Whoo-hoo

I just received an email from my advisor/professor.  She got a call today from someone trying to organize a session on English linguistics at the MLA conference in San Antonio next year.  And so she sent me email to see if I wanted to work on something and present it.  Of course I said yes.  It’s presenting, which looks great on a CV and it’s local so I won’t have to dish out a lot of money to get there.  Fantastic!  Now I just have to figure out what I want to do–the abstract is due soon.  But she’s going to help me think of something.

I’m very happy!

I did tons of stupid things

This is to make up for the blog I recently posted about my mother.  Granted, she’s odd, but I have no room to talk.  I’m not only clumsy, but kind of dim sometimes.

Okay, when I was about 8 years old, my mother was struggling to put my hair into a bun for a ballet recital.  It took lots of hairpins and hairspray.  So much hairspray that I had to stand there with my eyes closed while she kept whirling that damned can around my head.  I started coughing and she said “Run.”  So I did, out of the bathroom and straight into a wall.  Because I didn’t bother to open my eyes.

My defense: She didn’t tell me to open my eyes.  Momma gave me an order and I followed it.  She should have been more explicit.

Mom’s thoughts following this incident?  According to her, she just sat there, shaking her head and thinking “That’s my gifted child.”

This is still my favorite thing on YouTube, ever

And Molly is the one who sent it to me, back during the summer of woe. It still makes me laugh every time.

It’s that time of night

So anyone who knows my mother knows that she gets . . . interesting after a certain point in the evening. You know how some cats, around midnight usually, just freak out and start chasing invisible things and run around for about 30 minutes? Well my mom does that, only it starts at around 9, and instead of chasing things she just flat out loses her mind. She laughs at everything and if you ask her why she’s laughing she just laughs harder until she starts crying and it just keeps going from there. If you dare raise an eyebrow at her, as if to say “What?” she will scream at you “Don’t look at me!!!” and then start laughing again and maybe run away.

This has a very specific name. C-time.

She doesn’t even have to be in person for this to happen.

I love foreigners

That’s foreigners, like people. Not Foreigner the band. I don’t like them so much.

After class tonight I met Molly at Titaya’s Thai restaurant for dinner. Food was great, conversation was better (ask Molly about my guess for her faux pas). We leave, I walk out and hey! I can’t get into my car!

Random useless information

I was reading a comment diversion on Pajiba today about ringtone choices on cell phones. Everyone has a different opinion, ranging from “I’m too serious/hip to do lame shit like worry about ringtones” to “I have a different ringtone for everyone I know; here’s a list!” And of course there’s always the contest between people to have the coolest, most nostalgiac, most obscure band ringtone. Extra points for using something dealing with 80s childhood nostalgia, like having the Fraggles theme song.

This got me thinking about the ringtones I’ve made for my phone (I’m not paying for them, people actually pay for them?).

I once pierced my foot

It’s true, I did. When I was 17, I was walking through our carpeted dining room and stepped on a sewing needle. It pierced the bottom of my right foot and came out through the top on the side below my small toe. I sat down in one of the chairs and calmly said, “Mom? I need you to come here for a second.” She was in the living room and asked “What? What for?” At this point, I was starting to freak out. I said, “I need you to come take this out, right now!”

Another word transformation

I was sitting up last night, playing Amateur Surgeon on adult swim (great game!), and for some reason unknown to me heard the phrase “long time” followed by “milk bone.”

So for my own amusement I’m going to trace how I got from one to the other.

Why I broke the piggybank

Of course I had a piggybank as a child. I would scrounge or beg for change and feel very adult as I dropped my change into my piggybank. I dreamed of all the things I would be able to buy because I was feeling very rich.

One night, for no good reason that I can recall, I decided that I must get my money. It was very important. I shook and rattled my piggybank and hey! I heard money!

Baby Hand

Yet another childhood tale of mine. I nicknamed all the kids I hung around, and this nickname is exactly what you think.

When I was 5 years old, we moved from one section of the neighborhood to the other section. This neighborhood was so new, there was no grass in the backyard and no fences between anyone. Around the block (or diagonally through the back yards) lived a girl that I will call M. I was friends with M only because her mother took care of me sometimes. I hated M. I hated M so much that I used to cry before going to her house. Not only was M mean, but M’s mother was mean.