Hi everyone.  This is Acadia from superficialgallery.com and I am writing this as a favor to my wonderful friend, Julie.  As someone who chooses to not reveal anything about myself on the Internet, the fact that Julie has been so incredibly honest and forthcoming has always and will always baffle me.  She is incredibly honest and like anything else, the more true something is the funnier/more poignant/more effective something is.  People have built in bullshit detectors and while Julie might be lots of complicated things, dishonest is not one of them.

But all of that honesty takes a toll.  The birthing process is always painful, and given the depth and breadth of the trauma Julie has undergone over the past year (all of which she shared here publicly), I am sure that you can understand that she’s kind of tired.  Add to that the fact that the site is costing her more money than it makes.  Then imagine what it would be like to be scared to look at your own pending comments because you are getting trolled by your own mom.  This has been going on for months, and yet she has kept writing until now.

So what’s different now?  Practical things.  The site(s) are bleeding money she doesn’t have.  Her health is for crap and what was previously a source of fulfillment and pride has become a looming wave of stress that she, to be honest, does not need to deal with.  I cannot imagine what it must be like to feel so crappy and still be able to make visitors feel welcome, make casual readers smile and make her useless failure of a mother feel like she had some sort of power by allowing her to leave the shitty comments that she left.  Julie and I spoke about just making it so her mom could not comment at all (would not have been difficult) but Julie said it would be better to let her think she was being effective that way rather than hurt more people by finding another medium.  Grownups should not have to make those kind of decisions but Julie did.

And she knows that not all of the decisions she made were good.  People were hurt by things she said and how she said them and where she said them.  People who deserved to have things related to them in a personal, respectful manner were informed instead in ways that could only be described as horrifically insensitive and completely inappropriate.  Things like that happen when people trick themselves into thinking that being selfish is a virtue.  Julie is no longer tricking herself and will fix the mess she made offline (where it should have been handled anyway).

Now, before you all go thinking that I somehow hacked Julie up, stole her site and have her hidden in one of her beloved stalker vans, I assure you that she is alive and well and you can find her on Facebook.  She is having seizures and needs to fix her finances and needs to get all of the things in real life worked out before she can think about coming back to the site.  And if she does come back to the site, she will need to decide where internet stops and real life starts.  Trying to make them one thing is too hard and it chewed her up.

So like they say…if you love something, umm, I guess go find it on Facebook?  I don’t know.  It’s not like this is a eulogy.  It’s just that the site is going dark.  So go away…go on!

Sorry folks.  Blog’s closed.  Moose out front should’ve told you.

Holy mother of pearl I had the two most fucked up days at work this past weekend.  I was all geeked out and ready to write on Friday afternoon but figured since I wrote in the middle of the night before it’d have wasted that post so I decided to wait until today.  Then NYE happened.  What a mess THAT was.

Let’s start with Friday.  I went in at 11:30 and was asked how I felt about going behind the bar since the bartender was sick. I’m a cocktail waitress.  I’m very comfortable with alcohol and I won’t ever turn my boss down for anything so I got a ten minute crash course in bar tending and then was super excited to do it because I felt like Tom Cruise in “Cocktail” and it was a Friday afternoon so I didn’t expect to be that busy right?

WRONG.

The place was mobbed.  The dining side had a party of 22 come in who ALL drank which never happens on a lunch shift and it’s the bartender’s job to fill those orders but the printer wouldn’t print out what they were and I had a substantial amount of people sitting at the bar so I didn’t have the time to fill every order.  The girls themselves were walking back behind the bar grabbing beers and mixing drinks and we were all Googling how to make certain blended ones we weren’t sure of.  I made a White Russian.   Yay.

One gal took the bar dining side, I had the bar and the other two girls worked the crowded lunch floor by herself.  Even with the bartender on staff it would have been a little hectic but I loved every second of it.  I made decent money and the day flew by.  I’d happily be a daytime bartender from now on but I’ve decided to become a certified trainer so I think I’ll just stick with one upgrade at a time.

Then comes New Year’s Eve.  What a disaster that was.  I went in with the mindset that I’d pull in $300.  Nope.  $84 big ones.  I had a full section, it was just full of people who clearly never go out and obviously don’t know how to party because they had about two beers and left $3 tips.  We were cleared out by 1 and I had a MASSIVE fat super gay guy scream at me then to my boss about me because he was REALLY drunk.

His friend cashed out their check at 12:20 and at 1:10 the big guy ordered another drink so I brought that with the new check with him.  I said it’s NYE and we have to have a credit card on file but since he’d been there already I can have him close it out now or keep it open if he wants to keep drinking.  His friend came in and I said the same thing again.  The big guy didn’t seem to understand that we had already closed the tab out.  His friend did.  He said please close it again, he’s done drinking so that’s what I did.  Holy hell you should have seen the receipt.  I’d have taken a picture of it if the handwriting was readable and it didn’t have my work name on it.  He wrote how terrible I was as a server and how I will destroy that company if I don’t get fired then he yelled at my boss about me for a solid 20 minutes and I almost cried because I was already on the verge of tears having had no one to kiss at midnight that I just decided to be in a shit mood for the rest of the night.

After the big guy left we all followed my boss into the back to explain what we saw him to to me and my boss actually paused to wash his face with soap because he said that guy spit all over him.  Ew.  He knew I wasn’t at fault, admitted the guy was just hammered and only teased me about it for the rest of the night but that guy killed my New Year’s Eve party.  None of us made money because all you broke-ass people stayed at home and I didn’t get my real New Year’s celebration until I happily found a pair of Pillow Pet slippers that fit me at Walmart at 5am.

So that was my work weekend in a nutshell.  How was yours?

That was from last Christmas Eve Eve.  When I first discovered the bounty and glory that is the Pillow Pet.  I don’t have them all but I do have a whole hell of a lot of them and today I’m going to talk about their names and where they came from.  There is a key person involved in all of my Pillow Pet shenanigans who not only doesn’t like to be talked about but he also doesn’t like being talked to for those of you who insist on reading my blog and then go running to said individual.  If he wanted to know what I was saying he’d read this himself.  That being said, through many trials and tribulations I have my friend back and I call him You because I think that’s hilarious.

Anyway, You and I went out last Christmas Eve Eve and I discovered this brand new world of owning a zoo that converts into a pillow.  My first pet was a Monkey.  I call him Monkey simply because I wanted to talk about spanking him.  On Christmas Eve Eve of last year You bought me Ted, named in honor of my late step-father and my friends late father (they have the exact same name, it’s creepy).

Sometime later on I bought a ladybug.  I can’t remember when but I know it was from Walmart and I honestly wasn’t ever too fond of her.  Named her Willow in honor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I ended up giving her to my son Joshua because her antennae bugged the shit out of me (no pun intended).  My son Jake was so jealous I bought him a dog and a penguin that he named Julie and Courtney (totally makes sense, we belong together) and recently I bought myself a mini-monkey I named Blue because my friend You makes “Blue’s Clues” noises and it inspired the name.  Blue is solely designed for travel.  It was too hard to take Monkey everywhere but Blue fits into any bag and is a perfect travel pillow.

When I took my trip with You to Galveston for my Carnival cruise promotion, You thought it was only fitting that he get his own pet (I confiscated it eventually) and he named him Red because it’s another color and it rhymes with Ted.   The two had a great time on the ship and I got an adorable post out of it that I don’t need to link to because you’re all very loyal and you’ve likely read it.

Then comes Balls.  OH MY GOD YOU I FUCKING LOVE YOU.

Balls is a pet that can be zipped up in pillow form or unzipped to become a blanket.  I love balls.  I can fit Blue right in him and travel with my Blue and Balls.  If you put all three together I now have Monkey Blue Balls so that right there is your reason why he got that name.  Balls is grand.  I don’t like when my knees touch when I sleep so instead of bunching all the blankets up like I normally do, I just put Balls between my legs and I have the perfect amount of comfort.  He’s silky and smooth and my Balls wraps perfectly around me.  I love playing with Balls.  I dance with him and like the way he feels so much I always find myself rubbing Balls against my face.

This Christmas Eve Eve You also bought be my new bear Bosco.  You named Bosco dating all the way back to the days he worked at a theme park and he lured people to come play games using different bears, all he named Bosco.  That’s the gist of the story anyway, I was manic as fuck when he told me and since he doesn’t read me I can admit that I was only half paying attention because I was wondering if my blood pressure was going to land me in the hospital.

Finally we have Bessie.  She’s my mini-cow.  I didn’t even want to get another one.  We walked into Walgreens and You grabbed her and made mewing noises with her and told me how bad she wanted to come home with me because someone was going to kill and eat her and it reminded me of my days growing up on the farm (yes, I grew up on a farm and no, I was not good at it) and I had a cow I favored that I named Bessie because that’s what I felt a cow should be named.  One day during dinner I distinctly remember saying “Where’s Bessie?” and I don’t know if it’s true or not but the devil said “You’re eating her” and that prompted me to stop eating all meat until I was twenty.  To this day I’ll only eat bacon, burgers, tacos and meatloaf.  I won’t go near a  steak.

I just bought my kids four Pillow Pets but they were pre-named.  Mader, SpongeBob, Mickey Mouse and Sir Purr from the Carolina Panthers.  What they don’t know is that You bought each one their own blanket pets, a dog for Jake and a monkey for Josh so I’m very excited to see what they name them when You gives them their Christmas gifts next time we hang out.  I’m willing to bet one of them is named Bob, but that’s just a hunch.

So that’s it!  I’m sure you were all just dying to know the history of my pets and the origin of their names.  Each one is super special to me and while I don’t think I can have enough of them, it’s gotten to the point where I only want You buying them for me because it’s becoming a tradition.  I suppose I can’t get pissy with him again if I want to increase my collection.  Forgive and forget right?  That’s what friends are for!

Sing it with me now – “Christmas fucking ruuuled!”

Dude.

It so did.

I got up at seven and went to see the two most handsome, well behaved children on the planet.

“Hello mother, how are you? May we please open up our gifts now? Yes?  OH! We each got an iPod touch from Santa!  And wow!  We got just about everything on our Christmas lists and MORE!  Let’s be total dicks now!”

That’s my day in a nutshell.  I spent it with Ry, his dad and the kids and they went from awesome to MISERABLE in just hours.  The days of going to bed late and watching Santa on radar until midnight caught up with them and they decided to shit on everything right in the middle of Denny’s.  We made going there our tradition last year mainly because we didn’t have anything to eat for breakfast and it’s the only place that’s open.

Josh took a two and of course touched the toilet seat while he was sitting there and then put his hands on the floor as I wiped his ass and he had the audacity to get pissed at me for holding his hands away from his mouth, where he wanted them to be until I washed them.  Then we got back to the table and he did the full-on body melt to the floor and promptly got himself a nap when he got back.

I took one as well.

Pillow Pets rule.  Each of my kids got two of them.

After dinner I went to work where I proceeded to get a $100 cash tip on a $230 bill.

I’m awesome.

I didn’t get to sing.

Tingley came out though and he was a rock star.  Everyone there went balls over him and someone stopped him as I was waiting on them and said he was the best in the place and it should be a show centered around him.  It happened to be my $100 table so if he had anything to do with them being in awesome moods thanks dude.  You are appreciated.

People got wicked super drunk and some were cut off.  There was an annoying bitch who got up and sang with EVERY SINGLE PERSON who went up to sing karaoke.  We couldn’t move her.  Tingley tried hooking the drunkest guy in the bar up with her and almost succeeded in the most hilarious way possible.  I’ll recant as best I can -

“Dude. you’ve gotta hook up with that girl.  You live with your mom?  That’s okay!  Fuck her in your car.  You don’t have a car?  Just take her over to a bench around the corner!  Come on, do it man!”

That was the one-sided summary of what happened.  I was laughing my ass off.  Of course Tingley knew our KJ Irish and now is obligated to return every Sunday because a lot of random shit happens and it’s always on my Sunday nights.

My skin is shit and I lost my tweezers.

This post isn’t so much random but it was a very random Christmas.  I got to enjoy my family, escape just before the bedtime meltdown finale and head to work where I took care of more children, only the kind with money to tip me and I poured shots down their throats and made my paycheck.  Sunday’s are my best days.  I always close and it’s ALWAYS crazy.  Usually some drunk chick falls over.  It’s like my favorite bar Lucky’s only bigger and I work there.

I think that’s all the random I have.  I still need black socks.