An unsolicited blogmercial

I am a slacker. I almost never pack my lunch and as a result am left to frequent one of the three or four restaurants in my industrial work neighborhood. Because this is Phoenix, more often than not, that means I eat some flavor of Mexican food almost every day. Only, here we don't call it "Mexican Food" we just call it "food".

Yesterday, true to form, I had brought no lunch and found myself at a local greasy spoon taqueria called "Filiberto's". There are about 123 places in the PHX called something-berto's, and they all serve moderately decent food for the most part. They're the sort of place you don't eat if you have a choice, but would murder Santa's elves for at 3am after a night of Corona & Patron shots. Or, you know, when you forget your lunch and your belly button is rubbing a hole in your back bone.

Anyhoodle, it was lunch time and I was starving and that chicken burrito was calling my name, so I eschewed my normally above reproach manners and rather than delicately cutting each bite, I tore into that burrito like a lion on the Serengeti happening upon a delicious dead zebra.

Now, anyone who has ever had the pleasure of my company at a meal know that my twins get hungry. Apparently yesterday they were hungry for burrito.



Now, that doesn't look to bad, right? Well get a load of this



That's right, it shot right past my mouth, down my chin, down between my creamy, heaving bosoms and INTO MY SHIRT. WTF? Who gets food INSIDE their shirt? Moi, that's who.

Not just a little either, a big, massive bright orange greasy stain



It kind of looks like a wiener. Like the ghost of Miss Manners squeezed out a big ol' mushroom stamp to teach me a lesson about not using silverware.

Tres classy.

Because I am prone to dropping things on the girls, I own very few white shirts. To make matters even BETTER I'm on a strict No New Clothing budget right now so it's not like I could do what I usually do and just buy a new shirt, change in a parking lot and get asked never to return to that store ever again. But also? I'm a little vain, so it's not like I wanted to sit in a stained, peppery shirt all day either.

Then, like a ray of light streaming down from the Heavens, my eyes happened upon an ad in Glamour for the Tide Pen. For the most part I tend to think things like that are snake oil, but that adorable Kelly Ripa looked so smug cleaning her central-casting-daughters pinafore, I thought, Why not? Sure, I'd have to brave Super Ghetto K-Mart. Sure, I haven't had a tetanus or rabies shot in a while. But I had rubber gloves in my trunk and close toed shoes, so why not be brave?

And I was, chickens! I was brave! I got my Tide Pen and headed back to my office to strip down and do laundry at my desk. Because that is what professional women do; they multi-task topless.

I took my shirt off, placed a folded paper towel behind it and followed the direction on the package. At first, not a damn thing happened. Then, slowly, the stain began to fade. I rubbed and blotted, rubbed and blotted and was rewarded with this



WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT? The stain is almost gone! I'll be damned. For the low, low price of $1.99, my shirt went from being garbage to salvageable. It's like a beautiful miracle of science.

So Miss Manners? Go Fuck Yourself. I'll eat my burrito and wear it too, because Tide Pen is the bestest thing EVAH.

PS - Dear Tide People, that will be $25,000 please. While I may be easy, I'm NEVER cheap.