now it's time for me to take control

my birthday snuck (i know the right word is sneaked. i still like snuck) up on me this year. it was one of those times when you are forced to realize that even when world-stopping things happen, time moves on. i had just caught my balance the other day. sure, i was still reeling a bit, but i was stable for the most part and ready for life to start up again. you can imagine my surprise when my husband asked, "so what do you want to do for your birthday?" and i was hit by the fact that life had never stopped just because i thought it should. it had continued on, ready or not. (don't you hate it when people allude to some big life-changing thing that happened and then never actually tell you what it is? yeah, me too.)

luckily for me, i'm pretty sure there is no one left here to be annoyed by my lack of telling. (i mean, an entire year of sporadic blogging. goodness. the thing is, in my head i had never "stopped blogging." like, i can't even really wrap my head around the idea that so much time has passed between posts. occasionally i come on here and write up a draft, so maybe that's why i feel like i never stopped? or it may be because time for me has lost all meaning so honestly, a year is the same as an hour is the same as a month. and by that logic, it really hasn't been so long.)

anyway, back to my birthday. despite my sporadic posting, there was no way that i couldn't come back here and write a birthday post. this morning i woke up in an ugh mood, but instead of letting outside forces dictate my mood and ruin my birthday, i decided to take action. so as soon as cricket woke up, i got him dressed and took him to ihop for a birthday breakfast of cupcake pancakes. it helped.

that simple action is going to play into the theme for the upcoming year, but i'll get to that in a minute.

i think that one of my most defining characteristics is that i am a people-pleaser. one hundred percent. i know every single way that this has been helpful and self-destructive in my life, and i cannot change it anymore that i can change my brown eyes or love for reading. it is embedded deep within what makes me me, for better or for worse.

due to my pleasing people all the time, i have pushed a lot of my own things to the back burner. when my ship starts to sink, the first things that i throw overboard are mine. this year, i'm pulling myself out of second place. this will be the year of me.

last year, when things got stressful with a new baby and family drama and just, life, i dropped reading and writing. and while i love reading, writing is part of who i am. it is how i work through everything. it is how i celebrate and how i mourn, and stopping writing felt like i had completely lost myself. i woke up one morning without my identity, and it was like i had woken up without the ability to breathe. i was floundering, but there was no time or space to flounder because there were things to do, and people to please. so i kept pushing it aside and pushing it aside, and having a series of mental breakdowns to my husband, and then one day i decided that enough was enough.

i have always dreamed of being published, and so after doing nanowrimo and writing through some depression crap (my story was literally about depression, but it was like a separate world type thing that at first seemed like magic? and then there was this giant-winged-cliche-shadow beast? and a girl got trapped? and there was a lot of self-isolation and very thin metaphors and it was just... i want to say really bad but i also kind of love it.) and writing a bunch of poems/scenes into my phone, i decided to come up with a defined goal.

my writing goal is to write a poetry chapbook and then send it out slash enter it into contests. i will complete this by the end of the year and i will feel like i have done something. something only for me.

and everyone else can kick rocks. i am done with them.

just kidding, i'll still be over here people pleasing, because that is what i do. and obviously the whole putting myself first thing will not be an always kind of thing, but will be an overarching part of everything this year. the thought that i have stuck to the door of the refrigerator in my mind. i have worn myself thin for others, and now it's time to collect myself and do it for me.

*On My Own - Whitney Houston

and even though there's no way of knowing where to go, i promise i'm going

the year for me does not start on january first, but rather on the eighteenth of april. last birthday was a hard one. it came at the end of a difficult year and looked to be the start of a similar one. i was stuck in the biggest rut and could not see a way out of it. this birthday is different. i mean, sure, there are some things in my life that are still definitely stuck, that i really need to stop being complacent about and sit down and unstick at some point, but other things are decidedly not. i have come out of my rut and fallen into a groove.

this was a crazy year of checking off milestones. i bought my first house. anxiety made it a lot more stressful than it probably should have been, but i learned about mortgages and real estate and signed contracts and talked deals and convinced people to give us a loan and made one of the biggest decisions of my life. it was all very grown up for someone who is still a child at heart, and very real for someone who lives most of her life in fictional worlds. and i haven't talked about my house very much since we moved in, but furnishing it has been its own adventure. i like how it's coming along. (i finally have a library, and that has made my life.)

i was pregnant for a lot of this past year, something i had always said was just not for me. and you know what? it turned out that i was very, very wrong. i was blessed with a very easy pregnancy, and i loved being pregnant. as much as i love my baby, there was more than one occasion after he was born that had me crying because i was no longer pregnant. (the first time i caught sight of my reflection in the bathroom without my pregnant stomach was heartbreaking.)

and i had a baby. it's been a little over a month now, and i love being a mom. it's not easy, but it feels right. i was never very career-ambitious and i made a quick pit stop on my academic journey a while back and forgot to get started again, but suddenly there is something that i want to do again. being a mom is right up there with published author. there are still moments where i just stare down at cricket in awe and can't believe that he is mine, that i made him, that i carried him inside of me for nine months and then brought him into the world. it's truly miraculous.

and so this birthday is different. if last year was the year for deep breaths, this year will be a year of action, of tying up loose ends, of clearing off my back burner, and of enjoying the present instead of constantly living in the past. (i still need to find a word to encompass all of that.)

also, yay for odd numbers.

*Be My Escape - Relient K

with one deep breath, and one big step, i move a little bit closer

as you may or may not know, today is (was?) my birthday. i mean, technically there are still a couple of hours left in the eighteenth, but it's not really the day anymore and i'll probably be heading to bed in an hour so i guess the day is over. or something. anyway. last year i turned twenty-five and that felt like a big birthday. i mean, a quarter of a century. that's big. this year i turned twenty-six (obviously) and despite the fact that the only noteworthy thing about this birthday is that it marks the start of a year-long countdown until the day i am an odd numbered age again, it's been hard. i think it might be the first really hard birthday i've had. like, ever.

i've had moments of "oh my god i am (insert age here) shouldn't i have accomplished (insert appropriate milestone or life goal here) by now?" but i have never felt such soul-crushing failure at the approach of a birthday as i did with this one. i was not ready to be twenty-six. because i am essentially stuck in the same place that i was on my birthday last year. only last year it felt like a step up. this feels a little more like having the rest of the ground rise up and leaving the one square i'm standing on right where it is. (i am not going to dwell on this fact any more than that. also, i started writing more than one piece dealing with this, and every image and metaphor i started sounded tired and hackneyed. the whole experience was kind of a metaphor of my life at the moment and that was just meta enough to piss me off.)

anyway. i always write a birthday post. always. whether it is a huge (or brief) recap of the past year or just a little note saying, "i was born on this day and here is what i did," something is written. but i was really thinking of not posting anything today. (fun fact: one of the main reasons there was a post a couple of days ago was so that i could post on my birthday without feeling like it had to be something big and worthwhile after a dry spell. i didn't want to give myself that excuse to not post. i still didn't want to post anything today.) this morning, feeling like i had to write something, i had a post that consisted entirely of one word: ugh. i later added, "let's just not this year." i didn't post it, though. acknowledging the fact that an entire year had passed without me even noticing felt like giving up. maybe if i didn't blog about it, i wouldn't be a year older.

i mentioned in one of my other birthday posts, though, that my birthday always reminds me of the wonderful people i have in my life. my family. my friends. my people that i sometimes forget exist but then come out of the woodwork offering me a smile. and this year was no different. i really am blessed with some amazing people. and by doing nothing but being themselves (and that includes throwing a bratty tantrum when i didn't play minecraft like i said i would) they have given me the (insert appropriate word here because i am tired and can't think of it) i needed to take a breath. to pause and look around. while i still have the taste of failure sitting strong and bitter at the back of my throat, and i still have the vague sense of panic churning in the pit of my stomach, there is also a small ray of hope. or faith. or something. all i know is that i will take a moment really soon and think through everything i have been shoving onto the proverbial back burner all year, and maybe that will help. maybe the thinking will be enough. maybe it will kickstart me into some forward movement. maybe. and at the moment, maybe feels like heaven.

twenty-six will be the year of deep breaths. i am ready.

*For Reasons Unknown - The Killers

well i feel like something's gonna give

i've had occasion-cake in my fridge since early march. it's a little ridiculous, to be honest. what is occasion cake, you may ask. well, cake made for an occasion of course. i made a cupcake rose bouquet for the going away dinner for my neighbors early last month. the cupcakes that did not make it into the bouquet made it into my fridge instead. a couple days after that, and before the cupcakes were finished, i made birthday cupcakes for my husband. a week or so later, with the cupcakes my husband told me to save for him growing stale (because, let's be honest, if it was me those cupcakes would be eaten before they even started to think about getting stale) i made the butterbeer cake for my youngest brother's birthday. with half of my family on a diet, my dad sent half of the leftover cake back home with me and it ended up in my fridge. then my sister got me a birthday cake and leftovers went into the fridge. then my husband got me a birthday cake and most of that went into the fridge. then my other sister sent me chocolate covered strawberries (which aren't technically cake but still count) and half of those went into the fridge. then i made black bean brownies for my younger sister's birthday (side note: she turned twenty-three yesterday and had her party at chuck e cheese's. it was awesome.) and, you guessed it, some of those joined the party in the fridge. i'm slowly working my way through everything (except for the stale cupcakes that are still sitting there looking sad) but oh my goodness is there a lot.

anyway.

i've been doing a lot of thinking lately about stuff and things. vague, i know, but a lot of it is still just feelings trying to work themselves into thoughts, and i couldn't really express them right now even if i tried. part of it, though, is this expectant feeling that something is going to happen. something good. something big. i'm crossing my fingers that it has to do with writingslashediting (i've been reading things very critically this year, noting what works and what doesn't, what i do well and what i need to improve upon, and i'm hoping that this will prove helpful once this semester is over and i pull my editing hat out from under the piles of dirty laundry i will finally get around to doing) but i'm not so sure. 

(i also kind of think that i've been subconsciously sabotaging my phd attempt. like, i'm doing the bare minimum to scrape by, but not putting in any effort to really move forward. i'm making a show of putting in effort, but i know deep down that if i really wanted to, i could have found myself a committee by now. i have always had a default defense mechanism where, if i'm not 100% sure that i won't fail, i won't give it my all so that i'll have an excuse when failure does come around, but i don't think that's entirely it this time. i think part of me is digging in my proverbial heels because it wants a different future, and until i make up my mind one way or the other i'm not going to be able to do anything. this summer will include some major soul searching (in between movie marathons and reading sprees), because i really need to figure some stuff out already.)

*Push - Matchbox 20

twenty-five years have come and gone and that story's still unfolding

twenty-five. it feels like a big one. like one of those birthdays that should mean something. a nice, round number that marks that i've been alive for a quarter of a century. how did that even happen? it is also the last year before my lapyear which is kind of really weird.

lapyear
n. the age at which you become older than your parents were when you were born, which signals that your leg of the relay race has already begun, having coasted in their slipstream as they tackled the mountain stages of life, leaving you strong, energetic and deeply mortified by their loud yellow jerseys. (Dictionary of obscure sorrows)

there's no big compilation of all of the things that happened this year, because honestly, i just did not have the time. but it was a good year for me, even if i did think i was twenty-three for most of it. a year of firsts. my first car, my first bunny, my first book published (and hopefully not the last)...

i had a surprise birthday dinner with friends on monday, was sick with a 24 hour feel like crap with a fever type thing on tuesday (when i made the huge mistake of starting a new book series (remember years ago when i posted on here that i wanted to read the mortal instruments? yeah i finally got started on them. took me long enough.) instead of just finishing persuasion. now i can't get any work done because just one. more. chapter.), did the whole student thing on wednesday, and went out to breakfast with my dad this morning.

birthdays always remind me of the amazing people that i have in my life. i have a tendency to default to depressed hermit, but that doesn't mean that i don't appreciate the fact that i'm surrounded (or at least can be surrounded) by truly awesome people. my social circle has slowly shrunk, like most people's do as they move through life, and i could not be happier with the ones who remain in it. (even if we do go months with no contact sometimes.)

anyway, here's to another year of friends, family, and dreams. and now i have a paper to write. blah.

*Twenty-five Years - Paul Simon

believe in magic that can set you free

so my brother turned eleven yesterday, and as every harry potter reader knows, eleven is a big birthday. bigger than your first double digit age, bigger than your first year as a teen, bigger even than your first year as an adult. eleven is when you find out where you stand: are you a wizard or a muggle?

as i've already mentioned on here, i got him an owl (stuffed of course) and an acceptance letter and had my sister leave them near his bed as he slept so he'd wake up to them. i also got both of my brothers wands. later in the day, as they were jumping around the living room wizard dueling in that way that only someone who has given up all thoughts of dignity and self-consciousness to be a real, nerdy fangirl (or boy i guess) can do, he kept telling his brother, "you know none of your spells can ever work because you're a muggle." his brother kept reminding him that he, too, lacked any real, magical powers, but it never seemed to stick with him. i'm not sure how much of that was because of birthday excitement and how much was due to the fact that when my brother picked up his wand my dad swore that his stuffed owl blinked (and my brother somehow believed him?) but it made me happy to see that imagination and a belief in magic were not something they were growing out of. i hope they never do.

this year i also started taking the birthday boy out for breakfast. if you grew up with siblings that were always having to do everything together, you may remember how cool it was to be able to go out by yourself. anyway, we go to ihop and he orders an orange juice. when he gets it, he takes a sip and says, "is this fresh squeezed? it tastes like it came out of a carton."

he was also telling me about all of the things that he could do now that he was eleven. apparently he was talking to my dad about the same thing earlier that morning, to which my dad replied that eleven year olds have to start cleaning and he made him clean his room. as he was listing off things, he took a sip of water and said, "their water tastes like paper cups. now that i'm eleven, i can criticize things." i gave him a look and asked when he ever didn't criticize things. "i never criticized things before i was a perfectionist," he said matter-of-factly. "and anyway, i just said that now i'm allowed to criticize, not that i never did before."

so eleven: the year of magic, cleaning, and criticism.

on the agenda today is to clean my apartment before my student gets here (did i mention that i restarted tutoring? i can't remember.), do a little schoolwork, and then bake a butterbeer cake for tomorrow. (i had class last night and didn't want to bake a cake for a day that i wouldn't be able to eat it.)

if you want to do something to celebrate this most magical of birthday years, you can buy my book. i know, i know. do i have no shame? using my youngest brother's special day for my own selfish promotion? obviously not.

*Do You Believe in Magic - The Lovin' Spoonfuls 

as we pull up in our brand new used car

[one] when i was younger, i always said that i wanted my first car to be some used piece of crap. i liked to romanticize everything back then (can't say i've really grown out of that, though) and loved the idea for some reason. as i grew older, i changed my mind. i definitely wanted my first car to be a new one. this, however, is a year for younger me's dreams to come true, and so today a bought my first car, and it is used. while not a piece of crap, it is still about a decade old, and so i think it qualifies as fulfillment of the dream. it is a lot older than the car i've gotten used to driving lately (the one i shared with my husband until he decided to grow up and need it for work) and is a bit of an adjustment. but i have a car, and that's pretty awesome. (in case you were wondering, his name is reginald fairfield after the character from boy meets world of the same name. i was reminded of him for some reason.)

[two] i was walking outside in the freezing wind and my hands froze. i've been in my apartment for almost an hour now, and yet i'm still having difficulty typing because my fingers are numb. the heat is on, but i kinda wanna go find my gloves because this is ridiculous. of course, i'm using this as an excuse for not doing the homework i have due tomorrow (but who assigns homework for the class after the midterm? i mean, seriously.) or the research that is not technically due tomorrow but that i stupidly said i'd have in by the end of the week. saturday can be the end of the week, too, though. right?

[three] i also need to decide what to do about my brother's birthday cake. his birthday is next friday, and while that may seem like a million years away i need to go get ingredients and decorations and stuff. problem is, i can't for the life of me decide what it should look like. it's going to be harry potter related to match my presents, and he said he wanted it to be butterbeer flavored so i'm just going to use the recipe i used to make butterbeer cupcakes, but the design? completely clueless. i was originally thinking of just making a giant snitch because that would be super easy, or to do a sheet cake and draw glasses/lightening bolt/wand/etc on it, but then i googled harry potter cakes and some of those things are super amazing. it kind of made me want to try something like that myself, despite the fact that i lack the required skill set.

*Used Cars - Bruce Springsteen

i think too much

my brother is turning eleven at the end of march, and having recently finished the harry potter series and loving it (the books inspired him to write his own novel which he got a couple of pages into before deciding that novel writing is more of a summer activity) and spending the past five years of his life telling me that i am destined to a life of miserable muggleness but that there is still hope for him to be a wizard, there was really nothing else to do but to get him a hogwarts acceptance letter. which will be delivered to his bed while he's sleeping with a stuffed owl. so that he'll wake up to it on his birthday. and then there's also a wand and stuff. needless to say, i'm really excited about his present. it's like when you're younger and you get your friend a really cool gift and you're equal parts excited that you get to give her something so awesome and jealous that you're not getting it and so on the day of the party you want to swap out the gift for something less awesome of yours and keep the new thing for yourself but your parents won't let you so you kind of hate her for the rest of the day? no? i guess that was only me then.

but anyway, all of my harry potter excitement for him has got me thinking about the series, and here are some things that i have realized.

i've read the series countless times, which means that yes, okay,  i know harry hears lily's final moments when a dementor comes near him and my gosh harry stop thinking you're special you're kind of annoying just shut up already. but recently i really thought about that, and oh my god it is horrifying. like, imagine you heard your mom begging someone not to kill you, knowing that she was probably going to die, and then actually getting killed. i mean, it was always sad and terrible that harry heard that, but i don't know why i didn't grasp the magnitude of how completely horrible it was until now. like, i know he doesn't really remember his mom and never really got to know her, so it would be a gajillion times worse for us that actually grew up with our moms and maybe that's what my mind was thinking, but still. goodness gracious rowling.

also, why do all of the pets in the series get cool names like hedwig and errol and crookshanks and then neville's toad is just named trevor. it's bad enough that no one likes you because you're a toad and that means the loser of the pets, but here, have a boring human name with no awesome greek mythology story or anything behind it. (i am not an expert in greek - or any other - mythology and may very well be wrong about this. if i am, please let me know.) no wonder he was always trying to run away.

oh, and on the topic of harry potter, i feel really stupid that it took me so long to get this, but spellotape is a play on words of sellotape which i somehow did not know was what they called tape over in not-america? i spent a year overseas with people who had either lived in england all their life or were taught british english all their life, and i kind of thought that i had figured out most of the american-british-english discrepancies. apparently not. but i feel like i should have known this. so i'm sharing it here to a) document my slowness and b) share the fact with you in case you are just as clueless as i am.

on a different note, my brother (the one in the first paragraph) was complaining to me about werewolves and vampires yesterday. he was saying that everyone always says that they're immortal but you can kill a vampire with a wooden stake or sunlight and a werewolf with a silver bullet to the heart. if they can die, then they shouldn't be called immortal. i was saying that, while true, i think it's more that they won't die until they're killed, to which he responded, "well, i'm immortal until i die, too." and you know what? he's right. so mythical creatures should not be called immortal. it should just be said that they live longer or don't age.

 *If You're Gone - Matchbox 20

so the years move on

so, today's my birthday. cue the facebook birthday posts from people that i haven't spoken to in years and only have on my friend's list because i'm too lazy to get rid of them. for example, last night someone wrote on my wall, and i had no idea who she was. at all. after a bit of searching it turned out to be one of those friends of a friend of a friend that had changed her name. but anyway, for the first time since i started this blog i'm not going to dedicate this entire post to my birthday. i know, i know, crazy.

before i move on to non-birthday things, though, i'm kinda annoyed that after lunch with my mom, sister, and husband today i have to go sit in class for six hours. what kind of way to spend a birthday is that? oh, and i can't decide whether to get books or a phone for myself. hardest decision of my life. (i'm leaning towards books, though.) speaking of books, i finally made a goodreads account after talking about it for years, and i'm way too addicted to it. do you know how many hours i can sit looking through book titles and reading reviews and not getting bored? a lot. if you have a goodreads account, then add me as a friend.

while we're on the subject of addicting websites that really shouldn't be this addicting, i also finally started pottermore yesterday. i was sorted into ravenclaw, and even though i was kind of expecting it, i'm still not entirely sure how i feel about that. if you happen to be on pottermore, i'm PatronusKnight508. find me. oh, and because i'm already talking about harry potter, the other day i was reading something online that asked if fred and george had the marauder's map for years, why were they never concerned when they saw a supposed dead man sleeping in ron's bed with him every night? i hadn't even thought of that before they mentioned it, but seriously.

oh, and as a birthday present blogger forced me into using the new blogger interface which i was avoiding switching to. yay.

*The Years Move On - Kristian Leontiou

i took the polaroid [poster] down in my room

we're leaving this friday for the desert, and i don't think i could be any less prepared - both mentally and physically. and the days are all starting to bleed into each other until it is just one long, never-ending three:o'clock on a sunday afternoon. i don't even know what to do with myself these days. but i'm not going to get into any of that right now because my main goal in life at the moment is to ignore it (did i ever mention that i suck at the whole goal fulfilling thing?).

anyway, i've been sitting with this post open for two hours and instead of writing anything have been procrastinating on other people's blogs because their lives are so much more appealing to me than my own at the moment. blah. i need to do laundry. i hate doing laundry.

oh, i've also been in a pickle about a poster. see, about five years ago (i can't believe it's been that long!) a friend got me this orlando bloom as will turner poster for my birthday that i went home and tacked to my wall. remember once upon a time when i told you people that i hate closing the curtains because it makes me feel trapped? yeah. because of that issue of mine and the location of the poster, it became a kind of known thing about my house. my sixty or something year old neighbor stopped me one time to say that she loved my poster and always looks up at it when she drives up to her house. a sister of my friend/friend of my sister's used to drive by our house whenever she was in the neighborhood to see it (i'm assuming that she stopped, but i actually don't know 'cause i haven't talked to her in forever). another friend said that she only knows my house because of the poster and if i ever took it down she would have no idea which house was ours. originally, i was planning on leaving it where it is, but there are a few issues with that. a) it's mine, and i want it - even if i don't hang it up - because it was a gift, and b) i think my sister is expecting me to take it. but if i do take it with me, i'd need to get another poster to put there because my wall already looks too empty now and i can't undress all of them. (our walls are, and have always been, covered with posters and maps and pictures and photos and flags and t-shirts and masks and you get the idea.) so, should i take the poster with me and get something else to put there? or do i leave the poster where it is? or should i just leave another empty space on the wall to speak of my absence?

*Tire Swing - Kimya Dawson

i know what you're thinking

blech so enough with the years late teenage angst that's filled the last few posts, let's talk of something happy in this one, shall we? something like... presents. and how i have always gotten awesome ones, but recently i think i've gotten psychic with my presents.

case in point: a few weeks, possibly months, ago i was putting off something by trying to look at every single webpage on the internet, or something like that. point is, i was looking at a bunch of random stuff. anyway, i came upon this book teapot and thought, "huh. that's cute. i should tell someone to get it for me." but then i moved onto the next page and never did. on sunday when my grandmother came down, guess what she had for me? the teapot! it's super amazing.

case in point: about a week ago i was looking at the hogwarts acceptance letter on the warner bros website, wishing someone had gotten it for me for my eleventh birthday and planning an elaborate potential birthday gift around it. yesterday, my sister finally gave me my birthday present. apparently she was waiting for me to get mail to stick it in the middle of it. it's kind of a running joke around my house how i never get any mail despite my desperate desire for some every single day. she finally gave up waiting. anyway, i wake up and sitting on joe is my very own acceptance letter to hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry along with a list of the school supplies i'll need. it is awesome. (random fact: apparently the top birthday to get this letter as a present is 11. the second is 23.)

case in point: a few weeks before my bridal shower i was contemplating buying an e-reader. i had a running list of reasons why i should that my sister got to listen to whenever a new one popped into my head. then my bridal shower comes and guess what one of the gifts was? yup. and while there are some books i will read on jj (my e-reader) and then have to go buy off amazon so i have the hard copy (i'm still an amazon addict), and i sometimes find myself trying to turn the page instead of pressing a button, i love jj.

so yeah, basically whenever i come across something online now, i will just wish for it and wait for someone to present it to me in gift form.

*Don't Speak - No Doubt

and here at 23 it's the same old me

do you have a lot of free time on your hand? if not, then maybe you shouldn't read this right now. i have a feeling it's gonna end up ridiculously long. cause i can be conceited that way.

today marks the start of another year in the life of me (or it marks the successful completion of my goal to live for at least twenty two years. you know, either one.). anyway, yes, it's my birthday. since this was a year of many happenings in my life after many years of nothing, i thought that a recap would be appropriate. i love recaps. don't you? plus, it'll give the new readers a chance to see just what they were missing (pretty much nothing, but you know, whatever.) 

the year saw a blog post with over twenty comments which is a record for me, and most of them have nothing to do with the post. it also bore witness to me being called stupid and fat by my wonderful anonymous commenters, among other things. one of them also called my family stupid and alluded to the fact that they (my family) may have incestuous relationships. oh the fun we have, these anonymous commenters and i. 

last april, two days before my birthday, i wrote this about books, which i kinda liked. later in the month, i complained that written things are better in my head. i started my twenty third year procrastinating, as if i ever do anything else.  actually, the whole month was apparently spent whining about or procrastinating one thing or another.

may was chock full of posts full of long, pointless rambles. i would like to apologize for some of the stuff i have forced you to read through. it was also a pretty eventful month, and in between all the rambles, i made fun of some lyrics, finally got to watch city island, announced that i wanted to write something magical, and then began to write things. among these things i have written:  this about that lady who broke her own heart when no one else would, this about the girl with the paper heart, and this about breaking up or something. i also kinda liked this thing that i wrote. may also saw the end of LOST. that was sad. my cousin who had been staying with us for three months left. oh, and i graduated. 

june was, according to me, a month of little blogging (despite the fact that there are more june posts than april ones). i hurt my back that month and could barely move. when it started to get better, i hurt it again. i was in one of my hopeless moods, but that was okay because i also learned that grumpy people are smarter. and i wrote this that some anonymous commenter wanted to use to break up with his girlfriend. wonder how that worked out. i graduated again, because it's obviously the cool thing to do. and then i left the country.

july was spent on the other side of the world, with poor internet connection. i went through vitamin water zero withdrawal. it was a pretty uneventful start to the summer, and i spent a lot of time in my grandmother's room (she's bedridden) watching arabic soap operas and hollywood action movies. i wrote two things that i like during this month: one about the different experiences with writing and one about philophobia. i got really sappy and wrote a whole post dedicated to my blog readers ('cause you really are all awesome). i'm pretty sure the majority of this month was spent doing karaoke to disney and lady gaga songs with my cousin's daughters. fun. 

in august, more people were on vacation, so we did a lot more family visiting. we slept over at my cousins' house a few times, and one of them watched me sleep which i think is one of the creepiest things in the world. i had some trouble sleeping. i talked about my inability to make a decision, while using sylvia plath to explain my thoughts for me. LOST dvd set, mockingjay, and city island dvd were all released at the end of august. and even though i wasn't in the country, i had to have them all the day they came out. leaving my sister america comes in handy sometimes. and i came back to america. i wrote this about two people who are moving at different speeds, in different directions, with different desires.

september saw the start of a new semester. it was also the start of some bad stuff. towards the end of the month, my uncle came over to stay with us from saudi arabia for cancer treatment. this added stress, worry, and other general unpleasantness to my life. the semester wasn't bad, though, and i had this professor that i just fell in love with. my life became a dull repetition of menial tasks, but i took refuge from reality in making fun of people's book habits and bunnies. oh, and this was the month when i found out how awesome mason police officers are when they came and fixed my car. (it turns out that they're actually a pretty racist group according to everyone else, but i had good experiences with them so i dunno.)

october was hectic and didn't see many blog updates. while my parents were occupied with my uncle's deteriorating condition, the basic day to day running of the house fell on me. this was a bit stressful, to say the least, and started my newfound hatred for five am. the suckiness increased when my uncle died and my dad flew off to the other side of the world. while it helped having my mom around again, things were still really crazy. i did meet an awesome person at the bus stop who i was able to have weekly conversations with to escape from the blechness that was my life. i tried to save the world by preaching about water, and it was also a record month for stink bugs in my area. i think i can say with full confidence that i did not like october.

while october was probably the most hellishly-busy-i-really-hope-never-gets-repeated month of the year, november was probably the most eventful in the my-life-will-never-be-the-same kind of way. for starters, november means nanowrimo. i wrote some children's fantasy about magic and giants and unicorns. it was surprisingly very fun and easy to write once i got started, but i stopped once november ended and haven't looked at it since, despite only being about two-thirds into the story. a friend of mine also did nano for the first time, and i was more excited about his than mine. (i recently got to read his book. it was awesome. i take all credit for it.) i got engaged, which was especially big news because i was never an engaged type of person. i had jury duty for the first time which was pretty anticlimactic to say the truth. there was eid, thanksgiving, abdullah's pokemon birthday party. my sister had a baby on my parents' wedding anniversary, and the harry potter seven part one movie came out. 

the big news in december was pretty much still my engagement. my cousins didn't seem too thrilled about it because they seemed to be suffering under some delusion that it meant i was going to die. i also read/reread a bunch of YA series that month: the mediator series, the gemma doyle series, the time series (a wrinkle time and those). i copied out an awesome part from the gemma doyle series, and if you didn't read it i think you should. december also started an endless string of dentist appointments that still hasn't ended. my sister and i bought a ginormous box of chocolates for my grandma, and were so excited to give it to her that the wait for her to come down for the winter visit was torture. i think december was our first snow of the year. the first big one, at least. the semester ended, and i haven't seen the professor i was/am in love with since. it's quite sad, actually. i made the stupid decision to get a phd that month (and once i make a decision i try my best to stick with it) and i hated on santa claus.  

the start of a new decade came and passed largely ignored by me. if i remember correctly i was watching either family guy or boy meets world when the clock struck twelve, lying on a bed of springs. i also made no resolutions. january was a month in which my life was holding its breath and waiting for something to happen. i'm not exactly sure if it exhaled because something happened or if it just got tired of waiting. my biggest thought was probably my idea about auto-tinting contacts, and it turns out someone else was thinking the same thing anyway. i had my bridal shower (pretty early because...) my older sister and her husband officially announced that they were leaving the country. my younger sister got her wisdom teeth out, making me the only one in my family that is still wise. it was in january that i started playing snake on youtube. i would spend hours a night playing on boy meets worlds episodes. i was seriously addicted but it was a good mind-numbing way to spend my time when i needed to just go away for a bit. i stopped now, though. i took a second's break from talking about myself to warn that world that robots are taking over, starting with watson. legos are helping with the world domination. the new year also brought on all the mysterious animal mass murders. has anyone figured those out yet? i had a weird dream experience, and found out that (like with my brilliant idea) i wasn't the only one. while the middle east blew up in a million "revolutions," lady gaga decided to make her own mark on the world with her new disgusting signature scent. wow, busy month.

when february finally came around, i started reading and writing again - two things i had stopped in january. (i wrote the hat story this month.) i also hurt my toe and had to walk around campus in the middle of winter in flip flops. i failed miserably at accurately expressing my views on what life would be like if i was never born. february started a semester of stressful projects and killing my gpa. i ended the month with a modern day retelling of rumpelstiltskin. oh, and my sister and her family left. after living with us for a week. ten people. in one small town house. 

i started march by getting back out my soap box and talking about how the whole "arab terrorist" stereotype has gone on long enough. i pretty much finalized all the wedding plans that i can from this side of the world. it was in march that gas prices started to creep up, and they still are. the other day the gas station next to my house was over four dollars. and because that's not bad enough, for the first time in my life i went through an entire class understanding nothing and feeling completely stupid. that has never happened to me before. ever. i mean, yeah i have not understood things but for three hours to understand nothing was unprecedented. it was also around this time that i realized i don't like school anymore. i started off liking school way back when, then tolerating it, now i'm teetering on the edge of hating it. most of the time. obnoxious teachers don't really help. that, combined with a bunch of other things, have made the usual disgruntledness (not a word. whatever.) grow until all i want to do is hide in the past. i wrote this about the different parts we play in our own lives, badly burned my skin (which still isn't completely back to normal), and procrastinated because, really, that's all i do. we also had ali's ben10 birthday which i think is the first birthday of either of the boys that my older sister ever missed. sad. but still fun.

and now we're back to april. it's started off with stupid people and bad books, so you know it's going to be a pretty good month. if i manage to finish all the stupid work i have to do. it might possibly be a good idea to do some of that instead of spending forever on this post, but if i look at any of it anymore i think i'll die. really. i also went to my old high school a bunch this month. there was an award ceremony for boys' elementary so of course i went for my brothers, and then there was also the arabic poetry contest. i don't remember it being so good when i was in school (the contest), and these were just the elementary boys. i can't decide if it's because i never really paid it too much attention back then or because elementary students take it a lot more seriously, but it was really good. my brother didn't win, but he was still amazing. of course. we went to the circus and my annual rekindling of my dream to join it was a big success. they also had a pirate act and since joining the circus and becoming a pirate were always my top two goals, i think having them combined made my mind explode.

you know, after writing it all out like this, it really doesn't seem like such an eventful year after all. in the midst of it, it seriously seemed like it was just one thing after another. when i look at it now, i realize there were actually some periods of reprieve between the commotions. maybe my life isn't as changed as i thought.

anyway, if you made it all the way down here, then i seriously commend you. go eat cake in celebration of me and spend the day procrastinating, reading, and listening to good music.

*Maintain Consciousness - Relient K

just like a circus

so, this was/is a weekend of circuses. yesterday we threw my brother's birthday party. he had chosen his theme the day after his party last year (the narnia one). and yes, he chose circus. i was the bearded lady and made an awesome cake. my sister, one of the clowns, made a monkey cut out thing where you stick your face in the hole and have a monkey body. you know what i'm talking about? yeah, and for someone who inherited barely more drawing skills than me (i got none) i must say it turned out pretty awesome.

anyway, today we are going to the real circus because a) my dad missed it last year, b) my brother was sick and couldnt really enjoy it last year, and c) neither my cousin nor grandma were here last year to see it.

also today, my other cousin is flying over the atlantic to stop here on his way to LA for college, for embassy related stuff and appointments. fun, no? how is this related to the circus, you may ask. well, you know the tiny clown cars with a bajillion clowns stuffed in? that is what our house will be beginning to feel like. our townhouse that is not used to holding any more than our family at a time. the one that barely seems big enough for just us at times. yes, that one, will have all bedrooms, some floors, and a couch occupied. so, if you have any other visitors that need a place to crash for a few days, send em along our way and we'll see how many more we can fit in.

in uncircus related news, i just remembered that a homework assignment assigned twelve years ago is due on wednesday. i don't even have the blank word document yet to give you an idea about how much i've gotten done on it. i dunno how much work it is going to be or how much time i'll get to do it what with the clown car town house and all. have i mentioned that i don't like grad school on this blog yet? well, i dont.

*Circus - Britney Spears

so bring your good times, and your laughter too we gonna celebrate your party with you

well, today is awesome for two reasons. the first being that it is the last of my undergraduate college career (yay me!) which we will get into later (possibly tomorrow) because i still have one exam left tonight and i know if i get too excited i'll completely blow it off. you know, i'll feel like okay thats it im done it doesnt matter anymore (because i havent been doing that for the past few weeks anyways. nope. not at all).

second reason, and main point of this post (isnt it great to get a post with a point from me?), is that the awesome blogger Carrie is holding a Blogging Birthday Bash today! her blog [carrotspeak.] just turned one year old, and she invited all of us to help celebrate that with her. so put on your best party outfit and come join the fun!

though carrie started her blog quite a while ago (an entire year!) i am a relatively recent follower of it. i found it through blogger's blog of note a while back and am extremely happy that i did. it's definitely worth a read. i can only hope that after a year my blog will be as entertaining, well-written, and all around awesome as hers (instead of slowly dying and turning into a place where i stop by once a week to say that nothing has happened, but i ate a really good lunch so all is

right with the world).

if you would all raise your glasses to "the birth of new friendships, the blogging outlet for self-expression, and the invention of birthday cake" (<- that was shamelessly stolen from Carrie's blog) and help me in wishing [carrotspeak.] the very best first birthday and many more to come.

what i would wear because it reminds me of belle's dress...

who i would bring because i love him....

birthday cupcakes! and theyre orange to match [carrotspeak.]!

*Celebration - Kool & The Gang

now my head is empty and the workload keeps on growing

with a little over five hundred words to cross the finish line (and a little more than that to finish the novel) i need a break. and since i'm obviously not gonna write the paper for tomorrow night, let me go into details about yesterday.

first: new moon.

i'm probably part of a very small percentage here, but i didnt hate the twilight movie. was it a great movie? no, but nor was i expecting it to be one. having a lot more money thrown into it than twilight, new moon was definitely better put together with way better effects. a lot of people had a problem with twilight being all about character development and no action. new moon is the opposite. the main focus is the action, and all the character development is pushed into second place. but, like any book to movie adaptation, thats really just because you cant put a million pages of text into a movie. i have to say though that the movie is one of those ones that feel like no time has passed but then you realize its been two hours... not necessarily a bad thing, but a thing. i liked how those chapters that were just months were translated into the movie. i liked jessica - she's hilarious. there was one point though i had to exert some serious will power to stop from laughing out loud at the pure idiocy of the scene. i was embarrassed for the actors. i was embarrassed for the director. i was embarrassed for myself. when alice shows aro that she sees bella becoming a vampire, they cut to this scene of bella and edward running through a meadow. omg hilarious! i'm not a good movie judge cause i can pretty much like anything, but i thought it was good.

second: the party.

it was fun, too. everything was completely last minute. i sewed the bow ties onto our shirts before we went to the movies. then when we came back we made the games, decorated, made the cake, made the TV (to take pictures in), and did everything else. we got home a little after 2, and had to have everything done by the time the boys got home from school at four. we just made it. birthdays in our family are more of a family than friends thing, so it was just us, my sister's family, and my grandma, but it was super fun. as soon as i upload the pictures, i'll show you all my awesome geek shirts.

random snippets from today:

my brother at dinner: when i become a food cricket i'm going to give this cake four a pluses!

my dad talking to his computer (yeah thats where i get it from): thank you, mcfadden (he means mcafee)

ok so i just made a mental list of all the stuff i needa get done this weekend, and i'm pretty much screwed... it kinda makes me wanna go to sleep early tonight.

*Procrastination - Amy Winehouse

the world will never ever be the same and you're to blame

so today, in case any of you didn't know, is shakespeare's birthday. if he was alive he'd be turning something like 445. i forgot the exact age but it's around there. if any of you have not read up on shakespeare's life, you should. he was a really interesting guy. while he was alive, his play were considered the SPAM of literature. amazing how much can change once you die. now he's like the epitome of a perfect playwright. his plays are awesome too. some people complain they can't understand the language, but i dont think it's that different.

anyway, aside from writing a whole bunch of plays that are still read, studied, acted, and plagiarized today, he also invented a whole bunch of words - words that we use everyday. that might have something to do with the reason no one liked his plays back then. how seriously do you take someone if he makes up every other word he writes?? how hard would it be to make a play of made up words?? ok still pretty hard, but whatever. here's a list of some of the words shakespeare made up off the top of his head. he invented over 1700:

Accused - Addiction - Advertising - Amazement - Arouse - Assassination - Bandit - Bedroom - Blanket - Bump - Champion - Countless - Epileptic - Fixture - Flawed - Generous - Hint - Lonely - Mimic - Negotiate - Obscene - Premeditated - Rant - Summit - Torture - Varied - Worthless - Zany

some phrases he started are:

All that glitters is not gold (The Merchant of Venice)
All's well that ends well (title)
As good luck would have it (The Merry Wives of Windsor)
Be-all and the end-all (Macbeth)
Break the ice (The Taming of the Shrew)
Breathed his last (3 Henry VI)
Refuse to budge an inch (Measure for Measure / Taming of the Shrew)
Come what come may ("come what may") (Macbeth)
Devil incarnate (Titus Andronicus / Henry V)
Eaten me out of house and home (2 Henry IV)
Elbow room (King John; first attested 1540 according to Merriam-Webster)
Farewell to all my greatness (Henry VIII)
Faint hearted (I Henry VI)

you can read more here.

his stories are still being adapted to this day. lion king and lion king 2 are basically hamlet and romeo and juliet. lion king 1 1/2 is the story of the two guards from hamlet. i forget their names anddont feel like googling them. rosencratz and something else. she's the man is 12th night. 10 things i hate about you is taming the shrew. and this is not taking into account all the modern remakes of his plays like romeo and juliet with leonardo di caprio, hamlet with ethan hawke, o with julia stiles (remake of othello).

anyway, here's my favorite of his sonnets:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

*Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's

time, where did you go?

another year has sped by, and it's once again the 18th of april. this may come as a shock to some of you, but me being born 21 years ago was not the only important thing to happen on april 18 (which by the way is the 108th day of the year, 109th if it's a leap year).

here are some cool things in history that happened on my birthday:

1025 – Bolesław Chrobry is crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland.
1518 – Bona Sforza is crowned as queen consort of Poland.
1775 – American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements.
1783 – Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day since it began.
1880 – An F4 tornado strikes Marshfield, Missouri, killing 99 people and injuring 100.
1881 – Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico.
1902 – Quetzaltenango, second largest city of Guatemala, destroyed by Earthquake.
1906 – The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire destroys much of San Francisco, California.
1909 – Joan of Arc is beatified in Rome.
1912 – The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.
1924 – Simon & Schuster publishes the first Crossword puzzle book.
1942 – World War II: The Doolittle Raid on Japan. Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya bombed.
1954 – Gamal Abdal Nasser seizes power in Egypt.
1958 – A United States federal court rules that poet Ezra Pound is to be released from an insane asylum.
1980 – The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country's first President.
1983 – A suicide bomber destroys the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people.
1988 – The United States launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.
1988 - Sarah Kabli was born.
1996 – In Lebanon, at least 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces shell the UN compound at Quana where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge.

so yeah, a lot of natural disasters and deaths and stuff, but the first crossword puzzle! awesome.

Some famous people born on my birthday: America Ferrera (Ugly Betty), Conan O'Brien, Eric McCormack (Will from Will & Grace), Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina the Teenage Witch).

*Time - Chantal Kreviazuk

Ridicule is nothing to be scared of...

...and something I have gotten quite a bit of today. But is it my fault that I have the mentality of an eight year old and enjoy taking part in life-threatening cardboard sword fights?? Or that taking pictures of myself next to a cardboard lamp post that's supposed to be Lantern Waste from Narnia is something I find to be extremely entertaining?? Maybe... but I don't really care cuz its super fun. I don't care if I'm almost 21 years old and should be sitting around with the "grown-ups" on the couches. They were all wishing that they could join in the fight too. Too bad none of them had swords or shields.

Cardboard or not, swords are dangerous. My brother, Abdullah, drew blood from both me and my sister. Vicious kid. Ali, on the other hand, has to be the most pretentious 7 year old alive. He made me make a speech for him as "the guests leave the party." He also came up to me towards the end and asked "where all the fun was. shouldn't there be meteors falling out of the sky for his birthday? didn't i get his list?" lool. At least we know he doesn't have an inferiority complex or something. if only all of nature would work together to commemorate someone's birthday. that would be awesome.

*Prince Charming - Adam and the Ants