[I feel like this should go on Overheard in Philly, which is one of my favorite blogs. But I didn't really overhear it — it happened to me. Unfortunately. I'm going to pretend it happened to someone else.]

Crazy Guy leans out of his car to slurrily yell at Parking Authority lady: "I'm glad you're smiling even though you make people's lives MISERABLE!!!"

Late 20's girl in black raincoat walking by smiles at this outburst, thinking about Parking Wars and feeling her first nudge of sympathy for Parking Authority workers. Crazy Guy notices, leans out the window and yells: "I see you smiling! You're beautiful!"

Raincoat Girl looks around, confused.

Crazy Guy continues to follow Raincoat Girl for the next several blocks, leaning out his car window and shouting at top volume: "I love you! We were made for each other! You're not being fair to yourself! Give me a chance! I love you! I LOOOOOOVVVEEE YOU!!!!!!!"

Raincoat Girl contemplates going inside one of the fine establishments she is walking by, but she doesn't have a problem with her gas bill or require a new washing machine, so she decides to hold firm, try her best to ignore Crazy Guy and continue on her way.

Finally, Crazy Guy is forced by the honks of the drivers behind him to go through a green light and leave Raincoat Girl stopped at the intersection. He continues to yell at Raincoat Girl as he drives away: "I STILL LOVE YOU!!!!!"

Embarrassed, Raincoat Girl looks around frantically, hoping her fellow pedestrians are casting sympathetic glances her way. A fellow pedestrian makes eye contact with her. Raincoat Girl feels relieved that there is at least one friendly person on the street.

Fellow Pedestrian says creepily: "I think I love you, too."

12th and Chestnut
Overheard by Raincoat Girl

This is one of the oddest juxtapositions I have seen (at least since I saw Jon Stewart talk about the CNN pic of the Saddam Hussein's sons' dead bodies with the crawl underneath saying, "Beyonce doesn't like the word 'bootylicious'" . . .)

On The Huffington Post this morning, I saw these headlines: "Congo: Africa's Other Holocaust" (complete with a pic of a child soldier), immediately followed by "StyleSLIDESHOW: Luxury Stays For Less This Winter Holiday" (with a pic of an oceanfront hotel patio). My brain is having a hard time processing.

Me: Oh my God, I had a dream I hooked up with this really cute guy from high school!

Albert: Must be Thursday. . .

Like, I know there are really important things going on in the world and no one cares about my freaking teeth, but I have to interrupt my regular schedule of not blogging to announce how happy I am to have (partially) unsheathed teeth again! (I will continue to have bottom braces for another 3-4 months, but whatevs, I can deal with that.) Behold, the difference between my smile yesterday at 11 a.m. and yesterday at 1 p.m. Hallelujah!

1. I pay for something that is free online. Yes, I am one of those dinosaurs with a New York Times subscription. I tried to go without it for a few months but I just don't like to read the paper online. Especially on weekends, when I try not to be online as much as possible. See, I work from home most days. I wake up early, brew a cup of coffee, sit down at my coffee table, and turn on the computer. Which I stare at or the next eight hours. On weekends, I wake up a little later, brew a cup of coffee and sit down at my coffee table. Then I spread the paper out in front of me, kick back, relax and read it slowly. It's just not the same waking up on weekends and hunching over the same coffee table, staring at the same screen I stare at five days a week. It feels like work. I love the physical act of reading the paper. I love lying down on the couch with the magazine folded up in one hand. I love spreading out the wedding announcements and scanning over the happy rich-looking couples, ignoring all of them except the ones that are interracial, gay, or old. Scrolling is just not the same as spreading out. And so, I will continue to pay for it until they pry it from my cold, dead hands. Or they stop making physical newspapers. Whichever comes first.

2. ***TMI alert! I'm going to talk about underwear now!***
I spend a fortune on bras. An absolute fortune. My bras cost more than anything that goes on top of them. I wear a very unusual size that is impossible to find in department stores. I also hate paying shipping for buying things online. So I visit the very nice lady at Couer who knows bras better than anyone in the world and always has "the special sizes" in stock and I pay a million and two dollars for the most comfortable, supportive and all around lovely bra experiences I have ever had. I only buy a couple at a time but sadly, they don't last forever. The problem is, my salary dropped considerably when I changed jobs and I am now paying back my astronomical student loans, and I had to get motherf'ing braces and it just seems completely irresponsible to pay for top-notch bras at this point. Denied! Suze Orman would tell me. Denied! Denied! Denied! Except . . .I kind of can't go back. I mean, your whole body feels a hundred times better. So what I'm saying is, it is quite possible that I will someday have newspapers delivered to a cardboard box where I live with my expensive bras and my degrees and my really, really nice teeth.

I was hoping that I would get a happy birthday present from my orthodontist today with the news that my braces are ready to come off. I have been asking if they are ready to come off since (roughly) the day I got them on. That day was one year and seven days ago. My teeth look totally straight to my uninformed eyes. My orthodontist feels otherwise and points out various subtle flaws and irregularities, some of which are taking place below the surface. He thinks they will be ready to come off by the end of the year. That is like an eternity away for a baby such as myself. Of course, I understand that if I want this investment to be worthwhile I can't rush it, but I am tired of people mistaking me for an undergrad when I am at work, or worse, my boss's daughter when I am traveling. Okay, I am done whining. I know I am a lucky, lucky girl.

That is what Suze Orman would say if she spent one minute with me. That woman scares me. And yet, I am kind of in love with her. Actually I am in love with those impressions Kristin Whig does of her on SNL . . ."Don't waste your money on expensive self-tanners! Take a bath in beef boullion cubes!" Sometimes I get sucked into Suze Orman's show and I want to slap her callers. Not the dumb ones who spend too much money on shit they can't afford . . . I like them. They make me feel good about myself. The rich ones who call in and give stats about how they are 26 years old with a huge salary and a ginormous savings account and stocks and bonds and retirement and then ask if they can buy some dumbass rich person thing like a $900 pair of shoes. And of course Suze approves them, because they can afford it, because they are freaking rich and everyone knows it, and why are they calling in on this show anyway — just to brag?!?!

But I digress. I think I need a Suze Orman in my life. Every year around this time, I get a compulsive urge to buy stuff. I think it's because we always got the gigantic J.C. Penney's catalog in the summer when I was growing up and I would spend a great deal of time going through it, circling things like a mad woman and drawing mustaches on the models. I would plan what I was going to wear on the first, second and third days of school. I'd record Saved by the Bell and Blossom and write down what everyone wore to see if I could copy their outfits. And then, right before school started, which was coincidentally also around my birthday, I would get stuff! Not a lot of stuff, but enough to make me feel like I had achieved a real makeover. Of course, my taste was totally whacked out (please note that Blossom was my role model). I remember taking great care to plan one of my first week outfits in third grade: It consisted of a t-shirt that said "I don't look for trouble . . . it finds me," red knee socks, and poofy corduroy knickers (inspired by newsboys, I suppose?) that I asked my mom to make specifically for the occasion. I thought I looked awesome. Later, I started cutting the tops off my sweatshirts and coupling them with shorts — over tights — and the requisite floppy hat with the flower in the middle. Then came the crazy Salvation Army get-ups that were trying too hard in the opposite way. Each new outfit made me feel like I was really projecting a new image: that people were going to think I was super edgy and cool. I think people just thought I was weird.

Thanks to my help from the Macy's personal shopper a few years ago, I have the beginnings of a fairly solid grown-up wardrobe. There are some gaping holes in it though, and I feel like now is the time to fill them. Instead of getting a new iron and a new vacuum. This year I feel extra urgency in getting new stuff because it appears I am about to get my braces off — and I can't really explain the logic here, but it's like, I really should get a new bag to show off my new teeth. Doesn't make any sense, I know. Especially since I do not care at all about bags. Or shoes. But suddenly, I kind of do. It's weird though, I still hate the experience of shopping — I just want to get stuff so I can never go shopping again. But I think Suze Orman would tell me I've got it backwards. And then she'd slap me, probably.

Since my feedback from Dilemma #1 was so helpful (I am going to suck it up and buy a full sized ironing board and an iron that doesn't leak and have someone show me the right way to do it — thanks, guys!), here is my newest household dilemma. My vacuum cleaner sucks. Actually, it blows. It sucks up the dust and dirt and then two minutes later spews it back out all over the floor. Kind of defeating the purpose of vacuuming. I cleaned out its innards and it still does this. It also makes this low growly, rumbly noise that I have never heard it make before. Has anyone else ever had this problem? Is it fixable? If not, what's a good replacement vac? I've been pretty happy with this one the past three years, but I don't want to buy an exact replica. I want something lightweight yet effective (and preferably cheap — but I will spend more if it means not having to buy a replacement every couple of years). Anyone care to weigh in?

This is hilarious. Make sure to check out the descriptions and the other classic thongs . . . I particularly enjoy the DSM one.

Via Feministing.

When I stopped writing blogs, I stopped reading them, for the most part, as well. It was just too much to keep up with, and reading the blogs of people I actually know reminded me of how I wasn't blogging and then I just felt bad. So for a while, I cut down my daily reads to almost nothing. I will never tell you what the list was, because some of them are totally embarrassing. But here's a summary: one liberal blog, one conservative blog, one gossip site, one political tabloid, one feminist blog, and a couple environmentalist blogs. Here is the strange thing, though — I didn't bookmark any of them, so I could only read blogs if I remembered the right address. I can't explain why I was feeling so vehemently anti-blog, but I'm over it now, so please forgive me.

My foray into the world of environmentalist blogs is worth sharing, though. Here are my top three:

Crunchy Chicken
Crunchy Chicken is amazing — it seems like she can do anything from scratch, and blog about it at the same time (with a sense of humor to boot)! This is my #1 must read enviro-blog.

Going Green
'Burban Mom is "just your average suburbanite slob who woke up one day and realized my daily actions were contributing to the rapid decay of the planet." And she is freaking hilarious. What I love, love, love about this blog is that there is nothing remotely esoteric or greener-than-thou about it — it is completely accessible.

Fake Plastic Fish
Beth from Fake Plastic Fish is trying to go plastic-free. I am in complete admiration of the way that she takes the time to call and write to companies about eliminating plastic — in instances where I would totally shrug plastic off as inevitable. But she is not sanctimonious about it at all: she even dressed up as a Brita Filter as part of the Take Back the Filter campaign. (Did you know that Brita filters are recyclable in Europe but not the U.S.?) Reading this blog has made me become way more conscious about the plastic I consume.