clearing your plate
recently my brother told a story he didn't realize was really disturbing. late last summer, due to some major family drama, my young cousin zack came to stay with my parents for a few weeks. zack is the youngest child of my uncle john. john, as many of my aunts and uncles are, is a strict disciplinarian. he called it spanking, we called it beating. but in my family you didn't mess with how other people raised their children. you just tried to get around it. one of john's oddest rules is that his children always had to clean their plates. which didn't make any sense becaus john and his then-wife would fill the plate for the child. and they would fill it high, often with food they knew the kid didn't like. but the kid couldn't leave the table until his or her plate was clean. at holidays my mother would wait until john and his then-wife weren't looking and put their food on mine and my siblings' plates. or she would simply eat off zack's or his sisters' plates. since she didn't mind if we threw food away, i would regularly throw away a plate of someone else's food. i think the clean plate rule comes from the sensibilities of poverty. when you are poor, you don't waste food. i wonder if he ever thought that maybe if he let his kids make thier own plates they might not be tempted to waste so much food. i wonder. but the disturbing part is that as a joke my brother and his fiance told zack one night at dinner that he couldn't leave the table til he cleared his plate. and the boy, though he's a teenager now, sat there and tried to do so. i guess the fear of the father is a powerful force.
my doctor laughed at me
i thought i was being good by being sick for 2 weeks before i went to the doctor, but my doctor still laughed at me cause she doesn't think i'm sick. then she gave me a prescription for antiobiotics because "some people think they need them." why would she think that when i haven't even been taking any meds for what i do have. well, i took some last week, but this week i haven't been cause i haven't been feeling congested, which is why i usually take meds. do you know, it's only 2.5 months until i hear from my schools? i can't wait. i'm totally rambling right now. i've been doing it all day. i think i'm antsy in general. i'm waiting for so many things. waiting to hear from grad schools. waiting for the next semester to start. waiting to graduate. waiting to figure out what's gonna happen next in my story (that's a lie, i know what has to happen, just haven't written it yet). waiting to have time to have the lump in my throat removed. waiting to figure out how to have a relationship, which i think i can only do by having a real one. i feel like this year a whole new life is gonna start. i can't freakign wait. and now gatsby is sitting on my stomach and that's not good cause i have to pee like crazy. so, off he goes so i can. haha.
I'M FREE!!!!!!!!!
so a little more than a week ago i turned in my grad school applications. so glad that's over with. i also can't believe it's done. it's like coming out of prison. mind prison. so instead my last two weeks were spent at the tour company. which is another kind of prison altogether. i need intellectual stimulation. i cannot survive happily when my days are long hours staring at a computer screen, answering the same questions over and over again, and surfing the internet. no, i need something that occupies my brain. i need it. like i need food. so i hope i get into grad school.
the past three days has been interesting with this whole strike thing. hour long walks three days in a row. my legs are killing me. but i'm so fucking glad i can take the subway tomorrow. getting to newark without the subway would have been a royal fucking pain the ass. argh, i'm too tired to blog.
jewel fruit
until this evening i had no idea what a real pomegranate looked like. i knew what the delicious seed thingys looked like: jewels. pomegranates have this amazing quality of being both one of the ugliest fruits and one of the most beautiful. reminds me of someone i know quite well. but anyway. i decided that i had to buy one of the fruits for myself. then i realized that i had no idea what they looked like and how the whole seed situation worked. you could have told me each seed was an entire pomegranate and i might have even believed you. but now i know. becuase i've had my first real pomegranate experience. as in i saw it at the grocery store, bought it, then looked up online how to cut and eat it! yes, i'm a dork, but i just didn't know and figured my mom wouldn't either. it was nice. i love food that is a process to eat. which is wierd because i hate cooking. but give me an artichoke that takes a half hour to eat and olives that you have to really nibble on to get the pit out. so the process of digging the seeds out of all the nooks and crannies was a real pleasure for me. in one part of my head i was actually in a mideastern desert exploring dusty caves and finding rubies. that's what the seeds remind me of--rubies. they're so beautiful. i think that's why i really like this fruit. it's just so beautiful. like honest-to-god sunrise, harvest moon cloud filled sky, cardinal in winter, that kind of beautiful. definately a new favorite fruit.
ps. is there a good way to ask for casual sex?
love me in country
about two weeks ago i was not feeling well and told my roommate i couldn't go out with her. i was resolute. i was sick and there were good shows on discovery health channel. but then she gave me her pleading look and i got dressed. and then i fell in love. because the band we were going to see was a bluegrass band. four beautiful boys singing the music that lives in my soul. to be a little corny. because country is the music that i grew up on. the first songs i learned all the words too. the first musician i had a crush on was alan jackson. so to hear these men singing songs that resonated somewhere deep inside me, i fell in love. of course only in the way that you do when you see someone doing what they love and enjoying it kind. the kind that only lasts when they're onstage and singing. and i realized something. i don't wanna be loved in the language of hiphop. or indie, or emo, or really anything else. i wanna be loved in country. i want to be wooed in my own language. and i want someone who knows what that means.
oops
so right now, my life is pretty damn good. i just had a normal, no frills weekend. it was nice, and i enjoyed it. things have been crazy hectic, with very few minutes off of something. even this weekend it feels like i was always kinda doing somethign. this is the problem with my chosen life. in school, in acadamia, there's not really time off. unless you follow a really strict schedule, which i'm not very good at. so basically, i always have something to do. it also doesnt help that there's a lot of work going on in my apartment right now too.
but what i really want to write about is how i'm not actually happy. like i have no real signs of it. in fact, i seem upset. i'm mean to people and i snap and i have absolutely no patience. what the fuck? i don't mean to be. i want to feel and act happy. like i feel it sometimes. when i'm walking down the street, and i see a beautiful dog, or someone laughing, or i even just think about my life i feel happy. but then someone says something and i just snap. i need to figure this out.
it never stops
so today was a fucking insane day. fucking insane. class from 9 am til 8:15. and i have so much to do that even in my breaks in between classes i was doing work. reading and stuff. so as of the second week of school i'm keeping up with things. hopefully i can keep doing this. someone today said, it'll give you a taste of grad school. if i had the energy i would think about what that meant for the next seven to nine years of my life. but i'm not gonna. today i did nail down (or at least tack down) my list of schools i'm applying to. and i got much needed encouragement from a professor. so though i'm exhausted, i feel like today was an ok day. tomorrow, i have a bunch of shitty work i don't want to do, but that's ok. cause then it's the weekend and there's a bunch of stuff i wanna do, and not all of it is homework. yay!
let's bottle the runover
last night instead of going out i actually watched hope floats on oxygen. there's this silly line in there that i secretly adore: "my cup runneth over". and you know what, today my cup does. i don't know why today i'm so happy. but i am. maybe cause i had a really good week. it started off in the hamptons with beautiful weather. then a bbq and the matrix monday, awesome. then tuesday work wasn't stressful. and i went to babysit and got to see the kids get ready for school. i love that back to school feeling. then wednesday i actually went back to school. and i saw my old friends and professors and just started to get back into the swing of school. and i got to each lunch for free in the faculty dining room. and then thursday work was again not stressful. then friday was an absolutely wonderful day, including getting my new couch! which is beautiful. it's red and soft and comfy. everyone loves it. and then saturday i didn't go out but stayed home by myself and went to bed early and got lots of sleep, which i needed. and today i woke up and sue and i went grocery shopping and made breakfast together and i just think that sometimes the best parts of friendship is the little bits. the wierd traditions that involve groceries and knowing what kind of cheese someone likes. and though i haven't done my homework yet, it's only 4:30 on a sunday, so if i had done my homework then this would officially be like the wierdest day ever. like officially. and so all i need to complete my life right now is someone to watch football with. cause sue doesn't give a shit that ben rothelisberger (sp?) threw an amazing 63 yard pass to anton randle el. and oh, i added some links, check them out.
