Oh, the insanity. November 25, 2008

So, first of all, apologies for the lack of posts AT ALL in the last two or three weeks. Can’t even remember how long it’s been. Anyway, the excuses abound, but the main reason that I’m lacking in the communication department is laziness. I was too lazy to find something about that time to tell you about. I would have blathered on and on about the dinner party, but Miriam already knows all the details, and none of the rest of you are here for any of that.

 

In other news, I have had tons of altibajos in the last two weeks (love that word… Spanish for “ups and downs”) and there’s probably plenty I could have talked about, but for some reason, whining is less appealing when it’s on the world wide web. There will be continued posting, but the posts will continue to be few and far between as final creep ever-closer. Gross.

 

Also: HAPPY 50th POST EVERYBODY! I know that’s absurd… but I don’t know of it’s absurd because the number is too high or too low… Whatever. Happy 50th to all of you! And thanks to everyone who’s left a note to tell me what you think! Special gold medal to Mirie, for being the bestest blog-reading friend in the history of bestest friends.

Twitterpated November 7, 2008

 

Heh. Yeah, I said that too, Bambi. Just you wait…

 

I don’t want to turn into one of those chicks that only ever talks about the cute boy. I think it’s stupid, because there’s more to life than that. And if that chick ever gets the guy, he’s still all she talks about, and she stops hanging out with her friends and only ever hangs out with him… and then they break up and her whole world shatters. Thanks but no thanks. I’ll wait for the next train.

 

But seriously… I think I’m at least slightly messed up in that regard. I think about CFB a lot. When I see him, I get butterflies. I know that I talk about him at least once at every meal, and when he talks to me I think about it all day, analyzing it. Mostly trying to make sure that I let him know I like him without flinging myself at him like the girlies in his harem.

 

WARNING: If you do not want to read what is basically a twelve-year-old’s diary entry, stop here and have a nice day. You do NOT HAVE to read what is below. Not even you, Miriam. I’m only putting this down for my own mental health, in the hopes that I get it out of my head. Feel free to consider this the end of the entry.

 

But today I can’t stop thinking about him at all. Today in class he complimented my hat (not important, except that I was wearing one and don’t usually) and made me kind of giddy, but then class proceeded as usual from there. We always talk in class, but it’s usually about silly stuff. He mentioned it was his roommate’s birthday and I told him to pass along birthday wishes from me. I complimented his No-Shave-November scruff, and he said he was getting a haircut. Blah blah blah… then later he flirted with me a tiny bit, but that wasn’t unusual. It was after class that I got my surprise.

 

On a typical day we’ll either leave the classroom together, and then walk to lunch, or one of us will end up leaving first and we don’t walk together. If I leave first, and he’s right behind me, I’ll slow up a little and wait under the pretense of asking about his plans for that night. Obviously that’s a delicate thing, because I don’t want to be sketchy. But today he left first, so I figured that was the last I’d see of him.

 

When I got to the stairs, I was a few people behind him. I saw him look back up the stairs, looking for something/someone. To be honest, I told myself it was for another girl in class who is a part of the flock of groupies. I did consider that it was for me, but I’m trying to be pragmatic. To my utter and total shock, I got outside and he was standing there, waiting. When I walked over, he fell right in step and asked about my weekend plans. He walked with me to lunch.

 

I’m so surprised. I did not expect him to do that. He never has before. I always thought he was kind of a passive friend– he let me initiate because I usually did. But we’ve gone to lunch separately a lot recently because I’ve been hesitant… I didn’t want to fling myself at him. But then today he initiated. Which has pretty much boggled my mind. I’ve never seen him seek out one of his harem-girls… this is good news. Very good news.

 

So that’s my story for today. Also– the eye infection is totally gone, but I have a tiny scar on my cornea. But I can wear contacts again! CELEBRATE!

Return of the FAIL. September 16, 2008

I am so bad at remembering to write in this. I try to think of it as a diary, or a journal, but I always shy away from naming names, or delving into events that are much too personal. And that’s not what I would do if I were keeping a journal. I would probably bitch even more than I currently do, and I’d brag and I’d tell stories about the stupid things I do all day…

 

But I don’t do that. And 6 days out of seven I feel like I have nothing to tell. Days are comprised of classes, meals with friends, and homework (or avoiding homework). I will do my best to keep thinking of little things to share.

 

Last night I attended a concert by the River City Brass Band. It was amazing! THey were so good, and there was a xylophonist who just blew my mind with how well (and how fast!) he played that thing! Their songs were well chosen and upbeat, the complexity of the music was not lost on us, but they played it with ease and made it seem flawless. I was completely flabbergasted! And really glad I went– I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been required for a class.

 

I fell in love with the pieces “American Civil War Fantasy” and …uh, something else I can’t remember, and I was absolutely ENTHRALLED when they played Hoedown (Rodeo) which no one knows by its name, but it’s in every single western-themed movie EVAR. It makes me squee.

 

During the concert I finished knitting my beret, which is huge-mongous and must wait until I have built up enough attitude to pull it off. It’s seriously bigger than my head… like I can pull it down to my neck. So, I’m really bad at reading patterns.

 

And things are looking up as far as that list of things to do that I posted WAY back in July-ish (see “EPIC FAIL. Part of a Balanced Breakfast”)

GOALS TO BE COMPLETED BEFORE AUGUST 23rd:

~ Lose 10 pounds.

~ Discover why the f*ck I’m so tired.

~ Find a way to remember to actually post on this damn thing.

I have lost about ten pounds, solved the tired problem for the most part (I still have a tendency to consider one am a suitable bedtime, even though I have an eight am class…) and I’m working toward remembering how to post on this. And I’m clearly not as grumpy as I was back then! YAY! I finished up chapter 11 of my story, and sent that to Miriam (thank you Mirie!) and I’m working on an outline of an original story that came back to haunt me, so the creative juices are flowing, and hopefully the homework will not be neglected in order to satisfy the writing drive. But if that happens, c’est la vie. I’ll either make money as an auhor someday, or as an accountant. We’ll see what happens.

There’s that word again– ‘heavy’. Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the earth’s gravitational pull? August 28, 2008

Heh, it took me a while but I found a BttF quote that fits my topic.

 

Boys and girls, today I am going give the obligatory blog-rant about Body Acceptance. Or as most blogs want to call it, Fat Acceptance. <See blogs like How to Eat a Cheeseburger (howtoeatacheeseburger.wordpress.com), and Shapely Prose (www.kateharding.net).>

 

Truths I hold to be self-evident:

• I do not have the ‘perfect body’.
• I do not want the ‘perfect body’.
• I am lazy.
• I  love food.
• The first two mean that I do not care about having the ‘perfect body’, nor do I want to put in the effort to attain the ‘perfect body’.
• The third and fourth mean that I will tend toward the rounded, or ‘fat’ body type.
• However, I do not desire to be ‘fat’ because personally, I find ‘fat’ unattractive.

 

Author’s Note: I emphasize personally because I know that there are others who find that curvier is better, and would disagree that ‘fat’ is unattractive. I do not make the blanket-statement that fat is unattractive, merely that I personally find it to be so. I also hate the word ‘fat’, but I refuse to be politically correct about it and use terms like ‘heavy’ or ‘plus-size’. So instead I will ‘quote’ it, to remind everyone that the term ‘fat’ is subjective, and there is no general definition. I will not assign a dress size, or pound quantity to determine what ‘fat’ is.

 

So while I may seem hypocritical, the truth is that I hold with body acceptance, but not fat acceptance. Personal philosophy is that if I am comfortable with my body at a certain weight, then that’s fine. If at any point I become uncomfortable, or the clothes that fit at the comfortable weight cease to fit as well, then healthy diet and excercise is acceptable. I also try not to go by the numbers, because I think I weigh about 10 pounds more than I look like I weigh, therefore striving to weigh 115 pounds may be a bad life choice. I like who I am, and I don’t want to be unhealthy, or to look like I just survived the Holocaust.

 

So I guess while I have moved beyond striving to look like death warmed over, I have fallen short of fat acceptance. Does that put me at the happy medium, or do I need to seek to reach that next level of celestial understanding? I feel guilty for dieting, and I feel guilty for not dieting. I can’t accept being ‘fat’, but I can’t agree that we should all look like MK Olsen. I think that there is a curvy, healthy, happy place that we can all strive toward that is not a standard weight, or BMI, or dress size. And when magazines describe a model that is slowly and painfully dying as her insides consume themselves out of want for food as sexy and hot, but then make a point of the statistic that most men prefer curves, they leave us all wondering what that standard of beauty that we are all striving toward actually means.

 

According to every single man I’ve ever asked, men like proportional women. We need to be able to stand up straight, without breaking our spines because there’s not enough muscle in our 18-inch waist to hold up our 40-inch bust. It seems to me that most men instinctively understand that our bodies were created with purpose. No one can deny that biceps are for lifting, hamstrings and quadriceps, are for walking, and fingers are for fine detail jobs. In the same way, hips were intended to cradle unborn children, not just to swing about whilst we stomp up and down a straight, elevated walkway in order for people to admire our clothes. Our waists are muscled to help us lift, and walk, and to do work, not just to cinch and shrink and use as bait for men. And everyone knows what the purpose of the part-of-us-that-requires-a-bra is. (I’m not being immature, I just don’t want creepy people searching for that certain anatomy on the internet to hit on this site just because that keyword is here.)

 

So I think that people who work out in order to reach their physical peak, and to be in the best possible form have the right idea. I admire them, and their determination to take the best care of the only body they were given. There is a certain beauty to a body that is well cared-for, and that is healthy.

 

SOPHOMORIC REASONING: There is nothing sexier than being healthy, confident, and comfortable with yourself. And that goes for guys too. As a girl, and even more so as a college sophomore, I totally get the whole pressure-to-look-a-certain-way. I get it better than most adult women do, as far as I’m concerned. But even if I want to try to deny that there is a certain human form that is more attractive than others, I have to admit that I am neither comfortable nor confident when there is an inner tube of fat ringing my waist and hips. So it’s pretty hard to think you’re attractive when you feel ‘fat’.

The Great American Melding Pot. August 17, 2008

Watching the Olympics always puts odd questions into my head. It throws the ridiculousness of our wars into sharp relief, it makes these boundaries that we’ve thrown up seem preposterous, and it brings out odd senses of loyalty in us that don’t exist as strongly otherwise.

 

I found myself cheering for Constantina Tomescu-Dita yesterday in the Women’s 25 mile Marathon. It wasn’t because she was about a half a mile ahead of the other ladies. It wasn’t because she was 38 and was about to be the oldest marathon champion in history. It was because she is Romanian, and being a little more than a quarter Romanian myself I wanted to see her win. Honestly, those were the thoughts in my head. I cheered for her because she was Romanian, and I wanted her to bring that honor to her country.

 

It’s stupid, really. I’m an American. I’ve never left the United States in my life. I am four generations down from the ancestors who came over on the boat. But my paternal grandparents are strongly Romanian, with my grandfather being 100% and my grandmother half Romanian-half Ukrainian. So where does this loyalty come from? It’s not like I know anything about Romania, other than what I learned in school with everyone else. I’m not Ukrainian Orthodox, and I don’t think there’s anything particularly Romanian or Ukrainian about me. I look very much the Irish-German I got from my mother’s side. But that’s the other thing. What is it about Americans that we’re so proud of coming from everywhere else in the world?

 

Immigrants who land on our shores fight to be able to say “I am an American.” (Or in most cases, “Soy Americano”…) We are of the most sought-after nationality. But we pride ourselves in being from everywhere else. You don’t hear people in Italy saying that their grandparents were Albanian. You don’t hear the English bragging about their French ancestry (although who would?). No other country is so focused on being from all the other corners of the world.

 

I have a professor in college who is Irish. He says all the time that he cannot believe how many people say to him, “Oh you’re Irish! I’m Irish too!” And he has to keep himself from saying “No, you’re not. You’re American. Because you’re not Irish unless you were born in Ireland. You may have Irish ancestors, but you’re an American.” Why do we focus so much on our geneaology like that? Is it a method to stand apart from the crowd? Am I proud of my Romanian blood because it makes me a little more unique? Or is it because we’re Americans, and we are plagued with nothing ever being enough? It’s not enough to be American; we have to be everything else too. We have to be able to claim the world in ourselves, to be able to pretend that in all our American majesty we’ve united the global bloodlines, and brought everyone together.

 

We brought the world’s people together, and we’ve made them fat. How’s that for world unity?

Attention is like bills. August 15, 2008

I pay neither, nor do I know what to do with them.

 

Suddenly in the last two days, I have recieved three comments from two readers THAT AREN’T MIRIAM! I don’t think it ever really occurred to me that eventually other people would comment.  I’ll never admit that I secretly hoped and prayed that people would read and let me know what they thought. It may have started that way, but by the third post it became a kind of journal-sharing thing with a best friend who moved away. So while I understood that this was on the internet for everyone to read, I remained convinced (and disappointed) that only my friend was reading any of it.

 

But now I have readers! I feel an odd obligation to start talking about issues that you guys might care about, but then I realize that I know little about current events except for which Olympians are totally buff and delicious, so I should avoid talking about current events. (BTW James Blake = teh hotness.)

 

So for now at least, I’ll keep talking about the things in my life that I think need to be brought to light. I think there’s more to be said about the life of the average teenager than anyone gives them credit for. And I don’t mean Meg Cabot’s versions of teenager-hood, in which all the girls are misunderstood, pretty (and convinced otherwise) and always wind up getting with the quarterback next door. There are no happy endings in teenager-hood, because there is no ending. We go from pimpled thirteens to less-pimpled nineteens, and the geekiness, the awkwardness, and the need for reassurance go nowhere. If I could turn my life into a Meg Cabot book, you can bet I would be dating a cute little dork up at school, and we’d already have ridden off into our sunset. But things keep moving and changing and there are things we have to learn from the moving and the changing. And I like to put all of that into words. It’s kinda what I do.

 

So this post, for example, has metamorphosed from “HAY COOL I GOT READERZ!” into a philosophical discussion of happy endings and why there are none.  Even when I try to approach something seriously, I mess up and wind up babbling about something entirely different. But that’s the beauty of having a blog. You guys can’t shut me up!! MWAHAHAHA!

 

Except, maybe you should be able to. For the good of mankind and all that jazz. *shrug*

Pockets. August 13, 2008

This is an old rant that I wrote a long long time ago (maybe at the beginning of summer…;)) that I recently rediscovered on my computer and decided to upload for your enjoyment!

~~~

I’m not going to pretend to be all cool and disaffected. I do care what people think of me. I care a lot. But I can’t see why what they think should outrank what feels right in the moment. (AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am NOT trying to advise that one should always live ‘in the moment’ and always ‘do what feels right’. That type of thinking can lead to bad things like DEATH. I’m just saying that if you’re at Macy’s and there’s a really cute top on sale, and you try it on and it fits PERFECTLY, then it’s ok to do an eighties-throwback type of happy-dance in the dressing room. Or in the store itself, if the Spirit moves you.)

 

So while I would love to stand on my soapbox and shout to the masses that we need to individualize, and think for ourselves, and not care what others think… I can’t. Hypocrisy doesn’t sit well with me. I care a lot about what people think of even the shallowest things about me. Every morning when I get dressed, I face the intense self-scrutiny of my mirror self. Do I look fat in this? Do I have too much makeup on? If my boobs look big, does that mean this top is skanky? And if my eyeliner is too thick, will people think I’m a skank– especially if my shirt’s too tight? OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT ZIT! What the hell was I thinking, buying these jeans in size eight…

 

And eventually I leave the house in a baseball cap, jeans, t-shirt and sneakers. Because I care too much, and I’d rather look like a slob than a ho.

 

But the problem is not that people care what other people think, it’s that other people think. Or they think they’re thinking. Really they’re jumping to conclusions, which requires no thought whatsoever. What happens is that we have created pockets for people. Everyone’s mind has tons of pockets, and everytime we see someone, we pick them up and put them in a neat little pocket where we think they fit the best. Even if that has nothing to do with the person in reality. Just because her shirt is a little tight, and she’s wearing skinny jeans, Converse sneakers, and heavy eye makeup, we think she’s a skater, or a rocker chick, or a groupie for some emo boy band. We put her in a pocket. And that guy in line in front of us in the cafeteria who is eating sixteen slices of pizza, and has biceps that look like he stuffed baseballs up his sleeves– I for one am guilty of being envious of muscle-man’s metabolism. And I’m sure others are too. We look at the muscles, and the way he packs away that pizza, and we sigh with envy and push our salad around on our plate. But the honest-to-God truth is that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US could look and eat like that if we put in the same effort. But we put him in the muscle-head group, with the NASCAR metabolism and the magically-appearing-overnight biceps, and the lack of a future outside of professional athleticism or teaching high school gym.

 

I know I do it too. I categorize people. I give them characters in stories that I haven’t written yet. I make them into the caricatures of themselves; I allow one or two of their personality quirks to overtake my view of them. I think of them forever as Dragon-Breath, or That Guy With The Scooter. But I hate thinking that others toss me into pockets like Girl-Who-Eats-Everything-In-Sight, or The Scribbler, or Doesn’t Pay Attention In Class. I’m more than those. It sounds all emo, but no one can be only what we see of them. There are forces at work behind the scenes, that little spark that sets the clockwork in motion, the little things that make people tick.

 

So I suppose I’ve ended up sounding exactly the way I never wanted to sound. I am encouraging people to look beyond the superficial, and to get to know everyone for who they really are. But honestly, that’s not my message. I know how utterly absurd a proposition that is. It’s impossible to spend that kind of time and energy on everyone we meet. All I ask is that people keep in mind that THERE IS MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE. Don’t spend a ton of time or thought or energy to find out what it is, but maybe spend a few seconds remembering that maybe rockerchick with the mullet has a good reason for her terrible hair, instead of assuming that she’s retarded and doesn’t own a mirror. Maybe she would rather have hair that doesn’t care if it’s ugly, so she doesn’t have to worry about making it look good.

 

I dunno. I’m just a kid pretending to be a grown-up. Or maybe a grown-up pretending to be a kid. I’m not the Dalai Lama or Ghandi or Mother Theresa. I’m not trying to change the way the world operates. I just want to explain it, so that I can pretend there’s a method to the general madness.

 

A.D.D. + Creative Impulses = No Drive to Complete a Task July 25, 2008

Here are my various skills/crafts/things I do instead of homework:

~Knitting

~Crocheting

~Painting

~Jewelry-making

~Scrapbooking

~Photography

~Photo-manipulation

~Drawing

~Writing

~Graphic Design

And there are infinite juvenile things like friendship bracelets, needlepoint and the like that I keep stashed under my bed. The above list contains only the crafts and arts that I have dedicated large amounts of time to. I knitted for about six months straight last year, crocheted for one month, took a graphic design class, paint at random intervals during the year, have recently dedicated huge chunks of time to photography and photomanipulation, worked on jewelry-making for a few months, and completed one and a half scrapbooks. Drawing and writing are incessant, and have been for about… my entire life.  But the problem is that I am constantly shifting, and rotating them, and I can’t just pick one to to work at. I remain at only a novice skill level in any of the above, and it’s because I can’t stay dedicated to any of them.

 

Anyway, this is a pointless rant basically stemming from a huge case of writer’s block, which has been festering for nigh on a month and that is irritating the crap out of me. I love my story, and my characters (and the ones I write that aren’t technically mine…) and the fact that I sit at my computer and don’t work on that story is stupid. It’s only because I’m not writing major action scenes or critical plot points that I can’t come up with anything. Anything less than that is difficult for me, and I avoid it. But no story can be comprised of only action, or only major plot, there has to be a slight lull in the storyline every so often just to keep things tied together. Right, Miriam? Or am I crazy? Because that’s entirely possible too.

 

But the issue that I have with all my other crafts is the lull in the action. That point in the scarf-knitting process where progress is less-than-noticable, and the part of photography when I run out of scenes to capture. Any lack of action, or any drudge-work where there is nothing to show for it makes me crazy. I blame the A.D.D. that I haven’t yet been diagnosed with.

 

Thanks for listening to me rant, Miriam.

Epic Fail. Part of a Balanced Breakast. July 24, 2008

So yeah. I have at least one serving of Fail everyday for breakfast. Why breakfast, you ask? Well, it’s because the fail usually occurs before or immediately after I get out of bed. On the wrong side, of course.

 

I begin to wonder, if you get up on the wrong side of the bed consistently enough, does it become the right side? And then do you have to switch sides in order to stay on the wrong side, or does switching sides make you less grumpy, because it retains its innate right-side-of-the-bed-ness?

 

Anyway, I’ve been really grumpy for the past couple weeks. It doesn’t seem to be letting up at all, and I’m constantly feeling tired and worn out. Even when I get up in the morning, my eyelids are heavy, and my limbs ache, and I just want to roll over and go back to sleep. I can’t stand it. All day long I want to nap, and the oddest things piss me off to no end. While I’m at work, I can keep a real smile on my face, but only for about a four-hour stretch at a time. When I get home I don’t want to deal with my family, I don’t want to sit down and have to put up with the screaming and the wrestling and the messes, I just want them to f*cking clean up after themselves and  sit quietly. But they are stuck in mess-making mode.

 

In short I’m tired. All the time. Every effing minute of my day is permeated by tiredness. I went into the doctor’s office complaining of chronic fatigue, and the first thing she asks me is if I think I’m depressed.

 

Well let me think about that one for a second… no, the FREAKING ANTI-DEPRESSANTS OUGHT TO BE TAKING CARE OF THAT. So she goes through another list of possiblities, which are summed up in the 57 blood tests I have to have done, and the night I am going to get to spend in a sleep lab, and the possible nasal reconstruction that I was slated for at eight months of age. So for now I just need to get about nine hours of sleep a night, put myself on a diet because I’m a fatass, and EXCERCISE. That’s right. For now, the cure for chronic fatigue is to sleep, eat less, and exercise. Why did I pay for this visit? Oh yeah, so you could NOT give me a straight answer, sign me up for a bajillion tests, and possible surgery, and then recommend something I can’t possibly have thought up on my own.

 

Doctor: 1, Jackie: 0.

 

I’m getting really tired of this game, God. Can I just lose now and have it be done with?

 

GOALS TO BE COMPLETED BEFORE AUGUST 23rd:

~ Lose 10 pounds.

~ Discover why the f*ck I’m so tired.

~ Find a way to remember to actually post on this damn thing.