Sex and The City (of Clay)

Being single at 31 is great, right? Maybe if you're Carrie Bradshaw. However, if you basically live at home in a city of roughly 800 people it turns out the single life is not so glamorous. The nightlife consists of shootin the shit with the town's elders at the A&W Rootbeer stand or venturing out to the local VFW for Friday night karaoke. If you're real lucky you might make it up to the truck pulls where you could snag you a respectable out of town man.

It's not that the town hasn't raised some hard-working, upstanding individuals. It's just that they are all married, divorced, or have 10 kids with 10 different women. This is the reality that you face when you wait till later in life to settle down. It's like punishment for wanting to live and experience life to the fullest in your 20's without the responsibility of a husband and children. You didn't want to settle down? Well here are all of the other men who never wanted to settle and still don't. Take your pick. It's like a two-for-one, grown ass man child. You can acquire a man plus a child at the same time!

The best part about small town dating is that you end up dating everyone you know and when you break up they end up dating everyone YOU know. Eventually you run out of people you know that you aren't related to then you just end up dating your cousin. Or eventually you run out of people close enough to your own age that you have to start dating people from different decades. "The thing about high school girls is I keep getting older and they stay the same age."

Running into an ex in a small town is inevitable. Gas station: ex. Bank: ex. Local pub:ex. 20 year old girl's house next door: ex. Or your family is even friends with most of them, so your own back yard: ex.

You think eventually you can escape this nightmarish hell that is your love life but it keeps reappearing everywhere you go. It keeps popping up on your Facebook, SnapChat, back door, etc. Sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh at the hilarity of it all and swear to yourself you'll never date another man from this town again. Ha, yeah right.

Crazy Bitch

I know how women think because I am one. This being said I do my best not to act like one. For the most part. Every time I become enraged at something some other woman is doing and feel the need to retaliate, I always hear my dad's voice in the back of my head saying "That's a crazy bitch thing to do." Women are fucking crazy. All of us, every last damn one of us. Don't let us fool you. Women do things, especially to other women, that no man is even capable of understanding, or even noticing for that matter. Women choose to be passive aggressive, manipulative and conniving. Women are natural born detectives and are therefore very much in tune to what other women are doing, whereas men are only in tune with their dicks. Don't try to explain to a man what some other woman is doing to piss you off because it's beyond their realm. "Oh, but honey I thought she seemed nice." They are clueless in this department. The best thing to do when dealing with a crazy bitch is to just ignore it. Bite your tongue, hold your head high, and remind yourself that at the end of the day you still have your dignity.

You might be a crazy bitch (and not the Buckcherry kind) if you:

Call someone consecutively 30 times in a row (We've all done this one)

Post pictures on social media with another guy within 36 hours of a breakup

Date your ex's best friend/friends

Start showing up at every social event you know your ex will be attending post-breakup

Start Taylor Swifting your Facebook wall with quotes and song lyrics

Get a job at your ex's favorite hang-out

Pretend to be pregnant/need to have/or have had an abortion

Return to your ex's house to retrieve a bobby pin you left behind

Send the other woman pics, convos, or any other kind of connection to her man

Play Damsel In Distress... "Oh shit, I was just driving down the road and ran out of gas"

Destroy a man's property in any way (No Carrie Underwood, there won't be a next time with your crazy ass)

28 Going On 18

At my age it becomes easy to forget sometimes that I'm 28 years old not 18. Being caught somewhere between the party scene and the parenting scene can tend to be confusing. On the one hand, you find yourself wanting to settle down but on the other you yearn to live it up while you still can. Just recently, I went on a major week-long drinking binge which resulted in the immediate need to redeem myself by remodeling my bedroom and hitting up Kohl's doorbuster sales. There comes a point in life when all-night drinking escapades, one-night stands, and long-running fb's are no longer exciting but just simply tragic. Sometimes you just have to stop and re-evaluate your life and decide if where you are is where you want to be. Maybe still acting 18 in some aspects is acceptable. It's just understanding the difference between fun and reckless; trendy and trashy. One can be responsible yet still know how to have fun, after all no one likes a prude right?

10 Signs You're Not 18 Anymore:

1. You know more about Alan Thicke than you do Robin Thicke (The guy from Growing Pains has a son?!)

2. The only Molly you know is a famous actress from the 80's (Sixteen Candles is like the greatest movie ever)

3. The craziest party you have been to lately is a 31 purse party

4. You can remember when Fifteen and Pregnant was a tragic movie on Lifetime, not a glamorous reality tv show

5. You can barely fit into a size XL in the JUNIOR department (Your hips aren't Forever 21)

6. You no longer find indoor tanning desirable (You work MON-FRI 9-5, who are you kidding with your fake orange glow?)

7. You have no fucking idea what is going on in that Miley Cyrus video

8. You would rather drink at the Legion or VFW than venture out to college bars ( How can you beat $1 beer?)

9. The only "dirty pics" you have on your phone are of your niece and nephew potty training

10. You get your current events from sources other than E!News

"Johnny Cash"

Three summers ago I did the craziest thing I've ever done in my life. I loaded up the Pontiac with all my belongings, burnt myself the ultimate road trip cd, and headed south. My life had suddenly turned into a Jason Aldean song. I was moving on, starting over, and by god I was NEVER coming back.

Let's face it. I was having a quarter-life crisis. My twenty-fifth birthday was nearing, my ex was getting married, and I seemed to be stuck in a major rut. I was working three jobs at the time, barely making rent, and partying WAY TOO much. I was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. I needed an extended vacation. The only problem, as it always tends to be, was money. I had to figure out a way to escape from what had become my own personal hell, yet still find a way to survive financially. And then it hit me. I work for a nationwide company. I can transfer anywhere. So that's what I did. 

Within my company, each store has a five digit identification number. One day I chose a number at random, plugged it into the store locator, and decided that whatever came up was where I was going. Hell I could have ended up in Puerto Rico or Alaska, it didn't matter. I had made up my mind and I was going to follow through regardless.

Fate will have it that the very first number I brought up and called was in West Palm Beach, Florida. Although that first store did not have an opening, they referred me to one down the street that did. I was on my way.

The next issue was finding a place to live.  I spent the next few months, with help from both my mom and step-mom, researching every apartment complex in South Florida. Sadly, they were all way beyond my price range, unless of course I wanted to live in Dade county and be featured on the next episode of Cops. I was starting to become extremely discouraged until somehow fate decided to intervene again.

A friend of the family, whom I barely even knew at the time, had gotten wind that I was moving to his neck of the woods. Since he lived with his girlfriend and was rarely home, he offered me a place to stay. The next thing I know, I'm living in a two-story townhouse on the beach in the richest zip code in America. In fact, my neighbors consisted of celebrities such as Alan Jackson and Tiger Woods. I was living the dream. I was experiencing things and seeing life from a whole new perspective and for the first time ever, I was doing it all by myself. 

Sh!T My Dad Does: A Follow-Up to Dadisms

If there has ever been anyone in my life who I have looked up to, admired, or strived to be like it’s my father. He has always lead by example, whether exemplary or not, and taught me to be brave, strong, and independent. He raised me with a brutal honesty and light sense of humor that has resulted in my always being unabashedly true to myself and to others. For this I am forever thankful.

With this being said, listed below is a compilation of shit my dad does, or has done (To be taken light-heartedly).

He cusses out teenage girls at concerts

My dad and stepmom agreed to take my friends and I to an Eminem concert for my birthday in Jr.High, why they agreed to this I’ll never know. It turned out to be the wildest event I’ve ever attended in my life, and this was prior to my drinking days and experimentation with illegal drugs. The entire venue was a pot fest; the woman in the seat beside me was filling up her empty beer cups with her own vomit while the man on the other side of me kept crawling under my legs in search of his pipe. Behind me a man was breaking another man’s jaw over the concrete curb all American History X style while Girls Gone Wild were on scene recording all of this. After we finally managed to make it to the car alive we had to wait in line for days to get out of the parking lot. Out of nowhere this carload of girls flew in front of our car, cutting us off and almost causing a wreck. The next thing I know Dad is leaning out of the window flipping them off yelling “F&*% YOU B!TCHE$!!!!!!!! I’d say my friends got a better show than they had bargained for.

He throws food back through drive-thru windows

Back when Terre Haute had a Joker’s Hamburgers or Jack-In-The-Box ( I can’t remember which one exactly because they both equally suck), Dad decided to give their food one last shot even though he constantly complained that it tasted like Styrofoam and that their Coke tasted like toilet water. After placing his order, he rolled up to the window in the Supra to receive, low and behold, his tasty Styrofoam burger and sewage trough of cola. All I remember from this point forward is a whirlwind of sandwich wrappers and the squealing of tires on the pavement, followed by the startled look on the drive-thru worker’s face as all the food went flying back through the window, fountain Coke and all.

He stoops to their level because “It’s all they understand”

My dad is an avid fisherman and he takes the sport very seriously. He rarely has the patience to take me with him, but it was a nice Sunday afternoon so he agreed to take my stepmom and I out on Raccoon Lake. While situated in the corner of the lake, Dad and I are both standing up casting towards the bank when out of nowhere a ski boat comes flying by us. This in turn causes our whole boat to rock back and forth violently almost sending Dad face first into the water. In complete silence he puts his pole down, takes his position in the driver’s seat, and puts the gas pedal to the floor. As we are fastly approaching the drunken skiers my stepmom is in fear of what he has planned. She explains that he should not “stoop to their level”. It’s too late. He comes up beside them throwing water in their faces while yelling “F&#* YOU MOTHERF$%^ERS!!! He then calmly sits down with a wide grin on his face and replies “Why? It’s all they understand.”

Born To Rock

So there I was. Driving down the road, sunroof open, hair blowing in the wind. The radio is blaring "Baba O'Riley" or "Heart of Gold" and I've forgotten who or where I am. I am constantly losing myself in song; pretending to be someone else, living someone else's life. I am a rockstar. I've always wanted to be a rockstar since my dad bought me the band set out of the JC Penney catalog in 1987. I would tie scarves around the mike stand and pretend to be Jon Bon Jovi or Axl Rose. I would stay up all night with my dad and his friends partying, rocking out to 80's hairbands. I'd sit on the console of his black Trans Am with the T-Tops out and cruise. 

At this time in my life I was living in a modular home with my dad and his second wife. She had a bowling league on Thursday nights so that's when the real parties went down. The neighbors at the end of the street would call in noise complaints because our stereo system was so loud. The following morning I'd replace my Bon Jovi cassette tape that my dad's friend bought me for Christmas with my sing-along nursery rhymes cassette so that my stepmom wouldn't suspect anything. 

When I got a little bit older my band set got replaced with a karaoke machine. My love for 80's hairbands had also been replaced with 90's grundge. The Trans Am was traded in on a candy apple red Toyota Supra. We would cruise around in that thing blaring Cracker or Collective Soul, doing about a buck ten down US 41 or cutting donuts in random parking lots.

Finally in my pre-teen years Dad decided it was time to really up my game. He took me to Service Merchandise and let me pick out a brand new, cutting edge video camera. My friends and I, along with half the neighborhood, were now in the business of making our own music videos. We produced videos ranging from Sir Mix-A-Lot to Goo Goo Dolls. We always dressed and sang the part with the dreams of one day winning a Grammy.

This month I'm celebrating my "Golden Birthday", as I will turn 28 on the 28th, but for me those were the Golden Years. I look back on my childhood sometimes and think "Where did I go wrong?" I had so much drive and ambition, where did I lose it? Considering I never learned how to play an instrument nor can sing to save my life, I'd say my dreams of becoming a rockstar are slightly unrealistic at this point. I guess I'll have to stick to writing. 

Broken Hearts And Time Machines

If you could go back to a specific moment in time, to the very moment when two cosmic worlds collided, would you change it? Would you forfeit the short-lived chance for pure happiness and joy to spare yourself the eventual heartbreak and sadness? Life is supposed to be about growth and learning from your mistakes and hardships. They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but it also leaves you scarred. Is it better to remain innocent and ignorant to life's disappointments or to face them head on?

What if someone with a crystal ball intervened at that very moment and warned you that the outcome would be negative? Would it be enough to persuade you? Would it be enough to suppress the sparks that are already ignited? The answer is no.

The human heart is a selfish organ. It requires not only blood, but also love to keep pumping and beating. It's so hungry for love sometimes that it overpowers the brain and makes its own rash decisions unaware of its consequences. 

It doesn't matter at this point if we are told that this person will break us beyond all possible measure because the process has already begun. It was meant to be and there is no stopping it.

What matters most is how you deal with the outcome. How is this devastation going to shape you into the person that you are and were always meant to be? Rise above the heartbreak and shine. Be the badass that you were born to be and don't let one little setback define you. People are always going to let you down, but don't let this be a reason to let yourself down. Find the strength to carry on. Go after what you want in life and never look back.