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.