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?

my words like silent raindrops fell and echoed in the wells of silence

on saturday, my older sister and her family made their way back to the desert. yesterday, i brought my younger sister her guinea pigs. today, i woke up to a completely silent house. i thought i heard the guinea pigs squeaking until i reminded myself that they weren't there and just lay in bed, listening to the silence. it's just me and darcy again, but this time there's a loneliness hanging over us that wasn't here in the beginning of the summer. (darcy misses his animal friends and the human attention he was getting.) the apartment is still a total mess, but there are empty spots where the cages used to be. there's an empty corner in the tower where all of their things were kept. i know that if i pick up the toys this time, i won't find them thrown around my apartment an hour later. and instead of the relief that i thought at times i would feel, there is only sadness. i miss the commotion of the summer.

and while i could go into an endless ramble of everything i miss, i won't. instead, i'll say that mondays used to be my do nothing days, but suddenly i find them jam packed with things: an online class, office hours, student meetings. and add to that the fact that i forgot my phone at my parents' house last night and now have to drive all the way back there to get it. and also get groceries. and i just want to sit in my room and be sad. but there is no time for that.

i will have to find time this week to do a major apartment cleaning (which is harder than it sounds because i do not have a single free day and this cleaning will take all day) and, being an avid hater of the process of cleaning (though i love a clean house), that should be fun. and then i will fall into a rest-of-the-semester routine, and the summer will fade into memory faster than i would have thought possible. (i am hoping that the routine includes both book editing and blanket knitting, but i am feeling too blah at the moment to really force them into it.)

*The Sound of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel

sometimes i worry that i lost the plot, my twitching muscles tease my flippant thoughts

[one] while fleshing out my novel, i realized that, once again, i'm taking too long to actually start the story. i can basically take out the first three chapters is what i'm thinking. i haven't done it yet because i need the words for camp nano and there are also some parts that i want to keep in. so maybe compress it into the first chapter and try not to make it seem too fragmented? we will see. i also added a house on the corner to add to the description and that accidentally added an entire character and will really help with a side plot thing that needed work so i am happy about that. i'm hopeful about the outcome of this camp fleshing.

[two] i always wanted to be a published author of novels. that has always been my dream. but somewhere along the way i found prosetry and fell in love with it. (i even published a book of it that you can buy here. you can read what other people thought about it here. /self promotion) i've been more geared to noveling recently and most lines that come to me are either put into my novel or left in a half finished blog draft "for later." i didn't think i'd miss prosetry as much as i do.

[three] i have recently discovered that the pitter-patter of guinea pig feet is one of my favorite sounds. who needs kids when you can just borrow your sister's pets? but seriously, it is adorable and makes me so happy. i love darcy to bits, but those guinea pig feet are just really something.

[four] part of me wants to drop out of school and pretend that i am at the same level in life as the senior citizens in my pottery class. i just want to handbuild, knit, and write for the rest of my life. hopefully make a living off of it, too. i mean, amazon has been trying to tell me that i am a middle aged woman for years now. maybe i should just listen to them.

[five] on the other hand, while watching the news recently (especially stuff about the aaron hernandez case), the computer forensics analyst in me gets super interested and excited. like, that is what i want to do with my life too. i just wish it was easier to actually do it.

*Easy Luck Free - Bright Eyes

the times they are a-changing

i am one of those people that are disgustingly close to their families. i willingly see my family multiple times a week and would cancel with friends to hang out with my siblings. i think they are some of the coolest people on earth (and the most annoying, but i love them anyway), and yesterday they deserted me for the desert. this makes me sad, but i will not dwell on that. instead, i will tell you all about my apartment.

my husband and i (and darcy) live in a one bedroom apartment. i've never thought of it as an itty bitty apartment, because it is not really itty bitty. i mean, yes it's small, but i've seen smaller. aside from the kitchen and bathroom, three are three main rooms in our apartment. over the past couple of days, they have gone through some major transformations.

my favorite room in the apartment is probably the tower. the first time my grandma visited us, she mentioned that the shape of room reminded her of a tower, and well... it stuck. the tower houses most of my books (except for the three piles that live on my nightstand) and has like a million windows so it's always filled with natural light - my favorite thing. in pre-darcy days i did yoga every morning in my tower, but then darcy moved in and his playpen has taken over my yoga space. (if the apartment people let us, i would take down the playpen, let him run around free, and resume my daily yoga. but they won't.) the tower has now been transformed into my menagerie. aside from darcy with his cage and playpen, it is now the temporary home of tedward berger and louis vuitton (my sister's guinea pigs), with their two cages and playpen. feeding and petting time is now filled with frustrated back leg thumps and desperate squeaks as they all try to be the first fed and the only one being petted. it's fun.

what used to be my living room is now the land of misfit furniture. there was a little red breakfast table with two chairs in the tower that were relocated to the living room to make room for our house guests. the living room - which was never huge - now has two furniture sets crammed into it, looking nicely mismatched and very unbalanced. it is also the summer home of peter, my sister's plant.

my bedroom has become ground zero of the eruption of the volcano of crap. not only is half of my closet laying around the floor and a mountain of laundry by the door, but there are boxes of textbooks between my side of the bed and window that were moved from the tower, boxes of art supplies littered here and there, tissue paper and gift bags, and just random crap that has been thrown into the room to make the rest of the apartment look neat. it's kind of like one giant closet or junk drawer.

i also offered our bedroom to my grandmother in august, so i may have to clean it just in case she takes me up on the offer. (she didn't seem too taken by the idea at the time but you never know). i'm not sure where i'll move anything which probably means that it'll go from an eruption of crap to semi-organized crap, but i don't think she'll mind.

oh, and during all of this moving around of stuff i discovered that i'm a bit of a packrat and i should maybe try and stop doing that.

*Times They Are A-Changing - Bob Dylan

i just don't see why i should even care

everyday i check my gmail, open my blog, read whoever's posted anything new, and then click on create new post. and then... nothing. i will leave the page open and go look at random stuff online. i might check facebook or watch random youtube videos. i may read articles or movie reviews or recipes. but the blogger page is always open, always waiting for me to write something in it. it stays that way until i close chrome and get off the computer. i'll occasionally go back and stare at the page where not even a cursor blinks yet, but i don't write a single word. there are not even any drafts of half-finished thoughts piling up. i think the only explanation is that i'm in love with the possibility of something great filling the page and overwhelmed with the fear of not making that a reality. either that, or i'm just too lazy to think and my life has been really uninspiring lately.

one of our neighbors just got a puppy. or, i think it's a puppy from the high pitched barking. and i think it's new because the barking just started a couple of days ago. and it does not. shut. up. ever. like, ever ever. i don't even think it breathes because i've yet to hear it pause for a breath. it just barks and barks and barks and barks. and i can't even muster the energy to get annoyed by it because i'm just really apathetic at the moment. but if i was a dog, i'd get tired of nonstop barking after two days.

i just read the house by the side of the road by sam walter foss and am newly obsessed with the lines:

There are hermit souls 

that live withdrawn

In the peace of their 

self-content. 

There are souls like stars,

that dwell apart

In a fellowless firmament;

there are twenty-one days until nanowrimo starts up again. i think i may have a story idea that combines computer forensics with growing up as a saudi-american in america because i am uncreative and am deciding to just write what i know. either that, or i'll write out a mermaid war. my brother is lobbying for the mermaids. 

*Not Dark Yet - Bob Dylan

sentimental me

[one] my sister bought a guinea pig, and it made me anxious for the time when real life decides to deprive my husband and me of the benefits of being young and jobless - mainly the ability to pick up and go somewhere on a moment's notice and then stay wherever that is for as long as we want - because once that happens i will buy myself a bunny. but then i decided that i can live pet-free for a while longer if it means i have the freedom to sleep in, travel, and spend five hours on the couch watching gilmore girls.

[two] i am overly sentimental. about everything. because of this, i am sad that our new mattress is coming tomorrow. it doesn't matter that it is way more comfortable than the old one. it doesn't matter that my husband hasn't been able to sleep for days because of the old one. all that matters is that the first mattress i had in my married life is being thrown out, and it is too big to fit into a scrapbook.

[three] i have so many little things i need to do today: laundry, picking up text books, picking up notes, reading articles, making sure the apt is clean enough for the mattress delivery guys tomorrow, making coffee brownies, etc. and i woke up "early" to get started on it all, but have spent over an hour sitting on my computer doing nothing. i can tell today is going to be a productive day.

*Sentimental Me - Elvis Presley

pedicure on our toes, toes

yesterday my sister and i went to get pedicures, because we can be girly like that sometimes. (only, not that often i guess because it was my first pedicure ever, which my sister (and most everyone else) found shocking for some reason.) instead of normal pedicures, though, we drove the extra half hour and got fish pedicures (where a bunch of tiny (in my case) and not so tiny (in my sister's case) fish basically ate the dry skin off our feet). it sounds really gross when i say it like that. poor fish. it was pretty awesome, though, despite the potential fish cruelty. it was followed by a traditional spa pedicure.

in other news, we're leaving on sunday for the desert. i should really start thinking about packing but when i look at the suitcases that i had my husband take out i'm instantly hit with a wave of lazy boredom and the feeling that if i get up to pack my head will surely explode. or my arm might fall off. or my leg might turn to ash. basically, i'll suffer some form of bodily harm, and who would risk that? we'll be gone for a little over a month and splitting the time between his side of the country and my side of the country, and i'm starting to just not feel like going. it's way too much work to travel across oceans and continents just to see people for a few days is my opinion. though that may just be my laziness talking (assuming that my laziness is a separate entity from myself). and that reminds me of a youtube video my sister sent me a while back. let me go find that for you. actually, my sister sent me episode two, but here's the first one:

seriously, story of my life.

also, i just used ke$ha lyrics for my blog title. i quoted someone with a dollar sign in her name. i think i should be tarred, feathered, and ran out of town, but that won't make me change them.

*Tik Tok (apparently she's too good for c's?) - Ke$ha

'cause you're amazing

you know what's really amazing? pringles. like, the way the flavors of their chips taste exactly like whatever they're supposed to taste like. it really is the greatest achievement of the universe. i mean, i'm eating the mexican seven layered dip pringles, and my mouth thinks it's eating some kind of seven-layer nachos and my brain is telling it that it's just pringles because it can read the box (tube?) and my mouth is telling my brain to just shut up because it knows what it's eating and it is freaking nachos. i was obsessed with the cheeseburger pringles for a while, too. i never see them in stores anymore, though. do they still make them? also the honey mustard and the dill pickle ones. i mean, all the original flavors are awesome, but these crazy ones are just crazy with how perfect they are.

on another note, the weather today is gorgeous. so obviously i spent all morning at chuck e cheese's with my husband, sister, and nephews. because there is no better way to enjoy beautiful weather than to be cooped up in a dark little building filled with beeping games and shouting kids and tickets and pizza. i mean, duh. and then after that we spent an hour in petland fawning over the bunnies. (i think that i really decided to fulfill my inner fourth-grader's dream of having a pet rabbit. i mean, after i check if they're allowed in my apartment and after we come back from our maybe-overseas-travels in the summer of course. because this seems to be the year to resurrect my fourth grade self, relive obsessions, fulfill dreams, and then finally put her away and grow up. or something.)

oh, and i'm kind of in love with that song from the brave trailer. you should probably listen to it.

*Just the Way You Are - Bruno Mars

you do what you must and you do it well

so i'm sitting here trying to study, and it feels weird. i'm getting flashbacks from undergrad and getting distracted by the air. and then it hits me: i haven't studied in over a year. i haven't had to. last semester i had one class with one take home exam. the semester before i had three classes: one open book exam, one take home, and one final paper. the semester before that: two take homes and one final paper. i can't even remember when i had to study for a test in class. i was bad at studying before, but now i'm just completely awful at it.

anyway, today was long. it started at six and i won't be home until at least ten:thirty. i was at mason at seven:thirty this morning when i bought coffee and then promptly spilled some of it all over my hand and jacket while walking down the stairs. don't ask me how. and aside from the problem of it being really, really hot, i had nothing to wipe it off with. i finally got a napkin, and when going to throw it away, i threw away my phone instead.

and then there were geese reenacting every us vs them movie in history right next to me. there was one flock on one patch of grass and another on the other side of the sidewalk. they were sitting honking at each other like they were getting paid. then two geese start fighting out of nowhere, flapping their wings at each other and biting necks and stuff. let me tell you, the hitting of goose wings is loud. the rest of the geese surrounded them honking like crazy. eventually one of the geese flew off to the lake and all the ones left behind just sat on the grass together. the lone geese was honking and honking at them, but he was ignored. lesson learned: geese have no sense of loyalty.

watching my brother in his spelling bee later in the morning was fun. and my mom dropped me back off at home and we listened to bob dylan and that was fun. (perks of being carless.) but after studying i have class, and i just want to go home.

*Buckets of Rain - Bob Dylan

you were just always talking about changing, guess what i am the same man

i started this post writing about the fact that i finally watched the 90s are all that on teen nick last night and how it was awesome and slightly sad at the same time. and kenan was so young! i mean, they all were, but he's the one i see the most these days and he was hosting the thing so we kept seeing him all grown up and facial haired and then we'd see him in all that and he was a baby. seriously. the post started to drag so i deleted it but still wanted to let you guys know that i miss 90s television.

anyway, i've been thinking about making a change (because, you know, getting married isn't a big enough change for me). see, i was talking to my cousins before i left saudi arabia and they were convincing me to get a new haircut (i have had the same hair style for as long as i can remember) since i'm married. it was apparently the first thing my cousin did and she said it was such an amazing feeling. they just about convinced me to cut bangs at my next haircut until a couple of days ago when i was thinking about it and realized that bangs can get really annoying and i just don't think i want them. she was also saying that her friend got a pet immediately after she was married and i should do that since i've always wanted a rabbit. that was an exciting idea for about three seconds until i decided that i like the idea of a pet rabbit more than i'd really like the actual pet. at least right now. it's just too much work that i don't feel like dealing with at the moment. plus, i want to be able to just get up and go on a spontaneous road trip without having to worry about who's going to take care of my pets. i mean, sure, i probably won't be going on many spontaneous road trips, but i want the option. 

so i got to thinking that maybe the problem isn't that bangs are annoying and pets are a lot of work. maybe it's just that i really do have an aversion to change that's too strong. maybe  i want to stay the same a little bit too much? to test out this theory, i am trying to think of a change that i won't have a million doubts about, but i'm coming up blank. maybe i will just go chop up my hair (every time i decide to do this though i remember my older sister cutting bangs a few years ago and absolutely hating it, plus, i'm not sure how i'd look with bangs seeing as the last time i had them i was five). ideas for changes? 

*Changing - Airborne Toxic Event

everything, it seems, i like's a little bit sweeter, a little bit fatter, a little bit harmful for me

so i just ate a pack of coconut m&ms, dipping each one in nutella before eating it. i feel like a colossal fatty. it was really good, though, if you could get over the fact that i was probably inhaling more calories for my little snack than if i went downstairs and made myself an actual lunch.

also, yesterday my sisters, nephew, and i went to a pet store, and i met the most adorable rabbit in the entire world. actually, there were three that i wanted, but this one was the most. i have half a mind to go back and buy him. he was just so cute.

is he not adorable? do you not want to take him home with you and keep him forever?

this is him being a fatty and sitting in the bowl to eat so no one else could share the food.

despite the fact that the bunny was the cutest pet in the history of pets, i really hate pet stores. i can't walk by the dogs and cats without wanting to cry. 

*Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk - Rufus Wainwright

honey, you're just too clingy

so we went to the museum of natural history this morning to finally watch "journey to mecca" - that imax movie. we've been making and postponing plans to see this for forever. it was really good and i recommend you all watch it. but thats not the point of this post. after the movie, we walked through the ocean exhibit since my younger sister and brother-in-law have a weird obsession with oceanic life. i mean, i think it's awesome, too, but not as much as them. but that's not the point either. while looking around, i came upon this:

which is this:

so apparently, clinginess is not just a human male characteristic. all guys, even fish ones, have a problem with being clingy parasites. i felt sorry for the poor fish (doesnt she look miserable? look at her grimace.) and completely understood why she acted the way she did, giving her the name of seadevil. i mean, come on.

*Clingwrap - Sam Sparro