ughhhhhhhhhhh this whole time I’ve been mostly okay with the desquamation because it was only my fingers but I just noticed two spots on my right palm that are prepping to go and EW, as if I weren’t disgusting enough already, let’s just throw peeling palms into the mix

my hands are gross I am gross toxic shock syndrome is gross

like how many customers have noticed my fingers and been disgusted but not said anything? I can only imagine

and today Mario said something about how they made him shudder and how it must hurt, and I had to explain that yeah they look chapped but actually the peeling doesn’t hurt, it just peels, really it’s the skin underneath that hurts because it’s baby skin and I cut my finger on a hanger or something at work today and I panicked because what if there was staph just waiting on my hand to jump into the cut on my finger, what if I get sick again

and later I wasn’t feeling well and I asked Robi if I had a fever and Noel said “tell her she has a fever” so I told him I’d kick him in the balls because I was freaking out about recurrence all day which Robi knew but Noel didn’t and poor Robi, his best friend died this morning, some serious emotional bonding today

but the moral of this story is that my palms are going to start peeling and I’m going to look even more hideous and I’m literally terrified by papercuts like who the fuck even am I right now, this is not me

pardon me while I rant about my Toxic Shock Syndrome some more

My nurse told me that after talking to me about my Toxic Shock Syndrome he did a bit of research, and found that a lot of the recently reported cases of TSS involved properly used tampons. That is to say, a lot recent TSS cases were not caused by tampons left in for more than x hours, but actually by new tampons.

I don’t know what data he was looking at, but I do know that I got sick within a few hours of putting in a new tampon. (One? Two? I’m not quite sure, but somewhere in that range.) I got TSS even though I followed the rules.

So I want to know WHY THE FUCK the fucking tampon boxes with all their warning labels DON’T EVEN BOTHER TO MENTION that you can still get TSS from tampons even if you follow all the rules on the warning labels.

Sorry, I’m just really frustrated by the fact that I ended up in the ICU because of a stupid fucking tampon, that I could have avoided all of this if I’d just switched to menstrual cups a few years ago like I meant to. I had to take an incomplete for my courses for this term, I had to take two and a half weeks off work, I have no idea what my hospital bills look like but I know that shit was expensive as fuck. 

And every time I saw the little pamphlet about Toxic Shock Syndrome in my boxes of tampons, I thought to myself, “funny how that never happens anymore.” And then it happened to me.

So the dancing was fun. But she brought her babygay friend (like brand new, out for two weeks babygay) and also was meeting up with some girl from okcupid and yeah, things obviously changed between last time and this time that I should have picked up on but didn’t. I kissed her once but apparently was not on my game because my flirting was only mildly effective (no one is surprised). (Actually wait, I was getting hit on all night by a number of ladies and two annoying dudes, so my game was on point, it just wasn’t working with her.)

So at one point I turned around and she was making out with her friend, so I went and got another shot because obviously the solution was to get more drunk (wrong) and when I came back they were still making out, so I just kept dancing and waited for them to be done.

At the end of the night they disappeared, and then when I was outside calling myself a cab I ran into them and they ended up (mostly out of a sense of obligation, I’m pretty sure) giving me a ride home. Well, almost all the way home. We got downtown and we were listening to Closer (because lesbians) and Portland is lots of annoying one way streets, so they went “can you find your way from here?” and yeah, I could, no big deal, just two blocks, so I got out of the car. She got out, apparently to hug me goodbye, only decided to tackle-hug me.

She tackled me into the pavement, and while I didn’t pass out, in retrospect I was distinctly disoriented and kept repeating the same thing over and over and insisting I was okay. Because I thought I was. Then I woke up the next morning and realized I had a concussion.

Not a bad concussion, but definitely a concussion.

And I haven’t heard from her since.

And that, ladies and gentlemen of the internet, is why I won’t be dating girls I meet at work anymore.

So there was this customer, and I was exhausted and she was stunning and I utterly failed to flirt with her. She walked out and Roxy looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “why didn’t you give her your number?” and I felt DUMB.

And then she came back like a week and a half later. I’d just clocked out and had previously agreed to take a shift later that day for an associate who hadn’t shown up recently, so I was chatting with Mario about that before I went to kill my hour of free time. Mid-sentence he breaks off, “—that girl is checking you out.” I turned to peek, and sure enough, it’s the same girl.

And I had NO GAME WHATSOEVER. I went up to chat, and she thought I was talking to her friend and was like “oh you two know each other?” like NO, she is not why I’m here talking to you in my precious chain-smoking time when I’m working a split shift. You are why I’m here talking to you.

So I bounced and commenced with cigarettes and chai tea and texting Roxy and Roisin about how I have no game. After a single cigarette, Sarah came out laughing, “Mario got that girl’s number for you.” 

Oh yeah, my manager got this girl’s number for me.

At which point he complained, “I get numbers for everyone but ME!” Poor Mario.

That time my manager got a girl’s number for me while I was out smoking a cigarette.

“I have no game but you have game for me!”
“I have game for everyone!” 

while I’m talking about grad school

Today I was talking to my dad on the phone and multiple times in the conversation (a good hour and a half long) I got to explain things that I learned in class. I didn’t realize how much I’d learned about the publishing industry until the information became useful in a casual conversation with my father.

I’M GETTING A MASTER’S DEGREE IN PUBLISHING AND IT’S AWESOME.