i'm nearing the end or the beginning, whichever finds me

so i finished my application essay (yay me!) and then reread it and realized that it sounded a bit like a thesaurus threw up all over the paper. you know the people who use big words for the sake of using big words? yeah, i think i might have turned into one of them. my greatest fear has been realized. only, when i read it out loud instead of in my head, it didn't sound that bad. it still sounded a little bad, but i've written so many application essays it feels like they're all just a bouquet of lies and cliches at this point so i didn't really expect to fall in love with it. i'm planning on rereading it tomorrow morning and if it doesn't make me want to die, i'll submit it. if it does, well, i guess i'm back to ground zero.

i also - finally - got the three people to write my recommendation letters. i got my adviser to do the last one because some of my professors are obnoxious, and he was very happy to. i guess he doesn't get asked to write many recommendation letters.

i have also been wondering, where do you wear your watch? a couple of years ago my cousin and i went watch shopping with my sister and noticed she wore her watch right at the bottom of her wrist (like under the bone/on the bone/right at the edge of her palm kind of thing), and we thought it was weird because we both wore it above the bone. while telling my mom that my sister was weird, i noticed that she was also an under-the-bone person. my husband is, too. when i went to get a watch resized the dude working there asked where i wore my watch, but his was under the bone. and then i had the shocking realization that maybe my cousin and i are the weird ones. maybe most people wear their watches lower down, and i just never noticed until now. so i'm asking you, for the sake of my sanity, where do you wear your watch?

oh, and at the risk of sounding like a complete and utter geek, i love the class i'm taking this semester. i think it's one of the best classes i've ever had. i have a paper due tuesday, and i'm actually excited to write it. i mean, i'm sure i'll still leave it for the last minute, but i'm excited nonetheless.

*Days in Avalon - Richard Marx

i've tried, but i can't try no more

i can't for the life of me write this stupid goals statement for my application. i just can't do it. people assume that applying for your phd is some great decision that took thought and deliberation. um, not for me. people think that after a bachelors and masters degree, you'd be an expert in your field. sorry to disappoint. people expect you to have some work experience to rely on, some real world something to give you that extra whatever it is that makes your opinions valid. for some reason, i don't think blogging really counts as computer work.

so how am i supposed to write seven fifty to a thousand words on my plans, credentials, and reasons for giving another chunk of my life to mason?

i was originally going to recycle the essay for my master's application, but it turns out that it was lost in one of joe's many brainwashings because of his susceptibility to viruses. i was crushed. the only thing i even remember about it was that i mentioned planning to work in saudi arabia/start a forensic office there to stand out from the rest of the applicants. i really don't need a phd to do that, making it useless for this particular statement. and then with the release of windows 8 and all of the changes coming with it (because microsoft seems to think that if they don't change absolutely everything, they'll all die), i'm already starting to feel that everything i'm learning is becoming obsolete before i even get a chance to use it. you can't really sell yourself when you're constantly wondering, "what's the point?" disenchantment does not come off as excitement on the page, surprising as that may sound.

i just want this application to be over.

*On Without You - Backstreet Boys

where'd you go? i miss you so. seems like it's been forever since you've been gone

so yesterday we took the boys to see the lion king at the movies, and can you believe that they had never seen it before? i felt like i had failed my duties as an older sister. they had seen lion king one and a half. it came out when they were younger and when i bought it they would watch it on repeat all. day. long. over and over and over again for months. they had seen lion king two recently on the airplane. we used to have it taped off the tv, but then ali recorded free willy over the last fifteen minutes or so when he was small. but they had never seen the original one, the best one. we had it on vhs, but it got lost in one of our house moves. i was devastated naturally, because along with beauty and the beast and aladdin, it's up there with my favorite disney movies of all time. if you haven't already, i suggest you go watch it on the big screen before it stops showing. it's a guaranteed good movie in a time when a lot of what is being shown is just mindless crap that makes billions of dollars anyway.

while i was watching the movie, listening to baby simba talk, all i could think about was where did jonathan taylor thomas disappear to? he was my first celebrity crush - well, him and aladdin, but he was my first non-animated one - and i definitely wasn't the only one. i remember him taking off time from acting to go to college or something, good role model as he is (it was the biggest news of my elementary class), and then he came back and did a few guest spots on shows that he would probably be starring in if he didn't leave, and then he fell off the face of the planet. where did he go?

**UPDATE**: shortly after posting this, i did a quick google search and found this, an interview with him from the home improvement reunion (which i didn't know about?) about a week ago. apparently he's been "going to school, and traveling quite a bit, getting to read a lot of books [he's] wanted to for quite some time." basically a very me-sanctioned way to spend his time out of the spotlight. twenty three year old me approves of eight year old's me choice in crushes. eight year old me feels validated.

i'm going to go find my slap bracelets now and continue reliving my childhood.

*Where'd You Go - Fort Minor

i love you like the stars above, i love you till i die

so i came home today, opened my email to see if i had any blog comments, and realized that i haven't actually posted anything in the past few days. my disappointment at my empty inbox (well, empty of anything new) prompted me to remedy that.

i'm applying for the phd program at my school for next semester (why, yes, i am certifiably insane), but i only really started the application today. it's due in about a week. most of it i can do pretty quick, but i need three recommendation letters. three. that means that i need to find people to recommend me, convince them to do it, and then make sure they have their stuff in on time. it's a pretty tight squeeze. especially since, being the youngest and least experienced in most of my classes, i'm rarely the one doing most of the talking. who really wants to take the time to recommend someone they can barely remember?

i knew that one of my professors knew me enough to write a personal recommendation. the only problem was that he rarely checked his email and never responds to anything. he prefers phones. but mason, great college that it is, updated to the new blackboard this semester without telling me and deleted the old one. that means that all my old notes, assignments, and syllabuses (i always though the plural of syllabus was syllabi. i feel stupid now.) are gone. thrown out in a giant virtual dumpster. that includes his phone number. i decided to email him and if i didn't get a response to cyberstalk him to find his number tomorrow. yeah, i'm that desperate.

twenty minutes later, i get an email from him saying "who does it need to be addressed to?" i was ecstatic. i email back explaining that the whole thing is done online now and that if i could submit his email they'll send him the form. his reply: "no problem. i would love to do it for you."

and i'm not gonna lie, i fell even more in love with him. i dunno if i mentioned my crush, for lack of a better word, on this guy here, but i was really obsessed with him. (he taught the two-student class i was in.) i loved going to his class early and talking and listening to his stories. he has an awesome sense of humor and is smart and amazing (and not really attractive at all but whatever). i could tell he would write me something good, because he liked me. he doesn't believe in pluses/minuses on grades, as he stressed repeatedly at the start of every class i ever took with him, and so when i saw the A+ he gave me last fall, i have to admit that i smiled like an idiot for a few seconds.

anyway, one of the other professors said i had to go meet up with him which i kinda don't feel like doing and the other one didn't answer. i'm not feeling very confident right now.

i think i procrastinated so long on applying because deep down, i know i'm not going to get into the program. they want you to have experience in the field and i have a grand total of none. i know that. and i think i naturally shy away from rejection and failure. which resulted in a very last minute application. tomorrow will be spent finding people to recommend me (and dragging up buried feelings of intellectual love for my professor of course).

oh, and i realize that the title is over the top. it's late, and i'm watching top chef: just desserts, and i can't think of anything else right now.

*Romeo and Juliet - The Killers

pay my respects to grace and virtue, send my condolences to good

because writing anything seems like the hardest thing in the world to do these days, here's a poem that i read a few days ago in an anthology i recently bought. i liked it. maybe you will too.

The Poet Has Come Back

by Margaret Arwood

The poet has come back to being a poet

after decades of being virtuous instead.

Can't you be both?

No. Not in public.

You could, once,

back when God was still thundering vengeance

and liked the scent of blood,

and hadn't got around to slippery forgiveness.

Then you could scatter incense and praise,

and wear your snake necklace,

and hymn the crushed skulls of your enemies

to a pious chorus.

No deferential smiling, no baking of cookies,

no I'm a nice person really.

Welcome back, my dear.

Time to resume our vigil,

time to unlock the cellar door,

time to remind ourselves

that the god of poets has two hands:

the dextrous, the sinister.

*Human - The Killers

oh, look what you've done. you've made a fool of everyone

years after i first suggested people read the hunger games, it suddenly seems that everyone i know has taken it upon themselves to read it. and then mention how it sucks. all i have to say to them is, "well, duh."

the movie for it is coming out soon, and it seems like the vast majority of the young adult reading population can only read a book when there is a movie deal in the works. i guess so that their imagination doesn't have to tire itself out for long thinking up images and scenes without the help of hollywood? anyway, for whatever reason, the series has been blown into twilightesque popularity, which is why i guess most people have decided to read it right now. because if something is that popular, it must be good, right? wrong. so very, very wrong.

if you read the books when they first came out, you would be reading them with the expectation of getting an entertaining book written for twelve year olds. mistakes would be more readily overlooked. the story could be enjoyed while ignoring the writing style, because, hey, it's a book for little kids that is not being touted as the next great american novel or anything even remotely close. which, incidentally is a pretty accurate description of the book. 

don't get me wrong, i loved the series. but at the same time, there were a bunch of typos that jumped out at me. there were way too many times when the author took the easy way out and had the main character unconscious somewhere when major plot points were happening so that they could be covered in some brief bullet points when she wakes up. this is going completely again the rule to "show, don't tell" and while i could make the argument that she was giving us the story as a sixteen year old girl whose had her life turned upside down might get it, she still does it way too many times. there are some parts where your logic should stay safe in your pocket and others where the characters were just too stupid/dense to believe. but overall, i enjoyed the story, liked the characters, and thought it was a good series. 

because i read it before it got hyped up.

now, it is being referred to as the best book ever to be written. it is elevated to a level of literature where it really has no business being. do i think that it shouldn't be a popular book series? no. people can like whatever they want to, and it does have a good story. what i do think is that people need to understand that just because you and a bunch of your friends like something, it is not the greatest thing ever to come to earth. take it off its pedestal and get over yourselves. if you read it now, no matter how much you say that general hype doesn't affect you, it does. even if it's just a little subconscious nudge in the back of your mind, your expectations are probably too high for the book. all you will get is disappointed. 

the series is being called the next twilight and while its fans will rant and rave about how inaccurate this description is, i think it's spot on. no, the stories are not the same, but that's not what i'm talking about. they are both series that might have been enjoyed before they were hyped up to the greatest books ever written - a claim that neither series can come close to supporting - but now they have a reputation to uphold and expectations to meet, and they can't. 

so go ahead and read the books if you want, but know that they were better when i read them, and try not to expect them to be what their fans are saying they are. 

*Look What You've Done - Jet

you're constantly surrounded by the swirling stream of what is and what was

i've been having life block (what do you call someone who lives that doesn't sound like a major organ?) lately that has translated in some way to a form of writer's block. you know, when you actually have some things you could write about, but just as you go to transfer them from brain to paper you realize that your brain has turned into a puddle of mush and the thoughts need to be hung up to dry before anything else can be done with them. life at the moment has gone... weird, is the only way i can describe it without writing out encyclopedia-sized posts. it's kind of like that moment in high school when, after using a calculator for years, your teacher gives you a page of math problems and says you have a minute to solve as many as you can... without the calculator. you stare at the numbers on the page, knowing that once upon you could solve them, that you used to race through these pages in less than a minute for that tootsie pop the teacher would give the first one to finish will all correct, but you just can't do it. your mind keeps trying to tell you which buttons on a calculator you would push, and next thing you know you've short-circuited something in your head and your answers are wrong. or it's like sitting in a college classroom and having someone come up to you and say you're no longer her best friend because you took the chair she wanted to sit in, thereby failing the friendship test. you don't know whether to laugh, cry, or pretend you can't hear her as you might have done in fourth grade. you forget how to deal with some things as you distance yourself from them for years. i think i'm forgetting how to live my life.

anyway, i saw this link on the side of a friend's blog, and thought i'd share it. it;s about how muslims should stop apologizing for september eleventh. the dude who wrote it is a comedian so it actually has some funniness in it. it's also pretty short. and september eleventh. so you should read it. if you want.

oh, and because you were probably all wondering, in the pancake war, i am oh for two. though this time they were cooked all the way through, i had forgotten to tell my brother not to stir the batter too much. over-strirred pancake batter makes for tough un-fluffy pancakes. which is what we ate. with chocolate chips in them. they weren't bad, but they couldn't be considered a victory. i will reconquer my ability to make pancakes, though. you can count on it.

school also feels weird because everyone i know has started to work on papers and homework and balancing classes with fun, and i haven't really started anything. but it's not like i'm out of school, i'm just taking a bite sized portion this semester, and it feels weird.

have i went over the number of times i can call something weird in one post yet?

*The Big Picture - Bright Eyes

you never doubted my warped opinions on suicidal hate

they always say that when you find yourself in an abusive relationship, you run. it doesn't matter who the person is or how nice they are on a good day, you pack your things and hightail it out of mayberry immediately. everything that happens on a good day is just not worth anything that happens on a bad day. abuse, emotional or physical, is just not something you should put up with. but what do you do when you're in an abusive relationship with yourself? how do you run away from the part of your brain that builds you up just so it can knock you down again and again and then kick you when your down? how do you escape from the hand that's swiping a razor blade across your skin to watch it bleed when the hand is yours? how do you move away from the mouth that overdoses and the legs that take you time and time again into misery? what do you do when you're abusing yourself more than anyone else ever could? you can't divorce your mind. you can't slip away from your body in the middle of the night. not alive at least. and that's what suicide is. it's getting out of an abusive relationship the only way you know how. the only way you can.

***

so i wrote this a pretty long while ago with the intention of keeping it drafted forever, one of those things that i would have written in my journal had it been on me and that instead went into blogger. but recently, for some reason completely unknown to me, i've been seeing a lot of stuff about suicide both online and off, and a lot of it has just served to royally piss me off. it's common knowledge that suicide is the one thing that no one can forgive. people insist on taking it personally. they put up with a person, tried to help him/her, and how does s/he repay them? by throwing away all their efforts and trying to kill themselves. it's really the height of indecency.

so they sit on their high horse and preach about how selfish people who commit suicide are. how all they think of is themselves, and what about the person that finds them dead? what about the pain they'll suffer and the trauma they'll have for life? what about their friends and family? did they ever stop to think about how their death would affect them?

what they don't seem to realize is that sometimes that's exactly the point and by the time that it comes down to suicide, it's usually so far past that that their little self-righteous rants are ridiculous at best. if it has come to the point that someone is willing to bleed out on their bathroom floor because anything is better than this, if someone is desperate enough to kill themself to escape the prison their mind is holding them captive in, do you really think that telling them to think about the people they're leaving behind will do any good? do you think they haven't thought about that already?

am i suicidal? no. do i think suicide should ever be the answer? no. but do i blame people for attempting suicide? absolutely not.

i read once that a person can withstand any suffering as long as there is an end in sight, a light at the end of the tunnel if you will. it doesn't have to be immediate, but the very thought that "it can't always be this bad" is enough to help them get through. some people, though, are incapable of seeing this light. there is no end to the suffering. what they thought was a tunnel is really just a hole, and they're falling deeper and deeper into the darkness, and they will continue to fall forever. and the people that refuse to see that to some people, suicide is not a way to get back at people, but the only way they can see to end their endless suffering, will never cease to get on my nerves.

*Hate Me - Blue October

why keep your feeble hopes alive? what are you proving? you've got the dream but not the drive.

my family is coming back today, and i am excited.

of course, that brought to light the fact that i have been here for over a month and done absolutely nothing with my life. (in two days i will have been married for two months. when did that happen?) i mean, not that i was expecting some big, grand, amazing transformation or anything, but there was a part of me that thought that when my time was more my own, i would learn some discipline and sit down and write. that getting married would be proof enough to myself that i'm old enough to stop being a lazy bum and actually do something that i say i want to do, namely write.

so i have written a few things here and there, some of which i actually liked, but there is no discipline in my writing. sure, i can blog pretty regularly, but i can't seem to channel that dedication anywhere else. for some reason i refuse to take it seriously. i'd probably take it more seriously if it was more promising, and it can't become more promising until i take it seriously, so i will be caught in just another endless cycle. story of my life.

it also reminded me that the gre i signed up to take and was supposed to start studying for is next week. now normally, i would be completely okay with that. but everyone has been telling me such horror stories about this test and how hard it is and how it is nothing like the SAT (which is what i was thinking it would be like) that i am slightly freaked out. and now there's a little over a week to study and i have nothing to study. i tried doing the online practice tests, but whenever i started something would happen to make me need to stop in the middle so i don't even know where i stand. tomorrow is definitely gre study day.

but back to the main point of the post: my family is coming back today, and i am excited. i have missed them more than i thought i would. of course, i'm sure i'll be thinking about how annoying they are an hour or so after the time that they land, but hey, that's family, right?

*Beauty School Dropout - Grease

and my eyes don't recognize you no more

water and i have just not been on the best terms for the past couple of days. i don't know what it is, but i've been having one embarrassing moment after another when it comes to water these days.

let's start with yesterday. we went out to have dinner at red lobster's after the longest day of waiting around ever. (we were at my parents' house waiting for the tv/internet installation guy. he was supposed to come between eight and twelve. he came at three:thirty and didn't leave until seven:thirty. i finished my book by ten:thirty, played sudoku for hours, did puzzles, played whatever one person board game type things i could find, made a bunch of peanut butter crackers i did not want to eat, and wandered around the house like a lost soul. it was a long day.) anyway, so we're at dinner and i'm just about done with my popcorn shrimp when i realize that i'm really thirsty and the waitress hadn't come back with my refill yet. so i take my fork and go to pick up an ice cube to suck on (when i was little my mom used to yell at me for using my hands.) when, instead of cooperating with me, it flew out of my cup and landed in the little thing of cocktail sauce on my plate.

whatever, i thought, and finally got it in my mouth - cocktail sauce and all. while i was sucking on it, the manager came around asking if everything was alright. i don't know why i felt compelled to answer, but i did. and after i got out my "fine, thanks" the stupid ice cube jumped out of my mouth, that's really the only way to describe it. it jumped out, bounced off the table, and landed on the booth next to me. somewhere after the point where i realized my ice escaped and before i saw it use the table as a diving board, i was simultaneously pulling an ostrich and dying of laughter. it was not my best moment. (it's times like these that make me doubt the fact that i'm actually twenty three and not seven.)

today, i was sitting on the couch drinking a cup of water and awkwardly reading a book while waiting for my nail polish to dry, when i somehow spilled a little water on myself. this caused me to pull the cup away dramatically, consequently splashing myself with a little more water. two seconds after i laugh about this with my husband, i go to take another sip. i spill more water on myself. i splash myself with more water. my face was soaked.

this morning i was filling up the brita filter and moving it back into the refrigerator. on its way over there and into its spot, it decided for some reason to just spill a bunch of water everywhere. i'm still not sure how it did this because it was still full when i put it in the fridge and it was not leaking anywhere. it just wanted to escape.

so, like i said, water and i are just not on the best terms at the moment. i think it might be because i've started drinking ridiculous amounts of water and my body is tired of it and staging a protest. but really, it's like water is now a completely different person. someone i have never really known, and i'm not sure if i would have wanted to.

*For Reasons Unknown - The Killers