coworker: he legally changed his name?
me: i don't know!!! between the name and the chain around his neck i am rolling
coworker: hahaha
coworker: he could be a rapper
me: probably
me: i don't think he can leave the state tho
me: INDIANA TOUR!
coworker: he probably dresses up as a t-rex to lure the hcildren
me: I'M GONNA TAKE YOU BACK TO THE CRETACEOUS IF YOU DON'T GET IN MY VAN
coworker: his character's name is barney
coworker: and he is purple
me: HI BOYS AND GIRLS
coworker: hahaha

emails are down again and i have posts up for the next two days so i'm just kind of treading water right now. i looked out the window and it was sunny - for once - after a month of shitty rain ruining moments. i want to go out and play!

this weekend was fun - we met a year ago saturday! - so zach and i went out to prospect park to hang out and meet up with emma after far too long. he killed me in scrabble - TWO! BINGOS (bingoes?) - and we headed back to astoria after ominous rain clouds started following us. it seemed like a good idea to eat dinner out, so we got off the train at second avenue and ran eight blocks toward mulberry in the pouring rain. flip-flops were a poor choice, natalia. discouraged and disgruntled, we jumped on the r at prince and endured the "oh shiiiiit"s from fellow subway passengers once they saw our soggy rumps. fuck all of you, thank you very much. $5 chicken and broccoli, a $10 bottle of wine and warming back up on the couch made everything much better.

aleksander texted me yesterday saying "billy mays died." and i did not believe him. i asked for more specificity and he said "he got hit on the head by plane stuff," which, even for him, is too random to be made up. i saw it online later that day and i'm still sort of in disbelief. one of my coworkers met him two weeks ago and said he was fine - a really nice guy - and i don't really believe it. i was sort of surprised at how sad i was, too. this is someone i've never met who hawks overpriced Pledge...and yet...here i am watching tribute videos on youtube.

talked to our dad on gchat today and he proposed renting a car and coming up for the weekend this weekend! AHHHHHH! i'm very excited to show everyone around everywhere and am wondering if they'll arrive early enough for zands to meet luc.

OH, speaking of lucien, gillian sent me an email saying "we miss you" and wanted to go out to dinner and catch up and i had mussels for the first time. i was surprised at how i did not dislike them. frog legs are a different story. i think my palette is expanding, but not that far. come on. anyway, i met lucien's cousin and he was very nice. a total reformed nerd, though - you could tell he had undergone a beauty and the geekesque makeover but when i made 4chan references, he dished 'em back with pure delight. that'll do.

what else? i don't know. things are slow here, as usual. i'm looking forward to a short week and then the faaaaaaaaaam.

Well, today I went to Planned Parenthood.

It's funny because the woman who came in to the office to explain "the new health care plan" said that a lot of places were getting familiar with HSAs "because this is the plan that a lot of companies are opting to offer now" - meaning...they're dropping coverage... - and when I brought this up to two people I spoke with, neither had an idea of what an HSA was, and when I explained it, they both made Faces.

Anyway, this whole thing had been stressing me out so much that I was having dreams about babies - I gave birth to twin girls in a dream two nights ago and hung out with Nolan last night in my reveries. Also, I was down to my last Yaz pill and was scared that I would get thrown off somehow and have to wait a while until I could be on it and have it kick in, you know?

ANYWAY, so my appointment was at 10:15 and I got there at 10:13 thanks to wonderful train karma. You go through a metal detector at this particular location, walk through a room of sad and confused dudes waiting for their ladies and come into a room with even sadder and more confused girls. I filled out a couple of sheets about when I started my period and if my boyfriends had ever beaten the shit out of me and waited.

I got called upstairs (I haven't been referred to as "Natalia L." since fourth grade, I think) to talk to a nice woman whose name I now forget about my "financial situation". She asked if I got paid weekly or bi-weekly ("monthly."/"ew, really?") and said I made too much to qualify for free stuff, which was fine. We chatted and she told me that her mother was on Medicare Part B and that they're paying through the nose but she could get hit by a car and have the whole thing paid for.

I went back downstairs and when my name was called around 11, I moved to a section in the back (this felt very Top Model Auditiony except we were all going out for America's Next Top Not Mom for At Least The Next Undisclosed Amount of Time), did kenken and texted until a woman called me in to take my blood pressure (the batteries were not working and it originally said my pulse was 192/116, which was...not right) and told me that I weighed 136 even on the doctor's "this tells you you weigh even more than you actually weigh" scale, which is scary but not unsurprising.

Anyway (#3), so I waited and waited and waited and waited and around 12:30, my name was finally called and I chatted with this nice woman who had an ankle tattoo and wore Crocs and apologized for the wait. I had no idea, but evidently checking off that I had had two migraines in my life was enough of a red flag for her to put me on some other type of contraception. I guess this came out about two years ago - that if you have had migraines with auras even once, you're at a much higher risk for stroke if you take normal contraceptives; one of her coworkers'd had auras in the past, ignored it and had a stroke when she was 35. So I said okay and she put me on one that is better for me and that's wonderful. I went out and picked up six months' worth for cheap and now I don't have to think about it.

I had no idea what to expect except for what I'd see in Juno, but everyone was really nice to me and called me "sweetie" and "baby" when I said please and thank you and whatnot. I was not called a babykiller on my way out (which would have been received with a "fuck you very much" and a Face as it is not even true) and I am glad that I don't have to worry about it anymore. Let's hope my baby dreams stop.

(you should be looking at 71 and 94)

could you imagine jason sudeikis as a sedaris?! hilarity ensues

i promise to write you a normal entry when something exciting happens

who has two thumbs and is not touching her compy all weekend?

this girl.

STOOP DUDE'S THE NAME AND WINNIN'S THE GAME!

this is not out on dvd yet. WHY IS THIS?

The other day I was waxing nostalgic about the retarded things we used to do when we were kids, and one particular game came to mind. Auditioners/Dang It Man was about people auditioning for a commercial (typically for Wid, a drug meant to counteract ADHD and general asshattery in children) who would act in front of a group of people and would inevitably not be cast for the ad.

The people sitting behind the desk, typically pretending to take scribbly notes, would apologize, saying the auditioner was not right for the part but that he/she was welcome to punch the Dang It Man on the way out.

The Dang It Man is a human punching bag hired to let others take out their frustrations. The auditioner would politely thank the group for their time, close the imaginary door and yell DANG IT!!!!!!!!! while punching whoever happened to be Dang It Man that day.

Fucking hilarious. I wonder how many people would take that job in today's economy. Also, I was mad for some reason and texted "get the dangit man. mama has some punching to do" and Aleksander has sent it back to me at least five times.

I also thought about Uncomfortable Bed, a game wherein one person is trying out a bed at a store and lies atop Uncomfortable Bed. UB lies still for a second and then starts convulsing and thrashing, forcing the person on top off, and as the person leaves, UB sings an off-key song with the lyrics "UNCOMFORTABLE BED! UNCOMFORTABLE BED!!!!"

I am loling reading this back. I want to be nine again.

Dublin Dance shows always feel more like family reunions than actual work. This is because you see the same people doing the same things. Minus the conspicuous hole where Ruth would typically go ("girls. be quiet. be quiet now. you must not talk. GIRLS!"), everything is the same even in a different venue. Jennie and Kat and I still put together questionable flower bouquets while the same dumb girls sulked over, said "we can help." and ended up squirting each other with water from the bottoms of the flowers. Kate played it cool and put out fires even though we had no idea where one of the kids was.

(parent: I want to take my daughter home. This show is too long.
kate: Oh, sure - what's her name and what was she in the show?
parent: her name is Nikki and she was a cow.
[kate runs upstairs, I look in the program and there are no cows in the show]
me: there are no cows.
kate: I can't tell a mom she doesn't know what her kid was)

4-year-olds will still be adorable and way too worried about their hair. Parents still do shitty jobs of putting makeup on their kids. It's okay, we'll fix it.

The only real difference is that people are taller. I babysat Kelly and Kathryn for years and now the former is a senior and going to Michigan State in the fall. WHAT?! Dryden, the spawn of hip-hop aficionado Miss Amanda and the occasionally intimidating but always amusing Jeff, is walking now because he's almost two. And that's insane.

more after the next two shows.

at the grocery store:
[cashier is checking ID] Yeah, you look younger than 24
me: well I'm 23
cashier: but that's how old you are
aleksander: SHE'S ALSO IN MENSA

funny

well, i've sent 80 emails, including one to a particularly cranky woman who demanded that i shut down her site immediately (even though she meant someone else) and accused me of playing god. i do not write lol in my blogulators, but were i to do so, said email would merit an ebullient lol.

whenever i send out stuff like this, i have this go-to mental montage: i picture a stock footage-style person going GRRRRRRR!!!!! and banging his/her fists on the computer desk. then said emailer reads my response out loud, gradually beginning to mumble as he/she gets madder and madder and finally goes AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and throws the computer keyboard upon realizing that i cannot restore the account winky4823489dickens or whatever the fuck it is because the system auto-deletes accounts that claim the owner is under 13.

i daydream a lot.

anyway.

well, what happened since you last heard from me? saturday, zach and i went out to bed-stuy and had a delightful time hanging out with one of his coworkers and said coworker's family. it was a hoot - i talked to coworker's mom about quitting smoking ("it's not so hard," she says), 45s ("i tell you what, i kept them all upstairs and someday i'll organize them all...probably when i'm too old to do anything else") and boston. we spent all afternoon and most of the evening there and had a proverbial ball.

sunday, i did laundry and watched top model pretty much all day. i was texting with kat about this, but it merits being repeated: i am terrified to be out in the sun during the summer. if i can stay home and do nothing, i would rather do that. i have such a pressing and unstoppable fear (overtaking current fear #1, popping balloons) of contracting skin cancer that i would rather just stay in. it's something that i guess i will have to be better about (read: copious amounts of sunscreen, as i never put enough on) and it's something i think about every time i go outside.

the rest of the week has been long. i keep thinking it's friday. i'm not babysitting for lucien on mondays anymore, much to both of our chagrins, but i did dinner with zach, his dearly departed (switzerland and then california) roommate and some friends of theirs i've met a few times and it was nice just to hang out. tuesday was even better; post-babysitting, the weather was nice enough to hang on the roof so we got takeout, grabbed our band camp chairs (purchased on sale from kmart) and looked out on queens and manhattan while sharing beef and broccoli. loves it.

and now i am waiting for two perpetually tardy fellow staff members to get their acts together (and their asses here, i suppose) for a meeting that was scheduled to start at 4. there is another meeting ("MORE! MORE! MORE! said the editor") at 6, and i'm hoping it's a quickie so i can go to astoria and watch basketball.

and because YOU ARE PLAYING GOD I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT!!! woman has not written back to me yet, i shall take it upon myself to play on the internet until our meeting begins. laterzzz.

SeamlessWeb is wonderful. I ordered food and tipped online, put in my address and my debit card number and ten minutes later, a dude was at the door going "NATALIA FOOOOOOD" and I had Thai in my scrimy mitts.

oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh