girlcrush time!

i have a really random girlcrush on patrick stump from fall out boy. sure, he’s chubby, dresses like a high schooler, and needs to rethink his sideburns (aside from the sideburns, this is an episode of the cult classic miniseries “pot, meet kettle!”). But he’s adorable, and i love his voice, and is from a place not too far from where i’m from. sigh, if only he didn’t have teenage girls throwing their underpants at him day in and day out. do they still even do that anymore, or was it an arena-rock thing?

Fabulous.

The only comment I got on a post I wasn’t expecting comments on was a site to find me a nice Indian groom. Uh-huh.

*Not that I’m stumping for comments, I’m totally okay not getting them.  But really, what the hell.  I guess tagging can be dangerous?

Home is not all that good for me, after all. Mom calls things like this my existential crises.

Good news:

Chrissy had the baby. Dylan is so adorable and soft and squishy and babylike and cuddly. I have a job. Yay. I’m expecting to really like it. A 4.0, or at least something close to it, is imminent so long as I can stay awake and don’t get so bored that I refuse to do my homework.

On to the bad news, on which there’s a lot because I’m alone a lot of the time.

I have never felt more unattractive in my life, for various reasons but they all work in conjunction to be one big ball of rock-bottom self-esteem. I forgot when I decided to come home that the best friend I have here is Jake the dog, and my second best friend is a tie between my mom and the refrigerator. I forgot that I didn’t really have friends to speak of when I left for the Academy, and add four years and me realizing that most of my friends weren’t that great of friends, or even that great of people, in the first place. Excepting Morgan–she’s been busy, but she also has more friends, and I always feel awkward because they had at least 2 years of being friends and I’m just barging in with nothing to talk about, not that that ever stops me from talking. I was talking to my mom today about how Jimmy and Doug (my bosses) are already giving me hell, but in a good way, and how I get nervous because for so many years of my life all I had was people making fun of me, and it scares me that if I don’t just accept it they won’t talk to me at all, and how for once I can tell the difference, because it’s a scuba thing, and that feels nice.

I forgot as well what life with my sister is like. Almost everything she does annoys me, and she knows what sets me off the most and does it often just to get on my nerves. For example–she told me that now I was home, I gave up my turn of having the car be “mine”–now it was “hers” and as such I needed to ask her permission to take it anywhere, including school, and that I had to be home in time for her to drive to work, no matter where I was or what I was doing. Yes, even at school, because it’s not her fault I’m in class until she needs to be at work, which may I add is six blocks away, if that. Much to my chagrin and pleasure, she crashed my car (chagrin) for the second time in six months (more chagrin) which led to my parents not allowing her to drive for an indefinite period (pleasure!). We’ve got this odd power struggle going, because she likes thinking she’s in charge, and I know that I should be at least regarding intra-sibling issues, except my mom seems to disagree and gets on my case while Libby stands behind her sticking her tongue at me. The problem is Libby knows that in a lot of ways I’m jealous of her and she likes rubbing that in. Like telling me repeatedly about how many people she’s going with to winter formal and how much her dress cost and all about her date and how he paid for her to go in a limo and on and on and fucking on. Normally I wouldn’t care but I’m sitting around thinking about whether I’ve made the right choices in life.

School blows. I haven’t been this bored since …well I can think of a lot of things that have been really boring, so…let’s just work with the assumption that all two or three people glancing at this know me well enough to know what happens when I get bored. Two and a half weeks on the Meiji restoration? With another week to go? Gag me. I don’t want to sound conceited, but sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be dumb. Would I be any happier? Really, I’m not being conceited–some of the people in my classes can’t string together a coherent sentence, let alone know any word longer than five or six letters. I like annoying people by sticking big kid words into my discussions and assignments just to make them frustrated. Not a good way to make friends, but at least I’m a little less bored. Also it seems like a lot of people don’t appreciate my unorthodox way of explaining things. Is it annoying, or do they just not understand my humor?

Part of the problem with Libby rubbing things in is that there’s another bidding war over her, this one bigger than ever. Anywhere from a couple to a gaggle of boys tries to outdo the others for her attention, and she comes home and says things like “I just don’t know how to let them down easy” and “I’m asking you because you know how to get boys to leave you alone” and “be glad you don’t have my problem”. Shut up.

Also significant is how often Libby asks to help me with my makeup or my hair or my outfit or “maybe you’ve had enough to eat today”. And she’s not doing to be nice, at least not anymore, because after the weeks of politely declining her help she’s been more persistent, and more insistent. “Can I pick out your eyeshadow” became “you’re not really going to wear that color, are you? No, I wasn’t being mean, I just really want to know”, “but you look so nice with your hair down” became “you’re going to get a bald spot if you wear that ponytail every day”, “iun is 69% girls, don’t worry” became “never mind, i forgot you’re not qualified to give relationship advice”, “at least you have a butt” became “at least you get to wear a wetsuit, it makes your thighs thinner”. Shut up shut up shut up nobody asked you.

At least I have my dog. And a job that God willing will be great. And a friend. And a bed. And my myriad existential crises. And how I don’t want to do my homework, because it’s nice knowing that some things never change.

Life is fantastic right now and I’m in no way going to argue with that

• I got my paper done. My TA accepted my doctor’s note and even though the paper is shit it won’t get an extra letter off. Also I get to do an extra credit project.
• The professor in my favorite class told me that I am full of insightful things to say and when I’m not in class he can tell and of course I don’t talk too much, and I should seriously consider going into the field and he likes what I have to say and he hopes to see more of me in the future.
• My computer is already finished being fixed, and it’s all under warranty, even my F key that’s been fucked since I don’t know when.  Best part?  I get to pick it up on my way out of town, the store is open early enough.
• In eight hours I’m getting into my car with Samir and driving home to people who love me. It turns out that the exit Samir needed to be dropped off at is the exact same exit I’d be getting off anyway. Oh snap.
• Did I mention the people who love me? Like, lots of them. Yes it’s going to be absolutely batshit, but come on. I have a car and a driver’s license and at least two friend’s houses I can escape to.
• But still they love me so I don’t care. Let’s see if this attitude sticks, but who gives a whatever, I’m in a good mood now dammit and by God I will stick with it. This probably means I won’t sleep.

Yes, I just rewatched my favorite episodes of West Wing and I’m hyper. I just read an article on how Obama did drugs in high school. I’m mostly packed and ready to go. I have so much energy right now, in fact, that I might carry all my stuff down to my car to expedite our estimated departure time. In a week and ten nine days I’m going to be in Mexico. On an island. On my first ever real vacation. With the beach and margaritas and I wish I found half-naked Mexican boys sexy. That’s Libby’s area. Still. Hot boys. Margaritas. A BEACH. NO SCHOOL.

Whatever drug I accidentally took tonight, I want to do it again. Oh…wait…no, wait…is this…is this what not feeling stressed is like? Holy mother of God. Either that or I’m really, really, really, REALLY drunk and I missed the whole drinking part. But I have a feeling that’s not it.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I really am thankful for you, whether I say it enough or not.

Inventory

On my shelf I have a mostly full box of sugar cubes, a bagel and five slices of bread that aren’t stale yet, paper towels, a case of Coke Zero, a little bottle of honey, a mostly empty box of goldfish crackers, and twelve different kinds of tea. I have plain black, Official Earl Grey, lemon, peppermint, chai, orange, green, ginger, chamomile, that red bush tea I stole from the cafe downstairs, black & orange peoke which is sort of different from plain black, and DECAF(tm) that I got from the Willkie C-Store.

I seriously have like a hundred tea bags, guys. I don’t think that’s normal. Thoughts?

Embarassing moment number…oh, I lost count a long time ago

So today was supposed to go like this:

60’s essay quiz, kanji quiz, lit, history.

Today really went something like this:

60’s essay quiz, threw up all over self, skip kanji quiz and lit. I won’t skip my WWII class, because I love it dearly and also I have a test on Thursday.

At least I managed to make it out into the hallway, where there was both slightly less people and a conveniently located garbage can. I just slunk out of there and straight into my pj’s.

Sometimes everything just hits you and you go “damn, well, at least I don’t have an STD.” Or, Stuff That’s Been Going On Stuck Together From LJ Entries

This is going to be in sections.

Section the first: school.
So I’ve had all my classes. Schedule goes like this:

Mon/Wed/Friday:
10:10-11 Japanese 3 lecture
1:25-2:15 Finite Math for Anyone Who Isn’t a Business Major Or a Science Major (Or a Math Major)

Tuesday/Thursday:
9:30-10:45 The Sixties
11:15-12:05 Japanese 3 drill
1-2:15 Japanese Fiction and Culture (That I Did Not Know Was Women’s Lit)
2:30-3:45 World War II: The Peoples

Japanese is Japanese. I am intimidated to shit, but so is mostly everyone else. Matsubara-sensei seems nice, but I haven’t really interacted with her. I’m happy I’ll get Ozaki-sensei again, and Okumura-sensei seems okay, although she looks and sounds about fifteen.
My math teacher looks like Bill Nye’s well-dressed cousin or something. If I had a dime for every time he said circle yesterday, I’d have like twenty bucks, but he seems harmless. One of his goals for the class is to get to know us. The absolute best part is that there are help sessions three times a week. Hurray!
My Sixties teacher looks like an ex-hippie, almost. He’s hilarious, and made fun of me for knowing who Barry Goldwater was. Not made fun of, exactly, but joked about it. This will be a fun class.
I had absolutely no idea that my fiction and culture class would basically be women’s lit from Japan. My teacher seems lovely but has a preoccupation with same-sex love among women at various points in Japanese culture. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just a little disappointed it’s going to be women’s lit. I was thinking more of a culture class with all types of fiction.
I’m really excited for my WWII class. My teacher seems wonderful, if not the most approachable kind of guy. He’s writing a book. I’ve known lots of my teachers to write books, but this is one I’ll probably read.

Sub-section: dormz.

My dorm situation, however, is not as pleasant. I was woken up at least three times in the middle of last night. I came back from class and my dry-erase board was ripped off my door, laying on the hallway floor with the marker missing. It didn’t just fall off, either–the foam tape from the back is missing on one end (but the residue is still on the door) and the marker is nowhere to be found. Trust me, I tried. This kind of shit just makes me tired.
My suitemate was just talking about me, I heard her in the bathroom. She thinks I’m fat. This is the pot calling the kettle, but what the hell, bitch.

Section the second: work.
I’m stalling on my new job search, as well as quitting my old job. I figured I could use the auditorium as a reference and I had a dream where when I went to ask if I could use them as a reference the guy in charge said “forget the application, you’re hired!” Hah, I wish. Maybe. Not so sure how I feel about that, since they’ve denied me twice. Maybe they don’t like me as much as I think. I want another job, but I don’t. I’m tired. I just want to have nothing to do. I know I’ll eventually get another job, but the sting of two denials hit me today more than I realized. I hate being told no, yet I keep setting myself up for being told no. Ugh, whatever.

Section the third: family.

So basically the poopy has hit the proverbial fan and my life as I’ve known it is over at home. It’s been topsy turvy since Grandpa moved in, but after all the spinal fracture shit I could write a book.

Basically his medication was making him hallucinate, there was a bunch of hallucinatory shit, and now he’s staying in a hospital. Dad’s work situation is driving him crazy, Mom has too much work to do like always, and Libby’s sleeping in my bed every night.

Section the fourth: relationshits.

I’m just going to go with the title saying it all. ‘Kay.

Section the fifth: in which I haven’t the faintest idea what to do with my life.

I think I think too much.  I focus on the negative, because for some reason it’s easier to find than the positive.  I have odd, very obvious mood swings (when I started writing this, for instance, I was happy.  Now I’m being negative.  wtf.)  Going home this weekend will refocus me.

Imagine all the crap things that could happen in a day…

…and have them happen at the same time.

So I end the day at five fifteen or five thirty this morning, which is entirely my fault. My alarm was set to eight fifteen so I could clean up the house because the van full of Polish ladies were coming to clean and take Grandpa somewhere out so he could be out of the house.

At seven fifteen, Mom wakes me up telling me that I have to take Grandpa to the emergency room, because he can’t see. She thinks he might be having a stroke. She can’t take him because she has a meeting in forty-five minutes, Libby can’t because, well, she can’t, and Dad is out on a raid. So I roll out of bed pissed because I’m tired and I’m worried about Grandpa. Libby is in a snit because she has to register for classes and Mom is too busy taking care of everyone else to leave RIGHTNOW.

I get ready and eat in record time and start bugging Grandpa to get going, because Mom thinks he’s having a stroke. No, it’s not a stroke, my eye is just bleeding. I can see out of one of them. It’s no big deal. Calm down and let me finish my coffee.

Now I’m just frustrated at Grandpa. Libby’s pissed at me because I had the foresight to call dibs on my car so she has to take Dad’s pickup. Mom is a wreck because she’s worried about everyone and Libby is yelling at her and I admit I wasn’t too great either, but in my defense I’d had two hours of sleep and was woken up with “you have to take Grandpa to the emergency room” and Grandpa is one of the most frustrating old people I know. Finally I manage to convince Grandpa to abandon the coffee (“How are you ever going to get asked on dates? You’re so impatient the guy will not want to take you out after the first one when you’re always jumping to leave. He’ll get offended.” Thanks, Grandpa), use the wheelchair, and get into the car. At this point Libby has practically backed over my little car with Dad’s pickup because she’s pissed and impatient and wants things done her way, not anybody else’s, and my car was in the way of her blowing the popsicle stand that is our house and leaving Mom in the dust for registration. Mom realizes she has the wrong notes for her meeting and is tearing the house apart to find them and Libby is upsetting her because she already has to be late to her meeting already.

So Grandpa and I roll up to the emergency room. I convinced him to go to Community instead of St. Margaret Mercy because I trust Community more and it has a better network of whatever. So we go in, and Grandpa doesn’t have his insurance card or an ID. This stalls us until I scream “HE COULD BE HAVING A STROKE RIGHT NOW” and they herd him into a room, strip him, and have him in bed before I could ask him for his Social Security number. (As an aside, it still bothers me that people are kept track of by numbers in this country. Not the fact that we count people or call them “family of four”, “family of five” etc, but that by looking up a specific number you can find out a ton of shit about someone.) Grandpa maintains that he is fine and will not need to be admitted to the hospital. He maintains this loudly and very often.

Long story short, we arrived at the hospital at eight this morning. We were supposed to leave the emergency room at ten fifteen with a referral to an eye specialist. We actually left the hospital at ten forty-five because Grandpa spent half an hour arguing that he was supposed to see a retina specialist before he was convinced that he had to see the eye specialist to see if he needed the retina specialist. I spent that half hour getting the Sarah Silverman song about old people unstuck from my head.

After a twenty minute insurance fiasco involving me arguing with the receptionist lady that we did in fact have the insurance card (it magically appeared in the wallet) and that it was in fact an insurance card, Grandpa turns to me and goes “I’ll stay here and see the eye doctor. You go get me a corned beef sandwich and bring it back here for me.”

So we spend until twenty after one confirming that Grandpa’s eye is definitely bleeding and somebody should really have a look at it. We spend another thirty minutes with a different receptionist, who actually was very sweet and wanted Grandpa’s shitty HMO to cover the retina specialist so she called around and called around and explained and explained and while it was nice Grandpa was getting upset because he “already knew that”.

So we drive home. Grandpa instructs me that basically the second we walk in the door I’m to have a sandwich prepared for him. I’m spastic because the cleaning ladies were due any second and I still hadn’t cleaned.

When we get home, Dad tells me that Libby wrecked his truck. I just sigh, make Grandpa his sandwich, and go to sleep in the basement because Dad cleaned for the Polish ladies.

Some days, man, some days.

So I haven’t used this in a while. The probability of it getting read is slim to none, but…

More often than I’d like to admit I find myself narrating my life as if it were a book, or one of those movies with a voice-over explaining all the details so the dialog doesn’t have to do it. Just a minute ago I finished my book and found myself mentally describing everything I did or thought as if I were the heroine in a romance novel, or a low-budget trying-too-hard indie movie. I’m not sure if this is normal. I mean, I guess it’s okay, but it’s sure as hell weird. It’s happening increasingly, too, which I’m concerned about.

Dammit, there I go again. I lied, it happens all the time. (Libby says I’ve either been watching too much Scrubs, I’m crazy, or I should be a writer. I say it’s probably a mixture of all three, with emphasis on the first two. Whatever. I’m probably just crazy.)

Libby and I just had a conversation about girl stuff (you don’t want the details). It was odd, but touching in a way because I’ve felt that recently we’ve been growing kind of apart, or spend more of our time both isolated, in our rooms, frustrated at life and because we have nothing new to read. We decided we’d go to the library tomorrow. It’s sad, because I’m realizing more and more that I can never go back and have the life I’d thought I’d wanted, regardless of whether it would have been better for me. For better or worse, I have what I have, and I’m trying to be okay with that. Ryne and I were talking about this last night. (As an aside, I find it odd but hilarious that I’m pretty good friends now with a friend’s ex.) We were talking about how sometimes we wish life had a reset button, like a Nintendo. We were also talking about when we’d have reset from last save and redone something knowing what we do now, like a kid who buys the stragedy guide halfway through the game. We both said seventh grade, which is the time universally accepted to just absolutely blow. We had different reasons, I think, but we both thought that seventh grade was when we could have done something differently, come out better. How weird would it be to go back to 2001 as an even more mature, out of place almost thirteen year old? I was already a bit mature for my age, realizing that life wasn’t fair but damned if I wanted to accept it. I probably would have known everything and then just lived my life the same way and tried to feel happier about it, or ignored everything and just gone to the Academy, and my life would still be different because I’d have even more warped social skills.

That’s the thing about people, I guess. Or at least people like me. (I know they exist, I swear. Like how Jen believes in aliens.) People will always wonder if the grass was greener, until they’re confident enough to accept all of their decisions, be they the right ones or not. I keep wondering if I should have gone through with rush, tried the whole sorority thing, for the friends and the excuses to go out and do things. I know for a fact I would have hated it because I can barely live with my sister without bickering, let alone become anorexic or gotten drunk and slept with everyone. I KNOW I would have hated it, yet I keep thinking how life could be different if I had done it. Maybe I’m just determined to undermine my own self-confidence, and that’s a whole different can of worms, but I like believing that somewhere there’s someone else worrying about what people think of them and trying to make a somewhat positive self-image and still feeling all the same insecurities as before the “yay I’m perfect the way I am” makeover.

On another completely unrelated note, there’s a coffee shop in Crown Point called the Conservative Cafe. The sign proclaims it’s “coffee done right”. I’m vaguely frightened and filled with a morbid curiosity–how do they decorate? will they serve biscotti or “hard, stolen-from-Italy freedom cookies”? I’ve wanted to take a picture of the sign for weeks and send it to Jessie so she can rant about it too, but I keep forgetting to bring my camera and I still can’t figure out how to get the pictures off my cell phone and onto the web.

I began reading this article and for the first bit I was nodding my head, murmuring to myself about yeah, that seems about right.

Then she brought in (dun dun duuuun) God and I lost all respect for the argument. Not the fact that faith plays a large part in sense of self, etc, but that to have healthy relationships we must first cultivate a relationship with God. Lady, I know tons of people who created a relationship with God only after the influence of heavy drinking (see AA steps 2-7, 11, 12). Nothing against God, I’m sure once I come to terms and make whatever I end up believing concrete I’ll see the point, but I know tons of people who make meaningful relationships without having to make them all divine or connect spiritually.

This is probably my own fault for knowing not what I stumbled upon, but the links at the bottom of the page crack me up. No offense to anyone meant, but they remind me of my old roommate. I think using God as an excuse for everything is a cop out. Ultimately, we are a product of our own choices and we have nothing except to continue on from the consequences, but I don’t necessarily need Jesus in my life to accept that I made these decisions and things might suck now but I have faith they will turn out okay. The difference here, everyone, is that I have faith in myself that I will solve my own problems, whereas I only seem to get the vibe that trusting Jesus basically equals ignoring the problem and not facing it because God will fix it.

Moral of the story? Drink*, fuck*, and be merry, so long as you’re happy with your life.

*Not in dangerous amounts or unsafely. Nor am I promoting alcohol and sex. They’re figures of speech, dammit.