About A Bug

You know that scene in Lord of the Rings when Gandalf is imprisoned on the top of Saruman's tower, and a moth flits by, and he captures it carefully in his hand and whispers a plead for help to said moth? That scene of the movie has always impressed me because, woah, he catches a moth WITH HIS BARE HANDS. And doesn't even crush the delicate little thing. Gandalf is a wizard, indeed.

Here's the thing: if that makes Gandalf an impressive, powerful wizard, then I must be one too. And Mike too. And Art even. Mike and Art's house, for some reason, has been taken over by moths. It started out with one, the Original Mothra (I even blogged about it here. Now they're everywhere, and they're attacking people. I'm still not sure what moths eat, so I don't know why they'd be flitting into our faces, but I'm sure they're confused and terrified and hungry.

Anyway, the other day, Mike wandered into the kitchen for a while, and came back with one of his hands balled up into a fist. He sat next to me, and opened the fist to reveal...a moth! In his bare hand! AMAZING!!! Then he convinced me to try it too, and I caught one for myself, and I was not nearly as impressed anymore. Moths are dumb, and I think they enjoy being imprisoned in human hands.

And then Art managed to catch one last night, just on a whim, and I lost all respect for them altogether. All they're doing now is flying in crazy circles, dive-bombing people kamikaze-style, or sitting on the ceiling, being boring. And they're drawing spiders, which cannot be tolerated. Giiiih.

But on the whole, I've been doing pretty well here in Virginia. The weather has become that hot, breathless, humid summer weather I love so much, and the fireflies have come out in droves. I watched them flickering splendidly in the trees last night as we drove along, and at that moment, I needed nothing more.

Maybe It's The Visor

Maybe I should start wearing makeup to work. At least some mascara or something. Because I came in the other day (at 4 p.m.) and my manager looked at me and asked if I'd just woken up.

Um?

Now, granted, he likes to believe that I'm a crazy college kid who parties all night and who has nothing better to do than to sleep all day until my shift starts (and really, he's kinda right), but seriously, 4 p.m.? No way. I totally woke up at 2:30.

...joking.

Does Anyone Know How To Sew?

I need curtains.

Help.

(My roommate moved out...or to another room...or something, and apparently the curtains were hers. Or else she kifed 'em, the jerk.)

P.S. -- This only goes to prove that Jennifer is the only feasible roommate option for me. (Don't be sad, Mike and Art. I did want to be the roommate*, but then you got too good for me.)

Some Thoughts Formed Late One Night When I Could Take My Misery No Longer

I am learning about happiness; about its primordial relationship with the myth of Adam and Eve. How they were cast out of paradise to carve their lives out of thorns and sweat and obedience to a lost God. Some people say that to be human is to seek for happiness, and they assure themselves that means they have a Puritan right to be good people and live in a big house with a fancy car gleaming in the driveway before it, their possessions announcing their candle-on-a-hill-ness to the entire neighborhood and crying out their worthiness to the entire world. "Look at me. You are starving, and I don't care. This is what it is to be happy."

Happiness is scratched from the earth. It is stolen in quiet, rare moments that have been saturated in meaning, full of promise and hope. These erudite moments shine bravely, like stars, a collection of a very few caught together on your palm; a few for a whole life lived. Happiness doesn't just come; it is not bred of the ignorance of failing to pay attention to how badly things suck. It may be our right, as humans, but we certainly squander our other rights: to be beautiful, and brave, and good, readily enough. Why should our right to happiness be any different?

But I am learning. I am learning of the hope that must be poured into it, and the patience, and the refusal to give up, no matter what -- because once existence is kindled in you, it cannot be stopped.

Comfort Food

Instead of going running, I'm watching Grey's Anatomy and gorging myself on Subway cookies. I think I'm definitely entitled, after the crazy hours I've been working.

Also: What does it say about me that I have random articles of clothing strewn about a boys' house? Sex kitten much?

Justification Sounds A Lot Like Juxtaposition

I think I may be polite to a fault.

You see, I'm the kind of girl who, while getting stitches through mangled pieces of skin, won't ask for more local anisthetic because she is definitely, definitely feeling the needle pulling the thread through now. No, that would be impolite. The doctors know what they are doing, they know how to administer anisthetic, and if you're feeling it, well, the fault is yours. So suck it up and deal. No crying. Is what my internal dialogue sounded like during those long minutes on the paper-covered dexamining table. Or what they would have sounded like if "Oh wow this hurts" weren't outplaying everything else.

And tonight? Tonight, I let a guy tell me about Renny Dess-cart-ess [how he pronounced René Descartes]. RENNY DESS-CART-ESS. And I KNOW his professor pronounced it correctly in class. And I didn't correct him at all. I just nodded my recognition, kept my facial contortions to myself, and moved on.

Of course, I'm blogging about it now, so I don't know how polite I am after all. Meh, I'm too tired to get into an argument about semantics. Especially not one with myself.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Sorry I couldn't come up and visit; this whole working six days a week (and fighting with my boss so I don't have to work seven) is really cutting into my free time.

Aw, looks like I'm growing up and learning how badly responsibility sucks and stuff.

Back From A Run

I have minions. And a key. AND...endorphins.

So yeah, work is going great, I have a schedule now, a routine all worked out, and I charted a short running course for me tonight. Here I am, in a great, inexpensive, hardwood-floor'd apartment, freshly back from a run in IDEAL outside running conditions. I live in a quiet, quaint little town where I can do things like always leave my door unlocked and run by myself after dark.

Maybe it's the endorphins talking, or the fact that I'm going to hop into THE greatest shower ever designed in a few minutes, but things are going rather swimmingly of late.

For me, anyway. Because I've only just started scraping the pieces of exploded heart muscle from the speckled blue linoleum of a kitchen floor. I thought my summer project would be something fun and memory-lane-esque, but it turns out that I'm relegated back to my old job of hope-holder. I'm good at it because I'm consistent. Just like now, how I'm finally happy because I actually have a complete routine.

An Observation

Things down south really are a lot lazier and more laid-back then up with the Yankees, like I grew up with.

The funny thing is, I'm only 3 hours from home. And I grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Huh.

At Least My Hair Can't Fall Out, Right?

Isn't stress great? I've been experiencing it in varying degrees the last few days, and I've decided that I would like to be seven years old again, thank you very much. My biggest worry of that age was that I accidentally colored outside of the line on a school coloring assignment (yes, I was THAT kind of child) or that I didn't get to read enough during class and I was disappointed, or something. I loved being seven; or at least, I love it now.

The thing is, I know I have no room to complain. I could list off, right now, ten people I personally know whose lives are far more stressful than mine. That doesn't matter so much when I'm sitting in a corner, worrying myself (literally) sick, though. I just hope a few things go my way and my stress level changes for the better.

Mothra Attacks

I am not dead. No, I am not. But almost.

Here's what went down yesterday. There was this moth, right? It flew into the house. I called it Mothra because, hey, what else do you do with moths? And then I wondered aloud what moths eat because this moth was flying frantically around, and I was sure it was starving. (I was actually just projecting and it was I who was starving, but that's not important.) Art flippantly replied, "Clothes. And inquisitive girls." Funny, right? Hahaha, not when his flippant reply came back to haunt him (and me -- actually, mostly just me) at 6 a.m. We'd been having a really long, very good conversation, and were completely exhausted, and I think I fell asleep, maybe, probably, when all of a sudden SOMETHING! woke me up by flitting on my face, and I startled, and shook, and made a big deal out of this SOMETHING!, whatever it was.

And then I remembered it was probably that dang moth coming to eat me for asking questions. I waved my hands around, trying to find it and bat it out of my life, and once I'd figured I'd succeeded, I put my head down to calm down. And felt the thing IN MY EAR. I have no idea where it was hiding, but woah, I thought my life was over; that the moth was secretly carnivorous and would eat my brains out. I may have even said as much out loud; I'm not sure, I was beyond exhausted. (I get pretty irrational early in the morning, especially after I have conversations about how inevitably lonely I am, I think.)

But hello! I am alive, and well, and pretty stressed, and in need of a shower after spending a couple hours washing dishes and doing laundry. You should all come visit me. I even promise to shower first.

She's Saying Goodbye

I didn't tell you guys, but on my last day in Utah, Jennifer and I found the Great Salt Lake (re-found, actually), saw a rattlesnake, and I tasted the lake.

It tastes like death, which is probably appropriate as there are carcasses of dead birds littering the ground around the lake. I don't know what killed them, but it may have been the despair from being in the ugliest part of Utah.

(If you'd like to see pictures of our little adventure, click here.)

Back Home

I've been talking to my brother The Pon a lot lately. I suppose I should clarify, though. Now that we're in the same house for a few days, we've been IMing each other more in one day than we did in four months. Heaven forbid I walk up the long long flight of stairs to his room to hold an actual, face-to-face conversation with him; nope, way too far. Plus, what would we say? This is one of the reasons I love instant messaging. Also because when I am too lazy to get off the couch to fetch my chocolate Easter rabbit from the fridge (I wasn't home over Easter, so I get to have mine now), I can instant message my brother and ask him to get one of the cats to fetch the rabbit for me.

Which brings me to another subject: the cats. For most of my life, we had one cat, a beautiful part-Siamese. Sometime in the fall, my family got a younger Maine Coon cat. He's sweet, but he's not too bright. Anyway, now with two cats in the house, they definitely lord it over everything. The other morning, I was kicked out of bed by a cat who assumed I was in her territory. And if I'm sitting on the couch, innocently surfing the internet, the other cat will come up and demand to be petted. DEMAND. And I had to pause in washing the dishes yesterday because that cat DEMANDED he be played with. I tried reasoning with him, but alas, he is a cat, and cats are above reason.

Storm (yes, the queerest name for a cat ever):



and Winter: