Identity Crisis

Alright folks, it looks as though many of you anticipate an identity crisis in my future. New Orleans is going to make me an entirely different person?! That's news to me!

For those of you who don't know me well, let me paint you a picture (or crudely draw you a stick figure):

That's me. Pretty average, I know, but I like me a lot, so I'm happy with this picture.

What everyone else pictures, however, is a little more seedy (or depressing):

To be fair, my family also pictures me as this:

Copyright the History Channel

I have something else in mind:

Adventures in Moving

First and foremost, I'm spoiling you, you know. Don't get used to this posting-on-a-regular-basis business, because it's just not going to happen. I'll fall off the face of the planet again soon, don't worry! Mostly because:

I'm MOVING!

That's right, folks, I really am moving to New Orleans! I'm very excited for this life change!! 

Yay! Sunshine and rainbows and daisies!

...But the reality of moving has definitely set in.

Ugh. Sunshine and rainbows and daisies take up a lot of boxes. 

Don't worry too much about me, though. I'm very quickly approaching the final stage of moving: apathy.

Don't worry. Mostly I donate it all. Everything but the clothes on my back.

This whole process is definitely an emotional whirlwind (mostly because I am moving and all my favorite things about Ohio are not), but it's also been a great learning process for me. Even just looking for places to live, I've noticed how much I've grown over the past few years.

Who cares?! IT'S MY FIRST PLACE!!!

Ah. There's the bitterness of experience right there.

Overall, I'm proud of myself. What a relatively responsible way of looking at renting, right? (I did not use that spreadsheet by the way, but I did think of those things! I still get points for good intentions!)

But, of course, moving has also led me to intense judgement. What kind of person am I? So many questions...

Seriously. I've never smoked ANYTHING. How could I possibly like Pink Floyd THAT much?!

No. I don't have a drinking problem. I have a storage problem.

Five or six pounds of beads.

Not everything has been left a mystery to me, though. I've learned some things, too!

Every piece of trash has a story, dang it!

This shouldn't be in past tense. It's still on my fridge.

Ha cha cha.

Please don't actually nominate me for that show.

Hoarding's not so bad though, is it? Look for updates with more fun facts I'm learning about myself... who knew moving was such a developmental process?!

LeeAnne's Bar Skank Guide

Well, I've survived the holidays and apparently I've spent a full two weeks recovering from NYE in New Orleans. It wasn't depressing as my last post promised, but I digress. I'm here to fill y'all in on what I have been up to these last few weeks... Beginning with a guide to bar skanks.

Last weekend we had an awesome comedy magician and an amazing hypnotist on campus, and what better way to celebrate that than to get crunked? Just kidding, but I did go out with friends that came down for the show to the village bar, "The Regal Beagle." At the time I joked that they were lucky they were such "Three's Company" fans, otherwise I wouldn't go in there. But if I hadn't gone, where would my blog inspiration be? And what would you, dear reader, be doing right now?!

It all started with my friend Evie, who sort of prides herself in her people watching skills.

I want to clarify here that she is announcing "Skanks, ho!" as in "Skanks ahead!" or "Skanks ahoy!" (hence the pirate hat) and not as in "Skanks and hoes!" That's just redundant, and Evie wouldn't waste her time with such silly announcements.

Anyway, what better place to spot bar skanks than in a college bar? To save yourself some time next time you're out, we've put together a skank spotting guide for your general safety and convenience.

You are bound to encounter any variety of bar skanks in the wild, so I've taken the liberty of illustrating four for you. 

I want to take a moment to say I didn't draw these panels to say that I'm a skank, even though I'm the example in each one. After my friend Jackie pointed out that I always make her my alcoholic friend in my posts, I realized I didn't want anybody else complaining that I always make them my skank friend. So there. Judge away, if you must!


If you disagree or have other bar skanks in mind, forget you, start your own blog. If you think these four are a little too specific and you don't know what to do with yourself, don't fret! If all else fails, study and remember the following bar skank behaviors and you'll be an advanced skank spotter in no time!

(As I finished the example skanks in that panel, I thought to myself, "Do I have a thing against blonde people?" but we'll save the self-discovery for some other time.)


In case you're wondering what a skank fight looks like, I imagine it looks something like this: 

Yeah, I just doodled crudely over the glitter explosion drawing I did for my Christmas crafting post. Have you seen what skanks wear? I don't think this is too far off the mark. Glitter, sequins, it's all the same.


In case you're wondering what a man fight looks like, fortunately for you we experienced one last weekend so I can share the whole thing in great detail:

Our reactions as I've described them are pretty accurate and say a lot about our character. Well, except Duke's reaction-- I don't really know what he was thinking, but he was working really hard on keeping his southern drawl all night so I hope against hope that he was thinking something like that. Or "those fellas are scrappier than a couple o' rabid possum" or "looks like two pigs fighting under a blanket." Well, that last one was from Steel Magnolias, but I think you get it.


Unfortunately, none of our reactions were at all effective. The fight was not broken up, the drinks were not saved, and although the table was initially flipped away from us, it eventually flipped back toward us, resulting in this:

(Technically I was covered in beer, but I didn't want to draw that because, well, let's think about what that would look like.)


Had we been bar skanks, we probably would have managed to get away from the man fight unscathed.


And just so Jackie doesn't feel left out of a blog post where I talk about booze:

Happy skank spotting!

The Day I DID Get My Hair Cut

So many adventures, so little time.

A few weeks ago, I shared a story about the day I couldn't get my hair cut and then madness ensued... I'm sure you've been concerned: Did LeeAnne ever get her hair cut?! Inquiring minds want to know!

So stop fretting! I did, in fact, get my hair cut, and that story makes me chuckle as well...

You may remember that Mother Nature seemed to have a personal vendetta against my attempts to manage my mane...

The extreme weather didn't stop, by the way. Another week passed after my previous attempt and the rain and tornado warnings kept up. I was about to give up and take matters into my own hands, like one of my favorite train wrecks:

Fortunately, I didn't have to go that route. I finally lost my mind and called around to find a salon that would cut my hair. Tornado or not, my windswept hairs would at least be short if  the weather took me out.

I arrived at the salon despite ominous clouds and fell in love:

You'd think that phrase would be expected in a salon, but I was traumatized. Anyone offering to cut my hair at this point was an angel on earth.

I changed my opinion about the "angel" bit pretty soon after I arrived though.

Rude comment, yes. But I was so happy to be getting my hair done that I didn't care. Even though it did some damage to my ego, I let out a feeble "yes" just to appease her so she would would cut my hair. She was probably right: my eyebrows were so untamed that she might have mistaken them for caterpillars or a furry headband or rascally kittens. I couldn't fault her for that.

While I was getting my eyebrows waxed, the lights flickered a few times. The thunder was, well, thunderous. I was getting really nervous, but she was just chat, chat, chatting away. To calm my anxiety, I interrogated her before we moved on to the actual slicing and dicing.

I was in heaven. Chatty, chatty heaven.

Things were going as normal despite the tumultuous weather. Even after the sirens sounded, I considered myself in good shape.

I'm not sure why the siren sounded like it was really excited, but it didn't affect my hair stylist. She kept up the chit chat to my monosyllabic responses: "Yes," "no," "wow," and "huh."

But that chit chat came to a screeching halt.

Call me sensitive, but I didn't really know what to do with that. What am I? 


Sookie Stackhouse would say "I'm a waitress." That would make me a housing professional? That doesn't even mean anything to this lady. Was she confused about my gender? I'm a woman. About my legal status? I'm a US Citizen. About my mood? Content, until that split second.

I knew what she meant, but I still wasn't sure how to respond:

I, of course, chose to be difficult. When people are rude, I like to make them uncomfortable. That's probably not healthy, but I am what I am. The conversation went something like...

      "Excuse me? I'm not sure what you mean."

      "Well, what are you? Where are you from?"

      "I already told you, I live just down the block. I work at the university."

      "No, no, no. Where are you originally from?"

      "Oh! I was born in northeastern Ohio."

      "No, I mean, WHAT ARE YOU?"

      "Oh, you mean my ethnicity?"

      "YES."

      "I'm half Vietnamese. My dad is white, my mom is Vietnamese. They met in the war."

      "Huh. I don't think so. You're Polynesian."

      "WHAT?"

      "Or maybe Hawaiian. Definitely. I lived in Bowling Green and I saw a lot of you people."

Oh yeah, that rude all right. But that horrifying conversation ended with shorter hair, at least.

I was happy again, so I tried to forget about the conversation and just have myself a nice evening.

Then I walked outside.

Mother nature still rained on my parade. Literally. 

So help me, I may never get my hair cut again.