The Times They Are A-Changin'

Sing it Bob, sing it.

H got into BYU. My brother F is now 16 years old. A had a baby. H2 will be in High School next year. M-Lite is a BYU student now. F2 is almost engaged. Boney M is across the country in South Carolina. I'm dating someone. I think I just saw the devil ice skating to work.

I guess I'm just always surprised at how time passes and why and I wonder where my youth went when I wasn't watching. I've almost cemented my plans for this Summer. Spring I'm staying here and working. Summer I'm going home to Portland. Fall I'm deferring but coming back to Provo to work before going back to school in the Winter. There you have it - the next year of my life all laid out. Only I hate making decisions - especially ones I feel are irresponsible. I'm going home for only a month or two, which means I can't possibly get a job there. I've had a job since I was 14. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself when I go home if I'm not going to be working. A huge part of my identity is what my job is. Crap. I'll think of something.

T with Mussolini

My old roommate that I used to call H? Her name is now the Maoist. We see each other on Tuesdays to catch up and to watch our shows together. She asked me why I hated her when we lived together, and I told her that I hadn't hated her, but that it took me some time to get used to living with other people. Up until Thanksgiving of last year I was still kind of wary of my roommates. Anyway, I wanted to share a few short things from when we lived together.

(1) The watermelon. One night the Maoist and I were going to bed. We'd just gotten on our pajamas, brushed our teeth, turned off the light, crawled under the covers, the whole routine. Then,

me: the Maoist?
Maoist: Yeah?
me: I want watermelon.
Maoist: Hmmm. Okay.

And we got up and got dressed again and she drove us around town looking for watermelon, which wasn't quite in season yet, but it had been rumored that Albertson's had some. We went to three stores, and finally ended up at Ream's, where I bought a small melon and some Q-tips, and she bought some gummy bears and let me eat most of the green ones because they're her least favorite.

The thing was, I'd been thinking about watermelon for months, craving it every day, thinking about it all the time, like what happens when I get a song stuck in my head. I had yellow submarine stuck in my head for at least 8 months straight last year. I'd hum it without realizing it all of the time.

(2) The great otter pop eating contest of 2005. Somehow the Maoist and I got into an argument about who loved otter pops more. She said it was her, and I countered that an entire hemisphere of my brain was devoted to otter pops. We decided to have it out, and made plans for a contest. But how to go about it? We debated long and hard before we came up with a fitting procedure. We each bought a box of 100 otter pops, and whoever ate the most during a set period of time (one 45 minute episode of Gilmore Girls on DVD) would be the winner.

Some extreme tactics were adopted on my part, and included me drawing on the walls of her shower. I have these shower crayons I got for my birthday once, so I left her a little drawing - her stick figure frame with X's for eyes, lying in a pool of melted otter pops as my stick figure (holding an otter pop) stood triumphant and gloating over her, in her otter induced coma.

We sat in our living room for the whole affair, pausing at the start to switch some flavors with each other (I don't care much for grape or orange you see) and we sat and ate. Except that pretty soon we couldn't feel our fingers, and we were forced to eat them with our hands wrapped up in blankets. The Maoist quit after 11 otter pops, and I could have stopped there, but I was curious to see how many I could actually endure eating in 45 minutes. I'd been averaging a pop a minute in the beginning, but toward the end when the sugar started clouding my mind I slowed down a bit. In the end I ate 30. My tongue was brown from all the colors being mixed, and what's more, I couldn't feel the top of it properly for 2 or 3 days at least. What can I say - I'm a beast.

(3) The fort. I had a couple of sheets I'd gotten from somewhere so we built a fort in the living room once. And not your average couch cushion cave fort, but one of magnificent and grandiose proportions. It enveloped our sofas and reached all the way to the ceiling, serving to separate the T.V. viewing area from the rest of the living room. And it kept getting upgraded as the days went on. Sewing was involved, broom handles were used to ensure structural stability, and a great amount of push pins were secured for the whole process. It was amazing. I think it must have stayed up for a couple of weeks.

At one point the landlady came over because she wanted to show the apartment to some potential renter, but upon seeing the fort thought better of it. I'm pretty sure I know why - it's because our fort was so incredible that she didn't want the potential renter to think all the apartments were as great as ours. Surely they'd be upset upon discovering that their own apartment did not come equipped with a fort. There would be a major upheaval if she let people know what they were missing out on. That's the only explanation.

(4) I have a small blue book, called Symptoms and Illnesses that I used to read before going to bed. It amuses me still. Anyway, we used to play a game where one of us would flip through the pages until the other said stop, and you got whatever disease they landed on. That was fun. I've recently taken to carrying it in my purse and pulling it out to give people diseases. I myself had lip cancer recently.

(5) So we had some good times, even if it took me awhile to adjust. However, I'm sure she disliked me too at the start. Just looking at our room you could see the discord there - her side was organized and clean and tidy and everything good, whereas my side was very messy, with stuff covering every inch of my walls, and all sorts of crap flowing off the surface of my desk and onto the floor. And I never did my dishes, which served to annoy everyone, not just the Maoist.

Also, I was rarely home, preferring to hang out in 15 where M-Lite lived. Being away from home I just wanted to be around people I knew well. I've quite obviously known M-Lite for my whole life, and I grew up with Sliquify and MJiggle who also lived in 15. I really did consider that apartment to be my home for a time- they called me the 7th roommate. Krebscout refers to me sometimes as her almost roommate, and I in turn always forget that we haven't ever roomed together, so in my stories I always forget and call her my roommate.

It's odd to think that I almost didn't live in the old ward, as most everyone I'm friends with now I met there. I had been planning on living in the dorms, but I'm glad now that I didn't. It was a fun year in the old ward, and I'm kind of interested to see how things will turn out in the Fall as Uffish, krebscout and I move back. It won't be the same - probably not even close, but I still hope it will be incredible. We'll see.

I think your cat is fat

It is quite possible that today has been one of the best days ever. I went to my classes and then wasn't really looking forward to going to work at all, but today surprised me. My coworker C and I did trash and talked about Marxism, capitalism, phonetics, the importance of intonation in different languages, asking rhetorical questions in sign language, and everything else imaginable.

So, we were talking about tone and speaking in Chinese, and joking about how if you get the tone wrong when you mean to say "I think you're pretty" it could conceivably come out as being "I think your cat is fat" instead. A guy sitting on a bench near the trash can we were changing was listening and he told us how to say "I think your cat is fat" in Mandarin, which made my day. He also told us that he had overheard us earlier when we'd been doing trash on a different floor and were discussing W's and H's.

There were sets to do, things to clean, and jokes to be told. We wrote down a million quotes from everything that happened today. It was spring outside. I hummed a song I had stuck in my head. I awarded people points for various hilarious reasons. S played the piano while I joked with A. C received good news about her husband's pell grant. Today I was happy for people.

Mostly today was good because it felt like the Summer, and not just because of the weather. Today really took me back to how much fun last summer was, and reminded me that work could be fun again. When we were joking today I asked myself how was I going to leave these people in the Spring? I stay where I work for the people, which is how I got sucked into staying in Provo last Summer.

And today was amazingly fun, just like my job used to be. My shift ended with two incredible events occurring. First - one of my coworkers (a guy) put on some heels we found in the ballroom and danced the Cha Cha with another coworker. Hilarity and a lot of flash photography ensued. Second - I slapped a coworker in the face. As hard as I could. Some months ago S promised me I could slap him, or rather I told him that I would someday, and he agreed. Today I called in that promise and hit him as hard as I could. I think it's one of those things that if I went through life without having slapped someone I would have regretted it.

I'm severely overjoyed. The end

Kalimazoo

My voice is back (kind of) and I'm in Rexburg for the weekend. I come back Monday. A few other updates - I bought something from Taco bell for the first time ever on Thursday. It was a soda, but I still think that's rather momentous. I tried to go to sleep early that night, because I had a test the next day, but people were still up and the light was still on, and then one of my roommates happened to own a bag of kazoos. We all got one. Mine's green, but I can't get a continuous hum into it. M-Lite took requests, and mine were "Lavender Blue" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy". Hearing them made me homesick. After the light was out and as I drifted off to sleep I could still hear my roommates and their kazoos, but I didn't really mind. It's not always that you get to experience such a thing.

I got to see my mom, because she came to Rexburg for a week, so our visits overlapped for about 18 hours. I got to hold my niece. She's tiny and looks just like her dad. I haven't held her much because I don't want to get her sick. You'll all be forced to see some pictures when I get back to Provo.

Yesterday my roommate came in with the mail and there was a letter for me from home. I opened it to find another sock. No fooling. It was from my sister H2 this time. A blue sock with polka dots, and with it a note that said "Have a Happy Valentines Day! (hope you get lots of sweets)" and inside the sock was a dollar bill. I had just regained my voice and the first thing I used it for was to laugh uproariously. This second piece of sock mail was postmarked exactly a month after the first, and I think that the one thing that could make me truly happy would be to receive a sock in the mail every month from now on. So, if any of you out there send me a sock postmarked on the 12th of March I will love you forever probably.

Also, I'm here in the library and what do I find sitting on the desk next to me? This book titled Street Gangs: Current Knowledge and Strategies. This makes me happy.

What's in the box?

The Valentine's Day boxes you made in elementary school. Do you remember them? As I've stated earlier, I can make anything out of cardboard. Evidence - the two hams, the log I made for this summer's production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and every school project I've ever made. I lived for Valentine's day. I was the kid who had the biggest, coolest, most ingenious box every year. No shoe boxes for me - I pulled out the big guns. Hot glue guns that is.

First grade: my box was shaped like a computer monitor. Second grade: a giant blue tennis shoe. With laces and those grommet holes that are in the sides of tennis shoes for no reason. Third grade: a giant clown head with a hat. This thing was almost taller than I was. You put the valentines in its mouth. Fourth grade: a yellow dinosaur, approximately 4 feet tall, with a tail and jagged white paper teeth. The cards went in the mouth and collected in the neck. Fifth grade: Heartbreak Hotel. A whole complex with little windows and a giant broken heart atop the building.

My mom usually had to drive me to school because these things were so big. Then I'd have to take my giant box home on the bus. There really was no need for them to be so huge - it's not like I got more valentines than anyone else, I just loved making things.

I didn't stop when my elementary school days were over - I made them for my younger siblings. H got a miniature piano one year. Brown with little painted keys. I even made some tiny sheet music for it. One I made for H2 was an outhouse. It had a moon shaped hole in the door and everything. And a little roof with purposefully uneven shingles and a ventilation thing. Fake slightly rusted hinges. You opened it up and dropped your valentine down the hole. There was even some toilet paper in there I think. I don't know what kind of message that sent, but it was fun to make. I actually reused that outhouse for a last minute tenth grade English class project - I managed to tie it in with Angela's Ashes. Man I'm awesome. And by awesome, I mean lazy.

I miss those days, when school meant getting to make things. I devoted an extraordinary amount of time to planning all of those boxes, and I wish more than anything I had pictures of all of them now. Believe me when I say they were incredible, and so was I.

180 or so

This is my third post for today - this is getting out of hand. I just had to say that I left the house for the first time in 42 hours to take my french test. I meant to study and take it earlier, but M-Lite and I got distracted making some valentines. I studied when I got there, in that room off to the side, and when I came out the line was out the door. I had to exit the building, join the end of the line and wait in the cold and cough. I didn't really mind -it was wonderful to breathe fresh air again. They ran out of Chem 106 tests and people were dispirited, so some girl pulled out her phone and started playing that oldie that goes sugar pie, honey bun, etc. That made me happy. I saw three people I knew in the line but wasn't able to talk to them. Oh well. I took my test. I don't think I failed it. I went to leave the testing center and as I opened the door I found two lines of people on either side of the walk, cheering and clapping and playing the guitar and offering me a cookie for a job well done. I have no idea who those people were, but I got a peanut butter cookie today. Life is good.

Fierce

There's a security guard at the library who looks ridiculously fierce. The first time I saw him he was glaring off into the distance, and I thought to myself that there was a good chance he could read minds and would know if I returned a book that was overdue. That is all.

Long, depressing, and not worth reading

Still home sick, and bored out of my mind. I still have to take my french test today, even though I can barely understand this chapter when I'm not feeling like death. Like I said, I lounged yesterday. I lolled also, but that's not important. I was bored. I watched Pollyanna. Please note for future reference, that watching a movie about a crippled girl does not actually lift your spirits. I managed to eat some applesauce while waiting to call home until after they would be out of church. H and I talked for over an hour, which made me feel better. We remembered a time we went to Enchanted Forest, this amusement park back home, and how we thought we were going to die on the log ride and promised each other all sorts of things in what we thought were our last moments together.

"If I die, you can have my cat sitting job."

I tried to go to bed at 8pm, but got up at various times after getting into bed. The first time was because somebody in the ward had a paper for me. The second time was around 11pm - I couldn't remember a date and needed to look it up on the computer. While I was up, a girl came over and she and my roommate began yelling. Squealing also occurred, and running around and slamming doors and screaming, all at a ridiculous volume. I walked past them to get to my room, and the girl asked what she could do for me. I responded rather coldly-

-You can stop screaming indoors. Good Night.

As I walked away I heard my roommate whisper "she's sick" as if this had something to do with me disapproving of their antics. The apartments where I live are loud all of the time. I have obnoxiously loud roommates, but even if they weren't home there would still be the people outside on the balconies making noise. Usually it's a combination of the two. I haven't finished my investigation yet, but I'm pretty sure the walls here are actually paper thin.

I told you I went to bed at 8pm. I did not fall asleep until sometime around 3am. I wanted to sleep and my brain wouldn't let me. I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince myself that I'd taken some NyQuil earlier. Surely thinking I'd taken some would induce a nice coma, but alas the placebo thing didn't work, probably because I knew I hadn't actually taken any. So my body was tired and my mind was running rampant, churning up all sorts of memories I'd forgotten, all while it rained outside my window.

I wanted more than anything to get up and go outside in the rain last night, but I stopped myself, and I don't know why. I told myself that it was because I was sick, but M-Lite pointed out that that has never stopped me before. She's absolutely right about that. I used to do all sorts of things in the rain. I even used to go out and jump on our trampoline during thunderstorms, or when it was hailing. One Sunday I rode my bike around the park by my house in the rain while wearing my church clothes. I also wore my old lady rain bonnet, which is a thing of beauty for those of you have yet to see it.

I thought about a million random things last night while I couldn't sleep. Most persistent was the thought that I wanted to go out on to the balcony and yell at my noisy neighbors, "FOR THE LOVE OF CRAP, SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP BEFORE I COME OVER THERE AND KICK YOU IN THE FACE!" As you can see, I'm not always as polite as I could be, but in my defense I did refrain from yelling this. I do say violent things like this all the time though. Anyway, some of the random things I thought about:

-How I picture doing math in my head, addition in particular.
-The health office at my middle school
-My memory. I wrote a whole post about this in my head last night, about how I can memorize all sorts of things very easily, like facts and numbers, but I forget things about myself a lot of the time.
-When I was bored yesterday and watching Pollyanna I got out my presidential place mat and memorized the presidents in order, just to see if I could. Last night I went through them more than a couple of times in order, then tried to cement their numbers in my mind by reciting them in columns, rather than in rows as they appear on my place mat. So- 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, 2, 12, 22, 32, 42, 3, like that. This didn't help me fall asleep. Curse you Warren G. Harding.
-I played What Are You Doing in my head. More W and N. I came up with Whaling Nintendos, and pictured someone yelling "White Wii!" as they fired an imaginary harpoon. Yeah, M-Lite didn't think it was funny either, so don't worry.
-My French test
-Friday the 13th
-How I picture the months of the year in my head as opposed to how everyone else I've talked to pictures them. Mine's vertical, whereas most people think horizontally and in a loop, and Boney M pictures the months as a backwards C if I'm not mistaken
-A million more things I can't remember now.

And here's the clincher - I cried. I never cry, and by never I mean very very rarely. It occurred to me that few people outside of my family have seen me cry, one of the two exceptions being a time I slipped in the bleachers at a high school football game and hit my shin really hard. Then I cried, and the people who knew me were probably disturbed, because they know that I do not cry. My sister's best friend saw me and went to find my sister.

A: Ummm. Genuine's crying.
H: What are you talking about?
A: I just saw her.
H: I don't know what you thought you saw, but it wasn't that.

It was because of my roommates and the fact that they were being loud when I wanted to sleep. I wanted to go out into the kitchen and tell them off, tell them how much I desperately wanted to sleep, and that I thought they were the loudest and most inconsiderate people I had ever met. But I knew that it wouldn't do any good, knew that it made no difference to them that I was upset, and I didn't want them to see me upset, so I did nothing - nothing but cry, and try to sleep in spite of my brain and wonder why I live the way I do, with strangers in a crappy apartment. I don't want to be in school right now, and I feel like I'm not allowed to quit. I just want to do what I want to do, which is:

-Sleep more
-Learn how to cook
-Make things, build things. Houses, forts, playgrounds, anything.
-Paint (fences, stage flats, etc.)
-Be in a play
-Repair vacuums
-Understand car engines
-Sew (drapes, costumes, the works!)
-Garden
-Teach children
-Read good books again
-Work in a library
-Ride my bicycle at the park
-Play softball
-Eat watermelon and corn on the cob
-Play croquet
-Learn how to play the clarinet properly
-Make a giant collage out of postage stamps
-Do anything that requires using a hot glue gun
-Make a movie
-Write children's books

I want to be doing all of these things rather than be in school right now. I want a bit of unstructured folly - I want life skills, things that I won't be graded on, things that are worth knowing. I want to be excited about something again.

Okay, I'm done now. Just know that all this is coming from the mind of someone who's housebound, getting over a fever, and who has eaten mostly carrot shavings and Advil today - I'm not normally this insane. Topics of upcoming posts should include reminiscences of living with the Maoist my freshman year, my scars, memory and the long word I can spell forward and backward in a short amount of time, the correlation between the office supplies you own and how much of an adult you are, and my Easter/laundry basket.

Craptastic

It's raining again, and I'm glad. It makes the air taste better. In other news, I'm sick today. Sore throat, lightheadedness, cough, the works. Every time I inhale and exhale it feels like I'm breathing fire. I just realized that I should get out my Symptoms and Illnesses guide I love so much. Anyway, my jaw has been stiff for the last week or so on account of the fact that I have a wisdom tooth coming in. Then yesterday all my other teeth felt sore, and I got a small sore throat. This story ends with that small sore throat growing up into a much larger sore throat- I think it becomes a successful businessman and father of three, because that's how most of those stories usually end. So I'm lounging now, watching my favorite Disney movie, The Rescuers. My voice is also remarkably similar to how I sound when I do my Roman Holiday bit and say in a low throaty whisper "Gregory, you're the only man for me."

Garbo

I'm an aunt. As of yesterday. My sister A had her baby - to be named Greta Mae. I'm planning on calling her Garbo, for obvious reasons. I'm an aunt. Hooray! I'm sad I don't have any pictures of her to put up here, but that's probably for the best, since newborns usually look a little squashed and overly pink.

When we first found out A was preganant M-Lite and I got all excited.

M-Lite: We're going to be aunts!
me: Yeah, we'll be able to lift ten times our own body weight.
M-Lite:Aunts, not ants, you fool.
me:Oh, right.

This is the first niece - my parents are now grandparents, which is really weird to me. It's probably not so weird to them though. My mom has been buying toys the last few years. A train set, a little red rocking chair, etc. One day a small kitchen play set appeared in our front entryway.

Dad: What is this doing here?
Mom: Oh, I found that at Goodwill.
Dad: Well, why isn't it still there - what are we doing with it?
Mom: It's for the grandkids.
Dad: We don't have any grandkids.
Mom: But we will.

Or at least that's how I tell it as happening. Anyway, my mom is flying to Idaho on Saturday to see A and the baby and help out for a few days. M-Lite and I will probably go sometime in March to visit, seeing as how we only live a few hours away. However, in April or May, A, B, and baby Garbo are moving to Pennsylvania, which means that I probably won't be seeing this kid for a long while. This is a shame really, because I will be an excellent aunt.

I told my coworkers that I was an aunt now, and they said something about me being able to spoil my niece. I cried out in horror, saying that nothing could be farther from the truth. Let me speak plainly - I do not believe in coddling children - working at a preschool for almost 4 years has taught me that. Should children be looked after? Fed and diapered? By all means yes. However, it is wrong when people go to the extremes trying to make their children happy. A pony? Trips to the Bahamas? Personalized baby stationary? Trombone lessons? A Power Wheels convertible? This is madness I say! Give them some masking tape to play with. Better yet, some blocks - you can make anything you want out of blocks. What ever happened to playing peek-a-boo or having a pet rock? My children are getting nothing but rocks to play with - rocks and whatever else they can find in the backyard.

Okay. I'm done ranting about parents who want the best for their children, because I didn't mean to get off on this tangent.

In other news, there's a Happy Pirates show tonight. Hooray for pillaging. Shows always make me nervous, but I do better at shows than in practice, which is a good thing, to say the least. If these people weren't getting in free I'd be tempted to give them a refund. Also, I became a pirate last January, so it's been over a year now since I signed my soul away. I'm glad. Krebscout and I joined at the same time, and I wasn't sure at first whether I wanted to join or not. I was scared then. I'm still scared now. I guess that's half the fun.

Baconflagration

We burned the ham, and it was glorious. I've been holding back this post until I could get the pictures on here. Also, I have to give Krebscout some mad props for the delicious pun that is the title of this post.

Yellow was kind enough to drive Krebscout, Ahem, Hamburglar, and myself over to an undisclosed location (which I shall refrain from naming lest “the bacon” should catch wind of what we did) and we started it on fire. This is Ahem getting ready to light it.

It didn’t catch at first, but then smoke started billowing out of it and suddenly it was ablaze. Not only was it a beautiful sight, but the flames kept the cold from finishing me off. I kind of wished I’d had a marshmallow to roast or something.

Mostly I’m happy that I was finally able to burn it as I’ve been intending to do for some time now. It had been hanging around my living room with a lampshade resting on its head. A ham that liked to party is what it looked like.

The day after we burned the ham I called Uffish to confirm a time for watching Scrubs, and the subject of ham burning came up. She had missed the event, and so demanded that I make her a second ham to burn. I asked if I could make the new ham smaller than the original, as it had been quite large. She consented, we hung up, and I immediately set to work making the second ham.

I delivered it to her an hour and a half later when we all met up at Optimistic.’s. It's hand puppet sized, and perhaps my favorite feature is that there’s a set of eyes you can move into place – modeled after my own pair of eyes – blue with black glasses around them. I’m immensely proud of how it turned out. Uffish has since demanded a third ham that she can actually burn, but at this I put my foot down. If I made a ham for everyone who wanted one (which turns out is quite a few people) I'd be in my room with a hot glue gun for days. What gets me is that it doesn't even really look like a ham. When I was wearing the original costume I had people ask me what I was supposed to be.

me:I'm the ham from To Kill A Mockingbird.

them:Oh.

me: Don't I look like a ham? I'm clearly labeled as being such.

Basically I would have been screwed if I hadn't painted the word HAM on the front of it in big white letters. Also, the rest of what I wrote in this post is incredibly outdated, seeing as how it happened two and a half weeks ago, but this is what it was at the time:

I’ve spent every day of this last week hanging out with incredibly cool people. To recap - two wedding receptions, iced cream, Big Fish, a birthday party, mafia, a lot of cake, the season premiere of 24, a lot of leftover cake, scum, Roman Holiday, homemade pizza, home videos of me when I had a raspy voice and hair like Chucky, Scrubs, Gigantic; a Tale of Two Johns, Happy Pirates practice, the LDS film festival 24 hour movie marathon, The Office, Scrubs again, and then the burning of the ham.

I handed out my ham, and then we all watched Scrubs and played Apples to Apples. A little before curfew most of us decided we were hungry, so when it was time to go we went to IHOP. I had a delicious Belgian waffle and some hashed browns. Highlights included discussing the Sanhedrin shuffle, making the syrups sing the manamanah song from The Muppets, and overhearing other tables’ conversations - I heard something about “the armpit of the world” that made me laugh. I wrote phone numbers on sugar packets, which is something I always do at restaurants for fun. For some SUGAR, call (801) 812 -5755. You get the idea.

Philosophy

I got up this morning and went to take a shower. Somebody didn't put that little tab down that switches the water from the shower head to the bathtub spout. Cold. Water. 6:30 am. Wet and dying. Cold water all over my head and shoulders. That woke me up a bit faster than usual. I'd meant to take a shower, but I prefer to be fully in the shower and not still in my pajamas when the dousing happens. After that I thought to myself, "I hate the world. Today sucks." Then a small smile played across my face, as I realized that there was no possible way for me to hate this day, no matter how terrible its course of events. Today is Groundhog Day.

Our family has the tradition of watching Groundhog Day every year. We drink root beer floats. We get up and dance during the credits to the weatherman song. I love this day. It's second only to Canada Day in my estimation. I love Phil. Both Phils. I love Ned and Larry. I love them all. I love hearing that ridiculous Sonny and Cher song over and over and over again, seeing Phil kill himself a lot (I wasn't just blown up yesterday), and the fact that I know the whole bit that plays on the radio each morning. "That's right woodchuck chuckers, it's...Groundhog Day!"

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.