What Not To Say When Meeting Someone For The First Time

I had a chance encounter with THIS super nice lady and fellow blogger on Saturday night. The conversation went as follows:

Smiley Sarah Extends Her Hand: "Hi, how are you doing? It's so nice to finally meet you."

Ridiculously Lame Elastic Holds Out Her Hand And Says: "Uhhhhhh, hi. I've got GAS all over my hands."
(It was true. I had just won a hard-fought battle with my petroleum-soaked gas cap at the filling station.)

Smiley Sarah Turns Complimentary: "I read your blog all the time!"

Insecure Elastic Looks Down At Her Feet And Mumbles: "Oh, really?"
(I'm kind of a rogue Mormon convert. I never know when a fellow Church member comments that they read my blog if it's a bad thing or a good thing.)

So there it is, people. I'm the Queen of Painfully Awkward Conversations.
Do you have too many friends and acquaintances? Are they burdening you and soaking up too much of your valuable free time? Do you just want to rid yourself of all human contact so you can live a hermitary life of extreme isolation?
Just call me---->elasticwaistbandlady<----and I'll show you my proven 12 point plan for alienating people by using the most modern tools available in the field of Non-Communication Communications.
I've carefully studied all the most famous unintelligible conversationalists in pop culture history to devise my unique system of driving all humanity as far away from you as possible.
The panel of experts include: That "Wah-Wah-Wah-Wah" teacher from Peanuts, Boomhauer from King Of The Hill, and the aptly named Mushmouth who rose to meteoric fame on the Fat Albert cartoon series.
I'm a prime example of what happens when the written word beats the tarnation out of the spoken word...........and leaves it struggling for breath on the side of the road.

What's Fishier Than a Catholic on Friday? I Am!

I know what you Infidelphiles are thinking. You think you have me pegged. "I know a lot about Elastic. I know her butt sweats profusely," you're thinking. "Her husband's name is Papi and he's a sexy-Mexi hunka hunka burnin' queso dip. Her six mini-Infidels spork-fight like nobody's business and one kid was accidentally born in the tub. Elastic yelled the F word at that guy once. Yeah, I have Elastic pegged."

I'm here to tell you, in the midst of my Rocked-like-a-Hurricane Blogtopia, that you don't know me as well as you might think.

What many of you Infidel-ites may not have realized is that I have utter and utmost love for all things seafaring. Seafood, sea urchins, seamen, Chicken of the Sea... no creature residing in the Seven Seas is safe from me and my undying fishy affection.

Why, just the other day I was telling a fish story to my adorable, charming, mustache-bleaching friend, the incomparable Millie Chicken. I said to Millie:

"Millie, my love, whose lips are impossibly moist and appealing..."

Millie was a bit grossed out by this, I could tell, but continued to listen politely because that's what she does at any cost: listen politely. She's just that kind of girl.

"... Millie my angel, do you know what I love most in the world?"

"Me?" she guessed, tossing back her mahogany hair and batting her eyelashes.

"So close, but sadly, no... there is one thing on earth - OK, seven other things on earth - that I love more than you. No, actually eight, because Papi and the six kids are the first seven and then I was going to tell you this other thing that I really have a hankering for and I got so discombooberated that I lost count."

"Uh-huh," Millie intoned. I could tell she was getting bored. Of course - the topic had turned away from herself to something else.

"I really love fish."

"Fish?"

"Yes. Fish. I love to eat them. I even love to write songs about eating fish. How's this: Fishedy doo and a fishedy dye... Sammy Davis, Jr. had one glass eye..."

Millie tried to covertly glance at her watch - it was obvious she was uncomfortable - and then looked up at me. Her face was strange: it wore the look of someone who'd recently rocked out hard to Rod Stewart's "Infatuation" but had suddenly remembered that headbanging is best left to people under the age of twenty. Either that, or she was suffering a sudden attack of gas.

Then, it finally hit her. I'm talking it probably took a good fifteen minutes.

"You. Eat. FISH?"

"Yes, my choicest morsel."

"That is just sick," she spat in my face.

"Why, my dear, my darling one?"

"My... best... friend," she sniffled noisily into a yellow embroidered handkerchief, "was maimed by a harpoon!"

She whipped out this picture:

"They even had her STUFFED and MOUNTED!" she sobbed into my shoulder.

Well. Was my fish-face red that day.

I didn't stick around to get the rest of the story - a nagging voice in my fish-addled brain wondered how this was even possible - but you can imagine how awkward things have been between me and my beloved Millie ever since.

And that, my friends... is a fishy story.

I Should Probably Just Change My Name To The Hypocritical Infidel Now

I'm a big fat hypocrite.
Yes. Yes, I am.
I'm such a humongous hypocrite that I should actually be referred to as a HIPPOcrite
If I was a board game I would be Hungry, Hungry HIPPOcrites.
So anyway the hot, hot Houston heat has been relentlessly stifling the past few weeks- often nearing the 100 degree mark.
It's so hot here that I developed an ugly heat rash right smack in the middle of my cleavage. Yeah, I'm suffering from Booby Heat Rash Affliction and it hurts like a mofo, too.
I placed a folded paper towel in my bra yesterday in an effort to soak up some of the boob moisture with the hope that a drier boobage area would clear up the heat rash.
Let that be a lesson to you. You know how your Aunt Nadine always pulls a Kleenex out of her bra to offer you when you have the sniffles? Don't be fooled, that tissue isn't stuffed in there for mucous purposes. Your Aunt Nadine packs her bra with paper products to try and stem the tide of booby sweat!
Why did I just switch topics from HIPPOcrite mea culpas to the weather and then inexplicably to burning bazongas? Am I trying to change subjects and divert your attention? No. It's all relevant.
Due to the excessively high temperatures I've been trying to work exclusively during the nights. As an added bonus, working during the night as opposed to the day usually means that I encounter less traffic and less people milling about in the streets.
I think that Houston is slowly transforming all my fellow citizens into summertime vampires because right now the reverse is true--the neighborhood streets are empty during the day and people only start venturing out of their homes under the cover of darkness.
So I'm out throwing the free community paper and as I careened around one of the endless cul-de-sacs on my route I spotted potential trouble.
When I see people out in their yard and I know I have to turn around and drive past the house again, I instinctively withhold the paper until the return trip. See, if they're ash holes they won't have the paper to use as ammunition to throw back at me while they spiral down into a full-on temper tantrum.
Yeah, they could call the office and place a STOP PAPER. Or they could, you know, actually bend their butts over and toss the thing into their recycling bin or trash but some people have nothing to live for outside of making this planet miserable for others.
Well, I accidentally tossed the paper at this house before I noticed the old man standing in the driveway in front of his SUV. Unfortunately for me it was also before I was safely turned around to make my escape from the cul-de-sac of doom.
As per typical, the old man was indeed an ash hole. He stood in the middle of the street with the paper in his hands ready for battle.
I don't stop for anyone on my route. Years of dealing with unpredictable crazies has taught me that. Neither will I put up with being harassed or assaulted in any way.
I saw Mr. Ash Hole and started revving my engine and then gunned it. It worked. He was scared enough to step out of my way. Since he couldn't get me to stop he attempted to throw the paper at me through my open window.
He failed. The paper ricocheted off my truck and smacked him instead.
I don't usually use profanity outside of those words sanctioned by the Bible like ass, Hell, and damn. My brand of profanity is sanitizing potentially offensive words and running them through the laundromat of my mind so that they're cleaned up into a more socially respectable form. Ass becomes azz. Sh*t magically transforms into SHEET. And the F word? Well, I don't even venture into that territory outside of using 'freakin'. The really bad four-letter F word for me is FICA. (That's a self-contractor joke)
I don't really know or understand what possessed me but I slammed on my brakes and started cursing a blue streak. A blue streak that began and ended with the F word.
My end of the conversation went as such:
"F*** You! Don't F*** With Me Because I F***in Know where You Live!"
And then I sped off and stopped around the corner because I was shaking so bad.
As I tried to regain my composure my ears were filled with the joyful music still playing on my XM Satellite Radio.
I had it programmed on the Christian Rock station called The Message!
There is nothing like spewing forth the foulest cuss word bile you have in your bad language arsenal to the perky beat of a Christian Rock background.
I know what you're saying. You're gasping and sputtering out something like "Oh Our Lady Of The Filled-Up Swear Jar, Do You Sing Praises To Your Lord With That Filthy Mouth?"
Apparently the answer to that is yes, I guess I do.
I'm horrified at myself and totally repentant as well........ mainly because I don't want to spend my eternity roasting next to Mr. Ash Hole for my sins.

Why Hallmark And American Greetings Called Security When I Tried To Sell Them My Card Ideas

A fit of wild inspiration hit me this week and I elected to parlay that into some dandy little homemade postcards for my Good Mail Girl peeps.

Infidel Tip Of The Day: Remember to always, no matter how secure of your writing talents, proofread. Always. Today, I sat addressing the cards to send them off to their new homes when I noticed a horrifying glitch on one of them.
This cheeky little card represents how I feel about the cheeseball inspirational stickers that came lodged in the middle of my value pack stickers featuring funky tank tops and lip gloss. I didn't want the stickers to go to waste, but I also felt a need to protect the snark credibility that only a true Smiling Infidel can accumulate. What to do? What to do? So, I slapped them onto this piece of cut-out posterboard and wrote adorable, feel good phrases underneath. What exactly is the problem then, you may ask? Take a looksie at the bottom left corner. It reads, "Hi, What's New?" and I finished it off with a delightful response of "This Weird Looking PUSSY Sore. Want To Come Closer To Look At It?"

Nuh-Uh, that's just all kinds of wrong. I intended it to mean PUSSY as in 'PUS-FILLED,' not like actual, you know, PUSSY. Don't worry, I modified the sentence this morning so none of the pure and mild Good Mail Girls will have to explain to their family why a stranger would inexplicably invite them to come take a close look at their weird PUSSY sore.

Someday We'll Find It, The Cable Connection......

Last Friday I played the part of a Good Samaritan superhero, but without any sausage casing Lycra tights or dorky capes. Believe me, the events that unfolded were completely unintentional on my part.

Papi entrusted me with the Houston Chronicle "special delivery" papers that needed to go to some of the local schools. No problem. There's really nothing I love more than the opportunity to play Mr. McFeely's Special Delivery(really funny youtube clip) game in the pre-dawn hours of the day. So, as I turned at the corner intersection to get to the neighborhood elementary school, a modified racer Honda Civic hatchback came rumbling/hiccuping up to the stop sign. It kind of looked like this....

only the once vibrant red paint had muted to a drab rusty color and large patches of paint had given way to show the exposed car frame. The hood was missing and some overtly hideous front end damage glared back at me. As the driver also went to turn, his car crapped out. He allowed the Civic to roll backwards until it came to rest completely sideways and completely blocking my path. He tried to turn over his engine several times while I impatiently waited for him to get the frick out of my way. His efforts proved useless. Irritated, I sat there and watched this young Asian EMO guy that looked like he escaped from the above picture, get out of his car and motion to me while puffing on a cigarette. The black shirted dude flipped his shaggy hair out of his eyes and adjusted his standard edition EMO white studded belt as he sauntered over to my open truck window and asked me if I would mind if he hooked up his jumper cables to my truck in order to start his car. I reluctantly agreed, and five minutes later he went along his merry little EMO way, no doubt listening and singing happily along to his Panic!At The Disco CD.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of relaying all of this to my Papi in a grossly unthoughtful and misguided sentence. I casually told him, "Yeah, so I had no other choice but to give a jump to this young Asian guy early Friday morning." Papi's copper colored eyes widened and his jaw fell open as he recoiled backwards sputtering in mock disbelief, "YOU WHAAAAAAATTTT?!???!?" I continued on, largely ignoring Papi's exaggerated reaction to describe what had happened and how the Asian guy was hard up and really needed me to give him a jump and how I was the only one that could meet his needs. Papi is secure in the knowledge that I'm 100 percent committed to products Made In Mexico only. Although, I did have to admit to my Papi that there were definitely sparks between Asian EMO guy and I. The dork hooked up his cables wrong the first time and gave himself a heavy dose of shock treatment. Men's hearts just seem to beat faster when they're around me. :)