the wrong side of the bed

my roommate and i got the keys to our apartment early. my roommate is excited because she has an unpleasant living situation in a house with too many people and too many vermin. she has moved in most of her belongings. i am okay with that, really, except that i am not. i won't be bringing my large furniture over until somewhere around august 3rd. she is going to have tons of time to become used to tables and chairs in specific locations. it shouldn't matter to me, it is just stuff, but i am increasingly tense and nervous about this. my big concern is my bookshelves. i'd really like to not have bookshelves in my bedroom. i'd sort of like to have as empty a bedroom as possible. it would be nice to have the place where i sleep as tidy as possible, at least this one time in my life. i want my books downstairs.

my roommate thinks i am nuts because this is all i talk about. where will my books go? we have some built in shelves, but they are very shallow and my books may not fit. my comic books are certainly too big. my larger playmobil landscapes won't even fit. i don't know what we will put on the shelves. we will have to scrounge through our stuff like pigs after truffles to find the right knickknacks.

the only other problem with this is the embarrassment and shame i feel when people, strangers and friends both, look at my book collection. i have always had a difficult relationship with books. it is very easy to read a title or catch an author's name and then make a quick judgement about a person. what would you think of me if, walking into my apartment, the first thing you saw was a shelf of romance novels? a shelf of books like the secret? management books? i somehow recently acquired about 10 books by ursula le guin that were in a free pile or on the street or something. i took them because i read most of them when i was in middle school and junior high. i'm not in love with the books or anything, but i am going to keep them anyway. if you saw those books on a shelf, what would it make you think? what if you saw all of my (now useless) sociology books?*

i have had this problem at least back to kindergarten. the first time we went to the school library, we were told that we should stay in one particular area with the very early reader books. it was explained that some books would be too hard for us and we might become frustrated. as we advanced in our reading skills, our teacher or librarian would tell us we could move on. no one ever told me that i could move on. i don't think i was a bad reader, but i know i was very quiet and was probably just overlooked. as a result, i felt that i could never leave the picture book section of the library. i eventually felt like it was easier to blend in with my peers if i made furtive trips into the older kid areas, but i would take whatever i grabbed back with me to the tiny tables by the easy readers. it is a wonder i ever got past hop on pop. even in high school, when visiting the public library, i would have to spend a good 15 minutes in the children's room before i could dash out and grab books for young adults or even, gasp, regular old grown-up books (mostly stephen king). i stopped being comfortable in libraries when my dad told me they could keep records of things i checked out, after all, they have to know who needs fines levied against them.

even now i get very nervous in bookstores. i get sort of twitchy and on edge. i look around to see if anyone is watching before i take something off of the shelf. i hate running into people i know. if that happens, i usually can't buy anything and leave the store immediately.

yesterday i moved some things into my new place while my roommate was out and about. i was talking with a friend on my cell phone (miraculously, i did not drop anything). he asked me what books my roommate had. see! first thing people want to know. what kind of person is she?** well, let's check what books she has on her shelves.

it is absolutely reasonable that i freak out about books. i am being watched.

* seriously, i feel like i should have an essay contest for incoming grads to the department. whoever can convince me they deserve the books gets a stack so big it will save them at least $1,000!

** this is not to say that the person i was talking to was using her books as a criteria to judge her. we were talking about my books and he asked what was on her shelf. it is just a natural question. if i had been talking about my dishes, he probably would have asked about hers, etc. just because i was uncomfortable about the book thing doesn not mean that my friend was trying to make me feel guilty or uncomfortable. in fact, i don't believe he knew about my book problem. i also don't think my roommate would care if i told anyone about her books.

Labels: worry

can you believe that i have an uncle who is also named el jefe (AKA the goat)? it is totally true. this weekend i emailed the one in dallas thinking that i was emailing the one in california. i lost el jefe's phone number and emailed him to ask for it.

subject line: i feel like i might want to call you.
body: what's your dang phone number?


my uncle sent his phone number and a message. call away! the problem is that i have nothing, absolutely fricking nothing, to say to him. i don't even know if i can make up something to say to him. my sister thinks i should just come clean and confess to the mistake. what do you think?

Labels: family, i suck, questions, worry

okay, am i the only one on earth who is not just kinda sick, but actually really sick of sally field? because i am. i guess i got worn out after gidget. sure, i wanted her for my valentine then but stop making those sad eyes or talking really fast when you are angry or looking so shocked at something we all saw coming. just chill out.

sorry, that isn't really what i was going to write about. it just didn’t seem to warrant a post all of its own. anyway…

about a month ago, when careyoke was here, it actually got cold. cold enough to freeze. i was supposed to drive to one of my communities for work, and i pulled into a gas station before i got on the road because, well, my tank was pretty much totally empty. my gas tank has one of those little doors that you pop open with a lever on the floor by the driver’s side door. i lean over, yank, and … nothing. yeah. nothing. it doesn’t budge. okay, i pull it again with the same result. it is frozen. now, i am from texas and we don’t have cold, cold winters, so you might think this was some dumb problem that i have just yet to experience but that everyone goes through up here. thing is, i have lived through winter in madison before. i have lived through very, very cold winters. not only that, my car has lived through cold winters. and the gas tank door has always come open.

i drive to a different gas station because the one where i am doesn’t even have an inside, just a booth where you pay for gas and buy cigarettes. i try the lever again, but it still doesn’t work. i call jon all freaked out because i am supposed to be in lodi, wisconsin. i tell him that my gas tank is frozen closed. he says i should poor hot water on it. how? how do i do that? anyway, i get angry with him for offering me no good advice. i call my mom. she tells me to pry it open. i get mad at her for the same reason. my mom calls the toyota dealership in houston, but they don’t know what to say. she calls back. i kind of apologize. i decided to skip lodi and just go home.

i head down park street. my car sounds weird. i am terrified that i am going to run out of gas and have no way to add any. i glide into a midas station. i leave my car there because they are about to close for the night. i call tara or careyoke or jj, i can’t remember which, and they are all in the car together on their way to get dinner. so they save me and we get eats.

the next morning, i get my car. overnight in the garage, the cable thawed and the door could be opened. they tell me there was moisture on the line. they tell me they put silicon on it and that it shouldn’t happen any more. they put silicon on the cable running to the trunk, too, because the automatic trunk popping thing is frozen, too. they don’t charge me and i am happy and i go fill up my tank.

fast forward to this monday. i am on my way to columbus, wisconsin, where there is a christopher columbus museum because, you know, it is where his ship touched ground, and i stop to get gas. after a million days of warmth, it is finally cold enough to freeze. the door to my gas tank won’t open. i turn my heat up high and drive to sun prairie wisconsin. i figure if i get to sun prairie and am able to get gas, i will keep going. if i can’t open the tank, i will turn around and go home. the tank won’t open. i drive to jon’s house because he has a driveway. i drive with the heat on high. i check the lever at every stop light. it opens a block from his house. i fill up the tank. i close the door.

flash back to summer. did i forget to tell you that my car flooded?

flash forward from summer to this wednesday (i am getting kind of back to the future here and am about to marry my own mom). i am at the toyota dealership. they don’t understand what i am saying about the door not opening. a mechanic makes me pull the lever. nothing happens. he asks me to pull it again, i don’t know why. not surprisingly, it doesn’t open. he tugs on it. he gets some other guy to tug on it. they decide that they will leave it in their garage for 30-45 minutes until it thaws and then try to figure something out. i watch CNN in the customer lounge. i realize that the ice storms in texas are worse than i thought. i finally call my family. they are fine.

after 30-45 minutes my gas tank door could be opened. they decide that if they remove all of the ice from around the cable everything will be just fine. they say that if it isn’t i can order the part. they shut the door to the tank. i drive to work. by the evening, the cable is frozen again. i drive to cottage grove without issue. on the way home, i turn the heat up really, really high. i go to jon’s house because he still has a driveway. i leave my car idling in his drive way. after 10 minutes, i check to see if i can open the tank. no, but the lever to my trunk moves freely. wait! it moves freely because it is broken! most likely, it is completely disconnected from the cable! i curse but then shrug because i can still open the trunk with my key. i go back inside. jon drinks a beer. i ask about dinner (i love dinner). 10 minutes later, i check and the lever can finally move. the door eases open. i leave it open, turn off my car, go inside jon’s apartment, and complain about wanting dinner. we decide to cook something at my house and head over there without stopping for gas. i park on the street by my apartment. it is silly, i know, but i am worried about leaving the door open. not because i think someone is going to siphon gas, but because i think someone will walk by and close it. i would because i would assume that the owner of the car forgot or pulled the wrong lever or something. i try to figure out a way for the door to sort of close but not all the way close. i push and poke the door a few times. i realize that i have actually closed the door. i worry for a second until i realize that the door hasn’t stayed closed. why? because now it is broken in the open position. i don’t laugh.

if you want to siphon gas from my car, you know where i live.

where i don’t live, though, are any number of small towns to which i have to travel. lodi (population 2,929), marshall (population 3,432), waterloo (population 3,259), cambridge (population 1,227), deerfield (population 1,971), columbus (population 4,479), and fall river (population (1,097).

do you know what is different about these towns as compared to my “hometown”? main street. there is no main street where i am from, despite the fact that it is a real hometown. do you know what is the same if you compare madison with the smaller towns? main street. do you know what is different about these main streets? in small towns, main street is in fact the main street. in madison, it is kind of unassuming. i am easily able to forget it exists. i crossed it today. i cross it whenever i go to jon’s to let my car idle with the heat on. today i remembered to notice that it was main street. i guess main street goes to the capital, but it is not a street i would ever take to the capital. state street for sure. definitely the wash. not main street.

small towns, like my car and sally field, don’t make much sense to me.

Labels: friends, fucked up, pity party, worry

i am pretty sure that most people who read my blog don't live in wisconsin, so this doesn't really matter. for those of you who do live here, even though i am now totally convinced that we are going to lose, maybe you could vote no on the marriage ban even if you think it doesn't matter. just in case voting actually works.

(i am also pretty sure that the 3 people in madison who do read my blog will already be going to the polls.)

Labels: worry

from the epilepsy foundation website:

Ineffective treatment, delayed or lack of access to high-quality, specialized care, and the severity of the underlying neurological disorder are all possible contributors to the development of hard to control seizures. Whatever the cause, the result is the same: a lifetime of dependence, enormous cost to society, and a formidable barrier to individual productivity and happiness.

so, yeah, the part that i bolded? not so encouraging. also, an enormous cost to society? i guess i apologize to you folks for the burden you are enduring on my account.

* i just wanted to look up information releated to the ADA and driving.

Labels: epilepsy, worry

get ready for me to put on some weight. the stress of various things (finding a job, thinking about epilepsy, etc.) is leading to some unnecessary eating. the biggest factor is probably the prelim. everytime i sit down to study, i almost immediately want to eat a pack of twizzlers and a grilled cheese sandwich. better yet, i wish i could eat a tiny triangle of my stomach over and over again, like in that one itchy and scratchy cartoon.

* when i was a novice talker, one of my favorite things to say to people was whatever they had just said to me, but with the addition of "on a bun!" if you offered me a dolly, i would have said, "dolly on a bun!" if you offered me a bun, i would have said, "bun on a bun!" you probably get the picture.

Labels: academics, i suck, worry