Let down

Around hour two of the most incomprehensible meeting on earth, I got the idea in my head that I wanted Indian food.

All afternoon I thought about Indian food.

The entire time I was at the gym I thought about Indian food.

When the idiot in the white Toyota cut me off with no room to spare, I calmed myself with thoughts of Indian food.

When I finally got out of traffic, I pointed myself to the Indian restaurant I had seen across the street.

When I got to the door, it was locked and the place was dark.

This General Tso's chicken is good, but it's just not the same.

My Biggest Fear

I'm terrified of bats. Really terrified. But that isn't it.

My biggest fear is that my life has become utterly and completely dull.

So dull that I no longer even have anything to contribute to conversations.

I've got several close friends that I've wanted to call or e-mail since moving back to NJ, but I'm afraid I would just bore them all to death, so I've refrained.

Same goes for friends I left behind in Kentucky and Ohio that are probably wondering if I got lost somewhere in Pennsylvania on my way here. Although, if they were truly worried, I'd like to think they'd have called someone by now...

I'm hoping this is a temporary state of being. My husband in back in Kentucky. I'm living in the bedroom I used to share with my older sister in my parents' house in the same small town where I spent the first 18 years of my life. My only high school friend who I'm still enough in touch with to want to see just had her tonsils out. My college friends all seem to live closer to where I work than where I'm living. I was never old enough in this one horse town to do anything more exciting than playing air hockey at the mall.

But what if this is just who I am now. I'm old and married and have a responsible adult job and the excitement is over. But even worse, I don't have kids yet, so I can't discuss their antics to make me seem exciting.

What will become of my blog if this dullness is terminal?

Is your pumpkin patch sincere enough?

One of life's great pleasures, for me, has always been the viewing of the various Charlie Brown holiday specials. For about six or eight years there, they were almost never on, and that was a sad time for me.

My absolute favorite has always been It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Watching it always reminds me of cold fall nights when I was child and we would all pile into my parents' bed and watch it with the lights off.

I think I had a special attachment to it because my parents made it into something special for us. We were latch-key kids from a pretty young age. My mom didn't want us to be out trick or treating with no adult at home to guard the house and to check on us. So, for several years of my childhood, we weren't allowed to trick or treat. To make up for it, on those years, we would each get a gift from the Great Pumpkin.

When I grew up and moved out, my father kept the tradition alive. Every year I would get a small package or a card or something in the mail from the Great Pumpkin.

My sisters probably think the whole thing is weird and won't carry it on with their children (they're only 2 years old and one week old, so this year it's a moot point), but I like the idea. And I've never been a huge fan of Halloween, so maybe this would be a nice family tradition to keep alive.

More Mysteries of the Universe

As I sit here pathetic and alone without my husband, I'm watching back-to-back reruns of Everwood and Gilmore Girls and something occurred to me. Why are people so obsessed with small town life?

I grew up in a small town (1.2 square miles) and I can tell you that it is nothing like on TV. Sure, we had our local characters, like the old guy who wore a beat up winter coat even in the dead of summer and the albino girl who liked to use her unusual appearance to scare younger kids. But it wasn't all fun town festivals and friendly people.

We had a cross town rivallry between the public and Catholic grade schools.

You couldn't get in trouble at lunch time in the first grade without it somehow getting back to your mom.

If you did something embarassing in the second grade, someone would still be bringing it up at the senior prom.

It was a constant race to be the one to befriend the new kid, because s/he was someone different.

When you hit 15, there was nothing to do. This ended with many a young man getting drunk in the woods and riding his bike off of the 15 foot sheer drop off known as "Dead Man's Cliff."

Bad break ups and stupid dating decisions will come back to haunt you for the rest of your life.

And our town meeting were never as fun as the ones on Gilmore Girls.

Other People's Houses Part II

I can't make the microwave work.
I got lost on my way to work this morning.
I don't know which shower I'm supposed to use.
I can't figure out why the TV remote only works half the time.
And will someone please tell me where I can find a pot holder?

Housesitting

Is there any feeling weirder than housesitting?

I'm staying at the home of old family friends who just got married. I take care of the cats, get the mail and water the plants. And drive way too far to get to work every day.

It's a weird idea staying in someone's home when they're not there. Am I doing something wrong? Would she freak out about the way I'm treating her kitchen? Am I totally messing the place up?

I refuse to answer her phone (it would just be her mom checking up on me). I'm doing laundry. Is that strange?

Oh, and she lives really close to where I went to college so there's this whole eerie feel to things...

I spent a lot of time alone at recess

..because I was no good at things like Red Rover and Kickball. Soit's no surprise that I've been tagged again.

1) Would you bungee jump?
I used to think I could, but I absolutely hate free fall (have fun with that one, amateur psychologists). I once came really close to sky diving, though.

2) If you could do anything in the world for a living what would it be?
Direct on Broadway.
Or drive a wrecking ball.
Either one seems fun.

3) Your favorite fictional animal?
That's weird. Does Tweety Bird count?

4) One person who never fails to make you laugh?
Wonderturtle and my friend Sue (who totall hit it off with Wonderturtle when they met...)

5) When you were 12 years old, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A forensic chemist. You see why I played alone at recess?

6) What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
Pee. Then, if it's a work day, I shower so that I won't be grouch for traffic.

7) Have you ever gone to therapy?
Grad school totally sucks for everyone. I'll let that be answer enough.

8) If you could have one superpower what would it be?
If I could teleport, then I would never have to sit in bumper to bumper traffic on Rte 18 again.

9) What is your favorite cartoon character?
The Brain, from Pinky and the Brain. Who wouldn't love a mouse that tries to take over the world?

10) Do you go to church?
Hey...not all of us are Christian! But I haven't been to temple in years, either. Although I tried to convince my husband to go to a Unitarian Church with me once.

11) What is your best childhood memory?
My fmaily is a little crazy, so we spent a lot of time laughing. The best, though, were cold snowy Sundays when we would all pile into my parents bed and watch old movies together. Damn, now I made my family sound like a Hallmark commercial.

12) Do you think marriage is an outdated ritual?Outdated?
I hope not. I've only been married for five months.

13) Do you own a gun?
Me, no. My redneck Kentucky boy has one, but he doens't have any ammunition for it. My really redneck father-in-law has many.

14) Have you ever hit someone of the opposite sex?
I do a martial art. I spend a lot of time beating up boys.

15) Have you ever sung in front of a large group of people?
I was forced to be in the chorus in high school. I can't sing, but I can match pitch with others around me.

16) What is the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
The eyes.

17) What is your biggest mistake?
Can I wait until after I start the new job? That, and I would have taken karate in grade school and really stunned a few bullies.

18) Say something totally random about yourself.
I still like to watch cheesy reruns on ABCFamily...even Seventh Heaven.

19) Has anyone ever said that you looked like a celebrity?
Everyone thinks I look like Sarah Gilbert (the dark middle daughter from Roseanne). It's just the hair.

20) What is the most romantic thing someone of the opposite sex has done for you?
A few months after I started dating my husband, I had to go to a meeting in Washington, DC and it was over my birthday. We came back to the room one afternoon and there were a dozen roses waiting. He won over my friends with that one, too.

21) Do you actually read these when other people fill them out?
I like surveys and advice columns and things like that.
22) Tags:dragonly

More controversy

I don't normally care to stir up controversy around here (yeah, right), but this post was so eloquently written that I just had to draw others' attention to it: http://bonusroundblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-subvert-our-secular-democracy.html

Warning: Borderline feminist rant

Now that I have a grown up job, I have to dress like one. It's merely reminding me of all that is evil about women's clothing.

I look around me, and the men have it easy. Dressy: put on a suit. Business, but less so: put on ashirt and tie. Business casual: collared shirt, no tie.

Women, on the other hand, have to determine what exactly is "nice enough." There are no set rules. There are no obvious guidelines.

Having gotten over the first hurdle and decided to go with slacks and a shirt most of the time with the occasional skirt thrown in for style, you then have to deal with the ridiculousness of the actual clothes.

Why do we bother with fake little pockety-looking slits on the sides of our pants that don't go to actual pockets? Heaven forbid women's pants would have actual pockets. It would "ruin the line." Men, can have a pocket knife, a set of keys, a wallet, a Palm Pilot and a regulation sized Major League baseball in their pocket and no one is studying their lines.

Shirts are all either sleeveless or low cut. I'm convinced of it. There are millions of women's dress shirts out there where the buttons don't start until the gneeral vacinity of one's cleavage. I can't find one that has what would be the first two buttons on a normal shirt.

Men need to own two pairs of shoes, one brown and one black. Women have to own a couple of styles in each color because, of course, the shoes that go with slacks don't go with a skirt and vice versa.

It's making me start to wonder why any man would ever join the drag show circuit...

I swear, this kid is a genius

I know I am biased when I say my almost two year old nephew is the cutest little boy in the state of New Jersey, but I'm not exaggerating when I say he is a genius.

1) At two years old, he has a better vocabulary than a lot of adults I know
2) This boy knows what he wants and needs. When leaving for a walk today, he wouldn't stop crying until we brought two boxes of raisins along instead of one. Turned out, he was really hungry and ate that second one.
3) I swear the kid knows his way home from anywehre he goes regularly (the park, day care, etc.)
4) My mom handed him a wrapped gift last week and before he even started to tear the paper, he announced "Book in here." and he was right.
5) The boy recognizes more letters at 2 than my husband's nephew did at 4.
6) He's environmentally conscious and insists on picking up litter at the park.

Okay, bragging is done. But this is the most I've seen him in one month since he was born, so I can be proud.

My Love Hate Relationship With Technology

When I was in college, all sophomores had to take an interdisciplinary course called "Society, Ethics and Technology." This class consisted of once a week torturous lectures in which, in order to prove you were in the room with 999 other sophomores, we (a) had to sit with our class like a third grade assembly and (b) had to turn in these short "essays" that basically boiled down to "write a summary that proves you were in the lecture. It was sport for my friends and I to try and get these essays done as fast as possible once the lecture began so we could get out as fast as possible. The class also had a once a week recitation session where, in groups of 25 or so, we pretended to care enough about the topic of the week that we wouldn't lose "participation" points.

This class was terrible for many reasons. Not the least of which was that our recitation professor made us all keep nametags on our desks as if to demonstrate how little he cared about who we actually were. But the worst part was the overall theme of the class. To sum up: Technology is bad. We cannot trust the scientists and doctors and engineers to control it themselves because they are all a little power mad. In order to save the world, we must all be weary of technological advances. As a biology major, computer nerd and gadget geek I took offense to this.

Until now.

Now, I hate technology.

It's a recent development based mainly on two things:
1) I'm living at my parents' and we only have a very slow dial up internet connection and I feel vaguely lost and disoriented.

2) My previous employer, a university, shut down my e-mail account without any warning and I lost all kinds of e-mails that were stored on the server and now that I've convinced them to turn it on for 24 hours, I can't get access to the webmail site to forward all my mail to myself.

Oh, and my cell phone is acting up.

Like being in junior high...with a car

Well, I did it. For the next three months, I am officially living with my parents. Surprisingly, it's not so bad as it sounds. Sure, I'm away from my husband and living in the room I shared with my sister from age 8-14, but I am back east. I don't start work for another two weeks, so I have some time to get settled and things, which is nice. I have my first real grown up job, so I'v had to go out and buy some big girl clothes. I let my older sister take me, which I think she's been waiting her entire life for. I spent several days simply agreeing because, I've found, it makes my life much easier if I just say yes to my sisters. I'm on a dial-up connection, so my reports will be less frequent until I convince my father to step into the last millenium and get a high speed line. Plus, I can't seem to get AOL's web browser to let me put in line breaks, here...so this will be awkward for awhile. More later....