Those of you who live with your parents, as I did for the past months, can probably relate to the frequent horrors of inhabiting the same bedroom you did when you had braces.  Suddenly, you’ve got two middle-aged roomies and are surrounded by constant reminders of how awkward you were as a child. (See: senior picture; middle school diary; mix tapes; jean jacket collection; Beanie Baby display.)

And then there’s always that defining moment when you are on the cusp of bringing someone home from the bar—whispering sweet nothings about “hanging out later” strategically before the last-call lights come up and you both turn into drunk, sloppy pumpkins—and then you realize, “Oh wait, ‘home’ is a shared residence with my parents, who are probably waiting up until I get back to make sure I’m not dead in a dumpster.”  And you can just imagine you and your anonymous suitor walk-wrestling up the stairs and slobbering all over each other as your parents look on, mortified.  I hope for the sake of all parties that you aborted the mission at this point.  

I understand. Having the ‘rents for roomies is….hard.  But the following are the noteworthy disadvantages of living on your own that I had kept in my arsenal to brandish in the faces of independent young professionals who boasted the luxury of bringing a stranger home from a bar and not needing Dad to drive them home the next morning…it made me feel better about sharing a room with six American Girl dolls. Now, I share a crawl space with six cockroaches.

1. Gone are the days of fully-stocked refrigerators and home-cooked meals. Cooking is hard, especially when the only groceries you have are tuna, peanut butter, red wine, eggs and jarred pasta sauce minus the pasta. This will require extensive creativity from a brain that has long since jellified into tapioca from your day on Pinterest at work. You will likely use three times more dishes than necessary, and if you are me, you don’t have a fucking dishwasher, because you are poor and might as well live in a halfway home.

2. No roommate will ever be as okay with you walking around pants-less as your mother is. At first, he/she might be cool if you do the whole tee shirt and skivvies thing when you crawl out of bed on a hungover Saturday morning clawing for Advil, but once you start rubbing your exposed butt cheeks into the community couch while you shovel down handfuls of Pop Chips and watch The Bachelorette, the peace might be slightly shit on.

3. The convenience of in-house laundry done by your in-house maid mom dissipates when you cut the cord and move into your shoebox apartment, forcing you to resort to the hobo/bag-lady conventions that are Laundromats and apartment building laundry rooms. Those sneaky dryers static cling undies in hidden nooks where lazy 20-somethings won’t reach—and suddenly, the chances of unwittingly wearing your neighbor’s underwear significantly increase. Next thing you know, you’ve got a weird itch and your doctor is calling in a script for adult diaper cream.

4. Who is going to guilt you into cleaning your room/going to church/calling your grandma/showering daily? Obviously, roommates are useless for such things, because they are just as drunk, dependent and worthless as you are. Nothing is as effective to get you to shave your leg fur as a finger wagging in your face and that perpetual parental squawking. 

5.  Since you’re no longer accompanying your parents on dinner dates where they invariably pick up the tab, eating out at restaurants now means you can’t order everything you want on the menu without suffering from violent financial remorse.  Oh, you eyeing that market price lobster? Not unless you are planning to sell your body tonight to make up the cash money.  Don’t be surprised if you spontaneously clothesline a passerby after realizing you spent a week’s worth of grocery money on one night’s dinner and drinks….even if it was at Dos Caminos and you crushed like ten pounds of guac to the face.  Still hurts.

(Might look something like this)

6. Understanding how your parents figure out how to pay bills and have medical insurance and do all the tax return nonsense is too much for your young adult pea brain to comprehend.  Also, no matter how sick you are, you must resist medical care basically until your jaw is pendulum-swinging from your ear, because now that you pay for your own healthcare, your coverage is about as good as a homeless person’s. Mandatory secession from the parental insurance plan might have been the proverbial nail in the moving-out coffin.

As you can see, offspring-tenants might suffer socially, but you should cherish the fact that you have been able to ward off the perils of real adulthood for another few months/year(s). Exploit the spoon-feeding while you can, because before you know it, you’ll be cruising around in a stranger’s socks as you try to translate the twaddle that is your 401K. Also, you might find yourself crying on the floor of your apartment next to the cockroach roommate at some point. Those critters tend to do that to you.

A friend of mine recently told me that the key to living in New York City was managing your vices. He didn’t realize that, as he was relaying his incredibly sound advice to me, I was sitting in the nail salon right below my apartment getting a manicure from a Vietnamese women named Phuong.

Obviously, a year of home-cooked meals, a late-night pick-up service and the Bank of Mom and Dad makes my dramatic entrance into the city the human equivalent of Sassy from the movie Homeward Bound. (…Not that I relish comparing myself to a cat, because cats suck, but I dare you to watch that video till the end and not cry like a pregnant woman.

So I’ve compiled a list of funds-sucking vices, some of which I already fall victim to, while others I could see myself adopting in the near future ‘cause it’s the New York way. If we are being realistic, the chances of me heeding the following advisory list are about as good as a Star Wars fan having sex with a female human…and then I can expect the result to be a week’s worth of financial dilapidation and, subsequentially, unintentional starvation, where I wake up gnawing on my bedsheets like they’re a tortilla.

1. Let’s start at the very beginning. Fucking BRUNCH. If you are a New Yorker, you brunch like someone pays you in stacks of hundreds and cocaine. I don’t care how hungover you are, you always feel the need to drag your dehydrated, city-berated ass out of bed just to order a mimosa and some fancy Eggs Benedict with your friendz you saw the night before. So there you have it people, you’ve just spent enough money to feed me rice and beans for a month (see below). Oh, and side note: Mom and Dad, when you come visit, DO NOT CALL IT BREAKFAST. It is BRUNCH and you will EMBARRASS me in front of my friends.

2. Froyo. Every girl knows frozen yogurt holds the power to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Walking into 16 Handles or any other frozen yogurt dispensary takes practiced self-control to not suction your mouth to the nozzle like the frozen dessert version of Two Girls One Cup. These places charge by the ounce, and you think you are being all restrained, grabbing just a little taste of everything, until your thing weighs as much as a newborn baby. Sorry ‘bout it.

3. Eating in general. Oh, you thought eating was a necessity? Nope, sorry. Eating is a luxury. You’ll come to find that the first time your parents come visit and take you out to dinner, it’s going to look a little something like Katniss stuffing her face with lamb stew at the Capitol, and it won’t be cute. (Yeah, I just made a Hunger Games reference. No, I haven’t seen the movie.)

3. Drinking. This point is certainly not about giving up drinking so much as reevaluating your drinking habits. I am not a huge drinker, but I have the misfortune of enjoying whiskey, and only whiskey, when I like to get toasty. And do you know how much whiskey costs in comparison to a nice PBR at bars? A fucking lot. And I know it’s extremely fun and cool to be seen frolicking around New York’s elite at places like the Boom Boom Room, (I’m still not sure what this is, but I think it’s some underground sex cult that you have to be initiated into by Tom Cruise), but I’m willing to bet they don’t even offer good ‘ole Pabst there. So take some lessons from your college days, funnel an entire fifth of liquor before you go out, and stick to brewskies at the humble bars. Remember, liquor before beer—you’re in the clear.

4. Smoking. Blame it on the months living with two squares (the people kind) in a picket-fenced suburb, but…people in America still smoke cigarettes? HOW DO YOU AFFORD TO IGNITE THOSE MONEY STICKS TO SUCK DOWN INTO YOUR LUNGS?! That is all. 

5. Shopping. Because I formerly got paid to basically just shop for large chunks of time and then reinvest my money back into the company that employed me, living in one of the commercial capitals of the world will prove to be difficult. And plus, I MUST HAVE FIVE PAIRS OF TOMS AND RAY BANS OR ELSE THEY WILL KICK ME OUT. I’m not even going to try here. Same goes for mani/pedis.

6. Cabs. When the sun goes down, we all become lazy as fuck. This is where the remainder of your pay check will be going—when you are out at night and can’t figure out which subway line will get you home or which way is north. Strangely enough, I can’t figure these things out sober. But this is the worst financial offense; so from now on, come 3 AM, if you need me, I’ll be in the dregs of the metro with Manhattan’s creatures waiting for the 1 Train while the homeless guy on heroin tries to crawl underneath the rotating door.

There you have it. Certainly this is just a starter list, and I’ll rapidly stumble over more of the dumb shit that’s going to make and keep me poor in this amazing city.

Here are some hipsters drinking PBR. You can be just like them!

Every one has that moment or two in life when sleeping on a friend’s couch is a necessity, whether because your whiskey-weak chicken ankles can’t make it all the way home, or because you don’t technically have a home.

I spent the past two weeks without a home.

I’d been playing the “let-me-sleep-on-your-couch-and-I’ll-make-you-brownies” game for a number of days that exceeds inches of Ray J’s weenie (In case you didn’t know, that’s long. Ask Kim Kardashian’s loose vagina.) Mostly, I feel bad for anyone who had to watch a moderately tall girl like me try to sleep on a short couch. It’s probably similar to what I imagine midget-regular person sex is like.

There are obvious drawbacks that any couch-dweller experiences, like having to sleep in fetal position or consistently getting locked outside with the pigeons and city-mutated squirrels. However, for the most part, my life withdrew from its standard kid-bedroom idiocy and I became a semi-autonomous human for a few short weeks, (Ohhhh, what shall I prepare myself for dinner this evening? I know, this Saltine cracker and a pickle! Delightful!) during which the opportunity for said weeks to become permanent, independent living presented itself.

What’s this? No more waking up to the lifeless glass eyes of stuffed animals and American Girl Dolls gazing at me? Cue the Carlton.

For most people, the only anxiety of escaping the perpetual wallet-raping of underemployment is relocating. For me, it was coming home to face my mother before leaving again. This is the woman who called me four times an hour while I was away, (although I do make exquisite company), so I knew I was in for something along the lines of her whipping emotions around erratically like a poo-flinging chimp.

Even with my foresight, I was admittedly ill-prepared. Below is a rundown of all the places and people to whom she cried in a single day. Let’s give her a sixteen-hour grace period of waking functionality here.

9:00 AM: Nail salon during manicure. Cries to the manicurist, whom she cajoles into crying as well.

10:00 AM: Nail salon after manicure. Cries to the grandma drying her nails next to her while reminiscing about when I picked out my communion dress when I was six. Seriously? I could cry about that too because I looked like such a shit head in that crinoline monkey suit. Maybe she was crying because she knows that’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to a wedding dress.

11:00 AM: At home because I won’t run errands with her, and these are the last few precious moments we have to go to Macy’s and pick up her panty hose together.

12:30 PM: Cracking the egg whites into my omelet. “I’ve made you omelets for a yearrrrrr—Hiccup.” I guess no added salt necessary. Trust when I say that if you had to be home for a year, you would sit on your lazy ass and let your mom make omelets for you too.

1:30 PM: Bank #1.  Cries sobs to the bank teller as she puts me in a headlock and calls me her baby. The bank teller starts to do the fanning of the face thing that either means she is going to cry too, or she’s in the throes of an awkward-induced hot flash, so I know it’s time to GTFO. Oh, don’t mind us, we were just denied a home loan. Nothing to see here.

2:00 PM: Bank #2/Doctor’s Office. I went in to the doctor’s office to wait for her while she took care of shit at the second bank—surely, my absence would prevent another “incident.” But alas, she walks into the office crying again, with her splotched face and smeared lipstick looking like a powdered sugar donut where the filling splooged out (sorry Mom, you are still beautiful, even when your face resembles a breakfast treat). I guess bank tellers have a certain cathartic way with people, and by people I mean only one human in the world. The only person who should be crying at banks is me, because I’m going to have just about enough money to live in a cardboard box in Penn Station. Hope my vaccines are updated.

6:00 PM: Dinner. We go to a small Mediterranean restaurant that seats about ten people at a time. We don’t make it five minutes before she’s crying about how this is OUR place. OUR SPECIAL PLACE. There is nothing worse than when you just wanna eat your fucking tabbouleh, and someone’s eye juices are splashing everywhere. Do you stop eating? Is it rude to reach across their heaving form to swipe more hummus from the communal dish? When the waitress comes over, I smile apologetically and give her the old, “Death in the family,” because people’s brains can assimilate to that explanation more seamlessly than, “Oh, you know. I got a job.”

So my count was up to seven outbursts in one day, which is not including phone calls from the car or spontaneous episodes. The eventual coming of this day is the sole reason why we have two dogs, and they aren’t even appeasing her. All they do is eat each other’s shit, which is the reality I am leaving behind for my poor mother. No wonder she can’t stop crying.

  Savor it now, people.

No matter how many times I come to New York for play time, when I’m here for interviews or dead-end business meetings, I automatically turn into an autistic octopus when I’m trying to navigate the city by myself. Limbs are everywhere, purse is strewn open with my possessions begging to be stolen, and my dress is invariably tucked into my underwear so my ass is exposed to all of Times Square.

Perhaps it’s interview nerves or a complete cease-fire of all brain function in the face of over-stimulation and under-caffeination, but my motor skills and common sense slow to a toddler status. I’ll proudly share that I’m the girl turning in a circle to figure out how to walk up a block instead of down. I can’t be the only one who does this, so I’ve compiled a list of suggestions for things you should not to do in most big cities that may or may not be based on my own experience.

1. Do not be conned into buying a pre-purchased MetroCard from the homeless guy you thought worked at the subway. He actually lives there, and just happens to be wearing a similar get-up to the employee uniforms—he is not, in fact, fixing the machine like you thought, and making you pay in cash a dollar amount that’s a quarter more than the card’s worth. If you do realize what is happening halfway through the interaction and try to frantically back out, do not feel bad for him and succumb to his toothless guilt trip. Even though every one is already watching you look like a big ass hole, do not embrace your idiocy…resist at all costs. You are not a natural-born idiot.

2. Wearing a wrap dress without a slip on a windy day is a poor choice. It may seem like a good idea with its sleek lines and professional appearance (because, let’s be honest, you are no professional), until you walk outside into eight wind tunnels and you have your own little Marilyn moment that is notably lacking in Marilyn’s endearment, but completely full of white butt cheeks and full frontal vagine. This is not cute. When this happens, immediately suction your knees together, hold the dress closed and go run-waddling for the Brooklyn Bridge.

3. Do not accept reading material on the subway. Don’t even let your eyes meet the paper. You will have nightmares, and your entire interview will be spent thinking about dead fetuses (feti?).

4. When the snaggle-toothed guy comes into Starbucks asking for money to get to the hospital because he spent it all on breakfast, assume that he actually spent it all on crack, and tell him you have no cash.

5. Do not arrive to any meeting obscenely early without a game plan for where to camp out. Standing in the street pretending to talk on the phone is not a game plan, but rather the social equivalent to being 600 pounds and star-fishing on the sidewalk. City etiquette says this is unacceptable behavior, and you must walk like this at all times without stopping—head down and elbows in, shoulders leading and feet flapping like fish.

Getting to the interview is half the battle—by the time I get there, my hands are shvitzing like two water fountains and my hair looks like Chaka Khan’s. It’s situations like these when apparating would be really God-damned convenient for a lowly muggle like me just tryin’ to get by. 

Non-Christmas holidays are hard for the stay-at-home child. While your other siblings are off in big cities celebrating over booze and brunch with their friends, with nary a child in sight, you are wedged between two sets of braces with gawky limbs attached (leftover lettuce included) who climb all over you like you’re a jungle gym. Family gatherings make me long for a do-it-yourself horse tranquilizer kit. (Unclear whether I’d use it on myself or everyone else.)

Easter is a particularly cringe-y holiday in my bitter old age….too many crafty things, inevitable chocolate mustaches and sticky fingers on every kid in church and a giant talking bunny who hopped straight out of an LSD hallucination. I just don’t approve of this. And yet at 22 and home alone, I’m forced to wake up at the crack of dawn and go on a solo Easter egg hunt like I’m still in training bras and have the brain capacity of a turtle.

I’m sure there are still some moms out there who, like my mom, perpetuate the Easter traditions well into adulthood…but probably not when there is only one child at home who happens to be notably cynical and has kept her teen angst look securely stewing on the back burner since high school. Sure, I get giggly at the thought of going to Easter mass in white L’eggs tights with the crotch sagging down to my knees and running around the pews in patent leather Mary Jane shoes. But then I remember that saggy tights feel like you took a steaming dump in your pants, and Easter returns to being the ridiculous cotton-tailed mind fuck it was when your family isn’t all together.   

Below is a run-down of the Easter festivities I had to participate in, solo.

—Easter egg dyeing. I love sitting in a room that smells like an egg fart hotbox and having to tell my friends, “Sorry guys, can’t go out tonight, me and my parents are having craft hour.” My mom does all these Pinteresty things like melting crayons on the eggs, while I drop the egg in every color till it turns brown like a chicken turd.

—Bunny Cake. Ever watch Buddy Valastro make buttercream frosting his bitch on Cake Boss? Yeah, well icing a cake isn’t that easy when you are missing the housewife gene and have unremarkable motor skills. Decorating an amateur bunny cake is closer to drunk finger painting. This year’s icing is crumb-flavored. Who gave me this job anyway? Mom had to step in toward the end…

 That little fucker with his judgmental beady eyes…

—Easter Egg Hunt. The Easter Bunny likes to terrorize me at my most unpleasant and unpretty moment of the day. It hides all the Easter eggs in abhorrent places like buried in jar of jelly beans or inside a cereal box or burrowed in a potted  plant. Then I spend an hour dragging my busted ass around the house spewing expletives at a mythical creature who is actually my mom while she takes my picture. Fortunately, the one perk of being the only one duking it out for all the eggs is you get all the cash money. No need to elbow the sibs in the nose this year.

  Looks like the Bunny’s been working the pole recently.

-The Basket. Most people just get a modest basket with novelty candy items in it and a few little gifty things if they are lucky, like a nice book or DVD or something. In our house, the resurrection of Christ warrants a second Christmas…like, he died for our sins, let’s celebrate big-time. That means big baskets, big presents.  And once again, I have to go on a fucking treasure hunt like I’m Jack Sparrow to earn my loot. The siblings only have to dig through a UPS box of artificial Easter grass for theirs. Some hiding spot highlights include the trunk of the car (which shouldn’t even count, because it wasn’t even in our house), the washing machine and the deep freezer, all far too clever for a simple-minded child to conceive. I probably thought the Easter Bunny didn’t come, and my mom had to magically find the basket for me lest I think I was getting rabbit shit. Therein lies one of the many flaws of perpetuating the holiday creatures farce. 

So, sure, getting presents was great…and celebrating Jesus. But given the choice, I would really rather lick the sidewalk in Times Square than participate in the Easter charade without backup. An entire holiday and brood of extended family is too excessive for one third of a siblings set to handle. Hey siblings, come home. We’ll all get through it together next time.

There comes a point in your life when the smallest treasures bring the greatest joys. I’ve already reached that point, and in my case, one of said small treasures is having the house to myself for a day, without the constant white noise of my roomies coo-coo-cachooing around and playing a perpetual game of 20 Questions. (“What are you doing? Oh, are you sleeping?” — “What show is this? Isn’t that the guy who plays Sonny in General Hospital?”—“Where are you going tonight? Who’s driving? They’re not drinking are they? Will there be boys there?”)

On the days I have off from dishing out heaping servings of my sweet disposition and completely genuine smile at my retail job, I don’t even sleep in so I can savor the extended period of solitude. These precious hours spent alone with the pups always seem to end in my mom walking into the kitchen, dishes piled high and me sitting in the same clothes I slept in, saying “What the hell have you been doing all day?” Well, Mom and Dad, I think it’s finally time to provide a run-down of what I do all day when you are gone and I have free reign of the castle.

1. Pants immediately come off. I have bare-assed it on every surface of our house. There have been a handful of times when I homeplate-slid from the family room as the mailman was trotting up the hill, because I was pretty much Jason Russell naked.  (It’s probably safe to assume I was doing his orangutan dance at some point as well). It’s only a matter of time before he or the neighborhood peeper sees me full frontal in our huge-ass windows that don’t have shades.

2. Drink straight from the bottle. If it has liquid in it, I will drink out of it. I was born with a debilitating housework handicap, so the tradeoff between trickling a little of my mouth juices back into the OJ and having to rinse a glass and open the dishwasher is a fair one. My love is your love.

3. Eat peanut fakenut butter with my hand. (Thanks to my brother’s peanut allergy, I’ve been deprived the luxury of eating real peanut butter). I can’t produce an edible meal on my own, so finger-blasting the peanut-butter-product jar is a suitable alternative for sustenance. Whatever it’s made of, I’ve definitely stuck a finger or two in that shit. If it makes you feel any better, my hands are always perfectly manicured, because I also spend at least an hour of my day painting my nails.

4. Watch Mad Men reruns while holding my picture on a Popsicle stick in front of my face. That way, I can visualize my face on the heads of all of Don’s hos. (For your sake as parents, I’ll let you tell yourself I’m kidding.)

5. Leave every cabinet door and drawer open and turn every light on. That scene in the Sixth Sense? Yeah, that was me. Sorry, Haley Joel Osment. And the absurd electricity bill? Me again. Sorry, Dad.

6. Eat all the raisins out of the Raisin Bran. I don’t think any one sets out with the explicit desire to eat raisins…but when they are stamped with grainy cereal sugar, I will fish them out of the box and avoid all the fibrous bran flakes like I’m playing a game of Operation so that you are left with a box of geezer-munch/Total. (See also: Lucky Charms marshmallows circa 1998)

7. Spend at least an hour on whatshouldwecallme and the Twitter machine to laugh. Facebook is dead to me, (reading the updates of hundreds of people I don’t care about doesn’t entice me anymore—does this mean I’ve crossed over?), and Pinterest captions make me beg for death.

8. Sing Celine. A lot. (Here’s the 90s cheese-fest video for my go-to song choice.)

By the time you get home, the pants have been replaced, and the singing has stopped. My picture is off the TV, but the cabinets are definitely still open, which I’ll just blame on the ghost. You probably think I’ve slept all day, but that would be a vast misconception—rather, I’ve been quite busy, as you now can see. Just ask the pups, who are now wandering around like they just lived through the apocalypse.

I am embarrassed to say that I am a Megabus frequent rider. It’s a shameful existence, really, but such is life when job interviews and networking in other cities seem to do little but empty your pockets and force you to ride 8-hour bus trips in which the person next to you smells like moth balls and cheese and is eating something out of a can that looks remarkably like Friskies cat food. I’ve had to endure a lot of jaw-clenching bus rides, but this week I stepped on the bus to a gaggle of elementary school cluckers, all eagerly yapping away for what was obviously their first trip to the big city. It was immediately clear that I was about to endure eight hours of teeth-gritting, high-pitched Hell replete with tears from both parties, since kids can’t do anything without crying, and I can’t be around kids for that long without crying.

Let me just say that you are automatically a shitty parent and person by subjecting every one on the bus to the human noise factories that are your spawn. Oh, so you thought it would be fun to spend eight hours in a confined space with you, your friend’s kids, and fifty Megabus creatures? Well, unfortunately, I don’t think it’s fun. I could hear their shrill whining before I got on the bus, which was the only inkling I had to the presence of children; and the complaining endured the ENTIRE TRIP. This is not hyperbole—I am now privy to every concern and ailment those brats have ever been plagued by, and I stand by the notion that kids being outright douche bags is just pure science.

Not once did either mom say, as I would have, “Johnny, shut that ceaseless Whoopee Cushion you call a mouth.” But the fact that you moms actually encouraged your children to speak—loudly, might I add—by saying, “Noah, tell the the entire bus that completely unfunny, not endearing story about the time at blah blah blah when you blah blahed,” and then had your daughter sit on your lap and read her kiddie book aloud to you for her reading log….Well, it makes me want to elbow you in the nose.  Just put some sort of sound-inhibiting muzzle on your kid, strap some headphones on it and then play Baby Einstein tapes till it falls asleep. It’s simple enough, and I wouldn’t have had to spend eight hours straight trying to maintain a steady stink-eye.

I think the bus driver was feeling a little pissed off at all the quacking too, because he knowingly left a girl at a rest stop. This was traumatizing to witness. Her friends told him she ran back inside to buy something (my guess is ear plugs) and would be out in five minutes, and he just drove away and said “Sorry, gotta stay on schedule. She can catch the next bus.” Which comes along in, oh, just four hours. That bitch was definitely getting human centipeded to the ass hole of some hairy trucker. Poor thing, and all because of four cretins without volume control and their dumbass moms.

Note: I did not light any Megabuses on fire. I found this photo on the Google Machine posted by a very disgruntled Megabus customer. Unclear whether he was responsible for said fire.

I constitute the minority of the population that generally hates St. Patrick’s Day. Masses of intoxicated people utterly terrify me, and I look ridiculous in green, but memories gone by of day-drinking on bar patios flooded me with an overwhelming desire to just say “What the feck?” and brave the boozy city tradition. I wore the darkest blue/hardly-counts-as-green shirt, which I got severely berated for. Haters gonna hate.

My eldest brother happened to be visiting home for the weekend, and given his first-born status, my mom couldn’t help herself from scheduling a family gathering on one of the biggest drinking days of the year in honor of his arrival. At the creaky age of 27, he’s too old and crotchety to enjoy social holidays, so I had to squeeze my celebration into a five-hour time frame during the day before my mom picked me up in town to drive my drunk ass home for the family dinner with my tail between my legs.

The drive home took about 30 minutes and bore an eery resemblance to a scene from the Walking Dead, except instead of zombies, hordes of fat girls in green tutus and drunk guys with their shirts off brushed up against the cars in the crawling traffic, banging on the hood of our car with their leaden zombie limbs. My naive mother looked severely traumatized, but I couldn’t afford too many sideways glances lest the carsickness kick in, so I simply told her to avoid eye contact and making loud noises.

Once we finally got past the Walkers and were about halfway home, I had to make her pull into a Wendy’s just moments before I emptied my jiggling bladder in the car, running into the restaurant that was a quarter-filled with parade-happy children so I could pee. She was notably displeased with me.

The rest of the ride she reminded me that my grandparents think I’m the only one of the three children who doesn’t drink, so to lock it up. I reminded her that living with your parents draws you to extreme coping mechanisms.

We finally made it home where my entire extended family awaited—including two senior citizens and two braces-clad children—and I sauntered in, smelling like hops and smoke and with my tongue stained green. At that point, I looked like Ke$ha and was walking around like B-Spears circa the 2007 VMAs. It’s hard enough coming home to your parents on weekends; this reception was too much for me, and I immediately launched into my standard strategy of spitting out million-dollar vocabulary words in a likely unintelligible succession to try to appear sober as a whistle—oldest trick in the book (See: Summer 2007).

One sniff of the night’s offerings—hot sausage, as per my brother’s manly request—made the Irish Car Bomb (my first ever) swishing around in my stomach start to churn and curdle…Milk was a bad choice. Now, I can’t rightfully call myself a vegetarian, because my Italian family doesn’t approve of such things, but I generally do not enjoy ingesting meat products, particularly of the sausage variety and especially when under the influence. One bite, and I was quietly escaping to try to yak in the upstairs bathroom, but to no avail. Instead, I just passed out on the couch holding the wall while everyone sat on top of me and watched March Madness.

Overall, I’d call the day a great success. I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day without wearing fugly kelly green, avoided eating sausage for dinner, and got to sleep through a family gathering. That’s talent.

Just when you think you’ve hit an all-time low, when it becomes commonplace to accompany the roomies to the movies or dinner parties, you find yourself sitting at your 15-year-old cousin’s orchestra concert. Before last week, I would have found that statement blasphemous and offensive, but somehow I landed myself in a timewarp of teen angst, sitting in the same velour auditorium seats where I lived out the four most awkward years of my life. The whine of string instruments; the tuxedo shirts and bow ties; the lanky teenagers. To say this was not ideal is like saying chicks like froyo—vast understatement. I wanted to get out of this about as much as I want to find an opportunity for a Kony joke (which I undoubtedly will).

Alas, escape was impossible, so I simply looked upon the night as at least a solid opportunity for a nap. Yet as soon as the brace-faced first-chair led the the warm-up, I couldn’t help but notice the mop-head sitting in front of me with his girlfriend: his arm appeared to be melded around her shoulder like the obese people whose asses grow into their couches or toilets. This kid looked like a strong candidate for pre-ejaculation. With his shaggy hair, cloudy glasses and greasy sheen, he bore a slight resemblance to my own unfortunate choice of high school boyfriend.  Apparently, high schoolers get totally horned up over classical music and Lord of the Rings medleys performed by their peers, because this kid started kissing his girlfriend in twenty-second intervals and nuzzling his oily cranium into her neck. An avid opponent of PDA, I was immediately and violently disturbed by their behavior—If Joseph Kony sat down next to him, I would unquestionably punch this kid first. (Told you it would happen.) From his enthusiastic performance, I surmised he was about two minutes away from splooging in his Dungarees.

Now, I get that when you are 16, even a public place like a high school orchestra concert, the mall, or minigolfing seems better than your parental-controlled house. But I’m 22 in a parental-controlled house, and I get by without dry humping in front of senior citizens. Go park at the end of your street and dry hump in your car or something. Besides bringing back horrifying memories of why we don’t count as humans until sometime in the years after we shed our high school heinousness, this display drove home our adolescent tendency to ignore the fact that the way we behave in a public space is visible to the people in said public space. Obviously this rule goes down the frat house pisser in college, but now that I’m a stoic, mature graduate, I proceeded to stare at them and giggle the entire concert and take pictures on my phone. Here are the two clearest ones my non-Instagram Motorola could cough up, and lucky for you, they are sans slimy tongue and rubbing, sweaty foreheads. Enjoy. Hopefully this evokes horrifying memories of your own awkward adolescent indiscretions.

Because I can’t have any love affairs in my parent-infested house, pop culture fills my lustful voids. The pop culture love triangle that consists of me, the TiVo and my computer is a complicated one in which my loyalties are often fickle. Just when the pop-c world does me so right, buttering me up with lineups like “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” “Modern Family” and my guiltiest of pleasures, “New Girl,” it turns around and Chris Browns me in the face with all its brainless smut….So when I say pop culture and I have a love affair, let’s leave it at friends-with-benefits, the ‘benefits’ being the quality TV, film and music products that, remarkably, are still out there amidst the skewers of Kardashian butt meat.

From what you’ve gathered about me thus far, it’s probably clear that I’m not the type who died over the “Grey’s Anatomy” musical episode or watches every season of “The Real Housewives.” I enjoy good things, with the very rare shitty thing thrown in there. I watch “The Bachelor” only to cruelly make fun of people whose lives are significantly more depressing than mine and to see Chris Harrison flex his pecs as he pops out of nowhere to gesture to the final rose. Unlike the rest of the world, I’m not exactly disturbed by Snooki’s pregnancy, because while I hope her offspring isn’t born with five limbs or BAIDS (Baby-AIDS), I do hope its birth leads to the cancellation of “Jersey Shore.” I said it.

I can’t, however, understand my mother’s taste in television, and the fact that I’m somehow forced to endure a week-long lineup of shitty shows (Perhaps there are minute traces of crushed Rohypnol in my dinner). Her taste is truly inexplicable, in that she’ll swoop in and change “It’s Always Sunny” and “The Colbert Report” to the local news if I don’t have my head on a swivel. Allow me to walk you through the pop-torture.

Sunday: GCB

Because this show just premiered, my mom hasn’t successfully conned me into watching it yet. I’ve been down this road before when I was 15 with Desperate Housewives—I will not do it again with a show about an Elf-woman with a southern twang that deals out a deluge of religious innuendos mixed with boob jokes. I’d rather let Rooney Mara give me bangs.

Monday: The Voice, Smash, The Bachelor

This night is a train wreck. So many crying and singing girls in one sitting, and way too much of Christina’s bloated face and ten-inch cleavage on the screen threatening to swallow Adam Levine’s tiny, douchey pea-head. “The Bachelor” provides moments of abundantly necessary comic relief, but it doesn’t outweigh the discomfort of trying to detach Carson Daly from “TRL” while watching a singing show judged by Jabba-the-Hut in sunglasses.

Tuesday: Glee, Dancing With The Stars (Starts soon, joyous)

As a music lover, there’s nothing I love to do more than watch Lea Michele’s horse mouth (Maybe this is why she’s so sensitive about horse-drawn carriages in NYC) cover great songs in hyperbolic musical theater style, or hear them performed by a wedding band as knock-kneed, washed-up celebrities stumble around trying to revive their careers and trick their partners to fall in love with them.

COMMERCIAL BREAK!

It appears that this is a real commercial. But I digress.

Wednesday: American Idol

More competitive amateur singing and teeth-grindingly unbearable celebrity judges! A night when there is actually some quality TV on, and I’m stuck listening to Jennifer Lopez quack about being from the block and other “singing” nonsense while Steven Tyler tries to maintain lucidity and keep from getting a juvenile-activated erection. Then suffer through eight Jennifer Lopez Kohl’s commercials. Definitely preferable to “Modern Family.” Absolutely.

Thursday: Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice

Just when you think the week is almost over, you have to watch the same hour of nonsensical medi-drama twice in a row. Every time I visit a hospital, I try to lurk the doctors’ conversations and read their body language to pick up on any cues about intern squabbles, PTSD from ambulance explosions, or patient-doctor love affairs; no such findings thus far. I find the McDreamy-McSteamy-McPunchme shtick as clever as a Kathy Griffin stand-up routine, and can’t wait for the storyline that kills off Meredith once and for all. Whiny bitch. 

Friday: Roomies sleeping on the couch.

Saturday: Roomies sleeping on the couch.

This lineup is painful, but it could obviously be worse, riddled with E!-fueled Kardashian Kock-slaps all week, or shows like “Whitney”; I’ve tried to obscure these really intellectually-offensive ones from my mom’s radar, because I truly think I’d rather have a slumber party with Tyra Banks than have her find out about them and add them to her weekly regimen. For now, I guess reality competition shows and lots of singing are the way to go.