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Do you ever just not like someone? For no good reason?

I have this problem with some people. I have no idea what it is that causes it, but there are some people that I just can't stand. They've never done anything to me. They don't treat me badly. My friends like them just fine. I couldn't think of good enough reason not to accept a friend request from them. And yet, pretty much from the second I meet them, I feel an instant, visceral dislike. Maybe it's just bad chemistry, maybe it's the alignment of the stars, or maybe I'm just crazy, but every time such individuals are around, I end up locked in an epic battle with myself. On the one hand, I feel like a cat who's been rubbed the wrong way. All my emotional fur is standing on end, crackling with static-y hatred. On the other hand, society frowns on humans taking random swipes at people just because you feel prickly. So, I wind up caught somewhere between displaying active dislike and active friendliness. This look is also known as "resentful apathy." I call this special attitude the Margot Tenenbaum:

Needless to say, this completely fails to conceal my rampant dislike. I end up feeling like a huge bitch, because I can't feign interest in someone I find so completely distasteful, in addition to feeling the aforementioned static-y hatred.

Through intense reflection (generally done while staring at a hated acquaintance with the closest thing to a blank look I can engineer), I've deduced that there are three major categories of these auto-hated people:

1) Reminders

These are the people that, through no fault of their own, probably remind me of someone else who I disliked, usually for good reason. I've had a couple of classmates who instantly remind me of H, my ex-best friend, and I can never really like them once I figure out why they seem familiar. This also applies to people who remind me of myself at my most irritating ages. There's nothing worse than being forced to confront both an unpleasant person and a reminder that you used to be just like that person.

2) Bitches

I'm sorry, okay, but some people don't deserve for me to like them. With these, it's really a chicken or egg kind of thing. They're rude to me, I'm rude to them, they're rude to me, and so on and so on...but is it because they know I don't like them? Or do I not like them because they were bitchy because they didn't like me? Fortunately, this group is the least guilt-inducing, because generally at least some of my friends also aren't so fond of them.

3) Puppy people

Sadly, this is by far the largest group, and yet also the group that I don't have a logical explanation for. These people have done nothing to me. They're not rude. They don't remind me of anyone I hate. Regardless, they bug the crap out of me. I call them puppy people because they act just like puppies - eager to please, a little slow, and blissfully unaware of any dislike directed at them. The Margot Tenenbaum goes right over their over-friendly heads. Some are too loud, some are too quiet. Some laugh too much, some are too self-conscious. Most are really bad at reading social cues. And they all seem to really, really like me. I can't be mean to them to make them go away. I would get this:

And so I sit there, thinking, "Go away. Goawaygoawaygoaway. Go away. Go away. Don't you see the Margot? WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE I HATE YOU."

Once they finally slink off, I'm left wondering what the hell just happened in my brain.

Twitter

So, I got a Twitter account about a month ago in order to follow feministhulk, who I read about somewhere on the internet during my endless hours on the internet. I signed up, clicked follow, and told myself that that would be all - I would not tweet. Ever. But then Trueblood told me (on Facebook) that if I tweeted their stupid message about whatever, I would get to see an Exclusive Scene from the New Season (which premieres Sunday! so excited!). So I did. But! I said, that is all. No more tweeting. We are done.

And then my friends at work starting asking me if I had a twitter. "Yes," I'd say, "but I only got it to follow feministhulk." Totally justified, I'd think smugly. They would then urge me to actually, you know, use it. Finally, I broke down. (And when I say broke down, I mean I wanted to be included in all this @whoever in-joke stuff that was going on around me.) I logged in, changed my username from my actual name to a fake name, and randomly tweeted an excerpt from a story I'd told my friends about T-rex. (It involved how after a fourth night in a row of pacing, I discovered an Eastie Beastie (don't click the links if you hate bizarre awful centipede creatures straight from Satan's nightmares) in my room, freaked out, killed it, and then sort of...left it in front of T-rex's door in a sleep-deprived act of revenge.)

From that point, I sort of threw myself into the whole endeavor. I changed my background to a picture I selected. (Cookies, obviously.) I changed the colors of the fonts and boxes. I found every member of the Glee and Community casts and am now "following" them. I found B and now we follow each other, which seems like a dog chasing its own tale, but whatever.

But now I'm sort of floundering. There is too much internet for me. Twitter asked me to list my "website, or blog." Wait, I thought. Should I list this blog? It is my blog, but... Then, I had a link I wanted to post somewhere. But suddenly, I had an overabundance of places to post it. When is it appropriate to tweet vs. facebook something? Can I do both? Is that redundant? Should I tell my Twitter about my blog? Should I tell my blog about Twitter?

I'm still not sure, but I have come to some semi-conclusions. I won't list my blog on any of my public profiles, for now. However, I will list my Twitter on my blog, in case anyone is interested, since there is no more information about me there then there is on here. I'm pepperpentangle, and if anyone is on Twitter, we should follow each other! It will be like the blind leading the blind! Doesn't that sound fun?

What is it with me and the T-Rex?

I'm staying at Bryn Mawr for the summer, as you may know, and for the past week my room in the summer housing dorm has been just fine. It's big and unusually cool considering the temperature outside, but most of all, it's quiet. Or at least it was. However, I acquired a new neighbor over the weekend, and I can only conclude that one of her parents is a T-Rex. No, seriously. I have never heard anyone with a heavier step in my life. And I've seen her. She's tiny. She must be the densest person ever. I should call the record books.

Now, let me explain. She appears to be a pacer. I can hear her at all hours, pacing along the wall that our rooms share. She thunders five steps towards the door, then four steps back. Five steps to the wall, four steps back. Thunkthunkthunkthunkthunk pause thunkthunkthunkthunk. Over and over and over, interrupted occasionally by a drawer opening and closing or her throwing things on the floor. (I don't know why it takes her more steps to walk in one direction than the other. I really don't.) This wouldn't be so bad if not for the aforementioned improbable density. She walks so hard that it rattles my chair. Literally. You know that scene in Jurassic Park, when you can tell the giant T-Rex is coming because the water in the cups starts shaking? My cups of water do that. I'm not even joking. And her steps actually sound like the T-Rex - more boom than thunk, really. Over and over and fucking over. And I have no idea how she manages to be so loud. I stood in my room and tried to recreate the noises she makes. It required a weird jump-step-stomp to make quite the same echoing bang, and I could only keep it up for a couple of strides. What is she made out of?

But, I thought, how bad is it, really? She seems to stop around midnight to go to sleep, and start up again around 8 or 8:30, usually waking up me up by slamming her door and stomping down the hall to the bathroom. But that's 8 hours of sleep for me. Sure, I would prefer more, but it's not going to kill me. And she leaves for work around 9 a.m., and I don't come back from work until 9 p.m., so I decided to just deal with it: clamp my headphones over my ears and ignore her. It seemed too awkward to go knock on her door and be like, "Hi, I'm your neighbor, and I was just wondering - do you think you could walk differently? I don't know what exactly you're doing, but it's fucking loud and if you don't stop I think I'm going to end up sleeping outside just to get away from you. Thanks!"

And then. I was woken this morning at 3:25 (let me repeat: 3:25 IN THE FUCKING MORNING) because my bed was shaking. Well, not really shaking. More rattling every other second. As I woke, my first thought was, of course, "Shit, it's a T-Rex! Or an earthquake!" Alas, it was just my neighbor. She was up and pacing. AT 3:25 IN THE FUCKING MORNING. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep. But the boomboomboomboomboom pause boomboomboomboom was impossible to ignore. Finally, at 3:45, I got up and went to ask her to cut it the fuck out. Politely. I stood in front of my door inside my room, tracking her movements back and forth as I tried to compose a polite way to ask that she stop moving around. "Hi, I'm your neighbor next door. I know it's late," (EARLY!) "but I couldn't help but hear your movements in your room. Do you think you could quiet down, a little? I need some sleep. I'm really sorry. I don't really mind during the day," (you weird T-Rex-human hybrid) "but your steps seem really loud and it's so early and I just want to sleep." I am not very coherent that early in the morning.

So, I finally made it to the hallway. I really creepily looked under her door to see if her light was on to make really sure that she was the one doing this before I knocked on her door at 3:45 in the morning. It was. So I knocked lightly but firmly, four times. There was no answer. I waited for about 15 seconds, which is much longer than you think, and then knocked again, five times this time, and a little louder. Again, no answer. "Hello?" I stage-whispered. Nothing. I had no idea what to do. I stood there awkwardly for another minute, then went back to my room, crestfallen. I really psyched myself out for that, and then, nothing.

Strangely, when I got back in I realized she had stopped. I stood there for a couple of minutes to make sure it wasn't a fluke, but though I could hear rustles from over next door, (seriously, what are the walls made of here? Cardboard?) there was no more T-Rex stomping. So, I went back to bed.

This makes me wonder - did she hear me knocking? And ignore me out of terror/knowledge of her ridiculous stride, but quiet down because she knew why I was knocking? She was definitely still up and moving, but not nearly as loudly. And, what do I do for the rest of the summer? I'm here until August - do I just go and knock on her door when she's bothering me at ridiculous hours, and hope she never answers but is nonetheless quiet? Is it ever okay to bang on the wall to try and get her to stop? She might know that I'm irritated, or she might think that I'm hanging a poster or killing a spider or just being a bitch. What do I do?

Hola

Hi loyal blog readers (cause if you're reading this at this point, you must be loyal). Finals are going alright for me - only one paper left. However, the biggest obstacle currently in my way is moving. I have to pack up my room, separate what I need for the summer from I really don't need from what I want but don't need, move all the stuff I need to Brecon, and help my roommate move the rest, plus her stuff and B's stuff, to storage. I always forget until finals start that I will be completely and totally sore from head to toe by the time moving out is over. I get fixated on school work and forget the physical work of stuffing all my belongings into boxes, carrying those boxes down flights of stairs, shoving them into a 2-door compact, wrestling them out of a 2-door compact, and pulling them into a 5x10 room.Ugh. I will be more interesting later, but I'm at work and feel conspicuous when I blog at the desk.

Finals So Far

Thus far, I've managed to:

- Finally e-mail one of my professors about my thesis idea to find out if it's viable. Fingers crossed, everyone. Hopefully this blog doesn't turn into the thesis version of my old one when I was a applying for colleges - a constantly shifting list of which ones I would be or was considering applying to.

- Make a Done is Good list.

- Buy a 600 page book I desperately want to read but really shouldn't until it's all over.

- Inherit a hot plate, cooking pot, blender, knife, cutting board, and many spices from a senior as May Day gifts. Also, a set of bangles that has been passed down before, and crayons that are for toddlers to use in the shower. Yeah, I don't know about those either.

- Sob my heart out on May Day. I know that this doesn't count as finals, but seriously. It's like in order to answer Haverfest Bryn Mawr decided to follow May Day with Sob Fest at the end of step sing.

- Get tickets to see the midnight premiere of Iron Man 2 with my friends.

- Make this awesome background for motivation:

- Make a list of the nonproductive things I've done so far in order to make myself feel better about my lack of real progress.

Mayday

I have a rather conflicted relationship with Mayday. On the one hand, it seems awesome: an all day party! On the other hand, I don't really like parties. I'm kind of bad at them. Also, Mayday starts SO EARLY. Last year, there was no coffee at breakfast, and I was grumpy for hours because not only did I have to get up at the asscrack of dawn (okay, 8, but still), but there was no caffeine! And this Mayday there is word of a certain state regulatory board that has been active on other campuses showing up here. And frankly, police make me nervous. It doesn't matter if I haven't done anything illegal, I still get unaccountably uncomfortable when there is a police presence. Add a police presence to an event where I'm wandering around with a crown of flowers on my head in bare feet, wearing a dress that refuses to cover all of my appropriate parts, and I begin to actively consider just staying inside all day. However, the call of strawberries and my friends will probably win me over.

I have a big head and little arms...

So, I realized that although I seem to feel free to post willy-nilly about jobs and bosses I've had in the past, I don't mention my current job in this blog. And I'm not going to go into many details here, but I will tell you that I work at Canaday Library and that I am currently there. Working. Yes, the time stamp is right. It's 7:21 a.m. I've been here since 6:00 a.m. No, I don't usually get up this early, but I needed money and since hours are extended this week and beyond so that the library is open 24 hours a day, they were available. So, here I sit. Sipping contraband Diet Dr. Pepper and blogging because really, no one needs anything at 7 a.m. on a Thursday.

I think I told you this because I feel the need to make it up to M after accidentally outing her blog comment in class, so I'm going to share the single most embarrassing thing I've ever done at a job. I was shelving here at the library, and my arms were so full of books that I had very limited mobility. In my mind, this related directly to the T-rex (yes, the dinosaurs) and I was thinking about how their arms are so short. In the spirit of the T-rex (and because I thought I was alone, since my headphones were blocking out other noises) I began to make vaguely T-rex-like arm gestures, still carrying all of the books. I got so amused that I did a little T-rex dance and let out a (very small) T-rex growl. Then I happened to glance up in the middle of my awesome dinosaur groove to see some guy staring at me like I was crazy. Because let's face it, I was clutching a bunch of books growling and waving my forearms around while awkwardly shuffling around (dancing is not my forte). Thankfully that guy has since graduated (or decided never to return to Bryn Mawr, land of weird growling dancing library workers), so I am not forced to relive my embarrassment. Much.

Look at that sexy dance.

Pictures

I mentioned in class today that I wanted to know more about the pictures on the tops of everyone else's blogs, and I realized that I never explained the ones at the top of mine. So, a brief explanation, clockwise from the top left:

1) Denbigh

The dorm where I live now.

2) Chocolate chip cookie, all melty and delicious

My one true love.

3) A pretty view of the sun through a tree

My roommate took this picture and I think it's really pretty. It has no particular meaning, but I thought it would look nice.

4) The door to Merion

The dorm where I lived as a freshman and sophomore, and will live as a senior.

5) A flower

From the end of Hell Week.

6) An accidental picture

Of the legs of me and my friends at Mayday last year. It was raining so we had to stay inside, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. A friend was trying to take a picture of C, A, and me, and fell over, accidentally taking this shot, which I thought turned out surprisingly well.

7) Two of my cats

Bundle and Ana

8) Two owls

The symbol of Bryn Mawr, obviously.

Blog post just for class

Warning: This brief blog post contains spoilers for my presentation thing tomorrow, so if you don't want that, (because I'm sure the thought of my thoughts on blogging has you tingling with anticipation) don't read it.

Cleaning Attack

So I was just sitting here reading this blog, having watched Tenure (it was terrible, really, only worth watching for the sake of going, "That's Bryn Mawr. That's Bryn Mawr. Omigod that's...Rosemont. Oh, Bryn Mawr again," and "I know that extra standing in the hallway right there!! I know a celebrity!") and feeling pretty content with my life. And then I had the sudden urge to clean. Like Right Then. At 10:37 on a Saturday night. Admittedly, things around my desk were getting a little...cluttered. I moved my foot somewhere into uncharted under-desk territory and planted it right in the middle of a dust bunny lump thing. There was a line of iced tea bottles that I had to be very careful not to knock over because of the incredibly loud domino effect that would surely ensue. I recently found a CD my roommate lent me to rip to my computer that had been hiding under a pile of papers since approximately December.

So. I cleaned. I can see my desk. It's wood. There are now 8 iced tea bottles of various brands in the recycling bin in the hall (which was a noisier process than I meant it to be. Sorry, Denbigh.). My nalgene full of iced tea from the dining is now sitting on (a clear patch of) my desk. I came up with that brilliant idea when I realized that there was a growing regiment of bottles next to my desk that I kept having to pay for, while there was a machine in Erdman that dispenses the same thing, which I have already paid for. (Or that I will pay for eventually, once I finally pay off my student loans.)

And now I'm sitting here, drinking half raspberry and half unsweetened black tea, trying to remember exactly how much I've taken out in student loans and contemplating sweeping. I probably won't, though. I think my cleaning spree was motivated by the cookie dough I ate while watching Tenure in an attempt to alleviate my indifference. In fact, I ate so much cookie dough (which has a warning printed all the way around the lid (yes, I bought a tub, rather than a tube. Cause I'm a bamf) that says, "Do not consume raw." HA!) that I had to eat two of the pickles I also bought today in order to convince my stomach/blood sugar/I-don't-even-know that I was not going to throw up.

So...yeah. I apologize for the sugar-high nature of this blog post. And for my frequent use of "so." I was going back through all of my old posts and I realizing just how much I lean on "so." And "just," for that matter. I appear to be developing that lovely "oh shit I actually wrote that" relationship with this blog that I have with the one I had when I was in high school. The one where I look back and think, "Why do I say "so" so much? And "really"? Did I really wax rhapsodic on some book I was reading that I don't even remember reading? Is that a typo? What is this thing I've made? It's a monsterrrrrr..."

Which is exactly how I'm going to feel about this mutant of a post in the morning. So, (damnit!) good night!

Blighted with Indifference

So, a little while back my hall had a flower-planting tea. My roommate and I both missed it, me because I don't interact with my hallmates because I'm kind of a jerk and A because she had class. Our HA recognized that not everybody would make it and so left the pots and some soil and seeds outside her room so that anyone who didn't make it could still have plants. So, A and I both gathered briefly in the hall and planted flowers. I watered both of ours for the next two or three weeks. A's had a couple of green things poking out of the soil, while mine was beginning to look positively verdant. I teased her that she was blighting the flowers with her indifference. She was slightly indignant. I now only four more blog posts left to write. I will leave you with photographic evidence that flowers know when they're loved.

Eavesdropping

So, I'm making an impromptu post from my local Starbucks, where I spend way too much time. I'm sitting here trying to get a paper written for my 300-level psych class, but I find myself hopelessly distracted by some drama going down a table away. Before I get into that I should mention something that I don't think I've every talked about here - I am a hopeless eavesdropper. I get more pleasure than is normal from listening to the conversations of strangers.

Right now (okay, so they left while I was playing solitaire after I started writing this, but whatever) these two soccer moms who clearly just left the gym together are discussing one's psychotic sister-in-law/friend/ex-husband's new wife - I can't tell - and I am paying rapt attention. They're throwing around phrases like, "cut out of my life," and "toxic personalities." There's lots of gesticulating while holding non-fat soy lattes with Splenda, and indignant exclamations of, "Not with YOUR HUSBAND!" and "In front of the children?!"

At the table next to me some college-aged blonde girl wearing obviously new business casual interview attire is having an interview for a job at what sounds like a test-prep company with some guy in a polo shirt who looks too large for the wooden Starbucks chair he has to sit in. She is trying very hard and I hope it goes well for her. I've developed more sympathy for interview candidates than I used to have, what with Senior Year and The Future looming on the horizon.

Overheard in my Room

My roommate A and I have lived together for 3 years. We've developed over that time a vast array of shorthand expressions for just about everything. So, without further ado (6 more entries left!) here is a list of the most commonly heard things in our room:

1) "What? Did you say something?...Oh."

I have headphones that block a lot of noise. Consequently, I occasionally become convinced that A is desperately trying to get my attention, so I whip around and stare at her. Only to have her tell me that she didn't say anything, it was just someone outside, or her putting her cup down, or whatever.

2) "Roomie. Roooooomie. Gillian. Gillian. Hey. GILLIAN. HEY GILLIAN! Psst." followed by a projectile

Thanks to the previously mentioned noise-blocking headphones, there are times when A is trying to get my attention and I am completely oblivious. She tries and tries and I just continue to power through my latest solitaire game. The only things that consistently work are her throwing things at me or "pssst." I hear that much more clearly than anything else, for which I have no explanation.

3) "Oh heeeeeeeeeey!"

It's our standard greeting. No clue how it happened.

4) "I have a bold and provocative proposition for you."

This is what I say whenever I want to go study or eat somewhere off campus. I have no idea why, though I imagine I picked it up from a movie or tv show.

5) "It's cold."

In our old room, A's desk was by a window, and mine was far from one. Despite this, in winter when A had the window open, I got cold long before she did. Instead of acting like a normal person and asking her to close it, I would instead turn around and look at her and announce, "It's cold." And she would sigh and close the window.

6) "Have fuuuun."

I say this whenever A leaves, whether she's going to shower or class or anything.

Oh Dear

I have 8, (well, 7 now) more blog posts to make in the next two weeks. I also have a whole lot of course work that I was going to enumerate here, but really, that just falls into the lovely BMC no-really-I-am-so-much-busier-and-more-important-than-you form of bragging, so I will refrain. Regardless, the semester is winding down and I find myself rather sad. I'm going to be a senior next year, and already thoughts of my thesis and "life after graduation" (it's in quotation marks because I refuse to believe in it at the moment) are swirling around my head. Several of my friends are graduating, I'm looking for a second summer job, and everything seems to be in flux. Which is why, I guess, so much of my blog is retrospective, or lists. It's much easier to write about the things that you've already done, rather than the things that are happening that you don't quite understand yet.

Dorm Draw

Apparently, I was the fifth person to draw into Merion, my most beloved dorm. Yesssss. (I'm not sure because I got a proxy to do it for me so that I could catch the premiere of Glee. Yes, I know I have a problem, I admitted it two blog posts ago.)

Anyway, I am super super excited. Super duper super excited. I really hope I get to live on the floor that A, my current roommate, is going to be HA on next year. And by hope, I mean I can, but there is only room there that is glorious enough for me to lust after. And we all know about my real estate lust. Wish me luck!

CD Case Inventory

My CD case doesn't see much action these days. It mostly stands on my bookshelf, wedged between The Romance of William of Palerne (ugh) and last year's planner, quietly gathering dust. (Seriously, it's kind of grey and fuzzy.) Thanks to the advent of newer music technologies, pretty much all my music lives on my computer or my mp3 player. There are a few CDs, though, that haven't made it onto either, but that I nonetheless keep around because I like them. They are for the most part too embarrassing to risk having them pop up when I put everything on shuffle, or are kept around for purely sentimental value. Anyway, here is a by no means comprehensive list of the CDs in that case that I keep around for reasons I barely know:

1) Mixes

B has been making me mixes since freshman year. E and A joined in later that same year, so it's safe to say that a sizable chunk of the discs are mixes with names like, "I wrote you a letter," and "Party like you're evil." These are all on my computer now, but I like having them physically present. Tucked into each slot is the accompanying handwritten tracklist, which I love having.

2) Good Charlotte, "The Young and the Hopeless"

Technically, this doesn't actually belong to me. My friend K left it at my house on my thirteenth birthday and moved away before I remembered to give it back to her. Listening to it brings back memories of K, who was all too briefly my best friend. She had blue hair and glasses and was generally great. Once she moved away my best friend ended up being Hayleigh, and we all know how that worked out.

3) Ani DiFranco, "Not a Pretty Girl"

Again, not actually mine. I stole it from my mom when I was around 10. It makes me think I was pretty much doomed to end up at Bryn Mawr.

4) James Blunt

I admit it. I thought "You're Beautiful" was a great song. I really did.

5) Michele Branch, "Spirit Room"

Michele Branch went to school at the same school as me back in Sedona, AZ, but graduated before I got there (I think). Teachers were always trying us to buy cheap demos of hers, and we scoffed. And then she got famous.

6) Yellowcard, "Ocean Avenue," and/or Slipknot, "Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses)"

There are two nearly indistinguishable burned CDs in here. One of them is Yellowcard, the other is Slipknot. I cannot for the life of me tell them apart anymore, but I know that I used to be able to see a small red smudge from when I tried to write on one, and I knew which one that was. Sometimes I pop one in expecting poppy rock with some violin, and instead I get blasted with heavy metal.

7) Eminem, "The Eminem Show"

I can't help it. Deep down, I like Eminem. I like swearing in music. I like bass. I just like it. God help me.

8) Miranda Lambert, "Kerosene"

Ah, country. I like you so much more than I should.

9) Jimmy Eat World, "Chase This Light"

I still like Jimmy Eat World, and I have ever since I heard "The Middle" on the radio in the car and had a mild revelation back in 2003.

10) Britney Spears, "Oops...I Did It Again"

I have had this since my tenth birthday. I just can't bear to get rid of it.

Hi, my name is Gillian and I'm a television addict

I know I watch a lot of TV. Really, I am aware that I have a problem. But it wasn't until I started compiling a list of all the TV shows I am currently watching/waiting to come back that I realized that I might have a situation on my hands. So, here's a list of all those shows:

1. Ugly Betty

2. Chuck

3. Pushing Daisies

4. Doctor Who

5. Stargate Universe

6. Community

7. Glee (oh my god why is this on during room draw?!?!?!?!)

8. Dexter

9. Dexter the Next Generation

10. 10 Thing I Hate About You

11. The Vampire Diaries

12. Weeds

13. In Plain Sight

14. Family Guy

15. American Dad

16. Psych

17. Caprica

18. Army Wives

19. Make It or Break It

20. Big Love

21. True Blood

22. Torchwood

23. Mercy

24. Fringe

25. House

26. Xena

27. Parenthood

28. Modern Family

I am so screwed.

Apologies

So, my roommate and I went to Panera after dinner, because I was in a bad mood and wanted nothing more than an asiago cheese bagel and a frozen mocha and a place to relax. We didn't get much work done, of course, but it was generally a fun time. While we were there, several things came up that we laughed uproariously about, while the dads and their kids looked on in frightened curiosity. So, because I'm lazy, here are the things we laughed about at Panera:

1) James Joyce

Last semester, my roommate, who shall henceforth be known as A because I'm too lazy to type roommate over and over, took a class on Ulysses. A year or so ago, I found this Kate Beaton comic about Joyce's letters to his wife, Nora. Don't look them up. Please don't do it. There's a reason Kate Beaton's dreams are haunted by a spectral James Joyce threatening to send her correspondence. Sophomore year, both A and I took a course on the Canterbury Tales. All of this leads up to the fact that we decided that the most hilarious/dirty literary penpals ever would be Chaucer and James Joyce. Think about it. It's funny.

2) Canadians, eh?

Another Kate Beaton comic that I really love is this one. Because it's true, of me at least. I can be so enraged that I'm about to beat my head against the wall, but if someone is suddenly polite to me I am completely unable not to respond in kind. Also, I have to have the last apology. I really have to. No really. I'm so sorry. Sorrier than you can ever be! Ha. I apologize for friends' bad days, for bumping into people, for people who step on my feet, for forgetting anything, for doing better than someone. You name it, I'm sorry for it.

3) Walt Whitman

...love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching;
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice...

Need I say more?

4) Professors

We're both English majors. We both basically live in this English department. We talk about professors. all. the. time. It's an inescapable topic. In addition, we Gertrude Stein them - I've never met a Bryn Mawr student who doesn't say professors' names as Firstname Lastname, each and every time they mention them. It's bizarre, and we frequently wonder if BMC is the only place that this happens, or if it's more widespread.

5) Starbucks/Panera

I seem to have some sort of mental block. I can know that I'm in Panera, but I seem completely incapable of calling it anything by Starbucks. This is possibly because I am in Starbucks all the frickin time, but it's starting to border on the ridiculous.

6) Literary Movements

In talking about Joyce, we inevitably started talking about literary movements, and how much we love Modernists and their kooky relationships with one another. I also looked up Mary McCarthy and read about her infamous feud with Lillian Hellman, about whom she said on the Dick Cavett Show, "every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." HILARIOUS. This ended in A and I deciding that we want to be in a literary movement full of crazy smart people who all hate or love one another and create lots of literary intrigue.

Scars

I have a weird relationship with scars. I hate them when they first show up, and I bitch and moan about how they're marring my perfect beauty. But after a while, I get used to them. They become a part of me, a part of my body that I expect to see. Of course, the moment that happens, they disappear back into my skin, never to be seen or heard from again. So, I'm going to catalog them here, those that are present along with those that have vanished, so that I can remember. And you can know how clumsy I am.

1) Face Craters

My face is littered with scars from acne. It's just a fact that I deal with. I tend not to notice these, because even if that one right above my lip finally goes away, another will pop up right on the other side of my mouth in short order.

2) Lefty

Ah, lefty. The scar that solidified for me the difference between left and right. When I was 9. (I had a remarkable amount of difficulty with the whole left vs. right thing. I remember once my mom indicated to me which of my arms was my left and which was my right, and then I turned around and gestured with my left arm and said, "So this is still right, right?") Lefty was this long crescent-shaped line on the inside of my left arm, that I got from a ring of metal with some scented oil in it that had been on top of a light bulb. I was playing with the lamp that contained said light bulb, and knocked off the ring in the process. It rolled down my left arm, leaving a curved line that stuck around for years. I first noticed it had disappeared right around when I was applying for college, and felt much sadder about it than I meant to.

3) Seat Belt

My mom and I got in a minor car accident the summer after my freshman year in college. We both walked away, but I managed to get a giant friction burn across the upper portion of my chest from my seat belt. It hurt a lot, but it was actually the last thing that started hurting immediately after the accident. (The first thing I noticed immediately was that my face stung from the airbag smacking it and breaking my glasses.) This scar mercifully faded very quickly - I was not happy about having a parallelogram engraved right where shirts open, and by a couple of months into sophomore year it was gone.

4) Lock

This scar was from the same car accident mentioned above. I'm not entirely sure, but I think I got it when my right arm was jammed against the door-unlocking switch on the passenger side door. Regardless, it started out as this strangely deep gash in my arm, which would have been alarming if not for the fact that it was very small - maybe an inch long, at most. I guess it could best be described as a gouge. Anyway, I grew to like the scar left behind, because it was at the perfect level for my left hand to touch when I crossed my arms. It faded very recently - in fact, I was in AWLW when I reached for it and realized for the first time that it was gone.

5) Louie

I had a scar on my upper left thigh that I was quite fond of. I got it the summer after freshman year (this was a dangerous summer for me) when Louie, an overly-enthusiastic dog at the shelter, started humping my leg and wouldn't get down. He wrapped his asshole-y doggy arms around my thigh and held on for dear life, leaving one long claw mark that didn't even bleed, but just sort of hung around on my leg for months. On the bright side, I didn't have to deal with him after that, because no one else had that problem with him, and despite the teasing I endured for being Louie's "one true love," it was worth not having to contend with him.

6) Forehead

I have a barely noticeable scar on my forehead that I've had since birth. Apparently it's from where the doctor grabbed my head with forceps when I was on my way out. It's faded over time, but it's definitely still there. It's more of a smudge than a scar - just a touch of tan by my hairline. I like it, and to be honest, I really hope it doesn't go away, because then the only familiar marks on my body will be my freckles and moles, and those are rather too numerous to catalog.

Birthdays

Despite the fact that my birthday is almost two months away, I've been thinking a lot about birthdays lately. When you really think about them, they're kind of weird - everyone ages. Well, unless they're dead. I guess birthdays are more of a way to celebrate another year of survival? I think I'm feeling a little morbid tonight. Anyway, I've witnessed a few pretty pathetic birthdays/birthday parties in my time, and so here is my list, of saddest/morbidest/most pathetic birthdays I've ever seen.

1) "No, I'm the ballerina."

This one is a little hard to remember the particulars of, since I think I was about 4 or 5. However, my whole class (so I must've been in kindergarten, I guess?) was at some girl's birthday at chuck e. cheese or a place like that, and her cake had various girly-girl icing figures on it. Among them was a ballerina and a princess. Somehow we all got into assigning ourselves to the various figures on the cake, and it came down to the ballerina and the princess, and me and the birthday girl. I REALLY wanted to be the ballerina, because of my completely hilarious conviction that I would one day grow to be a graceful dancer. However, the birthday girl also wanted to be the ballerina. So, I did the only logical thing to do: I completely refused to give in, and brought it to a vote - wasn't it fair that the birthday girl be the princess, and I be the ballerina? The whole room agreed. The birthday girl accepted her crown through tears. And I was the ballerina.*

I should be a politician.

*I should note that this is perhaps one of my most frequently told stories. But it is also one of my most embarrassing, because really. What a bitchy thing to do.

2) The Lip Balm Incident

This was in Arizona, and I believe it was the 11th or 12th birthday of a girl named Tyler, who I didn't really like, but since we were in the same class, I wound up going to her birthday party anyway. The invitations, handmade by her mother, informed the recipient that the party would involve fun activities such as making your own handmade lipbalm. When I got to the party, I was pleasantly surprised. Tyler's mom was a very pleasant woman, and it seemed obvious to me that they both were trying very hard. We flocked around the modest and square background, eating pizza and chatting. Well, other people chatted. I stood in a corner and tried to look cool. Finally came the lipbalm making. We all got little tins which we would decorate later. Tyler's mom stood by and mixed everything, and we all shuffled through a line, picking out oils in order to each have a unique flavor in ours. (I got plain mint.) Later, as we were sitting on benches admiring our (Tyler's mom's) handiwork, and decorating the tins, all the girls started talking about how, now that they had what they came for, they really wanted to leave. "Yeah," said one girl, "I really only came because I wanted lipbalm. I don't really like her. Do you want to go?" "No," said someone else. "Let's wait for the cake."

Ouch. I didn't really like her either, but this seemed a little cruel to me. And there's something that always gets me about people who try really hard to be accepted but for whatever reason just...aren't.

3) Stefi and Rachel's Co-Birthday Extravaganza

Stefi and Rachel were both briefly my friends, in that way that in Arizona, I didn't hold on to friends for more than a couple months at a time. Stefi's parents owned the only Chinese restaurant in town, a place my family didn't frequently visit due to the unnervingly frequent failures it received from the inspectors at the health department. Stefi was also rather stuck up. Rachel was really sweet, and saw a kindred spirit in the equally detail-oriented Stefi. Soon after Rachel moved to Sedona, she and Stefi were best friends, and I was once again eating lunch in the classroom, hiding from all my classmates.

In addition to being bffs, Stefi and Rachel had birthdays only about a week apart. So, they co-planned a co-birthday, inviting everyone in the class. The party was to be held at Stefi's family restaurant - they were going to shut it down for us for the day, and feed everybody free lunch. When, after I breathlessly watched Stefi pass out the invitations one morning, she finally reached my desk and handed me an invite, I was unduly excited. They had both been my friends, after all, and I thought that maybe this meant we could all be friends. However, Stefi paused in the act of handing me my invitation, holding in the air directly in front of my face as I sat at my desk. "Here's your invitation," she said flatly. "We weren't going to invite you, but it looks like there'll be room after all. My parents thought it would be rude not to let you come." Gosh. Thanks.

Finally, the day arrived. I'd like to say that I was too proud to go, but I wasn't. I showed up right on time. I was the first to get there, so I handed them my present and sat at their table, though Stefi warned me that when other people got there I would have to let her real friends sit with them. (Rachel was notably silent during these animosity-laden exchanges. I'll never know what she thought of it all.) So we sat and waited. And waited. And waited some more. The appetizers sitting on all the tables began to cool. The lunch Stefi's parents had made for sixty was starting to dry out. Finally, after about an hour, they gave up and served the food, cut the cake, and opened my solitary present. Rachel looked sad, but Stefi looked defiantly crushed - she was hurt, but way too proud to show it. On the drive back home I passed a group of the kids who were supposed to have been there zipping around on skateboards, clearly with nothing better to do. This event has always stuck in my mind, for several reasons - one, the sweet vindication of being the grudgingly invited guest who turned out to be the only guest; two, the expense of all that wasted food; and three, the fact that no one at school ever brought it up. It was the party that never happened.

4) My Eighteenth Birthday

I spent my eighteenth birthday at my uncle's funeral. It was a depressing entrance into adulthood, coupled with a healthy reminder of my own mortality. Does anything else really need to be said?

5) My Nineteenth Birthday

This one isn't so bad, but on June 25, 2009, Micheal Jackson and Farrah Fawcett both died. This second intrusion of death into my birthday has me irrationally worried about this year, when I will finally turn 20. After all, once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.

"I just have a lot of feelings."

In many of my classes, for reasons probably relating more to the classes I select than anything else, we frequently end up reading sentimental novels. And to be honest, I often have trouble imagining sobbing along with them, stirred to the heights of emotion by what seem to me to be ridiculously overblown descriptions of emotion. I scoff at whoever could be so naive as to be moved by such a book.

And then I go and watch Army Wives. It's this ridiculously overblown drama about wives of soldiers (duh), and how they and their families deal with duty to country and duty to family and blah blah blah. It's produced by those artisans of drama, Lifetime Television. And it gets me every. single. time. I always end up hunched over my computer, trying valiantly not to sob, moved to tears by impassioned speeches about what it means to be American/family/friends/etc. "Damnit," I think, "pull yourself together. You're too smart for this to work! It's all pro-America rah-rah bullshit! You're Canadian, for God's sake!"

Despite the fact that I can tell exactly how this show is trying to elicit my response, I am completely incapable of turning it off. It's the same thing with that Sarah MacLachlan ad for some animal protection agency (I'm not sure which one because every time it's on I either can't see through my tears by the time it gets to that part, or I've left the room to spare what's left of my dignity). I just can't hold back my immediate emotional response. So, I try to go a little easier than I used to on sentimental novels - after all, I'm just a slightly updated version of a sucker who cries while reading A Sentimental Journey.

Migraine Cure

The other night, my friends and I decided to go grocery shopping, due to an unpalatable dining hall dinner. I wound up buying 2 containers of strawberries (it was 2 for 1!), a package of croissants, and a jar of Nutella. Nutella used to be a treat reserved for food days in French class in high school, but it occurred to me that night, through the haze of the migraine that had settled in my mind, that I could just buy some. And eat it. On croissants. Freedom!

So, I wound up sitting on the floor of my room with my friends watching movies, slathering delicious "Hazelnut Spread with Skim Milk and Cocoa" onto croissants, and eating strawberries sparkling with the sugar I had dumped over them. Migraine cured! Fun had! If only delicious nut-based spreads worked like this all the time.

Progress

So, I'm breaking one of my cardinal rules of college: don't beg, borrow, or buy a new book that you really want to read when you know damn well that you don't have time to read everything required for class, let alone frothy fiction. But I really love this author, and her books are these tooth-achingly sweet pieces of magical realism based in the South, and sometimes I just need the literary version of cotton candy to melt in my brain and coat everything in sappy-happy goodness. So, here I am, wandering around with a book that I should not be reading, setting off the sensors at work all the time because it's a Lower Merion Library book and they drive Canaday crazy, trying to decide if I should just gorge myself and read it all in one go, or if I should parcel out the chapters like treats after accomplishing (school-related) tasks. (If you're wondering what's up with all the food references, the books always involve food - candy, cakes, barbecue, etc. and this has somehow invaded my brain.)

Anyway, this book is all about how people change over time and how you have to let go of the past and see people as they are, rather than as they were, and how sometimes you can spend your whole life trying to make up for something, becoming a completely different person in the process. Needless to say, I, the world-champion in not letting go of past injustices, am having some troubles with this whole plot. (This is not to say that I am not enjoying it. I am 160 pages into it, and 51 pages in Gertrude Stein. Hence my rule.)

Despite the fact that this is in no way an autobiographical text, I found one paragraph that really reminded me of class - "Your peers when you're a teenager will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now." (Allen 102) (I'm really an English major now, citing things on my blog. God.)

And it's true, really. I read that and reflected that perhaps one of the reasons I decided to go to college 1200 miles from my high school was because I wanted to start again. I mean, I've spent my life waiting for the next restart - I learned the hard way when we first moved to Arizona that moving means starting over in the eyes of your peers - you have to completely recreate a self for others to interact with. And if you fuck it up, if you come across as anything other than what you want to be, then you're stuck with that self; no matter how much you actually change, people will see you as you were. At least until you get to move again, get the chance to start over again, and try to create someone you and others will like better. And that's what Arkansas was, and that's what college is, and that's what whatever happens after college will be. A chance to be a different, hopefully better person. And that's also what's so hard about moving - the realization that you have to let go of who you were, pack up the good parts, and try to leave the bad parts behind. Because, let's face it, you're never really going to be the ideal you that you want others to see. You can only ever try.

Room Draw

It's that time of year again! Room Draw time. Now, it might just be my real estate-loving side, but their is just something so appealing about room draw, in theory. You get to look at the whole campus and try to decide where you're going to live next year. You make contingency plans in case you wind up at the absolute bottom of the draw order and have to double up with a stranger. You have elaborate fantasies about how awesome your life will be, if only you get that awesome huge light-filled single that everyone wants. You sit in your room on the night that priority numbers are supposed to be posted and refresh the page where they will appear over...and over...and over...and then blog about it. Well, if you're me you do all of these things.

Anyway, this is another one of my blog posts that doesn't really have a point. Lately, I've been a little overwhelmed with my life in general, and possible blog post topics in particular. I've been meaning to make a post about grudges that people probably have against me, as a sort of rebuttal against my earlier post. Also, I was recently thinking about crappy/pathetic birthdays, so that might show up here in a while too. But for now, I'm juggling financial aid applications (made even more annoying by the new documentation system and having divorced parents), school work, the rapidly approaching graduation of my senior friends, the fact that I soon have to write a thesis, the fact that my mom is moving soon, and the fact that since spring is here, I never know whether to wear sandals or close-toed shoes.

Truly, my life is hard.

Priority numbers still not posted.

I hate the rain

So, stress. We all have it. We all deal with it in our own ways. At this point in the semester it all really seems to hit - it's almost the end of the year, we have to start on final projects, room draw is coming up - UGH - financial aid is due in a month, blah blah blah blah. I am perhaps unique in my favorite approach to dealing with the madness: I just made a list of everything that is stressing me out/that I am worried about. Then I went through and assigned different symbols and style of crossing-out lines based on solutions: there's just a straight line, for "done," a transparent wavy line for things over which I have no control and must let go of ASAP, and then asterisks with numbers next to them for indicating how soon I can start on one side, and how soon I should be done on the other. Truly I am a master at creating the appearance of progress. I really like that this allows me immediately cross things off the list (the things I can't change), as well as set goals for myself. Also, colored markers make everything better.

In other, mostly unrelated news, I hate it when people lock themselves out of the dorm and then pound on the door begging to be let in. I know this is callous. (I've even locked myself out. Once. But I never did it again.) But I live directly above and the right of the front door. I can hear you. It's annoying. Just call a friend and stop yelling. (Also, you know that conversation you had the other night at the front door, about how drunk you got last weekend and how you shouldn't have hooked up with your ex's brother? I heard that. If you say directly outside of my room, which happens to be directly in front of the door,I CAN HEAR YOU. (Also also, surely we all realize by now how poor the sound insulation on campus is. Surely we all know that no matter where you are, someone can hear you. Surely.))

Facebook Ads

Seriously. To quote every comedian ever, what's up with that? There is a ton of information about me floating around the internet. So much that it gets uncomfortable to think about too much. And my Facebook profile specifically just lists facts and favorites like there's no tomorrow. I'm even Facebook married to my best friend. A woman. Facebook thinks I'm gay married. And yet. The ads I get are all about "tea party conservatives," and taking back our taxes from Obama, who may or may not be a terrorist/alien/non-citizen. And how universal healthcare/socialized healthcare is bad. I'm Canadian! I love socialized everything. And also, there are tons of appeals, begging me to help ban gay marriage. Because I clearly want to ban gay marriage!! Why the fuck would I want to ban gay marriage, Facebook? For all you know, I'm actually gay married.

In addition, it appears that I desperately need to know what my baby with a celebrity/my crush would look like. I am also engaged, pregnant, married, a parent, and a college student, all of which render me eligible for a green card, laptop, or scholarship. Despite the complicated nature of my life, I still find time to be interested in meeting other gay, Indian, black, geeky, Jewish, and overweight singles.

This is not to say that sometimes Facebook ads aren't helpful. But how many times can I get directed to ModCloth before I bookmark it?

Chain Reactions

So, as a return to blogging, having been spurred to action by L who mentioned that her post would somehow involve me and my roommate (?!), after a week off that I may or may not have been supposed to take, I am going to discuss the fact that I love things that are the results of other things. Or, more poetically, I like to watch chain reactions. So, since this blog post is the direct result of another act (no, seriously, why are we in that blog post?), a small list of things I love to watch happen.

1) Fire

When I was little, I used to love candles. And matches. And watching melt wax in candles. And lighting matches with already lit candles. And picking the melted and then hardened strips of wax off of candles and melting them again by sticking them into the flame...Ahem. Anyway, despite the rather alarming nature of this predilection, I didn't wind up a pyromaniac. But I like to think it started me down the road of being obsessed with watching "This Too Shall Pass."

2) Melodramas and Romance Novels

Although some (most?) might find it boring to set out a narrative journey when you know damn well how it's all going to end, I really really enjoy starting a romance novel sure that the ending will be happy. I also really like crappy soap operas and bad teen shows, (I've already mentioned Degrassi, right?) when the beginning hints or outright tells you what's going to happen - you know, when someone says, "Oh, no, I would really hate it if I had to be lab partners with Jay. He's such a bad boy," and then bam! She's lab partners with Jay and they're in love, or at least in a steamy broom closet of PG-13-rated groping.

3) NationStates

My friend just introduced me to this website thing called NationStates, where you start your own country. You name it, answer questions about your politics, and then there it is, your very own nation. After that, you get two "issues" a day that you have to make decisions about, choosing from 2-5 options, or dismissing the issue altogether. The day after you make your decision, you go back and see what impact the new law has had on your country. You might get reclassified from "Democratic Socialists" to "Left-Leaning College State," or you might discover that making it so that hospitals can pay for blood donations means that "the poor are often seen pale and dizzy after selling their blood to make ends meet." It's the ultimate control. (Oo-er. That sounded kind of weird and freaky, but I can't really think of how to rephrase it...)

4) Snot Splatter

I may be revealing my mental age to be about 6 years old, but the best game I could think of that I really enjoy that involves chain reactions is Snot Splatter, which you should really go play because I am too lazy to explain it. It involves popping bubbles of a gross green substance that I firmly pretend is not snot, and trying to get them all to pop in one go. It's really fun.

Damnit L, why would I be in your blog?

Procrastination Part II: Never Give Up

Really. I can't stop. I can't start. I've now played 29,181 games of Solitaire. Help me. I am completely incapable of getting anything done.

9) Other Work

I have a paper to write, and a midterm to take, and journals to do. But instead, I should really really get all my readings done. Going to class unprepared just isn't acceptable.

10) My Roommate

Why do endless amounts of work when I can look to my right and strike up a conversation with my lovely roommate?

11) Television and Movies

Last night I watched Waitress and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the creepy one with Johnny Depp) with my roommate. In the past few days I have also caught up on the fourth season of Big Love - 7 episodes in 2 days - and I am currently flying through Roswell.

12) Hunting for my dream house and dream pets

This is a little ridiculous, but I enjoy spending time scrolling through real estate listings, looking for my dream home. I also watch endless episodes of House Hunters. I've also spent more than a few hours looking up pets on petfinder.com and Best Friends and trying to decide who I can see spending a few years with. Really. I actually do this.

13) Neopets and ZooWorld

Not only can I pretend that I'm 8 years old, but I can nurture fake pets and play games and build the Largest Zoo in the World.

14) Me Me Me Me

I'll go look at my Facebook profile and edit it to more purely reflect my inner self. Or I'll blog about myself in order to feel like I'm getting something done.

15) The Appearance of Progress

When I finally buckle down and start something, I always begin by inserting my header with page number, then writing my name, and the class, and the date, etc. And the title. And then I'll go ahead and do the works cited page ahead of time, so I don't have to worry about it later. And voila! Words on a screen. Progress. Not.

Procrastination

I'm terrible at starting things. And finishing them. And working on them once I've started but haven't yet finished. This is perhaps why I've play 29,135 games of solitaire since I started college. Hold on a second...make that 29,136. So, because I'm pressed for time, having spent most of my day playing solitaire and Googling things no one cares about, here is a list of my top procrastination tools:

1) Playlists

I can't start working without music, right? And for this paper/exam/whatever, I have very specific music needs, in terms of beat and type and lyrical content. So, I'll just spend the next 90 minutes composing a wonderful playlist, so that I may more happily do my work. The playlists are generally about 200 songs long, and though they are useful, I could do the same thing with the shuffle function.

2) Motivational Backgrounds and Posters

This one started way back in freshman year, when I started my collection of Johnny Depp posters. I cut out a piece of paper in the shape of speech bubble, on which I wrote something vaguely insulting yet motivational, along the lines of, "Stop staring at me and write your damn paper." Since then I've made speech bubbles for pretty much every poster I have that features a person, and then moved on to my desktop background. These can turn into huge time-sucks, because they require googling all the appropriate images, cropping them, adding text, deciding if I want one or a whole collage, etc.

3) Lists

I can't start until I know what I have to start. Right? And it really helps when I write it all down in a color-coded format, organized by date due, length, and type of assignment. Right?

4) Hygiene

Just because I have more work than it seems possible to complete doesn't mean that I should be a slob. Clearly, I need to keep up with my showering. And my nail polish is chipping. Must fix that immediately. Oh, and the room is so messy. I'll just have to completely cleanse it of all dust and old papers.

5) Nostalgia

I wonder what Creeper McCreeperson from high school is up to? I should look him up on Facebook. Also, I haven't looked at my yearbook in ages. Now is the time to go through it and read every page.

6) Food

This is not the time to deprive my brain of vital glucose! I simply must walk to Acme and buy food. Right now. Because the dining halls just aren't what I'm craving. Also, I should make some tea.

7) Solitaire and Minesweeper

Hours of my life, gone. Gone forever.

8) Internet

Again, my list ends with the internet. Because really, why do an assignment when I can look up the Christian Side Hug Rap, or Google With Kittens, or use Bacolicious? Or blog about how to procrastinate?

My Favorite Things

So, after my long (long, long, long) post last night, I feel the need to make a shorter one. With pictures. I also feel the need to write another list. So, here, by no means complete, a list of:

My Favorite Things

1) Chocolate Chip Cookies

As you may have surmised from the picture at the top of the page, I am a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies. I eat a lot of them. I especially enjoy the kind that are just barely cooked, and sort of ooze around my fingers as I try not to get melted chocolate all over my hands.

2) Electric Blankets

This one is especially true right now, in the dead of February, when the draft from my windows is actually strong enough to ruffle papers. There's nothing so nice as crawling into an already warm bed.

3) Romance Novels

I know. Lame. But there's something comforting in starting a book knowing exactly how it's going to end, and having a pretty good idea of how it's going to get there.

4) Salty Foods

(This is going to be a food-heavy entry.) Salt and vinegar chips, dill pickles, french fries covered in vinegar, capers. I've even been know to take tiny tiny sips of soy sauce. To make up for this excess of salt in my diet, I try never to put table salt on my food. We'll see if it all evens out in a couple of decades.

5) Garlic

I just can't resist it. It's so delicious. I think all dining hall food could be improved by its addition.

6) Cats

I love cats. It's just a fact of life. This, combined with my love of romance novels and garlic, has frequently led me to imagine my future as a crazy cat lady in a house filled to the rafters with paperbacks with titles like, "The Darkest Pleasure," and cats with names like Mr. Frumpertins and Jabba the Cat.

7) The Internet

I actually don't know how I would fill my time without it. Seriously. It went out for a few hours one day, and I did not cope well. At all.

The Grudge

One day in the summer after my freshman year of college, while I was working at the local animal shelter, I was discussing with one of my coworkers how I had discovered I loved pit bulls, of which the shelter had many. We were specifically discussing Jillian, a dog who shared a name with me, but predated me at the shelter by a couple of weeks. (As an aside, I'm pretty sure they knew I was going to be working there before they named Jillian. I'm still not sure how I feel about a socially incompetent and extremely bouncy pit bull that latches onto clothing in order to get attention being named after me.) My coworker said, "Yeah, you and Jillian are a lot alike, I think."

Um. What? Jillian was (is - she went into a pit bull rescue group) a playful dog who had some abandonment issues and ate whatever wildlife was dumb enough to wander into her run. (Really, what possum worth its salt thinks, "Hey, an animal shelter filled with dozens of dogs! I'll just drop in for a visit.") She loves people. I love...some people. She's always ready to play. My energy dies around 2 p.m. She's white and had brown spots. I'm white and have brown hair.

In other words, I had no idea what he was referring to. My face must have registered the fact that I was trying to determine whether our faces were terribly similar and I had never noticed, because he added, "Yeah, once you get your teeth into something, neither of you will just. Let. It. Go."

Oh. Well. Jillian did once almost rip my pants off during a play session - I tried to leave and she just latched onto my pant leg and wouldn't let go. She had a great time, and I spent the rest of the day with the left leg of my jeans dangling from a ripped seam in the back. (At that point, on the pants spectrum, they were bordering on Not-Pants.) And I...well, I've had some things between my mental teeth for quite a while.

So, without further ado, a list, or a progression, if you will, of the grudges I can just. not. let. go.

1) Madame Johnson

My kindergarten teacher. I (and everyone else, really) was always being bullied by Delaney, this giant first grader who'd already been held back and had a history of behavior problems. Once, he grabbed me as I was walking into the coat room, threw me on the floor, and slammed my head into the floor, and then just walked away. And then there was the Incident. I had rushed to be the first in line to go into class, an honor that was very important for Kindergarten Gillian. He cut in front of me. Irritated, (and perhaps suicidal?) I tapped him on the shoulder to tell him that I had been first. He whirled around and punched me in the stomach so hard that I completely lost my breath, and staggered completely out of the line wheezing and generally acting pathetic.

However, this grudge isn't for him. It's for Madame Johnson, who, when informed by a no-doubt hysterical Kindergarten Me that I had been punched, kept Delaney in during recess. I swanned off to go play, sure that I would be vindicated and he would be punished. Horribly. Preferably publicly. Maybe he would get expelled. Turns out, she was asking him for his side of the story. I got back from recess, and was pulled aside, expecting to hear about what was going to happen to Delaney. But Madame Johnson said, "Now, Gillian, Delaney told me about how you shoved him. His reaction was not nice, but you can't just shove people who get in your way. So, you have to apologize to each other, because you both did something wrong."

What. The. Fuck.

I was eventually persuaded to apologize, sobbing with the injustice of it all (I was a very weepy kid). But in the (embarrassingly frequent) reenactments I have done in my mind, I tell her that she is a grossly unfair bitch who should be ashamed of herself. I punch her in the face. I simply refuse to apologize for something I didn't do. In retrospect, I understand why she had to at least try to make Delaney feel like he was being heard - the kid had problems I probably had no concept of, and ended up going to some sort of school that, it was whispered, was for delinquents. But still. I just can't quite let go of this breach of trust.

2) The shoes

When I was 13, my mom went to New York City for a week. My favorite pair of shoes did too. Without me in them.

3) Hayleigh

Ah, best friend break-ups. Hayleigh and I were best friends from when I was 12, in the 8th grade, and she was 14 and in the 9th, until I was 15 and a junior and she was 17 and a senior. For a couple of years, things were great - we talked, we laughed, we wore dark clothing, listened to goth rock and lamented that no one understood us. And then slowly, things changed. Around the beginning of my junior year, she got snarky, taking delight in highlighting my most painful faults. I got defensive, pointing out that I was prettier, smarter, and taller (by 2.5 inches). She went public, telling people that I attacked her over a cookie (look, I like them, but come on) and that I had had a threesome when I was 14 with some friends of ours. I went ballistic in the only way High School Me could, and commenced turning all of our mutual friends against her.

But by about halfway through the year, I just gave up. I avoided her as much as was possible when, in the glory days of our friendship, we had tried to have all of our classes together. I didn't answer the phone when she called. She once commented on a blog post I made, saying, "oh, you're still alive. i wasn't sure since you never answer the phone when i call." In the end, I just wrote in her yearbook when she graduated that I hoped she had a good life, that we had had some good times, and that I would miss our friendship. I'd like to think that this was taking the high road, but really, it was just taking the easy one.

Then came Facebook. I finally got one after starting college, and labored endlessly to avoid friending people I knew she would be friends with. However, I eventually let my guard down and did friend someone I knew she was also friends with, figuring that since it had been a year and a half since we had spoken, she would leave me alone. Alas, I was wrong, and she added me almost immediately. There followed an excruciating set of messages, wherein we discussed in great detail why our friendship died. She told me that she was jealous of me, and was convinced that I had my eye on her Yu-Gi-Oh playing, college drop-out, future ex-husband, who at the time was dating someone else. I told her she was wrong. She asked if we could still be friends. I told her that I wished her all the best, but that I just didn't want to know her anymore. Even after all that time, I couldn't forgive her enough to let her back into my life. (Even after all this time, I still find enjoyment, deep down, in talking about how she did me wrong.)

4) The Theater

The summer before college, I worked at a movie theater. I wore a red vest, a bow tie, extremely unflattering black pants, and an aura of discontent and popcorn. My boss had told me that she would pay me 25 cents above minimum wage. The entire summer, I was paid minimum wage exactly. I complained. A lot. She told me it was a corporate decision, and that she was trying to fix it. I told her that I was going to talk to the Department of Labor. The Department of Labor told me that there was nothing I could do, since I wasn't being paid below minimum wage. My boss told me I would get gift certificates, or posters, to make up for it.

Then money went missing from the cash drawer that I had only worked for part of the day, and I was written up for it. (I did not take it.) My boss hinted that this was not the correct way to make up for lost wages. I hinted that I couldn't wait to go to college and never come near this hell-hole of overpriced concessions and brain-dead managers ever again.

5) Jillian

This one isn't really against Jillian, let me just say, lest you get a bad idea about pit bulls. I love pit bulls. Have I mentioned that yet?

Anyway, back to the animal shelter, the summer after my freshman year in college. I was usually dealing with the cat rooms - cleaning, feeding, and, most importantly, medicating, over a hundred cats and kittens in the height of kitten season. There was an upper respiratory infection sweeping through just about every cat there, so my days were filled with shoving pills down enraged feline throats. However, one cat, who was one of my favorites, had crawled into the outside enclosure, and refused to come back in. He was in bad shape, and needed to be force fed and medicated right away. So, I went around to the outside door to get him. On the way, I stepped on a piece of gravel, which seemed to poke through my ugly, ugly clogs. I grabbed it and tossed into the swamp so no one else would step on it, then grabbed the cat and went on my way.

When I got to the laundry room/kitchen/medicine room, I plunked the cat down and began to mix some wet food and water for him, when I noticed my foot felt awfully wet. The cat wasn't going anywhere, so I took my foot out of my shoe and looked down, only to observe that it was completely filled with blood. The rock had not just gone into my shoe, but into my foot.

Then commenced a series of ridiculous contortions wherein I tried to get my foot into the sink so it would stop dripping blood on the concrete floor (the stains are still there), and then to wash and bandage it. A volunteer happened to come in, saw the blood, and ran to get the manager. In rushed my manager, looking deeply concerned. She saw me, standing with one foot in the sink, and began to laugh. "Oh my God," she said. "When the volunteer told me that Gillian had cut her foot really badly and was bleeding all over the place, I thought she meant Jillian the dog! I was so worried!"

"Thanks," I muttered to the sick cat.