Once upon a time I met this really cute guy and we got married and at first we were going to have at least four kids but after we’d had two we said FUCK THIS TWO IS PLENTY and my husband got snipped.

The end.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

This week we got a puppy.

Cute little bitch, isn’t she?

We have only had her for five days but already we love her. Except she cries a lot. I’m talking every two hours, all night long. And she has crazy-sharp teeth and she always seems to be starving and I think she has some weird peeing disease. When she dozes off we all tiptoe and whisper and give quiet praise for the brief, blessed silence. We have a fucking newborn, you guys.

She obviously misses her mama. I miss sleeping. It’s going to get better, right?

You guys know I’m all super-religious, right? (What? That’s not what holier-than-thou means? Shit. Never mind.) Fine, I’m not super-religious. I’m spiritual, in a very vague sort of way. (The one that doesn’t make you go to church or believe in hell or prevent you from having tattoos and gay friends.)

Nevertheless, I have spent the last four years diligently studying theology*, all with a singular, focused goal: To become a Minister.

Today, my hard work and dedication* paid off.

I am now available for weddings, baptisms, vow renewals and funerals (okay I would rather not do funerals but if your budget is in the neighborhood of obscene or above, I’ll consider it).

God bless.

~Reverend McCarthy

* I filled out a four-line form and certified that I am over 13.

So I know you guys probably think I get angry hate mail all the time from people I’ve offended, but I actually don’t. In fact, my first written spanking arrived just this morning. You can imagine how excited I was, right? I mean, if nobody hates you, you’re… nobody. (Think about it: Does anybody actually like Paris Hilton, Octomom or that Gosselin douchebag?)

Anyway, here’s what my new-best-lady-friend Debra had to say:

Please note several things about Debra’s email:

* She called me beautiful. And YOUNG!

* Her email address has the word asylum in it. Hmmmm.

* Debra obviously is a lady as she read my hateful book simply because it was given to her. Ladies ROCK!

Here’s what I wrote back:

And here is what I wanted to write back:

Dear Debra,

Fuck! I am so fucking sorry that you didn’t like my book. I worked really fucking hard on it, too. But I’m glad you wrote to me, because you’ve inspired me! You see, I really don’t like horror books. Like, at all. I never realized that I could write to, say, Stephen King, and gently explain to him that being able to graphically describe gruesome murder scenes doesn’t make them socially acceptable. (I’ll surely wish him well at the end of my note, of course, because I really want to be a lady like you!) I am also going to write a letter to J. R. R. Tolkein because I’m not too crazy about hobbits either. (I realize he’s dead, but there’s a Tolkein society and I’m confident they will be interested in my opinion.)

Thanks to you, I also looked up the definition of “lady”: A well-mannered and considerate woman with high standards of proper behavior. So now I know that it is perfectly ladylike to tell someone else that they are not a lady. This is good information to have and I assure you that I will make good use of it!

Thank you again for your sincere wishes of luck with my child-raising and writing! I plan to continue to kick fucking ass at both of them.

Warmly,
Jenna

p.s. “So” only has one o, and it should be “it saddens me” not “its saddens me”. Sorry, but I have very high standards of proper spelling and grammar!

p.p.s. Whatever you do, never ever accidentally stumble across The Bloggess. Seriously, that shit will send you into cardiac fucking arrest.

Like you, I used to find it exhausting trolling the internet all day for pictures of houses I’ll never own, recipes for food I’ll never make, links to brilliant things I didn’t write and ideas for DIY crafts I couldn’t pull off even if Martha herself were barking the directions at me.

Then I discovered Pinterest.

After waiting an entire fucking week, my invitation arrived. I was in! You can imagine how giddy I was to find all of the above things and and more all in one convenient place. Think of the hours I’d save every week! Did I care that my gleeful dancing left scuff marks on my coffee table? I did not! Thanks to Pinterest, I already knew that vinegar would take that shit right off.

I started with one simple board (“stuff I love“). Before long I realized that many of the things I wanted to repin didn’t fit neatly into that category , so I began to add other boards: “Shit I’ll never make but that looks crazy-good” (am I right?), “don’t let the tiara fool you” (well there actually are a lot of good cleaning tips on there), “me, myself and I” (because face it, we’re all out here to pimp our shit at the end of the day), and “I’m not sure how to categorize this crap“. I created the last category when I discovered this:

Looks intriguing, right? I thought so, too! (It’s probably worth noting here that I have no idea if I have a right to post that photo, but it was right here on this gal’s blog, which I am pretty sure means it is in the public domain, but just in case please don’t narc on me, okay?)

The original pin was titled “how to make your own pore strips” and I love me some pore strips more than my kids love saying “Mom, did you see? Did you see that? Did you see?” so I couldn’t resist it. I wish I’d pinned it right onto the “shit I’ll never make” board, but I didn’t. I pinned it to “I’m not sure how to categorize this crap“, where it taunted me for a full 24 hours before I decided to give it a whirl.

The gist was simple: Mix two whole ingredients (I could handle that!), apply to skin, allow to harden and then peel away to reveal youthful, glowing, gorgeous skin.

(I’ll add right here that I am a worthless sucker when it comes to any sort of marketing claim. I’ll buy your goddamned blackest-black mascara every fucking time because I can’t bear the thought of not having the pinnacle of the spectrum of blackness in my makeup drawer.)

So I mixed, applied and allowed. As a dedicated disciple of the If A Little Is Good Then A Lot Must Be Better Institute of Beautification*, I went a little apeshit** with the stuff. I spackled it on good and thick, and then I decided that nothing would be worse than having a young, glowing face and an old, dull neck, so I smeared that sticky, stinky goo all the way down to my collarbone.

Within the first three minutes, I felt the mask begin to harden. It became difficult to lift my eyebrows after another five. At the fifteen minute mark I literally could not lift or lower my chin. I felt like this gal:

I was pretty sure it was time to peel.

I began with the neck. I scraped at the edges, trying to get something to tug onto, but I couldn’t get any traction. Each tug felt like an army of fire ants were extinguishing their tiny cigarettes into my jugular. Imagine you’d smeared, say, six tons of cement onto your face and allowed it to harden for seven years. It felt just a tiny bit harder and more impossible to move than that.

Now, the blog-lady’s peel slipped off easily like this:

Mine, not so much. I scraped and I scraped and with each tiny flecklet (I know it’s not a word, but these pieces didn’t deserve to be called flecks) the fire-sensation on my neck continued to build. Every once in a while I’d get a dime-size fleck(let) and pulling it off would bring tears to my eyes. The flecklets themselves had the consistency of shellacked corn-flakes, and a few had a strange pink tint that could only have been because of the blood.

Please understand: I have undergone laser hair removal and laser facials, I have two tattoos (only one of which I got in Amsterdam, ahem) and I have brought two nine pound babies into the world through my vagina. This pain ranked right up there with the lot of them. On the holy redeemer’s grave, I was genuinely afraid to look into the mirror for fear I’d see an exposed critical artery or possibly even bone.

An hour passed. I picked and peeled. My face felt like I’d plunged it into battery acid. My flecklet pile continued to grow.

Why didn’t I just rinse it off, you ask? You see, blog-lady had specifically instructed to concoct this mess in a disposable cup and apply it with a disposable stick, but I didn’t have either of those things handy so I’d just used a ramekin and a spoon. Within seconds of concocting, the mask residue was petrified to both ramekin and spoon in such a way that no amount of bleach plus an industrial chisel would have removed it. (And yes, I applied it to my face anyway but quit judging me because the Pinterest people said this shit was the bomb.) So I already knew that water was not going to help me.

After a fucking hour and twenty minutes, I had most of it off. I ventured a peek in the mirror. White scaly patches hung around my eyebrows, nostrils and lips. My neck and cheeks were fire-engine red. I looked like a century-old, poorly preserved mummy. I grabbed a washcloth and soaked it in warm water, dying to apply some soothing moisture to my face. I laid the towel over my face and could feel the rawness of my skin. I let it sit for a second and then swiped it around, marveling at the fact that I couldn’t feel the calciferous mask parts that I knew were still clinging to me. I swirled the cloth a few times for good measure, rinsed and looked in the mirror.

The mask was totally gone. And my skin looked FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC. Like, ten years younger fan-fucking-tastic: Dewy. Glowy. Pink (not red). Hairless (yes, hairless). Smoother than any baby’s ass I ever wiped.

So obviously now goddamn it I am going to have to do it again.

Please drop off booze.

*not a real Institute or actually a real anything
*a real state of activity

p.s. I know you’re totally going to do it, so at least please a) avoid your neck area and b) use the disposable cup/stick like the lady told you to do, okay?