the wrong side of the bed

a few weeks ago i was in love with at least 3 or 4 people. then i decided that i probably wasn't. this weekend i decided that i wasn't even interested in pretending like i was in love with anyone, even just for fun. today i am singing a different tune. when i was doing laundry, a sock flew into my dryer from across the laundromat. my black, white, and burgundy argyle sock! a boy was putting his clothes in the washer i had just used and had rescued my sock from a life without it's pair!

as if that weren't enough, as i was leaving he rode up on his bicycle and smiled at me. someone should let him know that i am easy.

Labels: cute, love

karaoke was delightful last night, until things got ugly. i think we left around 1:00, and i guess things must have turned bad around midnight when a group of people wearing headbands and matching shirts showed up. one man, an undergrad, did a horrible rendition of a song i can't remember ("let's get it on" maybe?), including impromptu cries of "motherfucker" and air fucking. it was disturbing in the extreme, and i was upset not just by the aggression, but also by the speaking in tongues. i'm not keen on making fun of religion - i just recently asked my christian coworkers to stop making fun of mormons - and the speaking in tongues came off as racist on top of that. we asked erika to move "total eclipse of the heart" up to the top of the queue and then jj and i got the fuck out of there.

on the street outside there were multiple women dressed lik a college student's approximation of a hooker. there were men making loud barking sounds. we passed the corner with wando's and were somewhat relieved by the presence of police officers, even if they were just giving out tickets to underage drinkers. the parking garage was remarkably asshole free, but driving out of it was more of a challenge as jj had to maneuver the car passed drunk people. when we made it to johnson, i commented that things seemed so much calmer by just driving one block. just then we saw a boy and girl in a parking lot running in a circle because... they were chasing a rabbit. drunk undergrads chasing a bunny in a circle.

Labels: fucked up, karaoke, really really weird

my dad was in town this weekend. he had a conference in chicago and drove up after to hang out with me. we didn't do much of anything except for walk up and down state street and eat at restaurants a lot. at the end of state street there is a small barber shop. jon gets his hair cut there and dad needed a hair cut. he got one at college barber because jon, who is very ambivalent about his appearance, might have recommended it had he been there.

two things stand out about dad's visit. the first is that i had a chance to look at his arm and check out his scars from the surgery in which they gave him zombie bones. i am disappointed that i never got a picture of it.

thing #2 - we also talked about our family, primarily my mother's strange behaviors. this weekend she drove to austin from the woodlands to check up on her mother's health and well being and to entertain my dad's mother. my mother thinks that my evil grandmother must be very lonely because she no longer has my grandfather to abuse. maybe she is lonely. i told my dad that if grandmother is lonely it is because she reaps what she sows. my dad takes criticism of his mother well, even though i know it must hurt him to hear me talk that way about her. i think my dad would spend less time with her if not for my mom. he once again mentioned in passing that she physically abused him when he was a kid. if it were me, and i know that it isn't, i would be unhappy that my spouse kept forcing me to see her. i know i resent having to interact with her.

my mom saw her mother, too. on friday night, she helped her mother put furniture and things back in place after a visit from an exterminator. she stayed the night because she wanted to watch my grandmother go to bed. i think there is some worry that she just sits in a chair all night. on saturday morning, she talked to my grandmother for a spell. probably had a cup of instant coffee. when she went outside to leave, a neighbor came up to talk to her about my grandmother. she has lived in the house for a long time and her neighbors also check in on her and wanted to talk to my mom about their concerns. this made my mom 30 minutes late to my evil grandmothers house. she was upset. my mom felt guilty.

my mom stayed overnight at my evil grandmother's house on saturday this seems strange because her goal is to watch over her mother as she sleeps. creepy! she is staying tonight at my good grandmother's house. she will drive straight to work, leaving round rock at 4:00 in the morning. sometimes my mother will arrive in austin at 2 in the morning. sometimes my mother leaves work at midnight. my family cannot convince my mother not to drive in the middle of the night. we are all certain that my mother will fall asleep at the wheel one of these days. what can we do?

we cannot understand my mother's behavior and we cannot change it. it is hard to think about loving her and watching her martyr herself. it is confusing to wonder if she prefers her life this way and might miss it if we convinced her to stop. i feel guilty thinking that i am not doing enough to get her out of this, but we cannot even convince her to buy shoes that do not hurt her feet.

Labels: family, stubborn, things i do not understand

my job. i really feel like my job should be easy. unfortunately my job is simultaneously boring and stressful. my job also requires organization, which i do not have. i can never find anything on my desk, and then i freak out and have to throw papers everywhere. after that, i don't file them, i through them right back in a jumbled pile. additionally, i can't seem to focus on one thing for more than 5 minutes at max. i'm always jumping up to do something else. today i am in the middle of typing up notes from parent conflicts. two annoyed parents in one day sucks. i am in the middle of entering names and contact information into a spreadsheet. i am in the middle of looking up numbers of girl registrations per elementary school. i am in the middle of preparing some mailings. i am in the middle of checking up on little things. pick one!

do i do this to myself because my job is so boring that i can't stay focused? it is probably a symptom of the same thing that leads to never cleaning my apartment. i start cleaning the bathroom. i decide to mop it, but then i go get the mop and use it in the kitchen instead. i'm in the kitchen, so i may as well wash some dishes. next to the sink is a can for recyclyng, so i put it in my recycling bin. there is a stack of paper to be recyclyed which inspires me to go around the house picking up magazines. as i am doing that, i notice that there are cords from thousands of appliances strewn across my floor. i start untangling them. i notice that my dvds are not in alphabetical order. i think about alphabatizing my books and notice that they are stacked up next to the shelves instead of on them. my playmobil collection happens to be on bookshelves, so i start setting them up. i think about the other toys in my apartment and.... anyway, i never actually complete any of these things.

this is why my life is a mess.

Labels: complaining, fucking up, i suck, work

living alone is lonely sometimes, but the worst part for me is that i eat weird crap. when jeff and stamie lived next door we would alternate who would cook dinner. that was fun and tasty. now my neighbor is some guy who is learning to play guitar, thankfully acoustic. he cooks his dinner at 10:30 at night. i know because i can smell it through the wall somehow. it always smells like meat.

without jeff and stamie i only have one person to cook for. that means that, unless i want food rotting in my fridge, i can only get 2 vegetables a week and an apple or two. i know i should eat more fresh fruits and veggies, but sometimes i eat out and stuff. this means that if i get a head of broccoli, i have to eat broccoli all week. if i get green beans, it is nothing but green beans. especially because i always underestimate how many beans are in the bag. two weeks in a row i bought asparagus because it is the best food on earth. i ate asparagus three days a week, which is pretty awesome, but i don't really want to get burned out on asparagus.

the other problem with cooking just for me is that i am not trying to impress anyone or even cater to their tastes. i end up eating whatever is around. sometimes i mix frozen corn and peas and pour the left over portion of a jar of spaghetti sauce over it and toss it in the microwave. is this good or tasty or even pretty to look at? no, but it is food. it requires no extra pots and pans. it is ready almost immediately. how about a spoonful of peanut butter and some raw green beans. okay. it isn't my dream meal, but i don't even have to get a plate dirty! a can of black beans, sometimes heated in a pot but always with cayenne pepper and cumin thrown in, plopped down on a tortilla. that's practically fancy! macaroni and cheese with peas tossed in. a whole bowl of edamame. pretzels and chunks of muenster cheese.

i'm one step away from eating uncooked rice-a-roni.

Labels: eat, gross

here's the thing. i have developed an unhealthy habit. i check the missed connections section of craigslists compulsively. multiple times a day. someone sometime is going to miss me. they are going to see me and wish they knew me or they are going to know me and wish they hadn't lost me. this will happen and i will be there when it does. so, you know, if you have been thinking about it, i'm about to check right now. hurry up and post!

Labels: people love me

i used to be very good at this.

Labels: a bit angry, sad

another thing about me that i have just discovered. i have really wide hips. i have always known that the top of me is smaller than the bottom of me, but i guess i didn't really think about the curves involved in that. i mean, the only curves i thought were involved were my breasts, which are not very curvy, they are just small. i knew my hips were wide, but i guess i thought all of me was universally wide. like a tube of cookie dough that has maybe been squeezed a tiny bit here an there. whatever. i could still be wrong. maybe my hips are not gigantic. anyway, these are crude drawings of how i perceived myself up until yesterday, how i think i must really look, and what i think girls are supposed to look like. yeah, i know that girls are not supposed to look like anything and there are all these varieties of body shapes, blah, blah, blah. come on people! everybody knows that girls are supposed to look like undergrads!

anyway, it is no wonder that when i tell sean i look like a boy he argues vehemently that i don't. i look like i could birth triplets all at the same time.


update! i just looked in the mirror again. i may have exaggerated the width of my hips. i really wish i could figure out what i look like.

Labels: body image

my sister, knowing that i am currently way into earth shoes, bought me a pair even though they cost a million dollars. she really hates to spend money. she found these somewhere online for sale. and i don't think i can really return them. before i received the shoes she told me that we could work out a way to return them if i didn't like them.

my brother and sister have very narrow comfort zones when it comes to color. this is weird to me because i find neutral colors sort of restrictive. i think that maybe my sister just doesn't understand color. sean told me that he will be teaching a color theory class for one semester.* i'm wondering if my sister might need to take this class. the shoes she bought me are a deep plum color. she thinks they match everything. blacks and browns. i agreed, but commented that they would not match the shirt i was wearing. bright orange (as you can see from the picture). she didn't understand why. how do you explain to someone over the phone that deep, deep plum doesn't really match with traffic cone orange? i would just understand without being shown a picture. christie might not understand even if she saw the two in person. i've got to say in the pictures i've attached the strange color of plum is not quite captured. imagine something a little redder and a little browner. i really wish the color came out better. in this picture i could sort almost see them matching. in any case, orange is a strange choice of color to pair with plum. i also had a difficult time explaining that only certain pants would go with platform mary janes. i was wearing very, very baggy men's jeans yesterday. it just looked weird. a person needs tighter, shorter pants so that the shape of the shoe is more obvious.


christie insists these are everyday shoes. there is nothing i could possibly wear that wouldn't match. sometimes when my mother buys me presents i obviously wouldn't like, i ask question whether or not she knows me. in this case i think something else is at play. i think maybe my sister just does not understand color or style.

she also looked at these shoes, but rejected them because she thought them so bizarre that no one would ever wear them. these are shoes i actually really like. i can't swap because my mother thinks it will hurt my sister's feelings. if you see me in these shoes, you now know why. i am trapped. they are quite comfortable. i should stop being whiny and instead be more practical.

* i think he said that he will be but he could have said might be.

Labels: birthdays, complaining, family, fashion