Your shining face

So, I promised an update on the 19th about the not washing my face with soap thing. It's been 10 days. I have washed my face twice with soap in the last 10 days. My face looks fine.

I think soap is a ploy to get people to buy more soap.

I went to a wedding this past weekend in the Berkshires. It was really really amazing...a very non-traditional Jewish wedding with some tradition thrown in. The bride was my best friend from high school and she looked absolutely stunning!

AJ and I stayed at his friend's house, which happened to be only a couple of minutes away from the wedding. We had the most amazing breakfasts ever on Saturday and Sunday, both at the Roadside Diner. The diner uses food from the local farm, Gould Farm, so all the ingredients were fresh and local. I don't know if they were organic. The sausage was AMAZING. I've never had anything like it in my life. I would absolutely drive the 4 hours just to spend one night in the Berkshires so that I could eat that sausage again.

School has started and is in full swing, so you'll probably be hearing less from me than you did all summer. I'll do my best, though, to keep posting regularly.

New 'do

I got a haircut yesterday. It was the first time I've had one in almost two years.

The stylist/barber guy (what do you call them these days?) thinned out my hair A LOT. At the end, he swept up a capybarra-sized pile of my hair. I was all like, "ooh! that's a lot of hair!" and he was like "don't freak out!" Except I wasn't freaking out...I was totally psyched to have that crap off of my head. He could have taken more.

Seriously folks...he took off (as in thinned out...he left it the same length) about 1/3 of my hair, and this is what I have left:



Totally crazy, huh? (That's not my boob...it's my giant pectoral muscle...my boobs are totally not that perky)

That sign behind me in the picture? It says "clean." Part of a set that I got at the Christmas Tree Shops. Speaking of, I'm doing a little experiment with the idea of "clean." For the last three days, I haven't been washing my face with soap. Instead, I've been using warm water and just scrubbing with my hands and drying with a towel. I'm an oily person. My hair gets oily in a day - my face gets oily a little after I wash it. Not using soap is, to me, not something to take lightly.

But...

So far, so good. My skin isn't oilier than usual and it looks kinda glowy. I'll give it a few more days and let you know what happens.

Stuff...and more stuff...the update edition

My father visited this weekend and I got to spend some time with my family, which was really really nice. Sometimes I forget how much I love those weird drunk, racist freaks.*

I'm enjoying my geology class so much that I'm thinking of switching my major from biology to geology. It would really mess up my whole 3-year plan. But I am so into geology right now that I don't really care.

My birthday is coming up in a week. I dropped hints all weekend to my father, hoping he'd remember and offer to take me shopping for some winter clothing while he was in town. He didn't pick up on the hints. In fact, I'm not even sure he knows my birthday is coming up. And he definitely doesn't know how old I am...



At my family party on Saturday night, I asked my 12 year-old cousin if he remembered the time my ex spun him around on the swing until he threw up. "Yeah," he said, "he was a jerk." A little shocked, I said, "yeah...he was." My cousin's follow-up? "Then why did you go out with him?" Zing.



*Okay...not ALL of my family are drunks...or freaks...and only one is significantly racist... In fact, most of my family members are outgoing, sweet, kind people. Or cute kids. Here's the money shot from this weekend:






These are my 2nd cousins and one of my first cousins. This was
just before a game of SPUD, which I won. Because I'm awesome.
And like to throw balls at little kids.

We will return

to your regularly scheduled blogging, after we figure out how to balance all the following each day:

- 8 hours of work
- 3 hours of class
- 4 hours of homework
- 1 hour of eating
- 1 hour of transportation via bicycle/foot
- 7 hours of sleeping

Somewhere in there, I'll find time to do some blogging...be patient with me!

Mr. Pedie

I woke up at six this morning; an hour earlier than usual. Not by chance, no, but because I had to. It was still pretty dark and I don't know about you, but nothing about the dark makes me want to hop out of bed and skip to the shower or anything like that.

I emerged from my bed like Dracula - arms crossed over my chest, body unmoving, feet planted on the bed and serving as an axis of rotation. Only when completely vertical did I open my eyes. Since my mattress is now on the floor, thanks to my recent poverty and a certain friend who really needed her bed frame back (the bitch!!!), I literally stepped out of bed.

The vibrations created by my first footsteps apparently also woke up one of our resident house centipedes, though he did more of a snake-like wiggle than a Dracula maneuver. He, with all his gross little legs and his silvery body and his side-to-side undulations, shot out from under AJ's bureau and charged at me, full-speed. EM, good for nothing, watched on as if she were in a 3D movie - batting at the bug while remaining several feet away from it.

I let out a shriek, grabbed the nearest crossword puzzle (thankfully I never throw them out unless they're 100% finished and have 30 at my disposal) and slammed it down on Mr. Pedie. I slowly lifted the paper and BAM, Mr. Pedie went dashing back toward the bureau, hoping to escape with at least 99 limbs still intact. But I was too quick for him, in my adrenaline-induced panic, and caught him again, making sure to slam on every square inch of the newspaper.

After ensuring Mr. Pedie's death (HA! I almost wrote "full death" which is redundant, eh?) I left him, exposed, on the floor while I got dressed. No sense in making two trips to the bathroom, right?

It was then that EM decided to take more than just a lazy swat's interest in Mr. Pedie. She circled the smooshed carcass and just as she was about to give him a little nibble, I realized that I didn't want my cat breathing centipede breath on me. So I swatted her lightly with my shirt.

Apparently, EM was also pretty terrified of Mr. Pedie, because when the the shirt touched her, that little stinker jumped straight up in the air - so high that I could have pet her without bending over (and I'm tall for a woman).

At some point during all of this, AJ looked up groggily from his pillow and asked me what was going on.

He missed a lot of excitement, but he got to sleep until seven, lucky bastard.

Photo from http://richard-seaman.com/

Shwork Bullets

(Schwork = school + work)

• First day of classes. Two, hour-long courses, back-to-back, from 10 a.m. to noon.

• Geology professor is hawt. Not in a Harrison Ford sort of way...more of a Chase Crawford but kinda rugged way. But he's my age, which is such a turn-off. And I'm not single. And he's my professor, so I'm not allowed to look at him as if he were a single, hot, young man...which he is.

• Guy sitting next to me in my geology class is wearing a dinosaur tee shirt. I silently judge him and then realize that not only do I own three or four dinosaur tee shirts, but that I'm devoting my entire academic career to studying dinosaurs.

• Pretty sure my geology teacher thinks I'm hot. Oh, no...he's looking at the giant pair of breasts right next to my face. Hey, get your boobies away from me! I know the lecture hall is cramped, but if I leaned back, I'd be using your cleavage as a neck brace. Yikes...these freshman girls are kinda ho-in' it up this year.

• Co-worker (note, not "boss") reached all-time levels of horribleness today when she gave me and another co-worker crap about watching a 3 minute YouTube video by asking "don't you two have any other work to do?" Screw you, B.

• Plus, she spent twenty minutes this morning talking politics with our soon-to-be boss. Bet you can't guess which political figure she was talking about. I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with "Marah Walin."

• Realizing that this new school/work schedule is less than ideal: Work from 7 am to 10 am. Class from 10 am to 12 pm. Work from 12 pm to 4:30 pm. Every other day. Two days a week attend lab from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. Sleep. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Burn. Candle. At. Both. Ends.

• Guy in Geology class puts his bare feet up on the chair next to me. This is kinda a hippie town, but WTF??? And they're 18 year-old boy feet. *shiver*

Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow...

I cross through the dark apartment, hearing only the sound of EM's claws scratching on the hard wood floors. Somewhere in the hall, she is playing with her crinkle ball. She is nearly hysterical - the scratching sounds increase to frantic and suddenly she is quiet. I know that she has won and that the crinkle ball is clenched in her jaws, her paw still batting at it as if it might put up a fight. I smile.

I find AJ on the porch. He has tried to patch the hole in his bicycle tire. His tools are spread out on the dry wood deck and he is covered in grease. I watch him remove the tire from the rim with a flat and hooked piece of plastic. He holds up the tube to show me the tear. It is not fixable. He will need a new tube.

I have many tears. Many times I have tried to patch them, but, like AJ's tire, they always seem to let the air out. Like AJ and his tire, I have the right tools to find the sources of those leaks, but often I feel powerless to fix them. Unlike AJ's tire, I can't just go to the store and purchase a new me. A shiny, undamaged me.

I am filled with anger and envy. I compare myself to everyone around me. I find ways to cut down people who threaten me - but I don't do it to their faces...I just hate them from a distance while pretending everything is okay.

I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to compete with the rest of the world or feel like I'm not enough. I have a decent life - a great boyfriend, a decent job, the opportunity to do what I've always wanted to do.

How do you do it? Can it be done? Is it possible to live in a world where we're constantly told we need more more more and still feel content? How do you even begin to love yourself, regardless of what everyone else is doing? At what point is it "only human" to feel this way? Is it possible to transcend that?