germs: a paper rant

amazing still it seems, i'll be twenty three

my birthday this year found me at the exact same place as it did last year, and also at a different place entirely.

22 was a good year. we completely renovated our little house, got married, went to california, came back, played about a million games of trivial pursuit, got our first Christmas tree, and met our very first niece.

i rung in the first day of 23 roasting in the burning sun with barclay, holding his hand and listening to some sweet music. the rays drew a blotchy, fire engine red pattern around the edges of my clothes and shoes, and i had to squint hard to see the performers on the stage. finally, i gave up and closed my eyes. good thing you can still hear with your eyes closed. 

AND! it was father's day. i like celebrating father's day on my birthday. considering they're somewhat completely connected.

as expected, i got my dixie cup of ice cream, saw lots of friends and family, and listened to scads of music, as well as saw the best tour bus i think i've ever seen [owned by one of my favorite bands maybe ever].

on our way out of the valley, we stopped at the top of the hill to just check out the view. i pretended it was the grand canyon. it was easy enough to do because i've never been to the grand canyon.

all day, barclay kept pulling small birthday presents out of his backpack. a freelance whales cd, some small notebooks, clodhoppers, stuff like that.

my favorite:

the pencil crayons are made of rolled up chinese newspapers. they are the nicest thing i've ever seen this week. he said i can use it for my paper rants. i love my husband.

so i'm off. to write a paper rant on my new paper with my new pencils while eating clodhoppers and listening to freelance whales. so best.
how was your weekend?

inspiring inspirational inspiration about success and succeeding

i found an inspiring piece of inspirational writing the other day at a thrift store.

i love sayings that say something about the subject that they are referring to.

needless to say, i just need to say that this quote -- plus the encouraging picture pictured below it -- made me think about thoughts that i hadn't thought of thinking before.

i almost bought it for my living room because i wanted to hang it in my living room, but the price pictured on the picture's price tag was exponentially more and a lot higher than i was willing to spend [it was 2 bucks].

and now, without further adieu, i will not make you wait any longer because nothing irks me like an irking thing [such as further adieu and waiting for a long time].

nothing succeeds likes success.
words to live by.

friday list number eleven

uno. friday again? they're stacking up like a 6 billion-car collision on the highway of my life. a wonderful, thankgoodnessit'sfriday kind of collision, though.
dos. last night it took me more than two hours to fall asleep. earlier that day, i'd bragged to a friend about how easily i fall asleep at night. "my head hits the pillow and i'm gone," i'd said, "never have a problem with that," i'd said, "can't imagine not being able to fall asleep within five minutes of trying," i'd said. but at midnight i was shaking out my legs and trying to have a friendly conversation with barclay, who really doesn't ever have a problem falling asleep [except for when i'm laying there going, "barclay...you awake? good...me too...what are you thinking about? barclay? baaaarclaaaaaay...]
tres. every single solitary year of my life [excluding the year i lived out in the mountains], i have spent the third weekend in june at the frenchman river valley gospel music jamboree. it is exactly what it sounds like and, incidentally, there is an overabundance of cowboy hats, gospel music, and the best hamburgers you have ever laid lips on. plus, tons of my friends make it out and what's better than tons of friends? not a thing. and, starting tomorrow, jamborree weekend is upon us once again! this weekend is going to rock my proverbial socks off.
cuatro. i don't like country music. however, i am completely ok with sitting out in the hot prairie sun eating a little dixie cup of schwann's ice cream  and listening to cowboys sing hyms in four-part harmony. i wrestled with this seemingly incongruous aspect of my musical consciousness for a while before realizing that country music as it is today is not even the least bit the same as country music was way back when, and gospel music is something else entirely. we're good.
cinco. "my shoe is off, my foot is cold, i have a bird i like to hold." - dr. seuss
cinco. this friday list feels lacking. i'm sorry. i should probably end it here.
seis. oh but one more thing: your comments and emails are so nice. they always make me grin and give me joy zits. merci merci boucoup.

we can try to build a home down the street out of gas, feathers, and doom. our house might as well explode.

have you noticed my new playlist there on the sidebar?
that's mine and barclay's new music game.
the point, in case you're just scratching your head and mumbling something about how you don't get what the point is, is that you have to make a song playlist in which the song titles make up a sentence or a story or something.
it was harder than i thought it would be, but it made for a completely magical evening. we found scads of new music.
try it and let me know what you come up with.

lol and blog and sitting on a bench

i didn't web log yesterday.
[on an only slightly related note, i've decided to not use the term "blog" anymore because, even though it's a completely different principle altogether, it vaguely reminds me of "lol". laugh out loud? did you really? i've had one too many text message conversations with someone who's like, "lol hi! i'm home and i'm eating ichiban noodles loooool!" and i'm like, "i fell down the stairs today and have to eat through a straw for a year." and they're like, "lol that sucks lol!" i just personally feel that "lol" is not a valid punctuation mark. anyway. this is a tangent. the point is definitely not this.]
the point is that i didn't write on this, my web log, yesterday.
i went and sat on a bench instead.
the original intent was to go for a walk, but then my insides went on one of those now-familiar revolts and i had to sit on a bench.
it's alright, sitting on a bench is.
for about the first five minutes, i felt like i was waiting for someone. and then i had this unsettled feeling that people were looking at me with strange, sympathetic stares. like i got stood up or like i had no friends to sit on a bench with.
[i have friends to sit on a bench with. let me tell you.]
i sat there for an hour, and then i went home.
that's all.

i can spend money without even knowing it: a paper rant

friday list what?

1. boy howdy, friday again.
2. last night, kiersten and i walked around right before the sun went down and looked at houses.
3. admission: we looked in the houses too. at about 9 at night, you can't really help it, and it's the home-owners' faults for leaving their blinds wide open, and it's a step up from reading house and home magazines. but i draw the line at taking pictures of the outside of strangers' homes. i promise.
4. i won a pair of bright red sunglasses on wednesday morning. you have never seen such a happy little camper as i was that day. i had joy seeping out of every pore. i got joy zits.
5. someday, i might write a book called joy zits. it'd be, in general, pretty optimistic and cheery. would you read it? consider this an official potential prospective book audience poll.
6. i'm just too tired to think of a number 6. onward.
7. last night, barclay and i thought of a magical new music game. i'll teach it to you tomorrow maybe. music games are the best kind of games, i think.
8. once i had this great farm cat and his name was blackie. blackie had three kittens, so i guess he was a girl. i named them tiger, smokey, and blackie. two of them died, but tiger didn't. tiger had three kittens, and i named them snowflake, smokey, and blackie. smokey and blackie died, but snowflake survived and gave birth to three kittens. i named them smokey, tiger, and blackie. they all died, and then this orange cat started hanging around. i named it tiger, and it had three kittens.
9. speaking of pets, i also had baby chicks, but never named any of them. kaiden had an earthworm that he named goldilocks and a fly named cupcake.

a story about bag clips

they brought me a present.
it was a basket; wider than my pillow, deeper than the kitchen sink, filled with oodles of magical things. there were sharpie markers and colorful tupperware and food and snacks and kiwi-flavoured toothpaste and laundry detergent and cds and headbands and even those little bag clips you can get at ikea if you're lucky enough to live near one.
[i'm not.]
i was most excited about the bag clips. i put them in the kitchen in the drawer beside the stove.

so yesterday when i got home from work, i opened up a bag of frozen peas for supper, emptied half of it into the pot, and reached into the drawer for my new, cheerfully-colored bag clips.
gone.
gone?
wot?
i looked everywhere for them but they were not anyplace.

then it hit me like a sumo wrestler with steel fat.

a quick glance in the medicine cabinet where the toothpaste wasn't, a sweep of the cd cupboard where i saw that my new andrew bird cd was gone without a trace, a peek in the laundry room where there were no longer two boxes of laundry detergent.

finally, i flung the bead curtain door of the pantry out of my way and my suspicions were confirmed.
the snacks and food were gone too.

dreams are nice. dreams are great.
but those realistic ones'll get you every time.

i'm so dissapointed right now.

on the erge of a nehvous breakdown

they were all standing around my desk.
that's not because i'm the cool kid in the office. it's not because i'm overly magnetic or even because i have m&ms in a little cup for people to have. it's because i'm the receptionist, and my desk is positioned in such a way that you will just end up standing at my desk if i don't tell you where to go right away.
so when i get lonely or bored sitting at my desk i say things like, "no, craig's in a meeting right now. you just wait right here. he shouldn't be more than a half hour. he'll let me know when he's out. my name's suzy, what's yours?"
and it's foolproof because if it's someone who bores me or who i get really irritated with quickly, i can just call my reception phone from my cell phone hidden discreetly under my desk and say something like but not neccessarily "craig will see you now."
and sometimes i get up to five people standing around my desk waiting for meetings to get out and we have a grand old time playing twenty questions and honey if you love me.

i don't really do that.

but the point is not that.
but i can't think of what the point was, exactly.
i think i need to stop blogging until i catch up on my sleep.

my first ever ultrasound and my lightning blood

a heart just doesn't look like a heart. did you know that?
it's not bright apple red.
it's not still.
it's not even really heart-shaped.
you know how i know?
i know because i saw mine today.
and it was not bright apple red, it was not still, and it was not even really all that heart-shaped.
but i wasn't dissapointed.
i was actually even very impressed.

i watched the monitor in utter fascination as the cardiologist expertly measured and typed and clicked. she sees hearts every day, all the time.

not me.

i watched the green lines sketch out my heartbeat on the bottom of the screen, getting bigger and shakier with every hacking cough. my black and white heart pounded out a great bass drum beat in the center of the screen. i tried to think of what song it looked like it was drumming along to. i tried to realize that all of this was going on inside of me.

i think the thing that excited me the most was that my blood is fast. i've never been fast. i always lost the races. but i bet my blood could beat your blood in a race.
i got lightning blood.

my headspace II

snort.

sniffle-hack.

wod?

oh, dode mide thad; thass jus by leff lug dere o de coffeh tabe oh.

i coughed id ub dis bordig.

wod?

blog?

you wad be do wride a blog?

i cad.

by bide iss stubbed ub.

here is a pigdur ub be ad robid thad we toog wid da selb-diber.

thadll hab do do.

my headspace

do you want to see what it's like in my head tonight?

it's like that.

today i laid on the couch with alyssa and barclay and watched 2 hours of dr quinn, medicine woman. 

and then i laid on the couch some more. 

had too many blueberries.

do you know how hard it is to blog after doing absolutely zero anything all day?

i can't even think of a funny or creative way to say how hard it is. 

see ya tomorrow.

fishing for compliments

"my hair is stupid."

"suzy. it looks good. i like it like that."

"IT'S SO DUMB."

"suzy. it looks good. i like it like that."

"ugh. i hate going to restaraunts. all the waitresses are gorgeous and perfect and here i just look like a shlubber."

"oh no. not a shlubber."

"yes. a shlubber in a barf bag. yuck."

"well look at me--i haven't showered today. i'm a greaser."

"yeah, but you don't have to compete with the waitresses. there are no man waitresses at mongoli grill."

"there are no man waitresses anywhere."

"what did you say?"

"nothing."

"no, what did you say?"

"mmmmmmm nothing."

"baaaaarclaaaaayyyy..."

"it's a boy secret."

"but...just...tell me..."

"do you want to be a BOY?!"

[jen wilson took this picture]

friday list #9

1. friday. again. good graish. if i had a sharpie marker for every time it was friday, i could color a to-scale model of the planet earth, in eastery pastel hues.
2. i got a new printer at work yesterday. i fired it up and plugged it in, only to discover it was a greek printer and spoke not a word of english.
3. upon examining the troubleshooting guide that came with the greek printer, we found the page on what to do if your printer is in the wrong language. oh good. i will now read a segment of the troubleshooting guide to you:
             

On your printer, select "Options", and "Languages" on the touch screen, then select your desired language.

5. these instructions would help a lot more if i knew the greek words for "options" and "languages". as it is, it took three scholars who'd taken Greek in Bible school to figure out how to make my printer speak English.
6. on wednesday i spilled boiling water on my stomach and scalded myself. i stared at barclay for roughly a second and then screamed bloody murder. right in his ear. pork eye.
7. when my brother says, "poor guy", it sounds like he's saying "pork eye." so now instead of saying "poor guy", barclay and i say "pork eye." it's a thing. you can do it too, if you want. you'll sound kind of insensitive though, like us.
8. today there's a man working on the light fixtures right above my head. he keeps saying things like, "oh, this stuff up here is kind of worrying me. it might fall on your head." and "ha, ha, oh man, i hope this doesn't fall on your head." and "man, if these fall on your head, i'm going to feel terrible." i'm starting to worry that something is going to fall on my head.
9. i wish i had a raspberry mocha right now, and some headphones with samuel beam in them. and someone willing to play a game of monopoly with me.
10. you remember dr quinn, medicine woman? like, jane seymour? did you know her actual name is actually Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg?

a sow bug and a human: a paper poem

now, don't you want to know why there was rotten potato salad in my purse?

aren't you a bit curious?
it all started at the coffee house down the street, where you can get a large panini for $9.49.
the panini is nice. the panini is fine. the panini can feed two hungry people or one extreeeemely hungry person.
[i can eat a whole one myself. i'm a rhinosaurus.]

but the point is not that.

the point is that the $9.49 panini comes with a puzzling little container of what would appear to be potato salad. i've never met someone who likes the obnoxious little salad, and it usually gets tossed.

good graish, wot a waste.

you and i both know that food has two uses: "eating" and "other".
[["other" includes but is not limited to: food fights, crafts [maccaroni necklaces and such], and, my personal favorite, pranking.]]
this food was not eat-worthy, so aimee and i decided to figure out the "other" use. we further decided that this particular food would be especially good--and only, really, good--for pranking.

a prank involves three components: a victim, a plan, and a flawless carrying-out.
we got the first two, and about a sliver of the third.

the anatomy of Project Potato Dalas

the victim: Dallas [because his name is pretty much salad backwards and also his office is the most accessible from my workspace.]

the plan: every friday, we will split a large panini and obtain one container of "potato salad". shortly after one o'clock [taking careful note of the time] suzy will slip into dallas' office and hide the container somewhere out of easy eye-sight. we will then wait outside and take note of how long it takes dallas to find said potato salad. we will keep a log book of his times, personal bests, personal worsts, how stinky his office becomes, etc.

the flawless carrying-out: i'll shoot straight with you: we did it once. it took him roughly an hour and twenty minutes to find the potato salad behind his desk. we returned to the coffee house the following friday, at which time i stuffed the potato salad into my purse, and promptly forgot about it. until saturday. not like saturday next saturday saturday. saturday a month later saturday.

the backlash: that's right. when you don't pull off the third part of your prank well, there will inevitably be a fourth part. and that part is this part--the backlash. the part where i open my purse a month later and stick my hand in month-old rotten potato salad.

anyways. that's all. kids: think twice before playing food-related pranks. think three times. and don't transport the ammo in a non-sealable container.

saturday, two days later

ok. now to finish the post i began writing right before i found the rotten potato salad in my purse. 

which is a whole nother post in itself. 

anyways. where did i leave off...

oh yes, "it was almost my dream saturday [see friday list number 8] except brekkie wasn't quite that elaborate and we weren't in california and it rained so i didn't get my sunburn and substitute a cadbury chocolate bar for the lindt chocolate and an elephant for a panda bear and i didn't get to sleep in a hammock.

however..."

...however, the day was a gas. 

i took pictures on my cell phone, because professional-type cameras are beyond overrated. 

also i can't afford one.

[mostly i can't afford one.]

we [we = kiersten &  i] walked down 13th to the cathedral arts festival.
first we saw shar, dancing up a storm in the street with her dance team.

shar dances like the northern lights!

then we jetted to the cathedral to see liz sing. 

she hit the very highest note. i was beyond impressed.

then we wandered down the street, past buskers--

--hippies--

--royal court jesters--

-and men wrapped in saran wrap for no good reason.

[he was shouting, "hey! hey you! do you think i can get out of this saran wrap?" and then he wriggled out of it and asked for money from the bystanders. 

"don't be cheap. i gave you a good show. you owe it to me. i don't come into your place of employment and leave without paying, do i?"

no. that's true. 

but if i sold women's hats and i came up and stuck one on your head, even though you don't need a woman's hat and don't want a woman's hat and didn't ask for a woman's hat, would you still owe me money?]

anyways. the point is not that.

the point is that THEN we went for coffee with a bunch of nice people. 

that was nice. 

then kiersten, full of nicety & an overly wonderful london fog, had the highlight of her day. 

we met caitie vancise, the designer for Vintage Charm Jewelry & Hair Accessories.  

she was very cool and very sweet and wants to someday open up a shop all her own and sell cute things.

i think she should. i offered to sometimes just sit in her shop and look at all the cute things and she said something like but not necessarily, "sure, i'll pay you in jewelry."

stellar.

anyways, kiersten bought this necklace and a sweet peacock headband and we swooned over them alllllllll day because we're girls. that's what we have to do sometimes. 

          

then it started raining.

like, torrentially.

we ran for cover into another coffee shop. 

[luckily, there are about twenty million of those in the area.] 

[well four. and three bakeries. that's not important.]

we sat by the window and talked about love and work and the cute necklace that kiersten bought. 

the day was lovely, but the rain started to wash the cathedral arts festival away. 

 

so we had to go home.

but THEN!

barclay took me to the circus!

and we lived happily ever after.