The time I lost a bird in my house.

This is said bird.

A few weeks ago my roommate and his fiancée came inside and we're chatting normally, then he asks out of the blue for "a tupperware we don't use anymore" and I am immediately suspicious. I had no idea how right I was to be so. I gave him one we'd lost the lid to and he marched outside for some unknown reason. That reason was to bring a stunned wild bird into the kitchen. 

If that's not a bad idea I don't know what is. 

Since the bird didn't resist him picking it up and generally wasn't moving, we just put a paper plate over it with something heavy on it and let it warm up and gather it's senses. Then Roommate and fiancée go to Kroger for something or other, leaving me with the bird on the counter, blinking at me.

Of course, what do I do? Decide it should have some bread. What should happen when I lift the top? EXPLOSION OF BIRD AT MY FACE. I, of course, screamed and lost sight of the bird after it smacked into the wall and fell somewhere. I spent the next 5-10 minutes looking for the god-damned bird all over my apartment. Even upstairs. Because, you know, birds can fly. No success. Finally I opened the door hoping it would see the light and go for it. I was right. When on my next round of frantic "oh god there is a bird in my house" searching I moved the door, it flapped up again and landed on the screen door. Screaming a little again, I slowly opened the screen door and shoo-ed it out - it promptly flew right across the lawn straight into the neighbor's window and fell into a bush. What the hell. When Roommate and fiancée returned and I told them the story, he said something to the effect of "fuck it, that bird is suicidal. Darwin." 

Psh. And he wouldn't let me bring the poor friendly cute cat in the house but he'll bring in a crazed suicidal bird? Where, I ask you, is the fairness in that?

Why I don't visit my Dad much.

Today was supposed to be a normal day. I visited Dad after visiting a friend of mine but.... Miss Crazy-Pants girlfriend exploded. Completely. I had Dad that page of photos and she just totally lost it. She was drunk at 3:30pm when I got there! She saw the photo page and just BURST into tears, sobbing and weeping, it was absurd. Weird happy-sad crying out of nowhere. It didn’t end there either.... just, oh my god, that visit right there, that bizarre uncontrollable unreasonable crazy, was one of the biggest factors in just needing to move out so desperately. So glad I live in this apartment and not with Miss Crazy-Pants now. Also I left there with a plant. I’m still trying to figure out that part – though I have no recollection of this, the spider plant was apparently once mine? All I know is that I’ve got one now. The other highlight of this visit was just before I left, when she said she had something to ask me before I went. Which was “Do I have your permission?” natural confused question followed: “For what?” Response: “To still be with your Dad, do I have your permission?” .... what. “You don’t need my permission, that’s between the two of you, I don’t have a say in this.” Her: “Yes. Yes.” I mistakenly though she was agreeing for a moment. “Yes I do need it! Do I have your permission?” When she gets like this it’s best to just go with the flow, because any attempts to reason with this weepy insistent beast will simply further enrage the beast. “Okay, yes, if that’s what you need, it’s fine, you can have it.” But somehow this seemed to be the wrong answer also! Tears filled her eyes and indecipherable high-pitched noises emitted from her mouth and – this is the kicker – she wrapped her arms around my neck like a vise and sobbed, literally wetly sobbed into my shoulder. I don’t think I would have been able to pry those skinny little arms from my neck with a crowbar. She did let go finally (Dad is actually sighing and slightly mortified in the background here, saying “She’s determined to annoy me today.) Dad and I chatted a bit more briefly before I left, but oh god did I get the hell out of there fast once I could. 

All of that, plus the cigarette smoke, is the Primary reason I do not visit my Dad as often as I should. 

Green Lantern Cake!

So we tried to surprise our friend for his birthday but then he ruined his own surprise party by inviting people out for drinks. Asshole. Anyways we all hung out and I made him a cake:

In brightest day, in darkest night...

It's a fun-fetti cake-in-a-box under there. It was going to be a Spiderman cake, but then I didn't have any food coloring but I had leftover green... so Green Lantern yaaaaay! He's a comic book fan all around and DC is doing slightly better things these days than Spiderman anyways so.... I made the lines for the symbol with chopsticks and the lid of the icing tub. I felt pretty good about it. 

And then he drunkenly fingered the cake

See the fun-fetti?

And then we call ate cake with spoons stolen from the ice cream place after three people bought milkshakes right before they closed and a good time was had by all.

Observe decimated cake.

And then I ate cake for the rest of the week.
The End. 

Just so anyone can see how horribly tacky my Dad's Crazy-ass girlfriend is, I have photo graphic evidence:

The horrors inflicted upon this poor bookshelf!  

So, yeah, she also has a cow obsession. And is overly patriotic in a bad way. It made me realize that yes, there is indeed a market for all that tacky crap you see in gift shops around the world. It's just one of those things you look at, shudder, and run away from quickly. Clearly the mind that would collect so many cows cannot be sane.
Not pictured: the cow objects in the kitchen, such as the paper-towel holder and Giant 3-foot-tall Cow Centerpiece.

Okay, so, I'm going to grab what I wrote last night for my 100 Words a Day Challenge in an effort to have something up here:

Day 18.

Well I’m mildly irritated with Boyfriend for going out to his friends' house so he could work in the district near there tomorrow and then cancelling it... to get drunk with his friends there. Great choice, dude. Complain some more to me about how you have no money, then tell me you’ve cancelled a day to get drunk, and see how well I react. He’s going to get an earful when I talk to him next. Okay, I’m not going to bitch him out per say, but I am definitely going to point out his inconsistencies, because he definitely points it out to me all the time. That place is terrible for him! I was excited when the “white-house” was falling apart and people were all moving away... but then several of them moved in together again at this place. Dammit. I’m frustrated with the whole situation. I am not feeling very in love at the moment, I am feeling angry. You can’t just fuck your best friend and go back to the way things were. I don’t want you near her, why do you seem to be forgetting this again? And I had a conversation about big scary “The Future” after graduation with that guy one of the grad students told me to talk to and I mentioned the whole situation with Boyfriend... He expressed great surprise that we’ve been together two years and he’s been able to move but hasn’t. I said honestly that I’m done making excuses for him, and if I do continue with school but he doesn’t move down here, then... I don’t know. I don’t want to deal in absolutes today. It’s hard enough letting/convincing myself that yes, I do want to teach high school Latin, just GO FOR IT ALREADY, don’t be afraid to say YES, this is what I want to do! I have to want this, I have to strive for it! It’s time to care about something, it’s time to want something and want it for myself! I have to say Yes, I Will Do This, and then chase it down, figure out how to get there, figure out what more I must do. Time to be BRAVE goddammit and stop with the tearing up, the shaking, the rambling when you’re nervous... it’s gotta go. Pep talk! Rah! Anima mea libera est, nihil potest superare me! Remember, it is etched in your skin forever. If that is not dedication, nothing is. No more saying “I don’t know.” It is time to start knowing; you are beyond a college senior! You know what life can be. Grab it by the balls and say your demands!

By the way I did talk to Boyfriend about my concerns. He explained that in fact he is doing okay for money at the moment. Has his credit card paid off till January, is about to pay a bit on his loans, and "has his head above water" as next week when we're off in the middle of nowhere visiting his family he won't be paying for anything, really. I still think his friends' place is bad for him. 26 years old and still sleeps on somebody's couch occasionally? Yeeeeaaaah. Starting to take issue with that. Still love him though, can't deny it. 

Oh, and I haven't done my homework for today in Latin. Worked last night and didn't go any homework beforehand. Once I got home and tried to look at it, it was all just gibberish, so I gave up and went to bed. Now I'm waiting for coffee to kick in and looking at 9:46 on the clock and thinking about how much I want to lay back down instead of run off to class at 10. Mostly because I have the feeling I'll just be late again. Stupid goddamn buses. I swear I see the one I need pull away just as I hit the parking lot every time. Ugh. I've been late like all this week. Plus I've lost my knee brace somewhere in the apartment. Oh dear. At least I finally found my ticket scrapbook when I was at my mom's last weekend!

Write every day?

Well I refuse to just let this blog die like so many other journals/diaries/sketchbooks. I'm terrible at a constant schedule, but, I'm back and I'm trying. First post for November, eh? Mostly here to tell you this: I'm doing a 100 Words a Day Challenge. But I haven't been writing it here... I've been typing it up neatly in a word document, sitting in the window next to this on my computer, beginning to feel guilty that nothing was here. I think I meant to post pictures of some kinda related to Halloween and my cupcake adventure, because it was a bit dramatic there for a minute, but I failed to find the will to do it. But the Challenge. I don't think I really want to post just a paragraph a day, nor do I want to confuse people (what people? no one reads this, I'm aware.) with my idea brainstorming for a story. Because it won't make sense. I can put some of the other bits up though.
Like the first day:

Begin with an outline. Are you writing a story? How to write an interesting story that hasn’t been done before is a big challenge. So how to break it up into smaller, manageable bits? Write a bit every day. You must choose a theme or a genre to begin with, of course, which is hard, because you don’t know what you want to write. Fantasy or Science Fiction or comic books are what I know, of course, my wonderful dork world is filled with all sorts of them. I love to read, I devour books, I read like my life depends on it. Does it follow, then, that I should be able to write as well? Can I hold that many different things in my mind at once to create a world, can I communicate what I really want, what I see in my head? I can get totally lost in the world of a book to the point of not knowing that someone is speaking to me. I have more bookshelves than other furniture types, or used to for a while anyways.

It's basically my brain vomiting on the page, vaguely sentence-like. 

The second day, a little more interesting:

Many say “write what you know.” Well... I know that’s often meant to be “write from your life in someway.” But what about “write what you know” meaning write like what you read? I’ve got a whole bookshelf dominated by SciFi, fantasy, and comic books. But then the problem is trying to not copy what someone else has done. And also don’t just write a “fanific” because those are often horrible and they won’t get you much of anywhere. It’s hard to create your own world, it is. You can’t force it, it needs to come organically. I know I could be a writer, maybe not for life, but for fun... I’m always composing my thoughts into writable sentences in my head. That has to mean a little bit of something. It’s putting a new twist on something, it’s finding something just different enough that it’s new but not to different that no one will buy it. Mistborn, great series I read recently, created a new world (literally, in part of the story) which had a very different type of “magic.”

This is a problem I've noticed. So many people advise you to "write what you know." I don't think it's necessarily good advice. I mean, if people like Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite SciFi/Fantasy writers, wrote what he knew, we would probably never have any of the Discworld books at all, and that's a great shame. After all, the world really isn't flat, carried on the backs of four elephants, on the back of a turtle, flying through space. It's a little more of the round variety. 

Anyways. I've written at least 100 words already I know, but it doesn't matter. It's the writing every day. Oh also this idea came from A Splintered Mind, his response to NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo. If ya don't know what those are, google em if you really care to know. A good friend of mine has done NaNoWriMo since, oh, high school? She's also graduated from art school and lives in New York with her girlfriend. Overachiever, psh. "graduating." Who needs it? (er, me.) NaNoWriMo has always been intimidating to me, and I don't know if I'd ever be able to handle it - partly because I never remember that it's going to be happening, partly because I can't figure out what the hell to write about. That's another reason I started a blog but I've been floundering. I don't really know what to write about. All the interesting things are taken. And when I write about stuff happening in my life...? Well mostly I get inspired to do that when a) really weird shit happens like the bird in my house last night or b) Shit is bad and depressing and I need an outlet and it's not very funny. I guess it's all in how you read it, but still. Watching me freak out about money, my long-distance boyfriend and graduating I'm sure is only entertaining for so long. 

I feel like I might be running out of steam for this post, and I need to go to class soon. 

I guess in the long run I'm just trying to figure out what I really want from my life, what I want to be doing, where I want to be, who I want to be with... I'm 22, these are the big questions we ask, I know this; it doesn't help me find the answers quicker though. I don't know if I want to teach, or do something in the history field, or go to grad school, or, or, or.... with so many options how do you choose one? Over the past two days I've been toying with the idea of getting my masters or a second Major in Latin. It come to time and money and wanting to be able to move... would I want to go to some other school? Can I afford to? Do I really think I can comprehend that language enough to teach kids the subjunctive, double dative, and past-contrary-to-fact grammar, answering their questions... do I even understand things now, in my Latin class? Yes I understand I have two more quarters to get it, but that's only seven months or so... oh well I guess that is a good amount of time, isn't it? I just don't know. I haven't made any plans to take the GRE ever, so I may have already screwed myself out of the grad school option. I could just stay, I guess, get my masters... I just feel like a medium fish in a gigantic pond the ocean. I guess it is challenging me to be better, to try to stand out a little... I don't know. I just don't know what I want to do. I wish my boyfriend would just be willing to move down here for a little while. Maybe he would see that the city isn't so bad, my state isn't so bad... (at least our roads aren't falling apart as much as his.) And I hate the cold. I don't really want to move more north, where he's wondering why it hasn't snowed yet... early November and he's wondering why it hasn't snowed. Guh. Noooo thank you. I like my happy medium of a little bit of everything weather-wise. 

And now it's time to leave for class so that I am not late. Again.