grease coma

i've eaten so badly in the two days i've been home. i can't wait to be back at the apartment with food options that i've carefully thought about. all i do here is eat crap (like now, as i stuff an in-n-out veggie burger into my face at 11 pm - my excuse, though, is that the play just ended and we were ravenous).

i have finally have a desk and a chair for my room, which my mom insisted that we buy full price at an actual store, when all i wanted to do was find stuff for really cheap on craigslist.

this afternoon, i cleaned up a lot of old junk that was all over my room and put it into the bins my mom threw so subtly into my room before i got home this weekend. it's really strange that i don't have a bed and that some of my favorite stuff is in boxes. i feel like we're all moving out, but it's just me. how sad.

my grandpa called me this morning to ask if i wanted a sweatshirt from costco and then after i said i didn't want him to buy it for me, we had a ten minute long conversation about how he was going to get it for me anyway and i had better tell him my size. i didn't ever tell him and he got way peeved, and i hate that i have to get into stupid arguments like that with him because he's so damn stubborn. i'm also kinda proud of myself because most of the time, he wins battles like that just simply because he's more patient than his opponents and will keep having the same circular conversations with them until they eventually break. i didn't cave. yipee for me.

now i feel disgusting for eating french fries. gross.

bedless

i just got back from the museum, where i experienced the longest, most drawn-out first night of performances i've had in my ten years of doing this play. the groups came through so slowly, and i only survived by eating almonds every once and while (i basically live off of almonds these days).

i also don't have a mattress in my room at home anymore (it's at the apartment), so i'm gonna have to sleep on the couch. plus, in the four days that i was gone, my mom put a bunch of giant plastic tubs in the middle of my room, and filled some of them with my stuff. i don't really know how i feel about my family gradually making my room less mine. it wasn't as sad as i thought it would be, and i think that's because even though i've only been in the apartment for a very short time, i've started to think of it as home, and so it's not so terrible to find that my mom wants my old room to herself. i guess it had to happen sometime.

i'm way tired and my feet hurt from standing all night in my stupid boots and it's insanely cold in the house right now.

that's all there is to report. no good stories or anything tonight, but i'm going furniture shopping with my parents tomorrow afternoon, so i'm pretty much promising that i'll have something really irritating to write about tomorrow night.

the resurrection

something really terrifying just happened and i cannot believe that it worked out ok. i came home from class and proceeded to knock the huge glass of water i'd left on the phonebook tier this morning over into the very heart of my open laptop. i managed to send a wave of water across the entirety of the computer and it was only dan telling me to blowdry the keys immediately that saved my laptop's life. it completely shut down at one point and i nearly had a panic attack. luckily, though, i kept blowdrying the areas that were waterlogged and i was able to turn it back on. it works fine now, except the speakers are crazed and the back arrow is now a second "6" button. it seems that i have, as a friend called it, a "jesus computer."

i had one class today, and we ended up watching half of the movie "kinsey". (all my premed friends would have a field day with that - "you watched a movie in class?"). it's my human sexuality class, and udeitha's in it too, so we're continuing our having-psych-classes-together tradition. hopefully, this class won't be as torturous as statistics for the behavioral sciences, because that class was terrible. this professor seems interesting and funny and really tied to what he's teaching, which is always good. i'm going to do the reading right after i finish this post because it seems so cool.

today, i ran into just about everyone i've ever known in my life at school. i was passing out copies of the paper (very briefly) on bruinwalk after work and saw tons of people, including two ex-boys, which was convenient only because i could yell out their names and get them to take copies, not because i ever want to see them anymore. one of them was supposed to have already graduated, but i guess not. it upsets me that i now run the risk of seeing him on campus again. sometimes i have really poor judgment.

thread the needle

today was almost exactly the same as a few other days i've had here in westwood thus far: i went to work for a way long time, hung out with people (this time, elona, zach, and karessa), and then went to a flying squirrel meeting. it was really nice to see elona and zach, and really surreal to see karessa because i'm not living with her, and rooming with her was such a huge part of my first two years. i had to walk home from the flying squirrel meeting tonight, and i thought it was going to be terrible because all i wanted was to be home, but i made it from the neuroscience center to my apartment in eleven minutes. that's way crazy. i should be a professional speed-walker or something.

when we were in rhode island, zoe's boyfriend zak told us about this game called "thread the needle", which basically involves walking between people coming toward you on the street. these people absolutely need be part of a group or a couple - they must be obviously together - and it's even better when you go out of your way to go through them. i've started playing this game when i walk around, which i've been doing a lot. it gives me something to do when i'm racing all over the place. i don't have the courage yet to walk in between people who are holding hands, but i think by the end of this quarter, i'll be up to the challenge.

classes start tomorrow. i'm already exhausted. i'm exhausted and really happy and ready to start being a student again.

poems and pills

i'm almost positive i should be in bed right now, because i have work in the morning and then about five thousand other things to do after that, but i'm not all that tired. i'm kinda wired.

i don't know exactly what happened to me, but i lost whatever talent i had for writing. over the summer, when i was home, i went through some old things i'd written, stories and things, and while they weren't absolutely stellar, they were way better than anything i've tried to write recently. i went on a poem-writing spree during last spring quarter, but it was mostly crap that served as my incredibly lazy way of keeping a little journal for myself. i want to work on getting better, because writing used to be something i was always proud to say i did.

i've also been thinking about the side effects of accutane and so every little weird that my body does registers as a possible serious complication. i'm starting to freak out if my ears pop or if my eyes hurt or if i'm sad. there's probably nothing wrong with my ears, though, considering i can hear the door to the garage open and close under me in the parking structure. and i can still hear the guy who lives above us tap dancing his way from his bedroom to his kitchen, back and forth, for hours every night.

hopefully, the only thing that comes from my stint on this drug is that i go through lots of bottles of eye drops (i'm so pro at them now) and that i'm happier with myself than i've been in a long time.

bar mitz-vhat?

on the way home from a day of work, walking, and finally hanging out with lina again, i bought some stupid magazines to occupy myself until school starts, during the little bit of downtime i have when i'm not at work or at meetings or trying to see as many people as i can (i'm really happy, by the way, to be this busy, and i can't wait for classes to start, because i think i function so much better when i've got a million things going on). so, in these stupid magazines, there are a ton of advertisements with way airbrushed women in them. i really don't understand that, and for some reason, it really pisses me off. i mean, if the idea is to make the models look as little like real people as possible, advertisers should just use cartoons.

ok, i'm off my soapbox now.

it was so great to see lina again. i missed her, and i'm glad she found her future husband in russia this summer. i love being giddy for other people. i wouldn't call it living vicariously - it's a geniune intense happiness for my friends when things work out for them. and now that i'm officially insanely happy for her, all i have to do is to force her to show me pictures of this dude.

i called home today and talked to clay about how he's going on thursday to meet with a local rabbi to discuss his bar mitzvah. his recently-decided-upon, incredibly shocking bar mitzvah. we've always been good about having family gatherings on jewish holidays, and i know all the important prayers in hebrew (i know, i'm that amazing), and i definitely identify more with judaism than with, say, protestantism (with which my dad was raised), but it was pretty much an unspoken rule that that would be as far as we were expected to go. my parents never really emphasized religion as a basis for morality or good works - my brothers and i were always just expected to be good people, or risk severe parental disappointment. my mom experimented with different faiths, and was a baha'i for a while, which turned out to be a really interesting experience for sam and me. i have all these crazy, little-kid memories of being at baha'i feasts (which are not at all as foreign and strange as they sound - baha'is are concerned more with universal understanding and unity than anything else, if i remember correctly). neither side of my family has been very hardcore about the actual religious practices associated with the two religions that divide them. once, a few years ago on christmas, my dad's mother gathered everyone in her living room to form a giant prayer circle, and i was so surprised by it that i couldn't take it seriously. and every passover/rosh hashanah/yom kippor/hanukah with my grandparents and my mom's family, we just eat a lot of amazing foods, try sometimes to have a proper seder, and then slowly descend into loud conversational madness. i think i appreciate judaism so much because it has allowed me to be incredibly close to my mom's entire family; family and ancestry is valued really highly in the jewish community, and i love that. i guess that makes me one of the bajillion secular jews in the united states.

ok, so basically, i'm equally surprised and interested in my brother's decision to have a bar mitzvah, having never taken hebrew before. he has less than two years to get ready for the ceremony. i tried hebrew school for about two months when i was twelve, but finally discovered that i'd be way too scared to read and sing in the language for an extended period of time in front of everyone i knew. props to clay.

on a completely different note, i'm finding that this blog is severely limiting my in-person storytelling options. seeing as i'm not sure who has read this (and that group is probably very, very small), i'm not sure who has already read about my adventures. and because i write this thing almost exactly how i actually speak, i find myself telling stories using the exact same words i've used here. so, now when i talk to andy (who is the only person i know reads this all the time because he has nothing better to do) or anyone else for that matter, i worry that it's old news and they're tired of hearing about it. and to them, i say: deal.

sleepy and gross

i spent the majority of this afternoon passing out copies of our paper at the activities fair on campus. i'm really happy with how it all turned out. it's professional-looking and so funny. i've had to work tables before for things i didn't really care about, but it was so much different today because i'm actually really proud to be a part of this paper. it wasn't hard to go right up to people and start talking to them about it because i actually care about it. and, thankfully, my predictions were correct and everyone involved with it is way awesome.

side note: i just decided to listen to dashboard for the first time since ninth grade track meets, and i realized that this music is probably the worst music in the world to listen to right before you're expected to be a competitor.

after the activities fair, i went to the ticket office for my official first day being "clocked in" to work. i was almost convinced that i was going to be fired before i'd even filled out the beginning paperwork, because i have to go home this weekend and next for the play and i'll miss two home games. i'm not to going to cry because i'm missing football games, but it's a requirement for new hires to work the fall games - mostly because there is such a huge demand for tickets. so, i was pretty sure when i told my boss i wouldn't be able to make those two games, i'd be done. however, that didn't happen, and i ended up "shadowing" a guy who has been working there for the past few months. it doesn't seem like it's going to be too impossible, but there is so much information to know and recall and understand. anyone can call about any event going on on campus, so it seems like it could get a little overwhelming.

my stupid pseudo-bedframe has wheels, and i just practically launched myself into the center of my room when i leaned back against the wall. amazing.

next up: i'm gonna go get a little cleaned up/fed (i'm going to steal some fried rice from dan) so i can not be exhausted and disgusting when i hang out with peeps tonight. no one ever went wrong with food and cleanliness.

p.s. i was going to use a dashboard song title as the title for this entry, because that's what all the cool people do (and i couldn't think of anything else), but they are all so damn sadcloud that i just couldn't do it. that sucks.

moving on up

the moment of truth has arrived: i'm all moved into the apartment. i got way mad at my family in the process, but i'm going to chalk that up to the stress of it all and not to the fact that i'm an evil bitch. i'm really not.

i just sliced myself on one of the chairs we found on craigslist and that i had to go pick up by myself on the hottest day of the year. these chairs were priced with three glass-topped wrought-iron tables and all of it needed to be carried out of some guy's third floor apartment in an elevator-less complex. basically, i've suffered enough for these chairs, and getting sliced makes them officially not worth it. (not true - they were way cheap and are amazing).

i don't have a desk in my room right now, because i still have hope that i'll find a really cheap, fairly new one and won't have to use an old, beaten up one my dad vowed to find in the garage. i tried to convince them that the huge antique mohagany bed frame they thought i'd use was too big, but they didn't believe me until they'd shlepped it all the way down here and set it up. it would be nice if once in a while, my parents would allow that i have some sort of an idea about how to run my life.

tonight, i'm going to help fold the copies of the paper. i'm so excited about seeing it. we were on a hardcore budget, so it was printed on white, extra-long copier paper, but apparently, it looks good and i cannot wait to see our hilarity in print. also, it's incredible for me to see something come to fruition. i joined a group on campus at the end of my first year, and it promised to publish a website and a book and to offer lots and lots of opportunities to write, and then, suddenly, so many higher-ups dropped out that i, having only written one tiny blurb about something stupid, was offered an editorship (is that a word? it so should be).

so, congrats to us for actually getting something done.

courtroom drama

both my brothers were sick last week and now i'm kinda sniffly and tired and my throat hurts and i'm a big baby so this is pretty much the end of the world. i've been drinking airborne like crazy and trying to think good thoughts.

i just got back from my aunt's house. it was grand to see everyone because i absolutely love my family, but the night ended with my mom, my grandma and i having a fat argument with my aunt, my uncle and my grandpa about politics. that happens so often that i don't usually get upset about it, but a lot of really stupid, ignorant shit was said and i really couldn't handle it. i was really happy when we left.

my dad and i got into a fight at the dinner table and didn't speak to each other for the rest of the night. he started giving me the third degree about what grocery stores are around my apartment, and i couldn't understand what the point of it was. he asked: "is there a market around?"; "how far?"; "where exactly is it located?"; "what's it called?"; (and in response to my half-second pause as i tried to remember if it is a ralph's or an albertson's) "what, you can't remember what it's called?"; "how many are there?". so, eventually, to stop the onslaught, i said, "dad, really, what do you care?" and he replied, "that's a nice way to answer someone when they're just trying to ask you a question." he got up and walked away and that was the end of that. i cannot stand that cross-examination crap. he does that to all the time, as if he's going to catch me in some terrible lie about where the market is or who i'm hanging out with or if i really did check my email.

on a lighter note, i spent a long time with my mom today. we went to the museum to pick up some papers and to spy on sam as he rehearsed his scene. then we went shopping, and i refused to let her even touch the elastic-waisted "comfortable" jeans she wanted to try on. i also saw a shirt that said, "i don't care about your blog," and i was tempted to get it, but then i remembered that i don't wear sparkly, logo'd baby doll tees anymore because i'm not in eighth grade. every once in a while, i have to fight the urge to wear something really ridiculous.

ugh, i'm sneezy. moving into the apartment tomorrow is going to be really bad if i don't feel well. plus, everyone is going to be afraid of me, so i'll be avoided and quarantined on my first night. how upsetting.

rattlesnakes and phone books

i finally figured out how to keep my laptop from randomly crashing while i'm trying to get stuff done. the answer, you ask? i prop the computer up on the edges of tall books (preferably phone books) so that the delicate little fans on the bottom of the laptop get their much needed cool airflow. it's comforting to know that one must use third-grade logic to make one's thousand-dollar piece of equipment work correctly. (thank you, gilmore, for the precious prop technique information).

this just in: i've been babysitting for a family for about six years. i adore the kids, and they love me, so it works out well. the mother called me when i was in new york, asking if i could, and i quote, "babysit this saturday," which was fine with me, so i said yes. that saturday came and went and i didn't get a call from them, so i assumed they'd forgotten about me, because it's happened before. i didn't check my voicemail this week until just now, when i discovered that i'd missed two messages from her telling me that the kids are really excited about my coming over tomorrow and would i mind making more money and watching three more kids? unfortunately, i'm going to my aunt's house tomorrow night for rosh hashanah and can't cancel seeing my entire family so that i can babysit on a day when i was totally not told i was supposed to. so, for one of the few times in my entire life, i actually had to confront someone and tell them that they were wrong and i couldn't do anything about it.

in between stacking books and balancing laptops and disappointing children, i've been thinking a lot about trust. i've been particularly curious as to how you can actually ever trust anyone. that sounds really jaded and cynical, but i feel it's still a valid question. for instance: someone in my family was cheated on for eight years before she found out, and she'd been with her husband since she was seventeen. if you can't trust someone after thirty years, when can you really trust anyone? also, her husband was the most meek, soft-spoken, least-likely-to-cause-a-scene guy i've ever known. to hear that he was a big liar for almost half my life was a little disconcerting.

i had a very timely dream last night (which is proof that this trust thing has been on my mind for a while) about how a few people in my life handed me a rattlesnake and proceeded to spend the rest of the dream laughing about how i was getting bitten by it. ok, so it sounds way less powerful and symbolic when it's written down like that, but i guess it shows that i'm just trying to avoid rattlesnake bites. the only multiple puncture wounds i need are the ones i'm likely to get when i go back in a month to the "drawing station" and they decide again to play minesweep and "where's the vein?" with my arms.

in short, no one likes to get owned. and so how do you ever know who is going to screw you over? like, for example, sam, who was supposed to come home straight home from school forty minutes ago so i could go to my doctor's appointment. he's not here, because sometimes, he can be an ass.

ka-ra-tay

today, i had an interview to work at the ticket office at school, and it was less of an interview and more of a "show up and you get the job" deal. i showed up and i got the job. it's going to be really convenient because the scheduling is really flexible and supervisors seem way nice. i wore something i thought was good enough for an interview (and had been approved by my mom...which maybe should have been my first clue), and when my dad came home, he said, "hey, nice karate outfit," which was bitchy. but apparently, when you go to "show up and you get the job" deals, you can wear karate outfits and still impress people.

my scars are fading and i'm going to my fourth appointment tomorrow. hopefully everything goes well tomorrow so that i don't have get all stressed out and pissed off about the website not working or the pharmacists being bastards. i'd really appreciate things running smoothly.

badgerman

i love the humor paper. i just got back from a four hour meeting with the "staff", and i was laughing for most of it. those people are way more hilarious than i am, and it's so cool for me to watch someone just spew out hysterical things off the top of his head. the fact that they are more hilarious than me makes it even more awesome when they think i'm funny. also, i have a really base sense of humor, so when someone says "balls" or "shit" or shows me a photoshopped picture of a man with a badger head, i think it's great. and that is exactly what i just spent four hours listening to. amazing.

the paper goes to print tomorrow. i just know that it's going to offend a ton of people.

tonight is going to be my first night in the apartment. i had the flying squirrel meeting tonight and have a job interview tomorrow afternoon, so i figured i might as well actually stay at the apartment i pay for. i don't know when i'll be going to sleep though, because i'm not tired at all. i woke up at noon today and had to check every clock in the house before i actually believed that i'd slept straight through so late.

fox news was just on briefly, and i've concluded this much: geraldo is a douche.

sir lancelot

so i figured out why sam had a ridiculous haircut for such a long time last year. he was totally self-conscious about his skin and decided to let his hair fall in his face all time to try to hide it. i feel really terrible now, looking back, because i think i gave him a lot of shit about what a stupid idea it was for him to grow out long, one-length hair and then cut bangs to go with it.

it's surprising how easy it is to misconstrue things when you don't really know what's going on.

gauzy

ever since i was little, i knew i'd never be a doctor. i hate blood and guts and needles. i like to say that for all i care, my insides are made of candy. that's good enough for me. unfortunately for me, though, my insides may actually be candy, because i have really small, nearly invisible, impenetrable veins. i had to get blood drawn this morning to prepare for my dermatologist appointment on friday, and every time i go for blood tests, the experience gets worse. there's an older british woman, who is kinda like the mother hen of the hypodermic needle-wielding crew of nurses, and she is the only person i ever want to touch me. all of the newbies, i soon figured out, only stick me lots of times and never actually get anything accomplished, except for making me way sick and dizzy. today, she saw me, and i swear i could tell what she was thinking: "oh shit, she's back." she even asked me how many more accutane prescriptions i'm going to need. i bet my answer (four) was probably not what she wanted to hear. and then she started poking around for veins, which is when the fun always begins. she stuck me in my left arm, even though i warned her not to, and then i immediately started bleeding and bruising and she dripped my own blood all over my arm. yum. next, she tried my right wrist, to no avail, before finally settling on the inside of my right elbow. by the time she was done, i was surrounded by four or five of the other nurses, a few of whom had to help her wrangle my vein into the right position. i was so sick, i thought i was going to pass out. i don't understand how people can do that all the time. maybe it's not so bad when you aren't the patient.

by the time i left, twenty-five minutes after i sat down in the "drawing station", i had both elbows and my right wrist wrapped in gauze bandages. i asked them, as a joke, if i could maybe get another bandage on my perfectly fine left wrist, just so i could match. instantly, one of the nurses took the bandage off my left elbow and put a band-aid on instead. i guess they figured it's bad for business to send people out with enough bright-colored bandages to make a fashion statement.

i'm now in the process of devouring a baja burrito partially because i had to fast before the blood test (not a big deal), but mostly because i need to sooth myself after such a harrowing experience. i'm five.

newsbrief

i finally got the tv down to westwood last night. that's quite an accomplishment. i'd like to say that i moved in too, but i just brought some clothes and shoes that i figured i wouldn't want to deal with when i actually move in. i need to buy a bedframe and a desk, and so i forced andy to look online for "moderne" desks for me because i refuse to use the ones my dad dug out of the garage. andy, dan (our new roommate!) and i went to noodle planet, which i adore, and apparently, the non-vegetarian stuff there isn't too great. (my veggie fried rice was fabulous). i'm not really the best at recommending restaurants to carnivores, i guess.

i wrote my newsbrief for the "the flying squirrel" today. the title was, "UC set to decrease faculty diversity," which is hilarious. i have a feeling i'm going to really enjoy hanging out and writing with the people involved. they are so funny, and feed me subjects like the one above. maybe now i have a positive, worthwhile outlet for my sarcasm. they're publishing it on thursday or friday. that's really exciting. maybe i can actually leave my house on wednesday when we have a meeting in LA.

sadtown

i'm multitasking: i'm watching some stupid mtv show and trying to figure out how i feel right now. i was totally humiliated by my mother today at the democratic "garden party" (which was actually held inside). i guess i probably should have figured it out when she surprised me with those tickets, because in the past, she has never forced me to go to these things without talking to me first. i also probably should have noticed that something was amiss when she said "that guy will be there." "that guy" happens to be a twenty-seven-year-old engineer from san diego, whose mother is my mom's fellow democratic-cluber. my mom told me about this woman's plan to set me up with him, sight-unseen, about five months ago. i'd completely forgot about it. until today. i'd made it through three hours of garden party, and stolen three anti-bush pins and a hanging potted plant, and was about to leave with my grandparents when this woman ambushed me and asked me who i was, using my full name. "that's great," she said, "because i've been trying to set you up with my son for months." this woman could not have been any more out of control. she made me wait until her son came out of the bathroom (he was probably hiding) and then said to him, "this is her! we thought she would be perfect for you."

i have never in my life been so embarassed. this guy and i made bizarre small talk for about ten minutes before my mom came and rescued me. i think it was bad for me not because i don't like talking to new people, because (obviously) i love talking, but i was really upset that i was put in the "relationship" spotlight when i feel absolutely terrible about myself. i mean, really, the last thing i want to do right now is be shopped out to strangers to see how much they can not be attracted to me. it's just awful.

i'm not attempting a relationship until i'm done with this crap. it's pretty much impossible for me to consider anything until i feel better. there's a definite correlation between the end of my last "real", healthy relationship and the beginning of the skin issue. if i don't feel good enough, there is totally no way i'm going to be anything but a relationship saboteur.

i'm debating going to lunch with the ex-boyfriend, mainly just to see if there can be any normalcy in our relationship, despite all the things he's said to me over the course of our five-year saga. i think i really am happy for him, and i want him to know that. maybe my meeting his current girlfriend-fiancee will be a good way to prove to him that he does in fact have a girlfriend-fiancee and there are certain things he can't say anymore.

extravaganzas

my trip in foods:
cuban (the first night in new york, in a tiny restaurant at a booth next to molly sims and kate bosworth); chocolate fondue and pizza at an all-chocolate restaurant; hazelnut rice pudding at "rice to riches"; accidental stick o' butter bagel that i refused to eat because it was so damn buttery; amazing indian biryani at the place where we ran into the hot guy from union square; three cocktails from two different bars (both of which we snuck into when the bouncers were in the bathroom - that was surprisingly easy); brown's dorm food, which is delicious; huge deli sandwiches; giant cookies and chocolate mousse pies (for my birthday); bavarian nuts (almost); pumpkin and banana pancakes; vegetarian sushi; raspberry chocolate cake; too many blueberry muffins; thai veggies; almond boba; moroccan cous-cous; belgian french fries; more almond boba.

i lost five pounds in a week. how the hell i accomplished that shall remain a mystery to me.

we went everywhere in new york: central park, times square, broadway, the metropolitan museum of art, soho, the battery, the statue of liberty, brooklyn (where we stayed), union square, saw "the producers" on broadway. i absolutely adore the city. i loved that everything was completely accessible all the time. anything you could possibly ever want to do is right at your fingertips via the subway or your legs. we did so much walking. that allowed us to do a ton of eating, as evidenced above.

providence was amazing. brown is an adorable school, with all the classes held in old brick victorian buildings and all the dorm rooms placed in renovated cottages. we went to this thing called "waterfire" over the weekend, which is a big festival celebrating the rejuvenation of providence by a former, now-imprisoned mayor. firepits in the middle of the river that runs through providence were set on fire and seeing them all down the river at night was beautiful. also, we got to hang out with zoe, who i love, and to see zak, who is hilarious.

this has made me even more sure that i need to travel to as many places as i possibly can. i always totally love where i go, but in the end, strangely, i come back home with a new appreciation for where i live.

next up is a trip to europe - when i magically have the money and the time.

my mom signed me up for a seat at this democratic luncheon tomorrow afternoon, without telling me, and that means that i can't move into the apartment tomorrow like i planned to. i could go afterward, i suppose, but i have no idea how long it's going to last. all i know is that i'm going to be harassed by some women who cannot believe that my activist mother could have possibly spawned such an apathetic child. what they don't know is that while i don't particularly like canvassing the neighborhood i live in, knocking on unsympathetic doors hoping that no one throws a bible in my face, i do actually care about what's going on in the world. i'm just not as flyer-y about it.

also, my dad and my brothers are officially beginning the halloween preparations. it's the 16th of september. according to my calculations, they're a day late. they took down all the many boxes of ghouls from the attic this morning, and i just helped my dad plug in a glowing spector that lives in the attic window, holding his head in his hand by its hair. there's a leg bone and some chains on my parents' bed and i think there's a skeletal body in the other corner of their room. it's all part of their planning phase, when they figure out what goes where and which type of motors to use to move decaying monsters around the garage. my personal favorite is the hanging witch, whose motorized rope turns around and around as if she's swaying in the breeze.

halloween is a huge deal in this house.

eotc

so, i'm home. there's so much to tell about our trip that i'm going to leave that for tomorrow, because my feet hurt and i'm sleepy.

tonight was the dress rehearsal for the play. i really didn't want to go, and was even contemplating dropping out, because i'm really not feeling so good about myself right now, and the last thing i want to do is stand in front of a bunch of people and put on a big "look-at-me" show. i'm crazy dry, and i have a new constant sunburn because my skin is so sun-sensitive that being outside for ten seconds while wearing sunscreen turns me bright red. basically, i feel like a mess. i don't particularly want to leave my house to go to longs, let alone to go perform somewhere. that seems really petty and whiny and stupid, and i guess maybe i'll never be able to fully explain how terrible this skin issue has been for me, but i'll just say that it is in fact terrible and i do think about it all the time. i'm going to have to celebrate in january when i've taken all of my little orange accutane pills and normalcy can begin.

rehearsal was actually fun. i always feel like a big star when i show up there in my 1876-esque wedding dress and clomp around in high-heeled boots. i met up with the cowboy poet i've known for a few years, having originally met him doing this play. he still insists that he's really close to getting his book of cowboy poetry launched at barnes and noble, but i've stopped being impressed with that because he's been saying it for three years. i like him because he's way earnest and he loves what he does (he owns his own publishing company) and he tells me that i'm an amazing writer. flattery is always nice.

i also got to see the woman who plays my mother in our scene. she's so amazing and relaxing to be around. i only see her for two weekends a year when we both do this reenactment, but i feel like i've known her forever. we talk about just about everything and because she's going blind, i give her verbal cues about what's going on in the play. i'm not being flippant about her blindness; she acts exactly the same way about it. i admire that about her. she's really positive and funny and i think i could learn a lot about coping from her.

one trip tidbit: fortunately, they did not take my gels from me on the plane. speaking of which, i need to go stick my entire face into a vat of creams.

leaving on a jet plane

we're leaving! i'm so excited and nervous and really not looking forward to the long flight. i can't imagine what we're going to do when we land and have to battle the "two subways and several blocks" to get to where we're staying in new york. those are the directions shiza got from her cousin. i'm sure it will be fine, but i'm an idiot, so anything is possible.

i'm also excited to get out of my house. it's really hard to go from living at school, where i don't really have to answer to anyone, to living at home, where it seems like i have to answer to everyone at least three times. it's going to be grand to just be able to do exactly what i want to do and not have to tell anyone about it.

until, of course, i come back home and post the longest epic anyone has ever read. consider yourself warned.

gels

the sides of my lips are seriously cracked to the max. this happened last summer, and it eventually healed, after i learned to pretty much never open my mouth. however, i see no end in sight for this for the next few months because my face will only get more dry, and thus, my lip-corners will only get more cracked. it's upsetting because i can't laugh like a jackal and i love laughing like a crazy person.

i've started wearing my contacts again. i'm such a strong person that i could only stand about six days of wearing my glasses before i caved and decided to weather the dry eyes and bring back the contacts.

today, i learned that i can't take chapstick with me on the plane in my carry-on. it's a gel. and apparently, gels aren't allowed on airplanes anymore. and that totally blows for me because i'll be trapped on that thing for five hours without anything to sooth my nasty lips. num num. that's way irritating. (i believe that's the first time i've used the word "irritating" on this blog. that's impressive).

i don't want to know what's going to happen when i have to live five hours without my gels.

laborious

labor day happenings of interest:

my twelve-year-old cousin told his friend, "kyle, you look like a bitch," and then proceeded to tell me that "there's always lesbian drama. it never ends."

my grandma and i exchanged diet secrets (she still thinks i'm off sugar). our conversation was prompted by my great-aunt (my grandma's sister) telling me the other day to "lay off the potatoes" because i didn't fit into any of the size double zero pants she tried to lend me for the trip.

my grandpa made the strongest apple-tinis in the universe, tried to get me to drink three, and then he drank them instead and got sloshed.

shiza and i leave tomorrow!

emote

my grandma totally surprised me tonight. we went over to my grandparents' house this afternoon to hang out and have a pre-labor day barbeque, because my parents have been invited to their *first ever* summer party thrown by people they actually like. as my mom says, they have friends now. more specifically, they have "friends who share their democratic ideals" and my mother loves this. i do too, actually, because maybe now we won't be the only people we know who plaster peace signs everywhere and consider being called a "bleeding heart" a compliment.

ok, so back to the grandmother. we celebrated my birthday tonight, even though it's really next week, because i'll be in new york on the actual day. my grandma bought a huge chocolate cake, but gave me a sugar-free pudding cup with a candle in it because she remembered that i'm off sugar. (and that's actually a lie, because i've been eating lots of sugary goodies lately, but i don't have the heart to tell her that i've broken my no-sugar rule). then, she brought out my gift, which was sarah jessica parker's perfume "lovely" - i've not so secretly wanted that since last summer. it was really thoughtful and i cannot believe she remembered. very nice.

i'm starting to get nervous for the new york extravaganza. my dad told me tonight, after i'd told him that i haven't packed my bag yet, that i should "think about doing that." thanks. it will be amazing to go and see it all, but i'm worried. that is, after all, my shtick.

andy is officially going to hate me, because i'm not going to be able to take the tvs down to the apartment before i leave for a week. and he will not have a tv for all that time, and he will miss the season premiere of "house" and will hate me forever. so, andrew, i'm very sorry about my inability to deliver the televisions as promised. i'm a terrible friend, roommate, and person in general.

OH, i almost forgot: my rehearsal yesterday was an absolute joke. the director kept telling us to, and i quote, "emote." i felt like she should have been wearing a beret and thick-framed glasses and waving around a long cigarette and beating a drum with one hand, all while saying, "emote, emote, emote." someone definitely takes her title as director of a museum play a little too seriously

shame on me

there's a terrible thing i do and i'm not even sure i want to post about it because it makes me seem like a beast. however, i feel i must post about this because i just caught myself doing it and in order to try to stop myself from doing this in the future, maybe i should publicly shame myself. so here goes: i look at pictures of people i knew a long time ago and revel in how different they look. and by different, i mean worse. obviously, i am/was jealous of these people in some way, shape or form, and by finding joy in their degradation i am feeding my ego. that's for sure. but that's awful, don't you think? when people go to college and gain fifteen pounds their first year, i laugh at them. when i see hideous pictures floating around, i'm filled with glee. it makes me feel more normal to know that other people, people i'm secretly envious of, gain weight or look terrible or aren't flattered by every camera angle. it makes them just like me. and if they're just like me, i don't have to be jealous of them.

girls are bitches.

ALSO, i'm a shitty vegan.

i'm really good at not eating meat and milk and cheese, but i'm really not good at refusing to wear leathery things that are just as exploitative to animals as the foods i don't eat. for instance, right how, i'm wearing leather sandals, carrying a leather bag (which, in my defense, i assumed was vinyl because i bought it for way cheap at target), and i have a leather cuff from the county fair on my wrist. i got it when i was volunteering at the "tide pool cruiser," a truck that had a mobile tide pool in its bed.

at my dental appointment last week, the assistant pointed to the letters embossed on the cuff and said, "oh, bread! like the band, right?" i agreed because i have indeed listened to bread before and i'll admit to copying my dad's "greatest hits" cd onto my itunes playlist, but the word on the cuff has nothing to do with the band, really. it does, however, have everything to do with the fact that i love to stuff loaves of delicious carbs into my face all the time. that's a habit i formed when i stopped eating meat twelve years ago.

which brings us full circle, back to the fact that while i am disgusted by the thought of consuming animals, i'm apparently totally fine with wearing them on my feet, shoulders, and wrist.

i'm a shitty vegan.

sudok you

i knew all about sudoku weeks before it was a big fad. i thought it looked boring and stupid as i sat across from a certain person in various vegan restaurants near school. he'd bring a newspaper and a pencil to every dinner, all the better to shut me out. and when that certain person turned out to be a giant ass, i forever (or so it seemed) associated the popular puzzle with being an ass-clown and vowed never to touch it. i would never taint my awesomeness with a game that such a bastard could enjoy.

that all changed last week when someone in my family folded up a newspaper to perfectly expose a copy of a sudoku game, and because it was right there in my face, all newsprinty and accessible and labelled "easy", i thought i'd give it a try. suddenly, i'm obsessed. i'm terrible at crossword puzzles, so i think that by mastering these other puzzles, i can redeem myself.

i bought a giant book of easy-medium-hard-hardest puzzles to take on the plane with me, considering my ipod is out of commission and i haven't remembered to take it to be repaired. i'll need the huge book of sudoku to entertain myself.

i'm a little upset that now i have something in common with the ass-clown. life is mysterious.

giggles

some really interesting things have been happening to me in the last few days, and what just occurred is the crowning achievement: i was myspace-stalking an ex-boyfriend, found tons of pictures of him and his new girlfriend, and was giddy about how cute they looked together. i think i might have even giggled about how cool it is that they have each other. either i've suddenly matured ten years or the drugs i'm on are having an unexpected side effect on me. accutane is loosely associated with depression and terrible moods, but during these first two weeks of medication, i've felt the exact opposite - i've been a big bubbly happytown. i told my mom about it last night, and even just talking about how happy i've been made me break out in a fat smile and jump around. i'm not usually an unhappy person, but most of the time, i could do without seeing former boyfriends frolic around with their new girlfriends.

maybe it has to do with the fact that i feel like my life is coming together. i understand that sounds ridiculous and dramatic, but i really do feel as if pretty soon, everything's going to make sense. i'm happy with school and my friends and myself (or, at least, i'm pretty sure i'm on the way to self-acceptance).

let's see how long this giddiness lasts when i go to rehearsal. i'm sure something outrageous will happen there. i once witnessed an older woman in a corseted costume chasing me, battery-powered lantern in hand, up a flight of concrete stairs, only to see her lose her balance and tumble back down the steps, lantern flying. that's pretty outrageous, and may be hard to top, but i'll try.

sarsaparilla

i can't believe it isn't even noon yet. it's been such a long morning.

i did indeed get my hair cut yesterday. i called ahead as i drove home from work to ask if i needed an appointment or if i could just saunter in whenever i felt like it, to which the receptionist at the "salon" replied, "um yeah, an appointment would definitely be nice," or something to that bitchy effect. i probably shouldn't have given them my business because after that, she passed me on to someone else, who was equally demonic. if i had any principles, i would have called back and cancelled the appointment i was forced to make. however, recently, i've stopped taking on lots of causes that only really hurt me. for instance, for years, i refused to set foot inside a local kohl's because they paved over a giant beautiful marsh to build that monstrosity. i went in the other day with my mom and realized that i should have been boycotting it first and foremost because the clothing it sells is absolutely repulsive.

god, i like stories. i got my hair cut. it's nice. and easy. i like it.

zoe left for providence this morning. we went to starbucks last night to say goodbye and loosely plan some things for when shiza and i fly out there in a few days. i can't believe the train from new york to providence costs fifty dollars. that's the me-equivalent of two or three haircuts, five clearance-racked shirts, or fifty packs of orbit gum, all of which seem to me to be more effective ways to spend that money. i'm excited to go on the trip, but i woke up this morning and suddenly felt really nervous. as much as i talk about how i want to get out of my little town and see the world, going somewhere three thousand miles away from everything familiar is starting to feel daunting.

at 2:30 this afternoon, i have rehearsal for the play. i don't know why i'm doing it again. it's fun and interesting, i suppose, but it's also really time consuming and repetitive (each scene has eight performances a night) and on a more personal note, my lines are terrible. that's really prima donna of me, but i have a bizarre monologue about gloves and shoes and coats, at the end of which i'm supposed to swoon. yes, swoon. and i have to actually say that word, too. it's true that the play is set in 1876, when swooning, the action and the verb, was more prevalent, i guess, but it could have been written better. i think i'm going to change some things around without telling anyone and just wait for the director to get upset with me because i'm ruining her vision. i'll reply with something along the lines of, "it's a museum fundraiser. go downstairs and chill out with a sarsaparilla."

villains and soups

someone just microwaved something horrible in the office kitchen. lucky for me, the office i'm working in is directly across from the kitchen, so the terrible, terrible smell is making its steady way over to my previously clean, breathable air. it smells like the separate odors of microwaved broccoli and cheese melded together to create one horrendously awful assault on my nostrils, lungs, and lifespan, because i just might suffocate to death on how gross this is.

this just in: it's mushroom soup. i knew it had to be something disgusting.

in other news: i hate to keep talking about celebrities (which is a lie because i love talking about celebrities), but i've noticed a lot of weirdness about certain famous people. take, for example, how much rebecca gayheart (who you should google immediately) frightens me. i'm not exactly sure why every time i see her, i think she looks villainous and evil. it may have something to do with the fact that the only thing i've ever seen her act in is "urban legends" a few years ago, and she plays a psychopath in that movie. also, i think she was back in the tabloids a while ago for running over a little child in her suv, and that's pretty frightening, right? whatever the reason, i glimpsed her the other day on a website, and now i can't figure out how no one else is scared of her.

i just had a long conversation about life with my aunt over baja fresh and water bottles. it's been really nice working at a family business, no matter how tedious the work or how much i screw it up. i've gotten a chance to hang out with lots of people i enjoy (sam, my aunt, my cousins, etc.) much more than i would have been able to had i not worked here. plus, there's a baja right around the corner, making my favorite goodies that much more convenient.

when i get back home from work, i'm going to get my hair cut. short. because even though i have sugar-plum dreams of having long beautious movie star hair, i must realize that i don't have a stylist trailing me at parties and awards shows and supermarkets. plus, i have very little time or energy to deal with the long hair myself, and thus, it ends up wadded at the top of my skull all the time. that is neither beautious nor dreamy, and must be remedied with a pair of little scissors. and i do realize that no one cares about this line of reasoning - i'm posting this because i know that when my hair is gone and i'm sad and pissed at myself for getting it cut off, i'll need to have a form of solid, dated proof as to why this must happen and why i'm cutting short (pun intended!) my mermaid-hair fantasies.

first of the month

it's september! which means lots of things i'm looking forward to are just around the corner: going on the fantastical journey with shiza and zoe, celebrating my birthday (!), moving into the apartment, starting school again (i'm really, really excited for my upper division psych and anthro classes). i'm spending this wonderous first day of september languishing at work, where recently, i just can't seem to get things together enough to do assignments right the first time. it's a relatively easy, mindless job, which requires nothing more of me than my neverending patience with filing, billing, adding, and copying. however, it's been way difficult the past few weeks for me to remember how to do any of it. there are a lot of little details i forget because i'm only working here part time for two months. i'm a little nervous about what it's going to be like for me to have a real career, when i can't really handle having a mini-job over the summer.

i'm not done talking about myself. i'm just busy. there will be more posted.