If the world is an overwhelming place in which I inhabit a little calm boring corner of, I can be grateful of that.

thoughts of the morning:1.) this girl who used to have regular dreams involving apocalypse, rejection, and violence, woke up from a lovely time of visiting with friends and family (my cousin Jenn even asked if anyone wanted to play parcheesi. I thought, "how does one play parcheesi?") 2.)Television dreams my dreams for me and I'm not sure that's a good thing 3.) I went to bed with intention about what I still want to do in life (not what I want out of life, cause that's easy= happiness) and a clear idea of what, if not a concrete plan of how to make those things happen, a clear idea of what I want to avoid doing n order to make those things more likely happen 4.) Change (capital C) is happening in ways we can and cannot control. We need to/should (normative versus positive lecture in college political science class. was positive the other word?) work to change the things that we can. history tells me that scary things happen in times of change 5.) I'm glad that some of the things I like are not prohibited in a jail cell: reading and yoga, although I'd miss sunlight. however, if I ended up in a jail cell I'm not sure that times would be such that that would be enough or that they would allow me to do those things 6.) I am soft. Yesterday I bought yet another jar of $6 hazelnut spread and multiple cups of coffee. My guilt sends me to the $6 jar, but my reason should tell me otherwise 7.) It's all over. It's too late. But I'm still here. My cat is grooming herself in my doorway, I'm lying in bed, coffee will be ready soon. Shoot, I still have to pour the water into the french press. 8.) log out of facebook. pick up that real book. even if you are accomplishing nothing, maybe you will at least stave off alzheimers in your old age. 9.) who was alzheimer? wikipedia is down today 10.) I should call my grandmother. and I should write my congressperson. how is it that I am so ignorant and inarticulate? it's my own fault. If I had a month to shut myself in my room and study... 11.) I want to move 700 miles away, away from all distractions and obligations 12.) still haven't made that coffee yet

That is my proof positive that thinking constantly does not indicate intelligence. The other day at work I realized I thought of the character Miranda from the television show "sex and the city" four separate times. I don't have any affinity towards her or Cynthia Nixon. But she kept popping into my consciousness. What are the things I still want to do in life? Two of the three things I articulated to myself last night I can accomplish right here, even right here in my bed if I had the tools. If I focused those racing thoughts and stopped idly thinking about "sex and the city" so much. I'm banking on the fact that the women in my family typically live long lives and that I'm a late bloomer. However, I have also observed that those same women who are blessed with health have also had their dreams curtailed or shifted by life, so I guess it's especially nice that they were granted the time to wrap their heads around those facts and make peace with them (my nana says, "isn't it a shame we had to be poor, but so good looking").

My family is very interesting to me. It'd make a good story that I will never write. I'm sure most peoples families are interesting. It's the story of people after all. Alls I'm saying is, we got plot. Which is good, because from my perspective as a child, I'm missing some of the dialog. The tip of the iceberg, which author said that? Anyway, i forget most everything that happened, and most of the things I'm told, my brain as most people's just clings onto the sensational bits.

I'm going to make that coffee now. I hope the water's still hot enough.

Meet Virginia or I'll Never Get it Right

This will end with an explanation of how I nearly caught caused (well, started) a kitchen fire with the microwave and ruined a perfectly good pair of underwear and our trash basket. You can guess. It's going to be pretty anticlimactic, as I already giggled about it all day the day it happened and have pretty much lost the steam to tell it. But here goes:

I met my friend for coffee yesterday and he looked down at my feet and remarked that the combination of my flip flops and bike clips reminded him "of that Train song." Kind of an embarrassing reference for him to make, but I did get it, howling, "she only drinks coffee at midnight... but I drink coffee ALL DAY!" Nerds. Anyway, I don't get it. I never have. It's not a chosen aloofness, a rejection of the norms of style and behavior, I just genuinely can't function in that way. Those girls that you see shivering outside of the bar in December in their tiny clothes-- I would totally be them. I didn't have a moment ever where I looked at hot chicks and said, "well, that looks stupid," it's just so unnatural and foreign to me that I can't even conceive of operating my life like that.

When I was younger, my mom bought us (my siblings and me) a giant trampoline for Christmas one year. My parent's were not wealthy, but Christmas was always a big holiday for us.

So, before I tell you about the beautiful porcelain doll that my grandmother gave me one year (she lost her eyelash, and I was just so upset), let me just wrap up my pleasant trip down memory lane and say that I rarely jumped on that giant trampoline. I was too self conscious to jump on the trampoline. The neighbors could see me, people walking down the street could see me. I didn't want anyone to see me jumping and think I looked stupid.

I'm not sure why that happened. I remember changing schools in 5th grade and going from being a happy little weirdo to being very shy and self conscious. I remember having a clear thought that I needed to change who I had been. I was 10 years old! Anyway, I don't know anything about child psychology, but I'm sure that kind of thing happens. Well, I hope it does. So I spent about a decade being painfully embarrassed at just existing (my description of adolescence) and afraid to do fun, harmless things like jumping on trampolines in my own back yard.

Well now, I often feel like I could very easily be the butt of a joke, but rather than it causing me to shut down I try to embrace it. Or I'm an attention whore. I do like it when people like me, so of course if this story caused people to actively dislike me rather than find me slightly ridiculous I might not share it:

I was getting ready for work. I had not had the time to do laundry for about a week. Even though I suspect there was clean underwear somewhere in the giant heap of clean laundry that permanently rests at the foot of my mattress, I couldn't find any. So I decided to hand wash some and microwave it dry. I totally have microwaved my clothes before (totally. this is totally normal), when I worked at a coffee shop and I didn't realize my work shirt wasn't clean before my shift. So I took the damp underwear, wrapped it in a paper towel (to be considerate of my housemates) and microwaved it for about a minute. They were still damp, so I put the underwear back in the microwave and unthinkingly went upstairs. When I came back downstairs, it was clear that my underwear were ruined. The paper towels looked singed and brown. So I tossed the underwear in the (empty)trash basket and went to brush my teeth. I came back into the kitchen to find smoke coming up from under the sink. The downstairs smelled like burning plastic. My housemates were still asleep, so I had to alert them of the fact that I nearly started a kitchen fire them via text message as I rode the train to work.

I texted my mom what happened and she replied, "you're just like your grandmother!" alluding to the time that my maternal grandmother almost burned down their apartment by putting her girdle in the oven. I told Ish and he called it "some crackhead-ass shit" and I reminded him that my nana had made a similar mistake some thirty years ago, and he maintained that "some crackhead-ass shit" runs in my family.

And that's the story. I really do fear the day when I am no longer young. I suspect that this sort of behavior doesn't age well.