it seems my life is going to change

this is a happy post. this is also, for some strange reason, a really hard post for me to write. i don't think i do happy very well. in anything.

so instead of trying to "write good" i am going to let imagery and metaphors and storytelling skills sit on the sidelines, and just say it: 

i'm pregnant!

yup, me - who still can't figure out her own life - is going to be completely in control of another person's life. and i think it's going to be awesome (as well as completely and utterly terrifying). i've been around kids my entire life, and i don't want to brag or anything, but i'm pretty fantastic with them. 

now that i'm not trying to build up to anything because i ruined the end right at the beginning, here's the lowdown:

i found out i was pregnant on the fourth of july. (something about that always makes me roll my eyes at myself so hard.) 

i then went halfway across the world and had an exhausting summer. aside from being extra tired and moody, though, i was pretty lucky with the pregnancy symptoms. guess who managed to get away with no morning sickness in exchange for some vague queasiness during the day? fifteen weeks and three days into this pregnancy and i have thrown up a grand total of zero times. 

i dunno if i'm just really stupid or what, but i've found the whole baby growing process fascinating and surprising. i took biology, i swear, but i guess i just never thought that when they said the baby at this point was like a tiny person i really got that. like, it has finger prints and taste buds and all of its limbs and organs and eye color and it's only four inches tall. i find that to be so amazing. it's been so cool reading about the new developments that are made every week. 

we call it Cricket because i think it is a cute unisex nickname and was also the name of the character in the book i was reading at the time and i am still very sad about the fact that i can't name my kid after my favorite characters so this was the next best thing. my dad hates the nickname, though, thinks it's awful that i'm calling my future kid a bug, and lectured me on it enough times that i stopped using it around him. my nephew doesn't understand why we would look for a "real" name at all and thinks cricket is a perfectly perfect name. 

i've heard the heartbeat twice (and cried like a hormonal idiot the first time) and had one ultrasound so far. it was pretty cool (read: totally awesome). 

i feel like there are so many other more important things that i should say about this, but i'm drawing a blank. my words and happiness, man, they have never gotten along. so yeah. that's my news. share in my happiness. 

*With Arms Wide Open - Creed

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

some things sat by so carelessly

so remember that time i wrote please listen and put it up for sale for any random stranger to read? yeah, well, for a while now, i have been having some second thoughts about it. not about writing it or sharing it, but more about what i wrote.

see, i wrote most of the prosetry in that collection over a period of years where i was feeling depressed and battling ugly thoughts and coming to all the wrong conclusions about the people in my life (but some of the right ones, too, if i'm being perfectly honest). one review i got on the book, and the one that's probably stuck with me the most, said that there were poems that were melodramatic and read like i was swept away by the power of words. (i'm pretty sure i addressed that comment on here before, but bear with me. there is a point to me bringing it up again.) depression is probably the most melodramatic thing in the world, and i do not mean that in a disparaging way at all. i think it was prozac nation that said that when you're depressed, everything is the worst thing that can happen. you can spend the same amount of tears on a cockroach dying as you would on your own dad dying because they are both equally the worst and saddest thing in the world. the reviewer had written that for a few poems, she could not relate at all and just kept thinking, "surely, it can't be that bad." and to reference the dead cockroach, maybe to an outsider it isn't that bad, but to you, it really, truly is. and for the most part, i like the overdramatic prosetry that came from me working through all of that stuff, it is an honest reflection of how i felt at the time, and i wouldn't change it for anything. 

but - and there is always a but - there are some things that i have been thinking about changing. 

see, in the midst of my anger and depression fueled writing, i wrote some lines that leave a bad taste in my mouth whenever i reread them, that make me cringe internally whenever i even think of them. there are a handful of different lines from a few different poems where i wrote something that romanticizes depression and/or suicide and at a point in my life where i am completely anti-romanticizing any mental illness because i grew up. there is a line where i wrote something like "you can't see the beauty in a slit wrist or the poetry in pooling blood" and that line haunts me. because i so strongly disagree with the sentiment in it. but it's out there, maybe forever, with my name attached to it.

so, i guess what i'm trying to say is while i'm all for leaving past pieces unchanged to accurately reflect myself at that time, when there is an idea that i feel is harmful and toxic, should i change it? it's not like please listen is some super popular book with a huge audience and being read by millions of impressionable minds, but still. 

*Smile Like You Mean It - The Killers

what the hell

i've been at mason a long time. a really, disgustingly long time. i've seen the campus nearly double in size and the number of trees shrink to almost half. i have seen buildings and the school paper change names. i experienced the migration from webct to blackboard and from masonmail to outlook. i have seen professors and presidents and deans come and go. there's a part of me that finds comfort in this fact and a part that wants to die just to put an end to it. i have learned the hard way that the experience of a student at a university changes drastically depending on what level you are at - and not in a good way. encouragement turns to scorn, helpfulness turns to hindrance, and everyone loves to blame you for the fact that they just didn't prepare you for the next step.

after all of that, you'd think that i'd be used to change. but i'm not.

i get on the computer this morning all ready to face the responsibilities i put off yesterday for the super bowl, and they changed their freaking email system again. it took me twenty minutes of fiddling with the settings, and it still looks wrong. the font is huge and the bold isn't bold enough and every reply opens a new window. what the hell, mason. stop messing around with this. gah.

going back to the super bowl. during the playoffs, i decided that i was going to root for the seahawks because none of my teams made it in and they had pretty colors. (duh.) plus, i somehow hadn't seen them play at all this season and thought that they were some kind of underdog cinderella story. so, i should be pretty psyched that they won. but i have never rooted against the team i was rooting for so much before. it all started with their game against the forty-niners where i spent all but the first fifteen minutes of the game hoping the niners would win. and then yesterday was pretty much the same thing. (and also, what the hell were you broncos doing? it's like you were actively trying to suck. goodness gracious.) despite this, i never "turned" on the seahawks formally. i wanted them to lose both times while simultaneously telling anyone who would listen that i hoped they won the whole thing. lesson learned: i am really bad at being a sports fan. also, i like underdogs. BUT after marrying an avid sports fan i can pretty much hold an intelligent conversation in most sports and you'll think that i know what i'm talking about and that i'm a sportsy person... but i'm not. and if you talk to me long enough then you'll realize i start to slip and call the players characters and turn plays into plot twists and that annoys hardcore sports people for some reason. (you'll also learn that i spend most of the game commenting on looks and names. like, did you know that the lions have a character named pettigrew? as in peter pettigrew? i don't care how many times i am told his name is not peter. he is still a rat, and that's why they lost because they put their trust in a traitor. they're just lucky it didn't turn out worse. i mean, the last people who put their trust in a pettigrew ended up killed by lord voldemort.)

and speaking of harry potter, what the hell jk rowling. you cannot write a book and then years and years later come back and say, "actually, no. i changed my mind." it doesn't work that way. have a problem with how you wrote things? write yourself some nice fanfiction and move on with your life. i feel like i have to have a rant about this lady soon. it's been building up for years. (in case you have no idea what i am talking about here, jk rowling recently came out and publicly stated that she regrets putting ron and hermione together, that hermione should have ended up with harry, and the whole ron thing was just wish fulfillment and didn't make any sense. whatever, rowling.)

*My Eyes Burn - Matchbox 20

could have given up so easily, i was a few cheap shots away from the end of me

a couple of posts ago, i mentioned that when some things start to go well with school, other things go very, very wrong. and up until yesterday, that was very true. i had finally found an adviser slash someone to head my committee but then, after he and i (but mostly him) put together a nice list of potential classes to take for this upcoming semester, i was faced with a registration site that did little else but laugh at me for thinking that i could get into the classes that i wanted with so little time left before the start of the semester. the classes that i wanted were full with no waitlist option. the classes that i didn't really want but would take if i had to were full with a waitlist already forming. i wasn't sure if i would be getting my TA job this semester or not, and although I had received the news that i was chosen to be a mentor to international students, that job was contingent on my being a full-time student. the way things looked yesterday morning, i was starting to think that i would not be a student at all. and with me trying to spend as much time as possible with my sister and her family while they're in the states... well, i wasn't really have much luck in finding time to deal with any of this.

but last night i did. i sat down and found a couple of classes that i wanted to take and a couple of classes that i think may be helpful for my dissertation (you'd be surprised how little these overlap. i am way too interested in way too many things), and registered for all of them. i'm on the waitlist for a bunch, sure, but i do have three guaranteed classes for next semester even if i don't get into any that i am waitlisted for. three classes means full time student means mentorship is safe. then i was told that i would be continuing as a TA, but this time as a full-time one. (last semester i was part-time.) and after that i got the news that i could and probably should audit one of the classes that were on the list my adviser put together that there was no hope of getting in to.

so let's just take a look at how my student status has changed over the course of the summer. when the summer first started i was wandering around my degree with no adviser and no hope of finding one. i was basically just preparing myself and my family for the very real possibility that i would end my promising academic career by becoming a drop-out. then, an amazing man magically fell from the sky and i suddenly found myself with a head of committee and the prospect of finding the rest of a committee looked hopeful. but i had no classes and no job and no real hope of getting either. now, as the summer draws to an end, i have a head of committee and two probable committee members (they said yes before i just have to reconfirm their yeses now that my committee is a real thing) and a possible member that i will talk to next week or the week after and some plan bs. i also have four (give or take a student) mentees and a full-time TA job. also, some research projects that i have been asked to help on. i have three classes that i am taking and one class that i am auditing. basically, it looks like school things are going to take up a lot more of my time than they usually do.

and add to the school stuff pottery classes, editing my book (i had a dream where the whole thing was written in passive voice, and i know that's a nerdy dream, but i don't know if it's true and it's sort of freaking me out. changing an entire novel from passive to active will be very time intensive.), knitting the blanket, and spending time with family... i'm thinking that i might actually have to say goodbye to my days of laziness and nothingness. at least for a while. the couch potato introvert in me has been throwing a temper tantrum since all of this fell into place, screaming about how she hates me and how i'm ruining her life. i'm trying to ignore her as much as i can and think positively about the semester, you know hope and stuff. if you put good energy out in the world then good stuff comes back to you, or some other non-pessimistic thinking that i usually don't subscribe to. but i am hopeful.

*Looking Up - Paramore

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

my neighbors (or, i guess my parents' neighbors) - who have known me longer than a lot of my friends - just moved to florida, and it was sad. like, we've had them over for christmases and thanksgivings and family dinners, they've seen me and my sisters go through grade school and college, they saw me in my dress before my school's quasi-prom senior/junior party, we went pumpkin patching with them and their grandson, the husband came to speak at career day when i asked him to... we were pretty close. and now they're just gone. 

my husband started his first day of work today, and though i know we both dragged this whole student thing on way too long, it's still weird to have him enter the real world and leave me sitting here thinking, "well now what?" (after enjoying all of this alone time that the hermit in me craves, of course.)

i have committed to one too many things and am now overwhelmed by everything that i have to do. so of course i completely shut down and do nothing, while letting the responsibilities crowd into the back of my mind, slowly growing into bigger and bigger worries. 

the above were all supposed to be individual blog posts over the past few days, but of course i feel like i have no time to do anything but worry and then procrastinate to keep my mind off of worrying and then worry some more, and, well... you get the picture.

this post is here because i feel like a lot of things are changing around me. for once nothing directly involving me, but at the same time, everything is affecting me. between the bouts of nostalgia and worry, i realized that this moment in time deserved some - even if it is not a very detailed or well written - recognition. 

every new beginning comes from another beginning's end

it's an exciting time to be living in our household, let me tell you. we are all about new beginnings and rekindling dreams and giving things a shot. (don't worry, though, there is still plenty of time being wasted sitting on the couch watching stupid tv shows and eating brownies.)

first of all, my fourth grade dream of owning a bunny was realized last night when my husband got me this guy:

(ignore the mess in the background and the fact that the lighting isn't great because it was dark (as it tends to get when the sun goes down) and our lights kind of suck in this apartment.) his name is fitzsarah darcy, or just darcy for short, and he is adorable and has a ridiculously sweet temperament.

second of all, my sister recently read my 2011 nanovel and said it had promise. i never opened the story after i finished nano last year, but remember really liking the idea of it before i started. so now i am re-excited about it and once i get my fifty thousand words for this nano finished, i will go back and take a second look at it. remember three years ago when i said that i was going to edit sincerely, mr. nobody and start sending it out to agents, but never did? yeah, well, this time i am planning to actually get further into the editing than the first three chapters and do this for real. i'm kind of stupidly excited about it, though i still haven't read the story myself so i don't know how discouraged i will get after that. (i painted my nails to look like pages in a book, though, and i think that that shows writerly promise, don't you?)

third, my husband also brought home a new tv last night, which he is super excited about. (though to be honest i kind of miss the way that the picture would stay printed on the screen for a few seconds every time a scene ended with our old one. enough people have told me i'm being stupid for that, though.)

finally, my husband is finishing his master's this semester (in like, two weeks) and i will be maybe dropping out of school next semester (but even if i don't it will be the last semester i take classes. like ever.) and the end of being married students is both liberating and terrifying and a slew of other emotions, but it is also a new beginning so it deserves to be listed here.

long story short, change is in the air, and though i am the biggest advocate of anti-change, exciting things may be happening.

*Closing Time - Green Day

it's funny how things change

growing up, i never went bowling. my family did a lot of "family things" together, we were all in sports, but we just never bowled. the first time i went bowling was towards the end of my undergrad years. since then, i've been quite a few times, but i'm not really sure why i'm sharing all of this with you. to get to the point, a couple of months ago my husband decided that it would be fun to go bowling with my whole family. we'd gone with my brothers and sisters, but never my parents. what with people dying and parents leaving the country, though, it kept getting pushed back. then trying to find a time that worked when my brothers were home from school proved to be impossible so we decided to go today with my grandma, parents, and younger sister.

when i mentioned the bowling plan the first time to my parents, i thought they would say they weren't interested. but they were actually surprisingly up for it. apparently they were big on bowling before us kids entered their lives? who knows what other kind of interests they had that i have no idea about. i mean, i know my parents had lives before us, but going twenty three years without ever knowing that your parents used to bowl is just weird. 

but that's not the point either. we get to the bowling place and my parents and grandmother's reactions were hilarious. they were surprised at how "automated" everything was these days. according to my mom, the last time that she went bowling, you had to have a designated score keeper [that was really good at math] to keep track of the scores. (my dad said that the last time they went bowling was '84.) according to my grandma, she remembers going bowling when there were boys sitting on little platform things that would jump down and set the pins back up after every turn. apparently, my grandpa was one of these boys at one time. 

i've obviously been taking this technology for granted. 

*Teenage Hearts - Allstar Weekend

it's kinda funny how life can change, can flip 180 in a matter of days

i still remember what it felt like when my family and i first moved to virginia from california. i was only around ten years old, but i remember feeling like everything was just... weird. the way the schools were all indoor. (my schools in california had classrooms that opened directly to the outside. hallways, for the most part, were under the sky.) the weather was weird. (the few times i had seen snow before moving here were on trips where we drove to see it. it got so much colder and so much hotter here.) the people were weird. (definitely more arabs than i was used to.) i remember the sheer panic that came over me when we heard that we had gotten into isa. i remember that i thought the school was huge (by the time i graduated it was tiny to the point of suffocation). the only way i could find my class in the mornings was by looking for the pink ice skates with our names on them that were outside the door. every morning i would have a few heart stopping seconds when i would think they were taken down and i would never find my classroom, i would be late, i would get in trouble, and someone would probably talk to me in arabic. i remember waiting in dread the entire day as i counted down the minutes for the arabic lesson to come and pass. the days where we had double arabic still fill me with a horrified sense of panic.

but now i've lived in virginia for more than half of my life. the kids in my class that i felt so apart from have become my oldest friends. fifth grade was a long time ago. there's a feeling of being home associated with these familiar streets, with the greenery that drips from some places and is absent from others, with the diversity of people that live here. a feeling that my ten year old self would never have felt was possible. i haven't been back to california since the move, but sometimes i wonder if any feelings of home still linger there. it's funny how much time can change things. i've known some of my friends for thirteen years. thirteen. my younger self changed schools so often that i never thought i'd be one of those people with friendships that spanned decades, but here i am years later, counting down the days to the wedding of the girl that i remember as wearing headbands and glasses and not really liking when i first met.

*One Love - Blue

i don't wanna do this anymore

so i'm sitting in my living room having just finished reading about what my favorite disney film says about me (except they didn't have my favorite so i was really reading about what other disney movies say about the people that love them) and wondering what to do. i had already checked my mail, scrolled quickly through my facebook news feed, and finished the show that i had been watching in five minute intervals all week. the only thing i knew that i didn't want to do was write. i didn't want to blog. i didn't want to reply to emails. i didn't want to add anything to any of the stories that are hanging around my computer hard drive waiting for their plots to thicken.

and then i thought: this is wrong. i like(d?) to write, and i have barely written anything lately.

now, i'm not saying that i should constantly be writing or even wanting to write. i just feel like i'm starting to fall into a routine in which writing does not exist. and i want to revive it before i manage to completely kill it. once i get into a routine, it's really, really, really hard to change it. unless it involves becoming more lazy. my body is always ready to change for the worst. i want to not dread writing, though, as i have started to do. and so, when what i want to do least is write, i will write. even if it's pointless, even if it's short, even if it doesn't make sense, i'll write. it's my new philosophy. or something.

*Unfaithful - Rihanna

these changes aint changing me

i had a few friends over for dinner friday night, and one bought me a vase. it was such a grown up person kinda gift. like, that's it. we're at the age where we can give each other vases and it's perfectly normal (or, should be perfectly normal at least).

anyway, one friend asked me if married life is different than non-married life, and that question has stuck in my head. in a way, i don't feel like i can answer it yet because at the moment i'm in a little bubble, cut off from the world and my usual life. normally, at this point in the summer, i'd be in jeddah surrounded by family and the dessert heat and whatnot. i haven't spent an august in america since i was in single digit ages, and never in virginia. so i really have nothing to compare my life right now with. with it being the middle of summer, there are also a lot fewer responsibilities waiting around for us. so i'm living in some kind of twilight zone at the moment, and comparing this to my "normal life" is just not possible. it's like we're stopped at the top of the ferris wheel, giving us time to look around for a minute before it starts turning again. once my family comes back and school starts up and the wheel starts moving, i can really say how different it is.

here a few small ways in which i've noticed it is different so far, though:

[one] i sleep in a lot more. i used to wake up between six:thirty and seven every day, sometimes staying in bed until seven:thirty. now, i don't wake up until at least ten:thirty, usually closer to eleven. yesterday i didn't get out of bed until one.

[two] after opening a package i got in the mail, a piece of plastic stayed on the floor for four days. until i got annoyed with it and threw it away. my dad would have had a heart attack over it being on the floor the second he saw it, and it would have never lasted four days out of the trash.

[three] i'm used to living in a town house with my two parents, two brothers, and one of my sisters. there are always a bunch of people everywhere. there is a considerable lack of humans in this apartment compared to what i'm used to.

[four] i'm one of those people that speaks in quotes. i'm constantly spouting a quote from a book or movie or a lyric from a song. my family (mainly my sister) knew all my references and understood them. my husband seems not to have read any of the same books, watched any of the same movies, or listened to any of the same music as me. a lot of what i say now either gets misunderstood or requires an explanation. i have subconsciously started to censor the quotes in what i say.

[five] my dad doesn't drink cold water, so at home the brita filter sat on the kitchen counter by the sink. here, it sits in the fridge.

[six] i walk up and down stairs a lot less. like, hardly ever.

[seven] i used to watch gsn and nickelodeon all the time. now i watch the food network and nickelodeon.

but besides these little nuances in my everyday life, i really don't feel like i have changed much at all. i know a lot of people who seemed to switch themselves in for a completely different version at their wedding, but i'm just not one of them. i still eat candy for breakfast and ignore everyone to read for hours when i feel like it. i'm just as lazy and awful at keeping in touch with everyone as i ever was. i'm still messy and obnoxious and i really can't see myself ever being anything else.

*All These Things That I've Done - The Killers

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

why should i go out? why should i even move? just another lazy day afternoon

so my blog views have reached a record low, i've lost a few followers, and i have a backlog of posts i need to read that is going to take me at least a couple of hours, but i'm back! i think. maybe. i hope. we just arrived back in america and this is the first chance i've had to get online since my last post. anyway, i get on facebook to let my sister know we got here and am hit with a flood of harry potter stuff. is it bad that i completely forgot about the movie up until this very moment? and i don't even know if i have the energy to go out and watch it before we leave for london because i'm just so exhausted from these past few weeks. that is so unlike me.

after writing that start of the post at around six yesterday, i went into the bedroom for a minute, laid down on the bed, and suddenly there's a very annoying alarm going off telling me that it is three:thirty in the morning. (the alarm was supposed to only be for yesterday to wake us up to check our bags, apparently it was never unset.) i then stayed in bed for a million hours, just took what i needed for my shower out if the suitcases instead of unpacking, put off all the stuff i needed to do today till tomorrow, and have otherwise just had a lazy day. after weeks of nonstop activity you have no idea how amazing today is to me.

anyway, i really will be starting my wedding posts soon, but before that, let me just give a brief overview of what a saudi (on our side of the country at least) wedding is like. you know, for those who grew up with the more western ones. it'll save me some words in the other posts. so the wedding starts off without the bride and groom - she'll be off getting makeup and hair and pictures done. the guests all start arriving where they will be greeted by the bride's family (mom, sisters, aunts, etc... basically whoever is free at the moment to stand at the door and greet guests). when the guests enter the hall they sit at one of several tables equipped with chocolates, finger foods, tea, and coffee. there is also a dance floor and music playing for those who want to dance, and waiters walk around occasionally bringing stuff like juice and whatever. after hours of this, the bride and groom come down for what is called the zaffah. this is basically a set of several steps depending on what the hall is like which includes things like throwing flower petals, walking down the aisle, cutting the cake, drinking juice, dancing, exchanging rings, and whatever else you want to do. the bride and groom will then reach a stage thing, sit down, people will come up to say hi to them and stuff, pictures are taken, and then the buffet is opened, the guests go eat, and the wedding is basically over. a lot of the time the groom will go away after the zaffah and the bride will stay and hang out with her friends and family who will have been covered up while the groom was there. i always hated the idea of saudi weddings because they seem to be more for the guests than the bride and groom, but i actually had fun at mine. i was slightly surprised because of my general distaste for being the center of attention. more of that later, though.

i am now going to go order a pizza and try to work up the energy to walk across the street and watch harry potter.

*Lazy Day - Plain White T's

everybody's changing, and i don't feel the same

i go months sitting on facebook 24/7 followed by months when i barely open the site. i am currently in one of my facebook lulls, but this morning i decided to go on and make sure i havent been missing out on anything major happening in anyone's lives. i wasnt. but looking at some of the things that popped up on my homepage about highschool friends - wall posts, notes, pictures - i realized how much i wouldnt fit in with them anymore. if i had met them for the first time right now, i doubt we'd make any lasting impression on each other. maybe one of us is growing up faster than the other. maybe being out of our tiny highschool has let us just be ourselves - a self that doesnt necessarily belong with the self we were back then. maybe we all just changed.

i know i've changed. a lot. but at the same time, i feel like i havent changed at all. i think one of the main changes was my switch from friends to family. i always liked my family... for the most part. but since i've graduated i've really come to appreciate them - from my immediate family to cousins, uncles, and aunts. lonerish as it might sound, they have become my closest friends (that doesnt mean i dont have moments when i wish i could go back to my younger self, scream 'i hate you' at the top of my lungs, stomp up the stairs, and slam my bedroom door to brood). i tend to blame one person for turning me off of the human race which led to my distancing myself from most people i know (mainly friends), but i'm sure it wouldve happened eventually. i'm coded for it. a friend and i used to make lists of people who would really truly miss us if we suddenly disappeared. if i made one of those lists now, it would contain mostly family, maybe a couple of friends. and i'm okay with that in a way i wouldnt have been before. my inability to complete a class presentation without turning into a flustered tomato has all but vanished. i no longer have the smallest shred of attention to spare on what people think of me. if i like me, that's all that matters. i refuse to try and be what people want me to be. i try to be a better everything: muslim, sister, daughter. i am more anxious about the future, less sure of where i will/want to end up. i don't like talking on the phone anymore. i have given up capital letters. but i still love to read, write, and let tv and movies rot my brains. i still prefer junk food to "good" food, baking to cooking. i still use sarcasm like it's going out of fashion. i'm still apathetic and lazy. my looks havent changed. i havent developed any major new hobbies, discovered any hidden talents. the basics have pretty much stayed the same.

on a different note, you know what word i find depressing?? almost. it mocks failures and belittles succeses. you almost made it. you almost didnt make it. we're almost there. when you succeed, when you fail... it's the almost that keeps you up at night thinking of the what if's. i'd rather miss by a landslide than almost get it right.

oh, and happy fourth of july!

*Everybody's Changing - Keane