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!