Those Goddam Latte Chinos

While talking to my grandpa the other day, I discovered that apparently I should cancel the full coverage insurance on my ten year old Ford Explorer because I’m “throwing money down the goddam drain.”  According to this guy, one should never hold full coverage insurance on a car that’s over five years old.  I thought I was being uber responsible by having full coverage because I’m one of the most horrifying drivers on the face of the planet.  True story. 

“You’re getting poorer while those insurance companies are getting richer!” he proclaimed, “you need to put that car on liability and quit giving all your hard earned money to people!”

Before I could get a word in, he demanded to know how much money I had in savings.

“Enough, old man,” I said, “I’ve got things under control.”

“How much?” he demanded.

I gave him a dollar amount that was a total exaggeration and he nearly had a heart attack.

“You need more!” he screamed.  Or he tried to scream.  One can only scream so loud when one has a hole in one’s neck that is typically full of boogers.

“You need to be putting fifty dollars more a month in savings than you are now!  You need to quit buying those goddam latte chinos and take all the money you spend on those goddam things and put it in the bank!”

I am pretty much used to his bizarre outbursts that come out of the blue.  I am very aware that my grandparents think I am a total lunatic and completely incapable of a logical thought.  They base this belief on the fact that I am a “goddam liberal hippy” and have been “brain warshed by a bunch of goddam liberal professors.”  According to these people, I am a hippy tree lover and need to stop associating with sissies, liberals, and homosexuals.  Because I hang out with such bizarre people, my grandparents assume that my acquaintances alone are the reason for all my life’s problems.  If I call my grandpa and tell him I got a flat tire on my way to class, he says, “well, if you’d quit associating with those goddam liberals and homosexuals perhaps you wouldn’t have gotten a flat tire, dumbass.”  I don’t know what the crap this guy is talking about but whatever. 

     So after my grandpa’s verbal assault, I asked my friend and his bromantic roommate if I should drop my full coverage and switch to liability.  They both told me that doing that would be a horrible idea.  Perhaps in order to afford my full coverage insurance I need to cut out an unnecessary expense.  I didn’t tell my grandpa this earlier, but it isn’t my “goddam latte chinos” making me poor. The fact that I spend an incredible amount of money on slutty clothes and alcohol is a more appropriate reason as to why I’m consistently broke. The next time he starts harassing me about my horrifying “personality defects” I’m going to remind him that he’s the one who raised me.

Jessica the Homeless Chick

I actually wrote this in like, August but whatever.

So, today I decided it would be beneficial to clean out my disgusting truck.  I’m utterly horrible about letting it get trashed out before I clean anything from it.  My friends and I have a little theory about this being the reason two out of five guys do not call me back after riding around in my car.  I maintain it’s because I don’t sleep around, which men tend to figure out around the third date, (other than that horrifying, gassy one night stand my friends won’t let me live down) but my friends say it’s because my car is disgusting and terrifies innocent “men.”  Whatever.  Show me an actual man in Lubbock, Texas and I’ll give you a thousand dollars.  I have yet to meet one of these “man” creatures and have had to settle with horny college boys who act obnoxious and annoy the hell out of me.  Anyway, so I decided to clean out my car while I was getting gas and proceeded to throw away all the coke bottles and waters and fast food bags and straw wrappers.  I found twenty bucks under the seat which was fun.  As I leaned far into the back to reach around under the seats in hopes of finding more cash, (human nature) I heard some guy say, “hey, need some help?”  I figured he was talking to someone else because only a moron would need help cleaning out their truck, so I didn’t pay any attention to him.  But then I felt a pat on my lower back and the guy said, “hey.”  I whipped around with a half full, moldy soda bottle in hand, ready to defend myself against a possible rape.

“What?” I said.  I instantly wasn’t as irritated as I noticed he was an utterly stunning piece of man meat.

“Do you need some help?” he asked.

“Well, I’m just cleaning out my truck,” I told him.  “If by help, you actually mean do it for me, then I’ll gladly accept.”

“Sure,” he said and grinned.  He had dimples in both cheeks.  I decided I must take this marvelous creature to Chimys.  Or even better, somewhere that didn’t require shirts.  I attempted to scope out his man body to determine if he had the abs of a god.  Judging by his bulging biceps and forearms, I decided he probably did.  I realized I was being a total slut and told him I was going in to get a soda.  I went inside, got a soda and came out to find him bent in the very back of my car, sorting through trash, putting it in a big pile.  As I sipped my coke zero and marveled at his butt, I mentally hooted that everyone always teases me about my car scaring guys away, yet I had the cutest one of the year cleaning out the disgusting thing.  I got bored watching him and decided to go ahead and help.  We chatted for a while.  He told me he was a civil engineer major and would be graduating in May.  He had a dog named Stanley and a twin sister.  He had a motorcycle and pointed to his hybrid he had parked at the front of the gas station.  Upon further questioning, I realized he was an uber liberal democrat like me, and decided I had probably just met my future husband. 

“I was watching you cleaning your car when I got here,” he said, “I thought it was funny that you were whistling to yourself.  You’re really cute, you know.”

I was very aware of my running shorts, a white-trash tank top, greasy hair, and sweaty armpits. 

“Ummm, it gets better,” I said like a moron, “I just got back from the gym.  I’m kind of…sweaty.”  Mental palm to forehead.  I am a dork.

He grinned at me and I noticed he had perfectly straight teeth and his eyes were super blue.  I’m the biggest sucker alive for extremely attractive guys especially buff ones with blue eyes.  I reminded myself not to drool and decided I would definitely be getting his number.

“So how’d you get your car this messy anyway?” he asked, “this is pretty bad.”  He grinned at me again and I had to resist leaping across my side of the car and ravishing his face.

“Well, I live in this thing so it gets messy pretty easily.”

He gave me a really weird look, one of nearly pity.  He stopped cleaning the floor and stood up.  Confused, I stood up and met him on the other side of the car.  He pulled out his walled and offered me a twenty.

“Ummm, shouldn’t I be paying you?” I asked, completely confused as to what this guy was doing.

“Seriously, it’s OK,” he said, “we all go through hard times.  I wish you the best of luck.”

I just kind of stood there, looking at him, not quite sure what was going on.  It figured the hottest man in Lubbock would turn out to be a raging psycho. 

He looked away awkwardly and sat his twenty dollar bill on the seat of my car.

“I’m pretty sure there are shelters around here you could stay in,” he said, “I admire you for staying in school through this.  I wish we could have met at a better time in your life.  You’re really funny and cute.”

With that, he turned abruptly and walked back to his hybrid.  What the hell?  I tried to remember if I had met him somewhere before and done something dumb.  I got back into my car, seriously confused, and tried to figure out what Mr. Hotty’s problem was.  Then it dawned on me.  I had told him, “I live in this thing.”  I began shrieking with laughter like a maniac.  He probably thought I meant I literally lived in my car!  I don’t live in the damn thing; I’m just in it so much because I’m so busy and have to go to ten different places a day.

“Oh my gosh!” I laughed to myself, “holy frick!”  My laughter quickly dissipated as I realized because of a simple misunderstanding I had just missed out on dating one of the hottest men on the planet.  My humor was quickly replaced with annoyance.  What an idiot.  What kind of homeless woman would have fake boobs and a huge collection of fast food trash in her car?  I had told him of my passion for Chimys.  Those damn margaritas are $5.50 a piece.  What kind of homeless person could afford that?  What kind of homeless person would have just put forty dollars into her truck?  Hell, if I was homeless I wouldn’t have cleaned the trash out of my truck; I would have left it there to cover up with during the chilly fall nights.  And what kind of homeless person throws out perfectly good week old potato chips?  Gosh.  And hello, I have a rather cheerful disposition and I have yet to find a homeless person with that kind of personality.  Naturally, just when I find a guy who doesn’t annoy me, is cute as hell, and is charmed by my stunning wit, he assumes I’m homeless just because I told him I live in my car. 

It Could Have Happened to Anyone

OK, so here’s the thing.  I can totally explain my new super creepy drivers license photo.  My friends constantly make fun of my ridiculous driver license and student ID photos.  (I’ve had three different licenses in the past year because I’m bad about losing them.)  In every one of these photos, I always look super excited.  I’ve had comments like, “what the hell?  You were actually HAPPY about standing in line for two hours?” and “you look REALLY happy about being there…”  Whatever.  It’s not that I’m happy to be in the DL office or school waiting to get my flippin picture taken.  It’s just that when I smile, my smile seems to take up my whole entire face.  I’m assuming it’s some sort of birth defect.  Anyway, so the last driver license photo I had to take, I decided to bring it down a notch.  I would be the picture of serenity and class.  No more dorky grins or beaming smiles coming from this chick in a totally pointless photo.  So I stood there in the DL office, giving my most serene and calm face.  My friends are right:  I truly am the ONLY person I’m aware of that has a history of beaming ecstatically in ID photos.  So after the lady snapped my newly serene and classy face, she printed out a temporary ID, with a picture included.  When she handed it to me, I snorted through my nose in an attempt to not shriek with laughter.  My face must be totally bipolar.  If it’s not beaming with happiness and excitement, apparently it looks like I just killed someone.  Seriously, I look like I just admitted to murdering my husband.  The photo reminds me of the women’s mug shots on “Snapped,” a show about murderous women.  When I got my actual drivers license, it was even worse.

  “I will be driving the EXACT speed limit until this thing expires,” I told my friends. 

“You look so…guilty,” Rachel said as she raised an eyebrow at the creepy photo, “this is by far the most mug like drivers license I have ever seen.”

“Epic fail,” I agreed, “It’s just all wrong.”

“You should probably just stick to your roots and grin like a moron the next time,” Amanda said, “you look even more ridiculous than before.”

“SERIOUSLY like a serial killer,” Brandi told me when I showed her, “like you just got caught.”

Whatever.  As my raging homosexual friend Devon said, “well, you might look like a psycho killer but at least your skin looks really good.”  Tehee.

So that is the story behind my madly psychotic looking drivers license photo.  It could have happened to anyone.