at first, when i see you cry, yeah it makes me smile

a few weeks ago i watched the fault in our stars with a friend. it was... an experience. it was the first time i had ever been in a situation with so many teen fangirls in one place without being a teen fangirl myself. (because, yes, we went to a ya book's movie adaptation on the saturday night of its opening weekend and were then surprised that we were outsiders in the theater.) i can only assume that it was the feeling you would have gotten going to a harry potter midnight book release if you liked the books, sure, but were the type of fan that did not have every character and their house and patronus memorized. the type of fan that didn't own nor particularly care to own any potter-world merchandise outside of the books. it was awful because at the point where the plot turns sad and the tears started building up, the entire theater burst into sobs, and my friend and i completely lost it. it was hilarious. and also completely distracting. the girl sitting in front of us had a little bun on the top of her head that bobbed up and down as she sniffled non-stop through half of the movie. the girls to the left had a frantic passing out of tissues moment when the lights went down. a girl behind us got up, said "i can't stay here," and ran out of the theater crying. one of the boys in her group, after asking the rest of the group if she was okay, went out to bring her back in and she spent the last ten minutes or so of the movie just sobbing. loudly. heart-wrenching-i-just-saw-my-entire-family-murdered-in-front-of-me sobs. it was completely over the top. (oh, and they clapped after every. single. scene.) i was biting my lip so hard to keep from laughing out loud that i'm surprised i didn't go right through it. my friend and i were shaking with silent laughter, because obviously we couldn't risk being killed by a theater full of over-emotional fangirls for having the wrong emotions. it was bad. 

but we made it through, and after leaving the theater and laughing for fifteen minutes straight, we started to discuss the movie. my friend, who hadn't read the book, thought the plot was pretty predictable. if you haven't read/watched it, you may want to just skip down to the next paragraph. you know it's a sad movie so you're expecting something bad to happen. the movie starts with hazel "dying" and then things just continue to get worse for her so you kind of assume that she's going to make it out okay, because there's no way it could be that obvious. gus, on the other hand, seems to have everything going for him, so you figure that he's screwed. it's just the way of books and movies and whatever. so when he dies, it's really sad, but it was also a bit expected.

anyway, i told her that it was less obvious in the book. but something i just read online made me realize that i was wrong. it wasn't just about reading the book vs watching the movie, it was more about when you read the book. i read the book before it exploded into something popular enough to warrant a movie. and i think that made all the difference in the world. because now, everyone knows that the book, and by extension the movie, is Sad with a capital s. you're in that mindset from the beginning, subconsciously preparing yourself for grief from the minute you start it. and when i read it, i had no idea that it was a Sad book. i knew it was about cancer kids, so i kind of thought that it would have a sad ending, but it was touted so much as Not a Cancer Book that i wasn't entirely sure. there was still that little thought that, "this might actually turn out good. there may be a happy ending after all of this." when you know that a book is Sad, there is no hope of a happy ending which makes it less sad then when that hope is crushed and spit on and then run over by a car. twice. 

and that's why i like to read books before the hype. that's what gets me. it's not about that weird hipster-real-fan mentality that is running rampant around the internet. (if i hear one more person tell me that they're a real fan of whatever book because they liked it before the movie, i will scream.) it's about the expecting. and i'm not talking about expectations not being met because it was overhyped or whatever, i'm talking about going into it with a particular mindset. i'd rather someone tell me that something was good/bad than sad/scary/happy. when you go in with a clean slate, everything is sharper. i like to have my feelings crushed and spit on and then run over by a car. twice. i like the feeling of realizing something is laugh out loud funny when i had no idea it would be. it's always funnier than when you expect it to be funny. i like that feeling when you have to pause reading to take a deep breath because this is totally not what you expected. i think that's why i'm having so much trouble getting myself to read any of the books that are becoming movies soon, despite actually wanting to read them. (well, that and the fact that i am in a serious reading slump still and oh my gosh i can't read anything these days.) 

*Smile - Lily Allen

i know it's hard

back in high school, there was a running joke of sorts about my girl-scout-ness for lack of a better word. you know, because i did things like bake brownies from scratch and we had a craft room (slash box after we moved) in my house. they would make comments about how i probably made my skirt and my tights and my bag and... you get the idea. a friend wrote in my end of the year notebook thingie:

"I'll remember your craftiness/girl scoutness and how you practically made everything you own... I can imagine you probably made this notebook yourself you liar... that man didn't give it to you."

(those ellipses are not me editing the quote. we were all really big on ellipses back then....) she then wrote that if i was a shape i would be a rectangle, but that is neither here nor there.

anyway. it has been eight years since i graduated high school, and i feel like i am becoming the person that they said i was back then. i just want to make everything. i want to spend hundreds of thousands of hours knitting and only stop when my hands are so cramped that i can barely hold the needles. and even then, i'll just switch to crocheting. (who woulda thought? me, crocheting.)  i want every blanket in my house to be made by me. i want to knit all my clothes. (i'm not even joking, i had the strongest urge to knit myself an entire outfit the other day but i refrained because although i'm fine with being the person who wants to knit their entire wardrobe, i don't think i'm ready to become the person that actually knits her own clothes.) once i finish this turtle scarf for my sister, i plan on crocheting a teddy bear. because why not. i want everyone i know to have babies so that i can make them blankets and hats and sweaters and toys. i want to have made every pot, plate, and mug i own. every vase and box and bowl. i want to make my own notebooks. (i've only done paper-making once outside of science class in sixth grade, but i loved it.)

my most recent crafty urge is to take up weaving. my mom has this huge loom (that i totally plan on stealing someday) that we were kind of obsessed with growing up. so she bought a table loom (that i plan to take a lot sooner than someday) and taught us to weave. we made blankets for our dolls, but then moved on, like kids do. recently, though, i have seen a bunch of woven tapestries and cannot shake the feeling of i need to do that. summers are kind of crazy, so i asked my mom to reteach me to weave in the fall, which she said she'd do. but i still want to weave right now. i am trying really, really hard not to buy myself a lap loom which pretty much needs no teaching because that is fifty dollars that could be used on so many other things. but good god is it hard. if i make it to the end of the summer without writing about my new woven artwork for my walls, i think i deserve a prize.

*Keep Your Head Up - Andy Grammer

so i lied

so remember that time in october when i wrote part one of a post and then never actually went on to write part two? yeah, i'm really good with procrastinating. (actually, i have come back to this multiple times since december. it is now may. i just cannot finish or post it for some reason. you guys, i think i may have found some dignity. who would've thought?) just in case you don't feel like clicking the link, part one basically said: i have an issue with attention. when i am put on the spot, suddenly the center of attention, asked something directly, have too many eyes on me or whatever, i panic. like real, hand sweating about to throw up panic. my usual response is to say the first thing to comes to mind that will take the attention off of me the fastest. this first thing usually does not have an immediate effect, and i end up having to answer a few questions. this first thing is usually a lie. well, it used to be. i've gotten a lot better at handling this and while i slip up sometimes, i am more likely to tell the truth these days. (this habit made me into a really good liar, though. a topic i can talk about in another post maybe.) after i say the lie, i'm pretty much trapped because saying just kidding i lied would make me look like an idiot and explaining the panic would just take too long.

and now that you are all caught up, let's go back to high school, shall we? when i was decidedly less successful at this whole not panic-lying thing. *cue memory wavy screen thingie*

it was my senior year. i had recently been turned onto fanfiction full force by a friend who shared a novel-length fic that was so much better than any of pieces i had seen before. it was really good, you guys. i was reading fanfiction regularly and had started writing it a bit, too. in secret, of course. (like, i had a password on the word document just in case. one to open it to read and one to edit it.) the first chapter of my own work was just posted on mugglenet, and i had plans of sharing that with my friends. (maybe not immediately, but definitely before the third chapter was posted. who would see it before then anyway? i had a plan. it involved a lot of stranger-validation and teenage insecurity. i'm not exactly proud of it.) the morning after it was posted, though, before it had more than twenty hits or a single review, i walk into school and my friend asks if i wrote it. (it was actually more of a "i know you wrote it" sort of thing.) the familiar wave of panic crashed into me and i felt a slight breeze as my plan flew out the window and i did what i always did, i lied.

she didn't give up that easily and would casually slip leading questions into group conversations. i remember her asking about a title of a movie and i said it was wicker park and she thought that was solid evidence that the fic writer was me because it was listed as a favorite movie in the author profile and who even knew that movie existed. i argued that the reason i knew it was because i had just watched it on a friday night friend get together thing a few friends and i used to have. which was true. but that was also why it was listed as my favorite movie. because it was in my head. (every time i see/hear anything about the movie - even now - i suddenly feel ashamed and sometimes it takes me a minute to remember why.)

anyway, i continued writing my fanfiction and posting it to mugglenet and making friends with amazing fellow fanfiction writers (one of whom i actually just had a brief catch-up session with online the other day, after eight years of radio silence. it was cool.) and improving my writing and lying about it, because i was too far in to stop. it was pretty awesome because i had some loyal readers and i got a bunch of reviews and some friends and i used to email each other whenever a new chapter was posted on one of our stories because we didn't want to miss anything. it kinda sucked too, though, because although there were great people online, i sometimes wanted to talk to my real life friends about it, and i couldn't. i couldn't even mention the name of the story just in case it blew up in my face. shortly after that, my friend and i started working on a story of our own which i have mentioned on this blog a few times. i wrote both. my online life was so far removed from my real life that they never even bled into each other. i don't think anyone ever conclusively found out that it was me, but really, they could have known the whole time.

and then graduation happened and i got busy and abandoned my story. (not the one i was working on with my friend. that one got finished.) i sometimes feel guilty about it and think that maybe i should go back and write an ending for it. any ending. but i'm not the same person i was at eighteen and i don't really want to corrupt it. besides, i only have vague memories of what was happening in the story. i haven't read it since the first semester of undergrad and am not sure that i want to. anyway, this is my compromise. i may not ever finish my story, but i will acknowledge it as mine. it is no longer a bastard, and that's about the best that i can do for it.

(also, yes, i do realize that i was - and probably still am - quite pathetic.)

*Here's to the Night - Eve 6

okay, so i have really bad eyesight. like, bad enough that anything more than a couple of inches away from my face is blurry and the lenses of my glasses are really thick (which is understandable considering the fact that i have been wearing glasses since i was five and never listened to my eye doctor's recommendations to read less [he then told me that after twenty minutes of reading i should pause and look off into the distance (walls don't count, like he's talking windows with real views) for five minutes, but who wants to read like that and also i do not always have access to distances while reading.]). now, i think you're supposed to take contacts out after eight hours, but my eye doctor told me that, because of my horrendous vision, i should try not to keep mine in for more than five hours a day. of course, what with classes and various things that require me to be out of the house for a lot of the day, my contacts are usually in longer than that. (this is one of the reasons for my headaches. staring at screens also causes my headaches. because of my life choices, i usually cannot give up either of these things. so i will have headaches forever.)

today, though, takes the cake. i just took my contacts out after seventeen hours in them. and not only were they dry and giving me the kind of headache where every step causes my head to pound, but they were getting weirdly deformed. so that was fun. you know in cartoons when a character is dehydrated and their eyes shrivel up? yeah, it felt a little like that. there are times when i really hate contacts.

but today was super fun. (and weight-gain-inducing. i ate every single meal out in a restaurant today. what kind of a fatty does that?) i spent most of it with my sister and her family but then spent a couple of hours with my friends. (the friend that came on the same day as my sister is leaving the day after her and it is as if they planned it but they didn't.) (when my brain is tired it extra-likes run-on sentences. and apparently hyphenated words.) and i am tired. and i possibly have breakfast plans and even if i don't i have hungry animals in the house that want their breakfast at seven:thirty. also, my sister is leaving tomorrow. also number two, i have a bunch of things planned for tomorrow and i kind of feel like just sleeping forever instead. 

i lost the point of this post somewhere up there. 

time goes by so fast

have you noticed that this is the fourth day in a row that i am blogging? just like old times, right? i have a theory about this that correlates with my state of mind and outlook on life on other things that will probably sound really smart and insightful eventually, but i don't have the time to really get the words right just now. but take my word for it, if it was more than a wisp of a thought than you would be amazed at my amazingness.

it's kind of funny (but also kind of terrifying) to think of how little time i have these days. i mean, there are just so many things to do and people to see. an old friend came to town over a week ago, and yet i still have not found the time too meet up because apparently i spent the beginning of the summer wasting time not from the present but from the future. if that makes any sense. it does in my head at least. (the fact that she came the same day as my sister and that school is starting soon may also contribute to the fact that i have not yet seen her. but i like my theory better.)

speaking of school, it may be starting next week? i honestly don't know, and i'm too afraid to check. my schedule is still up in the air (though a lot closer to the ground than it was last week) and i think if i just don't think about school maybe it will just wait for me to be ready for it. with that great sense of logic it's not hard to believe that i am working on a phd at all, is it?

yesterday while my sister was out fulfilling her childhood slash teenage dream of seeing backstreet boys live (of which i'm a little jealous of, i must admit) her sons and i made stuff out of clay. (i had wanted the clay you bake in the oven, but apparently they don't sell that anymore? there's only the air dry stuff that takes for-freaking-ever to dry and smells horrendous. the stench gets caught in the back of your throat and won't wash off of your fingers and next time i am getting crayola instead of this icky fancy stuff.) my nephew and i worked together on an elephant that i think he made adorable and as soon as it's dry and painted i will post a picture. because, really, you guys need to see this thing.

*Ordinary Day - Nick Lachey

and i won't forget you. at least, i'll try

so yesterday my family (or part of it) and i went out to the national harbor for my husband's last graduation of the season. (i tell you, graduation season drags on forever for us.) it was nice, and i wish i had actually written this blog post last night like i meant to because it already feels like years ago and parts of it are fuzzy. lesson learned: my memory sucks and/or i suck at blogging and/or i was drugged. since i didn't eat or drink anything there, though, the last one is a little far-fetched.

i did see a friend from school that i haven't seen in years, and i mean years and years. not any high school friend that i graduated with but someone from the years when my cheeks were still super chubby and i was too shy to talk to anyone. it always surprises me when people recognize me slash remember me. i know that sounds really self-deprecating, but like the narrator of the princess bride, i rate high on forgetability. i just don't feel like i make a lasting impression on people, and the fact that most people who do "recognize" me are mistaking me for my younger sister just goes to prove my point. i'm mostly completely okay with it. when someone remembers me from the days where i was making it my personal goal to be the most wallflowerish wallflower in history... well, i find it both shocking and kind of amazingly awesome. 

there was also a point in the ceremony, when they were drawing names for free airplane tickets, where we were all very suddenly evacuated from the building. since that very morning i had been making comments about how the people staying at the hotel must have been freaking out because it was so overrun with saudis, my mind immediately went to either a) someone threatened the room's safety somehow (a history of bomb threats being made to my grade school led to this one) or b) something happened to the hotel and we were all going to be blamed because why wouldn't they blame the congregation of saudis? did you not watch what happened with the boston bombing? anyway, it wasn't long before we were let back in, but i never did find out exactly what happened. some people were speculating that the fire alarm went off again (there was an incident that morning where someone was stupidly smoking in the hotel and set off the fire alarm), but no one could confirm it. i'm a very curious person and would still like to know. 

events like this always fill me with a love/hate thing for saudis (and arabs in general). i mean, on the one hand, i really do think it's great that they can hold on to their culture (while still experiencing the new culture and assimilating without giving up their identity) and everyone seems so genuinely proud of their country and achievements that it's infectious. on the other hand, there are some extremely judgey and stuck up people (like the woman i had never seen before who very openly pointed me out to her friend while whispering something before they proceeded to laugh at me. i mean, who does that?) that make me remember why i never really feel like i fit in with them in the first place. ah, the joys of having a foot in two cultures and never really being fully in either one. 

anyway, it was a fun day overall and now i am off to read. (i have a list of books i'm trying to get through before my family leaves the country, because once they're gone i'm planning on taking a few book-free weeks to really get my novel edited. i doubt i'll get through them all, but here's to hoping.)

*Everything Will Be Alright - The Killers

you've been on my mind

i have this friend who i'll go months without speaking to (actually i have a lot of those. it's kinda sad) and then one day i'll be thinking about her or she'll show up in my dream or something, and next thing i know i have an email in my inbox from her saying that i was on her mind/in her dream. it's really cool. and i haven't seen this girl since i was in tenth grade, but it's always been like this. it's generally in these moments though that i lament the fact that i tend to get so wrapped up in my own life that i withdraw from whatever friends i've managed to keep over the years. i'm too hermit-y for my own good. at these moments i'll decide that i'm just going to stop being such a social recluse and invite everyone over to my house. but then i'll look around at the mess i'd be forced to clean and watch another episode of gilmore girls instead. (the show changes, the laziness never does.) i think my new year resolution is going to be to go back to the time in my life when i actually kept in touch with all of my friends. that should be fun.

you know what isn't fun? probability homework. and calculus that i need to relearn because i cannot for the life of me remember it from that one semester my first year of college. i'm not going to look at any of that until i come back from my meeting this afternoon that will either send me into a panic over my absolute unreadiness to move on in this program or give me a high off the knowledge that i'm actually on track and can do this. i'm planning on going out to buy the new candy corn oreos that i've heard so much about the past couple of days, because i love candy corn and i love flavored oreos, to either console me in my misery or celebrate with in my happiness. i'll let you all know how they are because i'm sure you're dying to know.

*One and Only - Adele

it's a nice day for a white wedding

so last night i went to my friend's wedding and i think that's really all i can say about it without spewing sappiness all over your screens. seriously. suffice it to say that she was a beautiful bride and it was a super fun night. except for the fact that i borrowed my sister's shoes at the last minute which were the perfect height heel and the perfect color but didn't fit quite right and left me with feet still hurting as i type this. but totally worth it. also, when my husband came to pick me up afterwards, he had flip flops with him which was awesome.

oh, and he and i had this conversation about my (sister's) clutch afterwards:
him: how do you fit anything in here? (i had everything from my lipstick and mirror to my phone and excedrin.)
me: magic.
him: it is magic. it's like hermione's bag.
(harry potter references are also awesome.)

but back to the wedding. um... there's really nothing i can say about it that doesn't start with my first impression of her in fifth grade and go on for pages and pages until it ends up at last night. it's one of those times when words fail me because there's just too much to say with too many emotions tangled up in it and too many secrets and inside jokes and too little time and space. and at the end of it, some of you might have missed the point completely, sigh about wasted hours, and move on with your life without understanding the magnitude of last night.

which of course brings to mind the question of: if i had nothing to say about the wedding then why did i mention it in the first place? because i felt that it should be commemorated in this ongoing virtual recording of my life so that years from now i can look back and know that i was there and it meant something.

*White Wedding - Billy Idol

i can tell that we're going to be friends

yesterday i got pulled over by the cops for the very first time in my entire life. i've never even been with someone who's been pulled over before. but there i was, eleven thirty at night, just leaving mason's campus to drive my sister home, and i see the flashing lights come on behind me. my first thought was, "wait... he can't be pulling me over, can he? no of course not." a couple of seconds later, after the realization that we were the only two cars on the road hit, i pulled over. i was tired, cut me some slack. anyway, he comes over to my sister's side of the car, and she rolls down her window. this is how our conversation started:

sister: ooh it's cold.
cop: yeah, the weather's changing again.
sister: i know. it's crazy! i mean, you don't know what kind of shoes you'll need when you wake up in the morning.
cop: *slightly confused laugh* is that the problem with the weather changing, then?
sister: of course!

then he proceeds to tell me that i rolled through a stop sign, and a few minutes later he said that since i had a good record he would let me off with a warning. we then all said bye and good night like we were good friends and i forced myself to wake up for the rest of the drive.

my sister is weird like that, making friends with the randomest of people at the randomest of times. i remember when she called to activate her credit card, she was on the phone forever. when she hung up she started telling me the life story of the dude that was activating her card (i forgot his name), including where how was going for spring break, how long he would stay there, and who he was going with. she was sad that she'd never get to talk to him again because, "he was really cool."

*We're Going to be Friends - The White Stripes

it's kinda funny how life can change, can flip 180 in a matter of days

i still remember what it felt like when my family and i first moved to virginia from california. i was only around ten years old, but i remember feeling like everything was just... weird. the way the schools were all indoor. (my schools in california had classrooms that opened directly to the outside. hallways, for the most part, were under the sky.) the weather was weird. (the few times i had seen snow before moving here were on trips where we drove to see it. it got so much colder and so much hotter here.) the people were weird. (definitely more arabs than i was used to.) i remember the sheer panic that came over me when we heard that we had gotten into isa. i remember that i thought the school was huge (by the time i graduated it was tiny to the point of suffocation). the only way i could find my class in the mornings was by looking for the pink ice skates with our names on them that were outside the door. every morning i would have a few heart stopping seconds when i would think they were taken down and i would never find my classroom, i would be late, i would get in trouble, and someone would probably talk to me in arabic. i remember waiting in dread the entire day as i counted down the minutes for the arabic lesson to come and pass. the days where we had double arabic still fill me with a horrified sense of panic.

but now i've lived in virginia for more than half of my life. the kids in my class that i felt so apart from have become my oldest friends. fifth grade was a long time ago. there's a feeling of being home associated with these familiar streets, with the greenery that drips from some places and is absent from others, with the diversity of people that live here. a feeling that my ten year old self would never have felt was possible. i haven't been back to california since the move, but sometimes i wonder if any feelings of home still linger there. it's funny how much time can change things. i've known some of my friends for thirteen years. thirteen. my younger self changed schools so often that i never thought i'd be one of those people with friendships that spanned decades, but here i am years later, counting down the days to the wedding of the girl that i remember as wearing headbands and glasses and not really liking when i first met.

*One Love - Blue

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

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

time goes by so slowly

yesterday was the longest friday. which i guess was an appropriate way to end what i'm pretty sure was the longest week of my adult life. maybe even the longest week of my entire life. actually, weeks have definitely not been this long since the invention of the internet. maybe not even since the invention of the car. but after i finish the million assignments to do today the week will be officially over.

it is taking all of my will-power to sit here and do my work (i'm waiting for a program to finish installing on my computer so this is not really procrastinating) instead of getting my book from the bedroom and finishing it. i couldn't even bring it with me to the living room because i knew if it was within reach i wouldn't do any work. and seeing as this is the one class that i think i'm really screwed in, i probably should put in the effort. right? right.

speaking of this class (OS security), i took it because i didn't want to take a malware engineering course. since i registered so late, there wasn't much to pick from (plus, i took everything i actually wanted/semi-wanted to take in my last degree). i get into class at seven on wednesday, bored to death from my four:thirty class, and guess what he decides we should learn this semester? malware engineering on computers and phones. which is basically harder than the class i had opted out of to take this one that was easier in the catalog description. stupid professors. stupid luck.

anyway, to take a short break from my school complaints which i'm sure will resume eventually, here are a few links to look at. first, check out these inappropriate answers to test questions/assignments. they're pretty amusing, and most of them are not the cliched "find x. here it is." ones. next, the world's population is expected to hit 7 billion pretty soon. this link shows where you fit in among all the other people. it's pretty cool. i was the 5,106,445,605th person alive on earth, and the 80,068,484,098th person to have lived since history began (i'm not quite sure where these people in history lived before earth). it also shows information about the population growth of the country you live in, what you can expect to see in your lifetime, and other interesting facts. it's definitely worth a look. finally, here's a link to a short story that was written by a college friend of mine way back in my undergrad days. (it's a 99 cent ebook.) i haven't had the chance to read it yet, and haven't read anything he's written in forever, but i'm extremely jealous of him so i thought i'd share.

*Hung Up - Madonna

i don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did

my nails are still orange. i don't know what to do about them. i mean, they're starting to grow out a bit to their normal color, but this is taking forever.

anyway, yesterday i met up with a friend for the biggest failure of a writing session i've ever seen. i wrote just over four hundred words in two plus hours, and he wrote even less. we'll get to actually writing next week. but as a catch-up hang out session it was pretty awesome, if i do say so myself. except for the part where a girl fresh from my old high school decided to complicate my life by forcing me to go out of my way to not see her because she was doing something secretive and she didn't want anyone she "knew" to see her. that doesn't make much sense partly because it needs a whole long, complicated, stupid story to fully make you understand what happened, and partly because, well, it just didn't make any sense.

what i don't think these children realize is that i really couldn't care any less about what they're doing with their lives. i don't know you, and even if i did i still wouldn't care. i mean, honestly, i do not spend my free time judging you or gossiping about you. not because i'm some kind of saint that just doesn't do that stuff, but because you are just not worth it. really. you rate so low on my radar that i'm not even sure you exist. so, seriously, children, stop adding me on facebook just to put me on limited profile. the only reason i accept your request is because i don't want to seem rude. don't run away when i pass you and your group of friends that are not ISA-sanctioned. i don't care who you hang out with. and don't make the mistake of assuming that the things going on in your life make any difference to me whatsoever just because we went to the same school. they don't.

*As Long As You Love Me - Backstreet Boys

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 took the polaroid [poster] down in my room

we're leaving this friday for the desert, and i don't think i could be any less prepared - both mentally and physically. and the days are all starting to bleed into each other until it is just one long, never-ending three:o'clock on a sunday afternoon. i don't even know what to do with myself these days. but i'm not going to get into any of that right now because my main goal in life at the moment is to ignore it (did i ever mention that i suck at the whole goal fulfilling thing?).

anyway, i've been sitting with this post open for two hours and instead of writing anything have been procrastinating on other people's blogs because their lives are so much more appealing to me than my own at the moment. blah. i need to do laundry. i hate doing laundry.

oh, i've also been in a pickle about a poster. see, about five years ago (i can't believe it's been that long!) a friend got me this orlando bloom as will turner poster for my birthday that i went home and tacked to my wall. remember once upon a time when i told you people that i hate closing the curtains because it makes me feel trapped? yeah. because of that issue of mine and the location of the poster, it became a kind of known thing about my house. my sixty or something year old neighbor stopped me one time to say that she loved my poster and always looks up at it when she drives up to her house. a sister of my friend/friend of my sister's used to drive by our house whenever she was in the neighborhood to see it (i'm assuming that she stopped, but i actually don't know 'cause i haven't talked to her in forever). another friend said that she only knows my house because of the poster and if i ever took it down she would have no idea which house was ours. originally, i was planning on leaving it where it is, but there are a few issues with that. a) it's mine, and i want it - even if i don't hang it up - because it was a gift, and b) i think my sister is expecting me to take it. but if i do take it with me, i'd need to get another poster to put there because my wall already looks too empty now and i can't undress all of them. (our walls are, and have always been, covered with posters and maps and pictures and photos and flags and t-shirts and masks and you get the idea.) so, should i take the poster with me and get something else to put there? or do i leave the poster where it is? or should i just leave another empty space on the wall to speak of my absence?

*Tire Swing - Kimya Dawson

maybe you're crazy

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

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

*Crazy - Gnarls Barkley

i want you to keep everything

it's amazing what you find when you clean your room. really clean it, not just doing the top three-quarters of the mess. it's what slips into that last quarter among the piles of batteries that may or may not be dead and old pens that are missing their caps that can really surprise you. uncovering all the hidden reminders of days so long past that the memories are fading can really put into light just how much you've changed over the years. i've been living in this room for almost a decade, give or take a year or two, so there are many years worth of stuff piled up in here. i'm a pretty sentimental person, and end up keeping a lot of junk most people would throw away. i am also a major pack rat (a characteristic i like to pretend i don't have) which means even more stuff. going through it all was just... weird.

for example, in a pile of old papers from high school (including every math test from tenth grade forward. even i had to raise an eyebrow at that one) i found this math packet that was half solved by me and half solved by this kid i used to have the biggest crush on for years. he had filled it out one day on the bus in a confusing, rather pointless story that i'm not gonna write out here. but anyway, i haven't seen this kid since our graduation in 'oh six (actually, i think i might have seen him on campus a couple of weeks ago but i'm not sure) or really talked to him aside from a couple of facebook messages a year or so back. i kept a packet just because it had his writing on it, i could pick him out of a crowd from a mile away, and now he's just not in my life at all. and i don't even notice his absence. like a lot of people i used to know. a lot of high school memories were surfacing today. 

i also realized that i suck at sending cards. i have an entire pile of thank you and get well cards, signed with little notes in addressed envelopes, that i just never got around to sending. talk about a waste of money. i can't even remember when some of them are from but judging from my handwriting they are nowhere near recent.

oh, and looking at how my handwriting has changed on all the papers was interesting. the fact that i had handwritten essays in junior year surprised me too. so did finding a paper that didn't make me want to scratch my eyes out by rereading it. that rarely happens. (there's this essay i wrote junior year of high school on gone with the wind that i was obsessed with. i thought it was the greatest thing ever written. i can't even look at it now without wanting to take a red pen to it.)

there were magazines i had saved because of some actor/actress/singer on the cover that i couldn't care any less about now.

there were things i had lost years ago like my mini stapler from my freshman year at college and the silly putty i bought for my brothers when they were four and five. they are now nine and ten. i found my high school diploma and tons of old hallmark cards, some not even for me. 

and i kept every. single. thing any kid ever drew me. i have tons of stuff from my brothers from over the years, but also drawings and notes from the kids i used to substitute for and girls on my bus. it's crazy. 

there were lists of songs i had wanted to download, half of them i never got around to, and statements from my old bank that doesn't even exist anymore. 

there's just so much stuff and it's taking forever to get through it all because i have to stop and read everything. 

*I Want You to Keep Everything - These United States

why do i keep counting?

since i'm pretty sure i haven't done one of these in a while, here's my life in numbers at the moment because i am sick and can't think straight enough to write a flowing post:

by the way, this post was written from the bottom up so if it doesn't quite make sense, that's why. i didn't realize there might be a problem with that until it was too late to stop.

10- half of the time i spent trying to think up something to write for number ten (this means i thought for twenty minutes). the few thoughts i have at the moment keep being drawn to the tv with every exclamation from my sister and "oww" from my sister's phone. (or, you know, her friend who's on speaker. either one.)

9- the number of times the word "please" was said in the last ten seconds. to get this to stop, i just agreed to play video games. i do not like video games. i have turned sucking at them into an art form, and i get way too frustrated. ash, this is all your fault. (so i played, reached a record level of suckage, ash gave out false shouts of encouragement (as if saying i'm "actually good" will make me suck less) and i lost every. single. time.)

8- the number of days it's been since i hurt my toe. my sister just said, loudly, "fat princess?!?!" and my train of thought has been derailed. her plus video games is really distracting. when we were little, she was often banned from playing video games because she would get too aggressive. now, there's no one to ban her. this has nothing to do with the number eight, but i really can't do much about that.

7- the number of things on my to-do list that i am currently ignoring to write this post and make fun of my sister as she sucks badly in modnation racer or whatever it's called with her friend. after weeks and weeks of stressing over it, she finally chose a username thingie and set up her online account for the ps3 network? as you can see, me and video games are not really the best of friends. but she's racing against her friend, and she sucks.

6- the number of books that are crowding my bed, not counting the two moleskine notebooks or the kobo (who, by the way, is named jj). i would move them, but there's really no space for them to go.

5- the number of months left until i am married.

4- about the number of weeks its been since "sleeping in" meant later than six:thirty. i have been watching way too much ben 10 and nineties reruns every morning.

3- the number of days until my homework is due. i have been talking about it/ridiculing the instructions for three weeks.

2- roughly the number of weeks left until my sister moves across the world. saddest part, she's taking her sons with her.

1- the number of classes left after this semester until i am officially a master of science.

*Why Do I Keep Counting? - The Killers

we think the same things at the same time

i have a friend that lives on the other side of the world. what with her rarely going online to do anything and me rarely calling people, we often lose touch with each other for stretches of time. but one of us will always initiate contact after a while and we can talk like we had just met up for lunch the day before. there's none of that awkward "wow so much time has passed there's really nothing to talk to you about" kind of stuff. anyway, i haven't spoken to the girl in months. i'm not sure exactly how long it was, but definitely before i graduated in the spring.

last night, she suddenly shows up in my dream. it was a weird dream that i only remember bits and parts of with us starting out at some warped version of my old high school and ending up at what i'm guessing is the airport in riyadh, though since i've never been there i wouldn't really know. i wake up and decide that i should email her. first i go do the brothers breakfast/get them on the bus morning ritual thing. then i watch tv in a tired daze till nine. i go online half an hour ago and guess who i have an email from? if you were guessing anyone other than my friend, well, then i really don't think you're getting the point here and maybe you should go read something else.

so i see the email from her, think haha weird, and open it. that's when it got really weird. you know what she said in the email? that i was in her dream so she decided to see what's been happening in my life. apparently in her dream we were at ISA (my old school) but decided to ditch and go to her house. not the house she used to live in here, though. no her house across the world. but when we got off the plane, we ended up just hanging around the airport. in riyadh. and is that not the weirdest thing you have ever heard?

it looks like me, in my bed here in virginia, and her, all the way on the other side of the world, had the same dream. or at least really, really similar ones. weird, right? but also kindasortareally cool. i don't think i've ever had the same dream as someone else. i didn't actually think it was possible. but who knows? maybe i'm dreaming the same things as you every night but since we never discussed our dreams we never knew? yeah, probably not.

*Harrowdown Hill - Thom Yorke