Thursday, December 30, 2004 I don't know why she says the things she does
Good evening, internet. After I last posted, the cat began saying "Enron! Enron!" in urgent tones. Then she went to take a whiz in the bathtub. I had that sandwich I talked about, too.
I also did some research and found Sarvodaya, an organization that's been active in Sri Lanka for years. The organization does a lot of different things, but in the case of the tsunami victims, they're in a special position to help, because someone has to distribute the aid that other organizations collect, and this organization knows the country and the people. (I'm not just basing this off of their homepage, but I got this information from various links that I didn't save. You can e-mail me if you're interested in more information, and I'll try to find them again. Or, you know, google.)
Whenever I give money to anyone or anything, I freak out in two directions, because I feel like I could have given more, and I'm afraid I've given too much and will screw myself if anything I didn't budget for happens in the next few months. That's crazy talk, though. What could possibly go wrong?
posted by Frenz | 12/30/2004 08:08:00 PM
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morale
Ever since I got back to my empty house in Baltimore, the cat has been all excited. She likes having someone around to yell at. "Lagniappe!" she says. "Morale. Peru."
"Who's the kitty?" I say, and she walks away, insulted.
Ho ho ho. Sri Lanka. How about that, huh? I just gave a little bit of money to Doctors Without Borders, and I can't say that I feel 100% better. I wish I could do more, but "Say it with cash" seems to be an acceptable policy. Maybe people could institute something like a "swear jar" system. If you ever have the urge to pray about a disaster, or to say that it's really sad, you should put a dollar or two in a jar, and then mail it off every couple months.
I wasn't going to write about the tsunamis on here at all, because it seemed pretty cheap. Like, your town just got washed away and you can't find your family, but, oh, thank God, the bloggers are all paying lipservice to being upset about your plight. Livejournal is behind you, too, Asia. Godspeed. Mainly, I wanted to post that link.
For lunch, I think I'm going to have a sandwich. posted by Frenz | 12/30/2004 03:29:00 PM
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Monday, December 27, 2004 area dog dumb as hell, awesome
My favorite parts about visting my parents' house are: their pets, and also the way that when I come home to visit, it's apparently OK for me to be drunk all the time now. I'm not, but if I'd accepted every adult beverage offered me since I woke up this morning, I'd be just about comatose by now. Silver bells. Silver bells.
I go back to Baltimore tomorrow. I'll be staying in an empty house until my housemates get back from tour or our new housemate moves in, whichever comes first. I want several thousand people to move into my house. I'm serious. I'd rent out the closets, the vestibule, and the dryer, if it were up to me. My rent would be, like, a dollar, and I would never be bored.
posted by Frenz | 12/27/2004 09:17:00 PM
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Sunday, December 26, 2004 weak, weak, weak
The other day I was at the mall with one of my housemates, who was doing a last little bit of Christmas shopping. We went to the calendar store and bought a calendar with kittens on it. The saleswoman tried to get us one with just twelve kittens (one per month), but we said, "No." We require a kitten a day.
The kittens are adorable. It's a good sign for 2005.
I would like to balance this out with something really badass, but igotnothing.com, at least not in the recent past.
This was a good Christmas. My family was shocked that I'd gotten them gifts, but they got over it. I kept pretending that it was just a coincidence that I'd gotten them all gifts at once on a day that happened to be a holiday.
Later, my parents' cat got upset and started attacking the sweater I'd gotten for my father. Kitties can't handle Christmas, either.
Shit. That was totally about kitties. I can't win. posted by Frenz | 12/26/2004 10:17:00 PM
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Saturday, December 25, 2004 A Christmas non-miracle, now with obvious science joke
When I found out that my mother had given some of my mangled old plastic horses to Goodwill, several things went through my head:
*I deserved this for singing along so enthusiastically to that Tuscadero song about parents throwing out beloved childhood possessions.
*Why would poor children want my janky ol' broken horses?
*Wasn't it bad enough that the poor had claimed my My Little Pony brand ponies years ago? Couldn't our family withhold some variety of toy horse from the underpriveleged?
*Why? Why go after my plastic horses when there are, for example, rotting hip waders that have not been touched in 18 years hanging in the garage?
I got worried and upset and wanted to know which ones she'd given away. She did her best to tell me, and I was a little bit relieved. I think she may have gotten rid of some of the plastic horses that I didn't love as much as the others. "I guess I could just look," I said.
"No, don't," she said.
Now I have Schrodinger's Breyer horses.
posted by Frenz | 12/25/2004 01:53:00 AM
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Thursday, December 23, 2004 Oh, that was well-advised
Yeah, how about that. A post about feelings and emotions: just what you need internet. God, I'm sorry. That was really thoughtless of me.
In the future, I'll keep it to humorous stories about street people, or I'll remind you about what I may have eaten in a given day.
(Tonight it was Chinese food!)
posted by Frenz | 12/23/2004 11:47:00 PM
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non-blue Christmas
This year, the crazy hasn't come yet, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because I'm not fighting with my family or doing even a little bit of living in a car, or maybe my heart is three sizes too big, but so far, so good. I usually get that ol' seasonal affective disorder stuff like DAMN. This year, I'm just a little bit meaner than usual, but that's it. Sure, I want to say hurtful things to innocent and well-meaning people, but the exciting part is that this year I'm in a good enough mood that I can bite my tongue and not say those things outloud. (I have some examples here: "Grow up." "Give me a fucking break." "Get bent." Aren't those hurtful? It is so kind of me not to say them.)
I think walking to work and back a few times a week has helped a lot, and I think the light exposure I get when I go outside at lunchtime does more than I was hoping it would.
I can hear church bells (or a reasonable facsimile) playing Christmas carols right now, and because mine is a household that does not turn off our outdoor Christmas lights, I can see them glowing red and trashy out in the yard.
Whenever I'm in a good mood for more than a few weeks at a time, I feel like there's something or someone hiding behind some doorway in my immediate future, just waiting to rabbit punch me when I least expect it, but duh. That's always there. I'm just basking in the feeling of being able to pick up the phone and place a pizza order without my heart racing and my hands sweating. I'm also enjoying holiday baked goods.
Perhaps the rabbit punch will be that obesity I'm always talking about.
Whatevs. I have so much tinsel in my home. I will just weave festive new tinsel pants when I outgrow my regular ones.
posted by Frenz | 12/23/2004 01:12:00 PM
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Tuesday, December 21, 2004 skip a day
One night this weekend I didn't sleep, because it turned out to be inconvenient to do so. Sometimes I wish I felt comfortable writing about my whole stupid life in my internet diary here, because I have been doing all kinds of crazy crap that's hilarious, but you know, I don't think I'll write about it. Maybe later.
I will say that I accidentally got caught up in this rowdy-ass bunch of carollers on the way home. There was nobody home at this one house, and they all started talking about how they should break in the back. I was like, "DAMN!"
Lies: I was actually like, "--" and I crossed the street and walked home fast. I don't interact with the poor people I meet on the way home, and I can't see any reason to interact with the well-heeled. Probably all full of mulled wine and spoiling for an earnest debate. No thnx, you damn weirdos. posted by Frenz | 12/21/2004 10:51:00 PM
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Friday, December 17, 2004 Attention, talent scouts
I got a haircut the other day, and somebody told me I look like I'm on a teen drama. Let's not waste this opportunity, Hollywood. Let's make this happen.
I worry about being discovered in other ways. I foolishly named my workplace in my comment's section the other day, and damn yes it shows up on google (I deleted that thread, but google doesn't know that yet). I haven't had anything incriminating to say on here for a long time, and never anything incriminating about that workplace. Nonethelss: I don't know if I want co-workers and clients to have access to information about what I ate for lunch on a given day or the funny thing one of my roommates said once.
I think maybe I'm just sneaky. Once when I was in highschool, I hid an entire boyfriend from my parents for over a year, although in hindsight I suspect that it was not the particular boyfriend who they would have preferred ultimately for me to have hidden.
I don't know what I'd write about if I didn't write about one job or another. If I'm not careful I'm going to have to revive my all Laura Ingalls Wilder, all the time format. posted by Frenz | 12/17/2004 01:18:00 AM
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Thursday, December 16, 2004 Five people you meet on the way to work:
*The friendly dog walker
*The dog walker who scowls at you for no reason
*The art kid who looks at you all weird
*Your boyfriend at the parking garage who tries to keep the thread of the conversation going from one day to the next, no matter how quickly you walk past
* Mr. Mumblesmuch posted by Frenz | 12/16/2004 01:37:00 AM
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Monday, December 13, 2004 Don't they know it's Christmas?
Silver bells. Silver bells. Where does one purchase mistletoe?* I've tried the grocery store and the other grocery store and a couple of people selling wreaths out of the trunks of their cars, and still nothing. I need it. How else does one make a holiday social gathering awkward as hell? (I have thought of a lot of ways and implemented several of them, but I want people to be like, "Damn, she thought of everything. Damn, damn, DAMN.")
If I knew a little bit more about botany, I could hunt for misteltoe the old fashioned way. Family lore has it that when my parents had just moved out to Irrelvant County, VA many years ago, my mother's father came to visit. He left the civilized country of their trailer and dirt yard and ventured out into the surrounding woods. Soon, you heard him getting ready to decorate. BLAM! BLAM!
He was shooting the mistletoe out of the treetops with a shotgun.** I don't know that I could recognize mistletoe in the wild, even if I did happen to be strapped. Still, this story is proof that I come from a line of people who are willing to use deadly force to get people in the holiday mood.
*My sister just told me I can get fake mistletoe at Target, but I want the real deal. Poisonous plants and kissin'. So good.
**Bang. What's up with that thang?***
***I did not want to write this, but my inner jerk won out, like always. The part that kills me is that I know that including this line will make me cringe when I go back and read over this later on, and yet I'm doing it nonetheless. What's with me, anyway?
posted by Frenz | 12/13/2004 05:20:00 PM
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wind
The wind blew so hard this morning that I nearly fell over on the way to work.
Here is something else that blew so hard: the telemarketing call that woke me up this morning an half hour before I was originally scheduled to get up.
posted by Frenz | 12/13/2004 01:40:00 PM
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Friday, December 10, 2004 with my big, filthy hands
Thanks to awesome genetics, I'm expecting my first gray hairs in a couple of years, and I don't want them to be a surprise. I do everything I can in order to promote personal gray-preparedness: staring at myself in mirrors, furtively checking tinted car windows as I pass by them (bonus: there might be famous people in there somewhere!), and unannounced spot checks.
Just now I was running my fingers through my hair, then inspecting the stray loosies I caught, and I realized I was in public.
I'm not just in public. I'm at work, at the job where I have computer access and I rarely hear people cuss.
I've gotten used to hair. I deal with pounds and pounds of the hair of others every day, and while my role in the hair cycle is generally relegated to hair disposal, sometimes people come into my one job and ask me questions that require me to stare at their scalps. My co-workers routinely do each other's hair when there's a lull in business, and if I get up from my desk, walk over to one of the room's many mirrors, and just start fooling with my hair, nobody says a damn thing about it.
Hair is our weather, the conversational topic that can provoke strong emotions but little real controversy and passes the time pleasantly.
So:
There's really no reason that it should have occurred to me that sitting here and pulling out my hair and looking at it is gross.
Am I right? posted by Frenz | 12/10/2004 03:36:00 PM
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Thursday, December 09, 2004 might as well be wearing a trenchcoat
A few minutes ago, once it had become clear that my two o'clock student wasn't going to show up, I wandered around a little, but wandered back up to this cubicle pretty quickly, because there were all these hanging around in groups. I knew most of them enough to recognize but not enough to begin a conversation with.
I've met most of them through one of my housemates, and I don't think most of them realize I work here, although they know I am not a student. They just think I'm skulking around impersonating a student for my own creepy purposes. In hindsight, ducking away when I see them probably doesn't help. posted by Frenz | 12/09/2004 02:37:00 PM
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Wednesday, December 08, 2004 on his feets uneven
Last year I described the holiday mood as "poverty", but thanks to an early Christmas miracle, I've been able to get so much work this week. My tutoring job at the writing center of a local college is really taking off, because everyone's final papers are about to be due. It's really nice, especially because I broke the hell out of one of my teeth last night. Bar fight, as usual.
No.
I grind my teeth like a monster while I sleep, and even if I don't feel like I'm particularly stressed during the day, I know I am when usually solid physical parts of myself start to crack and wear down.
It's weird, because I've had that "good at life" feeling for most of this week: even when tutoring is bad, it's not very bad at all, and when it's good, I feel like maybe I haven't just spent a lot of money and a lot of time effing around and collecting trivia. I like helping people write, even if they don't want to write and are just there because a professor has forced the person to come.
I like finding grammatical errors and correcting them. I like it when people thank me.
People thank me at my other job, too, but there I usually fight the urge to say "I didn't do anything. I made you an appoinment. That's nopt so hard. Koko the gorilla could probably do that. Jesus." (That would in ingracious.)
On the other hand, my other job gets me deeply discounted hair products, and tutoring gives me zero hair products.
posted by Frenz | 12/08/2004 04:45:00 PM
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silver bells
You know the difference between me and everyone else in the damn world with a web presence? I don't get all upset about Christmastime. I kind of like it. Christmas songs are catchy and fun to sing, and sometimes I just can't help it. I'll find myself humming on the street. Silver bells. Silver bells. I'm not sure if this makes me more or less approachable. So far it seems to have made no difference, although in this holiday season that more people are inclined to need change for the bus than they are to get me to make some time to date them.
City sidewalks, busy sidewalks. I think I just like colored lights and rich food. posted by Frenz | 12/08/2004 11:11:00 AM
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Tuesday, December 07, 2004 the cattle are lowing
Some people were trying to teach me how to shoot pool the other night, and it was so hard. i tried talking tough, but that didn't help much.
posted by Frenz | 12/07/2004 01:46:00 PM
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Accident report
My ears are ringing. I think I ate too much baklava. My nails require attention. The cat is peeing on somebody else's bed now. I think that means we're divorced. posted by Frenz | 12/07/2004 11:41:00 AM
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Sunday, December 05, 2004 with a bullet
Parking: Everyone missed their haircut appointments today, because all the meters on the major street nearest the beauty parlor were inexplicably shut down for the day. Everyone got upset! Still, a few haircuts were accomplished.
Houseplants: Every day, in every way, I get closer to my goal of having a huge number of spiderplants. I break off the little spiders when no one is looking, and I plant them in junky old containers in my room. So far, so good. It makes it look like I forgot to weed my nightstand.
Entertainment: I hear that the hot new DVD in Baltimore is a film called Stop Fucking Snitching. It is a public service announcement from a group of concerned West Baltimore drug dealers. It is intended to raise public awareness of the unhealthy consequences of telling the cops a damn thing. A DVD! Was it Margaret Meade who said the thing about a small group of thoughtful people changing the world?
posted by Frenz | 12/05/2004 04:01:00 AM
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Wednesday, December 01, 2004 Daily inspiration
God never gives you more cold rain than you can handle. God never allows you to miss a bus. God never allows the next bus to speed past because you were waiting in the bus shelter and obviously didn't want it bad enough. God never allows the "next stop" button on the bus that finally, grudgingly picks you up to be broken so that you go past your stop and have to walk home in the weather like some kind of animal.
Instead, God gives you Ikea. This must be the case, because you do not buy Ikea, not out of some kind of Fight-Clubby objection to 20-something nesting patterns, but rather because Ikea is a little out of your league. (Your league is the stolen milkcrates league. You play the sandy mattress on the floor league in the world series of crap.)
God gives you Ikea through your housemate's relatives who no longer wish to own shabby items of furniture. God gives you Ikea in the alleys near your home, by way of wasteful art students. God gives you Ikea when you least expect it: you have to open your heart to Ikea.
How do you repay God? By laughing when the cat is mad that it's raining. By eating cake for breakfast. By leaving the breakroom door open when you know people are cussin'.
God is very disappointed in you. posted by Frenz | 12/01/2004 08:41:00 PM
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