It's Trich-y

First of all, I'd like to take a moment for you all (all 4 of you) to appreciate that brilliant title I came up with. You may wonder why I misspelled 'tricky.' If you do, click here before reading on. If you're already accustomed to the fact that I'm mildly crazy, just quietly reflect on the sheer genius of the title for a second because then you can turn your volume up and watch this:




Lyrics | Run D.M.C. - It’s Tricky lyrics

Amazing, right?

Anyway, now that you know I have an uncanny ability to pair a horrifying song with my own eccentricities, we can (reluctantly) move on.

I figure you all are dying to know what's happening with my hair pulling! Yay! Let's catch up:

The last time I wrote about this nearly irresistible habit I have was almost two years ago! I had gone several days pull-free and I got a little cocky. One innocent hair led to tons more, and bam! I leaped directly back onto the hair wagon (which feels more like a bullet train). I tried again at the beginning of last year and was successful for about 2 months before I couldn't stand it anymore and binged frequently with periods of moderation. And look where I am now! Nearly bald at 27. I'm not even exaggerating, it's totally happening. I'd post pictures, but I'm not sure any of you would follow this blog anymore. Plus I'm good at bobby pins so I am only visibly bald occasionally. Plus, I have an INCREDIBLE ability to pull off self-deprecating humor (ha!), and this is the kind of thing that needs it. How did I get so hilarious (in writing)? I have no idea. Except the theory I have which is illustrated in the tedious footnote at the end of this blog.*

There's good news and bad news about my hair...

Good Things:
1. I am learning to become aware of my behavior and thought patterns by gathering useful information. This means I neurotically collect the hair I pull out, store it in a dated envelope, and then count it every week, and I keep a situation and thought record as often as I can.

2. I'm about to start learning ways to intervene that might actually WORK if I can become aware enough to know when to intervene.

3. I'm about to solve this annoying problem and I will be very proud of myself.

4. It's so much better now than it was when I was younger and afraid to tell anyone. I'm not sure why it's better that it's not a secret, but it is. So thanks! :)

5. There's always my old stand-by as a substitute habit: Swedish Fish.**

Bad Things:
1. I have 3 almost-visible balding patches, and 1 visible bald patch.

2. I think the only thing more irritating to count would be grains of sand. Especially the hairs I zipped ribbon-style into little balls or tiny ringlets, because they form giant bouncy looking tangles when they're all smashed with their curled friends in an envelope. Plus, my hair is pretty light-colored even though the ones I rip out are redder and thus darker. This means I have to count them on a giant white shipping envelope with my face like an inch from the hair so I can see, and sometimes I have to BREATHE and they all fly away. Gah!! And sometimes as I'm putting a little clump of 5 hairs onto the already-counted pile, the tiny clump sticks to my hand, attaches to the giant already-counted pile, and then my hand inevitably spazzes and I fling hair everywhere. If my hair was an expensive drug I'd be in debt. Not to mention, it takes forever to count. Last week I recorded 2,335.

3. I'm about to lose my most effective (in the short-term) and most pervasive soothing mechanism. It's weird.

4. Did I mention I am going bald at 27?

I guess the take-away message is...if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. And again. And if it takes you 16 years to start succeeding, you might get frighteningly close to being bald.

Just in case you didn't know, the only woman who looks good bald is G.I. Jane, and that's just because she's Demi Moore. OK, I guess Natalie Portman is pretty too. Without a significant handicap (Brad, you know what I'm talking about), I'd struggle to pull off that level of hotness off. However, I'm pretty sure I could learn to do a one-armed push-up. Maybe even a Mr. Clean commercial.



* I think my self-deprecating skill stems from both my great sense of humor and how I figured out what to do when I was made fun of in school when I was young. Junior high, as Matt's blog describes, is never fun. But I figured if I just didn't cry in front of anyone, they'd leave me alone because it wouldn't be as interesting to pick on me if I just thought everything they said was funny and laughed every time. Instead of crying in the halls, I'd just hold it together until I could escape to the bathroom and hide in a stall until I was normal again. Then I realized some things WERE funny, and if I just went along with it and made my own jokes like I didn't care, that they would get bored of it. And I never, ever, picked on anyone else. Why? Why wouldn't I stand up for myself by cutting others down? Because it feels awful when you're the cuttee. I didn't want someone else to feel like that. And I figured if they had to make someone else feel bad so they would feel good, they must have been a lot more insecure than me. And in a small way, I feel like they learned something. And so did I. Now the goal is to reverse it. It's just a little trich-y.

**At least I'll still have my sugar:

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

Most of my blogs are about past experiences. OK, some are incoherent ramblings about what I’m doing with my life. In an attempt to live in the present moment, I’m going to focus on the minutia: things I do (always and probably forevermore) that slightly irritate me but that I never seem to change.

Having a dusty computer screen.

I could just wipe it off with a hand towel, but I read somewhere that you have to use that special cloth like the kind you use for wiping off your glasses. Or your screen will look like a rainbow. Now that I think of it, that information probably came from an advertisement for the glasses cloth. I still have the fear though.

Dragging out my contacts’ lifespan.

I will wear those things until they’re so dry they’re sticking to my eyelids. I try to prolong switching them out for the next pair as long as Kira-ly possible. Which is pretty long actually. I have incredible tolerance for certain somewhat meaningless annoyances.

Not folding my laundry until I have to get into the bed it’s piled on.

It takes 5 minutes, but it seems like forever. I think everyone probably agrees with me on this. But instead of folding them right away, I toss them in a large heap on my bed and then when I start getting ready for bed I get mad at my past self for refusing to fold the laundry right away. So then I waste 5 minutes of precious sleep.

Not washing the outside of my car.

In my defense, why should I? It lives outside, and rain falls on it. And even if I did wash it, there are trees that drip sap on cars. And 900 pine needles. And bird poop. Besides, it takes all of my brain to remember to keep the INSIDE clean. Sheesh. If I washed the outside all the time, I’d probably have 900 Gatorade bottles blocking the back window instead of pine needles. But still, it looks dirty and then some people get confused about the color. It's blue. Not green. I do wash it occasionally, but in the summer so I can play in the hose.

Using four notebooks at a time and leaving them in different places.

It’s nice in a way to have a notebook everywhere I need one: on my nightstand, in my purse, in my backpack, and in the car. On the other hand, it’s impossible to remember what I wrote in each notebook because they’re scattered around. Also, sometimes in my school notebooks, I’ll flip to an empty page toward the back and write down some weird idea I have for the Oliver story, or some brilliant thing someone said that I want to remember, or brainstorming for an essay, or just rambling thoughts I have. Then I find it three terms later and by then it’s embarrassing.

Leaving a trail of my belongings.

I leave stuff at other people’s houses constantly. I would be a very easy person to track, if I ever had to go on the lam or whatever. (Does anyone know what ‘on the lam’ actually means? I don’t get it but I’m using it because ‘hiding’ sounds boring). Books, my phone, water bottles, jackets, candy. I like to leave people a souvenir.

Getting into bed and turning off the light, then realizing I have to pee.

Seriously. Why? Whyyyyyyyyy?*

Spending a vast quantity of time staring at things and zoning out.

Sometimes I’ll be staring at a TV show but instead of paying attention I’ll start planning what I would do if the back half of an airplane fell off like in Lost for a half hour, and then I have no idea what the show is about if someone asks me. (For the record, I’d attach my child’s breathing mask if I had a kid before my own because I would know to hold my breath and the kid wouldn’t, cling to that seat cushion thing that is supposed to float (and the child), and hope that the cool slide that you use in plane crashes comes out so I can go down it on my stomach into the ocean). Anyway. Also, when we’re doing crunches at the gym I stare at the ceiling squares and make invisible hypotenuses until there are a bunch of tiny imaginary triangles, which is my favorite staring game. Apparently we’re supposed to look over our knees instead of at the ceiling, because she reminds us all the time. I can’t make any triangles out of my kneecaps.

Leaving my keys inside and not realizing it until I get to the car door.

Seriously if you tallied the minutes I waste by walking from the house to the car twice as much as everyone else…well. You’d have a lot of tally marks with diagonal ones through them. One time I lived in an apartment by myself on the third floor, and I bet I was in the best shape ever after that year. I actually taped a sign to the wall right by the door handle that said “Keys. Wallet. Phone.” 60% of the time it worked every time.**

Being in a rush every time I leave the house in the morning.

I have, apparently, a void in the part of my brain that understands how long it takes me to get ready. The void affects me even if I get up really early on purpose, so I have no way that I could possibly be running late. What happens is very strange. I get mostly ready to leave, and then I waste an incredible amount of time doing whatever it is I do that wastes time. I stare at the wall thinking about random things, try on different earrings that I’m not actually going to wear because I rediscover them in the pile of tangled things in my jewelry box, go on the computer, ponder which book to bring, rip out my hair (that can burn anywhere from 10 seconds to an hour, depending on how much time I have to waste before I’m about to be late), write in one of my myriad of journals, or something equally inefficient. So then I look at the clock and I have 30 seconds to do the two things I leave until the end: putting in contacts and brushing my teeth. And I don’t want to lose my teeth in my twenties, so I end up leaving about two minutes later than I’m supposed to. And sometimes, for fun, I leave my keys in the house.

*When you read that part, say it like Nancy Kerrigan.
**That’s from Anchorman. I’m not actually confused about percentages.

My mom could beat your mom at Crystal Quest

I didn’t have a TV when I was little because my parents were hippies. (Not really, but I like to say that because it’s funny. And I’ve seen a picture of my mom in a hippie headband with straight long hair. And my dad had a VW Beetle and a dog, Zooey, who was probably named after the Salinger novel). I kind of liked not having a TV actually. You know, aside from coming away from the 80s and 90s with next to no knowledge about pop culture. Seinfeld? I didn’t watch a full episode probably until they were reruns. Michael Jackson? I don’t think I saw the music video for “Thriller” until like 2003. And I couldn’t play video games on a TV to save my life. What we did have though (along with massive quantities of books), was a bunch of totally rad computer games. I think they were mostly just built into the computer already, but I have no idea. It was an Apple Macintosh, and it had ClarisWorks, KidPix, and probably Netscape Navigator for a browser. Most importantly, it had Spacestation Pheta, Brickles, and Crystal Quest.

Brickles:


This image is of a newer version of the game, but you get the idea. Ball, paddle, bricks.

I rocked at Brickles. There was a little paddle that you controlled with the mouse and you had to make sure the ball didn’t touch the ground. The ground was like hot lava. Plus you had to get all 100 bricks that the ball would bounce up and capture so you could move up a level. And the ball’s trajectory depended on where it hit the paddle. If you barely made it and hit the corner, the ball flew away at like a 20 degree angle and went bouncing off of everything at lightspeed and it was horrifying to try and catch it. And every time you passed a level the ball got faster and faster until you thought you were going to have an aneurysm trying to follow it. Anyway I got the highest score of my life once when I was like 10, but then my parents said I had to go take a shower and pack my stuff to go to the beach. So I paused the game (instead of saving it!! Gah!!!), intending to come back to it and dominate after I got ready. But no – when I got back the computer was turned off. I nearly had a heart attack. I’m not sure if I cried, but it’s possible. I will never come close to that score ever again in my life.

Spacestation Pheta:




Spacestation Pheta was a timed game where you moved a spaceman guy around what was presumably a spacestation and you had to climb up to the exit gate before the time was up. You used spacebar to jump and the arrow keys to move (I think). It was mostly entertaining because of the way he said, “Jump!” with his weird monotone computer man voice every time he jumped up onto a platform. And the way he disintegrated when he died. I mean if he touched the ground, he like melted with a little swooshy sound. He shriveled up almost instantly! God it was satisfying. So most of the time I would try to find the best places to kill him. I’d build up like 30 lives and get to the later levels and then destroy him 30 times in a row. If you’d heard the noise, you’d do it too. Leaping off a tall platform was best, because he would cry, “Ahhhhhhhhhh…” and the volume faded out until he squished. One time I tried to kill him by leaping into this huge cauldron thing that I found on one of the last levels, but it rocketed him back up to the next platform! With an, “Ahhhhhhhhhh…KAPOW!!” like a gun firing. So sometimes I’d jump over and over into the cauldron and fly into the air until I was bored and then I’d suicide him. After we figured that cauldron bit out we could actually beat the level because it shot you up to the exit gate, but it was a lot more fun to see him incinerate into a little pile of spacesuit.

Crystal Quest:



And then there was Crystal Quest. I think Mom really was addicted to Crystal Quest. She was like a savant at it, which was baffling to me and Wyeth. Mom has trouble with the power locks on her car, but she could school you in Crystal Quest, I promise. It’s unbelievable. I mean we were good, but Mom was freaking spectacular. She was a machine.


OK. So you were this little circular spaceship (the round white/red circle on the picture above) controlled by the mouse, and you zipped around picking up these little crystal gems that made a “Ching!” noise when you ran into them. Hence the name Crystal Quest. It was a freaking death pilgrimage though, because the stupid things were EVERYWHERE and you had to get them. All of them! All you had to do was run into one and you’d collect it. Once you got all the ones on the screen, a gate opened at the bottom and you aimed the spaceship out very carefully but as fast as possible. And if you got out in a certain amount of time, you got like jackpot points to go with the points you got for shooting stupid aliens. Gathering crystals is tons harder when you’re dodging like 900 space aliens with varying weapons and speed. Some just shot slowly without aiming and you just had to drive around the bullet. Others came at you really fast and shot right at you, and others blew up if you shot them and emitted like electron orbitals of bomb shrapnel that you had to avoid. That sucked, especially if you were aiming at another alien and you shot at it right as you saw the last crystal or something so you slightly moved and MISSED and hit one of the bomb ones. There were slow-moving blobs that wouldn’t be that bad but they were huge and you sometimes ran into them agonizingly while trying to avoid a parasite or the bomb alien you inadvertently shot. And you had to shoot them like 7 times before they died, so you had to get a running (flying?) start and shoot like crazy while driving right at them and hope they died before you collided. You could only shoot things when moving forward, because you shot in the direction you were traveling, so if you were cornered by a bunch of land mines you couldn’t really shoot at an attacking alien or you’d run into the dumb land mine. Sometimes big shining and glowy diamonds came out of the places the aliens came out of and you desperately wanted them, not just because they were glorious and pretty and comforting, but because once you ran into one you got thousands and thousands of points and it gave you bomb power (or something did – my point system memory is hazy. The glowy things were good though. You wanted them). Then once the screen got too complicated and freaking parasite aliens were coming after you (they tracked you! None of the others did that! What the h!), you could push spacebar and the screen lit up and everything would be obliterated. Thank God. After level 25, the exit gate started MOVING across the ground. Half the time my last precious lives would be wasted on trying to get out, because the sides of the exit gate killed you if you bumped them. Plus you’re always on edge in the higher levels because everything is after you. Sometimes your last crystal is way at the top of the screen and you have to fly all the way down to the gate that might not even BE there when you finally arrive. It’s like trying to find an exit in Los Angeles at rush hour, if instead of being gridlocked and stopped, there were that many cars moving at 70 miles an hour and just as closely packed and in different directions. And if you had a gun that never ran out of bullets and would blast all the cars out of the way. You couldn’t really blink while playing or you’d certainly crash (unless you were my mom). So my eyes were always dry and bloodshot, and my hands were sweaty because it was terrifying. All for a bunch of crystals. Typical.

Oregon Trail:




Oregon Trail was also glorious. We got to play that in school! Teachers thought it was educational! I did learn a few things:

1. Don’t shoot the only six buffaloes* in the first part of the game in one hunt, because you can only carry back 200 (250?) pounds back to your wagon. Even though it’s REALLY tempting, because they’re kind of cute when they’re in a little heap after they’re dead. Spread it out so your family can at least eat regularly in the first 15 minutes of the game. Once you get past the first river there are only mangy squirrels to shoot and they’re way spazzier to aim at. And yeah, that asterisk was on purpose. There’s a footnote at the end of the blog!! Fancy.

2. Always name the last child (there are five people: you and four others) after someone you don’t like, because they will probably get bitten by a snake as soon as you leave St. Louis. No matter what age you designate, they will die. Even though I think it’s a lot less likely that a toddler is going to get bitten by a snake just sitting in a wagon with their mom all day, but what do I know?

3. Caulking the wagon means floating across the river. I never really understood this. Were there caulking guns back then? Wouldn’t it take kind of a long time to seal a wagon? Did they use pitch or something? Can oxen swim? Wouldn’t the wheels be heavy enough to sink the wagon? What the hell were they talking about?

4. The Green River is like 20 feet deep in the middle, so fording it is a good way to kill off your family if you don’t have many points and you want to start over. Fording means trying to just drive across, apparently, and your entire family will die almost every time. Nobody could swim in the 1800s.

5. Cholera and dysentery kill you, and you can get them a lot easier if you are in “Poor” health, ie., if you are only eating squirrels, or not resting. You have to rest a lot if you want to survive, which is easy to forget when you’re concentrating on finding more cute buffaloes* to shoot.

6. There is always an abundance of oxen for some reason, so if your oxen die, you can just trade for more. Who knew?

7. Don’t try to raft down the river at the end. There are tons of logs and there’s no way to practice because you have to play all the way through to get there. Just pay for the toll road thing. It’s only a slight detour and your entire family won’t smash into a log and drown before they get to Oregon.


So that was the Oregon Trail. I loved computer class because of that. Also, Keyboarding lessons were fun. (I know, I know: DORK!) But it timed you and you had to go FFF JJJ FFF JJJ FJF JFJ JJ FF JJJ FFF as fast as you could, until you learned more letters and then it would make you type paragraphs, which was nerve-racking. I was obsessed with improving my words per minute. My hands got sweaty in keyboarding too.


When we were older we got Myst. I'm not even putting a picture of Myst up because it will only aggravate me. Myst is a scavenger hunt (as far as I could tell, since I didn’t get very far) in which you wander around in some mist and try to find stuff. I never found ANYTHING! It was always telling you to find maps and spyglasses and other dumb things that were totally invisible in the mist! Plus it spelled Myst with a Y, which made me barf a little in my mouth. That’s about when computer games got lame and Wyeth started playing insane ones called SoulReaverIII and GroundControlLXXVIII and I started being a teenager and IMing everyone. Which, if you don’t know, is instant messaging, or Neanderthal texting, but cooler since you knew if the person was there or not because it showed unless you went invisible. So you weren’t just texting to space. Just like Facebook or Gmail chatting now, but old school. It was crazy, because you could have like five IM screens up at once and five conversations. So most conversations would be like:

Beada17 (that was me): Lalalala. What are you doing? I’m bored.

ilikebunnyrabbits1983: im like talking to 4 people rite now, sorryif im being slow lol

Beada17: Me too, who are you talking to?

ilikebunnyrabbits1983: john, laura, amanda and jason. and u obviuosly

Beada17: Me too!! Whoa weird!

ilikebunnyrabbits1983: what ru guys talking about?

Beada17: Who Jason wants to ask to the dance. I think he’ll ask Laura. Don’t tell him I told you.

ilikebunnyrabbits1983: i wont john just said hes asking laura!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Beada17: Ahhh!!

ilikebunnyrabbits1983: cul8r i have to eat dinner :(

Beada17: Bye!


The lazy typing made me want to die, so I protested peacefully by capitalizing proper pronouns and using apostrophes, but it was a useless crusade. Now I’m desensitized. I admit I have a soft spot for omg. Anyway, you had to have codes for if your parents came into the room while you were typing about something embarrassing, such as whether you like-liked someone or not. Ours was “oj.” If I typed that, my friend would know that I couldn’t respond at the moment and I probably had a window up blocking the IM with my homework essay or Encyclopedia Britannica or something safe. Either that or I was just going to get some orange juice and I’d brb. Lol.



* I’m pretty sure both ‘buffalo’ and ‘buffaloes’ work as plurals, but I’m sorry if they don’t. ‘Buffaloes’ is cooler and frankly I didn’t know it was a word until recently, and plus it looks like ‘toes,’ so I’m using it.

My Spacey Brain

(Not to be confused with my spacIOUS brain.)

Earlier I read a reference to one of Britney Spears’ songs on a friend’s Facebook status and instantly knew the next few lyrics. Somewhat ashamed, I started thinking about it and realized there must be a lot of wasted space in my brain. No wonder I can’t think of the answer super quickly when my psychotic teacher calls on me in class. My brain has to sift through all the pop lyrics and baseball stats and who knows what else I’ve built up to get to a clear place and think of the answer. Sheesh.
I am the type of person who gets really excited about things if I like them, and then I try to learn everything about them. Or at least, I start out learning about them, gather a bunch of useful information, and then ditch it all for something else I decide to love. (I’m not like that about everything – I don’t think I’d be super interested if I had a baby and then suddenly decide I’m not that into it. I mean, there are bridges you can’t go back across. And sometimes I become RE-obsessed with things. Like fantasy baseball. It happened when I was 10, and here I am at 26 having a relapse). I also happen to like a LOT of things. It’s like trying on jeans at the store. I bring 15 pairs into the changing room and sometimes come out with one pair. Or none, usually. I guess I like to try new things. Not like heroin, but you know. It’s adaptive for something like school – I just LOVE learning! Except I changed my major like 9 million times, so a more cost-effective strategy would have been better. For instance, I’d be more successful if I became obsessed with and then excellent at linear algebra and nothing else. Instead I’ve settled for a general proficiency in a variety of crap. Well-rounded, I called it on college applications. I was an extracurricular-ly active kid.
That said, I have had several strong obsessions throughout the last 26 years. At seven years old, my parents asked if I wanted to subscribe to a magazine. We could pick anything we wanted. So I chose Parents magazine. Oh yes. I read about EVERYTHING. I read about autism, weaning, colic, cystic fibrosis, ectopic pregnancies, how to spice up your sex life (whatever THAT was) if you’re co-sleeping with your three-year-old. You name it. There were sections in that magazine on each milestone of a child’s life, and as I was reading them I was growing up into different stages (so I guess I was always introspective). Yet I recall nothing in depth. I have a very general bookish idea of what it’d be like to be a parent. When I read things like Sarah’s blog though, I realize I have absolutely no concept of what it’s like in practice. (Naked marathons! Where was that in the job description? In comparison, the motherhood interview process is a piece of cake – at least the first time around). Anyway, I would cut out the articles I thought would be useful for babysitting. I did a giant research paper in 8th grade on the steps to becoming a pediatrician, where I went and volunteered at a low-income and mostly with a Hispanic population medical clinic. I got to translate the Spanish for the doctor during a patient’s checkup. (I’m sure the doctor already understood, but still I felt special.) I read a book about medical school and dissecting dogs, and how one doctor dealt with the experience of examining a two-year-old with multiple bruises under her diaper. I was all for the rewarding aspects and the heartbreaking bits, and I decided when I was like 40 I would write a book about it just like that doctor I read about. In high school I started shaping my transcript and activities so I could pursue medicine. “Purdue pre-med program, here I come!” I said. I visited the campus. I wanted to major in biology and specialize in genetics.
Until I deferred admission there and instead studied abroad in Italy the first term of college and decided I wanted to learn a lot of languages and be a translator so I could travel for the rest of my life. In Italy I had a conversation with a fairly attractive Italian guy who didn’t know English but knew German, and I didn’t know Italian and knew German pretty well at the time. We spoke in German for a while, about President Bush and whether or not I agreed with his politics, and it actually worked! That kind of blew my mind a little. Until he wanted us to go somewhere in his “taxi.” Yeah! Totally like in that movie Taken. Except I’m not an idiot, so I was not taken. (On a related note, a similar thing happened in Barcelona, except that guy wanted me to go on a plane with him to Morocco the next day. Maybe later I’ll write a blog about how I escaped being kidnapped or whatever by that dude). So after that I decided I’d just translate for hospitals or something.
When I started at UO I had two years of both Spanish and German, and one year of Italian. I needed to learn maybe Japanese or French or something else useful. So, logically, I signed up for Danish. Not even first-year, it was some intensive crazy class for people who obviously were born in Denmark or something. I took two weeks of that class and opted out when we read this impossibly Danish news article. Why the hell do I need Danish anyway? I thought. I could just learn these things on my own and it would be much faster and more fun. So I made my friend, a Japanese major, teach me the Hiragana alphabet. He quizzed me and everything – I totally knew what sounds the characters made and a few of the Kanji characters. I bought French tapes and children’s books in Polish and all sorts of glorious things from the Powell’s language section (the Red Room). I had read the first Harry Potter in Spanish for a class, so I bought the second one in French. I studied the patterns and word order and sometimes thought I could actually understand it. I took linguistics classes and more Spanish. I know what a interdental fricative is. P’s and M’s are bilabial stops. And then I thought for like one second about the possibilities I’d have as a linguistics major and said screw this - I’m majoring in comparative literature.
I mean journalism. Wait! English. Actually I’m going to minor in Art – photography. Oh never mind I guess I’ll do psychology. And respiratory care at the same time. Yep, that sounds good.
I still am particularly interested in the power of the mind though – especially right now since I’m reading all these books about spiritual enlightenment and cosmic connections. But I already went through that phase when I took a bunch of philosophy classes around the same time as the Danish, so I’m not allowed to get obsessed again. There are too many other enticing and obsession-worthy things out there, right? But maybe not, if I just had enough space to figure out the spiritual enlightenment bit…but that is probably going to be difficult.
Because I bet I could remember how to play F@#% the Dealer if I was given a deck of cards and a 30-rack of Keystone Light. That is precisely the kind of space I denied my spiritual health. Thankfully I only needed to know it for a couple experimental years, and did not become obsessed - that would be alcoholism. Maybe then my blogs would be funnier. Anyhoo.
Let’s just say I don’t need any of that other filler crap now. Wasted freaking brain capacity. And that was space that I intentionally wasted!! I wasn’t even talking about automatic things I do to decrease potential. Those things are much harder to not do. Like memorizing an oldies song – like 50s and 60s oldies. I memorized them because I chose to listen to them for like four years straight, to my mom and dad’s horror. So maybe I had some control over that, but how the hell do I know what’s going to stick around for 17 years when I’m nine?! Parents of today’s kids, don’t let them listen to the 80s. It will not be cool. I have not changed for the cooler by listening to pop music my parents grew up trying not to listen to in high school. And yes I do have the Eugene oldies station programmed into my car radio. Keepin’ it real.
It’s the little things that I haven’t consciously put in my brain that I worry about. These are the things that make it difficult to answer an impromptu question. Like today when I was listening the teacher who I REALLY NEED to listen carefully to because at any moment I could shift slightly in my seat and he could use that as an excuse to call on me. I was listening attentively, but also staring at one corner of the wall, where it meets the ceiling. It’s never good to stare at a wall, because I do this thing where I connect invisible lines in my mind so that triangles are formed. I guess you could say I create invisible hypotenuses whenever I see an acute angle or a bunch of squares, or even bricks. Good thing I can’t measure the lengths of the sides and stuff, or I would be A-squaring plus B-squaring away my life. That’s the type of thing that I could really do without. (God it’s satisfying to use the word ‘hypotenuses’ in a sentence. Finally, after all these years of storing it in my files…wait. Ahhhhhhh!!!!) Also I count things. Sometimes I have to think something a certain number of times in order to be satisfied with it. Or split things into acceptable groups of equal number, and most importantly an even number (because then I can have one on each side of my mouth. Equal cavity chance). If I dump them all out on the table and there are 61 Skittles in my pack, this is annoying. It just is. Because there are five different flavors of Skittles in an original pack: red, orange, green, yellow, purple. You could divide them into five piles of 12, but then you’d have an extra one. I have to eat all the unmatched extra ones first because they can’t go in sets of two. Thankfully there’s only one extra one in that case, which would be extremely rare. Normally I have to whittle away at them until there’s five piles of six each or something. This is clearly just some obsessive-compulsive issue, but if you think about it, I could have been using all that space in my brain I took up by making a rule to sort Skittles for something useful! Good grief.
Another thing I do is make up little scenes in my head. Everyone does this to an extent I think – like after you do something and it’s embarrassing, you think of how the scene would have gone if you did it right. That’s kind of a productive way to use the scenes, except it means dwelling on unimportant things from the past. I ultimately know that whatever I did that was stupid, those who matter won’t mind and those who mind don’t matter. So why the replays? And why is that phrase about mind and matter in my brain anyway? Probably because my brain can’t hold onto anything actually happening in the present because it’s too busy going, “Step by step, ooh baby, gotta get to you girrrrrrrrl. Step one: you can have lots of fun, step two: there’s so much we can do, step three: it’s just you and meeeee, step four: I can give you more, step five…" Thank God I don’t remember step five - I think I just realized what that song was about. But maybe they’re only talking about second base. At least that’s all I would have comprehended when my insane child-self was committing this all to memory.
I also remember other jingles from my youth. Like this one (you have to say it aloud so it makes sense – there’s a lot of word play): “Miss Susie had a tugboat, the tugboat had a bell, the tugboat when to heaven, Miss Susie went to hello operator, please give me number 9, and if you disconnect me, I’ll cut off your behind the refrigerator, there was a piece of glass, Miss Susie sat upon it, and broke her little ask me no more questions, tell me no more lies, the boys are in the bathroom, zipping up their flies are in the meadow, the bees are in the hive, and Susie and her boyfriend are kissing in the D-A-R-K, D-A-R-K, D-A-R-K dark!”

Oh GREAT! I just realized something. I’m going to cardio pump in a little while with Nancy, and I’ve just started learning all the step calls. This is not good! I mean, I’m doing OK at it, all uncoordinated handicaps considered. But now when my teacher points at me to answer tomorrow in class (when I make a sudden movement to pick at my pencil eraser), I’ll probably have my cardio instructor saying, “Hamstring curl, karate repeater, turn straddle turn straddle, walk the curb, chug up chug down,” in my head. And it would all be to the beat of a Lady Gaga song I learned word for word. Let’s face it: I’m doomed.

The Terrible Tues...day?

Oh that title is amazingly cheesy! Whew.

This is going to be a rant blog – sorry. But today has been freaking rant-tastic. (If you want to read a funny rant blog, check out Matt's blog.)

First I was fully awake for no reason at 5:30. OK, I think. I’ll just roll over and shut my eyes and have another glorious, warm, peaceful hour of sleep. Orrrrrr, I’ll just lay there awake until 6:27 or so. The last time I looked at the clock it was 6:15, and then the alarm went off at 6:30, and Adam instantly suctioned himself to me.

I don’t know what happens while I’m sleeping, but when I wake up in the middle of the night and go to stretch my leg out or just find a colder area of the bed to lay in, Adam SENSES this, rolls over, and attaches to my back. I sleep on my side but slightly curled. I don’t want my legs to be straight down because then I wouldn’t be able to balance on my side. But Adam likes me to lie perfectly straight and unbalanced so he can wrap himself around me. Plus he has subconscious ESP. Like if I move slightly to reposition my arm or something, he will be stuck to my back in like one second. So I say, “Umm…Adam dear? It’s too hot, can you move back like four feet?” But he can’t hear me until like the fourth time, and by then I’m just like “BABE!! You’re suffocating me.” So then he thinks I’m sort of evil, because who just yells at you while you’re asleep? And in the middle of the night you can’t really be like, “No no, you misunderstood. There’s a back story here – I’m dying of heatstroke and I tried to tell you like nine times." Or at least I can’t, because I might be killed. Also, since I’m already on the subject, I used to be an insane sleeper, OK, but I’ve changed my ways. I was a frequent and unpredictable sleepwalker. See this blog for details.

But I never stealthily tucked the blankets around myself like a burrito and rolled away with them! And it’s always when I’m AWAKE, so it’s not like I just don’t notice and sleep on until I’m freezing in the middle of the night. I’ll be laying there fully under the blanket, awake and kind of mad about it because obviously I’m not asleep but at least I’m warm, and suddenly the blankets slide away. I sleep on the right side of the (queen size) bed with a foot of room to work with, because Adam can only sleep in the direct center of the bed. And I don’t like if my feet or hands or knees are hanging over the side because as a child I thought wolves were under the bed and I just get an uneasy feeling if they’re hanging out there. Anyway, so Adam will be lying there on his back totally passed out and unmoving, and then suddenly for no reason he’ll quickly roll to the right, gather the blankets with his legs, and roll back to the left with the entire blanket/sheet ensemble. It’s almost like he practices it. It’s maddening, but also really funny sometimes. I try not to laugh though because the Before-Coffee-Adam might kill me.

Anyway, today when my alarm went off, I was like OK, Tuesday. That’s cool. I forgive you for jacking my sleep because it’s sunny already, my classes are early, and I have the day off work. Take that. And I went to school, got a good parking spot, and put 2 hours and 45 minutes worth of change into the meter (I know, I know. Biking will commence soon. But I’m going to complain about things having to do with the car anyway right now because I’m stupid and drove my car). Then I walked to my classroom and then immediately all the way back to the car again to retrieve my coffee. My first class, Marital and Family Therapy, went fine. Well, except I wanted to sit in the back (because my hair is down today, and I have ripped out too much of it recently but I still wanted to wear it down because it feels nicer), so I chose a seat in the second-to-back row. I would have chose the back row but everyone else was sort of up further and I didn’t want to be rude and sit farthest away from the teacher. And then someone came in like 10 minutes late and sat in the seat directly behind me. There was a whole row!!! How was she going to see the blackboard RIGHT BEHIND ME?? I know perfectly well how irrational it is to care about my hair, but I just sometimes want to sit in the back of the classroom. Is that so bad? If this paragraph was perplexing, read this.

But in reality you’ll probably still be perplexed. I am.

Anyhow, then I had the class that I like the best but am most terrified of, because it’s “seminar-style” and there are only 15 students. Which apparently means the teacher just calls on you anytime he wants and sometime I’m going to have to lead a class discussion who knows how many times? Like stand up and present. At random. I mean can it get any scarier? Sheesh. The teacher is funny and talks about relevant things to 2010, which I like. When teachers use phone cords as an analogy like my chemistry teacher last term, I worry that almost everyone else in the class won’t get it because phone cords are before their time. (Except at work. Where we have long phone cords and I do the most moving and talking on the phone ever. I totally clothes-lined the relief pharmacist yesterday. It’s like those laser rooms in movies, where you try to get to the diamond but there are secret lasers every which way and you have to contort your body to get around them, and for some reason you have to wear very little clothing if you’re female and when you're dodging the lasers it's always a lot more racy than when the guy is).

Anyway, this guy talks about video games and cell phones and basketball and gorillas and uses youtube.com to show us fun videos. And then grills us on some totally new concept he’s just presented that day! Like the word ‘endogenous.’ He just said the word for the first time like one minute ago, and then he calls on someone and says, “So what does endogenous mean and how does it relate to misdirection of attention?” Huh? Thank God he asked the kid in front of me, who managed to extrapolate the meaning from the parts of the word. He’ll ask the question, and then say, “Yes? You in the green?” like you just raised your hand or something, and then you’re like, “Wait, me? Or…” It’s nerve-racking. I don’t even care about my seating arrangement in that class because I’m too busy scrambling to think of something that makes sense in any way. When I answer questions in class, even if I know the answer, I still manage to misspeak somehow, turn red, and correct myself. In the process I realize that what I said doesn’t make sense and then I just trail off. Today I asked a question about a project, and I said something like, “Our group was wondering, and I’m wondering I guess can we use, because I’m asking, is this, I mean are we, for the hypothesis, am I on the right track here? If I say, I mean, um, for the hypothesis?” And he stares at me sympathetically like, “What IS your hypothesis?” And I’m like, “Oh of course, sorry.” And then I get some kind of answer, hopefully, after I’ve actually asked something that even resembles a question. It’s horrifying, but I’m used to it. Moving on.

During the last 15 minutes of class, we split into groups for a project. Oh, JOY! We were supposed to bring an idea for an experiment today to share, and 3 of the 4 of us had it. And of the 3, I am the only one who followed the directions. I actually thought of it during my hour of non-sleep, which was awesome. So we had to use mine for the main thing, and so of course I was like, well I guess I’ll type it up and email it to the teacher early this afternoon!! Yay Tuesday! This teacher is crazy with his impromptu stuff. God I hate group assignments. The people in my group were smart – I could tell by the way they defined words they’d never heard. So what the H?

So I went to the computer lab, with the knowledge that I had approximately 34 minutes to get back to my car/write the thing and email it. But obviously I didn’t make it in time because there was a nice green ticket on the windshield. I think the parking meter maid Apparated, because I swear he or she should have still been writing the ticket as I walked up. Probably my meter had been blinking for like 20 seconds. I mean, I try to be a conscientious citizen. I don’t throw things out my car window, and I try not to take up eight spaces with my car (don’t even mention Mazzi’s, those of you who remember), I don’t run into people with my car, I don’t go 45 mph on Hwy 126, and I always pay the meter. Unless I forget. But this time I didn’t even forget!! And no one will ever know that I TRIED to pay it, because there’s no record! I tried, city.

I think it’s appropriate to insert a mini-rant about the Portland parking meters. They are innovative because you can use credit cards or paper bills or change, which is glorious. But it drives me crazy that you can’t add time onto it once you’ve printed out your sticky note thing. Like, if you’re at one that has a one-hour time limit and you put in a half hour’s worth of money, and then remember you need to go do something else for ten minutes, you have to print a whole new sticky note (you stick them on your window and they say the time you should return to the car) that doesn’t take into account your old sticky note. So then you have two dumb notes taped to your car window and one says you have to come back in a half hour, and the other says you have to come back in ten minutes. That drives me insane for some reason.

No matter, I decided, I’ll just go pay it and be on my merry way to enjoy Tuesday. Tuesday is frankly awesome right now by the way, so this blog is just a means of processing all the injustices that happened in the morning. I’m in a spectacular mood, and I’m not being sarcastic. Wednesday might be even better, who knows? So I put 30 minutes worth of change into a new meter outside the parking ticket office, which is also conveniently the Municipal Court, so I feel like a freaking criminal going in there, but anyway.

As I’m waiting for the lady to praise me for being so prompt on my ticket payment, she’s like, “Hmm, you have an outstanding balance on here from 2008.” So I go, “Oh. Shoot.” And she asks if I remember parking on 13th and Moss. And I’m like, “No way lady.” But she said it was only $24, which was a giant relief since I thought those things double by the month or something. Turns out they don’t even care if you don’t pay your ticket for two years. She even said I didn’t have to pay that one today! But I did, because if this happens again in 2012 I will freak out. So 16+24=$40 later (actually about $43 if you count all the change I PUT IN THE EFFING METERS), I was free. Free to go home and return a phone call from a couple days ago.

The lady on the phone said, “Is 1345 Ferry St. your current address?” And I said, “No. That’s where I lived in 2006 though.” And she goes, “OK, we’re a collections agency trying to collect a debt.” And I’m like, “OK. For what?” Because I can’t remember anything problematic in the last five years. Honestly. Don’t those people try to contact you like mad if they want money? I mean it’s been four years apparently. And she asks if I still have my Comcast modem from 2006 and I’m like, “No!” Who knows where that thing is…probably in JD’s stepdad’s garage for all I know. And she goes, “OK, you owe $99.99 then. Would you like to pay that today?” Yeah I’d LOVE to! Gahhhhhhhhh!! So I paid it, and then the lady was happy. I just wonder how they let these things go for like four YEARS, or two for the parking ticket, and then suddenly you have to pay it by Wednesday? I mean, I just want to know if something is wrong – and then I can take care of it. I’m trying to be a good citizen, I swear. Look, I just paid $139.99 before 11 a.m.!! Or more like $142.99. And then the lady, even though I thought she hung up because the phone went dead for like five seconds, as it had been doing periodically the whole conversation, says, “So is 1345 Ferry St. a current billing address for this card?”

It sounded good at the time...

I finished my chemistry final and I am flooded with energy. When I say flooded I mean my brain is being drowned. Seriously. I have no brain, and I’m being swept down a river of energy. It’s not the kind of productive energy that makes people want to clean their houses or go running for 6 miles, it’s bursty writing energy and it’s driving me NUTS!!! If you don’t know what bursty means, it’s what I call it when I have a ball of excitement in my chest and I’m suddenly understanding things much better than before and I am SO CLOSE to putting it all together and figuring out what the hell is going on with the world, and the only thing I want to do with it is write it down. But I can never express it. That’s why I’m in the energy river. It only makes sense to me! The ball of energy is always about liking something so strongly that it’s like I’m straining toward it. Usually it’s an elusive concept, like the FREAKING MEANING OF LIFE. Or the Oliver McBubbins story. So, since I have again failed to grasp and hold on to the meaning of everything and then tell you guys about it, I figure I’ll just talk about a bunch of dumb things that I remember from my childhood. I’ll try and relate them all to one phrase, which I’m going to repeat each time I switch topics because otherwise this won’t make any sense, and the phrase is this:

It sounded good at the time…

…to start squirt gun fights with the neighbor boys at our apartment complex. These kids were relentless. One’s name was Taylor, and the other was Kyran (which amused me greatly because MY name was almost the same spelling, and that is cool when you are a little kid. Except it wasn’t cool for him because it was kind of a girlish name). They were both a year older than me, and when they were together they were mean. Kyran on his own was OK. He used to play catch with me and that was nice, and he’d throw it as hard as he could, which was good because I liked catching it better that way. But Taylor was just generally terrifying. And he hocked loogies on the ground at the bus stop a few years later, which made me want to barf all the time. And since they were a year older than me, they were five years older than my brother Wyeth. Who was like FOUR years old. So already you would be rooting for us if this was a TV show. But sadly it was real. They were like the American Gladiators of squirt gun fights. Our main disadvantage besides age and size was our absolute lack of up-to-date weaponry. Remember squirt guns, and when Super Soakers came out? And it was like Super Soaker 100, or Super Soaker 275, or whatever? And the number indicated roughly how many feet you could squirt? OK, so we had like Super Soaker 10. And Super Soaker 25.



So our most technologically advance weapon had a water chamber that held about six ounces of water. Which meant we had to go reload at the garden hose about every thirty seconds. And of course, the hose was guarded by someone EVIL with a Super Soaker 3900 or something INSANE that could blast our faces off. And they always took head shots. One year Taylor and Kyran got backpacks with a fire hose attached to them, I swear to God. It was a PACK of water, I don’t even know how they ran. They were like Marines. It was horrifying.



And for lack of a better picture of the backpack, think of something like this:



Luckily we were fast and we knew the good hiding places. Big kids usually don’t know the hiding places right away, because they don’t need them. But it totally sucked if we were found, because we were always trapped behind the building somewhere far, far away from the hose or even our glorious water balloon grenade supply, which was probably left unguarded since we were hiding. And then Taylor and Kyran would just kill us. We were dead. I mean, you know when you jump into a swimming pool and you don’t blow out with your nose, so water goes up it? And you have water right in your sinus for like a day? That happened when they killed us all summer long. And thankfully it didn’t snow much in Oregon, because the year it did I stupidly threw a snowball at Taylor, just as a little joke, and then Wyeth and I almost died again.

It sounded good at the time…

...to put my hair in corn rows the night before my third grade school picture day, and then take them out so I had awesome crimped hair for pictures. My friend asked if I stuck my finger in a light socket.

It sounded good at the time…

…to wear hot pink and sort of shimmery Spandex shorts and matching hot pink Saltwater sandals with a teal hoodless sweatshirt several times in fourth grade.

It sounded good at the time…

…to let Dad have a sip of our soda, ever. Dad is the fastest soda drinker I have ever seen. Our maximum soda amount allotted was one soda per day. Obviously most days we didn’t have soda, because we usually drank juice or something else because soda is bad for you. We drank an abnormally high amount of grape juice compared to other types of juice, but that’s because Wyeth is and has always been obsessed with grape juice. Anyway. Dad totally gypped us out of like three-fourths of the soda EVERY TIME. “Just a little sip,” he’d say innocently. And then he’d tip the can back and literally in one second the soda was gone. And then he'd say "No Coke, Pepsi" even though it was really Coke. So really our maximum amount was like three ounces of soda per day. OMG, does anyone remember Nehi?? It was blue. And glorious.



It sounded good at the time…

…to get the DPT vaccine. The marketing was great – no diphtheria, pertussis, or tetanus! All you have to do is be stabbed once in the leg. I don’t care about needles, I watch every time, because I kind of want to know what is going on. And I like giving blood and stuff. Being blindly stabbed is bad. That’s probably where everyone gets their fear of needles in the first place. Of course it’s terrifying if something randomly STABS you when you’re looking the other way. The anticipation is the worst part. Anyway. Wyeth and I got stabbed in the leg once to protect us from DPT, and then we were crippled for days. Seriously, we couldn’t walk. We laid there dying FOREVER in our rooms. I mean it was probably only a couple hours, but I think we got tetanus in our legs for real. It wasn’t the normal ache, it was like something is clearly wrong and if it goes on any longer we’re going to amputate. Did that happen to anyone else? You’d remember. It was the shot that paralyzed your leg. And you were probably like five. Or one, apparently, if you were Wyeth.

It sounded good at the time…

…to swim in the ocean in Oregon in January. Or November. Whenever we were at the beach. We were crazed. Well, I was crazed and I dragged Wyeth down the wrong path with me. If you don’t know what temperatures are like on the Oregon coast, just think 40s. Or 50s. Or in August, maybe 65. That’s the air. The water temperature is an enigma. I would guess ice cold. It would be so cold out we’d be wearing jackets and sweatpants TO the ocean, and then sometimes long-sleeved shirts and sweatpants INTO the ocean. Most of you know that my face gets a pretty good shade of red when I’m hot, or nervous, or embarrassed, or thinking about something that could be embarrassing to someone else hypothetically, or just excited about my chemistry final being finished. I’m pretty sure I was flushed for like the whole afternoon today. Anyway, when I’m cold I turn very red, but with flecks of purple, blue, and fuschia. And not in the face as much as my entire body. It took about 45 seconds for us to be numb, which strangely is what we were going for. Once you’re numb, it totally doesn’t matter and you can stay in forever. Or as long as Mom and Dad wanted to stand in their winter jackets on the shore trying to read and watch so we didn’t die, which was a surprisingly long time. English majors. Anyway. Wyeth and I liked getting crushed by waves, and would get disappointed and impatient if the waves were not strong enough. We never went out higher than our waists really, but that’s because we’re smart. The waves here are not calm like in some places, where people just go swimming out past the waves and hang out in their wetsuits or whatever. I wished it was, but it’s not. The other thing that’s kind of underrated about the whole thing is that we took our glasses off sometimes so we wouldn’t lose them (one time Wyeth did lose his when we were in the ocean in San Diego and that sucked). So without my glasses or contacts Adam likes to refer to me as “Mole,” because I squint and lean forward and get really close to things to read them. Or FIND them, since glasses are usually what I am trying to find when I don’t have them on. So how on earth did we see how big the waves would be? Now that I think about it, that was totally and completely psychotic. Once we were numbed and bored of the ocean, we would run into the creek which ran into the ocean and dive straight in because it was warm comparatively. When we got to the house, we got the sand hosed off of us, which was the worst part somehow. Then one of us stood by the heater while the other one took a shower, and we’d switch until we were finally thawed. By that time we were ready to go again.

It seemed good at the time…

…to bring the cat with us to the beach and let her outside. She loved it, but would never come back, so we always had to wait until she came back inside to go home if it was the last day of vacation. And she had like cat ESP because she always was gone on that day. And once her tail got bit by some crazy animal at the beach and she had to wear a cone on her head.

It sounded good at the time…

…to sneak out of bed secretly in the middle of the night to read in the living room. I swear it was like the coolest idea EVER, and it was always my idea, since I am the oldest and the bad example. Now that I’ve heard other people’s stories about sneaking out in the middle of the night, I’m pretty sure we were missing the entire point. I would like a mulligan, please. We’d be laying there in our beds and I would finally whisper the plan to Wyeth after we could tell Mom and Dad were asleep. I would leap as far off of my bed as possible and gently land in the middle of the room so as not to be eaten by the wolves under the bed. They were confined under the bed though, so once I was touching the floor I was fine. We’d choose a book and quietly crawl down the hall, which was the hard part, since it was right by Mom and Dad’s room. And it was really FUNNY to be doing this in the middle of the night, so if I looked over at Wyeth stealthily crawling away I would always start to giggle, and then we would sprint-crawl to the living room where it was safe. If I were Mom and Dad I might have killed us, because we were so giggly and annoying, but they just captured us and returned us to our room. Where we could just read anyway, I don’t know why it was so exciting to read in the dark living room when I had a perfectly good flashlight.

It sounded good at the time…

…to let Wyeth try my Dr. Pepper-flavored chapstick, because he ate it. And then all I had left was stupid Strawberry.

The Hunchback of North Cedar (Street)

Once upon a time in chemistry class today, my stomach started to progressively tighten into a nice knot. This was completely tolerable, since most of the two hour class we were sitting and stirring the same beaker. By the time we got to Brad’s house however, I was semi-dying, and probably most of it is because Brad is funny, so I kept laughing, which only fueled the knot. And on the way home in my car, I kept thinking about this really stupid thing someone in my class said yesterday, so I was cracking up AGAIN, which didn’t untangle the knot. We are learning about genetics and stuff, and specifically about alleles. And as the teacher was showing a chart that mapped out some of the possible combinations of the sex chromosomes (ie. XY, XX, XXY, XYY, X, etc.), literally aloud in the middle of class, this guy asked if one of the alleles would explain why someone is gay. Brad turned red, I couldn’t look at the teacher, there was a collective groan, and then the teacher handled it better than anything he’s handled all year by saying, “That’s beyond the scope of this class.” For once, when he said that, I was glad. The people in these classes of ours are priceless. So anyway I was cackling to myself about that on the way home, and consequently dying.

When I got to my house, I was hunched over. And hunched is how I’ve remained for the last four hours. It’s weird. I have a relatively high threshold for pain, or at least as high as I can tell, having never really severely wounded myself. So actually, I’ll retract that statement. I guess I have no idea. I could be a total pansy. I mean, yeah. I probably am. I guess I got hit in the face with a baseball bat once, but that only required six stitches. Actually I’ve been hit in the head tons of times with various objects during sports events. Most notably basketballs. Which are kind of stunning if they aren’t expected, and obviously they weren’t, or I would have caught or at least batted at them. So I had tape on my glasses a few times. And once I got sunburned so badly my face oozed stuff and crusted over and I had a slight fever and didn’t leave the house for three days. And a couple times my head bounced off the ground in softball, but you know. That's what happens when one lands ungracefully on the ground a lot. And one year in high school my nose would randomly bleed and I got migraines. And once I sort of passed out in the shower because of a nosebleed and landed on my hip on the metal track thing that holds the door. But the nosebleeds and migraines went away. And there’s something stuck in my kneecap, or like a chip missing from it, or something that really sucks to kneel on ever since I totally ate it off my bike on the way to work last year. (Embarrassingly, there were witnesses. But that was like a year ago and it’s still in my knee for whatever reason). Anyway! I never got severely hurt. I never even broke any bones! Except for a hairline fracture on my skull when I was two from falling off some stairs. Actually I don’t even know if it was a hairline fracture, but the back of my head was apparently squishy afterward, and the doctor said that was bad. Which probably explains a lot. But mild head wounds pale in comparison to something like childbirth. Or a dislocated shoulder. Or a bullet wound. So. Consider me a wuss, but still pity me because I am dying.

Anyhow, my point wasn’t really that I’m dying, because that part will go away. At least I hope, or I’ll be dead. And then, effectively, it will have gone away. Anyway, I research everything possible, because how can I resist, with infinite amounts of information just sitting there about EVERYTHING on the internet. And health questions always bring me to WebMD. My point was going to be: never go onto WebMD, ever. I'm not even going to link it for you. Because I revisited it today, and my future according to that thing is bleak. And I’m not by any means a hypochondriac or anything. I rarely am sick, and I don't really get pathetically sick when I do get sick. Except I have a slight cold today, which is stupid. I totally have WebMD syndrome though, which is similar to medical student syndrome, but probably less informed. WebMD just tells you you're most likely dying and there’s nothing really you can do to remedy it at home. Which I already knew OBVIOUSLY before. If I wasn’t freaking dying, I wouldn’t be that curious about it.

WebMD is totally crazed. I’m convinced they have to tell you every possible scenario so people don’t sue them or something, but really? Try it. I mean, do you have a headache? Could be AIDS. Weird rash? It shows you like 8 pictures of rashes that COULD be construed to look like your rash, so you possibly now have 8 diseases instead of just poison oak or whatever you thought it was. All rashes start to look the same on that thing. When Oliver had 5th Disease (which sounds terrifying, but seriously is a common childhood thing and fine), it could have been ringworm, eczema, psoriasis of the face, freaking anything according to WebMD!

I looked up red cheeks (since mine are always red, sometimes I get afraid that it might indicate something more serious than just having a windblown complexion, as Brad calls it, which is one of the reasons he’s funny), and I was almost convinced I have rosacea and soon my nose could get all bulbous and red. Wouldn’t that be fun? I turn red even if I think of something moderately embarrassing. Or talk, ever. Or if someone else says something moderately embarrassing. WebMD says blushing easily might be the only symptom you notice before you get rosacea.

A couple months ago, my eye was twitching, and someone on Facebook said it might be BELLS PALSY, because she just had that and her eye twitched first. And then her face froze for a while I guess! I was like you’re effing kidding me, but I looked it up on trusty WebMD and it brought me to a page that asked me, “Do you have poor night vision?” Umm. Yeah. I pretty much suck at seeing anyway, but at night, yes, it is harder. So then it said maybe I’ll get cataracts. Or retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic disorder affecting young people before the age of 30. Or diabetes, which I probably will get anyway due to all the sugary junk I eat. But I think WebMD reversed the eye twitch and cancelled it out, because after I read all that stuff my eye was fine. I’m still not certain that the eye twitch isn’t a clear predictor of the karmic stroke I’m going to have at 40, but until it twitches again I’m putting it out of my mind.

Every time I go on WebMD, it’s like that kids’ book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. You give the mouse one cookie and suddenly it needs like tons more stuff. I read one article, and suddenly I need to know all the definitions and causes and symptoms. And I always think, OK, don’t get carried away. Just look at the most reasonable things, and don’t click on any links within the article. Because when I do that I’ve found my list of possible ailments greatly increases. But then some little voice is always like, since you’ve been badly sunburned tons of times before the age of 18, and totally unfairly because you didn’t even try to tan back then, you're just incredibly pale, maybe you should look at the sunscreen rankings again. Just for the ingredients? Maybe then make sure you’ve stocked a sunscreen with every possible ingredient combination in your house, just in case the rankings change. Which is how I ended up with Neutrogena Baby Sunscreen with zinc oxide (for that really hot, white-faced look at the beach), Banana Boat Sport Sunscreen, some natural Kiss My Face Sun Stick thing, Aveeno Faces, Neutrogena Ultra-Sheer Dry-touch Helioplex SPF 85+, Hawaiian Tropic SPF 6 (I think I was in denial for that one. I bought it mainly because it smells like coconuts), and probably 10 others in every size, type of application, and SPF. And like 900 chapsticks with sunscreen. There are three in my purse right now, two on the nightstand that I alternate each night, several more on one of my bookshelves, and random sticks in different coat pockets just in case my lips burn, shrivel up, or crack off. See:



And those are just the ones I could find within two minutes. I didn't even look in my car or softball bag, or the linen closet, in which I know for sure there are tons more. There’s a point every summer where I consider wearing light, long-sleeved shirts, pants, and wide-brimmed hats and only leaving the house before 10 a.m. and after 7 p.m. like it recommends on WebMD, but then I say screw it and end up sunburned no matter which sunscreen I choose. I may have tons of wrinkles by the time I’m 35, but at least I will have lived. As long as I don’t use any wrinkle creams with the wrong ingredients. And until one of my blistering burns contributes to skin cancer.

So I’m cutting myself off from WebMD. Because if I look up how carried away I get, it might tell me I’m being all OCD and paranoid, which might lead me to look up compulsive behaviors or delusions, which sounds like it would inevitably lead to reading my old psychology texts, and then I’ll just decide I have everything and call it a day. And then I’ll go on to read my bedtime story, Boomeritis (thanks, Matt!). It is difficult enough to read and analyze one’s consciousness levels and spiritual health without having poor night vision, skin cancer, diabetes, psychotic obsessive-compulsive disorder (that’s a new one for the DSM-V), and some kind of undiagnosed stomach knot. And now that I’ve sat here trying not to breathe too hard while I was writing this because my stomach is dying, my butt is asleep. Which I’m sure means I’m in some early stage of paralysis. But I don’t know because I’m not looking it up.

Trivial Pursuit?

You know how sometimes you’re just going along like normal, doing your routine, and suddenly everything just freaking falls out from under you? And it’s not even all really falling out from under you, it just seems like it?
Almost every time I’ve felt like this, I recognize it right away. It’s easy. And I know it’s just negative thinking and if I can spot it, I should be smart enough to outthink it. Like, combat it with positive thoughts or go work out and forget about it or write it all down in this blog. But it doesn’t work – I just go back to this thought that I am not working properly. That I won’t go back to normal. And then I feel completely crazy. To illustrate, I guess I have this example from when I was younger…
It was dark, and I was driving my dad’s pickup home from Canada. I didn’t want to go home yet. I kept thinking about the rides home from our beach house when I was a kid. I never wanted to go home then either.
It was winter break, and Dad and I were heading home from Victoria and Vancouver, B.C. in 2004. We went on a whirlwind tour of every used bookstore we could find, in an epic search for Dad’s beloved Rex Stout mystery series. I even had a glass of wine with my dad for the first time, and I wasn’t even 21! I had a wonderful time – a bright spot after a school term in which only thing I enjoyed doing was running. I ran and ran and ran. I ran in the middle of the night and sometimes twice a day. Sometimes I pretended like someone was chasing me just to see how long I could last. I felt like I accomplished something, however small, after I ran. Like if I couldn’t go to class that day, at least I could go running.
Anyway, the news was playing on the radio in the car, and the financial analysts were talking about the stock market and numbers and I couldn’t stand it. I was embarrassed because I didn’t know what all of it meant – and it didn’t matter that I’d never taken a business class or paid attention to economics; I thought I should have somehow learned something about investments in my 20 years of living. So I asked my dad what the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq Composite Index are and what the difference is and who needs to know about them. He patiently launched into a basic description of them. Somehow, in the middle of the explanation, I got this crushing feeling that I didn’t understand and I would never understand - that I didn’t have the potential to understand. The more I tried to concentrate, the more I kept thinking how hopeless I was as a person living in society who didn’t even know basic facts about the economy. And then I started to get scared, like terrified, that I would never understand anything important. That I would never be normal. That I couldn’t even listen to an explanation that I had asked for just moments before. That I was a selfish, horrible daughter, and I wasn’t even able to go to school. That I wasn’t a good example for my little brother. That no one would ever love me because how could they? Even I didn’t love me. That I couldn’t help anyone else because I couldn’t even function on a basic level. That I should run more. I should eat less. I probably shouldn’t have children.
Then suddenly I was crying hard, and snot was running into my mouth and I couldn’t really see the road and I hated it. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. And simultaneously like I shouldn’t breathe. There is nowhere to go and hide if you’re unexpectedly crying in a car, unfortunately. I wanted out of my skin. Surprised, my dad told me to pull over at the next exit, and to just breathe and try to calm down.
That’s how I feel. The world is not literally falling out from under me, but it seems like it is. The DOW and the NASDAQ aren’t really that important, but they certainly were at the time. And I still honestly don’t really understand them, but I’m not even going to get into that right now. Because I don’t care enough about that stuff currently. Is that what needs to happen? To just not care enough about whatever it is that’s bothering me to the point that it goes away? That appears brilliant at first, but then that means I wouldn’t care about my future.
All this is just because this week several little undesirable things occurred and I started thinking I might be stupid again. For one thing, I took a biology quiz and FORGOT TO ANSWER A QUESTION. It was weird. Then I simply didn’t follow directions on another one. Which is also out of character. And then I got this genius idea to contemplate my future. Insert ‘horrible’ for ‘genius’ in that last sentence. I feel like suddenly, at 26, I’m realizing (again!) that I wasn’t really meant to live past 30. I can never envision myself clearly in the future. When I envision myself in the future, there are like hundreds of possible strings of future me. One might be doing respiratory therapy in some hospital and coming home at night to feed my kids. One might go to grad school for psychology and in ten more years start counseling people (but that one isn’t sure if she even should counsel people since she can’t really figure out her own mind and if it can even manage grad school). One might be writing novels that never get published (or finished) and scraping by on a clerk’s wages. One might be going to school forever and never figuring it out but surviving on whatever jobs are flexible enough to allow for a student lifestyle. One might have sabotaged herself because she couldn’t figure out where her string was supposed to go or whether it started. One might quit caring and move into a jungle. And each string has like four splits: kids and husband, no family, just husband, and just kids. And then there are a few more strings that aren’t quite thick enough to come into the picture. Ultimately, none of them are strong enough to follow.
Then, after 2 months and about a week of not pulling my hair once (which is longer than I’ve gone probably ever except when I shaved my head), I pulled my hair. So then I thought I’d just stop again, since I did it before, but seriously I probably pulled more this week than I would have if I’d been mildly pulling all of the two months! WhatEVER! Yesterday I realized it was the 14th of April, and not the 12th, which is what I thought. So, I decided to (re)do Adam’s taxes on paper since TurboTax couldn’t identify him the first time around. They are the easiest taxes ever (plus our state forms), but even using a calculator I was off by HUNDREDS of dollars. It took me literally like three hours. I mean seriously! It’s never taken that long before. Fortunately my dad knows at least as much about taxes as he does about the DOW and the NASDAQ. And I listened this time. But then today I took a chemistry quiz and forgot like a third of what we learned. Like…before I understood the concept of one of the things we’re supposed to know because it’s fairly simple, and then I got the quiz and it was gone. Necrosis of the brain. And all class period it was still jumbled, and even now I am uncertain. I guess the difference between 20 and 26 is that this time I didn’t cry in the car on the way home…but I was on the verge. It’s a good thing Brad is so funny and practical.
So the title of this blog is the best I could come up with. Certainly I’ve encountered worse than missing two points on a biology quiz. But not much worse. My life is pretty darn good in general. I chose trivial examples because the whole thing, the world over, the pursuit of whatever I’m supposed to be doing, just seems insignificant sometimes. One thing from biology this week struck me as interesting. When a cell realizes its DNA is damaged, it simply destroys itself. That’s a natural thing. It’s called apoptosis, or cell suicide. I’m just wondering what made my brain cells notice their DNA is freaking damaged. Because that’s stupid.
Clearly the only string I should follow is the one I’m already on, because it’s the only certain one that exists. But sometimes I forget about a third of that concept, and suddenly the whole thing disappears. The good thing is I’ll probably remember sooner or later, and this whole thing will just seem…well…trivial. In the meantime, I’ll just keep sliding along this thread until I get somewhere.

Lydia and Wyatt

“…eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety…” Lydia bounced diagonally down the driveway on her brand-new pogo stick. She’d saved a long time for this thing, and she was going to stay on it for 100 bounces if it killed her. It was $17.95, and worth every penny. Her dad paid her 10 cents per wheelbarrow load of yard debris, and 50 cents to wash the car. After what seemed like an eternity (and several unnecessary car washes) she took her earnings to ToysRUs. The pogo stick was red and shiny with black rubber handle grips, and it made a satisfying metal springing noise. She was crunching up and down the driveway to her heart’s content when her little brother, Wyatt, missed from the free throw line and their basketball started rolling down the street.
Lydia and Wyatt lived on top of one of the steepest hills in south Eugene. Luckily Lydia was only seven years old, because if she had ever tried to start a stick shift on that hill, she’d never want to get her license. Their neighbors across the street had a trampoline, and it was literally slanted. Going to the house west of their house practically required rock climbing gear. In fact, living on this hill really improved their outside shot, because if they missed, the ball was lost forever.
Wyatt, who was only three and therefore couldn’t get his rebound very fast, was devastated. Lydia tossed her shiny new pogo stick safely into a bush and started to run after the ball, which was already clearing the ridge in the middle of the hill and disappearing over the side. It was headed for Donald St., which was like half a mile down the hill. Lydia stopped after a second and kept her eye on the ball (which as anyone who’s ever played catch and accidentally thrown a ball into a forest knows is a much better strategy than immediately running toward the lost ball). Since this was their dad’s only basketball, they decided they’d have to go after it. Being only seven and three, they generally had to ask permission to go beyond the yard. There was absolutely no way they’d be allowed to walk all the way down the hill by themselves, so Lydia made an executive decision and dragged their Radio Flyer wagon out of the side yard.
The Radio Flyer was the kids’ vehicle of choice because a) both of them could fit on it with Lydia in the back reaching over Wyatt to steer with the black metal handle, and b)if they fell out, usually they’d just fly into some grass in a heap, as the wagon was close to the ground to begin with. Falling off a bicycle or roller blades was a lot more complicated. The kids spent hours on that wagon, with Lydia pushing the wagon for a head start and then leaping into it at the last second for a terrifying ride through the side yard that usually ended with the kids covered in scrapes and laughing hysterically.
After looking both ways for cars and their parents, the kids pushed off (or rather, simply let go) of the curb. The hill was sickeningly steep. No one in their right minds would embark on such a ride, the kids realized too late. They were FLYING down, and at the halfway ridge Lydia thought she saw an orange blur several hundred feet in front of them. She wrenched the handle to the left, which made the wheels catch on the pavement. They hurtled toward the side of the street and smashed into the curb. The front of the wagon caught on the curb, and the back acted as a catapult. Lydia was pretty sure she did two full somersaults in mid-air, and Wyatt did an impressive handspring off the sidewalk before they both vaulted over the side of a ravine and rolled forever before landing in a prickly hedge. Stunned, they looked around. They were in someone’s yard.
The yard was bubbling. Upon further review, there were about nine fountains gurgling water in this yard. The fountains, complete with cherubic angel statues, were arranged in a circle around an old-fashioned garden infested with ivy. The vines twisted up and around each chipped stone angel. Beyond the garden was what looked like a run-down guest house with a broken window. The house must have been behind it, but they couldn’t tell from where they crouched. The yard was surrounded by thick trees so they couldn’t see the street above. It was a sunny, hot summer day, but the trees made it shadowy in the yard. Lydia shivered.
“I think we must be near Kari’s house,” she whispered to her brother. Kari was their 17-year-old babysitter who lived somewhere midway down the hill. Lydia in fact had no idea where they were, or exactly where Kari lived, but she felt like if she didn’t say something Wyatt would get scared. Besides, it was reassuring to think that Kari might be close by. She was a great babysitter. She taught Lydia how to draw funny cartoon people and she took the kids for walks in the rain.
Lydia squinted at something orange in the brush across the garden. The ball! She started toward it when Wyatt grabbed her arm. Something or someone was moving in the trees.
“Whaddat?” said Wyatt. Lydia put her finger up to her lips. Wyatt clamped his hand over his mouth. They stared into the trees as a figure emerged. It was a little boy maybe a little younger than Lydia. He had dark curly hair and was wearing a white, button-up shirt with brown shorts. He had white socks pulled up to his knees and brown loafers. The boy looked curiously at the hedge, and then at the basketball in the brush. He picked it up and wheeled around suddenly like he’d heard something. He glanced back at the hedge and ran back through the trees.
“Hey!” Lydia whispered indignantly. Wyatt, ever the practical one, pointed toward the street in a clear vote to return to the wagon, but Lydia grabbed his arm and tugged him into the trees.

That's all for now. More soon. I got writer's block. If anyone has any brilliant ideas as to where this story should go, they should post them. I used to live on a hill just like the one Lydia and Wyatt live on, and I even had a Radio Flyer just like theirs. And a little brother with a name suspiciously close to Wyatt. I always wondered where the balls I lost ended up. Probably not in a yard full of fountains, but hey.

San Francisco

San Francisco’s grey in December

Filled with lights and hills.

The wind cuts her fingers as she tightens her backpack straps

The night taunts knowing she has no one

A ball drops while she rides the midnight bus:

It's 2005.

A man offers a paper bagged bottle

She writes on scraps of napkin

Lost in headphones

Unnoticed on the sidewalk.

She walks fast; faster in the dark

Walking under streetlights, running under none

She pauses on a bridge

Watches water rush away.

Knees knock against skinny jeans

Pink tights line legs inside tall boots

Hood up, cheekbones high

She leans against the rail.

A boy films her walking toward him

She smiles shyly and puts a hand in her pocket

He asks if he can kiss her

He says she is the most beautiful girl in America.