so i'm sitting in my husband's cubicle at my old high school. the chatter of all my old teachers blends with the randomest collection of songs my ipod could possibly give me to form a hum of background noise. i'm grading graduate student papers on incident response. i'm drinking black tea with mint from a beauty and the beast thermos. there is such an overlap of adultish me and teenage me at the moment that i'm not sure what to do with myself. i don't think surreal is the word i'm looking for, but it feels something. the part of me that never really understood how to grow my vocabulary wants to say weird and leave it at that, but it's like a specific brand of weird. a certain weirdness that makes me feel like i'm taking a step back from my life and watching it from the ceiling (and also mixing metaphors). it's not the visiting the past feeling that i get every other time i'm here (which is pretty often). it is more of a sitting in the present as the past forms a fog that swirls around me. i don't know if i'm making any sense so i'll just stop now.

on a different note, you may all remember my complaints from previous semesters about the papers that i had to grade. about students who didn't know how to string together a sentence or failed to comprehend exactly what a paragraph was. today i was grading the first assignment for one of the classes i TA for and  the quality of work has gone up exponentially. it's partly awesome (yay for education!) and partly not because there is suddenly so much more to grade. it's surprising how much faster grading goes when twelve students all submit the same paper and no one meets the page minimum. well, actually, i guess it's not really surprising at all. fingers crossed that the lab reports for the second class have improved as well. 

then why do i keep counting?

sometimes i try and remember how i started. when. and why.

i can't, though. for as long as i can remember i have been counting letters, arranging them. i hear a phrase and i start writing it out in my head. sometimes i'll scratch it into my palm or write it on the roof of my mouth with my tongue or scribble it into the air. maybe the letters can be neatly arranged in pairs. maybe in groups of three. maybe they fall into a one-two-one pattern or a two-one-two. i keep trying until they are ordered. sometimes i have to switch between writing numbers out and not, between having contractions and not, between abbreviations and none. sometimes, if nothing is working, i'll add a word or two. nothing big, an "oh" here, an "and" there. just small things so they'll finally fit.

i never really thought much about it. it was just something i did. we all have our quirks.

and then i started to spend my time in movie theaters wondering when the shooter was going to come in. debating whether i would run or hide when he did. looking at the exits. figuring out exactly what i would to to protect myself and the people around me. every single movie, every single time. of course, it's been about six months now and the shooter has never come. there's also the thing with the headlights in my car. every minute or so my fingers move a few centimeters away from the wheel to make sure that my lights are still on. that people are still aware that i am here. they always are. i still check. and when i'm not driving, my fingers itch to know. "are the lights on?" i ask again and again and again until even i am sick of hearing the question.

so i arrange letters, and i never really thought much about it. but maybe being overly fond of sadness isn't all there is to me.

***
i know i already posted something today and i dunno why i'm writing this other than the fact that it is eleven:seventeen pm, my husband is playing video games, and there is the ghost of a lump in the back of my throat. i was too lazy to shower today and now i'm too lazy to walk to my bedroom to read and sleep. i was going to write something pretty... but then i didn't. maybe tomorrow.

*Why Do I Keep Counting? - The Killers

it's funny (read: scary) how the days blend together. how you wake up monday morning and go to sleep friday night and can't really remember anything that happened in between. we're a quarter of the way through the semester and i have yet to start anything and how did that even happen? i started a two hundred page book, put it down for a minute, and now it's three days later and i haven't picked it up again. i wrote a blog post this morning, but it was really five days ago. sometimes, the amount of time that falls away without me noticing terrifies me. i feel like i'm drowning in it. i feel like the sand is slipping through the hourglass and falling straight into my chest, weighing me down and making it hard to breathe.

we have a snow day today and i could wax poetic about the beauty of it, but the truth of the matter is, i looked out of my window when i woke up for a minute, just to make sure it was still out there, and that will probably be the last i see of it until it is brown slush melting during the day and freezing during the night. and what's so pretty about that?

i'm in one of those moods where my mind is so far in some fictional world that i don't even know where it is. i don't see what it sees, hear what it hears, or know what it knows. i feel like i'm floating and strangely empty. i can't think about anything because my brain is off having adventures. it doesn't even send me postcards to hang up on my wall. i can't document its journey or live vicariously through it. every postcard it picks up says, "wish you were here," and if it was taught one thing during its stay with me, it's that you should never lie.  

you blame me, but some of this is still your fault

okay, so. remember how, a few weeks ago, mason called me and basically accused me of stealing money that they gave me? in a check? a month before the accusation? yes, well, it didn't end there.

monday afternoon. i'm sitting in the student lounge outside of the engineering school GTA office for my office hours. (i rarely sit in the office. i'm literally only there when there is absolutely nowhere else i can go. being a TA for the computer forensics department kind of sucks because forensics, as one of my professors would say, is like the red-headed step child that no one likes. he was talking about the field in general, but i feel like the metaphor still applies. another professor says our program is the bastard child of the university. that works, too. basically, we don't really fit anywhere and no one really likes us. the engineering department hires me so i'm kind of with them, and the classes i TA for are cross-listed with the tcom department so i'm kind of with them, but really, i'm with neither. story of my life, man. anyway, the engineering TAs feel like i'm taking up a spot that results in them having extra work. they are also like a little tight knit family that i just don't belong to. sitting in their office makes me slightly uncomfortable. also, it always smells funny in there. but i digress.) these two people come up to me and are like, "sarah? sarah kabli?" now, i'm sitting in a general student area and am not really sure how these people know me, but i answer with a hesitant yes because apparently i'm the stupid girl who gets murdered in the first ten minutes of a horror movie. imagine that.

anyway, they take me into an office and the lady turns to me, hands clasped in front of her and a serious look on her face. "i'm from the dean's office," she says, as if that's supposed to mean something to me. as if i should know what's going on now. i nod and stay quiet, not bothering to keep the confusion off of my face. "you're on a scholarship, right?" she asks. "and they pay your full tuition?" i confirm this and she gives me another one of those knowing looks. there was a pause where i assume she was waiting for me to confess to something, which i didn't because i still had no idea what was going on. "i'm in charge of the finances for this department, and i noticed that you got some money last semester that you shouldn't have," she finally says. but the way that she said it made it clear that by "got," she meant "took." ugh, i thought.

"uh, yeah. i got a check from mason at the end of last semester, but they called me before this semester started and i gave the money back," i explain. "we didn't get any money back," she said. "well..." i shrug. "i paid it back the day they called me." after a few more minutes she said that she was going to take it up with the student accounts office because they should have returned the money to them and who knows where they actually put it, and we agreed that if i got a check again this semester i would go talk to her instead of paying mason.

but oh my god am i never going to trust a check from mason again. ever. (this wasn't the first time i got a check back from them but it will be the last time i ever deposit one.) i have never felt like such a criminal for doing absolutely nothing wrong in my life. and mason, you need to get your act together and figure this stuff out. you should probably know where all your money is supposed to go. sheesh.

*Which To Bury, Us Or The Hatchet - Relient K

some things in this world, man, they don't make sense

these days i am made up of wistful half-thoughts and almost-sentences trailing off into silence. i am smiles with just a touch of self-doubt. i am a butterfly garden. i am being productive to procrastinate and filled to the brim with, "yeah no, don't wanna, not gonna." i am itching to write and lacking the words. i am wanting to go back to my mermaids but scared that the memory of how i left them is better than the reality. basically, i'm doing a lot of nothing important.

on to more pressing matters, though. and by pressing i mean at least there is a focus of sorts to this next part and maybe even a point or a moral to be learned or a good phrase lost in the paragraphs. or something. i don't know. i haven't gotten that far in yet.

so i don't know how many of you are living in america and seeing these turbotax commercials, but they come on way too often for me. they make me feel... lacking. just in case you are not living in america and watching the same channels as i am, here's the video so you can watch it in all of its judgmental glory. (i can't even remember the last time i embedded a youtube video into a post. i think i used to do it a lot though? maybe not...)



there's just something about this video that makes me feel like i completely wasted away twenty-thirteen. i mean, i thought it was a pretty good year at first, but then i see this commercial over and over and over again and it's just like, okay, i get it! i have done nothing worthwhile. stop judging me! let's go through it point by point, shall we?
one) you made another human being: actually, no. i didn't. sorry. you're not the first person to assume this of me, though. is the universe hinting that i should get on with it or what?
two) you found that one person who you're meant to be with: once again, no. (i think maybe being married already makes this a moot point, but it kinda makes me feel like i should have waited until last year.)
three) you bought a house: ugh, no. i wish. stop rubbing it in my face. stupid commercial.
four) you got a new job: *sigh* nope.
five) you went on an important business trip: not likely with my answer to point number four.
which leaves me with what? reading a lot and not catching up with tv shows? what in the world did i do last year?

and yet, there's another turbotax commercial, "the year of you," that basically says the same things but somehow makes me feel all empowered and accomplished and hopeful.


it's weird. maybe it's the extra parts with the hair cutting and the shirt giving awaying? i dunno. but i love the second commercial and usually have to pause the tv after the first one to rant at turbotax for making me feel bad about myself. oh, the power of editing.

(oh, and i have already used this lyric as a title before. oh well. it was the first that came to my mind.)

*Bright Lights - Matchbox 20

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

how does anybody get anything done?

sometimes people will say something referencing the fact that i am sort of somehow maybe on my way to becoming a holder of a phd and i just kind of laugh nervously and make some comment along the lines of "it's been a bit of struggle 'till now but that's the plan" because deep down i know how completely ridiculous it is. i mean, i do want to get the degree to end all degrees and all that, but there's something very self-sabotaging about the way i'm going about actually getting it.

take, for example, today. i was supposed to spend the day reading articles and doing some preliminary research so that when i meet up with my adviser this friday he won't know that i have spent exactly zero minutes thinking about my dissertation over the winter break. zero. and that i maybe stretched the truth a little (or a whole freaking lot) when he asked me in emails if i was following certain things and i told him yeah of course i am. but the best laid plans... and other useless idioms that let you know that that is not what happened.

instead i spent the day reading fanfiction (which i am apparently back to doing) and getting worked up over fictional characters. and i also worried a bit about a stain on my "books turn muggles into wizards" t-shirt because dressing like an adult is apparently beyond me. i did manage to get a load of laundry done and take out the trash, but that was about as much responsibleness as i was capable of. there may have also been a bit of pretending that the nervous tension in my stomach was solely caused by the stories and not at all by the fact that i was procrastinating life. and you know how much research i got done? none. i didn't even open the articles. i didn't even open the email the articles were sent in. but i did get the urge to write some fanfiction again, so there's that.

also, i bought a ring today and it's a little too big and seems to be getting bigger by the second which is making me sad.

also number two, last night i got exactly two hours of sleep (if that) because i was just. not. tired. and i wasn't tired the entire day and now it is past midnight and i am still not tired and what is wrong with me? i'm usually (well, at least for the last couple of years) that obnoxious person that has to sleep for like ten hours a night. and all i can think of is this girl they were talking about on the radio a few weeks ago who had a tumor on her brain which made her never have to sleep ever, and i can't remember what happened to her and am pretty sure that i don't have a tumor on my brain but my mind is nothing if not a lover of what if's and late-night hypochondria. also, lightheadedness. i've been feeling light-headed a lot recently and that's not a sign of brain tumors is it? i'm pretty sure headaches are, and my normally constant headaches have been noticeably missing from my life and thank god for that, i tell you.

this post has gotten wildly off-track.

anyway, long story short, i am not an adult and am getting pretty bad at pretending to be one. also, i wish i had studied english and was doing a phd on fanfiction and its role in something or other. i would be right on track. (i overuse the word also.)

*Take It Like A Man - Dragonette

sometimes i plan to celebrate the anniversary of certain events and then i realize that i can't remember anniversaries to save my life and when i go check the date it turns out that the anniversary already passed. and since i'm already late, i drag out the celebration until i don't even feel like celebrating anymore. and then i write a blog post about it.

the most recent instance of this is me not remembering that is has been exactly one year (and then some) since i released my first ever book of prosetry. i announced it first here on my blog. you can reread that post for nostalgia reasons here. if you didn't buy the book for whatever reason, you should click that link and read all the reasons that you should buy it. and then go buy it from amazon. i mean, you can get the kindle version for just under three bucks and get the kindle app for free and then you can read it almost instantly.  or you could wait a little longer and pay a little more and get a copy you can hold in your hands. or you could do both. you know, if you really want to.

one of the reviews i got on please listen was that some of the pieces seemed melodramatic. since it's been a year, i'm going to address that comment. i wrote a lot of those prose poems either as a way to work through or a result of getting through stuff. some of that "stuff" was depression-related, and if you know nothing else about depression then know that it is all melodrama. the worst thing is always happening and never ending. (notice that i didn't say "it seems like..." that was intentional.) so yes. a bunch of it is melodramatic and over-the-top and  you know what? i'm totally okay with that.

i haven't read any of the pieces in the book for a while, but some of my favorite things i've ever written are contained within those pages. (i also think i have most of it memorized from the number of times i read through it while putting it together, and yet there are still typos i didn't catch.) though i'll probably always look back and think, "if i only did..." i will also always be proud of please listen. no matter what happens in the future. for more reasons than i can list.

end shameless self-promotion. 

giving the academy a rain-check

okay, so. it's common knowledge around here that i like books. and that i think that writing competition shows should be on tv just like cooking competition shows, remodeling competition shows, and who looks prettier competition shows. and since it is award season (is it? i honestly have no idea. is there even an award season or do award shows just kinda happen throughout the entire year? i've never actually watched an award show ever in my entire life. i plan to sometimes, but then i forget. i do enjoy the gif sets that appear after an award show though. anyway, let's just pretend that i know what i'm talking about and that it is awards season, okay?)  i think that books should be awarded right along with movies, tv shows, and music. and yes, i know that books do get awards, but where is their televised glitzy show with a red carpet and readings from the top books of the year and trophies given to the authors? it just doesn't seem fair, if you ask me. so i will be awarding some book-oscars. the nominees are all of the books that i picked up to read last year (you can find the complete list with all of the authors here) because they must have done something right to get picked up, you know?

i'm adapting all of the categories that wikipedia tells me the academy awards use as best as i can. and now, without further ado, i present to you our winners: 

Best character (male) in a leading role (leading role means narrating to me): tobias (allegiant)

Best character (male) in a supporting role: gus (the fault in our stars) 

Best character (female) in a leading role: cather avery (fangirl)

Best character (female) in a supporting role: reagan (fangirl)

Best children's book: wings of fire: the lost heir

Best short story: life on the refrigerator door (since i finished it in half an hour it counts as a short story)

Best narrating voice: lawrence (when we were romans) 

Best costume design: the divergent trilogy

Best author: rainbow rowell

Best nonfiction story: discovery of luray caverns 

Best nonfiction short story: climbing everest: tales of triumph and tragedy on the world's highest mountain (this was a library book so i can't tell you which exact story was my actual favorite)

Best editor: it would NOT go to the editor of the tmi series, the divergent series, chose the wrong guy, or the host for sure 

Best story in a foreign location: stolen

Best action story: trash 

Best character descriptions: the host

Best self-published book: off with her heart

Best title: chose the wrong guy, gave him the wrong finger 

Best book: fangirl

Best cover design: the fault in our stars

Best dialog: eleanor and park

Best setting description: stolen

Best world-building: the mortal instruments series (cassandra clare)

Best play: long day's journey into the night

Best poetry collection: teaching my mother how to give birth

this was a lot harder than i thought it would be. i wanted to have ties for almost every category, and the books that i read later in the year were freshest in my mind which was slightly unfair. if i read through the list again, i'd probably change half of them. i would also like to point out that i really  liked the beach street knitting society and yarn club even though it's not bolded in the previous post or the recipient of any of the awards here. i have no idea why because i really enjoyed the book. a lot. 

if you feel like awarding your own books, then let me know who wins. 

*It's Time - Imagine Dragons

a little late

i mentioned early last year how i changed my reading goal on goodreads from fifty books to thirty-five because i am basically afraid of failing anything, even stupid self-made goals. and then i started the year with a bunch of rereads. since i'm already too late to write any year in review lists for 2013, here is a year in review list for 2013: books read edition.

the books i read last year (sort of in the order that goodreads shows it to me):

1. the fault in our stars by john green*
2. eleanor and park by rainbow rowell
3. eleanor and park by rainbow rowell*
4. fangirl by rainbow rowell
5. fangirl by rainbow rowell*
6. attachments by rainbow rowell (and a half)
7. stolen by lucy christopher
8. the host by stephenie meyer*
9. the beach street knitting society and yarn club by gil mcneil
10. long day's journey into the night by eugene o'neill
11. divergent by veronica roth*
12. insurgent by veronica roth*
13. allegiant by veronica roth
14. she's come undone by wally lamb 
15. persuasion by jane austen*
16. pride and prejudice by jane austen*
17. when we were romans by matthew kneale
18. chose the wrong guy, gave him the wrong finger by beth harbison
19. city of bones by cassandra clare
20. city of glass by cassandra clare
21. city of ashes by cassandra clare
22. city of fallen angels by cassandra clare
23. city of lost souls by cassandra clare
24. wake by lisa mcmann*
25. fade by lisa mcmann*
26. gone by lisa mcmann*
27. night of the tiger by debi emmons
28. the tiger's cub by debi emmons
29. wings of fire: the lost heir by tui sutherland
30. the long fall by walter mosley
31. discovery of luray caverns by russell h gurnee
32. trash by andy mulligan
33. intentional dissonance by iain thomas aka pleasefindthis
34. off with her heart by amy dale
35. ranger's apprentice: the ruins of gorlan by john flanagan
36. miss peregrine's home for peculiar children by ransom riggs
37. climbing everest: tales of triumph and tragedy on the world's highest mountain by audrey salkeld
38. weekend in paris by robyn sisman
39. life on the refrigerator door by alice kuipers
40. to be or not to be: a choosable path adventure by ryan north
41. how to be a woman by caitlin moran
42. perfection by dayna bailey (x)
43. the story of her holding an orange by milos bogetic (x)
44. pride and prejudice and zombies by seth grahame-smith (x)
45. intelligence: from secrets to policy by mark lowenthal
46. jane austen's england by lesley adkins
47. teaching my mother how to give birth by warsan shire
48. twenty-five by rachel l hamm
49. love is a dog from hell by charles bukowski
50. bits and pieces of a broken heart by janice angela burt (x)

and then there was a book about fishing that i could not get more than a few chapters in to. 

i find it ironic that i read fifty books in the end. you may choose not to find it so. 

i'm not going to tell you which of these you should read, because i am all for reading anything and everything. so i think you should read all of them. even the ones i did not like. (i will mark the ones that you can push to the very end of your to-read list, though.) i could talk about each of these books for seven hours, so if you want to have a conversation about any of them i will be more than happy to do so. also, after adding so many different symbols after each title that i confused myself, i took them all off except for:

* means it was a reread

(x) means you probably don't need to worry about reading it any time soon

bolded means it made my top five of the year list. (rereads were not included in this list.)(there were some i really liked that i did not bold.)(read everything.)

i am way behind schedule for this year's goal in case you were wondering.

*Torn - Natalie Imbruglia