A Better Daughter

Hahahah. This song came on my iPod today and I actually listened to all the lyrics instead of just the bridge and they're so apt I had to post them. This is a Rilo Kiley song called "A Better Son/Daughter" if you weren't awares.

Sometimes in the morning
I am petrified and can't move
Awake but cannot open my eyes

And the weight is crushing down
On my lungs
I know I can't breathe
And hope someone will save me this time

And your mother's still calling
you insane and high
Swearing it's different this time

And you tell her to give in
to the demons that possess her
That god never blessed her insides

Then you hang up the phone
And feel badly for upsetting things
Crawl back into bed to dream of a time
When your heart was open wide
And you loved things just because
Like the sink and the dying

And sometimes when you're on
You're really fucking on
And your friends they sing along
And they love you

But the lows are so extreme
That the good seems fucking cheap
And it teases you for weeks
in it's absence

But you'll fight it
and you'll make it through
You'll fake it
if you have to
And you'll show up for work
with a smile

You'll be better
And you'll be smarter
And more grown up
And a better daughter
or a son
And a real good friend

You'll be awake
You'll be alert
You'll be positive
though it hurts
And you'll laugh
and embrace all your friends

You'll be a real good
listener
You'll be honest
You'll be brave
You'll be handsome
You'll be beautiful

You'll be happy

Your ship may be coming in
You're weak but not giving in
To the cries and the wails
of the valley below

And your ship may be coming in
You're weak but not giving in
And you'll fight it
You'll go out fighting all of 'em

Apt. Yes indeed. Apt little anthem for grad students, early twenty-somethings, people with my mom for their mom, etc. Apt. Go find it online and listen to it. It's catchy. Unfortunately for my sanity, it's catchy. Something to replace Toxic in your heads.

And Sometimes When You're On, You're Really Fucking On

So. It has taken me two days or so to figure out that you really can get to blogs just by typing the url out. For some reason my browser pops up the tabs I usually use with not available error pages. So I just rolled my eyes and cursed at blogger, but that doesn't seem to be the problem. That makes me feel a little retarded.

So, JD and I have noticed acutely that we seem to have a really good day followed by a shitty day. Like, Friday last week we went to Disneyland and had Indian food and watched movies, and it was like the perfect day. But then the next day people kept being rude to me and making me feel stupid and they all looked the same. And I hit my head repeatedly on the door frame as I have told several of you in phone conversations that made you all laugh uproariously at my expense and the fact that I knocked the vocabulary center right out of my brain and the cat came running up and ate it before I could reattach it. That darn cat!

Which Pseudo hubbie and I have taken to saying everytime the cat does something naughty. That Darn Cat! Whoo!

Sorry about my big long mom rant. I haven't dealt with or thought about it really since I posted that, which is good because I don't have time. And I have basically decided that my only recourse is to write back and say, "well, clearly you are so unreceptive to hearing anything I have to say about you that's based in honesty that I will never try that again, you can go on being delusional for the remainder of your existence but by that token don't hold your breath for fully functional relationships with your daughters, and just pretend this whole exchange never happened and go back to calling me on Sundays and ignoring what I say about school. "

It's just like, amazing to me that she won't even listen to ME. Me, who has always always tried (with gritted teeth sometimes) to be calm and rational with her when she's wanting to pick a fight, or wanting to be hysterical, and now with all my intelligence and maturity and all the admiring me she supposedly does (all her words) she still can't listen to the slightest criticism. It's exasperating. why she's like this, I don't know. That she needs to be in therapy, I know for sure.

Anyway. Yesterday I had an awesome day, gave a little presentation and got loads of nice feedback from it throughout the day. One little pat on the head can sustian me for a few weeks, so that was cool. Got my stats test back, sufficiently whallopped it to reaffirm my choice in a stats minor. And we rode our bikes in the park like we've been doing and it was great and then we came back and took a delicious nap. And then I talked to Keith. And then we went back to sleep and I slept until 11 this morning, which puts the grand total for the last 24 hours around 13 or so hours. And I kept wondering why I was so goddamn tired all the time but seeing as how I'm well rested today and feel fine, I can guess I need more sleep. It's just such a waste of time

This morning, though, as yesterday was good, started off badly when JD called me from his trip to work (at 5:45) to say that his bike got stolen. From right in front of his car. And ours were chained together and to the carport, but they cut through it and took his. And left mine. I'm so fucking frustrated with this having shit stolen crap. This is the nicest place either of us has ever lived and either someone has it out for JD or the parking space is the easiest target in the whole fucking complex. There's no point in filing an insurance claim, we're already going to get dropped at the end of the term because we had it less than a year and then his car got broken into. Plus the deductible is more than the bike.

I'm just so tired of people taking away stuff that isn't worth that much money but means a lot to him and us. I LOVE riding my bike around with him, we act like fifth graders and it's the most stress-relieving thing to do. And we've been going like everyday. And his cds, all those fucking cds that were so eclectic that no one else could possibly treasure the collection like he did, stolen because they could get fifty cents for each one at coconuts or something. All we could think is that his bike looks way more expensive than it was. We got it at walmart, for christs sake. it was Not expensive. Neither was mine, but they didn't want that. They just cut right the fuck through the lock.

I just want to cry. I'm so sick of this helpless feeling. I'm so sick of not having enough money to replace the shit that gets stolen. And not having any way of figuring out who did it.

It's hard to think of a positive outcome of his bike getting stolen. I hate this.

And If You Locked Me In The Sun

Oh. My. God.

I am so frustrated. I am not a parent. That's a deliberate choice on my part. I choose, everyday, deliberately and with purpose, not to be a parent at the age of 22. Because I already have a 47-year-old daughter. And she is clinically insane. And that, along with grad school and the wedding planning I have to do (ok, that's a giant joke, haha), is stressing me out.

Do you guys have adult children in your lives who make you want to strangle other people? I know a couple of you do. I think it's a really detrimental thing for me to know so much about the fricking transition to an empty-nest and to be attempting to juggle this bullshit at the same time.

Have you ever written someone an email telling them to stop acting like a goddamn martyr only to get a lengthier reply with even more martyr-esque phrases and denials? Do you guys have someone in your life (oddly, and unfortunately for me, my life seems to be populated with more than just one someone like this) who calls you and lets you talk on occassion but couldn't remember anything you say beyond trivial banalities if you paid them? Do you have someone who claims to love you who doesn't know that you're a chef, or a nurse, or what your major is? That you talk to every week? That you've told, repeatedly, what your profession/area of study is? No?

See, I have one. I have one and for all the rice in China (haha) I couldnt' explain to someone who isn't my sister how infuriating it is. I can't quite convey the paradox that IS my mother, someone who purports to be so involved and caring and I am convinced, genuinely feels that way, but is so so distant and complicated and moody and just....difficult.

I actually remember that being the exact way my father tried to explain her to me once. "Difficult." Your mother's just, well, uhhhhhh.....(scans lexicon for 5-year-old level vocab word).....Difficult. Capital D.

Being somewhat educated now, I could think of some other, more fitting words. But I think Difficult still works well enough for the purposes of today, so that'll stay as is.

Did I like psychology because I knew she was crazy all along? Did I seek this horribly revealing (about myself and about her) career out because I wanted to arm myself with knowledge against it? Or did I try my whole life to align myself with my father, walk in his giant footsteps (mental image: me at age 4 with tiny little girl feet in his huge dress shoes like a clown, walking around and eventually getting yelled at) and do everything in my power to be the insensitive (not like he was a buffoon, like I got in trouble when I was little for crying and being "too sensitive" around him and that, I would suggest, explains the Sarcasm), brave, patient, rational opposite of my mother that I saw him as?

Can I even give my child self that much credit? Did the person I am now even exist before he died? Sometimes I don't think so, and that confuses and scares me. And I don't hate the way I turned out, but I certainly don't give credit for it to anyone but myself. It's no one else's fault and no one else gets to pretend that they "helped" me get here. Except, come to think of it, the people who read this regularly who have been there for me since before he died, or soon after. The people who came to be my family in a period of years where siblings don't get along and I didn't have any parents.

But in my mind, the Way I Am Now, for better or worse, belongs more to you guys than my mom. And in a narcissistic way, I take the credit for every accomplishment, and I take the blame for all the shit things too. It's like I completely separate her from my fromative years. And that's not an oversight, she really wasn't part of them. Not in a typical teen-angst way where I'd have fights with her that consisted of her telling me I had too much makeup on and I looked slutty, or that jarrod wasn't good enough for me, or anything like that. We fought, sure, but we fought in the context of the three of us all screaming at each other. I never fought with or really had any relationship with my mom.

And I think the audible snap in my head when my dad died and Jenny and I both realize we're orphans changed me in a way that I cannot explain. And sure, lots of changes happen when you're 13. But since then I (we) have parented our mother. And in an infuriating way she managed never to give us anything we really needed, whether it was her physical presence at importnat things, or a shoulder to cry on (meaning she woud be strong while we lost it....I remember plenty of holiday season crying fests that lasted days or weeks) while always managing to congratulate herself on being able to hold it all together. But it wasn't enough, and this far down the road we're starting to figure out where our lives were deficient and how we are supposed to let that go. I don't fault her for not being able to do enough for two teenage daughters. I fault her for thinking she did a great job and that our current happiness/successes are thanks to her efforts over the last decade.


There was no solid ground to stand on except for you guys. I would have drowned in my own sense of loss.

So my life has become a continuous rebellion against her craziness. A continuous quest to bring aspects of my father (that I am convinced existed already in me and Jenny) back into the picture and be able to give her some kind of even-headed balance in her life when she tries, valiantly, to sabotage all her relationships with her children, her family, her employers, random people she meets on the street, etc. And yes, it's not pretty but I readily admit you can pick out aspects of that behavior in my personality too. And when I feel compelled to eject people and burn the bridges and lash out and otherwise seizure my life all over the place, it's because I have this genetic component of Pure Insanity that sits dormant in the back of my brain until some perceived wrong has been perpetrated against me and then, you guessed it, the Knee-Jerkingly Indignant Back Lash overcomes me. Overcomes most of us.

even though I try hard, most days, to fight the crazy down and be like my father, strive to do things he would approve of, strive to conduct myself in ways that would reflect favorably on his memory (deified as he already is to all of the people who remember him...he just had that effect on people....plus being fabulously talented seems to stick in people's minds), pick things to do with myself that would make him ultimately proud of me if ever after this life I see him and he asks what I did with myself, even though I try hard it doesn't always work.

And the rage I feel at being unable to quell the negativity, that was either transmitted genetically or taught through young years of watching her distaste for everyone and every kind of person who was different from us, is concentrated these days on her and her denial of reality. And this morning I wrote her an angry email in response to an angry phone call and an angry email from her, and she wrote me back a suitably out-of-touch-with-reality reply to make me literally and figuratively bang my head on this desk for several minutes before I could even think of what to do.

I still don't know what to do. I hate knowing how like her I am. But I don't hate her for being the way she is, at all. She undercuts everything I say these days with implications of me being hypocritical or me not "accepting" the way she is (this, most hysterically, when I'm telling her to stop --you guessed it-- knee-jerkingly indignantly hating people for trivial offenses) or basically harping on any negative morsel I mention about how it is here or how I am here and trying to parlay that into an excuse to drop out and move home. And it goes beyond normal motherwishing, it feels sinister.

I'm so frustrated. She is not someone that one person can handle.

Come On Courage, Teach Me To Be Shy

Friday I spent all afternoon downloading shit from Slimewire. Nice. Nice way to kill a few hours. I didn't go to the beach because it was actually fucking freezing here, and that's never fun. Finally downloaded a playlist Ashleigh suggested to me a long time ago, it's great, thanks Ash.

Jushin and I have been feuding this weekend. He's winning again. It's tiresome to have to fight with the cat. It keeps forcing me to realize how much I dislike taking care of things like cats and babies. Even though they're cute to look at.

I love sleeping in. I love weekends right now.

I think the cat sneezed in my face enough to transmit his cold to me. Fucking bitch cat.

JD got a raise. We don't know how much yet, as he's not really supposed to know about it. I'm guessing we'll find out next time he gets paid, next week. So everyone cross your fingers that it's substantial. I get my last stipend this Tuesday and I'm really going to be sorry to see it go. From now on we're more on our own than before. Scary. Now I actually have to be working for the school to get them to give me money.

We went to Disneyland Friday night and walked directly on to almost every ride. It was awesome. I think we went on like eight rides in a couple hours. In two different parks.
Then we got Indian food and went to take back some movies we rented last week, but ended up buying them and two others. So now we have lost in translation, 21 grams, intolerable cruelty, and melvin goes to dinner, which I highly recommmend. So go get it and watch it. Nice job Bob. Haven't watched 21 grams yet, something tells me it's worth the 10 bucks.

Then yesterday we went to Ikea because there was supposedly a sale but nothing was good enough to buy. So instead we went to the giant mall, which made me feel stupid at every turn for some reason (they sensed I hadn't been there in awhile, maybe) and we sat in a stationary store for at least an hour looking at wedding invitations and they all suck. Forcing me to realize that weddings consist of ugly brides in ugly fucking dresses with their bridesmaids also in ugly fucking dresses with plain looking bullshit invitations and boring ass receptions.

Ho ho, not so for our wedding. I am so grossed out by "traditional" wedding crap and so not buying into any of it (did it START with the fact that no one can walk me down the aisle---and before you think of my mom, try to picture my mom giving me away and how I would be carrying her down the aisle while she sobbed uncontrollably and clings to my arm--or did i dislike traditional weddings before I realized I would be flying solo?hmmm).

Anyway, we sat there so long that the friendly girl working there brought us free bottles of water, which was convenient timing. I was surprised until I remembered what mall we were in. Hahahaha, rich people. Sometimes we trick them into thinking we're rich too. hahahahah.

After that we went to Borders, where I decided that I am so insanely jealous of Melissa's reading list that, fuck it, I will just make time to read. Anytime I would watch tv can be devoted to reading instead. And I found 7-8 books I wanted and then a stack of bridal magazines I sat and read through (I'm not buying one of those monsters anytime soon) and got even more pissed off about how stupid weddings are. No offense, rest of world.

so ok, here's what I think should happen. You guys who are bridesmaids (and why don't you just volunteer if you want to be one instead of me forcing you? Sign up in the comments section) can just wear black. Any style dress, whatever. It just has to be the same material. So let's say you have to wear a black satin dress that looks good on you. There. Crisis averted.

And the cake, Stace, I think I want it to be pink. well, several colors, maybe, but mostly pink. That's right, I'm having the pinkest most colorful wedding you ever did see.

So then we had sat there for like eight hours, JD finding stuff about his new obsession, the Freemastons (sic!) and me making pissed off indignant noises at the shit in the mags about etiquette and how to ask your parents for more money. hahahahaha.

Then we got hungry and I wanted to see if another bookstore had a better selection of books by a certain author so we went back to irving(sic) and ate at ruby's, which I love, and then went to a bookstore right by it. and they actually had a worse selection by that author, but I managed to find some stuff I wanted. So we each got a couple books, fueled by my memories of my family taking long ass summer car trips and every time us going to bdalton or waldenbooks in the mall beforehand and dad tellin us we could each pick out 10 books and it was like christmas every time. And sometimes Jenny and I would even strategically cooperate to get 20 books we both wanted to read. God, that's such a nice memory. I need to read more. and I need to read straight up plot-riddled fiction. Nothing sciency or convoluted.

I'm STOKED!

Today I gotta meet the boyf for lunch in a few hours, talk to mom later, jenny you shoudl call me today i'm going to be around and I have a similar, I imagine, hilarious story for you as you mentioned you wouldn't be putting on your blog....I just have a hunch that it's along those same lines. And I gotta get a shit ton of work done. And that stinks. But is kind of ok too.

Anyway, LATERS!

Less Like A Lake, More Like A Moat

I'm in that fabulous lull between Morning Responsibilities and Afternoon Responsibilities during which I usually type about how much I'm dreading this afternoon's ridiculously lengthy seminar. Not so today. I am in the best mood ever because I have coffee. That I hadn't had until a minute ago. And this earlier Unhappiness forced me to realize that I Have An Addiction. And it's not just shit coffee, it's a delicious carmel mocha concoction.

And until about five minutes ago, I seriously felt more like the walking dead than I ever have before in my life. And people were commenting on it in that super catty way they can where you can't be pissed that they just told you how zombieish you look because it's you fault for not knowing your body needing a substance that it was addicted to. I was absolutely useless in a meeting I just got out of. But they noticed that and ordered me straight to the coffee place. Fine by me.

So, I'm admitting it. I don't think I've ever been addicted to caffeine before. I quit drinking diet cokes a few weeks ago for no real reason and I didn't miss them, but with all the shit I have to get done in the last few weeks of the quarter I inevitably end up leaning on coffee. Oh well. I'm not like disappointed in myself or anything, and coffee's better for you than coke. But it's embarrassing that my brain seriously was not processing ANYTHING until just now. How lame.

And I'm unprepared for the class in a little bit. The class that, through strange twists of fate and a little overzealousness on my part, has me writing a final paper about how online gaming (this is for you, chris daneils) is one aspect of technology destroying society. I am going to be compelling, but I haven't had time to get compelled to work on it.

Also going on the list of shit I've basically volunteered to overextend myself to do are fifteen things that have to get done by Tuesday. But I'm not willing to give up the beach or Disneyland to accomodate them. Hmmmm. I guess I will quit sleeping this weekend. God, this coffee is delicious. And I had such a raging fucking headache too...I like to be totally oblivious to my body trying to tell me things.

Also, nice to see that, oh, 90% of you don't give a shit about us getting married. Or maybe you just were like "yeah so? I figured as much" either way, ladies love cool comments

thanks about the cake though stace, i'll start sending you sketches.
and i think the rest of you with valuable skills can start volunteering. it's so damn close to being planned i'm tempted to just have it next year instead. Hahahaha. Tempted, but then freaked out and that's not happening. Unless we have a SECRET wedding and you guys are all kidnapped and brought to the beach or something

God, lame. Lame lamey lamerton
SO BUSY. SO MUCH BULLSHIT TO DO TODAY. NO TIME FOR POSTING OR SLEEPING.

Btw, I handed my stats test its ass. And am otherwise excelling at everything. But am also gearing up for Total Systems Failure in the next week as I attempt to do everything all at once at a level I am not capable of quite yet.

WISH ME LUCK

All We Had Were Moments

Oh jesus I am doing my best to put off actual work today. There is one looming thing I need to get done. Just one thing, but because it involves a great deal of writing I am shirking it in favor of doing everything else in the whole world.

But that's ok, updating my blog was also on my to-do list for today so I am actually being "productive" here.

So JD and I have taken to riding our bikes over to the regional park that's a block or so away and riding around in the park and then stopping and playing on the swings and I'm starting to realize that the time we spend together out of the apartment away from the tv and the laptops and the wireless internet and the cat (who is lovey but a big fat distraction) and not sitting listlessly on the couch is supremely valuable to me. And we have better conversations while we're swinging and I have more startling insights about issues I'm thinking about for school, etc. Mind clearing good times. I love it. Plus there's something about riding a bike in a park where you're not in danger of getting hit by a car that takes me right back to how much I liked riding my bike when I was, say, 7. And that's really neat. But anyway

I have this class that's mostly devoted to professional issues because i'm the youngest student in there and everyone else HAS professional issues. Yesterday's class was almost exclusively about how Hard it is to be a woman and be successful at this career. And how Hard it is to have a kid, or kids, and how there are no Good times to do it but the Better times are sooner than later. Like, people across the board will tell you that having a baby in grad school is easier than having a baby in a post-doc, or in your first year of a job. Though that also is recommended over the years after that when you're working to get tenured. Basically, there is no good time to have a life if you also want to be successful and be a woman (which is not really a choice for most of us). Which means that since I want a life, I definitely want kids at some point and I don't intend to have them in 4 years, I can just get ready to look forward to Things Always Being Hard.

But it's starting to be worth it. It's starting to feel like I'm supposed to be doing this instead of I arbitrarily picked this. It's retarded how much encouragement one little email from a professor who's impressed with me to my advisor can do for my feeling of well being here. I'm starting to feel like I'm getting a thousand times better at this, and that I DO realize that everything's either going to be this hard or harder forever more, in terms of my career. But it's not scaring me off the way it was a couple months ago. In fact, I'm looking forward to some of it. I can imagine that having kids is more fulfilling than a kickass career ever could be, even if you love your career. And that is worth some sacrifices.

I feel really torn most days between my chronological age and my career/mental competency age. Part of me still feels very much like I'm 15 and stealing liquor out of someone's parents' house while they're out of town and getting drunk every weekend and riding to school every morning with four of you and seeing all my close friends all day everyday and dropping by your houses after school. --This is off topic here, but I am really grateful that I had such a gigantic network of people who were unconditionally there for me when my dad died...More and more these days I'm starting to believe that if I hadn't felt so loved by you guys, I would've evaporated when my mom stopped being a mom---I still feel like we're all teenagers. I'm still amazed at the fact that I'm allowed to go into bars and drink. (That's relatively new still, but y'know). But then on the flip side (right, Master Blaster Fans?) I feel like I'm intellectually and academically on par with people and oter students who are years older than me and vastly more well-read on certain topics, but I'm not intimidated here. And I'm not thinking anymore that it's beause this isn't an "ivy" and it's not "that great" a school, I think it's just that I picked the place I felt most comfortable in and that's a great thing. When I'm at school or thinking about school or working on school or being forced through a professional issues seminar to function at a higher level than I ever had to in high school or college (because now it's really important that I learn this stuff, instead of just temporarily memorizing it for an exam), I find that my life is going to unfold at a rate that's directly contradictory to the way I feel it should.

That's confusing, but as an example: the having kids thing. I don't want to have kids anytime soon. I don't want to have kids before I'm 30. But. When I'm 30 (assuming all goes well) I'll be two or more years into a job, AFTER a post-doc position...that's about halfway to being tenured if it's a university job. And that, in the career-scheme of things, seems really fucking LATE to get started on that.

I dont' feel like I want kids in the near future. But women's issues in acadremia (sic) dictate that I should be willing. But working backwards from there, I'm not married. (Not that I really give a crap if you're married before you have kids, I'm living in sin anyway....and for those of you who are parents reading this, yeah, that means I'm HAVING SEX). And working back from there, I'm not engaged. And the traditional side of me thinks that those should happen for me in that order. Rock, ugly dresses for you guys, baby vomit everywhere. (That's a revealing look at how I conceptualize each of those major life events, huh?)

Ok but the thing I noticed yesterday in the park is that I'm fine to get married to JD whenever. Honestly. We're pseduo-married now, I call him my pseudo-husband to faculty and students, we're functioning as a team with this financial situation and the housework and the new life we're responsible for (thanks again for that symbolism, mom) and we're hitting slight rough spots but it's all working out remarkably well.

And for shit's sake, we've been together for 5 years. Since I was in HIIIIIIGH SCHOOOOL.

Basically, we talked about my retardedly limiting (and his thankfully flexible) career choices, about how the timing of certain major things is going to have to be a little "off" for me just BECAUSE I'm halfway to a masters and I'm 22 (and in this program at least, I am again the youngest person) and my career has to go a certain direction at certain times. So we're aiming for a kid when I'm 28-29. And we're aiming for a wedding in about 2.5 years. Actually, and don't get freaked out everyone, but we more or less picked a date we'll probably end up getting married (October 2006) and are going to work backwards from there.

Meaning, we'll get engaged sometime a reasonable amount of time prior, but I don't especially feel the need to be engaged right now, and the timing of this would put me after compsh(sic) but way before I advance and it's the best timing for something that I feel (naively?) will not take as much time to plan as most people's weddings (because I have already decided on everything except the location) but will be the be-all-end-all of cool parties. Start clearning your collective day planners now, some weekend in October 2006 you need to save the date. Is anyone willing to come out here? The beach is lovely. But, fall in Bloomington is also gorgeous.

Hahahahaha, this is all crazy talk. But it gives me (us?) an excuse to go read girly bridal magazines at Borders for hours this weekend without feeling like I'm slacking off.

for some reason deciding yesterday when I'm getting married isn't freaking me out in the slightest. The part of me that still feels 15 is a little like "whaaaaat bitch?" but the grown up career woman part is like "yes, nice, taking appropriate steps"

it's weird but helpful to be around people my/our age at school and see that they're married and that it doesn't immediately make you old and boring and lame. We're already lame, so (yours are 8X8? Ours are 9X9) no big deal.

Anyghey

That's that. I'm already planning the dumb thing. Suggestions are welcome. Stacey I want you to make the cake. Can you get it done in two and a half years? Thaaaaaaanxxxx


*In other news, I had a dream this morning that Keith adn ashleigh were secretly married, that he'd proposed to her as her birthday present last year and people were just now finding out. I love dreams, they're so fucking weird. I also had on ewhere someone gave me a bottle of ketchup and of barbecue sauce stuck together. So symbolic. *

(Repost from February 11, 2003. Some editorial liberties have been taken with the original screenplay). Note the references to abusing puppies and saying "definitely" every third word, both of which I had forgotten. Thank God for Blogger.

:: 2.11.2003 ::
He Had It Coming; Or: The Oxygen-Thieving Waste-of-Space finally gets what's coming to his ass-face, and predictably takes it like a sniveling whiny bitch. An attempt at a screenplay in three acts

Act I: Past
Sigh...
SHOSH and BELLE are in SHOSH's bedroom, asleep.

BELLE awakes to a strange sensation

BELLE: Hey, what the...?!?
BELLE: You're PEEING on me? What the fuck are you doing?
BELLE: Oh my GOD, you nasty, stupid fucker.

Belle leaves, Shosh wakes hours later to find a scathing note and a puddle of pee. To be more specific, he awakes IN this puddle, on top of Belle's coat.


ACT II: Present


BELLE is happy, successful, annoyed that she has to acknowlede SHOSH's existence at group functions, but nonetheless looking to the future and dealing well with the situation. remember? She got peed on in ACT I. By Shosh. Yeah, that's right. PEED ON, yet Shosh bugs her every goddamn day about when they'll get past all this and when they'll be friends again and when they'll talk civilly and how she can't avoid him forever if they're both in An Organization together....god, he is the scummiest thing alive.

(At An Organization conference. Belle is running for Queen next year and is anxiously awaiting the announcement of mysterious opponent. No one has yet revealed opponent's identity to her. Did I mention that this Queen position is something that Belle REALLY REALLY wants and cares about, will do a good job at, and has the support of her entire board and everyone involved in An Organization? Because she does. Basically, it's ludicrious for anyone to run against her because she's already got it in the bag. Follow?)

BELLE: So, when do I get to find out who my competition is?
SHOSH: Hey, that DEFINITELY reminds me that I have an announcement to make!
BELLE: (aside) Oh fucking great
SHOSH: (to whole room) Well, guys, you'll be please to note that ironical as it may seem to you and me and I, our love, like the large bulldover, can prevail. Not even a herd of Iranian goats can bother me now. I am beautiful, no matter what they say, and words won't bring me down. I may be an insincere faux-christian who believes in torturing puppies and small children, but that's no reason we can't all pray for my family, who suffered aggregiously and melodramaculously at the hands of the evil demon that did arise from hell to light afire the meat market that sustains my family's well-being. Now, instead of my parents just handing me the money I need to go to school, which I consider to be me "working my way through college," which is just plain wrong, they actually have to get LOANS so they can hand me the money I need to go to school. So, I feel justified in telling Belle that she's spoiled because her aunt gives her a box of twinkies every semester and i have to work and pay my own way through school. because, obviously, Belle has things handed to her all the time, and those loans aren't really in HER name, and her family clearly has more money than they know what to do with, as do most families with kids in college, except for mine. Wow, I am such a martyr. Wow, I am DEFINITELY the most morally righteous person in here. Duuude, I now need to announce that I am DEFINITELY going to run for office of Queen next year, basically because I am a STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLE AND I WANT TO MAKE BELLE'S LIFE A LIVING FUCKING HELLHOLE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE SINCE SHE IS ALSO RUNNING FOR QUEEN AND HAS ACTUALLY CONFIDED IN ME ALL HER CAMPAIGNING STRATEGIES, AND I THINK THIS IS THE ALL-TIME MOST PATHETIC ATTEMPT TO DO SOMETHING ASSHOLEY OR MANIPULATIVE TO ANOTHER PERSON AND THERE'S NO FUCKING WAY I CAN JUST TAKE THE FACT THAT SHE THINKS I AM SLIME AND WALK AWAY, SOME INKLING OF PRIDE INTACT, NO, I HAVE TO MAKE SURE I COME OFF LOOKING LIKE THE BIGGEST POSSIBLE LOSER BUT THAT I ALSO HURT AND OFFEND AND ABUSE BELLE TO THE EXTENT OF MY VAST ABILITIES TO DO SO WITH NO SLOWING OR STOPPING AT ANY TIME BECAUSE THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO CONVINCE THAT LIBERAL HIPPIE THAT GWB IS, IN FACT, A ROLEMODEL AND EVANGELICAL FREE IS, IN FACT, THE ONLY TRUE RELIGION.

ACT III: Near, near, couple hours from now future.

JIZ, DJ, BLISS, RACY, LADY, DASH, BILE, and entire Particular Martial Arts Club arrive at same frat house from ACT I. Mood is tense, as what we'll call "the Bod Squad" is there to beat Shosh into bloody pulp.

JIZ: OPEN UP IN THERE!! WE KNOW THAT FUCKER'S HIDING IN YOUR LAME ASS FRAT HOUSE!!!
LADY: YEAH! Open the fucking door, fuckers!
BLISS: Bliss SMASH!
DASH: I'ma rippim limb from limb...snaaarl....where's he at?
GUYS IN FRAT HOUSE: Please go away, we're frightened.
Particular Martial Arts CLUB: We're going to blow your house down
GUYS IN FRAT: Please, don't do that!
PMAC: Oh, too late, you suck.

(everyone huffs and puffs and blows with all their might, and the lamest frat in the world blows over like a piece of cardboard...)

ALL: Hurrah! We've done it!
SHOSH: (scurrying out from beneath an empty keg) Hey, uh, guys, what are you doing here?
ALL: We're here to kill your ass dead
SHOSH: Oh, that DEFINITELY sucks
ALL: GET HIM

(Much violence ensues. SHOSH is allowed to choose between cutting his reproductive organs off himself --with a plastic spoon--- and writing an apology on them to send to Belle, or getting the shit beaten out of him. He foolishly chooses option Number Two. Thusly, the world's biggest clusterfuck of violence begins. Bones are broken, skin is torn off and then stapled back on, eyeballs are popped out and thrown around, reproductive organs are sawed off with spoon and mailed to Belle anyway, violence continues. Each finger and toe is yanked on until it comes off, ears are made into convenient souvenirs. Shosh writhes and bitches like a stupid little baby entire time, swears upon meat market's ashes that he'll retract his pledge to run for Queen, apologize for everything to Belle, and leave her alone forEVER. Violence continues for a few more hours anyway, and then Once he also promises never to mistreat another animal, violence ceases. then, to ensure that he follows through on promises, Belle suddenly appears and punches his idiot face in. shosh dies an uneventful death, no one cares. World restores itself to sensical balance. all is well with Belle, with her friends, with the universe as a whole. everyone agrees shosh was a sociopath. )

MORON ON THE LOOSE!! MORON ON THE LOOSE!!!!!!

Sigh.

(rolls eyes)

Dear Mr. Incontinence,

Please die. You are so obnoxious. No one likes you. You are, to coin a frat word ALMOST as meaningful as "fugly," Fu-retarded. Fincontinent. Funintelligent. Fobnoxious. Fstupid. You're Fuhstupid.

You peed on someone. You actually got so drunk that you peed ON someone. YOU peed ON someone else. On accident. not in a sick fetish way, you just couldn't control your bladder. You're an alcoholic. You're pathetic. I hate you. You stink.

Also, speaking on behalf of myself and the other Fuglies, I really think some introspection would benefit you. Err, to put it in 2nd-grade reading level terms, you should notice that YOU are actually much uglier than any of her friends. In fact, you are plain retarded looking. You look like a big bumbling frat boy rapist. I, as evidenced by this url, am extremely hot. So are the other friends of hers that you ever had the pleasure of meeting. So fuck you. And fuck you for getting offended about how stupid you are. You ARE stupid, you act stupid and you insist on calling attention to your stupidity, so you deserve it.

And really, none of her Fugly Friends has ever successfully told her what to do. So that's not right. And when you think about it, you don't really NEED to seek out the advice and opinions of your Fugly Friends when someone Pees On You. You pretty much know what you want to do about that situation right away. In fact, you could make a convincing argument that every human being is BORN with the inclination to dump someone who pees on them. No discussion necessary.

And finally, and with the most necessary vagueness, you would never have won if you competed against her. I think everyone knows that. You just tried to lever it against her to get her to talk to you after you Peed On Her. You're a manipulative asshole and you're completely transparent to everyone who meets you, her included. It's too bad you were so "in love with her" because she's way too good for you, REALIZES THAT, and will never ever ever associate with you again. You're a giant dickface.

So, let's sum up:

You're fuhretarded. Fucking retarded. You're a giant idiot. You're a bunch of bad names that I haven't used since I was like eight. You're smelly. Probably because you are incontinent. You can't read, no one ever thought that you might be suggesting interesting books. You can't spell, as evidenced by your unwillingness to practice your spelling homework for the week. You're severely confused about what constitutes (makes up) "ugliness" and "attractiveness" when it comes to friends of people. You're wrong to think that anyone ever TOLD her that you were lame. Well, I guess that's technically true, but it wasn't like it was a secret that someone revealed to her. She already knew you were a piece of shit. You just confirmed it with your stupid ass bullshit. I'm sorry, your fuhstupid fuhass fuhbullshit. You suck, I hate you, you look like Jim Breuer got hit by a car, you're not funny, you're not fun to be around, you laugh at Chris Rock, you like the president, you beleive (SIC) in fundamentalism, you pee on people, and you're all around not cool.

And just so you know, we hated you upon meeting you so much that we poured Diet Coke in your frat boy shoes when you came to visit. At least it killed the smell for a little while.

I'm going to find a post I wrote about a year ago detailing how much I hate you and republish it here. So look forward to reading that one too. But somehow I doubt you'll ever be able to find this. Let alone understand all the big words.

Do you know how much talking-down it took not to have the entire martial arts department knocking on your frat boy door the day after you peed on her? Leave her the fuck alone.

Your biggest fan,
Fugly

Desperation Is A Stinky Cologne, John

So I just had an awkward early-morning bathroom encounter with one of the administrative ladies on this floor. My office is waaaaaay up on the third floor, which means I walk out and there's a gorgeous view of the mountains when they're visible and the whole valley in front of them, which is spe-c-tac-u-lar. But anyway there's one women's bathroom on the floor, which is more than enough since there's me, a bunch of secretaries, and a couple other people who have office space but mostly it's me and my bathroom. 90% of the time when I go in there it's just me and the female janitor who likes to hang out in the bathroom reading a paper instead of doing whatever janitorial thing she's supposed to do, but I won't tell on her.

So usually I have the run of the bathroom, can pee with the stall doors open or whatever I feel like, can spend forty minutes fixing my hair in the mirror without feeling vain if I want to (though never have) etc. But this morning I walk into the bathroom at the exact same time as probably the only other woman on the floor, and we smile grimly at each other because no one likes to pee right next to someone else when you're like the only people on the whole floor. Err, anyway. So we both pee and then are washing our hands, and all our movements are retardedly in sync and then I smell burning hair and am kind of glancing at her to see if she's on fire, and she's blocking the paper towels and turns to me and shrill-ly, loudly, nearly screams, "do you smell ammonia?" And I say, "i smell burning hair" and she ignores this and says, "it's definitely ammonia. I smell it all the time in here in the morning. if it's in the water we have a major problem." So I, humoring her, exaggeratedly sniff my water-dripping hands and announce that it must just be in the drains. Then she says, "well, if they clean the drains with ammonia they must be using it too strong." and walks out. Yes ma'am I'll relay that to my janitor buddy

yeah good story liz

In other news I have come to yet another realization about myself that is slightly disturbing:
I am becoming a work-a-holic

Please, hold your belly laughing until the end of the story. That's very rude. Stop that.

So the general trend with me is go to school every weekday, usually I'm fairly productive, I get a lot accomplished when I have a lot to do and a lot of time to be on campus. But then I get itchy to go home and play with my boyfriend and the cat and I tell myself I'll finish up at home. Which has never, ever happened. I cannot remember ever accomplishing ANYthing at home. I can't read, can't write, can't do math, can't look at spreadsheets, can't calculate anything, can't function. So what happens is I go home on Friday after my lab, check out of school even though I have a mental list of the billion things I could help myself out by staying on top of over the weekend, but I never lift a school-related finger over the weekend, even when I'm home by myself and JD's at work or band practice and I'm bored off my ass. I SO can't get anything done at home that instead of trying I just watch Real World reruns for hours and halfheartedly clean the living room or something. And then I'm moping and depressed because I'm so bored because I don't LIKE having a couple days away from my important stressful work and it makes me crazy.

And then when JD is home I'm like a five year old and I'm pissed at how little I accomplished in the course of eight hours and I'm pissed because he never has anything pressing he wants to do and I feel completely benign on weekends and it frustrates me. can't make decisions, can't do any legwork for anything, etc.

And then last night I realized I'm entering the most stressful part of the quarter (yeah I know I say that every day but I think it really does begin at week 7 and doesn't let up until July) and I caught myself excited to go to sleep and wake up and it be Monday and that mean I could come to campus and get a jump on things.

And maybe the obvious solution is for me to come the fuck to school while JD works on weekends and get some shit done, which I have considered before, believe me. It's hard to leave the cat. Hahahah. So maybe "workaholic" isn't quite right, but something weird and dorktastic is happening to me and I kind of like it. It's like my body's adjusted to a certain amount of stress at all times, so when there's not enough going on at any given time it freaks out and gets depressed because it's bored. Huh. That's fucked up but I think it's right. Like, this week for example includes about ninety things I cannot for the life of me see getting done that Must get done, and I'm not too worried, just anxious to get started tackling them. How fucking lame is that.

Anywaaaaay. So my life is totally happening. I'm trying from now on to work hard enough while I'm at school to feel like I earned free time on the weekends, otherwise I will continually drive myself and JD crazy with my whining. And that's the scoop.

For All The Nights I Set You Free

So I just gone done eating my lunch in my office, which included me eating an entire container of yogurt by dipping my finger in it because I forgot a spoon. CHOICE!

Ok, so if today was the last day of stats before the exam next Tuesday, and the extremely nice professor is going over the test and specific things we need to know for the test in elementary-school detail, would you think the best way to spend the class period is to

A. Listen and write everything down and ask for clarification when you misheard something
B. Interrupt her every fifteen seconds with idiotic questions about the methodology of the data we are using as an EXAMPLE
C. Raise you hand when your idiot friend makes an idiot comment and say something about how you agree with him, try to restate your friend's initial idiot question into even dumber wording, and ask an original idiot question of your own
D. Argue with her over why something on the board is a certain way when it's obvious to the rest of the class that she made a simple error and you could correct it in your own head if you were paying attention without having to interrupt

A, right? Yeah, that's what me and ALL the other psych general science students picked, but a certain group of Ineffectuals (remember? I'm trying to coin a new word here, help me out) whose department rhymes with Sliminology don't seem to grasp even the most basic of scientific principles. So, a challenging statistics course zooms over their heads and in case anyone was wondering whether they are all confused or not, they manage to raise their hands eighteen times each in an 80 minute class. And effectively (which is sarcastic since Ineffectuals can not, by definition, do anything "effectively") piddle away our limited review time with the professor. And then on Friday they will repeat this behavior in the lab, "effectively" piddling away our time with the TAs who would be the next best line of explanation after the prof.

And no amount of passive-aggressive eyerolling and exasperated sighing by my friend J (who has a problem with not acting pissy about everything all the time) can prevent their stupid questions. And no amount of all the Science students pointedly dropping their pens, slumping down in their chairs, whispering to each other about how retarded the question was, etc. deters the Slim students (haha, a genuine misnomer) from persisting in their quest for POINTLESS KNOWLEDGE ABOUT NOTHING YOU WOULD EVER NEED PERTAINING TO STATISTICS.

Makes me want to throttle them.

My cat and I had a fist fight yesterday. My arms and shoulders, which were not covered by a piece of clothing that would have effectively been demolished by his claws, are covered in deep gashes. Not normal-looking kitten "oops I swiped at you lovingly" scratches, but ones that can only happen when you're sitting on the floor and the cat takes a flying leap from a nearby piece of furniture onto your shoulders, but he can't balance on them and tries to stabilize with his claws and cartoonishly slides all the way down your person with his claws firmly in your skin.

And my laptop, which at the time has displayed on it a very irritating but vital data set that I was in the arduous process of checking eight bajillion times, was so enticing to him that he, upon realizing that I didn't want him sleeping on the keyboard, chewing on the corners of the screen, walking back and forth on the keys and erasing numbers from the data set and replacing them with random consonants, etc, decided that the best way to get at the keyboard was to stalk it and pounce on it from every conceivable angle, which he did. And how.

Sigh. Fucking children, I swear to god. It doesn't help that my friend Piston has 2 cats and is always telling me how much clothing they ruined when they were kittens. I fucking believe it, he tries every five seconds to climb up my personage when I'm standing using his claws. If I'm not wearing jeans he tears little claw hole in my pants. If I'm wearing jeans he gets high enough to get his claws into my shirt, which he then tears little claw holes in. I actually thought to myself yesterday, "we can't have nice things anymore"

Not that we have them, but it was such a middle-aged thought that I congratulated myself on being lame.

Ugh. It's Thursday, it's my three hour class in a few minutes. Piss buckets.

But that's like the only painful thing left to do this week that can't involve me sitting on the floor in my living room in my underwear, hoping a delivery guy comes to the door. Hahahahaha.

Oh and tomorrow I'm going back to the beach. This whole regular sun exposure thing is great. I heart tan lines. I heart secret beach. I heart how nice the weather is here

Sis Face let me know if the fax stuff turned out ok. Thaaaaaaanxxxxx

Level 9

I decided today that being in graduate school is like playing Tetris. As soon as I think I'm doing awesome it starts piling up and coming down faster and the annoying music speeds up too. And for a little while you might still be doing awesome. But honest to god, every time I get to this point in the quarter and I consciously think to myself, "there is NO way I could be any busier," someone offhandedly triples the workload and shortens the amount of time I have to do it in.

But, unlike the past two quarters, I'm aware of this trend and am bracing for it BEFOREHAND, instead of flipping out afterward. So bully for me. And I am actually getting a little better at time management. Which is great. And I have shit tons to do but I'm quite excited about almost everything. So great. It just feels like I'm in a bad earthquake movie or tv miniseries about earthquakes in which I am required to run directly in front of the collapsing earth for an indefinite amount of time. Er, in my case, indefinitely means the next six years. And then the next ten years. And then until I retire. Etc.

Huh. But hey, everytime I think my ability to tolerate a certain amount of stress is trounced and the world doesn't end, I don't stop functioning, I still get everything done and on time and occasionally well, I realize instead that I'm just pushing up the ceiling limit of how much I can juggle at once. It's actually kind of fun. I just hope I don't turn into one of those freaks who lives for pressure and thrives off stress and shit

Congrats to everyone who graduated, is graduating, is done with a first year of law school, is getting married, etc.

How Do You Not Fuck That

Well, I had a fun time last night. I think I'm going to try to force my friends to accompany me to movies biweekly or something like that. Our get-togethers always degenerate into gossip fests about a few select people in our cohort, names I won't be mentioning here, but let's just say one of them is blatantly gay but his religion prevents him from admitting this to himself, so instead he acts like a girl, is totally catty and gossipy and critiques clothing choices and tries to parse the cohort into dyads and then act extremely high school about the whole production and he never has anything insightful to say in class, rather he's one of the people I have come to call The Ineffectuals who, instead of offering interesting discussion subject matter, resorts to the extremely easy and almost so obvious it's implicit that we don't need to talk about it, "does this generalize across cultures?" or "does this generalize across ages?"

Anygay, I learned some more tidbits of useful information about him last night, notably that he gossips about me/us (we're getting somewhat cliquey, which is unintentional but more default because we all have similar interests and wind up around each other more) just as much as we about him. Heh. Let's see how this relationship falls in line with all the other relationships Liz has had with gay men to the exclusion of Kyle (who I don't THINK hates me) that inevitably end in a huge catfight.

We already had a non-quite altercation in my adulthud class where he was poking fun at me, I poked fun rigt back but without realizing it hinted that he was a big Nancy Boy and he got pissed off and Then We Weren't Joking and I half expected some personal character assassination ("well, you look fat in those pants!") to come flying back in my face, but I made fake nice like I wasn't trying to harpoon him with my acerbic wit and it blew over. But I don't for a second think that he forgot that or didn't mention it to his clique, so I might be mentioning him more often in the future. There's something unsettling to me about him in a way that makes me think that he's eventually going to be trouble for me or someone I like here, and he's completely nice to my face but I worry. Guys just usually aren't THIS girly, except Keith, and it's a little scary.

Also. I have an ungodly amount of work to be doing, lots of which I am willingly subjecting myself to in order to potentially feel entrenched enough here that I wont' want to leave, and that's actually going well. I had a meeting this morning in which I realized that I have FINISHED data analyses on a particular project and now am going to start working on the results section, which is sure to break my spirit and will to live almost immediately but I'll still try. Haha. I hate writing results sections, they're the parts of articles I still don't totally understand when I read them and I think you have to be able to read before you c an write. Or at least write well.

Speaking of writing "extremely" well, I have been flipping through some essays written by undergrads in fulfillment of this study I'm doing for my 2nd yr project in which they are supposed to write about being in a certain emotional state. One of them was driving and hit and killed a pedestrian. One of them wanted to explore his bi-sexual tendencies and was crushed when his bi friend broke off contact with him because he "putting it loosely, wanted to DO ME too fucking bad." One of them left a bunny in a cage in the backyard in the sun thinking it would make the bunny happy and the bunny died of heat stroke. They don't hesitate to use the phrase "fucking asshole" or to write their accounts as third-person short narratives, or to use sixth-grade level exposition in which they describe the exact setting with ridiculous adjectives. I will post the finest examples here if I can convince myself it's not unethical.

I looked seriously into on-campus housing today, which would involve me signing a lease alone and JD not legally living there, and having a PO Box or something. It would be years until that could happen, but the prospect of living in an apartment that cost $800/month instead of $1400/month (and ever-increasing) warms my heart. I like our place, but living on campus would save me parking permit money, plus it's the same amount of space and we can have cats and some of the utilities are included. Hell, I'd move just to save a couple hundred bucks, it would at least mean we would get our THIRTY ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS WORTH OF DEPOSIT back from this property. Think about that amount, just to humor me. They have $3100.00 of ours that we need EVERY GODDAMN DAY sitting there collecting interest and they're going to jack our rent up in August and every August after that and it's retarded. I am starting to really hate everything that goes along with living in this area of the country, aside from all the good things. Hahaha.

So, I need to make some lists.

People Whose Voices I Would Sleep With If Logistically Possible

Jeff Buckley
Mike Patton
The guy from the Frames
Patrick Stewart
Keanu Reeves
Maynard from Tool
Elvis Costello
Jeremy Enigk
Amy from Portishead
Freddie Mercury
Craig Whedron
Greg Dulli


Shit I Have To Do This Afternoon

Read a shit ton of articles
Coin new phrases like "shit ton" and try to get them all to catch on
Print out stats lab #3, funding application
Prep for least favorite day of week, Tuesday
Check and recheck and clean data in data set I just got in email
Figure out a paper topic and outline it for adulthud class
continue reading essays
do laundry
get groceries
figure out courtttttroom study
marvel at multi-tasking abilities
call jenny back
write thousand emails
stop procrastinating
take pictures of cat and post them on fotoblog
begin writing results section
outline 5-6 articles
prepare to give mini-presentation about nonexistant project in tuesday class
teach cat to fetch

I Was Only Thinking Of You

I'v been having fucked up dreams in the last few days. Last night I had a dream that Jenny had a baby, and was in labor for 8 hours. That's all I remember about that, but there was a ton more. So in honor of mother's day, my preoccupation with how bad it's going to hurt someday to have a baby, my thursday class that ended up being hugely entertaining and informative about "transitioning" to motherhood, and my fucked up dreams, I am trying to watch one of those child birth miracle shows on tv. I am still having to avert my damn eyes anytime anything gross happens, which is most of the time.

Remind me to call my mom today. She wrote me an email yesterday that was like, "oh since I talked to you thursday (she blew me off last sunday, which is when we usually talk) i won't call you tomorrow, but feel free to call me if the mood strikes:)" followed by a paragraph about how nice mother's day used to be for her when me Jenny and dad would make her feel like a queen. Could you BE more obvious there, mom?

Remember how much I bitched about hosting the prospectives in February? Well, I invited one of them (not my girl, my friend's) and her boyf to stay with us for like 5 days at the end of this month so they can look for apartments. And she took me up on it. I didn't realize they were flying and not driving, that's way more of a committment for me to shuttle them around and shit. But that's ok, even though I won't get paid this time. Sigh. I'm such a decent person.

My friends are coming over tonight to meet the cat and have mid-quarter-blow-off-steam girl's night. Including pizza. I'm excited. However, that means I have to get off my ass sometime in the very near future, clean the apartment, do some homework, get stuff festively ready for them, etc.

In school news I had a meeting with my supplementary advisor J and she suggested I bust my ass, do a lot of data collection at the LA County Detendency Ct, and submit that to a conference that I have been lusting after but saw no way of getting to, as the submission date for next spring's conference is July something. Yay for advisors who think as unrealistically as I do about shit like that.

I went to the beach Friday again, and burned myself. I have very unfortunate tan lines where you can tell I adjusted my suit out of my butt crack and made a crooked line, and there's this ridiculous spot on my back where you can see where my suit was tied in the back that looks like a white bow in the middle of my back, it's retarded.

HAPPY GRADUATION ASHLEIGH, you should be walking down the aisle right abouts now. We're really proud of you. Come visit soon.

Bah, I should go do stuff. Fuck.

Schadenfreude


Ok, I think today officially sucks. I just ripped my pants on the underside of my desk and have to go to my adulthud class with a big hole in my pants that people will possibly think is meant to be a fashion statement. also lame, i got around to downloading my grant comment sheets, one of the three judges thought I was perfect, one thought I was great, and one went around marking random fucking boxes that make me wonder if he had the right proposal in front of him. AAAAAARRRRGHH. How could I get ALL PERFECT SCORES FROM ONE JUDGE AND a couple "insuffficient basis for judgment"s from another?

Do they even bother to make sure everyone's on the same goddamn judging page over there?!?? HUH!?
And I am sorry, my GRE test scores are not "very good," they are fricking "excellent" in every (including Bill and Ted) sense of the word. WHICH TWO OF THEM ACKNOWLEDGED just fine. Let me guess, one of these judges is the scorned professor I decided not to work with last year. Who wasn't cited oft enough in the proposal. BALHDF IHOEUFHOLF

Also, Jyushin had to go to the vet yesterday. Which he was not excited about doing. And then he had to get some more medicine for his sneezy thing. And now he has to take two different intrusive medications every day, which he also hates me for. Especially because I am not very good at shoving a pill down a cat's throat. Like, this morning I had to try about six times. Which he was also not excited about.

I think I just reaaaaaaally don't want to go to this fucking class...I have so much more I could be doing instead. I hate the mid-quarter slump. I hate week 5 and 6 and 7. I hate the end of the quarter. I hate seminar classes right now and I hate HATE the impending stats test in week 7. I hate forcing myself to participate in discussions when I have nothing insightful to say, I hate feeling acutely freshmany, I hate that I ripped my fucking pants, I hate that as I downloaded my comment sheets (btw, only one person wrote any goddamn comments and those were all highlighting the positives, how the shit am i supposed to use this to help me when I reapply?) I noticed that the stipend for this year was a few thousand more than I'd thought it would be, I hate that the meeting I had this morning involved the guy I was meeting with not arriving on time, then running over so that I was late to stats, I hate that I am supposed to fill out all these self-evaluations and applications for summer funding (that's right, I have to APPLY for money that's contractually guaranteed to me) all by tomorrow, I hate that I'm not almost done with this school year, I hate that I can only muster energy two days out of the week, today not being one of them, I hate that there's a virus in the school's network that has the already bitchy computer IT people even more bitchy, I hate that I had to park almost on the top of the parking structure today which means it'll take me a thousand years to get out right at 5, I hate that I had to haul a giant box with thousands of pages of bullshit across campus to my office this morning, I hate that I ripped my goddamn favorite pants, I hate that my hair looks terrible today and my back hurts and my toenails are not all painted because I nervously pick at nail polish but forgot to fix that, I hate that I want to call my friends tonight on sixteen-way or something but I don't have time. Ugh, graduate school. Ugh, dreading the rest of the afternoon. Ugh, all my favorite tv shows (meaning Scrubs and The OC, not NOT Friends) are ending for the season. Ugh, my cat thinks I am trying to kill him.

Ugh. I now have to really go prepare for this bullshit class. I HATE THREE HOUR CLASSES

That Darn Cat!

So, here's a list of things Jyushin has managed to do to inconvenience himself or me in the last 24 hours:

*Run full speed into a wall and knock himself totally crazy

*Wake up when JD gets up to go to work every morning (refresher: that's 4:30am) and then once JD leaves he wants to "play" but I'm asleep so he runs back and forth across my face, licking and purring and clawing at my FACE and impeding my breathing and forcing me to whine and shift around not quite awake so I don't suffocate

*Repeatedly interrupts this blog post by mewling pathetically until I pick him up like a baby and let him crawl all over me and lick my face

*Repeatedly interrupts this blog post by dashing from one end of the apartment to the other as fast as he can and scrambling up the side of the couch with his claws, so I pick him off and set him pointedly on his scratchy box thing and show him that he's supposed to sharpen his claws on THAT but he thinks I'm trying to kill him when I do that

*Can't be happy unless his tail has been dragged through his water dish

*I was drinking HOT coffee a while ago and had it on the coffee table and had been repeatedly telling him not to stick his nose in it because it was hot and he touched the mug and discovered that the mug was hot but then when I looked away stuck his whole face in the coffee and reared back, shocked that it was hot, and sneezed it everywhere.

*I peed when I woke up this morning and didn't flush the toilet because I was going to clean his box but I forgot to clean it until I was about to walk out the door so I went to do it and play with him and as I was scooping his poop into the toilet he jumped into the box and then immediately jumped DIRECTLY into the toilet with a ferocious splash, soaking his damn self, splashing URINE and CAT LITTER POOP all over me, and almost drowning. So I had to fish him out, force him under the sink faucet for like ten minutes, towel him off, change my clothes and since I didn't have time to shower sprayed myself all over with wrinkle releaser so I wouldn't smell

And now he's figured out how to get on the kitchen counters, and every other conceivable place he shouldn't be able to get.

anygay.
Chris and I have decided we're all dropping out of school and opening a Hammerhed (sic) replica bar on a pirate ship that will only play outkast songs that we can all drunkenly sing along to and it'll be awesome

Otherwise, I want to slit my wrists as far as school goes.

Happy early graduation to ashleigh
Happy end of first year to chris, you'll do fine on your tests
Happy end of semester/graduation to IU people
and everyone else who has cool shit going on. I envy you like you wouldn't believe these days.

gotta go be productive

Teach Me How To Shine

Got a kitten sleeping here next to me. Jesus Christ he's cute.

We went Friday to find a kitty after JD got off work, but I'd called aroudn to every place and they had all "run out" of kittens earlier in the day. But we went to all the shelters anyway to see what they had and there were really cute older cats but they have to be there a week before they'll let you take them in case their owner comes, so we couldn't even play with some of the cutest ones. But then there were these 2 kittens named (unfortunately) Akuna and Matata (which is not even accurate) and we played with them in a big room full of cat toys and they were really cute and nice but I didn't want an all black cat. And they were both black

So yesterday we went on the rounds again and the shelter with the 2 black kittens had a bunch more black kittens, but Akuna had been adopted and when I sat down in front of Matata's cage he appeared to recognize me and got really excited and cute. And we finally got him in a playroom and he was super sweet and in the light you can see that he's got gray stripes around his legs and his stomach is probaby going to be gray and in fact his whole back is gray and black splotch

Anyway. We totally fell in love with him in like 2 minutes. Plus he's a boy and I think JD was wanting a boy. Plus he does this cute feral cat thing where he catches the toy and then stalks off with it in his mouth and he looks so proud of himself.

So last night we hung out with him (renamed Jyushin) in the bathroom and he was adjusting fine so we let him run around the whole apartment and he's a sweetie. He's so cute. And he's so niiiiice, he predictably gets tired of playing after about 20 minutes and then comes mewling over to your face and climbs up on you until he can wrap himself around your neck like a scarf and lick you. He's sooooo sweet.

And I was going to leave him in the bathroom all night but he just kept crying and i felt awful so we let him out into just the bedroom/bathroom and he's sooooo sweet. He's floppy and actually reaches for you withhis arms like a kid and acts liek a dog and purrs almost constantly and is totally handsome .

anyway, kitty to getback to attending to. God, I so don't want to have anything to do with going to school this week. I just want to sit here with Jyushin and tell him how sweet he is. Blaha