While preparing dinner with my brother tonight (read: preparing dinner while Nate was standing in the room), I decided that I was going to use something ordinary in an unexpected way. Looking around the kitchen, I spotted a basket of green apples waiting for the week’s lunches. “How staid,” he thought, as he chopped one up and added it to an ordinary mix of veg for pasta. The outcome of this kitchen daliance is perhaps one of the best things I’ve created so far. Enjoy!
I just finished the last pages of Shampoo Planet tonight. I feel like my stomach is going to be coughed out of me like a wad of crumpled up paper. In short, like I’m going to cry. Excellent book.
In other news:
Let’s organize this “Strip Jenga!” party. Who’s in? Show of hands…er…comments.
I think hair knows when it’s going in for a cutting. One smart little flyaway catches wind of what’s coming and passes it along the FolicleNet™ to its buddies. In a move of desparation, they all simultaneously choose to be sleek and shiny, smooth and silky…coming together in a last ditch effort to preserve their current arrangement by producing the Best Hair Day Evah.
Sorry, bitches…you’ve curled your last curl in my efforts to make you straight. You’ve been replaced with my first ever mohawk. I wonder how much work will hate it?
I picked Tigg up today. She was so freaking out of it when I brought her back in to the apartment. She fell out of her carrier and dragged herself to the kitchen where she attempted to eat food from a non-existent dish. All very humorous until she started shaking. A few hours of napping later, and she seems to be fine.
Whether he likes her or not, Tigg <3 Nate. Awseseseses brought to you by Pringles. Pringles: Once you pop, you can’t stop! ®
Even if you die in a cloud of fake cheese.
I can’t really even begin to explain just how frustrating my commute was this morning. See, I had to take Tigg to her crazy cat home for shots and spaying this evening and I had to do this before work at nine. Also, I had to drop Nate’s ass off for class at the Walker Building. So, I got to experience a longer stretch of 220 than usual (read: more fuckasses blocking the left lane at 60 mph) and all of Atherton (read: the parade of red lights.) To top it off, students have decided that this is it! This is the year that they will no longer be shackled by the inconvenience of looking for cars before they cross the street. They had already thrown off the oppression of crosswalks, so now they can finally take flight and enjoy a life unconstrained by their own safety! I’m glad I got to be at the epicenter of the dawning of their Age of Aquarius, or somesuch.
Finally barreling through to Park Ave. and on my way to the parking lot – which, incidentally, is on the complete opposite side of campus from my office, closer to where I dropped Nate off – I encounter some sort of waste spill on the road. This wouldn’t really be an issue since it was in the parking spaces/loading area by North Halls, but a police barricade with four squad cars was blocking the intersection adjacent to the spill. Now, most normal people would just continue one more block to the next right turn and then circle around…but, ho-ho…not the people in front of me. No sir! They are far too special in their tan, wheat and champagne SUVs. They must all block the entire intersection to ask the police officers if they can “maybe, just this once, make an exception” so they can turn through the impassable barricade. The look of utter contempt on the police officers’ faces when they disappointed the behemoth-piloting motorists with a “No, in fact, you cannot pass through the (potentially) toxic waste” was enough to keep me from running any bitches over.
And now I’m at the bus stop in the rain. And this is where my life starts flashing before my eyes. You see, Penn State decided that the first days of class would be the ideal moment in time to change the bus stops and, therefore, bus routes. So, the bus drivers are now hopelessly lost and horribly confused. The woman driving my particular Blue Loop of Doom had decreed that the best way to deal with HER new route would be to drive as fast as bus-ed-ly possible while taking every corner at full steam. Since she was clearly trying for a land speed record, she hadn’t the time for stopping the bus and thusly missed letting three people off when they pulled the cord. How we didn’t hit any of the cars that we were poised precariously on the edge of slamming into, I do not know, but I definitely thought on at least three occasions “Okay, this is it. I’m going to die on the Loop today and there is nothing I can do to change that.”
I wanted to kiss the floor when I stepped into my office, knowing that the ground was no longer moving under me and that I was safe from any more travel-induced mishaps.
*spent*
I got bored after my night of being frustrated with freelance yesterday and decided to paint. While Depeche Mode and Feist poured over me – and the rain came down in hurricane fashion outside – I crafted this. I guess my mind was on the way leaves look from below on a sunny day.
This is perhaps the most concise summation of how I feel that I’ve ever found outside of my head:
“Thanks.” She sighs, does a wrinkle-and-freckle check, the way Anna-Louise does, too, right out of the starting gate in the morning. I have this feeling watching Jasmine – that as you grow older, it becomes harder to feel 100 percent happy; you learn all the things that can go wrong; you become superstitious about tempting fate, about bringing disaster upon your life by accidentally feeling too good one day.”
Shampoo Planet, pp. 131
There is probably nothing more luxurious (and decadent?) about reading for an hour in a cast iron bath tub. Just lying there, completely lost in a world of your own imagining, listening to music and watching candles flicker on porcelain and chrome. A great morning.
And now, with my belly full of Hannah’s pineapple & pine nut dessert, I’m going to make my way to a more reclined position.
While I was browsing The Collegian Magazine today, I noticed an article about how the rising cost of tuition is going to negatively affect students this year. It seems the increased cost of going to school here is going to hurt party supply purchases. Woe is the student body at large. Nevermind the minority of students that actually have to pay for school on their own and for all of their living expenses. I guess I had a pretty non-typical college experience, so can someone please explain to me when going to college shifted away from ‘now I’m an adult’ to ‘childhood’s last hoorah’ and why?
Maybe I’m just jaded, but this diversion from growing up that has become being a student is really not helping anyone.
“In general I remember thinking how modern and snappy Europe appeared in photos: lively tinkling geometric buildings sprouting like crystals from the tedious stone drabness below. Europe seemed like a place where the future was advancing more rapidly than in Lancaster, and I love the future, so that was that. Funward ho.”
Shampoo Planet, pp. 96
We live on a mountain
Right at the top
There’s a beautiful view
From the top of the mountain
Every morning I walk towards the edge
And throw little things off
Like:
Car-parts, bottles and cutlery
Or whatever I find lying around
It’s become a habit
A way
To start the day
I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you
It’s real early morning
No-one is awake
I’m back at my cliff
Still throwing things off
I listen to the sounds they make
On their way down
I follow them with my eyes til they crash
Imagine what my body would sound like
Slamming against those rocks
When it lands
Will my eyes
Be closed or open?
I go through all this
Before you wake up
So I can feel happier
To be safe up here with you
“Hyper-ballad” by Björk
So, over my weekend that’s just now drawing to a close, I built Tigg this cat tower/scratching post/dangly thing. I used a jigsaw, sandpaper, a file, staple gun and drill! *très butch* It was actually a lot of fun putting this monstrosity together. Dragging it up to the third floor actually wasn’t. See the base that looks like a chunk of moon rock? 30 lbs of concrete…
Also this weekend:
Visited with Hoover on Thursday night and helped talk him down from an unemployment-induced ledge. Quite a nice time and kept me occupied since my entire family didn’t arrive home until midnight or so. On Friday I spent my morning delousing the VeeDub and then went to Clarion with mi hermana to get handy type things at Trader Ho. Then, my aunt and grandmamas arrived for a trip into the woods. We had dinner at Trail’s End (made it, even though no one in my car could navigate) and then watched Hannah dance in Fame.
Today, I worked on the biggest cat toy ever and generally relaxed with my mom while watching my dad do varied insane-seeming ‘chores.’ We watched from the pool, I might add, while Ebby paddled about on her raft.
Now I’m exhausted. Just once I’d like to return to my place with less stuff than follows me home. JUST. ONCE.
