Only in St. Louis

I had the strangest "Small world" experiance ever today. The kind that can really only happen in St. Louis... I wont go into detail as it involves some of the people who might read this site. All I will share is a picture of the text message I sent to my friend as I sat in his restaurant in the most unconfortable situation EVER!

Notice my awesome spelling!

The places you wouldn't go sober

Sometimes at night we get drunk enough to decide this is a place that is safe to eat at. Sometimes if you are super lucky like last night you can see the guys butt crak thats cooking. Most of the time you choose the option of peeing in the parking lot rather than going into the dungon basement to use the "emplyoee only" bathroom. There are no tables, no cleanliness, and you have to be buzzed in by a door buzzzer. Always you meet strange drunk people. It's like where the smartest movers and shakers in St. Louis meet to discuss to economy, stock market and US foreign policy.

Like last night when a total Chad screamed out "Vancouver's the SHIT! Seattle Represent"

An Open Letter to The Anonymous Commentor on my Last Post

Dear Anonymous,


I can only begin to ponder which one of my readers that reads the website would leave this comment. I am guessing by the fact that you read this it means you know me. And I am guessing if you know me you would know that :

A. I am all talk.
B. I get bored with things quickly
C. The fact that I am a twenty eight year old professional waitress proves the fact I have absolutely zero ability to follow through with anything
D. I am far to busy fucking the bitches and slapping the ho’s to write a post every day
E. D is not true but it would be cool if it were

Ok really I bombed on the post a day. Perhaps Christmas time was a bad time to try and do this. Things have been busy. Besides I super want a digital camera to take pictures to put on here. Pictures make things so much easier to write about. For example I shaved my puppy last night, making him bald on his body but left his super puffy head. It’s a riot, but you cannot see because I have no camera. So you can take my word for it, but it’s just not nearly as good. I think perhaps I am the only person alive (or under age eighty) that doesn’t have a digital camera. Maybe if I wasn’t so bad this year Santa would have brought me one for Christmas. Christmas isn’t over you think…trust me I was naughty and ain’t getting shit let alone a camera this year.

So no “post a day”… but I can promise my annual Christmas update letter is on the tip of my tongue and should be here any day now.

P.S.

I love St. Louis… it doesn’t snow, it doesn’t rain… if fucking rains Ice in the middle of the day… lightning and thunder included… wouldn’t you like to see a picture of that? Oh wait… no camera~!

P.P.S

DENISE- I never book marked your site I have ALWAYS gotten to it by clicking on your name on my comments… and now it won’t let me get there anymore. PLEASE HELP ME FIND YOU!

Katie Lauren

Nothing

Tonight I have nothing to say except the fact my older brother (whom I love but will beg you not to tell him so) didn't completely dismiss my idea of him and his wife coming here for Mardi Gras. I know the profile says I live in Colorado still but I don't I live in stupid ass St. Louis Missouri, and the one good thing we have is the second largest Mardi Gras in the country, and it happens to take place in my neighborhood....

Please don't berate me for being 28 and super excited about a big wasted holiday, especially if it involves my brother!

Katie

...because he's funny

I SWEAR I tried to post yesterday but something is going on with my internet at home. By something I mean the lady I steal internet from seems to have moved:(

A normal work day involves me getting out of bed after hitting snooze 400 times, pouting and crying and coming up with every reason in the world that it is absoulty absurd to expect someone to get out of bed at 10:00 am (you know because in my world thats SUPER early.) I then get in the shower and pout some more. Most days my boyfriend is nice enough to layout my work cloths on the bed because he realizes that the act of me having to spend two seconds looking for a clean work shirt amongsts the piles of close on the floor could send me right into a mental break down Sally Field style in the movie Sybil.

This has slowly become one of my favorite parts of the day. If he could just figure out how to get me up, showered, dressed and to work before waking me up, that would be a sign of true love.
Yesterday was not a work day and I woke up when ever I felt like it (but before it was dark again) and showered on my own time. There was no pouting crying or three year old fits. Even so I decided to push my luck and reminded him as I got in the shower to lay my clothes out. Part because I wanted to see if he would do it and mostly because I wanted to see what a man who refused to wear matching socks would pick out for me to wear that day....

And here is what I got...



An afro wig and a thong...

Katie Lauren

Classy

Another short one...

I really want to keep with the post a day but I have to admit this one and the last one are LAME... Weekends are busy and especially being Christmas season. We worked all day and went to a party this evening. A party where most of the folks (although great friends) are a bit older and live a bit different lifestyles than myself. So for example rather than apartment dweling in a local party town they happened to live in Kirkwood Missiouri a fairly affluent suburb of St. Louis. They also all have college degrees,(masters) and REAL jobs. My mother taught me long ago to never show up to a party empty handed so what did this classy bitch bring...

An Oldy but Nowhere NEAR GOODY

Boone's Farm!

-Katie Lauren

Trying...

This is going to post as a "Saturday" post even thought to me it's still friday; meaning I have not gone to sleep. I worked and then went to a release party for a good friend that created a new literary zine. So it's late but I am still going to count this is my daily post and all I have to say is ...


St. Loius you have not been as bad to me as I claim you are...

Guilt

I have to be the guiltiest person ever. People often drink to much act stupid and wake up the next feeling guilty. I on the other hand take it one step further. I drink, act normal and still wake up feeling guilty.

The other day I cleaned out my closets and gave a few huge trash bags full of cloths to friends. I might be the only person alive that felt guilty because it might not have been good enough stuff, or fit them right.

Who feels guilty about giving free shit to people?

Katie Lauren

Dear Princess

Dear Princess,

Today you are 348 months old…

I cannot believe how time has passed. Granted I met you when you were only 216 months old but time has flown. Since the young’ in you were when I met you we have had many adventures. Drunk times in Mexico when we weren’t old enough to drink in the states, a month (or so) in Ireland when we weren’t mature enough to go to college, let alone think about a future that lasted longer than tomorrow. Many tragedies, many laughs. Many boys, bad hair cuts, episodes of Rosanne, discriminating pictures, bad friends, broken hearts, bad choices, made up songs, days spoken in Spanish (where we could only ask where the bathroom is and recite our school supplies and colors,) walks of shame, embarrassing moments (where we attempt to convince the other what ever we did was in fact not embarrassing, even though we knew it was) drunken falls, a move across the country, and a welcome party when I came home, too many big bar tabs, money loans(even though they say never to lend a friend money) jokes about your father wanting to do me (yeah you call me STEP MOM), one bad night at karaoke, one wedding, one divorce and all the life that happened in between.

You have always been my rock. My wake up cal,l and my biggest supporter. The only person I know that will honestly tell me when I look fat in my pants. The only person I know who will tell me I’m right even when we both know I am wrong.

The one that forgives me when I take random trips to D.C. in attempt to do the right thing but end up doing the wrong one.

You’ve stood beside me when I make the wrong decisions, and are still there to pick up the pieces when I call you to tell you I made the wrong decision, you even are nice enough to fake shocked like you didn’t know all along I was fucking up.

You let me laugh at you and make fun of you and only pretend to be a little offended or pissed.

You let down your “prissy side” and “professional side” and “normal person side” and you just be you around me. And as far as I am concerned that is the biggest enjoyment of being your friend is that I know you are always just “you” with me.

The second best part of being your friend is knowing that no matter what I do, or say, or you do or say we are stuck together.

The worst part of being your friend? Knowing that as much as I talk( and we both know I can talk), I will never have to words to let you know how much you mean to me. They say you can’t choose your family so you choose your friends. I didn’t choose you, you just showed the fuck up and never went home, and that Princess was the best day of my life.

Happy Birthday!

I love you!

Katie Lauren
P.S I am so the Rhoda

Katie Lauren on Why Katie Lauren is no Longer a Bartender

Post #3 on "a Post a Day Till' Christmas"

Katie Lauren on why Katie Lauren can no longer bartend…


I’ve been going strong for about ten awful years in the service industry. Like any job it has it’s ups and downs. The up, being the money, the downs, being countless. When I first started serving I was anxious to bar tend. The art of bartending made once cool by Tom Cruise in Cocktail and continued by douche bag after douche bag seemed it own kind of glamor. You stand behind a bar all day, flirt with men, and bring in cash. Getting paid to handle booze and talk. One would have thought this job was invented for me.

Everywhere I have ever worked restaurant wise has had it’s own kind of class system. Bussers, at the bottom, servers in the middle and bartenders at the top. Like only the cool of cool, the masters of smart could ever remember that a screw driver is vodka and orange juice.

Some bartenders I know have endless lists of shots they can pour any drunk twenty something on a binger. Often they claim to have made most of them up, giving them names like Assbag, Fuckerupper, Tits on Ice, and Drunkskunk. Not me though I just ever had one specialty shot. “Red”. Because let’s face it people drunk enough to decide they not only need to drink more, but it needs to enter their body at lightning speeds are far to drunk to know what’s in anything. So I just make them “Red”- ingredients? Who the fuck knows just make it red and they will drink it.

I gave up long ago attempting to do any, as they call it, “Bar Flair.” Not because it isn’t super cool and all to have your only life talent be the ability to flip around a shaker or catch a bottle in the air but because I know when I go to a bar I don’t want to see you spin shit, shake shit, or light anything on fire, I want to see one thing and one thing only… you (bartender) making my drink.

On a side note perhaps flair should make its way out of the restaurants and bars and into our normal lives. Like next time I do laundry I’m going to throw my socks in the air while simultaneously drinking half the bottle of laundry detergent (liquid of course.) To finish the act I will vomit up the detergent, light it on fire and catch the socks on my tits. Or next time I cook dinner I’m going to submerge my entire head in the soup pot while giving myself an upside down French braid as I peel onions with my toes and crush garlic with my stomach. Just imagine the flair fun you could have while changing your baby or visiting your elderly grandma.

Seriously though there is nothing cool about bartending. I mean sure maybe if you work a high volume place in Las Vegas shit might be cool, but St. Louis Missouri at the corner bar, or the Red Robin this shit isn’t cool.

Here is what I have learned about bartending. You don’t get paid to talk you get paid to listen, and there is a BIG difference. You will hear people’s life stories, and generally not those of interesting lives but those who are depressed enough to be sitting at a bar at noon on a Monday. (Not knocking anyone because I’ve been at many a bars at noon on a Monday) You will hear about how terrible their kids are, their neighbors, their health problems. Most of all though, most irritating of all you will hear stories of how much money they have or how many business they have owned. Most folks never come out and say “my life sucks, I’m at a bar on Monday afternoon.” Rather they tell you how they finally took a day off from earning their millions to have a fast drink with you. Then they will tip you a dollar.

Number one life lesson I learned from bartending, people who talk about having money generally do not.

The worst part is that unlike waiting tables you have no where to go. You are a captive audience. It’s like being forced to watch shitty infomercials on repeat, only the only thing these people are selling is the hope that you will think they are someone.

The real talented bartenders are the ones that can put up with this. Not me, there is no amount of money in the world that’s going to make me want to hear about how your brother stole your construction business, you spent three years in therapy getting over it because you feared you were going to kill his wife and eat his babies, and now though you are “OK” because you know that the best revenge is getting rich and you are so rich you poop Benjamin’s.

And after you are finished I certainly am not going to hug you, let you touch my ass, or ask you to come back. Only the true talented ones can do that.

I would prefer to bring you a burger, talk about you in the kitchen, take your money and send you packing. I’ll leave the flair and the listening up to a professional, and be glad to no longer call myself a bartender.

Katie Lauren

35 Reveling Things about Katie Lauren

Day Two of a post a day until Christmas

1.I am deathly afraid of fish… not in the ocean or lakes but the kind in tanks
2.I took eight years to get a college degree I don’t even use
3.Children between the ages of six and twelve tend to annoy the shit out of me.
4.I am a salt freak, I eat it on anything and everything
5.I carry around small ribbons or soft tags found on clothing as a security measure and have panic attacks sometimes when I lose them
6.I hate malls and shopping
7.I have no problem blowing 100 dollars at a bar but feel guilty when I spend money on cloths
8.I wear flip flops in the winter when it is snowing
9.Coats make me claustrophobic
10.I moved out of my parents house when I was sixteen
11.I never graduated high school and plan to lie through my teeth to my children if they ever find out
12.I have friends I’ve had for years that I secretly can’t stand
13.I think I’m funnier than I really am
14.I don’t think I’m cut out to ever be a mother
15.I am extremely irresponsible with money
16.I can’t ever complete a project
17.I am not sure if I’m more afraid to fail, or more afraid to succeed
18.If I met 1,000 people one night and 999 of them loved me, I would spend all my energy wondering why the1 one didn’t
19.I forget things
20.I am the most guilt ridden person I know
21.I am a good cook, probably better than even your mother
22.I have the most severe love/hate relationship with my mother I have ever heard of
23.You know those people that talk about others behind their backs all the time? I often and one of them
24.I am terrified of dying bored
25.I have two full screen plays in my head and next to no ambition to get them on paper
26.I am certain I am luckier than most people in the friend department
27.I have loved many people but have only once ever been “in love”
28.I carry on conversations with inanimate objects, often answering back for them
29.I haven’t turned on a T.V in eight months (except at my brothers house where I spent three days of my vacation watching a marathon of John and Kate Plus 8)
30.I love my dogs more than anyone I have ever known anyone to love their dogs
31.I hate the feeling of car ceilings so much I freak out when I hear someone else touch them
32.I sit down in the shower
33.I love steak, but Subway veggie subs are my comfort food
34.The first thing I notice on people are their shoes
35.I smoke cigarettes and love it, and at this time have no intentions of quitting no matter how many times you tell me it’s bad for me

To Blog or Not to Blog (part two)

Back when I started this blog in 2006 (can’t believe it’s been that long) I struggled with the question of “To Blog or Not to Blog.” A little because I had never yet let anyone read anything I wrote and more mostly because the thought of putting yourself out there for the world to see was a bit scary. I was in the process of finishing school to be a teacher, and the idea of future students or job prospects knowing my life was a little like nothing I ever wanted at all. This was long before Myspace, You Tube, Facebook or where Googling people’s names actually produced results related to the person you knew and not just someone who shared the same name who happened to win a cross country meet at some random high school.

Since then I have read my writing in front of audiences, both small and medium and wrote a book put out there for the public to see. I however have grown no more comfortable with the idea of putting yourself out there for the world to know, stalk, or snoop. My myspace (built years ago) is private and the only picture uploaded was one of my dog. You can’t search for me by my high school, email, zip code or real name. I delete comments left from friends that would lead anyone who thinks they know me to believe, as my tag line reads “This is not the Katie you are looking for.”

I have spent years freaking out when friends put pictures of me on their page mostly because I feel it is an invasion of privacy, and a little because I’ve gotten fatter than I care to admit and it seems that the only time your friends (no matter how much they love you) seem to post pictures of you is when it is in compromising situations…drunk, hung-over, fatty, zitty or otherwise shit you wouldn’t want your Grandma to see.

My cousin Lindsay blew my shit when she left a copy of my book for my Grandma to read. The one and only book I ever published that contained a story about my grandma shitting herself, not to mention stories that referred to my vagina (my Judy) the fact I used to like to fuck around a bit, drank too much and was pretty much a total loser. I would expect not the kind of grandchild she was hoping for. Why Lindsay left it there? I will never know. When you ask her she simply says “She asked me to.”

Thanks Lindsay…

So my shit was out of the bag and I gradually have become a little less than uncomfortable with picture friends post of me online. Facebook added a feature a few years ago where you can “tag” pictures of people. You not only post them on your page but if you add my name it automatically post them on my page. Meaning two things, there are pictures of me floating around I would prefer to not even have seen myself let alone be added to the permanent archives of the “World Wide Waste of time.” And second that my friend Steph better never get a Facebook and dare to add picture of me in any state less than perfect because I am holding onto a goldmine of discriminating blackmail pictures from a trip to Mexico when we were eighteen.

Today I was talking with my boyfriend about the start of blogs. About the first internet celebrity I remember. I can’t for the life of me remember his name now but I am sure he used to live at about ten websites long before blogs and he boasted about once being on MTV’s Singled Out. He was a bit of a porn freak and an almost Fabio look alike. I am sure he can still be found at one of the ten websites he used to run (and I would check before posting but due to the fact my neighbor who I stole internet from moved I can’t right now) www.cockybastard.com

What has made them since boy wondered? Two things I answered, One the ability to share themselves. Some of the big girls or guys often hide parts of their lives but share so much more. They might refer to a significant other as “Boy” or perhaps the first letter of their name. The might hide where they live, or work, or post pictures that have their face shaded out. The bottom line is they give up far more than they hide. They allow us into their lives to know them, or at least most parts. They lean us on a voyeuristic journey, not laying it all out, like a good book, or more like a great movie that never ends. The make you want more. A slow journey in character development. Two: They have a niche. It’s the mommy blogger, the craft lady, the reformed Mormon, the recovering alcoholic, the expecting mother, the single party girl, the single thirty-tired of being alone-my life is pathetic-Sex in the City-eccentric wannabe. Bottom line they have something the reader wants; wants to love, wants to hate, want to relate to or wants to mock. I have always been blown away by the hate mail these bloggers get and often post. People take time out of their lives to not only read these sites but to type an email saying how much they hate the writer. It would be like me writing hate mail to Jack In The Box because once again I found myself there eating their shit food at 3:00 am. I hate it, I know it sucks but goddam I’ll be back for more.

So what do I have, I have a boring blog because I refuse to tell you all anything about me, and I actually had to ask my boyfriend how to spell the word “niche” meaning two things and two things only… One, I certainly don’t have one, and two I can’t spell.

November is officially NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and since founded many fellow bloggers (can I say fellow when I go months upon months of not blogging?) participated in NaBlogPoMo National Blog Posting Month, meaning one blog a day for one month. Well, It’s the last day of November and given that I would beat any self proclaimed procrastinator in a pie eating contest (given we could start tomorrow) I decided one blog a day from here until Christmas.

What do I have to write about the boyfriend asked. The beginning I told him. I will start at the beginning.

April 29, 1980 I was born.

Ok so nothing at all like the Baby Jesus, but my scanner is at the office so I can’t post a baby picture of me

See you tomorrow…