guest post, bitches

Greetings Delightful Bitches of Petunia Face,

My name is Leslie. I write a blog called Squid Pro Quo. It’s a mystery to me how Susannah and I connected. It’s one of the magical accidents of fate orchestrated by the interwebs. We are in very different places in our lives. I’m 25, single, no kids. Assuming the readership of this blog is primarily women in Susannah’s age group, I imagine you may be jealous remembering the time in your life before you decided to incubate the mini-monsters. Well let me drop a little taste of my world on you. I’m about to blast you in the face with a bright white light of truth. Don’t look directly at it lest it scorch the retinas right out of your eyeballs. Use your peripherals as if you were to encounter burning magnesium.

This past week I was “released” from my job in a medical research laboratory at a world-renowned academic medicine institution in the Bay Area. Now I don’t want to name names so I’ll just tell you that it rhymes with “juicy yes jeff” I’m very relieved I never have to go back to that job. I mean I only worked there for five days but it was definitely not for me. I think all the anesthetic gas I was inhaling was going to make me even crazier.

This most recent F-up of mine comes at a bad time. We’re in the middle of a recesh. My parents are threatening me with all sorts of horrifying “enhanced interrogation techniques” including making me move back to my hometown Nashville, TN or going to work for my older sister (shudder). I’m afraid there will be no more corporate bailouts in my future from my parental congress.

I know what you’re thinking, “quit being a brat and get a job at starbucks”. I’ve tried! I have no retail or service experience and I’m up against a few thousand starving artist San Franciscans who have nothing but waiter experience. I have no real world skills. I can help you extract DNA from a hedgehog cheek swab sample, but I sure as shit don’t know how to make espresso.

Now, my fellow Americans, I am without health insurance so if I want the pills that I need for my brain so I don’t flip over cars in the street and set them on fire are almost $300 a month. We’ll see how the tax payers feel about universal health care when I snap and chain myself to the Golden Gate Bridge in a 1950’s prom dress because I can’t get Effexor. That will REALLY clog up traffic, y’all.

This has been complain, complain, complain. I’m sorry. Let me warm the cockles of your hearts by getting reflective all over your asses. In an effort to be more positive here are some things that I DO have:

1) The impossible optimism of youth. When you have so much time ahead of you have no choice other than to be optimistic. The potential of time is a blessing you only have for so long. Yes I’ve had a series of set backs but every day I’m still breathing is another chance to get my shit together.
2) Parents who love me unconditionally. There is a heart-crushing burden to being someone’s daughter. Knowing there are two people out there who would give you every last drop of their blood is overwhelming and confusing. It’s the burden that makes us become parents ourselves I suppose.
3) A strong survival instinct. I have some small business ideas in the works. Distilling moonshine in my bathtub and ponzi scheme are two examples.
4) An iPhone. God dammit those things are smart.
5) Fiercely sharp friends and the wonderful city of San Francisco. Because those are really the ultimate reasons I need to make it work out here.

Well, that’s all I have in me. Thanks for reading, if you even made it this far. I welcome any and all advice you may have for me.

-Leslie