Things I shouldn't probably admit to doing, but I'm going to anyway.

In an effort to be closer to you blog reader, I realized that we don't know that much about one another. So in an attempt to develop some emotional intimacy I am going to tell you a couple of things about me that I am somewhat ashamed of and then you can respond in the comments. 

1. I'm afraid of the mail man. Don't ask, I don't know why. I just am.

2. I watch those Japanese cartoons sometimes when I'm bored. It's the story that draws me in. They're always about some kid who is in love with his best friend, who happens to be gorgeous. For some reason or another, he has been chosen to go out and save the world and his budding romance resides on whether or not he'll get it done. I'm a sucker for a good love story.

3. When I make a sandwich I always stick the spoon in the mayonnaise jar and eat a spoonful. Half a spoonful if I'm feeling fat that day.

4. I don't like peanut butter or chocolate. I know. I'm an alien obviously.

5. I have at least 80 pairs of underwear. No, I'm not kidding.

6. I have a sticky phobia. For serious. It's kind of obnoxious sometimes. If I'm inebriated multiply that by 10. It's quite a sight to see. But you have no clue how debilitating it is. My brain seriously shuts down and enters this cycle of where I have to rub my fingers against my palm multiple, multiple times. I imagine this is how chronic OCDers must feel. It's horrible.

7. I read this article one time about people whose genetic makeup is different from their sex. IE they're really XY but they feel XX. I sometimes think I have that condition. Mostly I think it's because I hate cuddling, have a huge fear of commitment and hate it when gentleman callers spend the night. And you wonder why I'm single?

8. I still require the nurse to hold my hand when I'm getting a shot and I always think about the Blair Witch Project whenever I get a female physical because that's what the doctor talked about at my very first female physical. Why she was talking about such an old, old, old, really old, movie I'll never know.

9. I'm also afraid of Howard the Duck. It makes me cry. Because it's creeeeeeepy.

10. I don't run anymore because I think I have those fractures in my feet that morbidly obese people get. I figure that's why I have shin splints.

Okay, now that I've shared odd things about me...What makes you, blog reader, odd? 

Please don't everyone respond at once.

And then I looked at the girl next to me and said "People do this for fun?!"

Apparently one of the things that I wasn't aware of, was that I, Anna Gray, am a glutton for punishment. For some reason I thought it would be beneficial to me to go to 'Power Yoga' on Monday night.

Let me start off by saying that I'm not big on all the hippy mushiness of yoga and breathing and blah blah blah. But I heard my spin instructor talking about what a good class it is and since I'm trying to look like her I figured, What the hey? It can't be too bad right? I mean I did do ballet for 13 years and I'm one of the more flexible people I know.

I was wrong. Yoga is evil. It is Wednesday and my hamstrings still scream at me when I even think about using the stairs or proceed up a gentle slope or graduated incline. Granted I went to spin class before yoga but I figure at this point my legs are used to spinning for 50 minutes. That's no biggie, but this yoga class. Yeouza.

Anyways this was the narrative of yoga class:

Breathe, hold, exhale,

fold, 

standing dog, 

lower, 

exhale (Somehow I missed inhaling. I don't know.), hold, 

whisper down, 

low dog, 

hold, breathe,

warrior king,

exhale, hold, breathe,

retching rabbit,

hold, exhale, breathe,

skipping shrimp,

hold, exhale, breathe,

'This is a tough one!'

Pimply Penguins Punching Pineapples,

hold,

'For my arm balancers, here we go'

(There are yahoos out there that can balance their whole body weight on 2 fingers of their left hand and the thumb of their right. For serious?)

hold, hold, hold, Exhale,

whisper down,

low dog, 

fold, 

come up, 

standing dog,

. . .    . . .

and on and on in a similar fashion in rapid succession for an HOUR.

At some point she came by to hold me up. I believe this was during the exercise where we grabbed our big toe on the opposite foot behind our back with the first two fingers of whatever hand wasn't on the floor. I'm not sure if you've ever tried this but I was not aware that it was humanly possible to fall over 14 times in less than 60 seconds and it's called something asinine and self-reassuring like: relaxing swan. I figured that at some point my body would yield and I could do this. Nooooooooo. Not at all. In fact the only thing that my body was doing was having a dialogue with me I cannot publish here because it is simply too vulgar and profane.

I felt muscles burn like they had never burned before, and I did 13 years of ballet mind you. I wanted to be a ballerina. Professional ballerina. Granted that all went way when I hit puberty and it was apparent that I was never again going to be able to pirouette without tipping over, but still the point is that I put myself through some grueling shit. And none of it compares to the flim-flam of yoga and the anthropomorphic animal poses that really should be called 'Go ahead and cry now because you'll need to save your energy to get out of the ridiculous pose you get yourself into later.' Things that accurately portray whats going on like:

Sweat-drenched Pretzel

Sobbing Adult

Just Go Ahead and Remove Your Leg From Your Hip Socket

Repeat above exercise with your arms

Dead Warrior

and 

Paralyzed Person

It was halfway through the class when we were standing on one arm and one leg with the others flying in the breeze somewhere that I looked over at my spin instructor and asked two questions:

'People do this for fun?'

and

'Make sure they take me to Forsyth. Will you?'

My Self-Worth is totally tied up in my hair.

Here's the long and short of it. Yes, the pun is intended. Keep reading you'll get it.

And no...for once it's not dirty. Imagine me blowing a really long, loud raspberry in your direction.

I have a theory. Here it is: I'm single because I have short hair.

I read an essay in Harper's Bazaar or Vogue, one of the two, once that talked about the difference in long and short hair. To paraphrase the essay this is what happened: Men were shown photos of attractive women with long hair and short hair, IE the same woman. I think they probably took their picture before and after they got their hair cut. They were then asked to pick which woman they would rather have a long-term committed relationship with and which one they would rather have a fling with. Apparently you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting hitched unless you have long hair.

Thus presenting a grande problemo por moi. I have short hair. And it's stupid hair. My hair will not grow past my shoulders. Don't get me wrong, I totally love my hair and it is freaking amazing at looking good short, it's hot. But it refuses to be long. It seriously has never been past my shoulder's in my 27 years of existence. It get's to my shoulders and has some dialogue with itself like that video of the french people on the interwebs a couple of years ago where they were all like, 'But I am le tired.' So it just quit. It was right behind my metabolism in the line of things to quit in or involving my body. Thank God I'm still fighting the good fight against gravity.

I'm just going to go ahead and warn you.

I have a new aspiration. If you've seen me in the last week you've heard about it. Let's just say, the blonde ones are totally my undoing. My plan to woo said blonde David is to grow my hair out. And bake things. I am going to grow my hair out. It will happen. I promise not to run to my hair savior and beg her to chop it all off, which is what always happens. Well, maybe I shouldn't promise; I'll try really hard. I really hate it long. I really, really hate it. But if men are going to take me seriously then maybe I need to grow my hair out.

God, how bad does that suck? I typed that last sentence and I kind of hate myself for thinking it.

'Hey boys, notice me. I have long hair exactly like the woman mainstream media has taught to you to idealize. Yay.'

I should take a moment to say right here that all of my friends have long hair and it's beautiful on them. I just happen to have a stupid face. It requires short hair. They, my gorgeous friends, wooed their collective husbands and boyfriends because they're all smart, funny and beautiful. I'm just bitter. And don't necessarily want to grow my hair out but something has got to give.

Because growing my hair has to be a lot easier than growing a set of testicles and putting on my big girl panties to ask him to go out for a drink or something.

Opportunities I've missed because I lack political clout.

I would never miss the bus. If I had political clout the bus wouldn't leave without me. I could probably also have the temperature on said bus adjusted to my liking, which is always helpful. With the right amount of clout I could have a personal driver! But that ruins the point of saving the planet. Crap.

If I had political clout I would never have to sit in a crappy section at basketball games again. I would always be at half court 3 rows up. I don't want to be too important. That demands paparazzi and all.

I would hire someone to carry the bags when I shop. Normally you make your boyfriend do this (The post about opportunities I've missed because I don't have a boyfriend is coming soon.) but because I have clout people would not want me to injure myself whilst I spend the money they've given me for being fucking awesome at what I do.

Believe me shopping is a skill.

And if I had more money I'd be exponentially better at it. Which I would have if I had clout.

I promise that if suddenly I became overwhelmed with the amount of clout that I have, I would make the world a better place. I would go ahead and create my agency to provide common sense, preventative and nutritional healthcare to the homeless. I would also work to bring research funding back to the private sector where it actually works. And clean up the oceans.

I would also buy a hippo.

And maybe a giraffe too.

Everyday the world turns without a care as to who I am or what I'm doing. Maybe with a little clout people would notice and make efforts to be better people. So if you read this, do something nice for someone today. Hopefully the ripple effect will work. At least until some ass monkey who's in a bad mood stops it because his girlfriend ran over his foot or something.

Most importantly, with more clout I'd never have to wait to be served at the bar again. I really hate waiting.

Screw you rain. Screw you.

Why is it whenever I want to do something outside, it rains?

I could react like I normally would and shake my fist at the sky and rail against the weather, but in the manner of things I cannot control, the rain is probably at the top of the list.

I cannot even get rained on like a normal person. Blessed as I am, my stomach never gets wet, unless it is especially blustery whilst precipitating. Which just makes the jaunt from one end of the bus station to the other even more eventful.

The key is to keep the aviators on. No one can touch me as long as I have the aviators on. Oddly enough, the Sheriff's department really hates them. I said 'Good Morning' to a sheriff this morning and he just sneered at me. WTF? The last ticket I got I had on the aviators. That sheriff said I was following too closely. Whatever. I'll say this in defense of that: I got convicted of 7 over the speed limit.

I never understood that because I wasn't speeding. But I wasn't following too closely either. Fucking pig.

Okay, so that's harsh. I don't really mean that. I apologize.

It's just that I'm all wet and it's cold on the bus. And I'm kind of in my cyclical emotional bristling. And all I wanted to do was go swimming. That's it. I wanted to sit on the roof in the pool and drink copious amounts of alcoholic beverages. And eat crappy food.

Look, it's Thursday. I have to work all weekend, so, shut up. It's not as if I'm a drunk. Plus plenty of people get drunk on Thursdays. Some of those people have weeks of only drinking Thursdays. My weeks have every day in them. So, I can afford to have a drinking Thursday in this one.

Maybe I'll try the chicky chicky boom boom dance to make the rain go away. That's worked the last two weddings I've done it at.

I wonder if it works if you're wet?

Love or Furniture?

Here's a hypothetical question:

Which does a person want more, love or furniture?

I suppose it depends on the desperation with which you yearn for both. On one hand, it's hard to have love if your apartment looks like a band of feral 4 year olds lives there. On the other, your furniture doesn't really give you a warm fuzzy feeling.

Okay. I lied. It does.

Well the right furniture does. Other furniture reminds you of monolithic creations that should have stayed in the Neolithic Age.

Anyways, my subscription to the online dating scheme has lapsed and I was going to re-up my membership but then I decided I needed furniture worse. So I bought a bookshelf.

But I swear it's a conspiracy. I've gotten more emails in the time that my subscription has been absent than in the weeks it was active. I personally think that is fishy. I didn't change my picture. I haven't updated my profile. Nothing has changed except for the fact that they are no longer taking money out of my account and accusing me of being a thief. I seriously am expecting that two things have happened: A) they hid the emails that I got before until now when I can't view them so that I would re-up my subscription or B) I've really only gotten one email and they're trying to make it seem like 9 million so that I will re-up my subscription.

Nevermind the fact that if I did get only one or 9 million emails they're all from some redneck-y people that combined have a grand total of 7 teeth, which subsequently happens to be 3 more teeth than the graveyard shift at your local Waffle House.

Anyways, I need your input. Should I re-up my contract and continue my search for love on the interwebs? The same place where there are websites of kittens with captions and octopuses who in live in trees?

Or should I just be pleased in the serendipitous way that my subscription ended and be done with it?

Opinions?

Um, Excuse me? Did you just throw candy at me?

So apparently when you're shit-ass faced smelling like the inside of a cheap liquor bottle and sitting in front of a hot girl on the bus you throw candy at her. Who knew?

But if he tries it one more time I will be forced to say something. And subsequently hurt someone. While I may not have a parmesan cheese shaker to beat his ass with I'm sure I can strangle him with the ear bud cord to my iPod.

And if forced to, I can indeed rip off the ear piece to my sunglasses and start stabbing. You just have to find the right soft fleshy parts.

Yes, you. Turn the fuck around. For serious. I'm starting to become aggravated. A person can only put up with so much.

I just had a revelation. I should obtain legal counsel. Just have some on retainer. I somehow see myself losing my temper and rendering some poor drunk, chicken-head crackhead incapable of peeing without a tube. For a very long time into the future. Over what may be a very trivial thing. But I'm sorry. You're not going to talk to me any way you damn well please. I don't care who you are.

Okay, there may be an exception or two to that last rule. But you have to be reeeeeaaaaalllllll damn purty. Real purty.

And that doesn't guarantee that I won't retaliate. It just means that I'll feel bad when I'm slicing up your handsome face.

I have to go now. I'm going to punch a drunk guy and then I have to go to the grocery store to get hot dogs and soda for my legal counsel.

PS - I'm technically still in Guilford County so somebody come to the detention center there to fetch me. And bring money. And snacks.