Greetings from the vacation that never quite seems to end. My double jointed elbow says, “hi.”

This morning started out early–around 4 a.m.–when my mom asked me to ride with her while she took Maddie to the emergency room. She had a really bad headache, so they gave her an IV with what they called a “headache cocktail.” She wouldn’t give me any of it and I was really jealous.

The IV made her really drowsy, so she slept until pretty late in the afternoon and I had no one to play with. I was in our room at one point to get my headphones and she was creepily staring at me from her bed. Either that or sleeping with her eyes open.

“How ya doin’ lil buddy?” I asked her.

“Good. I feel bettttter.” she said in a really sleepy voice.

“You on some drugs there?”

“Nah.” she said, “But I guess you could put a bonnet on me.”

“Yeah. I think you’re on some drugs.”

(I’m getting ready to moon my mom in this picture.)

My mom is taking really great care of Maddie because of the whole ER thing. I, on the other hand, have been getting extremely neglected. She wouldn’t even put aloe on my inner thigh sunburn. Oh yeah. I forgot to mention I have inner thigh sunburn. I had a salad and three mimosas for lunch and then fell asleep on the deck with my legs spread–resulting in terrible and awkward inner thigh sunburn. Everything is awful.

Tonight’s our last night with baby Lily.

I know what you’re thinking. YES her bathing suit matches my upper thigh tattoo. In one of the proudest moments of my life today, I successfully burped baby Lily. It smelled like breast milk and was really gross.

Speaking of breast milk, Melissa refuses to share her “Mother’s Milk” tea with me. According to her, it will not make my breasts magically produce milk.

I think its worth a shot.

We’ll always remember this as the vacation where

• I tried to make high waisted shorts happen (I only brought four pairs of them with me)
• We utilized the first aid kit more than my mom probably would have liked
• I walked in on an awkward conversation my mom was having with my entire family about my boobs
• Melissa told me I had a mustache
• We realized baby Lily–when her hair is fluffed just right–might be Conan O’Brien’s child
• We had a house next to circus people who brought their own trampoline and set it up on the beach
• I had very little to blog about because I had an 11 p.m. curfew
• I took a lot of pictures with strategic arm placement to make it look like I have more cleavage than I do

One last thing thing–today on the beach, my sunbathing reading material of choice was a book on Neuromarketing that my boss let me borrow. Instead of applying the neuromarketing tricks to my work to convince people to buy my clients’ services and products, I’m instead going to attempt to use them to trick boys into cuddling and watching Titanic with me. Just kidding. Maybe.

I’ve been in Virginia Beach for a little over 48 hours now. I’ve succeeded in drinking half a bottle of Grey Goose and using a Biore cleansing nose strip. I REALLY don’t know how to spend my free time.

Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true. In the worst waste of a Garmin Forerunner ever, I’ve been using mine to make sure that I walk at least five miles a day. When I was finally finishing off Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project the other night, she discussed Dorothea Brande’s warning that

writers are too inclined to spend their time on wordy occupations like reading, talking, and watching TV, movies, and plays. Instead, writers should recharge themselves with language-free occupations like listening to music, visiting museums, playing solitaire, or taking long walks alone.

I definitely found this interesting because even though writing is my profession, I tend to fill my free time with language-based activities like reading, blogging, and eating hot dogs with mac and cheese and crab on top. Okay. Maybe not that last one. But in an effort to “recharge” myself with “language free occupations,” I’ve been walking five miles a day. Don’t worry about all those calories I’m burning. I’m making up for them with Angry Orchard Apple Ginger cider and cocktails in jars. Welcome to the South.

A few other updates:

I’ve been having absolute terrible luck with piercings. One of my dermals sunk into my skin and I had to have it removed completely. I now only have one back dermal. It’s a good look if you’re into asymmetry. Perhaps this is a sign that I’m getting a little too old for piercings.

In less disgusting news, I watched baby Lily for almost an entire hour today and we both survived. I don’t really know exactly what babies like to do for fun, so we just watched some Family Guy and I fed her a bottle.

If you’re wondering about the title of this blog post, it’s a J.M. Barrie quote–who wrote Peter Pan. If I had been 23 when I found it, it’d probably be inked on my body right now. Good thing I’m 24.

I’m not necessarily “good” at vacation. I don’t really know what it means to disconnect–and when I have free time I’m never quite sure what to do with it.

With that being said, I’m in Virginia Beach with my mom’s family right now.

The weather is terrible and I’ve been drunk twice already today. This isn’t to say I’m having a terrible time; I absolutely am not. In fact, since my cousin Melissa is on vacation with us, I’ve been learning a lot about babies. And by babies I mean breast pumping.

Since we’ve been here, I’ve seen Melissa pumping her breasts more than I’ve seen the sun. But like I said, we haven’t had nice weather. Nonetheless, we’ve all agreed that her life now basically consists of caring for the baby, pumping her breasts, and getting angry when I tell her that her baby looks like Conan O’Brien. (She absolutely doesn’t, but she does have red hair.)

Me: Hey Melissa, after you’re done pumping, can we….nevermind.

Melissa: Can we what?

Me: I just wanted to try the breast pump on to know what it feels like…

Melissa: Yeah, no. That’s not sanitary.

Me: Will you at least make make your Facebook status “Live by the pump; die by the pump”?

Melissa: Done.

I must admit that I feel a little old for family vacations. Although it’s hard to feel old when my mom gives me an 11 p.m. curfew. She’s also told me that I’m not allowed to talk and not allowed to go in the ocean. She at least allows me to get afternoon drunk.

Alright. Vacation is weird. Bye.

I’m glad that you can’t see the time stamps on my blog posts. Otherwise you’d know this post is going up at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday. And then you’d think I was weird.

Last night my company got us tickets to the Orioles game and I took my Trashy as my plus one. This was my first time at Camden Yards.

I have no idea whose shirt I was wearing yesterday (I’m from Pittsburgh and don’t own an O’s shirt). But it smelled bad. Or maybe that was me.

The chicken head made it through security and operation “chicken dance on the Jumbotron” became my goal. Like most of my goals–which include training my body to not be lactose intolerant, convincing my coworker Emily Light to change her first name to Crystal, and teaching the chinchilla to walk on a treadmill–I failed miserably and had diarrhea in the process.

Speaking of diarrhea (Oh Miss Bond, your writing transitions are only getting better with age), I realized that when I’m at the beach with my mom’s family this week, it will be the perfect time to finally use and blog about that colon cleansing kit that John got me.

John and I have the worst friendship you can ever imagine. It involves colon cleansing kits and me tricking him into going on picnics with false promises of day drinking. He’ll also tell me I have a nonexistent ass on the occasion and every so often I’ll ignore his gchats where he sends me YouTube videos of emo music. Okay so sometimes he sends me something good:

Jill and I watched this on repeat for hours one day at work. And by that I mean we did our work and all our clients were happy and then we did extra work and even cleaned up the coffee spills by the Keurig (HEYYYY BEN!).

One last thing about the Orioles game. If you ever find yourself at Camden Yards and you have to put a bikini on the very next day, you should probably get a hotdog covered with crab and mac and cheese anyway. Also get this even if you’re lactose intolerant. It’s  worth it.

Months later, I will deem this unflattering and delete it. So save it to your hard drives, jump drives, and food drives now.

OMG one last thing. Natasha and I took a very big step in our friendship last night. When we were driving home from Baltimore and Natasha was DJing our ride, she asked me if I knew who Tracy Chapman was.

Duh.

We then proceeded to sing every word to “Fast Car” while going 90 mph down 95 in my Smart Car. Mom, you didn’t read that.

See you at the beach.

A few months ago, I had a mildly traumatizing experience at a party and decided to make myself feel better by buying a TV, going horseback riding with Nina,  and getting holes punched in my back.

Since then, I’ve hardly thought about my dermal piercings–that is–until they get caught on my pants. Fortunately, I hardly ever wear pants. But yesterday, I happened to bend over in a pair of jean shorts (JORTS YOU GUYS!) and my left dermal got caught on them. It hurt a little, but I didn’t think much of it. A few hours later, I noticed the implanted part of the dermal (the anchor) was sticking out on one side.

There really is only one type of reaction for that sort of thing:

One of the biggest downsides to living alone and 200+ miles from your entire family is that you really don’t have many people to call in a situation like this. Finally, I decided to make Ryan Janes fix it, because he’s a janitor so I figure he’s seen much grosser things.

He even cleaned it with peroxide and put a bandaid on it. He’s going to make a great wife someday.

Emails with Strangers

I got a gem of an email yesterday from someone that stumbled upon my train wreck of a blog–Lex and the Shitty City. I will take out most of his details except for his last name, because it’s the best part of the story:

I randomly found your blog today.  You are hilarious.  I’d love to take you out for a drink sometime and get the backstory.  You can check me out to ensure that I’m not  a freak.  I’m a lawyer at _________________ here in DC.  My pic is up there on the firm’s website, along with a list of my general lawyerly awesomeness.

(First name removed because I’m not a complete bitch) McNutt

I’m not feeling so great. But that picture reminds me of something else–after turning 24 last month, I did something I thought I would never do; I bought a pair of bright yellow flats and was excited about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll probably someday be a 60 old lady in my stilettos, but I think with my age has come an appreciation for a sensible (ok so maybe bright yellow isn’t super sensible) pair of flats.

As much as I love Mindy Kalig, I’m kind of “meh” about her show The Mindy Project. I am, however, digging her style. That, my friends, is a pearl tie. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it for Tie Day Friday at work. Ok, so I’ve only ever successfully had two Tie Day Fridays at work. But I still need this in my wardrobe ASAP.

It’s almost that time of year again–time for the Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governor’s Island. While my trip to New York is not set in stone by any means, I would never forgive myself for missing this event–especially since I think The Great Gatsby will spur an even bigger interest in this event. As if all you can drink champagne cocktails wasn’t motivation enough?

I might even try to dress the right era this year!

Alright, one last fashion item on today’s agenda:

How cool do I look in my grandpa’s Air Force jacket? Let me rephrase–how cool do I look in my grandpa’s Air Force jacket despite the fact that I’m trying not to “skinny arm” and I therefore have no idea what to do with my arm? Also, those random lawn chairs aren’t normally set up in the foyer like that.

As John Hartnett would say, “what the hell’s a foyer?”

Check out more Lex and the City fashion posts here.

Every once in a while, a producer at the HuffPost Live finds your year old blog post on tanning addictions and decides they want to interview you–live–for a segment called “I Can’t Stop Tanning.” They did not know what they were getting themselves into.

At least I behaved myself a little bit more than I did during my interview on The Sports Junkies.

Here’s the video–looking back, I wish I had gotten a spray tan before it. And brushed my hair. And lost 10 pounds. It was kind of short notice.

Things I won’t ever do: sound smart during an interview.

Things I will do more than I should: promote taco bell, smart cars, and shoes.

By this time, you’ve probably seen all the Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cereal GIFs.

As funny as the GIFs are, I think my friend Nick’s response to them is even funnier (and so incredibly true):

nick: someone…had to make this
which means they watched a bunch of ryan gosling movies
and at various, two second clips realized

WHOA

if someone attempted to feed him cereal

at this exact moment

the internet would love it

so then this person went

and found the clips online

or made them from scratch

found a picture of a spoon full of cereal

timed it perfectly

and uploaded them all to imgur

.
.

The rest of this post is brought to you by the black and white filter on Instagram with a special contribution from my giant nose and a small donation from my armpit fat:

.

Yesterday, I met my cousin Melissa’s daughter, Lilyann. Seriously though. I shook her hand and introduced myself and told her it was nice to meet her. And then I prolonged holding her until the last possible minute. In fact, I even held the cat like a baby. What can I say? I’ve never been a huge baby person.

But with that said, the above picture is a snapshot my mom took while I was telling Lily about The Great Gatsby. I explained to her that I thought Leonardo Decaprio was the absolute perfect Gatsby, although a friend of mine thought Arnold Schwarzenegger would make a better Gatsby. ”Can you imagine?” I asked her. And then, in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, I said “Dai-zee.”

And wouldn’t you know it, but the kid smiled at me, and basically everything changed. I was a baby person.

Damnit.

Last night my sister and my aunts insisted that we go out for a belated birthday drink for me. Naturally, that turned into four drinks. Notice my one drunk eye above.

A woman at the bar approached me a few drinks in and said, “Me and the rest of the bar are all wondering–are you wearing underwear?”

Um. Yes.

“Oh so are you wearing a thong?”

Um. No.

“So you have big old granny panties on?”

Yes.

“Sweet.”

She then flashed her boobs to the bartender and most of the people sitting at the bar.

BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING, SCROLL DOWN AND READ YESTERDAY’S BLOG POST. IT INVOLVES THIS:

YER WELCOME. Proceeeeeed with the chlorofyl.

Sometimes I get in really mad moods and all I want to do is sit at my house and watch reruns of The Hills and eat Chinese food in my underwear.

This isn’t always a practical solution.

So here are some other things that cheer me up:

John is the worst friend you can have and the best friend you can have–all at the same damn time. Surprisingly, that one simple correction of my grammar made me feel so much better.

Pat Stansik is a YouTube celebrity who I absolutely love, bringing you such gems as “I’m 24,” and “Tall Blonde Girl.” His Twitter feed is also golden. When I turned 24 last month, I quoted his song, and he left a happy birthday comment on my blog post–prompting the Tweet above, which he then favorited. (That last sentence was an absolute train wreck but it’s early in the morning and I don’t feel like fixing it. Blogger of the year.)

This is the birthday card that Jill got me this year. It makes absolutely no sense and I’m obsessed with it. It hangs in my cubical (which actually isn’t a cube at all. It’s just a desk against the wall. A deskical?) and reminds me that everything is going to be okay. Well, until you can’t hear the bats.

I should probably say something really sweet about how much I love my friends or something, but that’s not why this picture cheers me up. It cheers me up because I have a vodka tonic and vodka tonics are delicious, and also because my eye makeup was spot on that night. Sorry Nina. Sorry Natasha. Vodka wins.

No words necessary.

Happy Friday.