Grows Up Around Me Like A Weed

I'm leaving for Cornell in a couple hours. God, I am tired of planes. Hopefully there'll be some nice turbulence. Anything to distract me from that annoying pseudo-motion sickness feeling I always get.

I wish I were more excited about this. I apologize for the ranting you've all had to put up with lately. I feel quite sure that it's out of my system now. For at least another three weeks.

So, I should knwo where I want to go to grad school by Saturday night. Crazy. Also, I met with Dr. Smith this morning and she came up with a fantastic explanation for the messiest part of my data, and then nagged me to publish it this summer or I'd never get around to doing it. Fucking weird. I wasn't thinking I had anything especially publishable in this.

Things are falling neatly into place again. Bam bam bam, everything's working itself out without my whining about it. Damn, you know? I spent a couple minutes yesterday going "well, I might be moving to california in a few months" and it doesn't seem real. Neither does New York.
I'm sure I'll let ya'll know the important stuff once I'm home again.

Be back Sunday evening.
Blechk

Tragic, if you're so inclined

I've been working dilligently on my thesis this evening. Please hold your applause. It really should've been done by now, and I think it was the startling realization that it is THE FUCKING END OF MARCH ALREADY that got my butt typing. Hopefully (har) I'll have it all wrapped up by early next week. Damn this final grad school visit. I wish I had more weekends to work on this stuff (isn't that insanely lame?)

Talked to Stace for awhile earlier, whined at her about typical Liz-is-Whining things, talked to Jenny on the phone, she's doing well. I love when things are good, but I really hate that it always seems to bottom out somewhere else. Like, me mom and Jenny can all be doing fantastically (we are, thanks for asking) but then you hear the most disheartening news about other people, about family members, about women I think of as psuedo-surrogate-extra mothers twice removed having ridiculous health problems, and then there's cancer, always with this fucking cancer everywhere I turn, and it makes me such a fucking weepy mess sometimes that I, the eternal retard optimist, beat my head against the wall in exasperation and fear that nothing ever gets better, nothing ever lets up, and we're all just cogs in this stupid ass machine destined to turn in circles and wear out and get replaced, and that nothing means anything.

But then I think about WHY these people are so important, and it blows my mind why and how people become meaningful to me. There's no logic behind it, it's not all tall people or blond people or smart people or fat people....it's this weird familiarity when you meet a person and you just KNOW in the depths of your heart that This is an Important Person, Not to Be Trifled With.

What is it about certain people? What is it that speaks to us when we finally connect on a level we didn't even know existed? Sometimes I wonder if I just fling my emotions around into every friendship I have that has the beginnings of this sort of thing, and that's why I find so many (relatively?) people I care so fiercely about. Am I stupid about how I do things? There are patterns, yes, and patterns are something I feel we should acknowledge and vow to change about ourselves if they're destructive...but to realize that they exist within us and that we also have patterns of people we grow close to....it kind of blows my mind as I get overly introspective and realize just in time that I am not Shane, this blog is really better-suited to a factual listing of my boring activities than it is to a misdirected rant about how much I love you guys spiralling out of my rage and frustration with cancer .....

It's like sometimes I have things I want to say, and feelings about things and people that I want to dump on here, and more often than not the words fail me miserably, and it's really quite sad. If they were effective, I could get through to people. I could make and break and fix things all from this sign-in screen, and my words would have some weight in the grand scheme of things. This is definitely not the case. I write now only in the context of scientific reports, trying to tone down the overuse of words like "thusly" and "posits" and "ascertains."

I have never been able to write, and I take great comfort in the fact that my sister is a fabulous writer (and artist, but some sort of paralyzing fear of failure stops her from pursuing that, needlessly) and will be incredibly fucking famous if she so chooses to be someday. I love that she's talented and people are noticing, that her journalism professors fawn and dote on her as though she's one in a million, and chances are she is. I can't wait to see what her life turns out to be, and such is the case with all of you.

I'm at a very strange place, where everything I think is some kind of flabergasting revelation that leaves me breathless and puzzled about the way everything is....I keep having these stupid "insights" that keep blowing my mind, and they're not even clever, just things that I generally ignore because I am the most misoneistic person in the whole world.

It scares the shit out of me to think about what all will change in the next year. In the next couple of months, even. I am terrified of going thousands of miles away and playing a more grown-up version of House and not being able to drive home to see my mom whenever I want. I'm going to be paid to go to school, because they think I'll be good at it and make them famous(er). JD's going to have to get a real job, and do real grown-up stuff, and hopefully that'll include music. I'm going to (probably, at this point) live by the ocean and the mountains. It's fucking insane.

I love you guys so much. I love all the bullshit fights and squabbles and all the things that remind me of my own life that make me smile (even when you're screaming and pulling your hair out) because I can attest wholeheartedly that everything will pass with time, and sometimes distance and time are the only things you can offer someone else.

I wish I could make things better for those of you who are hurting, almost to a fault. I'm sorry that ex-boyfriends are such fuckers, that best friends who mean the world to each other are ALWAYS the ones who can hurt each other the most, cut the deepest with the things they say....and if I could I would promise that it's going to get better, and that you have to give it _______ amount of time before it fades. But no one knows that for sure, and pacifying your pain now doesn't mean you won't have to deal with it head on in a week, or a month, or years from now.

I feel like I have this weird clarity because things are going well for me right now. Yeah, stuff really blows every now and then, and we all watch people we care about implode and self-destruct and disappear and there's not a lot we can do to save them. There are friends I've had for ten years that I still don't know how to deal with, how to talk to without sounding bitchy or confrontational or disinterested, and that pisses me the hell off about myself. There are people I've known for just a couple of years that feel like thousands, and I think about them in their absence an absurd amount. There are things about me that annoy me, and I think it's my social retardation that really can be blamed for all of it.

Sigh. Maybe that's why I cling so fucking hard to the pantleg of people that I click with. I really make things hard on myself by not knowing how to let go of these. Everything's uphill when you want someone in your life and they don't want you around. And for all of us that applies to now, I just want to say to the rest of you that it sucks, and whining is uber-appropriate in these cases. Ha.

No, but seriously.

Nothing in the world sucks worse than losing someone you wish you didn't have to lose....and that can be true across so many billions of situations that I'll just leave it open to your interpretation of things. I don't know what the fuck launched this stupid "rant" but I'm willing to bet that it's got something to do with cancer


Look, I've said this before and I'm sure I'll say it again and again, but life is just too goddamn short to fuck around with things that are important. If you love someone, tell them. If someone's draining you, cut them loose. If you and a best friend are at odds, give it a little bit of distance and try again. If it's manageable. If it's something that's so huge and out of control that you can't even fathom it ever being better, give it a big fat year of your time and distance, and then try again. And when that isn't enough time, give it another year. And then another, and as many as it takes. And chances are fantastic that I'll wait ten or twenty years for Keith to want to talk to me again and the day he decides he can deal with me will be the day right before he decides it's too unimportant and there's been too much distance to fuck with it. That's the nightmare that wakes me up at 4am, that's the stuff that climbs on top of this talk of sickness and death and rears back and swipes at me, growling, as though my idiotic optimism is just not going to be enough to carry both of us through it.

And it's probably not going to be. But I don't care. There is good reason to care so much about Keith, and about wanting him in my life again. He is worth the agony of waiting a million years, he is worth the potential crushing disappointment of this never working out, he is worth the tiny drop in my heart every time the phone rings, or I check my email, and there's no sign of him. He is worth the open-ended "we'll just see how things go" that so completely paralyzes me because I am convinced we'll never have any contact with each other again. He's worth whatever hell he wants to put me through, because I have this tiny little hope that with enough time, things can get better. I wish it could be now, but the reasonable part of me that still exists somewhere in the depths of my subconscious understands that it CAN'T be. And I fucking hate it. Fucking hate it more than anything.

I miss him, and you guys are all sick of hearing it, but it doesn't go away or get any better. I feel so fucking helpless, so fucking incompetent to do anything in this, and that's how I am supposed to feel, but it makes me sick. I wish I could be there to help him with this, and that's so fucking backward of me that it should be funny, because I'm the fucking problem, and the problem can't fix the problem....but I wish it anyway.

Life's just too fucking short to dick around not wanting to emote. I'm serious. What the hell is the fun in never risking anything and never feeling extremes? If you go out on a limb and fall on your face, fine. At least you felt something when you hit the ground. I can't live with things I wish I'd done, and because of that stupid ass "trait" that I made up, I have a lot of messes from things gone badly that I have to clean up. But I don't regret anything....everything has taught me something about myself and about coping with painful things, if it hasn't worked out how I wanted. And that just can't be a bad thing.

So anyway, the point of this is two-fold:

Hope, however dim, is worth it.

Life, however miserable and bleak at times, is way the fuck too short to sit around holding grudges. Do what you need to, tell people what you need to, and don't think twice about looking like an ass. The benefits of having these relationships is worth any heartache you have to endure now.


I apologize already for this stupid rant. As Stacey so accurately pointed out, I could choose not to post it, but why? I love airing my dirty laundry.

Also: Shane, Dustin, and Chris need to take my quiz and post their results on their blogs. ha.

Nicole Kidman deserved that fucking Oscar

So, guys. Here's a new quiz for you. I spent, seriously, the whole fucking evening putting the thing together, from photoshopping the pictures to scanning them to making up questions to making up a dozen answers...I expect to see the results posted on your blogs. Also, I should note that Kyle and Janel may feel left out, as I stupidly forgot to include them.....sorry guys:) You can pretend to be someone else while you take the quiz. I mostly geared it toward people who probably read my blog, and then a few other "fun" ones.

Also, I updated my picture page....go find the ones of California to really understand why I'm so attracted to UC Irvine. It is a FANTASTIC place.

Anyway, I've been sitting with a computer in front of me for like 5 hours, that's about enough. TAKE MY QUIZ!!!!!

The New Quiz

If A Door is Closed, Karate Chop It Open

So. I have been WILDLY unproductive this whole fucking break. I think I've gone to Borders to read stacks of magazines and drink frozen coffee drinks nine or ten times. I've mindlessly, shamelessly spent money that I do not have on things I barely need and are absurdly frivolous (who needs three of the same bra in different colors, just because it's the most comfortable cleavage-creating marvel known to (wo)man? Raedy will be the first in line to point out how absurd it is of me to find something I like and buy it in triplicate, as is the case with bras, shirts, tank tops, jeans (right Stace? you've seen my entire collection of unnecessary pants spread out across the entirety of my bedroom floor), bath products, makeup, nail polish, hair care products, and pints of Ben & Jerry's Limited Edition Oatmeal Cookie Chunk Ice Cream).

But for every barrage of "retail therapy" (as the magazines so chidingly call it nowadays) I must say in my defense that I spend hours upon hours weeding out clothing and donating it to Goodwill...hahahaha.

I tried to cut JD's hair a few days ago, and as we all know by now, I suck bad at cutting boy hair, and JD is always such a good sport about the mullet or the ridge or the mushroom head or the tufts of weed-whacked hair he inevitably ends up with. Today he was rolling his head back on his neck to torment me with the disgusting pseudo-mullet I had left at the very nape of his neck (which is more evident when he squishes his head around like he's making fun of Christopher Reeve) and it made me PHYSICALLY NAUSEOUS to watch, so we drove directly to the nearest Fantastic Sam's and the "hairdresser" promptly made fun of me for my attempt at using clippers, and then gave him the Josh "Green River Road Trash" Elliot hair that she just assumed he wanted. HAHAHAHAHAHA. She didn't even ask, just evened out the back and combed the top forward and "styled" it for him. HAHAHA, it was highly entertaining for me to watch JD walk stiffly to the car, unwilling to muss it until out of sight of the building, as though she would chase us, screaming, down the street with clippers in hand, sobbing because he hadn't liked her (clearly perfected through hundreds--if not thousands--of Bton trash boys waltzing in wearing muscle shirts and too-large hightop nikes and requesting she make them look like Russell Crowe in Gladiator) creation.

Also, we spent a lovely, headache-inducing couple of hours at the BMV, trying to get my lame-ass, cheap-looking new license plate from the surliest people in the world. Note: never ever come to the Bloomington BMV, if you can help it. They hate you and want you to know it.

Also, JD has started doing this extremely junior-highish thing where he cups his hand on his shoulder and makes a farting sound with his mouth. You would think this would annoy me, but there's something about the quality of the sound that sends me into fits of giggles, or maybe it's because he always does it when we're someplace I would rather NOT have people thinking I'm farting.....like....everyplace in the whole world. He makes this stupid noise and then looks at me with this highly-practiced expression of shock and terror, as though he's never in his wildest dreams imagined that I would be so crass. Sigh.

Also today, we dragged my old unfinished "wood" bookcase outside (you know, the one that has "I Love Jarrod" written all the fuck over it in metallic ink?) to varnish it. And once we had it there, and were finished, huge angry stormclouds rolled in. So we scrambled to get everything on the porch and inside, and the fucking clouds rolled right bcak out, no rain included. Sigh.

So, you'll notice that I make no mention of having progressed ANY on writing my thesis. That's because I haven't. Raedy and I went to the lab yesterday to run our statistics, but found that (to our dismay) the lab is closed for break. So, we had to go buy SPSS (super-nerd psychological statistics science science science nerd nerd) for our home computers, and since I've installed it I felt like I'd accomplished so much that I could take the next couple days off, and work instead on doing absolutely nothing at all.

I'm kind of kicking myself for not coming to see Stacey in her drag-tastic debut, but hopefully I'll hear all about it soon. Stace, Toni, Ash....I miss you guys. Damn my laziness. Were it not for my incessant need to lumber around and nap, I might've had time to come home over break. Poop.

I'm sick of travel. Isn't that lame of me? I've all but decided I want to go to school in California, and southern Californai at that. I don't want to visit Cornell, for fear I'll like it immensely and have to decide. I don't wanna fly there and I don't wanna fly to Tampa in April and I CERTAINLY do NOT want to finish my thesis and get that enormous elephant out of the room, or whatever the expression is, and I AM TIRED OF SCHOOL AND JUST WANT IT TO BE FINISHED. So, five more years? Sounds like a good plan.

Piss.

Now, since I'll be up until 4 or 5 anyway, I think I'll go try to figure out my stats.

Also, if Dave Walsh is reading this, I NEED TO KNOW THE DETAILS FOR THE CHICAGO EXCURSION TOMORROW. Or, I'll have Plan B ready to go for when we somehow can't find you at the show. Were you planning to come through Bloomington and we'd all drive up there together? Or what? And did you guys want to go to Yoga with my auntie on saturday?

I love my family. I love my crazy aunt ("that's 'doctor auntie' to you") and my cute grandma and my socially-inept cousin and my uncle who's exactly the same as when I was my cousin age and still wears the same red flannel shirt and plays the same inane child games....and my cousin in California and my aunt out there, and then there's my MOM, my wonderful, best-possible mom, and I must mention the fact that she got a raise, and a promotion, and is moving in a month, and is SO FUCKING AWESOME that you should all call her up and go have lunch, she loves you guys.

Anyway. I just thought it was cute that she wrote me an email tonight titled "Yo."

Gotta go! Duty calls!

If you spot a terrorist arrow, pin it against the wall with your shoulder.

FEAR [----------------------------------------------] LOVE

I HATE Blogger.

I'm home from California and have been since Friday afternoon...and tonight I'm home all alone since JD is in Evansville, Raedy's in Columbus (?) and Melissa is somewhere between here and Utah, as far as I know. This already sucks. I'm waiting for someone to come attack me, I am super-convinced that something creepy is about to happen....this is what happens when you stay in a college town over spring break and the entire rest of the populus has evacuated for warmer temperatures. Sigh.

well, I DO have a shitload of stuff to get done with this "free time," so I guess it's a good thing.

I don't want to think about money, the war, the stupid conference Raedy and I have to go to in April, my temp belt test, definding my thesis, or running stats on my results.

So, instead:

* I LOVE Southern California. LOVE IT. UC Irvine is beautiful, the area around it is gorgeous, Laguna Beach (where my host took me to see the ocean) is fabulous, everything is laid-back and casual and temperate and jaw-droppingly beautiful....plus, there is a higher concentration of sheer numbers of people there doing what I'm most interested in, and that's a definite selling point. Also, everyone is really, genuinely, un-annoyingly friendly. Dennis Rodman lives down the road. Joe Millionaire shops at the nearby Fashion Island. Stores stay open until 11 on weekdays, and everything is open and has courtyards...and the fucking ocean, my GOD.


It's unreasonably pretty there, and everyone swears that it doesn't even get that hot....sometimes into the 90s (don't we get into the 90s, all the time in the summer? and isn't it miserable because it's so humid? yeah, they insist that it's almost a "nice" heat because you're not sticky, it just feels like you're baking. And there's always a breeze).

It's midway between San Diego and LA, and I don't need to point out the OBVIOUS career opportunities that being an hour from cities with music scenes (THE music scenes, even) JD would have. Plus, they just recently told me the financial deal, which is pretty kickass. Cost-of-living there is going to be over six times what I'm paying now....but the benefits are just too awesome.

So then I flew from LA to Fresno, and hanging out with my aunt and cousin Evan was FABULOUS, and I was constantly surprised by how much like Chris Daniels Evan is, in the best possible way:) We dicked around all day Tuesday, going to stupid malls and to lunch and to see Chicago....and then we made cookies and watched Enter the Dragon....it was super. We both decided that road trips are in order for the summer, and I think all you guys should come along with me if i decide to go to school in California and have to drive out there to check it out with JD and find an apartment....my aunt says you're all perfectly welcome, if we want to go to northern California for any reason. And of course, Vegas is on the way. Hee.

Evan has already been accepted to UC Irvine, and i hope if I go there he goes there too. I think UC Davis is his first choice, though. We'll see.

After my lovely Fresno visit, I flew to Sacramento (those of you who are good at geography can stop making fun of me, I didn't know any better when I booked the flights) and spent the next two days at UC Davis. I liked the people I'd be working with very much, and the program, and the campus and the area. However. I found the other grad students to be rude and snotty (referring to me "jokingly" as their "free meal ticket" since everything is on the department when prospectives come to visit; making the obligatory "so where you from" talk with me for two seconds then going back to their own conversations that did NOT include me; making fun of everything and everyone they could think of (and NOT in a way that I think I would eventually grow to like....in a really catty, bitchy, bored housewife kind of way, if that makes sense); being loud and obnoxious in stupid-people ways, all of which added up to an icky feeling my last nigth there, and a desperate desire to run as far away as possible....not the world's best visit.

Like I said though, I really liked the important people.

Then I came back and had been dicking around with JD ever since, until he left for Evill this morning and I decided it was about time to actually get some work done. I finished coding all my data, now there's really just the writing that needs to happen....hopefully I'll get it mostly done this week.

So I'll be bored tonight, Stacey said she might call, that would be FANTASTIC...and of course anyone else is welcome to call or show up here to entertain me too.

This friday is the Godspeed you! Black Emperor show in Chicago, see those of you who are applicable to it there and then....did we get a hotel or what?

It seems like there should be more to talk about, since I've been gone for awhile. Oh, I bought a bike. I need a job. I'll scan those awesome pictures of Laguna Beach when JD gets back.

Yeah, so I'm boring. Too fucking bad.

FEED ME A STRAY CAT

I'm leaving for Cali in a few hours. Chris and JD are driving me to the airport. This should kick so much ass. If not, if I actually live out the nightmares I've been having of missing my connecting flights, getting stranded for weeks in some huge airport with no phone or way of calling anyone, then it should at least be amusing.

anyway. I'll take a lot of pictures of my family and the areas if anyone ever will be interested. Probably not, though, so you guys have a good week in school...hehe and I guess in spring break.

Hopefully, I'll see everyone soon.

Smooches!

I Hate Blogger

I keep trying to post stuff, none of it interesting, and it won't happen. Sorry guys, I know you were all foaming at the mouth for me to update you about my weekend.

FUCK, THIS SUCKS

Teacher Bob is Tough But Fair

*A crisp new dollar bill to ANYONE who emails me (EXCEPT my sister, as she might know exactly where) with the origins of today's titling.

*Two funny things:

Idiot criminal hijacks Judo team's minivan to raucous laughter, film at eleven

Idiot gymnastics team (read: one flaming boy who can do a back handspring) gets pissy as hapkido belt testing runs into their club meeting time, film at eleven.

*I just flipped the channel and found none other than KIRSTIE ALLEY in a made-for-tv movie about Puritans (?) called "the Salem witch trials"

*Shit:

Went to visit U of Chicago this weekend. I absolutely loved it. The professor I want to work with, the bad-reputation-having "bitch," reminds me of my grandma, and we talked more about Pilates, yoga, and hapkido than about anything that made me think for a second she's a "bitch." this complicates things, as I was hoping to go, hate it, and make the inevitable deciding among the schools that much easier.

I won't use her name, as my host, the maddeningly ambiguously gay man I was staying with, is a "computer genius" and googled me at her request, finding the nerdy hapkido picture of me, JD, and Jon, which is how she knew to ask me about that. Obviously, I am certain that he could easily find this page, and I don't want to explain my loose-tongued and sarcastic opinions over a tense meeting next semester, just in case.

This woman is awesome, and I feel that the work she does is important and satisfying...by FAR the best part of the visit was the non-stop meetings with the faculty (all of who are impressively nerdy and interesting) yesterday....

Anyway, no one cares about it except for Raedy and JD, and I've already talked it to death with them both. It kicked ass. It was cool, and by cool I mean TOTALLY SWEET

*I drove up on Friday, which allowed me to hang out with the relatives, so Doctor Auntie took me along to her folk music night Friday, then I went to her yoga class Saturday.....it was actually cool, I also got to see my cousin Ryan ("Irish Man" or "construction elephant" to the naked eye) and he's very loving and huggy, reminding me quite a bit of Stacey's bro Austin.

*I'll be flying out to Irvine this Saturday, and coming back the following Friday...anyone need anything from California? hahahaha, aha ha haha hahahahaha

*I'm keeping my eyes and options open as far as next year goes, but MAN it's going to be a sucky, tough choice.

Stace, when the fuck am I getting my phone call? I could call you, I guess. Hmpf

I thought I had more interesting things to say, but I guess not.