What if I had ended yesterday’s post by saying, “I’m enlisting”?

That would have been hilarious*, huh?

But I didn’t, so…

Speaking of hindsight, here’s another installment of “Annie’s Most Embarrassing Moments.”

Yesterday, Brooks & Dunn called it quits.  (SO EMBARRASSING… oh wait… not yet… wait for it…)

On some website, I saw that the writer had referred to them as “Brooks & DONE,” and I thought, “Well, that’s clever.”  I love words.  I love plays-on-words.  I just liked it, okay?  And I resolved that I would use it as my own.

So last night, as I was leaving the Y, drenched in sweat delightfully and femininely glistening, I tossed my towel in the bin.  And the man behind the counter said, “Haha – just like Brooks & Dunn – throwing in the towel” (someone give that man a trophy, because THAT WAS SHARP).

It was my chance.

And here is what I said.

“More like Brooks & NO MORE!”

What.

I ruined it.  Completely.

I mean, what in the hell was that?  Brooks & No More?  Brooks & NO MORE?

And what’s worse – if I had gotten it right, it’s the sort of thing that would only translate in writing.  I could have said, “More like Brooks & DONE!” and started laughing hysterically, patted myself on the back for my brilliance, and winked at my latest adoring fan on the way out the door – and the poor YMCA worker would have just thought I was a dolt.

So, given the two scenarios, I suppose it’s Sophie’s Choice.

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*Hilarious not because the military is something to be laughed at, but more at the thought of me wearing a hat of any sort.

Just preempting the blog-hatred.  A girl gotsta look out for herself.

I tout myself as a thrifty person – one who hates to waste anything – and will find a use for every half-used jar of marmalade, every discarded ribbon from a birthday present, every unloved piece of furniture.

However, I am a fraud – no better than a snake oil salesman.

My parents recently visited me in Nashville, and my dad bought a 2-liter bottle of Diet Pepsi.  I don’t drink pop, but I couldn’t bring myself to dump out the still half-full bottle when he left.  So rather than tossing the $1’s worth of leftovers down the drain, I went out and spent $20 on a bottle of rum.

Rum and Diet Pepsi isn’t even an awesome drink.

But I tell you what: every drop of that Diet Pepsi was utilized.

Still, that was really stupid financial reasoning.

I suppose even angels fall.

A notorious over-packer, I recently flew back from a 2-day trip to Seattle with a suitcase weighing in at 49.5 lbs. – one shoe away from the overweight charge.  And that’s not to mention anything of my second suitcase.

Travel this weekend, I was determined, would be different.

Flying to Kansas City on Friday night, I did something I have never done before – I ONLY CARRIED ON.  One small roller suitcase in the overhead bin – and no waiting at the baggage claim!  Brilliant!

But on the way back, things were a little different.

Remember how my mom is especially fond of sending me away with a suitcase of frozen food?  This time, it was a pork tenderloin – a large, cylindrical, vacuum-sealed piece of meat.  I am not entirely sure how to cook a pork tenderloin, but still: lucky me!

Until I got to security.

Wouldn’t you know, the guards saw something a little “suspicious” in the x-ray of my suitcase.

And there, in front of God and everyone, they unzipped my bag to find the culprit.

“Uh, Ron, we’re gonna need to run this through again.”

“What is it?”

“Looks like a piece of meat.”

I stood by, compliant and taciturn, as my precious hog was passed from hand to hand, back to the beginning of the machine.  Everyone in line behind me looked at me with a collective, “Seriously?”

Seriously.

Me: “Don’t you want to roll your eyes at people who don’t know the difference between stationary and stationery?”

Him: “It’s an easy mistake – the only way I remember it is that e goes with envelope.”

Me: “I remember it because e goes with letter… which, now that I think about it, is a completely useless mnemonic device.”

On Facebook, sometimes users are required to type in a word to verify that one is indeed a human and not a cyborg or a hacker. It’s called a “captcha” – get it, like, “capture,” but all loosey-goosey and free-style? Say it with attitude – move your shoulders with each syllable. “Captcha.”

(You totally whispered it out loud, didn’t you? You sassy little devil.)

But I only just now realized that it’s pronounced “captcha”; when you read something over and over, but are never required to say it out loud, your brain can play tricks on you. And this whole time, in my head, I’ve been calling it a “captchka.” “Captchka” makes absolutely no sense – PLUS, with 5 consonants in a row, it’s almost impossible to pronounce. What was I thinking?

I have a little electronic key on my key-ring that unlocks certain doors at the office. When I included it in Friday’s video, I realized that I did not, in fact, know what it was called; you see my slight hesitation at 1:33. In my head, I have been calling it a “pre-farb,” which is quite possibly the ugliest word in the made-up English language*. But today I was set straight: it’s a “key fob.”

There’s an old Patty Loveless song with the line, “It gets melancholy.” Until very recently, I thought she was singing about “a kid-smellin’ collie” – which could have been right…?

There are words that slide comfortably into my written lexicon that I’ve discovered that I have to pause before pronouncing out loud: archetype, posthumous, banal, wan.

I have a new goal of being able to spell, with no hesitation, the following:
- coup d’état
- hors d’oeuvres
- onomatopoeia

*The ugliest word in the ACTUAL English language is “crotch.”

There is a client who frequents the office. I know his name, and respectfully call him “Doctor _________.” Because he is a doctor.

Except no. No he isn’t. Today, my co-worker said, “Why do you call him ‘doctor’? He’s not a doctor.”

Why did I think he was? What did I mis-hear, or mis-interpret, or just make up? I HAVE NO IDEA. I am completely delusional. I stopped him today and said, red-faced, “I’m really sorry – it’s been brought to my attention that you are not, in fact, a doctor. And I don’t know why, but I’ve been calling you ‘doctor’ for so long… I feel silly.”

And so he told me the story of a woman he once met years ago, and how she insisted upon being called “doctor,” even though she just had an online education certifying her with a “Doctorate of Transcendental Meditation.”

If that works, then I declare myself to have a “Doctorate of Cheese.”

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What are your weekend plans? I want to know. From ALL of you.

I am an introvert through and through. I love silence and solitude and being totally reclusive, blocking out the world and screening my phone calls and reading and writing and thinking, nesting and organizing and never saying a word. If I’ve had a week in which I’ve had too much going on or too many people to interact with, I start to wither and fold inward and shut down.

I love being alone. To an almost alarming degree.

But – and this is a big but – I love my friends. I mean, I really, really love my friends. For someone who, as a general rule, doesn’t like people, I sure LOVE a lot of people. I sure do.

Last night, after seeing one of my new favorites play a show (along with these two, who are also completely darling), I stood outside Café Coco in a circle of friends. It was cold, and I didn’t have a coat on (because I am a dimwit), and it was late. But we all stood there and talked, girls and guys, a small slice of the wonderful people I have met here, laughing and looking each other in the eye – and I felt happy in my heart, and I didn’t let a single one get away without a hug.

And that moment – those goodbyes, those hugs with friends that I’ll surely see within the next 48 hours, those smiles and waves – is burned into my brain. When I moved to Nashville, I wondered who I would love. Now I know.

My friend Carly has a fabulous food blog aptly titled Fabulously Classic. She is my dream wife, coming up with all sorts of delicious concoctions to feed her husband Ben. Recently, she posted a recipe for pumpkin bars, and since it’s fall and I have A NEW MIXER, I thought I would bake a batch for my friendliest neighbors: the ex-cons across the street.

Except I didn’t follow the instructions. Carly said “jelly roll pan.” I took that to mean “any pan that I want.” Bad decision.

The pumpkin batter in my pan wound up being FAR too deep to bake all the way through, so in the end, I was presented with a “crispy around the edges” and yet “completely unbaked wad of dough in the middle” cake. I pulled it out and looked at it, flabbergasted, trying to scientifically deduce what I had done wrong. I’ve decided that a good law to live by should be, “Never do what your brain thinks will be okay.” That rule of thumb would have saved me from several speeding tickets, an ill-fated decision to pass up Dramamine, and $400 at a date auction in 2001.

However, never one to waste anything – especially sugar and lard – I waited for the cake to cool and then revisited it. I decided that there were salvageable pieces around the edges, so I took a knife to the whole, and wound up with 3 platefuls of mini-squares of perfectly good cake. Today, I will frost them individually, and bring them to my favorite former prisoners.

But I still have the mush from the middle – a doughy lump of ugly-yet-probably-delicious cake. And call me crazy, but I’m thinking… breakfast for 2 weeks.

It’s been a long time. I was starting to think that the day would never come. But finally, after days and weeks and months of absolute agony, the moment has finally arrived:

I am in a good mood.

A genuinely good mood.

Welcome, Fall. You have been missed.

The people of Nashville tell me that this summer was mild. These words feel like a frying pan to the face – a disorienting blow that leaves me dazed, confused, and frankly, a bit pissed off. What do you mean, “mild”? This summer was the most miserable season OF MY LIFE. I didn’t sleep because it was too hot. I didn’t exercise because it was too hot. I didn’t do my hair because it was too hot. I didn’t smile because it was too hot.

You might call me a weather wimp. But I say to thee, HOLD YOUR JUDGMENT: you never see me scoffing at the people who become depressed in the dark and cold winter months – mostly because I am gleefully drinking tea and being cozy. I’ve never really liked the summer – but this is the first year that I genuinely hated the summer. I honestly do not know if I will willingly choose to live through another Nashville hot-season – not on purpose.

But the doleful summer days are now gone. Or at least – almost gone. I know that it’s supposed to get back into the 80’s tomorrow and for the remainder of the week, and who knows what next week will bring. But today, I am wearing a scarf. I am back to my lunchtime walks. I am feeling the change in the air.

What is this strange feeling?

Oh. Happiness. Long overdue, honest-to-God happiness.

As the Temptress, I make an hourly wage, which equates to a not-very-big salary. Don’t get me wrong: for doing nothing, I make a fortune. And even if I don’t have a lot of extra cash, my bills always get paid. I am grateful for this temp job that is allowing me to have an experience here in Nashville.

But extra money is never a bad thing, right?

So I am currently doing a trial run with one of those Type From Home programs. Companies all over the world have scanned in old documents, and they need people to transcribe them. This seemed like a good fit for me because 1) I can do it at work, and 2) who is the valedictorian of typing? It sounded like easy cash.

But the program that I am using has some stipulations. There is a minimum requirement of pages to be typed each month, and if you don’t meet it – sorry, no money, not even for the pages that you DO type. There is also a maximum number of pages you can type – you may not exceed X number of pages, and therefore, X number of dollars, each month.

Doing the math, I figured out that I must type 15 pages a day to meet the minimum requirement. Not bad – especially when WHAT ELSE AM I GOING TO DO AT MY DESK? So yesterday was my first day, my grand experiment, and I was excited to get going.

Maniacally excited. I typed 75 pages.

When I walked out of work, my eyeballs fell out of my skull and rolled across the parking lot like marbles.

But you know me – I love money! I love cash! Being poor is balderdash!

So I went home, and typed some more – mostly Iranian medical documents about menstruation and chemical compounds. Adding up the pages as I went along, I started calculating the things I was going to buy: a new bottle of perfume, a ticket to Seattle, a new car… visions of Anthropologie dresses and massages and all of the things I’ve always wanted but never been able to buy… Type From Home is going to be my ticket to financial freedom!

But just before bed, I checked the website one more time… and my Blimp of a Thousand Dreams was slashed by the Grand Knife of Reality: there is a 50 page/day maximum. Anything above that is not only deleted, but then subtracted from your total. You type 51, your total is 49. You type 52, your total is 48. So because I typed close to 100 pages, I logged nearly zero.

I have a bad feeling about this.