whine...

i'd like to whine loudly and childishly about the fact that i cut the tip of my pinky finger at lunch on my cheese slicer and now it hurts to type. grr.

oh, i might be hooked...

I went on a ride last night on the back of my friend's motorcycle. At one point on the way home, she asked if I was comfortable leaning forward as I was. She joked that I was probably warmer that way, using her to break the wind, but in the summer I'd be leaning back to catch the wind and cool off.

At the next stop light I said, "In the summer I won't be leaning back, I'll be *THERE*." I pointed to our right and behind us just a bit. She turned around to look quizzically at where I was pointing, as I finished, "on the next bike over."

So, I'm going home tonight to toy with my budget and figure out if I can afford a bike.

a friday meme

by the look of things, this migrated from somebody's myspace... oh, the contagion!

1. You have 10 bucks at a gas station, what do you get?
$5 in gas, a GIANT dr pepper, and a bag of 3d jalapeno cheddar doritos

2. If you had to be reincarnated as some sort of sea dwelling creature, what would you be?
no doubt, i'd be a hammerhead shark. they are the coolest looking things out there.

3. Who's your favorite redhead?
reneenee! except her hair's not red anymore. still, she's my favorite. amythest is a close second.

4. What do you order when you're at a pancake house?
crepes, whenever possible.

5. Last book you read?
working on robert jordan's latest. Knife Of Dreams

6. Have you made out with anyone on your friend's list?
yes, i have.

7. Describe your favorite pair of underwear:
a pair of boxers with spongebob on one leg and "talk nerdy to me" in large print on the other.

8. Describe the last time you were injured:
i got a papercut severe enough to require a band-aid on tuesday. i'll count that.

9. Of all your friends, who would you want to be stuck in the middle of a jungle with?
rose or brody or both. the jungle would be sorry it had tried to eat us by the time we got out.

10. Are there any odd things that make you feel uncomfortable?
when people have those surgeries where they put pins in to hold the bones in place and then those are attached outside their skin to some kind of traction thingie. it gives me a chillshiver right to my toenailhair every damn time i see that.

11. Tell me an embarrassing story from your high school years:
walking down the hall, i sneezed and my retainer flew out of my mouth, landed and slid across the floor. eep!

12. What is the wallpaper on your cell phone?
a random sunny color pattern in warm tones that reminds me it won't be graywinter for FREAKIN ever.

13. Soda?
don't you mean "coke"? i drink dr pepper flavored coke most of the time.

14. Flavor of pudding?
vanilla.

15. What type of shirt are you wearing?
long-sleeved black t-shirt with the freebird's world burrito logo superimposed on a picture of the earth taken from space.

16. Prescription medication?:
none for me, thanks.

18. How many people are on your friends list?
this only makes sense if it's posted on a livejournal or myspace blog.

19. How many people on your list do you know in real life?
this only makes sense if it's posted on a livejournal or myspace blog.

20. What are you listening to right now?
babble from down the hall

21. Most recent movie you watched?
The Woodsman with kevin bacon

22. Name 3 things you have on you at all times:
my hair, my hands, and my feet. everything else is mutable.

23. Would you rather give or receive a foot massage?
can we trade? i'd just as soon have either, so long as it involves skin contact.

24. Name a teacher you had the hots for:
can't say i ever have had a teacher crush. none of mine were remotely hot, aesthetically speaking.

25. What is a saying that you use a lot?
"that's a riot!"

26. How many people on your friends list are exes?
this only makes sense if it's posted on a livejournal or myspace blog.

27. What is your favorite part of the chicken?
any part i don't have to eat.

28. What's your favorite town?
whichever one i'm going to next! i love me some road trippin'...

29. Favorite kind of cake?
yellow mix cake with chocolate frosting. it's a childhood thing. (becca, joy, do y'all remember those microwave cakes? where you had to make the cake pan out of the box?)

30. What's the first word that comes to mind right now?
gumbo

31. When was the last time you saw your mom in person?
about three weeks ago she was up here visiting and i drove over to my sister's house to have dinner with them.

32. What makes you feel like puking?
ummm... the flu virus? botulisms? i don't generally barf outside of actual medical illness.

34. What did you have for dinner LAST NIGHT?
veggie patch pizza at applebee's

35. How long have you been at your current job?
almost 9 months

36. Is Tom on your friends list?
i think this meme must have traveled over from myspace. tom is the default friend on myspace the way frank the goat is on livejournal. and, yes, tom and frank are both on my lists.

37. What's the last thing you said out loud?
be a good girl, see you later. (to my dog, molly)

38. Look to your right, what do you see?
my cell phone, highlighters, engineer's scale, and stapler.

39. Who is the last person you spent over $100.00 on?
i sponsored a song for a local musician named kathy corbin who really needs to get a cd recorded and out there for sale. i hope the project is successful.

40. Who's your favorite villain?
Maleficent from disney's sleeping beauty

41. What's the last piece of clothing you borrowed ?
a pair of socks.

42. What's the last piece of clothing you bought?
Ka-Pow! boxers from Gap when i went shopping with brody this weekend. actually, he paid for them, so i owe him some bux... i forgot my wallet when we went to the mall. perhaps the fact that this did not surprise or dismay either of us, when it was revealed, will help reinforce the literal truth of my answer to number 22.

43. What phrase makes you laugh no matter where, when or how?
i don't think such a magic phrase exists.

45. What does your last text message say?
Realistically, in any relationship you're going to get your feelings hurt by something. Is it worth putting up with this in exchange for the good stuff?

Brody Brings the Ice

So, this weekend was the second time my friend, Brody, has visited me in Fort Worth. This is also the second time that Fort Worth has completely iced over, necessitating the use of sand trucks and ice scrapers for and among the populace. Coincidence? I think not.

We managed to have fun, anyway. We tried to trek across the metroplex to visit Ikea in Frisco on Saturday. However, just as we reached downtown Fort Worth on the freeway, we were halted by a wall of vehicles coming to the most rapid halts they could manage on the slick roads. There was a sand truck turned perpendicular to the flow of traffic and there were an array of flashy-wirly lights in the thick of things. Ordinarily, I'd be completely thrown by the combination of whirly and flashy things, but I managed to avert my eyes long enough to make an exit off the freeway before we were enmeshed in the traffic snarl. We had a minor adventure on our exit because it involved some unsanded bridges and some Texans who don't understand that the appropriate approach to such things is neither your accelerator nor your brake, and that a 2-second following distance is insufficient when the driving surface is ICE. Seriously, dudes, the Tundra in front of us was turned sideways relative to the direction of his movement and i think he might have bounced off the barrier wall more than once.

So, we ended up staying home, making stew and chili con queso, and watching movies. A great time! I must say that the movie Ray, while it is a terrific story and was very well made, is LOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGG. Longer than is comfortable to sit still for, really. We inadvertently watched the "Extended Version" which probably only added 10 minutes, at most, to the film. I was up and down several times while watching the film to stir the stew and let Molly out to potty (aside: if your dog can't hold it through the movie, the movie is DEFINITELY too long) and I still felt a little stir-crazy and chairbound when it ended.

The other film we watched was The Woodsman. It was intense. It deals with the struggle of a convicted pedophile (who apparently got off on smelling little girls' hair) to reintegrate into society. It's hard to find housing, hard to find a job, hard to find friends. In the end, the character finds redemption, but it's uncertain up until the very last moment whether he will or not. According to Brody, it's a very realistic portrayal of the sex offenders' struggle to be "normal". Some other areas of the film (like the love story and the family reconciliation story) suffer, just because the movie can't be long enough to treat everything with the same depth. All in all, intense, but worth watching.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my fish survived me leaving them while I was in Austin last weekend. The weekend feeder tablet did the trick, apparently, because there were no floating fish skeletons waiting for me when I returned. We're into the third week of tank cycling now, and I'm researching other fish I can keep. I was really keen on one kind called the Black Molly, for the obvious and cheesy reason that it goes with my dog, Molly, a black lab. However, they have a water temperature incompatibility with the Zebra Danios I've got in the tank right now, so I think I'm going to look at keeping tetras. They come in a number of shiny color variations which I think would be fun, and they're supposedly not too hard to keep alive. This is good! The only thing I worry about is that if I get a bunch of them, I'll become mesmerized by their shiny flashiness every time I walk past the tank...

DAILY RANDOM!

names obscured to protect the supremely innocent, and the merely moderately innocent. you can decide which of us you think is which.

Her: something happened last night that I wanted to share with you...because I believe you would appreciate it--and my horror of the situation
Me: go ahead. i woke up this morning and saw i'd missed a text from you...
Her: I went to the gas station by my house to pick up a cup of ice on my way to the library last night. I had to write a fucking paper
Her: While walking from the freezer to the checkout.....I got "Ms. So-and-So"-d
Me: oh, no!
Me: a student?
Her: yes
Her: I wanted to crawl under the shelves
Her: Jeez, what if I had been buying beer or condoms?
Me: well, then the student would have been forced to go back to his/her insulated little life and cry to his/her friends about how s/he saw the TA buying beer or condoms and how it'd scarred him/her for life.
Me: you'd probably do the same thing... plus probably turning 10 shades of red.
Her: oh, sure...make fun
Me: :) ok, i will.
Her: it was a girl, by the way
Her: to save you from the gender games you have to play with the pronouns
Me: thanks.
Me: you've never had to go to a pharmacy and have a family friend instruct you on how to de-worm yourself, have you?
Her: um...no
Me: then i've got you beat on the "embarrassed at the register" game. hands down.
Me: unless you have something better than being caught by a student while buying ice...
Her: no, that's pretty much it
Me: ok.
Her: my kung-fu is weak and bows to your superior embarrassing moment.
Me: thank you.
Me: i'd been in mexico on a class project. in spite of everyone's best efforts at handwashing, drinking bottled water, and careful food prep, etc... some of us ended up with worms.
Her: I wasn't going to ask

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

the greatest little love-bugs ever would like to wish all my readers a happy valentine's day. they sure made my day, i hope they make yours! hugs and kisses!!!

ROAD TRIPPIN!!!!

yee-hippity-haw!!! i LOVE road trips!

I'm going to Austin tonight with a few friends... Deena, Teal, Reneenee, and Rose. We'll be going to see my friend Brody and his peeps at the Kings N Things drag show. And from there, the weekend is wide open! We're going to try to make it out to The Oasis for some awesome food and a gorgeous sunset, and maybe see Melissa Ferrick out at the Flamingo Cantina on Saturday.

yea! (did i cram enough links into that paragraph for you?)

And now, I shall bop off to do the HappyRoadTripDance!!! and attempt to get something productive done at work with what's left of my afternoon.

Oh, and I fed my fish... a big weekend rock that sits at the bottom of the tank and supposedly releases Spirulina and krill, or some such nonsense. We'll see. If they're alive when I get home, I'll be thrilled.

Oh, yeah... I finally got some fish for my tank. I got 6 zebra danios to cycle the filter with. This is what they look like:

I Tried.

I tried to pour my light into your darkness, to fill it up, to lift you and light you and show you your own light. You were a crystal cave that my spark could awaken to fiery color, to dazzle.

I didn't have enough light. Your darkness needed every spark I had, needed more the more I gave. I wanted so much to give, I would have died to give it all to you, and
YOU.
WOULD.
HAVE.
TAKEN.
ALL.

You couldn't let me go out for more light. You relied so much on me, you didn't have your own to give.
You wouldn't let me refill myself, and so I could never fill you.

We both went dark.

I tried.

I tried.

When I was cold, alone in complete darkness, underground, when no light was left in me -- you asked more even then. I was dead. My eyes were dead, my heart was a rock. It wasn't numb. It had never felt, forgot living and warmth and the light. How could you ask for more from me then? Where was I to get it? I didn't even remember what the light looked like.

Knowing I couldn't give you what you needed... it broke me.

For you, for my beloved, if I had it to give, if I'd had to scrape it out of my own heart with my own dying hand and leave myself a weeping wound to get it,
I.
WOULD.
HAVE.
GIVEN.
ALL.

HOW COULD YOU ASK ME TO DO THAT?

I used to shine.

I used to glow.

I remember it now, although I didn't then.

I used to light a hundred souls who returned that light, reflected and strengthened. I always had enough for myself, for everyone who wanted any, for everyone who needed, for friends and lovers and family and beloved. Always some reflected and some didn't, but there was always enough.

You took it all. You took from wanters, needers, myself, friends, family, everyone. Your dark swallowed me until no reflections came back to me. Enclosed, I tried to pour my remaining light into you. I tried to make you glow, so we could shine on each other. I was a gambler trying to recover a lifetime of savings with her last chip. I wanted to see the crystal cave lit from inside, to see you sparkle and shine and give back to me what I gave to you.

I tried.

I tried.

I tried.

And now,
for taking from me so carelessly,
for asking more from me than I had to give,
for swallowing me up,
for taking from me all I had,
for using me,
i hate you.

always know it's time...

I always know it's time for a little time off when I start thinking fondly of my days in the food service industry. To be fair, I was never your hairnetted burger-flipper, I was a tie-clad hostess at a nice, sit-down restaurant. Still, whenever I find myself at my desk and daydreaming fondly of those times and calculating whether I could pay my bills on that salary, I know I need a break.

So, guess who needs a break today?

luke

I've had this on my mind off and on over the last few weeks. Last Monday was particularly rough. I was hormonal and weepy and tired to begin with, and pictures of Luke's face kept jumping up in my head all day. I even sketched him during the staff meeting at work. I achieved a pretty reasonable likeness in a few of the doodles, because I scared myself with them when I ran across the paper on my desk yesterday. When I saw it, my brain injected this little ink sketch on yellow paper with three dimensions and color. It was eerily "real" for a minute. I was so rattled off my center when I saw it that I threw it away, but I wish now that I'd kept it. I did a little sketch of the scene, as well -- a view as I originally saw it, from across Wabash street. I sketch like autistic kids do, though. I see too much detail about how things are put together. I want to draw things the way I know they fit and function, not the way they look, so my perspective is always all wrong. I put in details that don't fit because I know they're there, even though I couldn't really see them from the distance I started sketching at.

Sketching it didn't help, though. The images were and still are there in my head... all a disconnected jumble. I was talking about this with a friend yesterday, and I think part of the reason I'm having so much trouble connecting the images and building a comprehensive movie of what was happening is that my perspective was not what it usually is. I usually see entirely too much detail about the physical world, as I mentioned. I may or may not notice that the couple in the corner are making googly eyes at each other, but I guarantee I'll notice whether the columns they're eyeing each other around are Corinthian, Doric, or Ionic. I usually have a near 360 degree view of my surroundings, always checking the edges. I may never turn my attention fully to those things on the periphery, but I know where they are and more or less what they are. In this situation, though, I was so completely focused on Luke and on his injuries and his condition that I remember feeling like I had tunnel vision. I don't multi-task very well in general, and it was all I could do to keep up with Luke. My surroundings, from the moment I put my hand on his throat to check for a pulse, virtually ceased to exist. I don't remember crowd sounds, I don't remember traffic noises. I don't remember light or shadow or the composition of the crowd or whether there was litter on the street. I only remember the maroon paint of the Blazer, the black glass everywhere, and Luke's brown skin and red blood. His hair was very dark, and curly, and frizzy. It was like mine is when I've given it the day off and not put any "product" in it. I don't even remember what he was wearing. I do remember the texture and color of the glove I picked up out of the Blazer... I just reached around the window frame into what would have been the cargo area and grabbed an eggshell-colored knitted wool glove. I remember thinking that I hoped it was clean, just before I used it to cover the wound on the back of his hand. It didn't seem very absorbent, and it was hard to get much direct pressure with the other injuries and the glass everywhere. He didn't seem to be bleeding too much from his hand, though.

I remember his face often. The red of blood on the brown of skin and the fear in his face when he realized he was alive and surrounded by strangers. His girlfriend came out of the building, I'm told, from which he had jumped. I never even saw her, but I'm told that she approached us at the car and looked down at him and then backed away. I never became aware of her at all. I was so grateful when Tuffy slid up next to me on my right side, because I felt safer then, with him there, guarding my flank. The surgeon who asked Luke about his medicines came up on my left side. I remember only that his skin wasn't white, I couldn't have identified his race beyond that. Later, Amy and Tuffy told me he was Asian, but I don't remember. I remember ignoring some interfering noise coming from that side of my body while I was trying to get Luke to lie still, I imagine he must've been speaking. Eventually he touched my shoulder, made me stop and pay attention to him, told me he was a doctor. When he did, I stopped talking to Luke, and just listened.

Amy saw the crowd come and go. Some people were claiming that he jumped from the "El" but that was clearly impossible from where he landed. It did look as though he had from across the street, though. A train went by on the "El" track just before we heard the sound of him landing on top of the Blazer. It seemed from the timing of the sounds that he'd been thrown from the train, or had been knocked off the track by the passage of the train.

And now, for a minute, my head is blessedly empty. So I'm off to bed. I hope this is the last of it, but I doubt it will be. Sorry, readers. Thanks for your patience.