Er, hello 2011

So, um, I'm not one for poetry. I don't read it. Except maybe when it's in another language, and then, that makes it a tad difficult. Well not with Latin because I can read Latin, mostly. But I'm not a fan of English-language poetry or poets. And I often feel poetry is egotistical and silly... which may have something to do with the fact that this thing I found on my computer was titled "my shitty poetry." Meaning I have no illusions about this at all. But this blog needs something and I feel like perhaps I do want to write. Write what? who knows. But starting with an edited version of a 3-year-old poem might be okay. I have to some day stop self-depreciating and try something. Even if it sucks. I'll learn to accept criticism on writing as I would a school paper. 
p.s. I like Pablo Neruda and Catullus.

I want 

to be romantic

to write poetry and inspire it

have a muse and to be a muse

to be admired and appreciated 

I want to be painted and drawn

And feel it's right, not egotistical to want these

I want you to want me!

Think I am the most beautiful, never want for another,

but see I am more than my body.

Tell me I am Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena

Tell me I am the only woman in the world,

Who draws your attention so

Tell me how I reflect these goddesses 

Artemis, pure

Aphrodite, sensual

Athena, fierce and wise.

Tell of how you would lay tribute at my feet,

were I a statue, smoothed from white marble

your sweet voice raised in song 

And deny me nothing!

Even as I am high on the pedestal, 

let me be low on the ground;

deny me not my humanity.

Let me love the earth and walk on it,

As I am born from earth and water.

Sculpted from earth and water

Clay hardened by flames 

and cooled by the zephyrs 

Let me be everything at once

All elements as one, as it is to be human

Let me be wrathful and miserable

Let me be joyous, let me cry and smile

Deny me nothing.

As I fly high, let me remember the ground I tread on;

For I am a woman,

and my nature is many-faced.

Let me be strong and let me be weak. 

Let me have the two-sided coin that is life.

sneeze-teased

This might sound weird, but do you ever get sneeze-teased like I do? It's when you feel that tickle or itch that tells you, hey, time to sneeze and get rid of this shit... but the sneeze never happens. You're left with this strange tingling itching sensation in your nose and you know you've already made it apparent you need to sneeze or have a heart attack by making a face similar to this:

Classy, no? How's that for a first photo of me?

And then you become highly embarrassed and try to pretend it never happened but end up wigging out over the strange feeling in your nose.
It's almost like being denied an orgasm or something.
For me this is compounded by the fact that I have extremely loud and violent sneezes. I've had a whole room full of people turn and stare at me as my brains return from feeling like they were shoved into my eyeballs to their proper place. Even stifled, my sneezes try to explode my brains out my ears. Last week I was sneeze-teased all damn day and it drove me insane. Even blowing my nose didn't help.
A friend of mine has it worse though. She sneezes like a cat; short and in rapid succession. And she always sneezes at least three times in a row. Once she sneezed something like 10 times in a row. This is terrifying if you happen to be driving with her, you know, since you can't see shit when you sneeze. The idea of someone having their eyes closed for that long on a curved highway at 65 mph is mildly terrifying.
At least I don't sneeze from parmesan cheese like my Dad does.

The Princess Bride Drinking Game

So I mentioned that we played the The Princess Bride Drinking Game over Thanksgiving break. These are the Rules:
Drink when:
1. Anyone says "True Love."
2. Wesley says "As you wish."
3. Vinzinni says "Inconceivable!"
4. Fezzik rhymes.
5. Inigo says "Hello, my name is Inigio Montoya..."

6. Scene cuts back to the boy and Grandfather.

7. The Six-Fingered Man is mentioned.

8. The Dread Pirate Roberts is mentioned. 

9. Any time Wesley defeats a new foe. (i.e. Inigo, Fezzik, fire swamp things.)

Please do note that I counted the times they say "True love" and it's fifteen. Don't ever play this with liquor, you'll die. Or at least vomit everywhere. 

By the way, this is my favorite movie EVAR. I will watch it anytime, but especially if I'm feeling down. Cheers me right up! 

I also have a couple other games... to Labyrinth and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (the latter you can really only enjoy if you play the game to anyhow - Willie's character is unbearable!) While playing The Temple of Doom one I drunkenly invented a new rule on top of the others called "BEEFCAKE!  HARRISON FORD NOT OLD RULE." which is exactly how I wrote it down. My favorite in the Labyrinth game is one we didn't even realize we were missing until 1/2 way through: drink when you see the owl. You'd be drinking through all the credits at the beginning! We were very glad, sitting there with our wine, that we did not use that rule. There's also an Epic sounding game I haven't convinced anyone to play yet: Lord of the Rings. (weighted for the Fellowship movie.) So many prompts. Would be so good. Especially with extended edition! I generally find that around 7-9 prompts is quite enough for the average movie. Especially for one like Indiana Jones. 

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. 

What almost was a very bad idea.

So the second or third day of classes this year I decided I would roller-blade to the bus stop. Seems like a harmless idea. But then, after putting on my blades and wrist-guard-thingies, I stood up shakily and remembered that I hadn't roller-bladed in years. I overcame the small wave of panic and took off. I immediately almost crashed. There are these weird deep footprints in our sidewalk from when some idiot walked across it while it was wet. A few of them have been filled in, but most haven't. Trap #1 narrowly avoided.
I rolled down the little ramp to the street, didn't get run over, and was on my way. The route I take to school is through the apartment complex across the street from me, and they take pains to make sure no one speeds from one end to the next. I.E. speed bumps. (Or speed humps, if that amuses you more.) There are two of them directly in my path... Trap #2 successfully passed by slowing down and bending my knees and squeaking in fear. Then I power through the small hill and into the next parking lot. Trap #3: big puddle. This I had no idea was a trap until after I was through it and nearly did the splits because of my wet skates. Onward down the sidewalk... time to cross another road! But wait... Trap #4! Gravel on both sides of the road! Awkward walking-scuffing-shuffle and I'm still on my feet. Next parking lot. There's a little more gravel, but I'm all pshhh whatevah I got this. Then I nearly fall on my face from a full-stop jerk of my right leg as a twig is caught in the wheels. Nearly. Trap #5 now watched for keenly as there is other random debris on the road/sidewalk. From there it's smooth sailing. I make it to the shuttle bus stop, take off the skates and throw on my flumpy shoes, and head to class.
But in the end it wasn't the small amounts of terror on the way to school that made me not want to skate to school again. (Plus slightly larder amount of terror going down the hill too fast on the way home.)  It was the carrying the bastards around all day on campus after I got there.

Looking back on the decision to skate, it was probably more of a bad idea than I thought. I remember some traumatic events with those very skates...
My best friend from middle school and I both got these new skates, and wanted desperately to go be fools outside. So we suited up - helmets, wrist guards, skates - and went off down the paved bike path. It was going fine for a good while, but she got a good bit ahead of me, so I decided to hurry up. Then I Spectacularly crashed and smeared my flesh on the pavement. A nice long slide. She didn't hear me fall and kept going. I was wearing shorts. NEVER ever EVER do this while skating unless you want hamburger for legs. I immediately started to cry. Some kind passerby stopped and helped me sit on a nearby bench until she came back. She was horrified and helped me skate painfully back home to get cleaned up. And if I hadn't been wearing those wrist guards? Probably would've seen bone on my hands. The gouges in the plastic are pretty deep. I had hardcore roadburn for a couple weeks.
This event probably should have put me off skating forever, but kids bounce back well. Another friend and I decided to skate from my house to her house. Which is over a mile. Plus up and down many hills. It took us twice as long to get to her house as we thought, and her Mother was super pissed. At one point to stop myself I wanted to pull a really cool move like in movies, where people use stop signs to swing around. Well I swung around. And around. And around until I was flat on my butt. Luckily I didn't hurt myself and we giggled insanely about it.
I should probably never try to be athletic in any way. I'm just not cut out for it.