After three weeks on the road and seeing Wal-Marts scarier than Christian Slater’s hairline (and if you think your Wal-Mart is scary, then either you live in Salt Lake City, where it has its own parking garage, or you’re completely full of shit), I have finally made it to Oregon.
Unfortunately, one of my first impressions of Oregon was a small town by the name of Hines, where I stopped off at a supermarket to buy a party tray of boneless honey barbecue chicken wings because, unless I wanted to chow down on bumper stickers reading “Real Men Love Jesus”, there was nothing else. It was at this moment that I overheard someone say, “I hope he falls off the face of the earth and we never have to hear about him again.” Hoping they were talking about Ryan Seacrest, my ears perked up, only to discover that this Joe Dirt knock-off and his girlfriend and/or mom were referring to a tabloid featuring Barack Obama.
Now, as far as my opinion of Barack Obama is concerned, I’m somewhere in between the rabid commemorative plate crowd and those who come up with new ways to talk about Michelle Obama’s ass, so I didn’t feel the need to really say anything. For this, I was rewarded because after that, the conversation transitioned into a heated debate on whether or not they would have enough money for cigarettes and a movie, which was weird since they were buying 22 fruit pies. If you make more than $30,000 a year and are therefore unfamiliar with the fruit pie, it’s a processed dessert (or in this case, every meal ever) consisting of a glazed pocket of crust filled with your choice of an ambiguous gravy-like substance that is passed off as cherry, lemon, or apple. It’s more like the concept of pie, which is why in most cases, it only costs .75.
So there I am, not really able to be too judgmental because I’m standing around with 7 pounds of chicken in my arms, wondering why I left everything behind for this. I mean, I knew that Oregon had more to offer than a couple with matching Army t-shirts and crew cut hair styles, but in that moment, all I wanted to do was go back to Florida so I could at least bask in a lower socio-economic culture that I was used to. Then, as I was driving away, imagining these two going home and eating their fruit pies while watching “Reba” in what I hoped was a child-free home, I saw this billboard:
It says, “One style doesn’t fit all. Especially when it comes to birth control. Free or low-cost birth control, that fits your life, your body and your budget.” I didn’t know what to make of it at first, and while searching for a picture of an aborted fetus holding up a “fornicator” sign, I finally realized that this was actually promoting safe sex practices instead of pandering to the lowest depths of teenage vernacular in order to transform pregnant fifteen-year-olds into married pregnant fiften-year-olds.
So, overall, Oregon is pretty cool–and I don’t even have to pump my own gas.
No SILS this week because I have been pissing out of my asshole for eighteen hours but assuming that you’re through vomiting because of what I just said, come back for the details.
I have been pale my whole life, and, despite numerous attempts to combat this disease, I’m still not used to the tone used when people exclaim, “You’re so PALE!” It’s the same one I suspect people use when they find out a sex offender is living in their neighborhood–one of disgust and outrage that ultimately leads to a torch filled witch hunt.
I cringe to think of all the times I tried to voluntarily turn myself into a George Hamilton lookalike, using everything including cheap self tanners, baby oil on a nude beach and tanning beds affixed with industrial strength exhaust fans.
Eventually, I stopped trying once I realized that I didn’t want to look like a cured ham at age 35. For years following my vow to stop trying to trick people into thinking that I was hot because I looked like a photo negative, I still failed to use sunscreen. This is partially because I was lazy and didn’t want to smell like coconut-scented chicken grease, but also because I thought that any sun I unintentionally picked up from being outside was like the free spot on a Bingo card and therefore failed to cause any sort of harm.
I recently wised up and bought Neutrogena’s Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock (SPF 85) and have been using it as my primary moisturizer. I was skeptical about its claim that it won’t clog pores, along with it’s advertised “lightweight clean feel.” However, after one week of using it, I can vouch for both. The scent is nothing special, but not cloying either. In case you’re as sloppy as I am and get it too close to your eyes, and…wait for it because this is revelatory…it will burn. I had to learn the hard way, twice.
In this installment of “reasons why I should emancipate myself from my vagina”, I just found out I have a yeast infection. My pap results came back, and it was a good news, bad news situation. Good news–I don’t have cancer. Bad news–I have a fucking yeast infection. I was instructed to cure it with an over the counter 3-day treatment, but I resisted since I didn’t think I had any symptoms relating to a yeast infection, and as was implied by my doctor based on the scant amount of yeast found, I figured it would go away on its own. Of course that wasn’t the case, and I’m clearly missing a few chromosomes for thinking that my doctor was just chewing the fat when she was on the phone with me, you know–trying to fill the awkward silence with a real conversation starter like, “you have a yeast infection.”
I resisted treating myself because I was convinced that my UTI was, as usual, still loitering. I stand by what I said a few months ago about legitimately having a UTI, because my urinalysis came back with a +3 reading of blood, which is apparently as high as it gets aside from “dead.” I was given a week long course of antibiotics, and even though I still experienced a very slight burning sensation when I peed, I shrugged and thought, “Can’t win them all.” I think what happened (and I DID pass Biology with a C so try to stay with me), is that my UTI and subsequent antibiotic treatment seamlessly transitioned into a yeast infection, which just convinced me that I still had a residual UTI. Since I’ve dealt with UTI symptoms for all of my adult life, I got used to it and started popping Macrobid , which considering that I actually had a yeast infection the whole time, was kind of like treating a heart attack with pizza.
It’s my first one (that I know of), and I’m surprised because I always thought having a yeast infection was kind of like having crabs but less taboo. Sure, everyone experiences the symptoms differently, but the Monistat commercials would have you believe that having a yeast infection is the modern way to have a child out of wedlock. This usually means that you’re required to wear cashmere lounge-wear, stare out of the rain soaked window pane of your beach house as you cozy up to a Danielle Steele novel and ride it out with a scarlet “Y” firmly affixed to the front of your Burberry Nova Check robe. Fortunately, I haven’t experienced any clumpy discharge (goodbye forever, appetite), and surprisingly, I haven’t even been afflicted with the meth-addict level itching. I admit to using the vulvar cream that came with my 3-day pack, because there was some itching, but (in keeping with the general theme here of “I’m a dumb ass”), I attributed it to the fact that a week of Spinning had my vagina making babies with a bike seat.
Anyway, I cheaped out and bought the generic drug store brand pack, because when I saw that Monistat was $25 I was like, “What the fuck, I’m not dying.” I really didn’t know what to expect, and when I got home to study the directions for 2 hours, I had flashbacks to the first time I put a tampon in or used a pregnancy test. It was just another one of those things that falls into the sickeningly labeled feminine care category where the commercials are put through a Disney filter and are therefore, so sterile that they could be selling car insurance or Mentos. I know there’s a fine line between selling feminine care products and…porn, but showing the box from 13 different angles and repeating words like “Fresh”, “Carefree” and “Gentle” is doing it wrong. Do you know how I know this? Because when I found out that the ovule had to be pushed into the vagina as far as it will go with a plunger that resembled E.T.’s finger, I felt supremely cheated, wondering why I had to lie on my back with my knees up near my ears to prevent leakage while it seemed that all of the other women who used this got to giggle and take their Yorkie to the dog park while they engineered a way to exercise their new found vaginal freedom by chatting up the cute guy with the Great Dane because of course he has to have a Great Dane since the size difference between the Yorkie and the Great Dane is charming and makes you really root for these two.
It’s the last time I buy generic, that’s for sure.
Maybe you don’t know this, but I’m kind of a mountain man in the making. You know, one of those guys who hasn’t shaved since Jimmy Carter sent him a secret briefing in the form of an L.L. Bean Catalog that exposed Gillette for putting radio transmitters in their razors because they’re in cahoots with the government and it’s all so they can read your thoughts and find out if you really think FDR was a hero or just some cripple who got lucky? Yeah, that kind. I don’t make my own bacon…yet, but I do strive to only eat food that I’ve either made myself, or has fewer than 5 listed ingredients listed on the package. Yes, this is coming from the Queen of Biscuit Sandwiches, but I got sick of staring back at a fun house version of myself so that’s in the past.
The first thing I had to tackle in getting my health back on track was my intake of sugar. I had an unhealthy relationship with cookies, cakes, chocolate, and candy, which is why I found it hard to stay in shape because I always craved some sort of dessert after every meal. I tried to find substitutions, things like apple slices, raisins, bananas, and even raw honey, but none of it ever fully satiated me long enough to keep me from my bag of chocolate chips. Eventually, I introduced fresh squeezed juice into my diet and found it to be instantly effective in eliminating sugar cravings and on top of that, I felt I had an immense amount of energy. The only problem was that non-pasteurized fresh squeezed juice was expensive. At around $6 for 20 ounces, I wasn’t able to have it very often and so I would inevitably revert back to deep-throating cannolis.
It’s only natural then, that I’ve joined the crystal clutching new age group of juicing. People who own juicers strike me as the kind that, if given the chance, would attempt to treat an aneurysm with a chilled cocktail of tomato, red bell pepper, beet, and carrot juice, and I know this because I am one. I recently received the Breville Juice Fountain Plus as a gift and after spending $30 on an orchard of fruit, I havent stopped using it. So far, I’ve juiced oranges, apples, mangoes, pears, strawberries, carrots, and lemons and it handles it all exceptionally well, without having to peel or cut anything (aside from the oranges). It’s easy to clean, easy to assemble and I love it.
This is also good for someone like me, who is 4 and refuses to eat anything green. I absolutely hate vegetables, so being able to juice beets, spinach and celery (or what I refer to as Cerberus) and hide it in palatable things like apple, carrot, and tomato is absolutely priceless to me, because I can no longer get away with eating tater tots and checking off my vegetable servings for the week.
