Family Tree

I got a lot done when I got home from work today. I vacuumed, mopped, and dusted the whole downstairs. It looks great and I fully intend to be the Shoe Nazi until Thanksgiving Day.

Tonight I brought up the fact that my dad never had real spaghetti sauce until he was in college. Up till that point, he only knew to put tomato sauce into pasta because that's all his mother had ever done. My mom's husband listed off several things that his mother killed in the kitchen before he was taken elsewhere to eat and discovered most of the food wasn't horrid; she was just screwing it up.

I asked my mom if she had ever "discovered" a food after getting out of her house and she said that besides Chinese take-out, her house was where people discovered new foods. Her family was Portuguese and apparently my Nana made stuff like Octopus soup and Rabbit and a few other things. her father, my Avo, used to make her peanut butter and banana sandwiches, which isn't as odd or Portuguese, but its something I remember.

Apparently my nana had been pregnant with my mom when she and my Avô came over from Portugal in the early fifties. They were so poor and had so little to eat that my nana would starve herself and save the food for my Avo. When he got home from work she would tell him she'd already eaten. It got to the point where my Avô took her to the doctor and he said neither my nana nor the baby were going to live. The one he probably didn't know about for awhile, I'm not sure. He said that he had just moved from Portugal and not a year later the doctor was telling him his wife and unborn child were going to die. Of course they didn't, somehow. Frankly, my nana was probably the most sickly person I've ever met. I only recently learned that she had a tumor in her throat when she was a teenager in Brazil and it was operated on. Back then. Oh my god. On top of that she inherited diabetes and was on dialysis from a few years ago until her death in 2003. I recall her having a mild heart attack a few years before that. I know that as a young woman she was told she had a tumor in her breast. She prayed it away, I've been told. She sat in her room full of fear and prayed. I was also told recently that she had to have a metal plate put in because her ab muscles weren't strong enough to hold her guts together by themselves. Its some crazy shit.

I think my Avô was born in 1934. I don't think he knows exactly when he was born, but we celebrate a birthday, so it must be close. He was good-looking. I've seen black and white shots of him from when he was 18 on his wall. He grew up in the Azores and we actually visited his house and looked around inside while we were there on our trip to Portugal in 1999. My nana was born in Portugal and there is an elaborate story about how the family had been rich but when they moved to Brazil they lost all their money somehow. Don't ask. They eventually moved back to Portugal and my grandparents met. He would've been 21 when my mother was born. Holy shit, he got married at what age? And moved to a different country at 20?? I can't even imagine doing that. People and places are different though. And at 21 he was told his wife was going to die. Um, yikes.

After that the next thing I know is that my mother didn't know English until kindergarten. Kids would make fun of her and she had no idea what they were saying. She thought she had something on her face. She had mad banana curls that were super cute and really soft and her aunt was taking care of ehr one time and got sick of trying to brush her hair so she took her to a salon and got them all chopped off. They never grew back quite the same. She still has them in a bag somewhere. Her parents were very strict to the point of not wanting her to ride a bike or take swimming lessons. To this day she can't swim. Her mother was a pretty angry woman it seems. She mellowed out when she was older but I've seen her get mad. I guess now since I've written this much about her I'll talk some about my dad.

I think I know much more about my dad's upbringing because he's a storyteller, but I probably know much less given that he tends to distort periods in his life that make him look weak. Either way, my Grandma was born in 1912 or thereabouts. She always lied and said she was born in 1913. I don't know why one year makes all the difference. She met my grandfather on a cruise where his and his brothers band was playing. They called themselves the Marsh Brothers because they knew no one would be able to pronounce our name. There were four brothers and two, my grandfather and the other middle child, were identical twins. Their parents had come over from Germany and their father left their mother I think. Something about a fish market and stuff, I don't know. I mean that's where he worked. Anyways, her nickname was Liepzen or something. It was pronounced Leap-shin and it meant "Darling", but as I hear it she was anything but. But let's get back to the cruise. my Grandma's mother had the balls to stand up and ask my grandfather if he was single. My Grandma was wicked embarressed. Later he met her out on the deck and later on he told her that he had been rinsing with Listerine and she happened to come out when it was still in his mouth. He didn't want to spit it out in front of her so he swallowed it. He had been married before, so they had a small marriage since her parents dissapproved, but later on they had a larger wedding. At the age of 40 she had my father and a year or so later, his sister. My father has commented on how he can see why his father never wanted to put the effort into disipline because he could never imagine dealing with a child at the age of 40 and up.

Anyways, I'm going to continue this later. I'm getting carpal tunnel. Hopefully I'll also find out more and have more to add as well since this is more of a spewing of the little I know and less a story.

Hickey #3

Maybe a week ago the owner of a company my company works with came in to drop something off. Although he's seen me before and is probably already aware of it, he decided to now bring up the subject of my birthmark. Like this:

"Is that a lovebite?"

"No, it's a hickey"

"Yah, a lovebite"

"No- I mean..its a birthmark, but everyone always asks if its a hickey"

"Oh, I thought you were just getting too passionate or something, haha"

Ha-Ha-Ha, you're so funny.

Now I'm starting to use the word hickey, argh.

Boring Blog Stuff

So I tried to move to Wordpress yesterday because it seemed like they had so many more options for layouts and an individual private blog post feature which Blogger does not have. If I want posts to be private here I have to make the entire blog private and I don't want that. I also wanted a nicer looking template but it turns out that with the free Wordpress your template choices are incredibly limited and they suck anyways. I might just keep the other one for private passworded posts and this one for public posts although in all the purpose was sort of defeated. Oh well. I also decided to change this template and used the only all black template to form a base for a masthead that I made out of a picture I found online with Photoshop. It still has little white outlines and I thought of fixing the size so it fit into the right side of the outlines but i kind of like how it looks flowing out like that. Okay, I'm done.

Middle Aged Women in College Classes

I just read a Wide Lawns post that is so on the mark and everyone in college needs to read.

I'll tell you who gets on my nerves the most though...In every single solitary college class I have taken in the past five years there is always without fail the Middle Aged Woman Who Will Not Shut Up. I hate this woman. I can not escape her in her seemingly infinite incarnations. She always shows up to every class. She never, ever fucking stops talking.

Go here http://widelawns.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html and scroll down until the title "I Hab a Bad Code". About halfway through is the part about the Middle Aged Woman who Won't Shut Up. Its completely true.

Vinh I Know You're Out There

When Vinh put a clock-radio in the second bathroom, the guys thought it was a marvelous idea. They could check the time and play music while taking a shower and not be stressed about whether they might be late to class. He built a little cardboard shelf for it and everything, positioning it in the corner behind the toilet, right where you could see it from the shower or if you were taking a whiz. Well, if you were a dude, which they both were. Boyfriend and I shared a bathroom at the very end of the hall with A, and Pool Boy and Vinh shared the smaller bathroom halfway down the hall, closer to the living room. Let me draw you a diagram because I can become very convoluted with these things.

There it is. If you can read the tiny print, then cool. If not, down the left reads "Vinh's Room, A's Room, Pool Boy's Room, Boyfriend's Room. And then the top bathroom is Me, Boyfriend and A, as previously mentioned, and that lower one is Vinh's and Pool Boy's.

Also, I'm sure you're wondering why I'm using Vinh's name when I never use any real names. Cause fuck him, that's why. And you'll see why.

So ANYWAYS. In that second bathroom you can see the toilet, the alarm clock radio, and the shower. It looks like a messy box. Sorry about that. So fast forward about a month. Its coming up on Halloween. We're all pulling costumes together last minute, except for Vinh, who is putting the finishing touches on a paper-mâché mask of that creepy little character from the SAW movies. I guess his name is Jigsaw or something.

The story starts with a bang, at least from my point of view. Me and Boyfriend were taking a shower and got out to dry off (no, there is no sexy shower part) and got wrapped up in towels and opened the door. Boyfriend was still using the mirror or something and as I opened the door to leave I nearly ran right into Vinh, who was leaving his room. You see how the doors to our bathroom and his bedroom line up. They did better in real life than in my drawing. He was walking down the hall to ask Mr. Pool Boy a question and Pool Boy had just entered the second bathroom for his own shower. Seeing as how Vinh was going to come back in a moment to get back in his room, I opted to stand in the doorway to not crowd the hallway and wait to leave until he was back in his room. While I waited, I glanced into the room through the still open door.

There was an image on the computer of white tile and a light switch. In fact, it looked quite similar to the tile and light switches that graced our bathrooms. But of course, every bathroom looks like that. I heard Vinh knock on the bathroom door down the hall and it was like the noise was echoed. I heard Pool Boy say "Hang on!" from down the hall and on the computer screen a big hairy chest entered into the picture frame, which, of course, was really a video. Nuts bundled in hand, I saw Pool Boy's hairy Italian chest curve around the door next to the light switch as the accompanying vocals came from down the hall. "I'll be out in like ten minutes." Awestruck, I stood in our bathroom doorway trying to process what was happening. The door shut and the hairy chest left the picture. Vinh walked back down the hall toward me and as he proceeded to enter his bedroom, I stammered, "Is that a camera??" He slammed the door behind him. Um, I think that's a yes.

Boyfriend and I walked down to his room and shut the door and I turned and said, "There's a camera. There's a camera in Pool Boy and Vinh's bathroom." Boyfriend laughed. I said again, totally serious, that there was a camera and I had seen Pool Boy's torso on Vinh's computer. Boyfriend laughed a little quieter and more nervous-like and accused me of fucking with him. I insisted and told him exactly what I saw and he became serious. We got dressed and listened for the shower to turn off. When it did we were all over the door. "Pool Boy, get out here, get out here now!" "I'll be out in a minute." he said. "No!! Now!!"

Pool Boy opened the door in a towel, still sopping wet and quite confused. "There's a camera in there" I said. "What?" "There's a camera; it's pointed towards the door and the shower; it's over there." I said, and inadvertently pointed right at the now suspect clock-radio. We toyed with it for a moment and saw that there was a little tiny circle for the AM/PM light, but there was one below it with no specified purpose. We left to let Pool Boy get some pants on. When he came out, we were waiting and he was holding the clock-radio. "Dude, it says on the bottom of it, 'AV Video Device'." He took it apart on the counter and sure enough, the little unspecified circle was a little window for a tiny camera. But how was it getting to the computer? More importantly, why had we never wondered what that random wire was that came out of it and was taped to the wall? Oh.

Pool Boy decided to confront Vinh, who had been in his room with the door shut now for about an hour, and yelled for him to come out to talk. I wish I could've watched him sweat as he saw a full view of our giant faces surveying the "clock-radio" on his monitor. It's actually something we joked about later on, because how did that look? But back to the story. Boyfriend told me we should go into his room and shut the door even though it occurred to me not too long after that my butt was on there several times and so were many other peoples' asses and dicks but let's not get caught up right now. Pool Boy basically asked Vinh what the fuck this was all about, gesturing at the dissected clock-radio, and do you know what that kid said? I bet you can't guess. Here it is. He said, "Dude! Why did you break my clock-radio!!?" Pool Boy, paralyzed in stunned disbelief, didn't even react as Vinh bundled up the parts and ran the clock-radio, or should I say hidden camera device, back to his room. Later that night, when no one was around to see him, Vinh grabbed some of his stuff and high-tailed it down to his old dorm to seek refuge from friends who didn't know yet what had happened. According to most, he told them he was having a fight with Pool Boy or something.

The next night I got a call from Pool Boy, who had finally decided to file charges, and good on him for doing so. Since I was the witness, they wanted me to come down to the station. I took way too long getting there as I assumed he was at the town PD and not the Campus PD, where he, in fact, was. There was a reason for this but I'll talk about it some other time. Down at the station I wrote up my own statement on a computer and got asked a bunch of questions by a cop. One of the most awesome parts about this was that we got to keep a copy of our statements and both of them (written separately) observed that I had identified Pool Boy by his extremely hairy Italian chest. Classic.

Apparently the Campus PD down there are fucking imcompetantes (I might've made up a word) because every so often, Vinh would come back to the place to get more of his stuff!! It was fucking everyone up and everyone would get tense and distracted and no one could do work or all that other shit you do at school. The day after Halloween my Bettie Page wig and my favorite very cute black pumps were missing. I had specifically remembered taking them out of my ride's car Halloween night because they had been such a fucking bitch to carry and I had placed them, wig and all in the shoebox) behind Boyfriend's bedroom door. Now, pretty much every time we left the apartment, I would lock the bedroom door because my parents are paranoid and they raised me to take extra precautions to protect my stuff. That said, it wasn't anyone who didn't live at the place. Pool Boy wouldn't have done it, because why would he? A wouldn't have taken my heels even as a joke because again, why would he. Neither had ever done anything very weird and neither had a girlfriend to give pumps to. Even so, I searched both their rooms, with their knowledge, to make sure I hadn't gone in there to talk and left them there. Last one down was Vinh, who, we now knew, liked to watch our friends dicks as they took a piss. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

He left one night, shortly after the confrontation, and left his door wide open, something he never did. He had spent the day in there cleaning. Figures. I knew that by now, I wouldn't find anything, but went in to tinker around anyways. I peered into things and under things, trying to avoid actually touching anything that belonged to the pervert, and when I was satisfied they had been put elsewhere, I left. He came home that evening and accused me of going into his room while he was gone. He had the evidence on a camera he had set up by his computer and was now accusing me of going through his stuff. I denied "going through" anything of his but admitted to being in his room. He continually told me I had been going through his stuff, to which I responded with a "No" and then to lead me into admitting to going through his stuff, he told me I had been in his room, to which I said that yes, yes I had because I was looking for my shoes. In his frustration of not being able to get me to fess up to "going through" stuff, he kept raising his voice until boyfriend, who can be very loud when he wants to be, yelled from the living room that that was enough and to leave me alone. With a frustrated and mildly sheepish look, he left the doorway and went on to his room down the hall. How ironic that someone blatantly caught taping our nether regions and who definitely stole something by deduction (and by putting the damn puzzle together) would attack me over walking into his room. If I did "go through" his stuff then what anyways? Oh, arrest me. I guess when you think about it it's the guilty who decide to start attacking people for stupid shit.

So through the tension we tried to cooperate with the cops who said their plan was to bag him in his room for questioning, confiscate his stuff, and then have him taken out of the apartment. That was the plan, but whenever Pool Boy would call them to tell them he was in the apartment, they would say they'd be there in a couple days; they were working on something. I think he actually heard them laugh once, as if they weren't even paying attention but someone was making jokes in the background. One day at around a two week point they came in and made a mess of his room, gathering up his computer and cords and the camera he had used to "catch" me "going through his stuff". He definitely got rid of the clock-radio camera and geez, he had plenty of fucking time, didn't he? Finally, FINALLY, he came in one day in a suit, paraded down the hall by his parents and a man who I presume was his lawyer. Actually when you think about it, that may have been punishment enough. I took a class senior year for the hell of it and it was known by classmates as "Gaysians". Frankly, it doesn't seem like Asian cultures are incredibly accepting of gays. Like normal gays. Not gay people with sneaky cameras. So I guess I'm just hoping the embarrassment of his Vietnamese parents knowing that he was secretly filming dick is on par with the absolute horrible-ness we had to go through because of his dark desires. Hehe, dark desires.

So anyways, it took them about 2 hours to clear out and we haven't seen him since. One of the most retarded things about this ridiculous situation was that even with the knowledge of what happened, people said some stupid shit. The most ludicrous thing I heard out of anyone was from some dipwad named Craig who was invited to some lovely beirut at the apartment. The dialouge went a little something like this:

"Hey Craig, we're having a party on Friday, wanna come play some beirut?"

"Oh, maybe. Is Vinh coming?"

"What? Why would he?"

"Oh, I don't know. I just didn't know if you were going to invite him."

"::Stunned silence::"

That might've been the worst part. That we could tell people exactly what happened and they'd say something stupid like that. Some of them acted like those people where a rape victim has come forth and they just don't believe her and scold her for saying such things. Or him. It happens. No one did exactly that, but a couple people just kind of acted like they didn't believe it and we were just saying crap cause we were all in some big fight. Over what? Oh, I dunno. Maybe a fight about Vinh filming our privates? Nah, that couldn't be it.

Fifteen years from now Craig will be entering his cubicle. His coworkers, bored with the same old same old of the everyday office life will have put an amateur gay porn site up on his computer. He presses the button and sits down. As his screen comes up his face turns white. His buddies, previously glancing over his cubicle walls, will fall apart with gales of laughter at the horrified expression on his face. Little will they know that his color has been drained not from a penis popping up in front of his face, but from knowledge; the knowledge that that is his penis. His 22 year old penis taking a piss in a dormitory bathroom years upon years ago. "Oh" he'll think, once words come back to him. "Oh."

It wasn't just Pool Boy. It was everyone who ever used that bathroom, and let me tell you, everyone who ever came over to party used that bathroom because it was the closest. Pool boy, Me, Boyfriend, A, Craig, that blond girl Craig is destined to marry and divorce, and everyone else you can possibly remember.And for all we know at this point, the kid got off scot-free. Given the lax attitude the cops had when we talked to them, if they ever got him down to the station, it went a little like this: "I'm going to cover my eyes and count to ten and I just hope no one kidnaps you..1...2."

So anyways, that's the story of Vinh and his secret dick-camera. Maybe sometime I'll follow that up with the time A ripped the apartment apart just a couple weeks after the camera incident. He got taken out of the apartment almost quicker and he hadn't sexually assaulted his roomates, if you will. That just shows you where the university's priorities are.

YouTube Try a Little Tenderness

Yesterday I finally got my new monitor working. I bought it basically brand new off a kid at work. i was sitting there talking about how I'd been looking for an lcd online and I found a brand new one for $100 on Amazon and it was the best find yet and he said, "I have one I'll sell you for 50 bucks. It came with my computer but I use my tv as the screen, so it's been sitting in my closet for 2 or 3 years." I pounced on it and brought it home but it said on the screen that it couldn't play that "video". I asked about this to the Ex and he told me to fix the resolution and the hertz, so I did but then it just had a colored box bouncing around the screen. I tried a couple different things but they necessitated me hooking up the giant monitor again and then detaching it and hooking up the lcd but then turning the computer off by shutting off the power, which isn't good and eventually I gave up and shut it down because I have a very short fuse with computers. My computer is positioned right by the stairs up to my loft and it really wouldn't take much for me to just kick it right off the top step, especially given my short temper as of late.

Back at work I explained the current situation and my buddy told me that he'd seen that before and it just meant the cord was hooked to the monitor and the comp on the wrong ends. He also said he had tested it before bringing it in to give me and he's not someone I would ever think could sell me anything broken, so I believed him. I had also thought of this myself but was so tired of messing with it at the time that I didn't bother to try it out. That's what I get for being lazy I guess. Anyways, I went home and tried it and the monitor came right on and now I'm back in business. I'm happy cause even though I like saving energy by using the basement computer, I miss my photoshopping.

It was also just in the nick of time because Boyfriend was around that day (Sunday) and he had brought wine, bread, cheese, and a log for the fireplace. So thoughtful. I'm trying to get in shape and he brings alcohol, carbs and cheese. What a guy. I'm just kidding, it was great. He's also registered on Pandora where he can set up his own radio stations (it's free) and he put on the Otis Redding station. Go to Pandora and make yourself an Otis Redding station because you will hear so much good music. Its also a great way to find new music that you'll love without having to ask your friends for their crappy opinions. Again, kidding...sort of. So we listened to Otis Redding in front of the fire and I got a great massage. My boy knows how to do it right. He just has to do it more often. I'm so romantic that for the first few minutes I was throwing used tissues into the fire for fun. That'll get it going. I got to sleep in as well and that was great in itself.

Port-a-gee

Me: Well, I was telling him how I was Portuguese and-

Boyfriend: You are not Portuguese.

Me: Yes I am, I'm half Portuguese.

Boyfriend: You aren't Portuguese unless you were born there.

Me: Fine then, I'm Hisportuguese.

Hickey #2

About three days ago, let's say November 14th, a customer asked me about my "hickey". When I told him it wasn't one he apologized more than once and I said it was fine cause he didn't just keep on making jokes about it like every other jackass.

You're So Gay and Your Don't Even Like Boys

So I've been wicked busy lately. Between reading and throwing a fit about everything I haven't had much time to get on here. It started with the Chemistry. If I can't at least understand something right away it bothers me and I'm automatically a failure. My week, which sort of starts in the middle of the actual week, started horribly. I got the Physics test back and got a 92%, but on Thursday I got the Chemistry test back and got a 60% and he added, with a little smile, that I needed to talk to him. After class I asked him if he was free next Thursday after class and, suddenly much more serious, he said that he wasn't but he could do Wednesday after class. So I agreed to that and walked to my car in angsty tears over having to ask for any help. On Friday Boyfriend was supposed to come out after his last class and, in classic C fashion, I made possible plans for him to take me out for sushi when he got here. I did some reading until he should've been here and then read for another hour and called his house. And he picked up. And I lost it. Your brain knows you're being a piss-ass, but it still only lets negative things out of your mouth. So he was going to be another 2 hours and I flew into a rage and whacked some books with my brush until it snapped, kicked my sneakers across the room, and chucked my lighter at the closet, where it make a nice "crack" sound and ricocheted into the bookshelf. I haven't seen it since. I'm at least smart enough to break stuff that doesn't really matter. And then I took a nap so I wouldn't have to wait around for the next two hours in undiluted rage. When I woke up he was another extra hour late but showed up shortly afterwards, saying the route he took had only one lane open for a bit of the way. We did go out for sushi, but he didn't have his cash clip on him and I paid with the promise that he'd pay me back. He is good for it, but he hasn't yet. So romantic. Anyways, we had a nice time.

So the next day he was fixing up his car with a friend and to pass the time, I offered to take his smelly puppy to his moms for a bath. Long story short she screamed like I was murdering her as opposed to bathing her and by the time I left my last nerve had broke and through mall trip and everything else I had a hard time not tweaking the fuck out. Sunday was a lot better and I attribute those 48 hours of mental instability to what basically adds up to detox and massive unusual PMS that I rarely ever get ever ever ever.

This weekend Boyfriend finally bent to my complaining and poking of his stomach and stopped calling it all a "food baby". I know he sat on a couch eating nothing but Pepsi and microwaveable pizza and kept the tae kwon do body he had gained two years before, but its all starting to catch up to him now and with the overgrown hair looking quite disproportional with the loss of his beard (and living on of his moustache (all for Halloween)) he looks like a giant hick. He finally admitted that we were both looking pretty frump to the dump and we agreed to 20 minutes of exercise a day with a variety of activities. He's taking the dog for twenty minute runs and doing something on top of that and I started out walking on the treadmill in the basement while reading chemistry and tonight I walked and ran for an hour and burned 500 calories. Then I stretched and did twenty crunches and now my left shin hurts and that's never good. My diet today was much improved as I snacked on edamame and apple slices with cashew butter (not that great) and I should do better not having Halloween candy in my room anymore. I found it very useful to play loud music off of youtube, mostly dancing stuff. I'm addicted to "Just Dance" by Lady GaGa, "Gimme That" by Chris Brown, "Paralyzer" by Finger Eleven, and "Let it Rock" by whoever and Lil' Wayne. Oh and I can't forget "Disturbia". In addition to this amazing amount of exercise I bought a waxing kit at CVS today and did up my eyebrows like a fucking pro. They look awesome and I can't believe I didn't rip half of one off or inadvertently wax a lightning bolt in there or anything. It gets rid of all those tiny hairs that take forever to get with tweezers and don't all come out anyways. And then you just do some cleanup with the tweezers! Its soooo addicting, waxing stuff is. If I could get paid to wax eyebrows I probably would ditch all my other ambitions and shape eyebrows for a living, but I think you need to know how to cut hair and do makeup as well and I don't care for that. Yes, its fun to cut hair, no, I don't normally do a good job of styling it, and no, I don't want to put up for cosmetology school. Is that how you spell it? Who cares.

I don't know how I thought of it, but I was just remembering how I had to stop someone at work from putting aluminum foil into the microwave. I was at the office one day, and Desperado let me know he was leaving his spot for a couple minutes to microwave some food he'd gotten that morning and I said okay and he walked away. A few seconds later I got a bad hunch and jumped up and ran down the hall and yelled "STOP!!" when I reached the kitchen door. His tin foil covered food was halfway into the microwave and I yelled "You can't put aluminum foil in the microwave!!" "You can't?", he said. "NO!!!" I shrieked. "Oh, okay, thanks", he said. Dude, the guy is in his early 30s. He doesn't know not to put foil into a microwave? He was ready to set the building on fire and had no idea. How is this possible? Not a month later, also at work, Ms. Singer hesitated and then asked me, "Is it okay to put Styrofoam in the microwave?" "NO!!!!!" This one is in her late 20s! How have these people not suffered dire consequences of ignorance already?? GOD.

Its probably all because of my mom saying that everything is bad for me. "This chapstick has petroleum in it. I don't know if you care but I don't want to use it; do you want it?" "These Biore cleansers use hairspray to pull the crap out of your pores and it just makes more build up; do you want them?" So she's setting me up for disaster, eh? "Almond butter is better for you than peanut butter." "I don't know why C is eating that, she knows diabetes runs in the familyyy." After almost every bite of the last burger I ate I would ask her, "doesn't that look a little pink to you?" She was getting aggravated with me but she's the one who made me this way.

Oh, haha, one more funny thing I keep forgetting about. Surely everyone has heard of Katy Perry by now. That stupid song "Hot and Cold" is on KIS 108 ten times an hour and I don't even listen to the whole hour straight through. Anyways, it came on when Boyfriend was in the car, and him and his schmuck friends love Katy Perry and her songs "Kissed a Girl" and "Ur So Gay" and a couple weeks ago he said exactly what I'd been thinking forever; that being that "Hot and Cold" and "Ur So Gay" were written as if she had gone out with my Ex. That will only be funny if you know me personally I guess and if you do, please go on youtube and check both of these out because its soooo truuuue haha. I just didn't want to be the first one to say it.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy the Josh Groban Christmas CD. He's dreeeamy hahaha. He's got those nice brown eyes and a great voice, obviously. I love his "Vincent" and apparently he does the vocals for the "real person" Beauty and the Beast with Streisand. I'm in a Christmas mood, can you tell. Its not too early for Christmas songs. BTW, who sings that version of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" that starts with the "bum bum bum baduh dibum", if you know what I mean and you probably don't. It was probably in McCauley Culkin Home Alone movies. The second one. Maybe.

Anyhoo, I'll sign off now and sing along to some youtube instrumentals because they are so fun.

Masthead

Not that anyone cares, but I'm trying to eff around with images to create a masthead. Right now I don't have access to my computer but I'm trying to make something pretty with Susan Seddon Boulet's art and some text. More and better to come.

Stop Spending Time with Your Kids to Have More Time to Spend with Them?

Something that bugs the hell out of me are these commercials with premade cookie dough, cut and ready to be laid out on the pan. The commercial implies that when the cookie dough is already made for you, you have more time to spend with your kids and less hassle. I was about to attack them for basically saying that everyone is dumb, but a lot of people are pretty dumb and would eat that up. Don’t enough people ignore their kids or let them waste their time playing video games and watching TV and not bonding with them ever?

When I was younger, we made cookies a decent amount, more often for Christmas. We mixed the dough, used our own plastic box full of cookie cutters and then designed them with sprinkles (we called them jimmies back then), colored sugar, and best of all those little silver balls that were probably full of mercury and not edible in the least. We have pictures and home videos of making these cookies and it was fun. What memories are kids these days going to have? If they’re lucky enough to make cookies at all it will be something like, “We put the cookies on the pan and then we ate them. And that’s how my eating disorder began.” And maybe the ADD too.

Speaking of Christmas, we used to go all out. We baked little shapes to paint and hang up on all the livingroom windows, and there were a lot of freaking windows. It looked like this but brown wood and not jutting outwards like that. They were also higher up since the house was a split-level and the livingroom was on the second floor.


We had angels and Christmas trees and snowmen and candy canes that we baked, painted, and put on little gold string to hang on each window. We put one of those electric candles in all the bedroom windows, had garlands up the stair railings, had Santa Claus' sitting around and put ceramic sleighs and trees that my grandma had made on the lamp tables. We had wreaths hanging everywhere that we had bought and poked little pieces of fabric into to decorate. The tree was lit and decorated with everything we had and the angel my mom sewed a long time ago with her and my father's initials was put on top. Our stockings had all been sewn or knitted by my mother with our names on them and we all dressed up, usually in red, for Christmas Eve and then again for Christmas Day. In fact, my sister and I wore dresses our parents got us for Christmas Eve and then the next day for our father's extended family's Christmas Day party we wore new dresses that our maternal grandparents had gifted to us the night before. The house was always thoroughly cleaned up before any Christmas decor went up and we played the Roche Sisters' Christmas songs while we decorated and then again while we opened gifts.

And now parents can't even roll cookie dough??? Are you effing kidding me???

A Pink Horse and a Red Phone

When I was little I reaped the benefits of having no cousins. My mother's sister and her husband weren't even married when I was born but he saw me as his first niece and went out and found a gigantic stuffed horse to give me as a birth-day gift. Its pink and I used to be able to sit on it. Apparently my uncle had to have someone get up on a ladder to get it and he couldn't have just any pink horse; it had to be that pink horse. This picture that I found is actually pretty similar if not exact:

It was pretty much exactly that size and eventually its legs went out underneath it and it couldn't stand up anymore. They got married probably a couple of years later or less. My aunt probably would've been around 21 years old when I was born. I think she's my godmother and my maternal grandfather is my godfather. She carried me for my baptism and I was quiet the whole time unlike the other screaming mimi babies.

When I was about 4 they took me to Canobie Lake Park because my uncle had paid-for tickets for a company outing and they didn't have kids of their own. I was wearing light denim overalls with mint green clasps and a green and blue striped shirt and I sniffled the whole time. My aunt kept asking if I had a cold and I kept denying it. We went on the teacups and they were my favorite ride. For the rest of the outing we kept trying to find them again because I loved them so much, but we never were able to. Now I realize that was probably on purpose because we could've just looked at a map and also, the teacups are probably sort of lame. I thought they were awesome though.

I remember their apartment in Cambridge and how their bedroom was at the end of the hall. They had a bright red dial telephone and my uncle had weights lined up next to the bed for working out his arms. Once, my father, a pretty big guy, asked me who would win in a fight between him and my uncle and I said my uncle. My incredulous father asked why and I said, "He lifts weights!" They moved out of that apartment into my grandparents old apartment building and then my sister was born. We'd have sleepovers on the diningroom floor with all our stuffed animals and when we got up my aunt would make us french toast. That was my favorite food by her. I also remember thinking my uncle had skinny heels and watching him swallow vitamins and hoping he wouldn't choke because I think he did get one stuck one time. Not majorly.

Four years after my sister was born my aunt had me announce to the family at Easter that she was pregnant. Nowadays they live in a giant house in Connecticut and we see them at holidays and call them for birthdays. My aunt sends cute stuff to us randomly, like the rock hard cookies I got in the mail the other day. They were still good; I ate them all, its just funny. They have two kids and a dog and my uncle started his own business, which is cool and I'm going to learn about that soon. Anyways, there are perks to being the oldest: Christmas gifts, attention, new clothes, theme park trips. This post doesn't really have a point though, its a little more documentary.

Harpy Bitch

So it seems as if the acupuncture is helping in some areas and not enough in others. I’ve been getting angrier and more irritable as a result of new stress from Chemistry and from a new lack of help from other Chemistry. I’ve hated bad drivers about ten times more than usual in the last few days and I wanted to throw my Chemistry book at the wall while I was doing my test but it’s borrowed and I expressly promised my lender that I was a wonderful possessor of objects and I always took care of my things. Obviously that was not an option.

On Wednesday my package showed up but the fact that it was from Canada prevented them from just leaving it on my doorstep and instead they left a note telling me they had stopped by and the item needed to be signed for. I could pick it up after 4pm and the post office closed at 5pm. With a sliver of hope in my heart I looked at the clock. 5:07. I was ready to throw something but I didn’t. I expected that they would come back the next day at the same time and when they did, they handed me a package from my aunt and a package for my mom and her husband. I halted them and asked them about my other package and he said it was at the post office to be signed for and I could go down right now. Yah, that would’ve been fine except my car was at the dealership for the third frikkin’ time. As the door bounced shut and the postal guy walked away I yelled with frustration (I walked away from the door first). After two seconds he drove back and asked to see my ticket thinger again. He said he could bring it by tomorrow and I told him that was okay and no thank you. He came back just to tell me that?? I threw the little note at the couch and it slowly flitted down to the cushion. Not the effect I was hoping for in my compounded rage, but the expected one I suppose. Thankfully I was able to get ahold of my mom and she picked it up before 5. Its ironic, she always complains that I never pick up my phone, but I can call her 5 times and get her voicemail and her phone is ATTACHED TO HER GODDAMN EAR.

Oh, I forgot. The acupuncture has been helping my skin clear up. Ever since my old job I’ve broken out a little on my forehead and its finally looking a little better.

So now I have Physics and Chem reading to catch up with and Boyfriend is coming out tonight and he better be planning to take me out for a sushi dinner if he knows what’s good for him because he hasn’t taken me on a date in near 8 or 9 months now. Probably more. I’m being generous.

Acupuncture for This Obama-Girl

So I guess I'll start off with the obvious: Our new president will be Barack Obama. That's pretty cool. We're going to have our first black president, as long as a KKK member doesn't shoot him first. All the good ones get shot- Lincoln, Kennedy, others I can't think of because I'm not really a history buff and pull stats out my ass... Anyways, I think its exciting and just because, I went out and got the Globe and the Herald to document this day. isn't that what people used to do? They drag out old newspapers and say "Hey, I was there", but only sort of, cause really, I was watching from my bed. I was at the polls though, so you can count me in on that. Everything I voted for won, which was pretty neat. Question 1 didn't pass, so my mom is happy- she's a teacher. Question 2 passed, which decriminalizes small amounts of marijuana, and I voted for that even though I don't smoke. I feel like a minority in that way; I don't smoke weed but I don't think other people should not be allowed to. It seems like a stupid waste of money having it be a criminal offense. And now I don't have to be worried about boyfriend driving around with a bag haha. I have a "no weed in the car" rule when I'm with him, but that can fly out the window now. I can only imagine Extravaganja and 420 this year and I'm surprised UMass didn't literally go up in smoke last night. THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN. 65% of us decided that shit was dumb and smokers should be able to carry an ounce or less. It could be amended or whatever, but hopefully not. I wore my Marley sweatshirt today to celebrate. I stayed up long enough to see McCain's very gracious and eloquent concession speech. That speech made me kinda like the guy again. He quieted the boos, faulted himself for not winning more votes, and emphasized how we all needed to work together. I listened to a couple more little snippets and the national anthem after that and then dozed off. I woke up around 3am to newspeople showing snips of Obama making his speech and shut off the light and TV. I can just watch it now on YouTube.

In other news, I had my weekly acupuncture today and my tongue was red on the tip and splotchy on what is apparently known as "spleen 7". This was assuredly a result of fucking Chemistry, which has been my primary, if not only, stressor. Goddamnit, Chemistry, why do you have to suck so hard? And why are you so difficult to avoid typo-ing? I'll be lucky if I get a 60 on that test. OH, my other stressor was the fucking bitch who sniped my parking spot that I was waiting for with my blinker ON. Why do people suck SO BAD? WHY? I made the rounds and there were literally no other spots and I had to back out of this little narrow parking area and some woman comes whipping around the corner as I put the car in drive and oh did I ruin her day by making her stop her car for two seconds. The bitch shook her head at me as I pulled forwards so I shook my head back at her because oh, maybe if she wasn't speeding around a parking lot like a maniac she wouldn't have had to hit the brakes because someone was backing out of a line of spots. Moron. So I walked in for my appointment in a sour mood. I swear to god, I could write an entire blog just bitching about shitty drivers and the awful people they come off as when they are in their car.

Back to the acupuncture- I decided to focus on my stress and on my back again, as a maintenance thing, and got stuck in two places on my wrist, one of which she seems a little anxious about and told me to take a deeper breath than normal. I looked at her like "Ummm.." and she was like "Oh, it won't hurt, its just a very tight point." It didn't hurt any more than any normal points, but if I had no feeling in my wrist and could only have judged from the way she monitored my facial expressions I would've thought that I should be in a great amount of pain. I asked what, pray tell, was that point for and she said "It's very calming. I know, weird, right? So much anxiety to calm down." When she pulled up my pants to do the points on my calves she mentioned how I had great pants for acupuncture. I always wear bell bottoms and they fold up easily. I told her about the Hot Topic raver pants I had worn in high school and how these were simply a denim version of those, but more attractive, I think everyone can agree. Anyways, I got poked in two places instead of one on my wrists, my regular spot on my hands, my regular calf spots, my regular feet spots, and two new places around my ankles which, I believe, were for my lungs. It was a great treatment, especially for being 20 minutes long (longer than normal) and I didn't have any problems where I usually have at least something that is making me anxious. Here is a nice little picture I messed with so you can all see where these crazy people like to stick me.

All the red spots are "Let's Jab C!" spots. I've had significantly less troubles with Jaq than with Kat, but I have to remember that Kat was dealing with some very different problems of mine. Still, Jaq seems to do more new spots, but that is probably due to their different supervisors. The right wrist spot was weird and a little painful after the needle had been taken out of it, which was strange, but it went away. She worked on my back and there were very few but still significant trouble spots but they got fixed up. Its a good sign that there are less every time. I totally fell asleep all weird on my pillow and that probably accounted for it. Jaq also gave me patent herbs today for my allergies. She fixed my itchy eyes with acupuncture for the most part but my nose is always bad. They were only 7 bucks so I said sure.

Oh! To digress for a moment, I watched "The Whale Rider" last night and it was such a good movie. D always told me about it, but I'd never rented it. Its about a girl in a Maori tribe whose grandfather is searching for a leader to bring the tribe up to its original awesomeness and he's disappointed by his own eldest son for not being that leader and for not having a son to be that leader. The girl is, of course, very devoted to knowing the ancient chants and stories and ways of fighting, but he looks her over and even is angry with her when she tries to be like the boys. Its right up my alley right now and I recommend it.

Speaking of tribes, my Indian moccasins came in the mail today and I was still in class so I missed them and have to wait another day, arghhh. I could be wearing them right now!! I got Boyfriend's gift in the mail, so I'm going to wrap it up soon. Its nice to be getting that stuff out of the way early. Tomorrow I'll get my stuff after class from the post office and read all that stuff I didn't read this week as catch-up while my car festers at the dealership. I made juice tonight and its pretty bad. I made kale, carrot and apple and pear juice last night with a few strawberries thrown in and it was great. Tonight I had to work with kale, carrots and some old mango. Not nearly as good. In fact, outright bad. Bleh. But you bet your ass I'll choke it down.

The reading is completely overwhelming me and I just want a break. I've decided to take next semester off if I haven't mentioned it already. I miss my regular books and my Chinese medicine stuff I was reading. Now its all this science crap I don't care about. I can never drive out and I can barely ever see my friends. Boo Hoo.

Oh, I remember what else I was going to talk about. My weekend. This weekend I went to Merst for a Halloween party because the next day I needed to go to my cousin's confirmation in Sunny California. Oh wait, no, not Sunny California. I meant to say Make-You-Feel-Bad-About-Your-Status-In-Life Connecticut. That's the one. I'll talk about that next time, as my neck is getting sore.

Election Eve

Voting in Massachusetts starts at 7am and goes until 8pm. FYI. NO, YES, YES

Sleep Paralysis

I don't think I've ever written about this before but its sort of interesting. I think it started in late high school. I would have dreams where I was staring at whatever I'd been looking at on the wall before I fell asleep. I felt like I couldn't breathe very well and I would try to wake myself up out of it. I would try sooo hard to move one of my limbs and would eventually get my arm to move and wake up. Sometimes the things I saw were warped and I saw a face instead, or someone laying next to me. One time I saw a face and when I woke up it was Boyfriend's hair. It was the shadows and textures making shapes. Eventually the fact that I could only see one thing and couldn't move around in the dream clued me into something a little terrifying. I wasn't asleep.

I realized that I would wake up, or, to say it better, my brain would wake up. I would wake up and see what was in front of me, but not be able to move, and since I was really actually still physically asleep, sometimes what I saw was warped. My body still thought I was asleep and that's why my breathing was shallow. I guess that's all well and good when you're actually asleep, but to me it felt like suffocation. When you fall asleep your brain kind of paralyzes your body to keep you from harming yourself, for example, by falling off your bed and such things. It was fucked up and I had to will myself for what seems like forever to move and kick myself out of sleep. Sometimes it would happen as soon as I fell asleep, almost like those dreams you can't get out of.

At some point I saw some sort of documentary on tv that described such a thing and called it "sleep paralysis". They showed artwork where there were little red demons sitting on women's chests, holding them down. That looked about right. It happened ALOT junior and senior years of college, and its mostly trickled off since then. Its scary because even when you know there is someone next to you, you can't ask them for help and from what I've seen on YouTube, nothing they can do seems to help anyways, at least not in severe cases. I watched a video where there was a woman making noises with her throat and her boyfriend, who was filming, explained that she was probably telling him to add something to the film but he didn't know what she was trying to say. Its only happened occasionally in the recent years, but I can tell you right now it fuckin sucks. It reminds me of when my sister was really little and she used to get night terrors. My parents couldn't try to wake her up because anything they did would just add to the night terror. I remember a specific one where she described being on the deck with my aunt and me and mom and no one could get a jar of bees to open. She tried and it opened and all the bees flew out into her face. I saw a documentary on tv of that too and people have to take drugs for it. They get up and walk around and end up hurting themselves because they're asleep walking around their house. And then there's sleepeaters and that's a whole nother thing. Sleep problems are just crazy shit because everything you experience is happening in an alternative world.

Boyfriend and Birds

One of the specific things I focused on during my two month long seperation with Boyfriend was the strange things he said that I felt no one else would even think of, his thoughts on robins in particular. There were more than a couple times where I wailed to my mom about what he said about robins and how no one else would ever say anything like this. He said that robins were the birds that reminded him most of dinosaurs because of how they ran across yards while other birds hopped. Who says shit like that?

There's No Shortage of Shitty Drivers

Speaking of driving, and I always have plenty to say about that, I always have to deal with bad drivers on the way to school. No one knows where they're going in the downtown area which serves as the midpoint between me and school. There are particular lanes markings with arrows for if you want to go left, go straight, go right, and there's always someone in one where they don't belong. Nothing can ever run smoothly.

There was one day where I was on the opposite side of an intersection where we both had a green light and people were waiting to turn left. Wait, I already messed up this story- no one was waiting for anything. Despite watching myself and others driving straight forward, some ass turd decided to take a left anyways. We on my side got cut off. That was stupid by itself but even worse was the jerk behind him who pulled up on his ass, stopped before he took his left, saw us, and still cut us off. He did the go, stop, go thing as he saw me coming towards him and he had plenty of choice left before he got in front of me and plenty of time to see that it was a bad idea. He pulled up, curved, so that we were almost face to face and bumper to bumper. Front bumpers that is and since he was in my way by now anyways, I had to stop my car. His wife gave me a nasty look as he edged by me and hopefully I had already beeped because she can go fuck herself. I just tried to take advantage of my right of way to drive in such a fashion that abides by the law. The icing on the cake was that since I had to sit there and wait for this moron to get out of my way, I ended up sitting in the middle of an intersection when the light turned red and getting beeped at by someone who now had the green. Fucking fabulous. I wanted to flip them off, but once again, I haven't made it to that stage of road rage and I'm trying to resist any forward movement in that department.

Whenever I complain about idiots getting in my way or cutting me off or whatever, Boyfriend says something to the effect of that whoever has the bigger balls is going to get their way and I don't have to pussy out. That sounds dangerous to me, but since I've been getting more and more aggravated it's actually been a more successful option.

You know how when you are on a two lane road that merges into a one way, you kind of need to do a zipper pattern with the cars in the other lane? It's basic, like having good manners or like learning to share and stuff in Kindergarten. You go, then I go, then you go, then I go. Everyone in one group takes their turn with everyone in the other group. But not mature adults in vehicles oh no no. I got some woman who was trying to double up and piggyback the car in front of her. The double yellow line was to my left and she was to my right and you can be assured right this very second that she wasn't getting away with it. The SUV in front of her had zippered itself in in front of me and she was trying to follow him. Seeing as how I wasn't going to make space in between the SUV and myself for her discretion and I certainly was not going to drive on top of a double yellow line, it would've been best for her to back off and file in with the rest of us in her zipper position. But of course that's never how it goes. Instead she punched the gas abruptly over and over again in an effort to keep up with the SUV but not hit anything. I could see her in my rearview being pushed in closer and closer to the side of my car but still she would not relent. I stayed close to the SUV, decided not to pussy out, and watched her struggle to try and shove me out of my spot in line. This was a sort of wide one laner; it fit two cars at least, but finally I saw the end of the line: side-of-the-road parking spots. If she had kept going she would've driven into the rear end of a parked car. She finally relented and I could see the nasty look on her face and her mouth moving behind me. Eventually the road got wider again, but only because there were parking spaces with no cars in them. I watched in my rearview as she used the parking spots as her own personal lane and decided once and for all that I was definitely dealing with someone who had a touch of the crazy. Eventually she had to pull into a long line of cars to go straight while I pulled into a shorter line of cars going straight that were to then go right at the subsequent light and I can't say I was unhappy to be away from this person.

When you're on the road, please realize that cars have people in them and that manners still count. Even 4 year olds know how to take turns.

Bitch, Bitch, Bitch

When I drive to work, the way my exit off the highway works is that rather than turning right to follow the road, you pull up straight to the lights, which puts you on a different route. The far left lane is a straight shot and the lane to the right is more like if you were on the left side of the turning section and decided at last minute you wanted to get off the highway. Its also for if you're driving up and see that the light might turn green and would prefer to blow by everyone rather than slow down.

Here is a diagram for your viewing pleasure because that reads in a really confusing way.



SO. The far left lane is the correct way to go. Everyone else merges right unless you decide to cut off an entire line of people and then you take the right side straight arrow. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mention that both lanes merge into one on the other side of the lights. Well, they do. I say you know what? If you're a fast driver and you don't want to wait for everyone, then by all means use that right lane. I hate people blowing by me too but if you want to go faster than everyone it makes more sense and I can understand.

What happened this morning was a little different. I was at the front of the left lane and someone was in the right lane. When the light turned green, he raced ahead and got in front of me. Okay. And then he drove down the road wicked fucking slow. Torturing me as we went. My question is why would you try to get in front of everybody if you're the slowest car of us all? I'm going to open my own driving school and its going to involve failing you if you're a flaming moron who doesn't know how to work with others. It will be a required class for everyone with a license and your insurance will go up without it. I think I'd cut out at least 50% of the traffic on the roads right now.

Kids Costumes Suck Nowadays- Come On, Parents!!

Tonight is Halloween and, in typical C fashion, I spent the evening stressing out and poring over a Chemistry take home that made me very seriously consider suicide. Chemistry is not my cup of tea and if I fail the world might just actually and finally end. I'm sort of surprised that it hasn't before. I wonder what it all means...

After I sat down and got all my notes spread out on the table and had my tea and honey and pens and calculator, someone rang the doorbell. I wondered if they were selling Girl Scout cookies or something. That's how much Chemistry fucks up my brain. When I opened the door there was a cute little kid in a tiger costume. I had to apologetically tell his mom I didn't have any candy. Which sucked. So I grabbed my keys and drove down the road and grabbed some and came back and pulled over near the family, who was putting the baby carriage away in their trunk and who were also now looking rather confused. I told them how I'd meant to get candy but forgot and they reminded me so here it was. I didn't want to be the weak house who had the lights on but was not handing out candy.

Some little kids came by and were super cute, but some big kids who I never see around the complex were doing the rounds too and they were much less pleasurable to give candy to. They only looked down at their bags and their outfits were lame 50% of the time. The first larger little turd was just wearing a red shirt with numbers across the front. I guess he was an inmate? I don't know. What I do know is that my mom used to slave over a sewing machine on the floor of our den for weeks to make quality costumes out of fabric and patterns. Everything I ever wore for Halloween was hand-made by my mom. So, let's see how much I can remember.

Years Old:

1. Pumpkin

2. Elf

3. Nun

4. Fairy Princess (I couldn't decide which one.)

5. Wonder Woman

6. Wonder Woman again

7. Stegosaurus (The costume was purple with yellow spikes and plates and some kids dad during the school Halloween parade said to his kid, "Look, its Barney!" and I was so pissed. Barney is a purple and green Tyrannosaurus rex with yellow spots Goddamnit. Don't you fools know the difference??)

By the way, I just realized right now that the name "Tyrannosaurus Rex" is derived from the word "Tyranny". Wow, this is one of my Cheerios moments. And also, how the fuck did my mom sew upright-standing stegosaurus plates?

8. Jasmine (of Aladdin fame)

9. Jasmine again, cause why the hell not.

10. ?

11. ?

12. Witch

13. Witch

And then in more recent years- I was a genie my Junior year and I looked DAMN GOOD. I was going to be Bettie Page senior year, but I wasn't confident about my homemade top, despite the fact that it made my boobs look crazy good. Last year I threw together a last minute Cruella DeVille and a customer at work told me how that's who his 10 year old daughter was going as this year. Figuresss. This year I'm going as Aeon Flux and I hope to god I don't gain 5 pounds in the next 24 hours. I think I'd definitely have to kill myself then. Or drink copious amounts, which I might do anyways. Hey, I guess it'll all work out!

By the way, what was everyone else?

Parents Can: Be Lying Jerks/ Make Things Interesting

This is another story about the bullshit my parents fed me when I was little that I wholeheartedly believed until I was told otherwise years later.

When I was about 4, my father started quizzing me on three questions. He said it was very important to know the answers to these questions because if you didn't you could not graduate from pre-school. The questions were these:

1) Who is the greatest band of all time?
2) Who is the greatest solo artist of all time?
3) Who won Wimbleton in 1987?

The answers were as such:

1) The Beatles
2) Bruce Springsteen
3) Jimmy Connors

Can you guess what we listened to in the car on roadtrips?

Anyways, I believed him when he said one had to possess this knowledge in order to make it out of pre-school, but since I was 4 it didn't really concern me too much. Plus, I always knew the first two. I only forgot the second repeatedly. One day nearing the end of the year, my father came early to pick me up. He sat on one of those tiny chairs while he waited for class to finish up and the teachers all sat us down in a group to talk to us.

They said, "Today, we have three questions for you. Number 1: Who is the greatest band of all time?"
I raised my hand and they let me answer, "The Beatles."
"Good. Now, who is the greatest solo artist of all time?"
I raised my hand again and got to answer, "Bruce Springsteen."
They asked about Wimbleton too, of course, and I failed my father by completely blanking. Johnny something? Some boy in the class knew it was Jimmy Connors. I knew I was fine nailing 2 out of 3 and thought it was funny how they really did ask those questions in pre-school.

Not that I thought about it often enough to have come to any kind of realization, but it was at least 5 or 6 years before my father told me that he had come in early and requested that the teachers ask us all that and it was only at that point that I knew the truth.

Don't think for a second I won't mess with my own kids like that because I fully intend to if I ever have any.

Me and D Rip Apart a Video

D: You know the song

D: but the video elevates it to an entirely different level.

D: Total Eclipse of the Heart

C: I definitely remember this gem

D: Have you seen the video?

C: yes

C: it was on all the time in the 90s

D: because if the song is a gem the video is crown jewels

C: I love the blown open shirts

D: Ahaha, and the absurd dance numbers.

C: dancing ninjas. Nice touch

D: Pornography has a more coherent plot

C: yah hahaha

C: is she supposed to be a teacher at a boarding school for nocturnal gay men?

C: they learn to make shoulder pads there. It's a vocational school despite all the extracurricular activities

D: I'm not sure, honestly.

D: It would make a fantastic porno

D: By fantastic I mean fantastically kitschy

Buddhist Wisdom

I'm going to start putting daily quotes from the little Buddhist Wisdom book I bought as my "about me" every day.

This Is Why the World Hates Us

Hm, so I have a post to write but first I have a quick disclaimer. Since yesterday I've been getting a sharp, throbbing pain in the back right of my head in just one particular spot. Its very random, so if I suddenly stop writing, you can just assume I've had an aneurysm. Now then! Moving on!

So I went to the mall yesterday. It was awful. The mall used to be so fun. I was never a mallrat, but it might've been different if I had one solid family living in one spot near my friends. Speaking of which, just to digress for a moment, I'm currently dealing with a situation which I will describe in a second, private post, because I have a particular policy on here. It will be the starred post; use this link and if you want to read it then friend me or whatever. ::Link will go up soon:: Anyways, the trouble started the second I was in sight of the mall. By the way, Old Navy went well and I got my Halloween costume and its hot without being whore-ish. Sort of. Hehe. I was driving in the leftish-straight (shut up, Boyfriend) lane and I needed to merge right for the upcoming right turn I needed. The light turned green and I put on my blinker and pulled forward. The car to my right could've sped up or slowed down, but instead in ran right next to me. I sped up to pull right in the front, so it sped up. I slowed down to see about getting behind it, but, seeing how I was not trying to get in front of it anymore, it slowed down. I sped up again to get into the lane, so they sped up. God I really do fucking hate people so much. So I missed my turn and had to find a different way in, which wasn't very hard but its the idea of it. If people could ever cooperate and be civil we'd get so much more done. I have my own policy and, while its also critique worthy by some, it makes sense to me. Here it is: If you don't have your blinker on, you're an incompetant asshole and I'm not slowing down to make room for you to cut me off with about 3 inches between our cars. If your blinker is on, I will manuever my car to help you be where you'd like to be. Unless you're a shitty driver and then I'd be afraid to have you anywhere near me so pull into my lane at a significant distance behind me please and thank you.

So I had now made it into the parking garage. Why is she writing about the parking garage, you ask. Well, because the idiocy just seems to multiply once you get into a parking area. This was no exception and I was on the first floor just 2 seconds into the garage itself before I came in contact with an idiot. It was one of those people who sees someone pulling out of their parking spot and recognizes opportunity. Except they were also the kind of person who doesn't back up and make room for you to reverse out of the spot but instead pulls up on your ass and sits right in your way. I drove up and it was then that they decided to back up about a foot. They had plenty of room, as I was not too close yet, but once they parked themselves for good (still in the other driver's way) I started feeling like a jerk and drove right on up. They still had room enough to back up some more, but not the plentiful amount of space that they'd had originally when it would've made fucking sense. So. Fuck them. Finally the poor driver of the smushed in car got out and drove away and I was free to go on my way. Except not, cause someone didn't know how to pull forward into a parking space. ARRRGGGHHHHH. Before she (yah, I said it) could pull back up and make a twenty-point turn I snuck around and parked myself a few yards away. Not to sound like a dick, but I saw the woman (of course) getting out of the car and walking across the parking lot and it was worse than I thought and since I'm not the only asshole around here I'll just let you deduce what that meant.

So holy shit! I made it inside! Finally! I walked though JC Penney and that was pretty horrible in itself. I saw a fleece sweater, made for an adult woman, with a frosted blue and turquoise and rhinestone snowflake pattern on it that would've been only borderline acceptable in 1991...for a ten year old. Or maybe your grandma. Jesus JC Penney! At least try to pretend your customers have some fashion sense! And just an fyi, I was wearing Step-Dad's old sweatpants, rolled at the waist, with a tank top and a sweatshirt my Boyfriend used to wear in highschool. That his mom got from a consignment shop. That now has stains on it from paint and probably maybe food or something that I've dropped on it. And I've sneezed on it in the recent past because I had a cold. I don't think that stained, I guess its just sort of gross. And I was still stylin' enough to make fun of the items in JC Penney. That's bad. I tried to take a picture of the aforementioned sweater, but my cell phone is retarded and it wouldn't let me. I've deleted like twenty pictures and it still says the memory is full. That's going back to the store, have no doubt about that. Argghh, the store is in the mall where I was!!!! Well, I'm an idiot too. Moving on then.

I got out of JC Penney without puking on anything and almost got run over by a team of old ladies. Don't you love how when 5 friends go to the mall they just spread themselves across the aisle? PICK A LANE, LADIES. I drove on straight ahead because I wasn't going to stop and start and stop and fumble around them to continue walking. They could just pick a lane. There were, as usual, hordes of teenagers, and then there were the old ladies who don't know how to dress their age. I went by one woman with her hair dyed dark and a dress and coat on that matched lengths above the knee, black tights, and black ankle boots and honestly, she'd look hotter if she took her age into consideration. Instead she decided to wear something for a 40-year old or less and look like a wannabe joke. I actually passed by that snobby 50-something year old character with the sunken cheeks and botoxed forehead and gaudy makeup you see in movies! You know, the one carrying around the dog and looking down her nose at, say, her new daughter-in-law and doing a half-british/ half-I'm not sure what accent. It was sort of funny. They actually make you?? Had no idea.

I walked back and forth in the mall looking for a Halloween store in which to buy a part of Boyfriend's costume but, alas, there was no such thing. Besides Spencers. Damn that fucking place is scary. Hot topic has become a joke but in Spencers you nearly expect someone in a hockey mask to come up behind you with a knife. I didn't mind leaving. So once I knew my search was futile I kind of meandered around, since that's what you're supposed to do at the mall anyways. Meander and buy, buy, buy. I saw the pumas I wanted in a store, greeted the clerk standing at the door, walked over and checked the price, visibly gagged, bade the clerk adieu, and walked back out. A ways away I saw a real live puma store and, naturally only expecting something worse, made my way over there to find the same shoe for five more dollars. They have so many goddamn manniquins in there that I almost jumped when I saw two real people talk and move. Ugh. On the way over there a fucking bird flew by me from the rafters and I was like "Ahh! Was that a fucking bird??" Um yes, it was. So anyways, I came out and went to turn left to wander the rest of the mall but I was so disenchanted with the mall by then that I didn't even want to see what else there was.

I was interested in one store on the way back, so I stopped there with no intention of buying anything. The store is called Teavana and its got (what else) tea and tea kettles and tea accessories and books on tea and tea cups etc., etc., etc. I mulled around and a nice saleslady asked if I'd ever been there before and I said I had, a year ago. Apparently that made me less sellable because she left me alone after that. I checked the price on the smaller version of a kettle I bought somewhere else and it was laughable (a "Teavana Exclusive!" my ass). I made my way over to the books and looked around a found a cute little square book that had a Buddhist quote for every day of the year. It was inexpensive and I liked it, so I bought it and avoided the depression that comes with leaving the mall empty-handed which is another damneable trick of the mall. The girl at the counter was nice and cheery and asked me if I wanted any tea with that, which confuses me since I had looked around the whole store already and if I wanted tea wouldn't I have picked some out and brought it up with my book? Instead of saying that I just said no and then proceeded to be even more obnoxious than I would've been had I just commented on my lack of tea and the reasoning behind my confusion over her question. My mother would've been appalled (and was when I told her about it later) but I have much less tact than my mother and in fact less tact than most people it seems and I actually had the gall to say, "Do you sell alot of this stuff?" which of course they do and she responded in kind, to which I continued, "That little shogun teapot over there is 69.95 and I got the larger one at Homegoods for 20 bucks." I knew she didn't care and couldn't do anything about it but I guess I just wanted to tell her as an fyi and maybe she might think its funny because she maybe knows how ridiculously her employer prices their items but there's also the chance that after I left she was like "did you hear what that girl just said?" to her coworker. Whatever. I was nice to her and refused a bag and thanked her and told her to have a nice day too, so hopefully I wasn't a heathen in the world of consumerism. Hey, everyone's looking for a deal. Maybe her discount is shitty. Actually compared to Homegoods regular pricing, her discount would be hella shitty no matter what is was. And the tea? I didn't check their price on that but I'm willing to bet I could buy the same tea in bulk for a fraction of what they're selling it for in cute little containers with a cheap pasted copy of a famous painting of a samurai on the front.

ANYWAYS. I got back out to my car and drove home and actually listened to half of that song from the nineties that's like "I'M COMING OUT, I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW, GOT TO MAKE IT SHOW- I'M COMINGG" but only because Nickelback was on every single other station I tried I swear to god. When I got sick of it (after thirty seconds) I tried again and found "SOS" by Rihanna, which I love, and stuck with that. For once I was incredibly happy to leave that plethora of consumerism which is the dreaded mall and I can assure you that I will not go near the place during Christmastime and possibly ever again. Boycott the mall!!

FIN

My Acupuncturist is Cool (and Educational)

Okay, so I was right and wrong and my acupuncturist's name is Jaq and not Jack. I'm learning that she stutters less when I don't look her right in the eyes constantly, which is convenient because i have a tendency of not looking peple in the eyes all the time while I talk to them. I tend to look at them and then all over the room and then them and then the ceiling and then them and then something that catches my eye. So I have no problem with this. She probably has more trouble with the stuttering when someone is staring her down or something, which makes perfect sense.

I'm finding that I like her better than my last acupuncturist for a few reasons. Number one is that we just seem to be on the same wavelength to begin with and the next is that she will take a needle right out if I say its still hurting. She'll try again with a smaller needle, but the point is that she immediately gives up with the original one. She is also really cool in the way she'll explain things to me and not just say, "That point is good for congestion" when I ask her abut the specific point. For example, I have told her in the past about how I had asthma until I was 8 years old. Today she asked if my palms were still sweaty, which is a really annoying and inconvenient thing that's happened on and off since I can't remember how long ago anymore. I made mention of my recent allergies which have accosted me in the nose (as usual) and the eyes (only slightly less usual). She responded to all my symptoms by asking about the sweaty palms and stating that the palms were connected to the lungs which also, of course, had to do with my asthma and allergies. I love this girl. I had no idea about that because I'm just like every other schmuck. Another thing she said was that there was redness around the needles on my back and she said this enthusiastically. Um, yeah I don't know what that means. She told me that it meant that qi was coming up around the needle points and that that was a good thing, obviously. Very cool. Lastly, I mentioned how I always have trouble with certain front points on and off but have much less trouble getting back points treated. She explained that the back is the yang side of our body which means it is in excess and the front part of our body is the yin part and we are much more protective of it, which I think can make sense even to someone who doesn't know or want to know anything about acupuncture.

Another funny thing is that she asked me if I had a new haircut and that seems to happen every couple of months while my hair is growing out, which is sort of funny. Anyways. Last night I did the majority of my Christmas shopping. I won the item on Ebay that I'm giving Boyfriend and I bought my sister and mother's gifts as well in one foul swoop. To Do lists are easy when they involve buying stuff you don't actually need. I also succeeded in picking up my Halloween costume yesterday and boy, oh boy do have some stuff to say about the mall. And surprise! None of it is positive.

I Love Bed.

Tell me you wouldn't want to sleep here. No, convincingly.

I Remember...

When I was younger I used to use my dad's nice felt tip pens to draw with. He would bring home giant piles of that printer paper with the little holes down the edges and I would be instructed to use pencil but I stole the felt tip pens every time. He bought them to do work with or math or whatever the hell it was he did. But no, I would take them from the jar of pens and use them to draw foxes and unicorns and mermaids and girls with different fashionable dresses (read: slutty clothing).

I remember that the red and black markers were always out of ink but the brown markers were always great. There was a reason for that. Now I would use any of them if it was just pouring ink, I like how smooth it is and what a nice line it makes. Back then I thought brown was a yucky color. I remember how when I drew women and mermaids with cleavage, my dad would ask why there was a "worm crawling up her chest" and how I'd get annoyed when he said what a beautiful drawing my sister had made and how she must be the artist of the house when I had just given her a drawing lesson.

I'd get irritated at those silly coloring contests they'd give kids around Easter or the xeroxed pages of Bozo the clown. I'd color it in perfectly and would get nothing. it was the kid who scrawled green all over the clown's face and made the sky purple that won. I meticulously colored inside the lines and made everything the correct color. maybe they thought my parents did if for me. ::sniff:: In talking about clowns right now I just went online looking for some and found this guy, who seems pretty cool and young. A graduate of a clown college, wtf? I should be one to know there's a college for everything out there. I like the thought of a vaudevillian act.

Speaking of clowns, my aunt dressed up as one for my fifth birthday party. I don't know how, but I didn't realize it was her until my mom told me 3 years later. She honestly looked more like a ghoul in a clown costume because she painted her face white and then made big black patches around her eyes. She had a bucket full of confetti and it was pretty funny because she scared the shit out of my mom by going into the kitchen, turning on the faucet, and then coming out and acting like the bucket was heavy and subsequently spilling the confetti everywhere. My sister was already crying because my aunt looked scary and because my sister cried at fucking everything. It was a success, all in all, and for no money, at that.

My sister cried when she got bumped out of her seat playing musical chairs at my 6th birthday party. My sister cried when Brandon spilled his orange soda on her lap at my 7th birthday party. My sister cried when my parents hired a big yellow chicken to accost my aunt at her 28th birthday party. My sister cried at our kiddie Halloween party for reasons that I can't remember. My sister cried when we jumped off the stairs into the snowpile on the bush and her leg went through into the bush and she couldn't get up. My sister cried when my parents let her up into the attic with me and my mom and she realized the attic is significantly higher than the floor and she wailed "Diddyyyyyyyy" at my dad. My sister cried at everything. She probaby cried in some episode with a mall santa like every other kid on the planet but I can't specifically remember that.

Well that post veered off in another direction, eh?