Plastic Fish

My lovely boyfriend gave me three gifts this week, which is unusual. He gave me a bouquet of fake flowers, which he wire-wrapped together, a cherry scented candle (which I wish were a food, it smells so good) and a bottle of the best lotion ever (even if the name is completely silly). The flowers, which made me deliriously happy, are, I admit, very silly. They’re very pink, and very fake, and wonderful. Anyway, he gave them to me, so I love them. My mother, on the other hand, took it upon herself to tell me (although not exactly in such terms) that the gift was frivolous and stupid. I didn’t reply to her, but for some reason the comment stuck, and it’s been bothering me.

Of course the flowers are frivolous and stupid--that’s the point. My boyfriend knew that when he gave them to me. He knew that I don’t need plastic flowers that don’t really match my room! That isn’t their purpose. They’re to remind me that he thinks about me when I’m not there, and that sometimes pretty things don’t have to be expensive, useful, or ceremonial (because, after all, there isn’t some holiday this week that he could be acknowledging with the gift). They’re just meant to be a silly reminder of him, for me, and they do serve that purpose very well. They make me smile every time I see them, and even if my mom thinks they’re dumb and wasteful, I still love them.

Last night, my sister stabbed me in the foot with a steak knife. Of course, it wasn’t on purpose and while I bled a little bit, I’m not actually injured. Still, it hurt pretty bad. The strange part, though, is that last night, I had a dream where she took my computer and printed out all of my privet documents. I became angry, in the dream, and tried to beat her face, but I felt like I was moving through water instead of air, and so I wasn’t able to really hit her. It was very dissatisfying.

On Sunday, I was at work, and I was taking old price stickers off merchandise with a dull box cutter, and my thumb hurt from pushing the blade. My feet hurt from standing. My back and shoulders hurt from hunching over the little craft supplies, and I was grumpy. I didn’t really want to be at work, and I let myself acknowledge that, and instead of bringing inner peace, it made me more grumpy. Clutching a miss-priced spool of ugly ribbon in my hand, I slapped the blade down, and worked it under the green sticker which proclaimed, “SALE-- $1.44,” in chunky, blurred black letters. Then I realized something.

I was mad because I felt like they were stealing my weekends from me.

Then I realized something else.

They weren’t stealing my weekends from me, they were buying my weekends from me. And I was selling my weekends to them. Then, while standing at the center island of the moderately sized craft store, tired and a little sweaty, I worked out just how much I was selling my weekends for, and realized that (ignoring government taxes, because I, shamefully, do not know exactly how much they take out) I was selling my weekends for $96.00 each.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized I thought this was a fairly fair price, given that really, I was just selling my mornings and afternoons, and not selling my evenings. It wasn’t like I was doing really backbreaking or mentally demanding work, either. I was more cheerful after realizing all of this, until my boss asked me to work the next day, too.

I have twenty six cents, a ukulele and a depressing number of papers strewn across my bedroom floor, and it makes me feel conflicted. Deep down, I have a strong desire to live a life with minimal stuff near me, and I think this is why I don’t allow much to be kept in my bathroom. On the other hand, I like having the stuff, and I am lazy, so things, especially papers from last quarter, tend to sit near the waste bin until I empty my trash. There they sit, making me feel cluttered and disorganized, and I wish I knew how to motivate myself to create a clean and clutter-free environment for myself.

I’ve long had this feeling that there is a system which, if only I could stumble upon it, would make my life suddenly snap into place and force everything to be easy. I’m starting to think that perhaps that doesn’t really exist and that looking for it is as foolish is trying to find skill-free make-up tips.

I also need to clean out my fish tanks. The water is fine (that is, the ammonia levels and all) but there is some algae growing on the sand in my larger tank. I’m thinking that I want to get some more fish for that tank, too, and I think I want balloon mollies (or is it mollys?) I’m shallow enough, though, that I’m worried they won’t match my lovely pearl that I already have living there, so I’ve been thinking about just getting a cloud of glo-light tetras for now. We’ll see how that goes.

Dreams and Blowfish

My mom bought me the most amazing gift today. It’s a little ceramic dish (tiny--it might old a quarter cup of liquid) that’s shaped like a blowfish. It’s so perfectly cute, and I can’t wait until I move out someday so that I can use it to serve salt at my dinner table with.

I have been having very strange dreams lately. The other night I dreamt that there was a terrible zombie apocalypse and I was living in this post-zombie world compound. Unfortunately, I was the one who had to live in the room facing the zombie menace. My room was open on two sides, with my bed about a foot and a half from the rickety fence set up to keep the zombies out. Periodically I had to pick up my strange scythe-pick combination tool and smack it into the heads of the moaning undead who were reaching through the fence into my room. I then went and tried to rescue this girl who I’ve never met, who rejected my help with a startled, “But who are you?”

I was pretty matter of fact about this, until we were invaded by other living people who had the advantage of coming from above on this hill, so I crawled out and hid behind a truck, and sniped their leader. He tumbled down from the theatre spotlight he was working on the crowd of refugees I had been living with, and the people took us back to live with them at the zoo. They assured me that there were no zombies, and I believed them until the moment before I woke up.

Then, the next night I had a dream where I was a seagull who lived on an ocean the size of a boxcar.

Last night my dream was about the unfairness of multiple choice tests.

Sometimes I sit in class, taking notes on my computer, and write passive aggressive things about the people around me who are disrupting my learning.

Last night I was going to add a couple gallons of water to my fish tanks. I filled the bucket and wrestled it down the hallway to my room, where I was to add the stuff that neutralizes all of the nasty chemicals in the tap water which make it safe for us but dangerous to fishes. Unfortunately, the top came off of the bottle and the entire thing dumped into the bucket, rendering it unusable. I was too lazy to fix the problem and now I have a bucket of water I need to pour out next to my fish tank.

I think I need to get some of those foam earplugs to wear to lectures. That must sound awfully silly, but my ears hurt all the time anymore. Whenever there’s someone nearby who has a cough, I end up feeling like my ears have had hot oil poured down inside them for days. It’s terrible. I am actually afraid that I might go deaf sooner, rather than later. My sense of hearing is awful. It makes me want to learn sign language.

I love receiving flowers.

I think that people who come into a retail store to buy non-essential items and allow their babies to wail the entire time they’re in the store without making some attempt to quiet them are awful, terrible people. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think inflicting a screaming toddler on forty other people while you browse the selection of stickers we have available is acceptable. Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to say anything to them while I’m at work. I do, however, leave stores which have screaming children in them.

Speaking of screaming children, my cousin is coming out with her two daughters this Friday and I’m interested to see them again. It’s funny to watch someone that much younger than me grow up. It really does happen quickly.

Chocolate Muffins and Devastation

It was blustery and cold this morning, and even armed with my fancy-dancy London scarf and my newish wool coat, I was chilled by the wind on my way to class. So, I stopped by the library and used four of the quarters in my pocket to buy myself a hot chocolate from a vending machine. Happy, I marched to class, my head held high and my hands tight around the paper warmth of the cup. I marched right through a planter and caught my toe on the cement edge. I almost went down. There was much wind milling of the arms and yelling, but I didn’t fall. Glancing down at myself, I realized, miracle of miracles, I hadn’t even spilled my cocoa.

I laughed to myself and pranced down a short ramp for the handicapped, and without tripping over anything poured about half my hot chocolate down the front of my coat. Grumbling to myself, I stomped into my classroom and sat down. Because it’s a large lecture hall and only about 2/3rds of the class ever bother to show up, I placed my remaining cocoa on the desk next to mine, and opened my backpack to pull out my homework which was due at the start of the lecture. As I handed it to the person next to me, I checked my backpack once more to make certain that my twelve page paper, due in the next class, was still where I had left it. Assured that it was, I pulled out my day-planner and started planning my day.

When the lecture began, I reached to shove my planner back into my backpack. As I did, my elbow jostled the desk next to mine, and in slow motion the half-filled cup of hot chocolate spun, and fell perfectly into the compartment of my bag, directly on the cover page of my twelve page paper. I let out a small gasp, and after a moment of shocked disbelief, I pulled the cup out, and then the paper. The first several pages were totally and utterly soaked. So I stood up and marched my butt back to the library, thinking that since I had the foresight to email the essay to myself the night before I would simply print out all fifteen pages again (the twelve page paper plus the coversheet and two pages of references). Then I reached into my pocket and realized I only had $0.60, and each page would cost $0.10. After a brief panic, I prioritized my essay, and printed out the pages that were worst hit by the cocoa and took it to class.

My professor found my story deeply amusing, and laughed harder when I went to the bathroom to wash out my backpack.

I now owe my sister a new copy of Pearls Before Swine.

In other news, I couple weeks ago, I was trying to make these amazing chocolate chip banana muffins (from scratch). I measured the ingredients, mixed them, put the little papers into the muffin tins, dolled out the batter with the ice cream scoop and dropped the entire tray upside down on the hot oven door.

I was devastated.

Today I have righted that wrong by mixing up a new batch of muffins which are safely out of the oven, golden brown, and delicious.

Rude Wool

In one of the classes I’m taking, my Professor said something today which, frankly, made no sense. The grades on the midterm are based on what everyone else got, so essentially you are in direct competition with those around you. That means that the top twenty five percent of the class gets an a, regardless of the actual percentages people get. While I personally dislike this sort of grading, I’m not going to make a big deal out of it. The part that got under my skin, though, was that she generously decided to grant everyone an additional seventeen percent on the midterm. What I don’t get is why she’s bothering--it won’t actually change anyone’s grades at all. I think perhaps she didn’t think it all the way through.

I’m a little shocked that I’m doing so well in physics this quarter, but the real surprise is that I’m enjoying it so much. Math is, shock surprise, fun. I think I’ll cut way back on the number of fluff classes I take from now on.

The store that I work at is closing soon, and I’ve noticed something that at first seemed very strange. As soon as the “Store Closing” sign went up, the number of customers who are very rude went up sharply. Suddenly, people are leaving candy wrappers and soda bottles all over the place, they’re miss-shelving things, and refusing to make eye-contact or say please or thank you. I actually watched a woman take a pack of stickers down off a rack, look at them for a moment and literally drop them on the floor and walk away. Now, I’m not wildly irritated about all of this, but I do think it’s very interesting. It doesn’t offend me personally that these people are now treating me like I’m an idiot (because of the sign?) because I know that I’m not stupid, but it does make me want to ask why they’re doing it. I doubt that would go over particularly well, though, so perhaps I’ll stick with internal sighs and outward smiles.

I got a new coat, and it’s fabulous. I didn’t realize that wearing an actual coat, made of wool, is so, so much warmer than wearing a cotton-blend hoodie. It’s amazing. Walking to class at seven thirty in the morning, I am no longer just not dead, I’m actually warm. I put my hands in my pockets, and they’re warm too! Toasty.

My earrings keep getting caught in the scarf I’m wearing today, and it is very unpleasant.

Screamin' Petals

Haven’t updated, no excuses, blah-blah-blah.

My dad caught the evil awful cold I had for six solid weeks. It was one of those ones that slammed you back and forth between being hot and cold and energetic and dead. It was not a fun illness to have. My dad has it now, though, and while normally he’s pretty stoic about illness, shunning medicine and all of that, he finally got his foot surgery scheduled, and since he’s been waiting for that since before we found out who was going to be the new President, he’s reluctant to let a cold force them to reschedule. So, he’s been acting like a big baby about the whole thing (which is completely understandable and not the point). This morning when I came downstairs, he was attacking one of those little blister packs of cold pills with an eight inch kitchen knife. When I said something like, “Whuuh?” He glared at me, brandished the knife at the pills and said, “Why do they make them so hard to open when the people that’ll be trying to open them are sick? It makes no sense!” I couldn’t argue with that.

I watched an unemployed homeless man with five foster children pick up a woman yesterday, and I’m still in awe of his skills. (On that topic, though, I wonder just how an unemployed homeless man has five foster children—not with him, he just mentioned them—I mean; you wouldn’t think the state would allow that).

I was mildly disappointed to learn that the Frankie in the love song Frankie and Johnny was a woman. I mean, it’s an older country song, so of course she is, but when I saw the title and heard the opening line, I felt a moment of surprised excitement that was quickly quashed by the chorus. Still, it shouldn’t take too much lyrical reworking to fix the injustice.

My boyfriend has been making the most beautiful jewelry. I’m so wildly impressed with what he’s been doing. I can’t believe that he just started doing it recently. We were at the craft store, and he goes, “I’m going to get some wire and some beads and start making jewelry.” I said, “That’s nice dear.” I thought he was going to basically take the wire and throw the beads on it, and be like, “Ta-da!” What he did was so much more impressive than that. I’ll get his permission later and throw the link to his etsy account up here, so that the one person other than me who reads this can go see what I’m talking about. Seriously, this stuff’s gorgeous.

Speaking of gorgeous, I saw a really beautiful sunset the other night and it’s still making me happy. Also topping my list of things that made me way happier than they really ought to have are the two canceled classes I have NOT going on this week, and the motivation I’m feeling to really do better in the second half of this quarter than I’ve done so far. I think I’m hitting the tail end of that evil cold, and I’m getting my second wind, so to speak. It isn’t that I’m doing all that poorly; I’m just not really applying myself the way I ought to be. That will change, though, and I’ll start emulating those people in my life who do so much better than me at everything with the exception of scraping by with the minimum effort (and perhaps baking pound cake).

I also learned that I have not grown out of being terrified by haunted houses. I went to a theme park with my boyfriend rather than watching that super-huge football game people seem to care so much about, and went into the haunted house they had and I screamed so much that the small child of approximately six years old looked back at me as if to say, “Please, lady, shuuut up!” He was completely incredulous. On the plus side, I did get everyone laughing, and that felt good.

There are these trees on campus that bloom in late January/early February, and they smell so, so awful. 100% of people polled agree with me.

I asked two people.

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.