45 days and counting down

I've had this post in the back of my mind for about a month. Not what to write, just the fact that I needed to write something on this date in time -January 30th 2007. It's significant because it's 45 days before my birthday, which means that today I am the same age that my sister Bony M was when she got married. Weird. When she was my age she had gotten engaged, planned a wedding, and carried the whole thing out. Weird again.

Two of my sisters have gotten married, but Bony M was the first to do so, and is the third oldest child in our family. Having a sister get married is something momentous, mainly because of all the small things that change in addition to the large things. Silly little things like remembering that she has a new last name. As the whole thing went down I was kind of disbelieving - I knew Bony M was getting married, but somewhere in the back of my head I thought it wouldn't happen, thought that something, anything would cause the whole thing to get called off. I don't know why I thought this, except that I can't ever imagine things changing, and as a member of someone's family you're incapable of seeing them how everyone else in the world sees them.

I wasn't terribly involved in the whole affair - I just had to show up and wear new white shoes that pinched my feet. Perhaps most distressing was that she got married on a day that was inconvenient for me - June 21st -when a new Harry Potter was coming out. There was good watermelon at the reception, it being a summer wedding, but I kept getting pulled into pictures and only managed to eat a few bites of any given slice I was holding before I had to put it down again. Or I'd give it to someone to hold while the family was being photographed, and when I was done I'd never see the person again. I'd curse the jerk that made off with my melon and go to get a fresh slice. All this is nonsense of course. Who cares who took your watermelon when your sister is getting married? Well, at the time, I did.

Weirdest of all was meeting our new brothers-in-law. Both of my married sisters got engaged without us having met their husbands-to-be. I believe that this was for the best. We're a weird family. I'd keep me away from someone I was trying to impress too if it were possible. When Bony M's now husband came to meet us before the wedding we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off to get ready. When they arrived and started up the walk, M-Lite and I were in the front room. We panicked.

-What do we do?!
-Quick! Act casual!

And we plopped down on the sofa and tried to act nonchalant. We were going to do our best to seem normal. Same thing for when A got married - we wanted to make a good first impression. My sisters A and Bony M are some of the more normal kids in our family. It's not debatable, it's just a fact. M-Lite probably makes that list as well. So there you have it, the top three. I don't know where I fall on that list, being more than somewhat biased in the matter, but I'd like to think that I fall third to weirdest out of the eight of us.

I still marvel at how young Bony M was when she got married, even though I think it was meant to be. I take stock of myself as a person and realize that I have no idea who I am at this age, and I've lived a quarter of my life. Most people would say that at age 25, but how many people actually live to be 100 anyway?

I posted this because I like to make comparisons between myself and other people, because this date serves as a marker, making everything quantifiable. At this point in time this is where I am. And I think I'm good.

P.S. To Bony M - I hope I haven't said anything I oughtn't, and that you're not offended by my focusing on Harry Potter and watermelon rather than your reception.

Schedule (pronounced the British way)

I take a nap every morning. I get up at 6:30, shower, and then nap for an hour and 13 minutes before I get up to get ready. It goes back to when I was in high school and got up at 5:20 every morning so I would be able to wake up H. I'd shower and then give H her first wake up warning. Ten minutes later I'd go back and turn on the lights if she wasn't up. After that her covers were taken away. I didn't need so much time to get ready, but H did, and I had to be up before her to make sure she got up. I asked her once what she expected to do when I left home and wouldn't be there to drag her out of bed.

This post is really about breakfast, and the fact that I don't normally eat it. I'd like to say that I don't have the time, but I have just admitted to you that I nap for an hour or more every morning. It's really a matter of priorities - sleep or food? Sleep will always win. I want to own a hotel called Food 'N Sleep. It appeals to everyone, this name.

Today I did eat breakfast, it being a Saturday and all. I made toast and pondered the changes I've made over the years in regards to how I prepare both it and cold cereal. Neither are very complicated to make, but I was surprised to find that I think a great deal about the process.

(1) Toast. The toaster at my apartment has no numbers on it.The toaster at home has numbers. It's better to have numbers, so you can ask which is the best for toast - a two and a half or a three perhaps? I tried fiddling with the numbers on my home toaster and my brother F told me to leave it on 3. Or maybe it was 4. Anyway, he said that there was no need to be moving it around like I was, and I trust his toast judgement so I didn't move it after that. This morning I had no idea which setting to put it on. There's a picture of light toast and one of dark toast on either side of the knob, which was more toward the dark toast picture. Ordinarily I'd trust whatever setting it was at, but that's when I'm at home, and I remembered that there are bagel eaters in my apartment. Bagels are thick. They probably require more toasting. I put it halfway in between light and dark and hoped it all came out alright.

It did. The buttering and jamming of my toast has changed over the years, but one thing that has not changed is that I examine both sides of the toast to determine which face is darker before buttering. Once I have my two pieces face up how I want them, I pick which one gets buttered first, and this is where everything has changed. I used to butter the darker piece first, probably because I find it more appealing than the other piece that didn't manage to become as toasted as I would have liked, and so I'd shun it and butter the better piece first.

I also believe (for no good or rational reason) that the darker piece is hotter than the lighter piece. This is key. Once I realized that I believed this, I had to change my buttering habits. If I butter the dark piece first, it means that the light piece, which is already not hot enough, is losing heat while I waste time buttering the darker hotter piece, and by the time I get to the lighter one, it will have lost the heat necessary to melt the butter I'm buttering with. So now I butter the lighter piece first, so that by the time I'm done with it, the darker piece will have cooled to be the same temperature that the lighter toast was when it was buttered. Like I said, this is not based in reason, it's just how I think.

(2) Cold cereal. I don't go in for any of those hot breakfast dishes, like oatmeal or eggs or anything. I ate raisin Bran growing up, and because it tastes the way it does, I was allowed to put two spoonfuls of sugar on it. I used to put the sugar on first, before pouring the milk. I realized eventually that this was foolish, and later in my life made the switch to sugaring after I'd poured the milk, so I'd get an equal adherence of sugar to the flakes. I was home this Christmas and was having a bowl of Raisin Bran, but I couldn't find the sugar, and you should always verify that you have the sugar before you pour the milk on, otherwise your cereal gets soggy while you're looking for it. Much like how you should make sure you have all the ingredients before you start in on making a cake.

I couldn't find the sugar. I told myself that seeing as I was an adult I could probably skip the sugar and eat the cereal for its nutritional value instead of demanding extra sugar for it. Then I asked myself who did I think I was kidding and continued the hunt until I found it.

I myself do not own any Raisin Bran, having been seduced by the likes of Marshmallow Mateys, Tootie Frooties, and Colossal Berry Crunch. I remember liking my Grandparents' house because they had honey nut cheerios. I have a few vague memories of my mom buying cereals other than Raisin Bran that I liked to eat - there was some Kix, and something similar to Honeycomb that was pretty good. Did you ever get those cereal samples in the mail growing up? Those tiny boxes? With Apple Jacks and Shredded Wheat and Fruit Loops? More importantly, did you know that the Trix rabbit actually got the Trix once? This was probably sometime in the early 90's. The company had children send in their votes about whether or not he should, and while I'm really too young to remember it, I think my older sisters sent in their votes, and the majority of the nation felt sorry for that silly rabbit, so he got some Trix. Is nothing constant in this world?

I have no good way to end this tedious post, so I'm just going to stop here and hope that none of you actually read this whole thing, and that if you did, you won't pay any more attention to your own buttering and sugaring methods now than you have in the past. The end.

Woot Canal

I've been thinking about my teeth recently. No particular reason. Well, there's some reason I suppose, I'm just not entirely sure what it is. Anyway, my first semester here I got a toothache for the first time, and I put off doing anything about it for months. The pain was terrible -I couldn't concentrate on anything but this molar, so finally I called my mom and asked her to set me up an appointment with our dentist for when I would be home over break.

Side note: At the time of this toothache I had the brilliant thought that a toothache was like a headache, only it was in your tooth. Then I wondered how I could possibly know this, because I have never had a headache.

My first day back home my mom says my appointment is for tomorrow, tells me the time, and then says that I'll have to drive myself over there. I'd never been to the dentist alone before and I wanted to keep it that way, but my mom had started working, and while she was worried we'd become latchkey children, I still had to drive myself. Anyway, I had to take her van and go to Aloha (which is a city in Oregon and not pronounced like the Hawaiian hello/goodbye, but more like uh-low-uh) all by myself.

The waiting room was different, or at least the movies were. Growing up they had always had Timmy the Tooth and The Return of Jafar among other movies, but they'd switched them out with newer ones, which was rather distressing.

I went to get the tooth taken care of, and partway through the drilling my dentist announces that it goes all the way to the nerve and they're going to do a root canal. At this point I was trying to remember what a root canal was exactly, while taking into account all the times I'd heard horror stories about them. So before I knew it they'd put a small tarp in my mouth and the dentist was sticking a series of larger and larger metal files into the cavities of my mouth and wiping what looked a lot like blood onto his gloves. And it didn't hurt a bit.

I have a bad habit of laughing when I am at the dentist's. The whole thing is just so absurd to me that I can't help it. There are four hands in my mouth! Somebody is pulling out the roots of my teeth! Do you know those spit suckers they use? The really big ones - not the ones you close your mouth around, but the ones the assistant uses throughout the procedure so you don't die? Well, this one time the assistant kept accidentally catching it on my lip and when she pulled it away it made an incredible honking sound, like there were geese in there with me. I started laughing then -I just couldn't help it.

My sister, who I have previously referred to as sister M, is now to be known as Bony M. If you've seen the documentary Touching the Void you'll know why. Anyway, she said that once (and I hope I'm remembering this accurately) when she was at the dentist's she was listening to the headphones they give you, but it was a comedy station, and she kept laughing. They thought she was in pain, so they gave her a lot more shots than she actually needed. She had us listen to it afterward -this routine by Woody Allen about a moose - and I highly recommend it.

Anyway, I went, I got the root canal, and then I asked to have a prize from the toy basket, just like how I still ask for a sticker when I go to the doctor's office. I felt like I deserved something for what I'd been through, so I picked out an orange warm fuzzy. The woman at the desk gave me a tissue for my drool and a paper with my bill on it. I went out to my car, buckled up, opened the bill, and freaked out.

Over $1500! For a tooth. For the love of all that's good and decent, why!? I drove home then, sobbing uncontrollably. I was in no physical pain, but $1500?! All I could do was say "I hadda halv a woot canal" over and over while I drove and cried. I'm fairly certain I ran at least one red light in the process. I arrived home still sobbing (a very very very rare occurrence for me) and no one was upstairs to greet me. I stood in the front entry bellowing until someone downstairs heard me and came up to investigate.

M-Lite: what's wrong with you?
me: I hadda halva woot canal, an it caws fiwfeen hunwed dowwarrrs!

I'm going to interrupt here and say something very important. I did not get to have a hamburger. That's right - no hamburger for me. I say this because every other trip I've ever taken to the dentist's has ended in our mom stopping at Dairy Queen on the way home and buying us food. It's not wise to eat when your mouth is still numb, but we'd do it anyway - you just have to eat your burger very carefully to avoid eating your own tongue. I associate going to the dentist's with a numb mustardiness combined with pickles, and this time I didn't get to have a hamburger. That's what's wrong with this whole scenario.

That's really all I have to say, except for one more side note, which is that I have a piece of floss tied around the pinkie finger of my right hand. Tomorrow it will have been there for two weeks. There's no reason for it being tied around my finger, but now I'm curious to see how long I can keep it there. Perhaps that's why I've been thinking about teeth lately.

Bogo Pogo

I ate lasagna last night for the first time in probably 12 or more years - the fact is, I can't remember the last time I've eaten it, because I know I don't like it. I'm extremely picky, I don't know why, and so there are a lot of foods I avoid without remembering what exactly I don't like about them. This makes me want to try them every decade or so, because I get curious. It's like how I get sick at every low rent amusement park I go to, because I forget how much I can't handle spinning rides combined with the smell of secondhand smoke. I know I don't like the tilt-a-whirl, but occasionally I forget, and think that surely this time will be different, and in the end I just become very sick and sorry.

So last night I went to Yellow's with Krebscout, Ahem, Uffish, and Optimistic., and it proved to be an extremely fun evening, aside from the fact that I became ill. My stomach was all sorts of rumbly, until halfway through dinner when it became all sorts of sharp stabbing pains. Basically, I threw up and then spent some time lying down on the bathroom floor shaking a lot until I felt better. It happened to be the cleanest bathroom floor I'd ever seen, by the way. Props to Yellow's mom who it turns out is June Cleaver.

Aside from taking ill very randomly, the evening was a whole lot of fun. There was a piano that played itself, and a lot of games were played to its background noises- Boggle, speed scrabble, and the anagram game. Also, I lost at Boggle, which was upsetting, but not wholly unexpected considering the company I was keeping. The most fun to watch: DDR - Uffish and Optimistic. had some pretty sweet moves that I would not be sad to see again someday. Also thrown into the mix were cookies, Nerf guns, ice cream, and guitar hero. All in all it was most enjoyable.

I failed to mention that this was only the end of yesterday. My day started with going to get Uffish, which involved me pumping gas for the first time by myself, which went miserably. Anyway, I secured the Uffish and we proceeded over to B's house to make funnel cakes. Optimistic. came over also, then the cakes were made and devoured, a skip-it was used, and four hours of Scrubs was watched while Uffish got her hair cut. I also saw Strictly Ballroom which turned out to be one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. It was after this, as well as trying to make sense of a Friday crossword, that we started the evening I mentioned above. I spent 14 hours in the best company possible yesterday, and unlike most mornings, I did not utter what has become mine and M-Lite's usual morning murmuring when we wake up dead after a long night - "Never again, never again!" - I would gladly have yesterday happen again.

Sock Mail

I found a piece of mail on the table that was addressed to me from my mom. I opened it and found that she had mailed me a sock. No note or anything. This amused me to no end - just the sight of one lonely used sock inside an envelope really tickled my fancy. Imagine - mailing a sock of all things. It made me wonder what else I could conceivably get away with dropping in the mail. There’s a logical explanation behind it, which is that when I was home I accidentally left a bag of clothes behind, and when I called my mom to tell her I’d gotten back safely she asked if I’d meant to donate the bag to D.I.? I told her no, that they were in fact my two favorite shirts in the world, and I needed them sent to me please. I received that package a few days ago – my two shirts, a tank top, and one purple sock, all wrapped around my copy of Wait Until Dark. The thing I liked most about the package was that as I was opening it and taking stock of what was inside I thought to myself that there was a good chance my mom would have sewn up the hole under the right arm of my Batman shirt. Sure enough, the hole was gone, and I was happy to have predicted this move on her part. I had no idea she would think to mail me the second sock though, because I myself did not notice its absence.

My socks rarely match -maybe 15% of the time are they the same color, and sometimes they are egregiously different height-wise as well as managing to differ in texture and pattern. I usually don’t take care to wear a matching pair because nobody really sees my socks. If I’ve just done my laundry I might be able to conjure up two of a kind, but I don't think it's worth the effort most of the time.

The yellow edible things in my closet

The gummi worms I’ve been eating are squiggly and striped, having four colored segments making up each one. Orange red orange red, white green white green, etc. When I eat a worm I eat it in four pieces, one colored band at a time, and I like to start with the tail. The reason for this is obvious – if you started with the head you’d be left with the tail, which is just silly, but by starting with the tail, you’re left with the head at the end, which aside from being a bit fuller and rounder than the rest of the worm has a little face. A definite plus.

There are exceptions to this of course. As I put down earlier, these worms are striped, and I personally like for the last segment of worm I eat to be the darker of the two colors that it is. If it’s red and yellow I’d like for the last bite to be red. A worm has a head, two middles, and a tail end. Let’s say that starting at the tail end my worm is (T) green, (M2) white, (M1) green, (H) white. This is not acceptable. I don’t want a lightly colored head to be my last bite, so in circumstances like these I reverse the order and start at the head to ensure a darker, and therefore more flavorful last bite, even if it has to be a tail.

So I was eating my worms (with some bears mixed in for variety) and I came across a worm that was only one segment long – a small deformed bit of worm that was only a yellow head that tapered off before it should have. I couldn’t eat it. It reminded me of the description in “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator” of the Vicious Knids, those sinewy wormlike monsters that inhabited the space hotel, who could spell things like SCRAM! with their bodies. I think that my worm is a smaller kind of knid, but whether or not it’s vicious is yet to be determined. I decided to save it, and tried to think of vicious knid-ish names for it. The first name that came to mind was Edith. So its name is Edith. Where to put it? On the shelf in my closet of course. Why? Because there currently is another yellow pet of mine residing there.

In a clear plastic baggy with the top folded over, pinned to the edge of my shelf and hanging on display, is Schoenberg. He’s a small dinosaur fruit snack I picked up at work. I carried him around most of the day I found him, until one of my coworkers tore off his head out of spite. I performed a hurried surgery and managed to reattach Schoenberg’s head, then wrapped him in a pink paper napkin until I could get him home. I’ve probably had him for close to a year now. The other yellow pet I no longer possess. He was a worm. I suppose he could have just as easily been a snake, but I decided he was a worm. This worm was not edible - it was an ill-formed balloon animal. I named him Herbert Spencer, and toted him about with me before he shriveled into a small rubbery blob. Apparently he was not fit enough to survive.

I have no idea why I keep these things. I didn't realize it was kind of a collection until Edith came along, and I find it odd that they've all been yellow, as I've never given much thought to the color before now. Perhaps I have other color coded collections and know nothing about it. I'll have to keep an eye out.

My attempt at a short(er) post

This post started out as an identity crisis and me trying to understand my indecisiveness and irrational fear of excellence. Then it veered left into something not as depressing. This is everything that the post was not originally. Random musings of mine, based on the premise of one day having a lot of money-

Owning a camp, and then working there disguised as the cook, and no one would ever guess that I was secretly the very wealthy owner. If they complained about the food I'd whip off my apron, reveal my true identity, and have them thrown out. Maybe. Throwing them out might be kind of harsh.

I have a mental list of people I would buy a really nice car if I became really rich. Mostly they're past teachers, because teachers make a difference and they're usually really poor. (Except for Mrs. K, which is a whole other story involving big hair and freakishly large diamond rings.)

I want to own a lot of houses, which I would rent out for really cheap to poor college students. I'd also like to run a boarding house and cook for my tenants on Sunday evenings.

I think I've mentioned before that I want to take over The Portland Golf Club. Sand traps would become sand boxes, I'd build some tree houses, and I'd probably put in a park with swings and some teeter-totters. And some rose bushes just because they smell nice. But no koi. I hate koi.

I want to donate back to the schools I went to, buy them books and butcher paper and tubas and all that jazz.

Owning my own island/country has always appealed to me, but I've always worried about the government interfering. Maybe it's not fair of me, but in the back of my mind I don't believe that they'd let me have my own laws and constitution and let me run things the way I want to. If I did buy an island, would they claim it as part of the larger country it was near, or could I conceivably secede? I don't know.

Where do I think all my imaginary wealth comes from? Most days I think that I'd like to host a television show, something worth watching, and have myself be a cross between Conan O'Brien, Carol Burnett, and Alex Trebek. This is not realistic at all, but it's something to fill my thoughts between sleeping and waking.

My next post will be about the yellow edible things I have in my closet.

Daddy drinks because you cry so much

Stay up all night and sleep all day/ we were smart kids with too much to say - Burn this city - Cartel

H, M , and I stayed up until 5am talking last night. Talking about everything imaginable for five hours straight. It's something we do occasionally, but I'd never done it with both M and H, which made for a more interesting conversation. We discussed our family dynamic, and the dynamic of both our parents' families because we visited our dad's side of the family over new years. It was interesting to remember certain things and come to some conclusions about our relatives.

We talked about our mom, and how she had such an odd childhood. Her parents divorced when she was little and she was raised by her grandma and her father. I had never really considered the fact that my mom didn't have a mom growing up, but looking at that fact now, it says so much about why my mom is the way she is, and about how we were raised. It must have been extremely difficult for her to not have a mother for all of her life events - going away to college, getting married, having all of us kids. How odd all of that would be, if you had to forge your own way without an example. Most everything I do I subconsciously learned from watching my parents - you know, those things that you never think about how you learned them.

My grandma reappeared in my mom's life sometime in the early 90's - she moved from Florida out here to Oregon - she's on the tape of when H2 was born, there in the hospital holding our new sister, her granddaughter, as if that was what she'd been doing all this time. I had never realized that she probably hadn't been there for when the rest of us were born, never knew us, just wasn't apart of our lives. I'm really not very close with any of my relatives, my mom's parents in particular. I don't know that I've talked to my mom's mom in the last ten years, and my mom's dad lives in Florida. Grandpa Earl. I met him for the first time in August when we took a family trip down there. My dad's parents are the grandparents of my childhood, the ones who brought us M&M's when they came to visit. They used to live in Seaside and we'd go visit them at the beach and play on my Grandpa's construction crane that he kept in their backyard.

We also discussed personality, intelligence, school, our learning and behavioral styles, why we dislike authority figures, what we each would do in certain situations, things like that. M brought up a point that made me realize just exactly how much I'm scared of failure - if I don't think I can excel at something I won't even try it - I see that in many aspects of my life. We talked about which of us looked alike and which of us looked most like which parent, etc. The whole evening had started with us comparing our toes. All of us took off a sock and touched everyone's toes. It turns out that H2 and M have the same hands and feet. Most of the toes on my feet I can't even bend. H has hobbit feet. F's toes are longer than the rest of ours, and very bendy.

We talked about anything and everything until 5am. It was a school night, and after 5 hours H said she had to do her homework. I stayed in the family room because I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep after that much talking. At 7am F was up and leaving to catch the bus. It was then that I went to bed and didn't get up until after noon. It's been a very lazy day, this penultimate day in Portland. Hopefully, tomorrow I will be more productive, because I've just now realized that I have yet to visit the Beaverton Light Shoppe in the whole time I've lived in this town.

I've written several posts recently, none of which I've published. I've pulled the following bits from those posts, because it's probably better for you to read this one long post than to have to endure several long posts. I really need to cut down.

Quote from my brother: "Just because it's leading you astray doesn't mean that it's wrong."

During Sunday dinner our dad told us, "You're all going to Hell." I don't remember why he said it, but it may have been because of a comment one of us made about crack cocaine. On a similar note, my mom buys this health juice stuff, and she was telling H and me that it does wonders for people who have bad acne, so she said that we should tell our friends about it. We joked that we wouldn't hang out with people who have bad acne, and she told us we were horrible people. So both my parents think I'm going to Hell I guess.

My sister F is one of the few people who makes me angry, and the only person that I know of who can make me cry. I don't know why this is, I just know that she does it and then doesn't believe me when I tell her that she's mean.

On Sunday I went to my old Sunday school class, which is spastic to say the least. Suzie, the teacher, brings a toaster and makes toaster strudels for everyone. The lesson never happens. Everyone talks about their weekend. It's like being in the train yard of conversations there's so much to follow - This is how the class went - ready?

"Who wants a french toast one? Well, what is it that I've got here? Cherry. Who took all the frosting? We're one short. That's okay, I ate it earlier. Hey, there's no filling in mine, what is this, tasteless?! Is their band any good? They would have sounded even been better if the mikes had been working properly. Am I on crack? Yes I am on crack. They asked us to do some show, but we only have half a song that we wrote, and we would have gotten a record deal out of it, but... Are you crazy? You guys should take that gig. Wedgie is totally in the dictionary. Well, my last strudel dripped out.What just happened?! Well, he just felt up her leg. No, I felt down her leg. Up her leg sounds bad. That's why I said it. So, Suzie, about that lesson? Will you read Malachi 3? Then the man said, "Isn't that dishonest?" "No. We could name the dish after you." and the man's name was Chimmy Chonga. What's crowd surfing? You said you liked that movie. No, I said I saw it - I wouldn't like that movie - it was retarded. The scripture is talking about Elijah. I've seen a blood red moon. My brother and I saw it when we were on a rooftop. Crowd surfing is for sickos. How can heroin make you non-feeling? Why would people take it then?"

Yeah, that was how it went. Some major points of the plot included, but are not limited to: my teacher saying she was on crack, H explaining how the brain alters after a person uses heroin, boy M feeling girl L's leg because she was wearing fishnets, K trying to read a scripture, J discussing his band's performance at the stake dance, more than several jokes being told, and a lot of toaster strudels being eaten. It was highly entertaining if not very spiritually filling.

I'll save my new year for another time, but leave you with saying that I've made a resolution to wear more eye makeup this next year. I have other, more serious goals, but when I first tried to think of something, that's what came to mind, so I figure it must be important.