Sunday, January 29, 2006

on friday i saw a picture of what looked like a macrame vulva, but that's not what this is about.

if there was ever a low point in the lowness that is pms, yesterday was it. first alvin and i waited too long for our caffeine fix and life became painful and difficult. also, i was on a mission to find a new pair of jeans that fit, and THAT was a stupid thing to do while i'm bloated and in a bad mood but i did it anyway. i tried on jeans at several different stores and got fed up after cutting my leg on a strangely sharp tag on this one pair of jeans that didn't fit anyway. alvin, being the sweetheart that he is but with his fingers crossed because he didn't really mean it, offered to drive me to the outlet mall half an hour away to see if i could find some decent jeans there. so off to the outlet mall we went. basically, the morning was full of good-intentioned bad ideas.

the outlet thing didn't turn out as planned, and there was lots of angsting on my part about how much shopping sucks & the neverending torture that is my life. alvin tried to be nice, he really did, and last night we went out and had a pleasant time. or maybe it just seemed pleasant because there was coffee involved, i don't know. unfortunately, things went downhill later when he hung a wet towel on our new bed and when i asked him to please hang it up in the bathroom, he threw it into the bathroom instead, narrowly missing smacking me in the head and causing yet another angsty outburst from moi about not throwing wet towels at pmsing chicks. doesn't he know i'm delicate like a flower?

today is better and the angst is mostly gone. also, i found some jeans that almost fit, though not exactly how they should. i wish the jean designer people would quit making all jeans ultra low rise, because i've figured out (after a couple of years of thinking i'm shaped wrong) that it's not me, it's them. where the fuck are the normal jeans? what if i don't want my ass hanging out? the jeans i bought today claim that your ass won't hang out of them, which is almost true. only my underwear are visible. doesn't it make sense that if jeans are now cut so low that there's a new term to describe the scary new trend--and a website full of pictures dedicated to the topic--that maybe there's a problem? all i'm asking for are jeans that cover the necessary parts that most people, including me, don't wanna see. but you know, you take what you can get and right now all i can get is low rise.

oh, i promised to say something nice this time, didn't i? dooce is coming to austin for SXSW, which totally makes me happy even if i'd never see her in a million years unless i paid lots of money to hear her talk or just followed her around, though i'd never do that because it's creepy and i have a strict no-stalking policy. as of today.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

if you can't say something nice, blog about it.

i've intentionally avoided posting anything since last week because anything i say will undoubtedly sound like this: whine whine whine and then more whining (see below). because pms is here again! it's infiltrating every aspect of my existence and making me hate everything. i'm thinking i should mostly avoid spreading this particular type of love, much like one should avoid spreading colds or, say, herpes. please.

pms makes me remember all the bad things and totally forget the good. as if there is any good. so in the spirit of unhappy pms-dom, where i'm currently hanging out, here is a recap of the last week:

wednesday: class made me want to cry and the resulting unhappiness forced me to eat a huge piece of cake. cake=good. class=bad. people=bad. life=bad.

thursday: in a moment of stupidity and love for our old ass wood kitchen floor, i decided to clean the entire floor by hand with a sponge. and special wood cleaner stuff. this was stupid of me only because of what happened on sunday.

friday: otherwise known as the day i realized i put a 37 cent stamp on our property tax bill when i mailed it last week, instead of a new first class/39 cent stamp. a half hour of sobbing ensued.

saturday: superb annoyance mitigated by alvin being truly nice and helpful. normally i'm all about the niceness but sometimes he's so nice that i don't know what to do about it. i'm like, quit being so freaking nice! i can't deal with it! do something bad! you see, the niceness and pms are completely incompatible so it confuses me.

sunday: there was rain, and there were dogs, and there was mud, and my pretty kitchen floor is no more.

monday & tuesday: i sat in class and pretended to pay attention but really i thought about the sekrit lives of the other students, including this one dude i have class with who totally reminds me of strong sad. he looks like him, and, most notably, he sounds like him--it's so not a good thing. and since i'm completely paranoid that someone i go to school with is going to read this, i will refrain from saying anything more.

next week: an update full of happiness, promise.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

this modern world.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

this is totally off topic, but drawn together? it's all about the gratuitous nastiness.

i'm not sure what to say about school--my first class yesterday was fine (fun and interesting, even) and i was all like, i can do this! and then today's class was exhausting and intimidating and made me want to crawl into bed and not come out ever again except to eat ice cream and cry. i'm not even sure why today was so bad, though maybe it was because everyone in class knew each other and i completely choked when introducing myself and the professor reminds me of a certain ex-boyfriend that i'd rather not be reminded of. and the sun was shining through the window right in my eyes for half the class! so i guess i have reasons, but still.

so tonight all i wanted was an iced mocha latte because i was pretty sure it would make me happy. it did and all was going well until the five seconds when i set my mocha down and alvin picked it up and DRANK THE REST OF IT which he knows is so completely unacceptable (he claims he didn't realize he was drinking it). it then became imperative that i get a piece of cake, because dammit i was determined to enjoy SOMETHING tonight and the mocha wasn't meant to be. (note to self: alcohol, duh)

while acquiring cake alvin and i ran into a friend we haven't seen in awhile. she teaches middle school at one of the more challenging schools in town--and she's hilarious, which i imagine is how she stays sane at work...and why the following happened:

teacher person: OH MY GOD Y'ALL I'M GOING TO BE FIRED!!

me: why?

teacher person: BECAUSE TODAY ONE OF MY STUDENTS SAID 'FUCK YOU' TO ME!

me: yeah, and?

bad teacher person: AND BEFORE I COULD STOP MYSELF I TOLD HIM HE DIDN'T HAVE A DICK BIG ENOUGH!

why couldn't my teachers be that cool?

Sunday, January 15, 2006

kill your television.

alvin's been sick since late last week or is perhaps pretending to be sick so i'll be extra nice, i can't tell. he does this thing where he acts completely well until i ask how he's feeling and then he's like, cough cough, i don't feel so good can you get me another glass of water and why's it so cold in here sniff? i think this means alvin is being himself, so he's probably fine.

but since he claims not to feel good we rented a couple of dvds to watch over the weekend--the 40-year-old virgin and the chumscrubber. the 40-year-old virgin was surprisingly good...i'm not so sure about the chumscrubber, which made me feel disturbed and like ever having children would be dooming them to a life of miserable failure and it would be my fault. also, like i should never move to the suburbs. i'm not sure if i can actually like something that made me feel so dirty, and not even in a GOOD way, but the apocalyptic suburban don't live like this message wasn't lost on me. and if i were ever as dense as the parents in that movie i would just go ahead and just kill myself, thanks. or maybe move to the inner city. maybe that would help. and if not, then kill myself.

i watched two or three other movies but i'm going to stop there lest i sound like a tv slut, which i'm trying not to be and really truly wouldn't be if somebody would for the love of god turn off my cable already. a certain cable company needs to take nike's advice and just fucking do it.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

the near death of pig dog.

beagle dog tried to commit suicide today. i was walking through the front gate after getting home and i thought he was running out to meet me because he missed me, but no. what he really wanted to do was dart out the gate and sprint into the the path of an oncoming SUV. i was pretty sure he was going to be squished so i squeezed my eyes shut so i wouldn't have to watch the squish happen. the SUV miraculously avoided him because apparently there is a god who doesn't want me to have to explain to any previous beagle dog owners that he had been squished. because my first thought was oh my god he's going to die! followed by, oh shit i'm going to have to tell his foster mom! the latter realization was almost as bad as the former so really, both our asses were saved when he avoided death.

alvin dragged his sick self out of bed and helped me look for beagle dog, whom last i saw was running full speed away from me. i was pretty sure we'd never find him and i started having visions of staying up all night, wandering the neighborhood and calling beagle dog's name, or hanging lost dog posters on telephone poles or finding him squished in the street. that turned out not to be the case, though, and we found him pretty quickly--he ran only as far as the nearest cat with a bowl of food. the cat was trying to defend his food, unsuccessfully, and pig dog ate most of it before we could drag him home and he was like i wanna go baaaaaaack. and i was so not happy that he escaped but at least he wasn't squished.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

earrings.

i spent about two hours today trying to make fancy earrings for my mom's birthday present. it wasn't working out so i settled on easy instead of fancy and about 10 minutes later i had made these:



they're simple but pretty and i think she'll like them since she kind of likes anything i make, like the time in third grade that i made this painted clay rendition of a fish that so totally did not look like a fish but nonetheless is still being displayed in the dining room at my parents' house because my mom thinks it's great. even though every time i visit them i'm like, what is that still doing here? there's no accounting for taste. so she should like the earrings.

and the above picture isn't great, but it does underscore our need for a new camera and a new dining room table and maybe a new photographer.

four things*

four jobs i've had:
1. transcriber
2. coffee shop person (or, as my supervisor lovingly? called me: bar wench)
3. writer (unpaid)
4. ebayer (paid)

four movies i could watch over and over:
1. amelie
2. the little mermaid
3. beetlejuice
4. fried green tomatoes

four places i've lived:
1. houston
2. del rio
3. austin
(texas is a big state)
4. chapel hill, nc

(feel like i'm filling out a job application--jobs held? past addresses? SKILLS? EDUCATION? WHY SHOULD WE HIRE YOU?!?!)

four tv shows i love to watch:
1. desperate housewives
2. south park
3. grey's anatomy
4. law & order

four places i've been on vacation:
1. asheville, nc
2. providence, ri
3. new orleans
4. northern california
(apparently i only visit coastal states)

four websites i visit daily:
1. cnn
2. google
3. salon
4. craigslist

four of my favorite foods:
1. dark chocolate
2. cheese enchiladas
3. sandwiches
4. fresh coffee

four places i'd rather be:
1. geneva, switzerland
2. asleep
3. outside, but only if it's cold but i'm warm & the sky is the right shade of blue & i feel like being outside. ok, for real, i like it inside.
4. california (i'd totally go outside--willingly--if i was in california)

four albums i can't live without:
1. belle & sebastian: dear catastrophe waitress
2. modest mouse: good news for people who love bad news
3. eliza gilkyson: hard times in babylon
4. inviolet: living backwards

four random things about me:
1. most of this information is already in my blog, albeit not in list form
2. i wish i had unlimited funds to remodel my house
3. i'm making earrings for my mom for her birthday
4. i like parentheses. can you tell?

*i think you people know enough about me to be me. and because i'm tired of myself, i'm limiting myself to one sarah blog list a year and this is it.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

i'm so glad yesterday is over.

yesterday was a long long day. orientation was helpful--i got advising out of the way, met people, and was told why i should be very afraid, even though it'll be fun but stressful but fun. the incoming class of students seems huge--it's about 55 people, with a ratio of women to men at about 10:1. this would be a great place for all five guys in the program to pick up chicks if, you know, they were interested in that.

everyone i met was so incredibly nice that i again wonder if i'm too cynical for this program. i'm nice but in a make fun of you till you nearly cry or want to throw things at me and then tell you i'm just kidding and offer to help you sorta way. that's probably not so acceptable when i'm dealing with clients and especially after i signed that code of ethics thingie that i need to remember to read sometime. do you people know how scary it is to hear that i'm going to have clients? as of this fall when i start my field placement? that sounds so grown up! as if.

and i really need to find the warped sense of humor people. i know they're out there. they can't all be sugary sweet. can they?

so yesterday was also good because i started to feel better, sort of i think. the hacking cough has been replaced with sneezing and i'm totally hopeful that the germs are being evicted. i've never been so thankful for sneezing in my life.

also also last night alvin did something quite unprecedented and helped clean the house which i was completely grateful for because, for instance, in our living room it looked like the christmas tree exploded:



which it kind of did. that's what happened when i took the ornaments and lights off the dead tree a week ago, and it probably wouldn't have happened if i didn't have to undo alvin's lighting display. i forget this every year (note to self: remember next time), but he likes wrapping christmas trees up and down with lights. most people, they stop with the lights when they get to the top. alvin, he gets to the top and goes back down. i think he wanted to see whether he could make the tree catch fire. it didn't, but getting the many light strands off the dead branches caused all the needles to poke holes in me and then fall to the floor.

i vacuumed up most of it until the vacuum was like, fuck this i quit, and then i was like, yeah me too. i left the rest of the pine needles on the floor and just frequently glared at that one corner of the room for not being clean. alvin made everything better by fixing the vacuum and then really truly vacuuming, which i totally didn't expect. i asked him to sweep the stairs and when he ended up sweeping & vacuuming it made my night. god, i never thought i'd say something that sad. yay, marriage.

(other note to self: buy fake christmas tree.)

Sunday, January 08, 2006

avoiding the contage.

so this cold that i've had since we got back from vacation hasn't quite gone away. it turned into a hacking cough last week and i thought i was getting better, but no. yesterday i decided i had had enough of staying up all night coughing, and, in an attempt to get better before my very incredibly mandatory (or so they say) orientation tomorrow, i went to the doctor. but since this is a weekend, "the doctor" actually means "the urgent care clinic" which is more like assembly line health care. i can't complain too much, though, because i was in an out in an hour and i don't think i was exposed to many germs that are too much worse than the ones i'm already harboring, except for the one guy who had the flu and i wasn't anywhere near him. the nice doctor i saw for all of two minutes (maybe, if you counted really slowly) said that 'tis the season for bronchitis and gave me a perscription for some stuff and some other stuff, the other stuff being stuff that the pharmacy called a "controlled substance." i'm really digging the controlled substance because it helped me sleep without coughing. all.night.long. coincidentally--or perhaps not--i also had HRMS dreams last night. alas, none involved trent. or monkeys.

i'm not sure that i'm going to feel better by tomorrow morning, and if not i'm not sure that i want to hang out for nine hours of orientation where i'm supposed to be paying attention. also not sure if i'm contagious or how long i'm contagious or just how mandatory mandatory really is when potentially contagious diseases are involved. like alvin said, please don't contage me. i don't feel horribly bad, but i don't feel good either. but i probably can't afford to miss orientation. sniff. (cough hack wheeze)

Saturday, January 07, 2006

sweet dreams are made of this.

i had this great dream last night where i met trent at a NIN concert that was held in a parking garage full of cars. um, the parking garage full of cars part wasn't great, but the trent meeting part was. dream trent was very polite and attentive and sweet and he hugged me. twice. he also totally wanted me and i know this because he gave me an i want you look. unfortunately for me, i was dressed in a retarded outfit that consisted of actual pieces of clothing from my wardrobe that should never be paired together in real life, and i couldn't find my pants. they were lost in the parking garage and i kept thinking, if i could just find my pants i wouldn't look so stupid. trent didn't seem to notice that i was pantless and looked ridiculous. maybe he just didn't look down.

the truly unfortunate thing is that, upon waking, the fond feelings i used to have for trent back before he turned all L.A.? they're baaaack. i seem to suffer from the phoebe problem, which consists of arbitrarily liking and disliking people based on dreams i have about them. the only good thing to be said for this is it's only applicable to people i don't really know. i'm hoping that somebody can talk me out of liking him because life is easier when i don't have crushes on completely unattainable celebrities who reek of L.A. and totally would not want me in real life.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

the holiday rundown, a week later.

houston: wasn't so bad. we spent a couple of mostly enjoyable days with my family at my grandma's house, though alvin and i stayed at a very nasty embassy suites that should be condemned, leveled, and made into a shopping mall because it was that awful. alvin deserves an award for being very good and not at all complainy about putting up with my family for a full 12 hours on christmas day. for christmas i got a lovely ipod nano from my parents and also, for reasons i'm not sure about, a liter of mexican vanilla that is made with ingredients that are known to cause liver failure and internal bleeding. they love me, they love me not, they love me, they want my internal organs to stop working while i bleed to death? need to ask them about that.

savannah: i've wanted to visit since i read midnight in the garden of good and evil. the town is small and historic with lots of parks, treacherous cobblestone, nice people, and many varieties of grits. alvin and i slept a lot and ate a lot and walked around a lot (mostly looking for coffee and invariably ending up at starbucks--the only place that was open past 9 pm--at least twice a day). but the best part of our trip, sleeping aside, was the tour 0f mercer house that was ostensibly all about the antiques that jim williams collected while he lived there. i think we were all like, yeah, this 900 year old vase is nice and all, but we wanna hear about the death and mayhem that we KNOW happened here because we read the book. after the tour was over the person standing next to me asked the tour guide where in the house the murder took place, to which she repsonded that mr. williams was acquitted of all charges. and then she STILL wouldn't tell us where the unofficial murder happened. pssst...the study. (the butler did it, with the candlestick.)

flying: the flight to savannah was mostly terror-free. my least favorite part of flying is takeoff but the little girl in the seat in front of me made it all better. she was about three, and i figured she'd be freaked out during takeoff. isn't everyone? but no, apparently this particular child was above being afraid, because we started the trek down the runway and the whole time she was saying: wheee! wheee! wheee! and it was so funny that i almost forgot that i was freaked out. i was much better on this flight than any previous flights, and as alvin pointed out there were no fingernail marks in his skin when we landed. that's progress.

the flight back was less fun because the airport people couldn't decide whether or not our flight was going to be delayed for three hours (it wasn't), so in the meantime i ate a hamburger and ended up sorely regretting that decision. and then there was the turbulence. maybe i'm just hyper-aware of these things, but i've never ever, until this particular flight, felt the plane rock from side to side. what the hell was that? it was like being on a boat and not even the dramamine helped it. i was horribly jealous of alvin, who was not only able to read a book during the plane-swaying but also claimed he couldn't feel it. gah. liar.

and i was doing ok, really, until the ground disappeared. ok, not so much the ground as the lights on the ground. it didn't occur to me at the time that either clouds were obscuring the lights or that we were flying over vacant land. what did occur to me was that we had become real-life victims of the langoliers and that, obviously, the ground really had disappeared and we were going to die. and it got worse when i overheard the flight attendent say that it was freeeezing in the cockpit and i was like, oh my god the ground has disappeared AND the pilots are going to freeze to death and who's going to fly the plane we're going to diiiiieeeee. btw, this is what i mean by irrational fears. so while i thought after that first flight that i had gotten over my fear of flying, it turns out that i've only gotten over the god-awful fear of flying during the day. i still need to work on the flying at night bit, preferably by avoiding it. to my credit i was very quiet about the langolier incident; i closed my window when the ground went away and when i opened it again later, the ground had reappeard and all was well, er, better again.

and, finally, new years: i entertained kate and linda by falling asleep well before midnight after spending most of the evening complaining about not feeling good. go me--i really know how to party. like an 80 year old.