Stubborn

I just got off the phone with my mother (hi Mom!) and had to tell her that I didn’t plan on walking in the graduation for my Master’s in May.  I could have sworn I told her this before, but she’s apparently been under the impression that I would be.

Well, I’m not.  For several reasons.

First of all, graduations are just boring as hell.  Second, UT is a huge school and even if they break up the ceremonies by department, it is going to last forever.  Third, I just don’t feel like it!  I still don’t know for certain if I want to stay for a doctorate and if I do, I don’t really want to walk for what wouldn’t be my terminal degree.

Now, I have walked in two other graduations.  One high school (okay, GED, it was lamer than you could imagine) and my undergrad.  But the second one was special and I wouldn’t have missed it anyway.  It was the Katrina graduation, January 2006, and UNO had pulled a fall semester out of thin air following the storm.  Professors scattered all over the country came together and made online courses and crazy satellite campuses and just did the damn thing.  It was very cool.  And that graduation was so celebratory for so many reasons.  We all cheered at everything, no matter how small.  We heard how the president of the university convinced the Coast Guard to bring him across the lake to the school, he and others hiked over the levee and rescued the servers.  We all cheered when they said the name of a department as the graduates walked in.  We cheered for hours at everything, but mostly our own perseverence.

However, we invited lots of our friends to that (C and I were both graduating, a feat in itself) and NO ONE CAME except for MY parents.  I would just like to point that out.  I guess I’m still a little bitter about that.

Anyway, I don’t feel especially motivated to walk in this graduation for tons and tons of reasons and no amount of persuasion is going to change that.  I told my mother that we will be visiting in May for a combined birthday celebration, we’re bringing M with us (maybe) and she can just roll graduation into all that.  Yippee.  Give me some crawfish, a poboy, and a daquiri and I say that’s good enough.

Of course, then my mother mentions that I could get presents.  I tell her I own so much crap that C and I are actually trying to declutter.  Then she switched her game and tried to tell me that my father was crying in a corner due to my new status as an ungrateful, horrible daughter.  I said, “This is neither the ending of The Natural nor The Benny Goodman Story, so I know he’s just fine.”

Not doing it.  Can’t make me.  So there.

In loving memory

C finally went yesterday to get her latest tattoo.  She had been wanting one for Tiger ever since we put her to sleep (understandably) and voila!   Here it is:

We’re twisted people, and actually took a picture of the blood imprint left on the temporary bandage.

Here’s a close-up of the tattoo (so you can see the small bit of shading on the paw):

Learning the Rhythm

A conversation with A made me remember one of my greatest friends tonight.  Not that he’s ever too far from my thoughts, but still.  I still miss you like mad, babe.

Eddie was a sensualist. Not in the sexual way (although that certainly came into play as we grew older) but because of his love of beauty. All beauty, especially music. He could be brought to tears by a good guitar riff, or a spectacular piano melody. But rhythm was his true love and he engulfed himself in it. One day, when I was fourteen and he was sixteen, he arrived at my house. I was in a mood, one of those moods that spontaneously pounce upon fourteen-year-old girls, and was sulking in my living room. “Field trip!” he announced. We went to New Orleans and walked to a corner near a construction site. He grabbed my arm to stop me and closed his eyes.

“What are you doing,” I asked. “Are you sleepy?”
“Shut up for a minute,” he said patiently.
“If we’re just gonna stand here, I came out for nothing. There are plenty of construction sites in Slidell. Aren’t we gonna DO something?”
“I said shut up. Have I ever brought you out here and not shown you a good time? If you shut up I can find it.”

Suddenly, he did. He opened his eyes and smiled.

“Okay, do you see that big yellow thing over there? The one that’s pounding the street?” he asked.
“Uh…yeah. So?”
“That’s the bass drum. Hear it? It’s a real slow beat, in 4/4. Now pay attention.”

I looked at him with my right eyebrow cocked in sarcastic bemusement. I had no clue what he was getting at. My early teenage attitude was on the rise and I was about to say something, but he beat me to it.

“I said shut up. You can give me that shit when we get home, but for now I need you to listen. So, we have a bass. Alright, hear that glass? Like a crashing, tinkling sound. Those are the cymbals. The hammer over there, that’s the snare. The heels, hear em? Those are the rims. Now close your eyes and listen.”

I did. I closed my eyes, before he yelled at me, and leaned my head back for good effect. I stood there, thinking what a moron and then…I heard it. I heard it. I heard the beat of the bass start it off, I heard the clicking of a woman’s high heels at a faster tempo. Someone threw a bag of trash somewhere, crash.  Glass broke, cymbals shivered. I heard something new: swish, swish. A street sweeper had come along. I opened my eyes and looked at Eddie. He was thrilled; he’d always wanted to try brush sticks. He pulled me in front of him and began to beat a rhythm on my back. We stood there, audience for the street corner concert, and listened.

Great

Looks like C might be getting laid off some time around March. That’s when it becomes a possibility, anyway. And honestly, she’s more likely to be laid off than another assistant manager for a couple reasons.
1) Post-Katrina wages were raised by that company, so she transferred here with a slightly higher pay scale
2) She’s currently part-time while she goes back to school.

Crap. And I get to find a job here in Austin come June. Crap crap crap. Maybe I should just find a way to stay in school?

Stay tuned for a girly moment

My friend H bought me a bottle of Stella McCartney perfume for Christmas and it was delivered today. I looooove it. Rose, peony, mandarin, and amber. It is so nice. I smell awesome.

In the bell jar

I’ve been feeling down lately.  Unmotivated, tired, cranky.  M screams at me “Clinical Depression!”  I just think it’s lack of stuff to do.  I’ve said many times that I need a certain level of stress and tension to keep going and when I’m on break, I don’t get enough of either.  Of course, when classes start again, I’ll have both in abundance and be bitching about how I need a break.  Woe is me.

I was talking C’s ear off about “I want to move to New Orleans, you should apply to Xavier’s pharmacology program, we’ll live uptown and be happy and I can have seafood whenever I want and I’ll understand the weather and be able to breathe again!!”  She quite helpfully pointed out that I apparently do this every break and to please, for the love of God, take a deep breath and chill.

I’ve had a fun couple of nights, though.  Grabbed M last night and headed to K’s house for a night of martinis, wine, movies, and a few highly amusing rounds of Scattergories.  Good times.  Tonight I delivered sushi and company in an effort to keep a good friend from snuggling up to her own bell jar.  Which doesn’t sound fun on paper, but I always have a good time with her.  Somehow, we never run out of things to talk about, it’s kind of amazing.  I also drank a michelada and have become kind of obsessed.  How beer, clam juice, and tomato juice make a tasty drink is beyond me, but hey! I drank something with beer in it.  And for those of you that know me personally, you will admit that this is a huge deal.  So yay me.

Right, then, in an effort to stave off what is apparently my constantly impending gloom, I am going to pull my panties up (I don’t like wearing socks) and get back to working on my thesis.  This is my plan anyway, I might get sucked back into watching old episodes of Doctor Who and The Office instead.  It happens.  C and I are also planning a de-cluttering of our apartment, which might help a lot of things.  We’ve been looking around and observing the massive amount of CRAP we seem to own, including boxes that we have moved twice without even opening them.  That is just silly.  Furthermore, we have a whole stack of VHS tapes that we keep moving around, but our VCR hasn’t been hooked up in almost 2 years.  That’s just ridiculous—it’s all going away.  Today I started going through books to toss (a HUGE deal, for me) and found some books that we have 2 copies of!!  Definitely time to streamline.

And that’s all I’ve got.  Holidays were good, New Year’s was fun.  Time to get ready for the new semester.  At which point I’ll start complaining again.

Ended up being great

I started the day morose and cranky.  I was NOT looking forward to spending New Year’s Eve by myself.  But N invited me over for bad movies, pizza, and Wii.

I brought over Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, one of the cheesier dance movies ever made, and we sat and chatted while we giggled at the outlandish outfits and choreography.

At one point, I brought up the fact that while C and I have been listening to the last Harry Potter audio book, I keep hearing the narrator use “disorientated” and it’s driving me crazy.  I keep meaning to crack open the book and see if it was actually written that way or if the narrator is just horrible like that.

She pulled out a copy, and I found that it is, indeed, the narrator’s fault.  Happy, I screamed “Go J.K. I knew you weren’t that stupid!”

N thought I said “Jackée” (the actress from 227, remember?) and said in all seriousness, “Did she read it?”  That sent us off into gales of laughter and impersonations of Ms. Jackée reading parts of the book (“Haaarrryyyy”).  At some point, N had to run and use the bathroom and I could hear her still laughing from where I sat in the living room.

C wasn’t supposed to be home from work tonight until 1 am or so, but she called me at 11:40 asking where I was.  Turns out she got off work early and came home to surprise me.  I told her I was still out, very sorry, and Happy New Year.  N said “Go! Hurry! Race home, but be careful of drunks and cops.”  I drove like a barely restrained madwoman and made it home with one minute to spare, surprising the hell out of C.

So, it was a good night!!  Better than I could have hoped for, and certainly better than I expected.  Here’s to a great 2009.