If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

I found out today that my "professional" email address was not linked to my "casual" email address, so I've missed meetings from last September, missed important business memos, and assumed that people were irresponsible for not emailing me back. Well, they did email me back. They emailed me back and I was the irresponsible one, and that made me feel really terrible, and my stomach sort of sat in the bottom of my feet like a rock when I made this discovery.

I started my new job on Thursday, and apparently, I'm a bookkeeper, and it's pretty much a 100000% Excel job, and of course, I made an F on my Excel project in Computer Applications class in college, so I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. It will get easier, I know, but for now, I feel like crying. Crying and a can of PBR.

Last night I went to an event, and so that people won't know whose event it was, I won't say what kind of event I attended. I made the discovery that people in this town are just as rude as people in L.A., but I used to just think that people here were stupid. Well, it isn't that they are stupid. It's that they are really rude. They say things to try to be "cute" or "coy," and their rudeness is sometimes disguised in Southern gentleness, but when you're a see-through-the-crap kind of person like me, you throw the charm out the window and recognize that people are just plain old fashioned RUDE.

Bad things come in 3's, right?

Well 3 rude things happened.

#1- there was this guy in high school that I knew who was sort of drop-dead gorgeous, but he was a huge jerk, so his gorgeousness didn't disguise his crapiness. I always sort of hoped that a "Cops" situation would present itself so I'd have the chance to pin him on the ground and beat the crap out of him, but the chance never presented itself, so to this day, I've still never gotten in a fist fight, and hopefully, I won't, even though I sometimes think about how fulfilling that punch to his face would be. Anyway, back in his hunky days, he went to Ole Miss for college and became your typical frat-tastic party guy, who should've had a name like "Chaz," complete with boat shoes and that dumb sunglasses strap thing that people should only wear on ski dos, but of course, all of the Ole Miss guys wear them, or at least they did when I was in college.

God proved that He is just when He made "Chaz" lose his hair, get fat, and drop out of college due to his compulsive, irresponsible partying.

So, Chaz was the first person I saw last night, and he said,

"So, what have you been up to?"

to which I replied,

"I'm trying to get back into school."

to which he replied,

"Oh. You're trying to finish your bachelor's degree?"

And all of the crap that I remember about gender stereotyping in this town, like it's 1920, made me livid, and my face felt hot when I said,

"No, I've applied for my doctorate. I finished my bachelor's in 2006."

Stupid punk.

He said,

"So you've already got a bachelor's AND a master's? And now you're trying to get a Ph.D.? Boy, was I wrong about you."

And I wanted to say, "Well, I was dead-on about you, because all of you hunky high school bullies always wind up being the dead beat drop out football watching male chauvinists with your beer guts and receding hairlines."

But, much like God closed the lions' mouths when Daniel was hanging out in the lions' den, he closed my mouth, and I just smiled politely.

#2- of course, someone I knew who also knew my bf wanted to talk to me about his exes. This is so rude. Please, people of Memphis, stop being obsessed with the past. Show a little bit of courtesy. You're rude and ignorant, and you aren't cute when you compare me to all of the girls who came before me.

I dated a raging hoe bag in L.A., and of course, at the time, I didn't know he probably had some sort of sexual addiction, but despite that he'd probably had carnal relations with everyone on the West Side and most of Hollywood, nobody ever talked about it. And you want to know WHY? Because NOBODY CARED.

In conjunction with this,

#2
a. the ex-obsessed person also wanted to talk negatively about one of my sisters, which REALLY hacked me off. If I want to talk crap about them or they want to talk crap about me, that's just fine, because we own those rights. You, rude person, might make me curb stomp you, "American History X" style, if you talk crap about my family.

#3 A person came up to me, with wide open arms, with a saccharine face full of excitement, and approached me for a bear hug, and called me my sister's name.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So that's that.

I know everyone is sick about me talking about Memphis and L.A. and all of that, so I'll get spiritual for half a second.

I read this yesterday:

"God may cause our circumstances to suddenly fall apart, which may bring the realization of our unfaithfulness to Him for not recognizing that He had ordained the situation. We never saw what He was trying to accomplish, and that exact event will never be repeated in our life. This is where the test of our faithfulness comes. If we will just learn to worship God even during the difficult circumstances, He will change them for the better very quickly if He so chooses."

I sort of felt like that was written just for me. It's funny how I felt like everything in L.A. fell apart and I had to move home with my tail tucked between my legs, just to find out that once I got home, life got way worse than it was in L.A. I also feel guilty a lot because I don't want to be known for my bad attitude or critical heart or acid mouth, and that's all I seem to be these days.

But you know who makes me feel better?

Johnny Cash.

Here's a blip about Cash from Wikipedia (the most credible source of all time, right?)

"Cash, a devout but troubled Christian,has been characterized as a "lens through which to view American contradictions and challenges."A Biblical scholar, he penned a Christian novel entitled Man in White, and he made a spoken word recording of the entire New King James Version of the New Testament. Even so, Cash declared that he was "the biggest sinner of them all", and viewed himself overall as a complicated and contradictory man."

Boy, do I know how you feel, Johnny.

It's funny how I can consider myself a Christian, and someone who truly wants to be a genuine person, but as soon as I go to a Memphis event with a bunch of ignorant people, I want to walk inside, Bushwacker-style, and start punting them into a corn field. Pretty sure Jesus never felt like that.

BTW, I ordered "Man in White" on half.com for a dollar. I can't wait for it to come in the mail.

I have recently heard a few people tell me that they hate my blog, for various reasons. I have some advice for to you, gentle readers (as Anne Landers called you):

Don't read it.

If you hate it, stop reading it.

I was reading a book last week that got me so upset that I just tore my bookmark right out of its spine and threw it in the garbage can. I really did.

Please know that I don't write anything to change the world, or change your mind, or to upset you, or brainwash you. I don't even write for you anymore. I write for me. I started this thing to write for you, but now I write because it brings me the slightest bit of clarity. So if you don't like it, don't read it, and if you do like it, read it and understand my heart.