Once upon a time, in a land far away, a verybadcat perched herself on a stool at the hotel bar. She found herself sitting next to a very handsome man.

Many giggles, glasses of wine and conversation topics later, she found herself down at the hot tub with that same man. He was not so much a prince, because princes have gone the way of dragons, but he was about the closest replica of a prince that she had ever seen.

Because he was so very handsome and charming, and because she had not found herself in the company of anyone so handsome and charming in quite some time, and because she is a verybadcat, she found herself in his hotel room. Where she spent the night, but mysteriously got very, very little sleep. It was like a dream, but she didn’t bother pinching herself because she hates being pinched, and anyway, would not have wanted to wake up if it were just a dream.

She did eventually have to wake up, however, because she had to be at work by eight in the morning, or her cruel, ugly, evil stepmother boss would have turned her into a pretty rug for his office otherwise. What she woke up to was something of a nightmare…

Apparently her happiness angered the Gods, because they had Mother Nature deliver a gift to her in the middle of the night. This gift was discovered by her companion as he peeled back the covers to get out of bed. She quickly surveyed her situation and realized that she needed out of that room and down to her own, both to save herself some humiliation and to shower. She quickly gathered her still damp bikini and cover up, which is about as opaque as wet toilet paper.

The very handsome and charming man gallantly offered her a t-shirt for her travels, which she gratefully accepted. He asked her for her cell phone number, and as she went to write it on the little notepad left on every hotel room desk since the time of dragons, she saw that the first sheet had already been written on. She stared at the name Kelly, with the phone number underneath it, and fought the urge to vomit right there on the desk. She ripped the page off, laid it carefully next to the pad, and wrote her own name and number on the second sheet.

She then bolted from the room.

That was about the time that she realized that she was wearing only a bikini and a man’s t-shirt that barely covered her ass, complete with last night’s hair and makeup. She smelled like wine and other things we don’t talk about in fairy tales.

Because verybadcat is a smart cookie, she quickly ruled out the elevator and slipped out to the staircase. Then she realized, with horror, that she had no idea how to get back to her own room without trouncing through the lobby. This was also when she realized that she was experiencing her very first walk of shame, ever. She may have cried a tear or two, but she pulled it together, stood at the doors to the lobby, and took a deep breath.

She opened the door and walked through it. The lobby was full of businessmen, peeking over the top of their Wall Street Journals and pausing mid-sip of their Starbucks to watch this pitiful creature cross the lobby; cheeks on fire, head held high, half dressed and love-worn, with a cover up and a room key in her hand.

It felt like it took forever to cross that lobby, and she was sure that if she made eye contact with anyone in a suit and tie in her current state that the Gods would turn her into a pillar of salt… so she put on her best hundred yard stare and marched through that lobby like she owned it.

Once she arrived in her own room she took a long hot shower, trying and yet at the same time knowing that no matter how hard you scrub, you cannot wash off  humiliation. She dressed for work and rushed out to her rental car. As she turned the key and adjusted the air conditioning, she heard her cell phone singing its text message song.

She looked at the screen in disbelief as she read the message from that handsome and charming man whose sheets she had so horrifically defiled in the night. In that moment, the birds began to sing, and the embarrassment dissolved, and verybadcat smiled such a bright and pretty smile that the Arizona sun paled in comparison.

The End

(or maybe it was just the beginning…)

This story comes to you courtesy of my Daddy, who we all know is probably my greatest source of TMI posts.

Where he works, they have a small cafeteria. For awhile, they had no cook, and so they had no breakfast or lunch available in the cafeteria. A new cook was hired, and everyone was eager to have hot food served at the office. They lined up to try his offerings.

The grits were his biggest hit by far. All the ladies ranted and raved about how incredibly delicious this guy’s grits were. Daddy got sick of hearing about it- that’s how impressed everyone was.

For the better part of three months, everyone ate grits for breakfast, and they were good, and all was right with the world. Until…

One day, they were out of forks or grits or something, and so one of the ladies wandered back into the kitchen to let him know…

… and found him working, um, furiously at finishing a batch of grits with his “special sauce”. The process by which he made this “special sauce” did not belong in the kitchen, and probably required a Playboy or a Penthouse to produce.

That’s right, folks- the women my father works with were over the moon for grits made with love sauce, which they unknowingly ate five mornings a week for three months.

The cafeteria is closed now.

Happy TMI Thursday!

I started my period today.

I gained 13 pounds in a week. Or my scale is broken.

Hook or crook, I will lose at least half of those 13 pounds by the time my period is over. Watch me.

The ex is taking custody of Adicus next Friday, and I’ve been a blubbering mess all day because of it.

It appears that both the appearance of my skin and my general outlook on life are kept in good order by sex. Which explains why my complexion is dull and I’m “meh” in general.

For those reasons among numerous and obvious other reasons, I would really like to measure my sexual activity (that includes other parties) in increments of weeks or even days rather than months.

Lucy and Adicus both have worms and I’m scared to death I’ll get them.

My legs are covered in flea bites.

In 2010, instead of implementing a blanket benefit maximum for mental health services, they will be covered (or not) based on the same criteria set for physical illnesses. I am sitting here hoping the crazy is good enough to keep me in covered therapy for the whole year. Which is a weird feeling.

I probably pretty much just screwed (ha! bad pun) myself out of correcting the sex life situation by admitting everything else.

I’m not sure I really care about that. Let’s face it, if a guy can’t handle this post? He can’t handle me.

There you have it. All my yuckies. Tomorrow is Friday, and I might just shed a few tears of gratitude when I get up in the morning.

Happy TMI.

I went through my archives, and I can’t see where I’ve told this story before, so here goes.

When I was a little girl, changing the kitty litter was one of my chores. One week, I was late getting to it, and Daddy insisted that it be done before he got home from work the next day or my was gonna be grass. Of course, I woke up late and had to rush. I dumped the box into the trash bag and went to fill it back up….

We had no kitty litter. What’s a girl to do? I can’t leave the box empty! What can I use to put in there until Daddy and I could get some more kitty litter?

Back in the day, Daddy shopped at Pace (just like Sams), and so in my frantic searching for a replacement, I came across a twin box of Grape Nuts. Perfect. Right size, right texture, there’s enough here. It will do in a pinch, and I am certainly in a pinch.

So I ripped open both bags and filled the kitty litter with Grape Nuts, and skipped off to the bus stop, thoroughly satisfied with my solution.

When Dad got home from work that night, I told him that I changed the kitty litter, but we have to run out and get more litter. Of course this confused him. How did I change the litter if we were out, and if I just changed it, why would we need to run out right now? So, proud as a peacock, I explained the situation. We headed off the the  store and picked up some Tidy Cat and when we got back home, Dad said I needed to go ahead and change it again, because Grape Nuts have no odor control.

Have you ever let Grape Nuts just sit in milk? Do you know what happens? They absorb it all, and when they do, they swell up into a big pile of mush.

I took the lid off of the kitty litter, and there it was.

Grape Nuts mountain, a la cat piss, with a few turds for presentation. The mountain of mush flowed over the edges of the litter pan and on to the carpet. I called Dad for reinforcements. He came into the room, looked at the litter overflowing with swollen cat piss Grape Nuts and turds. That was when he bust out laughing, shaking his head as he went to get the shop vac. We cleaned it up, gagging and laughing the whole time, and then Dad had to clean out the shop vac. It smelled like wheaty toasted cat waste, and was so mushy and gummy that we ended up having to let a few spots dry on the carpet for a few days and just cutting it out once it had dried to a ammonia and grain cement type mixture.

No one in my immediate family has eaten Grape Nuts since.

Happy TMI!

Rach, if you’re out there, don’t read this one. Seriously.

With the ex moved out, Adicus and I have had to renegotiate our relationship. I agreed to fetch him more if he would quit busting the screens out of the the living room windows to get outside when I’m not home. He agrees that I’m in charge until a strange car pulls into the driveway, then all bets are off. He sleeps in the bed, not at the foot like he used to, now he stretches out like a human, his doggie head resting on the pillow beside me.

Yesterday, though, he took things a little too far.

I was lucky enough to get my monthly gift for the second time in two weeks this week. Go figure. After I came home from work, I was peeing and changing clothes….

Whenever I come home from anywhere, whenever I use the restroom in any manner except for makeup and brushing of teeth, Adicus must inspect me and/or whatever I’m in there doing. A little sniff here, a little sniff there. I guess he’s checking for cancer. Who knows. I discourage it, but I’m not too strict about it. He’s a pack animal, I’m the alpha bitch (huzzah!), and he’s just doing what dogs do. Until last night.

As I sat there, peeing, he rested his chin on my knee, as he often does, so that I will rub his muzzle and tell him how handsome and smart he is. I did just that, and as I reached for the toilet paper, in one swift motion, before I could figure it out and prevent it?

He licked my dirty pantyliner.

Yeah. I was horrified too. I mean, he’s dug them out of the trash and eaten them in the bed before. That’s how I ended up with one of those little metal trashcans with the foot pedal that lifts the lid. Somehow, though, it was much, much more disturbing to see him lick the pantyliner that I was still wearing.

Also? He licked it the way he eats his favorite treat- soft serve ice cream- tenderly, slowly. He savored the taste of my pantyliner.

I made him stop, replaced the pantyliner, and then he and I had a little talk about boundaries.  I think he understands now.

Happy TMI!

Every year in late April, Smoky Mountain National Park has its annual Wildflower Pilgrimage. Tourons (tourist + moron) pay hundreds of dollars to be led around the park by rangers and volunteers, to see all of the spring wildflowers in their glory. Which is funny to me, because if you’re hiking the right trails, you can’t miss even the rare ones.

The ex and I went out to one of the best trails in the park for spring wildflowers. We split up, and he spent the morning fishing the river, while I hiked seven miles round trip and took several hundred pictures, one of which is the thumbnail in my right hand column over there.

We met back at the truck, pulled our lunch out of the cooler, and hiked off trail to a nice spot by the river. It was fairly far from the road, back in the woods, next to a good run for him to fish after lunch, and a beautiful plunge pool.

I spread out the ground cover, and we had lunch. It was a little past noon, and the sun was high overhead. We were both tired in the best way- that tiredness that comes from catching lots of fish and finding lots of wildflowers. We were not so tired, though, as to be completely uninterested in each other.

We seemed far enough from the road, which was not busy,  and though the trees were not completely leafed out, there was some cover between the blanket and the road… and so we decided to have each other for dessert. It was necessarily short, but not so short as to prevent me from enjoying the sun and breeze on my mostly bare skin. I sat up to put my shorts back on, and that was when I realized.

Apparently, I overestimated the amount of cover we were afforded, and possibly the distance from the road. When people can see a bear from the road, all traffic stops until the bear ambles off out of sight. We locals, as well as park officials, call this a “bear jam”. Well, it would appear that the ex and I created our own little “bare jam”, because as I slipped my shorts back on, I noticed several cars stopped on the road in direct sight of our picnic blanket. It was right about that time that the “bare jam” moved along and the road was quiet again.

Funny enough, that didn’t stop me from skinny dipping in the plunge pool after the ex wandered off for more fishing. That was easier to get away with, though, because the river bank was tall, and you couldn’t see the water from the road. We should have had our little rendezvous on one of the large boulders next to the plunge pool. Live and learn, I guess.

We’re lucky that we didn’t get heckled, photographed, or ticketed. No, the only consequence was a little sheepishness, and a bruise the exact size and shape of a sweetgum ball on the small of my back.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. This little girl was always breaking out in poison ivy, oak or sumac. (this little girl is in no way my baby sister, evar, no way, it’s a dirty lie). Her Mama was a working girl (not THAT kind, ya’ll, I mean all corporate and stuff) who left at the ass crack of dawn to get the office early.

So that was how this little girl found herself packing her book bag for a field trip all alone. She had a nasty patch of the Ivy on the small of her back, and it was itchin’ like a bitch. The little girl is in second or third grade maybe. She called her Mama and asked where the poison ivy medicine was so she could take it on her field trip. Her Mama told her to look for the cream with hydro-cortisone in on her bathroom counter and rushed her off the phone, because Mama was IMPORTANT and couldn’t be bothered with the little girl’s rash issues at the moment.

The little girl was a smart cookie- she found the tube that said “whatever % hydro-cortisone” on the front, threw it in her backpack and caught the bus to school.

Later that day at where ever the hell the field trip was, she walked up to her favorite teacher. Her favorite teacher was the new one- the cute young guy that had just started at the school and was very sweet to all the kids. The little girl just thought this teacher hung the moon, she loved him so.

You can imagine how it hurt her feelings when she handed him the tube of cream, asked him to help her with the itching, and turned her back on him and he ran away. Ran away to an old lady teacher and muttered something and threw the tube at the old lady and disappeared for awhile…

Well, it hurt her feelings real bad. Really bad enough that when her awesome sauce big sister got home from school, she had to cry and snot all over her and tell her all about it. Because her awesome big sister is an EVEN smarter cookie than she is, she said to the little girl- “bring me the cream you took to school today. RIGHT NOW.”

That big sister was still an angsty teenager with a liver full of sibling rivarly and hatred. So when the little girl produced a tube of Preparation H? She could only roll around on the floor, convulsing in a fit of pee inducing laughter.

Because she truly was an awesome sauce big sister, she found the REAL poison ivy medicine for the little girl, and the little girl and the old lady teacher talked to the very cute and thoroughly disturbed new male teacher the next day and everyone was happy…..

This may seem a little immature, now that I’m almost thirty and I love that little girl so much it makes my heart hurt, but…

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! She asked her teacher to help her with hemorrhoid cream! BWAHAHAHA!

At the tender age of sixteen, I was hanging out with a group of people who were at least five years older than I was, which I would recommend highly to any teenager, so long as their parents aren’t around to hear me say it.

There was a guy in our little gang who was so handsome, so hot, so incredibly attractive that I was smitten the moment I saw him. As I got to know him a little better, I realized how wild he really was. He was passionate about everything, was a risk taker, was always pushing the envelope. He was the guy that you begged not to talk when the cops showed up, because it would only lead to unmitigated disaster.

I will explain at this point that this guy was Icelandic. He had white blond hair, ice blue eyes and chiseled everything. He was six foot tall and I only wish I had a picture, could post a picture, because my description doesn’t even do him justice. He was smokin’ hot.

So it happened that one night that we found ourselves quite drunk and rather alone. One thing led to another (as it so often does when one finds themselves quite drunk), and the next thing I knew, I was having sex with the hottest man to ever walk the Earth. Of course, because this is my life and not a Molly Ringwald movie, a very irritating chick who was visiting a friend from some other town interrupted us. Which killed the mood, because not two hours previously, she informed us that she was covered in little white bumps, which her doctor told her was a fungal infection she caught from the tanning bed.

It mattered little to me. I had taken advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime.

Until I realized that Fungal Infection told all of our friends what happened.

My girlfriends (again, these girls were at least five years my senior) were horrified with him. They asked me- “So are the two of you dating now?”, and I thought about it for a minute.

“No, I don’t really think so. I really don’t think he has any interest in dating me.”

“Then why did you sleep together? Why did he sleep with you? Why in the blue fuck did you sleep with him, then?”

“Um, because I could? Because I know that he’ll never date me, but who would turn him down?!”

I will admit, I was as confused as they were. I didn’t understand why they were so outraged. We’re friends, I have a huge crush on him, we got drunk, we had sex, end of story. Should I have not slept with him because I knew what was up? But then I never would have slept with the hottest man to walk the Earth, evar?

“This was so wrong of him. He knows how much you like him!”

Okay, but he didn’t tell me that he loved me? He didn’t say that we would be together. He just started nibbling on my ear, and I didn’t stop him. I encouraged him. It never occurred to me at any point to stop and say “hey, what are the chances of you ever buying me dinner”?!

He and I spoke about it once, briefly. He asked me if I understood that our little escapade was not the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I nodded. He asked me if I was okay with that, or if I felt taken advantage of. I told him that I was fine with it, that I would have loved to date him, but that I knew that was unrealistic, and had never really thought otherwise?

We remained friends for years afterward, and there were a few inappropriate moments peppered here and there, but nothing as glorious as that first night. I think he was afraid of my friends.

So that, my lovely freaders, is when I figured out a few important things:

Sex and love are two very, very different things, and you can have one without the other- in fact, I would gain to say that having the two of them together is something of a rare bird.

Women have to have a connection with a man to sleep with them, no matter what you try to tell me. If you don’t care about someone on a very basic level, it’s not happening.

That feeling that you get from having sex without love- that gnawing guilty/wanting to turn his spare bedroom into a nursery feeling? It’s biology, folks. In case you get knocked up. What do you do with that feeling? Acknowledge it and dismiss it. It’s not doing you any good unless you are, in fact, knocked up.

The ending of this story might be better than the story itself.

Two years later, when the ex and I crossed paths with this guy as a couple? We chatted idly for a few minutes, and he asked my new boyfriend if we were dating. When the ex confirmed that we were, he smiled, leaned over and said: “Good for you, man, you’ve got a live wire there…”

Not only did I sleep with one of the hottest men in the world, but I got a rave review.  Does it get any better than that?

Happy TMI Thursday!

Yes, lovely freaders, it’s TMI Thursday! Today’s story takes place in the long, long ago when I was about sixteen. My friends were a group of people at least four years older than I.

One of our friends was leaving to join the Marines, so we threw him a party. His last hurrah. Much booze was consumed, and I don’t really remember how Mr. Marine and I ended up on the pull out sofa bed together, but we did.

Like any good and patriotic American girl who finds herself drunk and cuddled up to a soon to be Marine, I felt compelled to give him a decent send off. I mean, doesn’t he deserve to go into basic training with the highest morale possible? The fact that he was handsome and halfway charming didn’t hurt at all.

I gave him such a good send off that we never made it to the main event. Which surprised me, because at the tender age of sixteen, I had no clue what I was doing. I woke up the next morning with a sticky t shirt and feeling a little sheepish.  I was also a little sensitive about my lack of experience- had I made a fool of myself? My consolation was that at least he had left town, so I wouldn’t have to deal with any aftermath, and to this day, I still don’t know that anyone else at the party knew about what happened that night.  I went on about my sweet sixteen business and after a while, I mostly forgot all about it.

Fast forward several months, to Mr. Marine’s first visit home on leave.

I’m sitting in the same house the send off party was held in, drink in hand, talking to a friend when he walked through the door. I turned to see who it was, and he saw me, and I must have blushed harder than I’ve ever blushed since. What do you say to a guy in this situation? All the worry and doubt and sheepishness came flooding back like a day hadn’t passed between our encounter and his return.

Turns out, I didn’t have to say a thing. He picked me up into a huge hug and twirled me around, going on and on about how much he had missed me?! I mean, it could have been a scene from a World War Two movie! We were not great friends before his send off, so his enthusiasm had to be about his farewell party.  So, not only did I not make a fool of myself, but apparently the memories of that night kept me on this guy’s radar for almost a year afterward, which made me feel a lot better about the whole thing. That was also when I realized what a simple and grateful creature the male human can be at a basic level. Nothing else ever happened between us; we talked that night and I never saw him again.

How’s that for serving your country?

Meet Pete.  Pete’s poison was red wine. He would finish a bottle or two in a night, easy. A little background on Pete:

- The first time I met him, he asked me if I was a Polynesian mail order bride and what catalog MH ordered me out of.

- Pete  not only worked the Ren Fest, but he wore the costume continuously while the Ren Fest was in town.

- Pete is a known projectile puking drunk.

We were at a friend’s house- that friend that always throws the parties- and we were upstairs playing pool. This was poor judgment on the part of our host, who generally never allowed Pete inside, except for the basement.  The evening progressed as a normal evening does.

Then, in one swift minute, MH and his best friend asked Pete if he was okay in the same breath. Pete wasn’t looking good- he had that telltale blank panicked look, a thin film of flop sweat, and his jaw was set. Steven went to open the sliding glass door and we were all directing Pete towards it. He then threw up all over the sliding glass door, the floor, and Steven’s hand. They got him out on to the back deck, where he proceeded to throw up all over the deck boards. It was dripping through to the basement porch below.

We made a fast exit towards the car, because if there is one thing MH knows about me, it’s that I simply cannot be around puke and pukers. We’re getting ready to pull out of the driveway when Pete came running toward the car, spitting chunks out of his mouth, screaming “why don’t you like me? don’t you like me? why don’t you like me?”. Lucky for me, MH hit the gas and we drove down the driveway and away from the red wine puke covered creepy ass old guy in a Peter Pan suit.

Happy TMI!