talk like that won't get you nowhere

sometimes when i'm out in public places by myself, i eavesdrop on people. and by sometimes i mean a lot of the time. i'm not even ashamed of it anymore, because people say the most amusingly stupid stuff when they don't know that i'm listening to them.

case in point: whenever i go to walmart, i always stop by the pathetic book section. i rarely buy anything, but i always have to go and see what books they have. (side note: whenever these not book stores that sell books have harry potter on their shelves, i get ridiculously happy. it really makes my day.) anyway, the books and CDs are in the same aisle, and there were two teenagers already there. one was looking through the CDs and the other was clearly just waiting for her to finish. she glanced over at the books and said, "you know, i might actually read more if getting books was more convenient." the friend looking for CDs hmmed noncommittally. "you know what they should have?" the friend continues, excitement building. "a netflix for books!"
the other friend looks up. "oh my god you're a genius!" she exclaims. "if you could have access to a whole collection of books and then you can just choose whichever one you feel like... that would be awesome. we should totally invent that."
i had to bite my tongue to keep myself from butting into their conversation with, "they actually do have that. it's called a library."

and with the ability to check out ebooks from the library from your own house, claims that libraries are too inconvenient are groundless. i don't think i mentioned it on here, but i gave myself a fifty dollar book buying budget for twenty-fourteen. there were just too many books that i bought last year to read that i didn't even really like and are now just taking up precious bookshelf space. so i will be returning to my library days and if i really like something then i'll add it to my book collection. plus, i already have too many books sitting on the floor to be read. i don't really need to add to them.

oh, and because facebook fills my newsfeed with scribd ads, i know that scribd markets itself as a netflix for books. sorry, girls, you're a little late to the party.

*All I Need - Matchbox 20

i feel like i'm living the worst day over and over again

so this is a story about how i finally started to hate my apartment that i always refused to move out of even when i think it is too small to breathe in, aka the time i realized how effective torture is, aka why yesterday and the day before were really sucky. (every time i say/think/write "this is a story" i want to finish it with "about a girl named lucky" and if you don't get that reference then i'm not sure we can be friends anymore. except still be my friend, please.)

so the day before yesterday i got on here all quasi-hopeful and talking about sleep and running or something. i was taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly and trying to get out of a funk. i really thought it would work. and then the fire alarm happened. oh, that alarm. you may remember my last real encounter with this fire alarm when i was ripped from sleep and forced to stand outside in the cold with a not-allowed bunny while they tried to figure out why it was screaming. (the alarm, not the bunny.) this time was worse.

i think i should start my story with the email i received a few days ago from my apartment people saying that they would be testing the fire alarms on the seventh, or tuesday. now, i spend my entire tuesday at my parents' house. it's kind of my thing. and last year when they checked the alarms, they turned them on for maybe five seconds, made sure the banshee that lives inside the smoke detectors could still wail, and then turned them off. so of course i didn't give the email a second thought.

tuesday came and passed and then it was wednesday. the eighth. meaning the day after the testing was supposed to happen. i'm sitting in my apartment eating string cheese to spite my stomach that was trying to tell me i was nauseous, feeling nervous for no reason, and trying to work up the will to go out and run the errands that i needed to run. and that's when the wailing started. when you are sitting in a quiet apartment one minute and the next minute it is filled with the cries of the entire world being ripped apart, you freeze for a second to try and process what happened. there's no way around it. after i unfroze, my immediate response was to go and hold a pillow up to the alarm to try and muffle it. (it is still way too loud even when muffled.) my first rational thought was that they were doing the testing and it would turn off in a second.

but it didn't.

could it actually be a real fire? i wondered. on the off chance that it was, i threw on some jeans and went to get darcy in his carrier to flee to safety. of course, to do that, i had to stop muffling the alarm with a pillow. that means that it was once again loud enough that you felt that your bones would shatter from the mere intensity of it. which of course freaked darcy out. he ran into the side of his cage twice before finding the door and raced around his playpen in a panic, barreling through obstacles like they weren't there. (you may remember that last time my husband had to get darcy. this time, my husband was at work.) any time i got near the playpen, he would go crazy. i went back to muffle the alarm and think of my options.

(can i just take a second here to point out that i suck at fire alarms? i remember in school i always knew that if there was a real fire i would be the idiot that stayed behind and burned because i was trying to get all my stuff to safety. apparently, i never grew up.)

as i saw it, there were two possible scenarios: either there was a fire or there wasn't. if there was, i could either try and get darcy in a carrier which would probably result in him being hurt along the way or i could just leave on my own. if there wasn't, well, the alarm would turn off eventually, right? wrong. i decided to stand there with a pillow over the alarm and just hope for the best because i'm really smart. but it. would. not. stop. and you know that anxiety that i was feeling? yeah, it just loved it. so i was standing there trying to muffle the constant keening of the alarm inside as i heard the almost BONG BONG BONG of the alarm outside and i lost it. obviously. i stood there sobbing into the chalkboard that hangs on my wall under the alarm as i had a panic attack on the phone to my sister.

i sounded just hysterical enough that my sister ended up taking a cab from her office to my apartment (even though i told her not to bother). (another brief interruption: i may be a tad biased, but i really do have the best sisters ever.) and the alarm went on. and on. and on. i seriously thought it would never stop. my arms burned from holding them up for so long, but i couldn't let them down or the alarm would kill me, i was sure. it was already too loud, especially since i was standing right under it. after an hour it finally went from the wailing to a staticky gurgle type sound, almost like it was losing its voice. that was when i moved to the couch. after about twenty minutes of that, there was silence. and my nerves were shattered. (that was when my sister showed up, and then we went out for some coffee.)

yesterday i get out of bed after not sleeping most of the night and think, okay today i will pull myself out of my funk. because i'm stupid like that and apparently tempting fate is my favorite thing to do. i was going to run all of the errands i didn't do the day before. i was going to drop something off at my sister's office. i was going to make buttons or something for my brother's sga campaign. but first, i was going to take a shower. i was just stepping into the shower when the effing alarm goes off again. i didn't waste time with any thinking this time. i just started to cry (give me a break, i was tired. and hormones suck.) and went out to hold a pillow over the alarm. i did manage to throw on a shirt first. which was good. because a minute later i hear my front door open and a guy walks in saying, "fire marshal!" (apparently he knocked first but i couldn't hear it because the alarm is loud in case you haven't gotten that yet. my sister found this hilarious and said that it sounded like the start of a really bad porno, so there's that.)

maybe having the fire marshal come into your house when the fire alarm is going off and see you trying to muffle said alarm instead of actually leaving the house is not the best situation to be in, but instead of pulling off the pillow, i just asked, "is this, like, real?" i'm so good with words, and also, i already looked like an idiot so whatever. he probably thought i was on drugs, but he hid it pretty well, and just said, "no ma'am. we're just testing it. it'll be off in a second." only, it wasn't. five minutes later it did turn off, but then a few minutes after that, it turned back on again. and that's how it went for hours: on and off, off and on. and it was so much worse than having it be on for an hour straight. because you never knew when it was going to come back. my nerves were so far past fried. i couldn't stop shaking. i was jumpy. i was tired. if i was being detained i would have confessed to anything just to make it stop. it was awful. and i suppose i could have just taken darcy in a minute of silence and left the house for the day, but what was i going to do with a rabbit in tow? plus, it didn't actually occur to me until later.

anyway, it had been quiet for about an hour and a half, and i was pretty sure that the whole ordeal was over but i couldn't untense myself because what if it wasn't? (it actually was, though.) and then the ups guy came and knocked on my door and i screamed. like way too loud. i think i probably gave him a heart attack. (after which i stuck my head out of the door while he ran down the stairs and called out a thank you.) scaring the ups guy made me laugh, and loosened me up enough for me to finally just shower and leave the house for an hour, but my god it was really the worst.

anyway, it is almost noon now and the fire alarm has not gone off at all so already today is awesome. hope yours is, too!

*Worst Day Ever - Simple Plan

there's a joke here somewhere and it's on me

you know what happens when indecisiveness and forgetfulness get together and make you mess up your birth control pill taking? your body thinks that you stopped taking your birth control. and you know what happens when your body thinks you stopped taking your birth control? i suppose the expected answer here is "you get pregnant," but no. this happens:

body: oh no. ohhhhhhh noo. i'm not getting regular dosages of hormones. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?!?!

me: okay, calm down. you can-

body: AAAAHHHHHH NO HORMONES!! WHAT DO I DOOOOOO????!!!!! 

me: if you would just take a second and-

body: okay, okay ummm maybe i'll just... umm... HERE! HAVE A FEW MIGRAINES! AND CRAMPS!

me: what the hell body. you did this on your own for twenty three years. get it together.

body: ANXIETY! I CAN MAKE ANXIETY! HERE! HAVE SOME MORE!

me: would you stop screaming? it is really starting to freak me out.

body: THESE ARE BAD SYMPTOMS FOR BASICALLY EVERY SINGLE THING EVER. HAVE THEM ALL. AND MORE ANXIETY! AND ANOTHER HEADACHE!

me: !@%@$%^#$@#!#$%!!#$&#$@**^%##*^%#!#$

body: NAUSEA! I CAN DO NAUSEA! I DON'T REMEMBER HORMONES BUT NAUSEA IS GOOD!

me: *starts sobbing*

body: HERE IS MORE ANXIETY! AND LOTS OF SLEEP!

me: *still sobbing* there is nothing left to feel anxious about! oh no i didn't bake gingerbread cookies this year! why am i such a failure?!

body: DOESN'T MATTER. HAVE SOME MORE! AND INSOMNIA NOW!

me: i hate everything. 

body: I GIVE UP!

i am seven hundred percent done with life right now. 

i have also been up since three in the morning. i found fangirl online and read it on my phone from a site that doesn't have a mobile app so the text was really tiny. yesterday was supposed to be productive but it straight up sucked. maybe i'll tell that story tomorrow. 

having my hormones out of whack has hindered my storytelling ability. it also makes it very exhausting to do normal things (including all of the fun stuff that i said was going on in my post yesterday) because i just want to sit down in the middle of walmart and cry and punch everyone in the face and also eat a soft pretzel and maybe have a chocolate milkshake. but instead i have to be a functioning human being or something. uggghhh. 

*Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen

now you're stuck in a moment, and you can't get out of it

i woke up today at nine o'clock. nine. and then i stayed in bed until nine:thirty. (i feel like i should mention that the only reason i woke up at all was because my sisters decided to have a whatsapp conversation in our group and i have this thing where i cannot silence my phone before bed because we have no landline and what if there is an emergency, i ask you. and my sisters have this thing where one has to be at work by nine and the other has kids and lives in a different time zone and neither have any consideration for their less-responsibility-ridden sister.) but anyway, nine. it was wonderful.

i've been having some struggles with the stuckness of my life. i think it was the red queen who said, "it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. if you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" (yes, i realize that being on the internet means there is no excuse for "thinking" anyone said a quote. two seconds and i could know for sure. but then i would also get sidetracked and this post would never be written. also, random fact: i first fell in love with this quote enough to memorize it not after watching/reading alice in wonderland, but after watching phoebe in wonderland. that movie, guys. it gets me every time.)

for a while now, it's felt like i was doing all the running i could do and, i guess predictably, i've been staying in the same place. still in school. still struggling for this degree. still not really doing much of anything. no kids. no house. no nothing. just... stuck. while everyone else seems to be moving forward. (before anyone tries to give me the whole you're-comparing-your-behind-the-scenes-to-their-highlight-reel or the just-'cause-it's-on-facebook-doesn't-mean-it's-real thing or the everyone-moves-at-a-different-pace-along-a-different-road speech, let me just say, i know. and i'm not actually comparing myself to other people because i got over that years ago. sorry guys, but for the most, i just really don't want your life, even if i might think it's fabulous. that is not the problem. the problem is the stuckness. them moving forward is just not giving me enough distraction from it.) and i couldn't figure out how i could possibly run any faster. (don't let the "couldn't" fool you into thinking i have everything figured out now.)

these past few weeks have been especially stressful and a whole roller coaster of stuff that i am not going to go into right now but that left me feeling very... something. raw? drained? constantly anxious? beat up and left on the side of the road to die? something like that. but at the same time they have been really good weeks filled with family and nightshirts and bunnies and laser tag and golf. and it's funny how that happens sometimes.

anyway, the point is that some days it's nice to stay in bed late not because of anything or despite anything. and even if your stomach still feels like its taken on a side job as a butterfly garden, sometimes, the stuckness doesn't feel so bad.

*Stuck in a Moment - U2

let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

i do believe in fairies. i do. i do.

the words used to mean something to me. they did. they did. now they are as empty as everything else. they have run over my tongue too many times, dropping bits of magic until they were out. leaving behind hope and meaning piece by piece until they become no more than a jumble of letters my brain can no longer make sense of.

i did believe in fairies. i did. i did. 

a need to create is burning just behind my eyes. my fingers are itching to write, but the words that used to be my best friends have abandoned me. i used to hold them closer than the breath that i pull absently from the air. the words are gone, but their echos are left ricocheting in my body, bouncing off my stomach and zigzagging down my trachea like a long forgotten call to what used to be.

a lump forms in my aching throat and my eyes prickle, but i am not sad. am i? my stomach is fluttering like the wings of seven hundred trapped butterflies, but i do not think that i am nervous. at least, there is nothing to be nervous about. my skin burns hot with a flash of what could have been anger but instead was nothing. it is always nothing now. i can't breathe and my trembling fingers are beginning to go numb, but my mind is empty. nothing. nothing. nothing.

maybe if i found my words, it could be something.

i will believe in fairies. i will. i will. 

i used to live with my feet planted firmly in the past and my head floating in the future, but somehow i found myself in the present, and i think i may be stuck here where reality glares down at me from directly above. there are no lurking shadows or dark corners for surprises to hide in. there is only this. there is only now. and i need to find a way out.

they tell you to grow up and live in the moment and i always swore that i wouldn't. but then i did. they tell you that it's the thought that counts, but they're wrong. because i didn't mean to do this, but i am stuck here anyway. i used to think that if you cut me open, ink would leak from my veins and flowery words would bubble from my lips. my lungs would be filled with fairydust and every single one of bones would be a pen. if you cut me open now all you'd see is a mess of sliced bones and severed arteries and warm blood that doesn't know where to go anymore. i used to think that i was my words, but now i'm thinking that i am my blood. moving through the paths set out for me without thought. doing the same thing over and over and over again until i can't do anything else.

but if i could change once, i could do it again.

i will look for my words and i will find the magic again. i will. i will.

*******

the thing about writing is that you can find your groove where everything you write is right, and then you can stop writing for far too long, and you don't think that you can forget how to do it, but you can. you believe the words and ideas and images will be there waiting for you whenever you decide to come back, but they're not. and it's scary to know how quickly the thing you are good at can become the thing that you used to be good at. it's so scary that sometimes you have to just pretend that nothing is wrong and lose yourself in other people's words instead of your own. but eventually you have to sit down and write pages and pages of bad stuff and pick pieces out of them that maybe could be okay and put them together into a makeshift poem that is not in your groove and will never be completely right but will get you back on the horse. that's the secret to life, you know. you need to find that one horse that's meant for you and just ride it. you can hop on and off, but be careful, because if you're off for too long, you'll get trampled by the stampede.

i'm setting a goal for this year to write one million words. anything i write that uses my voice and is not correspondence will count towards this goal (meaning blog posts and poems and short stories and novels and some school work and journal entries and, well, you get the idea) starting with this post. i'll track my words over on the sidebar where my nano word count sits every november so you can guilt me into not slacking. here's to writing.

*Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield

it's the last day of the year, and i was planning on doing some sort of compilation post or a year in review or something, but i think we all know how blogging plans have been going for me this year. basically, they haven't. also, my brothers are sleeping over and, being tech junkies, i haven't gotten much time to my own computers. i don't mind, though. there's something really awesome about having them sleep over. i'm more "me," when i'm with my siblings, if that makes any sense. like, there is no need to compromise anything or worry about conventions or filters or offending anyone. siblings know the truest form of you, and there is something really great about that. they know every embarrassing moment and all the highs and lows that have filled your entire life. they have all the same little crazy bits that come from growing up in your family and they get things that no one else could ever understand. i'm not one for resolutions, as you may know, but i am one for taking moments to be thankful, and as i look back on this year, i am immensely grateful for my family. 

give it a try

this is a christmas related post that really actually has little to do with christmas and is coming to you the day after christmas. although, i typed it up on christmas. (four christmases in two sentences.) but i already posted that lovely and pointless post that was sort of about hope but mostly just my way of saying that i have that feeling that something big is going to happen. usually when i have that feeling, nothing happens, but it doesn't make it any less exciting. and i kind of like the fact that i can't quite quell the excitement when i feel it even though i know it's probably just nothing. it's kind of disney-esque, only mostly just inside my head. it's hard to explain.

but anyway. back to christmas. well, sort of.

being muslim, i don't celebrate christmas. (except for those years when my sisters and i were growing up and we did the whole christmas thing every year. the whole nine yards with tree and lights and stockings and christmas music and paper chain countdowns and waking up at dawn to open presents.) i, however, love the christmas season. christmas lights are without a doubt one of my favorite things in the world. there is something about the small colored lights that fill me with magic. i also love christmas music (although it is really annoying when you are trying to sing along to the radio and every singer changes the song just enough to make it sound like you are way out of tune every single time). i also love stocking stuffers. i have this really bad problem with buying stuff that i don't need or want because it is either on sale or a good price. dollar stores and drug stores and the sale aisle of craft stores are my weakness. stocking stuffers fall under that umbrella. but that's neither here nor there.

despite not celebrating christmas, i do have my christmas season (which lasts a little longer than most people's) traditions. like, gingerbread cookies. every year, between the end of thanksgiving and martin luther king (jr.?) day, i have to bake gingerbread men. at least once. and every year i have to watch the santa claus. you know, the tim allen one. (the radio the other night told me that the movie has been out for nineteen years and that made me feel so old. ninteen years guys. i could have raised a child to voting age in that time. i could have raised two children to voting age (given they were born in consecutive years) in that time. there is something about the word consecutive that makes me think of math problems.) i used to watch all of those christmas tv shows (santa, rudolph, frosty, etc) that have been on for generations and are actually pretty terrible and incredibly sexist/racist/generally politically incorrect, but i stopped those a couple of years ago. mostly because i kept forgetting to watch them and time became a lot harder to come by. i also love to go on  drives through neighborhoods to look at christmas lights. my older sister and i used to that a lot during our college years before she up and moved to the other side of the world. my husband just does not see the appeal in it. it's not as fun going alone, and so i opted to skip it this year. sad, i know. this is not the point, either.

(i guess this really has turned into a christmas post.)

but what i really came here to say, though, was that, during my read-through of the blog posts from the last two months, someone mentioned that they had already watched elf twice, and i have never seen elf. not even once. ever. i never even really wanted to. but it is often listed as one of the christmas movies that you have to watch every year, and i'm thinking that maybe i should take the plunge. a different blogger wrote about how she makes chocolates for all of her friends and family for christmas, and i kind of want to try that, too. what other christmastime traditions should i try out while i'm at it?

*Give it a Try - Badfinger

magic in the air tonight, yes, i might just try

i have been in school for twenty-two years. that is eighty-eight percent of my life, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. and while i know that, someday in my future when this percentage has shrunk down to almost nothing, i will look back on it with nostalgic fondness and long for the days of structured learning where i could sit in a classroom for three hours and just absorb information - both boring and fascinating - and i also know that i am only done with classes and still have a few years left of school, the thought of next semester fills me with a sense of freedom. and possibility. and hope.

it's the same feeling i get that makes me want to create things and fill notebooks with pretty words. that make me think that one day i will be a published author and be caught up on every show i want to watch and have a phd that doesn't just sit in the corner gathering dust. this semester may have started out crazy and ended even crazier, but this year will end with blossoming hope. and i am okay with that.

it's been a while since i have sat down and written for writing's sake. (i hate to admit it, but most of november was writing for nano's sake and nano's sake only. i think there were only two - maybe three - days in there that i was writing because i was excited about the idea and the characters and the plot was running off almost on its own with my fingers struggling to keep up as they raced over the keyboard. despite that, i think the two characters i wrote in november may be some of my favorites. they took a while to get there, but i don't think i'll be able to drop them just yet.) and i miss writing. i really do. pretty words make me happy.

i also miss baking. and gingerbread. and think that, being christmas and all, it is the perfect time for making some gingerbread men. (although i'm not sure i have the necessary ingredients and are grocery stores even open on christmas?) maybe i'll spend my day doing that. (and catching up on the blog posts i've missed. i'm already caught up on facebook and emails so this is my next stop.)

whether you celebrate christmas or not, i hope you have a wonderful day filled with magic and hope and twinkling lights. and hershey's candy cane chocolate bar because those are delicious.

*Magic in the Air - Badly Drawn Boy

so the crazy semester ended crazily... as was expected. the last couple of weeks found me so busy with classes and meetings and grading and knitting baby blankets and making t-shirts (more on those later) that i had to take a break from the internet, meaning facebook, tumblr, and blogger. it was only supposed to be for a day or two, but that bled into a week and then two and now three. and now i have so many facebook notifications and so many unread blog posts that i have been afraid to jump back in. there is so much to catch up on that i feel like it's too much work for a vacation. so... winter break has found me still avoiding the internet.

speaking of work in a vacation, that's exactly what i got to do the first few days because professors can do stuff that really freaks students out and sends them running to me for help. things like changing when a final is due and deciding last minute not to accept an assignment that a student worked on for half of a semester. so i got to handle all of that. and now i get to focus on the party my sister and i are throwing. tomorrow. that i'm still not entirely ready for. yay.

but come sunday, i will get the relaxing break that i have been counting down to for the past month. i hope.

anyway, this was more of a post to get over my fear of returning to the internet and let all of you know that i am still alive than anything important. this coming week i will read all about your lives that i have missed and go through all five hundred buzzfeed articles my sister posted on my facebook wall, and then hopefully be all caught up and back to my normal spot in cyberspace. and next semester i will have no classes (!!! i don't even know how i will handle that) and hopefully be back to blogging regularly. 

we beats the odds together

so if you look over to the sidebar over there <-- a="" actual="" actually="" against="" all="" an="" and="" around="" as="" at="" bar="" because="" before="" brother="" but="" by="" characters...="" characters="" completely="" days="" don="" doubters="" end="" enjoyed="" enough="" excitement="" exciting="" fact="" few="" fifty="" finished="" first="" follow="" for="" forty="" found="" full.="" get="" give="" going="" good="" got="" had="" hah="" haven="" hit="" how="" i="" in="" is="" it.="" just="" kind="" like="" ll="" lose="" lot="" love="" m="" mark="" me="" meaning="" might="" month="" more="" my="" nano="" nbsp="" never="" next="" no="" odds="" of="" only="" over="" p="" part.="" part="" path="" really="" red="" say:="" see="" so="" some="" started="" stopped.="" story.="" story="" stuff.="" suspense="" t="" that="" the="" then="" there="" thirty="" this="" thousand="" time="" to="" told="" touch="" try="" two="" up="" wandering="" was="" way="" weeks="" well="" where="" who="" win="" with="" won="" word="" words="" writing="" year.="" yet="" you="">
and here you have the graph of my writing progress over the month. it actually makes me look like i was writing more than i was, i think. but, as you can see, i was only on track the very first and the very last day of the month. every other day i was in varying stages of behindness. (i was pretty close to on track on that second day, though.) somewhere in that middle section i was twenty thousand words behind. that was definitely a low point.

today my plan is to knit the last patch i need for a baby blanket i am making and finish the t-shirts for my nephews that i am also making. (because i really like to procrastinate with crafts. duh.) then i can focus on the three exams, two presentations, and one paper i have left to close this semester (which is ending in two weeks). and grading forty homework assignments. oh, and registering for next semester. which means i need to find a committee that i still can't seem to get together. and there's that research project that i said i would do that a professor probably thinks i'm working on even though i'm not. and ugh school gives me anxiety at the moment so let's just stop talking about it, shall we?

*You're Still the One - Shania Twain