I've Not Been Swept Since The Day My Husband Died

We haven't been this broke since JD didn't have a job. That's broke, my friends. Should be ok by next Friday, but for now it's hilarious how scrimpy we're going to have to be. I know, a week isn't so long to go without spending money, and that's fine, but the cat has to go to the vet next week and get shots, and since we don't know how much that is it's cutting into our grocery money. Wow, I feel like I have three kids and a mortgage right now. We can always just have popcorn for dinner. Actually, we can both survive for months only eating bean burritos and chocolate millk, so we should be fine.

But whew, that's kind of stressful. Squelches my weird compulsion to go shopping, though. Harsh bastard reality.

Also stressful is the last couple weeks of this quarter. Which is now. Which as usual, I am updating to procrastinate from being involved in. I figure, I have all day to get shit done. JD works until like 9 tonight, and I found out this morning that less is actually die this week than I thought. However, nothing is nicer than getting shit out of the way early. So count on me to go do that in a minute.

Thanks for all the nice comments on the last post. I will be taking you all up on offers to drive me to and fro. And thanks. And that's exciting. I think I might try to fit everything I'll need for two weeks into one bag, or else I'll be lugging shit all over various cities and modes of transportation. That sounds like a challenge. Awesome.

Yup, nothing to say today.

Pupils Don't Lie

*My school email is telling me every time I try to sign in that I have the wrong username or password. I have to email something to a class in the next few hours. I will be severely pissed off if I can't get it to them. Oh wait, I could always send it from another email account except I don't know all of their addresses. Oh but I could just tell someone to forward it to everyone for me. Hmm, ok, problem solved. CRISIS AVERTED

*This weekend the cat did something to my laptop while I was gone. He jumped on the keyboard and not only renamed all of the files on my desktop to read "BAJUDSOFB+[>:OJ" but managed, somehow, to change the display COLOR from normal to the exact opposite of normal. Imagine it's like looking at a photo negative all the time. So right now in Blogger I'm typing white letters on a black screen. The icons on my desktop look super cool. I can't see colors the way they're supposed to look, say, if I'm trying to shop online for clothes. It looks really cool, BUT no one can get it back to normal. Jamison and I have tried rebooting it about a million times with this or that safe key held or cache erased or resetting this preference but to no avail. I can start up in safe mode but then it can't detect the airport card and it tells me that my office license has expired. Which is all bullshit but I can't not use word or the internet. Who do I look like, your grandmother?

*I this morning booked a plane and train ticket and okayed the first two legs of the trip with Raedy and Keith respectively. Which is AWESOME. Those of you in SoIn (hahahahahaha) can expect me around August 6th or so, most likely. Jenny, do you and ____ still want to come get me from northern IN? Great, fabulous.

*Somehow I have to get BACK up to Chicago to fly home, which I haven't yet worked out. Anyone have suggestions? I also want to get to Louisville at some point. Anyone want to give me a ride?

*For the All of you who crapped out on your plans to come visit this summer, all I can say is that you better start saving money for December, because if your asses aren't in Vegas I will be SUPER PIIIIIIISSSED

*Remember the recent feud with my mom? Ok, here's the dramatic conclusion:

I wrote her an email, exhausted, saying (in hindsight, I sound very sarcastical) that she should just forget the whole angry exchange because I overestimated what our mother-daughter relationship was, and that I shouldn't be surprised that she won't listen to me because she's never listened to anyone in her whole life, so why would her kid be an exception? And that I wasn't mad and was never mad and don't like her to feel attacked and I disagreed with a lot of her email but didn't even want to deal with it, just wanted things to go back to normal, so could we please just nevermind that whole weekend? The title of the email was nevermind. And I tell her I hope she'll call me on Sunday like normal and I can't wait to see her and I love her. All true.

So she calls me on Sunday and we have the world's most pleasant, not forced mother-daughter conversation about trivialities and we're both thrilled with it and we talk animatedly about many things and it's nice. And only when we hang up am I struck with the realization that my guilt-trippy, bullshit email written pseudo-deliberately in the style that she writes guilt-trippy, bullshit emails to me ACTUALLY WORKED ON HER and EVERYTHING IS NOW FINE AND BACK TO NORMAL. My jaw was on the floor for the rest of the day. And then I got extremely sad when it occurred to me that handling mom like she handles other people, which I do not approve of, is the best course of action for dealing with her. It's like she thinks you're being bitchy unless you insert enough martyr-esque phrases into any given sentence. And then, instead of thinking it might be sarcastic (even though it wasn't when I wrote it) she thinks you're being sensitive and honest. I don't get why I can't just be Normal Honest with her, but whatever,

*In the world's most obvious segue, My readings for this week focus on how stress exacerbates pre-existing illness. I don't even want to follow that through. I gobbled them all up. In a morbid fascination kind of way.

*Ohhh, summer you can't get here fast enough. Here's a list of things on my summer to-do list:

1. Read lots of fiction (I have a list but it's not going on here until I've fleshed it out enough to look decent next to all of your summer reading lists....i wish to god they would let 22 yr. olds participate in that free-pizza-if-you-read-a-whole-book Book It! program. Or that it still existed. Man, that was a good time)

2. Take lots of road trips. Potential destinations include Las Vegas (certainement), Crater Lake, Yosemite, San Diego, Seattle via the majority of Oregon, Big Bear, Catalina Island, San Francisco, Fresno, Redwood nat'l forest, Channel Islands, etc. We need a tent and some sleeping bags PRONTO.

3. End note. Raedy, that was already on my list but thanks for the reminder. Fucking dog balls that's going to be labor intensive.

4. Stripping and then refinishing the two ugly white dressers we share (one from each of our childhoods!) and getting new hardware for them so they look cool with the rest of the apartment and can maybe be permitted to be placed somewhere other than in the back of the walk-in closet.

5. Painting parts of the living room, dining room, bedroom, bathroom

6. A billionty school-related things that won't get discussed in detail here, but trust me that there's a billionty.

1,000,000,007. Start and learn to maintain some sort of greenery (perhaps not a real garden just yet) on the balcony.

1,000,000,008. Read every article ever written about mimory, striss, destriss, emo-ness and learn everything there is to know about blame. Become totally expert at being a grad student. Just in time to TA an intro psych class. HAHAHAHAHAH

1,000,000,009. Make you all summer comp cds

1,000,000,010. Get digital photos printed out on paper and put them in an album. I hate not having recent pictures to pore over all the time.

1,000,000,011. Go visit all of you.

1,000,000,012. Go to the beach as often as possible.

1,000,000,013. Catch up on movies I wanted to see that are now on video

1,000,000,014. Go to Utah

1,000,000,015. Get three projects published and become instantly famous

Yeah, so I might be busy, but I CANNOT WAIT to not have classes. SOOOOOO NICE. YES.

Anyway. Anyghey.

Ex-girlfriend, Black Jetta

Next time you have a free moment call JD and ask him to do his Fred Schneider impression. WELL worth your effort.

So the prospie is here with her boyf. Let's call them Cachel and Riss. And let's just say, in the moments before I have to rush off to class, that I like them both a great deal but I do NOT like the fact that they have clearly never lived in an apartment before...meaning, they have never had to clean up after themselves that wasn't dorm-style, involving only throwing away your easy mac container when it was empty. They use eight glasses a day, each, and when they're done they stick them and whatever else in the sink without rinsing them. Cool except when they have chocolate milk. also, we're ass-broke as usual but they are eating all our groceries ("can i just help myself to the last of the milk?") and even though I've hinted about a thousand times that there's a grocery store within walking distance that they could go pick up a few things from if they wanted, we've taken them out to eat at every meal. Except breakfast, when they use all my milk and cinnamon toast crunch.

And the odds of them getting groceries are not good, they leave tomorrow (i get to take them to the airport at 7:30am) and they want to go to Cheesecake Phactory tonight. Which is fine but in the last three days we've been to Rubby's, Innnnout, a mexican place, a pizza place, a food court....and we don't have the money to do this.

But I can't bring mysefl to point out the ENTIRE tank of $2.49 gas I used driving them all over the goddamn county, or the fact that I won't go to the grocery store while they're here because I know they won't give me any money and that'll piss me off when they want to eat it, or that basically this is the most hectic week for me and I can't find the time to do everything I need to do because they're always sitting around looking bored and I feel guilty for their boredom.

And yes, I invited them to stay with us. But man, I'm not liking this choice right now. Also, I'm annoyed that they can't clean up after themselves and can't contribute to the piles of money I'm wasting in hosting them. At least when it was school-sanctioned I was compensated for "incidentals."

This blows. I have so much to do in the course of today. They seemed off-put that I had to be on campus from 9-2 at least, and they're presently wandering around the campus and are going to meet me later.
Sigh.

I have to go to class #1