Sunday, January 29, 2012

Sorry For My Party Rock'n

I have a cousin who is younger than me by 7 yrs maybe. I'm not sure.  I'm not even sure how much I've spoken to him ever...there are a lot of cousins.  But he's a friend on facebook and he's in college.  In my mind he's still 12 and quiet.  He has 3 older sisters.  But he turned into a big college party-er and I LOVE reading all of his posts.  He's having a great time in college partying it up and it makes me remember when I would have a great time in college.  In college I knew what was expected of me, I knew who I was, I knew who my friends were and I knew what I was going to do every Thursday and Friday night.

Thursday nights Josh and I played the board game Life but turned it into a drinking game.  We would walk to the seven/eleven get 40's of beer and frozen burritos.  Then we played Life (which involved drinking 3/4 of the forty) and then watched Adult Swim and talked while we finished the rest of the beer and ate the burritos with ranch.  That was preparing for Friday night when we went out and partied with our friends.  Everything was close enough to walk to or ride a bike to.

What I learned from that time period is that it is not (NOT) safe to ride a bike drunk but a hellalota fun.

The commuter parking lot was always empty at CMU at 1am on the weekend so you could pedal as fast as you could and coast through the parking lot with nothing in your way and the wind flying through your hair, screaming and laughing.  Then after that was the circle drive at The Towers dorm halls.  Josh would be following me and I would ride around and around and around that circle and Josh could never figure out where we were going.

I recently felt like that again, screaming and laughing and truly deeply happy.  The sad part is since my gluten allergy I switched from beer to gin and tonics and I don't have control of my drinking when I drink those. (Only 6 months of sporadic practice vs. 10 yrs of weekly practice).  I dont' remember much of the other night, but I do remember being innocently happy, like when you're a kid.  The unfortunate part was that I was with coworkers who are past my stage of life now...and I fear I behaved poorly in front of them.  I behaved great if I was with friends or all strangers, but not coworkers.  I may have humped a barrel a little and I may have almost got in a fist fight with a friend/coworker ( I remember that and I thought it was awesome and sooo fun!), I may have told someone that "I dont' like salesmen, but I like you! Teach me!" and I dont' know what else I did.  I was very embarrassed the next several days and couldn't think about it without my stomach going into instant pain (sign my anxiety is bad) and it was the worst Monday walking into work ever.  But what I remember from the night was only happiness.  Josh got me home and I spent the rest of the night chasing Ackbar around on my hands and knees laughing at the top of my lungs and wanting him to hug me.  Ackbar only ran away in pure terror.  I was sore for an entire week after that!  Then Josh made some frozen food that tasted like chinese food exactly and it blew my mind.  I could not comprehend how he produced chinese food in the middle of the night from our apartment.

And I've decided this is all I have to say for myself:



That night I was truly myself.  I acted and did what I thought without self censure.  Being an adult and accepted by society is very oppressive to me and scary.  I just want to be me and do what I want, but Nashville has never really approved.  From the first day I moved here I have been judged as too weird, wild, loud, crass, insensitive, naive, no sense of self privacy, and I hate Ohio.  Apparently it is a great sin and a greater offense to dislike a state. And gingers...all gingers of this state do not like me either.  Oh and once I put the left over blueberry pie in the same dish as the leftover pumpkin pie and I RUINED THANKSGIVING.

Bless my heart.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Old Person Ranting

One of my guilty pleasures and favorite things is eating the extra greasy cheese puffs at the bottom of the bag.  The ones that look like they are wet because of all the grease.  Those are my favorite.  I also like to stick as many as I can into my mouth at once and eat them.

We have new neighbors across the street.  I haven't met them.  We only know our neighbors through constant vigilance and observation.  These new ones are the youngest in the two buildings (ours and the one across from us) and there are three or four, and definitely one is a boy and one is a girl, and I don't remember what the third is.  My constant vigilance and observation powers are not very strong.  But I do know their cars.  They have small older red car that is boxy shaped and bright red.  They have bumper stickers of silly things on the windows, placed at angles.  The other car is black I think with funny sticker on it.  One sticker is of The Shocker.  The Shocker is a sign you make with your hands, where you hold your pointer finger and middle together out straight, bend your ring finger down and hold your pinky finger out straight.  The Shocker means "Two in the pink and one in the stink."  I apologize for having to relay to you the truth.

These kids are so silly, with their offensive bumper stickers and their hipster cars. What these kids do is park their car in front of the dumpster or on the curb on the curve on the hill.  It's sooo dangerous!  Everyone speeds around here and no one is expecting a car to be parked in the road.  They just park there because they are too lazy to walk from far away.  It's not even that far away...it's just not directly in front of your building.  They also left a comforter out on the porch in a pile for a week.  Josh was really concerned about that for some reason.  I figured it got puked on and they didn't know what to do so they set it outside for a while.

The only people who really say hi to us in our complex are the little kids.  They are forever saying hi.  We always say hi back.  One little girl has lived here since we moved it 2.5 yrs ago.  Back then she was just perfecting her ability to walk and get in a car.  Now she can do it on her own no problem and says hi to us.  The mom wears scrubs, so she works somewhere with scrubs as a uniform.  Every morning she gets the girl in her car and drives somewhere and then comes back in the afternoon.

Good story, bro.

Friday, January 20, 2012

The Good, The Bad, and The Caffeen

A Thankful List:
1.  For having mostly 1st world problems - okay so probably all of my problems are first world.
2.  For restaurant gift cards - allowing Josh and I to spend only $20 (including tip) for both of us to get steak.  For you who have a husband that eats steak every night...I can't even imagine.  I don't need it again for a month or more.
3.  For my sweet and totally awesome truck
4.  For seeing a giant crane fly across the road in front of my truck and inspiring me to imagine what it would be like if I had a pet crane that lived in the bed of my truck.
5.  For my job, it gives me something to do and money and insurance
6.  For vision insurance and for Josh not needing glasses
7.  For surprise "straight up espresso"  That just happened, right after I wrote number 6, and I'm not sure what I got myself into.  I'm just glad I chose tea this morning instead of coffee.  It's sort of like sipping whiskey on the rocks only with coffee.
8.  For friends and knitting together
9.  For Al Gore for creating the internets allowing pictures of cats to take over
10.  For my growing coaster collection on my desk. I'm a pretty big fan of all of my coasters.  I finally found the one I got at the Renaissance Fair last spring and brought it in.  It's cork with a picture of a castle on it.  I don't have any other cork coasters.

A List of My Concerns:
1.  Overpopulation
2.  Alien Apocolypse
3.  SOPA and PIPA and clueless old cranky politicians breaking the internet because they are out of touch with the younger parts of society and run by untrustworthy rich greedy entertainment moguls who are afraid of change and are clinging to what little power they have left from the past when they were at the top.
4.  Cable news
5.  Anti-bacterial soap, flu shots, and death resistant germs
6.  Patented plant genes
7.  How this espresso is going to affect me
8.  The rights and quality of life of migrant workers.  I was thinking it would be a great project/idea to set up a non-profit, or hells just go do it, to have a person travel with migrant workers as a teacher.  They live with the groups and teach the kids when they can and it would work better than no teaching because the teacher moves with them.
9.  For the world's fresh and clean water supply
10.  For when the world realizes we are out of oil

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

In Which I am Confused

Okay, here is a story.  Sometimes I think it's embarrassing on my part a little, sometimes I think it makes a point about my beliefs, and sometimes I think it makes me look ignorant.  I just don't know.  It's still enjoyable though.

I was at the doctor's getting my allergies tested and it was the pre-screening time when the nurses take your weight and blood pressure and height.  I went to the doctor two days in a row and got two different weights 4 lbs apart.  Not sure how that works, but I'm choosing to believe the lesser one that was not digital. :/  Anyways, while they do this they ask questions like "Are you able to perform normal daily functions on your own?"  "Are you in danger or being threatened by any one at home?" and so on.  Only this nurse was not asking the questions word for word but was re-wording them in a way I actually understood!  I did not realize she was asking me the standard questions, and just thought she was being really nice and curious and/or doing her job.  And she wasn't just listing them.  It was the most "normal" understandable time I had with these questions.  Normally I get nervous about answering them wrong and stutter a lot.  I did the next day when I was asked the exact same questions but they were read straight from the page instead.

The question she asked that got me, as she's strapping the blood pressure thing on my arm was:

"What is your race?"

My thoughts:  OMG! She cares!  She wants to know about my heritage and I look interesting to her.   I always wish people would ask me this question!
What I say out loud:  "DUTCH!" 
I am soooo happy.  Then I think about it and I change my answer:
"Well, I guess I would say I'm American really."

And the nurse looks at me and goes, "On the forms do you usually just put "white"?"  And that's when I figured it out. My reaction to her statement was part snarky:  "Really, do I look anything other than white to you?" and part appreciative that she didn't just assume I was.

I just don't like being called "white".  It does nothing to state what I stand for, what my history is, or bring our country together as a whole.  People from France are French, people from China are Chinese, and I'm from America, so I am American, not white.  Why must they lump us European Americans together under "white".  At least all of South America and Central America gets to be lumped under "Hispanic" or "Latino".  That's way more awesome and slightly more defining than "white".

And there you go.  Those are my thoughts on that topic and I don't know if I'm right, if I'm wrong, if I'm missing something important, if I'm being insensitive, and so on.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Ketchup: The Breakfast Condiment of Champions

I like my food burnt.  I don't want a red steak.  I want a steak that was cooked through (pink in the middle is good now) but then at then the heat was turned up and there is a burnt crust on it.  I like when the onions are browned that the cook "forgets" about them and they get a little crispy burnt on the edges.  I like to leave the scrambled eggs in the pan longer once they are done so that they get browned/burnt on the bottom.  I like my pizza cheese crispy on the top bits and along the crust edges. I like the top of lasagna and the edges of brownies.  I like my hotdogs burnt.

Control your eating by controlling what you buy.  If you only buy healthy food you will only have healthy food to eat.  If you can't afford a lot of healthy food, buy less of it.  Then eat it.  That way no food goes to waste and you save money.  That's my theory.  I'm much better at controlling how I spend my money than controlling what I eat.

I just ate a piece of burnt garlic in my food I made and it was AMAZING.

Okay, my food is amazing completely and inspired this post.  I cut up some onion, yellow bell pepper b/c I don't eat green bell pepper, and garlic and fried it until it was burnt and soft and nice the way I like it. It was salted and peppered appropriately as well. Then I added some baby spinach, oh and garlic wine vinegar (vinegar (any cooking kind) is the secret ingredient).  I didn't wilt the spinach as much as I do other greens, it didn't seem to want to wilt that way, so I added one egg and made vegetable scrambled eggs.  With ketchup.  I always feel that ketchup is a lame condiment and take away from all the great natural flavors of good cooked foods, but I can't help it, it's sooooo good on eggs!  And hash browns.  And breakfast potatoes.  Ketchup is a breakfast condiment I guess.  I think I would prefer it to a homemade salsa on my eggs.  I think.  I'd probably split my eggs in two and put ketchup on one half and the salsa on the other half and eat them as an experiment to see what I like better.  And then I'd probably lie to myself and say it was the salsa, but know deep down it was the ketchup.

I also love buttermilk.  I think I will go have some now.

Friday, January 13, 2012

But First, Coffee

This year I am not making resolutions, but goals.  Goals seem more attainable.  So far I feel like I've accomplished more than I did all of last year!  I've been busy these two weeks.  I have started running again, I finished 2 knitting projects, completed 2 pinterest projects, made and attended 3 doctors appointments, saw a movie, cooked dinner a lot, cleaned out the fridge and Josh cleaned the pantry, snuggled my kitty, got a haircut, and other stuff I'm not remembering right now.

I went to the allergist doctor yesterday to get tested for my gluten intolerance.  They convinced me to do the inhalant tests too, even though I didn't think I needed to because I have my allergies under control and I've never really had allergies my whole life.  The doctor said I won the award for most allergic person of the day.  He was impressed at how allergic I was to Nashville's grass', trees, cats, dogs, mice, and dust mites.  I am not allergic to mold or cockroaches.  I'm also allergic enough to avocado that I got an epi pen!  I am not allergic to wheat or walnuts though, the things I went in for because of my reactions.  I am allergic to tomatoes, which I had a suspicion.  I eat them just not if they've been canned homemade or Campbell's tomato soup, those things have made me sick for as long as I remember.  I used to hate spaggetti when my mom made it because she used her own canned tomatoes for the sauce and my stomach hurt afterwards so bad every time.

Josh and I signed up for my works IRA program so now we have a retirement plan too.  That's definitely one of the most adult things we've ever done.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before or not, but I was diagnosed with Generalize Anxiety Disorder a year and a half ago I think.  I'm now on a medication that helps that.  I've never wanted to discuss it on the internets because I dont' want people to think it's my life, or to define me by that.  I think about it everyday...and I dont' want to think everyone else is too.  He he he...pretty self absorbed of me.  Anyways, I have good days and I have bad days.  I try not to post on a bad day but sometimes they sneak up on me.  I'm a lot better now.  I used to worry, especially before the pills and during my thesis writing, that if I made one simple little mistake or forgot something the world would end and I would be floating in a black hole of nothingness. I cannot describe or make people understand the paralyzing fear I have of that black hole of nothingness.  Now every action of mine is to stave off that horrible black hole.  Sometimes I realize it doesn't exist or stop being afraid long enough to wonder what's on the other side of it.  After the anxiety hits, I am rendered incapable of decisions, and therefore of action.  I do nothing I worry about and nothing that needs to be done, then I go into a depression at how much I suck at life and how horrible I am and useless and weak.  That hasn't happened that badly in a while though...I practice mindfullness meditation and find that I'm best at it when I'm walking.  I can't wait to try it while I run!  It really affects me at work because work requires me to talk to new people, call people and make decisions, and I dont' know what in the world I'm doing most of the time!  All of those things cue my anxiety.  I have a coworker who has worked with the Tribes for over 20 years and I think he used to teach at a university.  It has really helped my anxiety since he started because I now have someone I can go to to ask all of my questions.  I never wanted to go to my supervisor b/c she is always busy and I don't want to bother her with questions everyone seems to think I should already know the answer to.  My coworker also answers a lot of life questions and once when I stalled my truck twice in one morning, he knew, without a doubt, that it wasn't my inability to be perfect that stalled it but that there was water in the gas tank causing it.  Which turned out to be true!  Up until he told me that I was pretty mad at myself for sucking up driving a stick shift.  I'm trying very hard to talk to myself in a caring compassionate way and not in a critical way.  It's very difficult.

The only thing that's be stable and there for me and helps me through all of this is Josh.  He always listens to me and doesn't judge and doesn't tell me what I should do.  He just helps me understand and tries his hardest to help out.  So let it be known, despite all of his "faults" (which by the way are why I fell in love with him) he is the best thing I know.  Also, he put up with me so well before the pills when everything made me angry and I spent 5 hrs a day watching Criminal Minds or crying.  He never yelled back or got frustrated.  Never.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

General Thoughts

I am suppose to be showering to prepare to go to a friends house.  But when I get there, we are going on a 4 mile hike.  I'll be wearing a hat.  I'll need to shower again for work tomorrow.  Maybe she won't mind dirty hair.  But Josh showered today to go to work...where he gets all dirty.  It's sort of inspiring.

Yesterday Josh and I went to Kroger for a quick grocery shopping trip.  We only spent $30 and I hope the food lasts all week!  But the point is, we were waiting in line to pay, and the larger woman in front of us was wearing white underwear with polka dots of different colors.  I know this because she thought her black nylons were leggings that you couldn't see through.  I think.  That's the only reason I can think of as to why she didn't put a skirt/shorts/long sweater/anything on over it.  I wonder when she will figure it out and how.  Josh didn't notice until she was done paying and leaving....and he even got really close to her to put his stuff on the conveyor belt.  It's all I could look at...like a bad car accident.

Two years ago, during the flood, a school near where I live, had a portable class room building float down the expressway.  It eventually smashed into all the cars underwater and trees and broke apart into pieces.  Later I was told that Extreme Home Makeover came and rebuilt the school.  It wasn't until this week that Josh and I noticed the big giant super fancy building that's all blue where the school is located.  But it's been over a year when the TV show was suppose to have done it in a week, so why didn't we notice it?  Our hypothesis' are that 1. it took a lot longer than a week to truly finish because it was a school not a house 2.  You have to turn your head and look behind you to see it while driving down the expressway, so maybe I just never looked 3.  We couldn't see it in all it's glory until the trees dropped their leaves 4.  Josh and I are just completely unaware of our surroundings.

The school looks like a giant jewel in a field of mud.  It's the most expensive and newest thing in a several mile radius (like 5 miles all around or more).  I wonder when the school will start to look old.  I'm hoping it'll take maybe 20-30 years or more.  Wait, there is a new Zaxby's...but the school is still nicer than that.

The Sears in the our mall is closing.  That means that only Macy's will be left of the large department stores (Dillard's left before we moved down here).  I just don't know what the mall will do now.  The Sears auto center I think did a lot more business than the rest of the mall.