Stop This Train

I'll be 25 in about eight days, and I've begun to think about how I'm getting older and how at 25 you're supposed to be "grown up" and living the adult life. I won't lie when I say that I've had my fair share of early quarterlife crises, where I've sat here and been like "oh my god I'm going to be 25 in X amount of months and I have absolutely nothing to show for it." And to me, in the traditional sense, I feel as though I don't. I'm a freshman in college, I still live at home...it seems silly, but it bothers me that I've never lived on my own.

The Great Recession, however, has leveled the quarterlife playing field. College degrees don't automatically signify a sweet high-paying job and a guaranteed spot on the awesome rung of the adult ladder. A lot of twentysomethings have moved back in with Mom and Dad because they can't find a job and the costs of living on their own are too high. I'm no longer the uncool single mom who is struggling to financially get through college and still lives at home. A lot of my friends have moved back home, right back into their bedrooms from their childhood.

So now I'm worrying about the other prong of the quarterlife crisis: I'm getting old. Scoff if you must, but high school still only seems like yesterday, albeit yesterday through a dirty glass. It seems weird for me to worry about dull skin and wrinkles and an entire skin routine. I've always been a low maintenance kind of girl when it comes to beauty routines. I don't have the time or the energy to worry about three steps to clearer skin or whatever. But now, now I have to be a little more structured with my skin or I'll pay for it down the road. Suddenly I'm worrying about those bad sunburns I got as a kid and my two separate but brief stints in the tanning bed. Suddenly I'm reading the descriptions on my face stuff and looking for alpha hydroxy acids and antioxidants. It's a bit daunting, but I figure it'll be worth it ten or fifteen years down the road.

I looked in the mirror a few weeks ago and I noticed that I had lines under my eyes. They weren't overly pronounced or anything, but they were enough to make me regret all those years of not wearing my glasses and squinting to see. I was kind of like a Latin American revolutionary when it came to wearing those stupid glasses. I'd rather die than wear those nerdy plastic welfare kid glasses, so I stayed vain and cool and popular and squinted my way through my childhood. I've since then bought eye cream, and I try to remember to apply it religiously twice a day. I tend to forget, but I figure if I do it enough it'll become a routine habit.

No gray hairs yet, thank sweet baby Jesus. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope I get a few more years out of that.

More on getting old tomorrow when I wake up. It's like 1:41 am and I have to go to sleep 'cause I have work at noon. XO.

Four Kicks

I'm on a Kings of Leon kick lately.  I'm really loving their music.  (See post title.)

"Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer.  Let us not fix the blame for the past.  Let us accept our own responsibility for the future."--John F. Kennedy

Anyway, today was Election Day, and I must say I am very disappointed in the people of the United States.  How could you vote for the party that dug us into the huge hole we are in now?  How could you let the party that accused our President of being a non-citizen because he spent a large part of his childhood outside the US, who challenged the authenticity of his birth certificate because his father was from Kenya, who questioned his religion and his ties to terrorism simply based on the middle name of Hussein, the House majority?  How could you simply forget how we teetered on the precipice of another Great Depression?  How could you forgive a party who led us into a war based on false pretenses?  How could you just blindly turn your head and forget?

How could you give up so quickly on change?

What ever happened to "Yes we can"?

I'm so tired of all the he said/she said red state/blue state elephant/donkey bullshit.  I'm so tired of all the partisan drama and the hate and the poorly veiled blatant racism and the anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic rhetoric.  I'm tired of the Rush Limbaughs and the Glenn Becks and the Michael Steeles and the Sarah Palins of the conservative world that make us all wonder if the Republican party has gone mad.  I'm so tired of watching every move Barack Obama makes get attacked on Fox News.

He's our fucking President, if you like him or not, if you voted for him or not.  Show some goddamn respect.  I didn't like Bush, but I showed him respect.  My party showed him respect, even when he dragged thousands of men and women off to die in the Middle East to fight in countries that didn't want us there.  I showed his party respect, even when they touted the gay marriage ban and the suggestion of overturning Roe v. Wade.  I respected him because he was our leader, even though I voted for John Kerry in my very first election.  I think that the rest of the country should respect Obama in the same fashion.

I have to admit that I am becoming disillusioned with our nation's government.  I am tired of watching the GOP block every damn thing that Obama tries to pass through Congress.  I am just so tired of it all.

I propose we start a new party.  Screw Republican and Democrat and Independent.  I say we start the party of NOW.  It has never been so important to speak up and make your voice heard in government.  It has never been so important to speak out against the bullshit going on in Congress.  It has never been so important to tell Capitol Hill you want change and you want it NOW.

I think I want to be the change that I want to see...Who wants to join me???

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.  We are the ones we've been waiting for.  We are the change that we seek."--Barack Obama

McFearless

This blog has wandered away from what it used to be, so thus I am bringing it back to focus.  Me whining about life is neither relevant or funny to most people, so let's just suck it up and bring it back to the witty shit it used to be.

Agreed?  Agreed, playa playa.

Okay...So...This coffee house opened at the end of my street, and I am starting to think that I am cultivating the beginnings of a major addiction.  I can't argue with tasty coffee beverages under $5.00.  I think that I am breaking up with Starbucks.  Sorry, Starbucks.  WesTown Grind is closer, which is always a plus because I am lazy and don't feel like walking to Target, which is like a good fifteen minutes away, and I don't have to sell my kidney and half of my liver to get a large mocha, which they call LARGE and not venti or grande or whatever the hell a large mocha is at Starbucks.  Aaand I get whipped cream, which the guy makes right there with whipping cream, aaaand I don't burn off my tongue when I go to take a sip.  So there, Starbucks.  We can be friends, but our love affair is over.  Please lose my number before this gets awkward.

Hmm...What else can I comment on?  Well, I went to my very first haunted house (I know, and I'll be 25 in two months.  No one ever wanted to go!  Laaammmeee.), and it was pretty interesting.  We went to Ohio State Reformatory, which is a former prison and is known for its notorious paranormal happenings.  It is also known for being the prison where they filmed Shawshank Redemption, which is one of my favorite movies.  The prison is pretty foreboding, built in an almost Gothic revival kind of style and just looks pretty freaky.  We waited in line for five hours to go inside, in front of the most ghetto people of all time.  The prison itself is super scary on the inside, and I want to go back for the overnight ghost hunt.  I also had a heart attack and hid my face in my friend's hoodie when a scary ass clown came out of nowhere with a huge freaking knife.  It was a good time.

Now I'm off to watch Sam and Dean go kick some demon ass on Supernatural.  Yumm.

Monster

I seem to be attracted to bad relationships. Honestly. Perhaps that's why I prefer being single.

What brought on that astute observation? Well, I was sitting here, cataloging all the idiotic men in my life, and they are just that: idiotic. I have wasted a huge chunk of my adult life on morons. I don't know what it is about them that pulls me into their ridiculous orbit. I really don't.

You would think that since I am so smart, I'd have figured this out a long time ago and saved my heart some grief. Apparently romance is where my heart and brain part company. My brain, no doubt brilliant and rational, often tells my illogical, irrational heart that it has serious issues. My heart, on the other hand, just continues its self-destructive dance to heartbreak.

And I've also realized that I can't seem to catch the eye of normal guys. I've tried. All I get are the idiots. And idiots they have been: a handful of urban wannabes, a guy who played me and his wife at the same time for nearly two years (and who unfortunately happens to be Nicky's dad), a really weird short guy who had the tendency to cry, put me down in weird ways, and told me he loved me after two weeks, all while bragging to my ex-friend's husband's family that he was banging me--and, I find out that oh-so-coincidentally he's said ex-friend's husband's sister's baby daddy...And then there's the latest one, who I've been messing with on and off for the past two and a half years. He is yummy, but I think he thinks he's the real life incarnation of Jamie Kennedy's B-Rad. Seriously. His name even rhymes. He grew up in the way-out-there suburbs of somewhat rural Ohio, with an extended stint in San Jose in his teens. Perhaps that's where he found his inner gangsta. I don't know, but what I do know is that he is a poser and it becomes more and more transparent every day.

And why can't I leave him alone? I don't really know, to be honest. He is never going to settle down, he's a player, and he is never going to outgrow this gangsta mentality, if the growing number of meaningless tattoos prove correct. I don't get myself, seriously. And he's the one that has affected me the most...He's even got my brain in on this huge mess.

I think I like setting myself up for heartache. I'm not really sure, but I do know that there has yet to be a normal guy in my crazy tally. It seems my options are either heartbreak or being single. And in all honesty, I'm single now, and the dramatics of my life still suck.

I could write one hell of a bad melodrama based on my bad romances.

Falling or Flying

I'd like to share that I am a deeply and vastly interesting person. I am also pretty humble and/or modest, if you haven't picked up on it yet. I am also pretty Narcissistic. I love me, dude. I am pretty awesome.

Through all that awesome deep and vast interesting humble Narcissistic modesty, I also have a weird fear of letting the people that matter in my life down. I am terrified I am going to be a loser and live for the rest of my days in my parents' house in the same bedroom I've had since I was ten and eschew shaving my legs and talk to myself in code. That would be kind of funny, actually--I just giggled a bit at the hairy legs and the muttering in code thing.

But yeah. I am a pretty neurotic person. I talk shit but I am pretty thin-skinned. I'm pretty naive.

I'm actually kind of worried that I really don't have a grasp on my future yet. I am also worried that I will become one of those people that worry endlessly about the future and wind up living in a fantasy world made up of nothing but tomorrows. I am a restless perpetual daydreamer and sometimes I prefer the imagined to the reality. I keep telling myself that I will be twenty-five in five months and I need to quit this Holden Caulfield bullshit and just decide what it is that I am going to do with the sixty or seventy-something odd years left in my life. I am better at spontaneity than I am at the long-term. That was fine and dandy back when I was seventeen and bored on a Friday night and came up with a crazy idea to kill time, but not now. I'm halfway to thirty for Christsakes. Time to grow up and join the adult world and...then what?

I'd like to get a book published but then I'd have to actually sit down and fucking write one and actually finish it. There are so many things I'd like to accomplish in this tragically brief span of life that humans have on this planet, but I get bored with them before I actually start them. Boredom is a bitch. I'd like to become a singer but I lack the money for a demo and I lack the actual time to perform, what between working like most of my day and then trying to make up for the time lost during the day at work with Nicky. I want to move out, but shit, I am scared. I won't openly or vocally admit it, but I am scared of living on my own and not having that safety net if something goes wrong.

I'm a tangle of knotted-up insecurities. I'm pretty self-confident, but I'm also pretty self-conscious. I'm a goddamned walking contradiction. I'm like Red Bull in your decaf coffee, although that sounds pretty gross. I'm not gross. Insecure, yes. Gross, no.

Emily Dickenson once said, "Forever is composed of nows." I suppose that my rambling diatribe is leading up to just that. My fear of falling or flying doesn't matter. My now is intrinsically part of my forever. I wish I could make that sound more coherent and less acid trippy, but I can't. I am trying to say that forever only matters when you're dead, and that now is what matters.

Dance In The Dark

I decided I'd make you guys a playlist since I haven't done one in ages.  Go ahead and give it a listen :)


The It's Saturday Night and I Am Drinking a Strawberry Banana Smoothie From McDonald's Instead of Out Drinking But I Have a Headache and Am Slightly Broke So I Am Here Making This Playlist Playlist:

"Paris (Ooh La La)", Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, (Grace Potter & The Nocturnals)

"Clap Your Hands", Sia, (We Are Born)

"Vanity", Lady Gaga, (The Fame Monster)

"Semi Precious Weapons", Semi Precious Weapons, (You Love You)

"Oh My God", Mark Ronson featuring Lily Allen, (Version)

"I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You", Black Kids, (Partie Traumatic)

"I Got Mine", The Black Keys, (Attack & Release)

"Polygraph, Right Now!", The Spill Canvas, (One Fell Swoop) 

"Sex On Fire", Kings of Leon, (Only By the Night)

"I'm Shakin'", Rooney, (Rooney)

(There's Gotta Be) More to Life

Ever have the feeling that somehow drama just kind of gravitates towards you?  Ever feel like life is just an eternal kick in the pants? 

I really feel like walking up to whoever is in charge of the chaos that goes on in my life and demand a refund for a good part of the last 24.5 years.  Seriously.  I want my money back.

I am an eternal optimist, and I have to say that this shit is getting old.  So I am eschewing drama with a firm hand.  I am so tired of this lifelong struggle with the things that make me throw my hands up in the air and either A.) get pissed, B.) cry, or C.) get pissed and then cry.  So I am just saying a huge "fuck it" and letting all that shit go.  Let's address the biggest issues in my life:

My mom's family sucks, and I have always known that.  I am gonna have to give them their own post, I promise.  A family that impossibly fucked up and judgemental needs their own blog post.  Honestly.

Work...I don't know how much I can post about work without getting in trouble and/or fired.  So I'll just let out a huge GRRRRRRRRR and leave it at that.

Nicky's dad is a douche and I hate him and I hope he never runs into me while I am in the possession of any sharp objects.  At least child support is taking out some money, even though I got fucked out of how much he has to pay.  I'm going to be Zen and say that at least I'm getting more money than I was getting before child support started doing their job.

Boys are a waste of time and that's all I have to say on that subject. 

Thank you so much Nashe for being concerned about me in my shitty time of craptastic bullshit.  I'm glad you care :)

I really have to get this blogging shit back on track.  It's really cathartic to just write about my everyday struggles, moments of awesomeness, and being held back by the Man. 

Gone

                                        

We were all witnesses to the very end.  No words to describe the loss every Cavs fan in Cleveland is feeling right now.  Another kick to the gut for a city that can never seem to catch a break.

Airplanes

"Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?  I could really use a wish right now, wish right now, wish right now..."--"Airplanes", B.O.B. with Hayley Williams

Clarity is a bitch.

Sorry.  I had a rough day.  I worked eleven hours, work was super busy, I got nothing done, and I am tired.  I found out that my friend with benefits (who I wrestle feelings for off and on) is maybe seeing someone.  Probably seeing someone.  And how did I find out?  Did he tell me?  No.  So how did I find out, you ask?  Oh...She got her car serviced at the dealership today.  And she called him right in front of me, and she sounded like they were more than just friends.  And he came up front and went outside with her, and just somehow that really sucked.

Like really, really sucked.  And it shouldn't have, but shit...it did.  And I was hurt for a moment, then it went away like nothing.  But I kept thinking about it.  And it bugged me.

Gah...why does life have to be so complicated?  I'm sort of hurt, a little pissed at myself because I shouldn't be hurt at all...He's not my boyfriend, but this is all so complicated.  We have been messing around, off and on, for two years and I started out liking him, he liked me...and then we started seeing each other and then life got all stupid and something just happened between us and now we are what we are.  And now I am where I am.  I am hurt and pissed at myself and just trying to evaluate things, because he's a good friend of mine and he's there when I want him to be, and I don't want to lose that.  And the sex is pretty good too.

Stupid sex.  Sex always ruins things.  And damn him and his stupid mixed messages and actions.  Damn me for falling for him and then trying to fall out of whatever this is with him.  Damn me for being an idiot.  Damn me for letting this get so far.  Damn this for getting all tangled up and complicated.  Damn me for letting this make me kind of sad.  Damndamndamndamndamndamndamn.

And why, oh why, do I freeze up at the thought of telling him how I feel?  Goddamn it.  I hate boys and I hate romance and the stupid complexities of it that I just can't seem to grasp.

So, I could really use a wish right now.  Or some good vodka.  Or a good trip away from my head.

Looking In

Maybe life has a different perspective when viewed through slightly blurry lenses.

I currently am sitting on my porch, wearing a jacket because I am freezing, and I have one contact in my left eye. I think I scratched my right eye taking out my lenses Monday night because my eye has hurt like crazy when I put my lens in since. Damn scratched cornea.


But anyway, life looks a little different when one looks at the world with one good eye and one pretty shitty nearsighted astigmatized eye. Obviously there is the distinct blurriness, but perhaps I could look at things in shades of gray instead of just plain, clear cut black and white.  Things could be easier, I suppose, if I allowed them to blur together in a cohesive tangle instead of hoping for a straight answer.


Perhaps not.  Perhaps the only thing I am getting out of this one contact thing is a strained right eye, but shit, it never hurts to wax philosophical.  My favorite philosopher, Soren Kirkegaard once said, "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."  How true he was.  The hardest thing in life might be to swallow the bubble of fear that forms in your stomach and blurs the distinction between the obvious and the delusion of uncertainty.  I have often suffered from that fear, that anxious tumble of butterflies and deluded reason that has the ability to freeze a perfectly rational person in their tracks.  I hate feeling as if someone poured ice into my veins, that sense of doubt one gets when fear steps in.


Oh, but the feeling you get when you pop that bubble and slap fear in the smug face!  It's such a heady, delicious feeling.  I imagine that perhaps the pursuit of freedom takes a bit of blurring, of smudging the charcoal lines on the stark white paper...Nothing in life is truly clear, perfectly sharp.  Nothing transcends the line of 20/20.  Perhaps one has to scratch their cornea to understand that.


I think that perhaps emotions work like that too.  Take for instance, matters of the heart.  I suppose we would all like love to be sharp and clear, charcoal and snow...but honestly, in all reality, it is a smeared compilation of anguished grays and delighted cream.  The heart kind of views things in a complicated Venn diagram, analyzing and overanalyzing things until they become a meaningless babble. 


I'm sure this unfocused clarity won't make sense the next time I read this post, but it makes perfect sense now:  We have to blur the edges of life in order to get the entire picture.  We can't always expect life to hand us a straightforward answer...we have to go searching through the mottled mess of our everyday lives to figure out the answers ourselves.

Boys Boys Boys

Nicky.  Is.  Driving.  Me.  Insane.

Oh, the joys of motherhood. 

He "graduated" from Head Start today and is officially a Kindergartner.  He starts in August. 

He is, however, currently being the biggest pain in my ass.  He discovered that scissors can be used for more than cutting just paper, and has currently cut a hole in his shirt, a huge chunk out of my dad's recliner, and cut wires to one of my brother's electronic devices, among other things, I'm sure.  He also decided that he doesn't have to listen to me, which is the latest on the long list of things that he has discovered infuriates me.  I, on the other hand, have discovered that patience is overrated.

Perhaps I might look into yoga. 

Do-Wah-Doo

Ahh…Summer is on its way. Hallelujah.



The air smells like flowers and stuffs up my nose. Pollen is every-freaking-where, but that doesn’t pale the beauty of the bright greens and the vivid colors of the flowers. Spring in Cleveland could be compared to a blind man seeing for the first time in his life--after a world of gray and drab from November to mid-March, the city looks as though it was run through the washer with Tide. Colors are brighter, the sun is warmer, the air feels amazing, pollen aside. You wake up feeling amazing. The world is anew, and you feel as though you can do anything. Mother Nature decided to wash away the bad and present us all with a clean slate.


May has been a great month, seriously. I finished school two weeks ago, and I got As in both my classes (I dropped Sociology and Ethics due to conflicts between balancing mommydom and work and school and Lashawn). I also decided to change my major from Pre-Law to Anthropology. I love history and studying different cultures, and I am researching Socio Cultural Anthroplogy--for the first time in a while, I am excited about my career choice. I suppose that says a lot about how I really felt about Law--I love it in conceptual theory, but I think I would be miserable if I actually practiced it. I am more happy moving around instead of being in an office all day long. I also don’t think I could handle the cases I would handle--I wanted to go into Child Advocacy, and I think all the different stories would kill me, in the most metaphorical sense. I want to be able to watch my son grow up and not always be away from him, and I would love to be able to do something I love as a career.


Nicky started tee ball, and he is the Tee Ball King. I am so proud! They had their first practice scrimmage game yesterday, and his team won. I missed it, but my brother said that Nicky hit the ball on the first try the two times he was up at bat, and he hits the ball deep into outer field. He really enjoys the game, and I am hoping a few of his tee ball friends will be in his class in Kindergarten in the fall.


Speaking of Kindergarten, he had his screening last Friday, and he is all set for the fall. I already got his school supply list and his uniform order form. He is psyched to be starting Kindergarten and going to “big boy school”.


I am also starting a diet. School and the stress of the past semester sort of derailed my exercise routine, and I gained like 6 pounds over the past four months. I am tired of feeling sluggish and worn down, and I have noticed that I went up a dress size, and those pants are starting to get tight. I will, however, miss the little oomph the weight added to my cleavage! I aiming to lose some of the extra weight I hadn’t lost from last year, so about ten to fifteen pounds. I figure that I should be able to do it over the summer. I am also trying to put some WD-40 in my old creative part of my noggin, and am toying with the idea of attempting a novel this summer. I have a few ideas running around in my head, and if I get anything going, I will share it with you guys via blog.


That is the run down for now. I promise another awesome post soon. XO

Chasing Pavements

My love affair with you, oh city of disparaging dreams,
Began on a Tuesday morning in December 1985
That snowy 17th you cradled me in your gritty arms
And I called you Home

I know there are some who prefer the country
Who delight in the vast expanses of hill and vale
But I prefer the dirt and the concrete
The crush of people and the incessant pulse of the city
I love the busyness of it all, the start and stop of things
The vivacious rhythm that one can only find in the urban oasis
I can’t be without it, the hushed sound of the streets calling my name
Without you, my humbled city, I am lost

I grew up in awe of your stoic presence
In the shadow that your brick and stucco edifice cast
I navigated the throng of the metropolitan playground
My hand safely tucked in my mother’s as I adventured about town
There was a great deal to see in my glittering world of you
And I tried to drink you in as much as I could, my shimmering jewel of a city
I was immersed in the wide eyed infatuation of a child

I lay in bed at night, lulled to sleep by the sound of traffic
Of airplanes flying low overhead
I could hear the hustlers making their money on the corner
The whispered lyrics of the inner city song
Noisy mufflers and women shouting provided the music
Breaking bottles and distant gunshots were the refrain


As I grew older I took you for granted
My dingy, dirty ramshackle city of broken dreams
The glittering gems of my youth were now, in my eyes of lost innocence
Nothing more than cracked and lackluster shards of poorly painted glass
I turned up my nose at your boarded up window fronts
When I should have lamented at your crumbling plaster shame
I scoffed at your downtrodden children, dirty and astray
Who slept in your doorframes and street grates
When I should have wept for your former glory instead
I turned my back on you in your most dire hour


I didn’t know your pain at the time
I was only focused on my immediate moment
Suburban daydreams, green grasses and strip malls
White picket fences and the empty lies of a charlatan fool
When I should have listened to your concrete whispers
Calling me back to the ones who truly loved me instead
It took a broken heart and shattered dreams
To make me find my love for you again
I promised you, my aching city, that I would never turn my back again


So I teach my son the illustrious history of your youth
The shining glory of your golden age
I show him your proud buildings from an era long since past
I tell him that through your tarnish there still is beauty
Though many see it and are confused
They fail to realize that in your dimmed magnificence there is a promising future
That in your veins runs the possibility of change anew
They fail to see that you still breathe, my damaged city
They choose instead to give up on themselves and on you
And thus, in their ignorance they blatantly abuse you


They break your heart with a sudden blast
Violently and instantaneously snuffing out the life
Of another of your bright and promising children
With a cowardly leaden bullet
And they seem to forget that when your rough concrete skin is splashed
With their innocent blood you die a little too, my fading city
A hundred thousand tiny crimson deaths
Beading and congealing in your cemented pores


And your people, they cry out in pain
They scream and bemoan their anguish to the skies
They cry out and leave vestiges of their sorrow
In the teddy bears and flowers they leave on the side of the pavement
The dates painted on windows in memoriam of those they loved
Ribbons tied to utility poles, silent reminders of those who left one day
And never came home
Makeshift memorials in a guerrilla war on a deteriorating city
Where the right and wrong sides were never truly made clear


And it hurts you too, though you cannot cry
For no mother should have to stand idly by
And helplessly watch her children die
Especially over something so meaningless and insignificant
As cars or clothes or foolish, fragile pride


But you raise your head, Cleveland
For although they have beaten you down,
The dreamless assassin has not yet won
You are beautiful yet, and still strong and proud
And through all the tears and dirt and blood
Amid the crumbling concrete and shattered glass, I still hear your music
In the voices of the ones who refuse to back down
The song of the city continues to be sung
You shall carry on, Cleveland.
You shall carry on.
                                             --"Words of Hope for My City"
                                                            04/26/2010

Teeth

Gahhh.

I had another wisdom tooth pulled Saturday morning, plus I had some root tips removed from a missing tooth.  My face is swollen, I look like a chipmunk, which is slightly better than yesterday (Sunday, I am still pretending it is Monday night), when I woke up looking like I had shoved a baseball in my jaw.  Ugh.  I took some Vicodin, but I am currently in pain and am not in the usual blogtastic mood.  I should be on when I am feeling fabulous and in tip-top shape.

Til then,
Me XO

Beautiful World

It is absolutely beautiful outside. The sun is shining, it's warm, and there's a slight breeze coming in off the lake. I can see this all from my tiny window in my office.

What is it with me and beautiful Spring days? I always seem to miss them. I did, however, get to enjoy a taste of the niceness this morning as I strolled to work. It was warm, smelled vaguely of flowers and gasoline, and no one was out and about yet. I felt like crap, but it was still a pretty morning.

I am still pretty sick, though I look much better than I did yesterday. I am drugged up on Tylenol Cold, but I have a nagging cough and my throat still hurts--and my awesome headache from yesterday is deciding to make a repeat performance. I am currently drinking warm Sprite from a red plastic cup that makes me wish that I was drinking Jameson and Coke instead. Red plastic cups make me think of parties, which makes me kind of sad because I am at work and in no mood to party.

I am, however, in the mood to compose crappy Spring poetry. Here we go:

The sun shines

Outside my window

The wind blows

Caressing the bare branches

On which

New buds just beginning to form

The grass looks somewhat lush and green

And the daffodils are almost ready to bloom

I sit here

Listening to Vampire Weekend

Sipping warm Sprite from a red plastic cup

Lamenting that I am sick and that today is not my day off

Chasing Pirates

Gahhh.

I think I am dying. My throat is killing me and my head is pounding. I also have an English essay on gender roles due Sunday, and true to my procrastinating nature, I have one whole paragraph written. I also have work tomorrow, 8 to 6.

Nicky doesn't seem to get that I am completely miserable (which seems to be a pretty commonplace thing when I am sick) and seems to be at a Level 99 on the Brat Scale. I have yelled so much that I am surprised I can even talk...but as we all know, frustrated sick Mommy yelling inevitably leads to a fit of coughing, which makes the throat hurt worse and the head pound more. Ah...C'est la vie.

And I was scoping out my Blogger Dashboard, and I seem to have either pissed off and/or bored a follower, because they are no longer following this sporadic and fabulous nugget of brilliancy. Usually my ego would be slightly bruised, but since I am sitting in bed with messy hair, glasses, and baggy sweats, burning up with a fever, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. (Clark Gable summed it up with that line, I swear.)

So...thank you Argent, for being a loyal reader and follower. If I could give you a golden award for being awesome, I would. Thank you to all my other followers who still follow me and enjoy my inane ramblings, I love all of you and you rock! Spread the word to your friends.

XO, and blahhhh. I am seriously hoping I'll be better soon.

Don't Stop The Music

Okay...So last night was UMMAXX 10, another of my GM's MMA fights. He owns a mixed martial arts company and he holds fights about every three months or so. I have been to three of them, and I absolutely love it.

I was supposed to sing the National Anthem last night, and I was super excited. I had on a yummy ensemble consisting of skinny jeans, kickass black stiletto boots, and a black shirt that had a completely lace back. I flat-ironed my hair and my makeup was beyond awesome. (See the picture on the right--->) I looked glam. I was also insanely nervous, but that's beside the point.

So I go to the entertainment group guy to find out what the hell is going on, since no one explained to me where I was singing or what was actually going down. He tells me that there's been a slight change in events, and I am like, Oh shit. He tells me to come with him, and so I follow him to the back of the expo center. He decides to tell me that oh, I am no longer singing the anthem by myself--and I am like, umm...what?--that I am singing it with two people from the Army and am I okay with that? Okay, we all know that I am not okay with that, but because I didn't want to sound like a monster bitch and I wasn't sure if my GM knew what was going down, I said yeah, I was okay with that. So I go and meet these Army people, who I immediately decided were not the cool sort of Army people. On the contrary, they seemed very nerdy and uncool. I sucked up my boiling inner rage and smiled in a very convincing delightful fashion. The entertainment guy asked me if I knew how to harmonize. Um, duh. I was in choir from 4th grade to 8th grade. You definitely pick up harmony over eight years.

I smile convincingly again and say I was in choir for ten years--I decided to beef up my expertise because these two Army geeks definitely reeked of pure inexperience. I have to go sing with these idiots, and I must add that hey, the fight begins in five minutes. I sigh and internally roll my eyes, beginning to sing with these fools. As soon as they opened their mouths and began to sing, my inner hypothesis was immediately proven correct. They sucked. They knew absolutely nothing about harmony at all. I tried to sing above them to try to get some sort of harmony started, but I only had a few successful moments of harmony. By now my tumultuous sea of rage is seething just below the surface of my fakeass smile, but I decide that I am fucked and I have to make the most of it.

We roll on up to the cage, and I am figuring that hey, at least I will still look hot. They immediately put the brakes on that one. Someone shoves a white Army tee shirt over my head, and hey, the stupid shirt is two sizes too fucking big. Perfect. I am past smiling at this point, and I strut angrily into the cage. I am then informed that my heels have to come off because they will ruin the mat--why the hell didn't someone tell me that before I went shopping? I am furious. I leave the cage, and they announce my name--which, of course, is pronounced wrong. That is nothing new, people see Lashawn Chillious and immediately get intimidated. I am not pissed about that. I am pissed that my moment of shininess is being shitted on. I have to throw the boots on the ground and run into the cage in my socks and this stupid as hell shirt. I am beyond looking like nothing is wrong--they already started singing without me! I stomp over and discover that I HAVE NO MICROPHONE. How am I supposed to sing without a microphone??? I am so pissed that all I can do is stand there in a silent fury and attempt to sing along with these idiots. I am so mad that my throat goes dry and nothing comes out.

After I am done, I grab my shoes and go to my job's table. Everyone is stunned by what just went down. I am stunned, and I am furious and I yank the shirt off and put my boots back on. I am embarrassed and pissed and decide to go find my GM. I find him in the back of the expo center, and the first words out of his mouth are "What the fuck was that?" He had no idea what had just gone down. He thought that I was still the only one that was going to sing--smooth move, don't tell the guy in charge that you are fucking with the show. I am told that he is going to talk to Mr. Douchey Entertainment guy and that I am singing alone at his next fight.

After that moment of unparallelled suckiness, the night was great. The fights were good, and I had a good time with my friends.

Aha!

(Taken from Free Will Astrology, by Rob Brezsny)

Week of March 18, 2010

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

The Hebrew word chalom means "dream". In his book Healing Dreams, Marc Ian Barasch notes that it's derived from the verb "to be made healthy and strong". Linguist Joseph Jastrow says that chalom is related to the Hebrew word hachlama, which means "recovery, recuperation". Extrapolating from these poetic hints and riffing on your astrological omens, I've got a prescription for you to consider: To build your vitality in the coming weeks, feed your dreams. And I mean "dreams" in both the sense of the nocturnal adventures you have while you're sleeping and the sweeping daytime visions of what you'd like to become.

I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You

A few things I noticed this week:

*Spring is definitely in the air. The snow from last week has been melting all week. Yay!

*I am stressed out.

*Nicky seems to think he doesn't need a bedtime.

*School may be the ninth circle of hell. It's tied with work.

*All my major English papers seem to be due the week of month end at work. Either that is cruel coincidence or it is inherently evil. I am leaning towards the latter.

*I am an idiot.

*The guy I have liked for ages is a moron but he is a cute moron. *Sigh* Like I said, I am an idiot.

*Fish is gross.

*I can't quit procrastinating. That would be like telling Amy Winehouse to stop smoking crack. It's never gonna happen.

*I am addicted to buying music on iTunes. When I hear a new song that I really like, I will seriously think of buying it on iTunes until I actually buy it on iTunes.

*That said, I am in serious withdrawal. I haven't switched my iTunes library to my laptop yet, and I have found SO much new music.

*I am so excited because we are finally getting our hours back which means that I can start apartment hunting again. Yay!!!

It Snowed

I am going to call today "The Trapped in a Snow Globe Chronicles, Part Three". All it has done for the past three days is
Snow

Snow

Snow.


I am, in all honesty, snowed out. Winter, I quit. You totally win. Now slink away back to the Arctic and don't return until next December.

I am ready for green grass, daffodils, birds, and sunshine. Bring on the skirts and the flip-flops. I am ready to wear bright colors and hang up my puffy down-filled coat for the next ten months. I am ready for the smell of sunscreen and my clogged up nose from the inevitable Springtime pollen (well....I can live without that aspect of Spring). I want to see butterflies and tulips and lilacs, go to Cedar Point and ride rollercoasters and eat chili cheese fries. I want to go to the beach and admire our dirty lake.

I will, however, miss the way the snow lays on top of tree branches and makes everything look so pretty and sparkling. I will miss how quiet the world seems when you are the only one out in the morning and there's clean, virtually untouched snow all around you and big, fluffy flakes are floating down from the sky. I will miss the way the cold air burns my lungs after I go for a run.

Bring on the Springtime shenanigans. Come on, March. I'm pulling for you.

Speechless

"In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?"
--Rainer Maria Rilke

That says it all.

Comfort Eagle

Today was a good day. I slept in, stayed in my pajamas until 2:40, and had the house to myself until my dad got home from work. You can't really beat that on a good day off.

So, as I mentioned earlier, I gave up procrasinating for Lent. It's kind of hard. I am a natural born procrastinator--putting stuff off isn't just something I do, it's a way of life. I'm attempting to read some stuff for school in a bit, which is a small step, like wading into the shallow end of the pool when you don't know how to swim (which I don't, coincidentally). The hardest part is trying to not think about procrastinating. I think about it constantly. Like, I'll be sitting here at the computer all like "I am going to read chapter 6 in American Government and then study." My brain busts in with a "FAAAAACEBOOOOOK!!!!" And I give in and cook some pie in Cafe World.

Well, no more. I am taking a stand. No longer will my brain call all the shots. Nay. Well...actually my brain has to call all the shots, but you know what I mean. I am silencing the slacker frat boy part of my brain, the part that yells out stuff like "CHEEEESEBURRRRGER" when I'm on a diet or "WIKIPEDIAAAAA" when I should really be doing something more constructive.

Viva la revolution.

Wish me luck. Forty days is a long time.

Do I

I came.

I sang.

I rocked the mic, made the karaoke stage my bitch.

That is all for tonight. It's 1:30 am and I promise to write more tomorrow when I don't have to keep chasing Nicky back into bed. XO, my darlings.

Hey, Soul Sister

Hey my lovelies! Yesterday (Tuesday--yes, I know it's after 1 am, but in my bubble of Lashawn it is still technically Wednesday until I fall asleep and wake up at a later unspecified point in the morning. It's not Thursday in my mind.) was Nicky's birthday! He had a great time and is enjoying his presents--unbelievably, the rocketship never came up. He was more interested in his Thomas the Tank Engine trains. We watched his Max and Ruby DVDs, and I was informed by Encyclopedia Nick that Max and Ruby's parents were eaten by a dragon. My son is hilarious.

I should be writing my rough draft for my Honors English class on visual rhetoric, but I'm stuck, and one can only rant so much about Sarah Palin until the words mean nothing. It's due tomorrow night, and I have one long paragraph. I can work on it in the morning. Procrastination is a seductive wench, it really is. I gave up procrasinating for Lent, wish me luck.

In other news, I am singing at the "Solon Idol" in some little bar/club thing called the Blue Fig, in Solon, which is some itty bitty city out in the boondocks. I know of Solon only because you had to cut through there to get to Geauga Lake (an amusement park), which was in Aurora. I'm a big city girl--I mix up everything that isn't in Cleveland or immediately outside of it. I haven't sang on a stage in six years, and I get stage fright. I'm an awesome singer, but I'm nervous. Wish me luck!

Here is my Wednesday Late Night Playlist. Enjoy!

"I Still Ain't Over You", Augustana, (Can't Love, Can't Hurt)

"Sleep", Azure Ray, (Azure Ray)

"Taylor", Jack Johnson, (On & On)

"Speechless", Lady Gaga, (The Fame Monster)

"Uprising", Muse, (The Resistance)

"More Than This", Missy Higgins, (Steer & More-EP)

"Dying Day", Brandi Carlile, (Give Up the Ghost)

"I'm On Fire", John Mayer, (Battle Studies)

"Lifeboats", Snow Patrol, (A Hundred Million Suns)

"Know Your Onion!", The Shins, (Oh, Inverted World)

"Human of the Year", Regina Spektor, (Far)

"Gravity Rides Everything", Lenka, (Gravity Rides Everything-Single)

Meet Me Halfway

I am sitting at my new laptop, eating shortbread cookies and Nutella. Yum.

It's been a while, hasn't it? I have been busy with school and work and Nicky, and I have neglected my wonderful blog. Bad Lashawn.

Well...it has snowed quite a lot in the past week, not as much as further South, but enough to make me want to shake my fist at the sky and curse the fools who don't shovel their walkways. Especially businesses on main streets. That boggles my mind.

Nicky is tickled about all the snow. There is something about snow that turns children into crack addled monkeys. He gets all excited and can't stay out of the stuff. It's cute, but it gets old fast when you start losing feeling in your fingertips. I guess that's the price of being a mom.

Nicky's birthday is Tuesday. He'll be five, which excites him simply because five is "a whole hand". My boy is becoming a man...or so he thinks. He roughed me up a bit today, then looks me in the face and deadpans, "You're still young, my love." Good. Because I was worried that I was aging at an alarming rate. Thank you for clearing that one up. He also wants a real rocketship, which leads me to think that he will be plenty disappointed when he unwraps his gifts and sees the new Max and Ruby DVDs and not the Endeavor docked in our backyard. I doubt NASA would be too keen on lending me a space shuttle for a few hours.

I am doing fabulous in school. I have high Bs in all my classes, something which will improve when I stop procrastinating and read the stuff earlier in the week instead of the night before my tests. I am a natural born procrastinator. It's a talent. Speaking of school, Kindergarten registrations are February 22nd. I have to sign Nicky up--I'm enrolling him at my old grade school, St. Ignatius. Have to keep the legend alive.

Daydream Believer

First off, a very belated HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!! I've been a bit busy, so I haven't had a chance to get on here as much as I should. Many apologies, my dears. I've been quite the neglective blogger...I'll try to catch up on reading yours and work on mine more often.

Ahh...Ten days into 2010, and I'm not gonna lie. It feels a hell of a lot like 2009, which, in my opinion, sucked. Absolutely sucked.

There were some bright points last year, to be sure, but the bad outweighed the good, especially financially, especially in the last few weeks. Ugh. And my money woes have carried over into the new year, but I'm ever the eternal optimist, and am hoping that things brighten up by summer.

Hmm...Resolutions? I resolve to get more fit, and to lose around fifteen pounds by May. I think I can do it. I also resolved to get more organized, and to try to be less messy. I'll need some luck with those!

I start college tomorrow. It's only the community college in Cleveland, but shit, it's a start. I know if I get through this semester it'll be smooth sailing...All I need is to get back into the rhythm of things and school will be a breeze. I got a grant, so tuition isn't an issue yet. I can worry about that when I transfer out to an university in two years. I'm taking easy classes this semester so I won't feel overwhelmed--no need to slog through math when this is the first time I've been in school in almost three years, you know? I'm dreading math anyways, and I'm praying all I need for pre-law is one science credit, and hopefully Biology will suffice. If I have to take Chemistry, I am soooo screwed. I still can't balance formulas...and when it comes to math, I still have trouble balancing equations. English and History will be a piece of cake, as will Spanish, Ethics, and anything that doesn't involve numbers or the Periodic Table.

It's late, so I'm going to log off for tonight and get Nicky to bed. I hope you all had a great holiday, and wish me luck for this week!!! XO