Take Two

chapter one: bills, bills, bills

NOW LET ME TELL YOU, I did not expect to wake up Wednesday morning to the smell of pancakes and sizzling bacon.

Breakfasts in this household were strictly grab a granola bar and go.

I slowly rolled out of my bed to investigate the source of the heavenly smell.

Let me rephrase that: I unceremoniously fell out of my bed.

Lorie, my stepmother (not evil, just crazy), recently lost a bet to Hal, our neighbor, about whether or not the mailman was into her.

Needless to say, he was not. And this was made perfectly clear when the little slip of paper that she left in the mailbox with her number scribbled on it was found a few days later, crumpled up and laying on the curb.

This meant that we were short $75 and I had to trade in my queen bed for a twin-sized air mattress that I found at a yard sale, in order to pay rent. Not only did it reek of mildew, but it had more than a few holes in it and I constantly had to wake up to re-pump it.

Lorie, of course, would yell at me from her room at four A.M. about how I was disturbing her "beauty sleep."

She should have thought of that before she put our money at stake.

The fact that she even wagered that much in the first place was beyond me, especially since we weren't in any position to lose any more cash. And we all knew that there was no way she would win that bet. She's been trying to get at the mailman for months and no avail.

She couldn't sell her bed because she sold it 7 months ago to afford a Kate Spade purse that she spotted at Nordstrom, and now she sleeps on an old futon.

What a life, huh?

When I finally got up, I headed into the bathroom and freshened up. Or freshened up as much as I could. We were out of deodorant so I had to rub scented shimmer spray from Bath and Body Works on my pits and underneath my lady orbs.

I showered last night so at least my hair was clean for the most part. I sprayed some water and leave-in conditioner in my curls in an attempt to make them look somewhat presentable. Not that it mattered.

The product was really only successful in making my hair wet and semi-detangled and not as helpful in the making it weightless and frizz free department.

That's what I get for buying curl products at a corner store where its sign is missing 3 of its letters.

After I threw on the only button up in my closet that wasn't wrinkled and a pair of checkered wool pants that I found at thrift store, I took a quick look in the mirror.

Wow, I really made broke look good.

Downstairs, I saw Lorie standing above the stove, wearing her "Kiss the Cook" apron, looking almost suspiciously happy. The last time she used that apron was Thanksgiving three years ago.

"Since when did we have pancake mix? Or bacon? Or a frying pan for that matter?" I asked dubiously.

"Well, there's an occasion," she chirped.

Yeah, she was way too chipper.

"An occasion?" I couldn't tell where this was going, because "an occasion" by her standards could be anything.

She once woke me up at 2 A.M. because she heard Chris Pratt and Anna Faris were "finally" splitting up. She bought $12 champagne and everything.

Ever since we finished Parks and Recreation, she claimed him as "her man," despite the fact that she was almost 7 years his senior, and that he doesn't know that she exists.