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

kristy, are you doing okay?

see the problem with reading so much and having an overactive imagination is that, well... you have an overactive imagination and millions of stories to feed it.

you probably know by now that i live in an apartment (that i simultaneously love and hate with all my heart). you may or may not know that i live on the top floor and therefore do not have to deal with things like heavy-footed dancing elephant owners marching on my head day in and day out, which is good because the thin walls/floors/whatever is a common complaint i hear about the apartments i live in. the only time i was really, seriously annoyed by it, though, was when my neighbor bought a new puppy and it barked all. day. long. and all night, too. but i digress. occasionally, i will hear banging from the apartment below us. i never pay any attention to it and rarely even notice it anymore, but the other night i did.

i had just finished my nightly ritual of checking on my clan and playing candy crush when i heard banging, like someone hammering a nail into the wall or knocking really loudly. my mind immediately supplied me with the scene from room (if you haven't read this, then i highly recommend it) where the kidnapped lady and her son stand on her bed and scream at the top of their lungs (the kid thinks it's a game) to try and get someone to notice and rescue them. she also used to turn the lights on and off in the middle of the night to try and get attention. suddenly, i was sure that there was someone trapped in the apartment below me. of course, you can't really do much when all your evidence of a wrongdoing is that it kindasortamaybe reminds you of something that happened in a book. (and that got me to thinking about all the times that people do normal things as a cry for help that are ignored because, well, you're not just going to try and get every person you see arrested on the off-chance that something bad is going on.)

around thanksgiving, there was a watermelon with a small triangle cut out of it left outside of the door of this same apartment. for a month. it was really, really weird. and because i am kind of a creeper, here is a picture of it (cropped in case there are potential stalkers reading this):

it was just there. day after day, week after week. and then one day, it wasn't. 

after the bang in the night that set off my imagination, i realized that there must have been a message for help hidden in there and the kidnapper realized that and took it away i totally missed my chance to save my neighbor and/or her victim. (except, i really didn't miss anything. i peeked into that watermelon as i passed it every single day and watched as it slowly rotted and bugs started to live in it.)

anyway.

neighbor, if you'reading this, i'm sorry i'm creepy and took a picture of your watermelon, but you have to understand, it was really weird. (i also have one taken three weeks after this. i'm sorry for that one too.) i'm also sorry if you are being held captive and i am blogging about it instead of helping. 

kidnapper (hopefully you are not my neighbor because if you are then you put on a very friendly and considerate facade and you are actually my favorite in the building and i'd hate for my favorite neighbor to be evil), if you are reading this then you should know that i'm totally on to you. also, you make really bad choices in places to keep your victims. thin walls, dude. unless you chose this place precisely for that reason because you know that people will just write off any weird noises to normal life. in which case, you're really smart and kinda scary. 

readers, i haven't slept in a while (which is why i'm choosing to stick with that line for the title even though i'm sure another line in the song could be better. i'm just too lazy to google the lyrics and this popped in my head, and well, there you have it). we (my husband and i) are thinking of buying and moving to our first house and good god is this stressful. (i'm probably making it even more stressful than it has to be because that is what i do.) i was doing really well with the blogging regularly thing for a while, too. i was going to write an entire post about this whole house thing, but then i decided not to. this little note is the compromise. 

*Kristy, Are You Doing Okay? - The Offspring

i'm living in a tree house

my husband watches things on tv that i would never turn to on my own but that i find strangely addicting once i start watching them. one of these shows is on the animal channel about some guy named pete who builds tree houses. and not just any tree houses, but really, really cool ones with electricity and running water and plumbing and lofts and fireplaces and guest rooms and garden roofs. they are amazing. of course, they are also crazy expensive. they'll get a call in the beginning of the episode about "potential clients willing to spend up to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars" and i'm just like, what? how do you people just have that much money sitting around to be spent on a tree house?

i'm pretty sure that all kids grow up wanting a tree house. at least, my sisters and i did. really, really badly. but we either lived in townhouses, or houses without big enough yards, or houses with big yards and no good tree-housey trees, or houses that we left before we could ever build one. basically, we never got the tree house. i'm not sure about my sisters, but i never really stopped wanting one. i'm not sitting around actively longing for one or anything, but the desire is still there in the back of my mind. just waiting for the right moment to surface completely.

and this show feeds that desire endlessly.

i have this thing where i'm always saying "one day when i'm rich and famous i'll..." (i remember writing a post about it but when i went to link it here i realized that i never actually posted it. probably one of those times when i couldn't think of a title and decided to come back later in the day when i thought of one but then forgot about the post completely. i'm not going to copy paste it here because it wouldn't really fit, but it includes things like having a house on the beach with huge windows and high ceilings and window seats, hiring someone to hold my book and turn the pages when i'm knitting, hiring someone to talk on the phone for me whenever i'm feeling particularly phone-phobic, having a private plane... stuff like that.) my new addition to my rich and famous list is a tree house. a pete tree house.

i'm going to have a tree house library. all of my books lining the walls of a space where i can read in the branches of a tree. doesn't that sound fantastic? there will also be a little writing area because if i'm rich and famous i will probably be some totally awesome author and need a place to write my totally awesome books. and what better place than hiding in leaves with the squirrels and birds? of course, my tree house will also have to have somewhere to hoard my junk food and maybe also a bed because i would obviously want to live in it. i mean, really, i don't understand how i've lived my life so far without this. i don't know how anyone lives their lives without a tree house.

when you're rich and famous, what will your tree house look like?

*Treehouse - Nada Surf

well, if you really needed numbers

i started writing today and it seemed like a lot of really short, disjointed ideas so i decided to do a "my life in numbers" post because i cannot even remember the last time i wrote one. (it is always surprising to me how hard it to is to fill in all of these numbers. every. single. time.)

10- the number of minutes i still need to fill with inspiring speechy words before the orientation tomorrow morning. i may end up just winging it.

9- the time i woke up today for good. (after i turned off my alarms at seven and eight.) i wanted to stay asleep longer to finish my dream, but my sister texted me and we all know that dreams do not always do what we want them to.

8- the number of tabs i have open in this browser window. they are: gmail, blogger, hotmail, facebook, youtube, etsy, some university's english department's page that has a poem i keep meaning to read, and usps.com.

7- the number of ceramic pieces that i have sitting on my coffee table right now. i keep making more and there is just no more room for them in my tiny apartment. they are: a basket, an oval tray thingie with handles, an oval tray thingie without handles, a rectangular tray thingie with butterflies, a vase with swirls on it, a vase shaped like a tree, and a box that looks like two ice cream sandwiches stacked on top of each other. i promise you they are nicer than they sound.

6- the number of family-size boxes of applejacks i have sitting in my apartment mocking me. i got them because my cousin said he wanted and was having trouble ordering them. he failed to tell me that the trouble he had was customs saying he wasn't allowed to bring them into the country until after i bought them. i was then told not to mail them (because they might be taken) but to send them with someone who was travelling there. i bought them in the middle of july if that tells you anything about how well-thought-through this plan was. i'm never going to try and be nice to family again.

5- the number of lives i just lost in candy crush trying to get past this level. this game is crack, guys. i seriously have a problem. sometimes at night i'll steal my husband's phone to play on his if i've already gone through all of my lives.

4- the number of school-related people that have decided to remind me this week that the vacation is nearly over.

3- the number of weeks i have been saying that i need to go jeans shopping. i'm going today, though, i swear. i need a pair that actually fits for the start of the semester. but i really hate shopping for jeans.

2- the number of hours it's been since i woke up from a really weird dream - that i only remember bits and pieces of, but that i wished i held on to better - and i still have this weird feeling hanging over me that does not seem to want to let up. at all. i really wish i could remember the finer details because it might make a really good story, and oh my god i'm so cliche.

1- the number of fingers i sliced yesterday in a moment of stupidity when i was absentmindedly cleaning dried clay off of a knife's blade. it still stings. (related: pottery started back up yesterday. yay!)

*Numbers - JoJo

it's not about the money, money, money

the polar vertex left behind amazing weather, you guys. it's so beautiful outside. totally not winter weather (i'm still holding out for a good snow) but still super beautiful.

along with the pretty weather, though, comes the reminder that spring semester is just around the corner. the emails about pre-semester meetings have already started rolling in. i have a ta meeting, an orientation (where i have a speech to give), and a tour/meet-and-greet on thursday. this thursday. bye bye vacation. 

speaking of school, at the end of last semester, mason sent me a lovely check for fifteen hundred dollars. since i have a scholarship that pays for my tuition and i had two campus jobs that each paid part of my tuition, i had some money left over in my student account. i wasn't expecting any money (since the two jobs said they wouldn't pay my tuition since i had a scholarship) so it was a really awesome surprise. and then today mason called me and said that they weren't supposed to give me any money and could i please pay them fifteen hundred dollars before they put my account on hold. so i did. it was decidedly less awesome than getting the money. and the lady was acting like i stole it. "i noticed that you already deposited the check," she said in the most accusatory tone she could manage. uh you mean the check written out to me a month ago? that you guys sent? that i thought was for me? yeah, i guess i did. 

*Price Tag - Jessie J