hate me today, hate me tomorrow

[day five: something you wore]

we wore uniforms in my high school. white button up shirts, plaid skirts, black shoes, and, depending on who the principal was at the time and how strictly they enforced the uniform, green plaid ties. i didn't mind the uniform on the whole, but it instilled in me a hatred for tights so deep that i have never bought or worn a pair since i graduated almost six years ago.

we all wore black tights under our skirts, and words cannot even begin to describe how much i hated them. i hated putting them on. i hated taking them off for PE. i hated washing them. i hated how our bathroom was full of my sister's and my drying tights. i hated when they got runs in them. i hated when they weren't the perfect opaqueness. i just hated everything about them.

and i still do. i refuse to ever wear tights ever again in my life. ever.

*Hate Me - Blue October

mr. postman, look and see if there's a letter in your bag for me

[day four: your mailbox]

living in an apartment building, we have one of those big boxy mailboxes for the building that has twelve boxes in one. i live on the third floor and it's in the middle of the first, under the stairs. this makes it convenient to check the mail on my way back home before i go up.

i've mentioned it a million times on here before, but i don't get much mail even though i love getting it. our mailbox is usually filled with the week's coupons, ads, and super savers. then there are some credit card offers and bills. a lot of the mail we get is for my father-in-law (he moved overseas and has his mail forwarded to us) which makes me slightly jealous even if it is mostly junk mail.

i get the occasional card from my grandma and the announcement from mason, but there are two consistent pieces of mail that i get every month: my writer's digest and a spanish pork catalog. the writer's digest was expected, but i still have no idea why i'm getting the spanish pork one, seeing as i'm not spanish and don't eat pork. and it's not like some random junk catalog. it's an actual subscription. i think someone may have signed me up as a joke or something? i dunno. but they do have these stuffed olives that i kinda wanna try. they're stuffed with things like anchovies and peppers that i've never heard of and actually sound really good. i love olives. so, whoever subscribed me to spanish pork, thanks.

*Please Mr. Postman - The Marvelettes

i got my diploma for my master's today (on my mom's birthday). and i was thinking about it, and i realized that i got my undergrad diploma on my mom's birthday too. i dunno, i thought it was kinda cool. 

i'm never gonna leave this bed

[day 3: something you love]

there are so many different ways that i could approach this topic. i could go the easy route and change the something to a someone. i could go the predictable route and rave about my books for the millionth time. i could go the lazy route or the tongue-in-cheek route or the pedantic route. i'm not exactly sure what this route is, but i am going to talk about beds. namely, my beds, and how much i love them.

i love my beds. (you know, in case you were having doubts about how lazy i really am.) the bed that is still first in my heart is the bed i (not so) recently deserted after getting married: my high school bed. that bed is just the right amounts of comfort and torture (depending on the mattress situation), that not only was it a great place to do everything from sleeping to homework in to watching tv, but it also gave me something to talk about when i felt like the situation needed a story about sleeping on springs.

(my absolute favorite pillow, though is the one i used from elementary to ninth grade. it currently lives on my bed in the desert, and it is just amazing. summers are made that much better because i get to sleep on it for another three months.)

my current bed and i got off to a kind of rocky start. not that i didn't like it  or anything, i just couldn't love it. a month or so after sleeping in it, it got a bit annoying. the pillows were too high and wouldn't flatten out and gave me neck cramps. it squeaked too much. i suddenly felt springs. but just when i was starting to completely give up on it, it changed. and it was comfortable again. at first, unlike my old bed, the minute i woke up i would leave it, and i wouldn't go back until night fell and i was ready to sleep. but suddenly i found myself reading in bed. i had breakfast in it. i started to do my homework and watch movies and study in it. and, i think i'm beginning to love it. not to say that i spend all my time in bed, or even anywhere close to what i used to spend, though.

there was this book my sisters and i had when we were little, one of those silver/gold bound picture ones that i'm totally blanking on the name of, about a squirrel whose bed turns into a ship and he goes sailing around the world in it. i always felt like my bed would be the type that take me around the world, too. 

*Never Gonna Leave This Bed - Maroon 5

made the toast, burned the eggs

[day two: your breakfast]

i have found that if i go into the kitchen for breakfast when i'm hungry before actually deciding what i want to eat, i will shove everything i see down my throat and then spend the next hour regretting it and feeling really, really gross. so if i can't decide between fruit yogurt, toast, cereal, or oatmeal with brown sugar and blueberries, i sit in the living room getting hungrier and hungrier until my mind decides to make itself up. some days, though, i'm just not hungry before lunch and skip breakfast altogether.

today, i had an omelet. and not just any omelet, but a pepper jack and salmon omelet made with salmon leftovers from the other day.  i also had a cup of raspberry ice crystal light to drink.

(i've had fish three times in the past four days. this is a lot of fish.)

because i don't want to have a post dedicated entirely to what i ate for breakfast, here are some awesome facts that you can use to make yourself look extra smart today: the earth gets 100kg heavier every day because of cosmic dust accumulation, chips are super flammable and can work as well as bark to start a fire and burn long enough to ignite damp wood, researchers with brain scanners found that it takes 1/5 seconds and twelve parts of your brain to fall in love, only about 2 percent of the world's population has green eyes, and finally, the color red is scientifically proven to make you hungry.

*Pitiful - Sick Puppies

could you tell me what to say?

i have been having trouble blogging recently: finding the time to do it, finding things to write about, finding the correct words to use. it's all hard for me. so i was thinking about those thirty day challenges that are all over the internet like weeds, and i thought, maybe that's what i need. a thirty day challenge to tell me exactly what to write about every day. so i googled thirty day challenge, and picked the first thing that popped up. i'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a picture challenge, but whatever. for the next thirty days (hopefully) i will write a post about exactly what it tells me to write. ready? let's go.

[day one: you]

this is one where taking a picture would be so much easier. i'm not exactly sure if i should do looks or personality so, here's both.

i look and dress like the kind of person that blends into the crowd, and i'm happy with that. after getting married this summer, i gained weight and people assume i'm pregnant. i'm working on that. i'm almost twenty four years old (eek) with absolutely no idea where i want my life to go aside from the vague dreams that i can't bring myself to really work towards. i like books more than most people, and sadness is my default emotion. i like to read out loud but don't do it very often. i like burt's bees chapstick, nostalgia, and music. i have dreams to travel the world, and all the laziness and procrastination to make sure it never happens. i can't remember a time in my life without little kids around. i'm too practical to be cool and probably wear jeans and hoodies far too often. i'm not a picky eater. i lack motivation and the ability to see things through to the end. the last nail polish color i had on was papaya.

*Tell Me What to Say - John Mayer

you do what you must and you do it well

so i'm sitting here trying to study, and it feels weird. i'm getting flashbacks from undergrad and getting distracted by the air. and then it hits me: i haven't studied in over a year. i haven't had to. last semester i had one class with one take home exam. the semester before i had three classes: one open book exam, one take home, and one final paper. the semester before that: two take homes and one final paper. i can't even remember when i had to study for a test in class. i was bad at studying before, but now i'm just completely awful at it.

anyway, today was long. it started at six and i won't be home until at least ten:thirty. i was at mason at seven:thirty this morning when i bought coffee and then promptly spilled some of it all over my hand and jacket while walking down the stairs. don't ask me how. and aside from the problem of it being really, really hot, i had nothing to wipe it off with. i finally got a napkin, and when going to throw it away, i threw away my phone instead.

and then there were geese reenacting every us vs them movie in history right next to me. there was one flock on one patch of grass and another on the other side of the sidewalk. they were sitting honking at each other like they were getting paid. then two geese start fighting out of nowhere, flapping their wings at each other and biting necks and stuff. let me tell you, the hitting of goose wings is loud. the rest of the geese surrounded them honking like crazy. eventually one of the geese flew off to the lake and all the ones left behind just sat on the grass together. the lone geese was honking and honking at them, but he was ignored. lesson learned: geese have no sense of loyalty.

watching my brother in his spelling bee later in the morning was fun. and my mom dropped me back off at home and we listened to bob dylan and that was fun. (perks of being carless.) but after studying i have class, and i just want to go home.

*Buckets of Rain - Bob Dylan

it's just my luck to end up getting stuck to everything

after installing and updating a new virtual machine on junior, fitting it with an operating system i have never used before, and continuing with this semester's murder of the free memory space on my computer, the programs and plugins i need to do my labs are finally downloading right. i spend the time they are downloading alternating between watching the orange bar tell me how much progress has been made and doodling words and song lyrics in the notebook open next to me. i'm sprawled out across my bed on my stomach, the sunlight glares off my computer screen, and the hum of a soccer game on the tv reaches me from the living room. i rest my head on the back of my hand, my wrist bent, and i can smell the ink in my black pen - taken from mason's parking services a couple years back. it's almost sweet, and it tugs at a memory in the back of my mind.

and suddenly i'm in a different room, lying on my stomach on the carpeted floor, bathed in the sunlight of early spring. i'm scribbling furiously into a red binder, desperate to get this thought out before i forget how to word it perfectly. i could smell the ink then too, sweet with a hint of something else i couldn't take the time to pinpoint. my mind is lost in a world of magic and cocky teenage guys with perfect hair and rolled up sleeves. my sister pulls me out of the story to tell me i'm pathetic. i ignore her, thinking instead of the reaction my part will get tomorrow at school, at how my friend will continue where i left off. i put my pen down and flip back over the pages i had just written, my handwriting covering both sides. the stack of written pages is thick, we'll soon need another binder. i add the page number at the top outside corner of each page, circling it, amazed at how much we've already written. the thoughts that there are only a couple months left of school, that the story would have to end, that i wouldn't experience the thrill of seeing my friend walk in with the binder in the morning for much longer, that i would probably rarely see my friend at all anymore are pushed out of my head. there's still enough time left that i can ignore them for now. and i am happy.

*All Hail the Heartbreaker - The Spill Canvas

making the same mistakes again

the other day in class we were talking about how apple is like that obnoxious kid who grows up to be that obnoxious adult that thinks he is the best thing since juice boxes and can do no wrong, even when his mistakes are staring him right in the face. now, i have nothing against apple. i think it makes cool products, even though the only apple thing i own is my ipod. but my god, apple, do you not learn?

quick history lesson: when computers first started being the big thing there were two main forerunners: apple and microsoft. apple seemed to have a head start, but windows thought about the bigger picture. with a few smart ideas, they eventually took over the market. one of its main smart ideas: don't tie the software to the hardware. windows operating system could be used on a gazillion machines. apple was exclusively for apple.

more recent history: the dawn of the smart phone. we, again, have two main forerunners: iphones and android phones. iphones came out strong, but they made the exact same mistake they made before. iOS is for the iPhone. only. android's os is for a whole bunch of phones. we saw what happened last time this mistake was made.

and surprise of all surprises, it is happening again. the iphone hold on the market is shaky. androids have almost caught up to them. and now, when basically all conceivable new features have been made and the changes to new phones will be more along the line of storage space and processor speed instead of super cool never before seen things, iphones will start to fade.

in a few years there will be the group of apple die hards and hipsters that are using iphones and claiming superiority, but the majority of the people will be using android phones. and apple will have no one to blame but themselves.

of course, i'll still be using my crappy little dumb phone that has fallen more times than i can count, has a camera that's not even measured in megapixels, and a memory that's worse than pathetic. holding on to it is starting to be done out of pure spite now.

*Falling Away With You - Muse

you always make me smile

gah it feels like my whole life is being taken over by this os security class. aside from the actual three hours a week assigned to this class, there are the extra meet up times, the office appointments, the time [that will be] spent doing crazy group projects, hours and hours trying to get stuff downloaded on my computer (that won't download) to do the million labs and homework and assignments, actually doing them, and then of course all the time i spend just panicking over everything. twelve weeks. well, thirteen if i count spring break. i cannot wait.

also, the next two months are crazy full of events and special occasions. there are bridal showers and weddings and lots and lots of birthdays. and then after that comes all the graduations. and then there's the summer which includes new babies and more weddings and family gatherings. and this is with me being  a social recluse. i can only imagine what it would be like if i still had friends. (i actually am excited about a bunch of these, even though it sounds like i'm not.)

things that are keeping me sane through all the stress: my brothers, my nephew calling me this morning to tell me that he liked the brave little toaster which i had bought for him because i loved it as a kid, laughing at wedding registries (is that mean?), getting wedding invitations in the mail, my other nephew switching his real stitches for butterfly stitches (i'd take an open wound over stitches any day. they make me so queasy), finally getting my financial guarantee letter so mason can stop harassing me for money, and books that have nothing to do with school (though i don't have much time to read them these days :/).

*You Always Make Me Smile - Kyle Andrews