the wrong side of the bed

If pride is a sin, I know at least 2 queer girls who are NOT going to Hell

2008-07-20T22:53:00.002-05:00

I went to the pride rally with my roommate and her girlfriend today. We watched Tammy Baldwin speak and then they refused to walk three quarters of the way around the capitol because one of them preferred to go to Urban Outfitters. Really?

Is it okay for me to find this icky?

2008-06-23T16:42:00.003-05:00

Perhaps I just don't like to think of my neighbor having sex, but it distresses me that the two times I have had to pull his laundry out of the washer or dryer I have found condom wrappers.

snap!

2008-06-16T08:13:00.004-05:00

Warning: I am going to be using the word "snap" an awful lot in this post. Can't be helped.

When I was in high school, my friend Clare and I would go through silly little obsessions. We pretend to be in love with Sting and our friend Adam. We drew pictures of woodpeckers all of the time. * We drew pictures of people with mohawks almost as frequently. ** We wrote ongoing stories about a blue stick figure and the characters in his life, like a cat named Dr. Sandoval.

We made many trips between Houston and Austin both together and separately. There used to be a warehouse with a drawing of a turtle snapping on the side. We didn't find the drawing terribly convincingly, so we would try to draw better snaps. Snaps are hard to do. You should try.

When I was in college, I briefly dated this girl name Jenn. She sat in front of me in my sociology theory class. We also new each other from the college radio station. She was a bit of a player, or absolutely a player, well before that word was popular. In class, she would sometimes grab my foot and hold it. She told me that, while she wasn't all that into me, she felt at ease opening up to me in was that she didn't with other people. Could have been a line because she was good at those things. At the time, I was also dating this guy who told me, straight up, that he loved me but was not in love with me. He often asked if I understood the difference.

Jenn and I both had shirts with snaps because we were hipsters and that was sort of the thing to do. She asked me to tear her shirt off, snap! snap! snap! She would also do this to me. It is something that thrills me to do. I currently have two shirts with snaps, and I highly recommend you yank my shirt open when you see me.

Try this: draw a snap right now. Do it. Now pull my shirt open and see what happens. Be prepared. Outcomes vary, but are never good. I could be yours forever. I could be bitter and angry. But, could you do it anyway?

* Our English teacher insisted that we always talked about woodpeckers, which we did not. This did, however lead us to throwing woodpeckers into all of our conversations. We would draw pictures of them over and over. We researched bits of trivia. Anytime she looked our way, there they would be. We did not like that teacher much.

** No real reason for that.

same old

2008-06-06T10:00:00.003-05:00

It used to be that when I was depressed I would listen to sad music. It seems that now when I am depressed I also visit epilepsy websites.

Sometimes it doesn't bother me as much, but other times taking pills everyday just reminds me of all of my problems. The pointlessness of taking the pill when I am destined to die alone and it is just making me gain weight easily. The constant need for me to take anti-anxiety/anti-depression meds so that I (supposedly) don't get really sad. The 600mg of Lamictal and 900mg of Gabapentin I take to keep the seizures at bay.

Ah, shit. A song by Daniel Johnston just came up on iTunes. Impossible Love.

Whatever will be, will be

2008-05-23T08:38:00.006-05:00

When I was in high school, I had something of an obsession with a girl named Mali. We had been in school together beginning in kindergarten. We had a lot of things in common, but she was always more popular than me and things often seemed to fall into her lap. As an adult, I realize that she was more outgoing and tried much harder than I did, but as a kid, it really just seemed like magic that she was so popular and I was a pariah.

I was fascinated with Mali. I simultaneously hated her and had a crush on her. For every reason that everyone else was enamored of Mali, I was too. Bitter and jealous, I tried to sabotage her when I could. I paid too much attention to her every move. Talked about her too much to my friends. Even I recognized that my feelings were unhealthy. Still, I wanted to knock her down and make her finally the same as me.

In our junior year English class we read something in which a character was a mistress. Everyone in class was eager to malign the woman in question. Mali asked a question, phrased a bit strangely, that caused an uproar in class. "What if you plan to be the other woman?" she asked. She surely meant "are" and not "plan," but we were quick to jump on Mali. Girls in class were especially angry. How could someone be a party to someone else's infidelity? I have no idea what I felt at the time. Now I would likely argue that it is much less the fault of the interloper than it is for other parties involved, but at 16 I really hadn't given it much thought. I did, however, see an opportunity to humiliate Mali. My barb was sharp, complicated, and painful. I was effectively able to imply that not only was it Mali's goal in life to be a whore and home wrecker, but that she perhaps already was. The way I said it brought the whole class to silence. All of this because I wanted to hurt Mali just as much as I wanted to be her and just as much as I wanted to always be around her.

I am not sure why I had such little compassion then. I was generous to people outside of my world, but those I interacted with regularly were not to be trusted, even my friends. I felt that betrayal was always around the corner. My mother has said that teenagers are selfish and self-absorbed and she is absolutely right. Even still, it upsets me that I matched this formula so exactly. I remember thinking that I was a compassionate person, but maybe I never did. It is possible that I recognized my potential to be cruel, but I am certain that I blamed it on other people.

This morning I was listening to a segment on NPR with book recommendations. One bookseller recommended a collection edited by Jeffrey Eugenides called My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro. A story called "How to be an Other Woman" by Lorrie Moore stood out in my mind. It sounded like a guide for the life that we had all decided Mali had planned. A workshop that might be offered or a short course at a community college.

The bookseller recommending the book read this selection, "When you were six you thought a mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet." I'm not sure I understand how a child might understand mistress to mean putting your shoes on the wrong feet. Like mis-dress? I think I may understand better the adult meaning. It would making walking awkward but doable, you could maybe make it so people wouldn't notice, but it would probably hurt a great deal in the process.

The year before we read whatever it is we read that lead Mali to announce her plan to be the other woman, we read To Kill a Mocking Bird. This book, I always thought, was the closest thing we ever got to sociology in my high school. At least it encouraged us to examine things from perspectives other than our own. I believe there is a part in which Atticus tells Scout to imagine herself walking in the shoes of someone else. Maybe Mali was just doing this. The other shoes just happened to be on the wrong feet.

Anyway, Mali, I'm sorry for being a teenager and selfish. I know you wanted to be an actress, and I have looked for you on IMDB and seen that you have been in some things. I don't know if you really wanted to be an other woman and I don't know if you are now. I am sorry for making fun of you if that was really your plan. If it is and you are, I don't know if I would still be jealous of you. It doesn't seem an enviable position, but I am, after all, a very jealous person. I do know that I would think of you with compassion and then try not to think of you at all.

I'm my inspiration

2008-05-18T15:38:00.004-05:00

I'm trying to apply for jobs. I've been saying this forever, but I really mean it. I've got to get out of this place, if it's the last thing I do. I'd really like to be closer to my family and/or in a place that I can make permanent. I get worn down by living a temporary life. It has been over 7 years that I have been waiting to get a move on. A silly approach to making progress.

I have found six jobs that I need to apply for this week. None of them are perfect fits, but who am I? I'm supposed to let them decide I'm not qualified, or so I am told. Needless to say I am stalling sending out resumes and such. I'm not good at tooting my own horn. Procrastination is always a nice and painful way to approach responsibilities. Instead of applying for jobs, I've just been updating a exercise/diet plan that I had started, but stopped, on Spark People (like Weight Watchers online, but free). I'm getting chubby again after having mysteriously lost a lot of weight. The website, in addition to nutrition and exercise goals, recommends a schedule of affirmation/reinforcement techniques. Most involve talking to supportive people and such. My very favorite was the suggestion that I give my self a five minute pep talk every day. I have no idea how I could fill five minutes with pepping. I don't know if I could keep it up for a whole minute. Really, what am I supposed to say? In high school I attended as few pep rallies as I possibly could, but from what I witnessed, there was a lot of "we've got spirit" going on. Is this what I should say? Should I just give myself compliments?

"Dorotha, your the hottest girl I have ever known. I'd really like to get your digits."

"I would give my eyeteeth to spend just one day with you."

"You are my Dinky Bossetti. My my Duckie. My Edna Shinglebox. My Watts."

"I have more faith in you than I have in the sun rising in the morning."

"Dorotha, I do believe that you are watching us with the eye of a tiger."

"I can see that St. Elmo's Fire is burning in you."

"Dorotha, I cannot live without you."

This last one, I think, is the most true. I really can't live without me. I will start chanting this for at least five minutes everyday. Starting tomorrow. Or sometime this week. I swear.

A different approach

2008-02-23T09:47:00.002-06:00

Okay, most likely no one is reading my blog anymore. I became bored with it and probably you did, too. I am going to change it. It isn't going to be much about me anymore. My new theme is....

Props to my friends!

I may even start a new blog. I will let you know. Please stay tuned.

No follow through

2007-12-07T08:39:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I was too busy at the gala to get before and after pictures. It turned out that I mostly looked like myself in a dress. The transformation was not as radical as I had hoped. My co-workers were going to do my hair and make up, but we were too busy to do anything but work.

I've been lazy about my blog. I'm going to try to write more posts. It isn't as if I have nothing to say. And I can say anything to you.

I'm just feeling lonely

2007-11-27T08:28:00.000-06:00

I feel bad for not having posted in a long time. I have things to say, I am just too lazy to write a post. I've had family things and roommate things come up, but I feel like I would need to concentrate to tell those stories and I am just not feeling it.

I've got to dress up on Thursday for an event at work. Maybe I will just post pictures of that. Me dressed up is kind of a hoot! How about some before and afters?

Simulblog: fulfilling a dream (mine is world peace)

2007-11-24T18:29:00.000-06:00

Gwennie, Connie, Some Guy and I are hanging out at Connie's place in LA. What would any boy want to do when alone with three girls? Put his face in m&ms, obviously.

It has long been the dream of Some Guy to put his face in m&ms. It isn't something that I can explain or even care to understand. I only know that Connie has made his dream come true. She's like Disneyland or Disney World or some crap.

Connie, Gwen, and Some Guy are also blogging about this. Though I have not read them, I am certain their posts are funnier. Read those instead.

huh

2007-11-18T19:39:00.000-06:00

I just noticed that the "about me" bar on the side listed my location as "the midwest, Afghanistan" for who knows how long. Just wanted to let you know that I am aware that I am right here.

Now I will have nothing for my memoir

2007-11-18T13:11:00.000-06:00

I've never been good at tag because I am slow. This is something you may not know about me but could probably guess. I can't outrun Goat Boy and am going to have to play the 6 things you probably don't know about me game. Alright, you win.

This is hard because I talk about myself too much.

#1 I smoked cigarettes for about a month when I was 19. I didn't inhale properly and probably never experienced any of the drug effects. The final time I smoked, I actually did inhale. I was almost immediately ill and threw up so hard that I broke blood vessels around my eyes. I steer clear of all things that require the inhalation of smoke. I also don't like burning marshmallows when I make s'mores. Not really the same thing, I know, but it does require being awfully close to burning wood. I roast my marshmallows at a distance. I don't even eat marshmallows because they are made with gelatin, so it doesn't really matter.

#2 I have never shoplifted. I know it may seem like I might have been a moody teen that stole from Walgreen's after school and then hung out at the park, but I wasn't. And I never would have broken any rules in high school. I have, however, stolen from my employers. Mostly office supplies, but also lots and lots of toys and stickers. Whatever. I was underpaid. As I TA I was also underpaid, and maybe should have been harvesting my students' brains, the very brains that I was molding.

#3 I have never done a cartwheel. Not a surprise at all, as I am the world's clumsiest human being. You might have thought I have, though, so it is good that we have cleared this up.

#4 I don't care what color M&M I am eating. For awhile when I was a kid, I thought that maybe I should only want to eat green ones, but who gives a flip? They all taste the same.

#5 Despite being a vegetarian, it is difficult for me to resist fish and chips. Once every couple of years, I break.

#6 I can be bought.

Picking someone to tag is going to be a challenge because a lot of my friends have gone underground.... how about Caryeoke?

mama called the doctor and the doctor said...

2007-11-12T22:06:00.000-06:00

I am dizzy right now. I feel like I have been dizzy a lot lately. I feel like I can't remember a day recently during which I have not felt at least a little dizzy. I started taking a medication a few weeks ago, but never really got to the full dosage, and then weaned myself off. Presumably this would no longer be messing with me since it was a good 2 or 3 weeks ago. I feel like I might have been dizzy even before that, though. When was the last time I wasn't dizzy?

I'm telling you this because I had this sudden urge, while washing my dishes a few minutes ago, to schedule an doctor's appointment. There is, I am sure, nothing wrong with me. It is just that having gone years without being properly diagnosed with epilepsy has made me nervous. Every tiny thing could be a symptom of something. Why am I dizzy? Why can't I sleep anymore? Why is the pinky finger on my left hand numb?

I am dangerously close to becoming a hypochondriac. I have been to the doctor unnecessarily a few times this year just to be safe. Maybe just one time. The other time was to the optometrist.

Still.

someone hates me

2007-11-11T13:28:00.000-06:00

i'm not kidding. this is one of my biggest fears. thanks to postsecret, i can never go to a bookstore again.

i am, though, going to make a postcard to send today.

no pressure

2007-11-06T08:31:00.000-06:00

I am going to Los Angeles with some friends for Thanksgiving. They being very generous to me in helping me get out there and letting me stay in hotel rooms with them. I appreciate it very much and, in the spirit of the holiday, am very thankful.

I'm getting quite excited because Gwen will be cooking amazing dishes for us. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, not just because of the food, but the food helps a lot. I also enjoy that it is a very secular holiday. My mom tries to argue that they all are, or that they are all about consumerism, and I agree that is a huge part of Christmas and Easter, but, if I have read the handmade signs in front yards correctly, Jesus is the reason for the season. In an argument with my mom about why I don't like Easter, she told me that it is "really a pagan holiday" and I had to remind her that we are not pagan, either. I can give thanks without it being to a god. I feel pretty good about that. I can give thanks to my anonymous benefactors instead.

Here is the big but: No one will make this for me. Do you not understand how important it is for me that Thanksgiving be exactly perfect?

why am i so disappointed that stephen colbert is no longer running for president?

2007-11-02T08:50:00.000-05:00

that's all. just sort of bummed.

petty

2007-11-01T07:12:00.000-05:00

i want to write a post about an amazing hat, but i keep putting it off. it's okay, i just have to get to it before thanksgiving. this, though, is something i need to deal with right now. my roommate is completely great as a roommate. i'm not in love with her quite as much, or at all, as i was when we moved in together. she is still almost everything a person could want. quiet. about as clean as i am. tolerant of my moods. but there are three things about her that have been making me crazy. i am a bad person for telling you, but here they are:

1. she hangs the toilet paper so that the sheets come down in the back. what is the advantage of that? the end of the roll is not always apparent. finding the roll requires awkward, unnatural hand positions.

2. she wears a faux hawk. why?

3. she decides that some things are recyclable that clearly are not. styrofoam. envelopes with plastic bubbles inside (the kind you pop!). take out containers. she doesn't even always break down boxes. okay, so the madison recylopedia doesn't say that you can't recycle packing envelopes, but how would they be processed by recycling facilities? i guess that other envelopes with plastic windows get recycled. maybe whatever soaking processes lets them extract all of the plastic after the paper is already mulch. still, i wish she had looked in to it.

she only eats oatmeal. every bowl in the apartment is sitting in our sink by the end of the week. she often puts dish towels in the bowls as if to hide the contents. it is quite odd. i can't get mad at her about this because i take ever glass in our house to my bedroom so that i can have water to take my pills. i never bring yesterdays glass back down. so, okay, i will let the bowl thing go.

nothing fudged

2007-10-11T00:42:00.000-05:00

this is exactly the email that my mom sent me earlier:

"I just came back from a horrible meeting. My phone says somebody text
messaged me and I don't know how to get it off. I've been thinking about
you all day.

I must have been in the chowder this morning when you called because I
didn't hear anything. The red light was blinking when I got home.

Daddy is in Austin going to a conference and I am going to go up on Friday.
My brother Bill is bringing Devin to see my mom. It is all getting to
poignant for me.... Too many maybe the last times....

She got a hair cut and Nancy helped her take a real shower, not just a
lickety split one. Mom says that's Nancy's job... Thanks Nancy!!

I really like you. I guess I will eat peanut butter and jelly.

Mom"

my grandmother is going to die soon. i didn't actually call my mom this morning, despite what she thinks. my mom calls showers "chowders."

celebrate

2007-10-08T07:38:00.000-05:00

sometimes we need something to celebrate. i am chosing today, international cephalopod awareness day. sure, it seems like a group of octopus fans made this up just a few days ago. who cares? their point was that talking like a pirate is kinda stupid, too. cephalopods are pretty great and usually don't steal from you. and do you really believe all of those tales about giant squids bringing down ships in the ocean? big squids have reportedly attacked small fishing vessels, but they weren't giant. just 40 feet including tentacles. i mean, that is hardly monster sized, right? probably terrifying, but still, come on people, that's tiny.

octopuses can, if kept as pets, get out of their tanks, go to nearby tanks, eat the fish kept there, and slink back home. so maybe i would worry about that more than kraken.

just an observation

2007-10-05T08:11:00.000-05:00

my job requires that i interact with a lot of people. i give small presentations to groups of parents, i lead meetings, i meet people one on one. why is it that, though i do these things regularly, i can never remember to say my name? i always remember to introduce myself halfway through when i should have done so at the beginning. this seems like something i should not forget as it happens over and over again.

there is something on the other side of this door

2007-10-01T19:50:00.001-05:00

in my bedroom, there is a door that is locked, and, even when unlocked, cannot be opened. i have no idea what is on the other side. when i moved in i tried very hard to get through but nothing. i decided to stop being curious. last night at 2:30, someone tugged the door from the other side. i shouted, "what the fuck!" and footsteps walked away. color me very disturbed. this morning i tried opening the door again and it is firmly stuck closed. there could be something on the other person's side that prevents me from pushing through. unfortunately, because the door opens out, i don't have that same option.

there is more to this story. there was a weird crumbling sound from the other side of the door on saturday along with the sound of men's voices. there was talking, television, and smoking taking place much closer to me than normal through the walls. there was.. i dunno. i guess that is what there was. mostly, there was someone trying to open my bedroom door in the middle of the night.

this is a blurry picture of my door. i shake a lot.

it is not like years ago

2007-09-29T17:10:00.000-05:00

i don't know for sure what made me think of these two and a half things

1. the boy i had a crush on in high school sang "nightswimming" during a choir concert. he would laugh when i was sarcastic even though the other boys were determined that girls were not funny. i cannot tell you how many times i listened to that song.

2. the same kids were almost always in my classes, thanks to tracking, so i am not sure how this happened, but it happened in eighth grade. i'm kind of remembering that we did some kind of class jumbling thing for a few weeks. we were working on group projects for our social studies or history or whatever class. in my group there was a kinda goth, kinda skater boy in my group, and i did not know him at all. there was also a girl named melody and a kid of some sort who i cannot remember.

i knew melody* because she had the locker next to mine in gym. she wore matching bras and underwear. they were always satin and dark colors like burgundy and forest green. she also wore thigh high stockings with garters. it was very hard not to watch her changing. this was during the same period of time that i would change clothes without ever actually fully undressing. so, yeah, i remember melody.

the kinda goth, kinda skater boy was kind of dismissive of me because i was such a dorky loser. from about 6th grade through my first year of college i wore the baggiest clothes that i could find in as many layers as i could tolerate. thank the heavens for grunge or high school would have been so unbearable as to have done me in. melody was nice to me because she knew me from gym, but the boy acted like i wasn't there and didn't really care about my input. without any contribution (or suggestion, because i was very shy) we ended up naming our country after the album green. after that we made ecology a big theme for our country.

do you remember those binders that had the extra, flexible plastic layer so that you could slip photos our paper into the outside? am i describing that well? at my school mostly only girls had them, but this goth skater kid had one. there was a picture of a girl that i knew and it turned out was his girlfriend. we had a very awkward conversation establishing how i knew her. my sister was briefly hospitalized for depression when she was in high school.** all of the kids and their families had a therapy session together once while my sister was there, during which his girlfriend confessed to her mother that she drank "a beer." according to my sister, she did a lot more than that, but, seriously, you don't end up in some kind of weirdo psychiatric treatmenty kinda place for being 13 and drinking one beer.

after he found out about my sister, i was suddenly much cooler.

1/2. there was a statue in my hometown that was supposed to be someone standing on the shoulder of a giant, but it was really more of a statue of a child coming out of the armpit of a man with his arms outstretched in the air. when we were driving around, as teenagers do, my friend clare and i would sometimes sing the relevant bit of the song "king of birds." we knew, don't worry, that is not the origin of the saying.

* i just tried to google melody by what i remember her first and last name to me. i'm not finding her. maybe her name wasn't melody... i did have a my little pony with that name, so maybe i am getting them confused.

** she didn't really need to be hospitalized. about a year later, there was a big scandal about those kinds of hospitals engaging in scams to get money from insurance companies by accepting patients that were not actually in need of care. whatever. it is still a good story, i guess. an even better part of the story is that my sister, while initially delighted to be there eventually exploded during family therapy saying, "it's dorotha's fault i'm here! dorotha's the one who should be here!"

sodium vapor

2007-09-24T21:12:00.001-05:00

it was nice out when i got home from work, so i went on a short walk. it took encouragement from my friend sean who assured me that people weren't going to wonder where i was going if i set out rambling along with no goal in mind. yes, i get that no one cares about what i am doing as much as i do, but i also get that sometimes they do. the missed connections section of craigslist, for example, leads me to believe that sometimes strangers are watching. there is also the evidence that i notice other people and make snap judgments about them. while my soul mate could be out there stalking me from afar and then posting about it, it is more likely that some little troll like myself is staring at me and mumbling accusations and criticisms under her breath. despite all of this, sean was convincing and i went for a walk to nowhere.*

i'd like to say that on the way back i saw something that made my whole day seem worthwhile, but i didn't. i did see some pretty yellow leaves that reminded me of the church parking lot that i used to pass on my way to campus. it had very slick, black asphalt. the accumulation of yellow leaves, especially when it rained, made a nice contrast. when i saw these leaves and remembered the other leaves i also remembered another parking lot. when i was in high school, our parking lot had yellow lights. classes started at 7:25, but i always got to school well before that because i was compulsively early to everything when i was young. it was often just dawn when i would get to school. i loved the way the lights looked against the sky. i especially loved it if the lights went out when i was in the parking lot. sometimes i would wait in my car until they did.

when i was in elementary school, just like every other kid, i loved new boxes of crayons. crayola were the best because they weren't too soft and because they had enough pigment for the colors to be dense and vibrant. when we did chores for money, i would use mine to buy new 64 crayon boxes. my parents, my dad especially, did not like this because we always had plenty of crayons, but there is really nothing like a brand new box. i would pour the crayons out onto the floor and arrange them in different groups.** all blues, all oranges, all reds. then i would rearrange them. blue, orange, red, blue, orange, red. i would put the brightest blue next to the brightest red and the darkest blue next to the darkest red. or i would put a bright yellow with a dark purple. i would arrange yellow, green, blue, purple, red, orange. then i would move orange to the front. i would do this for hours. then i would test the colors on paper and rearrange them again. sometimes a color that looked dark was actually pale when you used it (cornflower). sometimes a pale color was much denser than it looked (periwinkle). i would spend hours determining which color was my favorite in different groups and which was my favorite overall. spring green gave me a weird, uncomfortable feeling. instead of making a crayon that color, why not just use less pressure to draw? raw sienna and burnt umber sounded more mysterious than i thought browns should. i would use up those two crayons quickly because i had to check them a lot. is it still named raw umber? is it still just brown? how can i tell which is burnt and which is raw? i didn't like warm colors much at all, and not surprisingly, the only red i could handle was a very cool magenta. i struggled with the oranges. they all looked so similar so none outshone the others. i didn't care for yellow either, but my favorite was goldenrod, even though it was named for a flower that made me sneeze. things like "green yellow" and "yellow green" made me wonder why there wasn't "red purple" or "purple blue." i think there may have been a "blue green" but no mirror "green blue." i liked the blues and purples the best. indigo was nice. midnight blue was nice. it was between the two. "midnight blue" seemed very romantic to me while indigo seemed a fuller color. i really did like indigo the best, but would try to believe and try to make myself believe and really want to believe that i liked midnight blue better. sometimes it worked and sometimes not.

i used to draw pictures of myself over and over again. i drew myself in a dress with big puffy sleeves because, like anne of green gables, i thought they were fancy. sometimes i would just draw a doll that was really a drawing of myself, but i knew it didn't look much like me so i would pretend to myself that it was trying to draw something else. instead of giving myself brown hair and peach skin and hazel eyes, i would use only the greens, for example. i would line them up from yellowest to bluest. then i would start a part of the drawing, always the hair first. when i was done with that, i would switch to the next crayon. next feature, the next crayon. i would rotate through as many times as it took. if i ended up having two things next to each other that were both in the same color then that is how it had to be because there were rules.

there isn't much point to this, but i feel like i am supposed to pull it all together into a lesson. mostly i was just thinking about the color yellow, which i have changed my opinion of since i was a child, and crayons. i guess that i could say that a friend told me to do things i enjoy, but that i have a hard time thinking of things i enjoy. the same friend also told me to make a list of things i like about myself. i said that i appreciate color and he rejected it. i'm supposed to say that i am smart or not a fuckwit or whatever. but, i enjoy colors and i am glad that i do. it is something i like in other people. no one else in my family really does. i would say that my dad is indifferent to it, my sister is confused by it, my mother is terrified of it, and my brother is accepting of it.*** honestly, my mother would live in a clear world if she could. my dad could survive equally well in a hot pink and lime home or a navy and gray one. my sister would chose to live in a monochromatic world, preferably maroon or forest green. my brother, perhaps because his wife is from san antonio and he lives in new orleans (two very brightly colored places) is the most comfortable and daring harried other than myself.

on the flip side, i think i am scared of order and uniformity. blank surfaces and empty spaces make me nervous. a navy bedspread, beige walls, a mahogany nightstand. there are not enough places to look! i could stare too long at one thing and not have something else to pull me away. i need a variety of shapes and colors to fight for my attention. i can fixate on one thing too much. i can become obsessive. look at all of my collections! when i start i can't stop. imagine having all of my focus on you. as pleasant as it may sound to have a dorotha devoted to you, it is not actually pretty. better that i should have many of you to sort through. 64 of you.

still don't know how to end this post. here.

* i came up with a reason in case anyone asked.

** i can't remember if this is my story or sean's. once, at the toy store where we worked, a little boy was playing in the vehicle section. he was putting all of the buses together. when his mom saw this she started shouting, "he's grouping! he's grouping!" which i think would have been more impressive if he weren't pulling them from a bucket of nothing but buses.

*** i get that it is weird to refer to color as an it. i mostly mean that my family doesn't think much about color, but if they did, they mostly wouldn't. but, color is not an it.

rather than fix the problem, let's just post this

2007-09-22T09:21:00.001-05:00

my job requires a lot of driving. sometime i enjoy it. yesterday, in addition to this sign, i also saw a sticker on a car of an american flag shaped butterfly (or a butterfly filled with an american flag). i understand an eagle, but a butterfly?

february 21st is also, as demonstrated by columbus, wisconsin elementary and middle school students, the united nations international day of peace. the display of pinwheels in the lawns of the two schools was much nicer to see than the usual nationalistic displays. i'm not sure how the butterfly fits into this.

cool kids

2007-09-20T21:59:00.000-05:00

tonight my friend penny* and i were discussing our friend anne. i commented that i had called her on saturday but never heard back even though i thought she was planning to. i have tried to get in touch with anne a few times since then, too. i remarked to penny that she could easily be dead. penny noted that if we were going by the last time she had spoken to anne, she could have been dead since may. we wondered if anne were actually dead we would hear about it. would anne's parents know how to reach us or even if they should try? i think they would put some effort into finding me, but maybe not. i know that if penny were to die i would hear about it through my friend david. likewise, if i were to die, david would tell penny.

after penny, i talked to my mother. she was agitated when i told her this. she doesn't know how to get in touch with my friends. if something awful happened to me she wouldn't know what to do. if i died, she wouldn't know who to invite to the party. she also wouldn't know who to call if i fell ill with spinal meningitis and needed to be taken care of. when we were kids, she had a folder that she wrote information on. somethings were in the folder, but a lot of it was actually on the folder.** contact information for families, friends, and neighbors. my mom doesn't have that for me anymore and she needs it.

if you want on the list, please let me know. i will send your information to my mom. you will not be invited to my funeral otherwise. anne, you do not need to email because 1) you never email, 2) i assume you would want to know, and 3) you are already dead and it isn't like someone is going to drag your corpse to the funeral. but i hope you aren't dead because that would make me look like a real asshole.

* not real names

** on the phone earlier, my mom called it the orange folder, even though i am fairly sure it is green and has always been green, even though it is not the original green folder. sometimes i almost believe my mother when she says she is color blind. the only problem is that it has always been a green folder and she should just learn to call it that even if she can't distinguish the two colors apart.

dorotha who sits*

2007-09-19T20:01:00.000-05:00

last week i didn't finish anything i needed to get done at work. the same for monday of this week. tuesday when i left my desk i still had things sitting there from august and i moved the most urgent of those in my chair so that i wouldn't be able to put them off. today i sat on them. i never looked at them. i just sat. it felt weird, but it didn't hurt.

my scheduled work hours are 8:00 - 4:30, assuming i don't have night meetings. today i left at 4:45. i would have stayed later but, thank god, i had a party to go to! my roommate's workplace was having a "talk like a pirate day" party. even though i think pirates are soooooo 2 years ago, i decided to attend because, well, my pool of friends is on the decline and it isn't getting any more promising. there were only a handful of people, but i actually knew two of them through friends.**

i was nervous before i got to the party. i'm scared of people. sometimes they bite and stuff. but, i went anyway. i wasn't a huge fuck up. i did talk to a few people. i managed to ask people questions about themselves, though not quite as much as i should. i tend to dominate conversations despite my social anxiety.

the funnest part, however, was somehow upsetting/hurting/annoying my roommate's boss. i have no idea how. i asked her if she liked the button i was wearing, erroneously assuming that, because my roommate had pinned it on me when i walked in, maria had either made it or that it had something to do with their company. it would seem that i was wrong, but i have no idea how. maria said she would tell me when we "weren't in front of the children." i am hoping it involves swingers.

this happened after i had already been there for around 2 hours, and i did not stay for cake.

*let me just say that when i searched my blog to see if i have ever used the above as the title of a post before, i came up with this. i am pretty funny. fuck you if you don't think so. i do wonder what that post was about, though.

** in the who time i have known them as friends of friends, i have never talked to the woman part of the couple as much as i did tonight. i have still barely spoken to the man. it turns out she is quite nice.

panacea

2007-09-17T08:30:00.000-05:00

do you ever hope and hope that something will happen that has zero chance of occurring? this afternoon i am going somewhere that will ultimately likely be useful, but certainly not in the short run.

on another note, thank you to a friend who has helped me come up with a reason to make toys and trinkets. you will get a lovely present for thanksgiving.

close your eyes tight and make a wish

2007-09-16T00:48:00.000-05:00

after a failed evening out, with a horribly humiliating premise to begin with, i came home at 12:34. not the same as 11:11, but almost as good, and sometimes maybe better. this time, however, not good or better.

sunny p

2007-09-15T11:31:00.000-05:00

beef o'brady's was everything i hoped and more! actually, it wasn't. i was hoping for something less hygienic, but what can you do. the meeting didn't suck as much as i thought it would. i actually left sincerely a couple of times. altogether, nothing to blog about.

when i got home, i talked to my friend carole for over 2 hours. i think it is strange to have that much to say to another person. on the other hand, i spend much of my day talking. it may be my single most favorite thing to do.

if instead of red, my voicemail light flashed green, would my life be any different?

2007-09-14T13:42:00.000-05:00

i'm not sure.

living life

2007-09-13T23:31:00.000-05:00

once again i would like to remind everyone that i must eat at a restaurant called beef o'brady's. additionally, i will be eating there on a friday evening with volunteers from a suburb of madison. my life is thrilling.

i think i am going to try to drug myself to sleep tomorrow evening around 9:00. my roommate takes prescription sleep aides. or i could just use antihistamines. they make me very sleepy.

proud to be an american, where at least i know i'm free

2007-09-13T09:23:00.000-05:00

do you remember that song? i think the choir sang that at ever event that we had during my entire time at mccullough high school. it kind of made me sick, but i knew all of the words. it was a rough time being liberal in the houston suburbs.

yesterday i was working with some volunteers out in one of my communities. we were talking about a flyer (flier - each spelling is acceptable). we print our fliers/flyers with english on one side and spanish on the other. she said that she regretted that we had to put spanish on the back. i said that i did, too, thinking that she meant that they should be on the same side and then we would have more room for different content on the back.* then she said, "this is america, speak english. i wouldn't go to your country and expect to be allowed to speak english."**

situations like these hit me out of the blue. when i was a grad student, the differences of opinion that we had were, from a more distant perspective, pretty minor. if i thought someone was totally wrong, i would just go on the attack. if my extended family says something that troubles me, and they almost never do, my brother and sister an i engage them in a battle.

so i froze and the color drained from my face. the volunteer that did not make the comment noticed and tried to smooth things over by saying that they were just "venting" between each other and that they would never say that in front of the girls they mentor. she said that people are better than the sound. i looked right at the woman who made the comment and said, "yes, people are better than they sound."

what am i supposed to do in a situation like that? she is a volunteer and i am doing a job. i couldn't freak out in my normal way. and i am not cool-headed enough to explain things to her her rationally. later i thought that maybe i should have said that i am part native american or something and fully agreed that people should speak the language of the country to which they immigrate. you know, rather than engage her in some more complicated argument.

anyway, what would you do? how would you handle something like that?

* i regretted the entire flyer. the design was horrible. i honestly thought that she was talking about the fact that there was no space for a rip-off interest form, which is driving me and my volunteers batty.

** i seriously doubt that if she went to another country, say japan, she would expect to learn that countries language.

i cannot believe that i am 31

2007-09-12T22:43:00.000-05:00

i think there is a reason that my little brother calls me little sister. it isn't a particularly flattering reason.

even if i ate meat this would gross me out

2007-09-11T08:23:00.000-05:00

i am going to a dinner meeting on friday evening to a place called Beef O'Brady's.

becoming my mother

2007-09-09T23:21:00.000-05:00

when i was a kid, my sister and i loved to watch "little house on the prairie." it came on before dinner time, and my mother was always cooking when it was on. she would watch a few minutes here and there. even watching a third of the show at the most, she would still cry every time.

i have been watching episodes of "ugly betty" online. i cried at one of the episodes just now. i don't care what you think or i wouldn't have told you.

i wandered lonely as a cloud

2007-09-09T14:37:00.000-05:00

i am recycling old notebooks, but going through all of them first to save blank pages. i found the little diary in which i wrote poetry in high school. (i was depressed! cut me some slack! at least i don't do it anymore.) i am getting rid of it and wonder why i kept it so long. also going away are notebooks from both undergrad and grad school. it would seem that i am a pack rat.

drivin on 9

2007-09-07T10:43:00.000-05:00

my job involves a lot of driving around in madison and surronding communities. for the past three days i have gotten lost. on wednesday i missed an exit to marshall and had to drive an extra 10 or 11 miles before there was another. on thursday i made about a thousand wrong turns in deforest. i get lost there all of the time. in my defense, their street signs are hard to read (black and white with a strange, crowded font) and i think i need new glasses anyway. today i missed the 12/18 exit going to cambridge. on the way back, i went the wrong way on 12/18 for about 2 miles. i have no idea how i can get lost so easily. it makes my job challenging, but at least my teensy car gets good mileage. driving around, especially given the absented mindedness and confusion that sends me way off course, gives me a lot of time to think, which is often quite horrible given my often morose nature. today wasn't so bad. a little bad, but suprisingly okay. i thought through some things and made a couple of decisons, one of which was to make an optometry appointment.

anyway, the best part of my drive today was passing a truck weigh station that was actually open! in my experience they are almost always closed. not only did this one ask that trucks stop, but as they left, there was an electronic message board that said, "okay go ahead." cracked me up. i tried very hard to remember it, and i did. i also tried to remember the lyrics to a country song that i caught when i was scanning the radio signals. i think the song had the word "bone" in it, but that is all i can dredge up. like skeletal bones, befofe your mind takes that trip to the gutter.

The next time you feel you're all worn out remeber life is just a story, don't you doubt

2007-09-07T10:30:00.000-05:00

so, a couple things. i don't want to make it seem like i am a treat to date or something. i can drive people away with my tenacity and neediness. whatevs. there you go.

also, i am in love with jeff lewis. so there. he cheered me up a bit this morning. take that!

if looks could kill I'd kill the men whose looks would kill you if looks could kill

2007-09-06T23:25:00.000-05:00

so, i have previously blogged about the first person i kissed. the way he won me over and the way he let me go. when we started dating, he delighted in the fact that he stole me away from my roommate, who, honestly, at the time did not seem to care until i was being stolen. gary was mean to me, manipulative, fed on my insecurities, and seemed to take delight in telling me that i was just not good enough. why did this make him so appealing? (answer: i am really fucked up.) everyone i know who has known him is awed by his meanness, even his close friends.*

there is a funny part of me that is certain that i will prevail when presented with the challenge of turning someone who is just not into me** into someone who will stay with me forever. i am pushy and it makes things worse. i seem to be especially drawn to situations that i know will end poorly. gary was never going to like me and i knew it pretty early on. the mix tape was the only thing nice that he ever did. he was dismissive of me. i was always quiet and depressed around him.*** i thought he and i were alike because we were both so miserable. i thought maybe we could be miserable together. i worked very hard to be miserable with him, even though i was plenty sad on my own.

i don't think i am yet over gary. not because i love him or something, because i definitely don't and never did, but because being rejected by someone so horrible makes me feel like i must be even worse than that. how could something beastly reject me? wouldn't i be a good enough option? how could he think i wasn't? he did, and part of me regrets not convincing him of my worth because it makes me doubt the parts of me that might be good. additionally, any person who could be enough for him must certainly have been superior to me. this person must be more than me. more everything than me. more everything good and maybe even more somethings bad that then become lovable quirks.

* sean had no beef with gary. he liked him because once gary kissed him on the forehead. i have never understood how sean could feel this way about someone who actively tried to make my life worse.

** i can decide whether to link to the amazon page about the "just not that into you" book or to jeremy's posts about it, so fuck it. no link.

*** now i am more loud than quiet. probably a bit less depressed, but i think i cry more often.

when i type in neuropsychologist, spell chekc wants me to use parapsychologist

2007-09-06T00:25:00.000-05:00

i have other, more distressing news, but i will tell you about my brain instead. i get to go to the neuropsychologist on october 3rd. the testing will take 4-6 hours. i'm not really sure what i will be doing and the woman who scheduled my appointment was not terribly forthcoming with information. i am happy to go and they can do whatever they want to me. within reason.

i'm afraid that my medications keep me up past my bed time. i am always exhausted, but when i go to sleep, i don't actually go to sleep. i need to stop taking my pills before i go to bed. even though the label on the side of the container indicates that i may experience drowsiness. big fucking lie. i plan to be a zombie tomorrow, which is great because i have to chair a meeting at 8:00 pm and then possibly go home and bake a cake.

stop referencing flowers for algernon!

2007-08-27T09:57:00.000-05:00

okay, but i saw my neurologist this morning. he referred me to a neuropsychologist who will (likely) do a "battery of tests" on me. IQ, spatial and verbal memory, little recall tests, and stuff like that. could be fun. my doctor kept saying that the neuropsychologist would be very interested in my cognitive abilities. i don't think i mind feeling like a rat or a toy.

my doctor told me, which he hadn't mentioned before, that the temporal lobe is involved in memory. i'm sure i could have looked it up myself, and maybe i did. who knows! he also seemed to stop down-playing the size of the damaged area.

we also discussed what would be benefitial about donating my brain. i asked, he didn't suggest it. he told me that, yes, my brain would be a valuable resource. at my urging, he explained what they would do and what they would probably find. i'm excited at the prospect of people examining me postmortem. one of the saddest things about being alive is that i cannot look at my guts and see how i am made. i know i can see how other people are put together, but i want to see my skeleton, my muscles, my organs...

anyway, back to my brain: i guess i hope there is a problem. it would certainly help in the reduction of negativity i feel about my overall failure at life. at least at the life i planned on having. i will let you know how it goes. i don't have the appointment yet. i have to wait on the request to go through my primary care physician.

green eyed

2007-08-27T09:56:00.001-05:00

my roommate is spending a lot of time with her girlfriend.* i am unhappy about this for a few reasons. i like to think that the most upsetting is how annoying i find the girlfriend. she is very superficial. in middle school, i think superficial was an insult of choice, but i think it applies in this situation. there is just no depth. today she and maria came in to find me sewing a hook onto one of my shirts. she told maria and me that her mother sews well and she is going to start sewing. she recently bought some really sweet patterns. a pattern for some really sweet pants and a pattern for a really sweet shirt. and she got the fabric at the vogue fabric store in chicago.** the fabric is, i hear, sweet. i dunno. i just can't handle that level of inanity. i'm not saying i'm super smart or anything; anyone who knows me knows that i am on a quick trip to stupidville. i would just ask that there was one interesting thing she could say that would make me give a shit. i find it disheartening that maria likes her because, though i don't know maria well, i like to think she should be with and would want to be with someone with a little more to her.

i am also, unfortunately, jealous. in two ways. i am jealous because i wish maria were around to hang out with more. it was more fun to sit around with her in the apartment when she wasn't just rushing around to go out, talking to her girlfriend, or talking about her girlfriend. so, even though she has only been dating this woman for a week, i am jealous of the time she takes up, which is also weird because i barely know maria. i just really like having people around to talk to. it is a wonder i didn't die living alone. seriously, i hate being by myself.

i am, of course, also jealous that maria is in a relationship that she seems to be enjoying. i can't remember ever being in a relationship were you meet someone and they really like you and you really like them. i only date people i have been friends with and usually only because i have worn them down with my relentless insistence that they hang around me. it is no one's fault that i am unpalatable and am like a thing you might eat because it is in front of you.*** it certainly has nothing to do with maria and there is no reason i should even think of her life and compare it to my own and wonder why she gets to have an exciting new person who wants to date her. so i am jealous and it is because i am a bad person. secret is out. i am a bad person. i even sort of want the relationship to end disastorously. maria was also much more fun when she was unhappy. happiness makes people boring. so, i am jealous of her happiness and made bored by it.

presumably i would also be boring if i were happy, so maybe i shouldn't wish that on myself.

* i guess they are girlfriends.

** i think it was chicago. she may have said that it was a suburb of chicago and my brain just turned it into chicago.

*** i dislike popcorn immensely but will still eat it if there is a bowl placed in front of me.

lazy dorotha's

2007-08-26T09:21:00.000-05:00

what the fuck are scones doing? i thought they were small and dry and less sweet. now they seem to be gigantic, very sweet, soft, jumbley messes. when i looked on wikipedia just now, the entry said that british scones are like our biscuits (not not their own biscuits, of course). but i have been to england, and i thought i remembered scones as dry and less sweet little lumps. my memory is not so good, but i can usually recall stuff from my childhood better than things from the reccent past.

i live next to lazy jane's. last week i had scones for breakfast three times because i didn't have time to go grocery shopping. i had a pumpkin scone, an almond scone, and a cherry scone. i don't like cherries, but i was in a hurry and the situation was awkward. i just shouted out the first variety i saw.

i have been making a lot of culinary disasters lately. i think i need to specialize on one kind of thing to be good at. maybe scones. i also need to learn to keep things simple until i master them. no beet, or chik'n nugget, or almond roca scones until i master plain ones.

desperate

2007-08-22T09:59:00.000-05:00

please, if you are bored, consider looking around for a new job for me. i am beyond ready to leave this job. send me anything you think i would be qualified for as i tend to think i am bad at everything. just something in madison for now.

i am incompetent, though, when it comes to my job. if a job post says that strong organizational skills are required, it is probably not a position i will be able to fill. send it anyway. maybe i can change.

i will be your best friend for ever.

three's company

2007-08-19T08:57:00.000-05:00

i haven't had a roommate in a long time. it has been, so far, fun and games. i am picking up new mannerisms that, when i realize i have picked them up, annoy me, even though it seems quite normal and innocuous when maria does them. that's fine. she says she has picked up some of mine, and i believe her, even if i haven't observed this. it is a nice thing, i think, to have someone with whom a mutual adjustment has gone smoothly. we both like the word "underpants."

there is one thing that has suddenly emerged that makes me a bit skittish. she brought someone home last night. a new someone that did not exist in our little world at the beginning. if maria had been with this person from the get go i think i would barely even notice, but now i need to make an adjustment. i don't remember what you do in a situation like this. maria had given me a bit of a warning yesterday that there was someone she was interested in, and when i walked into our apartment at 11:00 yesterday, i knew who the extra person in the living room must be. i said hello, stood around for a minute, and then dashed up to my bedroom. i think i did well. i acknowledged her, but didn't stay around long enough to get in the way.

what about now, this morning? do i need to change into real clothes, or are pajamas okay? what do i say when they wander out bleary eyed and i am sitting on the couch eating snicker doodles? i just need to be reminded.

presumably (hopefully?) there is a chance, however small, that i could start seeing someone and will have to repeat the process with a reversal of roles. do you think i could pull it off without making every party uncomfortable? like i said, it has been a long, very long time since i have had a roommate. 7 years? i can forget many things in 7 years.

better left unsaid

2007-08-16T06:40:00.000-05:00

lately i have been writing blog posts and then not posting them. they aren't working exactly right. for example, reccently jj and jon and i went to see jane wiedlen from the Go-Go's. it was tragic and horrible. she was drunk and/or fucked up on something else (glue?). it was horrible to watch. she kept telling priest child molestation jokes which i never find funny, but certainly not when delivered poorly by someone who keeps shouting to the audience that we should listen to her and that she was in a famous band. before she performed a band, whose name i have forgotten but have no desire to remember, played. they were noteworthy only in that one member played all of the percussion instruments that are given to the kid in junior high band who didn't actually get to play the drums. except the xylophone. he played those things you shake like a martini, but sound full of sand. he played a tambourine. he played the triangle. and he was damned happy about that.

and i didn't tell you that story, which actually had more to it than all that. a couple who were groping each other in especially skanky ways right in front of us. screaming cyn-cyn and the pons. jj's funny comparison about jane wiedlin and an episode of 90210...

i don't feel like telling you about my roommate, about whom i have written a post that i have not published. i don't feel like complaining about work or telling my DMV story. what i want to tell you is this:

i do not want to hold your baby. if i am forced to hold your baby, i would prefer that you not make fun of me for being awkward. i am sorry that i do not like babies. they are extremely boring. if they could talk, walk, or do anything i would be much more impressed. because i am so uninterested in your child, and you know this fact, i think it would be to both of our advantages to avoid having me hold your son. you will be afraid i will drop him and i will not really give a shit if i do.

for the record, i did not drop him nor did i even come close.

working hard or hardly working?

2007-08-07T12:41:00.000-05:00

i know i complain about my job a lot, but part of the reason is not just that it is boring and my co-workers think i am weird and don't get my jokes. the other problem with my job is that i am not good at it. my job requires skills that i do not have: organization and attention to detail. my job description probably puts that as the very last skill needed, but it should be the first above all else. it doesn't hurt that my memory is bad, but i don't think this can explain everything. last fall is a blur, sure, and i can't remember names or faces of people i've met, but this is probably pretty normal. i've decided that i have got to get out of this job. there are tricky things involved with this. for example, i have no idea where i am going to live in a year. i'm not in love with madison and see little reason to stay here, especially as my friends will all be leaving soon. is it worth it to change jobs only to move? besides, given my grouchiness, i could easily hate the next thing just as much.

here is my plan: i will expend effort trying to figure out what i actually want to do.* if i happen to also be good at what i what to do, then i figure out whether or not i might be able to pull it off. until then, i am going to lie. i am going to tell everyone i interact with at work, including all of the volunteers i supervise, that i can't remember anything, ever. not just stuff that happened in the past few years, which is truly lost, but things that happened yesterday.** how can i file if i forget that i even need to? sure, there are piles of paper on my desk, but are they mine? yes, i guess i did approve that ridiculous request, my name is on it after all, but i have no recollection why i would do this! i'm hoping this strategy is effective.

* i like teaching, but don't really know how to go about this. still, i do think about it as a possibility. i'm not sure who i would want to teach or what i would want to teach them. this morning driving to work, i was thinking about my kid brother who works at a private school in new orleans. i sometimes ask him for his advice on this subject. one thing i know i would want to borrow from him is a great method for keeping his kids on task. he sings to them, which is pretty funny because he, like me, has a horrible singing voice. he makes up little songs indicating when they should turn in tests, what chapters to read, reminders to tidy things, and, my favorite, when to go to the next class. his students like him a great deal and tend to dawdle. chuck treats them to a little number that goes, "get out of my face, get out of my face, i don't ever want to see you again." the kids love it and sing along at the end of every class. and they leave on time.

** yeah, so i don't remember many things that happened for at least two years. yesterday i was looking at the staff recommendations in the young adult section at a bookstore. one book was marked with a card that said something to the effect of "what would you do if you lost all memory of the past two years of your life?" what would you do? i need to know! the story, it turns out, is about a boy who ineffectually shoots himself in the head only to suffer brain damage that erases his memory. in his case some of the problems he encounters are a best friend who doesn't like him anymore, family members who are mistrustful, and the like, all for no reason obvious to him! i did not buy the book, but am happy to use the excuse it offers. if i have offended you, if we are on the outs, if i owe you large sums of money, then i should let you know that i am off the hook because i do not remember any of this happening. cut me some slack. it is like i have taken a bullet to the brain.

opportunity for increased sales

2007-08-01T20:25:00.000-05:00

what percentage of these prescriptions do you think will be improperly disposed of on october 13th? i'm not really sure that i have the social skills necessary to sell drugs, but if i did, this seems like it would be a good day to be a city of madison streets and recycling employee.

slime in the ice machine

2007-07-30T08:39:00.000-05:00

i don't know why this is making me so sad, but marvin zindler died yesterday. he was an "investigative reporter" on the houston abc affiliate. he reported daily for Eye Witness News, the station my family watched. he was well known for exposing consumer fraud and for uncovering restaurants with health code violations. perhaps his greatest contributions to the world were providing the impetus for sneeze guards on salad bars and buffets and uncovering the brothel that was the inspiration for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

i always thought he looked like a negative image roy orbison. you be the judge.

a tiny thing that might lead someone to think i am unhinged

2007-07-23T08:34:00.000-05:00

my roommate and i got the keys to our apartment early. my roommate is excited because she has an unpleasant living situation in a house with too many people and too many vermin. she has moved in most of her belongings. i am okay with that, really, except that i am not. i won't be bringing my large furniture over until somewhere around august 3rd. she is going to have tons of time to become used to tables and chairs in specific locations. it shouldn't matter to me, it is just stuff, but i am increasingly tense and nervous about this. my big concern is my bookshelves. i'd really like to not have bookshelves in my bedroom. i'd sort of like to have as empty a bedroom as possible. it would be nice to have the place where i sleep as tidy as possible, at least this one time in my life. i want my books downstairs.

my roommate thinks i am nuts because this is all i talk about. where will my books go? we have some built in shelves, but they are very shallow and my books may not fit. my comic books are certainly too big. my larger playmobil landscapes won't even fit. i don't know what we will put on the shelves. we will have to scrounge through our stuff like pigs after truffles to find the right knickknacks.

the only other problem with this is the embarrassment and shame i feel when people, strangers and friends both, look at my book collection. i have always had a difficult relationship with books. it is very easy to read a title or catch an author's name and then make a quick judgement about a person. what would you think of me if, walking into my apartment, the first thing you saw was a shelf of romance novels? a shelf of books like the secret? management books? i somehow recently acquired about 10 books by ursula le guin that were in a free pile or on the street or something. i took them because i read most of them when i was in middle school and junior high. i'm not in love with the books or anything, but i am going to keep them anyway. if you saw those books on a shelf, what would it make you think? what if you saw all of my (now useless) sociology books?*

i have had this problem at least back to kindergarten. the first time we went to the school library, we were told that we should stay in one particular area with the very early reader books. it was explained that some books would be too hard for us and we might become frustrated. as we advanced in our reading skills, our teacher or librarian would tell us we could move on. no one ever told me that i could move on. i don't think i was a bad reader, but i know i was very quiet and was probably just overlooked. as a result, i felt that i could never leave the picture book section of the library. i eventually felt like it was easier to blend in with my peers if i made furtive trips into the older kid areas, but i would take whatever i grabbed back with me to the tiny tables by the easy readers. it is a wonder i ever got past hop on pop. even in high school, when visiting the public library, i would have to spend a good 15 minutes in the children's room before i could dash out and grab books for young adults or even, gasp, regular old grown-up books (mostly stephen king). i stopped being comfortable in libraries when my dad told me they could keep records of things i checked out, after all, they have to know who needs fines levied against them.

even now i get very nervous in bookstores. i get sort of twitchy and on edge. i look around to see if anyone is watching before i take something off of the shelf. i hate running into people i know. if that happens, i usually can't buy anything and leave the store immediately.

yesterday i moved some things into my new place while my roommate was out and about. i was talking with a friend on my cell phone (miraculously, i did not drop anything). he asked me what books my roommate had. see! first thing people want to know. what kind of person is she?** well, let's check what books she has on her shelves.

it is absolutely reasonable that i freak out about books. i am being watched.

* seriously, i feel like i should have an essay contest for incoming grads to the department. whoever can convince me they deserve the books gets a stack so big it will save them at least $1,000!

** this is not to say that the person i was talking to was using her books as a criteria to judge her. we were talking about my books and he asked what was on her shelf. it is just a natural question. if i had been talking about my dishes, he probably would have asked about hers, etc. just because i was uncomfortable about the book thing doesn not mean that my friend was trying to make me feel guilty or uncomfortable. in fact, i don't believe he knew about my book problem. i also don't think my roommate would care if i told anyone about her books.

not since i last wore flannel

2007-07-17T18:00:00.000-05:00

there is a pepsi commercial about political correctness that has been airing lately. i cannot imagine what happened in what boardroom that this commercial is on the air. i think making fun of political correctness is stupid but it is also really outdated, isn't it? i mean, weren't people making fun of political correctness in the 90's? the commercial says something like "now days, you have to be 'politically correct.'" now days? try at least 10-15 years ago, pepsi-cola! the movie PCU came out in 1994!*

on my drive home from lodi, wisconsin, i saw someone very greasy looking. it got me to thinking about the amount of fat in the human body, which in turn made me think of the "wick effect" theory of spontaneous human combustion. i don't think i have had a discussion about this with someone since high school or early college. i also don't think i have had a conversation about serial killers in quite a while. do all teenagers go through a phase in which spontaneous human combustion and charles manson are fascinating? i know i wasn't the only one.

* have you seen this commercial? am i missing the joke? it is just stupid, right?

knock at little louder baby!

2007-07-13T08:07:00.000-05:00

in elementary school, if we finished our work early, we were asked to quietly put our heads on our desks. my head was often on my desk. our desk tops were "wood", our chairs were plastic, and the legs were metal. with your ear on the desk, you could kicked or hit the different elements and hear different sounds.* it was something to do and was sort of calming. the desk was cool against my face, but it would become warm and i would have to find another spot. other kids would do this, too, but i continued the practice well into middle school. high school was out of the question as i was weird enough already. i missed it. i would have put my head on the cool desk and kicked the leg of my chair. sit quietly. don't put your head down. don't fall asleep. in some classes i would read with my book on my desk, in other classes i had to hide my book in my lap so other kids wouldn't know i was reading.

i have work to do today. i have people to call, meetings to arrange, paper to file, spreadsheets to update. all i want to do is put my head on my desk.

* is this why i enjoy getting mri's?

unfortunately i have a short tongue

2007-07-12T16:06:00.000-05:00

when my mother was especially irritated with me, she would say, "i can't win for losing with you!" this is how i feel about my eyes. yesterday my right eye would not stop running. today my left eye is itchy and dry. i wish i were a gecko.

at first i wondered if this was a good use of my membership dollars

2007-07-11T19:26:00.000-05:00

hey, what are you doing right now? yeah? well, i'm watching a pbs documentary about synchronized swimming. so there! so far, more interesting than i would have guessed. as weird as it looks from the top, it looks more bizarre from below. some pretty weird maneuvering is required to swim in place at an angle with your feet in the air and your head underwater.

i feel pretty bad for the girl who learns facial expressions to use in performance by watching passions. she seems to like the show, but that is a big sacrifice for sport, if you ask me.

what will they think of next!

2007-07-10T14:39:00.000-05:00

in 1965, the Girl Scouts in the greater madison area sold cookies called "four flavor shorties." i think that four flavors of "shorties" must have come in the box, but i'd kind of like to think it is some sort of willy wonka style "shorty" that tastes of four different flavors at once!

why i will never be a (real) missed connection

2007-07-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

the co-op was not very busy this morning. i bought more food than normal, and two bored cashiers offered to help me pack my groceries. i said no, but i am not entirely sure why. they both acted somewhat offended, one even gave a snippy "fine!" is it that big a deal that i didn't need help? i won't be missed.

i did get a delicious, juicy cantaloupe which i suspect is better than a missed connection anyway.

i swear i like my family...

2007-07-01T10:03:00.000-05:00

... however, from my mom's voice on the phone, i am 200% sure my dad is being a phenomenal dick. i can't wait to meet up with them later!

slut

2007-06-25T21:23:00.000-05:00

a few weeks ago i was in love with at least 3 or 4 people. then i decided that i probably wasn't. this weekend i decided that i wasn't even interested in pretending like i was in love with anyone, even just for fun. today i am singing a different tune. when i was doing laundry, a sock flew into my dryer from across the laundromat. my black, white, and burgundy argyle sock! a boy was putting his clothes in the washer i had just used and had rescued my sock from a life without it's pair!

as if that weren't enough, as i was leaving he rode up on his bicycle and smiled at me. someone should let him know that i am easy.

good to bad to worse?

2007-06-24T19:59:00.000-05:00

karaoke was delightful last night, until things got ugly. i think we left around 1:00, and i guess things must have turned bad around midnight when a group of people wearing headbands and matching shirts showed up. one man, an undergrad, did a horrible rendition of a song i can't remember ("let's get it on" maybe?), including impromptu cries of "motherfucker" and air fucking. it was disturbing in the extreme, and i was upset not just by the aggression, but also by the speaking in tongues. i'm not keen on making fun of religion - i just recently asked my christian coworkers to stop making fun of mormons - and the speaking in tongues came off as racist on top of that. we asked erika to move "total eclipse of the heart" up to the top of the queue and then jj and i got the fuck out of there.

on the street outside there were multiple women dressed lik a college student's approximation of a hooker. there were men making loud barking sounds. we passed the corner with wando's and were somewhat relieved by the presence of police officers, even if they were just giving out tickets to underage drinkers. the parking garage was remarkably asshole free, but driving out of it was more of a challenge as jj had to maneuver the car passed drunk people. when we made it to johnson, i commented that things seemed so much calmer by just driving one block. just then we saw a boy and girl in a parking lot running in a circle because... they were chasing a rabbit. drunk undergrads chasing a bunny in a circle.

i don't know what

2007-06-10T10:24:00.000-05:00

my dad was in town this weekend. he had a conference in chicago and drove up after to hang out with me. we didn't do much of anything except for walk up and down state street and eat at restaurants a lot. at the end of state street there is a small barber shop. jon gets his hair cut there and dad needed a hair cut. he got one at college barber because jon, who is very ambivalent about his appearance, might have recommended it had he been there.

two things stand out about dad's visit. the first is that i had a chance to look at his arm and check out his scars from the surgery in which they gave him zombie bones. i am disappointed that i never got a picture of it.

thing #2 - we also talked about our family, primarily my mother's strange behaviors. this weekend she drove to austin from the woodlands to check up on her mother's health and well being and to entertain my dad's mother. my mother thinks that my evil grandmother must be very lonely because she no longer has my grandfather to abuse. maybe she is lonely. i told my dad that if grandmother is lonely it is because she reaps what she sows. my dad takes criticism of his mother well, even though i know it must hurt him to hear me talk that way about her. i think my dad would spend less time with her if not for my mom. he once again mentioned in passing that she physically abused him when he was a kid. if it were me, and i know that it isn't, i would be unhappy that my spouse kept forcing me to see her. i know i resent having to interact with her.

my mom saw her mother, too. on friday night, she helped her mother put furniture and things back in place after a visit from an exterminator. she stayed the night because she wanted to watch my grandmother go to bed. i think there is some worry that she just sits in a chair all night. on saturday morning, she talked to my grandmother for a spell. probably had a cup of instant coffee. when she went outside to leave, a neighbor came up to talk to her about my grandmother. she has lived in the house for a long time and her neighbors also check in on her and wanted to talk to my mom about their concerns. this made my mom 30 minutes late to my evil grandmothers house. she was upset. my mom felt guilty.

my mom stayed overnight at my evil grandmother's house on saturday this seems strange because her goal is to watch over her mother as she sleeps. creepy! she is staying tonight at my good grandmother's house. she will drive straight to work, leaving round rock at 4:00 in the morning. sometimes my mother will arrive in austin at 2 in the morning. sometimes my mother leaves work at midnight. my family cannot convince my mother not to drive in the middle of the night. we are all certain that my mother will fall asleep at the wheel one of these days. what can we do?

we cannot understand my mother's behavior and we cannot change it. it is hard to think about loving her and watching her martyr herself. it is confusing to wonder if she prefers her life this way and might miss it if we convinced her to stop. i feel guilty thinking that i am not doing enough to get her out of this, but we cannot even convince her to buy shoes that do not hurt her feet.

things that should be easy but aren't

2007-06-07T12:58:00.000-05:00

my job. i really feel like my job should be easy. unfortunately my job is simultaneously boring and stressful. my job also requires organization, which i do not have. i can never find anything on my desk, and then i freak out and have to throw papers everywhere. after that, i don't file them, i through them right back in a jumbled pile. additionally, i can't seem to focus on one thing for more than 5 minutes at max. i'm always jumping up to do something else. today i am in the middle of typing up notes from parent conflicts. two annoyed parents in one day sucks. i am in the middle of entering names and contact information into a spreadsheet. i am in the middle of looking up numbers of girl registrations per elementary school. i am in the middle of preparing some mailings. i am in the middle of checking up on little things. pick one!

do i do this to myself because my job is so boring that i can't stay focused? it is probably a symptom of the same thing that leads to never cleaning my apartment. i start cleaning the bathroom. i decide to mop it, but then i go get the mop and use it in the kitchen instead. i'm in the kitchen, so i may as well wash some dishes. next to the sink is a can for recyclyng, so i put it in my recycling bin. there is a stack of paper to be recyclyed which inspires me to go around the house picking up magazines. as i am doing that, i notice that there are cords from thousands of appliances strewn across my floor. i start untangling them. i notice that my dvds are not in alphabetical order. i think about alphabatizing my books and notice that they are stacked up next to the shelves instead of on them. my playmobil collection happens to be on bookshelves, so i start setting them up. i think about the other toys in my apartment and.... anyway, i never actually complete any of these things.

this is why my life is a mess.

being alone is the best way to be

2007-06-06T12:47:00.000-05:00

living alone is lonely sometimes, but the worst part for me is that i eat weird crap. when jeff and stamie lived next door we would alternate who would cook dinner. that was fun and tasty. now my neighbor is some guy who is learning to play guitar, thankfully acoustic. he cooks his dinner at 10:30 at night. i know because i can smell it through the wall somehow. it always smells like meat.

without jeff and stamie i only have one person to cook for. that means that, unless i want food rotting in my fridge, i can only get 2 vegetables a week and an apple or two. i know i should eat more fresh fruits and veggies, but sometimes i eat out and stuff. this means that if i get a head of broccoli, i have to eat broccoli all week. if i get green beans, it is nothing but green beans. especially because i always underestimate how many beans are in the bag. two weeks in a row i bought asparagus because it is the best food on earth. i ate asparagus three days a week, which is pretty awesome, but i don't really want to get burned out on asparagus.

the other problem with cooking just for me is that i am not trying to impress anyone or even cater to their tastes. i end up eating whatever is around. sometimes i mix frozen corn and peas and pour the left over portion of a jar of spaghetti sauce over it and toss it in the microwave. is this good or tasty or even pretty to look at? no, but it is food. it requires no extra pots and pans. it is ready almost immediately. how about a spoonful of peanut butter and some raw green beans. okay. it isn't my dream meal, but i don't even have to get a plate dirty! a can of black beans, sometimes heated in a pot but always with cayenne pepper and cumin thrown in, plopped down on a tortilla. that's practically fancy! macaroni and cheese with peas tossed in. a whole bowl of edamame. pretzels and chunks of muenster cheese.

i'm one step away from eating uncooked rice-a-roni.

miss you

2007-06-05T22:38:00.000-05:00

here's the thing. i have developed an unhealthy habit. i check the missed connections section of craigslists compulsively. multiple times a day. someone sometime is going to miss me. they are going to see me and wish they knew me or they are going to know me and wish they hadn't lost me. this will happen and i will be there when it does. so, you know, if you have been thinking about it, i'm about to check right now. hurry up and post!

speak when spoken to

2007-06-04T08:22:00.000-05:00

i used to be very good at this.

talk about bum cakes

2007-06-03T14:53:00.000-05:00

another thing about me that i have just discovered. i have really wide hips. i have always known that the top of me is smaller than the bottom of me, but i guess i didn't really think about the curves involved in that. i mean, the only curves i thought were involved were my breasts, which are not very curvy, they are just small. i knew my hips were wide, but i guess i thought all of me was universally wide. like a tube of cookie dough that has maybe been squeezed a tiny bit here an there. whatever. i could still be wrong. maybe my hips are not gigantic. anyway, these are crude drawings of how i perceived myself up until yesterday, how i think i must really look, and what i think girls are supposed to look like. yeah, i know that girls are not supposed to look like anything and there are all these varieties of body shapes, blah, blah, blah. come on people! everybody knows that girls are supposed to look like undergrads!

anyway, it is no wonder that when i tell sean i look like a boy he argues vehemently that i don't. i look like i could birth triplets all at the same time.

update! i just looked in the mirror again. i may have exaggerated the width of my hips. i really wish i could figure out what i look like.

true colors

2007-06-03T13:35:00.000-05:00

my sister, knowing that i am currently way into earth shoes, bought me a pair even though they cost a million dollars. she really hates to spend money. she found these somewhere online for sale. and i don't think i can really return them. before i received the shoes she told me that we could work out a way to return them if i didn't like them.

my brother and sister have very narrow comfort zones when it comes to color. this is weird to me because i find neutral colors sort of restrictive. i think that maybe my sister just doesn't understand color. sean told me that he will be teaching a color theory class for one semester.* i'm wondering if my sister might need to take this class. the shoes she bought me are a deep plum color. she thinks they match everything. blacks and browns. i agreed, but commented that they would not match the shirt i was wearing. bright orange (as you can see from the picture). she didn't understand why. how do you explain to someone over the phone that deep, deep plum doesn't really match with traffic cone orange? i would just understand without being shown a picture. christie might not understand even if she saw the two in person. i've got to say in the pictures i've attached the strange color of plum is not quite captured. imagine something a little redder and a little browner. i really wish the color came out better. in this picture i could sort almost see them matching. in any case, orange is a strange choice of color to pair with plum. i also had a difficult time explaining that only certain pants would go with platform mary janes. i was wearing very, very baggy men's jeans yesterday. it just looked weird. a person needs tighter, shorter pants so that the shape of the shoe is more obvious.

christie insists these are everyday shoes. there is nothing i could possibly wear that wouldn't match. sometimes when my mother buys me presents i obviously wouldn't like, i ask question whether or not she knows me. in this case i think something else is at play. i think maybe my sister just does not understand color or style.

she also looked at these shoes, but rejected them because she thought them so bizarre that no one would ever wear them. these are shoes i actually really like. i can't swap because my mother thinks it will hurt my sister's feelings. if you see me in these shoes, you now know why. i am trapped. they are quite comfortable. i should stop being whiny and instead be more practical.

* i think he said that he will be but he could have said might be.

we're almost happy, she's almost like you

2007-05-31T22:17:00.000-05:00

jon emailed me today letting me know that he is a disertator. very good work for a mostly good boy!

i'm honestly very happy for him and am almost finding it difficult to feel sorry for myself. don't get my wrong, i'm still whiny and pathetic and way too into being whiny and pathetic. i just feel like i might normally hear this news and want to die. normally i would feel like a fuck up. i am super big on comparing myself to others and always finding myself wanting. today today i heard the news and felt good. i am not sure whether i am more proud of him for passing another hurdle in grad school or for expressing positive emotion about it, but no matter which way you slice it i am pleased or glad or something that is a slower, less ecstatic kind of happy. jon really is basically good. he may have been awful to date, but i do care for him and want to see him do well in life.

the picture is from the bathroom door of the karaoke kid. i swear it was not me who scratched the message into the door. i think i may have posted it before, but that doesn't make it any less appropriate.

different from me

2007-05-28T21:32:00.000-05:00

when sean and i were dating, i am embarrassed to admit, i was sometimes unreasonable in my expectations. i would become incensed if he told me the same story twice. this seems especially unfair given that, now, i cannot remember anything and repeat my own stories quite often. it does make it easier on the people around me because my forgetfulness makes everything they tell me all brand new.

i was also often shocked at the way that sean did things. usually the way he washed dishes or how loudly he left at television shows - the kinds of things you might pick up from your family. i tried not to be judgmental, but this has always been a challenge for me. my solution was to acknowledge a difference and then let it go. this didn't work because the label was a judgment.

i have a plant that i consider quite ugly. i want it out of my life. it isn't dead and i don't want to make it die. i neglect it horribly as it requires a great deal of water, but i always rescue it from the brink. today i emailed sean pictures of the beastly plant. he does not think it is so bad.

things i forgot about myself or that i reccently learned.

2007-05-26T10:03:00.000-05:00

i have learned three things about myself since i started working at the place i currently work (shhh! i decided not to say where i work).

1. i don't like lemon. we sell a lemon flavored cookie that my co-workers love. people were incredulous that i don't like that cookie and i mentioned that i don't like lemon bars either, which are another favorite around the office.* in my mind, i went through a host of lemon flavored edibles and realized that i don't really like any of them. i don't hate lemon and i would eat your lemon pastries or lemonade if i were at your home. i'd just rather not.

2. i walk funny. i am pigeon-toed. i am only now realized that i have a funny gait. i swing one hip more, compensating for my weird, dragging, pointed in foot. i don't know how i didn't notice this. my office has a long hall that i am constantly walking up and down. i guess something about that little trip exaggerated the extra bit of swing. now i am hyper aware of it. have i gotten more pigeon-toed? it seems like maybe i have.

3. having low self-esteem doesn't just make me hate myself. i suffered the delusion for many years that i appear emotionally normal in most situations, but i realized that being a neurotic mess of insecurity affects my job performance in even the tiniest of ways. that, in turn, leads to people not trusting my actions. really. i've been told this by my boss. the fact that i don't "believe in myself" has given my co-workers the impression that i don't know what i am doing. wah?

those are things i have learned at my place of work. here is something i learned last night at karaoke.

1. i am sometimes incredibly shy and self-conscious. i sang "the growly song" with jeremy, but felt uncomfortable the whole way through because there were so many strangers at the kid. in the karaoke heyday, there were always so many sociologists. i am shy. from my asshole-ish-ness you might think that i am desparate for attention. i promise that it is something else.

2. i really need to work on not being such an asshole. sheesh. one of these days someone is gonna knock my teeth out.

i'm such a freak. i dashed off after the growly song, embarrassed an strange.

i do, as of now, still have my teeth and my bad foot.

* okay, so pretty much any sweet is a favorite around my office. if you need to put on a few pounds, i can hook you up.

holy shit! i am lonely

2007-04-25T18:09:00.000-05:00

this post will change later. for now, just know that i am lonely. i am about to have a meeting with some warring parents, but i will still feel lonely. even though things might come to blows, i will feel disconnected from it all.

i want to go home and go to bed.

still in love?

2007-04-24T18:42:00.000-05:00

no, not so much. i feel sort of anxious-sick. work is stressful lately. my team is not living up to the goals, objectives, indicators, and whatnot. makes it hard to be happy. i come into work singing, but at the end of the day i am always scowling. too many meetings and too many other responsibilities. i'm not entirely sure what people in offices do with this. how do you get rid of that horrible feeling of not caring that much about your job but being expected to care about your job and it is your job so you better fucking do it?

so, yeah, i'm not in love anymore. i was pretty hyper and peppy this weekend, but that's kind of done for the week. i'm tired and down. i mean, i washed dishes and i am doing laundry, so that is sort of like being productive, but i really don't feel like doing anything else. i could probably bring myself to sew something.

i don't know. give me something else to be in love with. i think i am going to get rid of a plant, so don't ask me to love a plant. it is dying so i am going to give it to jon. not because i am going to be all like "here's a dead plant, fuck face!" more like, "dude, i can't take care of this, maybe you can since you seem to suddenly enjoy plants". so, give me something else to love. i don't want a mammal either.

i do still like my future roommate. i think. but i just like her, i don't like like her.

shiver at the sight of you

2007-04-23T08:19:00.000-05:00

i'm sure that everyone who reads this blog is probably already my friend, so you already know that jon and i broke up a few weeks ago. it is sad because these things are always sad, but it is also very good for me already. when i was dating jon we never did anything. he hardly ever wanted to leave the house except to go eat or go to toy stores. i'm already doing more things with other people. and while i am sad for myself, i am also very sad for him because the boy is so messed up. i don't think his particular vices help him any, either.

i also feel like a chump. he emailed me last week to ask if i would water his while he is in ohio. i said yes because i know there is no one else he can ask.* it really bothers me because he almost never called me before because he was too busy sitting, but now that his calendula and tomatoes might suffer he sends me longer emails.

things are actually quite good when i am not being sad. besides, i am in love with two people already. a friend of a friend i met at a bar who lives very far away, which is nice. i did copy two cds for him to take back, and i think i come off as only mildly creepy for doing that. i am also in love with the girl who is going to be my roommate. we talked for two hours when we met. we like some of the same things and are both collectors.** she is also just learning to sew and pulled a bag out of her back almost identical to the one i am making my friend monrovia.***

2 people, a 2 hour conversation, 2 cds, a boy a 2 degrees of separation. i will endeavor to make it 3's!

* rob, his roommate, is even more lethargic and self-medicated than jon.
** she collects chicken related things.
*** it will be cute. hope i didn't give too much away.

what have i become?

2007-04-18T23:11:00.000-05:00

lately i have been making myself stay awake until i can barely keep my eyes open just so that i am not left lying in my bed, thinking, thinking, thinking. i used to have insomnia when i was a kid. this is just another flowers for algernon moment for me.

cancel the midnight rollerskate parachute jump

2007-04-18T21:11:00.000-05:00

on monday my sister-in-law fell and broke her radius, basically right at the elbow. she was eating a bagel and talking on her cell phone while walking down stairs. she's very banged and bruised. tonight my father had a bicycle accident. a woman was using her cell phone while riding her bike. she cut my dad off or something and he flipped over the front of his bike trying to stop. his arm is broken in multiple places. my mother says it is also hanging at a funny angle. they iced it with frozen edamame. my parents are at the emergency room right now. dad brought the current issue of the bulletin of the atomic scientist and an AARP magazine. my mom is just watching non-stop coverage of the virginia shooting.

i am thinking i should avoid using my cell phone for a few days. then i will forget and get all willy-nilly with safety again.

i am bad for morale

2007-04-12T09:42:00.000-05:00

my coworker lorene just came into my office and commented that it is not cheerful enough. i have toys all over the place! how is that not cheerful?

we have whiteboards on which we right down our numbers* and she thinks i should have a positive, uplifting quote on it. the numbers are depressing, so i guess i see her point. plus, i don't want to bring everyone down, i guess. do you have any suggestions? right now i just have a quote from bert (& ernie), but it isn't particularly uplifting. just "i love paperclips!" what would you write on my whiteboard?

* number of girls. we are down. there is a quota we have not met.

destined to fail

2007-04-03T22:42:00.000-05:00

i was nudged into taking a position on the "sunshine committee" at work. the committee is in charge of organizing snacks and whatnot for holidays i don't actually care about. st. patrick's day, valentine's day, popcorn day, etc. we are currently planning for a going away party and a wedding shower. a complicated and annoying thing happened today related to this party planning. it freaking pissed me off. yes, it is ridiculous to get upset about the sunshine committee, but it would seem that there is no thing so small that i can't get upset about it. try me.

i have been pretty grouchy about all of the sunshine committee related things that i have been asked to do so far. today i almost tried to resign, but i wasn't sure if i would be allowed. i briefly wondered if i should quit my job so that i could quit the committee.

the funny thing is that i was pushed to be on the committee because i am a pessimist and it was generally felt that this would help me be more positive.

fuck that shit.

thanks!

2007-03-27T19:25:00.000-05:00

i have received 2 cards for the anniversary of my diagnosis! careyoke and joshie sent me a hand drawn note (drawn by careyoke, i suspect). my dad sent me a birthday card for a one year old. it had baby muppets (but not muppet babies) on it. thanks!

did this happen to anyone else?

2007-03-24T11:04:00.000-05:00

this is the kind of thing that makes me really wish that i had been diagnosed with something other than anxiety when i was in college. this story is pretty much what happened to me. i was out of my gourd when i would drink while on paxil. it felt awesome, but caused my friends great deal of concern. and i wanted to drink a lot.

this thursday, the 29th, is the anniversary of my diagnosis with epilepsy. i am happy about this because it was the day that i was put on medication to stop my seizures and the day that i finally was put on the path to kicking effexor. i wasn't allowed to stop taking it until they were sure that i was going to tolerate the lamictal. they didn't want to get me all screwy with my body chemistry, i guess. so, it probably took me 6 months to actually be rid of the stuff. i think i might have been taking something else, too.

i just remembered that i started seeing a counselor when i was in high school. i remember begging my mother, even though she agreed readily. i thought she was going to say no. i'd been hinting around at it for a couple of months and she had even said that there must be something wrong with me.* i wanted to go because i was having those weird episodes that i assumed were anxiety. i would get really confused in class and i complained of having deja vu** all of the time. i even complained about feelings of unreality and that the light would get really strange and that i couldn't see properly.*** i probably could have been diagnosed properly in high school. anyway, i will stop being all cranky and bitter. instead i am planning to treat thursday as a celebration of sorts. so yay for me! i told some of my friends that i am expecting greeting cards.

* okay, probably some of what is wrong with me is anxiety and depression. my mom had previously mentioned that i seemed like i had problems with both at earlier times in my life, but i don't remember having seizures before high school. i mean, maybe i was having seizures, but they were milder or something. anyway, the first time my mom suggested that i might need some sort of therapy was when i was five. i cried a lot and had insomnia when i was little. my mom said that if i didn't cheer up, she was going to send me to a psychiatrist. i don't know.

** feelings of deja vu are common for people with temporal lobe epilepsy. it is "classic". i wonder if a doctor would have caught this.

*** unreality and mild hallucination are also common. i remeber that it always got lighter when i had a seizure (in the early days). i would get weirded out because everything would get really bright but washed out looking. some people have visual hallucinations and some people smell things that aren't there. some people can have full on hallucinations, but i am not so lucky. that would probably be scary, but so much more impressive. i just lose all sense of place. dang, i am so boring.

iffy

2007-03-21T22:52:00.000-05:00

i don't know about boys. a kid* from my high school called me at 3:55 in the morning last night. yeah. we had a class together my freshman or sophmore year, i can't really remember. he was a nice boy, but very odd. we sat in the corner with a girl named julie. we all used to write funny little poems about history because the class** was so boring. i used to think steven had a crush on me, maybe. once he started telling me how great i was and i told him there was a wall between us (that is actually what i said). honestly, he was a pretty nice guy. anyway, he called out of the blue at 3:55 AM. he told me that he is in madison, passing through to milwaukee to see a sick relative. it was an odd conversation. as soon as i picked up the phone, he said he was sorry for waking me up and i probably had to worked tomorrow. yes, i said, i gotta make a living.

anyway, the conversation was quite odd. he mentioned some friends of mine that he had seen after we graduated from high school, but they were all references to events immediately after high school. he also asked me if i remembered working at randall's***, which of course i did. after all, i am the one who worked there, and he is the one who did not. i said that i hated ironing my uniform before i would go to work. he said he likes a crisp collar.

he told me he was applying for an assistant manager position at one of those horrible check cashing places*, and i said they were evil. he said if he got the job, he would stay in madison, but otherwise he was just passing through. he also said that he had worked in houston for a while for "internet companies" but that he left town on bad terms and that there were people angry with him. he said he had gone to school in indiana and that he had been in the navy.

it was quite odd. at the end of the conversation, i said, "well, don't stalk me." he said, "what?!" i said, "don't stalk me." he said, "you are allowed to call one friend from high school at 4:00 in the morning." i said, "don't stalk me."

thing is, he must have known i lived in wisconsin. probably found me on the internet. was coming through town and thought he would find my phone number and call me in the middle of the night. don't you think that is sketchy?

the other weird thing is that i mentioned chip, the kid from infinite eruption, who i wrote about in my last post. i said that i had just found him on the internet. it turns out that steven didn't know him. he said something about how i must have liked chip in high school. i didn't, i just knew chip from elementary school through 12th grade. and i thought the name of his band was freaking hilarious. at one point i think my friend clare and i were going to pretend to be groupies. i guess i am a bit weird, too, as i googled chip just the day before. who doesn't google old friends? i guess the difference is that i don't call them at 3:55 in the morning.
* he is a kid in my head, but i suppose he has actually aged at the same rate that i have.

** another boy in that class started out as my friend, but then he took to calling me a feminazi all the time. what the fuck?

*** a grocery store owned by mormons. they wouldn't sell alcohol or cigarettes. it was explained that this was because they were a mormon owned store. they did, however, sell caffeinated beverages.

**** at the cash store, you are cash-worthy with us.

school is the place where i did my growing

2007-03-18T22:34:00.000-05:00

not that i forgot these, but today i remembered some things from my childhood.

the first is from elementary school. there were kids, mostly boys, who would find a social pariah of some sort, mostly ugly girls, and sneak up behind them to deliver a message from on high. a tap on the shoulder. "i love you," they would say, "in god's way." meaning that, though hideous and unpopular, they were forced to love you, but only the way that god might, in that he loved all of his children. needless to say, i was loved quite well by my elementary school classmates.

the second is not scaring, but funny. there were two music groups from my high school. one was a duo, a year ahead of me, who played folk music and called themselves the "peyote siblings." the other was a band made up of boys i had been in school with since elementary school. they were called "infinite eruption." i saw both groups perform at various events, but one stands out. at a party for high school kids in the park near my house, chip*, lead singer for "infinite eruption", performed wearing green lipstick. needless to say, his hairy was stringy.

* shit! i had chip's last name in this post, but then i googled him and found him on the internet. i don't want him to stumble on this post. anyway, google tells me that chip is in grad school now, pursuing an MFA in creative writing.

sister for sale

2007-03-08T17:00:00.000-06:00

i was thinking about my relationship with my older sister last night.* specifically, i was thinking about how much i wanted to be like her when i was a kid. it was just a passing thought, but it came up again at lunch today when my co-worker was talking about her daughters. her girls are 7 or 8 years apart in age. my sister and i were 4.5 years apart. when christie was in high school and i was in middle/jr. high school, i thought she was the bees knees. same with my co-worker's daughters. often my sister and i were good friends, but sometimes she would get so pissed off at me for being a younger sister. same with my co-worker's kids. the funny thing is that my sister and i got to be friends a bit more because we were closer in age. as a little sister, i feel bad for riley, the younger one, and less sympathy for the older one.

* i was thinking about the many times my sister would go to the mall, buy herself a beatles t-shirt (she loved the beatles), and give it to me. i later found out that she really wanted the shirts for herself but felt to guilty about purchasing them. she'd always give them to me when she got home. i just thought she was a great older sister. every once in a while, though, she would flip out on me when i wore one of the shirts and accuse me of being a copy-cat and not having my own personality. what a meanie!

that's my name, don't wear it out

2007-03-04T19:00:00.000-06:00

i was at a party this weekend where people were playing drinking games (something called "flippy cup"). i was talking to two boys. i don't really remember how it got to the point that i was arguing with them because i hadn't intended to be arguing. when i am drunk i do tend to give boys a hard time because i feel less inclined to put up with bullshit. so, this is probably what was happening. i was probably asking too many questions about the rules of "flippy cup", but i don't know for sure. all of a sudden one of the boys said, "you like to argue." i said, "i guess, but i was just asking about the rules of flippy cup." one of the boys tried to get me to just play flippy cup but i said that i didn't want to play until i knew the rules.

anyway, next thing i know, one of the boys said, "whatever, hillary clinton."

bend and stretch, reach for the stars

2007-02-19T23:00:00.000-06:00

i don't normally take calls in dressing rooms, but my sister and i don't get a chance to talk very much anymore. christie works weird shifts (she is a nurse) and i never know when she is awake so i wait for her to call me. about once every other week i get a call from her as she drives to work. today we mostly talked about my nephew's birthday party, although i also discussed the pants i was trying on when she called.

christie wants to treat some of ezra's friends to a movie. ezra wants to have an astronomy and mythology themed birthday party. christie is willing to spend the $100+ it will cost to take the kids to the movies just so that she doesn't have a heard of screaming children in her house (there was a lack of involvement from adult family members who were supposed to supervise). christie claims the cost would be the same anyway. i think she can do a home party on the cheap. my idea is that if the other adults she recruits are given very specific tasks, they might be able to stay focused. i think that one adult per five children should work (maybe 1 extra just in case).

here's how it will work: there will be a couple of activity stations. each one will have very specific instructions and outcomes. activities will center on astronomy and mythology. i'm thinking that one station could be learning a bit about some culture's mythology and then creating an original constellation. a paper plate can be penetrated with a pin in the shape of the constellation. a flashlight would then be employed to illuminate the constellation in a dark room (ezra's closet?). another station could be about the origin of the names of the planets or something and the kids can make one of those silly styrofom ball models or something. station 3 could involve decorating star shaped cookies. station four could be about glam rock. the kids could put on make up like david bowie or maybe even the star child from kiss. station five could be about comic book mythology and could focus on the evolution of the dark phoenix from the x-men series. fun!

before the kids go home, christie could just sprinkle the kids with glitter that will get stuck to their sticky scalps. parents will be struggling to get that out of hair for days!

my nephew's birthday is on april 7th. i did not get the pants i was trying on. please send me ideas for birthday party activities and treats.

john jacob jingleheimer schmidt

2007-02-12T20:02:00.000-06:00

can you believe that i have an uncle who is also named el jefe (AKA the goat)? it is totally true. this weekend i emailed the one in dallas thinking that i was emailing the one in california. i lost el jefe's phone number and emailed him to ask for it.

subject line: i feel like i might want to call you.
body: what's your dang phone number?

my uncle sent his phone number and a message. call away! the problem is that i have nothing, absolutely fricking nothing, to say to him. i don't even know if i can make up something to say to him. my sister thinks i should just come clean and confess to the mistake. what do you think?

don't make a federal case out of it!

2007-02-06T21:25:00.000-06:00

i have met, but do not know well, someone who is currently incarcerated for... something weird. should i say what it is? is that the kind of thing that you shouldn't post on your blog? i mean, what this person is in prison for is so unusual that i would guess it would be pretty easy to figure out who it is that i know if you were, um, the man. there can't possibly be very many people currently locked up for this crime. if you wanted to figure out which of these people i know, and you were a federal agent, you could just take that (very short) list and circle the one or two people on it who might live where i used to live. maybe.

i will just say this: when i was telling jon the story, he misheard me as saying "organ smuggling" instead of the kind of smuggling it really was. i don't know an organ smuggler. i don't even know a former organ smuggler. i don't know any alleged organ smugglers, current or former.

he is the husband of my mother's friend. after being out on appeal, he was sent back just reccently. my mom's friend says that he is back in the "big house on the prairie." get it? so, the news of his imprisonment isn't new, just refreshed. anyway, this person is about 70 years old now. he is in poor health. i guess i feel that, given the fact that he is 70 years old and has diabetes and a heart problem makes me wonder if maybe he shouldn't have been sent back. if he were a white collar criminal i'd advocate a life sentence (i'm probably kidding), but this seems a bit different. does it seem like i am being to "soft on crime"? will you still elect me to office?

(okay, wait. i just did some googling found that this was a pretty publicized case in the houston area and among orchid hobbyists. so, there, i said it. he allegedly smuggled some orchids.)

(okay, i also guess there is something to be said about the endagered status of the orchids. that is usually why they are illegal to import. the status of these orchids is iffy. i won't get into it b/c i wasn't at the trial. regardless, this man didn't really follow rules very well, so locking him up isn't really unreasonable.)

can i get a show of of hands?

2007-01-21T09:42:00.000-06:00

a life change could be on its way. the problem is that i might need to use someone for health insurance. if anyone is willing to marry me, and it has to be legally recognized by the state, please let me know. thank you.

new mainstreet singers

2007-01-18T21:35:00.000-06:00

okay, am i the only one on earth who is not just kinda sick, but actually really sick of sally field? because i am. i guess i got worn out after gidget. sure, i wanted her for my valentine then but stop making those sad eyes or talking really fast when you are angry or looking so shocked at something we all saw coming. just chill out.

sorry, that isn't really what i was going to write about. it just didn’t seem to warrant a post all of its own. anyway…

about a month ago, when careyoke was here, it actually got cold. cold enough to freeze. i was supposed to drive to one of my communities for work, and i pulled into a gas station before i got on the road because, well, my tank was pretty much totally empty. my gas tank has one of those little doors that you pop open with a lever on the floor by the driver’s side door. i lean over, yank, and … nothing. yeah. nothing. it doesn’t budge. okay, i pull it again with the same result. it is frozen. now, i am from texas and we don’t have cold, cold winters, so you might think this was some dumb problem that i have just yet to experience but that everyone goes through up here. thing is, i have lived through winter in madison before. i have lived through very, very cold winters. not only that, my car has lived through cold winters. and the gas tank door has always come open.

i drive to a different gas station because the one where i am doesn’t even have an inside, just a booth where you pay for gas and buy cigarettes. i try the lever again, but it still doesn’t work. i call jon all freaked out because i am supposed to be in lodi, wisconsin. i tell him that my gas tank is frozen closed. he says i should poor hot water on it. how? how do i do that? anyway, i get angry with him for offering me no good advice. i call my mom. she tells me to pry it open. i get mad at her for the same reason. my mom calls the toyota dealership in houston, but they don’t know what to say. she calls back. i kind of apologize. i decided to skip lodi and just go home.

i head down park street. my car sounds weird. i am terrified that i am going to run out of gas and have no way to add any. i glide into a midas station. i leave my car there because they are about to close for the night. i call tara or careyoke or jj, i can’t remember which, and they are all in the car together on their way to get dinner. so they save me and we get eats.

the next morning, i get my car. overnight in the garage, the cable thawed and the door could be opened. they tell me there was moisture on the line. they tell me they put silicon on it and that it shouldn’t happen any more. they put silicon on the cable running to the trunk, too, because the automatic trunk popping thing is frozen, too. they don’t charge me and i am happy and i go fill up my tank.

fast forward to this monday. i am on my way to columbus, wisconsin, where there is a christopher columbus museum because, you know, it is where his ship touched ground, and i stop to get gas. after a million days of warmth, it is finally cold enough to freeze. the door to my gas tank won’t open. i turn my heat up high and drive to sun prairie wisconsin. i figure if i get to sun prairie and am able to get gas, i will keep going. if i can’t open the tank, i will turn around and go home. the tank won’t open. i drive to jon’s house because he has a driveway. i drive with the heat on high. i check the lever at every stop light. it opens a block from his house. i fill up the tank. i close the door.

flash back to summer. did i forget to tell you that my car flooded?

flash forward from summer to this wednesday (i am getting kind of back to the future here and am about to marry my own mom). i am at the toyota dealership. they don’t understand what i am saying about the door not opening. a mechanic makes me pull the lever. nothing happens. he asks me to pull it again, i don’t know why. not surprisingly, it doesn’t open. he tugs on it. he gets some other guy to tug on it. they decide that they will leave it in their garage for 30-45 minutes until it thaws and then try to figure something out. i watch CNN in the customer lounge. i realize that the ice storms in texas are worse than i thought. i finally call my family. they are fine.

after 30-45 minutes my gas tank door could be opened. they decide that if they remove all of the ice from around the cable everything will be just fine. they say that if it isn’t i can order the part. they shut the door to the tank. i drive to work. by the evening, the cable is frozen again. i drive to cottage grove without issue. on the way home, i turn the heat up really, really high. i go to jon’s house because he still has a driveway. i leave my car idling in his drive way. after 10 minutes, i check to see if i can open the tank. no, but the lever to my trunk moves freely. wait! it moves freely because it is broken! most likely, it is completely disconnected from the cable! i curse but then shrug because i can still open the trunk with my key. i go back inside. jon drinks a beer. i ask about dinner (i love dinner). 10 minutes later, i check and the lever can finally move. the door eases open. i leave it open, turn off my car, go inside jon’s apartment, and complain about wanting dinner. we decide to cook something at my house and head over there without stopping for gas. i park on the street by my apartment. it is silly, i know, but i am worried about leaving the door open. not because i think someone is going to siphon gas, but because i think someone will walk by and close it. i would because i would assume that the owner of the car forgot or pulled the wrong lever or something. i try to figure out a way for the door to sort of close but not all the way close. i push and poke the door a few times. i realize that i have actually closed the door. i worry for a second until i realize that the door hasn’t stayed closed. why? because now it is broken in the open position. i don’t laugh.

if you want to siphon gas from my car, you know where i live.

where i don’t live, though, are any number of small towns to which i have to travel. lodi (population 2,929), marshall (population 3,432), waterloo (population 3,259), cambridge (population 1,227), deerfield (population 1,971), columbus (population 4,479), and fall river (population (1,097).

do you know what is different about these towns as compared to my “hometown”? main street. there is no main street where i am from, despite the fact that it is a real hometown. do you know what is the same if you compare madison with the smaller towns? main street. do you know what is different about these main streets? in small towns, main street is in fact the main street. in madison, it is kind of unassuming. i am easily able to forget it exists. i crossed it today. i cross it whenever i go to jon’s to let my car idle with the heat on. today i remembered to notice that it was main street. i guess main street goes to the capital, but it is not a street i would ever take to the capital. state street for sure. definitely the wash. not main street.

small towns, like my car and sally field, don’t make much sense to me.

mathematical!

2007-01-14T17:13:00.001-06:00

watch this and have all of your dreams realized.

on the other hand, watch this and... nothing. this is my mother's favorite website. my dad says that she is obsessed. it is an african watering hole. you can watch it live. it is cool and all, i suppose, but you have to wait a long time to see something. or else you have to check it as obsessively as you check your email.

update: i guess the link to the awesome cartoon is gone. i found it on you tube, but it isn't that clear. try searching there for adventure time.

going, going, gone

2007-01-01T11:13:00.000-06:00

in college, i learned about facial hair removal. when i was younger, i just thought that some women never had hair grow on their faces. i thought that because i did i was sort of gross. i didn't know the lengths women go through to be hairless. i suddenly knew people who melted, waxed, and used twirled strings to remove the hair above their lips. i also learned that some women have enough facial hair to really have a moustache. i read somewhere about women who deliberately let their facial hair grow. how did they get actual beards? the article i was reading just said they didn't use anything to remove hair. um, neither did i, but i didn't have even the creepiest of pubescent-boy-stache. but i am older now and things are getting out of control. i hadn't planned on doing anything about it, but i sort of feel it is getting to an all or nothing situation. i either want a goatee or a baby face. i am going to melt. i am going to put some horrible cream on my face that will dissolve the hair away. do you think it is the same stuff that is in dran-o?
(cute shirt stolen from this site.)

not feeling particularly okay

2006-12-31T12:08:00.000-06:00

i feel sometimes like i am completely happy and content. the very next day i will feel so isolated and desparately alone. of course, there isn't much i do about feeling alone. i mean, once you get all depressed and self-pitying, your ability to motivate yourself to do something about it kind of goes to shit. if i try hanging out with friends to cheer me up it sometimes just makes me feel more lonely. i put so much of my happiness in other peoples's hands. which is dumb because they are kind of busy with themselves.

i am not good at being happy on my own. i feel like i have to piece together feeling good from so many awkward scraps that don't fit well at all. it is like i am trying to make something out of bits of paper, warn out cordouroys, chicken bones, nail clippings, and the occasional nice thing (like stickers and my peanut shaped eraser). you can't make a lot from that. maybe i should try putting something together that is already complete. like making myself out of the visible woman.

i am sewing a monster today, though. on my new sewing machine. that is good, right? i am going to make my uncle some stickers with my sticker maker because i couldn't afford to get him a nice christmas present. that's good too, right?

wondering if she changed at all, if her hair was still red*

2006-12-30T13:01:00.000-06:00

while home for christmas, i didn't really see any friends, except for sean (he doesn't count because he is very nearly family - i did live with him, you know). jon, hilariously, ran into a friend from middle school at a comic book store. his friend hadn't changed a bit. he still lived with his parents and, according to jon, still talked too loudly.

have i changed at all since middle school or high school? yes, decidely yes. at my good grandmother's christmas event, i learned from my aunt cathy that my mom and brother called me the anti-christ** when i was in high school. i was sort of prone to fits of yelling and i told my family that i hated them all of the time.

in college, i suppose i was much better. i didn't yell as much. i just moped and hated myself in a more quiet way. but, i also got a bit quirkier. i mean, i was a freak in high school. i wore ties in my hair in place of scarves. i kept a giant orange pig in the backseat of my car. when people asked me what it was doing there, i would tell them that it was my car pig. duh. his name was claudius, i think. my friend clare and i developed mock obsessions with sting, woodpeckers, and my friend adam jacks.**** in college i took to dying my hair funny colors, wearing totally insane clothes, including a pair of yellow polyester pants that were too short, and covering myself in temporary tattoos. in high school, i thought it was a sign of weakness to laugh; in college it was spit take after spit take.

anyway, at one point in college, i had bright red hair. not the kind of red i had about 3 years ago, but a more run lola run red. when i had hair that red, men were constantly hollering at me from passing cars. the homeless guys outside of the store where i worked made comments every day. i never have random people tell me i'm attractive.

(okay, once, walking outside a gay bar, a woman told me, "you are beautiful, do you know that?" but that is about it. oh, and i guess there was that jim anchower looking guy who sent a drink to me when i was at paul's club. also, when i worked at a grocery store during high school, a woman told me that i had a nice hairline.)

when i had red hair, it wasn't always flattering what men said to me. i'm suprised i didn't get that "do the drapes match the carpet" thing. mostly guys tell me that i am fat. seriously, drunk men tell me that i am fat all of the time. hey, guess what? i totally know that i am fat. so, i guess, more people think i am fat and ugly than think i am attractive. in fact, at least one boy a day told me i was a "fat cow" when i was in elementary school. "do you want to go with me? just kidding, you are a fat, ugly cow." thanks boys, i get it.

anyway, what is it with guys and red hair? seriously. i like having red hair because i like looking like a comic book character, so it is either red, black, or blonde. black makes me look kind of washed out, and when i am blonde, there are practically arrows drawn on my face pointing out every blemish, so red it is. i kinda hate that i get more attention when i have red hair. aren't i attractive when i have brown hair? my ex-boyfriend sean didn't think i was cute at first (for the record and to be fair, i didn't think he was cute, either). he didn't think i was cute until one day when i had bright red hair and was wearing a white t-shirt and blue pants. he decided i looked like a fisher price little person. um, hot.

sean is constantly telling me that people find attractive what they find attractive. this is usually after i go on a rant about how his pal zak only likes pencil thin girls with giant breasts. i especially hate that zak dismissed me when he first met me because i wasn't (1) a hot girl or (2) a boy. boys, while not hot, are clearly more fun to talk to than ugly girls. sean doesn't realize that zak blew me off because sean is a boy, and thus worthy of zak's attention. he obviously didn't see things from my perspective. eh. fuck zak. but not in the nice sense of the word because he would just like that. at least he would like that if it weren't me.

anyway, i guess sean is sort of right about people being attracted to what they find attractive. i mean, my first crush was on keith from voltron. i've had a thing for people with dark brown hair and brown eyes ever since. sorry to all of you blondies out there. not that i wouldn't like you if you were towheaded. it just might take me a bit longer to, you know, get all warm for your form.

my hair is somewhere between brown and red red right now. best of both worlds.

* jon admitted in the car today that this was a good song. i think it is one of the best songs in reccent musical history, but what do i know. anyway, jon is such a metal head that i didn't think he'd like bob dylan. who knew?

** i am so johnny rotten.

*** my family rules the school. i am going to chalk my cruelty up to my undiagnosed epilepsy. what can't i blame on that? it is probably the most awesome excuse i have ever had in my life.

**** adam, if you are reading this, i had a tremendous crush on you. i'm sure you knew that, tho. you do have pretty brown eyes. in fact, i just google-stalked you and found a picture you from your brother's website. i almost posted it here, except you are wearing a dorky headband. you know the picture; it is the one from the from the MS bike ride. anyway, don't tell clare, all right? hey, i just google-stalked clare! i found clare! should i email her? i'm scared.

resolute

2006-12-29T13:04:00.000-06:00

i doubt my ability to change, mostly because i doubt my ability to actually try to change. case in point: i came back to madison earlier than i had to so that i could clean my apartment. if you have ever been in my apartment you know that, in addition to having a lot of playmobil, some sad looking plants, more crafting materials than i could ever use, i also have piles and piles of things like unopened mail, dirty dishes, stationery and markers, books, etc. i wouldn't be suprised if, at some point in my life i end up with things all over the floor but completely barren shelves. anyway, though i intended to clean, i have not accomplished anything in the 24 hours i have been back except for three loads of laundry. about an hour ago, i decided to get down to business. i put on a video to "keep me company" while i clean. yeah, right. i chose one i had seen many times so that i wouldn't have to pay attention and could "just listen." i am now watching spiderman and not cleaning, tidying, straightening or any of the like.

at least i made an appointment to go to the gynecologist (which one can easily do if they just pause the dvd for 1 minute). i am almost out of pills and my RN won't renew my prescription unless i come in. i don't want to reproduce because then i would have to clean up after someone else, too. can you imagine the diaper pail in my home?

update: well, i organized my fabric and moved my comic books to accommodate my growing playmobil collection. i need to find about 3 shelves worth of space for more books. i need to find places for the random paperwork on my living room floor. i need to pick up stray writing implements. i need to come up with a better filing system for bills. i need to recycle a big stack of paper and magazines.

the more things change, the more they revert back, and then jump forward again

2006-12-29T10:06:00.000-06:00

i washed two loads of clothes in my basement washing machine yesterday. a year ago, before the washer broke, to wash cost $0.75 and to dry cost $1.25. when the washing machine broke, they got a new one and the price went up to $1.00, but the price to dry dropped down to $1.00. yesterday when i did laundry, the washing machine had dropped back down to $0.75, but the price to dry did not change. i just now put a load in the wash. $1.00. huh?

really?

2006-12-27T14:25:00.000-06:00

read in the paper this morning that james brown, now dead, is survived by "at least four children." yeah, right, four. i like the way that they completely acknowledge that there are very, very likely more than four.

okay, i caved

2006-12-14T21:44:00.000-06:00

i just switched over to new blogger. can you tell?

should i change my template? i'm kinda bored with it, but it took me a long time to tweak it just how i wanted it.

bad medicine is what i need

2006-12-14T11:16:00.000-06:00

dudes, the meds seem to be working. no seizures since my dad's birthday on september 9th!

i know that i am a bad person

2006-12-14T11:07:00.000-06:00

i am actually kind of glad that i am a bad person. i don't really give a flip what YOU think about that.

something that makes me unnecessarily angry

2006-12-04T06:38:00.000-06:00

update: i'm putting this update at the top so that all my "readers" catch it. a commenter doesn't understand why i am angry. first off, in the title of the post, i indicate that i am unnecessarily angry. i think i should really have put unjustifiably. or maybe unreasonably. but, i am also unnecessarily angry because, honestly, my seething dislike of my grandmother doesn't do me a whole lot of good. nothing much comes of it.

as to why i am angry, let me see if i can explain a bit better. my grandmother prevented (or at least inhibited) my grandfather from going to church. no one stopped her from going to church, she just didn't go after the death of my uncle. prior to his death, she just went to a different church than her husband and children. when my uncle died, she stopped going to her church and forbade the rest of the family from going to catholic church. yes, they could have just gone, but it would have adversely impacted the rest of their family life. sure, it was their decision ultimately (except for the two that were still in her custody), but she also had a great deal of control over their lives in many ways.

all through my life, if my grandfather started to say grace at a family meal, usually only at thanksgiving or christmans, she would yell at him, cutting him off mid-blessing. my grandad still wanted to participate in the catholic church. when he died, and my grandmother was his next of kin and made all decisions for him at the hospital, she did not allow him to have last rites. seriously, i think that is foul. i don't believe in god, but, holy crap, that is mean.

my great uncle john was deaf his entirely life. when my grandfather's hearing started to fail, she said she wouldn't pay for a hearing aid because only stupid people need hearing aids. her brother was born hearing impared and also apparently stupid as a result. when my granfather needed medications, she didn't want to get them for him because, in her words, she didn't want to spend the money because he was "already no good." okay, maybe she is just cheap, but that seems heartless to me.

so, for her to be going to church now seems, i don't know, somehow false. it doesn't seem like it is coming from the heart. perhaps her cruelty is finally making her feel guilty enough to repent her sins or something. i, being the horrible grandchild (and person) that i am, don't want her to feel forgiven. i don't want her to find solace in religion. she was intolerant of other peoples' faith. she wouldn't say my nephew's name for a year because it "sounded too jewish."

yeah, i am a bad person for being angry. it just hurts me. screw it. i don't care if i am angry. i just am.

end of update

my mom went to visit my evil grandmother this weekend. when she called, grandmother didn't answer, but she drove over anyway. when she got there, my grandmother was coming in from church. my mother's email actually said CHURCH. why was my mom email yelling? because my grandmother hasn't gone to chuch since before i was alive. i think she stopped when her favorite child died in a car accident (he was 17 and drunk driving).* my grandfather just died in may. is she going to church again?** when granddad would sometimes "slip up" and say grace at thanksgiving and christmas dinner, my grandmother would say a reproachful, "LARRY!" we would all shoot her angry looks and encourage granddad to keep going.

i asked my mom about it just now and confirmed that, though my granddad raised my dad and his siblings catholic, my grandmother was episcopalian. is this why she is going to church again? my granddad died so she is finally free? when graddad was in the hospital, she wouldn't let him have last rights. his kids had to sneak behind his back to arrange it. my mom says she has hated*** the catholic church since charlie died because they didn't send food or something like that. i don't know. i'm not religious, but i really don't see how it is the fault of the catholic church that charlie died.

* yes, this is the famous incident in which my grandmother, at the funeral, told my father that the wrong son died.

** i suppose it is not out of the realm of possibilty that she is trying to deal with her grief. more likely the guilt she must feel for treating him so poorly while he was alive.

*** my mom just told me that i use the word "hate" too much and that it reflects poorly on me. i should have more forgiveness in my heart. maybe i was raised wrong.

like it wasn't scary enough the first time

2006-12-03T19:59:00.000-06:00

old & new

shower me

2006-11-30T21:22:00.000-06:00

a former acquaintance said of my ex-boyfriend sean that he was an enjoyer. this was after we ate together and she noticed that he was humming while he ate. sean is an enjoyer. he especially loves eating yummy foods. it is fortunate for him that he is now dating a chef. i don't totally suck in the kitchen, but i don't really try to make special meals nor do i always pay attention to whether or not things are burning. i think his girlfriend is a good match for him.

if sean is an enjoyer, then what am i? rather than feeding me, people seem pretty intent on giving me presents. have any of you ever been in my house? have you seen how many toys i have? am i a hoarder? is that what i am? am i a collector? can people tell this when they meet me? why do they humor me? i don't even have room for more toys, but three people have already asked me what new playmobil i "need" for christmas.

because you care, i am listing things i have collected at various points in my life.

turtles
stuffed animals
wrapping paper
origami paper
baby name books
ugly neckties
found paper clips
eggplants (not actual eggplants, though i do enjoy eating them)
strange lamps
stationery
stickers (okay, this is pretty much an ongoing obsession)
notebooks
socks
comic books
old cookbooks
lenticular things
playmobil

please, if you can, try not to get me these things. i know you all want to. my sister has told me that it is fun to get me toys and other wacky things because i light up with joy when i open the packages. i always get more christmas and birthday presents than anyone in my family with the exception of my nephew (but only for the past 7 years). toys are awesome. they are really, really awesome. i know. shiny things are great. i bought myself something lenticular just today. i get it. my obsessions rock. but, please, just think before you give me anything. i might also need non-perishable foods. i could use a new bottle face lotion (neutrogena face lotion for combination skin, please). i'm getting too fat for most of my pants. i'd like a sewing machine so i can return the one i am borrowing. i love pickles.