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

i've been locked inside that house, all the while you hold the key

after having it sit in my amazon shopping cart for almost a year after it got recommended to me, i recently bought and read room. finally. and to put it simply, you should all go read it. buy it, check it out from the library, come borrow it from me, whatever you want... but it was a really good book. it's written from the point of view of jack, a five year old boy whose whole world consists of an eleven by eleven sound proof cell that he shares with his mom. he was born in there during his mom's seven year kidnap, and honestly thinks there's no world outside of it. trees, cats, other people, and ice cream are all "TV" - made up, or part of other planets that are floating around in outer space. which starts right behind Door. i think donoghue did a great job in keeping the story gripping and making a believable narrator, not an easy task.

but while the book was great, and i think you should read it, this is not a post dedicated to its awesomeness. there's one point in the book where a character mentions that it was assumed jack's mom had her reasons for running away or something. that got me thinking. i talk a lot about running away. i always have. i talk about getting in my car and driving until everyone and everything i know is so far behind me even the memory of them is faded with distance. but the thing is, i would never really do it (the part of me blind with wanderlust denies this confession vehemently). no matter how great an experience it might be, i could never do that to my family, and i'd probably be too lazy anyway. i like to talk more than do.

but anyway, if i ever got kidnapped, how long would it take for someone to suggest that i just finally ran away? how difficult would it be for others to believe it? would i get the requisite funeral to give my family closure or would i just be remembered as the family runaway? it made me think about how many people have been listed as runaways when they weren't. how many kidnappers have been able to get away with what they've done because of this. and then i thought that maybe i read too many books and watch too many detective shows.

*Be My Escape - Relient K

staring at the blank page before you

yesterday afternoon facebook decided that it was too cool to work for me, and it hasn't come to its senses since then. now, i'm about as far from a facebook junkie as you could get so normally this wouldn't annoy me in the least bit. but recently it's become pretty much the only contact i have with my family and i have a bunch of scrabble (lexulous) games that i'm winning in that i would really like to finish. so yeah.

this could, however, be a good thing because yesterday i was also overcome with a desire to write. not to write just another short piece of prosetry, not to scribble down a short story or a scene from a longer one, but to really write. to lose myself in a world of my own creation, to meet new characters born in my head and introduce them to the rest of the world, to struggle with them over the obstacles that i never quite seem to plan. having no facebook could mean one less distraction from writing, and god know i find enough of those.

i actually didn't start writing yesterday. sad, i know. i just stared at a blank screen for a while before i decided to read, but the feeling is still here. as soon as the story comes to me i will begin to write it, and i am excited. 

*Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield

how do you do when i'm not around?

i have had a killer headache since last night. it hit really bad out of nowhere and just won't. go. away. it's bad. like bad enough to keep waking me up at night. it's a strange mixture between throbbing headache and medicine head, though i don't have a cold and haven't taken any medicine. anyway, it's really starting to annoy me. i am not a happy camper.

moving on.

you know what i miss about my old house? my ability to people watch. i had some pretty interesting neighbors, from the couple that never took their child out of the house (though the mom would stand with her/him in front of the window occasionally) to the family that would form an assembly to bring their groceries one by one into their house. there was always something interesting going on right outside my window, even if it was just a congregation of squirrels or crows. here, i don't see anyone. it's like our apartment is in a little twilight zone of its own where no one exists besides us. i need to know what is happening in my [old] neighbors' lives. i'm just nosy like that.

also, i have taken to watching the food channel and travel channel all the time. i think i've watched more episodes of diners, drive-ins, and dives and man vs food in the past couple of weeks than most people watch in a lifetime. and all of those competitions like iron chef and chopped and whatever else. anyway, i watch them. all the time. and now they're infiltrating my dreams and i'm not sure how i feel about that. it's one thing when a book or movie will weasel its way into my subconscious, at least those actually have a plot. i don't remember much about my dream last night, but i can say pretty confidently that it wasn't the most thrilling dream i've ever had. though that could be because it was interrupted every three point seven seconds.

*How Do You Do - Foo Fighters

what have you been doing lately?

i'm knitting a scarf. in the middle of august. it was all very sudden and now i have half of it done. see, i've had this yarn for two years now that i bought to knit into a scarf. one of my knitting needles has been missing forever though (ever since it impaled my sister when she stepped on it. it went right up through her foot. it was gross.) and i just always assumed it would show up without me having to look for it. it didn't. the other day i was in michael's and knitting needles were on sale for ninety nine cents so i got a pair, came home, and started to knit. i finished one thing of yarn (i can't remember what they're called) in two and a half days and am now starting on the second.

in other news, saturday morning we had an impromptu trip into dc and went to the spy museum and madame tassauds, or however you spell that. it was super fun. did you know that julia childs worked for a spy network? and that poe was a spy? and the dude that wrote robinson crusoe? and george washington, who couldn't tell a lie, apparently had no problem with spies. it was all very interesting and we saw super cool things like the hidden cameras and bugs that you would think were only for movies but apparently were used in real life, too. oh, and at the beginning you choose a secret identity and are quizzed on it as you go through the museum and i, being awesome, made it through my mission without blowing my cover. the person being quizzed next to me was caught and sent to jail.

on another note, yesterday i cleaned the kitchen which is really not that big (especially compared to the kitchen i just left) and it took me forever. over two hours. it was ridiculous. i think because it was the first time i really cleaned it (yeah, i've been lazy since we got back. sue me.) so i was scrubbing down everything. hopefully next time it won't take as long. anyway, i finish cleaning it and a couple of hours later we're grilling hamburgers and frying chips and making chocolate cupcakes and just generally making a mess. guess what didn't look all clean and pretty anymore? it never fails that the day i clean a kitchen everyone decides to have the messiest thing they can think of for dinner.

*What Have You Been Doing Lately? - Relient K

make up your mind and i'll make up mine

the street i live on is confused and can't decide on what its called. you see, on one sign it is hills, as in plural. it finds its power in numbers, like an army of ants. it's stretches out as far as the eye can see. it's social and believes in the collective and works well with others.

on another sign, though, it's hill minus the final s, as in single. it's a one man army and has enough strength on its own. it's solitary and important in its own right. it is an island. it is the center of attention and doesn't care what you think.

it can't quite make up its mind on which it would rather be, so at the moment it is choosing to be both. best of both worlds, and all that. we get mail addressed to both hill and hills, so we can't tell by that if one of the signs just has a typo.

an indecisive for an indecisive person to live on. i kinda like it.

it hit me yesterday that at the end of this month i'll be back in school. blech. that i do not like as much.

*Make Up Your Mind - Theory of a Deadman

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

it's a trap, one i can't quite escape so pretend it's the place that i love

There's a girl who sits at the station watching trains come and go without ever getting on one. She tells whoever will listen that sunshine is just an illusion, mirror and smoke to hide the storm clouds that are always raging overhead. She says her favorite thing to do might be to watch people pretend to happy, but it's really watching people realize that they can't. She knows that there's no use looking for the light at the end of the tunnel because all it does is bring on the start of a new tunnel and she'd rather stay in the one she's in now, thank you very much. She talks about how everything is futile and pointless. She says there's no reason to wash your clothes if they're just going to get dirty again, no reason to eat if you'll just get hungry, no reason to live if you're just going to die.

There's a girl who sits at the station watching trains come and go without ever getting on one. She sits near the boy with the laughing eyes and listens to him talk about his first real job. He tells her that he's started to drink his coffee black because it seems like the adult thing to do, and sometimes a person just has to grow up. He tells her that the taste of it makes him gag and he can never drink more than the first two sips. He talks to her about dreams and hopes, and she wants to explain to him the beauty of a popping bubble and the music of a person crying, but she always forgets. 

There's a girl who sits at the station watching the trains come and go without ever getting on one. She waits for a boy with laughing eyes that hasn't been seen for far too long and thinks about how sometimes a person just has to grow up. She thinks about conducting a symphony of shrieking brakes and wild screams, wonders if the sound of crushing bones would be heard above the music. When the next train is announced she raises her arms above her head and walks slowly off the edge, reveling in the sounds only she knew would blend together this perfectly. She thinks about the fact that she didn't think it would take this long as she gags on the metallic taste filling her senses. As sirens are added to the orchestra, she wonders if growing up always makes you gag. 

*Out Through the Curtain - The Hush Sound

there's so much time, so little to do

so i came on here this morning all set to write a post about ramadan (we started fasting yesterday. from four:forty-five to eight:twenty-one. my fasting day would be so much shorter if i was still in saudi arabia with my family.) but now i don't really remember what it was i going to write besides the fact that ramadan is here. and suddenly i have the desire to shove truckloads of food down my throat despite the fact that i'm not hungry or anything. i just want it 'cause i can't have it. my childishness has withstood marriage apparently.last night i was sitting watching a movie on tv and i came up with a brilliant post, but by the end of the movie i couldn't for the life of me remember what it was.

so i'm sitting here now with the desire and time to blog and nothing to blog about, and it hits me that this is something that happened to me all the time before the wedding craziness happened. and suddenly i'm really excited about the fact that i really have no life and lots of free time because that means that things are going back to normal. that means that the flood of endless to-do lists is calming down. it means that even after doing something as life-changing as getting married, the basics have not changed. i may be in a new house surrounded by new people, but i am still the boring anti-social hermit that i was three months ago. it's great.

i mean, yes, we do have things we need to do today, but it's more like normal errands than essential to our survival must get done immediately stuff, you know?

so in light of this sudden realization, let me tell you all about my grandma. so she calls yesterday to return my call to her after i got back from london. apparently she had lost my husband's cell number (my phone is temporarily nonexistent) but it turns out that it was right next to the phone where she thought it was, but the paper it was written on was turned over. anyway, we're talking and she suddenly goes, "oh sarah before i forget, guess where i went the other day?" she sounds super excited so i'm trying to think if she mentioned any plays she was looking forward to the last time we talked or exhibits opening or anything like that. "you'll never guess so i'll just tell you," she continues. "i went to see the last harry potter!!!" my grandma has known of my love of harry potter for years, but she has never actually read any of the books or watched any of the movies. her knowledge of the story is basically limited to the blurbs on the backs of the books and what she hears about it in the library (she's a librarian). but she was raving about the special effects and how the snow seemed to be falling on her and her friend's seat because they were sitting in the middle (she watched it in 3D and apparently the last 3D movie she saw was house of wax before she got married back a hundred years ago) and how many people were in it and the epicness of the fighting and the acting and the emotions and at the end apparently all she could think was, "no wonder sarah likes this series." i just thought it funny that she went to watch it. it really isn't what you'd expect to be something she'd like.

*Softer to Me - Relient K

i'm not giving up. no

i can make awesome pancakes. i can, really. ask my brothers who have often eaten them at our sunday best buddy club breakfasts. i think my parents may have eaten them a couple of times, too. ask them if their word holds more weight than a ten year old. or just trust me. but i can make pancakes.

yesterday we decided to make pancakes for breakfast and to put things in perspective, most of them went uneaten. see, the first problem was the oven, which is not like my oven at home. it wouldn't heat up to the right temperature and every time it did, two seconds later it seemed to change again. second problem was the pan. i dunno what was wrong with it but it was weird. third problem was that he has the weirdest spatula ever. the first couple of pancakes that i flipped got messed up, but then i got used to it and the rest looked okay.

after making the batter and making the pancakes (one by one because there was only a small pan available. guess what i'm shopping for?) we got ready to eat.

we sit down and start and oh my god it was disgusting. practically the only pancakes that were cooked all the way through were the messed up first ones. some were slightly burned (not really, but darker than the golden brown they should be) on the outside and completely raw on the inside courtesy of the temperamental stove. half were blueberry and for some reason the blueberry juice was all over the plate and made them nice and soggy. i know, yum. and a lot of those weren't cooked either.

my husband comes up with a "brilliant" idea to just bake em for a few minutes even though i said i didn't think it would work. but he did it anyway, and went to eat one and practically died from how gross it was. full from the few i had earlier, i didn't eat any baked ones.

anyway, long story short: it was a complete fiasco. but i refuse to be bested by a stupid oven and pan. i will make pancakes again in this apartment and they will be awesome. they have no other option.

*Not Givin' Up - Natasha Bedingfield