Entries by TATIANA

Thursdays and Sundays is when I volunteer. Been doing that for some time now, not EVERY Thursday and Sunday but most.
On Thursdays I am a receptionist at a very esthetically pleasing place with focus on Scandinavian culture. So it is a big plus that I speak Swedish. I answer phones, talk to people that come up throughout the day and ask questions, I prepare letters for mailing, do data input, organize for events that we have etc. I like it a lot, fun and great people. The only negative is that I have to get up early (for me), 8 in the morning. I am not a morning person and I like to sleep.



On Sundays I give out dog and cat food and pet supplies to mostly low income and/or homeless people that need to feed their pets. So I pick up donations, bag up the food, get to know people and their pets so they get greeted by a familiar face and somebody they feel that they can trust, I pick trash (I have a certain knack for trash picking). And of course I get to meet dogs and cats - I love animals.



And then I do this. Not really volunteering but sometimes I feel like it is. I encounter lots of needy people needing all kinds of attention.
If I won a lot of money I would still volunteer, volunteer more actually and probably dance once a week for another year or two, just to go on stage and hang out with the other dancers because we have so much fun together.
I know I will miss that aspect of the dancing when the day that I hang up the Pleasers arrives.
I say another year or two because there are days when I am so over it. Not the dancing but the talking and giving people attention. That can be exhausting (more often than not I think) and way too repetitive.

Ok.....time for in the club part 2 for the people that are curious.
Money. Do the dancers make money? Hopefully yes. I wish I could say that we all make a lot of money every time we work but we don't and the reason vary.
You just never know, the only way to increase your chances of making something doing this is to show up for work. Sometimes you go on stage and make a decent amount. Other times not. Below is a picture of a good stage set (for me). I do not work in those clubs were dancers get "rained on" by some rapper and sit and straighten out thousands of dollars in stage tips every night. Those clubs are not located around here and if they were I am way too white for those clubs, so I would not be there anyways cause they would not have me. My twerk don't work to put it simply. I do as little as possible. My fave clubs for stage dancing were in NYC, no floor work and you just kind of prance around, flip your hair, smile and look pretty. I am good at doing just that. Unfortunately the clubs in Portland are far from as upscale. In my opinion dancers do WAY too much here and try much too hard.



But one evening I got showered with so many hundreds that I went out and put a fat cash downpayment on a house the next day. Not. This was actually fun. Those were fake hundreds and I knew it but another dancer just could not comprehend that those were fake bills. She got upset and she was intoxicated and super confused trying to understand that the bills were not real. It was actually quite hilarious.



My mermaid broke her tail. That is what people think I look like the most, a mermaid. I am good with that.



New outfit.



This is what it looks like on.





Another outfit.





And this is what I do a large chunk of the time while in the club.
Read in the dressing room. Can I just get paid for reading instead? Talking to random people (men) in the club is barely tolerable to be honest. That is why I sit and read.

For those of you who are curious about strip clubs....well lucky you, I took some pictures to show you. Here we go, In The Club Part 1, come back tomorrow for Part 2.
The dressing room, the place where all the really fun stuff happens. For YEARS now I have been suggesting to have a live stream from the dressing room and let the dancers just BE, be themselves. It would be such a highly entertaining mix of everything and it would be one of the most interesting live streams ever, especially if I would be in it.
The dressing room in one of the clubs I work (I currently work at two, well technically three if we are going to be picky).
This one fits five girls comfortably, six would work too. This particular club caps it at five girls per shift, which is perfect. The dressing room is comfortable, we are all friends and have a lot of fun together.
We do things together outside of the club and there is a feeling of camaraderie here. I spend like 80% of the five hours that I work here in the dressing room. I bring my laptop, catch up on emails, write blogs, read, study. Talk to the other girls. It is so relaxing.



The other club's dressing room. Not as comfortable. Sometimes there are too many girls, more often than not lately. Too loud. Always cold. The fans in the ceiling have large dust bunnies clinging to them, even though I have cleaned them a few times (I dusted the fans off prior to taking this picture). I don't like this club that much but it provides income. The shift is six hours and I often pay extra to leave early because I just don't want to be there anymore.
Anything more than five hours is too much.



A note from the owner to the dancers. Yea....some girls stink.
Not many but I have work with a few that smelled like unwashed sweaty armpit. That smell takes over the whole dressing room, lingers its way into other areas of the club, it is gross. Do not be that dancer.
Right now my perfume (when I wear it and it is not every time I work) is Decadence by Marc Jacobs. I also really like a lotion called Bum Bum Cream by Sol de Janeiro. I rub that in on my butt and the left over residue I just pat on my arms and scrunch into my hair - people looooove it. Sometimes I don't put anything on, my hair smells like the shampoo and conditioner I use. One of the nicest compliments, well one of the compliments I have remembered is when somebody told me I always look CLEAN.



Some random heels.



If you got a pink wig and some sparkly heels you can change your life for the better! Throw in some essential nutrients like cigarettes, Red Bull and pizza and you are good to go.



And on the other end of the spectrum, this girl is super into yoga, working out and brings her own home made smoothies and eats only vegan. And no that is not my stuff. Me making a smoothie before work? I am too lazy for that.



The stages in one of the clubs, there are three stages here but mostly one is used, sometimes two when I work. I do not like going on stage here. The lights are not the best and the stage just feels cold. And it is kind of small. Meh.



The stage in the other club. There is one stage because the club is a smaller club. Great lights, I really like this stage. We play our own music, most of the dancers use Spotify. One of my fave songs to dance to right now.....cause it changes but right now it is Kinda Like It by Black Atlass - it is yummy.



And speaking of Spotify, it costs $10/month. Once in a while a girl does not want to spend that (?), I mean I can be frugal too but come on! So if you do not spend the $10 for Spotify you get to hear commercials in between the songs. You know.....car insurance, laundry detergent and random stuff like that. Something the owner does not want to hear when he visits to check up on his club. Capish?

Woke to up snow.....April snow. Later I found out that this was the latest date for snow recorded in Portland, since they started keeping track of these kinds of things. April 11.
It melted quick though. And the beautiful lilac tree I have in my yard got damaged from the snow. One of its larger branches must had gotten too heavy from the snow weighing it down because when I looked outside, the branch was down. Broken. I wonder if I can tie it back up together again.



I basically spent my day doing laundry. I finally got to put two of my new pillows to use. I have two more new ones, king size but I need to get some pillow covers for them first before I use them. Nowadays new pillows are exciting to me. I did not do much else. Besides the normal......got a latte in the morning, ate, took a walk in the evening, had some tea and lemon cookies at bedtime and now I am in bed enjoying these new pillows and clean sheets waiting for tomorrow's Wordle to be available. It is four minutes until midnight.

Last Friday I had a couple of friends in town and I have been wanting to visit a place called Huber's Cafė and taste their famous Spanish Coffee. Huber's has been around since 1879 and I liked the place as soon as I entered. And I finally got to taste that famous Spanish Coffee and yes it IS yummy and I will definitely go back for more. Super nice place to enjoy food and a beverage.







And afterwards we went to see the cherry blossom trees and it is good that we did because last night it was super windy and most of the flowers are on the ground now.







A fun evening.
On the way back to my car I saw this little bunny propped up against a wall in the middle of downtown Portland. It made me feel a bit sad. Poor little bunny. I hope it is OK. It reminded me of the Velveteen Rabbit.



When I was little I had a bunch of stuffed animals that I slept with and before I could settle down and go to sleep I had to make sure that ALL of them were tucked in under my cover. Not one could be left out and alone, all had to completely safe under the cover together with me.

Started today with a boring day at work. Very uneventful.....kind of like this.



Did errands afterwards. Got cleaning vinegar. So everybody knows that you can use vinegar for cleaning stuff....for example floors, coffee and tea pots, faucets. But did you know that there is CLEANING vinegar? I didn't until recently. Cleaning vinegar has a higher level of acidity than regular white vinegar. Well I got some of that today since I like to clean. It is therapeutic.
Then I went for a walk. It looked something like this.



I can't get enough of the amazing cherry blossoms. They are SO pretty.



Hello, is it me you're looking for?



And now I am going to talk about some stuff. That is why you are here reading right.....cause you want to know my thoughts on stuff. And I have plenty to say about a lot.
I can't remember last time I watched the Oscars. Does not interest me, feels stuffy, outdated and full of annoying ass-kissing hypocrites.
But of course this year's debacle blew up larger than things that really matter, like wars and injustices and people and animals getting hurt.
I am not surprised.
My thoughts on the drama? My initial reaction was that it must had been fake or staged when Will Smith indignantly stomped up on the podium and slapped Chris Rock. But I guess it wasn't fake. And if it was indeed fake then everybody should cancel Hollywood, enough of that bullshit already. I should add here that I only watched the slap incident once. So I do not care for either Will or his wife Jada, their kids are annoying as well. That whole family is CRINGE. I am pretty sure that Jada can defend herself, she has mused about her past drug and alcohol issues and she used to hang with Tupac after all so she is not a defenseless fragile flower. The stuff she has revealed about her and Will's marriage is kind of embarrassing so no wonder Will has lots of pent up rage. I would too if my significant other looked outside the relationship constantly. And the alopecia.....really now? You are a millionaire and openly talking and complaining about hair loss that might actually be due to the way you have been treating your hair for the last 40 years. Put a wig on, or one of the head wraps you claim you love wearing or be bald and fab, now sit down and shut up. And not everybody is aware of your sorry traction alopecia issues.
Perhaps Rock wasn't, did that occur to you? A guy that produced a documentary called Good Hair (and yes I watched it) so he is not completely unaware about hair struggles in the black community.
And the joke wasn't even that shocking, I consider it mild, nothing to raise an eyebrow over, certainly didn't warrant Smith's outburst.
The Hollywood crowd is so fake. Ten years ago they were all kissing Harvey Weinstein's ass knowing damn well that he made the ladies go the ole' casting couch route to win a role in one of his productions, which the ladies also did but later on when the Me Too movement swept the globe he was suddenly a pariah. Hypocrites. They should have somebody like Ricky Gervais hosting the Oscars but the hypocrites are too scared to be outed for the sorry hypocrites they are. There are wars going on and Smith decides to lead by example and slap somebody. So I am team Rock all the way on this one.
Sit down Will Smith. Good that Zelensky was kept out of the Oscars.....he does not have time for that kind of Hollyweird stupidity.
And speaking of Zelensky. I feel that he should allow Russia to have Donbass and declare Ukraine a neutral country. Enough of death, suffering and destruction. It is not worth it. What other solution can there be to put an end to this? I am so disappointed at Putin at this point. He too needs to sit down.
And I think that was it for me tonight. Shower and Wordle next.
Then sleep.