neutral

apology: i had no intention in turning this blog into the type of thing the crazy old lady down the street would write as she sat rocking back and forth on her rickety porch.  i realize the crazy old lady in this scenario is me, and for that, i am sorry.  however, i do, on occasion, have deep thoughts and i like to share.

so, to the past week.  i flew to and returned from the forensic science conference in chicago.  it was amazing for me to see the extreme diversity of studies presented, because i have lots and lots of ideas and was thinking i had very few options for synthesizing them.  now, though, i'm feeling much better about my future thesis, which is not to say that i know exactly what's going on, but i'm feeling less pressure/insanity about it.

additionally, i learned that i have effectively pulled most of the joy out of my wardrobe, which is both a good thing and a bad thing.  i've mentioned before that in college, i had jessica simpson syndrome and essentially just had a horrible wardrobe.  recently, i found proof:

ok, first of all, ignore what's going on with my face.  second, what the hell i am i wearing on my body?  third, check out that closet shot.  you can see fragments of about ten items and it's already obvious that nothing goes together and it's all insane.  as a child, i was convinced that if you wore blocks of colors, your outfit was inherently put together.  um, no, but unfortunately, this philosophy carried me until i was 21.  i've since stopped shopping the clearance racks at ridiculous stores and have only purchased things in about four colors: white, black/grey, dark blue and purple/bright pink (because i love me some salmon t-shirts).  thus, in most of the photos from the conference, i am in neutral head to toe.  it's ok, though, because most of the time, i matched.  

as a side note, i never, ever wore the horrible beige gauzy skirt visible hanging in that college apartment closet. it hung there because it was $5 at urban.  i seriously had a problem.

mad libs!

i advise you all to check this link: mad libs.  a) because it's hilarious and b) because it concerns something really very serious.

as a person who happens to be a genetic mutt with an open mind, it astounds me when people have hard-wired prejudices or intense misconceptions are people who are of the "other," especially because these prejudices are often so deeply rooted in present-day social problems that they are glaringly obvious reactions to subconscious fears.  those who carry prejudices, fearing for the future propagation of the world as they knew it (regardless of whether or not it was a good, progressive, enlightened world), rail against any and all fellow human beings who do not fit neatly into the small cube of existence that they have carved out for themselves.  and to these fear-mongers, i say, "fuck you."  (but nicely, of course, because that's my m.o.)  i'm enraged daily by the sheer ignorance and hate that gets vomited into the public discourse every day by talking heads, politicians and their supporters (this goes for both side of the aisle, for the record), who say harmful, hateful, despicable things about living, breathing, beautiful people who just happen to be different.

there is absolutely no justification, moral, religious, cultural or otherwise, for the systematic removal of the rights and status of people simply due to their otherness and those who encourage this are imbeciles.  strong language, right?  totally.  because it's true.  to subscribe to that view is simply to expose your fundamental misunderstanding of history and about what it means to be a human being.  there hasn't been a time in the last several thousand years that any one group of people was any more pure or good or righteous than another. to vilify a group in the present is to forget our collective pasts, which included such horrific events as the crusades and the holocaust, neither of which were spearheaded by today's villians de jour, homosexuals or those who practice islam.  no, the crusades and the holocaust were christian, white enterprises, but they were long enough ago that we're able to forgot about the terrible havoc our ancestors wrecked on the world and focus instead on attempting to subjugate everyone else under our very special, puritanical world views.

it's time to step down from our 21st century straight, white, middle class pedestals and start taking effective, realistic and humble action in our world.  however, as a student of history, it's not difficult for me to see why when our country is failing at pretty much everything, the first reaction is not to help solve legitimate problems, but instead is to point the finger at the supposed social monstrosities that are to blame (in 2011, those would be abortion, gay people and muslims, to name a few).  that's what fearful people have done in hard times of change all throughout history.

like, when the crusaders torched europe or when hitler killed my great-great grandparents.

glass house, stones, people.  shut the hell up about what defines rape or who gets an abortion and fix the broken american educational system, crack down on mortgage lenders and make sure we can all get the healthcare we need.  poverty, obesity and prejudice will take us down long before gay marriage.  trust.

you've just won...the chance to open a misleading email!

about a month and a half ago, i thought i'd won $100,000.  long story.  another time.  but since that didn't really go so well and still needing the thousands and thousands of dollars, i entered my information at publisher's clearing house, thinking it's free and exciting and who cares.  and, in the weeks since, it has been just that.  it's also got the added bonus of being totally ridiculous, which of course i love.  i keep getting emails with really intense subject lines, that are a little psychologically abusive, saying things like, "you've just WON...an entry into a contest with 1:160,000,000,000 odds!" and "reply here to claim your...entry into a contest with 1:160,000,000,000 odds!"

if i were the kind of person who trusted publisher's clearing house and who thought that i legitimately had a chance of winning a million dollars a year for the rest of my life, i'd be a total wreck because i'd be getting daily emails that inflated my poor, hopeless hopes.

it's really mean, actually.  shame on you, pch.com.  obviously, we're all gonna enter every day like morons - that's why we signed up in the first place.  there's no need to make it so torturously deceiving.

a storm's a-comin'

next week, i'm going to chicago for a conference for school with a bunch of forensic peeps and despite weeks and weeks of fearing i would freeze to death (as living in southern california one's whole life doesn't necessary prepare one for the snowpocalypse), i am now pissed that weather forecasts call for sunny days.  sunny days, chicago?  don't you know i bought amazing super tall rubber rain boots that are styled to look like real leather boots and zip up the back?  don't you know i was stoked to wear them through the horrible storms, so as to protect my feet from moisture and also look super cool?  sunny days totally cramp my style.

granted, it's still supposed be only 28*, so i'll be able to bust out my new coats.

in other news, i still haven't been back to the traffic school website because i can't be bothered.  i didn't mention this before because it seemed like small potatoes compared to the minimum time requirements, but it's now a large part of why i'm dreading beginning again, so i should explain.  this online traffic school course, which is super cheap and ok'd by the court (aka fine by me), spends the entire first unit explaining that speeders and road ragers are people who are immature, crazy imbeciles who are so broken from reality that they take everything in life too seriously.  it practically insists that i, the traffic violator, need to take a quaalude* just to function in day to day life.  listen, traffic school, i'm offended.  i got my ticket for speeding and i'll admit, i sometimes get a little upset when drivers around me do stupid things.  however, this is not because i have some unresolved daddy issues or because i have an anger management problem.  it's because driving in los angeles is not like meditation (which, i shit you not, was a comparison made on page 4.  believe me.  i stared at it for 12 minutes).  driving in los angeles is like throwing your car down a plinko board and hoping it lands on $100,000, or in this case, "not death."  people here are idiots.  they drive like assholes and i am astounded by the rampant idiocy that confronts me each and every time i get into my car.  so, no, i'm not taking it personally when a mercedes suv nearly runs me off the road.  i am not a paranoid schizophrenic (although, btw, if i was, i wouldn't want to be called out over internet traffic school).  what i am is not interested to dealing with bullshit and that's pretty inescapable around these parts, if your routes contain the 101, 405 or 10.

i need to finish the program before this weekend, so hello, friday morning!  can't wait to fill you with hours of tedium and prejudice.

*two As!  who knew?

vd in review

valentine's day breakdown:

what we didn't do: eat leftovers or watch our shitty favorite shows.

what we did do: wash a ton of laundry and clean up the back patio so that it is now functional* and not embarrassing, make pasta and homemade garlic bread, eat by really dark candlelight (damn no-dimmer lights!), snack on the peanut butter cookies i made (which are luke's favorite and were by far the best i've ever had - recipe: bookmarked), and then watched when harry met sally, which is still one of my favorite movies, despite the fact that i've watched probably ten zillion times.  it was a very relaxed, very productive day.  go us.  (also, we spent zero dollars, as everything we ate and entertained ourselves with was already here.  oh, the glory of being cheap bastards.)

oh, this is old news by now, as it was established on sunday, but i've roped luke and anya, one of my favorite people in the universe, into starting a crafting company with me.  ok, company might be a little extreme.  business perhaps.  i figure if i'm sitting around here all day anyway, i might as well attempt to throw my (knit) hat into the online crafting ring.  i was inspired by my baby shower gift creations.  i happen to think they were pretty amazing.  and as i was throwing this idea around in my braincase, anya came to visit, bearing this book as a gift for me:

what are the chances?  obviously, anya and i are not only soul mates, but are also destined to rule the world of little baby clothing.

*when we lived in our apartment, our kitchen had a really odd empty space right by the oven, which provided the distant, depressing promise that either a dishwasher or more counter space had once existed there.  so sad.  instead, we stuck a really amazing stainless steel chef's table into the hole and it worked perfectly for us for two years.  in this house, however, there is no gaping hole in the kitchen (as they completed it before renting it to us - imagine that!) and so our awesome table hung out for about three months propped against the back of the house, just waiting for a new job.  yesterday, luke repurposed it as a gardening/potting station, and we arranged all of the potted succulents on it (succulents from my bouquet and from our party favors, which still live and give me much joy).  we also have another area set up for barbeque'ing, which will have to wait patiently until we have enough money for a BBQ.  :(

vd

it's valentine's day!  yay.  if my last post was any indication, i'm obviously not super into participating in events that foster unreal expectations (and therefore almost always come with disappointment).  i don't like getting so totally carried away with how television tells me things ought to be that i can't enjoy things are they are. things that often get corrupted by media: christmas, thanksgiving, birthdays, new year's eve, valentine's day.  that's not to say i don't love holidays.  i am my mother's child.  i could decorate you all under the table.  i am a sucker for party stores and i am obsessed with making things memorable.  i just don't think memorable often syncs with traditional (in the box of chocolates, bouquet of flowers sense).  i will love luke regardless of whether or not he buys me a diamond necklace because no, not every kiss begins with kay.  (i also kinda take offense to the idea that the purest way to prove to a woman that you love her is to buy her diamonds and chocolates once a year.)

so anyway, what are luke and i doing for valentine's day?  i'm scouring the interwebs for jobs that aren't scams/panicking about how i haven't made any money in four weeks and luke's doing graphic design work for a local bookstore.  tonight, we'll probably eat leftovers and maybe i'll make some cookies/brownies.  we'll also watch some really embarrassing tv shows that i'm not even going to name (let's just say they're on abc family).

vedding

five days ago, luke and i celebrated our nine month anniversary.  and by celebrated, i mean i remembered in class on tuesday night that it was the 8th, and that that meant we'd been married for nine months and then i told luke when i got home and he was unimpressed.  that's all important because i don't want you all to think we're the kind of people who celebrate month-by-month anniversaries.  we aren't.  it's kinda frightening, though, to realize that the wedding was almost a year ago.  that's craziness.  also, i feel very ashamed of myself for never recording the wedding blitz in blog form, and what better time than the present?

here goes:

when most little girls were feeding baby dolls, i was also forcing a bottle into the mouth of my favorite toy ever.  however, mine was a little plush dog that peed in very timely increments after being fed, which i found hilarious.  when most little girls were brushing their hair 100 times each night, i was engaging in world wars with the neighbors' kids, helping my brother hurl lemons over the backyard fence.  and when most little girls were dreaming of their perfect weddings, i was watching horror movies with my brother, trying to decide if we could do the same special events with ketchup and oatmeal.  this is why i was engaged for two years, although this maybe also was due to the fact that i got engaged when i was 21.  i'll rephrase: the long engagement was mostly because the idea of this tomboy crazy person planning a wedding was a) completely foreign and b) totally terrifying. 

i've never understood pomp and circumstance and traditions and social demands.  so the thought of bridal showers, bachelorette parties, dress fittings, cake testings, interviewing vendors, party games, rehearsal dinners and of course the main event itself was overwhelming, to say the least.  my family really rallied, throwing me showers and helping with the vendors and coordinating the dinners, which was fabulous especially near d-day because i was so extremely exhausted and crazed.  as it was, though, even with all the participation of everyone i loved, i couldn't help feeling like a bit of a schmuck, just marching through these bizarre highly pressurized, institutionalized rites of passage.  that's probably because bridal showers and hair and makeup are so obviously not my thing and i was just sure that the woman fitting my dress was going to look up at me with her finger pointed and out me as an impostor in this world of sugar and spice and everything nice.  "you haven't dreamt of this your whole life!  you can barely do your own hair!  you can't be a bride!"  yes.  these were my fears.

terror aside, i think luke and i did a fantastic job making the wedding itself as reflective of us as possible.  i'm really proud of that, especially because the wedding machine (the vendors, the magazines, the advice books, everything) is structured to make you feel like an extra $2000 for embossed invitations is entirely in the realm of normal.  we didn't have a bridesmaids or groomsmen, because the idea of enslaving my friends to plan parties for us and organize shit seemed a little vicious.*  we spent a reasonable amount on each one of the party parts (food, music, site) and really only splurged on this amazing hoopa the florist made, which i was ok with because it featured one of my great-grandma edna's tablecloths and she'd died a few months before, after having been so excited to come.

we also trapped our two friends, cory and joel, who were instrumental to introducing us, into performing the ceremony and marrying us.  they went to an orientation, signed all the proper paperwork and worked for months on the most wonderful ceremony.  they did a magnificent job and i really couldn't think of any other people we would have shared that moment with.

here's the hoopa (and us, i guess), just after the ceremony:

all in all, after all the planning and stress and fights with the site coordinator about bistro lighting and agonizing over being the center of attention in such a huge way for an entire night and nights wondering, "why in the hell am i doing all this?" (most especially after we got our marriage license for $75 and realized we could then get married for practically nothing), the wedding was perfect.  i know, i know.  "the perfect day" is a horrible way to look at your wedding, because inevitably it won't be.  ours wasn't either, at least not by the standard definition.  initially, as i languished in hair and makeup, all the ceremony chairs were set up directly facing the sun, and luke and joel and cory had to move them themselves twenty minutes before the show started.  i had a nervous stomachache the entire night and didn't even get to eat any of the delicious foods or cake or drink any of the vodka lemonades, which were apparently amazing.  we found out at 9:50 pm, with the party still raging, that our contract with the caterers (who also provided the tables and chairs) was over at 10 pm (how that got lost in translation in the planning phase still beats me).  however, in the face of all that horrible adversity (sarcasm, yes?), it was one of the best nights ever.  i've subsequently had other amazing days, days i would say are some of the best days of my life, but that night, we were enveloped in love, for each other and for our family and friends and i have truly never felt anything like that before.  it wasn't the cake or the dress or the venue: it was the knowledge that everyone we loved was in the same place at the same time, celebrating and loving.  

if you can achieve that, you've got the perfect wedding, wherever you are and whatever it costs.

*my friends, the bridesmaids of my heart (too much?), actually did come to my rescue and do a few jobs the day of the wedding, even though i'd tried to spare them.  despite having chosen a makeup artist and done a trial run, it never occurred to me that i would be locked up in a secret room "getting ready" for three hours before the ceremony, and therefore, i never delegated any day-of tasks to anyone because i figured i'd just do them all.  i mean, the ceremony wasn't until 4:30 (control freak much?).  thus, there it was, may 8th, and i'm sitting in the hair chair thinking, "holy shit, there is no one to do a, b, c."  cue my amazing, glorious friends, who showed up just to say hi before it all began and were instead enlisted in hanging up place cards and arranging the candy table.  i cannot believe how much i relied on people at the last minute to make everything work out, and how they all managed it perfectly.  thanks, loves!

meats

first things first: at the risk of sounding like a fuddy duddy old lady, i despise loud motorcycles.  there is absolutely no acceptable reason for me to feel like an asteroid is on a collision course with my house when you feel like driving down the street.  it's obnoxious and gross.

second things second: luke and i are having some peeps over for dinner tonight and i think his plan is to roast a chicken.  this wouldn't be a problem to most people, but i'm having a hard time reconciling with luke's abandoned vegetarianism.  as i've ranted about before, i stopped eating meat when i was 8.  and, when i met luke, he'd been a vegetarian independently for a few years.  recently, though, he decided he wanted to start eating meat again and i became cool with that.  my only rule was that he couldn't cook it in the house.  (i realize that sounds extreme, but as someone who has spent the last 16 years studying the meat industry in the united states and growing intensely uncomfortable with the whole scene, i'd like to keep the corpses out of my kitchen and away from my utensils.)

now he's going to roast a chicken and i'll probably go cry about how horrific roasting and then sawing apart the flesh of a dead animal is.*


*incidentally, this is why i can't do a decomposition study for my thesis in my master's program.  i think everyone i've told this to just wants me to grow a pair and stop acting like a baby, but there is something deeply disturbing to me about being responsible, in whatever way, for the death of any other living thing. people are big fans of telling me that meat in a store is already dead and would have been killed anyway, so it makes no sense to boycott it or refuse to purchase it.  my response is that each person who buys the meat produced by factory farming is contributing to a market for shit like that.  so, if you consume it, you are responsible.  and, in the case of a possible decomp thesis, in california, studies of that kind must be done on animals (namely, pigs as they are incredibly similar to humans).  therefore, in order to run as precise a study as possible, one must go to a butcher shop, select one's pigs and have them killed at the appointed hour so that one knows time of death.  i know i wouldn't be ok with that, because it doesn't matter to me whether or not ten minutes later someone would have killed the pig for a luau.  what matters to me is how i deal with the choices i make and i would probably be haunted by the dead pigs for the rest of my life.

maximum sentences

long, long ago, i got a speeding ticket.  i was in my second year of college, so that was four years ago.  i did an online traffic school, which was awesome because i was able to fly through the webpages, take the quizzes and i finished the entire course in like two hours.

fast forward to today, when i signed on for my second online traffic school.  i got a speeding ticket in november for going 80 mph on the freeway at 9 pm.  let me repeat that: 80 mph on the freeway at 9 pm.  now, my father the lawyer would say i still broke the law, which i suppose is true.  however, i believe i was going slower than most people around me, so how i won the lottery, i will never know.  maybe it was my flashy car, with its rear-ended bumper and two missing hubcaps that made the officer think i had the money to burn on a traffic ticket.  blarg.

so, two hours ago, i started traffic school.  and guess what?  this is truly horrifying so prepare yourselves.  apparently, online traffic schools are now mandated by the courts to enforce time minimums for each page of instruction.  for example, if i finish reading a page in 3 minutes (which happens on or around 100% of the time because i'm a crazy fast reader), i can't advance to the next page until the 12 minute clock has rundown.

are. we. serious.  doing traffic school this way will probably be more painful than if i had just gone to the comedy school in person for eight hours (my grandpa scored a ticket around the same time i did* and suggested we go together, but i scoffed at the idea of spending all day on it when i could just do it at my own chosen speed online.  little did i know.).

so, i got through 6 webpages in an hour and had to take a break.  just even saying "six webpages equals one hour" is so mind-numbing, i can't even believe it.  go read a full page of text on the internet somewhere, time yourself and multiply it by 6.  i will guarantee that even if you read it in your fourth language, your time will be remarkably less than 60 minutes.

how am i going to handle this?


*obviously, i come from a long line of badass speeders.  although, to his credit, my grandpa was speeding on his way to get the giant MRSA infection on his leg taken care of, so i guess he had someplace pretty important to get to.

funfetti

i am obsessed with this cat:

huck is by far the most loving animal i've ever had (and i grew up in a menagerie).  it's been a little crazy since we got the dog, but now, a few months later, things have normalized and huck's back to sleeping curled up with me at night and following luke and i around the house.  i am in love and i'm not ashamed of it.  i woke up this morning to his little russian blue face and it was glorious.

recently, abe has also gotten brave enough to come through the berlin wall* to visit us in the living room.  mostly, he does a lot of this:

he's figured out how to open all the drawers and cabinets in the house (including the closet in our room), so he spends his days either curled up on the hand towels at the top of the hall closet or up in my clothes, eating holes in all my soft sweaters.**  he's super cozy and vocal, so it's like having a stuffed animal you can talk to.  that's kinda awesome.

in other news, i have to present my evolution vs. creationism powerpoint tonight.  i think it'll be fine.  especially because my master plan is to come bearing funfetti cupcakes, which are amazing and should win me good reviews from my fellow grad students.  also, i really want to eat one, so it's mostly for me.

*when we first got dess, the cats were terrified and she loved to sprint after them as they slid around on the wood floors trying to escape her.  luke bought a baby gate and cut out a small portion at the bottom of one of the barrier poles, therefore allowing the cats to come and go as they pleased but barring the dog from following them.  in first few weeks, there was a lot of a mournful crying and wistful staring coming from the bedroom side of the baby gate (thus, the berlin wall reference).  now, though, the cats realize they could claw out dess's eyes and therefore hold all the power.  also, dess can now leap over the gate from a sitting position, so keeping it up is more of a formality at this point.  maybe i'm just waiting for ronald reagan to tell me to take it down.

**having pets is like having children who never grow up and stop destroying things.  abe has had a form of pica that requires him to eat all the nicest fabrics in my closet since he was able to eat solid food.  i figured he'd grow out of it, but to this day, i'll pull something off a hanger only to realize there's a giant, cat-mouth-sized hole in the sleeve, or the hem looks like it's been eaten by a giant caterpillar.  the other day, dess ate through one of my beloved peace sign sandals, which i loved mostly because i always got compliments on them (as in, every single time i wore them, which was a lot).  and huck can sniff out any and all sugary treats i have in my bag and steal them.  the only time in two and half years he has ever hissed at me is when i was trying to snatch back a package of graham crackers he'd taken from my purse and dragged back to his lair behind the treadmill.

creating problems

i spent approximately 4 hours this morning on a powerpoint presentation about creationism and intelligent design for my physical anthropology seminar on thursday and by the end of it, i was having trouble being neutral.  obviously, being the tree hugging, bleeding heart, hippie liberal that i am, i don't care what anyone else believes.  more power to you, scientologists!  to each his own.  however, i get really riled about religious notions in politics and schools, mostly because most proponents of religious notions in politics and schools aren't like me.  they don't subscribe to the "to each his own" mentality.  they aren't foaming at the mouth to let people practice whatever the hell they want.  instead, often, they want to mandate certain religious leanings be foisted upon all people, regardless of what those people personally believe.  i don't believe in prayer in public schools or that creationism should be taught in science class.  this is not because i'm not religious (although that is true), but instead because not everyone who is religious is christian.  not everyone who prays prays the same way.  not everyone who has questions about evolution is looking for a christian alternative.  therefore, it's not reasonable, responsible, or even basically fair to attempt to force your personal beliefs upon groups as multidenominational as, say, the entire american public school system or the government of the united states of america.  our forefathers may have come from christian backgrounds, but that only serves as proof that they were more open-minded in the 1700s than we are now.  it's true.  read the constitution and try to find some overt, you-must-be-like-me literature.  it's not there.

we are not all the same.  i love that.  that's why i'm in graduate school studying anthropology, for pete's sake.  what i can't tolerate, though, is the blatant disregard some people have for this diversity.

do your own thing and let everyone else do theirs, unless of course people try to get in the way of your doing your own thing, in which case you post something on your blog that no one reads.

sugarfree

on january 5th, i decided to take a month off sugar.  why, you ask?  oh, mostly because i gained ten pounds over the holidays.  seriously.  ten pounds.  obviously, i could tell i'd been a horrible glutton, because it's hard to forgot literally stuffing your face with your mother's delicious gingerbread men, but i only discovered the extent of my gluttony when i was weighed at a doctor's appointment and the nurse recorded the terrible number for posterity in my medical records.  thus, i gave up sugar.  the timing was perfect, too, because a month later i'd being going to the baby shower of a dear friend of mine and presumably be able to eat delicious cake to celebrate one month sugarfree.

cut to: the shower, which was adorable and also crazy.  i cannot believe that someone i was 14 with is now weeks away from being a mother.  this happens to me a lot.  i'll flip (stalk) through facebook, hyperventilating about all my childhood friends who have gotten married or had children, denying to myself that we're old enough for any of that, until i realize that i've contributed to this by also being married.  this terrifies me because it illustrates that no one ever feels like they're older, ever.  my 96-year-old great-grandmother wasn't from another planet, where old people are a different species who have forgotten what it's like to have their own personality.  oh, no.  she felt 16.  so essentially we're all doomed to feel young and carefree while having to get older and weighed down with responsibility.  (i'm a downer.)

anyway.  the shower was fabulous and so was the highly anticipated cake.  however, what i didn't expect, what i could never have expected, was that as i was gleefully licking the buttercream frosting off my fork, i realized i didn't need it.  i didn't feel like i was satiating an intense longing for sugary goodness because i didn't have an intense longing for sugary goodness.  i've taken up to six months off processed sugar before and each time i stop the fast, i fall off the wagon hard.  this time, the cake didn't make me want to fly to the nearest 7-11 and drink a massive slurpee while eating a snickers and shoving fun dips in my bag for ten minutes later.  as someone who has spent literally her entire life with sugar as a food group, this was surprising.

maybe i'm becoming less disgusting in my old (married) age.

onesie...twosie???

baby outfit numero dos:

aaaaaadorable, if i may say so myself.

onesie.

i lazed today, which makes this friday, um, exactly like every other day since the excavation ended.  i read a tad for class, perhaps finalized a group meeting for a class project, and finally made it to a fabric store, where i got some supplies to finish off my crafting bonanza for the baby shower tomorrow.  let me just say, despite the fact that having a child right now would be a horrible idea, baby accoutrements are adorable and i can't wait until i can craft them for myself (my kids.  i meant my kids.).

this here was part of today's project:

apparently, i am the mayor of horrible photo town.  a close-up:

i'm a little bit in love with this, especially because i only really planned for the tiny, solid circle to look like an eye and instead, the pattern worked as the trunk and the ear as well, which i think is totally super awesome.  i also want to make myself something with this little elephant* on it.  tote bag?  kitchen towel?  patch over the hole in the seat of my most favorite jeans ever that i can no longer wear without feeling like a prostitute?  or, maybe i could just make another onesie and hoard it until i have children light years from now.  that wouldn't be weird, right?  that's like a completely normal human thing to do, i'm sure.

*just for the record, i obviously didn't draw this elephant.  i can barely hold a pencil.  luke sketched it out for me, and it was perfect the first time and i was really jealous and sad.  however, he doesn't know how to make baby cocoons or use fabric transfer paper**, so i win.

**i will feel really silly about declaring this if everyone in the world thinks my crafting looks like a five-year-old did it with their non-dominant hand, but i like to think of myself as a professional layman.  what i mean by this is that i am not particularly good at any arts and/or crafts, but what i am good at is figuring out how to make something decent and moderately attractive with my limited skill set (namely, being able to cut out traced objects and knit and purl on a loom.  yes.  a loom.  it has come to that.)  i'm very proud of that.  those who can't do...spend hours on the internet searching for ways to make people think that they can.

it's not only reasonable, it's essential.

if it wasn't glaringly obvious from the sheer terror in my blog voice for the last few weeks, i am hating figuring out my life.  i'm over my mid-twenties.  give me my settled thirties, please!  i would like to be, as jenna rink dreams in 13 going on 30, "30, flirty and thriving."

i've been bitching and moaning about this all over the 101 freeway.  my parents, my aunts, my grandparents, all of you people.  everyone knows.  i've made it clear.  and, despite the fact that no one has offered me millions of dollars, which is obviously why i'm talking about this all the time guys (it's getting embarrassing.  someone just read between the lines and hand over some cash), it's been nice to know that i'm not alone.

for instance, my dad is a pretty intense dude.  he's hilarious and loves fantastically horrible movies (the ringer starring johnny knoxville is a family fav), but in terms of what he has accomplished in his career, holy canoli he scares the bejesus out of me.  i think it really is just mostly that he's a trial lawyer and for some reason, that reads to me that he is made of steel.  i'd probably crap my pants if i had to cross-examine someone.  he's also been on tv (check it out.  i love how the tie matches his eyes.  so proud.).  i mean, wowzers.

ok, so the point: my dad, who my entire life has had all his shit together, told me a story recently about how my parents discovered they only had 44 cents in the bank one day when they were trying to buy diapers for my little brother and me.  granted, he was a lawyer by then and probably remedied that situation as soon as his next paycheck came in, but it was nice to know that even my very established parents had times of insanity (and they had kids!  at least i don't have kids!).  perhaps it's normal.  i guess it is normal.  why is it normal that your early adulthood has to blow so hard?

and, on the flip side of loving that apparently everyone stutter-starts their lives, i'm reading the life histories of several world-famous turn of the century scientists for class and this book exalts these people, especially the ones with "no university degrees," for managing to rise into the ranks of respected academics by the time they were 24 (or, as i interpret it, my age.  it's all about me.).  you know how these brilliant minds were able to achieve so much with such ease?  it was 1926.  and approximately all their parents knew the head of the smithsonian.  that's how.  stop making me feel bad, ann gibbons.  it was a different time!

cocoon!

this morning, i was up at 6:30, despite not having anything scheduled until class tonight.  this annoyed me, until i was able to catch up on three tv shows, finish a paper due tonight and complete my baby cocoon/hat combo for a friend's baby shower on saturday.  so, it's noon and i've done literal hours of work.  love it.

here's my cocoon.  forgive the bear.  it's not like i have a bunch of model babies hanging around here.

not being an expert by any means, i chose a pattern that doesn't read as well with this chunky yarn as it did with the lighter weight yarn suggested for it.  whatevs.  i think it's adorable.  and rustic and cozy, which is exactly what i wanted.  

i want a grown-up cocoon.

how convenient!

i just experienced what is perhaps the most fortuitous event ever: my grandpa called me this afternoon, offering his dentisting services tomorrow morning.  he didn't know about my cursed gums before he called, because i'd made a point of not telling anyone, so that was a wonderous coincidence.  tomorrow, i will be cured.  but, of course, this still requires a visit to a medical professional, making it doctor visit number fifty thousand and one.

i am not an animal! i am a human being!

disclaimer: i'm about to release a laundry list of my current and previous medical oddities into the universe. if you're not into that or don't want to see me in a different light (i.e. that of a terrible freak monster), then go procrastinate being checking out jezebel.com or gofugyourself.com.

if you're still here, i'm just gonna assume you're a glutton for punishment or unable to overcome your intense voyeurism.  that's ok.  i forgive you.

here goes: i have had exactly two "real" medical emergencies in my life.  at two years old, i was hospitalized for ten days with periorbital cellulitus and when i was six, i was hit by a bike (as in bicycle - i wasn't run down by a hell's angel, although that would make a better story) and needed many stitches to sew up the gaping knee hole i got when a tire bolt ripped through my leg.

despite only truly needing medical intervention as a child, i've been to the doctor approximately fifty thousand times in my young life.  just so we're clear: two legitimate medical problems, fifty thousand doctor visits.  why the huge discrepancy, you ask?  it's the one-two punch of being raised by a hypochondriac mother* and imagining the worst all the time, while having a very real tendency to actually contract some of the most bizarre and irritating bodily issues in history.

as an adult, i have: been diagnosed with a hernia on my calf from sprinting for seven years, found a benign cyst on the sternal end of my clavicle, gotten pink eye (twice), suffered through styes, broken out in ringworm (on my neck, which is probably the most disgusting place), had three ingrown toe nails, had such terrible skin i needed to take accutane, grew a subcutaneous cyst that hung around for like three months,  and had a miserable reaction to a nose piercing that resulted in a permanent round little nostril tattoo.  i'm still the proud owner of the hernia, the clavicle cyst and the nostril tattoo, and have sort of just accepted that i am predisposed to vomitous, if not life threatening, skin/eye problems.

why does this matter?  why would i chose to discuss this on a public forum?  who would care?  well, i'm guessing the answer to that last question would be, "no one."  i'm cool with that.  however, i felt that the above exposition was necessary to fully explain how peeved i am about a certain new development: namely, the inflammation of my gums that's going on three days now.  WHY GUMS?  can't we just get along?  why can't i have normal gums like all my friends?  are you really going to stick around just long enough for me to worry an infection is eating my canine tooth out of my skull, forcing me to the dentist just so my grandpa (the dentist) can tell me i'm disgusting and just need to floss more regularly?  is that what this is about?  is this YOU, grandpa?

see.  every time effing time one of these seemingly minor, inconsequential issues arises, i am driven insane with panic, until i start every conversation with luke with, "so, you're sure you've had this before and it was normal?  you're positive?" and then he never wants to speak to me again.  so i call my mom (which is a major no-no), who then calls my grandpa (who as the dentist is the go-to medical expert for any problem) and pretty soon i have my entire family up in arms about how i'm about to die a miserable, agonizing death due to mutant fatal ringworm.  or, in this case, gum inflammation.


*my mother, who i adore, is one of the most intense hypochondriacs i think has ever walked the earth.  as an infant, i don't think my precious skin ever once came in contact with dirt (you think i kid, but seriously, no one was allowed to put me on the ground).  also, i was forced to wear water booties into the ocean (lest i cut my feets open on unseen glass or needles in the sand) until i was 14 and decided enough was enough.  also also, it was my mother who pointed out my clavicle cyst and calf hernia, which means she was (is) more obsessive about my nasty afflictions than i was (am).

ten points if you can find the clavicle cyst!