Wherein I make a bad hair analogy and run with it

It's officially the season for change. Temperatures are warming, hemlines are rising (Vogue said so this month, so it MUST be true), and all possibilities are on the mend.

Today, to celebrate these changes, I whacked off all my hair. It felt awesome. My hair used to be down past my shoulders and has been incrementally crawling upwards towards my ears. I had 5 or 6 interim chops that each felt so good, that I might be officially addicted to the drug of haircut-thrill. It's like, half the thrill of doing something bad (props to my fallen sister, Chloe, the eyebrow ring of angst, who lasted 10 months) but better than new-outfit thrill, THAT'S FOR SURE.

I had very short hair when I was a teenager. I cut it all off, from below shoulder length to quite short, thanks to some movie-inspiration. I had just seen Sliding Doors and the short hair business that Gwyneth Paltrow sported, and coveted it.

Ok, actually the longer story is this dude Mike, sat behind me in biology and would sing me the "Adams Family" theme song to me, because apparently my long, dark hair reminded him of Cousin Itt. I never appreciated this, but he seemed to think it was really funny. Perhaps in hindsight it is; my hair is very thick and there is a lot of it, and it had a tendency to be triangular in nature. So in the interest of about 60% spite, 40% get rid-of-5-lbs of hair, I chopped 11 inches of my hair off and showed up the next day and told him to shove it with a big grin.

Lately, I've been yearning to get back to the short-haired times. Short-haired times are the ones where I was optimistic-- hopeful for the future. I knew what I liked and I was in an emotional place where I was a little too naive to worry too much but just wise enough to worry some.

I feel more like MYSELF than I have in a long time, if that makes any sense at all. It's been a slow process of me re-acquainting myself with feelings of deja-vu in good ways. It's remembering what it's like to be into music, needing to hear a song because it's already coming up your throat and out your mouth but just didn't know the words. It's having outlets for creativity so you remember you are worth more than your cubicle and (in/de)flated job title. It's reading books you love to read because you sort of maybe wish you were British and in a hoopskirt, denying your love for Mr. so-and-so because he was cross with you once blah blah blah..... and you are unabashed about the daydreams thereof. It's being more connected with friends, and understanding sort of maybe even just a little where your insignificant speck belongs with the galaxy of others. It's about having my life sort itself out after the confetti of college-life hung in the air all sparkly and suspended and it's all gently getting reacquainted with where it will rest.

So, the short-haired-times are hopefully leading somewhere good, taking me back to a road I got tripped up on. I am a Taurus, and we are notorious for being resistant (or at least anxiety-prone) to change. But there's nothing more shocking than changing what looks back at you in the mirror, because you know that change was $45 and fleeting. But what's to come is worth more. After that, hopefully a (FINGERS CROSSED OH PLEASE OH PLEASE) new job and (FINGERS CROSSED OH PLEASE OH PLEASE) new apartment will just be the icing on my butterscotch krimpet.

Motherly Advice

I call my mom to discuss tomorrow's second interview for potential new-job glory.

I tell her everything I know and how excited I am for it.

I tell her I am nervous a little. I tell her I bought a new shirt to wear under suit for the occasion.

Her response?

"Oh Honey, just don't use the F-word and you'll be FINE."

Words of wisdom I shall carry with me for life. Thanks, Mom!

My Friend

is an internet sub-D list celebrity! It's Michael Goldberg!

His blog has been linked to by a site that has access to a large group of 14-year-old boys and therefore has found his target audience.

We befriended him lo these many years ago at GW for that very reason.

All I'll tell you about Goldberg is that he was involved in a very cruel yet very hilarious-in-hindsight prank involving me and my stuffed penguins.

OH yeah, internets, that's something embarrassing about me.

Hello, my name is katastrophe, and I am a girl who

a) still has stuffed animals (I know, I know. I'm THAT GIRL)

and

b) I have a penguin "thing". A collecting "thing". It's a problem. I know.

I was 18 and just finished taking my first college exam. I was over-caffeinated, sleep-deprived, and recovering from what would then be a pattern of pre-exam anxiety attacks that would grip me for about half a day, and only eventually let up a few hours after the exam when I could finally nap.

I came home to my freshman-year dorm room to find my door slightly ajar.

I FREAK.

Yes, we all sort of kept our doors open. It facilitated the borrowing of things and the notes to leave. But this was unusual. I ran up to my room and burst through the door. To my horror, I found my stuffed animals swinging by nooses around their necks from the ceiling, in some sort of stuffed animal suicide pact.

I gasped. I looked to the floor.

Strewn beneath them were all my class materials from THE WORST CLASS EVER THAT I TOOK IN COLLEGE: Attitudes towards DEATH AND DYING.

Yes, that's right. At 8am Mondays and Wednesday I got to learn about death, which was not limited to grief, psychologies of death, cultural attitudes towards death, and types of death. The professor collected funerary photography and shuffled about the campus ensconced in floral mumus and a morose air about her 400 lb self.

Back to the penguins-- which were gently swaying with the heat coming out of the vents, their glass eyes looking past me. It was like someone knew I was coming, and gave the penguins a good shove so that I would find them swinging. There was a suicide note, but I was too overcome to read it.

This was the icing on my panic attack cake. This was my 18-year-old breaking point. Before bills, job interviews, housing concerns and sort-of real life dicisions. These penguins were with me from a very early age, and are the closest thing I have to a security blanket. I had flitted around the backyard with one tucked under an arm on some sort of imaginary adventure as a child, snuggled with them to help me fall asleep as an awkward kid, and clutched them while I cried when high school boys broke my heart.

I did the only thing my exhaustion would let me do. I burst into tears. It was funny exactly 72 hours afterwards, but it was a great joke to return to. A la "It's not like she hung your penguins or anything! god!"

I think I let Goldberg have it for like, two WHOLE years. My tears weren't the desired outcome, and the culprits immediately tried to make me see the humor in it.

The college humor.

So have a heart. Visit CollegeHumor.com and click the link "banging the queen". Yes, that's what his blog entry is called. He's also linked at right, so checking him out that way is probably easier. In fact, bookmark him and read often.

He really will cream his pants if his site meter stats get any higher, so help a guy out who is living at home and going to law school IN NEW JERSEY. He could really use those nerd-rays of sunshine.

Let me say that again: HE IS LIVING AT HOME AND GOING TO LAW SCHOOL. IN NEW JERSEY.

Have pity, click on through.

The numbers on today

Number of women in obscene dark stretch denim cat-suit-type-things that were offensively tight and involved a jacket or shirt attached to a long skirt that made me gasp a little with their heinousness (not the ladies, but the get-ups): 3 (!!!!!)

Number of times I sighed deeply wishing for a new job: 17

Number of times I played web boggle and scored below 20: 5

Number of times I played web boggle and scored below 40: 11

Web boggle high score: 48

How many times I wished for a nap: 3

How many times I actually said slightly audibly "Damn I need a new job": 2

Number of times I closed my eyes and sighed with glee about how good my sandwich was: 2

Number of times I wished for more potato chips: 1

Number of times I tried to articulate in blog entry how weird today was and then scrapped it because I sounded like a whinny loser: 3

Number of times I was like "hmmm... blogs aren't just for complaining, you know": 2

Number of minutes I spent praying to the gods of the interviews that the interview place I went on would finally call me back. You said you would, place, and I know you take a long time BUT COME ON: 17

How long I spent online window shopping: 1.5 hours

What my time sheet will reflect: database clean up and donor research

Number of new blogs I started reading today: 3

How many times I wished to have Mischa Barton's new puppy as my own: 19,000

How many minutes spent trying new experiment of making tea in my nalgene and then putting it in the freezer and in 3 hours I have iced tea that is thick and delicious: 21 (here and there over the 3 hours)

How many tea bags that takes: 2

How many times I had to not think about cheese because I OD'ed on it last night at Banana Cafe: 6

How many references to my upcoming birthday did I make today: 9 (shameless!)

Number of engagements to which I am going tonight: 2

Number of beers I intend to consume: 5 - 7

Number of slices of pizza I wish for dinner: 1 (beers count as food tonight a little)

Probability that the Nat's game will be rained out tomorrow: 99%

How sad that makes me on a scale of 1 - 10 with 10 being the highest: 8

How many people I read about on the internet that quit their jobs today and made me salivate with envy: 3

Web boggle score for the word salivate: 7

Things I learned this weekend

In no particular order:

1.) Brisket is some pretty tasty stuff.

2.) Dog hair doesn't come out of pajama pants magically in the washing machine. Who knew you had to brush it off first? And wash things twice?

3.) Asti makes all family get-togethers even better. For AM Asti enjoyment, a mimosa. For PM Asti enjoyment, with some raspberries in the bottom of the glass. For anytime enjoyment, chug from bottle and wink at your cousin.

4.) Canal street is not a fun place to drag a little wheelie suitcase through, no matter HOW lost you are, HOW above asking for directions, HOW hot it is, and HOW you are SO-GOING-TO-MISS-THAT-CHINATOWN-BUS.

5.) It is worth getting lost in Chinatown to buy your mom a $2 pair of souvenir slippers because it made her day a little.

6.) Also worth it cuz you got yourself 2 pairs!

7.) Knitting these slippers wasn't as hard as I thought they would be. I can count, therefore; I knit. One slipper down, the other to go.

8.) Grey's Anatomy isn't going to be on until the 23rd. GRRRRR, ABC, GRRRR.

9.) Pennsylvania DMVs mean BUSINESS.

10.) And by BUSINESS, I mean make it clear how much of an idiot you are for not waiting for your camera card to get in the mail before you decide to prance into the photo center ready for some glamour shot of a new license that will be horizontal, not vertical like your UNDER 21 UNTIL APRIL 26, 2003 trading card.

11.) Attention PA drivers: That camera card is very important. Don't show up without it, lest Yvonne at the Rosemont DMV give you some 'tude for how dumb you are.

12.) Century Coach is vastly superior to Today's Bus.

13.) Some people, like the girl sitting next to me on one of my busses, would like a tattoo of an oversize octopus sitting in a lifeguard chair on a lovely shoreline.

14.) Other people at one point wanted a tattoo of Kermit on their stomach.

15.) Dave's parents two favorite stories about him as a child involve polka and a gerbil named "Husky" respectively.

16.) You can't go wrong in a sort-of-smelly Chinese restaurant with sweet and sour pork.

17.) Teen night at a local Peruvian bar is probably the scariest thing you could possibly imagine.

18.) When in doubt, shamelessly tease your boyfriend in front of his parents to gain their respect.

19.) Swiffer Wet Jet is probably the most amazing invention since pasteurization.

20.) Scrapple contains some nast pig bits. That's why it's delicious!

21.) Seltzer water is a gift from God.

22.) Septa makes me sleepy.

23.) Amtrak makes me hungry

24.) My brother Neal makes a kick ass power point presentation.

25.) My brother Kevin leaves ridiculous messages on my cousin's facebook page.

26.) I am officially too old to talk about facebook.

27.) Wawa's 2 soft pretzels for 99 cents is something to call home about.

28.) I still remember how to drive.

29.) I am impressed my 17-year-old brother Neal listens to more NPR than I do. He is well on his way to yuppie-dom.

30.) Rita's Water Ice is just as good as I remembered it.

31.) My family on both sides have the following general characteristics: Loud, hungry, gossipy, bossy and nosey.

32.) Confusing Penn station and Grand Central station is dumb when you proclaim your deep conviction that the ATM you need is there, only to realize after a few laps around that you are in the other station.

33.) Amtrak employees mumble. Both on the PA and off.

34.) When in your parents house for 24 hours, eat as much food as you can, no matter how un-hungry you are. You'll relish the memory of those 4 oreos later in your oreo-less house.

35.) Bassett hounds are a little stinky, but OH so lovable.

Playing Catch up

We all have reading that piles up on us. First it's summer reading as a kid, then reading in college that you skim the night before, and then the adult version: the publication pile-up.

Right now I only get 2 magazines, Vogue and Vogue Knitting. The DK complains of the Economist or Foreign Affairs stacking up on his desk (snobs, the both of us). I used to get Glamour in Spanish but that subscription had run its course. It was always the month behind gringa Glamour, and really, once you know the Spanish words for thong, doggie-style, and lip-liner I feel the novelty had passed.

My roommate works with lots of publications, hence we have lots of them sitting around the house. This makes for extra pile-up reading, because now you feel the need to read things that you didn't know you needed to read. Like Mother Jones. Or The New Republic.

[Sidenote: I refused to let myself be the kind of lady who writes about things I've read to show how interesting/well-read/globally connected/better than you I am. I understand that they have their audiences and I read blogs like that, but that's not my intent for this space be book report-ville.]

However, I read a really interesting article regarding the New York Times in The New Republic, and its abundance of luxury porn. And I have to say that I fall for it, in the New York Times, and elsewhere-- hook, line, and sinker.

Hello, My name is Katastrophe, and I am a luxury-porn addict.

I am a devour-er of all sorts of luxury porn. Note my shortlist of magazines. Sometimes I swindle co-workers into giving me Vanity Fair and Dwell. I have apartment therapy bookmarked at work AND at home so I can get my fill of design/apartment/modernist porn. I get Daily Candy DC because hell, of COURSE I want to know about where to get sleek French underthings and buttery soft handbags in the District and it's posher outlying suburbs. I watch Cribs and The Fabulous Life of...... . I troll the goss blogs. I hear Oprah says it's good being rich.

Luxury porn is everywhere, and I lap it up al fresco in a plastic bowl outside the fence of the cafe du you'll-never-have-a-Prada-dress-though-it's-been-a-life-goal-
since-you-could-spell-Prada.

I don't get paid a whole lot. I work a small-time gig. I won't buy wine that's more than $15.99. I go out to lunch maybe once a month. H&M is more how I roll. The most expensive handbag I ever purchased was $45 at Loehmanns because it's the closest thing to turquoise butteriness I could ever hope to afford.

I don't think I've ever had "rich" on a list of my aspirations. I'd like to not fret everytime I check my balance online, but I don't need to be wearing that Prada dress every day, and wouldn't appreciate it if I had a whole closet-full. Part of luxury porn is seducing you with and desensitizing you to wealth, price, and what you are worth. It's like I don't blink when I see how much dresses cost in Vogue, or bat an eye that a rapper with the word "Lil" before some sort of animal noise as a name makes more money that I ever will, and has the closet to show for it.

What the article had to say was that the New York Times wasn't always put in that position. People like me GET Vogue for the fashion-porn (and yikes, Dolce and Gabbana, your ads are porn-porn) and to step into actress's French mansions, Christian Louboutin stilettos, and Narciso Rodriguez gowns. Which is worse-- getting your luxury porn where you know you can find it, or turning to every day sources for fur scrunchies? (yes, they actually referred to them in said article).

Fur scrunchies? Shouldn't that send out the signal for collective vomiting throughout Manhattan?

But I digress. It made me wonder why I seek out luxury porn. I'd like to say it's because I am grooming my good taste for the future, when I can look at Vogue and then find a knock-off that isn't so knock-y--off-y. It's for ripping pages out and bringing them to Ikea, to H&M and to Target. But when I am faced with spending money, I balk at prices on clothing that Anna Wintour wouldn't blow her nose with.

I would say for someone my age, I live in luxury. I have a roof over my head that isn't my parents', a double bed with soft sheets, food in the fridge, clothes rattling in the dryer, some disposable income for booze and the occasional savings for some sandals. This is enough for me now, but I worry there will come a day where that won't do.


P.S. ha ha oooh the web statistics on site-meter are going to be HILARIOUS with the use of the word "porn" so frequently.

Of safeways and sprouts

Today, I made my regular weekly trip to the Soviet Safeway for some provisions for lunch for the upcoming week. Some of us are a little too poor to enjoy the finery of Galileo grill every day, (but bless them for being open so much these days!) so I generally load up the work fridge with as much as I can. A girl's gotta be a little selfish sometimes.

Last week, I OD'ed on raisins and Lean Cuisines. I am officially OFF lean cuisines. I know they are gross, but when you can get 7 for 10 dollars, what's a girl to do? Really, I would much rather spend my hard-earned money on shoes, jewelry, or a well-deserved trip (read, after I pay my bills and save for a new apt and all it's hidden costs).

So, I am anti-lean-cuisines-bistro-gourmet-you've-got-to-be-effing-kidding-me-this-pizza-is-the- size-of-my-fist. It's never as good as you psych yourself up to be. You think "this is going to be a party!" And then you realize that you have five Swedish meatballs and a handful of noodles in "gravy" that is some grayish brown color that looks like all the deliciousness was scientifically removed by the Swedish bikini team themselves, just to make those of us who are poor and looking to stay trim feel an extra kick in the pants.

You'd be surprised, what more a girl would want. Then that girl is dying of hunger like she's a third world orphan and needs to go to CVS to buy Pringles cuz they're on sale for 88 cents and she's got a possessed, starving glare in her eyes as she hands over that cvs extra-care card. At least I bought the low-fat ones, but a pringle's a pringle.

At the Soviet safeway, I came the closest I ever have to actually complaining and then retreating, giving up and carrying the anger with me in my little, passive-aggressive soul.

I waited for literally 13 minutes at the deli counter before someone decided to meet my eye-contact. At first I had the waiting posture that indicates that you know that anyone behind a counter deserves some respect, after all, they handle your black forest ham and they probably deal with some awful people so being nice is the absolute least I can do. But then I was full on arms-crossed, foot tapping, looking around for someone to even acknowledge that yes, I was waiting. Still. I just wanted a half-pound of turkey. One poor employee was stuck making sandwiches AND handing out some turkey and was being eternally patient with a 96 year-old-woman who needed her sandwich just so. The other was leaning on the counters, chatting at her, drinking sodas and bitching about how he didn't want to go clock in yet, but he were late so he should. Then he finally went to go clock in. And then he came back and continued talking at her and sipping his Tab. I understand that job must blow, but give me a break. My job blows. Get in line.

OH WAIT, I AM IN LINE. HOW NOVEL! Like you, sir, my lunchbreak is also an hour.

Situations like this always makes me think of the song Pixie, by Ani Difranco. That song surprised me very much, because for all her liberal leanings it brought her down to a human level in which she too, apple of my teenage eye, can have it up to HERE when a girl can't get a taquito with some semblance of timeliness. That always was sort of my green light to at least say "damn the man, but for the love of god, can I PLEASE HAVE SOME TURKEY" or at least "I'll be with you in a few minutes". Or at least a LOOK. Something. Anything.

Nothing. However, over-worked employee finally came over and apologized and I resumed my deference for her handling fine meat products and thanked her and wished her a nice day. I felt better about the situation because after I had circled the store 6 times trying to find non-frozen bagels and agonizing about what flavor of cream cheese to get, I heard her lay into her lazy co-worker real good, and I smiled for her.

And then, my smiling for her, and for fights for fairness, equality, civil rights, and all worthy causes swelled up inside my chest like a balloon filled with hope. I thought of all the people who would be swarming the mall today to protest their right to just get some effing turkey. On the walk home, I let a penny lie on the sidewalk, because I thought, "you know? Right now, someone else needs this luck more than me." On all my favorite blogs, I clicked their ads. All of them. On my walk home, I smiled at all the people who looked a little forlorn, babies, and dogs, completely drunk on my own benevolent sensitivity.

I'm losing my edge. I'm becoming a little too emo for my own good.

Must be all the second degree hookah smoke.

However, this also led me to purchase alfalfa sprouts, and now I am concerned that my bacon-cheeseburger-eating, beer-drinking, combat-boot-owning self is getting all soft in her old age. And now I'm a little put off. I didn't know I was the sprouts kinda girl. But then I looked down at my black-cat-stamped-hand, holding a bottle of seltzer water, listening to KT Tunstall and panicked.

send help!

Abuses of the words "actually and particularly"

Now, everyone please be a love and cross your fingers. Cross them well, cross them often and with good wishes, please, please, please.

I'll be busy between the hours of 10 and 12 trying to prove to some people how amazing I am. This will be interesting, because, REALLY? I'm not that amazing (who is when you're 24?), I am just a desperate, desperate woman with a particularly interesting thing going on.

But you know what doesn't hurt amazing-ness? Some really hot shoes, some lipstick (!), and about 3 - 5 good questions (they love it when the prospective peoples ask questions! and lots of 'em.)

The suit is fabreezed (the poor woman's dry cleaning) and ready to be ironed. Perfunctory DC-suit pearl accessories have been selected. I have an eyecatching bag with some detailed notes and said important questions.

I have made the rounds of lies to say I had a doctor's appointment, which I hope does not choose to bite me in the ass. I actually feel bad about lying.

That's a total lie, actually. I feel bad about being sneaky because I totally suck at being sneaky. I was that child with a fistfull of cookies who jammed them into her mouth when she saw a parental unit, and then vehemently denied that cookies existed, my mouth was full, or that my ears were burning from the heat of the devil rising up from hell to take my 5-year-old-soul back down with him, because isn't that what I learned in Catholic school?

An intense fear of the devil and of hell I think is what drove me to behave as well as I did as a kid. I remember being in second grade, sitting in my plaid skirt, pigtails perfectly braided, hands folded while the teacher was talking. A particularly unruly boy asked me why I was so f---ing good all the time, and I just angelically lifted my finger to my lips and shushed him with the grace of a saint. Clearly, the F-word didn't exist yet in my little world and fast forward to 24 and I have been proudly kilt free since the age of 11(britney spears and naughty-catholic school girl Halloween costumes in poor taste included.)

Things are hard now that I ruined my run as being perfect, which had a good long life of about ages 6 - 9. I am freaking out that I might say "balls!" if I drop a pen, or swear absentmindedly to myself while filling out paperwork. I have done my homework, and now all I can do is get some beauty sleep, and hope for the best. Oh, and GET THERE, could that be ANY more difficult? For serious. Thanks public transportation. I'm just hoping that this goes so well that it's the last I mention of occupational hazards of boredom, because I'll be doing something awesome. Also, it would be particularly nice to NOT WRITE ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET.

Basic outline of why I am still awake.

At the top of that list right now?

Stressing about not being able to sleep. Damn you daylight savings. Daylight savings time always screws me up, and I don't fall asleep easily; I am a fretter.

Sunday nights in particular I never get a good night's sleep. I have read books, watched tv, counted backwards from 99, envisioned sheep, fantasized about the shoes I would like to buy and the jobs I would prefer to have-- even read the drug information packet from my new medical wonder-friend, Zelnorm.

But nothing. Not. sleepy.

I can't sleep right now, due to your average sunday-night-case-of-the-worries, which I've included here in outline form

I. MONEY

A.) I wonder what my balance is. should i check it? no-- let's just ballpark the math.
1.) pay bills:
i.) Rent
ii.) Student Loans
iii.) Credit Card
2.) Balls. check balance. budget money for the next 2 weeks to maximize credit card payment. This includes food, necessary amounts of booze, fun times over the weekend, travel for passover and easter, and doctors hoo ha (see III).
B.) Notation that I need to make more money... leading into

II. JOBS

A.) I would really like a new one, please. My current job isn't doing it for me anymore. I am interested in a lot of things. I really would like to do a lot of things that I am underqualified for.
1.) Internet strategies for non-profits: qualifications = i read blogs at work a lot
2.) Transition into the arts = I take bad faux-artsy pictures and stalk flickr
3.) Get out of things that involve the things I hate about my job now.
4.) Get to be more creative in workplace, however, I need to figure out
a.) what exactly I am good at
b.) what to do with what I am good at
c.) figure out what makes my skills unique
d.) figure out how to get paid more than i am getting paid now for such qualifications
B.) Also figure out new job that will let me start to think about grad school, but first I should
1.) figure out what I'd like to study
2.) get over being really bullishly stubborn about higher-higher education because I feel like the world is really just so self-important re: higher-higher education. Everyone has all these plans,that are falling into place, which they sort of talk about in such a way that makes me feel really bad about myself because i've finally come to the realization that I don't have to like school as much as I pretended to. Smart girls are supposed to like school. And deciding this isn't always true was hard.
a.) once i am over this, figure out how to pay for such an education, which apparently i am ridiculously ignorant for not knowing what it shall be in and or not having a huge drive to attain it because I am well in the hole for undergrad alone.
b.) I have no interest in going into the realm which I studied in college, and I am now paying citibank often for the luxury of that mistake. (see I. MONEY)
3.) But maybe should stay at job with super good benefits because

III. MY HEALTH

A.) Zelnorm packet has not put me to sleep, though said drug has increased my overall life
satisfaction insomuch as now i am not sitting on the couch green with envy.
1.) Neither is my 9am appointment for bloodwork tomorrow.
2.) I am not afraid of needles.
B.) I am afraid of having to take a pill for the rest of my life and I have always been afraid of getting results of ANYTHING back.

IV. CASE IN POINT

A. To this day, I don't know what my grades for my second semester of college are. I have never looked.
B.) I never looked because I had the WORST professor in a NORTORIOUSLY hard class who had failed most of us on a midterm and I was PETRIFIED of failing, because I am not the kind of girl who 'never failed'. I have failed at a great many things.
1.) gymnastics
2.) childhood dream of becoming cowgirl-mommy by age 19
3.) 3 midterms (ALL CLASSES for my major)
4.) to figure out what I want to be when I grow up (see I, II, IV, V, VI, VII)
C.) When cleaning out desk this weekend, I found my letter stating that GW had let me graduate, and that my diploma was on its way. I had forgotten about this friendly letter, and a few months anxiety rushed out of my body.
1.) so where the balls IS my dilpoma?
2.) and where the balls are all my important documents?

V. IMPENDING BIRTHDAY (April 26)

A. I need to renew drivers license
1.) stick with PA?
2.) Get DC?
a.) what papers do i need
b.) where the eff ARE THOSE PAPERS
B. What the balls am I going to do for said birthday?
C. Not asking any family members of my overly-presently-inclined family because I am going to need some help for

VI. THE MOVE

A.) The goal is to live by myself. I am really ready for my own apartment with my own mess, own decorating decisions, and own emotional space. Even if it's like 300 square feet of it. I am ready for not turning on the light to figure out what that creepy noise is. I am ready to just sleep with a baseball bat and hope for the best.
B.) Finding a studio apartment is going to be really hard.
1.) especially in my price range
2.) especially on the Hill (preferred neighborhood)
3.) i've lived without windows in my bedroom (and office to boot) and am looking for some LIGHT, AIR CIRCULATION, and PEACE AND QUIET.
C.) And my parents will want to help me buy what I need to fill in the gaps at Target and what not, and after having helped me pay for college (see IV) I am completely incapable of accepting their money, which is a real shame.
1.) example 1: when i was home before my cousin's wedding to hang out, my mom took me shopping for a dress to wear. she offered to get me some new work clothes too, but i refused. They had done so much for me, how could I really accept some slacks? My mother told me that i was acting foolish, but she doesn't quite understand how guilty i feel that they paid a lot of money for my education and I am not using it exactly.(see I, II)

VII. TIDBITS IN CONCLUSION

A.) currently reading A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby, which is so beautiful and yet so depressing that it makes it hard to sleep, because I am now worried about
a.) people throwing themselves off of buildings
b.) how to make life worth not throwing self off building
1.) do i ever think about throwing myself off a building?
2.) if i have is that so bad?
3.) if i haven't, is that so bad?
B.) Am gripped with sudden realization at impending age (see V) that my parents are getting older. And my grandparents are getting older. And I am sad about the day I will have to worry about this for real.
C.) is making outlines of why it's now 2:45 am and i still cannot sleep COMPLETELY NEUROTIC?
1.) Why is my poor blog my outlet for neurotic tendencies?
2.) Does blog enable neurotic tendencies?

for reals now. i'd like some sleep.