Thursday, August 28, 2014

i should have known better

tomorrow morning i have a meeting with my stat professor from undergrad. she seems willing to join my committee... IF we feel like a good match in person. if she does join my committee, then i will have all of the IT/engineering/mathy type people that i need and i can get my last person from ANYWHERE. and people outside of my realm of sciencey tech geeks relate to me so much more, like me so much more, think my project is awesome. i feel like i should prepare for this meeting. i should brush up on my statistics and reread everything i have for my dissertation and read her biography and know her interests. i really need her to join my committee. this would mean the end of so much suffering. (it would also mean that i would suddenly have a full committee and zero excuses left so i would need to actually work and research and write and ugh i've gotten real used to not doing anything and blaming my circumstances. but i'm not thinking about that. at least not yet. for now i am only allowing myself to feel positive vibes about this. i will not allow myself to not want what i want, or what i am pretty sure that i think i want, or what i should want.)

my brothers are sleeping over, though. and i am so so tired. and i need to procrastinate now before i won't be able to procrastinate again. and so instead of preparing for this meeting i watched harriet the spy with my husband and brothers. because that felt like the right thing to do at the time. and i mean, i could start preparing now, but i would much rather go to sleep. plus, the work i have finished is depressing me. when i look at it, all i can think is, as sport would say (from harriet the spy obviously), "this is worse than crap. this is what crap wants to be when it grows up."

anyway. just in case this meeting miraculously works out (do you remember when i walked into these things confident and hopeful? i was such a young, naive idiot), i felt like it should be mentioned here. since i have filled this blog with years of whining about my lack of a committee. it's only fair. 

*I Should Have Known Better - The Beatles

Saturday, August 23, 2014

and sometimes i hear you, the galaxy sings your song

when the older of my two nephews was really young (i mean, he's only five now) he used to love the story of goldilocks and the three bears. there was a little board book that belonged to my brothers when they were small that i would read to him. if i didn't have the board book, i would tell him the story from memory - complete with different voices for all the characters and dramatizations in the reading. when they moved to saudi arabia the first time, i used to read him the story over skype. the other night, i needed to keep his younger brother quiet for a few minutes, so i sat him down in the kitchen and told him all about goldilocks and the three bears (which i am almost one hundred percent sure he has heard before a million times both from me and his own parents, but which he listened to as if it was the very first time he had heard it. i appreciated it).

after i finished the story and he asked his follow up questions about goldilocks (they didn't eat her, did they? she was okay, wasn't she? what happened to her? where did she go? why did they never see her again? those kinds of things), he sat quiet for a minute before he said, "but... what if her mom didn't know how to make porridge? what if her mom didn't know how to make anything?" and suddenly i was feeling sorry for one of the few fictional characters that i never really felt anything for one way or the other.

other things this kid has said over the past couple of weeks:

he was sitting in the back seat of my car, and when i glanced back at him in my rearview mirror, i noticed he looked upset. "omar, what's wrong?" i asked. he met my eyes in the mirror and said, "it's just... trees don't talk." um. okay. (he wouldn't elaborate, but i'm still not entirely sure that he wasn't upset because he heard trees talking and trees are not supposed to talk.)

another time i was taking them with my grandma to walmart so they could show her a book they had seen and wanted. he hops out of my car and says apropos of nothing, "i wouldn't want to have blood dripping down me." yeah, kid, cause that's not creepy.

and also, the title of this post doesn't really have much to do with anything, but my brain really isn't firing on all pistons at the moment. (i honestly don't think i have ever used that phrase before in my life, and i'm not really sure where it came from.) there are a lot of reallys in this tiny paragraph.

*Forget About What I Said - The Killers 

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

she believes that life is made up of all that you're used to

tuesdays smell like iced peach and violet and taste like scrambled eggs.

routine hangs heavy around us like a fog that we forget to look through, and when it rises it's as if it was never there, but when it falls it becomes all we ever knew. my alarm shrills its wake up call at five:forty am and my body, the same one that protested just yesterday that ten hours of sleep could never be enough, is already awake and responding to it. the panic of forgotten to-do lists and appointments that need to be made, meetings that need to be had, reports that need to be written, and emails that need to be sent crawls up my spine and swims through my veins.

my feet grow heavy and find the familiar paths that they walk down every day from september through june. my eyes forget to wander. my chest welcomes back the sense of unease that hangs just under everything else. i start missing the people that i haven't even said goodbye to yet, and my skin yearns for the warmth of the summer sun that is shining right outside.

i loved summer vacations as a child, but i did not crave them like i do now. i did not need them like i do as a twenty-something year old that is still trying to find her way. it is within these three months that i can turn my head away from everything "i should be doing" and just be me. it is here in these three months that hope can be found. that promise is still alive. that possibilities are real.

and so i hold tight to them. i scream out for ice cream and fountains and lazy days in the sun. i close my eyes tight for one more day where i can eat burgers and drink lemonade and not think about the growing list of things i cannot do.

but fall is coming. it is unavoidable.

and tuesdays smell like iced peach and violet again.

*3 AM - Matchbox 20 

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

so last night was the kind of night that you wake up at three:thirty in the morning really needing to pee and then go back to bed and toss and turn and toss and turn but just can't. fall. asleep. and after playing candy crush and checking instagram and putting down your phone to try and go back to sleep, you're still staring at the ceiling then the wall then the ceiling then the back of your eyelids just to look at the ceiling again. and then you grab your phone every fifteen minutes to find answers to extremely pressing questions like, how exactly do you pronounce fondant.

apparently this leads to the kind of evening where you sit down to write a blog post because you have stuff to say but then you keep getting distracted because your husband is watching dennis the menace and you haven't watched that movie in decades and oh look it's the tying the robber up scene and suddenly the movie is over, you've barely written a paragraph, and you've forgotten what you have to say.

but anyway.

the past week or so has been filled with the most perfect summer days. like, seriously, think of a good way to spend a summer day and we have spent it that way this week. do you like to sit outside eating frozen yogurt while kids splash in a fountain? did it. do you like to spend your day at the farm looking at baby animals and taking hayrides? did it. do you like to laze around the house playing video games and watching old disney movies? did it. do you like to gorge yourself on pizza and hot fudge sundaes? did it. do you like to eat half a chicken with your hands while you watch knights on horseback engage in fake battles to the death? well, that's tomorrow.

ideal as this summer is at the moment, though, it's reaching that point where thoughts of school and responsibility and everything else that i pretend doesn't exist during the summer months are starting to creep in. it is not fun.

also, remember how excited i was for landline? and how upset i was that i wouldn't get it before i left on vacation? well, as soon as i came back, it was the first piece of mail that i opened. and then i carried it around for the day. and then i threw it in my tote bag and carried it around for the next two weeks. and now the dust jacket looks worn and i still haven't even opened the front cover. two thousand fourteen really sucks as a reading year for me. 

Sunday, August 10, 2014

how do you move in a world of fog that's always changing things?

as of yesterday, i have been back in va for a week. it feels like i've been back for six months already. which is why every time i came to write one of the posts that i had planned to write this week, i couldn't help but feel like i was being slightly ridiculous. as if i was writing about airplane trips in the middle of december (which actually sounds like something i would do). so maybe i will hold off on those posts until the middle of december and instead talk about what's going on right now. which, aside from a bunch of family time, really isn't much.

but we started house hunting. again. sort of. i don't know why i'm finding it so difficult to leave my tiny apartment. i know that we need more space. but house buying is scary. and a huge decision. and a change. and a commitment. and expensive. and those are all  of my least favorite things.  

i mean, i love looking at houses. i always have. but i like looking at houses now the way i liked to whenever my family would move when we were younger. i like to look at the house itself, the paint and lighting and room size, with absolutely no thought to the hoa costs and home insurance and mortgage rates and all the other practical important adult considerations. the whole thing is just a little super overwhelming. just one more of those things they never really taught you how to do but then sort of just expect you to do because you reached a certain age and are now an adult and adults should be able to buy a house. or something. 

on a related note, remember how earlier in the summer i wanted to buy a lap loom but said i wasn't going to because a) i didn't need one and b) i wouldn't have time to use it? well, of course i caved and bought myself one as soon as i came back from the desert. and this note is only related as it proves that i do not know how to be a practical adult and how in the world am i supposed to buy a house?

*I Don't Want To Grow Up - Ramones

Sunday, August 3, 2014

home again, home again, jiggity jig

i had decided to stick to a similar posting schedule that i used for my scheduled posts, but i am not the greatest with schedules and want to write a post now, and so. here we are.

[one] i brought darcy home today and oh my goodness did i miss him. so so much. here was the conversation i had with the lady at the front desk when i went to pick him up:
me: hi. i'm here to pick up a rabbit i was boarding with you.
her: *looks up in shock* not mr. darcy?!
me: uh... yeah.
her: what's your name?
me: *say my name*
her: how do you spell it?
me: *spell it*
her: oh... *pause* what's your address?
me: *says it*
her: *sigh* okay. i'm really going to miss him.
when i was waiting for the attendant to bring darcy in from the back, the lady was telling me about how he was the favorite bunny boarder and that they would fight over who got to take care of him. and is it stupid to feel proud of your pet? because i'm not gonna lie, as they told me how gentle and well-behaved darcy was (things i obviously already knew), i was feeling a little proud.
and then, after i got darcy and they all said goodbye to him, the lady at the front started to cry and i dunno but i thought that was a little extreme.

[two] a little over three weeks ago, i went to saudi arabia. we stopped by my side of the country first, where i let my younger brothers take custody of james (my laptop). i left james with them when we went to my husband's side of the country and didn't get him back until i was headed to the airport to come back to virginia. while they had james, i used jackson (my ipad). this means that for the past month or so, i have not used a keyboard. and although i had some typo issues with the letters being further apart when i first got james back, i am so happy to have a keyboard. i also strangely missed the clicking sound of the keys.

[three] while we were gone, one of my neighbors either got a new dog or one of the puppies in the building grew up. either way, there is this really loud, really annoying dog that keeps barking. in that deep voice that only the really big and scary dogs have. i have yet to see the creature, and i kinda hope it stays that way.

*Some Rhyme About Pigs - Mother Goose?

Saturday, August 2, 2014

sometimes in life you drop little innocent hints about yourself and your location across multiple social media platforms that in and of themselves are neither too revealing nor harmful, but if you put them all together then they maybe just might be if you squint and tilt your head slightly to the left. other times in life you spend years taking classes in cyber security and grow into a very paranoid person that is hesitant to even look at a computer without first putting a paper bag over your head. and then there are the times where the first and second overlap just so and you end up leaving the country for three weeks but scheduling blog posts so that no one will know on the off chance that you have a crazy stalker waiting to break into your apartment the second they learn that it's empty. (granted, i mentioned on here that i would be leaving the country ahead of time so really, the whole effort was moot but whatever.)

anyway, i'm back! (i was gone as of july tenth, just in case you were wondering.) and i am exhausted. it feels like i spent a ridiculously large portion of those three weeks on airplanes and in airports. (i will probably calculate the exact percentage of my vacation that i spent in the air because i am a nerd, but it will have to wait until tomorrow because of that whole exhausted thing.) another large portion of that time was spent without the time/internet access to blog. (which i had planned for, hence the scheduled posts, but i was still supposed to write something last week.) i'm sure there are stories from my vacation that will seem blog-worthy in the morning, but at the moment, the only thought in my head is how delicious chinese food would taste right now. 

also, i definitely remember spending a lot of time before i left cleaning my apartment, but when i walked in today (after a taxi ride that i could not keep my eyes open in after the airlines didn't send one of our bags after we had to suffer through an annoyingly not-direct flight because we made reservations really late this year) and thinking, ugh the apartment looks so effing cluttered. because it is, of course. because there is really no other way for it be. i mean, there are only so many places that you can keep things in a one bedroom apartment. add to that the fact that i have an unhealthy addiction to yarn, regularly make and bring home pottery pieces throughout the year, have more books than i have room for, and a very bad habit of keeping everything "for memories" and, well... i'm sure you get the picture. i am able to block it out for most of the year, but the second i go to saudi arabia, where my room (in both families' houses) is sparse and neat and empty slash big enough so that even some things thrown on the floor doesn't make it look too messy, that ability disappears and i come back and just see small and cluttered and junk. but at the end of the day, it is my small and cluttered apartment and i love it. which is why i am the worst at house hunting fyi.