When In Doubt, The Books Come Out. So Do The Cats.

So. The job at Sunnydale Library begins in a week, and naturally I am one terrified librarian. What? You mean I actually have to put my Master’s to good use? Oh man. I think I will need to stock up on the beer and bubble bath for my first week on the job. For when I come home, of course.

To better prepare myself, intellectually and emotionally, I have busted out some of my old library science books and articles. Yeah, I know, all that theoretical and book knowledge can only go so far, and I will just need to get the experience, that is the best teacher. But I at least have to give myself a semblance of control. And re-affirming my progressive, radical, bleeding-heart liberal librarian ethics and values is not a bad thing. So today I have my nose buried in books, and the Internets and my cats are conspiring against me, distracting me, coaxing me into continuing my dissipated existence.

So, in an effort to connect with you, my Internets audience, I bring you pictures. First, the bedchamber here at The Hermitage:

Austen, alias Narcissus, checks out the bewitching kitty in the mirror.

My new bedding ensemble, acquired from Target, purveyors of Capitalist Whoredom. Michael hates it, I love it, and Austen clearly thinks it should be featured on HGTV
…aren’t cats supposed to be colorblind?

Austen is confused. Think I can teach him to flush?

Magdalene is officially a wretch. She never cleans up after herself.

I'm Not A Crazy Cat Lady. Yet.

So, once upon another lifetime ago, when I was young(er) and stupid(er)...well, maybe...I dated a fellow that we shall forever after affectionately call The Crap Weasel*. We had a tumultuous relationship, Ol' Crappy and I, and the last time we broke up (there were many), the drama was quite protracted. At one point, in a desperate attempt to reconcile, Crap Weasel offered me something that I never imagined: "We can get married!" (Does that count as a proposal? I don't think so, but it'd be nice to have that scalp in my belt) "We can have children!"

At the time, I was rather anti-baby, and so began to lecture him. "I don't WANT a baby, Crap Weasel. You know that. I want a family made up of pets and friends and a happy, functional couple." In the end, we went our separate ways...him to the Deep South, and I to Tampa, and Bloomington, and Sunnydale. Since those good ol' days, my stance on babies has changed, but not my views on unconventional families. There's a whole lotta room in my heart and home for friends and pets, and so in that spirit, I recently made a coupla additions to my (very) little family. No, I didn'y have twins. I'm still taking my no-baby pills, as I am still a Liberated Woman (tm), but I did acquire two little purr-balls of fur and feist, otherwise known as my kittens, Magdalene and Austen.

Magdalene's a marmalade girl who plays with her food, meows loudly when she's using the litter box, and bullies Austen.

*The little piece of food on the ground is what she scooped out and later batted around.

Austen's a black-and-white boy who follows me everywhere, including the shower, and has a purr that registers on the Richter scale.

They're little assholes, especially Magdalene, and I know they are plotting against me, now that they have infiltrated The Hermitage. But they're good company, and they are my kitties.

*All my ex-menfolk have nicknames. Crap Weasel, Idiot Steve, Big Brad, John the Saint, and the Emotional Fucktard. Guess which one I still get along with?

Most of the time, it's easy to hold homesickness at bay. Watch LOST, surf the Internets, play with the cats, worry about the job, basically just distract myself. But more and more these days, I find it catching me off-guard, in unexpected ways:
Getting emails from the IU-SLIS listserv, reminding me of upcoming events. Oh wait! I'm not a student anymore, I don't go to IU. And then I am hit by a dozen memories of the campus, my initial starry-eyed wonder of the architecture, the seasons, the small-town feel.

Listening to some of my New Age music on my Itunes. Dead Can Dance, or Loreena McKennitt especially. All of a sudden I am transported back to my first semester: autumn and winter evenings at the Fountain Park apartment, as I sat at my computer, editing articles for the JCMC and caught up in the intensity of the music, as the temperature dropped outside, and inside, all was a cozy cocoon of Michael and music and me and work.
Looking at pictures on Flikr. Just random peoples' pictures...sometimes the scenery will be so obviously autumn or winter--the sky just looks cold, and you can tell it's chilly, and I begin to miss the idea of seasons so tremendously. Most recently I saw a picture of a blue sky that had some grey, stormy clouds, and I remembered last October, the Saturday that Eric and I spent in Indy, touring bungalows and hanging out at one of the parks. The sky was similar--a chilly blue, but littered with grey clouds and late afternoon sunlight filtering through and made the clouds look even stormier. And I swung on the swings, and thought, Years from now I am going to take my children here, and they'll swing on the swings and they'll be so lucky to have seasons, even if they don't know it. I was SO CERTAIN that that would be my future. The autumn afternoon, and the certainty (no matter how delusional)--I miss them both.

It's time to go back to distracting myself. I don't want to look back too much. Otherwise I will miss whatever is going on right under my nose. And I am here now, here in Southern California. This is what matters.

Armageddon! Let's Nap.

Hmmm. Well, well, well. This is...fascinating. Unnerving, perhaps.

Right before I moved away from Florida, we got hit, big time, by Hurricane Charlie, one mean sonofabitch of a storm. Of course, this was before the other mean sonofabitch hurricanes blew through in the following weeks, and it was a year before Katrina, AKA Hurricane Motherfucker, came through, but at the time, it sucked. The winds knocked out the power at nine o'clock at night, and without a/c, light, or anything to keep us occupied, we had few choices: we could contemplate our collective navels, we could cower and cringer every time a gust of wind compromised our roof, or we could sleep. Yeah, guess what yours truly did? I must have been a narcoleptic in a past life, because hot damn, did I sleep. I slept right through the eye of the storm, which passed over us about six hours later. It was the silence of the storm's aftermath that woke me up.
The Big One that I am quickly becoming obsessed with? Yeah, I'm totally going to sleep through it, too. I decided to check out the thingy that tells about recent earthquakes in California, and hi! I'm doomed! because there was one (a 2.4 "microearthquake") on the 21st, a few miles north of me. At 7:30 in the morning. When I was sound asleep, likely dreaming of hurricanes and humidity, like any self-respecting transplanted Floridiot.

...HOW THE HELL DID I SLEEP THROUGH AN EARTHQUAKE???? I don't care how micro the damned thing was, I should have been able to feel it. But noooo. I am going to be asleep when So. Cal breaks off the continent and sets sail for parts unknown. Doooooom!

Clearly, I am a woman of reliability and action. When the world ends, let's nap on it.

In which family, traffic, and all sorts of other craziness ensue

When I lived in Indiana, for the first few months, one of the hardest things to adjust to was that there was no one around with whom I could share memories and knowledge of my past and my Florida home, who would know what I was talking about through their own experiences. In other words, I was lonely for folks that had grown up in the same place I had. It took some getting used to. But here in So Cal, I have a small consolation: I have a family of cousins about two hours away--Lynne, her husband Jack, and their two little boys. Lynne's mother and my mother were sisters, and we all moved down to Florida at the same time, and while Lynne's a bit older, we still share the same memories and knowledge of our crazy, goofy family.

So, the other day, I drove out to San Pedro to visit them. It was indescribably comforting, to be able to talk about the summer storms in Florida, the mugginess, the idiosyncrasies of our family, even the SuperTarget on Dunlawton, to someone who knew what the hell I was talking about. In my time there, I began to really appreciate the real importance of family, and feel a sense of groundedness that I had not experienced in a VERY long time. I've been moving a lot over the last few years, and ever farther from my family and my childhood home, and since I am a sentimental, gooey sap, this has not been an easy thing to do. Most of the time, I ignore it, try to get on with my work, my day, my life, but every now and then--usually in the evening, when I can hear the crickets chirp (thank god, there are crickets out here) I begin to think of my folks, my past, and wonder how the hell I got this far away, and what on earth I am doing here. But now, I can take a small measure of comfort from the nearness of my cousins.
While I was visiting, Cousin Jack picked up Panda Express for dinner. Lynne and Jack and I sat at the table, eating, while their (very energetic) boys Nicholas and Michael ran around and played, and I paused for a moment to remember the family dinners of our youth, and how my sisters and I had to sit at the kiddie table, and we would always finish our dinner before the adults and wonder off to play, because no one wanted to hear the boring conversations of the adults, who were lingering over dinner at their own table. As I watched Nicholas and Michael, a sobering thought occurred to me: I had become one of the adults having a boring (to them) conversation at the adult table. Funny how life goes like that.
Enough of this sentimental claptrap. I saw the Pacific Ocean! For the first time! It was BIG! And blue. It's hard not to be carried away with the romance of the ocean when you are seeing it for the first time, or the first time in a long time. I'm rather happy I did not waste a lot of time in seeing it.

And I got to deal with L.A. traffic (light). Intense, but I kept my head (literally, hee hee.) I know it's a lot more chaotic in L.A. proper, but I have to start somewhere, and I don't want to spend most of my time here avoiding it. I've always tried to be one who grabs the bull by its balls.

Melissa Goes to Hollywood

I blame it on the fact that I live so close to Hollywood. Closer than I used to, anyway. Or the heat--the heat is messing with my brains and good judgement. Yeah! That's it. But anyway. Today's class--which, I might add, will be a recurring lesson--is about how much Hollywood sucks, and how much I can do to remedy that.

See, Hollywood's got a problem. Its producers are demented enough to think that, Snakes on a Plane aside, the discerning American public has the patience for the crap they have been presenting for the past...ever, I guess. I mean, seriously folks...Snakes...on a plane? The insipidity of the title alone makes it worth viewing, but I dread to think of the imitation films that might flood the country. We need better crap than this?

And, if one is going to produce a crappy movie, what better way than to do an adaptation? There are so many good novels waiting to be disgraced and degraded. And there are plenty of fans out there eager to see eye-candy enact their favorite storylines.

For example, Rebecca. It's a great book, full of lots of suspense and detail of wealth and sumptuousness. It might make a better winter flick, but it's so good. And Jon Stewart would be perfect for Max de Winter...only I guess he would have to be Max de Winterstein. There could be a Jewish spin to it, I guess...he kills Rebecca because she's been showing her flaming bush to all the tribes but his!
Er, anyway. Seriously, there needs to be a screen adaptation of Rebecca. Kate Winslet as the nameless main character; Gwenyth as Rebecca. Maybe Stockard Channing as Mrs. Danvers? Can she do a British accent? And now that I think about it, Anthony Stewart Head would make a great Max de Winter. He makes moody and broody look so sexy. Oh, yum. Mmmmm. Sorry, where was I?

Independent Women

Imagine Destiny's Child playing in the background. Or maybe some Gloria Gaynor. Anything to give off an aura of independence. Because, folks, I have become one hell of an independent woman. I mean, I assembled my own furniture this week. I've never done that before; I've always simply passed along the tools to my (arguably) more competent boyfriends. (Hi John! You could assemble a desk like no other. Put that on your resume. Along with "proficient in handling high-strung, emotionally-eruptive, highly stressed femme fatales that forget their femme-ninity.) ANYWAY. This week? I totally assembled all sorts of furniture. ME. And I am getting muscle mass too. Seriously. My hands are becoming very...meaty.

But my competence does not extend to book-case bolting. For some reason, this skill evades me. Alas, it's an important one for me. Ever since my grandfather, dear ol' plan-your-work-and-work-your-plan Boppa, began buying me bookcases when I was like...two or something, he always insisted on bolting them to the walls. Because maybe he thought I was going to test my shimmying skills with $40 Wal-Mart chipboard? I don't know, really. But the habit stuck, and now I am convinced that I must BOLT MY BOOKSHELVES OR DIE. Which, considering I now live in Southern California and have an earthquake or a faultline with my name on it, lurking just around the corner, and as I have more pounds of books than the Queen has in the bank, is a distinct possibility.

So! Picture it--me, an Independent woman. About to end her days buried under a pile of Dickens, Austen, and Teasdale, because she was not plucky enough to figure out bookcase bolts before the Big One hit. My hypothetical cats will have to chew through about three layers of nineteenth century melodrama before they get to their dinner of my meaty hands.

But hey, bright side. Maybe my neighbor can take a picture of it!

101 Things

1. I hated every minute of it.
2. I had this dream that if I lived in a state that had seasons, in a nice split-level house, with two parents, that
3. I grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida
4. everything would be just dandy.
5. My maternal grandparents raised me from the time I was 10.
6. I have two sisters, and I am the baby. They will never let me forget this.
7. I studied at Newnham College, at Cambridge University, for three weeks when I was 19.
8. I love to read.
9. I believe whole-heartedly that it is my body, and no one has the right to decide what happens to it.
10. I also believe there should be a constitutional amendment protecting the institution of marriage by defining it as something in which ANYONE, of ANY sexual persuasion, can partake.
11. I believe in taxes.
12. I loved high school.
13. Wherever I visit, I like to traipse around and take pictures of old buildings.
14. I listen to Def Leppard.
15. I don’t know how to ride a bike.
16. I love, love, love making lists.
17. I am very adept at losing lists as soon as I make them.
18. One of my dreams is to live in an apartment with hardwood floors, a poky kitchen, a fireplace, and a clawfoot tub, and lots of built-in shelves
19. Another one of my dreams is to live in this apartment in Boston or London or Seattle
20. I wouldn’t try Chinese food until I was 19 years old
21. I would totally bear Jon Stewart’s children
22. I don’t know how to ride a bike.
23. I can turn my eyelids inside out.
24. I do not get motion sickness of any kind
25. I love getting stuff in the mail
26. Seeing old people dining or grocery shopping alone makes me incredibly sad.
27. I have mild backne
28. When I was five, my favorite insult was “dumb-dumb facehead”
29. When I was six, I was in love with Danger Mouse. I didn’t understand why a girl and a mouse could not live happily ever after.
30. When I was eight, I decided to write “The Bad Word Newspaper”.
31. My mother thought this was a riot.
32. When I was eleven, I wanted to be in the Baby-sitter’s Club.
33. When I was fourteen, I was convinced that if I had enough Bongo jeans and No Fear t-shirts, I would be part of the cool crowd.
34. When I was fifteen, I realized how stupid that was. I would never be part of the cool crowd. And Bongo jeans were fugly.
35. When I was sixteen, I thought I was on the road to becoming a Poet Laureate of some county.
36. I am really, really, really pissed off at Michael Brown.
37. My eyes are slightly uneven.
38. I disapprove of Wal-Mart with a fanatic intensity.
39. Christmas is my favorite holiday.
40. If I had to be an insect, I would be a cricket, because they continue singing even in the darkest part of the night.
41. I not-so-secretly envy housecats.
42. I was a born-again Christian for three years of my life.
43. And then the Christian in me died.
44. I love thunderstorms. And rain.
45. Autumn is my favorite season, and then winter.
46. I have not had cable television in five years.
47. I am an organizing fool—I love to file, organize, and clean.
48. I hate doing laundry.
49. I believe it’s better to be hated for who you are then loved for who you aren’t.
50. I read Dickens for fun.
51. I like very clicky keyboards.
52. I am a sucker for mysterious, gruff, hero characters in novels and movies.
53. I have survived two hurricanes, two tropical storms, and a tornado.
54. I have a secret fear of becoming trailer trash.
55. I snort when I laugh.
56. I feel the need to snack when I read. This does not help me to maintain my ideal weight.
57. I burp very, very loudly. But only when I drink soda.
58. I love roller coasters and water parks.
59. Another goal of mine is to work in a job where I can wear an eyebrow ring—and then get my eyebrow pierced.
60. I did not have friends until I was 12 years old.
61. A knitting blog changed my life.
62. I love mint chocolate chip ice cream, but only if it is green. If it is not green, I will not eat it.
63. The older I get, the more important family becomes to me.
64. I love make-up.
65. I am not particularly skilled at applying it.
66. If I could, I would lounge around in pajamas all day long. I lovelovelove pajamas
67. If I had to live in any era of history, and do something in particular, I would live in Victorian England and be a bluestocking.
68. I am NOT a risk-taker.
69. I used to cry regularly in gym class.
70. When I go to the beauty salon to get my hair dyed, the stylist ALWAYS runs out of my dye and has to send out for more. I have a deceptively enormous head of hair.
71. I like to eat out WAY too much
72. Among certain circles, I am known as “The Hot-tub Hottie.” This is my one wild college-years story.
73. If I were not a librarian, I would restore Victorian and Arts-and-Crafts bungalows for a living. Or be the proprietor of a witchcraft supply store.
74. You know those people, the ones that always look perfectly put together and in control of their lives? The ones that never have to root around in their purse for anything? The ones whose shoes are never scuffed, whose nail polish is never chipped, who aren’t clumsy and just exude that something? Yeah, that’s not me.
75. I really, really wish I were one of those people.
76. Sometimes I think I might go to law school some day.
77. I can daydream so well, I could make it into an Olympic sport. There should be mental Olympics.
78. I love to travel.
79. I love returning home even more.
80. I hatehatehate the sound of Styrofoam
81. I love to pluck my eyebrows
82. When I drink, I sometimes get into intellectual snubbing matches with conventionally-cute boys. This is often like shooting fish in a barrel.
83. It doesn’t matter how depressed or bummed I might be, watching re-runs of Friends will always make me feel at least a tiny, tiny bit better.
84. I love to buy gifts for people.
85. I have nightmares about tornadoes at least once a week.
86. I try to keep my watch ahead by at least five minutes
87. I have inhuman stamina when it comes to driving on road trips. It’s kind of freakish.
88. I have two sisters, and according to almost everyone, we could be triplets.
89. I cannot dance. I think it’s something in my genes.
90. In the past, when men have asked me for my number, I have sometimes given them the number 867-5309.
91. I’ve also told men that I was a lesbian. This was more effective than you might think.
92. I look really, really good in hats.
93. I love surprise parties.
94. The only surprise party anyone has ever thrown for me was one that I was duped into planning myself.
95. I have a deep and abiding love for Toyota cars.
96. I love watching fireflies
97. I have been known to do Christmas shopping in July.
98. I am from the South, and I believe in hospitality and good conversational skills. If I come into your home and you have not asked me how I am doing and offered me something to drink within the first three minutes, I will maybe hate you forever.
99. When it’s late at night and I hear strange noises in the apartment, I put on Spice World to make me feel better.
100. When I was fourteen, I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves every night for two months.
101. I like memes. Because I am essentially a self-absorbed person, and they are a good way to vent the self-absorption without forcing people to listen. You read this list of your own free will.

Okay, this is what I get for trying to be artsy.

See, I am paying out the ass to have a window seat in my living room, and an extra closet in my bedroom. Every now and then, I have misgivings about that--until late last night, when i happened to peer out the window, and saw the moon rising in the East. I had a pretty darn good view. So I thought, "Hey, I'll take a picture of the moon and the window seat!" So I did.

(Please make note of the fact that I did not capture the moon all that well. It is a wee, tiny, ickle speck in the picture. See that yellow speck, really close to the right edge of the window? That's not it. That's the streetlight. The tinier, more wee speck, a little higher up near the eve, that's the moon. I'm not so good with figuring out night pictures.)

So, I continue on with my task of organizing my desk (read: putting away reciepts and then getting distracted by Target and Overstock.com) when five minutes later, there is a knock on my door. Please note that it is past one in the morning. The only thing I can figure is that one of my neighbors is annoyed with the fact that I am playing music. Me and Dar Williams, we were rocking out last night, you see. Chagrined, I turn down the volume, go to the door, and look out the peephole. No one.

I return to my desk, and about twenty seconds later, there is another knock. I look out the peephole. Still no one. Without opening the door, I call out "Yes?" A voice responded, "It's your neighbor."

I still can't see him. And it's not very easy to carry on a conversation from behind closed doors. I'm thinking, "Oh my god, this is it. It's some drugged up cat-molesting serial killer secret alien agent who is trying to get me to open the door so he can stage a home invasion. I am GOING TO DIE before I even lived a week in California. Why the hell did I come here?"

So, of course I open the door just a little crack and did my best to sound forbidding and burly. Me! Shorty McShortsalot! "Yes?"

My neighbor demands to know (very politiely, I will add) "Did you take a picture of me?"

Apparently, he had seen me at my window, aiming my camera in his general direction. I explained (feeling very foolish) that I had been taking a picture of the moon. He explained that he was worried that he had been doing something that bothered me. (??????) Maybe he was engaged in nefarious, cat-molesting activities and got all paranoid? I don't know. Apparently I cannot be all artsy without feeling like a dumbass.

But hey! A view of the moon! That's something, right?

101 Things

1. I hated every minute of it.
2. I had this dream that if I lived in a state that had seasons, in a nice split-level house, with two parents, that
3. I grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida
4. everything would be just dandy.
5. My maternal grandparents raised me from the time I was 10.
6. I have two sisters, and I am the baby. They will never let me forget this.
7. I studied at Newnham College, at Cambridge University, for three weeks when I was 19.
8. I love to read.
9. I believe whole-heartedly that it is my body, and no one has the right to decide what happens to it.
10. I also believe there should be a constitutional amendment protecting the institution of marriage by defining it as something in which ANYONE, of ANY sexual persuasion, can partake.
11. I believe in taxes.
12. I loved high school.
13. Wherever I visit, I like to traipse around and take pictures of old buildings.
14. I listen to Def Leppard.
15. I don’t know how to ride a bike.
16. I love, love, love making lists.
17. I am very adept at losing lists as soon as I make them.
18. One of my dreams is to live in an apartment with hardwood floors, a poky kitchen, a fireplace, and a clawfoot tub, and lots of built-in shelves
19. Another one of my dreams is to live in this apartment in Boston or London or Seattle
20. I wouldn’t try Chinese food until I was 19 years old
21. I would totally bear Jon Stewart’s children
22. I don’t know how to ride a bike.
23. I can turn my eyelids inside out.
24. I do not get motion sickness of any kind
25. I love getting stuff in the mail
26. Seeing old people dining or grocery shopping alone makes me incredibly sad.
27. I have mild backne
28. When I was five, my favorite insult was “dumb-dumb facehead”
29. When I was six, I was in love with Danger Mouse. I didn’t understand why a girl and a mouse could not live happily ever after.
30. When I was eight, I decided to write “The Bad Word Newspaper”.
31. My mother thought this was a riot.
32. When I was eleven, I wanted to be in the Baby-sitter’s Club.
33. When I was fourteen, I was convinced that if I had enough Bongo jeans and No Fear t-shirts, I would be part of the cool crowd.
34. When I was fifteen, I realized how stupid that was. I would never be part of the cool crowd. And Bongo jeans were fugly.
35. When I was sixteen, I thought I was on the road to becoming a Poet Laureate of some county.
36. I am really, really, really pissed off at Michael Brown.
37. My eyes are slightly uneven.
38. I disapprove of Wal-Mart with a fanatic intensity.
39. Christmas is my favorite holiday.
40. If I had to be an insect, I would be a cricket, because they continue singing even in the darkest part of the night.
41. I not-so-secretly envy housecats.
42. I was a born-again Christian for three years of my life.
43. And then the Christian in me died.
44. I love thunderstorms. And rain.
45. Autumn is my favorite season, and then winter.
46. I have not had cable television in five years.
47. I am an organizing fool—I love to file, organize, and clean.
48. I hate doing laundry.
49. I believe it’s better to be hated for who you are then loved for who you aren’t.
50. I read Dickens for fun.
51. I like very clicky keyboards.
52. I am a sucker for mysterious, gruff, hero characters in novels and movies.
53. I have survived two hurricanes, two tropical storms, and a tornado.
54. I have a secret fear of becoming trailer trash.
55. I snort when I laugh.
56. I feel the need to snack when I read. This does not help me to maintain my ideal weight.
57. I burp very, very loudly. But only when I drink soda.
58. I love roller coasters and water parks.
59. Another goal of mine is to work in a job where I can wear an eyebrow ring—and then get my eyebrow pierced.
60. I did not have friends until I was 12 years old.
61. A knitting blog changed my life.
62. I love mint chocolate chip ice cream, but only if it is green. If it is not green, I will not eat it.
63. The older I get, the more important family becomes to me.
64. I love make-up.
65. I am not particularly skilled at applying it.
66. If I could, I would lounge around in pajamas all day long. I lovelovelove pajamas
67. If I had to live in any era of history, and do something in particular, I would live in Victorian England and be a bluestocking.
68. I am NOT a risk-taker.
69. I used to cry regularly in gym class.
70. When I go to the beauty salon to get my hair dyed, the stylist ALWAYS runs out of my dye and has to send out for more. I have a deceptively enormous head of hair.
71. I like to eat out WAY too much
72. Among certain circles, I am known as “The Hot-tub Hottie.” This is my one wild college-years story.
73. If I were not a librarian, I would restore Victorian and Arts-and-Crafts bungalows for a living. Or be the proprietor of a witchcraft supply store.
74. You know those people, the ones that always look perfectly put together and in control of their lives? The ones that never have to root around in their purse for anything? The ones whose shoes are never scuffed, whose nail polish is never chipped, who aren’t clumsy and just exude that something? Yeah, that’s not me.
75. I really, really wish I were one of those people.
76. Sometimes I think I might go to law school some day.
77. I can daydream so well, I could make it into an Olympic sport. There should be mental Olympics.
78. I love to travel.
79. I love returning home even more.
80. I hatehatehate the sound of Styrofoam
81. I love to pluck my eyebrows
82. When I drink, I sometimes get into intellectual snubbing matches with conventionally-cute boys. This is often like shooting fish in a barrel.
83. It doesn’t matter how depressed or bummed I might be, watching re-runs of Friends will always make me feel at least a tiny, tiny bit better.
84. I love to buy gifts for people.
85. I have nightmares about tornadoes at least once a week.
86. I try to keep my watch ahead by at least five minutes
87. I have inhuman stamina when it comes to driving on road trips. It’s kind of freakish.
88. I have two sisters, and according to almost everyone, we could be triplets.
89. I cannot dance. I think it’s something in my genes.
90. In the past, when men have asked me for my number, I have sometimes given them the number 867-5309.
91. I’ve also told men that I was a lesbian. This was more effective than you might think.
92. I look really, really good in hats.
93. I love surprise parties.
94. The only surprise party anyone has ever thrown for me was one that I was duped into planning myself.
95. I have a deep and abiding love for Toyota cars.
96. I love watching fireflies
97. I have been known to do Christmas shopping in July.
98. I am from the South, and I believe in hospitality and good conversational skills. If I come into your home and you have not asked me how I am doing and offered me something to drink within the first three minutes, I will maybe hate you forever.
99. When it’s late at night and I hear strange noises in the apartment, I put on Spice World to make me feel better.
100. When I was fourteen, I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves every night for two months.
101. I like memes. Because I am essentially a self-absorbed person, and they are a good way to vent the self-absorption without forcing people to listen. You read this list of your own free will.

California Dreamin'

Well, I'm here. So Cal. Eighty miles east of L.A. 100 degrees outside. Last night I had the bestest Mexican food ever.

Slowly but surely I am getting the apartment furnished. I have the majority of the furniture I need, but am lacking necessities such as towels, dishes, lamps, and cleaning supplies. I think the first few months will be spent getting back in my feet financially, and trying to fill in the gaps of the apartment. But! I have a desk, and a desk means power and maturity and organization. Sure, Mel.
And now that I have the newly-installed Internets, I am good to go. I can conquer Southern California, ooooohhh yeah. Next week I intend to acquire a couple of kitty-cats, and then it will really feel like a home. It's a little lonely, from time to time. But I still think this was a very mature and good decision to make.

Coveting Doesn't Really Count If I Don't Buy It

Something I've noticed the older I get--what my friend Jeana calls "the commodification of everything." We live in a capitalist, consumer-driven society, and if you've got the money, someone's willing to sell it, or do it to you or for you. (It's why prostitution should be legalized! Free market! It's a service, same as everything else! Yeahyeah!)

But I digress. My point is, the more disposable income we have, the more stuff there is to buy. The greater the "globalization"--i.e., the proliferation of espresso, sushi, biscotti, and panini (food is how we display our enlightened diverse, multicultual awareness) and the more disposable income, the more geegaws and doodads there are on the market that help us spend our money and get on with our yuppified, enlightened selves.

I have a point. Really.

As I begin my forays into online shopping, the extent of this commodification of everything is really dawning on me. You can get EVERYTHING online. The problem is that there is SO MUCH COOL STUFF coming on to the market every day, and it's all waiting to be bought. And there's more stuff being invented! Now, panini makers are not my thing. I'm safe from that hulking gadget, and frankly, panini makes me gag. Don't ask. But they ("they" being whoever it is that plots the demise of my checkbook) have happened upon my weakness: storage and organization. There's so many ways to store and organize and run my happy little home! And they are all available to me! Laundry sorter to cure my pile-o-dirty clothes blues! Craft cart to organize all of my crafty supplies that I never use! Wrapping paper storage boxes to store the wrapping paper on the gifts that I forget to buy for people. Because all of this stuff, it will make my life more productive, organized, fruitful, and creative! Sold to the lady in the first row, the one with the mildly OCD look in her eyes! Oh, the power the power!
Seriously, folks, it's really pathetic. Or at least, I am. But not really. Because I am self-aware, right?

Planning Less, Living More

With 6 days left to go in Indiana, there's a lot I want to do, in a very limited amount of time. But I took a good stab at it today--I spent the day in Bloomington, canoeing with Jo. It was perfect weather-sunny, with only a few clouds, and a little bit of a breeze. Not too hot. We were out on the water for a good few hours, and I can tell it now, with my uber-stiff muscles and my red and freckled nose.

It bothers me a little that in the 22 months I spent in Indiana, I did not do nearly as many of the things that I promised myself that I would. Example: I always planned to go canoeing with Jo, but it was not until my last weekend here that I hauled my ass out there. I'm a great one for making plans, but my follow-through leaves something to be desired. Sometimes I think I'd still be stuck in my mom's womb, planning my life, if Nature and doctors had not intervened. If life's what happens when you're making other plans, then I haven't really been experiencing a lot of life.

I'm not going to say "Ooooh, that will change! I am turning over a new leaf!" That's too simple--the wuss's way out. And I don't know that it will change. But I do want it to change...it'd be nice to get out there. Why, what a perfect coincidence that a big migration is occurring in my life! What an opportune time to be less lame! So, instead of saying "I'm not going to be lame, I'm going to change," I am going to set up some (ideally) attainable goals* for the next 6 to 12 months, and see in a while if I have measured up to them. And if I've planned less, and lived more.

*Goals forthcoming. Hold your damned horses!

Spice World

So, Michael and I decided to throw a little spice into our relationship. A threesome, you might ask? Nothing so raunchy. An impromptu trip to the South of France? Nothing so glamorous. Let's go for...painful. Tear-inducing, even. If you guessed S&M, guess again. We quite literally added some spice! Habanero sauce, baby! I'm not even sure what exactly a habanero is, but you can sure as shit bet that I won't be putting it in my mouth again any time soon.

So, the story: Boy and girl go out to dinner. Boy orders a sammich which had a sauce forbodingly called "habanero hellfire." Boy gamely digs into sammich, only to immediately begin sweating, sniffling, and gulping down Girl's water. Girl decides she's got nads as big as Boy's, and so bites into sammich too. Girl's eyes immediately water, and steam shoots out of her ears and nostrils. Boy laughs at her until his pain overcomes him. Boy and girl realize that they are drawn closer in their physical discomfort. And that they are dumb as hell for eating habanero hellfire.

Next time, I'll just take the whips and chains, please. Cat-o-nine tails, anyone?

Win a Date With Indy!

Seeing as how I am going to be headed West in less than 10 days, I figured that today would be a date-with-Indy day. Let's just make this clear: It's never very romantic, my dates with Indy. It's Dutch style all the way. There's no flowers unless I buy them. And there's sure as heck no kissing--I love Indy, but even I have my limits.

There is, however, a lot of driving. Really, date-with-Indy is just a bunch of errands, with some detours in the really classy areas, just to give it a glamorous feel. And usually Indy and I have this tradition where I'll get lost on the date, at least once. Indy likes to produce a lot of obstacles for us...it doesn't like me too getting close, you see, so there's usually a lot of dead-ends, detours, road-closures, and roads that abruptly change directions and end in Broad Ripple Canal. What can I say? Indy likes to keep the spice in our relationship. Today's date-with-Indy typical: a run to Staples for more boxes, and I decided to spend a little time at the Humane Society, getting some quality time with some little purr-balls. Top it off with some picture-taking in Meridian Kessler, and sha-zam! Another date with Indy, happily completed.

The detour I took today, in my quest for the Humane Society, directed me into an area I had never ventured before: just your standard lower-middle-class neighborhood, with some small older houses, shabby but still pretty, set amidst the lush greenery that I have not yet learned to associate with the Midwest summers. It wasn't nearly as glamorous as Meridian-Kessler, but somehow so much more...real. I think, whenever I remember the Midwest and Indy, I will remember that humble, sweet little area first. It was honest, unpretentious, and yet proud.

On the Wit and Wisdom of Fortune Cookies (In Bed)

Today Michael and I ran some errands and found ourselves in downtown Indy for longer than expected, and so Michael introduced me to the delights of Panda Express. How I went 26 years without being aware of its cheapy-goodness, I will never know. After glutting ourselves on lots of orange chicken and fried rice, we busted into our fortune cookies (simultaneously; I've always insisted on that, and somehow it's a completely ubiquitous tradition. Anyone else follow this?). Anyhow, my fortune was about someone running me off the road with a semi, or some nonsense. Michael's fortune was a little more amusing:
"Spring has sprung. New life is blooming!"

He read it aloud to me, and then eyed me suspiciously. "Are you pregnant?"