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

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

maybe you're crazy

so i woke up yesterday all geared to write a post (or think of a post to write) when i notice that i have eighteen new email messages in my inbox. due to the fact that a, i check my email compulsively, and b, i'm really not that popular (shocking, right? i know! i was pretty surprised myself.) this is not a common occurrence. what is even rarer is that, in front of my own eyes it jumped to twenty in like three minutes. i obviously went to check my email first and much to my surprise, they were all blog comments. i start reading through them and apparently my sister had taken it upon herself to make sure that every single post every written on my blog had at least one comment. every. single. post. now, keep in mind that this is the sister that lives halfway across the world and sits alone at home with two kids under three all day. she really doesn't have loads off free time on her hands. also take into account that i have over five hundred and eighty posts on this thing, ramble on about pointless crap at times, and no one knew the blog existed for the first couple of months, meaning lots of posts with no comments. overall, it's a pretty daunting task to take on. but insanity seems to run in my family alongside the brown hair and eyes, and she did it. we went shopping for hours for stuff for my cousins (who, by the way, said that they didn't want us to bring them anything until two nights ago when they suddenly decide they want the entire mall please and thank you.) and when we came back, i was still getting emails about new blog comments. it really was crazy. but also awesome. and so, here's your acknowledgement and recognition. yay you.

on a completely unrelated note (actually it has to do with my other sister so it's slightly related i guess) my younger sister has always had a problem with how i walk. or, at least for a very long time. my last year of undergrad she would always be telling me, "you swing your arm too much when you walk. stop it." eventually, she got used to it or i stopped or something, but she stopped commenting and we both forgot about it. until a couple of weeks ago. she and i made this graduation gift basket for a friend and drove all the way to campus to give it to him and do you know how he thanked me? when i was leaving he told my sister that i walked like an idiot (something to do with my swinging arm. gosh, people, i really can't control it). and so now, whenever i walk with her (which is a lot let me tell you) she says, "wow, sarah, you walk like an idiot" or "can you please stop walking like a idiot?" so thanks for that, ash. i dunno if you still read this, but whatever, thanks anyway. (just to clarify, though, i actually wasn't insulted or offended or anything. i thought it was pretty funny.)

*Crazy - Gnarls Barkley

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