Given that neurotic minimalism is my style -- the opposite of a hoarder, I'm a purger, bulimia aside -- I'm trying to build my humble collection of quality skirts, dresses, pants, and tops, as opposed to buying thin swaths of fabric labelled "dress" from Target and Forever 21 Too Old To Wear This and hoping the frock won't disintegrate in the dryer, but wearing it anyway when it does, until I use it to wipe down the counter as an afterthought before throwing it in the trash (true story). I want a few pieces of good quality clothing that I can wear perpetually, getting dry cleaned or hand washed occasionally, that don't look disheveled in my closet or on me for a change. I don't want to look like Little Orphan Hannie, one pulled thread away from neked, anymore, nor do I want to have a closet full of forgotten, trendy, never worn items. I'm all for functional materialism.

My birthday last week came and went leaving a stash of unexpected but greedily accepted cash from far away family and friends. Instead of making an indiscernible to the point of pointless dent in my student loan debt, I went the instant gratification route and bought new clothes, none from Target, almost all dry clean only, hopefully doing my benefactors proud.

At university, students in my college had to take a class that was basically business charm school. We learned how to dress and how to talk and how to be, in my mind at the time, manipulative douchebags. I rolled my eyes so many times, I'm lucky they didn't get stuck in the back of my head or worse, that someone didn't call me out on my immaturity. I always remember a phrase uttered by an annoyingly enthusiastic (and wealthy, in a privileged, lucky way as opposed to a picked himself up by the cheap, shoddy bootstraps by working at Pizza Hut and putting himself through college, more elusive way). "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have." The student speaker didn't assume I aspired to little more at that time than to scoff at privilege and conventionalism in my ratty dresses and broken flip flops, begrudging smug assholes who got jobs based on their chummy personalities, nepotism, and parent bought lifestyles. I eventually got over all that pointless, bitter resentment. And though I don't aspire to be a Minimalist Diva professionally, just usually, imma start living up to that once mocked grown-up dress-up idea. I'm no fashionista, but like SJP, this little orphan Hannie can graduate to bigger and better roles. "I couldn't help but wonder...is it time to dress the fuck up?"

My new theme song that plays while I'm prancing out the apartment (prancing being a euphemism for running frantically because I'm always late) in my new duds is that Reba Mcentire song. I mighta been born just plain white trash, but Fancy was my name. Prostitution connotations notwithstanding...or rather, withstanding, but metaphorically now.

An older gentleman, a regular patron, just told me, "Your face looks good today. You did a good job!"

I'm wearing makeup for the first time in a a very long while, mostly to offset the fact that my hair is greasy and gross due to the effort I'm taking, per a hairdressers urging, to wash it less.

Ever since I paired blue Wet n Wild eyeliner with varying shades of purple eyeshadow for my first makeup attempt in 7th grade -- a look I carried on for three entire years for lack of better friends (I hate every single person who encouraged this look) -- I haven't a clue what I'm doing.  Even after watching all those YouTube videos. Speaking of which, I just bought $30 foundation from Korea off the internet because some cute, articulate 15 year old recommended it. We both have acne; mine's worse. Ingrid, I'm trusting you, girl.

So I appreciate the compliment from this very genuine, couldn't lie if he tried, man in his 70s. This man whom I once attempted to help recover his forgotten email password. His established password hint read "mi novia," so I asked him, "Well, what's your girlfriend's name?" He said, "I forgot."

"You forgot your girlfriend's name?" I asked without even hiding my amusement.

"Well, I forgot which one." he replied in all seriousness.

Not because I take it this fella has seen his fair share of fresh faces, but more because I'll take any reassurance I can get, I truly appreciate the compliment and feel better about my powdery face with clown cheeks because sometimes when I look in the mirror, which I do a lot, I guess to make sure things are per usual, I see a prematurely aging four year old who got into her mother's makeup...or Britney Spears circa 2007.

I don't remember precisely what we were talking about, something about cheating, obviously, when Eugenio uttered a phrase I'd never heard. Why eat hamburgers when you have steak at home.

The conversation in my head went directly to dismissing this phrase as defeating its own purpose, because sometimes a hamburger is preferable, right? And then the whole piece of meat thing.

He must have known I'd over think it. Later that night when we were having a moment, because we're gross, he said, "You're my steak...and I'm your burrito."

Oh, snap.

Every day this blog gets traffic from people searching for "calories in a coronarita." I imagine a lot of disappointment upon finding this drunk girl embarrassingly rambling, without mentioning an actual calorie count, after I imbibed a semi-homemade knock-off concoction. I need to delete that post. I need to delete this entire blog. But I feel like I can provide a service, give people what they're looking for.

So here you have it. I like to imagine you waking up in a strangers bed with hazy details about last night,  panicked, grabbing for your phone, as if knowing your caloric intake will put you back in control of your life. You find weight watchers doesn't have the stats for dosaritas and coronaritas yet and neither does your calorie tracker app. Relax. I'll tell you:

LOL!You added a beer to a corn syrupy, sugary, salty alcoholic beverage the size of your face. It's about too fucking many calories to even be concerned about anymore. It was so good though, right?! I had a bucket sized dosarita (the real deal, finally) in Houston a few months ago. It was satisfying and headachy and bloating enough to never want to even taste one again, like washing down an entire chocolate cake with tacos. In fact, there's bile in my mouth right now just thinking about it (sorry).

If you want to get drunk on a diet, just stick with the tequila and don't eat anything ever. OK? Just kidding. Anyway, a beer has about 150 calories, a big ass margarita like the one you probably drank has about 550 calories. For the mathematically challenged, that's 700 calories or over two times the daily allowance for anorectics. But let's be real, you probably drank more than that. The better question is, what did you do afterwards? Also, unsolicited food for thought: we're all going to die.

We're going to the beach on Saturday and Sunday to celebrate our anniversary. We booked the hotel. I've been whining about the Florida winter heat for months, but here comes a short cold front to coincide with my pale skin in a bikini. Well played, Universe.

After a night of little sleep, this monkey affects me more than it normally would. Normally it would just leave me giddy and teary eyed. I don't even care about caring right now, or el cuidar, the character trait the library is promoting this month, I just care about cuteness.

Look at that face. I don't want to have a baby. I want to have a baby monkey. Science is working on that, right? Designer babies and such.

This reminds me of when my little sister Emma and I cruelly yet hilariously convinced Molly, the youngest, that she was a monkey our parents adopted at the zoo. Molly was the cutest kid ever. She was also super sensitive and gullible, as I guess all coddled 4 year olds are. But this was the Carr house, so she needed to Buck Up. Plus she was the youngest of seven, so my parents had already given up. Molly got away with some pretty ridiculous shit, as my mother blamed it all on the fictitious evil twin, Dolly. Oh, no. That couldn't have been my Molly. That must have been Dolly. Molly used this excuse handed to her on a silver platter often. My mom would even pretend to beat us in the bathroom, banging on the wall, whispering, "Pretend to scream from pain," in order to make diabolical, innocent, conniving, sensitive Molly-Dolly smile after a minor infraction on her rights as spoiled, youngest child, like pointing and laughing at her when she got the remote control car stuck in her hair again.

So, we felt it was our duty to humble her a bit.

"Molly, think about it. You're the only person in this family who has red hair. You're the only person in this family who has curly hair," I reasoned, using my intimidating, 9 years old superiority.

"You also have lots of freckles. We only have a few," 7 years old Emma added.

We were banking on the fact that Molly wouldn't realise that most monkeys don't have curly red hair nor freckles.

Before Molly could run for comfort, and as Emma continued to provide proof -- did Molly ever recall being born? -- I charged down the stairs to get my mother in on it.


"Mom, if Molly asks if she's a monkey we adopted from the zoo, say yes! I'll rub your back!" I blurted out in one breath, because I knew that woman would sell her kid to the devil for a back rub.

"For how long?"

"Twenty minutes!"

"Thirty."

"Fine!"

"Deal."

Wild haired Molly slowly walked down the stairs, one slow step at a time, like a drama queen, asking through watery eyes, in all seriousness, if she was an adopted monkey.

"Well, yes honey." Mom replied with a compassionate tone and furrowed brow, in an Oscar worthy moment, before we all caved and told Molly we were joking after she cried that cute-sad, child cry which makes you laugh while hoping no psychological damage is being done.

Molly got a ton of sympathy for her crying, mom got her back rub, and Em and I got the satisfaction of tricking Mo into believing she was actually a monkey. In that moment her face looked exactly like this:

It's one of those nights when I'm reading a really good book at the expense of sleeping. I just stopped in the kitchen for a midnight snack. I always get hungry again if I stay up long enough, and as a rule, I never go to bed hungry, because then I'll fantasize about food while my stomach growls and then be absolutely useless the next day.  So I make myself a piece of toast with peanut butter. It's natural peanut butter, which needs jelly or honey for flavor. I realise we are out of jelly and honey, so I sprinkle some sugar straight from the 5lb bag. Except it wasn't sugar, it was flour. I'm in no mood for starting over, so I dust as much flour off as possible and eat it anyway.

This has been the most noteworthy thing that happened to me today, besides the misunderstanding Neno and I had over my agreement to go to a work related recruitment dinner with him, sucking up my anxiety and hatred of talking to strangers, in the name of moral support, though he actually didn't need my support, because unlike myself he is a normal grown ass person, but merely invited me so that I would feel involved, so once we finally realized we were both unnecessarily trying to fulfill unnecessary marital obligations, I got to take off the makeup and stifling clothes and watch webisodes in my underwear while he went out to secure a future job...but then he came home early because it sucked and then we ate frozen pizza in our underwear together.