Can we just discuss something for a minute, you guys? I can’t even tell you the battle I’ve been having lately with buying jeans. It seems that in the past year, one of two things has happened- either the leg length of the average woman has increased by like four inches, or whoever puts the labels on the jeans in the jean factory has been smoking crack and just sticking on the sizes willy-nilly without care for the sanity of those of us who need new pants. Or they’re just doing it as a joke.
Okay that was actually three things. Whatever. Sometimes when I get worked up I get a little careless.
Anyway, my point is this- jeans usually come with labels attached identifying them as either “Long”, “Regular” or “Short”. Naturally, one assumes that these are for long, regular, or short people.
Not so.
These labels apparently have no bearing whatsoever on the actual length of the jeans. When I invest my time in a shopping expedition (which for me is like epically slow Chinese Water Torture) I expect the regular length jeans to be just that- regular. 'Tis the season for flip-flops and flats, and I don’t want yards of gratuitous fabric flapping around my ankles when I’m going for a nice, leisurely stroll around town. This past spring I completely ruined the hem of my favorite pair of jeans while walking around Venice because they were too long for my flops but I didn’t want to wear heels on the cobblestone streets.
(I could have gotten my point across there without being specific to location, but I want to make sure everyone knows that I wrecked my pants in Venice. Booyah.)
Right about now you might be thinking to yourself “Geez this chick is lazy. Why doesn’t she just buy the regular pants and then hem them if they are too long?“ Here’s why- I don’t want to. I want what I was promised on the label to be so. I don’t want to buy pants and then spend more money to make it so. (Captain Picard fans should have gotten a little thrill just then. To everyone else sitting there scratching your heads- we are cooler than you. Go check out Star Trek: The Next Generation and then get back to me.)
I understand that everyone wants a pair of jeans that they can wear with a fun pair of heels/boots/wedges etc. Naturally, these need to be a little longer than usual to accommodate the extra height, or else we would look silly, right? Of course. That’s what the long ones are for! Hear me, oh rich and powerful Magnates of Denim: There is no reason to make the regular length jeans longer! You have already provided for this with your "Long" length!!! Does anyone else have this much trouble, or is it just me?
All that whingeing aside, I actually did have some margin of success yesterday- at Wal-Mart no less. (Oh my gosh, spell check recognizes Wal-Mart as an actual word!) Here’s the secret. Ready? You have to buy petite. Not really a word I would ever use to describe myself, but apparently if you want jeans to come down just to the soles of your shoes, that’s the way you have to go. Which leaves me wondering- what is the difference between 12 petite and 12 short? Because I tried the petite ones and they were the perfect length, and then I tried the short ones and I looked like a sailor from On The Town. Go figure.
Ordinarily I’m not a shout-out-y type of person, but tonight I’m making an exception. You may have noticed that after my post in which I begged for more followers in order to appease my Number OCD, my number increased from a seizure-inducing eleven to a much more calming and visually pleasing twelve. So I’m sending a big shout-out to Deanna Fleming, my fellow French Honors Society alum and the person who helped me to make it through my 7:30am Intro to Psychology class in high school. (Honestly, what person is mentally prepared for such an advanced level of cogitation that early in the morning??)Prior to her selfless act of generosity, every time I looked at my number of followers I felt an impending sense of dread that is not unlike the sensation I get in the moment right before the whirring dentist office toothbrush smeared with gritty dentist office toothpaste accidentally hits my tongue and I nearly bite my hygienist’s fingers off in disgust. Now, with twelve, it’s more like the feeling you get when the teeth-polishing is over and you are allowed as much water as you want to wash the residual grit and bloody saliva out of your mouth. So, thank you Dee! Every time Maxime Le Forestier comes on my ipod and sings “C’est une maison bleue…” I think of you and Viv, and being stranded in a blizzard in Québec with nothing to do except go see an extremely disturbing French-Canadian movie that was actually kind of like soft-core porn.
Before reading this you might want to buckle your seat belt, or at least put a helmet on or something, because we are about to go deep into the recesses of my mind and explore the mystery-enshrouded brain hiccup that I like to call Number OCD. Are you ready? Hold on tight to something. I assure you, the ride will be bumpy.
Anyone who has ever ridden in my car with me has most likely experienced this particular quirk, and if you have ever tried to touch the volume on my radio you have surely had your hand slapped away/been subject to a raving, nonsensical lecture. My car radio is sacred ground, and the biggest manifestation of my weirdness.
The way it works is that there is a turny button for the volume, and a digital display that tells you the number of the volume level. The volume is pre-set to 25, which means that whenever I turn my car on, no matter what the volume was set to when I turned it off, it starts at 25. This is a perfect number because it is half of 50. I can’t tell you why that’s perfect, I just know that it is. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Kind of like how you feel when you're looking at a box of kittens.
Anyway, 25 is not nearly loud enough. Never mind the fact that I could just change the setting so that it’s pre-set to a higher volume. I’ve thought of that before, but it came to me set at 25 and that’s the way it shall stay. So I always have to turn it up, and here’s where it gets weird.
Do you remember the scene in Monty Python and The Holy Grail when they find the Holy Hand Grenade? And do you remember what it says in the Book of Armaments? Let me give you a little refresher:
"First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.”
That’s kind of what it’s like in my mind. The number of the volume in my car should ideally end in a five or zero. A number ending in a two, four, six or eight is acceptable, but not preferred. Of the four acceptable numbers, six is the least preferred because six is only one number away from five and why would you turn it to six when five is RIGHT THERE? I realize that four is also one number away from five, but it’s less than five so that’s okay. Having five as your next higher volume option is fine. But there’s no excuse for turning it only one past five. If you’re going to go past five, please have the decency to go further than one click. What makes six acceptable is the fact that it’s an even number, otherwise it would be stricken from the list. You should get down on your knees and thank God for your easy divisibility, Six. It is the only thing saving your bacon.
Under no circumstances may numbers that end in one, three, seven or nine be used. One and nine because they are too close to zero and why wouldn’t you just turn it to zero, and three and seven because they are right in between two even numbers - either of which would be vastly preferable to the odd number between them unless that odd number is five - so there’s no reason to leave it on three or seven.
There are other, smaller ways in which my Number OCD comes out, but I think I’ve done enough damage with these few paragraphs. And Number OCD is not the only type of OCD that I have. Don’t even get me started on colors. (Just ask my mother about how every time we play Trivial Pursuit I have to take all the colored wedges that she has haphazardly shoved into her playing piece with no regard whatsoever for the natural order of the world, and put them back in rainbow order. It drives her crazy when I do that.)
Symmetry is very important to me as well. I was unable to watch any of the coverage of the Inaugural Ball for fear I might see the First Lady, who unfortunately had chosen for her dress that night a gown that only had one shoulder strap. You have two shoulders, Mrs. Obama. Why would anyone choose a dress with one shoulder strap? Why? (For that matter, why would anyone make a dress with one shoulder strap?)
So now you guys know I’m crazy. That's not nearly all, but it's enough. It is now safe to remove the helmets/seatbelts/harnesses. The ride has come to a full and complete stop.
I was asked to blog about my number OCD and also my love of Hot Pockets, so, as promised, here it is. (Actually, I said I would blog about them in my previous post, and then I was asked after that, so I would have done it anyway. But I prefer to say that I’m doing it because I’m such a magnanimous person.)
I think I’m going to do this in two separate posts, because there’s no smooth transition to be made between warm, cheesy heaven and mental illness. There's also not a whole lot of difference. That being said, I’m hungry so let’s do Hot Pockets first, okay?
I discovered the Hot Pocket when I was 19. I was a sophomore in college, living in an on-campus apartment with five other girls and extremely pleased with myself because I had lived in a dorm when I was a lowly frosh, but now I was Big Cheese.
*Quick note about freshman year (this will be important in a minute so pay attention)- I did not have a car. What I did have was a dorm room that was ten feet away from the dining hall, and a meal plan that let me eat there three times a day. Sophomore year I had a car, and my apartment was located approximately one hundred million miles away from the dining hall. Needless to say, I never set foot inside that building again.
I am an extremely lazy person. I totally could have walked to the DH for my meals, but I had my car and my own kitchen, so I was like “I’ll just buy groceries and make my own food like a real adult. It will be fun! I’ll eat healthy!” Yeah right. Enter the Hot Pocket.
The Hot Pocket, for those of you who grew up under a rock, (or North Korea or the former Soviet Union or some other place where having fun is against the law) is a delicious concoction of cheese and usually some kind of meat, wrapped in a pastry-type crust. Biting into it is like biting into an angel straight out of Heaven made of chocolate and baby laughter all wrapped up in the moment that the Wizard of Oz turns from black-and-white to color. Words cannot do it justice.
But it can turn on you.
From my Hot Pocket diet (still the happiest nine months of my life) I went from 152 pounds to 170. It has taken me FIVE YEARS to get rid of it. And I still have three pounds to go. So take a lesson, kids. All things in moderation. The Hot Pocket can be your best friend, or your worst enemy. It all depends on how much will power you have. For me, it is no easy thing to keep Beelzebub at the stave’s end.
Okay that got a little dramatic. It’s not cocaine or anything, it’s just a microwavable sandwich.
Recently I’ve become obsessed with wanting everyone in the world to read my blog. I don’t know why. It’s not worth reading. I’m absolutely certain that immediately after you read whatever my latest lame story is, you probably sit there thinking “Why did I waste my time on that? That took me at least two to five minutes to read.”
You could have used those minutes to read something worthwhile, like The Economist, or The Beijing Times. Or better yet, you could have used two of the minutes to microwave a delicious hot-pocket and still have had three minutes left over to eat it while you were reading something that would fill your brain with important thoughts because you are a suit-wearing intellectual with many accomplishments under your belt and a snappy briefcase that says "I'm Somebody", and not a 25 year old sweat-pants-wearing fake-adult who still lives with her parents. (By the way, two minutes is the exact amount of time it takes to nuke a hot-pocket. I know this from experience. Someday I’ll tell you about how this knowledge helped me gain twenty pounds during my sophomore year of college.)
But you are not doing any of those things. You are sitting here reading all of my nonsense. Or maybe you aren’t, and I’m writing stuff that disappears into the vast wilderness of cyberspace and winds up lost and alone, discovered only by the poor, confused soul who’s just Googled “hot-pocket” and “The Economist” simultaneously and is now wondering which circle of Hell he‘s stumbled into.
Welcome to my mind, hungry smart person. There is no escape. I have you now.
Either way, I don’t really care because blogging is an ego-centric activity and in the end I still get to write funny things for my own personal enjoyment, and that’s all that matters because this is about ME, right? RIGHT??? That’s what I thought.
But I still want people to read.
So…tell your friends. Also tell your enemies. Being forced to read my blog would be a great way to torture someone that you hate if they are afflicted with no sense of humor and do not enjoy pointless but also hysterically funny stories.
It is also acceptable to tell perfect strangers. You could be like those people who stand on the street and hand out pamphlets promoting some club or self-produced DVD of a lame stand-up comedian who also happens to be your friend and you really don’t want to be standing outside on the street for seven hours breathing in traffic fumes in the middle of August promoting this person but they’re your friend so you do it anyway because that’s what friends do. That would be awesome and although I don’t have a club to invite you to, I would probably most likely bake you some cookies.
So there you go. Tell everyone. My undying gratitude and some free cookies are waiting.
P.S. In case you were wondering about the title, I really do have number OCD. I’ll tell you all about it sometime soon.
Dear Avalon Organics Vitamin C Oil-Free Moisturizer,
Thank you for hydrating my skin! You are so light and smooth, and you make my face feel good. I love the way that you smell like oranges. Or lemons. I’m not very discerning at 6.50am. Either way, you smell delicious, kind of like you would taste really good. But you don’t taste good. (Don’t judge me. I was curious.) That’s okay, because whatever the ingredients are that make you so perfect are likely toxic and would probably kill me if I ate a whole jar of you. One time, I ate a whole tin of Sucrets because they tasted like candy and my mom had to call Poison Control! Did you make yourself taste bad on purpose to keep me safe? That was so thoughtful of you!
Thank you, Avalon Organics Vitamin C Oil-Free Moisturizer, for having a rancid flavor and saving me an embarrassing phone call to Poison Control, and possibly a trip to the emergency room to have my stomach pumped.
Thank you also for your continued efforts to make my skin smooth and silky. Keep up the good work! I will see you tonight after I wash my face. I can't wait!Your friend,Molly
I just plucked the shit out of my eyebrows, you guys. But for some weird reason I decided to only do the middle. So now I look like I’ve had a horrible accident with lighter fluid, or hydrochloric acid, or some other equally destructive substance that’s burned away an inch-wide strip directly above my nose and left a furry furry caterpillar to stand guard on either side. I could fix this. I should fix this. But I don’t think I’m going to. Even though I look like some sort of really surprised Brooke Shields-Groucho Marx hybrid. Shut up. I do what I want.
Dear Fortune Cookie,
Well I hope you’re happy. Not only were you crushed into little tiny pieces before I unwrapped you, you didn’t even have a fortune inside. I was so disappointed.
When I first poured your little broken bits into my hand looking for that coveted slip of paper dictating how I would live my life for the next ten minutes before forgetting about you completely, I was filled with the kind of breathless anticipation one gets right before opening a present on Christmas morning.
I was initially confused when I couldn’t find it, and I immediately went into Justification Mode. “Maybe I just missed it. This cookie is a mess and I ripped into the wrapper with extra enthusiasm. Maybe it just fell on the floor.”
Sifting through your broken pieces again, the justification turned to denial: “Any minute now. I’ll find it. It’s here somewhere, I know it." I grew more and more anxious as I frantically searched under my napkin, in the folds of my pajama pants and on the floor. Where was the reward for finishing my meal? What was I going to do without that little piece of paper chirping out sometimes confused or misspelled but always cheerful statements advising me to “Depart not from the path which fate has you assigned”, or “Always remember to wear your best pants when fighting for freedom”, or “Please visit us at www.wontonfood.com”?
As I lie here on my bed in a state of apathy and despair, slowly and painfully digesting the entire pint of sweet and sour chicken that I wolfed down in a state of giddy anticipation while blissfully unaware that my dinner was about to turn into a bigger disappointment than "Aladdin 2: The Return of Jafar", all I have to say, Fortune Cookie, is that I’m very disappointed. This is not the level of service I have come to expect from you. Please take care that this does not happen again. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Molly
Holy christmas tree you guys, I am so bored. I'm sitting on my bed waiting for inspiration to strike. It's not happening. Help! Usually when I'm bored I read, but I just can't get into Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness right now.
I have a weird cramp in my thumb. I've never had a thumb cramp before. Oh wait, it's gone now.
I think I ate too much for dinner. I always get really excited whenever mom makes mashed potatoes, and I wind up going a little crazy. I turn into a mashed potato monster and I think that if I was the last person left on earth and the only other person besides me was a chef who only knew how to make mashed potatoes, I would be fine with that. Like, forever.
Today I wanted to write a blog post, but my brain was like: "No!" So instead I'm writing a list of movies who's endings traumatized me so much the first time I saw them that I can never watch them again.
Armageddon
The only part of this movie that I can clearly remember is that scene at the end where Bruce Willis changes places with Liv Tyler's boyfriend at the last second, and is all "Take care of my daughter" or something like that, and then basically just sits down on the asteroid and waits to run out of oxygen, or for the asteroid to explode, whatever comes first. I did not see that coming.
This might be traumatizing to me because one of my biggest fears is dying alone in outer space. I'm not sure why this scares me so much. I'm pretty sure I will never be in outer space. Unless NASA suddenly starts accepting extremely under-qualified musicians with vague aspirations towards the library sciences field into their astronaut program.
The Goonies
I don't even remember why this movie scared me. I just know that it was bad. And I never want to see it again. Call me un-American, call me a traitor to my generation, just don't call me into the room if this movie is on tv.
Titanic
Even though I was fully aware of how this one would end, it still scared the crap out of me. Again, (I'm sensing a theme here), one of my biggest fears is being in extremely deep water with no idea as to what could possibly be lurking under me. Just the thought that any minute I could look over and see a huge whale or maybe a shark is enough to keep me out of the deep end of the pool. And don't even get me started on those aquariums that have the big underground windows where you can see into the tanks. I live in mortal terror of the sperm whale display at the Natural History Museum.
Deep Impact
Space disaster, end of the world, huge tidal wave. Enough said.
E.T.
Don't laugh, you guys. This movie made me so sad that I cried hysterically for two hours after it was over, and had to have my mom sleep in my bed with me that night. Never again.
So now you know what a wuss I am, all thanks to my lazy brain who couldn't come up with a good idea for a post.
WeIl, I had a feeling that Pork wouldn't last too long after Beans died. I was right. At least they are together again...I guess I just wasn't meant to keep aquatic pets alive. I feel so guilty. If you ever see me heading for the fish store again, you had better scream bloody murder until I turn around.
My mom is making hot dogs for dinner and I'm weirdly excited about it. I love hot dogs. Hot dogs hot dogs hot dogs. Eating a hot dog always makes me feel like a little kid. So do these things:
Other Food That Makes Me Feel Like A Child
spam
cinnamon toast
Gortons Fisherman popcorn shrimp
chicken nuggets shaped like other things (dinosaurs, stars, etc.)
frozen vegetables
celery and peanut butter
Kid Cuisine tv dinners
the kind of orange juice that comes frozen in a can and you have to put it in the pitcher and pour cold water over it and then chop it up with a wooden spoon
I used to work for a rich lady. I was her personal assistant, and I worked at her house doing whatever she needed me to do. My brother will swear up and down that this was not a real job, because my days basically consisted of long hours sitting on the sofa reading whatever book I was currently in the middle of, punctuated by brief moments of dog walking, phone answering, and the occasional foray into the kitchen to whip up some raspberry vinaigrette dressing or a BLT or whatever my employer was craving at the moment. Needless to say, it was a pretty sweet gig. It was also the scene of the most physically awesome thing I have ever done. And it happened on my first day of work. Unfortunately it was not witnessed by my boss who was out sunning herself by the pool at the time, but only by a random contractor and his helper. Intrigued? Read on...
* Let me preface this by saying that the first job I ever had was at a china shop, and the only rule I remember is that when the telephone rang, we were to answer it in two rings or less. Three rings is unprofessional. I don't know who arbitrarily decided that, but for whatever reason it has stuck with me for eight years and to this day I still feel vaguely guilty when I can't get to a phone by that crucial third ring. This will all make sense in a moment.
So it's my first day of work, right? Naturally I was a little nervous and eager to please, and I definitely didn't want to mess anything up. It was a pretty slow day; the only thing on the schedule was these guys that were supposed to come to the house and hang up a chandelier in the kitchen.
So okay. The guys get to the house. I let them in the front door and show them the kitchen and where she wants the chandelier, and they move the kitchen table out of the way, put down a drop cloth so they don't wreck the hard-wood floor, and start working to get this thing up. (It's truly hideous by the way- very dark wrought iron in the shape of bats with their wings outstretched, all surrounding these frosted glass globes that have dark red paint dripping down the sides that looks like blood.)
During the installation of what I like to call the Halloween Special (clearly ordered from Dr. Frankenstein's Discount Dungeon and Torture Chamber Supply), I decided I had to pee. So I went. I was all finished and washing my hands when I heard the faint sound of the telephone ringing. In the back of my mind, I heard the voice of my old boss at the china shop and I thought: three rings is unprofessional. The bathroom is at the end of a long hallway, which is on the other side of the kitchen from the closest telephone. And I'm already down by one ring. I only have one left. I realize that if I'm going to make it before the third one, I'm going to have to do some serious hauling.
So I set off down the hallway like Flo Jo and reached the kitchen just as the sounds of the second ring were dying away. I had some serious momentum going, but as I headed for the table where the phone was, I hit the drop cloth that the contractors put down. Fleecy, floor-protecting drop cloth + shiny wood floor = Slippery. My feet flew out from under me and I landed hard on my butt, but here's the awesome part. My momentum in addition to the slippery floor gave me some serious glide, and as I shot past the table I managed to grab the phone, push the Talk button, and answer calmly and in a professional manner before the third ring as I continued to slide across the floor at breakneck speed and crash into the hutch cabinet at the other end of the room.
The chandelier guys (who at this point thought I was REALLY COOL) were like "Oh my Gosh! Are you okay??" and I was like "Of course I'm okay. I'm a professional. I'm only doing my job." I was actually in some serious pain, but I wasn't about to let them know that. I would rather them see me as the super dedicated employee who would throw herself (literally) into the face of danger with a casual disregard for my own personal safety in the interest of my work. And anyway, the awesomeness of what I had just done went a long way in relieving the pain. Being a personal assistant can provide a lot more opportunities for heroics than most people think. Integrity incarnate- that's me.
I just got back from dinner out at a Mexican restaurant, and I'm so tired! I can feel the delicious chicken tacos that I ate sitting in a warm, happy ball in my stomach, and it would be perfect napping conditions if it weren't 9pm. I might go to bed early. Seriously, I can barely hold my head up. I haven't posted in a while though, so I'm going to be noble and fight through the exhaustion to update you all on what's been happening for the past few days. Because I can tell that you are all just dying to know.
So, basically nothing of consequence happened last week, hence the lack of posts. Actually, I take that back. Wednesday night I went to see the NY Phil at Avery Fisher. They were performing Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with the NY Choral Artists (whoever they are). It was excellent. I absolutely love that piece, even though I wanted to kill myself every day that I was learning it in college because it was so hard and I had too many other things to worry about. But I digress. Anyway, I wound up going by myself and it was really fun. I've never taken myself out to a concert before. The only bummer was that I didn't have anyone to talk about it with afterward. Well, that's not entirely true. I did trade emails about it with my friend who works in arts management, and it turns out that she used to work for the conductor when he was just starting up, she represented the soprano when she was starting her career overseas (I believe the phrase that she used was "she was one of my kids that I was trying to sell over in Europe" haha) and she somehow knows the tenor through her former boss because they are friends or something. Anyway, I yakked about it with her for a while, which was fun because she is a fabulous musician and she really knows her stuff.
From a glitzy night out in town to doing my corporate duty- Friday night (which I count as the start of the weekend) was my company's annual outing to see a Trenton Thunder game. They are the minor league team for the Yankees. It was about as fun as I expected it to be, which was not very. I mean, it was nice to see everyone outside of the office and with their families and stuff, but baseball is not my thing, and I'm not really friends with a lot of my co-workers. They are very nice, pleasant people, I just don't want to have an extended conversation with them in a forced social setting. I did have one friend that I really enjoy who came, and she brought her family and they are really fun, but other than that it was pretty boring. But I felt like it was important to go, because it was a nice thing that the partners did for everyone at the office.
Saturday I went up to spend the weekend with Alison and the rest of the Heathers, and that night we went to the fair in Yorktown. It was really fun, and the boys had a blast. They were so cute. They were really dragging by the end of the night though, and so was I! I don't know why I was so tired, all I did was walk around, but for some reason I was exhausted by the time we got home. I crashed hard at bedtime, and didn't wake up the next morning until after 8:30. That's unusual for me when I'm at their house. Even though I've kind of gone past the point when I'm treated like a guest and am now one of the fam, I still try to be courteous and I feel like when I'm in someone else's home I shouldn't sleep in until all hours and then lie around the house in my pajamas until tea time. I try to get up not too much later than the boys, but Sunday morning I was the last one out of bed. I even missed early morning tea! That's not too much of a bummer though because the last time I had early morning tea at their house it was 7:30 on Christmas morning, and I pounded down a HUGE cup of tea in about five minutes flat and then immediately had to run downstairs and throw it all back up because the combination of how excited I was in addition to how fast I drank the tea made me sick. Luckily the boys were absorbed in presents, and Alison and Randall were absorbed in watching them open presents, so no one noticed my brief moment of disgusting grossness. Which is good because it was really embarrassing. I felt like a little kid who ate her Halloween candy too fast. I mean, seriously. I'm an adult and I threw up on Christmas morning because I was too excited.
Okay this post has soured, and taken a turn that I wasn't expecting. I wasn't planning on writing about puking on Christmas. How did that happen? That was a seriously polluted stream of consciousness. So anyway, now you know what I've been up to for the past few days. Not a bad week/weekend if I do say so myself. Now I'm going to go plan my outfit for tomorrow, because it's going to be Fancy Dress-Up Day at work. See you all on the flip side.
It is my sad duty to inform you that when I can home from work this afternoon, I found Beans upside-down at the bottom of the tank looking very dead. My suspicions were confirmed when I tapped the glass and there was no response, and then really confirmed when I fished him out with the net and dropped him in the toilet and he still didn't move. Man down. He's been flushed, and words of an appropriate solemn nature were said. Pork is now A Frog On His Own. Poor little guy.
I think I'm going back to school. I've sat on my butt for three years since graduation (save for a brief, failed attempt at city living) waiting for something to fall into my lap and make me change my life, and it just recently occurred to me that if I want change, I have to make it. So I'm going to University. Again. I'm applying to the online program at Drexel University to get my masters in Library Science, with a concentration in archival studies so that I can be one of those cool people working in the dungeon of some museum rebuilding the Library of Alexandria or something.
I decided to do this for a number of reasons- the first being that I've become too comfortable in the job I have now, and other than the fact that I'm dying to live on my own, I have no real motivation to move forward with my life. This is going to screw up my master plan of buying my own place soon because the money I've been saving for that reason will now be going towards tuition instead. I'm hoping though that the payoff will be worth it, because I think this is going to open up my life a lot. Once I've got my degree and I get a job and move to wherever that job is, I will have so many chances to meet new people (and by people I mean boys). I have no desire for a relationship right now, but by the time I do, I would like to be living in a place where a guy's idea of a good time is not going to someones farm, getting drunk in a field and then driving home. I need a nerdy boy who likes what I like, although I'm not sure how I'm going to find him. (Maybe I could try out some nerdy pick-up lines; "Check me out at your local library!")
I'm telling everyone because if I make it public, I can't back out. I'm doing this and I'm doing it for real. I'm applying for the Spring semester of 2011, because the deadline for Fall 2010 is August 2nd and I don't have enough time to get my stuff together before then. So...yay! I'm going to be a Master at something! Assuming I get accepted into the program, that is. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch.
"I have a mercurial temperament," Anastasia said to her mother.
"You also have a terribly dirty shirt on," her mother said. "Don't you have any clean clothes?"
"Yes, but I hate all my clean shirts. This is my favorite shirt. I'll save the clean ones for school. This is okay for Saturday."
-
Anastasia Krupnik, by Lois Lowry
So I've discovered the new design templates (thank you Sammi) and decided to revamp my blog (again). My only problem is that there are too many fun ones to choose from. I'm not going to pick just one and stick to it, I'm going to change whenever I feel like it. It will depend on my mood, which, having a mercurial temperament as I do, changes a lot. So don't be surprised if you visit my blog and it looks completely different than the time before. It's still the same old blog, just wearing a different outfit. It has a mercurial temperament. Like me.
"Don't you agree that I have a mercurial temperament?"
"Tell me what it means," said her mother.
"It means someone who changes her mind a lot."
"What have you changed your mind about?"
Anastasia hoisted herself up on the countertop and sat with her legs dangling.
"Well, just for an example, do you remember that at Thanksgiving I told you I hated pumpkin pie?"
"Mmmmm."
"Did you notice at Christmas I ate a whole lot of pumpkin pie?"
"Yes," said her mother thoughtfully. "As a matter of fact, I did notice that. Christmas night, very late, I sneaked into the kitchen to get something to eat, and what I wanted was a piece of pumpkin pie. And it was all gone. You ate all the whipped cream, too."
"Yeah. Mercurial temperament."
These are my frogs before I moved them to a more spacious aquarium. Cute little buggers, aren't they?
Have I mentioned lately that I have two frogs? Well, I do. For all those out there who have been
living under a rock since Christmas, they are African Dwarf frogs, their names are Pork and Beans, and recently I moved them from their tiny plastic cube into a nice tank that has plants and pretty gravel. The latest addition to the tank was a water filter, and I'm afraid that it might have had a really negative effect on the them. Ever since I put it in the tank, all they do is hide. They have not been eating, they have changed to a really light color and because of the lack of food, they have shrunk (weird). I know what you're thinking- just turn the filter off! I had the same thought about four days ago, so I did. They have eaten a couple of times since then, but they haven't changed back to their normal color and are still really lethargic. I'm afraid I've done irreparable damage. I was really hoping that I could keep these guys alive. Some of you know about my abysmal track record with fish (4-7 has seen many toilet funerals) and I thought I was doing the right thing by moving the frogs to a better environment but I might have killed them. I'm not really that attached to them (they're frogs; they are not furry or snuggly and they don't exactly love you back) but I feel responsible for their lives and I really don't want them to die. They have no control over what happens to them. It's all me. And I'm really trying to not screw it up.
We meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but a learner; now I am the master.
Cue light sabers and death-battle. Following the completion of the final 11 minutes in the trial version, Bejeweled 2 will shut down and sacrifice itself for the greater goal of ultimately convincing me to purchase the full game, which will seduce me into playing it every time I turn on my computer. The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded.
