i'm coming clean

there are something like two weeks left of my master's degree. when did that happen? and i'm still waiting to hear back from the phd program. with uncertainty about my future once again hanging in the air, i think it's time for me to confess something. it's something that's been weighing on my mind for years now, a facade i've been keeping alive just because it was so convenient. but now, i think it's time that you all knew the truth. ready? here goes.

i am not a good student.

shocking, right? i mean, after being in school for a good eighty three percent of my life, i lave learned to be good at school. really good when the mood suits me. but i have in no way learned how to be a good student. you know the type? that studies and shows up to class and gets the grades and participates and learns stuff. i think that's where my biggest problem lies. i don't learn anything. i can ace a test with my eyes closed, but i will have no idea what you tested me on three point seven seconds later. i just figured out at a young age what teachers are likely to test me on, i keep it in my mind for the test, and then it's gone with the wind.

people just assume when they see me that i'm a good student because i have all the symptoms: i'm quiet, i like to read, i am usually writing in a notebook in class (they assume i'm taking notes), and i know a lot of the right answers. i'm here to finally correct this misconception.

you see, i am no better than a bad student who cheats. i have gotten through my education on smoke and mirrors, and now that it is almost done, maybe forever, i think that it is important for you to know this. i know nothing. and that will most likely come back to bite me now.

so when i fall flat on my face in the real world, and people whisper shocked comments behind their hands that they had such high hopes for me because i was such a good student, you can all go correct them. let them know that i have never once been a good student. tell them to drop their expectations to the level they would have for the burn out who sat in the back of the class sleeping and repeated fourth grade seven times. i'm kinda like him.

*Coming Clean - Hilary Duff (is it weird that this song has been randomly stuck in my head for the past day or so? it is, isn't it?)

we've reached the end of the road

so i technically finished my novel today. but since i'm planning on going back and changing the beginning from third to first person before i take any time away from these characters and come back to edit, i feel weird saying i'm done. i got the required word count, at least. it's kind of weird how when i finished my first nano i felt happy more than anything, the second one was a flop because though i finished the words i didnt finish the story and never went back to it, but this one i feel kind of sad. probably just my mood lately.

i have a lot of editing to do on it, but i know where i want to take it and what i want to fix, so i'm hoping i actually will edit. i have a problem editing things that are longer than three pages. editing is just not as fun as the initial writing to me. i never understood the editing lovers, but i think i should learn from them.

i just wrote a few thousand words on my story, and switching over to writing this is harder than i thought. my mind is having trouble thinking about me so soon after thinking about my characters.

*Terrified - Story of the Year

i'm gonna be like him, yeah

you would think that after doing nanowrimo for two years in open office (this thanksgiving, i am thankful for open source software and candy cane oreos. you know, in case you were wondering. oh, and my family. always, always my family.) i would finally learn that its word count lives in a fantasy world of its own and i shouldn't trust it. but did i learn? nope. and did i trust it? yup. and was i shocked to find that my actual word count was a thousand words less than my open office word count even though i shouldn't be? well, of course! how am i supposed to remember that open office counts curly quotes (the pretty " for those like my sister who don't know) as words. i mean, just because i have a whole dramatic realization every year does not mean that it should stick with me. right? right.

so i was just thinking that my blog might be easier to read if i wasn't constantly interrupting myself and switching between thoughts like a pinball machine. what do you think?

speaking of nothing i was talking about, november is almost over, and do you know what that means? (aside from the fact that rudolph the red nosed reindeer and frosty the snowman will take over tv networks and suddenly everyone on the street will get more stressed and obnoxious than usual of course.) it means that i get to go back to reading. i still have a stack of books that are just waiting for me to finish my nano, which looks like it will take the entire month this time, and i can't wait to get into them. oh, how i have missed my fictional worlds.

ew, that reminds me. the other day i was watching gone with the wind (i've said this before, but if you haven't read the book, go get it and read it now) and afterwards was trying to find a quote from the book online (i didn't find it :(. sad.) but anyway, i did find this quote:

For Ashley was born of a line of men who used their leisure for thinking, not doing, for spinning brightly colored dreams that had in them no touch of reality... He looked on people, and he neither liked nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither heartened nor saddened. He accepted the universe and his place in it for what they were and, shrugging, turned to his music and books and his better world.

and i was struck with a horrible realization that i'm an ashley. and how awful is that? i have always been a rhett butler girl through and through. i hate ashley. but reading that line when i wasn't lost in the world of the book made me realize that i'm him. i do nothing but dream and read and listen to music and ew, i hate ashley.

*Cat's in the Cradle - Harry Chapin 

Sometimes a hurt is so deep, deep, deep

You think that you're gonna drown.

Sometimes all I can do is weep, weep, weep

With all this rain falling down.

~Rain, Patty Griffin

Deep within my soul, I feel

Nothing's like it used to be.

Sometimes I wish I could turn back time,

Impossible as it may seem,

But I wish I could so bad baby.

~Quit Playing Games With My Heart, Backstreet Boys

If you need to fall apart,

I can mend a broken heart.

If you need to crash, then crash and burn.

~Crash and Burn, Savage Garden

There are those who think that I'm strange,

They would box me up and tell me to change.

~Anchor, Mindy Geldhill

for the past two months i have been parking in the parking deck every tuesday night without a parking permit. i just didn't want to pay a hundred dollars for one class, and the deck is always empty at night anyway so it's not like i'm taking a spot that a paid parker would need. i have not once gotten a ticket. but because today just keeps getting better and better, i come to my car after a class that was worse than i was expecting it to be and find a nice yellow ticket waiting for me on my windshield.

today sucked.

the only part that didn't suck was my three hour writing session with ash.

update: i didn't even look at the ticket yesterday, but they used to be 25 dollars. you know how much i owe? 75. so annoying. and yes, i know it's my fault. whatever. 

it's been a really, really messed up week

november 2011 takes the cake for being the worst month ever.

to put you in the right perspective for this next story, you have to understand that lately i've been in one of those moods where finding out you've run out of milk makes you want to collapse on the kitchen floor in sobs and just die right there, where the death of a fly feels like the death of an entire country and you just want to mourn it forever, you know the kind? anyway, everything is blown way out of proportion, and of course this when stuff actually happens.

so i was in a store parking lot today starting to pull out of my spot when a van came down the aisle or lane or whatever the space between the parking spots is called. i'm waiting for it to pass and another car comes from the other direction and has to wait for the van too since he's kind of driving in the middle of the lane. the van passes and the lady in the other car waves her hand. i assume she's telling me to go ahead so she could take my spot. the parking lot was kinda crowded. so i move forward half an inch, notice she's starting to move forward too, and stop. i'm not exaggerating when i say that the car barely moved at all. it didn't come anywhere near her car, and i stopped immediately. instead of just continuing on, she stops and pounds on her horn like it gives her a power boost she desperately needs. she then gives an extra long beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep and i'm just sitting there waiting for her to move thinking, "are you kidding me?"

anyway, because that isn't enough (i assume because it's getting no reaction from me), she throws open her door and storms over to my car. my window was opened a bit and she starts screaming into it. here's the conversation we had:

her (in a very, very thick accent): what is your problem?
me (very calmly): i'm sorry, i thought you wanted my spot. when i realized you didn't, i stopped.
her: i don't know what country you come from or how it is over there, but here in america we don't do shit like that. the one driving has the right of way.
me: *i refrain from pointing out how ironic it is that she's telling me about how "we do things in america" when, out of the two of us, i'm the one that can actually speak english and has probably lived here longer, and give her that patient-ish stare you give a child throwing a temper tantrum as you wait for them to realize how immature and ineffectual they're being.*
her: maybe you should go back to your country.
me: *continue to stare at her*
her: or maybe if you took that scarf off you could see. (for those of you that don't know me/haven't seen me, i wear a headscarf.)
me: *continue to stare at her*

after a minute or so of this she stomps back to her car, slams her door shut behind her, and drives past me, honking a few hundred times for good measure.

now, if it was a normal day, i would have just laughed this off. i probably still wouldn't have said anything back to her because i really don't see the point in arguing with idiots. if you're being stupid, no matter who you are, all you're likely to get from me is silence, and maybe a look or two. but because it was today, because everything else seems to be falling apart despite my desperate attempts to hold it all together, i just wanted to turn around, go home, crawl into bed, and never come out. and it wasn't because what she said upset me; it didn't. i'm just waiting for that last proverbial straw, i'm looking for it with eyes wide open, just waiting to welcome with open arms: the excuse for me to completely break down. i think i may need to.

*Tonight, Tonight - Hot Chelle Rae

if there's so much i must be, can i still just be me the way i am?

in some cultures, being twenty three years old would make you a responsible, independent adult - or at least give you the option to be so. it would make you free. i do not live in one of those cultures. i grew up hearing that i would go from "my father's house to my husband's house," never my own house. i would go from being a daughter to a wife, with no time for being just me. i mean, sure, i could technically be me while i was playing the other roles, but it's not the same as when you're being you alone. there's never really any way to test your capabilities, find out what you're made of, without offending one person or another and being shunned by your entire world. i have often come on this blog to bemoan this fact (though i think i have stopped doing this as often as i once did). i have, a few times, wished for a narrower mind. i have said that it would have been easier had we not grown up with people telling us the world was full of opportunities ripe for the picking. we would not have grown up with expectations that can never be met and dreams that can never be fulfilled.

don't get me wrong, i like my life. i have a good life, full of blessings i am well aware of. i had a very happy childhood, i have always had food on the table, clothes to wear, and a roof over my head. i was not forced into marriage or kept out of school. i have a family that i know will always have my back no matter what, and it's actually made up of people i like. i have people to hold intelligent conversations with and people to act like a three year old with. i have a million and one things and people that i am thankful for every day. but still. there is always that "what if" hanging in there whispering about future selves that i will never meet. 

the other day, though, i was talking to my dad and he was saying that he made a mistake by raising us like he did, like the kids from other cultures who will grow up in ways that we shouldn't even dream about. one of his arguments was that if we were raised like the mindless puppets i have always been glad i'm not, we wouldn't be questioning things now. we would accept things easier. which may be true. but it's one thing saying that myself, and another thing entirely having it said to me. kind of like how i can complain about my parents all i want, but no one else is allowed to say a word about them, you know? with him saying it, my sisters and i turned into mistakes that he can never fix, eternal reminders of what he did wrong. it didn't matter that he was taking the blame, we became the faults. the thing i fear most is failure, and with just a few sentences he turned my life into something that had been doomed to failure from the start, a failure that could never be turned around. 

i love my dad. i really do. i don't always agree with everything he says or does, but i do understand where he comes from. (i was cursed with the ability to be able to see every stupid side of a situation, which makes arguing and getting mad pretty hard since i really, truly see where the other person is coming from and see how they think they're right. and you can't get mad at someone for doing what they think is the right thing.) he wasn't trying to be hurtful, i know that for a fact, and he was voicing an opinion that i have often voiced in the past. but when it comes right down to it, i think that my sisters and i were raised awesomely. i have always looked at the people who told me i was destined for a life of obscurity, cleaning, and gossip and secretly felt glad that i could see beyond that when they couldn't. even when i was wishing for ignorance, i was holding on to my knowledge like a lifeline. i was grasping my dreams of more like they were the only things keeping me going, because, at times, they were. they are what make me who i am. and suddenly i'm being told that one of the things i hold dearest to me, my ability to look out past the box i've been put in, was a mistake. i shouldn't see past the four walls closing me in, and if i was raised right, i wouldn't. 

i'm not looking for people to tell me that my dad is wrong. i'm not looking for reassurances that my life is not one big failure. i'm not looking for advice to throw off my culture an embrace life. i'm not sure what i'm looking for, really, except the ability to vent. i've recently been having a bit of an identity crisis, which is a post for another day, and this conversation just came at a really bad time for me.

i am having a really hard time posting this post.

*We Are One - The Lion King 2 Soundtrack

these are a few of my favorite things

if you buy one thing this winter, let it be the candy cane oreos. trust me on this one.

last night on the way home, we stopped by walmart because we needed brita water filters. walmart is a dangerous store for me, just like cvs. i can wander through those aisles needing nothing and come out with my hands full of bags of stuff i don't need or even particularly want. for that reason, i sent my husband to get the filters while i stood at customer service to return something. i didn't want to buy anything but the filters. as it turns out, on the way to the cashier i saw a stack of limited edition candy cane oreos. and who could resist a limited edition oreo? my husband "suggested" not getting them because he thought they were going to taste bad. but i'm the junk food expert in our house, and i had a feeling that they would be amazing. so i got them anyway.

and let me tell you, they are my new favorite thing in the world. go out and get some. right now. eat them and be happy. they're really that good.

*My Favorite Things - Julie Andrews

write me a letter, write it today

there are very few people that would ever call me an optimist. i'm generally not one to buoy myself up with false hopes, but there is one time that i just cannot seem to suppress them, though i know deep inside they are most likely to come crashing down. every time i walk to the mailbox - and this has been going on for years - i will inflate the bubble of hope that there will be something there for me. something good. more often than not, i am wrong. on a good day, i might get a credit card offer. most days, though, find the mailbox filled with things for everyone else. it's very crushing. i recently starting receiving spanish pork catalogs. i'm still confused about them seeing as i'm not spanish, don't eat pork, and never signed up for them. but once a month one will be delivered to our mailbox with my name neatly printed on the back.

i was not always so mail deprived. once upon a time i was a little girl who would receive mail on a regular basis. and good mail, too. i had a few pen pals when i was younger, and it was great. looking back, my letters were formulaic, boring, and pretty pathetic. after the salutation, i always started with a mention of the weather. always. it was either, "the weather here has been warm lately. how is the weather over there?" or "the weather here has started to get cold. how is the weather over there?" sad, i  know. but i was only like eight. give me a break. regardless of the fact that the letters were nothing to write home about, i wrote them regularly. every time i would get a reply from one of my pen pals, i would run to my room, pull out my stationary - which i used to have lots of - and start a reply. it would be in the mail the next day and then i'd wait for a reply back.

the recipients of my letters were an odd bunch: my great grandfather, my mom's great aunt, and my grandmother's first grade teacher are among the most prominent in my mind. sometimes along with the letters they would send little treats - a bookmark or an eraser - that would make my day. the teacher used to send my sisters and i big packages full of old jewelry and books. they were great.

the point is, i grew up having a really good relationship with the mail. i developed expectations that, fifteen years later, have yet to die, though all of my pen pals have. (is that too blunt of a sentence? i cringed a little when writing it.) i miss the thrill of getting handwritten letters in the mail, the excitement of getting a glimpse into another's life, even if that other was literally ten times my age. i miss getting good mail. i need to find myself some new pen pals is what i'm thinking.

oh, and i went to see cirque du soleil: qidam yesterday. i felt that it should be mentioned to, if for no other reason, make sure it is remembered.

*Write Me a Letter - Aerosmith

oh, i believe in yesterday

i wake up this morning tired, which seems to be the new theme of my life. i have a gazillion things to do today and after spending half an hour checking my mail and basically wasting my time on the internet, i decided to get my writing finished first. i plug the thumb drive i've been storing my novel on into my computer and for some strange reason i see that it is installing the driver for the device, though the driver has been installed for a while now. and then, because things like to go wrong when i don't have time for them, windows tells me that it cannot recognize the drive and wants to format it. uhh... no. that is my novel on there and i refuse to delete it. i try the usb in joe, hoping that junior was just being stupid, but the same error popped up. and now i'm about ready to just go into a corner and cry about everything. (lack of good sleep will do that to a person, you know.)

okay, so before i go getting you all feeling too sorry for me, i did have a backup of it saved onto my computer. the other day i thought to myself, it would really suck if my usb stopped working and so i backed it up. i think now that that was tempting fate a bit too much. but that copy is missing the last two thousand or so words, and the last two thousand words are where i wrote all the exciting-ish things that i don't want to rewrite for several reasons that i will not list here. since i refuse to rewrite it, i have to try and recover it which will take time and stuff, and i just wanted to write, and now i can't, and this sucks.

plus it's gloomy outside and cold and wet. and i have to make the t-shirts for my brother's birthday on sunday which i know are going to turn out awful because, as i learned last night, i can't draw food to save my life. and i'm just tired and annoyed and not liking today at all.

and the title doesn't really fit. whatever.

*Yesterday - The Beatles

i don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did

my nails are still orange. i don't know what to do about them. i mean, they're starting to grow out a bit to their normal color, but this is taking forever.

anyway, yesterday i met up with a friend for the biggest failure of a writing session i've ever seen. i wrote just over four hundred words in two plus hours, and he wrote even less. we'll get to actually writing next week. but as a catch-up hang out session it was pretty awesome, if i do say so myself. except for the part where a girl fresh from my old high school decided to complicate my life by forcing me to go out of my way to not see her because she was doing something secretive and she didn't want anyone she "knew" to see her. that doesn't make much sense partly because it needs a whole long, complicated, stupid story to fully make you understand what happened, and partly because, well, it just didn't make any sense.

what i don't think these children realize is that i really couldn't care any less about what they're doing with their lives. i don't know you, and even if i did i still wouldn't care. i mean, honestly, i do not spend my free time judging you or gossiping about you. not because i'm some kind of saint that just doesn't do that stuff, but because you are just not worth it. really. you rate so low on my radar that i'm not even sure you exist. so, seriously, children, stop adding me on facebook just to put me on limited profile. the only reason i accept your request is because i don't want to seem rude. don't run away when i pass you and your group of friends that are not ISA-sanctioned. i don't care who you hang out with. and don't make the mistake of assuming that the things going on in your life make any difference to me whatsoever just because we went to the same school. they don't.

*As Long As You Love Me - Backstreet Boys

you know what's really hard to do? think up a band's name that is not already taken. my god are there a lot of bands out there, and they have the most random names. i sat in my room a few nights ago trying to think up a name for my main character's favorite band because she kept mentioning it and i was tired of writing, "my favorite band...." anyway, i guess i was procrastinating because i didn't want to use a real band's name and kept googling every random name that i came up with. i was searching stuff that i saw in my room, heard from the tv hum coming from the living room, random words from my spam mail, and anything else that came into my head. i searched for  the walking dead, the rattling bones, the horse's mouth, the lines, the undead, the magic bones, the unnamed band, and a gajillion others. and they all came up with a band page. i finally ended up naming the band after the bottle of static guard sitting on my dresser, but i honestly think that the static guard is cooler band name than the horse's mouth. is that just me?

you think you're cooler than me

my phone has an ego issue. it happened a short while after i mentioned it in my blog. i think that, being a dumb phone, it didn't realize that i wasn't really saying anything good about it, and the whole thing went to its head. now it simply refuses to do its job right, taking hours, or even days, to pass on the messages people leave it for me. it refuses to remember anything i want it to, claiming that its memory is filled with more important things. and it's apparently too dignified to raise its voice too loud to tell me that someone is calling me. it's really starting to get ridiculous, not to mention extremely inconvenient, and i'm thinking i'll have to go buy myself a new one now. stupid technology with its expiration dates. do you think that cans connected with a string ever got lazy on the job? do you think you needed to get new cans every few years? no. though i imagine the string might get some wear and tear.

and because it's november, and i'm sure you're all super interested in my nano-ing, it's time for my nano problems, though i'm not so sure if they're problems or not yet. i was writing this year's story by switching narratives between two characters. one of them was writing in first person, and one was writing in third person. first person has always been easier for me to write, but this character just seemed to work better in third. so i went with it. i recently noticed that i've started writing her in first person, too, though. for the past couple of days i had to go back every few paragraphs and switch all the i's with she's. i finally decided today that that was taking to long and kept interrupting the flow of my writing so i'm switching her to s first person narrator as well. eventually i'll go back and fix the beginning. i'm just not sure if i can write two first person characters and keep their voices separate. we'll just have to wait and see how it goes, though, i guess.

*Cooler Than Me - Mike Posner

11:11 just struck

so this week has been crazy. filled with pretty menial things in itself, it has felt like a whirlwind of commotion with the whole being way bigger than the sum of its parts.

monday held long shopping trips with my sister as she struggled to find "the perfect outfit" for her senior pictures that day. while she did manage to find some things to buy, after a few hours at the mall, she decided to just wear the outfit she had pulled out of her closet that very morning. typical. then after sitting with my brothers (who were off this week) at my parents' house and playing several thousand rounds of gin rummy, my husband came back from school, we watched a movie, and then hung around the mall for a midnight release of some video game that we ended up not getting that night anyway.

the next day saw a hectic morning of cleaning and cooking, an afternoon of my family coming over (it was the first time my parents visited after i got married and it took a lot of failed plans before it worked out), and then an evening and night of class where we spent mind numbing hours of looking through the registry. that was fun.

wednesday morning my nephews and sister came over, i babysat my younger nephew, my brothers came for a sleepover, we had four loud kids playing in our small apartment, and the day ended with milkshakes in the freezing cold. not the smartest of ideas.

thursday morning we took the boys to the playground to play with my nephews, and when the rain and cold got to be too much to ignore, we went bowling. we came home for lunch and then the boys and i went for a walk in the cold. ali (my youngest brother) fell in a hole... kinda... and after playing video games until they were both slap happy, the day (which sounds uneventful but was really never ending and filled with quite a lot of moping and sulking)finally ended.

today we all went to run errands in the morning. i went to target to get the new - and last - harry potter with the extra documentary that i still think should not just be a target exclusive. we brought the boys back to my parents house, i sat with my mom for a bit, and then we went to the mall again (have i ever mentioned that i'm not a mall person?), went to watch a movie, got chinese take-out because all the restaurants were jam packed full. i saw my old math teacher at the movies who i really liked, so that was fun. when we got home, i watched harry potter while my husband fell asleep on the couch.

anyway, i didn't mean to make you all a laundry list of my week, but i felt that i had to write it out so my mind can see that it really isn't as crazy as it felt like. i think the fact that i haven't gotten a decent night's worth of sleep in a long time has something to do with it. but i have managed to do some writing on my nano novel so i'm only a few thousand words behind. totally catching up-able. i just need to update my word count on here and do a couple of five thousand word days.

oh, and it's 11:11 on 11/11/11 (or it was when i started this post). i found that cool. which is why i started writing this thing in the first place.

*Let's Just Get Married - Archie Star

turn back the clock

i have orange nails. no, i'm not wearing nail polish, the nails themselves are actually orange. i'm not sure how it happened. last week i was using orange paint, but i also had nail polish on which protected my nails from any paint, or so i thought. a few days later, i took off the nail polish to find my nails - all ten of them - died orange. the whole nail, i'm not talking about little spots here. and the first day i took the polish off, my fingers were all tingly all day. it was weird. i don't know what happened, and i don't know what to do about it. i took off my nail polish on friday, and they're still orange. crazy stuff, i tell you.

on a different note, today i wore heels for the first time in years (unless you count weddings in the summer, which i don't because i do like zero walking then). i'm not quite sure how that happened, but i guess i turned into hobo-mode when i entered grad school and just never turned it off. during undergrad, i wore heels every presentation, most classes i had to dress up, and ceremonies. grad school came along and i lived off of flip flops and sneakers (which were always my favorites anyway).

moving on. we turned the clocks back an hour last night, and, as usual, i feel like my whole life was thrown off-balance. i can never decide if i'm one of the love daylights saving or hate daylights saving people. i mean, i used to only do work as long as the sun was shining, so when i got home at five and the sun would go down at five thirty (high school days), i would never get anything done. but at the same time, i always loved thinking it was late and then looking at the clock and realizing it was still really early. guess my indecisiveness extends to this as well.

*Brand New Day - Ryan Star

la la la whatever

so today is looking like the first day (of probably many) this month that i didn't get my word count, let alone any writing, done. unless i manage to write a thousand some words in the next three hours or so, but to be honest i don't really see that happening. i mean, my husband is watching thundercats and i've heard a lot about it and watched some clips from a friend, but i've never actually seen an episode myself. and there are forgetful elephants with really bad accents on my tv. who could resist, right? plus, i really like the premise of my novel and feel like i'm butchering it with my words and i want to do it justice which at the moments seems to mean keeping it in my head, where it's been for a while. i probably should have stuck with my original idea and just spew words without caring instead of switching. oh well.

don't worry. that's all the whining i will be doing to you lovely people.

changing the subject, the other day i was leaving my apartment to go to school and at a red light, checked my pockets and bag and couldn't find my phone. my first thought was, "ugh great. i have to remember to gmail text my sister to tell her where to meet me (we carpool tuesday nights) and my husband in case he decides to ask me to get something on my way back." and then i stopped thinking about it. i make a quick cvs stop on my way to class because i am a cvs addict, i can admit it. anyway, i'm walking through the aisles and pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time (despite the fact that i now feel naked without a watch on, my phone is still the first place i go for the time). i stick it back in my pocket, but then pull it out thinking, "i might as well just text everyone now that i forgot my phone in case i forget when i get to campus." so i write out an overly long text and i'm about to hit send when it hits me that i couldn't be texting them if i had actually forgotten my phone. i was just glad i remembered before i texted. i'm also the kind of person who will look for their phone when they're on it. because i'm just smart like that. i have not reached the level of looking for my glasses while wearing them, but i think that may just be because i'm blind without them so if i can see clearly, i know when they are.

point of the story is, i'm getting more and more scatterbrained lately. i say something, and three seconds later i've completely forgotten it. i'm also getting lazier, something i never thought possible. i'm blaming that on the reason why i'm ignoring the interesting parts of my plot to have my character write a grocery list.

but i sat in my parents kitchen today with my nephew and spent a good fifteen minutes just listing everything we liked from different farm animals to foods to people to soap and water (i was surprised when he said that), and i realized that with so many things to like, getting a little scatterbrained is really not so bad.

i did not read over this post. it may be riddled with typos.

update: i wrote my words so most of this post is now invalid.

*Tonight, Tonight - Hot Chelle Rae

needless to say i'm odds and ends

i woke up today with the motivation to write. well, kinda, sort, not really. i woke up with the desire to write but no motivation to get started. so i did what i do best. i procrastinated. i checked all of my emails and contemplated forwarding everything over to the new ugly email system my school has decided to switch to. (i decided to leave that for tomorrow.) i read all the blogs that were updated and checked the items on my ebay watch list that were ending soon. i decided not to buy anything. i thought about starting to knit my brother's hat, but decided to save that for after i write. i read the first november pep talk, didn't get too pepped, and then decided to just buckle down and write. i opened the story i started on yesterday and... decided that maybe i want to change it. maybe i'll write both for a while and see which one writes easier. i started to think that was smart and then i decided that it was a bad idea and i came here to blog to regain some sanity.

i think i will go get some cereal for breakfast. i eat most types of cereal without milk, but i have to have milk with granola and shredded wheat. cheerios and honey bunches of oats can go either way. because, you know, you really wanted to know that.

to prevent this post from being an entire waste of your time, did you know that lemons contain more sugar than strawberries and that strawberries are the only fruit that grows its seeds on the outside? did you realize that the names of all the continents start and end with the same letter? did you know that bats always turn left when exiting a cave?

*Take on Me - A-ha