Suddenly I find myself sitting here thinking about snack foods... the other day I was suddenly craving Handi Snaks - those little packs of crackers with the red plastic stick and Velveeta-like cheese... So while doing laundry I snuck off to Hannaford to see if they still made these things! They do! I'm sure that they're absolutely horrible for you and chock full of preservatives, but until I make a concerted effort to start eating vegan again it made for an interesting trip down memory lane! They sell 'em 2/89cents. I was rather disappointed that by the time I got the second pack home (I ate the first one at the laundromat) all the crackers were smashed, thus ruining my usual method for eating them. Oh well. Now if I could only find Bottle Caps again in stores! Rootbeer bottle caps are the schiznit!

Speaking of snack foods...I remember a year or so ago I found a place that sells bulk boxes of Laffy Taffy, quite possibly one of my all time favorite foods. 30 lbs of Laffy Taffy is like a dream come true!

And they have chocolate Laffy Taffy too! I've never seen the chocolate flavor in stores, so I must keep my eyes peeled! I wonder what it tastes like? Don't forget, there's a joke on every wrapper. I wish I could remember the joke that had Fred and I laughing so hard last year on Halloween... we had a pretty nifty routine that went along with it. It so nicely complimented our costumes - flannel jammies and AOL-emoticon bindis! This year I think a little mor e advance planning is needed in the costume department... but at least the Raggedy Ann costume is complete now, ready to be worn at a moment's notice...

Here's a late thought for the afternoon. One of my oh-so-helpful friends was offering me some advice today on how to be more datable or attractive or something... says there's not enough mystery or something to me. Well okay, fine. After a lengthy discussion about all my supposed shortcomings (coming from a middle-aged mama's boy who regularly attracts some fairly questionable women, no less) it pretty much boiled down to a few things I need to do: wear more skirts, show more leg, sit up straight and have "more mystery." Which I'm pretty sure in context meant "talk less." Followed by the suggestion that what I could really use is a makeover. Now who exactly are these people I'm supposed to attract if I do all these things? I am who I am and that's that... if people aren't interested in me, slouchy, geeky, un-made-over not showing enough leg and not exhibiting enough mystery me, then they don't have to be. I'm not a mysterious person. I'm an in-your-face person. If you throw it all out there on the table it gives people a chance right away to determine whether or not you're going to be in their circle of friends and honestly, it saves all parties involved a lot of time. There is such a thing as exuding too much mystery, too. Like extracting any little tidbit about them is like pulling teeth and that can just get exhausting. Which kind of brings me back to something I was thinking about last night... I got home just in time to catch the end of Extreme Makeover. This is certainly not one of those programs I would normally watch, but there's nothing else on on Wednesdays and I tend to mute things like that and just listen to music anyway.The first time I saw it I was horrified - all these people with such seemingly minor things they wanted to fix. And trust me, I would never minimalize a person's desire to change something that they were genuinely insecure with if it would boost their confidence and make them happier. But why does happiness have to come from fitting into some ridiculous media-perpetuated idea of what a person should look like? So of course it brought out all my insecurities and I thought, just for a few moments last night, that if they can write a letter to the producer of some show that convinces them to donate thousands of dollars worth of plastic surgery, dental work, personal trainers etc... well, maybe I could do that too just to see what it feels like to be beautiful, to be one of those girls that turns heads. Ugh! I'm so pissed at myself for even thinking like that. Then this suggestion to have a makeover! I really do need a haircut quite desperately and some new glasses (the fun that these frames were wore off long ago), but if I have to put on some plastic face just to leave the house in the morning... I just wish the world wasn't so hard on "ugly" people. Where did this standard come from, anyway, when did we decide that diversity isn't beautiful? When did we give control over to just a few people who decide that girls who aren't quite right don't deserve to be appreciated for their unique talents and strengths? It makes me so angry, because I know as much as I hate it that I buy into that myth too. That no matter what, I'm always afraid of how people are reacting to the way I look instead of to the way I think or speak or act or show complete and total devotion and love to the people close to my heart. It makes me sick to be afraid to walk into a bathroom at a bar because I might not be worthy of some quality primping time in front of a mirror, not when it's filled with size 0 make-up wearing, bleached blonde, fake tanned bimbos. So I'm sitting here feeling frizzy-haired and dumpy and trying to keep in mind all the conversations I've had with people who tell me I'm fine just the way I am, that I'm beautiful and wonderful and real. I just don't know why someone would say what [censored] said to me to a person. And I hate myself for also judging people by the way they look, sometimes it just pops out though, if someone has a particularly remarkable hair-do or style or something and it bears commenting on. I'm no better than anyone else I guess but we all do this. It doesn't help, either, to use the line of reasoning that I must be okay because I've had boyfriends and stuff, because there are so many guys out there who will just stick their dick anywhere it's like there's no measuring stick for being special anymore. No one takes time anymore to open car doors or buy flowers or call just to say that they're thinking of you, romance has gone right out the window. So why be mysterious? No one wants mystery - they want to cut to the chase and be done with you, that's just the way it is. We might as well just take romance, mystery, communication, all of those things and just throw them out the window. We live in a throwaway society so it's only fitting. So what am I the most pissed at right now? Myself? Society? I don't know. It doesn't really matter. I am who I am, and I do have a lot to offer people and if people enjoy my company, they will no matter what I look like I guess. The self-doubt! The self-bashing! I need to stop it. Maybe when they take Extreme Makeover and all that other crap off the air...

Every once in a while someone says something completely random about my breasts, usually something great. I love my breasts. They're quite honestly the one part of me that I really do enjoy, and if you believe what my friends say, I talk about them all the time. Some of my favorites:

"They're not porn star huge, but they're damn near perfect."
"Wow. Now I know why you talk about them all the time; they're great! It's like a car accident, you just can't look away!"