my experience. Try to detect the lie in the above sentences. Go ahead, try.

You totally thought it was the Belize thing right? But it isn’t. Actually there isn’t any lies up there. I guess calling Joe my “boy-toy” is kind of a lie since I would never normally use that label and I have no idea what possessed me to do so here. But that isn’t so much of a lie as it is a terribly un-classy choice of words. So I guess me asking you look for a lie turned out to be a lie. Not as fun for you though, I’m sure. But I don’t care what is fun for you. I am going to Belize, dammit.

Yes, five days and four nights at The Inn at Roberts Grove in Belize. Free airfare, free accommodations, free food, free excursions, even a free night on a private island. Best of all, I am getting paid to write about it. I have no idea how this happened. I am expecting somebody to jump out and tell me that because I am signed up to go on this trip now I have to buy a time share, or give them my first born child. Don’t get me wrong, I’d probably do it. Free trips to Belize don’t come along every day. Children are a dime a dozen, right?

Ok, let me take a moment to quell my overzealous wanderlust and tell you about the other things I mentioned up above. I am moving back to Charlotte. This is an unexpected but not unhappy development, certainly not unhappy if you were to ask my mother– who appears to be planning a ticker tape parade along with a full six weeks of preparing every meal that I have ever said I enjoyed. How did this happen? Well, long story short Joe’s patience with the miscreants of the South Side of Chicago began to wear thin a few months back. Not to say that he doesn’t like the kids. He loves them. He just never sees them. Week after week they fail to show up for their therapy sessions, rendering Joe essentially useless aside from his incredible penchant for developing organized filing systems. Joe wanted out, and he was interested in exploring other careers, like that of a college counselor.

Now, I am not sure how big my readership on this blog really is, so I don’t know what sort of experiences you all might have had with the counseling staff at your high school, but the College Counseling office at Providence Day is legendary. Not only do they get to you when you are still practically in braces, they are with you every single step of the way, reminding you to turn in applications, making phone calls on your behalf, and turning “Two summers working in the Snack Shack at the pool” into a resume entry that sounds worthy of a Nobel Prize. So naturally, I put Joe in touch with the Queen Bee of the PDS counseling hive – Phyllis Gill. She put him in touch with her cohorts in Chicago, one of whom took a serious shining to Joe and told him he should ditch his plans to sink more money into grad school and become a teacher at an independent school instead and then work his way into the counseling office over a series of a few years. Yada yada yada, a few phone calls later Joe was getting an interview at PDS. ‘ It will be good practice” I said, not wanting him to feel pressured to take a job in my hometown, so far away from his family and friends. “Yeah totally” he said, being the good-natured sort that he is. But the closer the interview got, the more the pressure grew. ….. Oh my holy lord. This is the most boring story of all time. Why on earth would you care? If you want to know the whole story, ask me. Geez, I mean are your eyes bleeding? I am so sorry. I can’t believe I just went into that degree of detail catching you up on my life. What is this, Livejournal? Am I 15? I am so sorry. Moving on.

Allow me to share a few left over thoughts I have been chewing on since my most recent tabloid binge:

Brangelina, you bore me. “We don’t talk about our relationship, we just live it.” Yeah right Angie. I am sure that Brad managed to legally adopt your children and hyphenate their last names without so much as a chit chat over a cup of coffee with you. By the way, Brad, was that entirely necessary? You say you didn’t cheat with Jolie, and your immediate post-divorce shack-up was enough for us to stop beliving that bullshit, did you really have to go the extra mile and tack your last name on to those poor children? Couldn’t you just share a room at the Chateau, galavant on the beach and get spotted “ring shopping in Beverly Hills” like a normal Hollywood couple? To encapsulate my feelings on this subject, I would like to pass on a single question to Brangie, TomKat, and the moldy pile of white trash that is Britney and Kevin:

Do what ever the hell you want- you are rich, famous, f&*#ed up, it makes sense. But why, why, WHY GOD WHY do you bring children into the equation?

While our society is still bumfuzzled and backwards over whether or not is unfair to bring a child into a life with two homosexual parents, our idols, our demigods of Hollywood are having children as an equivalent alternative to having their lover’s name tattooed on their ass (or in Angie’s case, probably in addition to). You want to give your flavor of the month a sign of your undying commitment? Buy her/him a goldfish. If you keep the tank clean, those things live for-fucking-ever. Is there a lack of contraception in Los Angeles? I lived there for a while and as far as I can remember, they sold condoms in every drug store, gas station and bar bathroom in the whole damn city. Perhaps Trojan is missing a golden opportunity to become a gift-bag sponsor. Next year at the Oscars just give all the winners a sampler box of the latest thrilling textured condoms and a lifetime prescription to the Nuva Ring. Either that, or the U.S. Government better start allocating a portion of our tax money to giving monetary incentives to people who want to become psychiatrists. Because assuming that America likes to mimic behavior other than the wearing of leggings and cowboy boots from their beloved celebrities, there are going to be generation upon generations of seriously disturbed children mingling amongst us. And yes, Tom Cruise, your kids will go to a psychiatrist, because I have hope that they will grow to realize that the religion you brought them into is the most amazingly horrifying load of horse shit ever spouted from the mouth of man. They will divorce you as a parent and go on to seek the most normal life possible, even if it means moving to Amish country, which compared to the Scientology Celebrity Centre, is the most normal place on earth.

WHEW.
Ok. That’s all I have to say about that.