Goodbye 2011

Well 2011, it's been...fun.

But now, with a little too much glee perhaps, it's time to say goodbye. I'm done with you. I'm moving on to bigger and better things. To a year less...dramatic. To good things. To happiness and ridiculousness and adventures.

It seems only fitting to leave on an epic note, and so, with that, today's song of the day is Dragonforce.



I'll see you all around the bend.
Love and Stuff,
Goose and LittleFoot.

Friday

Friday was a miserable day. Just one of those days when I should have stayed in bed. Things started to unravel from the beginning, culminating with me throwing my (live) paycheck into the hospitals trash compactor and compacting it before realizing my mistake. Yeah. I totally had to climb in there and dig it out. Which was lame.

But like all days it ended. The sun came up today. And everything is okay.

I've spent the last 24 hours or so trying desperately to get some videos uploaded to youtube for you of the fish tanks. Clearly youtube is an impossible monster. One which is not easily defeated. I have uploaded 3, yes, THREE videos in 24 hours. BAH! But fear not Dear Friend, persistence is a quality I have in spades, and I am not nearly about to give up!

Lots of love!

Song of the Day for Thursday!

Song of the Day for Wednesday!

Heavens : Patent Pending



Bring your bored, bring your broken hearted
Got a vessel that we've chartered
Into the wide open sea
The two of us dearly departed

Bring a book with a happy ending
a remix of the message sending
Shining clean, this guillotine
New and improved
Patent pending

Place a curse on the hearse we're driving
Cut the brake lines, and the dying
Glad to be traumatically
Against the ropes, lost all hope trying
Finding ways to break the silence
And to quench our taste for violence
Shadow free monstrosities
Crafting the fine art of patience.

Reading lists.

So ASU is hosting a book collection competition which I feel compelled to enter. It's free and first prize is $600. Seems to me that this is the universe's way of validating my ever growing personal library.

Problem is the breadth of said collection makes it difficult to define.

Quite frankly I'm struggling to find any sort of cohesive element aside from a general 'fiction' or 'literature' which seems a little vague. Or possibly 'post-modern lit' which is vaguer still but probably a better fit for much of it, but forces me to leave out authors I love (Carsten Jensen, Tolstoy) and leaves the whole mess feeling rather unrepresentative of me.

See, this is where my issues with specificity become so damn apparent. I have a really REALLY hard time defining what I like because I like EVERYTHING (except Vonnegut, of course) and more than that, I crave variety. Require it really. I'm easily bored, I loathe repetition, and I can't read books by the same author in sequence.

SO I guess the question then becomes, if you were to categorize my taste in books, how would YOU do it?

Lots of love Dear Friend, hope you're holidays were at least tolerable, and that this coming year is better than the last. <3

Oi.

I just spent the last 3 hours frantically calling my dad (like, every 6 minutes), totally paranoid out of my brain that he was sick/hurt/dead (TOC is out of town). He's fine. Left his phone at work.

See now, this is what happens when Dad spends all his time talking to me about how short life is and living for the moment, and how he could die at any moment. (We've had a spate of recent deaths among friends and family. We're all a little off our game).

I go all wonky every time he doesn't immediately pick up his phone and sit at home teetering somewhere between having a total breakdown and doing the 'rational' thing and calling the police.

Sheesh.
I need a chill pill.
For serious.

Song of the DAYYYYYYYYYYYY:

(addendum: clearly I don't follow up on Goose's song of the day posts since I clearly just posted the same song she did the day before. OOOPS! So here's a new song...one that's not a duplicate. Lol.)



Also, Goose, I MAY have uploaded my entire Sarina Paris CD to your ipod...also possibly Ultimate Dance Party 2000... :P
Enjoy!

Wait. What happened to winter break?

Well classes officially start up again next Thursday, which seems somehow...unfair. Don't get me wrong. I love school, and I fear that I will be permanently lost without it when I leave, but two short weeks somehow seems not nearly long enough to recover from the previous semester.

I know that at least my brand of finals-fatigue is self prophesied. I know that TECHNICALLY I could do a lighter, one could argue more reasonable, load each semester. But when I'm not challenged, really, really challenged, when I'm not scrambling to keep up, to claw some kernel of knowledge out of the mess that is higher education, I falter. I fail to do much of anything. I look at how little is asked of me and I ask myself what's the point? Why bother? And then I don't. Bother that is. In fact, I don't do much of anything. I just sort of drift through the semester. Bored and listless. Indifferent to my nosediving GPA.

At this point though, I've had enough apathetic semesters to be able to write the book on the link between boredom and poor marks so I'm doing things my own way. I have hellishly impossible semesters. Tandem semesters really. I take classes I think I'll never be able to pass, and lots of them, and I flourish.

But by the time I've stumbled out of the jungle that is finals I'm exhausted. Physically and mentally fatigued and in need of a good long nap. Possibly a small hibernation. All I want is chocolate, possibly some cake, and a cozy bed...for a month or so. Long enough for me to be able to speak in coherent sentences not just the me-want-num-nums kind of caveman talk I find myself babbling around the time I'm polishing off my last research paper.

Two, maybe three-ish weeks is not what I had in mind. It certainly wasn't something I had anticipated, at least not far enough in advance. But I'll live.

More than that, I'm going to demolish this semester in spite of it.



Oh, one more thing...
Did I tell you I had a religions class in there? Something reading intensive but still kind of soft?
Yeah, I ditched that in favor of a course on the history of technology and social thought. :p

Song of the Day!

song of the day! From Goose!

Soooo I've come to the conclusion that LittleFoots blog needed an awesome Japanese Metal song of the day so I bring you Dir en Grey.. They're pretty freakin sweet. Also if you want to see a creepy ass video by them look up Obscure (uncensored), I was going to post it but its pretty bad in both a bad way and a good way. Watch it at your own risk and don't blame me for the man in the mask and his weird mechanical junk. Thats it I suppose.

Goose.

Song of the Day!

I suppose one can't avoid Christmas songs forever. Well, maybe I could, but it seems like it would be a lot of hard work. . . and I'm feeling kind of lazy. So here's this one.

NUFAN Cover:




Original :

song of the day! From Goose. Again :)

A Slipknot song was way over due.
You're welcome. :)

Song of the day! From Goose.

This was my all time favorite band until they kicked out their lead singer... Now they suck! I'm still a bit bitter.

Songs for the Days!

Crossing the River Styx...I am totally in love with this song today. Just so you know.


Also. Neko Case. <3


Also my lovely, I think your phone is wonky. When I call it doesn't ring, I just get a message saying 'the cellular customer you are calling is unavailable'. I didn't even know phones even said that anymore...

I guess my point is that you should call me. Soonish if you're not all busy with the holidays or whatever. I'm still trying to pretend they're not real. ;P Lots and lots of love.

We had these...

really fantastic neighbors that lived behind us. Cute as all get out. Quiet, soft spoken. Covered in tattoos. They had sweet, well behaved little kids.

Then one day they moved out.

I'm not sure who lives there now, but I can tell you that I for sure, despise them.

Every night, every night at 9:15 they crank up the music. Loud music. Heavy bass. They rattle all my pictures. Knock fossils off the shelf. And I hate them. See-red-punch-through-the-wall-massacre-your-stereo kind of hate them.

So now I spend my evenings pounding on the wall. Wailing against the noise. Raging against their very existence. And I will continue to do so until they come to grips with what denotes a 'reasonable' volume.

For the record, I am a reasonable neighbor. I know that community living has its drawbacks. That one of those is knowing way too much about what your neighbors do or say or listen to on the other side of our shared walls. I know that no degree of good craftmanship is going to sound-proof my home and forever block out the endless sounds of life coming from other apartments. I know that ASU is an intrinsic and inescapable facet of life in and around Tempe and that its hell-goblins will inevitably share walls with me. I accept these things.

However, if you cannot keep your music regulated to a volume that does not SHAKE MY BELONGINGS OFF THE COUNTERS I'm going to be forced to make life as difficult as possible for you.

The wall pounding is my warning to you. The first sign of things to come. Take heed.

Today was lame.

I slept until 1pm because it was raining and the sun never came through the windows.

I emerged from my lair to find the house a wreck.

We bought a fish tank stand yesterday because the new tank was too big/heavy for the old bookshelf to support it. It took me the better part of yesterday to put it together since it had literally fifty thousand parts. It can support a max weight of about 1200lbs so I don't know what I was expecting, but that thing was for-serious a hardcore beastie.

The downside to that is that my living room is now full of the dismembered parts of the old bookshelf/all the stuff that was on it that needs to be put away. It's...overwhelming. Ugh. She-she's going to take the old bookshelf but she doesn't know how to put it together, I don't have the instructions, and it's not as straightforward a build as one would assume. So here it will stay until x-mas when I have time to take it over there and put it together.

I've been frantically trying to organize the chaos with little success.

In addition Oscar has been causing trouble since the new tank was installed. For the past couple of weeks it's been sitting on the floor in the hallway. This was nice because he could just lie around on the floor and stare at the fish. Now however, the only really close-up vantage point is from standing on top of the tank. I'm sure you can see the problem with that. Well today he took a flying leap across the living room onto the top of the tank, shattered the glass and fell in. Since then he has forgotten that the glass is no longer there exactly twice, both times resulting in 32 lbs of wet cat, scared fish, and a screaming me. Ugh.

Currently I'm re-washing a mountain of laundry I'd just finished folding since fat-pants catman decided to use it to dry off.

I've also come to the conclusion that our apartment is way too small. It takes WAY too much effort to get all my stuff to fit in here nicely without looking cluttered, and as much as I like organizing things, I'm getting pretty tired of it.

Well, that's all I know. I found my phone but it's dead and my charger is at work so I won't get to call you today. Do you work tomorrow? When are you free? I'll call anyway. Miss you tons and tons. Hope life is tolerable. <3

Song of the Day!

Lips like Morphine...

Song of the day!

Ring the bells




When you let me fall
Grew my own wings
Now I'm as tall as the sky
When you let me drown
Grew gills and fins
Now I'm as deep as the sea
When you let me die
My spirit's free
There's nothing challenging me.

wha-wa-waaaaa

Well with yet another semester down and only two (TWO!) somehow remaining the problem of selecting classes and hashing out some kind of coherent schedule is upon me yet again.

I did register already. I have laid out a practical (if slightly insane) schedule for the spring, but we both know that once the reserved seats opened up I'd be forced to at least consider dropping most/all of those lovely practical classes in favor of something more interesting.

I had several classes in mind, totally useless self-indulgent classes mind you, but classes nonetheless. Since I only have 2 classes left to complete my degree (With a time conflict between them, of course) I have lots of room for the totally ridiculous. Problem is that now that I've opened the door to nonsense classes there are so many I feel compelled to take.

Firstly I am dismayed that the seminar class on Nobokov has only five available seats, and further dismayed that they are all full since statistically speaking, the chances of a seat opening up in there are nill.

Secondly I spent a great deal of time contemplating taking this class on game theory and the possible application of feminist politics and macroeconomic theory to WoW. Not that I care about gaming at all. (Particularly WoW which as I think we all know, is the genital herpes of the gaming world.) Clearly I don't. But just the same, the discussions generated in that class would be amazing.

For a brief moment I contemplated taking Lady Gaga and the Ideology of Otherness, mostly because it would provide a platform for me to complain (ad nauseum) and to a captive audience about the brain parasite that is Lady Gaga. But then I spent some time picturing what the other students in that class would be like. What they would sound like. The kinds of conversations I would have to endure. . .
Do you have any idea how badly the thought of that class, of those discussions frightens me?
Well I registered for Plant Geography instead. Plant. Geography.
Case.
In.
Point.
I just keep seeing that 'leave Brittney alone' video in my head over and over again and the thought of having to sit through even one similar outburst in a CLASS that I PAID FOR makes my skin crawl. No thanks.

As it stands, I have 21 semester hours. 3 math/math related classes, 1 geo class, one anthro class, and two bio seminar classes. My lowest level class is a 394, and I may very well have to kill myself before the semester ends. BUT at least I'll never be bored.


Song of the Day: Ace of Base!!!


Lots of love to you Dear Friend. Miss you terribly.

Song of the day!

The sparkle in your eyes
keeps me alive
and the sparkle in your eyes
keeps me alive, keeps me alive.

The world
and the world turns around
the world and the world, yeah
the world drags me down.

...I'm sure in her you'll find
the sanctuary.

Song of the day!

John Prine via Susan Tedeschi...there's some Grateful Dead thrown in there too I think, but that's just a bonus.



Make me an angel
that flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
that I can hold on to
to believe in this livin'
is just a hard way to go

Song of the Day.

It rained all day today. From the moment I woke up. And it's still going now. But it's not a true rain. It's an Arizona kind of drizzle. But it's been steady, and that's something.

I'm tired. Exhausted really, and ready for the semester to be over.

But then I remember there aren't even 2 weeks until the new semester starts up, a fact which I seriously dislike. Does anyone know why school is starting up the first week of Jan instead of the third week? Because it's got me baffled.

Anyway, here's song of the day:



P.S. there's a bonus in it for anyone who can guess my favorite Garbage song...

Lots of Love.

Song for yesterday.

Song of the day!

Song of the Day!!

Long time no see...

I have so many f-ing things to tell you it's ridiculous! Today however, and for the next week I am short on time.

*cough*cough*finals*cough*cough*

The short version is that ASU email switched to google mail and somehow that made it IMPOSSIBLE to log on here. Gah! But I've found away around that. I now officially have way too many fish tanks. Two of my fish had babies. The dog is afraid of her new nail trimmers. And I just answered the door with my night vision goggles on.

Yeah.

You heard me.

NIGHT VISION.

Now I'm off to pray to the Gods that be that I somehow make it through the next week without imploding.
I love you tons dear friend!

Gooses song of the day!

I love playing DJ far away. This is my all time favorite Yeah Yeah Yeahs song. Enjoy :)

In the trenches.

Psh. Today was war. War I say. I spent it in the trenches from the moment I woke up. Exhausted. Bleary-eyed. Starving. I stumbled to work and proceeded to watch the world unravel in my hands.

The devil is in the details Dear Friend.
Really and truly.

I don't even remember the little things that were going wrong today. All I know is that it was ridiculous. I do know at one point I was sitting on the floor in the bathroom at work crying to myself because I COULD NOT get my shoe back on for the life of me. They're not complicated shoes, they're 2 sizes too big and I wear them every day. But for some reason today getting them on was impossible. My foot would not go. I know, I don't understand it either. It's not like it's a square peg in a round hole kind of deal. It's a foot shaped foot for the foot shaped shoe. Oh well.

I don't know.
I don't know anything.
But I'm home now, and not at all dead. Tomorrow will be better. I can feel it in my bones.

Songs from the Long Weekend

Friday:


Saturday:


Sunday:



:P

Radio Silence

I know, I've failed at keeping you abreast of life in the desert this week and for that I'm sorry. I took a long break from life this weekend, for no reason in particular. But it was nice.

Friday's shindig came and went. It was lovely and quiet, and filled with food. Your absence was palpable, but we survived. Currently we're drowning in leftovers.

We went shopping at midnight Thursday for Black Friday which was great fun. We spent an hour, maybe two in line to get in, got everything we wanted, and then spent another hour in line to check out. Totally worth it by the way.

Saturday I had to work all day. It was lame and there was a lot to do. I went home and spent the evening parked on the sofa with Goose. Later that night, as I watched the sweet puppy sleeping on her chair, it occurred to me that her nails needed trimming and now was the perfect opportunity. She was asleep, practically drunk on turkey, and she wouldn't even notice.

Goose got up and brought me the nail clippers, which are HUGE, in case you haven't seen them, because Emery has feet like a Great Dane. Goose wandered off into the back of the house somewhere and I did my best to sneak up on the dog. Somewhere along the way I lost my footing, twisted my ankle and crashed to the ground.

I felt a sharp and distinct pain.  A sort of meaty feeling. And then looked down at my hand. Somehow I had fallen onto the nail clippers which had in turn removed a quarter of my fingernail. It took out a whole quadrant. The rip goes straight down the center of my nail and then sideways across the half way point.

It took what seemed like forever to start bleeding, but bleed it did. I sat on the floor, mostly in shock, pinching the crap out of my wounded digit, waiting quietly for Goose to return and/or for it to stop bleeding.

Then something strange happened. As I looked down at my mangled finger the world started to spin. Life got all swirly and unbearably warm. I started to sweat. My stomach started to twist around and my vision started to fade out.

Goose returned and all I could manage to say was 'help'. I don't know how to impress upon you what a strange experience this was. The wound itself didn't hurt AT ALL, aside from the initial sharp pinch. Once it was done it just felt....meaty. Not painful at all, but gross in that way that only ripped off fingernails can feel.

Goose went and retrieved the first aid kit. She went to clean my hand up and I decided that was probably a bad idea. Missing fingernails feel gross enough without other people touching them, plus control freak as I am, relinquishing control of the situation was not high on my priority list. She opened the alcohol wipes and as I went to put it on my finger the room got hot, my head got all spin-y and I desperately needed a puke bucket.

I don't know why this particular injury bothered me, I've ripped entire nails off before and survived without needing to pass out, but this one, for whatever reason was not jiving with conscious Little Foot. I spent the next 20 minutes or so alternating between throwing up and lying on the bathroom floor praying for death. I really really loathe vomiting.

I returned to the living room, looking more shell-shocked than ever, and notified Goose in the creepy calm voice that I was, for whatever reason, unable to look at my finger (let alone clean or bandage it) without passing out. I don't know why, it wasn't even that bad, it made no rational sense, but nonetheless here we were. And so I sat quietly while she cleaned my finger as best she could. The nail, while totally severed from the nail bed, is still connected at the far side and there was no way we were going to trim it that night.

So my finger remains bandaged. It is gross. It feels all meaty. And I bump it on everything.

Also, for the record, I've had a lot of gross injuries, and the only other one that ever made me throw up/pass out was when I was in the seventh grade, riding on the rack on the back of a friends bike and I got my foot stuck in the tire. My foot was really grossly mangled all the way down to the bone and bits of my shoe were stuck in it. But even that reaction wasn't as bad as this. My brain was not happy about this fingernail business.

Not at all.


Lots of love.
I'll have songs for you later.
Hope your weekend was lovely. 

T-Day

Oh Friend! What a week it's' been.

Today I had dinner with the family. Dear Sister is crazy. Balls-to-the-wall totally just nutso. She tried telling me that I needed to watch Ancient Aliens because what I'm learning in school isn't the 'truth'. Apparently there's the real truth, (which as it happens is the TV truth) and the truth they want me to believe. Who knew all I needed was a conspiracy theory TV show to show me the light? I sure didn't. She also pointed out that I was failing the 'movement' that's the Occupy Whatever movement (which, like all things political, I am actively ignoring) by shopping tomorrow. That's when THEY want me to shop, apparently. I asked who this cryptic THEY was she told me 'the corporations, duh', to which I replied, I'm pretty sure they want me to shop every day. DUH. I'm not sure when exactly her brain turned to jello, but jello it is. Besides, $10 jeans? Yes please, says the poor college student. Crowds be damned, there just aren't that many days out of the year when I can afford to shop anywhere other than Goodwill.

Our big dinner is tomorrow, which we have done exactly 0 prepping for. The house is trashed, every dish is dirty and we still have some grocery shopping to do. I'm really praying for a miracle, hoping against all hope that it comes together seamlessly somehow in the early morning hours. We've both been mopy. Glooming about the house dreading the holiday season. Totally lost at your absence. We both figured you'd have come home by now. We don't know how you're surviving, but we're proud of your staying power. We both would have turned tail and ran by now.  So we're impressed, but also sad. Mostly in a selfish sort of why aren't you here/what about us sort of way. Please forgive our selfishness. We just love you tons.

Ugh. That's all for now. More later. Lots of love.

Gooses song of the day!

So I'm pretty sure I just won the song of the month award because this song kicks major ass, its has stop motion, body paint, and a pretty lady.  Yep I win.

   Love and Stuff,
                  Goose.

3 For You, As Requested.

Oh Dear Friend, I am just restless this week. We managed to get the grocery shopping for the big day done this weekend, though we both unloaded it all feeling a little nauseous. Hard to believe you've been gone so long, or that we'll somehow really be forced to face the holidays without you. I've been telling myself for months now that this day wouldn't come. That the world would just stop turning, that time would reach some horizontal asymptote and though we'd approach Thanksgiving, we would never really reach it.

There's still time for that though I suppose, so in the mean time my fingers are crossed. I'm also dragging my feet to a ridiculous degree. We've laid down no concrete plans. No timeline for festivities, or even really nailed down a guest list. What we have done is bought a shit-ton of food, so I guess that's our ticking clock. Gotta cook it before it goes bad I suppose.

BAH! Humbug and things! Or so I say!



In other news:

Goose's fish are constipated and I've been feeding them peas in a seemingly futile attempt to relieve the bloating.

I made my first ever soup last night-pumpkin! Yep, pumpkin soup. It was pretty good, but a little heavy on the carrots/garlic and a little light on the pumpkin. Goose was not a fan, even though she's refusing to admit it. She took one bite and then politely told me she wasn't hungry. <-- hello captain obvious, we're all aware of what that means, and no, you're not fooling anyone. In the mean time I plan to make it for every meal until she just admits she doesn't like it.




I am still sore and exhausted and WAY overslept for work today as a result.

I am also terribly jealous of all the reading you're getting done. I've totally and completely stalled. At least in a literary sense. I'm reading, it's just all papers for research and that's just not the same. On that thread, how are you liking Reading Lolita in Tehran? I read it when I was in a rut and it reminded me how much I love reading. Weak-knees, doe-eyed kind of love. *sigh*



Well Dear Friend, that's all I've got. I hope you survive the week. I hope I survive it too. I hope work keeps you busy and sane rather than busy and insane, and I hope you're missing us just as much as we miss you. Take care, be good, call when you can.

P.S. You called today while I was in class. :( Boo. I didn't return it because I figured you'd already made it to work, BUT I was happy that you called! I'll catch you on the next go-round hopefully. Lots of Love.

mud slinging.

Oh Dear Friend,
I
Am
So
Sore.

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early to meet the crew of SWAT, AAS, and the MZMNH for some fun in the sun. I got there extra early due to nerves and a fear of being chastised for running on GST (That's Gay Standard Time, and it runs about an hour and ten minutes behind normal time). 

I was the first one there other than the two overseeing the group. A few more people showed up, maybe three, and then we packed up our gear and headed out 'round the back of the ruins. We unloaded our gear and were given the run down; there are two kinds of mud we're using to fight erosion at the site. The first is a gravel/sand mixture which is used to fill holes, the second is a slurry of sand and screened dirt which is used for finishing. The purpose of all of this is to keep the parts of the site that were excavated in the 30's from weathering away. We do not touch anything that is not exposed, we are not looking to restore the sight to it's former glory, we are only preserving what is already exposed.

And with that we got to work. There was a big container, kind of like a pond you would sink into the ground and into it went about 200lbs of sand/gravel/dirt mix and water. That was then mixed by hand with a hoe until it was a nice smooth muddy consistency. It was then shoveled into buckets and taken to the people working on the walls.

Because I got there early I ended up mixing the mud since until the mud is mixed there's really nothing to do. Apparently mud mixing is NOT a desirable job. People began showing up about 45 minutes after the start time, grabbing the mud buckets and running off to the walls. Not that I blame them, mud making is really hard, exhausting, back breaking work. And it never stops. I mixed mud batches for five hours, sweaty and tired, and could not keep up with the demand. We made about 25ish batches, we even ran out of dirt and had to go gather more. It was intense.

At some point one of the leaders offered to relieve me of my mud duties, but the other girl who was working with me was having trouble breathing...allergies or something, so I told her to go. I really didn't mind. I enjoyed my mud duties, I really did, and it gave me a strange sort of perspective into what went into making the sight in the first place. I didn't show up to just do the fun stuff, and I'm not really the kind to pick and choose what is and is not important to learn. As far as I'm concerned, it's far better to know too much than too little.  Besides, I was just grateful to be there.

After all the mud was gone and sun was high in the sky, myself and the other mudders started the clean up. Washing out the 50 or so mud buckets and the pond. What was really amazing was that as people finished up on the wall and came back with their buckets no one offered to wash their own. Instead they just set them next to the three of us that were scrubbing away and sat down. Now, I don't really care, I was having a good enough time with the two people I'd been working with all day, but it was strange. I know people have gotten lazy, or at least lazier over time, but it was really strange to see people who were so lucky to have gotten to work at the site, and who had volunteered for a day of hard labor to actively avoid the hard-work part. It's a sad state of affairs when a grown person can't even clean their own mud bucket.

The downside to the whole thing is that EVERY SINGLE muscle in my body is exacting revenge today. Everything I do is painful. Muscles are hurting that I didn't even know I had! But you know what? I'll be back every month to do it all over again. Even if I get stuck mixing the mud every single time. I can't tell you what I'm gaining from doing it, but I know that whatever it is, it's important. And hey, even if it's not, I'm still having fun.


I miss you Dear Friend. Someday I'll take you with me, I promise. You know, when you live somewhere less green. :) I hope things are well. Lots of love.

song of the day!

I'm back!!! You just got song of the day jacked Little Foot!

Love and Stuff,
Goose.

Song of the Day!

Song of the Day! For Yesterday!

Well...

That's that I guess.

Today was miserable. But an extra special shade of miserable, for what that's worth.

Most notably I forgot today was Thursday until I looked at the clock at 4:50 and thought how lovely it was I didn't have class. Only I did. Because it was Wednesday. And it was due to start at 5:15.

I showed up at two before six, threw the door open, winded from the run and babbling about days and time and so on. I was excused for the day (but have to make up the lab tomorrow) which was the one blessing the universe bestowed up on me today. And for that I say grace.

Now I'm hanging out at home, missing Goose and dreading next week now that the count down to Turkey Day has begun in earnest. Hopefully your day was better than mine, and we aren't trapped having simultaneous bad days because that would be lame. Possibly even the lamest. Lots of love, from Goose and I.

Absalom

Well Dear Friend, Goose has been having a swell time playing long distance DJ, and I'm sure she'll be sad to learn that I beat her to the song of the day post today. Poor darling.

But in the end, it was high time I updated you on...something.

Anyway, we got a fish tank.

Remember that story about the two little goldfish? Yeah. That spiraled out of control (as most things do around here). I staked out craigslist for ages, waiting patiently for the fish tank I wanted. I found it, finally, for almost-free, but had to drive an hour and a half to pick it up. It was still totally worth it. So it's like 35ish gallons and a hexagon. It's about twice as tall as it is wide and is nearly identical to the one I had as a kid. I got it home, lugged it inside and got it set up. Then the research began.

I don't know if you've ever witnessed me researching projects, but it's really...annoying. It's compulsive. I can't stop it. I just read more and more and my goals are constantly morphing in to things that will cost more and more money. My Dear Sweet Goose just sits there and shakes her head at me (but never rains on my crazy parade).

Well it didn't take long for me to figure out that a tank with a small footprint can support less biomass than a tank of equal volume with a large footprint. Duh. Should have seen that coming. In addition, goldfish have a high bioload, (they're dirty fish) so the tank could hold 3...max. Okay. So we thought we'd move to a community tank with one black moore in there, and some other species. Not so easy. Apparently black moores have bad eyesight, and (obviously) delicate eyes. Fast moving fish can startle them, they can bump their eyes, and then it's all downhill from there. Also goldfish are cold water fish, most fish are tropical fish...you see how this goes?

So we abandoned the goldfish plan and moved on to tropical fish. Goose likes platties and mollies (mollies also have a big bioload so those are out). I (at this point) have stopped caring so much about the fish and have moved on to aquatic gardens and aquascaping. Yes. Aquascaping. You heard me. I have totally lost myself in matters of substrate, CO2 injection systems, and starry-eyed dreams filled with a fish tank filled with rolling grassy hills, sandy rivers, and perfectly pruned aquatic bonsai trees.

Instead the two of us met in the middle. We got a community tank. (Our opalescent unicorn of a betta fish Absalom, ruler of the roost, two platties and two sword tails). The betta is being a little testy today, but mostly that's a plant issue. Aggression will decrease as the scenery becomes more complex and more territories become available. We plan on adding small schooling fish in a couple of weeks once the plants come in a bit more, and while I got some live plants, Goose got a pirate ship. In the end, it's still beautiful and it's a good mix of what we both wanted...I'm just saying I could have landscaped the shit out of the tank. ;)

That's all for today. Sending you lots of love and stuff from both Goose and I. <3

Song of the day!

I know I know it's kind of a jump Phil Collins to Norma Jean but you like it so shut up. :)

Love and stuff,
Goose.

Song of the day!

It's me again! Sorry I forgot to post your dose of Phil Collins yesterday so here it is as promised. Little Foot said no to The Hoff soooo I suppose Sir Collins will just have to suffice.

Love and stuff,
Goose.

Song of the day!

Little Foot is slacking! So once again you are blessed with my impeccable taste in music. Maybe tomorrow I'll post some Phil Collins or maybe just maybe The Hoff will stop by! bahahaha!

Love Always,
Goose.

Song of the day!

From the one the only GOOSE! You love me! :D Enjoy the Horrorbilly!

Song of the Day.

Seriously Scandinavia, why are you so awesome? Seems like I spend my life rolling around in music made by Scandinavian bands....



I have a long and rambling story to tell you about a totally random chain of events that led to a acquiring a unicorn...of sorts.

But tonight is not a night for story telling. It's more like a night for lying around in our unds eating cheetos and watching Buffy.

Lots of love.

Song of the day! From Goose.

The Battle Hymn.

You know, there are few things in life that can not be learned almost instantaneously to the tune of The Battle Hymn of The Republic. Between the time spent crafting new lyrics, and the infectious, almost parasitic nature of the tune (much like The Song That Never Ends), whatever information you put to that song is entombed in your mind forever. It's how I learned the Krebs cycle, the geologic timescale, soil horizons, all sorts of taphonomic information...it can't be helped! That's what that song is for! Learning! (Clearly).

And while I am, at least at this point, much too modest to post a video of my own version of it (my voice is meant for the shower, and the inside of my car...not so much for the internet) in its stead I give you this amazing/animated/impassioned version by Judy Garland.

I can see you rolling your eyes at me, but seriously, watch it. It is EPIC. In every sense of the word. EPIC.



....also I love Judy Garland. <3

Song of the Day!

In the Reins

In the Reins is such a fantastic album. I forget sometimes, since I never got around to uploading it to my playlist, how very very much I love it.

I've spent the past week, probably more like two really, hiding from life. I'm not quite done yet either. I keep hoping that if I can just pretend time is standing still for long enough, that there will be a moment when I look around and realize that it has. That I will have time to sort my head out and get my sh*t together before the sun comes up again and this whole big never ending circle of time and days and weeks and work and school and everything else comes around again and fogs up my brain.

I know, I know, I'm so not that lucky.

But I CAN dream.
And so I do.

I don't know Dear Friend. Seems things have gotten gloomy around here.

This morning about half the lightbulbs in my apartment burnt out which left me fumbling around in the dark. When I got to work there were lights out there too. It has literally felt like rain was going to start pouring from the ceiling all day. Periodically I would open the doors to peek outside and see if the rain had started yet and realize it was bright and sunny outside. I guess all the clouds were in my head.

Well, I've got some research to do on Papio, a geoarch project to come up with, a book review to write, and more math homework than I want to think about to work on, so it looks like I've got my work cut out for me this evening.

As always, I miss you more than life. Possibly more these past few weeks than normal, if that's possible. I hope things are well, and that your flagging class is at least amusing. I hope the trees aren't growing roots into your brain, and that your busted ankle is getting better. I hope QD and the rest of the SFB (that's Swiss Family Beckman, in case you were wondering) aren't driving you crazy. I pray that you're at least out-reading me at this point, since my progress has come to a total standstill. And last but not least, I hope you're not freezing your butt off up there in what is practically the Arctic Tundra. Lots of love.

Guess I Owe You One...

...For yesterday too. These cold rainy days muddle together so easily.

Song of the Day!

Today was miserable. Possibly worse than miserable. For no reason in particular. The cumulative weight of a million tiny things I suppose.

Oh well.
It was abysmal.
Now it's over.
Fingers crossed tomorrow is better.

Hope things are better for you. <3

In true Arizona fashion, fall came and left us in the span of a week. Unreasonably hot days melted, almost seamlessly into unreasonably cold nights. November is really and truly upon us, and I for one, am displeased.

Not only because I have an innate dislike for chilly weather, but also because I loathe holidays with and begin exhibiting an almost primal kind of fear as they approach. This year I am particularly dismayed at your absence, in case I haven't mentioned that enough. I have been mulling over the various ways I might somehow goad you into coming home for T-day, but there's always at least one irritating little detail I can't seem to get around. And so, all my plotting (so far, at least) has been for naught.


In other news, some creature or another has been leaving piles of mystery poo on our patio. At first I suspected this little black kitten in a pink collar, that was hopelessly enamored of Mittens. He spent his evenings languishing about our patio, pawing hopelessly at the arcadia doors, and occasionally headbutting the window. Goose has informed me however, that upon closer inspection she believes them to be the handy-work of a dog. A big dog. Much bigger than the poor lovestruck kitty.

This brings me to another point.
One of loose dogs.

The other night I was up well past my bed time working on a exam. Sometime after midnight a dog began barking. Loudly. Eventually I sent Goose to investigate. She peered out the window, and let me know there was a very large, mildly disgruntled pitbull on our patio barking at the door. I set my work aside, opened the door, and sure enough, there he was. He was a big dog, and would have been terribly handsome had he not been trying to bark my door down. He was black with a white chest, and was wearing a collar with tags. Well enough was enough. I marched up to him, and he quieted down for a second, took a few hesitant steps toward me, and then Emmy woke up. She let out one singular warning howl and the trespasser went nuts. His hair went up, his ears went down, and his tail was as far between his legs as it could get. Poor thing. When my goofy dog (who's two favorite treats, for the record, are celery and ice cubes) scares the living bejeezus out of you, you know you've got issues. Anyway, I chased him off. He came back a couple of times, but then left for good.

The next morning we saw the SAME dog on a leash, being walked around the next complex over. I seriously hope he managed to escape and is not roaming around free at night. Anyway...

As I walked out my door today to find yet another outrageous pile of feces on my patio I can't help but wonder if it's from THAT dog.

As irritating as that might be, it's better than the alternative that one of my neighbors is allowing their dogs to defecate on patio, not 4 inches from my door, and then refusing to pick it up.

Apparently there are no good answers. At least not when I'm the one left cleaning it up. :/


Miss you tons Dear Friend. Tons and Tons.

Song of the Day!

...tryna get his mitts in my oven....




heeeeheeee

My new car...

So last Friday I bought a new car. Well, not new per-say, but new to me. It's a civic, in pretty great shape, and has a fresh coat of paint on it. . . or at least it did.

Today I left my car at work while we went out to dinner with the Boss Lady. R dropped me back off at my car a couple of hours later when I saw it. THE BIGGEST door-dink mark of life. You can quite literally see the entire length of the door that slammed into my precious, precious car. Not only is there a huge, foot long, mark on my car, but the paint is chipped off in several places.

I was (am) pissed. Super pissed. Beyond super pissed. Not just because they damaged my car that I have barely even owned for a whole week, but because they didn't even leave me an 'I'm sorry' note. It is NOT a small dent. Not by any stretch of the imagination. And I wasn't parked in a public lot, I was parked in the rear employees lot. This is a fact that really REALLY makes me mad. Because I know everyone who parks back there. It's someone I work with, someone who says hi to me every day, and they didn't even take two seconds to say 'oops, totally didn't mean to dent the side of your car in'.

So now, when I go into work on Monday I'm going to be eyeballing everyone I see. Wondering who was the braying jackass (who was clearly raised by wolves) that had the audacity to smash up the side of my car and just drive away.

Currently I feel like posting an open letter to said jackass on the side of my car above the dent. However, I think that might result in slashed tires.

People are rude. RUDE.

And they should be ashamed.

that.is.all.

Boss Lady.

Oh Dear Friend, tonight R and I went out to dinner with the Boss Lady. She's not really our boss lady anymore, at least not technically, but she'll always be THE Boss Lady. It was fantastic. The best dinner ever. For a lot of reasons, really. But mostly because I miss her. And I'm glad she misses us back.

Whatever Boss Lady may be to everyone else, and whatever she may think she is to us, in my mind she'll always be my Other Mother. I never had a mom, not in any real sense of the word, but for five long years Boss Lady watched over me every day, for eight long, long hours. She scolded me when I was bad. Corrected me when I was wrong. Equipped me to do all kinds of things I didn't think that I would ever be able to do. She put up with my, at times unreasonable tantrums, saw me through the worst of my crazy. And after I tried (and failed...miserably) to kill myself, when no one else (except my dad) would even return my phone calls, she showed up at the ICU to make sure I was okay.

I don't know what she thinks about all this, or why she's taken care of me the way that she has, and really, I don't care. She did. And I'm a better person for having known her. Every day. I like the Boss Lady because she makes me better than I am. Even if she doesn't know it.

Boss Lady is my favorite.

I wish you had gotten a chance to meet her before you moved away...I don't know how exactly we would have accomplished that, but that's beside the point. She's been such a huge influence on Goose and I, without her ever really knowing it. When we get stuck, particularly when one of us is having issues at work, or with someone else, we try to figure out what Boss Lady would tell us to do. Plus, she plays the accordion. That in and of itself makes her pretty dang cool in my book.


Oh, and she secretly rocked out to Lady Gaga in the mornings. :)

Spellcheck

Before I go, Is it just me or does it seem like nobody gives a damn about spelling anymore? Spelling has always been my downfall. I'm terrible at it, admittedly. But with so many tools at my disposal it seems really...lazy to not even try to spell stuff right. (Besides that, if I'm the one noticing, you probably have a pretty serious problem).

And you know, social networking or personal blogs or whatever, I know I have to let that stuff go. But business emails? News articles?

What on earth is up with that?

I can't tell you how many online article I read that have grievous spelling and grammatical errors. Does nobody employ an editor anymore? Are things just published the way they are submitted? Does nobody care, to any small degree, how utterly stupid it makes them look to publish...anything with two spelling errors to every paragraph?

Makes me nutso.

Maybe it's just me, but it feels a lot like some sort of twisted devolution.

Maybe we'll just abandon the written word all together.

Maybe we'll all just go back to grunting.

It's hard to say.

Spellcheck.
Use it.
Love it.

Thursdays.

Somehow all the days just feel like Wednesdays.

It's official. I'm depressed. Not depressed-depressed. You know, not the failing-to-function, can't-wash-my-own-hair kind of depressed, but depressed nonetheless.

I don't feel overtly sad. I'm just apathetic. Apathetic and listless. About all things. Part of it is the month I've had. Part of it is the October blues, which in reality stretches out through most of the winter. Lightening a bit around T-day (probably not this year though), and clearing up for a bit around the first of the new year. Then before long comes the end of February melt-down which without fail arises out of the perfect storm created by the endless February/March flu, midterms, and a high census at work. How I survive all that, I'll never know. How I'm going to fare this year without my medication is yet to be seen. But, and I say this without trying to sound too much like Sylvia Plath via The Bell Jar, I'm hopeful.

Eh, well, if anyone can do it it's me.

Right about now I'm feeling a little bitter that my psychiatrist quit (even though it's been a year and a half now). And possibly more bitter that it's so hard to find one who's not an A-hole. But really I guess when you've had the same doc for as long as I have, they all seem like A-holes comparatively. Maybe it's an issue with standards. Maybe it has to do with my general disdain for change I do not initiate. Maybe it's something else all together. Who knows.

I think my boss is going to hire someone else to help out with the workload at work. I'm happy in theory. In practice, I'm worried because I know I'm not as adaptive as I need to be. Particularly because 1. I'm not in charge of the interviewing/hiring process and 2. I didn't ask for anyone else to be hired. Seems petty doesn't it? In the real world it's more complex with that. My fears over new people are colored by my experiences with other people I've worked with, both at this job and at others, and with the symbiotic relationship my co-worker and I have developed (don't know how we'll merge a third person into that, eep!). I know in the end, that I am working way too hard. That in reality the work load will crush me come February, but I'm resistant/anxious about the impending changes. I'm hoping if I stay aware of what I'm going through I'll be able to keep my head above water.

Also, I miss Goose.
Terribly.
I know it's probably the October blues or whatever, but right about now I really dislike how her and I are on opposite work schedules. Getting to see her one day a week blows chunks. This is a particularly pronounced problem this week since I have not attended any of my night classes and have way too much time on my hands. . . of course, by way too much time on my hands, I mean about two hours a night less than I need to get my homework done. But then we'd have to assume that I'm doing any of it right now, which I'm not. This further compounds my problems because it forces me to spend all day Saturday working on it, which is the only day I get with Goose, but you know how I can be when the procrastination/self-deprecation cycle starts up. :P

Ah, I don't know Dear Friend. Life is just generally icky.

But do you want to know something funny? (and totally unrelated to any part of this obnoxious rant?) Thought so.

Today I went to my morning class. It's super boring, which makes me sad because I both adore my professor, and expected I would really love this class. (Somehow the particle size of sediment just isn't doing it for me). Anyway, I have to write long hand in here to keep myself awake, and by writing, I really mean transcribing every single word that is said by anyone just to keep my brain focused. I got there a few minutes late, snuck in, set my bag down and it made the LOUDEST, most bizarre clunking sound ever.

Perplexed, I stared at my bag. What was in there? Why was this happening? I was sure I asked Goose to pack it for me this morning...what did she pack me?

The class stops briefly to stare at me.

When things go back to normal I quietly go to take out my notebook and start my notes. I unzip my bag...and it's full of hammers. HA! I thought it felt heavy and strangely packed. Goose forgot to re-pack it for me and it was still full of my fossiling gear. It was pretty funny. Less funny since I kept falling asleep in class, but still pretty dang funny.

I hope things today are better than they have been in your world. I want to call you, but I am in a for-real funk with nothing to say. Instead I just stare at the phone. Also, it's funny that you mentioned crossed lines in your post the other day because today I couldn't find my phone so I called it from Gooses phone, and it rang a couple of times and then was 'answered' by what sounded suspiciously like aliens. :) For serious though, that's what it sounded like. I'm sure it was a connection error that resulted in some really really weird electronic sounds, but it freaked Goose out pretty bad. She has an intense and irrational fear of all things alien and zombie. (Not that I continually exploit that....)

Well Dear Friend, I love you tons. Don't die up there amidst all the trees. Miss us some and we'll keep on missing you. Oh, and you know....come home soon. (Just had to throw that one in there). Lots of love.

Song of the day is one of Gooses favorite songs:

On the menu tonight...

Humble pie, with a side of crow.

Only problem is, it should be in front of someone else.

There are many things in this world that I dislike doing. One of them is getting scolded for other peoples mistakes. Worse still, is having to eat a big ol' slice of that other person's humble pie. Especially if they're sitting across the table, grinning at you. That's pretty much been the theme of this week.

This month really.

For both of us.

Seems that everywhere Goose and I turn, someone has screwed something up, something that can't be proven, and blamed us.

Now, don't get me wrong, we screw up all the time...at least I know I do. There's no shame in making mistakes, even big ones. So why on earth do people have such a hard time with it, and in turn, put so much energy into blaming other people? I just don't get it.

It's not that I usually take these things lying down. I don't. I'm a real pain in the ass sometimes, and will continue to press the issue until it's been resolved CORRECTLY. With the correct people taking responsibility.

Sometimes though, that's not an option.

Do you remember that issue of The Wonder Years where Mr. Arnold gets the new boss who's an a-hole? The one who is totally unreasonable and yelling at him for no reason and Mr. Arnold just keeps replying 'Whatever you say, Ken'? Well Kevin doesn't get it. Thinks his dad is an idiot for putting up with all of it, then gets a job as a caddy and realizes sometimes you've just got to put up with unreasonable people, accept defeat in battles you weren't even fighting in, and admit fault for things you had nothing to do with.

Today we were both Kevin. It hit us like a 15,000lb sack of bricks, and neither of us liked it very much. There's this really weird point in life, where you really really really get all that crap about choosing your battles...and what exactly Dad means when he says 'it's just business'. Its unsettling. Strangely soul crushing. And I think the revelation itself may have aged me 15 or 20 years.

I miss the days, really miss them, when I had the luxury of being able to tell my boss/professor/neighbor/whoever to f-off. When right was right and wrong was wrong and I was in a position where I didn't have to accept anything in between. Where walking away from anything and everything was still 'totally reasonable', at least in my mind.

Being a grown-up, it sucks. Life is really all in-betweens. It's all politicking, networking, ladder climbing. It's meeting about nothing, endless memos and golf on Sundays. It's one big freaking campaign commercial and no one realizes or cares that one who throws mud inevitably gets hit with it too. Worse yet, no matter how much I don't want to play, real world economics dictate, at least for today, that we - Goose and I - bow to the system.

I don't know Dear Friend, I don't know. Seems that this past year has been particularly unkind to you and I . . . possibly to the world at large. . .
As T-Day approaches, and I face my first batch of holidays in recent memory without you and QD, I can't help but think that maybe, just maybe, we're not out of the woods quite yet.

Wednesday, wednesday.

Oh Dear Friend. So many things have happened, and yet I somehow have nothing to talk about.

I did, however, submit an exam via safeassign earlier this week. Today I checked out my originality report. The first hit on it was 'from another student's paper' and was the material in the heading (My name / class number / Exam 1). I was pretty amused. Glad this safe assign thing is catching the plagerists. ;)

Lots of love.

Birthdays.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown

Well it's official. Another Birthday come and gone, and here I am a whole year older.

Birthdays are not my favorite time of year.

For a lot of reasons really.


Every year this day comes, and it goes. I spend it, as often as I can, alone. There are so many questions that I don't have answers to. Many of them I never will. And even now, at 27, perhaps more so than ever, they haunt me.

Each year I mark the date of my birth and wonder to myself why it is I was born. It's not that I wish I hadn't been. Or that I don't love and enjoy my life, because the truth is that I do. But I can't help but spend the day dwelling on the woman who brought me into this world, knowingly. And peering into my tiny newborn eyes, decided I wasn't worth loving. That I was somehow marked. And that I was the beginning of her own personal fall from grace.

It's a kind of rejection I'm not likely to get over. One that lacks reason or logic. One that even lacks any discernible mythology. It just was. By all accounts she was fine before I arrived, and it was only afterwards that the cracks began to show.

And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'

My dad and I spent Saturday together. It's the first day we've spent together in 16 years, and it was both beautiful and strange. On the car on the way home we were talking about things. About life, and me, and the whole complicated mess that was my first 22 or so years here on Earth. He said, jokingly that I was a difficult child. And I agreed. I was difficult. It's not that I was bad, or into trouble, or anything else. I wasn't. But I was complicated. Everything with me was messy. Always messy. It immediately became apparent that he felt bad for saying it. He shouldn't have, it's the way it was, but he did. He tried to backtrack. To tell me that I really wasn't that difficult...then he paused. He said, right around fifth grade. That's when it all started spiraling out of control.

And he was right. I had to remind him of all the changes that came that year.

At the end of the fourth grade we had been expelled from Catholic school because of mom's...issues. Mom ran off to Medjugorje to see the Virgin Mary, but she didn't appear to her. They didn't tell us until the first week of school about the change. Mom decided I was too old for birthdays and hauled me off to an abortion rally instead. But I didn't make it there. I jumped out of her van at a stoplight and ran until my legs couldn't take me any farther. I hid in a tunnel behind the church playground for six hours until my dad came and found me. Mom grounded me for a month. When dad wasn't home I wasn't allowed water. But I was angry as sin and not about to be a prisoner. I threw the bunk-bed ladder through the window, climbed up on the roof and refused to come down until dad came home and understood. I was ungrounded, but the damage was done. Mom spent the rest of my adolescence trying to find someone who would have me exorcised. She started believing, really believing, that happiness was our greatest sin. We started family therapy that year, and Mom began openly blaming me for everything that had gone wrong in her life.

These things, they're just facts. Not absolute facts, but my facts. I'm sure she has her own too. I don't feel bad about them, I don't feel sorry for myself...most of the time anyway. But I also don't understand. Sure, I've written my own reasons, I have my own bedtime stories about what happened to mom and why we ended up where we did, but the reality is that they're just stories. Things I've made up over the years to explain it all to me. To make it all more or less okay.


Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Dad changed the subject quickly. The downside to the giant mess at my sister's birthday, over the OC's comments about my issues with my mother, is that dad now refuses to talk about her with me.

When I was younger, from about the fifth grade until several years after I left home things were really messy. Mom was crazy. Not the fun kind of crazy either. The crawling in through the doggy door in the middle of the night and standing over me muttering prayers kind of crazy. Mom and dad were stuck in a prolonged separation, followed by a messy divorce and a year or so where she refused to see us. Dad, in all his worrying felt he had deprived us of a mother because they had divorced. No matter how bad she was, in his eyes she was still a mom, and we needed her. After months of pleading, we were forced into Thursday night visitation that I loathed. Most nights I got out of Dad's car and walked the 4 miles home. Mom took offense at my rejection and began a lengthy custody dispute. Dad wouldn't let me testify on my own behalf, something that drove me crazy. All mom did was say terrible things about dad. All dad did was tell me mom loved me and I was being difficult.

As a result for many years it was not only me vs mom, but me vs the world. I didn't understand the complexities of divorce, or custody cases, or even relationships in general. All I knew was mom was nuts and dad kept telling me she wasn't. For a long long time I felt that he wasn't on my side. That he didn't care enough to see what was happening, to admit, just once, even just a little bit that maybe mom was insane and it wasn't my fault.

It wasn't until my sister and I were both out of the house that I ever heard dad say one unkind word about mom. He's still careful about what he says (and it still makes me crazy). But now, when we sit around remembering her, talking about the way things were, and all of the just plain insane things we've lived through I remember that I wasn't alone in it. That dad kept his mouth shut so mom never had anything on him. That he kept us safe, made sure we never had to spend one single night in 11 years, alone with her. When I sit with him and pour over all those insane details, read over the mountains of paperwork her hurricane left behind, go through dad's journals of the dark times, I remember just how much he loves me. And how very lucky I am to have him around. Even if I didn't understand at the time. Our shared commiseration reminds me that he was abused too. That we were fighting the same battle from different posts. That we both paid very different prices, but we survived.

I tried to explain that to him, but he missed the point and changed the subject.

The point is, obviously, that I'm sad we won't be having those talks, but also that it's those talks that gave me insight into what those years were like for dad. That through it we've come together, as adults, as people, looking at our shared history together without the anger that marred so many years of our lives. We've come to understand why we've taken the paths we have and how we became the people we are. I know mom has her own side of the story too, maybe even one, however improbable, that would make me hate her just a little less.

Unfortunately for the both of us, that's a chat we'll never have. And when all is said and done, I know that that's what's best for me. That whatever I would have gained in closure, in comfort, would be surpassed by new forms of torture. Torture only the truly crazy, and those who have to live with them can imagine.

So it is on my birthday, that I also celebrate the break I've made from her. The six years I've gone without saying one single word to her, without responding to the cold and often downright evil voicemails she periodically leaves me. I puzzle over the questions that remain, I roll around in the many, many things that have gone wrong between us, I lament the loss of the relationship I should have had with her, and I remember that in the end I was brave enough to stand up on my own two feet, the two feet she gave me, and walk away.

I am blessed to have a dad as wonderful as mine is. He isn't perfect. At times he's stubborn, often times wrong, and occasionally downright annoying. But he's always on my side. He always tells me that he loves me. Even when I've screwed up in ways I never imagined were possible. Even when my life is in ruins around me and I don't know how I'll make it through the days. He's always, always there and he always helps me sort things out.

I spend the weekend before my birthday with my dad. Just sitting around, watching birds, hunting for fossils, and looking at the stars. Eternally grateful that we've made it through all this mess together, and that when all is said and done, we're still family. This year I spent a whole day with him, from dawn to dusk, and it was hands down the best present I've ever gotten. Just family time. Me and my dad.

Working through the backlog.

I have failed miserably at keeping you updated through my birthday weekend. Shame. So much shame.

Tonight sadly, is no different as I have a evolutionary primatology paper/exam to finish by tomorrow. Procrastination and I are old friends. *le sigh*

I have so much to say. Tomorrow we'll catch up. I'll try and call in the evening, okay?

MISSSSSS YOOOUUUU.......

For Thursday


For Friday

Do you know....

What I'm NOT doing right now? Oh, yeah. That's right. Sleeping. And why pray tell, am I still not only up, but fully alert when I have to be awake hours before the sun tomorrow? Well I'll tell you. It's because I do not in any way, shape, or form want to go to work tomorrow. Nope, not at all.

Today one person, who does not even work at my facility, who stops by for a mere 15 minutes a day was such a momentous jackass that I would just much rather stay in bed. Stupidity is contagious after all, can't I just call in stupid? Tell the boss man it's going around?

No? Really? Damn. It's shaping up to be a long snoozy day for me tomorrow then isn't it? :p

Song of the Day:

Survivor

Wednesdays are for the dogs. They're just the bleakest, most twisted, seemingly endless 24 hours of the week. I know, it might seem silly to be so fundamentally opposed to a single day, but I would be willing to argue that that's just because you lack perspective.

My perspective, to be exact.

I'd share it with you, but it's a Wednesday and I don't really feel like doing anything other than getting a good strong case of repetitive stress disorder from lazing about and scratching my butt.

This weekend, Dear Friend, is rapidly approaching. This means a great many things in my world.

First and foremost it means I will officially be yet another year older. Somehow though, I'm actually (mentally) gaining a year as I went through this whole year thinking I was a year older than I am. (How on Earth does that even happen?!) Secondly I am going fossil hunting with my dad. (Finally). It will be one month TO THE DAY from the first time we were supposed to go fossiling together and thus one month from The Great Automobile Disaster of 2011. As I no longer have a car (technically) Dad will be picking me up at my house.

This seems like it should be no big deal right? Dad and I are good friends. I love him more than life, so what does it matter if he knows where I live...well it matters Dear Friend. It matters a lot.

I have privacy issues. Big time. Second only to my ever-present mommy issues. Maybe it was all those years my mother spent stalking us...crawling in through the dog door in the middle of the night, peering through the windows of our friends houses, standing over me like a serial killer while I tried to sleep, or trying to have me exorcized. Maybe it was the way Dad dealt with the chronic anxiety/depression/anger tornado all Mommy-Dearest caused by taking the doors off all the rooms in the house and openly listening in to my phone calls. Maybe it's the way he always let himself into my first apartment to 'clean' it, and then accidentally happened to purge my house of all things that made him uncomfortable. Maybe it's the way my sister and I were always at war, snooping through each others things for something to hold over the other one. Maybe it's something different entirely. Maybe I'm just weird. It's hard to say.

All I know is that in the past 9 years I've had 11 different apartments and I have only once had my Dad over for dinner. Having family in my house is a strange and somehow invasive, anxiety ridden affair. It's like letting them crawl around in my head. I don't like it, and it's freaking me out man.

BUT if, and I do mean IF, I survive it, and the 3 hours alone in the car with Dad, it should be the best day ever. If you however, do not hear from me again, know that I went crazy. Disappeared off into the mountains, and am probably living inside that old rusted-out truck we couldn't find that day. Living off the land, and possibly the meat sourced from my own limbs.

I'll send out smoke signals. It will be just like this...only smoky-er. :)

As I went down in the river to pray...

Goose came home a bit early from work tonight to find me in a bubble bath, in the dark, with this song blasting through the silent house.

Apparently that's creepy, (a fact only exaggerated by my own agnosticism), and reeks of suicidality. I have been asked to refrain from doing it any more. (Despite my cheery mood!)

*le sigh*
Can I do nothing in my own home?
Nothing!?

An-ey-whay...Here it is for your listening pleasure.



And please be sure to check out the remix...re-re-remix. Which is also awesome.



Tons of love.

Song of the Day

Best version of this song ever.

The weekend in music.

I owe you a post, a real post. With actual words in it, rather than these brief pop-ins. Hopefully I'll get to it tonight, but I have ANOTHER calc test so we'll see.

This past weekend just flew by. I know time always manages to do that, but October always seems to go extra quick. *sad face* My October mornings are almost gone, and it's damn near my birthday again somehow. ET asks after you all the time and wants to know when you're coming home. I think you should fly back for Thanksgiving, but I know I probably won't win that battle. Miss you.

Saturday


Sunday

Pumpkins!

Oh Fall! Sweet, glorious fall. I love you.

Tonight we started our holiday prep in earnest. We made pumpkin tealight holders that are beyond cute and picked our our pumpkins for carving. Next weekend ET, Goose and I will be carving them up, and playing dress up for Dia De Los Muertos. It will be glorious. I am so SO sad that you can't be here for it. :(

Last night,

while bored and diligently avoiding my calculus project (not that that's what I'm doing right now. No, no. Not at all) I did my best to take a picture of mittens for you. She was...non-compliant. But I suppose that is to be expected. I did my best to hold her still, but as time went on (the whole process lasted a matter of seconds so 'time' as used here is really relative) she got more and more disgruntled before rapidly disintegrating into a pouty mooing beast. (Please reference photo 3). At that point I abandoned the project all together and turned my sights to other things.

Mittens, for the record, could really work on both her attitude and becoming more photogenic. Sir 'Loons on the other hand, was more than happy to chum it up for the camera. He is bigger than ever, (he can now stand on his hind legs and comfortably reach the kitchen counter with his paws which is proving troublesome) and since he's in that awkward stage between summer and winter coats, he's more scraggly and rakish than ever before. While not at all graceful, and often tripping over his own too-big feet, or falling off the sofa, does love the camera.

Okay. Enough.

Oi. Okay. This week is over and I'm soooooo happy. We ran out of beds at the hospital this weeek (Thank you DOC!), so I've been running myself ragged at work, plus...you know. Midterms and stuff.

Is it just me, or did midterms drag out for an entire month?

Anyway, here are the songs I owe you for the week. I'm wrapping up our fore into queercore here, because really really, that was hard!

It's not just that 'queercore' is sort of a vast sort of amorphous category, or that there's not nearly as much out there to suit my daily moods, but you know me. I struggle to stay focused on anything for an hour, let alone a week. It's that goldfish brain thing, and I've got it bad. I see something shiny, and it just totally wipes my memory clean. Can't remember what I was doing, can't remember why I was doing it.

That was sort of the theme of this week.

...Most weeks if we're honest. Hell, most moments.




I am just exhausted to the core Dear Friend. Really and truly tired. I worked an 11 hour shift today. 11 hours. Yuck. And now I've got a calc project due by midnight that I've been putting off all semester so I suppose I'd better buckle down and get to work.

I miss you terribly. Also, I'm worried that the excess oxygen in the air from all those trees is damaging your brain. Are you losing your marbles yet? Do I need to send you a cactus to cancel some of the (leafy) greeny-green-ness out? Also, sweet pig baby looks adorable on his little leash, please don't get eaten alive by the trees on your long walks, and go easy on your ankle. Miss you dearly. Come home soon. <3



Wednesday:



Thursday:


Friday:

Song of the Day!

Queercore day 3! Your Heart Breaks.





Miss you Dear Friend.

Heart attack. Hit and Run.

Well Dear Friend, today I woke up a whole new kind of sick. As a result, I'm a little short on words.

Tomorrow I have a 3 hour proctored calc exam. Wish me luck.

I miss you terribly and I'm already dreading our first round of holidays without you. :(




Song of the day is Sleater Kinney.

Queercore!

You asked, Dear Friend, and so I shall deliver. All week in fact! All week! Queercore from us to you.

It amuses me to no end (NO END!!) that you discovered this genera by googling 'angry bitch music'. I find that hysterical.

Sadly for you though, it is not all angry. Some of it is cute, and happy, and just really REALLY gay.

Like this one:



We miss you Dear Friend.

Things in the desert are also terrible.
We also hate all things.
And so we sit on our couch in solidarity with you.
We raise our glasses to the hope that one day
we will be able to scorch the earth with the glare from our eyes alone,
we will be able render our enemies useless
with only the triumphant beating of our hearts,
and we will awaken to a world free of both stupidity and inconvenience.
...or simply one with more free time, chocolate, and amaretto sours.
Whichever requires less work.

Also, I will give you a million dollars, acquired through whatever means necessary, if you actually sit down and turn this crap-fest into a musical. Because I really, REALLY love a good musical. And I would kill to see a QD-based character singing his funny little heart out to the words you've chosen for him. The pleasure alone might kill me, but it would totally be worth it.

Miss you. *muah*

I'm tellin' ya...

There's something about Norway. I don't know what it is, but it seems every week I'm falling in love with another Norwegian band.

Song for Saturday:

Lovertits

Ugh, I owe you little songs from as far back as Friday! Damn me and my lazy-laziness! This weekend has been a huge blur of grease paint and 3rd Rock from the Sun re-runs. . . I'll let you marinate on that one for a while.

Fridays song is a two-for-one, because I couldn't pick between the two. Enjoy.








Peaches reminds me of a very strange time following my first and most spectacular (read: epic) failure at trying to assimilate to life in the University. I learned, not only am I incredibly bad at being social, but also that I don't really like people much.

I came to the conclusion during this time that I would make a terrible doctor for exactly those reasons and took med school off the table. I also realized I did not have the social skills to be able to stomach life in the art world and abandoned art school. This left me in a bizarre and unanticipated educational limbo which, coupled with my lesbian hang-over from having spent the last year drowning in a writhing heap of homo-erotic drama helped to usher what you and I Dear Friend refer to, cryptically as the N*** Era.

BUT in spite of all that, or perhaps even because of it, I am hilarious, beautiful, wise beyond my years, and when home alone, I draw the shades and dance around with wild abandon to Peaches.

Miss you.

Every Squirrel's Dream

This pretty much summarizes my day today. Yep. Happy as a squirrel in peanut butter jar. Love you.

Better.

Oh Dear Friend, I'm feeling light years better than yesterday, which is practically a miracle in my world.
And so, I am grateful.
There are a great many things that I feel I should tell you today, but they're all jumbled up...
As a result this may be less of a masterpiece and more of a blathering jumble of words, but you're cool with that right?
Awesome.

First things first.
It has been a week and a half since my computer bit the dust. This has meant a great many things for me, but most of all it means I've been cut off from my music collection. I know, I know, for years the world has been telling me to 'get an effing ipod, Little Foot'. And truth be told I did. But it was complicated, and the screen was small, and more importantly I would have to learn how to use it. Well, I never did and it is now lost in the oblivion that is the kitchen junk drawer. It's kind of like the abyssal planes of the ocean, but more packed with garbage and much harder to navigate. I dare not search for it. Instead I've carried my laptop around with me constantly for going on 4 years. I carried it with me like most people carry their phones, or like people carried boomboxes in urban America in the 90's. Now that it's gone the music is too.

I've been forced to resort to...(dun-dun-duuuun!).... *gasp* ....the radio.

The RADIO.
Ugh.

And out comes the whiny little elitist (hipster) inside of me.
But I don't LIKE the radio.
There's nothing good on the radio.
And there really REALLY isn't.

I know, I can already see my taste in music sliding down into the questionable realm of...whatever that crap is on there. The point is, Dear Friend, I'm counting on you - even from all the way up there in the land of trees and snow - to keep me in check. I expect you to keep an ear to the ground and should you, from your far away perch, ever hear me hum so much as one bar of 'moves like jager' or anything else equally unpalatable, grab a saw and start marching. Because really, there's no coming back from that. A lobotomy becomes a necessary evil, a gift of love from you to me.

Should you fail me in this, decide that perhaps it would be fun to see Little Foot singing her little heart out to Owl City or Moves Like Jager or that sticky b*tch Ke$ha, or God forbid something more awful I haven't even stumbled across yet...just remember, there is a special kind of hell awaiting you. One in which I play Rihanna videos on a continuous loop. And hold your eyelids open. 'Cause that's the way I roll.

...Now that I've said all that I can't for the life of me remember what else I had to tell you.

I saw a gaggle of children at the bus stop on my way home teaching each other to c-walk. I didn't know kids even did that anymore. You know what else? Goose can c-walk like a crazy woman. Yep. It's true. Betcha didn't see that one coming did you? It's really tragic that amidst all the drunken dancing we did at Pride, we didn't goad her into c-walking to Uh-Huh Her. Because, really-really I would have died of laughter.

And it would have totally been worth it.

I don't know Dear Friend, I don't know. There was so much stuff in my head, and now it's all mostly air and dust. Just space between my ears where thoughts should be. I guess that's how I know that it's time to wrap it up for the night eh? I miss you terribly. I wish you were here. And one day I'm going to steal you back. Better sleep with one eye open. Lots of love.





Neko Case makes me happy. She's got such a big voice. Sing along......

I’m not the man you thought I was
My love has never lived indoors
I had to drag it home by force
Hired hounds at both my wrists
Damp and bruised by stranger’s kisses on my lips
But you’re the one that I still miss
You’re the one that I still miss
And it's ruthless that it comes as no surprise

Delirium.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern——

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

(Taken from Fever 103°. Sylvia Plath)


I stayed home today.
Mumbling poetry under my breath.

I cannot go to school today, said little Peggy Anne McKay...

I rolled around in sweaty sheets from sundown yesterday until well past noon today.
Waiting for my fever to subside.
Somewhere in the middle there I lost my voice.
All of it. Even my whispers are silent.

I have survived on cough drops and Nyquil.
My skin has all gone sore.
I am unable to distinguish the delirium
As a gift of the fever or side effect of the medicine.

Now Goose has gone off to work and I am alone.
I am a pitiful sack of fleshy germs when I'm ill.
Unable to focus.
Unwilling to take care of myself.

Instead I just slink about in slow motion.
Watching the second hand drag its way around the clock face.
Listening for the sound of the key in the lock.
Picking at the growing layers of crust in my eyes.

Tomorrow I have a midterm.
Bright and sunshiny early.
On soil horizons and taphonomy.
If I'm very good, or really lucky, I'll be better by then.


Song of the Day for today is by The Raincoats, really makes you miss 1996 don't it?
No? Not so much? At any rate, it's got a Lou Reed meets Psycho vibe that makes me light-hearted.
Even when I'm too sick to take care of myself.
Love you tons Dear Friend.