Worlds colliding

Uh, hi, remember Dr. Shaughnessy, the sub? A BC grad! A legitimate physicist! Makes violins by hand! Featured in this summer's Boston College Magazine! I know, right?

-- 11:53 PM

No contrast

I woke up yesterday morning to my mother and brother talking downstairs and distinctly remember feeling excited to go down and talk to them at breakfast, but as usual, the only thing everyone wanted to talk about is what I eat and how I eat it, and it felt like a wire snapped in my chest and I began yelling, and that's how it always starts.

For weeks I had been both dreading and anticipating Saturday night at work, as it would be the last time the three of us would ever close together again, but I couldn't get this horrible pain out of my body, and I couldn't laugh, and when they said, "We think you're in a funk tonight," I nearly lost it. I said I was in a bad mood, that I couldn't get it out of my system, and they tried very hard to help. The fact that I've met people who will work to get me in higher spirits (unlike my brother who seems determined to make me as guilty and furious as possible before the week is over) made me shake while I did dishes. In the car I thought, That's it, that was your last Saturday, and this is how you spent it. I sobbed the whole way home, trying with all my might to just sing Pure Prairie League and stop it, but I couldn't, it all came out, and I don't remember the last time I felt the need to do that.

Today I was just as unwilling to look at my offending family members. My mom came in to show me the turkey she bought for dinner--my last Sunday dinner--and I gave her the cold shoulder. "What did I do to make you mad at me?" she asked in a watery voice, and I told her.

"Maybe you're nervous for school?"

"OH, YEAH, MAYBE THAT'S IT."

I don't know at which point over the night I determined that that was exactly it, but the tone of my immediate response clearly said that I had already come to that conclusion ages ago. It's going back to school, it's living up to expectations, it's my friend moving to Florida and being genuinely afraid that I might not see him again, it's that everyone from work is leaving and I'll have to start over when I return, it's what my brother said at dinner tonight when no one else could hear--"Soon you'll be gone, and I'll be the only child, and then you'll know how it feels"--that just tore my heart into a billion pieces, it's wondering if truly the only interesting thing about me is what I eat and how skinny I am because no one ever wants to talk about anything else, it's being looked at like if I don't get football tickets this year I will be letting him down in the biggest way, it's being jealous around all the wedding talk because I want so badly for it to be me, it's being told of course I'm going to graduate school, didn't I know?

Addie told me to write this down last night, but I said I would wait for today, because today I was going horseback riding with my friend Nancy from work. I knew I would be in a great mood after that, so I said something obnoxious like, "It will make for a much better contrast." And I absolutely was in a better mood, and even when my horse dropped to the ground and tried to roll me over, I thought that was just the tops. But now that I have written it, it's only got me thinking about it more.

I've got two days left of work, and I am going to do my very best to do it right. What's the point of crying over leaving everyone there if it's just going to make for a miserable day together?

-- 10:59 PM

Two things I've learned about pregnant women which I think are good to know

Pregnant women always want whipped cream on their drinks, which is refreshing because around 60% of people over thirteen refuse it on the grounds that "it's bad enough for me as it is." This gets a little frustrating, because pretty much nothing sold in a cafe is going to be healthy, but that's the point. I certainly never walk into one thinking, I need a well-balanced snack. It's more along the lines of, I need to find out exactly how much extra chocolate I can get on that something-something without being charged for it. Everything in there is a means of indulgence, and when people groan over calories, that's what I say.

Pregnant women always want to talk about their pregnancy. I am never the first to breach the topic, obviously, because that's the number one rule of the universe. But in my daydreams about being pregnant, I've decided that I want people to talk to me about it simply so I can brag about how happy I am, and as I suspected, other women feel the same way. I make their drink garnishes extra special, because I know they are actually going to enjoy it, and they always manage to slip it in somehow, like, "That is perrrrfect, especially eating for two."

-- 01:09 AM

Transition

Be patient during technical difficulties. I've totally reworked everything. If you're still a chump using Internet Explorer, this place is going to look like a shithole. Maybe you should grow up and switch to Firefox.

Remnants of the old version may still be hanging around here, and I'll get to them. I'll also work on fixing the IE problem in the future, but in the meantime, suck it, I'm going to bed.

UPDATE: Aaaand all redone again. We hopes you like seeing my kitty cat Mo. I sure do. Everything should be pretty much okay in IE now, but really, you should get a new browser, because nothing looks too nice in it. Let me know of any glitches anywhere (like the fact that all the entry dates are in Times New Roman. Why is it doing that? It makes zero sense. I'm working on it.)

-- 10:57 PM

Further thoughts welcome

I've now posed this question to basically everyone I know, but I think it's an important one, and more like this come to me all the time while I'm falling asleep watching Conan:

If Jurassic Park were real, would we be able to see the big dinosaurs on Google Earth?

Some people say yes, of course, the brontosaurus (sic. Brachiosaurus, if we're talking Jurassic, fools) would definitely show up; some are skeptical because of trees; others like my brother flat out ignore me. Dad suggested I check out the Disney Animal Kingdom Safari or the San Diego Zoo to see if I could find an elephant on the map, because if I could see that, then I could definitely see a T-Rex. But for whatever reason, it's really difficult to find an African plain in or around Orlando on a map, and the actual continent does not yet have close-ups. Then it came to me--the Cabazon Dinosaurs! That tourist attraction in California with those monster statues from PeeWee's Big Adventure. Low and behold:

I've done a little research, and these guys are like two or three times the size of an actual apatosaurus and T-Rex, but still. Cut them in half or third, and I would still see them. Then put a whole herd of them around a waterhole like in that beautiful scene with the music and the sneezing, and how could you miss them?

A few problems, obviously.

1. Islas Nublar, Sorna, y todos don't exist, so if Jurassic Park were real... well, how could it be if there was no place to keep them? So we clearly need uninhabited/uncharted islands to house them, because Google Earth isn't just going to invent it.
   
2. How exactly does Google take these satellite pictures? How do they never end up with clouds in the way? Mom said they just wait for a nice day, but I don't think so, there's some kind of technology they use. But does it capture motion? Obviously buildings and roads aren't going anywhere too fast, but if a shitload of parasaurolophuses are fleeing from a Rex, will that just be a big blur? But those aren't big dinos anyway... probably wouldn't see them.
   
3. Not one of the problems, but when I did take a look at Africa, you have got to see the Sahara! It's such a cool image, it's sand blowing allllll over the place.
   

This is an issue/theory/obsession I can't get over, probably because I've found myself wishing I'd pursued paleontology lately, and even though it's been fourteen years (fourteen years! I don't believe it either!) since the first movie came out, dinosaurs are on my brain all the god damn time. Explain it to me.

-- 11:54 PM

Ketchup

Yesterday I went to lunch with my tenth-grade English teacher, whose cat I adopted two years ago. We've been emailing each other ever since she moved to New York, me updating her on her Tub-a-guy and my ups and downs at college, she always providing quite excellent advice. She's written a book, so we were there partly under the pretense that I would see the publishing process she's going through. But almost immediately, it came around to me.

I told her everything I've experienced, witnessed, and noticed in the tremulous years of "high school senior" and "college freshman," and she assured me for the umpteenth time that I am on the right path. I said I'm still filled with a lot of resentment towards those that aren't, those that relish in their screwedupedness and will still succeed in some ways that I don't think I'll ever reach, and she said it won't last. "The moral of this story," she said after telling me a secret about Plymouth North, "is that everything will catch up. All of the good, smart moves you're making are right, and you're going to gain from them. People who make bad decisions now, who think they're having fun, they are going to have a lot of growing up to do--something you've already done."

I've been dreading going back to school for numerous reasons: because I've made some really good friends this summer, because I'm still uncertain where I stand at that school and with the friends I made there and I haven't actually talked to them since leaving, because I have seven new roommates, because I like making money, because I like not doing homework, because this is the first summer I've been happy. These past few mornings, I've woken with a pang of fear because it is so cold, it is almost September, and I don't know if I'm ready to leave. But really, I must be, because I've bought all my cold-weather clothes and the things for my room, and I've adjusted my sleep schedule to what it will be at school, and all that. All that needs fixing now is my attitude, so I guess I just keep my eye on that straight path I walk so neatly and grow up two steps ahead of everyone else.

-- 11:58 AM

Such as

I have so many things I need to admit--little facts about myself that I'll never get around until I say them out loud--but I can't. I can't.

-- 01:02 AM