Once upon a time, a beautiful little girl was born in New England. Then, a few short weeks later, a second beautiful little girl was born (it’s my blog, I’m taking liberties, damn it) in the South.

These two beautiful little girls grew up to be fabulous twenty-something women. Their sheer awesomeness was so unparalleled, that they had to go and each start their own blogs to tell about each of their awesome lives.

The first woman, a sophisticated/sexy/smart/funny type dubbed herself Blogging Barbie, and wrote hilarious tales of dating and life in general. All who read her fell in love with her adorableness and her fantastic writing ability.

The second woman, Long Red Cape (that’s me!), was more of a nerdy type with a very dry, inappropriate sense of humor whose tales of failed relationships made everyone who read her blog dry heave in unison. But somehow, miraculously, they kept coming back. Masochists?

One day, the two girls started commenting on each others’ blogs. Then, the comments turned to e-mails, and the e-mails turned into drunken texts and the occasional phone call.

After about a year of this activity, the two girls decided they should finally meet. At the time, BB lived in Philly and LRC lived in Bum Fuck Egypt. LRC decided to fly into Philly and visit BB for a weekend of awesomeness.

When LRC got off the train in Philly, she saw the beautiful BB walking down the sidewalk, wearing a perfectly coordinated outfit, natch. BB ran up to LRC and exclaimed “You’re here! You’re here!”

Immediately the two ladies hit it off.

Also immediately? The two ladies began hitting the sauce.

BB and LRC shared a pitcher of vodka/pink lemonades in BB’s kitchen and LRC talked way too loudly because she wasn’t used to, uh.. roommates. And neighbors who share walls. Oopsie.

The night continued with a BYOB sushi bar, a double bottle of wine, and LRC’s first Irish Car Bomb (BB’s curdled!). Those are delicious, by the way.

The girls didn’t JUST consume alcohol the entire weekend, however. What, do you think they’re a bunch of drunks or something?

No, they didn’t just drink. They ATE. And ate and ate and ate and ate.

Fatty fried bar food was consumed. Football was watched. Some annoying Stanford fans were glared at. A pigeon was shooed by LRC because birds are feared by BB.

It was a lovely weekend indeed.

LRC can’t speak for BB, but LRC definitely can’t wait to do it again.

Despite their differences (highlighted perfectly, it seemed, by their ringtone choices. BB’s was the Sex and the City theme song, and LRC’s was the theme from Super Mario Bros.), the ladies had a friendship that transitioned seamlessly from web to “real life.”

This goes without saying, but blog friends? Are the shit.

Love you, BB

You probably grew up on some normal-sounding street somewhere, didn’t you?

Cherry Lane? Lexington Avenue? Or even the horrifyingly normal MAIN STREET?

If so, I pity you. You, my friend, did not have the distinct pleasure of growing up on a uniquely named street. Others honored and revered my address. My family was the envy of the entire county.

What street did I live on, you ask?

I lived on Rat Nest Road.

Okay, so I made up that whole first part, in case you didn’t catch on by now. But not the name of my street. No, that’s a frightening reality.  Rat Nest Road.

WHAT THE FUCK?

Who wants to live on Goddamned Rat Nest Road?

Not this girl. Especially in my formative teenage years.

I envisioned my rejection letter every time I filled out the “address” section of a college application. What respectable university would grand admission to a hillbilly who lived on Rat Nest Road?

In case you ever had any doubts as to what region of the country I inhabit, well . . . now you know. The dirty, dirty South.

What makes it even worse is the fact that my Dad named the street himself.

Yes, you read that correctly. My Dad bestowed that horrible fate upon us of his own accord.

Let me ’splain it for ya. We sold our house and decided to build a new one. As you can imagine, building a house takes a loooooong fucking time. So in the mean time in between time, we lived in sort of a “halfway house,” if you will. And I mean “halfway house” in the way that we were “in between houses,” not that we were “halfway from crippling drug addiction to sobriety.”

It was a three room cabin on my grandparents’ land, a cabin that my grandfather (rest in peace, Papaw) lovingly dubbed his “rat nest.”

My father served on the zoning committee for our area at the time, and I’m sure you can put two and two together on that one.

I’m sure you’re thinking, Awww, how sweet! He named it for his Daddy!

Yes, it was sweet. But you’re not the one who lived on fucking RAT NEST ROAD.

Moving right along . . .

Not only was my address embarrassing, my living arrangements were as well.

Like I said, it was a three room cabin. Not meant for being inhabited by a small family. There was a bedroom, a living room, and a kitchen (and of course a bathroom, but that doesn’t really count as a “room”—and when you have a Dad with such…er… active bowels as mine does, the smell of the bathroom permeates the entire house at least twice a day). My parents slept in the bedroom, and I slept in the living room.

I distinctly remember one night while I was trying to go to sleep (it was a school night!) and my parents were watching TV in the living room/my bedroom. I politely asked if they could watch TV in their bedroom, seeing as how they had a perfectly good TV in there. And my Mom said, I shit you not, “Well, we want to still feel like we have a living room.”

Seriously?? And I don’t want to feel like I have a Goddamned BEDROOM?

Sadly, the rat nest is no more. We moved out my senior year of high school and shortly thereafter my family sold the land to a rich developer who wasted no time in tearing it down. I managed to get into a decent university despite my mortifying address and my parents now live in a beautiful home and don’t have to share a living room with me.

EVERYBODY WINS!!!!!

On an unrelated note, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAWYERMAN! Even though you’re not reading, I love you to pieces and I want the whole internets to know it!

. . .  you interrupt my busy day to ask me to come to your office and help you with a technology-related issue. I work in the marketing department, not the IT department. Call an IT person. I guarantee you they can fix it. LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE. I GOT SHIT TO DO. I swear to you, there is a woman on my floor who asks me how to download a picture from her e-mail EVERY TIME.

. . . you come in my office while I’m eating lunch, stand over me as I’m putting the fork to my mouth, and ask nosily, “WHATCHA EATIN?”

. . . you call my office phone, which does not have caller ID, and start yapping away about some favor you need from me and expect me to know exactly who you are and what you are talking about. INTRODUCE YO SELF, FOOL.

. . . you ask me why I’m not married yet or why I don’t have children. Mind your own beeswax. I don’t ask YOU why you’re a no-neck cockwaffle, so shut the shit up.

. . . you force me to listen to Christmas music before December 20th.

. . . you refuse to have sex with me because you have a sprained ankle. I’m looking at YOU, Lawyerman. Man up and let’s do the sexytime. Just dangle that bitch off the edge of the bed. Problem solved.

. . . you URINATE ON MY FUCKING STOVE. What the hell, Berta? The internet wants to tell me my cat has a urinary tract infection. I just think she’s being a little bitch.

I’m KIDDING, y’all. I totes love my cat. I got her some canned cat food and a heating pad. Chill out. Happy Friday!

Do you ever have those days (or weeks, or months…) when you just feel fucking UGLY? Like, Carmindy could do your makeup, Tim Gunn could pick out your outfit, and Ken Paves could do your hair and you’d STILL feel like a troll?

Yeah, I’ve been having that problem lately.

Since I’ve gotten a boyfriend, I’ve gained about 10 or 15 pounds, give or take, because I’ve been eating actual MEALS and not just rice every night…and while I was pretty tiny to begin with and am not overweight by any means now, it’s hard to feel sexy when your clothes don’t fit anymore.

I’m not exactly a rich woman, so many days I’m forced to wear pants that cut off my circulation because I can’t afford new ones. During the summer I got away with wearing dresses most of the time (because my dresses don’t judge me as harshly as my pants do—pants will MOCK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU), but now that the temperature is cooling off I’m forced to wear pants more often. I’m growing tired of my frizzy, curly hair. And when I have a breakout? You STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME.

Last night I literally hid behind my book while in bed with MY BOYFRIEND, the person who thinks I’m beautiful no matter what and constantly tells me so. “Don’t look at me! I’m hideous!” I said. And on top of having a few blemishes, today I woke up with a freaking stye on my eye so it feels like eyelid death all over my right eye.

Sexy.

I also even find myself judging people on television now. This is totally not like me. When I see someone bigger than a size two on TV I think to myself, SHE’S BIGGER THAN ME, RIGHT? RIGHT??!? And I totally shouldn’t be that way. But this weight gain over the past year has really done a number on my confidence. Before, I didn’t care what other people thought because I knew I looked good.

Now, I’m not so sure.

And I’m hungry all the time now. I just want to EAT and EAT and EAT and EAT.

It’s just such a terrible feeling, being me right now.

This hottie and I have been calling ourselves “chunklers” lately and begging each other not to judge the other when we see each other this weekend (!!!) because our arms look like twin hams. At least I will have some girl time this weekend and (hopefully) not worry if I’ve got muffin tops or not, or if my sleeves are too tight on my arms.

I just need to find a way to get back to the confident, comfortable me I once was. If I’ve passed the point of being 105 pounds only to never, ever return, will I ever be happy with my body the way it is? What happens if/when I gain MORE weight? Or, God forbid, I have a child and can’t get rid of the baby weight? I can’t go through life feeling this way about myself.

I AM NOT FAT (and I’m not just saying that because I think you’ll judge me if I am. I’m saying that because it’s sorta ridiculous for me to be pitying myself so much right now and I just DON’T KNOW WHERE IT’S COMING FROM). I’m just not as thin as I once was.

Then why do I feel so badly about myself?

This is not a post about weight (though it may seem like it). It’s a post about confidence. I haz none.

I’ve got to regain my confidence. In order for me to be happy, it’s just gotta happen.

Period.

Wait a minute . . .

. . . what’s this?

Is it . . . could it . . . be?

A BLOG?

From LRC?

Yeah, don’t ask me what I just did there with that POKE thing. I don’t know, either. I guess I was trying to like conjure up images of poking something unrecognizable (like a blog post from moi). Because THAT’S the smartest thing to do. Why do we do that? Why do we poke stuff when we don’t know what it is? We (and when I say we I mean people. Sorry if you’re not a person) are fucking strange.

Bee Tee Dubs, while I was Google Image-ing pictures of poking (TWSS), I came across this:

Isn’t that horrifying? And the kid is all nonchalant, like, “Yeah, I just shoved a freshly sharpened pencil like, way far in my ear. What’s the big effing deal? Gimme a 40 and let’s superman some hoes.”

Aaaaanyhearingloss, yes. Your eyes are not deceiving you. I am blogging.

Why, you may ask?

Because LAWYERMAN IS AWAY.

And when Lawyerman is away, LRC PLAYS!

And by “play,” I mean blog, be a douche on twitter, reload tumblr every five minutes, and wait for someone to get online and talk to me while I drink Coors Light out of a can while getonmyhorse plays in the background on loop.

Obviously.

With my weekend to myself, I can’t decide if I’d rather

1. take advantage of the fact that I don’t have to cook a five course meal all weekend and eat like a bird… like I ate when I was 10 pounds lighter, pre-Lawyerman, and not feel like a fucking cow, OR
2. eat as much cheese as possible, just ’cause I fucking CAN. Not that Lawyerman would ever try to prevent me from inhaling a fortnight’s worth of sharp cheddar in two days (I just wanted to say fortnight), but because I equate cheese consumption with rebelliousness. Don’t ever say I didn’t live on the EDGE.

Both options sound lovely, but my guess is that option number two (huh. huh.) will reign supreme because CHEESE NEVER LOSES.

Plus I’ve already eaten like eleven slices of cheese.

So yeah.

I guess option number one is out.

While As Much Nothing As Possible is the only thing I’ll likely cross of my list this weekend, in two weeks I will be skidding into Philly international to visit THIS LADY.

Someone is going to have to invent a new word for epic after all that awesomeness happens.

I made a graphic to commemorate the occasion, but I can’t post it here because of that whole semi-anonymity thing, and it has our beautiful faces on it. But trust me. It’s beautiful. And tie-dyed.

Also, if you haven’t clicked the getonmyhorse link yet, I suggest you do that now.

SHUT UP WOMAN GET ON MY HORSE

So there you have it, I have spoken. To be honest, I mainly blogged because I wanted to post a comment on my future husband Jason Isbell’s blog and in the off chance he were to click forward to my blog, I didn’t want the first post he saw to be a post about my horrible asparagus farts.

Happy TMI Thursday, toots and tootettes!

OBLIGATORY ASIDE ABOUT “TOOT”: Next time a conversation gets too serious, clasp your hands together, furrow your brow slightly, and without blinking say the word “toot” with a straight face. That’s a little bonus LRC-adventure for ya. You’re welcome.

For today’s TMI Thursday I will share some Things About Flatulence with you, in bullet form.

• Now that I have an intern in my office (literally, she’s in my office. Like, sits-across-from-me-at-my-desk-and-I-can’t-read-tumblr-when-she’s-here-because-there-are-too-many-nipples-oh-and-by-the-way-have-you-been-reading-my-tumblr?), I, uh… can’t fart like I want to. I was so ready to just let one rip earlier today until I realized, yeah hi, there’s another person—a person I’m supposed to be setting a positive example for—in my office. Oh, but when she leaves? It’s a regular C&C Fart Factory in here.
• This morning, I was lying in bed with my Lawyerman. I was telling him how crappy I felt and that I just wanted to lie in bed with him all day. “You know what always makes me feel better?” he said. “What, baby?” I asked. “BRRRRONK!!!!!!!!!” Yep, he farted. Of course. I forgot about it for a minute because I didn’t smell anything (also, he farts about every thirteen seconds so it’s not like this was a rare occurrence) and we went back to chatting. I reached down and playfully snapped the elastic on his boxers. Guess what happened? Yep. Residual fart went directly in my face. Awesome.
• I was already aware of the fact that asparagus is supposed to make your pee smell funny, but until recently I had no idea it would give you pungent, unceasing gas as well. The other night, Lawyerman and I had dinner at my house, and it was quite a lovely meal indeed. Within the half hour, however, I was producing Old-Man-Post-Baked-Bean-Dinner-quality farts with alarming frequency. I was even able to fart on command, punctuating my sentences with the beautiful music of my anus (Gloria Estefan was right—the rhythm is, indeed, going to get you. Gloria Estefan joke courtesy Chandler Bing). After one particularly fragrant bunghole emission, Lawyerman even had to leave the room. Yep. Lawyerman, a 6′1″, 240-lb. grown-ass man was outdone by a 5′3″ (nice try, I’m not telling you my weight) leetle woman. I’ve never been more proud of my digestive tract.

You thought you were done hearing about New York, weren’t you? Well, you’re not. Hopefully this will be the last post that involves him.

Before I go any further, let me just say that yes, Lawyerman and I are doing fine. There is nothing to worry about. We are in love (!!!) and still can’t keep our hands off each other. I just had to share this What the Fuck, New York?™ moment.

NY and I have remained quasi-friends since we stopped doing… whatever it was we were doing. Usually that entails chatting when we see each other and sending the sporadic text message (aka 0.1 KB of PURE EVIL–you know how I feel about texting). Recently, I told him that I started reading the Harry Potter series (late to the game, party of 1), which he has already read in its entirety. So he’s been making it a point to text me “spoilers” (“has Ron killed Hagrid yet?”, etc.) just to mess with me (for all you Harry Potter nerds… I know Ron doesn’t kill Hagrid. OR DOES HE?). Somehow, New York turned our conversation about Harry Potter into something… dirty.

What the Fuck, New York?™

When we were “dating,” he NEVER engaged in dirty texts (I should have known at that point we wouldn’t work, because Geez Louise you’ve GOT to have the dirty texts!), so why did he want to start now, when we haven’t been anywhere remotely intimate since well before the summer solstice?

But more importantly, I think, is the fact that he tried to make a conversation about HARRY POTTER into something SEXUAL. I believe “a wanding” was mentioned and he also alluded to “mystical 3somes.”

UHHHHHH…….

Of course I responded to him that I had vomited on the magazine I was reading.

I wish I could properly convey the craziness of this situation, but alas, I cannot. I just don’t even know. What The Fuck seems to be the only reaction I can come up with.

I sure hope he enjoyed stroking his wand alone that night.

*****NEW TOPIC!*****

So I went to a strip club for the first time ever last weekend because my friend had her bachelorette party. At first I was extremely uncomfortable, but then I started to kinda… uh.. enjoy it? Not because I’m sexually attracted to women, but because seeing gyrating nakedness… reawakened my sexuality? I guess?

I was inspired.

I decided that I needed to try to be a little..sexier for my Lawyerman. He’d mentioned before that he wished I had more g-strings in my underwear collection because he thinks they’re sexy. So I went to a trashy lingerie website and proceeded to buy myself a sexy babydoll lingerie set with a g-string..which leaves very little to the imagination. I was straight up giddy, y’all, when I thought about how his eyes would light up when I answered the door wearing that sexy getup with some 5″ heels. Then, before placing my order, a certain naughty word caught my eye…

Crotchless.

HOOOOOOOOOOOLY SHIT. I’ve never owned a pair of crotchless panties! This is excitin’, y’all! So I purchased a pair of those, too. I told Lawyerman I bought him two surprises on the internet and that he’d get the first one soon after the package arrived, and the second one later.

This is where I need your help.

Do I start off with the answering-the-door-in-my-new-lingerie-set-and-high-heels deal? Or do I walk around the house in a skirt (with the crotchless panties underneath!) and throw my leg up over Lawyerman’s shoulder? DECISIONS, DECISIONS.

In times like these I guess I need to ask myself one question:

What would Jesus do?

Or not. I’d rather know what you would do. Or what you’d want your girlfriend to do for you.

And now I feel that I’ve met my skank quota for the day, so I’m stopping there.

Watch out, it’s TMI Thursday!

This one should have you sufficiently grossed-out.

On with it . . .

—

Okay, sorry. That title made it sound like my Lawyerman is a fecalphiliac (why is my spell checker not recognizing this word? It is a legitimate word that people use in everyday conversation, spell checker! What is your fucking deal? Oh, and now that I’ve written this complaint, the spell checker is recognizing it as an actual word. WHO’S THE BITCH NOW, SPELL CHECKER? WHAT.) I can assure you that he is not.

That was a bad pun. I apologize.

Back to the story. That I never got to in the first place.

A couple weekends ago Claire, The Lawyer, and I enjoyed a nice day out on the lake. While Lawyerman was docking the boat, my bestie Claire and I went inside his house to use the facilities. Since we have been friends since we were basically both fetuses, we don’t mind peeing in front of each other. It’s what friends do. That, and braid each other’s pubic hair.

What, you don’t do that? Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything . . .

Anyhoodle, while Claire was getting her tink on, I reached into the medicine cabinet for some deodorant because I was feeling a bit rancid after a day of sweating and swimming in dirty river water. As I reached for the stink stick, I accidentally jostled a bottle of Aspirin (I had no idea people still kept aspirin in their houses. WTF, Lawyerman? This is not 1947). This started a chain reaction of events.

As Claire was flushing the toilet, the Aspirin fell out of the cabinet.

Into the sink.

Bounced out of the sink.

Into the now-flushing toilet.

Down the drain.

Oopsie.

Claire, being the awesome human being that she is, reached down into the toilet to feel for the Aspirin bottle (I suppose she’s touched worse. She is an LPN in a nursing home and changing old people diapers is sorta the norm there . . .), then said, “It’s gone.”

I told Lawyerman about our little mishap, and he said it was fine as long as the toilet still flushed. We flushed it a few times to be safe, and everything seemed to be in working order on his porcelain throne.

So, naturally, later that night, I had to take a poop.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

It wasn’t a BIG poop, mind you. It was kinda like Mooooog’s daughter’s pellet poop (featured in his header). Like this:

Check out that detail!

I mean, there were like, three pellets. TOPS. Not exactly a huge load. Surely not enough to clog a toilet.

Oh yeah.

Three poop pellets was enough to clog the toilet.

It. Sure. Fucking. Was.

Oopsie again.

So my Lawyerman, bless his heart, tried to snake the drain, to no avail.

So he had to remove the toilet, fish out the blockage (read: Aspirin bottle covered in LRC poo), and replace the toilet.

And take a long, hot shower after getting up close and personal with my latest bowel movement.

That’s love right there.

What the shitting hell is wrong with me? THREE blog posts this week? And I’ve already written and scheduled my TMI post for next week?

What can I say, I’m feeling prolific. And awesome.

I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately, so I’ve been trying to remember the various personal webpages I’ve had since my parents first got dialup on a 14.4k modem 13 years ago.

The first one was on GeoCities, wayyyy before banner ads. I even remember the address! I was 13 (wow, that was half my life ago) and I learned HTML from a friend I met on the interwebs (I TALKED TO PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET AND ACTUALLY DIDN’T GET RAPED OR KILLED—WHO KNEW?). I actually wrote out that shit by hand, yo. I still remember a decent amount of it, which is a pretty good skill to have, I think.

Anyhoodle, I remember my first website looking something like this:

Plus probably some animated .gifs and pictures of the band Bush. My friend Claire and I were obsessed. I’m even following Gavin Rossdale on Twitter now, this is how deep it goes.

Also, remember guestbooks? I made the mistake of telling one of my (evil) friends about my site. She shared the address with a guy I liked and his friend and they went on my guestbook and made fun of some of the things I said. They signed their names as “Suddenly Susan Farted.” I’m pretty sure I cried and didn’t talk to anyone for a week.

Ah, junior high.

REMEMBER MIDI FILES? They were like the redheaded stepchild of music files. They were lame reproductions of regular songs (think “ringtones” before they were actual songs) that sounded like BEEP, BEEP, BOOP, BOOP, BEEEEEEEP! and everyone who was anyone OMG had a midi song that automatically played on their page! DUH! This was before MySpace, folks. This shit was way ahead of its time.

OMG Y’ALL, REMEMBER WEBRINGS?

OK, I’ll stop. Sorry. Getting a little carried away here.

I also remember having an Angelfire page. The address was http://www.angelfire.com/hi/ihaveagaydog. Yes, I exploited my dog Sam’s latent homosexuality by naming my webpage “I Have a Gay Dog.” Holy shitballs I was a messed up adolescent.

After I outgrew centered text and putting ~*~*~*~*~ before and after everything, I graduated to a Tripod page and started using frames and pictures of Courtney Love and/or other pictures of women in screaming girl bands tinted blue in Photoshop. I was dark, y’all. I even think I wrote, like, poetry and shit then. I’m sure I wrote about important things such as going all the way with my high school boyfriend on his porch and urging him to “get it over with already” because I was tired of him asking me if he could just “put it in one time,” or about how cute my Purrr-fect shirt was that I’d just bought from 5•7•9, or about how I was going to threaten to cut myself if I had to do one more goddamn Georgia History project.

See how far I’ve come since those days? I write about important shit now! Like, um . . .

Hmm.

Yeah…

Gimme a minute.

I’ll get back to you on that . . .

Watch out, it’s TMI Thursday!

Don’t blink, or you’ll miss this one, folks.

Here we go . . .

—–

A few weeks ago, I picked a nickel-sized piece of dead skin from the heel of my foot. I then fed it to my dog, Noodle.

Feel free to judge me now. It’s okay, I would, too.