Below are the 19 most recent journal entries recorded in laura's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, May 8th, 2007
4:52 pm	well, now. as we all knew i would, it seems that i've waited too long and everything's gone fuzzy. we got all of our pics back from the photographer, and it seems that i'm going to have to refresh my memory with them. honestly, the rest of the night, even at the time, was a blur of dancing and karaoke and laughing and andy injuring his ankle trying to do the cotton-eyed joe with becky's cousin ben. so i don't really feel too bad about having lost specific memories. it will always be a magnificent blur in my head. the pictures are amazing - if you're one of the handful of people left on earth that i haven't bullied into witnessing how gorgeous they made me look, they're here: http://www.browers.exposuremanager.com/g/proofs_laura_andy_2006 (password 'browers1231'). did i mention the dancing? i was really afraid that no one would dance. looking at the pictures, i realize how small a wedding (and how large a space) it really was - the dance floor looks deceptively empty at times. but at the time, i didn't notice, because i danced to every. single. song. dancing opened to andrew w.k.'s 'party hard' (because when it's time to party, we will always party hard. duh.) and just never stopped. in my mind, contrary to what the pictures show, everyone was dancing with me. maybe because at one point or another during the night, everyone did. aunts, uncles, cousins, non-dancing friends...even aaron, ben and chad got into it for a pogues sing-along, beers in hand, raising them at the end of every line. oh, and then there was the conga line... oh, god. and then the karaoke. ben sang, like, 4 songs. [bunny, you'll have to remind me which ones. i know you did 'i knew the bride (when she used to rock n roll),' but i also know there were more.] he really got the karaoke thing going. i want to get it all down here, so bear with me. dave did pearl jam's 'jeremy' (not recommended for karaoke purposes). erin patton and i duetted to 'bohemian rhapsody'. nate did 'unchained melody' and almost managed to hit the high note - you can see me in pictures pointing toward him, saying "here it comes! here it comes!" aaron and lindsey did a kickass 'don't you want me, baby,' complete with aaron's signature robot dance and lindsey's "so cute you want to eat her" bouncing dance. ryan doktor, who i didn't even know (he came as lauren's date) did 'alison.' eileen belted out 'me and bobby mcgee'. erin lockward did...crap. something. susie, too. and kyle, too. john p. and heather...the list goes on. shit. i wish that i could remember. oh yeah. and andy and i did 'g thang,' because, well, that's just appropriate for a wedding, don't you think? i even un-censored the censored lyrics for them. the dj's list wasn't all that great, but it was a total hit, anyway. people were just getting warmed up when it was time to cut to the new year's stuff. i made a last-minute impulse buy of these 14" long sticks filled with confetti for midnight, and they were one of the best wedding-related purchases i made. the pictures look awesome, and maria and desi and angie had a blast, filling my train and their party hats up with confetti and letting it fly all over again. andy and i shared our first kiss on new year's eve 1999 (hi, nat!), and so it was so perfect that the photogs got a great picture of this new year's eve kiss - confetti is falling and it looks like i've positively flown into andy's arms to receive my kiss. then the dj busts out "99 problems" and you get me making all sorts of weird faces, because apparently, when i rap, i make weird faces. i hope jigga will forgive me. and then 'it's the end of the world as we know it' and EVERYONE is on their feet (confetti is still flying at this point). and then it is over. oh, how i didn't want it to end. there was only one true disappointment. our friend chris always gets naked. it's kinda his thing. "oh, there's chris naked again!" and i was kinda hoping that this gathering would be no different. i heard later that he had a special thong prepared just for the event. but andy put the kibosh on that, citing the small children running around. pooh. four months later, i'd still do it over this weekend if i could. it was that much fun. an ecstatic, exhasted, drunken blur. maybe we should get divorced just so we can get married again. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, February 26th, 2007
10:46 pm	i've been tagged okay, i'm game. RULES: Each player of this game starts off with 10 weirdthings/habits/little known facts about yourself. People who get taggedneed to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things/little knownfacts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you need to choose10 people to be tagged and list their names. No tag backs. We only tag because we love. 1. when i was in 8th grade, my two best friends, who i spent ALL my time with, one day just up and decided that they didn't like me anymore. it was completely devastating, at a time when your social life is everything. i may seem outgoing and confident, but i'm really terrified when i meet you that you won't like me or, worse, you'll like me but then change your mind one day because of some small offense that i won't be able to later identify. it takes me a very long time to trust that you really, actually like me. a long, long time. 2. i talk/act like an 8-year old ("you're a poopy face head" "no, YOU'RE a poopy face butt fart head!") only with my husband. a lot of the time. 3. using the word "husband" still totally makes me oogy...but in a good way. as does looking at my ring, even after a year+ of wearing it. 4. i've been doing the vegetarian thing for 7 months now, and i secretly doubt that i'll be able to stick it out long-term. i've been dreaming (literally) about burgers lately. i suspect that this makes me a bad animal-lover. 5. my mom and i don't get along for more than 1/2 hour at a time. i love the lady in the way that everyone loves their mother, but if we weren't related, i wouldn't have anything to do with her. we have nothing in common. i'm not sure there's anything i can do (or care to) to change this. 6. i am more fully committed in my head to opening a pizza restaurant/punk rock bar than i'm willing to admit to anyone else just yet. 7. i am completely obsessed with my body, in a bad way. i suspect that i may have body dysmorphic disorder. 8. i think that any given animal is better than most people. if the human race is wiped off the face of the planet within my lifetime, i'll think that we fully deserve it. 9. i'm way too smart for the job i work. i'm also way too lazy to find a better one. 10. i feel really bad that i have relegated my teddy bear to the bookshelf in the office. he's almost human to me, even now, after all these years. i comfort myself by telling myself that he's in good company, surrounded by all the books that i also love. also, he's in such bad shape that if i kept him in my bed like i want to, he'd be bereft of stuffing within a month. i only have 5 lj friends, and i'm pretty sure they've all been tagged. so there. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
6:22 pm	Note to alleycat: thanks for kicking my butt. i know i'm totally going to forget everything in, like, a month, so i need little reminders every now and then to get this done. so we're married, right? but it still doesn't quite feel that way at this point. i mean, we've been married for all of, like, 2 minutes. the photographers followed us out of the ceremony, as this was their allotted "just andy and laura" picture time. i guess we should have had a few moments together, just to let it all sink in, but i figured that we had the rest of our lives to do that, and i wanted to get to the party part. we ran around the museum a bit and the photographers twisted and posed us a bit, which isn't at all to my liking, because i really didn't want anything that looked posed, but i'm glad we did it, because those photos all came out AMAZING and really didn't look very fake at all. (the link won't work for posterity, but see photographic evidence here: http://mbrowers.powweb.com/Slideshows/LauraAndy2006Final/index.html). so after pictures, back upstairs in time for the dj to introduce us as Mr. Andy H. and Mrs. Laura S. (i kept my name after a not-really-so-agonizing inner debate. couldn't come up with any compelling reasons to give it up), and for us to enter the room to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme song, devil horns raised (http://www.flickr.com/photos/77593617@N00/361020920/). we sat down and i STILL had the weird "everybody's looking at me" almost-panicky feeling (it kinda followed me all night, but i got used to it as the night went on), so i wanted to get the ball rollin'. the coordinator was being a rockstar. she totally MADE me eat - she was like "oh, no, honey, the bride doesn't wait in line for food at her own wedding" - and i'm SO glad she did, because the food was awesome. i shoveled it all down MOST indelicately, because it was so good, and also because i was just so excited about everything that i wasn't even paying attention to what i was doing. it is to my everlasting credit that i didn't spill even a single sauteed pepper down my dress. if you were to tell that to anyone who knew me well, they'd never believe you. i want to take a break in the narrative to point out the full rockstar-ness of my wedding coordinator. i had a small problem, you see. my girls were not behaving. they wanted nothing to do with that dress, and they wanted out. in the two or three fittings that i had previous to the wedding, the stays in the bodice showed no signs of weakness, but apparently, they were not architecturally sound. they sorta just...bent. which meant that at any moment, my girls were in grave peril of making an appearance in front of all my gathered family and friends. i disappeared into the bathroom right before dinner to sort of tuck things back in, and morissa, my coordinator, followed me, took one look at the situation and said "come here." the woman - nay, goddess - took the hanging straps from my dress and the laces from my corset and fucking macgyvered straps for my strapless dress. they didn't even look that terrible! i will love her forever and ever, amen. my own reception could conceviably have been ruined for me, because i would have been SO self-conscious about pulling my dress up all night long. how do you dance with your tits perpetually on the verge of flying out? i loveherloveherLOVEHER. as everyone was finishing up eating, my dad got up and gave the welcome speech, recounting from beginning to end the tale of andy and my first trip to colorado together (girl meets boy on internet, girl gives up plane ticket to drive from north carolina to take boy out to colorado to see ALL, girl tells parents she's still flying, girl's car breaks down in buttfuck, kansas on the way home, boy's parents start to worry, call girl's parents, girl's parents say "who is boy? girl flew to colorado, you must be mistaken," hilarity ensues), gets a good laugh from everyone and then hands the mic over to the best man. dave does a "top five" list (he's totally obsessed with 'high fidelity.' sensitive and single, ladies!) of why andy and laura are great together, ending with (i shit you not) "laura, please stand up" [i suspiciously do so] "andy is a boob man. enough said." lindsay gets up and gives the genuine, heartfelt girly speech, and then it's time for the father-daughter dance. i hadn't really given this a lot of thought up until about a day or two before the wedding. it would be a cold day in hell before i would dance to "butterfly kisses" or that terrible new one about "i loved her first" or whatever - i knew that much - but i hadn't really stopped to think what might be appropriate. it really didn't take a lot of thought, though. neither my dad nor i are mushy people, and if we ever had a song, it would have to be "a boy named sue" - he seems to always tell stories about us sitting on the floor together, listening to "live at san quentin" and it was always kind of our thing. so we danced to it. not very well at all, but it was fun, and we sang every word. then it was time for andy and i to dance. again with the "everybody's looking at us" ick, so i didn't really enjoy it like i thought i should have. or something. i don't know. we're not dancers. these two dances are concessions i made to my "you're not having a wedding cake?!" mother. plus, honestly, the song choice was weird. that is to say, not mine. i let andy pick "hallelujah" by jeff buckley because he seemed strangely attached to it, and i wondered if he associated the song with me for some reason. he didn't. he just said "it seemed like a good song to dance to." which, in andy's head, totally makes sense. but the truth is that we don't really have "a song." i guess we have records, but you can't really dance to a whole record. people might leave. so we danced to that, and it was long. i still have no idea what we even said to each other during that interminable song. back and forth, back and forth, like a couple of middle schoolers. we finally had the dj cut it off. all in all, awkward, but we got some good pictures out of it. then...FINALLY...it was time for the party to start. but you'll have to wait to hear about it... see! i'm just like that bald guy on 'deal or no deal'! 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Sunday, January 7th, 2007
11:06 am	Married, part trois what else can i say about getting into my dress? i was feeling generally rushed at this point, and i wish i had had lindsay there to remind me yet again that the wedding waits for the bride, because maybe i would have enjoyed it more. i was feeling very sort of robotic at this point - "accomplish task A, move on to task B" instead of the excited and nervous that i probably could have been if i were surrounded by different people. i'll try to remember that for my next wedding. when we get down to the hotel lobby and stop for a couple of photos, it finally hits me there that I'M THE BRIDE. people are stopping and staring like i've always done, and i know what's going through their heads is "how cool!" and "wow! a bride! neato!" because it really is not something you see every day. i've always looked at brides and wondered how they were feeling at that moment about the fact that they're about to get married, and now i know that they're probably feeling excited and blurry and a little oxygen-deprived due to the corset. it's not at all a bad feeling. so on to the city museum, where my brother was directing events in a way that was so very him that i just loved him so much at that moment. i should have made HIM my wedding coordinator. i'm surrounded by family and friends and feeling so sheltered and cozy, but then it's TIME and the coordinator shoos everyone away and looks at me and says, like a drill sergeant, "are you ready to get married?" and all the thoughts leave my head and the only thing left is "Yes!" I am so ready. I think i might have said "let's do this thing." my dad and i walk down the mirrored hallway, and i'm finally excited. i can't wait to see andy. as we're waiting for maria to flower-girl herself down the aisle (which i'm later told she does in a very robotic, yet endearing manner) and the music to start, daddy asks for a kiss and then we go. i probably walked a little fast, and certainly not as gracefully as 'moonlight sonata' would dictate, but it was weird - everyone stood up and all eyes were on me. i locked eyes with andy for a while, but it was too intense, and i had to look away. i couldn't look at anyone. i made eye contact randomly with erin lockward and she gave me the thumbs-up and i winked at her, and then andy was there. i know it's all antiquated and anti-feminist, but i am SO glad that i went straight from my dad to andy's arm, because i really needed guidance at this point. one comforting presence to the next. and there we were, facing each other, holding hands. i felt the need to mouth little things to him that i'm sure he didn't understand, but i was so nervous that i couldn't just stand there and stare at him. my face was doing weird things like it does just before i start to cry, and i was NOT going to let that happen. i was finally calm enough to look around a bit - i saw that danielle, my brother's fiancee, was crying (major sister-in-law points) and tim, andy's dad, was not (he had been duly warned by his wife, becky). Then my dad got up to do a reading, and totally choked up. I'm not sure i've ever seen my dad cry. The short, 4 line poem my mom read as a funny counterpoint to my dad's serious reading got a laugh from everybody, and then it was down to the serious business. We rocked our vows. i was finally able to look andy in the eye as he read his to me, and it was good. it was recitation for sure - i still have no idea what exactly was said - but i remember feeling very 'in the moment' and actually meaning every word, every syllable that was spoken. i'm glad about that. that it wasn't all a blur. i never thought that the ceremony itself was going to be a big deal to me - i mean, c'mon, we've lived together for 6 years. it was just a formality, right? turns out that's not the case. i mean, i certainly didn't fixate on the ceremony while i was making wedding plans, but it seems that when it came right down to it, it actually was very meaningful. go figure. and then the rings. when andy took them out and gave them to arlene and i saw them in her hand, there was a feeling of "ooh, yay!" that i can't really explain. in the moment, i was really excited about exchanging rings. i remember that andy put mine on a bit too early and that when i put his on, there was a definite saucy note of victory and accomplishment in my voice, like "with this ring, I...(dramatic pause while i slip the ring on)...thee wed." i was cute. people laughed. then the kiss. it was a good kiss, but i was still too nervous, being up in front of all those people, to make it a GOOD kiss. it was definitely not chaste, but not tacky, either. and then we processed to "new day rising," which, known only to myself and andy (and now you), is the record that andy put on after the first time we had sex. it was appropriate then and now, and i like that it's our secret. next up...the reception! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007
10:27 pm	Married! cont'd after breakfast, we hit the mall, and i was really freaking out a bit at this point, because we only had about an hour and a half to collect all the above-mentioned items. i specifically remember riding an escalator in macy's and thinking 'oh, god, i'm going to barf right here in this fancy department store,' but lindsay was perfect. she kept reminding me that no one is ever late to anything on their wedding day. weddings can't very well go forward without the bride. i was also thinking very mean and vulgar things about anyone with the nerve to get in my way as i moved through the crowded mall. i know everyone always jokes and says 'deep breaths' but that is truly what got me through the shopping blitz. it wasn't even a conscious thing, i would just stop, inhale deeply and exhale strongly and that kept me going. we got out of there more or less exactly on time, but that was when i forgot to stop and pick up the programs. met emilie the hair goddess back at the hotel, and she was quick and comforting. having your hair done is always calming, even under the most harrying of circumstances. it turned out very well, and it was only after two hours of non-stop dancing that the hair comb finally failed me, but that is not her fault. the ball was truly rolling at this point, and i think i really just didn't have any more time to be worried about anything. a few small problems reared their ugly heads and were quickly dismissed. museum open to the public when they promised me it was closed? no problem. (turned out they WERE closed, they just hadn't succeeded in kicking everyone out yet - becky overreacting at her best) back to the mall. the girl at the MAC store was fabulous. she was sweet and (there's that word again) comforting and she rocked my face. literally. i want her to move in with me and do my makeup every day. that was a very pleasant experience, and my first encounter with my photographers. i was pleased that i was able to sucessfully ignore them and i can't wait to see all the photos. back to the hotel again for the dress, which turned out to be more of a trial than i was expecting, probably because the people who had gotten me into it on three other previous occasions were all professionals. pictures will prove that i had no less than three grown women working on my corset for a good twenty minutes. more to come... (Comment on this)
4:09 pm	Married! i know i'm going to forget everything that happened by next friday, so for posterity's sake, here is the timeline for the big weekend: Friday, December 29th: out late on thursday night (didn't mean to be! it just happened. had to get away from my parents for a bit. in retrospect, i was TOTALLY JUSTIFIED in thinking that they should have gotten a hotel while they were here in springfield), so we slept in a bit and left for st. louis around 11. felt good driving down, pretty day. that drive is always very peaceful. nothing but open fields and sky for an hour. not nervous at all. also not totally stoked about all the family/schmoozing that awaited me, but was ready to grin and bear it. we had errands to run - pick up linens, pick up andy's tux, pick up the marriage license - that we took care of in a flash of super-efficiency and then checked in. met my brother's fiancee, danielle, for the first time. she's SUPER nice and i can tell she's a great person, but just not my kind of girl. type-A high-maintenance, just like my brother. they are the male/female counterparts of one another. i'm not sure if that makes for a good marriage or a disasterous one, but i'm hoping for the best, because i want him to be happy. spent a good bit of time that afternoon not being bugged by anyone (thanks, mom!) and just chillin' in the hotel room. we watched a 'pimp my ride' marathon for, like, 2 hours. people started arriving that evening - my aunt jan and uncle steve and their two kids were the first. i'm always a bit weird around them because they're super-religious and i know they're just baffled at how i turned out. friday was my parents' 39th anniversary (go bonnie! go larry!), so we went out to a nice thai restaurant and had good food and relaxed conversation. my cousin susan is weird. i mean, i guess she's just your average drama-queen, boy crazy 15 year old girl, but i totally can't relate anymore, and that makes me sad. it doesn't bode well for relating to any potential female offspring. i also wasn't quite sure how i should act around her, because i want to always relate to people on my level and it made me nervous to have to worry about what i said around her, for fear that i might corrupt her or something. but the more time i spent with her family, the more relaxed i got. they may be jesus freaks, but at least they have the decency to keep it to themselves. in short, not nearly as uncomfortable as i was making it out to be in my head. even, dare i say, enjoyable. Saturday, December 30th: andy had to meet his family for an early breakfast and i slept in. got a call around 9am from my college girlfriend karla, who, by coincidence, was already going to be in town from north carolina for a christian youth convention (22,000 christian youth took over st. louis all week long). met her for a FANTASTIC breakfast and great conversation, and came away comforted by the fact that neither time nor core differences of opinion (you know - things like whether god had planned for her to be in town the same weekend as my wedding) have changed the fact of our friendship. now people really start rollin' in, and i start to freak out a little about having to spend quality time with all of them. they all came from so far to be with us, but i was having a hard time caring at that point, because, you know, i was getting married and stuff. my mom made it easy by having all of her family members to their hotel room for an 'open house' - the inderbitzins and lockwards, my aunt karoline and ryan and nora, the kudelkas - everyone wanted a piece of me, and under the circumstances, i think i did alright getting to talk to all of them. i was in and out a bit, because at the same time, my phone had started ringing off the hook as friends from springfield started arriving. and, to be completely honest, i was making up errands to run and secretly sneaking back to my room for a breather every once and a while. it was the only way i was going to retain my sanity. which i did. go me. rehearsal at 5pm, which was very informal and lightning fast. i couldn't bring myself to look at andy as i walked down the aisle, for fear that i might tear up, so i pretended to be very preoccupied with my feet. dinner, courtesy of andy's clan, was fabulous. all family/friends on both sides together for the first time, with a 'safe' table of our friends - tab and john, lindz, aaron, hank and erin and ben. i was so excited that ben made it! the storm hitting colorado had me worried. he really really likes a girl right now, and it's all VERY new, but the way he's talking about her, i wanted to note it here that i wouldn't be surprised at all if she's a keeper. just one of those inklings, like the one Nat kept telling me about when andy and i were first talking. then we hit the boats! i was totally stoked, because i'd always wanted to sit down at a blackjack table, but was too terrified of taking a hit that i shouldn't and fucking up the stranger's hand next to me. but as soon as we walked in, there was a completely empty table and myself, hank, andy, ben and john all sat down. the dealer pegged both me and ben immediately as beginners and even asked to see my i.d. (i think he was just fucking with me), but we all pretty much went out at the same time. it didn't take long. i'm glad i was amongst friends, because it's way more fast-paced than when i would sit at the kitchen table and play with my dad. the dealer had me so flustered that i actually said "my dad would be so unproud!" unproud?! i'm NEVER vocabularily challenged! EVER! after blackjack, all my money was gone (and i DID have the foresight to leave my wallet at the hotel), but andy had $10 left, so he sat down at a video poker machine, at which time i left to go see how other people were doing. when i came back, i find out that lindz had told him that the max bet was 5 quarters, and it turned out to be 20. he got a four of a kind, and all of a sudden, we were $125 richer! AND he immediately cashed out and was ready to leave! whereas, in his place, i would've fed it right back into those machines, hoping to win even more. he's a keeper, i swear. becky also won $100 on another machine, so good fun was had by all (even we losers). back to the hotel bar for a drink, and then off to (separate) beds, in preparation for... D-DAY!: sleeping alone, on the very few occasions that i've had to do it since andy and i have lived together, has always been weird for me, so i woke up a couple of times during the night and had a hard time getting back to sleep. gears were turning in my head that i didn't even know i had, and i wasn't quite sure how to turn them off. i slept just okay, which i suppose is to be expected on the night before your wedding. got up around 10, and this is where things start to get really fuzzy. this whole day - right up until the second the wedding coordinator asks me, in her whip-like fashion, "are you ready to get married?," and, by doing so, bringing everything instantaneously back into focus before shoving me down the aisle - is a complete blur of driving, talking on the phone, smoking and feeling like i'm going to vomit. i'll try to lay it all out as i remember it. first, i had things to buy. on my wedding day, i still had things to buy. earrings, stockings, flip-flops and body butter, to be exact. the body butter was pretty unnecessary, in retrospect, but at the time, smooth skin was a must. also, during one of those wide-awake but trying to get back to sleep episodes, i had remembered the only thing all weekend that i had actually totally flaked on - i left the programs at home. this may well be the only time you will ever hear me say this, but thank jeebus we work at kinko's. i had my manager send the file to a local kinko's and they promised to have them done in an hour. it actually wasn't a huge concern of mine (as you will see in a minute), because who needs a program for a 10-minute (erin clocked us to see how we compared to theirs) ceremony without any bridal party, but certain family members who will remain nameless insisted. they turned out pretty cute, too. which makes it all the more of a shame that i forgot to pick them up a second time. ah, well. we'll send them out with the thank-yous. so, programs ordered, i headed out to breakfast with lindz and her boy-toy (what else can i call him? she won't let me use 'boyfriend') to the same place i'd eaten with karla the morning before because it was JUST that good. the best description for how i was feeling was 'numb' - as if i was watching myself in a movie. i wasn't quite all there. but lindz and, surprisingly, pennington were both very good to me and penny let me have his toast because i wanted both a croissant AND toast and the meal i ordered only permitted one bread choice. he then paid for my breakfast. my opinion of him is being raised all the time. parents here...more later. 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Saturday, August 19th, 2006
4:32 pm	for Nat... because she makes me laugh. whew. saturdays. work, then home, then the ultimate struggle to get my ass out of this computer chair and squeeze one more workout out of the week before i lay around all day on sundays. the lazy is currently winnin, and that's because i'm still reeling from the after-effects - i ran for FORTY-FIVE minutes STRAIGHT on thursday. i haven't done that since high school soccer! i kinda guessed that this workout dvd i use was doing something, because i've lost a bunch of weight, but i had NO idea that it was actually making me cardiovascular-ly stronger, as well. well, that and the fact that i don't smoke NEARLY as many cigs anymore as i have for the past, oh, 13 years or so. okay, so i binge a bit on my one weekend drinking night. but i'm practically one of those people who "only smoke when i drink"! be impressed. seriously. please? andy actually threatened to quit work today. only to me, of course, but it was still really weird, because he's SO laid back and NEVER lets himself get worked up. he's frustrated that we're surrounded by incompetent morons, of course. i am, too. it was bound to get to one of us sooner or later. i'm just shocked that he was the first to crack. i mean, i threaten to quit in my head at LEAST once a day, but who knows when i'm actually gonna sack up (thanks, rex!) and do something about it. it would help if there were actually any jobs available here. you know the worst thing about this job? not management, not the job itself, not even the fact that we are corporate wage-slaves...it's the customers. they are A-1 prime shitheads, to the last. if i EVER suggest that i may be even thinking about THINKING that i want to work with the general public ever again, you have my permission, here in writing, to shoot me. or at least poke me with a sharp stick or something, because people are ASSHOLES. give me a mind-numbing desk job away from customers ANYday. note to self: you need to get gorilla permits. NOW. why are you putting this off? today, i don't want to have kids. this is going to be a new installment in my lj. i used to go through cycles of wanting to/not wanting to (ALWAYS more wanting to than not), but lately (and by lately, i mean the last 6 months or so), it's been more unusual for me to think to myself "yes! kids!" than the opposite. i don't know why i've been obsessing about this so much lately, but i think it's because i'm scared that i actually might not ever want to have a kid. i don't know exactly what's WRONG with not wanting one, but i seem to think that there is something. i guess because everyone else in the world, you know, has one. or many. it's just something you do. i used to think that, when i would go through my 'not having' periods, i was just at a selfish point in my life, but i don't think that's it anymore. i'm starting to think that it's not selfish to not want them, but practical. there are too many things i want to do with this very.short.life. the way i see it, my parents dedicated 20+ years to raising us and working to support us (for which i am eternally grateful), and of COURSE i think that we were worth it, but do they? in their heart of hearts? did my mom harbor a secret desire to be an astronaut or to visit the west indies? i KNOW my dad probably could have found something more enjoyable to do than work in the insurance industry for 30 years. i can't help but think that if they had just held off a little longer, they might have followed another path in life entirely. but that's them, anyway. i mean, maybe my mom's greatest desire WAS to raise kids. i know there are plenty of people like that. i just don't see myself as one of those people. not that i think i'm going to do anything GREAT or world-changing with my life. i just want to be able to look back at the end of it and find that i didn't miss out on anything i'd always wanted to do. yeah, yeah. everyone says that. some people even make lists. but hardly anyone checks anything off of those lists, and then they die. life gets in the way. and, in my eyes, kids get in the way. but NO ONE will admit it. it's always "not a moment of regret," and "my kids are the best thing that ever happened to me." bullshit. your life changed and you got a new perspective and a new focus, but that didn't make all the OTHER things you wanted to do go away. it just made them fond memories. plus, teenagers TOTALLY suck. totally. i remember. whew. well, i guess this one wasn't so much for Nat, proud mama that she is :) but it feels good to get stuff like this off my chest. i feel so weird for thinking these things, and i know i shouldn't. feel weird, i mean, not think them. now i'm going to go try to run again. here's hoping i don't die of a heart attack before i get all of these all-important, yet extremely vague things done with my life. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 12th, 2006
4:12 pm	oh, and... i wanted to make a note that i am officially CONSIDERING becoming a vegetarian. i just don't know if i can do it. (Comment on this)
3:38 pm	food, glorious food. not tomorrow. but close. lessee...thursday, we went to dave and linz's after work...well, not true...after I got home from work...andy was off because he'd worked a double the day before, and he dorked with Dave all day long...for the record: andy plays ENTIRELY too much D&D online. i know that every girlfriend has to deal with something like this, whether it be too much band or too many video games or too much work, but really...every night until 4am? i guess it's his problem...i'm not the one who has to go to work on 5 hours of sleep (which is not something i'd even be capable of). anyway, we had a nice, grown-up meal with them (okay, it was hamburgers, corn and mashed potatoes, but we did it all from scratch - i even shucked the corn!) and strawberry shortcake for dessert. then we watched a movie and called it a night...i like doing things during the week, though...it kinda breaks the work week up. ummm. friday. got paid, so we went out to eat with spencer & kristina. vietnamese place, but i had thai. i decided in my car this morning on the way to work that my favorite food in the whole wide world is musaman (i've seen a thousand different spellings, so whatever) curry, which is tied with pizza. god, i love food. saturday after work we met carolyn at the taste of springfield, and that's what i did - i ate all of springfield. i had ribs, a burrito, fries and we took home two wraps, one of which i ate later that evening. diet? what diet? i'm picking up a pattern here. all of our social recreation seems to be centered directly on food. we're both going to weigh 300lb by the time we're 40. sunday, softball and more food - IHOP this time. no wonder we're fucking broke all the time. this has got to stop. i'm horrifying myself. but wait...there's more... monday. wildlife rehab, where i had an apple and half a bag of potato chips. sandwich for dinner, which was the best (in the 'good for you' sense) thing i'd eaten in 5 days. i hung out most of the time with jacques in the shop and he told me hawking stories...there wasn't much going on, animal-wise. a great horned owl that got hit by a train - twice - and also possibly electrocuted but didn't have a single broken bone to show for it, a baby robin, a sweet juvenile wood duck that's too imprinted to release, another really MEAN duck, all in addition to the regular cast of hawks, owls, eagles, falcons, foxes, groundhogs, etc. that constitute our permanent residents. oh, and also a baby cowbird who was SO cute but probably wasn't going to survive jacques' distaste for them (as brood parasites, they lay their eggs in other birds' nests and let others raise their young, usually to the detriment of the birds' own young). jacques has a weird sort of morality when it comes to animals. he runs a wildlife rehab center but hunts those same animals he would rehab. that's not to say that i'd rule out the possibility of becoming a falconer someday, too, but i'd definitely have to think on it...why protect some animals and purposely kill others? but then, hawks need to eat, too, and the killing that they do is totally natural and necessary. i think jacques would take me as an apprentice if i seemed serious about it. i'm just not sure if i am. then there's the prejudice that both he and jane share against starlings, sparrows and cowbirds (they refuse to rehab them), just because there are too many of them or they're not technically 'native.' to me, a baby in need is a baby in need. i miss my NC wildlife center. it was better run, better funded, better supported by volunteers and just generally...better. but i'm gonna stick it out at this one because i love the work and i need the knowledge and experience. plus, it's fucking cool. how many people get to hang out with eagles on a weekly basis? i am totally avoiding laundry and dishes right now. but that brings us pretty much up to date. work yesterday and today. i have saturday off, though, because i'm turning OLD. 358 days left of my twenties. i'm hoping to make the best of them. stupid laundry. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 5th, 2006
5:25 pm	a new leaf. i totally stalk Nat on a weekly basis to find out what's going on in her life, and EVERY time, i say to myself, "self, you need to start doing this, too, because a million years from now, when Nat's old, she's going to have all this to read and remember, and you won't." granted, her life is much more journal-worthy than mine, but at least i'll know, looking back, that my life was totally fucking lame when i was 28 going on 29 and that it only got better from then on out... so here we go. we'll see what happens. i'm pretty sure i've tried this before. today, i went to work. it was pretty painful. pretty much every day is one of those days that i just don't want to get out of bed, but today was extra-specially so. if my life were a wave graph, i'd be in the valley between peaks of hating my job...just coming off of REALLY hating it, and looking forward to really hating it again, but right now i'm just 'eh.' which is never the place i want to be, because 'eh' means that i'm not even CONSIDERING looking for a new job. i won't start doing that until i reach the hate peak again. right now, i should be working out. instead, i'm looking for a reason - ANY reason - not to do so. if i didn't sit my (admittedly much less-)fat ass down in front of the computer every day when i got home from work, i'd be done practically before i even knew that i had started...but no. myspace, the dorkboard, livejournal - all these websites conspiring to make me fat. about the fat thing, though...i give myself credit for losing the weight that i have, but i now live in a constant state of fear that i will slip back into bad old habits and gain it all back all the hard work will have been for naught...oh, and i won't fit into my wedding dress. so it's either be fat and be really depressed about being fat or be perpetually terrified that skipping a day (or three) of working out will knock me completely off the wagon...constant vigilance...constant vigilance... i will say here that i am extremely proud of myself and my body. i worry that i will start (have already started?) to obsess about the smaller flaws now that i've got the big stuff out of the way, but most of the time i feel really, really good about myself. i look pretty damn hot these days. this is to help my future fat self remember what it felt like to actually feel good about my body and perhaps inspire her to lay off the fucking pizza, already. i haven't had one of those deep, dark meltdowns in months, and hopefully it will stay that way. i do, however, have those moments where i fear that i can actually see my thighs growing. is it always like this when people lose weight? i think not. methinks that, perhaps, i am psycho. what say you? wedding. i hate that word. i really, really do. becky said to me yesterday "well, i think we've reached the time of the year where it's going to be 'all wedding, all the time,'" and i love the lady, but i wanted to crush her head like the guys from KITH. mona, too...they're relentless. i mean, it's MY fucking wedding, and i'm about half as interested as they are. thank god my mother hasn't been too much in the mix...she's been shockingly low-key about the whole affair...possibly due to the painkillers and depression. i have nightmares regularly, and they all involve me on my wedding day NOT being ready for my wedding day...not not ready to be married, but not ready for the event...the flowers aren't right or the dress doesn't fit or my bridesmaids are wearing jeans...though i'm not (i think) showing any outward signs of it, in my head, i'm already a bridezilla. what happened to cool and casual and groomsmen wearing jeans? what happened to OUR music the ENTIRE time and everyone else can suck a dick? i'm questioning my decisions at every turn because i'm terrified that people aren't going to enjoy themselves, and i have completely lost ALL perspective. the wedding has taken on a life of its own. it just applied for a social security number. i can't seem to remember that this is about me and andy. probably because he's not involved in the process at all, which, while it was to be expected, disappoints me all the same. but it feels like that would've been SO much easier to remember if we had just eloped. then it really WOULD have been about me and andy. not about food or flowers (i don't even LIKE flowers) or relatives or music or ANYTHING else. just me and him. god, i want that so badly. is it too late? we'd lose a lot of deposits. and we wouldn't be able to go to uganda. still tempting...but i just lost every bit of desire to write...weird how that happens. hopefully back tomorrow. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 6th, 2005
11:51 am	this one's for nat... i realized that every couple of days, i check nat's livejournal to see what's going on in her life and i don't extend the courtesy of updating this journal in return...yes, nat (and possibly ben and sean) are the only ones who even know this exists. so here you go, girl: um. we're waiting (again) to see if andy got into grad school this year...it's one of those things that we don't talk about because i don't want to add any pressure to the unbelievable pressure he's already put on himself, but we're both thinking about it...he applied to six schools this year, instead of just three, so there's got to be a better chance this time around, right? right. i'm happy to say that i'd be thrilled with any of the locations he applied to - long island, manhattan, durham (where we are now), baltimore, d.c. or st. louis. not so thrilled with the prospective rent in any of the new places, but we all make sacrifices. i'd be willing to live WAY below the means to which we've become accustomed (big spenders that we are) if it meant that he'd gotten into school. as far as the marriage and babies thing that i promised i'd update eventually, it's all on hold for the time being...babies, indefinitely and marriage almost indefinitely but conceivable within the next few years, i suppose...it's always been up to andy, who seems to be hung up on the fact that he wouldn't be able to afford a decent ring right now (and, in the interest of full disclosure, i must admit that a shallow part of me would like a nice ring)...i think my parents would help with the wedding, but now that they're retired, they've got to watch their money more closely...so basically, we're in no particular rush, especially in light of the fact that when andy gets into school, we'll be uprooted again, and we can't afford it right now. that last particular excuse is probably going to be rendered irrelevant as soon as we admit to ourselves that there is no time in the next 10 years or so that we're going to be making a lot more money than we are right now. i am NOT waiting 10 years to get married. as far as babies, i'm kinda on the 'eh' downturn of my annual 'babies NOW!/babies later' cycle...it just isn't a priority now that i've decided that i will most likely go back to school as soon as we get settled somewhere...a baby would make both of our lives very difficult even if i didn't go back to school, because whether or not i am, andy definitely will be...and i've said it before - both of us are too jealous of our personal time right now to want to add a baby into the mix...i just can't conceive right now of not being able to go to a movie or out to the bar on a weekend if we want to...and babies don't travel well in the rainforests of africa... off to work with me...nat, tell sophie that the next time we meet (at hank and erin's wedding, because you ARE going, and you ARE bringing both of your children), i will be thrilled to sing 'copacabana' with her, word for word..."her name was lola...she was a showgirl..." (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 29th, 2004
7:44 pm	at work... and SO fucking bored. i figured now is as good a time as any to update...this makes it two in two weeks. whoot! first, a few words on the situation in southeast asia...for posterity (because we tend to forget about even the most horrible of disasters too quickly if they're not happening in our own backyard), a 9.0 earthquake hit about 100 miles of the coast of sumatra, in the middle of the indian ocean, causing a terrible tsunami that, as of this moment, has claimed almost 80,000 lives, and the death toll is still rising, 3 days out. i think that this sort of complete devastation is pretty much incomprehensible to anyone not there at the moment that it hits. i'm sure it was even incomprehensible to those standing at the shore, watching the wave roll in...i really can't say why this has hit me so hard, but i can honestly say that i well up every time i think about those poor people, going about their day to day lives or enjoying a well-deserved vacation with loved ones...maybe because, for once, it's not a man-made disaster...there are no good guys and bad guys...it just...happened. this would probably also be a good place to mention that a tsunami is one of my recurring nightmares...maybe i can empathize, because i've had countless dreams over the course of my lifetime wherein i'm standing on a beach, frozen to the spot, watching a wall of water approach, and not being able to scream or move. i am slightly ashamed to admit that one of the first things i thought about, when i heard that aceh province in sumatra was one of the hardest-hit areas, was orangutans. there's an orang rehabilitation sanctuary there, and they're also still found wild in gunung leuser national park in southern aceh province. there are only, like, 5,000 of them left in the whole world! i know. nobody should care about orangutans when 80,000 human beings are dead, but i do. i can't help it. i think that a lot of the time, i might like animals more than people. but i do still care about the people. i got $500 from my parents for christmas, to go toward whatever trip andy and i are planning in between moving from here to the next place (wherever that may be) next fall, and i gave half of it away today to oxfam. it really was just a question of me happening to have extra money (when i normally have none) and them needing it way more than i. if you've ever given money away to any humanitarian cause, you may know what i'm talking about, but it's a really hard thing. not because i'm too selfish to want to give my money away, but because...well, i could really use that money. i'm not well off by any means. we live paycheck to paycheck, and we don't even have kids! and THEN you debate internally about just how much you can really afford. i feel a bit guilty now that i didn't give MORE, and then i hear andy's voice in my head when i told him that i was giving even $250. "what?!" andy is usually the rational voice in my head, and i usually end up agreeing with him, but this time i couldn't listen. but i'm really feeling now that i should have given the whole $500. but THEN you stop and think about all the other parts of the world and all the other people who are suffering, and it gets overwhelming. at that point, i just have to kind of block it all out, tell myself i did what i could do today, and call it a day. i think i'd also much rather be THERE, actually helping and feeling that i was accomplishing something that i could see and feel for myself, rather than just giving money. i have total confidence in oxfam that my money is actually going where i want it to go, but it just doesn't give me the same sort of satisfaction that i think i would get out of actually being there to help. of course, that's total fantasy. in reality, i'd do nothing but get in the way of experienced aid workers. they've got all the bodies they need. it's money they don't have. i felt very cynical this afternoon, watching the news conference on cnn...representatives of the bush administration and the military actually seemed to give a fuck about the situation. i couldn't help but ask myself quietly in my head what the US hoped to from all the apparent concern. a better reputation in the world at large? probably. but i also found myself getting angry at the journalists that were trying to find fault with how the government reacted to the crisis - 'why did it take three days to send help?' 'why isn't the US contributing more money to this effort?'...i mean, jesus. for once, i really believe that our government is doing the best that they can right now, and i hope that they will give more and do more in the near future, and also over the course of the next few years, in regard to rebuilding, but give them a break for just a second. they're doing, frankly, much more than i would ever have expected. but, like i said, i'm cynical. i'm not very coherent. i find that i make less sense when i write about things i care about. and i really should go because i'm starting to feel guilty that i'm sitting here typing this while my co-worker is making up things to do around here. so much for 'a few words'... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 20th, 2004
11:06 pm	so i didn't do laundry. we all knew i wouldn't... in fact, my house is a certified disaster area...i'm expecting FEMA any minute. i'm sad, too, because i was really making strides in the 'grown-up, cleans her house more than twice a year right before her parents come to visit' arena...sigh. i'm destined for squalor. squalor and huge thighs...these are my curses. but i really got on here to talk about how badly i want to be a zookeeper. i get this way every monday, after coming home from my volunteering 'thing' (i always want to call it my volunteering job, but i refuse to speak in contradictions in terms) and THEN watching the new episode of "growing up...[insert adorable baby animal here]" (tonight, it was a penguin) on animal planet... we had to euthanize two hawks today...winter is usually slow at any wildlife rehab center because most animals are pretty lazy in winter, but apparently every jackass and their jackass mom is out there shooting poor, defenseless birds this week. i really hate people. like, pretty much almost all of them. very few exceptions. if you're reading this, you're probably one. how could it EVER be considered fun or funny or even momentarily interesting to shoot...eck. i just lost all interest in even going into it...it makes me too angry for words. i did get to hang out with one of the new education possums at the end of the day, though...her name is 'mama', because when she came in, she had 6 babies still in the pouch...the babies have all since been released, but mama was injured so badly that we had to amputate one of her back legs...she's a sweet girl...she's still a bit nervous around us, so it was a personal victory for me to be able to get her to sit next to me and not be freaking out... in the past couple of months, i've been working a lot with the education raptors - primarily the barred owl and the great horned owl...and then, we've been getting a lot of injured hawks in, too...birds are really a lot more fascinating than anyone gives them credit for...i guess you don't realize it until you have a huge bird perched on your very own arm, but they are pretty amazing...especially the hawks. you don't want to fuck with a hawk. the best word i can think of to describe them is 'majestic'...that sounds so fuckin' cheesy, but it's really apt. even at their worst, when they've been hit by a car or shot, they just give you this look, like "i could still fuck you up. just gimme a shot"...i think raptors might be giving gorillas a run for their money as far as what kind of animal i want most to work closely with... although...man, i played hooky from the rehab center last week to go to the zoo, instead...four hours to see the entire zoo and what did i do? spent half of that time watching the gorillas...one of them in particular, actually...one of the two young males...i think he likes me...he spent an awful lot of time flirting with me...i'd put my hand up on the glass and he'd do the same, and then he'd sit down right in front of me and put his forehead on the glass and i'd do the same...i could seriously sit there all day and just watch them... more later...suddenly really sleepy... Nat, i'm thinking about you and your boobies...and not in nearly as dirty a way as that sounds... (Comment on this)
Friday, December 10th, 2004
11:00 am	this is for Nat... ...who is completely delusional if she thinks i'm going to update this thing as much as she does...i totally agree that it's a good idea, because it'd be great to be able to look back at these entries (like i do with all the instant messenger conversations with andy that i saved, which creeps him out to no end), but it's just not realistic...i haven't even SPOKEN to my best friend in going on 6 months (note to self: call Hil) and my brother's got a new girlfriend that i've had to hear about from my parents...i'm just no good at keeping in touch, even with an electronic medium that won't sass back for not keeping in touch... so. today i hope to do some laundry...i don't have to leave for work until 2:30 - that's 3 1/2 hours from now...i should get at least 2 loads done...but i'm hungry and lazy and it's my day off from working out, and...well, let's call a spade a spade, here...i'm not going to do laundry, am i? this thing with my brother kind of upsets me, though...i mean, you kinda assume that even if you don't keep in touch (hey, it's a two way street, buddy), family are going to be around always...just kinda there, waiting in the background for you to find a good time to call them...but then i look at my father's relationship with his brothers, and andy's dad's family, as well, and i realize that you really DO have to make the effort, even if it is just every once in a blue moon, or one day you might just realize that you haven't spoken to your own brother in three years...it's retarded, too, because neither of us has the distractions that usually form the basis for an excuse not to talk to one another - no family, no 60-hour a week job...there's just no good excuse... just like there's no good excuse for me not to be doing laundry right now...Nat, i'll talk about babies and marriage next time, i promise...you know i've got quite a bit to say on the subject... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 11th, 2004
2:27 am	da bears. i cannot stop thinking about football season. there is precious little in my life to be excited about these days, but even if there were, i know i would feel the same. i've had my teddy bear since the day i was born, and when i was little, he used to look different to me than other objects... brighter, somehow. i'm not sure quite how to explain it, but in scanning a room, he would just stand out, as if he appeared in technicolor against everything else's more muted tones. that's how special he is. i think love causes certain objects or people to shine. teddy shines. andy shines. and football season shines. i look forward to every sunday between september and january with unadulterated glee. and i get a little bit depressed when the game is over for another week. i get REALLY depressed when the season is over for another year. february through july appear bland and colorless by comparison. then comes august, training camp and exhibition games. in themselves, not exciting, but their portent is exciting. the yelling, the beer, the convivial fan competition, the perennial conviction that THIS is the year. our year. a return to the glory of '85. anything is possible. for my (yes, "my") team, the super bowl has been more or less (primarily more) out of reach for the last 19 years. since the last time. the glorious last time. i was 8. i remember NOTHING of the game. well, not nothing. i just remember no specific details. the details are post-remembered, thanks to NFL highlight reels. i do remember having to babysit my brother and two younger next door neighbors while my parents went next door to watch. i distinctly remember telling the kids to sit down and shut up, couldn't they see i was trying to watch the GAME?! i was 8. that is my first clear memory of bears fandom. i could have chosen a more likely team. after that near-perfect season (marred only by a loss to the dolphins, themselves being the only team in NFL history to complete a perfect season...you'd think they'd have understood), we never made it again. not even close, really. and sometimes depressingly far away... chicago fans are special, though. loyal almost to a fault. and to be there in the stadium, to be counted among them...there is nothing like sharing in the roar of the crowd at a perfectly executed reception or a particularly well-thrown block. my first live bears game happened to be the last game ever played at old soldier field, and i count myself lucky to have been in attendance... it is a fantasy of mine to someday hold season tickets...it saddens me that geographic and economic circumstances may prevent me from someday fulfilling my fantasy. bears' season tickets held by a resident of rural rwanda or costa rica (also fantasies of mine) don't fall under the category of 'most practical things you can do with your money'...what a great legacy to pass on, though...not only love of sport and team, but love of hard, cramped stadium seating, handed down from one generation to the next...i could wax poetic all day. i'd call it 'ode to portable grills, layered clothing and winter-bearded men in dayglo hunting gear.' instead, i will stop and admit that the late hour is making me silly and romantic. i can cheer my bears to victory (or defeat) just fine from my own couch...but, man. if only. i will sit on my couch (or, this year, in a bar, because north carolina doesn't see fit to broadcast bears games locally) and scream alternately with excitement and indignation, never swerving in my loyalty. because the bears shine. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2004
1:23 pm	i just got off the phone with my brother...with most people, this usually isn't a big deal, but i NEVER talk to my brother...not because i don't like him or anything...we've just managed to maintain very poor contact ever since i left for college 9 years ago...i suspect that it's mostly my fault, because i keep in touch with EVERYONE poorly...further, though, i suspect that, in working so hard to distance myself from my parents in my late teens and early twenties, i accidentally left my brother behind, too...i talk to my parents at most once a week, always at their initiation...but that's because sometimes they drive me nutso...there's no good reason i shouldn't be talking to my brother more...we get along really well, and we like to make fun of our parents...i'm more sad than anything at the end of this conversation, because now we're practically strangers...he promised to call me later on this week so we could catch up better... the reason i called him is this stupid fucking orange alert bullshit...he works in manhattan, on wall st. i really started to panic yesterday when i heard how they had captured an al qaeda operative with specific information as to how they wanted to attack new york again - this time with a car or truck bomb...so i called him and left a message that was like "if you work anywhere near the buildings they're supposedly targeting, you should quit. and if you see any suspicious trucks, you should run, not walk, in the other direction." he called me back a few minutes later and said that security is really tight...they've closed a couple of bridges and tunnels in the area to trucks, so that they can only come into the city through a couple of different means, and all those routes are heavily secured...he says that there are guys with automatic weapons guarding some of the buildings around him...scary, but it makes me feel better...9-11 was horrific, but always relatively distant, personally...i'm definitely anti-war of any kind, but if something were to happen to my little brother, i might just enlist...you see the world from an entirely different perspective when you're contemplating losing someone close to you... we talked about other things, too...his new place in hoboken, his new job, his girlfriend (with whom, it sounds, he's not so madly in love as my parents would like to think), and i couldn't help but think that it was IMPOSSIBLE that my little brother is now a grown-up with a BETTER job and potential future than me...when did he surpass me in grown-upness? probably, looking back, at around age 18...we've always been at opposite ends of the spectrum, personality-wise...he's very organized, to the point of anal, and very closed...or deceptive...but neither of those are the right word - it's something i can't quite put my finger on...you just always feel like there's more going on under the surface...he lies really well - not in a malicious way...he can just make you believe almost anything...he's been doing it since he was really small...he likes to trick people...but he's also got a dry humor that i love, he's the consummate charmer, and he's always going to tell you like it is (if he cares at all about you, that is)...i think if i were a man, i would like to be like him...instead, i'm a girl, and i'm calling my brother to tell him he'd better get the fuck out of manhattan, or i am going to turn into a basket case... in other news, i watched the ENTIRE bridezillas marathon over the weekend...i fear that if one more friend gets married (erin and hank just got engaged and lindsay and dave are taking the plunge in november), my own spinster alert level, now a pleasant school bus yellow like the color of our living room, will skip orange entirely and go straight to red...andy is adamant about waiting until our lives (read: his life) are a little more stable and pointed in the right direction before we make a decision like this, but i suspect that it's some to do with that and some to do with the fact that he doesn't hold the idea of marriage in the highest of regard to begin with...oh, and he's scared. there's that, too. he claims that i manage to mention the idea of marriage in one way or another just about every day...i disagree...but even if i DID, can you blame me? i'm staring down 28, and 30 is lined up right behind it (temporary suspension of numerical order aside)...and two of our closest friends are getting married in 3 months...i still haven't ruled out the possibility that, when pressed, he's one day going to say to me "married? oh, you didn't REALLY think i was seriously considering that, did you? i'm sorry...i thought it was just a running joke...ha ha and all that." jerk. i mean, joe and miho from bridezillas got married after only a year of knowing each other, and half of that time was spent with them in different countries! of course, i give their marriage 6 months at the outside, but still... if i were an outsider listening to myself, i would immediately conclude that i was chasing after marriage simply to BE married...but, as that outsider, i would be wrong...sort of. it's not like i haven't put a lot of thought into it...i've had almost 4 1/2 years chock FULL of thought...to contemplate being with the same person for the rest of my life...that's not the kind of thing i take lightly...and i appreciate that andy is taking all the time he needs to be sure that this is absolutely what he wants to do... blah. i just lost interest in that entire subject. i'm so tired of thinking about it. the house is a mess again. i blame it on entropy. who am i against a force like entropy? 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Friday, July 30th, 2004
1:42 pm	new neighbor in our duplex...hipster glasses, retro furniture and a tattoo...i hope that means he's cool...we could use a new friend...i'll keep you updated... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
12:31 pm	i smell bad. so the cable guy is coming this afternoon...i totally forgot and slept in (like i always do), and i'm woken by the phone and some guy leaving a message...luckily, he called back 15 minutes later...what would we do without our new DVR? actually, i don't know what we are going to do WITH our new DVR...i'll probably end up taping every national geographic ultimate explorer, and anything with 'monkey' in the description...andy can tape baseball games that he misses while he's at work...other than that, neither of us actually watches a whole lot of tv...but who can turn down a deal? it's only, like, $6 a month on top of our fabulous combined cable/digital phone/internet deal...i think the guy who sold us the cable actually made a mistake when he told us what the combined price was going to be and now they have to honor it...it means that we get unlimited phone calls (long distance too!) for $20/month...the whole package is only $100/month...huzzah for stupid cable salesmen! so let me take a minute and share with you the sense of panic i felt upon waking up and realizing that a stranger would be entering our home...not because i'm afraid that anything might happen to me with andy not here, but because of one simple fact: we live in squalor. unmitigated squalor. when we first started dating, we were both like "this is great! neither one of us is a neat freak! we'll get along famously!"...and we do. we just do it in squalor. our coffee table, while never actually serving as a foundation for a good cuppa joe, is perpetually covered in other, less savory items, such as plates covered in 3-day old ranch dressing and half-filled cans of soda with cigarette butts floating in them (i NEED to stop smoking in the house)... there is a universe of difference between admitting here, to you, that we are the worst kind of slobs, and actually having another human being experience our trashtastic house...so i am only now recovering from the sweaty, panicked dash about the living room, emptying cans, wiping down glass surfaces, sweeping the hardwood floor and chasing the armies of cat hair dust bunnies that normally have free reign over our domicile...my most fervent prayer is that the guy doesn't have to use the bathroom...that may just push me over the edge... but now, here i sit, full to the gills with self-satisfaction...i look at my clean coffee table and cat hair-free couch and wonder why it seems such an impossibility to keep things looking like this all the time...it's not as if i LIKE being messy...i love the way a clean house looks...i just don't like the day-to-day maintenance it requires...i'm horrified to even THINK of what our house is going to look like when we have kids...our only hope is to win the lottery (please, jesus, please - we both know i don't believe in you, but wouldn't this be a GREAT way to change my mind?) and be able to afford a housekeeper...please? jesus? Current Mood: satisfied Current Music: jeff buckley - grace (Comment on this)
1:38 am	my very first entry... so i've been a voyeur on Nat's livejournal for some weeks now (ever since the Felix-watch really heated up), and i've meant to start my own for a while, but i am, by nature, a procrastinator... so here i am. hmmm. i guess i'll just start with what i did today... woke up around 10:30 to the sound of my stupid cat knocking over his 359th lifetime glass of water...he is supremely offended by standing glasses of water. he's also insane. truly. i always go immediately to allcentral when i wake up. because my only three friends with livejournals all post there, i am not afraid to admit it. then i spent a good hour or so at lonelyplanet.com, trying to decide where andy and i want to go next fall, in between quitting our jobs and starting new ones/school somewhere else...last year we went to costa rica, and i swear we'll go back someday, but i want to hit as many exotic foreign countries as possible before being inevitably bogged down with real jobs/real kids/real life... india was my first choice, but the more i read about it, the more intimidating it seems...it's a REALLY big country...i guess i had never given it its proper consideration as a big country...it seems overwhelming in its provinces and palaces and entirely different climates...it's cheap, which is always a plus, but inevitably all the most romantic sounding places are in a state of turmoil...stupid fucking people, always wanting to fight with someone else and preventing me from safely travelling...same goes for indonesia, which sounds all pristine beach and dreamy...the u.s. travel advisory made it sound otherwise, however...something about avoiding all travel to the area, terrorists, bombings, blah, blah, blah...if i were a more adventurous person (my inner self and outer self are in constant disagreement as to whether i am or not) i would say "fuck bombs! i want to lay on a beach and mingle with orangutans in sumatra!," but i'll never forget how badly i and my fellow travellers stuck out as americans in spain...i don't think i'd be able to enjoy a vacation if i was constantly worried about avoiding public places and dodging suspicious-looking arabs...i even toyed with the idea of sewing patches of the canadian flag on our backpacks (how the canadians of allcentral would love THAT) when we go...something i still haven't ruled out...i mean, it's not as if i'm particularly proud to be an american...i'd even go so far as to say that often, especially when considering travel to other countries, i'd rather NOT be known as an american...i could probably even swing a half-convincing canadian accent...my parents, born and raised in northern minnesota, have often been mistaken for canadians...i'd just have to make sure i never wrote anything down, for fear of leaving the 'u' out of words like 'color' and 'favor'... after losing myself in a fantasy travel world of vietnam, peru and malaysia, i woke up and realized that i had to go to work. man, i hate work. okay, so i don't have a REAL, grown-up job. i work at kinko's. promise me you'll never work at kinko's. retail in general, but especially not kinko's...it's got all the bad sides of working in retail (namely, dealing with the public) and none of the good sides (who the fuck wants an employee discount on copies?)...and have i mentioned the 'dealing with the public' part? having worked there now for over 3 years, i can make this very definitive statement: 'the public' are morons. plain and simple and with VERY few exceptions. kinko's is supremely worse, though, because you're not selling them a dress that they picked out or a book they like, you're providing them with a service that they NEED, right NOW, and they can't BELIEVE you managed to fuck it up...even though it wasn't even close to being YOU who fucked it up...it was, 9 times out of 10, THEY who were the fucker-uppers. THEY will never admit this. THEY are the bane of my existence. the only things that make work bearable are the presence there of andy (oh yeah...we're pullin' in the DOUBLE-kinko's income) and various other coworkers who hate kinko's just as much as i do...we are comrades in hate...paisanos in mockery of others...and we get FREE PORN. yes, once in a very long while, working at kinko's pays off...yesterday we did a job for a local porn distributor, and the lady was really cool...she told us when she placed the order that she'd put together a 'care package' when andy went to drop the job off...we giggled at the idea, but she really followed through...andy came back with a cute little shopping bag, a la victoria's secret, FULL of porn. for those who weren't pleased with the selected offerings, she included 3 catalogs and an offer to call her up with our own personal preferences...rock. there was also the time we got a free keg of some really good local beer from a delivery driver who needed copies really quickly...and there's the fact that we can listen to whatever music we like during our shift with the added bonus that in a swanky hipster town like chapel hill, most of the people working there have half-decent taste (except for our branch manager, whose sole contribution to the work cd collection was avril lavigne...but hey. there's always gotta be that one guy...)...and there are the frequent marathon smoke breaks and the manager flexible about using sick time as vacation time... but then, ever ready to drop a deluge on the picnic of 'yay! kinko's!,' there's the looming, ominous cloud of 'the public.' that damn public. they seriously suck. in a serious way. present company excluded, of course. anyway, that's a pretty healthy first entry, wouldn'tcha say? time to go crawl into bed and cuddle my sleeping boyfriend... thank maude (expression courtesy of Nat.) for sleeping boyfriends... 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