January 18 and My General Dislike of Its Existence

Today was one of those days where I just woke up pissed. Not at anything in particular, but a combination of every small thing I encountered as I went about my morning. I started this post the second I got to my first class, but as January 18 sucks, I did not get to finish it and instead had to actually concentrate on my school work. The nerve of this day!

So first off all when I woke up this morning, I was waking from a dream where I was waiting tables and looked down to realize I was naked. Apparently in the world in which my dream was set this was a normal occurrence, but I was mortified all the same and was desperate to get clothes. Unfortunately they were upstairs and I didn't want to  go upstairs because then everyone would see me naked, so I resolved to hide behind the computer and sulk in my shame.

Of course I didn't want to get out of bed, so I laid there for twenty minutes falling in and out of sleep until I realized that I have to be a big girl and get the hell up for class. Then I thought, "Ooh! I'll be a responsible grown-up and make myself breakfast!"  but I had to get ready so my awesome boyfriend got up and made one for me! So sweet :) Now back to why I hate everything. The smoothie then gave me brain freeze and I didn't even get to finish it because I had to leave.

Then I realize it's freezing outside and this genius left her damn coat in the car last night. I hate the cold, and I want it to go away. Every time I walk outside now I just get angry and resentful at the fact that I am frozen stiff rather than lounging on a beach somewhere in a bikini. Damn seasons.

While driving to school I notice that every single radio station is completely disrupted by static. I think by this point the universe realized how angry I was and just wanted to mess with me, because every single time I found a song I really liked, it would be clear for just long enough to make me happy and then become immersed in static and interruptions from other radio stations.

But wait! I might just make it to school on time for once! I pulled into the parking lot 2 minutes before class, with just enough time to park my car and make it up the hill by 9 am. However, I forgot to take into account how SHITTY Shorter's parking is. If you get there at the ass-crack of dawn, you might have a chance at finding a spot. However, otherwise you are subjected to a maze of complicated and poorly-designed parking lots with random one-way signs and dead ends, and if you're late all the time like me, you have to park like this:

Although the picture does it little justice, you'll notice that my car is parked sideways on the edge of a hill. In order to get out, I had to launch myself out of my car against the insistent pull of gravity and fighting my car door not to slam on me. Oh, and I was still late to class.

So by 9 am this morning, I had already decided that January 18 sucks.

Rebellion and Denial

My hair tends to have a mind of its own. I think it is some kind of extension of my personality in that it is constantly doing whatever it wants no matter how much I would like for it to look presentable and stylish. For example, my hair is wavy but sometimes I wake up and there is one particular strand that sticks up above all the others, making me look somewhat lopsided:

Do you see it? Do you see the crazy hair on the left side? It doesn't look too bad in the picture but it was sticking out about 2 inches. As I was about to walk out the door for class I realized it might be a good idea to look in the mirror, and this fuckery is what I was met with. Sighhh, my hair will always be nonconformist.

Onto my more troubling problem, I think I am literally in denial about the seasons. It is January right now, but for the past week I have had dreams about the beach and frolicking happily in the sunlight beating down on ocean waves. I then wake up cold and angry as I realize that it is 30 degrees outside and I am nowhere near the beach. However, spring break is coming up soon and I am going to Israel. Although this may not be the ideal "vacation" spot, I am suuuuuuper excited and can't wait to go! I've heard it's pretty toasty there, so to "prepare for the sun" I went to the tanning bed yesterday. In the middle of January. Sure it will probably keep me from frying when I'm exposed to the Middle-Eastern sun, but the main reason is that being at the tanning bed reminded me of summer, and I was able to escape to my fantasy world for ten blissful minutes.

It's official. I'm so desperate for summer I am living in complete denial. Don't be surprised to find me sunbathing next to a covered pool with a CD of ocean sounds in the near future.

Attack Kitty!

Now that Sushi has realized the power of her claws and teeth, she has taken to pouncing on everything at every given opportunity. Usually her prey ends up being my keys, my feet when I am walking around the house, my homework, my pencil when I am writing, or anything she can drag into her lair, which is under my bed. However, I love her new method of attack, which is pouncing full-force onto objects and wrapping her jaws and feet around them. Observe:

How to Boil Water

I have been cooking since I was old enough to read, largely because I never had an Easy Bake oven and resorted to using a real one instead. This was mainly under the supervision of my mother who cooked a homemade dinner from scratch every single night, and taught me all she could about how to prepare food. Since then I have loved to cook, bake, and entertain, and was convinced for at least 4 years of my life that I was going to go to culinary school and become a master chef of my own restaurant. Every Christmas I bake vast amounts of food for people as gifts, managing to make several varieties of treats in a matter of hours and still have time to clean the entire kitchen before I go to bed. I have cooked dinner for friends, gotten up at ungodly hours of the morning to cook mother's day or birthday eggs Benedict for my mom who gets up at 5:30 am, and have no trouble with complex baking directions. But for the life of me, I cannot master simple tasks in the kitchen.

The other day, for example, I wanted to make rice to go with a chicken dish my grandparents gave me. What could be simpler than rice? I did what I assumed was the correct first step and put on some water to boil, then went to my room to wait for it to bubble - this was my first mistake. Yes, there is something simpler than rice, and that is boiling water. But somehow every time I put on water to boil, my ADHD kicks in and I completely forget about it and walk into the kitchen fifteen minutes later with half of the water evaporated, or I put a lid on the pot to prevent evaporation so the water simply bubbles over and splashes with hissing noises all over the stove, or I turn on the wrong stove eye entirely and wonder why the water has been sitting there for five minutes and not started simmering yet. So, back to the rice. When I remembered that I was in the process of preparing food, I dashed back to the kitchen and was greeted by a cloud of steam swirling over my stove top from the water which was now madly boiling at full capacity. I grabbed the box of rice and dumped the entire thing into the water to let it cook, completely forgetting to season it in any way. When the rice was done cooking, I realized that I had vastly underestimated the expansion qualities of rice. I was aiming to prepare maybe enough for 2 people, but apparently the entire box produces enough for about 10. So now I had at least 9 leftover portions of unseasoned rice which I had absolutely no intentions of eating. Fortunately I never had to eat them because this happened:

Fail.

Other obstacles which I frequently face in the kitchen include frozen pizzas and Pillsbury cookies, which I burn almost every time I attempt to make them. I also have issues with Ramen noodles and Easy Mac, as I always put too much or too little water in them. Any simple task in the kitchen I will probably find a way to mess it up, but if you need someone to cook a four course dinner in a limited amount of time, I'm your girl.

Birthday Tree!

Today is my mom's birthday, 50th to be exact but you'd never guess it! She looks at least ten years younger. Being the quirky and festive soul that she is, she has always wanted a year-round Christmas tree to decorate according to the seasons. So for her birthday I bought her a fake tree and decorated it in a winter theme (she loves snow and was born in a snow storm), then hung pictures of things she likes all over it I've included Charlie Brown, Dr. Seuss, favorite Looney Tunes episodes, British comedies, and other various things. Maybe it's a weird concept to some, but her reaction was worth it because I could tell she felt special. Love love love my mommy!

Priorites

It has come to my attention in the past few days that some of my priorities may be somewhat skewed. Of course I get the important stuff done, bills and work and such, but what I chose to do with my spare time is starting to concern me. Every time I come in the apartment, the first thing that I notice is silence, which I don't like to come home to. No one there, lights off, and completely quiet expect for when my cat leaps out of me from a dark corner in the playful attempt to give me a heart attack. So to fill the void of empty silence which seems to pervade the air, I turn on the TV for background noise. Unfortunately I am addicted to trash television background noise usually means Toddlers and Tiaras, Jersey Shore, Pawn Stars, or any of those terribly depressing shows about addictions and other crazy people with problems. Pretty soon I lose my focus and think, "No! I can't take out the trash now! I have to see more of this person ruin his life with heroine!" Who can think about actually going to buy groceries after watching Extreme Couponing? It makes shopping seem futile and wasteful due to the fact that I actually have to spend money. I don't need real life!

This morning was the first day of my senior year of college, and after I got up I had to figure out what to do with my time before school. I thought I could cook some eggs, but then I looked in the mirror and realized that make-up needed to happen RIGHT NOW before such trivialities as sustenance could be considered. After that I faced another obstacle - what to wear. It's my senior year and my classes are up a hill, so heels are definitely out. It's going to later so I need to wear boots, therefore I need to wear skinny jeans to put inside said boots. I'm not skinny yet so I have to find something that covers me, so there goes the majority of my shirts. Is it cold? Should I wear a scarf? OK. Outfit done. Now what the hell is going on with my hair. What position do I sleep in to even make it look like that?
Of course eating is simply out of the question at this point now that my hair was in such a deplorable state. Breakfast is only for people with nice hair, so I skipped it and ate an apple in the car. Priorities.

Other difficult decisions I have faced recently include trying to decide whether to purchase New York Times OR Cosmopolitan on my Nook, buy a map update for my GPS or save money/constantly become hopelessly lost in attempts to find most locations, and currently, sleep or blog and work on random projects, none of which have anything to do with school. Sleep was probably the right decision around 3 hours ago.

I just have to add this because it was so stupid: I am on a laptop typing this. That's an actual laptop with a big screen and a full keyboard and access to the internet. A second ago I thought, "this blog needs a picture. I should look for one!" So I pulled out my iPhone and pulled up Safari. FAIL.

Picture of the Day: School > Sleep

Raaaaaspberry Puree

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture of the day - two of the greatest people in the world!! My little family, which consists of me, mom, uncle, and grandparents, gathered to celebrate upcoming birthdays of my mom's 50th and my uncle's 40th. Even though it was a small gathering, I always have so much fun and feel so complete when I am with them. They are unabashedly quirky and love me unconditionally, and being around them never fails to bring me back to who I truly am. Tonight the birthday song was sung in the traditional style of my family, 3-part harmony with my grandfather as the bass and my uncle's gorgeous voice as the baritone. My uncle took ten years to make dinner because he is both a brilliant cook and an experimentalist, so cooking usually means hours of marinating this, reducing that, letting this simmer, at the end of which time we have just enough energy to drag ourselves to the table. To his credit, however, that steak and sauce it took 20 hours to make was amazing. Afterwards we had chocolate cake and a raspberry sorbet that my uncle also made. As soon as it was served, my mom immediately starting singing "Raaaaaspberry puree!" to the tune of Prince's "Raspberry Beret," saying that she used to think those were the actual lyrics. Now not only is that song stuck in my head, but it is also making me hungry.
I can't form cohesive thoughts anymore because it is 2 am so I'm going to be lazy and post pictures instead!

RAAAAAAASPBERRY SORBET!

I love how my grandmother writes her F's

For every occasion, my grandmother has a table. She will spend all year collecting various decor for the Christmas table, which is a different theme every year, and has a decorating talent which rivals Martha Stewart. Every birthday table is personalized - this year the balloons have my mom's baby picture on one side and my uncle's on the other! The napkins, which my grandfather proudly proclaimed that he folded, were made to look like birthday hats. And yes, my whole family can fit around this table.

Ok. My brain is shutting down. But I blogged, dammit! Accomplishments!

I think my cat has schizophrenia

This is my cat, Sushi.

As you can see, she's a bit off.

The first night I got her, someone had left in her in an elevator, so my boyfriend brought her home as a Christmas surprise for me because I really wanted a kitten (specifically rescue kitten). All she did for the first night was purr and snuggle up next to me, burying her head in between my neck and shoulder and occasionally licking my nose. How sweet! Then came time to feed her...and I saw a touch of insanity in those precious feline eyes. "Maybe it's just because she's so hungry from being outside," I thought. But every time I feed her it's like she hasn't eaten in days, and she screams non-stop until finally shutting herself up by eagerly slamming her face into the food bowl. However, in order to get the food into the bowl you have endure the obstacle course of getting it from my kitchen cabinet to my room, which involves trying to balance a cup of cat food while having your ankles endlessly circled by a ravenous feline who attempts to jump the four feet in the air to get to her dinner. I literally have to shove her away from her bowl just so I can get the food into it without her knocking it out of my hands in excitement.

Then there's the jumping at things that aren't there. Maybe it's just beyond the capabilities of my limited human vision, but she is bound and determined to destroy something on my walls that I cannot see. The other night she woke me up at 2 am trying to climb the door frame and repeatedly failing with the sound of scratching nails down the side of the wall. Sure, she plays with her toys, bottle caps, boxes, and other random things, but when she starts going for invisible specks I start to wonder about her mental stability. Occasionally the invisible thing will move to the carpet, and throughout the day she will pounce forcefully on some area in the carpet which has absolutely no objects in the vicinity. She will then move back to inspect her catch, and often become alarmed at the fact that there is nothing beneath her paws. Such realizations in cats may cause disillusionment and lead to depression and anxiety over invisible specks, and I am in no place to look after a schizophrenic cat.

Right now she is suckling contently on my panda pillow pet, from which she is determined to get milk. She may have some disturbed idea that it is her mother.

Her alcoholism doesn't help either. She will only give "kisses" if you have been drinking, and the other night she stuck her face in my wine glass. More signs of mental instability.

But she is a sweet cat and seems to be loyal, so I'll let her stay crazy as long as she's happy. In other news I worked 8 hours tonight and want to go to sleep. Good night.

People are stupid. The end.

 

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the ticket for a $42 dollar pizza. My first table at work tonight was a man and a woman who brought in their two babies in separate carriers and sat them up on the table next to the parmesan and red pepper shakers - how cute. I have been quite sick for the past couple of weeks and consequentially my nose is leaking every time I tilt my head down and my ears are completely stopped up so I can't tell the volume of my voice and I can't properly hear people. As if that isn't enough trouble, this particular couple does not seem to want to speak above a whisper, and they take at least 20 seconds of awkward silence between each item they order. So, onto the ridiculously expensive pizza. The man keeps the menu for literally the entire time, studying it thoroughly before finally ordering it and keeping it during the meal so he could later place a to go order. One would think that after twenty five minutes of studying that he would have a pretty good idea of prices, right? That's what I thought. I started to take his order and just continued to listen and write down the monstrous list of ingredients he slowly listed off as he browsed the menu. It took at least three minutes to write this down due to the fact that he would list off a few things, then see another ingredient listed and add that, then pause and ask if he had added chicken yet, then look at the list again, etc. About 9 ingredients in I said, "that sounds like a pretty expensive pizza." But no matter! He just kept on ordering. Steak, chicken, portobello, pretty much everything. When I finally rang it in the kitchen asked if I was joking and if he had any idea how much money that would be. "The prices are on the menu," I replied. So what happens when I deliver the ticket? I get a dirty look from his wife as if I created the prices and forced her husband to be a greedy, unobservant fatass, and NO TIP on a $71 check. The moral of this rant is that people are stupid and don't pay attention, then blame others for their own faults. Unfortunately, this attitude affects how much money I make. I really hope those people dropped that entire $42 pizza on the ground and that it got devoured by angry raccoons before they could save any of it. Jerks. The end.

IKEA. OH MY GAWD.

Today I had the wondrous and magical experience of going to IKEA for the first time, and later the heart-wrenching agony of realizing I cannot live in the meticulously decorated showrooms and have to leave. One trip, and I'm hooked - my whole life is going to be different because of this store. I am going to make money so I can have an adorable, organized, colorful apartment decorated entirely in IKEA furniture, then I'm going to marry rich so I can have kids with little mini-IKEA rooms. My plan is flawless!! I came home with a few much-needed things, such as light for my living room since we have not purchased a lamp for it in the five months we've been living here. As for the rest of my life such as preparing for school and working out, it is being put on hold for unrealistic fantasies of ideal home decoration and organizational bliss. However, in putting together a towel rack today, I learned how to use a drill! And I put together a lamp and a desk organizer thingy and some stuff on my wall that involved screws and a hammer...I'm such a handy woman. Definitely set for life with my skills.

January 1

Picture number 1 out of what I hope to be 365. My night of writing with my favorite tea and my fantastically nerdy teapot I got for Christmas.

New Years Tentative Suggestions for 2012

1. Write every day 

-see present blog

2. Pray every day 

3. Read every day

-but not just for school, like for FUN. I remember a distant point in my past when I actually wanted to pick up a book and leisurely enjoy it without the impending terror of being tested on it and knowing stupid and minute details like symbols and motifs and what year the author got married.
4. Work out

-No but seriously!!! I will this time!!! This year is different! I am going to drop fifteen pounds and become an avid runner and drink fruit smoothies and be on exercise infomercials! I can change, dammit!

6. Watch movies instead of TV shows

-since I haven't seen a lot of basic "good" movies and am pretty sure that I have seen every episode of Lizard Lick Towing, Storage Wars, Teen Mom 2, and, yes, Jersey Shore. Yeah like you haven't watched it. Judgmental asshole.

7. Cook

-I'm in college, so the occasional Ramen Noodle dinner is inevitable despite the fact that I have a fully-functional kitchen in my apartment. However, I get the vibe that my family wants me to be less of a lazy pizza-consuming fatass and more of a homemaker when for the past two Christmases I received an arsenal of Martha Stewart kitchen gadgets.

8. Make an effort to look good

-Granted, I put on makeup in the morning, but styling my hair consists of showering the night before and letting it shape itself overnight as I toss and turn into various awkward sleeping positions. Maybe instead of just wearing jeans and t-shirts I could...like...put on a scarf or something...?
9. Keep up with the world
-I shamefully admit that I am one of the ignorant mass of young people who never watches the news or reads political news articles. I honestly just don't care about politics. At all. But world events are important and I want to avoid being the dumbass who gets asked about "the hurricane" or "what happened yesterday in Japan" and responds with:

10. Finish what I start
-like this blog
-and the twenty page research paper I have due in a few weeks for my capstone
-and studying for the oral exam in a couple of weeks which determines if I graduate
-and paying off the paypal account I created to pay for Christmas gifts
-and the art journal I started like 5 months ago and only did 2 pages
-and decorating my apartment where I have been living for 6 months
-and books
-and sentences
-and.

11. Have a morning routine

-if I don't have a schedule, I cannot function. Despite how unorganized my mind is, my physical world is structured and neat, and routines often help me to think. However, my current morning routine involves the following:
-rude awakening by repetitive apple ringtone
-set alarm to snooze
-sleep ten more minutes
-another rude awakening, this time seemingly more insistent
-sleep ten more minutes
-alarm
-realize I have thirty minutes to get ready and make it through traffic to class










-sleep ten more minutes
-alarm, wake in state of annoyance and panic at time limit
-clothes. jeans. shirt. shoes. whatever I grab first.
-food? no time.
-make it to class at least ten minutes late every single day of the semester

12. Do what makes me happy

-but not "temporary" happy, like getting drunk or giving in to cravings to spend money, but what makes me happy overall. Listen to music when I clean, drink tea and read books, go for a walk - sappy shit like that which actually requires me to reflect on the world around me and how I will somehow find a way to fit into it.