Santa Buffalo

I had to read a short story for my creative writing class, and in it, a man tortured a baby water buffalo. I found the story very upsetting. The next day, I was in the car with my boyfriend. I was driving, and he was in the passenger’s seat next to me. I was babbling at him and singing to the radio, and generally being self-centered and loud, while he nodded and sort of half listened to what I was saying. Then, as we drove up a semi-busy street, he turned to me, and solemnly said, “We have a guest,” and I said something brilliant and witty, like, “Huh?”

I looked over at him (which was safe because I was at a stoplight) and there on his (massive) hand, he had a tiny yellow ladybug. “Oh,” I said. “Huh. Where’d you get him?”

“I dunno, he must have been on campus.”

“Oh.” I’m so clever.

“I’m going to let him go once we stop.”

And that’s why I love him (my boyfriend, not the bug). Because he held that little bug gently (and watched it with the utmost fascination) the whole half hour we were in the car, and then with great care, he put it down on a leaf. I love that he doesn’t even kill bugs, and that he not only doesn’t kill them, but he was considerate enough of it’s tiny insect feelings that he let the lady bug go once the car was stopped, rather than let it go while we were moving.

The waitress at the restaurant where my dad and I had breakfast this morning was way, way too chipper. She really did have one of those I’m-so-happy-I-must-be-a-serial-killer vibes going on.

I am wearing a hat with llamas on it.

I failed at NaNoWriMo and I failed hard. I managed to hit one fifth of the words I was hoping for, which is wildly disappointing to me, but this way, if I get two fifths next year, I guess I’m doing twice as good. We’ll see how that goes.

I have also fallen and fallen hard for Eartha Kitt’s version of ‘Santa Baby.’

Zombie Charms

Today my dad was sitting on our leather love seat today watching a bad super-agent movie. He was also drinking a beer and eating lucky charms dry out of the box.

I love my dad.

I was reorganizing yarn the other day. The yarn is kept in wire-mesh cubby deals, and each skein is wrapped in a paper label. These labels tend to catch on, well, everything, and they tear. They catch on the wires, they catch on the hanging tags, they catch on each other, and they tear. Part of my job was to tape the labels back together after they rip. While doing this, I realized that the yarn is just like the victims of zombie attacks. It would be smarter to have sturdy, tight fitting clothes, rather than loose paper labels.

My socks are crazy stripy today.

I ordered lunch today, and the cashier woman sort of grossed me out. She was, as part of her job, handling the money and cards that people were using to pay for their pasta. She was not wearing gloves, and, without washing her hands, she reloaded the forks and napkins. Now, I know that her hands were probably not teeming death traps of virus menaces, but money isn’t clean. She also breathed on the forks. I know I probably ought to have said something, but I didn’t know what to say.

I made the most delicious quesadilla today. It had goat cheddar, green olives, and salsa inside. It was crispy and nearly perfect. The only way it could have been better is if I had fried the cheese before putting it together.

When I was tiny I walked into more than one rear-view mirror.

I really dig pencils.

November

When I was smaller, probably in the third or forth grade, I was not as hygienically conscious as I am now, and since I am not particularly hygienically conscious now, that means I was basically a slob. My toothbrush, which I used daily (thanks, Ma!) was rinsed every time I used it, but I was not always careful to remove the little ring of toothpaste grime that would end up at the top of the handle. As a result, the little ring became a slightly larger ring and so on. This is all very gross, and looking back, I honestly can’t imagine sticking that thing in my mouth, but apparently I did and survived. I recall very vividly though, the exact moment when I became conscious of the fact that my toothbrush was gross though, which is unusual. Usually these sort of realizations come slowly, but this one was immediate. I spent the night at a friend’s house, and we left our tooth brushes on the edge of her sink after brushing our teeth, and then we ran off to do children things. The next morning, when I went to get my stuff together, her mother handed me my toothbrush, which she had cleaned. I don’t think she said anything about cleaning it, or about the toothbrush all, actually, but even that young, I was completely shamed. Even today when I brushed my teeth, I made sure to clean all (and I mean all) of that toothpaste grime off the handle of my toothbrush.

I have a (hopefully) mild infection in my lip, and it’s swollen like nobody’s business. It looks like I got punched hard in the mouth, and I think I’m going to tell anyone who asks that I got into a fight with a carnie. Hopefully icing it up will work, though, and I won’t need to lie to anyone.

My dad has taken to shooting the tip of the cat’s tail with a rubber band, which I disapprove of. On the other hand, it is amazing to watch the cat jump four feet straight in the air.

The previous was written quite a while ago, but since I’m not going to be writing on my blog much for the month of November, I figured that I’d put it up. I’m doing the NaNoWriMo deal, and so I’m pretty busy.

I would also like to express my deep displeasure at the (probable) passing of the bill which will eliminate the rights of a minority group in the California, and I’ll probably talk more about it later.

Zebra Feet

I think I need a new right foot. It just straight up hurts. My big toe is gnawing at the rest of my foot, and my ankle is sore.

I am made wildly uncomfortable when people sit really close to me, especially in lectures. I don’t just mean when they sit in the seat next to me. I don’t need an entire row to myself or anything, but when they allow themselves to hang over the edge of the seat and into my personal space, I find it distressing. I am also not self-assured enough to calmly ask the person next to me in this sort of situation to kindly stop touching me.

I got a bit of purple ink on my shirt this morning, and while I’m certain that no one else will notice it, it still bothers me. In fact, looking down, I can’t even see it, but I can feel it. Not literally, but it’s like I put a marker on it inside my brain, on my mental map of the world, and I can’t get the little light bulb to turn off.

I’m wearing an Isis necklace today. It’s pretty-- I added a quartz pendant as well, so there’s a little silver Isis with the yellow quartz. It’s odd that I feel funny wearing my Hindu bracelet but have no qualms about wearing Isis. I think that must mean that my hesitation isn’t about the beauty of the images, but with the social pressures and cues that I might be caving to and/or giving off unintentionally (I made a typo when typing unintentionally the first time, and it auto-corrected to existentially).

I tried a melon strawberry drink this morning, and it’s delicious. I wish it were a little more melon and a little less strawberry though.

Several months ago, I mentioned to my boyfriend that I used to love the zebra gum that my dad would buy me when I was a little kid, but unfortunately I can’t chew it anymore because it has sugar anymore. This gum was so cool, it was zebra striped in bright colors (like green or pink or purple) and while that was neat enough in and of itself, but the really cool part was that each wrapper came with a stick-on tattoo. On Saturday, when he showed up at my house with the fixings for Mexican cocoa to comfort me after hearing that my Grandpa had passed away, he also brought a pack of the zebra gum, because while in Vons, he noticed that it came in sugar free now. It was just as amazing as I remember it.

My ears are crooked.

I’ve been so tired for a month now. I think that it would be in m best interest to sleep basically all day on Saturday. My skin feels like it’s about two sizes too small and it buttons at the back of my neck. Maybe that isn’t my exhaustion that I’m feeling there, maybe it’s my hair. I’ve been trying to stretch my sleep farther, and so I haven’t given my hair time to dry in the mornings. To prevent it from looking totally scraggly, it ends up getting put up in a bun.

I changed my alarm-clock ring tone to a chime, and it’s wildly weird to have the different noise. It ends up getting incorporated into my dreams, as well, briefly, which is confusing to wake up to. Perhaps I should change back.

Rabbits on the Moon

When I was very small, probably four or so, maybe even younger, I would, on occasion, spend the night at my grandparent’s house. They lived in a retirement type community, with a metal screen door and a chair on the porch. This was before they moved to San Diego, for my grandmother’s health. When they moved, I remember getting to ride the empty dolly from the truck back to the house. Before they moved though, I would sometimes spend the night there, and I vividly remember being very small and having my grandpa show me the rabbit on the moon. It took me a while to see it, and I remember first lying and saying that I could, and then, a few seconds later, I actually could. My grandpa was also the person who taught me that I have to let go to the peanuts if I want to get my hand out of the jar. At four, I guess I wasn’t much smarter than a raccoon.

Actually, I don’t know how honestly true that is. In Where the Red Fern Grows, they talk about how a raccoon won’t let go of something, so you could capture them by getting their hands stuck. I’ve never even had the desire to hunt raccoons, so I’ve never taken the opportunity to find out for myself if you really can catch them that way, or if it is simply a clever literary device.

There was a coyote in our backyard this morning, and it was beautiful. It had a little white tuft at the end of it’s tail, with a skinny black ring separating the white fur from the sandy brown. They’re so lanky, coyotes, and they have such lovely long faces. Our dogs didn’t think the coyote was gorgeous, they though it was an intruder. Fortunately, there was a fence between them.

Fur texture on dogs is a funny thing. We had a beautiful sheltie, named Charlie, and she had soft, fluty fur that was long, but the individual strands were thin and wavy. Our short-coated shepherd, Patriot, has stiff outer hairs that are a few inches long, and our long-coated shepherd, Sheila, has long hairs that are in between Patriot and Charlie’s fur in terms of stiffness. My boyfriend’s dog, Zobby though has fur that when you pet him feels slick (if not soft) but when taken individually is downright bristly.

The main thing that I dislike about winter is how itchy my skin gets. Last night as I tried to go to sleep it felt like there were a billion little pins poking through my pajamas, and it sucked. I also dreamt that I missed my first class this morning. When I woke up this morning, and got in my car, I left on time, but due to extraordinary traffic, I ended up being a little late anyway. While trying to exit the freeway, a person (very rudely) zipped around me and used the shoulder to get off the freeway. Then they ran a stop sign. I found it interesting, when I caught up with them, that they had a little tiny Jesus fish up in the corner. It reminded me of the time I was cut off hard-core by a large SUV and got to watch the driver toss a lit cigarette out the window into the leaf-strewn gutter during fire season, and they had a prominent W, a Jesus fish, and an anti-choice bumper sticker.

I’ve been meaning to repaint my toenails for months, and it still hasn’t happened, and while this shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, it still made me sad when I stepped into the shower this morning.

Teal Atheists

I hate the experience of parking my car, and casually glancing to the right and seeing someone else sitting in the parked car next to me. There’s this moment of surprise, because there’s a whole live person there, and then there’s this moment of suspicion, like, hey, what are they doing there?

I’ve spent a year growing my hair out, and I have almost gotten to the point where my previous bangs fit into my pony tail. Looking in the mirror this morning, though, I thought to myself, “Hey now, perhaps you should get a haircut and get bangs again!” Then I thought, “Are you on CRACK?”

There are these bracelets with wooden beads that have little miniature paintings of religious figures. Most of the one’s I’ve seen have been Catholic. I have one, though, that has Hindu gods and goddesses on it. I am not Hindu, but I think it’s lovely. When I wear it, though, I always feel a little self-conscious, like perhaps I shouldn’t be wearing any religious icons. I guess I feel a little like maybe by doing so, I’m denying what I am, which is an atheist. That feeling is silly though. First of all, I have no problem telling anyone that I’m an atheist. Secondly, why would I care if someone seeing the bracelet thinks that I’m Hindu? Or, as is more likely, thinks I’m Catholic? On top of that, it isn’t as though any of the atheists I know would care that another atheist is wearing religious jewelry. We’re a pretty chill bunch.

Yesterday I saw a girl with some gorgeous purple feather earrings, and then I dreamt that I made them. I think I will-- I love feather earrings like no body’s business, but I can’t wear earrings that aren’t either gold or stainless steel (or something else equally inert).

I have a hankerin’ for some Mexican cocoa. Mexican hot chocolate is crazy amazing.

There are two parts of my brain. One thinks that people are smart, and we should have a true democracy where the popular vote determines the political figures. The other part thinks that people are stupid and that’s a bad idea. I’m deeply conflicted about this. I am often surprised at how stupid people are, because I always think everyone is as smart or smarter than I am. It’s wildly disappointing to find out that a person isn’t intelligent.

Since I started working, my joints have been hurting, and I’m bothered by that. The irritating, whiney part of myself wants to cry, “I’m not old yet! This isn’t fair!” The rest of me says that I should stop hunching while counting thread, and get someone else to lift the heavy boxes.

I like the colors dark blue and bright yellow together. Not always, I mean, I have seen some train wrecks, but on the whole, I don’t think I see enough of it. Maybe dark blue isn’t right, maybe I really mean dark teal.

At the museum near my house once there was an exhibit of duck paintings and it made a big impact on me. I would love to see that sort of exhibition again. I’ll have to look into that.

Chicken Bones

Last night, at around ten thirty, I was watching Desperate Housewives on my laptop with my boyfriend. We were sitting together on the sofa, using the coffee table as a footrest. On the coffee table was, among many other things, a piece of my quesadilla from dinner. I had meant to finish the food, because it was really delicious, but unfortunately, as I was starting the third out of four pieces, I bit down on a bone in the chicken which killed my appetite. This wasn’t just a little chip of bone back between my molars, oh no. This was a honkin’ hunk’a chicken femur still embedded in the fleshy thigh. So, I left it there on the plate, meaning to throw it away once I was ready to call it a night.

I have a cat named Sadie who many people have said doesn’t actually exist. She is a lovely creature, with black fur and yellow eyes. She’s also wildly shy. Anyway, she was hanging out with us, mostly on the sofa, trying her hardest to unplug the power cable from my computer, and I brushed her off, and scratched the top of her head, which I what I think she really wanted.

Earlier in the evening she had shown a small bit of interest in the plate of food, and my boyfriend had kindly told her, in the gentlest possible way, “Sadie, that isn’t appropriate.” Because she’s an easy going sort of cat, we figured this would be enough.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

Sadie, in a fit of backbone and crazed desire, leapt onto the table and in one swift motion, swallowed the hunk of chicken, bone and all. It took a moment for the incident to sink in.

“Did she eat the one with the bone?” I asked.

“I think so.”

“That quickly?”

“Uh… yeah.”

So, I grabbed the cat, and my boyfriend quickly got the bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide from the medicine cabinet. The first teaspoon didn’t make her vomit, but it sure made her foam and gag like crazy. The second didn’t work either.

Ten minutes later, the third didn’t.

At this point, I started to panic a little. I mean, now she really had to throw up, because she’d ingested a large amount of what amounts to poison. In a fit of panic, we then made her drink a small glass of warm salt water.

That didn’t work well either.

So, after forty five minutes, I ended up in the bathroom, holding her belly and trying to get her to vomit, but she didn’t want to. Now, I need to interject here and mention that my cat has a problem with hairballs, and vomits almost daily. So, holding her over the tile, massaging her stomach, I realized that her body was trying to throw up, but she was swallowing it back down. I ended up having to hold her head so that she couldn’t work the swallowin’ muscles and massage her stomach at the same time before she finally spewed everything up in one messy cat-vomit mess. And lo, the bone was in one whole piece.

Buttons and Junk

I’m completely filled up with aches and pains and it’s ridiculous. I’m not old, I shouldn’t be hurting. I picked up a box that weighs more than half what I do at work, and wrenched my lower back a little, so that hurts, and my leg does too, as a result of the wrenching. Then one of my toes hurts like I have gout or something equally stupid. I broke three nails this week, which sucks, and my wrists both hurt. What the junk is this crap?

Ice cold mountain dew is deliciously refreshing after getting almost no sleep.

Today, I’m wearing my Ironman shirt today, and while I wish I could say that it makes me feel fearless, it doesn’t. I’m downright terrified. Not of anything in particular. I think it’s just residual fear left from the stress of my midterm yesterday, which I felt less than prepared for. I’m scared that I can’t do all of the things that I’m committed to doing. I know that it’s doable, because other people manage loads like mine just fine, but when I try to zoom out and look at the big picture, and see what I have to get done in the next month, then I end up thinking that I can’t do it after all. I end up having to look at each day individually and take one task at a time. That just doesn’t seem like a good way to live though, I mean, I only get to do this college thing once (well, most people only go once) so I should enjoy it, but right now, I just don’t have time to enjoy it.

Why do people sat that contractions aren’t proper? If they weren’t meant to be used, why do we have grammatical rules for them? Massive silliness. I sort of like how variable the English language is. I mean, a few sentences ago, I asked “what the junk,” which is in no way proper English, but my point came across just fine. Sometimes, improper grammar can actually be the best way to get a point across.

I wonder if I’m the only one my age who feels like there’s no reason to respect the President (general, not specific) based on principle. Sometimes that makes me very sad, because I don’t want to be jaded or disillusioned about life and democracy and whatnot.

Hitler looks quite a bit like Donald Duck. Also, Yugoslavia sounds made up. I mean, I know that it was made up, as all words were, but Yugoslavia does not sound like a real honest-to-joy place. It sounds pretend.

I want a sweater that comes down to my thighs. I think it would be quite the thing. I have also recently developed an interest in buttons. They can add so much to a garment-- color, visual interest, or they can polish it up, make it look pulled together and complete. I’m not so much a fan of those belt deals that tie at the waist. Don’t be lazy, slap some darts up in there. Of course, this is coming from someone who adores those ugly knit hats with the pom-poms. I have one with llamas on it now.

Someday, I’m going to have a pet goat, and I’m going to teach it tricks. And forget things like play dead and roll over, there’s no need for that. If you teach a goat to sit, come and lay down, I guarantee people will be impressed. It’s going to be a pretty goat, and I’ll milk it, and it will be delicious.

For lunch today, I’m going to have orange chicken. This isn’t an unusual occurrence.

I have a bunch of songs on my laptop that I want to put on my ipod, but out of laziness, I haven’t yet. One of them is called Little Demon by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. I can’t tell if I actually like the song, or if it’s just that his name is so provocative that I can’t help but love the idea of the song enough to actually enjoy listening to it. It is a deliciously odd song.

I like adverbs a lot. I’m taking a creative writing class and we are learning about the power of verbs and nouns. I agree completely that choosing the right verbs and nouns is instrumental in conveying the layers of meanings that you’re trying to get across, but I think that adverbs can be used to an advantage too. Or, maybe I just like having a d all rubbing up on a v like that-- there aren’t too many words that have the ‘nads to do that.

Toilets and Lamps

Last night I dreamed that my boyfriend’s aunt was a real estate agent, and she was trying to sell this little house. I decided that I wanted it, so I told my lawyer. Then this woman started moving her junk into the house, and I helped her, until I realized that she did not, in fact, have first dibs on the house, so I kicked her out-- mostly so I could have the lava lamp. Then, when I was in the kitchen looking for food, my boyfriend proposed to me with a ring that had this wooden surface that was about three by five inches. It was huge. There were intricate carvings, and in the middle was a large orange opal, which was lovely, with diamonds in the corners. When I didn’t show a lot of enthusiasm at wearing the monstrosity (for an hour, much less forever) I could tell that it really hurt his feelings, but the ring was so ugly and huge that I couldn’t help but reject it. Read something into that, why don’t you?

Cream cheese is fantastic.

Ever had one of those times where you just can’t stop yawning, even though none of them are satisfying? And you end up yawning in the hopes that it’ll work, but it doesn’t. And you get those little air pockets behind your tongue, and then you end up hurting your neck. It sucks.

I don’t usually like brown and black together, but I was hit with the overwhelming urge, this morning, to wear a brown shirt with black pants, and it makes me feel sort of funny inside. But then, I do have Trent Lane on my chest, so maybe it’s all good.

I’m one of those people who sneeze when they walk out into bright places.

There has to be a better way to design girls toilets. The way guys pee seems so much more sanitary. I mean, we have to actually sit down on the seat, and even using a little tissue cover doesn’t seem that clean to me. I can’t think of a solution right now, but I’m sure one exists. I also don’t like touching the door handles in restrooms.

I smashed the ever-loving crap out of my finger the other day and it’s so weird to watch the skin grow back on. I hate it when skin pulls back from nails and you can see into the finger. I always feel like if I stare at it too long, something will pop out and be all like, “BOO,” and make me jump out of the rest of my skin.

I put my hair in a bun almost every day and I’m sick of it, man. I need some other hairstyles. Perhaps I should make it a goal to learn to braid my own hair. It’ll go on the list with learning how to knit, embroider and speak Dutch.

I like the concept of the elevator but I think we need to bring the classy back. There should be a person in there, pushin’ the buttons for you. And you should tip them. Pay for the privilege of not walking up forty thousand flights of stairs. And we need more velvet on the walls. Or wall paper, with floral designs and delicate lighting with pink-tinted glass. Public type places seem like they used to be so much more decorated than they are now, and I think that’s a royal shame. Even if it’s laminate, let’s bring back the idea of marble and polished wood. The world should be a beautiful place. I know that a great many great people think that opulence is a waste of materials and manpower, but it’s so very pretty.

Chinese, Chalk and Cheese

When I go to a certain chain Chinese food restaurant, I usually take two or three fortune cookies. I always feel guilty about it, even though I know they don’t care. I take them, though, because I love them. I love everything about them. Of course, I love the fortune part, that’s a given. Who doesn’t love being told that their winning smile will gain them many friends? They’re almost always so complimentary. The other thing I love about them is that they’re the cookie equivalent of saltine crackers. They’re bland, almost tasteless, and utterly crispy. I love saltine crackers, because when I was little, whenever I was getting over the flu, that’s the first thing I’d get to eat again, so they always make me feel better. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because they remind me of that, fortune cookies make me feel better too. Biscuits and gravy also make me feel better.

I love the way chalk looks on a blackboard (or are we supposed to say chalkboard now?) but only time I like it is when the blackboard is clean. Once it’s been smeared with chalk dust and you try to write on it again, it’s just kind of dull and dank and depressing.

As any of my friends would tell you, I get angry. Oh, do I get angry. I don’t think I feel any other emotions as strongly as I do anger. I wonder though if other people get angry like that too, to the point where even though they know that they’re being irrational and stupid, they can’t stop. It’s like this goblin living inside the back of your throat, yanking on the tendons and stuff, and kicking inside your ribcage. You can’t just ask it to stop, either, because pointing out to the goblin that he’s hurting you just makes him kick harder and then he starts biting at your tongue and clawing at the inside of your skull, and your eyes pop and bleed everywhere and it sucks. I have to admit, though, that there is a part of me, that goblin, who loves to be mad. Coming down off anger is awful though. There’s the guilt and the self-disapproval to deal with, and it is unpleasant.

I’ve always been bothered by the fact that in media when people are shrunk, they can still breathe. Wouldn’t, if you were just shrunk, you die almost instantly? I mean, the big-ol’ oxygen molecules that the little people’d breathe in wouldn’t be able to attach to the teeny-weenie hemoglobin in the little tiny blood stream.

The ceiling tiles in here don’t line up right.

I bought some delicious cheese while I was in Holland. It was made by a man in a shoe factory. This wasn’t just your average cheddar, oh no. It was tender white cheese, filled to the brim with garlic joy, and it had a waxy crust so that it didn’t need refrigeration. The perfect gift! So, I bought the delicious cheese, and I put it into my luggage. The next morning, I realized I had made a grievous mistake. All of my belongings now smelled strongly of garlic and cheese. While the smell was delicious when one was about to take a bite, it did get a bit old after the first couple minutes. I quickly transferred the cheese into a separate backpack, but, alas, it was too late. Now all of my memories of Europe are screened through the robust scent… of cheese.

Socks and Feathers

Curling up in a chair, with my feet level with my butt, and wearing my boyfriend’s coat is one of the greatest pleasures I can think of. I love that jacket, it’s a grey plaid flannel, and it has that woolly sheep-fur junk as a liner. It’s so snuggly. I got to wear it in the car on the way back to my house, too, with the windows down and the air so cold I could feel it swirling around in my lungs, and the music so loud that it was hard to believe that anything was making noise anywhere else in the world. That was wonderful.

Speaking of woolly mammoths, I read a really funny book a while back called Mammoth. It was about… a mammoth. I bought it while on vacation, and read it at the beach. I love books like that, the trashy sci-fi novels that you don’t feel the least bit silly or guilty reading while you’re chilling out on vacation. I mean, I read the trashy sci-fi at home, too, but I always feel like I have to roll my eyes at it and keep my distance, or else I’m wasting my time. When I’m on vacation, though, I’m allowed to enjoy the stupid.

I have the worst skin. Not in terms of appearance, but it’s that awful combination skin. Yesterday my nose was flaking, and my cheeks and forehead were oily like no one’s business. So, when I went to Tar-jey, I was interested in buying some face lotion that didn’t have oil in it. I ended up getting some with sunscreen in it, which is wildly exciting to me, because I’m sick of being so freakishly pale that I sunburn walking to class. In the autumn. I also got new face soap that smells like lemons.

I chew sugar-free gum to the exclusion of sugared gum, because the gum with sugar in it gives me cavities. Once the flavor has started leaving the sugar-free gum, though, it starts to taste a little funny, with the same sort of aftertaste as diet soda, which I take pains to avoid.

I love wearing baggy, long-sleeved shirts and sweaters. They make me feel prettier, which seems a little backwards. Maybe it’s because I think that my face is halfway decent, but I’m not too sure about the rest of me. Besides that, they make me feel like a little kid again, ready for hot chocolate and freeze-tag. I think that’s why I like wearing the boyfriend’s coat, too.

I have a necklace with two jade fish hanging from it, and I think it’s fabulous. Fish are fascinating animals. They have such interesting body shapes, and they’re so foreign, like birds are. Birds and fish are a lot alike. They both, for the most part, live in three dimensional worlds, while ours is largely a two dimensional one. While it’s true that we do move up and down to some degree, compared to the lives that birds and fish must lead, our experience must be completely flat. I envy them that extra degree of life.

Turtle neck sweaters are too cozy for words.

The wind today is so extreme. There was junk flying all over the freeway, and it actually cut visibility down pretty far. It was unpleasant.

Lately, I’ve felt sort of restless about music. There’s something I’m looking for, and I’m not finding it. I want something a little smoother, and a little sadder, something with a lot more hum and piano.

My socks are uncomfortably white today.

Best Russian I Can Be

It’s finally cool enough out for me to wear the sweater that my dad bought me for my birthday. I got several long sleeved shirts for the fall this summer and I’ve been chomping at the bit (positively foaming) to wear them, but it’s been too hot. Then all of a sudden it went from being hot yesterday, to being cold today. Perhaps it wasn’t that sudden of a change. Perhaps I’m just unable to tolerate a very large range of temperatures.

I returned a composition book to the school bookstore today, and I think it irritated the woman behind the counter. I understand that it isn’t an expensive item, but today, that $2.79 will make the difference between my eating lunch and my not eating lunch. Not because I’m totally broke in general, but because I’m totally broke right now. Side-note; $2.79 is way too much to pay for a composition book. I’m an idiot.

I have a lovely piece of wood that I would like to add to my fish tank. The only problem with this is that there are purple streaks on it which my dad says are from the firefighting chemicals they spray on the forests, and I don’t know if that stuff is poisonous or not. So The log is soaking in a tub in the backyard, and I think it’s irritating my mother.

I really want to learn Dutch. The language is truly fantastic. All of those letters stuck in all over the place just make me happy. It would be a useless thing to do, learning Dutch. I mean, there really aren’t a lot of people who speak it. It isn’t like Spanish, or Mandarin. There is something appealing about it, though. Learning Russian would be fun.

I love having long nails. They make me feel delicate.

Lenin, the Russian one, as far as I can tell from his portrait, had a fabulous mouth. I mean, that thing was curvy and puffy and just made for lipstick ads.

I forgot my best friend’s birthday. Again. Actually, I didn’t really forget, I just thought it was a month later than it was. Last year, I thought it was two days later than it actually was, so I’m actually getting worse. I am the worst friend ever. I can’t believe she still tolerates me.

I have not made her a card yet.

Balls.

Crawfish Shins and WWI

I associate Kevin Bacon with Adam Smith. There is no reason for this. One is a top rate actor, as anyone who has seen Tremors will agree, and the other is a drop-dead-sexy economist that was born, alas, far too early. Unfortunately, this association is seriously screwing with my ability to take the subjects of history and economics seriously because someone will say that Adam Smith advocated a free market capitalism system, and I’ll be hearing Footloose in my head, which in turn leads to me thinking about God, The Devil, and Bob, and then I’m like, oh, French Stewart, and I get dragged back to earth and I’m like, dude, who cares about Europe in the late 19th century, we could be talking about 3rd Rock from the Sun!

Karl Marx had some mad crazy eyebrows going on there.

So for the first time this quarter I’m going to take my history notes on my computer, instead of using the more traditional, tried and true, pen on paper method. There are some downsides to each note-taking technique. If I write them by hand, I waste paper, ink, and I doodle all over everything. If I type them, I am unable to draw helpful diagrams, and I run the risk of, oh, say writing something frivolous instead of actually taking notes on the World Wars. I think that once I actually start bringing my tablet to take notes with, things will get better. I have no logical reason to think this, but I’m pretty sure it’s true anyway.

Sexist music makes me feel good inside. I know that it shouldn’t, but it does. I be that I could examine the reasons for this and find deep and convoluted self-loathing or some such, but that might ruin the fun.

Yesterday while I walked from my chemistry lab to my car, I saw six black widow spiders. Honestly, they’re getting ridiculous. Where are the lizards when you need them?

I got kicked in the shins, and it hurts. I doubt it was intentional.

I had a fascinating dream last night. There was a white swimming pool, which had a couple of crawfish in it. Once I got in, though, I realized that there were hundreds of them, but most of them were clear-white instead of reddish orange. In the dream I thought to myself that while the clear-white must help them in their quest for camouflage, but they must have crazy high rates of mutation from damage done to their DNA from the sun. There was a man there who was catching some of the clear crawfish, and another man came over and told him that his grandmother had kept beads in their pool for years, and now they had crawfish that were blue and pink in order to match their surroundings, so the first man went to collect a few of those too.

I wonder now how hard it would be to breed crawfish in designer colors. It would be an interesting project.

I was thinking some more about the lesbian comment I made yesterday, which is unusual. Not for me to make a lesbian comment, but for me to be thinking about something I already said. I realized that I wanted to clarify it (more to myself, than to anyone else). It isn’t that I think that all Christians are against gay people, or indeed that there are no gay Christians, because, duh, that’s not true. What I meant was that I think it’s ridiculous for people to use religion as an argument against gay marriage, and really, it’s the only argument that’s being made. That the government is, in many places, taking the religious arguments against anything seriously into consideration makes me very upset because we are supposed to uphold a separation of church and state in our country, but we don’t. That was my point, but I think I may have made it in a less than effective way yesterday in my lame attempt at comedy.

Gay Cramping

I hate it when I reach that point where I feel like if I don’t wash my face right this second, right this instant, that I’m going to have to claw it off completely because the oil is driving me absolutely crazy. I just reach this point where there is absolutely nothing else I can think about, and the oil on my face completely consumes all of the me that there is. I hate this feeling not so much because of the oily feeling itself, but because once I reach this point, washing it won’t make it better. It should, but it doesn’t. Instead, washing it just makes my face feel pulled tight and dry, and then my T-zone gets flakey and it makes me want to kill whoever invented hormones.

The worst part about having a computer make an error is that I’m always sure that it’s somehow my fault. I mean, I don’t understand how computers work. I really don’t. Like, I have a pretty good general idea, but if you were to ask me about anything specifically, I’d be lost. And that’s so bizarre when you really think about it, because it’s something that I use pretty much every day. I like the word bizarre because it sounds British, which is a dumb thing to say, because, hello, I’m speaking English. But, it’s so bizarre, because you’d think that in order to use something that is this complicated, I’d have to understand it better, but I don’t.

I was pretty much content to feel this way, too, but when I was in my history lecture the other day, the professor mentioned that he didn’t understand how cell phones work. How, he asked us, could the signals know which phone to go to? Obviously they do, but how? And I realized then that I don’t want to go through life thinking little sound fairies bring me the voices through my phone. That’s not good enough.

The other day at work, I was involved with a task that entailed standing still for long stretches of time and I got total leg cramps in both legs. I have never experienced anything like that before, and I think that it happened because of the “protect traditional marriage” garbage that was playing over the loudspeakers. No, my workplace is not that politically charged, there was a paid advertisement (imagine that said advert-is-ment, not adver-tize-ment) playing on the radio. That didn’t change the fact that I felt rage.

I don’t understand how anyone could fall for the fail of logic that was displayed in the ad. I mean, honestly, if a person doesn’t like gay marriage, why do they think that gay people would want to marry them? And it isn’t as though the lesbians are going to say, “Gee, I guess if I can’t marry my lovely woman here, I’ll have to find me a man to go be all up in the Christianity with.”

I like drinking water, but the downside is that it makes you pee. The upside is that you don’t die.

Rockin' Sunglasses

My sister’s cat is getting heavy. I think it’s because of my dad. He gives the cat treats every single day, without fail. And not just one or two, but a small handful. Then the cat also gets his ‘little taste’ for dinner, while the dogs are getting fed (because otherwise we run the danger of having him stick his head in the dog’s dishes to get their food), and then he gets fed by my sister in the morning and evening with the other cat, who is not overweight.

Despite it probably being unhealthy, Maurice does wear his additional girth well. I have to admit that he is a handsome cat, even with the extra couple pounds. That doesn’t make him any less evil, though.

My mom used to have this book about architecture in Santa Fe, and in it there was a house that had walls made out of huge boulders, with Plexiglas shaped to fill in between them. I think it was the most wonderful idea I’ve ever seen. I’m totally in love with the idea of having a wall in my house made not just out of rocks, but made out of one or two rocks. The inside of the house had natural stone nooks, too, which I think is the most romantic idea. Plus, the effect was really beautiful.

I love the desert (the place, not dessert, like the post-meal snack). There’s so much orange and brown, and the animals are downright neat. I’m not sure if I’ll ever live in the desert, though. It gets awfully hot in the summer in the ones nearby, and while I’m down with the heat, certain other important persons in my life do not like hot weather at all. I am also curious about snow.

The weather has taken a turn for the warmer again, which makes me glad. I want, this weekend, to go hiking with my boyfriend. I think we’ll take a picnic, and spend a couple hours trekking around a creek I know of. I love hiking around creeks, because I like to pretend, briefly, that I’m a wild animal of a person who is roving around the landscape where I’m most at home. This is, of course, complete nonsense, because I am most at home on the sofa in my house, but it’s a fun illusion nevertheless.

I am sitting at a table in the cafeteria at school right now, watching the line for the Panda Express. I want food, but I’m hoping (probably in vain) that if I wait a while, and watch the line, it will get shorter and I won’t have to stand as long.

I am not looking forward to going to work tonight. The first couple weeks back to school kick my butt, because I get so out of shape over the summer. I try to stay active, but it’s so much easier to just sit still than it is to get up and move, especially when it’s a billion and twelve degrees outside.

I also think that I should start wearing my sunglasses. I have them, and they’re very nice, and I look totally awesome in them (or, at least, I feel like I do) so I really have no excuse. Every morning, when I get into the car, I think, “Hey, sunglasses,” and then I drive off without them.

Nazi with a Side of Chicken

So I’m tired of people thinking that evolutionists are in favor of Social Darwinism. It’s definitely insulting to me. I mean, honestly, the theory of evolution has nothing to do with Social Darwinism except the name. I recently heard evolution described as the survival of the fit enough, and I think that’s an absolutely brilliant way to put it, because it’s so true.

I don’t really want to go to work today. I work at a craft store now, and it’s really not bad work, but I had three days in a row off, and that makes going back hard. Especially now that I have school going on, too. I don’t know if I’m going to continue to work while I have school, but I think I will. It hasn’t been bad so far, but one we get down to crunch time, I might feel differently. I’d just feel bad bailing on the store during the holiday rush, but that’s the way it might have to go down.

So our blender is totally broken, and it sucks. I was trying to make myself a coffee drink this morning, and all I managed to do was get the counters all sticky with coffee-dulce-de-leche scented muck. I really did almost cry. I feel bad for my dad, who was trying to enjoy his (hot, blender-free) coffee, and got caught in the verbal cross-fire between me and the blender. Not really fair for anyone.

I’ve had the same cold for about ten days now, and I’m getting sick of it. Seriously, this is unnecessary. I don’t need the lingering cough or drippy nose. I just don’t. I’m so over it.
I’m not over orange chicken, though. Man, I swear, that stuff is slightly spicy crack. It makes my mouth feel slightly funny when I eat it, but I think that’s just part of the appeal. Also, fried rice. Whoever came up with that idea gets my kudos.

My butt hurts right now. I’m sitting in the lobby thing of a lecture hall on campus, waiting for some unknown class to be over and leave so I can go sit and learn all about the history of the 20th century. Nazis for the lose, man. I know how this goes down. Some Franz guy gets assassinated and WWI is like pachoo and then all get’s quiet on the western front and a goose dies, and then we have a great depression and the southwest all blows away and then the Nazis put all the Jews, gays and gypsies (sounds like my kind of party) in camps (no longer a party) and make the rest of the world mad by trying to take it over, and then they lose because we’re too awesome, and something about Japan and bombs. Actually, that’s about where my timeline of the 20th century ends. I mean, until I’m born, then it gets interesting again. In all seriousness though, I really don’t know enough about the later half of the 1900s, because my history classes never got up that high before, and I’m a lazy weenie who doesn’t really care.

In other news, I think I want to take some archeology/paleontology classes in the future. I should look into that. I’m getting all re-interested in dinosaurs again. Darn you, National Geographic. Darn you!

Dreams of a Badass

Sometime Saturday evening, I was walking up the slope where we have our citrus grove while cutting an orange with a knife. Unfortunately, I was paying a little too much attention to the ground and not enough attention to my fingers, and so I now have a flesh wound on my pinky. I haven’t cut myself with a knife for a while, other than this incident, and so it came as a bit of a shock to me. What scared me was that it really didn’t hurt, despite the orange juice which was all over my hands. Although it did sting when I rinsed it out, it never really hurt, and honestly it isn’t that bad the first day or so. I will admit that while I was in class on Monday I did slice right through the same spot with a piece of cardboard on accident, and that pretty much sent me through the roof.

I had such an odd dream Wednesday morning. At six I woke up and did my sit-ups with my mom. Then I went back up and laid down, thinking I’d sleep for twenty minutes and get up with my alarm. Unfortunately, when it went off, I turned it off and fell back asleep. The dream I had was vivid, intense, and strange. My family and I were all at Knott’s Berry Farm, and we were standing under the Ghost Rider, where it goes out over the lane to the parking lot. The sign outside said something that I remember as very odd, although I’m not sure what it was, and my dad and I remarked on it. We went in, and we were told the story of the Spear of Longinus, and how a gladiator who looked like that actor from The Mummy took it and murdered a couple in a small town in Pennsylvania. Then the scene changed and the German (I think) actor from that Sandra whoever movie, 28 Days (not the one about zombie-like crazy people-- the one about drug addicts) was there with his wife (girlfriend?) and he was suicidal. I didn’t see it happen, but he ended up killing himself by throwing himself onto a bed of toothpicks, which were all pointing straight up. It was all very creepy. I think part of the creepiness came from the faux-old-English everyone was using, plus the Old West (in Pennsylvania?) setting.

In case anyone cares, I ended up getting out of the house exactly 10 minutes after I normally do, despite waking up exactly 10 minutes before I normally leave, which means it took me 20 minutes to shower, get dressed, gather all of my crap and start my car. Not bad, considering that it often takes an hour and a half.

Today when I went to use the restroom I noticed that my knuckle was bleeding. Briefly, this excited me because I thought that maybe I looked badass. Then I realized that it just looked like the cat had scratched me, and that no one would believe I laid into anyone anyway. Then I washed my hands and went to class.

Evolution and Mountain Dew

I really like mountain dew. Especially the livewire one. You know, the kind with the orange flavor in it. I think they stopped making it or something, but the store near us still sells it. Sometimes I wonder if they didn’t just buy a really big case of it and just haven’t gone through it yet. I also wonder how old the snickers with almonds are. Oh, and my parents brought me some of those after dinner mints. Those ones that look like little mouse pillows. Not mouse poos, but little pillows. I love them. The texture is amazing-- they’re like eating soft chalk.

I like sour pickles better than the sweet ones.

I read a really terrible book recently, and in it the author had a character mention the fact that women can tuck their legs up under themselves, but men can’t. The statement niggled at me for a few days before I realized that most of the men folk on my mom’s side of the family can actually put their legs under themselves. In fact, my cousin (who is quite a bit older than I am) often sits on the floor with his knees on the floor and his feet near his butt (just the way my sister and I prefer to sit on the floor). Ah well, I suppose I should just chalk it up to artistic license and let it go.

I feel prettier than normal when I wear purple. I don’t know why this is true, but it is. Whenever I acknowledge this, it briefly makes me wonder if it’s because I’m actually a tyrannical ruler in Rome or something. This feeling passes quickly.

The child in me is continuously delighted with the dinosaurs that have been uncovered with feathers. I had a discussion with my physics lab partner last week where she mentioned that she didn’t enjoy the biology class that she was in because it was about evolution, and thus boring. I was shocked and a little confused, because that has been my favorite subject since I was little (when I would watch shows about dinosaurs on the Discovery channel, where they would drag out the archaeopteryx fossils and talk about birds). When I pressed her for her reasoning, she just said something about how she didn’t like the professor. I think what blew me away about it was the idea that everyone on earth does not find the mechanisms behind evolution as completely compelling and fascinating as I do. This should not have come as a surprise to me, but it did. I guess my self-absorption is showing.

Oops.

Watch yo' Soup

I got a new watch today. Before entering the store, I knew that I wanted a watch with a thin brown strap, a rectangular face, and no gold colored metal, and I wanted it for less than fifteen dollars. Six dollars and change later, I have my dream watch.

Of course, I got home and realized that for the trip that I bought the watch for I am going to be wearing black shoes, and I have a black dress, so now I’m thinking that I’m going to get another, similar watch in black. Go me.

My friend and I were talking about the internet as a series of tubes in the car today. I realized the absurdity of the topic, and I laughed. He asked what was funny, and I told him that I had just realized how silly and nonsensical it would have seemed if you were looking in, and he nodded and said, “Ah, you had an out-of-conversation-experience.” How absolutely amazing is that phrase? Besides that, I realized that it’s something that I have fairly often. Of course, I don’t think all that quickly, so I’ll often lose track of the conversation that I’m in while I’m thinking objectively (ha) about whatever the subject is.

I love soup with crackers all crushed up in it, but if I ever break up with my boyfriend I won’t be able to eat it anymore.

I haven’t decided what I’ll be having for dinner tonight, although I think it will probably soup, or something similar. I also want some iced tea, although that is probably more to get me through the essay that I’m working on. Actually, that’s inaccurate. I haven’t started yet, so it is really the essay that I will be working on. I hope.

Chocolate Owls

Rather than doing the physics lab that is due tomorrow, I am rocking out to that Oingo Boingo song about little girls and eating an extra crispy Kit-Kat bar. Unfortunately I’m a doofus and left the candy bar in the sun, which made it melt. Short story shorter, my mouth was completely coated in cheap chocolate, which was not a pleasant feeling.

I’m having one of those super-sappy days where everything feels a lot more emotional to me than it would normally. (Funny-- I’m wearing a shirt with a leopard face on it, and it’s bunched up and in my reflection on the computer screen it looks like the leopard is squishing up the left side of his face in disgust). I just noticed that I got a bunch of chocolate on my shirt. My brand new WWF shirt. Sad.

There was an exploded mouse on the sidewalk near my car when I was walking to class this morning. Seriously, there were it’s whole, furry little hind legs with the tail attached to the spine with intestines all over the place. It took up almost two square feet. There was no heart, no lungs, no liver and no head as far as I was able to tell. People must have thought I was absolutely bonkers, standing over this shredded little rodent. My best guess is that an owl ate it and then dropped the bits it didn’t want. I think this because it was under a light post and the owls near our house really like to sit up there because they are hidden that way.

Rock on, alfalfa.

I love my body. I don’t mean that in the egotistical, YE-OWW sort of way-- I don’t think I’m that hot. But I do love the feeling of being. I’ve been putting on a teensy bit of muscle, and it feels great. I can completely understand why people get addicted to body-building. This feeling of being stronger is amazingly heady, especially in my legs.

I’m riding in the car right this second, on my way to the museum (no, I’m not driving) and the clouds are really pretty. The weather has been pretty wild for the last couple days, and our hills, which are normally just a flat, sun-burnt yellow have become a softly beautiful grey-green yellow, and the normally dull and dusty bushes have become a much more lively green. Funny-- we didn’t see the burros.

There’s something wonderful about the huge boulders that stick up out of the ground here. I don’t know why I like them so much, but I do.

I was eating lunch with a very nice lady at school the other day, and I went to refill my water bottle out of the drinking fountain, and she mentioned to me that the water in this area has a lot more lime in it than most places. I told her that it made sense because this whole area used to be underwater, and I might just be overly sensitive, but I think she gave me an odd look.

My dad loves to “rock hound,” or search for rocks, and I have been known to go with him. Once, we were digging through some soft sediment near a freeway off ramp, and a police officer pulled over to ask what we were doing. His hand hovered near his gun until my dad handed me the pickax, and he didn’t believe our story until we showed him the fossil mollusks we had found.

I think prickly pear cacti are really cool. In fact, most cacti are neat. Succulents in general, they’re fascinating. Actually, I find all of the adaptations that plants and animals make to dry climates very interesting. What’s really kind of cool is that in the areas where there really is very little precipitation, the plants tend to be the kind that store water somewhere, so I wonder if that’s part of what animals are able to eat just those plants and get enough water? Food for thought, anyway.

I think if I were going to be a mythical sea monster, I’d have to pick the kraken, and probably just because of the cool name. When I was little, I had this book of monsters that had the most beautiful illustrations. They were like collages, and were less than hyper-realistic. Some of the monsters even had paisley patterns. I must have read that book a hundred and fifty times.

I like how dense orange trees are. I had a dream last night where I was flying around, over all of this farm land, but the strange thing was that the things I was flying over really shouldn’t all have been growing in the same area, unless I’m totally crazy. There were normal crops like oranges and avocados, but there was also alfalfa (which I wouldn’t recognize in reality) and corn, and probably a whole lot of other stuff whin I recognized in my dreams but wouldn’t awake.

We just passed a sparrow harassing a crow. I wonder who the crow was molesting to get that sort of reaction out of such a little bird. Perhaps the sparrow was just attempting a preemptive strike, though.

Ten short days.

Ten days is a crazy long time between updates, yeah? I’ve been busy, yada-yada-yada. Anyway, as I was walking across my bedroom to turn on my duck lamp, I realized that the bones in my feet (and yours, too) seem rather counter-intuitive at first glance. Putting the small, delicate foot-bones down on the ground with the substantial thigh and hip bones above? But then I realized it’s so that the foot can have a lot more flexibility and movement than the thigh, and it all made sense.

I love pasta, but when I eat it I am usually hungry immediately afterward. I don’t understand this at all. My mom thinks it might be a type of wheat allergy. I have no idea what it is.

Right this second there is a huge yellow wasp on the screen of my window. It’s moving it’s wings all slow-like. We have two large dogs which I refer to affectionately as organic doorbells.

The moon moves so quickly when it’s full.

Smooth Chit

I’m drinking a green tea (with citrus!) drink, and I can’t decide if I like it or not. Every sip tastes completely different, which makes it difficult for me to make a definitive decision.

Today I am going to go have smoothies with a nice young lady that I met through my chemistry lab. The only problem with that is that I don’t really like smoothies, so while I’m sure she won’t care if I get a coke or something, I still feel like I’m living a lie. In a couple hours though it will all come out and I’ll feel better about it.

I also feel like a bad person when I chit chat with someone who I know I will never be friends with. I know that it’s completely irrational, because everyone talks with people that they aren’t going to become best friends forever with, and it isn’t as though I’m really even lying by omission here, it just feels funny. I don’t mean people who I just won’t see again, but when I can tell that our personalities just aren’t going to be compatible. It’s like a bad date, and I don’t like it.

I just finished a book by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas called The Harmless People, and it was very good, although it was a little sad. It’s about people who live in Africa and hunt antelope. Some of those animals are really beautiful. I am particularly drawn to the greater kudu. They are absolutely huge and gorgeous. They don’t even look real, even in person (hey, I’ve been to the Wild Animal Park).

Who decided banana should be the base fruit in yogurt? They aren’t that fantastic, especially when combined with other fruits. Strawberry banana? I’m sorry, I just think that as a culture, we could do better. Same with orange and cream--I’m going to have to give that an F.

The classroom I’m sitting in has stools instead of real chairs, but the problem is that they don’t move in or out, they only swivel around. This sucks because it makes my shoulders sore no matter what I’m doing. I can’t imagine that I’m the only one who is bothered by it, either.

I really don’t like peer-editing in English classes because I feel that it often ends up being an unequal exchange, and today I got shortchanged. While I love the praise, telling me that there’s nothing that needs fixing is completely unhelpful (unless you’re grading me) and while it’s a sweet sentiment, it’s also a lie. And lying, like drugs, is bad, m’kay?

Newton't Llamas

I have been studying hard for Physics lately, and had to look up the conversion from pounds to Newtons. It turns out that one quarter pound is equal to one Newton, so my mom, who was sitting next to me said, “Why don’t we order a Newton with cheese?” Stitches in my side? I’ve got ‘em from laughin’.

Similarly, while snuggling on the sofa with my boyfriend, I made the astute observation that he has a man-pelt. Without missing a beat, he informed me that his spirit animal is the llama. Just thinking about it, I’m dying.

I don’t know why it is that when someone around me says something even mildly witty I often think it’s just amazing, but when I’m told a genuinely funny joke, I often have to force a chuckle. That makes zero sense to me.

In a similar vein, it’s hard for me to drink hot chocolate out of a cup that sounds like it’s in a lot of pain. For some reason, the paper coffee cups they sell at the Java Hut thing on campus sound like they’re crying when you take a big drink, and that’s just off-putting. Somehow I doubt that most people want to think about the pain their food and drink causes their paper cup.

I hate animal rights organizations. I take them as a personal criticism and insult, as well as a more general threat. I feel like they are saying that not only am I not smart enough to decide how I feel about my dogs, I’m also not observational enough to see when they’re unhappy or in pain. Besides that, I take great offence to anyone who tells me that I should be dead multiple times, or, barring that, be a wheelchair bound cripple. It also gets my fur up when someone says that my entire family should be dead to save a few mice, especially when that person is on insulin themselves. As far as hypocrisy goes, a lot of those animal rights organizations are up there with religions. Really, it reminds me of the Handmaid’s Tale; I mean the bit about the woman who through her career helped to end the ability of women everywhere to have a personal identity. Though I might be using animal research to stay alive, you shouldn’t be allowed to, so then I wouldn’t be allowed to, and we’d all be dead. The thing is, honestly, people are animals too, and I don’t see a lot of animal right’s activists protesting outside the ant colonies where they use aphids as their cows. SLAVERY AND OPPRESSION IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN AMAZON, PEOPLE!

If I had to have a freakishly enlarged body part, I’d choose my neck, so long as it didn’t have to get much thicker. I mean, how cool would it be to have a neck like those women who stretch theirs with the copper rings? Who’s swanlike now, bitches?

Sugared Eyes

I have a migraine right now. Complete with nausea, dizziness and visual blinkies and black-spots. In all fairness to the mighty migraine fairy, it isn’t a particularly painful one… yet. Unfortunately, I get migraines when I’m stressed out, and I’m sure it’s my body telling me to cut the crap and weird stress hormones and whatnot, but when I’m crunched for time and working super hard at something, the last thing I need is to feel like there is a cat inside my skull gnawing on my eyeball and rabbit kicking my temples. It is not going to help me learn physics, it’s just not. Maybe I’ve listened to too much Johnny Cash, because my migraines get rhythm when I get the blues.

Okay, even I have to admit that was a stretch. Because I don’t learn from my own experiences, I went back and got a cocoa from the same coffee shop where I bought the hot water last week, and it was actually pretty good this time. The lady tried to stiff me for a dollar eight though. She said, “That’ll be $2.16,” and I said, “… are you sure about that?” And lo, it wasn’t two sixteen after all.

That story seemed a lot more interesting in my head. I guess I could lie and say I hopped over the counter and scissor kicked her in the face, but that’s just silly.

So I drank some Mountain Dew Code Red--JESUS CHRIST IS A LOIN (actually meant to be lion, but I mistyped and thought this was funnier) THERE IS A SPIDER ON MY WALL!

So I drank some Mountain Dew Code Red and ate some Funyuns (Onion Flavored Rings) in the vain hope that the combination of salt, fat, sugar and caffeine would knock out my migraine like wachaKAPOW, but it didn’t. So now my mouth tastes like a litter box, my stomach feels OILY and nauseous, and my eye still feels like it’s being eaten by Maurice. Where’s the justice?

Only slightly related, but why is it that my English Professor decided that the week that I have three midterms would be the best time to assign a thousand word essay about WC Fields? I mean, a thousand words really isn’t that bad, but with Calculus, Phyiscs and Chemistry to worry about this week, I’m really not up to analyzing a fat clown’s motives, unless there’s free chocolate cake involved, and trust me, there isn’t.

Hyena Shots

I was shot in the leg today.

Of course it was with this little spring cannon thing in Physics, but it still hurt. I also ripped up part of my finger nail on accident and that hurt more. In fact, that still hurts even though I did it at eight thirty this morning.

I am having one of those days where I have eaten way, way too much. My stomach hurts, and I feel slightly ill. I wish very much that I had had water with dinner, instead of a chocolate shake.

I am tired of being cut off in traffic by people with bumperstickers that I disagree with. Hey Bush-voting-war-supporting-SUV-driving-Christian guy-- cutting me off, flipping the bird and tossing your lit cigarette into the dry leaves on the side of the road? Classy. Seriously. Kudos.

I have an affinity towards cream colored lace, but I don’t wear it. Ever. I don’t know why this is, because every time I see a little ruffled skirt with the stuff I go gaga, but it stays at the store. I think I’m afraid that I’m not female enough for that and the sale’s people will know. More likely, it’s the fact that if I bought it, it would probably hang in my closet for three or four years before going to the goodwill without ever seeing the outside of my home in between. I need to really start wearing a more varied wardrobe.

I love the word wardrobe. It makes me think of magical hospitals with wizard doctors. I bet lions would fare a lot better in their war against hyenas if they would just set up some field hospitals. I’m still on the hyena’s side in the Lion-Hyena fight though. Any animal which kills it’s siblings before it’s eyes are open has got to be one tough cookie. Take that, you giant yellow pussy-cats.

I’m slowly being won over by the color purple. Seriously, now that I’m getting over the whole Barney association thing, it’s not really so bad. Just please, don’t combine it with bright green. That’s just weird.

My favorite kind of ice cream at the moment is cotton candy, but rainbow sherbet is starting to catch up now that the weather is getting warmer again. I spent a good fifteen minutes laying in the sun today after class and it was wonderful until our dog Sheila put her head on my neck and tried to use her chin to drag me off the hammock.

Buster'd Humps

Despite the fact that I’m really not in to pretty men, I think that Buster Keaton was pretty darn spiffy. Seeing him in the old silent pictures, I just want to sit down with him and hear what he has to say. Ironic that a silent film would make me want to talk to the character, but maybe that’s how you can tell that the movie worked. Keaton’s movies did work, too. The several that I’ve seen were just as spiffy as his face, although some of the freshness has been lost (mostly, I think, because of the Bugs Bunny cartoons-- they used exactly the same gags as Keaton did, I swear). Side-note: Harold Lloyd’s smile in the film called Safety Last made me feel very strange.

I think maybe I smile at people too much. It’s sort of an appeasement gesture for me, like, “I swear I’m not going to punch you! Let’s be friends!” Unfortunately, I think I end up creeping people out-- they want me at about a four, and I’m probably up around nine or ten somewhere. At least when I’m surrounded by strangers and alone. I talk a lot of trash but I really have no backbone.

Like today, I went to get some tutoring help, and was totally timid about it. In my defense, I did get my hand verbally slapped in the Lab I had right before--don’t touch the pennies, are you mad? Those are for the TA to experiment with! Play with your food dye, peasant. Speaking of which, I squirted way too much yellow into the water. It said use one drop for 100 mL or something, but it wouldn’t come out, so I put some muscle into it, and ended up dumping about a quarter of the bottle in. Oops. Then our graph came out sort of lopsided and wonky. Playing with the spectrophotometer made up for it, though.

I swear, that is the coolest word I learned today. Spectrophotometer. I haven’t tried saying it out loud yet, but I’m building up to that. Unfortunately it’s one of those words which really has no use except in reference to a very, very specific activity. Those accursed nouns.

I have been getting up really early lately (not entirely by choice) and thought for a little while that coffee would be the answer, so I had my parents buy me some coffeemate (because milk in the morning disagrees with my stomach--I’m thinking it’s philosophical, as they seem to resolve their issues around noon) because I can’t take my coffee like I like my men (er…?). Then I started worrying about caffeine addictions. Honestly, I think I stress myself out about this stuff on purpose to distract myself from the real issue which is that I have a physics midterm which I am in no way ready for in about a week. This midterm is the straw which has broken my humped yellow back (I spit!), and caused me to bite through my night guard, which is not a cool thing, seeing as my last one cost three hundred dollars and ruined my teeth.

Maroon Lepus

Last night I had a very strange dream. I was in the living room of my house, and my dad was getting ready to go on a trip. My sister was going to take her cat, Maurice, but she was going to keep him in a stroller. I didn’t think it was a great idea to take a cat to San Diego, but I kept my tongue, and didn’t say anything. My dad mentioned that the last time we took the cat to San Diego, my boyfriend let the cat out of the car and it was a terrible pain to try and catch the cat. I said something to the effect of, well, it isn’t as though he takes terribly good care of his cats, so maybe he just didn’t know any better. The weird part about this, is, of course, that my boyfriend does not have a cat. Actually, his dog wouldn’t really allow him to have a cat. Not because the dog is particularly vicious towards small animals, but because the dog is afraid of cats.

There was a rabbit smeared across the road near my house as I was driving to school this morning, and it made me think. I don’t recall ever hitting a rabbit, and I don’t ever recall being in the car when one was hit, but I still see dead rabbits in the road all the time. Clearly, they aren’t being hit by cars, but rather have some strange disease where occasionally, when crossing a mildly busy road they will just explode in a skidding fashion for three to five feet. I’ll call it lepus itineris finis (basically rabbit road death, I think) and it will be my great latin-named disease and I’ll become famous all over the world.

Alright, even I’ll admit that was completely silly and irrelevant. Besides, who would care? There would be no fame in my discovery, and no fortune. Happily, I’m sure that lepus itineris finis is not real, and it’s more like lepus itineris hit-by-a-freakin’-truck.

When I first got my driver’s license, my wonderful dad bought me a pick-up truck. It was fabulous. It was a really pretty dark green with the pinstripes down the side and the glitter in the paint. It was a stick, and I even got mats with frogs on them for the floorboards. The only problem was that I couldn’t see over the hood of the truck. I’m not a particularly short person, but my torso is, and I was about eye level with the top of the steering wheel. I was very, very crushed by this, because I like pick-up trucks too, and I wanted very much to be able to drive it. Unfortunately, it was not to be, and my dad sold the truck.

It’s kind of like those really pretty dresses with the elastic band under the bust that is supposed to keep everything in place. They’re great in theory, very pretty, but when I put one on, the elastic band keeps popping up over my boobs because they were ultimately designed for people with a bigger bust than I have, and I am never going to be able to wear them. This also goes for a particularly pretty shade of green, which unfortunately makes me look purple and sick.

I think there is a shade of maroon which is almost universally flattering, but they usually only make polo shirts out of it, which is a real shame because polo shirts really don’t flatter anyone.

Rattle My Hair

I spent a week and a half with most of my hair pulled up in a ponytail, and in that time my hair grew out what seems like a lot. It is very cool to suddenly notice how much longer your hair is. It’s one of those things like foot size. There’s not really a noticeable difference between one day and the next, but suddenly! BAM! There it is. Richard Dawkins used a similar analogy to explain evolution, and I thought it was very apt. Why I have stolen it to talk about my hair, I honestly don’t know.

If I were loading a steel box onto a truck without a tailgate or handrails, I would make sure I wasn’t loading it on to flat ice. I would also probably tie the box down with bungee cords. I understand that it makes sense to word physics problems as “real world” scenarios, but honestly, who would load a steel box onto an ice covered truck and not attempt to secure it in any way? That’s just stupid. Although I have on several occasions set my backpack (complete with laptop) on my passenger’s seat while driving, and once it fell off while I was on the freeway and knocked me into neutral. If I leave the story at that it sounds very scary, but I was only going twenty miles an hour, downhill, at the time, so it wasn’t really a very big deal. Perhaps I’m not much more intelligent than someone loading the steel box into the truck after all.

I’m reading The Princess Bride (the abridged version, by William Goldman) and it is thus far almost exactly like the movie. I am surprised because that is almost never the case, ever. Most of the time, the book is butchered on it’s way to the silver screen. The Golden Compass was an extreme example of this. An extreme, heart wrenching, frustrating example of the phenomenon. I have not heard what Phillip Pullman thinks about the damage done to his story, but I can’t imagine that he was happy with the results. I will admit that the movie was visually stunning and that there were some wonderful parts. Overall, though, I think it comes down to the extreme difficulty of condensing one of those densely populous fantasy worlds down from a thousand plus page trilogy into a two and a half hour film. They weren’t written to be experienced that way, and often, it doesn’t work. There are a lot of exceptions, of course, and even though the odds are against me, I still go out of my way to see the film adaptations of my favorite novels. And my second favorite novels. And so on. (By the way, anyone who has ever read Michael Crichton needs to see the movie version of Congo. Pure B-movie camp, all the way through.)

People on campus smoke. Not all people, obviously, but enough for it to be noticeable. It doesn’t really bother me (unless they’re being rude about it, and no, spitting and flicking your ashes onto my backpack does NOT make you look feminine and mysterious, it makes you look like a pig), especially when the people smoking are far away. On my way out of math class today, I realized that I kind of like it because from a distance, the smell reminds me of campfires, and I loved camping when I was little. There is something about eating macaroni and cheese out of a metal bowl with a plastic spoon that just appeals to me. It’s also quite hot today, and the smell of hot pine trees is also a smell that makes me want to walk up creek beds bare foot, looking for little critters and new plants. This summer, I’m so there.

When I was younger, before his ankles got so bad, my dad really liked to go gold panning. I loved to go with him, but not because I really like swirling dirt around in pan (although finding gold and garnets is really a lot of fun). No, I liked it because of the swimming and snakes. I know that sounds funny, but we would swim in this little fork of this river with the dogs while my dad would pan, and we must have seen about a bajillion snakes, lizards and fish in the process. Once, I was off on my own a little farther than was really safe, and of course I was barefoot, and I hopped up on a wide, flat rock atop another wider flatter rock. I simultaneously put my eyes and foot down towards the second rock, and came within a couple seconds of hopping on the most beautiful baby rattlesnake. I probably would have heard the little guy, but the river was only about a foot to my left, his right, and that drowned out any sound he could have hopped to make. His little rattles looked like miniature pearls. Fortunately, my mom showed up and startled him away, but it was literally breathtaking.

Lime in my Squid

When I was a very small child, I knew that when I grew up, I was going to be a dog. Once I got a little older, I grew out of that phase for a little while and decided that I was going to be the first person to photograph a live giant squid in the wild. Now, I didn’t really make a big deal out of this, and it wasn’t as though I was ever super interested in squid, but in the back of my mind and the bottom corner of my heart, I held on to a secret hope that my life would work itself out and I would be the one to photograph one of those suckers.

Obviously, since the event has come and gone without me, this life goal has been shattered into a million pieces. Which is fine, I suppose, because the odds have always been slim-to-none that I’d even go into the field of marine biology anyway, especially as a field researcher. This doesn’t explain the soul crushing disappointment I felt when I saw those stills for the first time (in my defense, the disappointment was quickly followed by elation and awe).

Lime is better than lemon in iced tea.

I have a pet snaked who is named Spike. I’ll admit that his name is sheer laziness on my part. I’m not all that fond of it, but he used to belong to my cousin, and while I could have tried to think of a slightly more mature name, I didn’t do it. He is a Kenyan Sand Boa, and is very pretty. He is, however, the most useless pet I’ve ever had. This is, of course, not his fault. He’s a snake. He’s a desert snake. Of course he’s not interactive, and of course he is completely uninterested in me. That’s fine, but the kicker is that he lives under the sand. So I basically have a nearly empty terrarium that I feed mice to once in a while. Despite this, I’m still very attached to the snake, which baffles me.

Spike’s terrarium lives on top of my bookshelf, and I feel slightly funny right now, because my books are completely discombobulated. Now, I don’t need them in alphabetical order by author’s cat’s maiden name or anything, but it would be nice if there was some sort of system here. I feel funny about having Poe touching Napoleon’s Buttons. Richard Dawkins is jammed haphazardly between the novelization of X-Men2 and the Mini-Atlas of Cats! Madness! On the positive side, though, at least they aren’t dusty anymore.

I am completely addicted to chapstick. I am more upset when I realize that I’ve left my lip balm at home for the day than I am when I realize I’ve forgotten my calculator before a chemistry exam. If I think the word “chapstick” to myself, I have to apply it or I freak out about the pain that my lips will be in. I didn’t think any of this was such a big deal until I found out that there is this anti-lip balm movement. Then I thought to myself, the movement has to be fake, right? So now I’m doubly insecure-- on the on hand, what if there is a movement and they’re right? Have I been bringing about the downfall of modern man by wearing lip balm? (And oh god-- have they even seen my lip gloss collection?!) And on the other hand, have I been duped into caring? It has to be a fake organization-- but what if it isn’t? On the outside, I don’t care. They don’t have to wear chapstick, and I’m sure they don’t really care that much when I do. Still, it always bothers me when I think that people might disapprove of something that I do when it hasn’t occurred to me that they might care at all. It doesn’t bother me when I offend people as long as I know in advance that I am committing a social sin. But it is mortifying to me to think that I may have accidentally made someone judge me. This is why I don’t mind little old ladies glaring at me while I wear a tube-top, but if my pants slip down and I bend over I’m terrified that someone may have seen my underwear. I also hate it when my brand new white socks get those first gray stains on top. What are those even from?

Dirty Sunshine

Not fifteen seconds ago, as I pushed my spiral bound notebook into my backpack, I caught my middle finger between the backpack and the chemistry book that was already inside and shoved the skin back up away from my nail. It hurts a lot, and it doesn’t make my hands look any more presentable. I like to keep my nails a little on the long side, and I do make some effort to keep my cuticles healthy and neat, but at times like this I feel it’s all for nothing. I have two broken nails, and three which are in the process, and there are several places where the skin has been chewed basically off because of my nervousness (I am the only person that I know of who chews the skin next to her nails instead of the nails themselves). On top of everything else, my hands are grungy. We’re not talking a little dirt or ink-- I’ve got orange chicken residue, probably soda, hairspray and Baby Christ only knows what else. Thinking about what it must be doing to my keyboard freaks me out even more, too.

My desktop keyboard is gray, and when I did a thorough clean up of my bedroom, I sat down with a washcloth and a bottle of counter cleaner and cleaned up every single key. I was completely disgusted to find that the keys on my keyboard, which I touch every day, got that rag dirtier than dusting my entire bookshelf and all my knickknacks did. I haven’t been able to find the courage to pop off the keys and clean underneath them, and I think I may just buy a new keyboard instead.

Lotion kills razor blades. Either that, or I suddenly have titanium leg hairs. While it might be kind of cool if that were true, I have my doubts.

Often I see a bad situation coming, and I know that I’ll suffer if I don’t do something, but I just watch the train getting closer and closer anyway. Just as an example, I recently broke a pen. Not the inkwell inside the pen, mind you, just the plastic part on the outside. Did I get up and throw the whole thing in the garbage and move on with my life? No. I put it in my backpack. Did I put it in a little compartment where the damage when the inkwell breaks will be minimal? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know where it is. Will there be any effort made on my part to locate the broken pen before disaster strikes? No. I will suffer.

I sat in the sun for almost an hour today. I wasn’t reading or typing, or drawing, or talking… I just sat. It was wonderful. I’ve heard that people get addicted to sunbathing, and at the time, I thought that was a ridiculous thing to say, but after today, I completely understand. What was really neat was the way the top of my head and my legs got really hot compared to my arms, which I think was because my jeans today are very dark, and my hair is darker than my skin. Unfortunately, I think I burnt my nose, but skin cancer is a small price to pay for that amount of joy and warmth.

Jazz and Wasps

The big midterm was yesterday, and I was ready. I spent the hour before hand chilling in the library, and sat down at four past the hour, which was cool because the class didn’t start until ten past. Then I had one of those chilling, slow dawning realization that makes you actually blanch. My driver’s license was in the car. This sentence may not mean much, but you have to realize that in order to receive credit for the exam, you have to show some form of photo ID, and that was mine. So what did I do? I stood up, asked the girl next to me to watch my backpack and I sprinted all the way across the large campus, and to my car. When I opened the door, pale, sweaty and shaking so hard the key wouldn’t go in the first time, I reached into the driver’s side door pocket thing, and groped for my wallet.

It. Wasn’t. There. Words cannot express the fear I felt. I actually screamed, and people turned, looking for the rapist and/or car thief. Then the wallet gods smiled down upon me, and I remembered that my wallet was in my trunk. All in all, it took me seven or eight minutes to make the round trip, and I was only a little late. I ended up getting a C+ on the test, too, so it can’t have affected my performance too much. The incident taught me two very important lessons, though. Firstly, remember to keep my stupid student ID card in my backpack at all times no matter what. A discount at the movies is not worth a mile sprint, it’s just not. Secondly, it taught me that I’m not nearly in as good’a shape as I’d like to be. I have been working on this, though. Four days a week for the last three weeks, I’ve been getting up at six to do sit-ups and squats with my mom. Still, it wasn’t really good enough.

Over the weekend I noticed a dramatic difference in my waist. Now, I’m exceptionally short-waisted. I mean, we’re talking rip-to-hip overlap here, so I always figured there was nothing to be done about it. I’ll never have a waspish figure, but, after three weeks of sit-ups and such, I do have an actual noticeable place in my torso that is smaller around than the rest, and is above my stomach and below my sternum, so I’m pretty jazzed about that.

I’ve always found the term “jazz hands” incredibly amusing. It seriously makes my day every time I hear it.

Sugared Goats

I am that unholy mixture of nervous and angry. I have an important midterm coming up at eleven o’clock, and as a result, my normally short fuse is pretty much nonexistent. I spent a lot of my time studying for it this weekend, but I still don’t feel prepared. It’s chemistry though, and as hard as I might try, I think that’s always going to be a weak subject for me. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because on the surface, it seems like it should be right up my alley. I love the sciences, and math is fun, and conceptual stuff usually makes me happy. For some reason though, as soon as you start talking electrons to me, my eyes glaze over and my mind wanders. I’m fighting to overcome this weakness, though, because when you need six quarters of a subject you can’t really afford to be lax about it.

I was at a store with one of my best friends a while back, and because we became tired, we found a bench and sat down. Twenty minutes later we realized that we were facing the laxatives. I think that it is very strange that a store like that would be so tactless as to place a bench facing the wall’o-easy-poo. I mean, if you had to grab a bottle of stool softener, would you want to do so with an audience? I think not. It would be like having a bench in front of the maxi-pads or the “family planning” section of the store—it’s just not the thing to do. Incidentally, no one grabbed anything while we were sitting on the bench, although several people did walk by, look at us, and then walk away, so maybe we were scaring away business… poor, miserable, constipated business.

I’ve never really been all that fond of the taste of popcorn. It has never been one of those foods that I think of when I’m sitting and minding my own business, never one that I crave. Sure I like popcorn okay, and I’ll eat it, and sometimes I’ll even make it for myself. Once in a while I just want salt and butter, and don’t really care where that comes from. But popcorn itself just isn’t all that exciting. (The obvious exception being movie popcorn—that stuff is just straight up crack). Kettle corn is an entirely different animal. Kettle corn is absolutely amazing. At first, I thought this was odd, that I would enjoy kettle corn so much, while not really caring at all about popcorn (with or without cheese). Then I realized a simple fact: I love sugar.

I am not really that big on things like cakes and cookies, and most candies are simply good, not amazing. Things that are only a little sweet though, but have loads of sugary joy—ohh baby. I can’t get enough of them. Like salad dressings with honey, or sweetish bread… or kettle corn. There’s something about things with just enough sugar to notice that really floats my goat.

While we’re on the subject, I am rather fond of goats. It is one of my many dreams to have a pet goat. It will be a female goat, and I will milk her, and I will use that milk to make ice cream. I love goat’s-milk-ice-cream like nothing else. Besides that, with their freakish eyes and knobby knees, goats are completely adorable. They should all be wearing those golf hats with the pompoms on top.

Licking the Minnow

I think that a lot of animals are weird about their ears. My sister’s cat was laying on the sofa, just chillin’ out, and our dog, Sheila, came over and stuck her tongue into the cat’s ear as a form of greeting, but the cat just sort of took it in stride, and let it go. A few days ago, the same dog, Sheila, put our other dog’s entire ear into her mouth, and, while chewing on the entire ear, she barked loudly. Did the other dog, as would be understood and excused, turn around and gut Sheila like a fish? He did not. Instead he sighed and barely raised a lip.

I cannot even imagine being that nonchalant about someone screaming in my ear, especially while my ear was in their mouth. I can also not imagine being greeted by a friend by having them stick their tongue all the way down into my ear canal. Then again, dogs and cats do a lot of things that are unfathomable to me, and I think that it has to do with a lack of personal boundaries, which is understandable, because they’re dogs and cats.

While I don’t mind it so much from friends and family, I am not really big on people touching me, especially strangers. I don’t even like brushing hands with cashiers at stores. This isn’t because I think they’re dirty or anything like that, I’d just rather not interact physically with most strangers. I think this is especially interesting because Desmond Morris talks about something very similar in The Naked Ape. He mentions that people in modern society have a huge social taboo against touching strangers, which is why we apologize when we run into or bump someone in public, regardless of whether it would have hurt someone or not. I personally have said excuse me to many people that I didn’t even actually touch, just because I came a little too close to them for comfort. Usually when this happens, that someone will laugh and say that of course it’s fine, but I’m still compelled to apologize anyway.

When walking on the sidewalk, I feel like there are these invisible bubbles that wrap around everyone, and it makes me uncomfortable to allow my bubble to come into contact with anyone else’s bubble. There is also an invisible bubble around my pet crawfish, Leonard, which is probably of arbitrary and random size, which I feel that Minnow (my little fish, that’s his name) should not enter. I fear for Minnow’s life, feeling that he is taking his life into his own scales whenever he pushes the boundaries of Leonard’s personal space, but he hasn’t been eaten. Yet.

I like things that remind me of food. My favorite candles at the moment are these cheap cherry-scented ones that I got at Big Lots for a dollar. They smell like cherry cough drops, and I love them. Unfortunately, they don’t really make my room smell like anything other than air and smoke, which rather defeats the purpose of having scented candles in the first place.

Bigfoot and Brain Surgeons

The list of things I’ve never understood would be far too long and far too boring for me to even attempt to write out. It would include things like osmosis, Lewis-dot structures, geography, and the appeal of the new Narnia movie(s). There is something, though, that has been bothering me more than any of the other varied and wide-reaching subjects that I know less than I could about, and that is the question of whether or not people who have part of their brain removed can feel the difference. I don’t mean feel the difference like know that part of their consciousness is gone (although that would be interesting to know too), I mean know the difference by the weight of their heads. When the surgeon removed the lowest rib on the front, left hand side of my ribcage, I was able to tell as soon as I was really conscious that there was something wrong there, and that still hasn’t gone away, even though it’s been almost six years since it was removed. I would assume that it would be even worse in your head. But maybe not, I guess there aren’t any nerves inside the brain itself, so perhaps you wouldn’t even be able to tell that it was missing.

I’m sure that if I cared to, I could learn the answer to my question fairly quickly, I mean, google doesn’t fail me often, but I’m not sure I care to find out just yet. Some of the best thinking I’ve ever done has been internal debates on subjects which I could easily find out the truth with minimal effort, but chose not to. Even when I end up being wrong, I think that the exercise of wondering if is important, and I know that it helps me make connections between subjects that never would have occurred to me otherwise.

The other day, I was thinking about how gorgeous mule deer are. They have this big glassy eyes, and ears that are comically large, and that jelly-bean body up on those knobby-kneed stilts. They’re amazing; I could fawn all over them for hours. There was a little zoo in the mountains near my home which had an exhibit of mule deer, and they would come up to the chain-link fence and lick your hands (probably for the salt). There were also some bison there, and I always got the impression that those big, beautiful beasts could walk right through the fence if they wanted to. There’s something thrilling about being at eye-level with an animal who’s forehead is bigger across than your hips, and having it look at you with all of that calm curiosity. There’s something alien about the way prey animals think, and they way they look at you.

I’ve always wondered that about bigfoot. I mean, he’s supposed to be an upright ape, and is often touted as the missing link (in Oregon..? but I guess I shouldn’t be picky about geography when I’m talking about bigfoot) but would he be an omnivore or an herbivore? I suppose he could be a predator, a carnivore, but given his probable evolutionary history, I think that’s unlikely. I would put my money on omnivore, and I bet his diet is a lot like a bear’s. Not a polar bear, more like a black bear, or a grizzly; someone that eats mostly plants and fruit, but wouldn’t object to a little fresh venison once in a while, maybe even the occasional rainbow trout.

Peach Pearls

A couple of weeks ago, I was sick. I was very, very sick. I couldn’t breathe through “by dose” and my head was stuffed with dust bunnies and spit. I couldn’t even get up enough energy to brush my hair, much less shower. My sister had several of her friends over, but did I stay in my room to shield them from the cousin of Grendal I had become? I did not. Instead, I shuffled into the room in my ratty pink bathrobe and plopped down into an armchair with a coke, and my laptop. After a couple of hours of playing Yoshi’s Island (yes, on my computer) I ran out of soda. So, I stood up, set my computer down on the arm of my chair and began to walk away. Two feet from the chair, I turned, and said, “Just wait, I’ll be right back,” to the computer. And yes, it was said with complete and utter sincerity.

I find myself talking to inanimate objects all the time, actually. “I just don’t get it,” I have often whined at my homework, and “Why won’t you print? I love you,” might have slipped out once or twice when I still had my old printer. Honestly, I think that printers really respond better to genteel kindness and understanding than they do to threats and anger. They are stubborn, temperamental creatures, and must be treated with delicacy and respect. I have never had a printer work when I was rude to it, not once. I also think that my printer is almost out of red ink.

I was looking at gemstones today, and there was a ring that I didn’t like. It had red stones (probably garnet, I didn’t ask and I’m certainly no expert) set in a flower pattern. It took me a few minutes to figure out my initial reaction of dislike bordering on outright revulsion. The stones were pretty, and it wasn’t poorly made or gaudy. Then it suddenly struck me-- it was a flower with four petals, and that just doesn’t happen in nature. Ironically enough, I wasn’t bothered by the multitude of obviously artificially colored pearls that they offered as well (we’re not talking about a delicate rosy blush on a white pearl, we’re talking shock-bright-bubble gum color here). I found those deliciously tacky. (There were also some bronze colored ones in a string that were very earthy and pretty).

I am also not a fan of diamonds. I think that they’re kind of boring, and they’re certainly overpriced. My favorite gemstone, in case anyone cares is the opal. Unfortunately, I think that opals might be the most abused gem that there is. Trying to find an opal ring that isn’t hideously tacky (or flanked by diamonds, which rather defeats the purpose) is like trying to find a flower with four petals in a garden.

Last summer my mom grew a bunch of arugula from seeds in a planter on our front porch, along with some sugar peas (which are finally producing) and some other plants. Once the arugula was tall enough, my mom transferred it to our vegetable garden near our avocado trees were before they died. Several months went by, and the arugula went a little wild, and then all of a sudden, in February it flowered. I was shocked, because it hadn’t occurred to me that an ugly little plant that looks a lot like spiky spinach would have beautiful little white flower clusters. Just goes to show that you never can predict things like that.

Although I think that the prettiest flowers are roses, the best smelling have to be peach blossoms. They smell like a cross between almond flowers and jasmine, and on a warm spring evening, that smell can get you completely stoned (pun completely intended).