It's the Election post!
Hey all. I managed to crash the server that is the cozy home to jeaun.com, Jake’s blog, and my own dear spot. It was awful. Friday went waaaay slower than usual. Plus it was beautiful outside, and I was stuck here until AFTER 5. Travesty.
After work I changed into what I consider to be a very cute outfit, complete with low pigtails and a Mets cap, and met up with the Angela.* As I was driving, windows down, radio up – Q101 surprised me by playing just the right song. All of a sudden, I’m hearing the into to The Impression that I Get by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Now, a catchy upbeat song like that is exactly what a girl needs driving in the sunshine on a Friday afternoon, but this particular song (and the whole album) have a special place in my heart – reminding me of the dubbed tape that sat in the outside tape player that my sister and I would listen to over and over as we rollerskated on the tiny patch of concrete driveway. Tiny circles to the left … Ah. So I dug the album out, and listened to it all weekend. Very pleasant.
If you saw me this weekend (and none of you did) you’d think I’d started grad school already. I went to the library on Saturday and checked out every knitting reference book they had. I’m not kidding. There is a splay of books in front of my couch, and I finally know how to make an invisible increase.
You’d think I’d know this stuff, but I never really paid attention – as long as the mitten worked, I didn’t care if there were bar increases. Now, NOW I have to care. On the upside, I’ll be able to kill you with knitting, as I will be a KNITTING MASTER.
I think my swatch yarn will get here between this Friday and next Friday, and in the meantime, I’ve been fooling around with acrylic, just faking the swatches to see if I know what I’m doing. Chomping at the bit.
*Hey – Anglea is almost at her goal for the Avon Breast Cancer walk, which is astounding considering she didn’t start fundraising until the last minute. Props and dormers for Kat and Jake for donating monies. For the rest of you – it’s not toooo laaaaate!
I'm not sure why,
but I find old-timey diseases and illnesses to be hilarious. I don't even know what some of these are!
Scurvy
Goiters
Rickets
Catarrh
Carbuncles
La Grippe
Consumption
Gout
I'm researching Abbott's history for 'now you know'-type facts. An early Abbott employee wrote of this 1899 remedy: "A first-born child came into the world small,
feeble, and exceedingly jaundiced. A dough of finely sifted rye flour was wrapt from head to foot. This was removed twice in 24 hours. It was a also bathed daily in a strong decoction of bean, to which a liberal amount of beer was added. In about two weeks, the child regained strength and grew up well."
And you wonder where food fetishists come from.
Pondery pondersome.
My sister pointed out that my current goal to get my Masters of Library Science is all well and good,
but that I'll probably change my mind before my application is approved.
Does this mean I'm not grown up enough to make decisions about my future?! Alena pointed out that it may mean that I should find something better. She thinks that becoming an outdoor education granola would be more appropriate for me.
She's totally right. With all the imagination I have,
why have I not come up with the best most well-fitting set of goals?
It's like the time I went to Borders at midnight for the release of Harry Potter V. We (the children there) could make our own wands out of dowel rods and an assortment of feathers, pipe cleaners, foam stars and whatnot. I stared at it. I wanted to make a wand so bad I could feel it. I stood there, wondering what I should hot-glue onto my stick.
Feasibly, I have almost every opportunity at my fingertips. I could probably do whatever I want. Truly. The bee sting is that I don't even know all the wonderful things I could do. I could put together outdoors, kids, camping and education. How about travel, writing and photography? Knitting, self-employment and… uh, kittens?
Do I need to flounder around some more until I have the focus to choose? Do I jump into one of these plans and then discard it after six months? Do I curl into the fetal position and drink some chocolate milk?
Yes.
On Christmas Day,
it's easy to wake up. Even at age 25 I have the residual Pavlovian desire to get out of bed.
Each morning, my ability to get out of bed is determined by a single factor- I am more likely to wake fully if there is an impetus. I do not require a large amount of motivation. Usually the thought of breakfast brings a smile to my face, and I hop up to hunt and gather. Other times it's the prospects that are held by the particular day. Out-of-the-ordinary events give me this charge, so do projects I am eager to attend to. Novel variations to my usual routine are instrument in making me a chipper person straight out of the gate.
I cannot attribute this phenomenon to my upbringing or genetics. I feel that I have, from a young age, cultivated the general ability to get excited about small things. I feel this talent has served me well. I do not suffer from depression, malaise or constipation.
The flipside of my sunny morning persona is the darker morning persona. When I have to get up before the sun, and turning on the lights hurts my eyes, I am not happy. If I have to do so because I have an unpleasant task ahead of me, I am really not happy. This tends to require a superior breakfast, consisting of more than three things. Usually I am content with a breakfast of just three things, but on these dark mornings (both literally and figuratively) I require more. This rights my spirits, and I return to neutral.
In between chipper and cranky lies a strange land. Waking up neutral can be splenetic because it offers the smallest thing (referred to above, as I am sensitive to small things) the opportunity to unsettle me.
Ah, yes, we come to today's observation. My first task this morning was to expel the several cups of beer left in my system from kickball the night before. I sat blinking in the harsh light, using this down time to gather my early thoughts and arrange my morning. First on the list was to change my tampon. As I use OB tampons, I have a much more intimate experience introducing the little white bullet.
Old 'pon out, new 'pon in — wait. What? No.
It was too early for to instantly comprehend the situation, but just as slowly as my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized that there was a second tampon, a magic bullet, up in my honey pot.
Shocking. As I pulled out the new tampon and began to envelope myself in myself (i.e. trawl for God-know-how-old tampon) I began to recognize the feeling I was having.
"Fucking great- now I'm all unsettled."
It took a bowl of cereal, apple cider and a scone to right this ship.
*author's note: Cereal and milk count as two things.
There are a myriad of dance or cheer related movies I quaff like so much Kool-aid. Left with a syrupy smile and a sugar high,
I take these movies for what they are- a bunch of dancing with some dialog in the middle.
I thought You Got Served would at least fall on par with the genre. I was horribly horribly mistaken. Bad acting and not enough dancing made this a bomb.
Even the breakdancing was mostly group synchro stuff. Where's the floorshow, yo?
I think I have a thing about food. I was stuffing little bags with energy drinks and bars for work today,
and I was pondering.
Always with the pondering.
I thought about how I had been encouraged to try a bar or two. I thought about how eating them really doesn't do anything benefitial to me other than give me more calories. I thought about how I ate too much in Germany,
about sneaking off with two 1000 Grands from the snack machine I was supposed to be filling. Then I remembered being a little girl- maybe 3rd grade- and sneaking snack food to take on the bus. I remember my mom finding me reaching into the cupboard for a nearly-empty jar of peanuts.
WTF? The only time I would even loosely over-categorize myself with an eating disorder was when I was in Germany and really unhappy.
The trend goes way back, though.
Is it because I'm hypoglycemic and this is a side-effect? That would be convenient.
Is it that I eat when I'm discontent? Maybe, but not to extreme excess. Just the occasional feels-like-excess.
Could it be that there's something I can't put my finger on, and I have no perspective with which to figure this out? Probably that one.
Just made me think, that's all.
I am fallen. Damned if I do,
damned if I don't,
in fact. I had requested an absentee ballot from Johnson County (IA) to be delivered to my parents' home in Clinton County (IA). Yes,
I know I've lived in Chicago for nearly five months now, but I felt that a fib was worth the swing state vote.
My parents never received the ballot, but did receive a letter last week instructing me to show up with the signed affidavit to vote in person in J. County. I called the auditor's office to find out what my best option was. As long as my permanent address was still in J. County, I could vote in person. If I had moved to C. County, then I would have had to register in that county. The registration end date was last Saturday.
Gulp. My hands are tied. Unless I commit a felony, I will not be voting in this election. I was crushed. This maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaajor election was going to speed by me like the Polar Express.
Jason pointed to <a href=http://www.shavingyourass.com/node/view/89>Charles' essay</a> for inspiration. Why spend $50 to drive to Iowa and commit a crime? I can use that $50 as a contribution to the Dems, and they can worry about getting others to vote.
Now I don't feel so bad.
I experimented with a psychotropic drug this morning.
OK,
I don't think coffee counts as a psychotropic,
but the last time I drank it, I had hallucinations. I was feeling in a frisky Friday-before-Halloween mood, which of course makes me want to do drugs.
Luckily, I went out to lunch with some girls from the office (not entirely true- I wouldn't call them 'girls' and one of them was definitely a guy). As it turns out, the antidote for coffee overdose is a reuben and fries.
Then there was cake. You know, the it-was-good-to-have-you-here-and-good-luck-in-the-corporate-suite cake of the wedding variety. Blue and pink flowers, quarter inch frosting, and both chocolate and yellow. (You know, because 'yellow' is a flavor.)
Now it's 4:15 and I'm ready to get out of here, or maybe run around the Abbott grounds in the wet leaves.
Another reason why I'm jittery is the election. After the nope-vote in Iowa (who wants to commit voter fraud?) I'm resigned to watching the train wreck. 58,000 absentee votes went missing in Broward County, FL. I can't help but feel a personal jolt after living there for several months. I wonder what the folks at Habitat for Humanity think of all this. I wonder if it's too late to call them and plead for a blue vote.
"Hello? Yes, um, this is Sonya Green. I was an AmeriCorps volunteer, what, three years ago now. I was just thinking about all of you, and wondering if you had taken Kerry/Edwards as your Lord and Savior. I have some pamphlets I could air mail you? Come on, I'll send you scones if you just vote democrat."
I have a pleasant throbbing/tingling sensation at the back of my neck. Maybe the coffee isn't out of my system.
I'm listening to the book-on-iPod version of Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. Every once in a while I'm distracted as the descriptions become almost bodice-ripping-like. Then again, English doesn't exactly overflow with appropriate descriptions of sex that don't make it sound degrading. Those that do are vague, or are of the third grade variety. Either way, it's a small portion of the greater text, and I'm enjoying it immensely.
Much like any other blogger/journaler/diarymaker,
when I think of what I'm most thinking about today,
it's the election. Hanging over my head like a giant scythe pendulum in a Poe poem (nod to Beetlejuice, the cartoon) I want this day to be over. I have this nervous jittery distracted feeling like my body is an ant farm.
I think that instead of leaving the country, I'll have to throw myself into a group. It would have to become the non-Bush voters who would balance out a second W. term. I don't know if Moveon.org would become a powerhouse of volunteers making the upper eschelons of our government become responsible in a way they haven't had to, but I will have to do something.
Already I feel like I stared open mouthed and dumbstruck for four years, not knowing really what to do about terrorist attacks and the war and Bush in general. I've seen one train wreck, I'm not about to let another one crash.
With that said, I am knitting the CUTEST hoodie for a fetus I'm going to meet. Well, I guess everyone is about to meet her. Amber is having a baby shower in a few weeks, and I am joyfully knitting for her. The sweater is super cute and functional (warm, washable, and soft) and I know that she will appreciate it in the way that only craftsers can.
I got to talk to Allison on the phone both last night and this morning, which always is a little like drinking champagne.
Sunday I practiced with Mucca Pazza Marching Band, a group I saw perform at the Hideout Block Party. We had just finished watching Mouse on Mars, and this crazed marching band enters the crowd and performs. It's my dream band. Real bands, with their songwriting and big egos, are not my cup of tea. I need sheet music. Last night I went to the Hideout to watch them play, and in less than 10 minutes found myself donning a band uniform and reaching for the cymbals. Utterly utterly satisfying, and I even got drink tickets. I'm a professional band geek, yo.
So there. Bush might be re-elected, but beauty and happiness are consistently in my life and shall remain.