you've got the moneymaker

So, my dear Sheebs and I cannot stop reading http://postcardsfromyomomma.com. I think this is probably because so many of the e-mails remind us of Amers, who is my mom's best friend and a huge mother figure to both of us. And also crazy and often unintentionally hilarious.

For example: Last week on Without a Trace, Anthony LaPaglia was running around with these sick open sores on his face and he was running around in warm weather with a jacket on and panting and gagging. As an expression of sympathy, Amers said, "God, I am so hot for him right now." She also managed to confuse Urban Cowboy, Midnight Cowboy, Brokeback Mountain, and Tootsie all into one movie earlier that night. So we like her a lot.

Even better than those two examples, possibly the best example: She blames her moderate form of insanity on bio-terrorism. She has this theory that the terrorists are engaging in "germ warfare" in which they target mothers, the cornerstone of society. That is why she is insane, because the terrorists are destroying us from the inside out and beginning with her. My favorite of her eight children, Annie, and I blame her moderate insanity on something some might call "Bacardi." So you can now understand why we like this website and why we like her.

In sadder news, my favorite model was voted off Top Model tonight, for a reason completely unrelated to actual modeling. God bless the voices in Tyra Banks's head. Also: Yes, I watch Top Model, and, no, this does not make me a bad feminist, because at least they can compete against each other in some arena that is not a romantic conquest. So there. Also, I would just end up watching all the products of psychosis that come out of Dominque's mouth later in the week on The Soup, so this is just an increase in energy efficiency, really.

So, even though I am sad, this is not going to make me boycott my second-favorite reality show (Project Runway has full reign in my heart, even after they refused to eliminate Ricky for so long.) And even if I did boycott ANTM, Diana and I would still keep saying "I brought you a chickeeeen" and "I, like, totally eat it on the pavement!" to each other constantly. Clearly, my brain sometimes has to take a break from nerdiness and just look at and shop for clothes and shoes.

Anyway. My tan from spring break has not yet faded, and since my prom dress is strapless, I am now using self-tanner to fill them in. I am afraid this will go badly. I wish my skin would have just returned to its typical shade of speckled bedsheet.

Okay! But I'm going to go. Alex figured out Facebook chat so now I have another distraction from doing actual work!

you should probably get to know me. or something.

1. How tall are you barefoot?
5'2".

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
Nope. In fact, I don't think I even really knew they made smokable heroin. I'm naive.

3. Do you own a gun?
Nope, and I never will. Because my lifestyle does not require one but rather makes it an unnecessary and dangerous extravagance, and I think more people need to realize that they are also in those circumstances.

4. Do you play with the ads on the side of the screen?
No.

5. Do you get nervous before "meeting the parents"?
I never have, but I doubt I will. Parents and I usually get along quite well.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
Blarg. I haven't eaten one of those since I had a say in what I ate.

7. What's your favorite Christmas song?
"O Holy Night."

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
Coffee.

9. Can you do push ups?
Barely. This is not related to my complete absence of muscle but rather to my withered and decrepit left arm.

10. Is your bathroom clean?
Yes.

11. What's your favorite piece of jewelry?
Well, my ring, of course. Although I did find some amazing earrings at Target last Friday. Target = love of my life.

12. Do you like pain killers?
Sure, when I need them.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
I don't really spend my time thinking about how to ensnare anybody.

14. Do you own a knife?
For culinary purposes.

15. Do you have A.D.H.D?
No.

16. Middle Name?
Marie.

18. What's your normal bed time?
I have no normal bedtime.

19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink:
Good old Diet Coke, water, coffee.

20. What time did you wake up today?
6:40. 20 minutes late. Oh yeah, sleeping in.

21. Name one person that comes to mind right now.
Diana. The last question reminded me of her because she loves sleeping so very, very much.

22. Current worry
I think I screwed up my online pizza order. Which would be fine if my brother wasn't so damn ornery tonight. Oh well.

23. Current hate?
Intolerance.

24. Favorite place to be?
The beach, anywhere with my friends (particularly Diana's kitchen), Church (the only place where my brain shuts up), my mom's house, my uncle BB's huge Monona house with all the crazy hiding spaces, Brigid's cottage. I'm content nearly anywhere.

25. Least favorite place to be?
Hmmm... well, farms. I just have very little fondness for the way they smell. Also, places where one can acquire ticks.

27. Do you own slippers?
Well... they are kind of like a slipper/moon boot hybrid. Allegedly people who climb Mt. Everest wear them in their tents at night? I don't know. My godmother just buys me these things when she feels like it's vital.

28. What shirt are you wearing?
A blue crewneck sweater. Deeply enthralling, I know.

29. How many people have ever truly broken your heart?
None. I'm pretty scrappy.

30. Favorite color(s)?
Blue and green.

31. Would you be a pirate?
Yes, if only as a formal commemoration of pirate night.

32. Last time you had an alcoholic drink?
Easter?

33. What songs do you sing in the shower?
I don't, really.

34. What did you fear was going to get you in the night as a child?
I used to have recurring dreams that I was a mouse being chased by a big red cat.

35. What's in your pockets right now?
Change from Papa John's, where they gave my carryout to someone else.

36. Is anyone on your mind right now?
My momma, because I'm on the phone with her listening to the story of how she cut her thumb open and it gushed blood and she almost fainted. But my stepdad is yelling about how she was hardly bleeding.

37. Do you think you get enough exercise?
Absolutely not.

38. Worst injury you've ever had?
The busted-up left elbow incident was really awful.

39. If you could cheat on your spouse, would you?
No.

41. Who is your loudest friend?
We're all pretty noisy, but probably Brigid.

42. Who is your most silent friend?
I wouldn't say that Elly is the most silent, but she is the quietest, and also the most profound.

43. Does someone have a crush on you?
Doubt it.

44. Do you wish on shooting stars?
Not really.

45. What is your favorite book?
Ughhhh you know I cannot answer that question, survey.

46. What is your favorite candy?
Kit Kats. Oh, also, IceBreakers now makes these fantastic raspberry iced-tea flavored breath freshening things and they are fab.

47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding?
"The Luckiest" by Ben Folds.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
Something that inappropriately references fire in honor of my cremains.

49. What is one of your favorite quotes?
"He told me I better not have laughed, and I said, only for five minutes straight!" -my godmother, during our half-hour phone conversation tonight. This quote sums up the two of us so well.

50. What were you doing 12 AM last night?
Watching Conan and writing in my notebook.

i wonder if everything could ever feel this real forever

So, I am in a stern mood right now. I intended to take my online French placement test and get it out of the way, but I didn't have my student ID number on any of the college crap I have at my dad's house, and so I failed on that one thanks to poorly-budgeted time. Oh, well. I guess it can be done tomorrow.

Also, I'm in a stern mood because it's Monday, because I'm beat, because it was snowing this morning, because I don't understand why people can't just be more relaxed about things, and because my first AP exam is in a week and I'm terrified of failure. It's a really great combination of annoyances going on. (Alex pointed out this weekend that I really only come in two emotions: regular and annoyed. So true.)

So this is going to be a serious post in which I talk about serious, grown-up things like the first serious, grown-up formal decision I've had to make: Choosing a College.

First of all, there is that whole thing called Getting Into College. I did pretty decently with that one. I applied to nine colleges (eight, initially), which was admittedly insane. I was accepted at seven, canceled an application at one before a final decision came, and was waitlisted, then accepted at another. However, the list of nine colleges I applied to only had three schools in common with my original list of nine colleges. That list was awesome, and looking at it now kind of depresses me. I only really intended to go to maybe three or four of the schools on my final list.

My whole life, I've felt family pressure to go to UW-Madison. My stepdad went there, my mom's entire family is from Madison, and my uncle taught at their law school for a really long time. I, of course, rebelled from this, until I visited the school and really loved it. It was my first choice for a very long time. I knew I would get waitlisted, because there is a pretty grand discrepancy between my class-rank percentile and my standardized-test-score percentile, and it's pretty clear that I could have been trying way harder the past three years, so I wasn't shocked or sad to get waitlisted.

It's probably a good thing I was waitlisted, because in the time of my postponed application, a lot of things happened with my family that made me decide, at the last minute, to apply to St. Norbert College. SNC is located in my mother's backyard. Every Sunday, my family goes to church at the campus parish. My father and all his siblings were forced into going there by my grandfather. (If you knew my dad, you might think he would pressure me into going to SNC, but, once I wanted to go to Madison, he stopped wanting me to go there and changed his allegiance to Marquette.) And none of them felt fondly about this, except for, ironically, the black sheep of the family.

Anyway, during that time, I also realized a lot of things about myself. I realize that I have some pretty awesome warped Catholic guilt going that makes me constantly feel responsible for the choices and actions of others. Madison probably would do bad things to this Catholic guilt. I also realized that I had declared the totally wrong major. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life involved in education, so I declared a secondary education major. Then I realized that the same things I hate about being a high school student would still be present if I were working in a high school. Then I remembered the concept of this fantastic thing called graduate school, where you are encouraged to be the nerdy and overly cerebral person you are in complete and full force. And then, once you're done being a student, you can work at college. This was a way better plan, I decided.

So that changed things a little bit. Now I had to decide which of my schools had good English programs, and not education programs. This did not narrow out any of the schools I already loved, and that was a problem. So I made my decision based on things like time and money, and not location. Location is a forgivable variable, time and money are more important to me, to be perfectly honest.

I think everyone thought I would end up somewhere completely different for college. I hear that a lot. "Why did I think you were going to school in Boston? Maybe I could just see you there or something." And "You seem like that girl who would go 400 miles away for college." I still am that girl, I'll still probably end up 400 miles away. But right now, I have to put away being that girl for the sake of my family, my bank account, my career goals, and my life expectancy. And those comments put me on the defensive, make me feel like people think I am making the wrong decision, and I am not. And sometimes I feel like I need to defend myself, like to people who should know me better, and other times, I do not, because I just don't care.

Realistically, I get to do this whole college-choosing thing all over again (hopefully: in three years.) So I didn't get to do the exact perfect thing I wanted this time, but, really, if college were exactly perfect, it would definitely not involve math courses. Also, with all my divorced-kid carting myself from here to there, I'm adaptable enough that I would be happy at nearly any college, and, since I'm not going to be totally miserable, I don't really care if I'm not the absolute happiest I'm ever going to be. I'm happy enough with my decision, and I think it's a decision that will pay off so much more nicely in the end.

God, this is really boring, I'm sure. I guess I just wanted to put it out there, and explain, or something.

tied up and twisted, the way i like to be

How was this weekend even real? Honestly. I feel like it was about six hours long, with Saturday being five of them. Anyway, Saturday was so crazy that I took notes on it on a piece of paper I kept with me all day. If you could kindly not laugh at that, I would appreciate it, because note-taking? Possibly my only marketable skill as a high school student. I take fantastic notes. So you can imagine that these notes correspond to my life as well as my English notes correspond to a Gilsdorf test. Amazing correlation, and also, amazing in general. So here goes.

If Saturday was written in Cornell note form, which is tedious and unhelpful and you should really just do whatever works for you, Roman numeral I would definitely be labeled "Trip to Plover." Plover is kind of a suburb of Stevens Point, and it is not really real. My stepdad's family lives there-- I would call them my family, but this was only the third time I have ever met them-- so Sheebs, the Craiganator, and I went down to visit.

But before we arrived in Plover, we were hungry, so we went to Wendy's. I always feel uncomfortable in fast food restaurants and I don't know why. Even though I am usually over-dressed, I feel extra over-dressed there, or something. Anyway, that is NOT the point of this story. The point of this story is that Sheebs ordered Mandarin chicken salad, and that, when she had completed only about 17% of it, she discovered a hair. A hair that was definitely not her own.

Sheebs: Oh, my god. Oh, my god.
Me: Oh, no. Oh, no. [I begin laughing.]
Sheebs: [laughter. accompanied by crying.]
Me: [I begin crying along with her.]
Craiganator: [stoic, humiliated silence.]

So that went on for a good minute. And then this conversation took place:

Craig: That is not that gross. It could have been a finger.
Sheebs: Or a toenail.
Me: [gagging, followed by more crying.]

Anyway, that was not the end of the day's grossness. Because when we got to Plover, we met a puppy. A 120-pound, slobbery-ass puppy. And it was insane. Also, my six-year-old step-cousin farted in my mom's face. Sheebs summed up this portion of the day quite well in her assessment, "Today is a terrible day. I got molested by a dog that weighs more than I do, a 6-year-old farted in my face, and there was a hair in my salad that definitely wasn't mine."

Once I finally got home from Plover at an hour even later than the late hour I expected, I went to Diana's. Well, first I talked to Diana on the phone and she wanted me to come eat soup, but I hate soup so I ate dinner at my own casa, and then I went to Diana's. She looked the most attractive I have ever seen her: powder blue sweatpants, the infamous Celebrity Poker Showdown t-shirt, and her hair in cornrows. Four cornrows. Anyway, I am just going to list things that occurred in close to the chronological order in which they occurred.

1. Diana and I got mad at a sexist Bounty commercial and we're going to write an angry feminist letter about it. I'm amazed that Diana and I don't threaten to write angry feminist letters more often, the more I think about this. But, damn, that commercial was moronic.

2. "Man, this is a fun Saturday." -Diana, as she cleans the toaster.

3. Diana and I discussed the non-fun that is all things removal and application of wallpaper. My thoughts on wallpaper were highly articulate ("Fuck that shit") and Diana laughed forever. Also, Diana (and Alex) continuted to laugh at any combination of those two words I would say the whole night, even though we were all having very filthy mouths and you would think they would be desensitized to it by now.

4. Alex decided to come over. Diana and I decided to scare Alex as she came into the house by jumping out from behind furniture. Allegedly, I said that I hoped we could make Alex crap her pants, and, honestly, I think we were close. The look on Alex's face was priceless.

5. We spent the rest of the night talking in the kitchen.
First hilarious Alex comment: "How's Madge?"
Me: "Who is Madge?"
Alex: "Your dad's girlfriend!"
Me: "... My dad's girlfriend is named Jean."
(Also, is Madge even something people are actually named?!)

6. The saga of trying to separate the parts of the blender so it could be washed.
Alex: "I don't think I can get them apart."
Diana: "Well, this smells bad. So it needs to be washed."
Also, a series of highly entertaining Alex faces, and noises, and indecisions.

7. Diana attempted to make cornbread at 11:30 with the minimal ingredients present in the house. It ended up looking like birdseed. What came out of that oven had absolutely nothing in common with cornbread. In the process of this, Diana and I poured an almost-full half-gallon of milk down the drain because it had the obviously-spoiled smell. Alex, angry that there is none of her favorite beverage in the house: "You don't know if it's spoiled for sure until you taste it. If you taste it, and it tastes like broccoli, then you know it's spoiled." Awesome, I am so glad to hear that.

8. In more milk news, Alex thought a can of sweetened milk was pineapple.

9. Our only remotely academic discussion was about necrophilia. Yeah, I know.
Alex: "I don't get it."
Diana: "Well, I don't either, since it's not like I've been to the graveyard lately for my latest hookup."

10. Our least academic discussion: animal humping.
Alex: "Milo [Diana's cat] is definitely gay."
Me: "Um, he is definitely neutered and therefore asexual. He has no desire to copulate."
Diana: "That's not true. I've definitely seen him mount Alice [Diana's ancient dog.]"
[Five minutes later:]
Diana: "One time, Harley [Diana's puppy] mounted Brian [Diana's delinquent brother]. I laughed really hard and he punched me in the stomach."

11. After the failure of the cornbread, Alex ordered a pizza. With every kind of meat imaginable. Plus extra bacon. So weird.

12. Diana kept thinking Alex and I were talking about public schools when we weren't because we made fun of her one time for not knowing where the Wright brothers made their first flight.
Alex: "Those kids are SO stupid."
Me, in a whisper: "That's because their parents are probably first cousins."
Diana: "I HEARD THAT."
Alex: "We weren't talking about public schools."

Yep, these are the freaks with whom I really enjoy my voluntary association.

a thousand different versions of yourself

The more I read Are Men Necessary?, the less I want to be Maureen Dowd and the more I realize I already could be her younger sister. There are some disturbing similarities going here, and not just pissing off Republicans on a regular basis. Although this realization makes me feel much better about going to a Catholic college in my hometown as an English major, as she did the same.

Anyway, I'm sure she also probably was voted Best Writer and Most Sarcastic in her high school class, too, if they had such things. I hope I get some kind of coronation ceremony for that; we really like those at Notre Dame. When I told my mom, she teared up in dead seriousness and said that my title of Most Sarcastic confirms her belief that she didn't totally screw me up as a human being with her parenting. My family has a strange, strange set of values.

French class has been quite entertaining this week because Natasha is back to the crazy that she was during freshman and sophomore year, before Max Fetus, and then Max Baby, sucked it all out of her. She is already jealous of my future educators of next year and afraid that I will like them better than her and forget all about her. Please note that she teaches night classes at the fine institution I'll be attending next year and I have no doubt that she will just pop in to see me at random intervals. Oh, French. You have taught me nothing this year, but that is okay anyway.

Anyway, I thought that AP exams began at 8 in the morning, but that is obviously a lie. One of mine begins at 7:30 and the other begins at 7:15, and they are at UWGB, which is, like, a twenty-minute drive. Are you serious here? We should get our stupid college credits just for showing up. Especially since the 7:15 one is the morning after Concert on the Field.

Schultz was on a roll today. He said that Richard Nixon looked like Skeletor from He-Man on TV debates, and informed us that he has been riding the same bike since 7th grade. Who are you, Matthew Schultz? Seriously.

This is a very academic, school-y post. So I'm going to mix it up and tell you that Alex's locker totally looks like a trash compactor, and that Erin's dental procedures are the hottest thing I've ever seen.

i laugh until my head comes off

"Idioteque" by Radiohead makes me really sad. A song with that much techno influence should not be so depressing.

I have cabin fever. It is basically official. I want summer more than I wanted anything in my life, except for college. And since mix CDs heal everything, I made myself a sweet mix CD to cure this disease. Do you want to see the tracklist? No? Well, suck it up. I have no real thoughts and I need to clean my room soon, so this is all the brilliant thought from me you'll get today.

1. The Shins- Sleeping Lessons. This song begins totally creepily and it is a great mix CD starter thanks to the way the way the volume and tempo increase into a totally awesome guitar riff!
Also, I pretty much put the Shins on every mix CD, since they own me.

2. Dr. Dog- Old News. If the beat of this song doesn't make you feel better, you make me sad.

3. Death Cab for Cutie- A Movie Script Ending. I imagine that this is what my life would have been like if I had gone 450 miles away for college like I initially wanted to. Oh well.

4. Kate Nash- Foundations. I just really enjoy singing along to this song. It is one of my ringtones, and sometimes I sing along to it as a ringtone without caring about how dorky a behavior that may be.

5. Hot Hot Heat- Goodnight Goodnight. Think about how many people that song would apply to if I were actually a confrontational person.

6. No Doubt- Bathwater. I miss old-school No Doubt. They remind me of summers when I was but a wee child.

7. Vampire Weekend- A-Punk. Yeah, I know, everyone likes Vampire Weekend and all the hipsters liked it before me. I don't care. They are sweet and their music makes me want to dance.

8. The Format- Oceans. This song is summer.

9. The Church- Under the Milky Way. One of my favorite 80s songs, and one nobody has ever heard of, but it was played in Donnie Darko, which is an awesome movie. I watched it many times last summer out of sheer desire to figure it out, and I think I actually might have. Plus, it's twisted and funny. Watch it. Yes, the hipsters beat me to it on this one, too.

10. Brand New- The Archer's Bows are Broken. If you want to rock out to statements about the separation of church and state, this song is for you.

11. The Doors- Touch Me. Alex and I listened to nothing but the School of Rock soundtrack for an entire summer. We had the words to Stevie Nicks's "Edge of Seventeen" all wrong.

12. The Decemberists- O Valencia. This song is kind of like West Side Story, but better. It is the boppiest song about blatant carnage I have ever heard. The Decemberists are a fantastically geeky band and I will never stop loving them.

13. OK Go- A Million Ways. OK Go is sweet beyond reason, because they wrote a song that totally encapsulates my stone-cold foxy personality.

14. Feist- I Feel It All. Really, though, this song actually describes me pretty well.

15. Panic! at the Disco- When the Day Met the Night. I just like belting the word "summer." If you saw me driving to school in the morning, you would be shocked at how cool I am.

16. Vampire Weekend- Campus. Well, my career ambition is mainly to be known as a "cruel professor", so it's only fitting to put this on a mix CD.

17. Coconut Records- West Coast. Brigid put this on a mix CD for me at the begining of 2008 and I think I've been listening to it constantly since. Jason Schwartzman is in this band. I like him because he was Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette, which is only a moderately decent movie, but once we were forced to view a docudrama about the French Revolution in which they referred to Louis XVI as "a painfully inadequate schlub." Megan and I are still laughing about that one.

18. Rooney- When Did Your Heart Go Missing? Who doesn't want to dance to this song? Remember that obnoxious episode of The OC where everyone said "Rooney" every other word?

19. Belle and Sebastian- Expectations (Remastered.) Well, because I clearly must reference a movie when I talk about 1/3 of these songs, I should probably tell you that this song is from the soundtrack of Juno.

would it be all right if we just sat and talked for a little while?

So, I am finally finished with my English research paper! 2,516 words. Truly expending myself over that 2,500 word minimum there. It is not a very exciting choice of topic, I should have gone with malaria or crucifixion or something Crucible-related like everyone else. I'm not being sarcastic.

Cabaret Night was a lot of fun last night. The Comedy City improv games were enormously entertaining, and the art show was amazing, especially Kassie's installation piece which inspired some entertaining discussions about abortion, Christmas, adoption, China v. America, religion, and the like. I'm glad I said "and the like" as though those things all fit into one coherent category and you could definitely imagine more things that fit in that category.

Speaking of religion, church was also good today, although mildly disappointing because no small children wanted their First Communion cigars blessed. My favorite thing about my weirdly-shaped church is my corner of it, where the same enjoyable people always sit. Before mass, they ask, by section, if there are any visitors. We never have any visitors, but they always ask, and we all just sit there with our arms crossed.

Actually, the same people do not always sit there. Because I have a revolving door of parents. So it's usually Sheebs and Craiganator but sometimes it is just Sheebs and every once in a while, like this weekend, it is Trixie firecracker. Which is why people sometimes say, "Say hi to your parents for me. Even the one I thought was your younger brother." Shit like that always cracks me up. You heard it here first: divorced parents = all comedy, all the time.

All the Juno viewing I've been doing this week also makes me which I had a fourth parent, and that parent is definitely Bren. I love her dearly. "I think that kids get bored and have intercourse."

how am i supposed to pretend to never want to see you again?

Today has been such a pleasant day. I am in a fantastic mood. It's (scarcely) warm enough to be considered sweater-and-dress-and-sandals weather, I cleaned the kitchen, all the windows are open so the house isn't so damn stuffy, I've done ten Sudokus and put 75 new songs on my iPod, and they're playing that season of Top Model that never runs on MTV! It's like the perfect storm.

Also enjoying the weather is the menagerie of animals that has congregated in the backyard. No peacocks, since I've apparently lost my gift for attracting them. But we do have two morbidly obese rabbits that will probably unleash a pack of smaller rabbits in our yard within the next few days. The best thing, though, are these mentally damaged squirrels we have. Nobody can figure out what is wrong with them. But they play this game where they leap at least one foot in the air, land on their backs, wriggle around for a while, and then repeat the cycle. It's kind of awesome.

The Office was vast improvement this week, thank God.

she said, i don't know if i've ever been good enough

Well, since board games seem to dominate my psyche lately, have any of you ever played Rummikub? That is one sweet game. Even if you're not a member of AARP as most players are, you should look into it.

Things that have amazed me today: my ability to distance myself from things, my ability to laugh at things that clearly are not funny, the fact that there is a small cut-out of Barney on the shelf in this room, the one picture that is on my digital camera (Megan, in French class, holding the crazy 70s French hotel room Bibles that we regularly are forced to read), the things people say in general. So, really, a normal day with a picture of Megan kissing a Bible and a Barney cutout thrown in.

So, there have been some requests for me to describe the ridiculous that is 7th hour College Credit English. This class is taught by Fr. Gilsdorf, who is enormously sarcastic and hilarious, a Green Bay legend, and a very quiet talker. Therefore, when it came time to select seats, Molly, Bet, and I chose seats in the front row. This ensured that we would be the only three people Fr. Gilsdorf ever spoke to (except when Molly left at semester to be in Creative Writing... her new CCEnglish class forgets about her.) That last sentence ends in a preposition, oh well.

The most notable event of 7th hour CCE has been the regular epic showdowns between Fr. Gilsdorf in Reed, in which mostly Reed just gets picked on. Again, that last sentence ends in a preposition. Fr. Gilsdorf says things to him, such as, "You need to learn how to train yourself," in reference to his regular bathroom breaks, and, "I would not want to be on your football team," in reference to his underprepared-ness. He also had a new hobby last week called "making Kellie read because it's funny that she gets annoyed whenever Milton writes something sexist which is all the time," but luckily now other people volunteer to read.

I would record all the epic/insane things Fr. Gilsdorf says, but there are just so many and they've been quite well-documented by generations past. Also, I think many of the people reading this are in CCEnglish, and he says just about the same thing every hour.

It is even better than last year's Vicky/Kellie/Megan English class with the rotating door of teachers, for which requests have also been made. That included events such as "This worksheet is deceiving." "Well... your MOM is deceiving!", "I DON'T bite my PENS!", and me shouting "SHIT!" in the middle of announcements because I realized I'd left my lights on. This is just scratching the surface. There was a lot of shouting in that class, clearly.

Anyway, I'm going now. I have a migraine, and I picture it as some kind of demon in my head that is punching my ocular nerves from the inside. It needs to stop.

i read too much david sedaris.

Here is an essay about the worst Easter my family has ever had, written a few months ago during the 56th (this may not be an exaggeration) time I was reading David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day. Really, you should just read his Easter story, "Jesus Shaves," but I'm posting mine because, at the very least, I find it amusing.


Easter is just one of those things in my family, which, as a rule, leads to some moderate form of disaster. It's never treated me kindly, at least, what with my distaste for ham and the conditions a packed church can impose on my low blood pressure. And, although it has a far deeper meaning than the other holidays, this only seems to increase my extended family's penchant for bickering. Needless to say, we do not generally quake with anticipation over its coming.

"Ham tomorrow," my mom smirked as I scaled the stairs for bed. "I'll be up in a bit." My parents had announced their divorce a few weeks prior, but she'd been sleeping on the sofa for months. That Saturday morning, a twin bed had been placed in the prison cell-sized guest bedroom, and she was disturbingly thrilled at the idea of sleeping in a room with teddy bear wallpaper and one small window.

"Yeah, enjoy your box spring," I smirked in return. After brushing my teeth and sliding into sweats, I crawled under my blankets and, after finishing a novel, earned a true rarity: eight and a half hours of unceasing slumber. However, when I woke at 9:30 the next morning, the rainy weather, combined with my typical inability to function within an hour of waking, left me drowsy.

"We going to church?" I grumbled to my mom, pouring myself the largest mug of coffee.

"No," she replied sullenly. Clearly, despite the presence of an actual mattress, she had not been granted a sufficient REM cycle.

"Why?" My thick sweatshirt cuffs blocked the heat of the newly-brewed coffee from my palms.

"You slept through it?" she snapped. I raised my eyebrows, urging her to continue. "Well, at 4:30 this morning, your brother threw up all over the hallway.

"Oh, no." My brother's inability to ralph has been legendary since infancy, when he demonstrated an aptitude for projectile vomit, and has contuned through multiple chapters of carsickness and one unfortunate childhood vacation in which he threw up on innocent, sleeping me. (At least it is a comfort to know that I got the grossest moment of my life out of the way at age seven.)

"And," she inhaled deeply, "in the bathroom sink."

My gag reflex momentarily activated before my brain shut it down. "How did you clean that up?"

"Well, initially, I didn't have to. Your dad started to do it... But then he threw up," she continued.

"Oh, Mom. Did you go back to bed after all that?" I had wanted her to get a good night's sleep, had hoped it would diffuse holiday--- and everyday--- tension and minimize her stress.

"No, it was pointless. But I read for a while down here, and it still smelled horrible and I couldn't figure out why until I realized the dog-- the stupid dog!-- had thrown up and rolled in it!" she explained.

My eyes were, I'm sure, the largest they've ever been opened before 10:00 am. Our dog is knee-high, mildly obese, completely neurotic, and possessed by the belief that my mom is her greatest rival. They are in perpetual alpha-dog contention. "What did you do?"

"Well, I had to give her a bath," she said matter-of-factly. I was shocked I had slept through all this, because the canine bathing process is a fairly intense undertaking. First, her pudgy body must be carried up the steps-- 65 pounds of biting, growling fur in your arms. Once you finally hoist her into the tub and turn the faucet on, she cries without stopping until the bath is over. Generally, the process ends here, unless my mom is feeling particularly vindictive and attempts to blow-dry her. Otherwise, she follows you around the house all day, shaking herself off on you at random intervals. (I should probably note that a groomer now gets paid a significant amount of money to do this.)

"Oh, Mom. I'm so sorry," I apologized. We are not touchy-feely people, but if we were, I might have hugged her. "Is it funny yet?"

"It'll be hilarious in a week or two," she promised.

"What an awful Easter."

"No ham, though," she pointed out, "so it's not really that awful." She was right for reasons far surpassing the absence of our least favorite meat. Somehow, she and I lack a basic ability to bond over what we imagine "normal" mothers and daughters might. Instead, we enjoy that which is morbid, or bizarre, or just straight-up random, anything which allows us to employ our well-honed sense of sarcasm. An unfortunate percentage of our favorite family memories involve vomit, allergic hives, Silence of the Lambs, public humiliation, and stitches. Although I never thought we could be knitted together more closely than we were after the time she nearly fainted in the E.R. upon seeing the X-ray of my completely demolished elbow, that Easter brought us Even closer. We spent the day walking through our neighborhood, laughing at the poor souls engaged in the complex warfare of their own dysfunctional families and the digestion of ham.

important philosophical discussion

About American Idol's resident crazed hippie, Jason Castro:
Sheebs: Did you know that he was a construction science major in college?
Craiganator: Hmmm... I would think he would have majored in something else. Like botany, maybe.

i've seen a lot of love go sour

Not to be arrogant or anything, but my research paper is kind of awesome, at least the half of it that's currently completed. I make Catholicism freakin' exciting. So now I am rewarding myself by using this unexpected spare time to write about far less meaningful events.

Entertaining event of Saturday's excursion to the Fox River Mall:
[Diana picks up a bra. Which is my size. And giggles to herself.]
Diana: Awww, tiny!
Me: Gee, thanks.

D truly has the funniest breast comments of anyone I know. Such as, "She just had huge knockers. Like, if she leaned forward while she was driving, they would honk the horn!" Please note that she yelled at me for calling a contestant I didn't like on Jeopardy a "hag" last week, because that was a word that is "degrading to women." But I would totally call a man a hag; my insults know no gender. That last paragraph pretty accurately sums up the inner workings of the Kellie and D companionship.

We also really like making fun of my stepdad Craiganator. Currently, he and I are having a back-and-forth e-mail debate over Brendt Snedeker's crying at the end of the Masters'. I am not a fan of him because he had arrogant-looking hair, but Craiganator said he would probably cry too-- even though my mom and I would make fun of him-- because one shot made a $400,000 difference. I asked him how many kettles $400,000 would buy, because it entertains me that he calls pots "kettles." This variety of behavior is totally warranted in the chunk of my family that has dual last names: I called a roundabout a "rotary" ONE TIME and they refuse to let me live it down. They also make fun of me for saying words like "skull" weirdly. And when I say "they", I mean Sheebs, who can't say the word "rural" with her life on the line, so what the hell does she know?

My Pandora has an awful habit of playing "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls, even after I've bestowed it with the thumbs-down kiss of death. It's baffling. When have I ever given anyone the idea that I have any goodwill for that song? Seriously.

if i were any colder i could disengage

So, I love my hairdresser. She is so fabulous, and responsible for the haircut I have had since the beginning of junior year and still love. It has layers and side-swept bangs (or, as Tyra Banks would call it, "mall bangs") and I've had it in a variety of lengths and it is nice no matter what. And I love it for reasons other than the fact that it takes thirty seconds for me to style in the morning and that it minimizes my billboard of a forehead, thankyouverymuch. My point is, I am pretty sure I am going to have this haircut forever, and that is totally okay. When I am one of those crazy middle-aged women on What Not to Wear who is all "I have had the same haircut since I was 17," well, don't say I didn't warn you.

Actually, I will also probably be on WNTW for wearing the same clothes I had when I was 17, because I already dress like I am middle aged, but whatever.

So, inappropriate Apples to Apples combinations... well. They usually involve Helen Keller ("touchy-feely" and "senseless" are probably the two greatest ones), although occassionally someone creates a fantastic one such as "Anne Frank" and "skinny." This is so not PC.

And my friends and I could write the book on entertaining Balderdash responses, so I'm not even going to start with that. Actually, Alex could not help write that book, because she puts down things that everyone knows are hers because they are not funny. But the rest of us could.

i was in love with the place in my mind, in my mind

So, I have this really interesting book full of historical essays from crazy people who appeared on C-Span's Booknotes--- which, for the record, I do not actually watch, thank you--- and it is a really enjoyable experience. For example, last night, I read about the daily lives of slaveholding women of the Civil War, and I'm currently reading about the celebrity of Helen Keller. I guess the point is that I would highly recommend this book if you are a nerd, even though it is a really big hardcover which can cause injury in unathletic forearms such as my own.

Can I also mention how improved my general outlook on life has been since The Office and 30 Rock have returned to the airwaves with new episodes? Although I do think last week's Office was a bit mediocre, minus the craziness of Dwight gnawing on that chicken leg. Please don't throw things at me. But 30 Rock always brings pretty intense amounts of joy and the "Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Aaaack!" joke made Sheebs and I laugh forever. (Sheebs is my mother, for the uninitiated.)

So, that's all I have for today, but tomorrow, I think I'm going to write about inappropriate responses to Balderdash questions and tasteless Apples to Apples combinations, or something equally life-altering.

gravity always wins and it wears him out

Why, hello children. Please don't expect anything too deep or profound from this blog. This is my newest writing/time-wasting endeavor, essentially a shrine to my newfound fourth-quarter inability to successfully perform menial academic tasks.

Actually, that "inability" thing is a complete lie, because I just read about fifteen websites that Wikipedia linked to about James Joyce (while I wasn't taking career aptitude quizzes.) Which was not overly exciting or useful in the scheme of my also-not-overly-exciting paper about Joyce and Catholicism. Oh, College Credit English, thank you for saving me from perpetual brain damage since the rest of my schedule is not conducive to critical thinking at all. That is not sarcastic at all, and I am likely the only person in the Class of 2008 thinking that previous sentence.

So, I need more shirts. This is because I recently decided to be a nice person and gave a large percentage of my wardrobe away (including a hunter green Notre Dame Academy polo and a pair of black leggings that I actually had needed to wear for the 80s dance, but that is because I am a moron and generally embarrassing.) But this weekend when Diana, Al, and I went down to Appleton in hopes of finding clothing that we needed, I failed at buying shirts. Instead, I bought one blazer. And I do not need more blazers. So does anyone know of a cute place to find reasonably priced, nice tops for women with the upper bodies of twelve-year-old boys?

Also embarrassing: I managed to fall down half the staircase at my mom's house this weekend. My mom lives in one of those crazy tiny old De Pere houses, and so the staircase is incredibly narrow and incredibly steep and, also, none of the stairs are the same height. So I slid halfway down it before I could catch myself, and although I was laughing really hard afterward, it was not nearly as humorous after sleeping on Diana's floor on Saturday night.

Although what was awesome at Diana's on Saturday night was that new Tostitos spinach dip, purchased from Kwik Trip, where the cashier thought that the four of us, in our truly cracked-out 80s Dance attire, had just come from prom. (Please note: Alex and Diana were wearing neon leotards with leggings and side ponytails.) And where a shady guy said "ouch" in reference to Brigid's personal appearance, followed by giving me elevator eyes and an "ayyyy, chica." So maybe that Christian Lifestyles video should have told us that Kwik Trip, and not church or the grocery store, is the place to meet quality dates.

More Wikipedia fun, this time for Brigid: I looked up "With or Without You." It was on Joshua Tree, which was released in 1987.

Concluding, borderline-meaningless quote of the day: "He's so entertaining. It's like sitting next to a rainbow."