well, i didn't get very much (read: practically nothing) done today. i went to the library and read magazines and borrowed enya and shawn colvin cds and just had an all-around good time. libraries make life so good.

it has come down to it. we use the internet to read the news, communicate with family and friends, order anything we want in the entire world to be shipped to our homes... i have resorted to the internet to solve my friend crisis. i posted an ad on the platonic section of craigslist saying "i'm new to austin. my boyfriend has friends. someone befriend me." i specified that i was only looking for women.

i have started talking to two people that seem really cool and eerily in tune with my interests. hopefully that will work out.

tonight boyfriend, his three friends and i barbecued for dinner. they like to do that a lot, so i always throw some tofu pup or chik'n patty on the grill. anyway, i have hung out with friends #1 and #2 a couple of times, and i like them. they're fun. friend #3 hasn't been around a whole lot, with traveling or something. i only met him the other day, and today was the second time.

so he says to boyfriend, in front of me, that i am like batman because he's only seen me once. boyfriend said it was because of him being away and he said, "me?!" as if that was ridiculous. then he said that when boyfriend is with me, all he hears from him is a message on gmail that he wants to go up and watch the football game with them.

now, was i wrong to be a smidge offended by this? have i suddenly become the evil girlfriend that won't let him out to play? i never told him not to hang out with his friends; i simply asked that we compromise on how much time he spends there. i mean, if this guy moved to a brand new city for his girlfriend and she spent her weekends watching sex & the city marathons with three female friends, i'm sure he would beg out once or twice. i'm also fairly certain he wouldn't happily sit in the apartment alone while she did that. guys piss and moan about everything.

anyway, whatever.

to do this weekend:

• write paper for brit lit class
• study for brit lit test
• finish brit lit classwork
• read "the everyman"
  
• revise paper comparing gilgamesh and woody allen ;)
  
• catch up in chemistry
• do chem pre-labs
• go to the library to return some stuff and maybe relax there a bit and read feminist magazines because all i do is work!!
• go to kerbey lane with boyfriend and eat eggs and french toast and drink coffee late at night because that's the only way to live.

can she do it, folks??

i miss eve. i probably wouldn't be bitching about making new friends if i could have her around. she's long gone.

i don't feel so good. maybe i shouldn't have had that "veggie basket" for dinner last night.

me: "what's in the veggie basket?"
man behind counter: "all of our fried vegetables: zucchini, okra, mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, and an onion."

welcome to texas.

i didn't have the heart to tell him that mozzarella cheese isn't a vegetable.

oh, my arteries.

i took everclear's so much for the afterglow cd out of the library and am enjoying my little bit of nostalgia. i spent all of my 15th year on this planet listening to this cd over and over, then threw it out because i was tired of being sad, and it didn't help.

having a shitty day today. you know, sometimes you just have them. i'm not due to be emotional for at least another week, but whatever.

i need to make friggin friends here. school is good, work is good, being with boyfriend is definitely good, but geez, how much can i study and paint? it's lonely.

madonna!

i was reading in the paper this morning about a woman who is suing her pastor/licensed secular therapist because when she confided in him about an affair she was having, he told the entire congregation and then told them all to shun her. he took this from matthew 18:15-17:

"if your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. if he listens to you, you have won your brother over. but if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector."

1. how is this woman's affair hurting your relationship with god?

2. treat him as you would a non-christian or one of those irs people - like dogs.

3. you know, even if the person does not turn from his sin, why do you have to shun him? can't you go on loving the sinner and not the sin, praying for him, showing him a good example? treating him like shit is not going to illustrate your christlike love very much. (although, it was christ who advocated this behavior, so who knows.)

4. since this whole thing doesn't even acknowledge that there are sisters and women in the world, that there are female christians, not just in the passage about them keeping their mouths shut in church but in general, maybe this doesn't apply to women. maybe she's allowed to sin as much as she wants because we are, of course, the weaker sex who brought sin into the world.

if god wants us to obey his rules so much, he could at least include us in the instructions.

sorry future priest, i know you will be angry with me, but these things piss me off. anyway, these are protestants.

weirdos in my world

weirdo #1

he comes to class barefoot. no shoes, no socks. his feet are dirty, obviously, but i stare in shock, wondering how he could live this way. doesn't he cut his feet? is he a hobbit? have we evolved to the point of not needing footwear anymore, and no one told me?

in chemistry lab, we are not allowed to wear open-toed shoes. he wears sneakers. they look brand new. i suppose that is because he never wears them! we have a short break after lab and then meet in class, where he is barefoot once again.

during chemistry lab, he asks my professor if she is going to teach us how to blow things up. when she says no, he wonders aloud about the logic of taking a chemistry lab if she isn't even going to teach us to blow things up. he gives out invitations to his birthday party, although he doesn't really know any of us. he gives one to our professor as well.

weirdo #2

he walks into class and says, "what's the molarity man?" kid next to me looks puzzled and asks, "the molarity of what?" the response is, "um, you know, what's going on? that's the chemistry way to say it." i sit back and roll my eyes, embarrassed for him. at the end of class, a girl asks the professor if our homework, which is due online the next morning at 8 am, could be pushed back a couple of days because we have a test. he looks at her and asks, "why? it's so easy." um, shut up?

it's frightening. i'm frightened.

mi piacciono biscotti baby

boyfriend bought a pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream yesterday and today he acted all surprised when there was none left. um, hello? last night he said he didn't even like it, so that shit was fair game.

chemistry test numero uno: i either just barely passed or just barely failed. results forthcoming.

best friend's birthday is at the end of the week. i tried to find her a super cool birthday card in the feminist bookstore, but they all had photos of women kissing each other on them and i didn't want to give her the wrong idea. i mean, i love you, but i don't love you.

we are reading the writings of julian of norwich and margery kempe in brit lit class. i love them old mystic ladies. i'm thinking of painting them when i have some time. a few days ago i did a piece i'm pretty proud of. it's a painting of a woman flying/floating backwards with a pair of wings, her eyes closed, looking peaceful, with unplucked eyebrows, unshaven legs, a little bulk in her waist. underneath her it reads libertà. it's a good piece of work, so long as no one notices that i gave her a right foot for a left, and vice versa. *shrug* hey, we all gotta start somewhere.

did i mention my landlord wouldn't let me have eve? bastardo. now she's gone, i haven't seen her in a couple of days. hopefully she found someone with a good heart and the deed to their house. i think she might have been pregnant.

anyway, chemistry is too much for me. back in the day, when i took it in high school - AT 14-15 YEARS OLD - i was able to pull a B. what, have i become stupider as the years have passed? what's going on?

then again, i had childhood friend to help me in those days. she was the math/science person, i was english/history. i got her an A on her european history essay on the unification of italy, and she helped me with stuff like chemistry. if anything, i was the distraction when the two of us got together to do homework after school. i used to tell her stories about the mafia whacking our chemistry teacher. see? i was meant to be a writer, not a scientist.

sabato triste

frigg-uh-la. what did i want to write about? i always forget as soon as i open blogger.

okay, so i went to this "italian" festival yesterday that sucked ass. seriously, man. let's take a look at what was advertised versus what was there:

"live italian music" = a band singing dean martin songs
"italian food" = 1 crummy pizza
"soccer and bocce game, renaissance costumes, puppet show, lyric opera, etc." = lies, all lies.

good thing it was right across the street from the library so as not to make this trip totally pointless. i read a book on birth order that was really dead-on. it listed characteristics of first-born people that i totally related to: responsible, perfectionists, a little uptight at times, pressured, taking on too many responsibilities, strong need for approval, cautious... there were 2 types: the compliant first born (a.k.a. me) who doesn't send back food that is crappy, who always wants to please, never says no, and the power-driven first born who is a leader and assertive and blah blah. when it described the babies of the family, it completely described sister. (she was the baby because our new sisters didn't come until we were 17 and 15.) she is the comedian who needs attention, rebellious, temperamental, impatient, outgoing...

baciano le donne

okay, so school/work/doing-all-that-is-required-for-me-to-remain-fabulous has drained me a bit, so i took a walk to the feminist bookstore this afternoon. just to clear my head and get a break.

i was in the store, checking out all the super-cool things they have in there. as is usually the custom, this bookstore was filled with gay pride and queer merchandise. i have always bristled at the fact that whoever finds out that i am a feminist calls me a lesbian. it makes me angry that a woman, whoever she is, who stands up for herself and other women must have some sort of sexual agenda. feminists are straight, and feminists are gay. the fact that lesbianism is a big part of the women's movement is because the women's movement exists to address issues important to women. this includes, but is not limited to, family, career, sex, love, marriage, children or the lack thereof, fashion or the protestation of such, religion/spirituality, etc. a woman who is discriminated against for loving other women should not have to go find her own movement. the movement is for her as much as for anyone else.

that being said, i was a little overwhelmed. i almost felt out of place because there was just so much of it. there were many things i could not relate to.

which is fine, i don't have to relate to everything i see. whatever.

so i'm browsing and some lesbians come in. that's fine and dandy with me; i have a lot of respect for lesbians. (i like the idea of woman as completely self-sufficient, even sexually.) but then, old stereotypes and fears came into my head. from where, i do not know. i like to think of myself as pretty tolerant. hell, i must have zillions of gay best friends, but they are all male.

these nice ladies were just shopping, minding their own business, and i'm thinking those crazy thoughts straighties tend to have. "what if someone thinks i'm a lesbian because i'm shopping here?" "what if a woman hits on me?" i was immediately ashamed at having such thoughts. when i am around men, i don't worry about unwanted attention. if it comes, i deal with it appropriately, but more often than not it does not. so what's the difference? is a lesbian going to reach out and grope me? i mean, come on. i have been hit on once by a woman, and survived to tell the tale.

in the great american psychological tradition of blaming one's parents for everything, i would like to offer up at least one excuse for my behavior. when i was growing up, we knew gay people, but they were living in sin and went to our church in order to abandon their lifestyle and be spared the wrath of god. that poster illustrating people going to heaven and hell that i looked at every day for most of my childhood? on one side of it, it said, "AIDS - the gay plague," implying god sent it to punish gays.

my parents are not hateful bigots, they just believed everything the church said, lock, stock and barrel. mother acknowledges today that that was a sick fucking poster.

come to think of it, mother loves fellow seeker, and the three of us enjoy watching 'talk sex with sue johanson' together, but she would be totally grossed out if she saw him kiss another man in front of her. as far as parents go, what with their upbringing and all that, mine are not too bad. but if me or one of my sisters turned out to be gay, they wouldn't be able to handle it.

it's interesting how ideas that are so ingrained come back to bite us in the asses. but, at least being conscious of it is a start to some sort of change.

i'm going to blog to keep my sanity.

life has been busy - which is a good thing, don't get me wrong - but i came dangerously close to losing it when i got a 66% grade on my online chemistry homework. are you ready for this, folks? are you ready? out of 18 questions, i got 14 right on the very first try. i didn't know how to do the others, so i guessed... quite badly. each question was worth 1 point. each time i guessed wrong, i lost 1 point! so on a couple of questions, i didn't guess the right answer until the 5th try, and consequently i lost 4 points on a 1 point question. how unfair is that? you get it right, you get one point... you get it wrong, you can lose up to five?? sick bastards!!

also, i took up painting. i am not good at it at all but i enjoy it, and sometimes i just need to not look at words and formulas and the printed word. i decided that my normal hobby - reading - did not help when i needed a break and my eyes hurt, so i started this. so far i have painted mythological women who are also trees (daphne... duh) and a monkey in a tree holding a banana. i know, i won't quit my day jobs.

i have fallen in love. this gorgeous creature found her way into our apartment and into my heart. i named her eve. now i have to beg the landlord to let me keep her.

she's so friendly and loving, i am convinced that she was a housecat at one time. no collar, though. as i was typing this, boyfriend yelled up to me that she found her way in the front door again, and now she came up to find me. *giggles*

i love people.

i ate a tub of ready-made microwavable mashed potatoes for dinner. am i disgusting or what?

anyway, today was my first day at work. it was nice... filled out forms, got my cubicle, met everyone around the office, etc. i had to leave at noon to get back in time for class, and thankfully, boss gave me a lift to school. (it took us 10 minutes, it takes me an hour by bus, including the time it takes me to cross the freeway by foot.)

what else? oh, i got a library card. i am so friggin excited.

this website makes me laugh. the guy who runs it is not trying to be malicious; he's just a christian poking fun at christian corniness.

anyway, i finally got to do the presentation this morning. madonna. it went very well, though. prof. liked it. i needed to give the presentation to get my mind off of the seething rage that had come about from a girl in my class theorizing that men have been able to subjugate women in history because women are weaker. i wanted to beat her up and show her that i'm not weak, but i'm a pacifist and we didn't have much time left in the class for acts of violence anyway.

i'd like to see a man squeeze a child out of his loins, just once. he would cry like a baby.

sunday plans = rained out. boyfriend was going to forgo his football viewing and we were going to go out and spend the day together, but mother nature decided not to let that happen. so he is upstairs again and i am down here with all my homework.

damn you, mother nature.

anyway, whatever, it's not that bad. i probably would have neglected some work had we gone out. and at least i can use my alone time to play christian music and feel like it's actually sunday.

i make it sound like he's some controlling boyfriend who doesn't want me playing christian music. that is so not the case. i guess i just get a little embarrassed, especially since he doesn't understand what it means to me. i mean, he recognizes that it means something to me, but not in what manner. how could he, anyway?

i remember, as a teenager, i was really into the faith while my parents were what the church considers "backsliders." they encouraged me to be faithful, naturally, but i still felt a little out of place. whenever my parents would come into the room, i would lower my christian music. one day, my dad said to me, "you know, you don't have to lower it. i love christian music. i used to listen to it all the time."

i miss my dad. the man i see now is not my dad. that's a mean thing to say, isn't it? it just feels true.

i put all these pictures of my family up in frames on the wall of our apartment, but i don't have a single photo of my father from before his accident. i have some back home, in my bedroom. i am going to ask mother or sister to mail them to me.

in my white tee

i love this picture. i took it a couple of nights ago. now all my friends are accusing us of having planned to wear matching shirts.

yeah, because white t-shirts are rare in life. *rolls eyes*

he's upstairs watching football in his friends' apartment. now i can play my hymns without being called a "funda" (as in "fundamentalist"). i know he's only teasing but it irks me. i feel a deep sense of loss in connection with my faith, and any tiny scrap or remnant i can hold onto is something i cherish. it's hard to explain that to someone else, though. it's hard for me to even articulate it in my own mind.

also, i should be able to take a joke better. i'm pretty uptight, i guess. i remember when i was 19, my mother set me up with this 28-year-old sleazy guy she worked with. he kept fucking around on when we were going to go out, and he cancelled a date or something and said to mother, "i hope she doesn't get mad at me." mother said she told him, "oh no, she's very easy going." i remember thinking, "easy going? me?" i think she was just trying to sell me. once the two of us found out what he was really like, she cut that out quickly.

anyway, i love this city. i don't think i have mentioned that enough. boyfriend and i stopped into a feminist bookstore today. it's like two blocks away from my school. oh my goodness. i nearly had a bookgasm right there in the store. which reminds me, i need to take confessions of a pagan nun out of the library in time for the next "bookgoddess reading group" meeting :)

the weekend's here! i just took a two-and-a-half hour nap that was sorely needed. missed the school newspaper orientation/meeting and my italian group, but i don't care. sleeeeep :)

actually, i quit the newspaper, so whatever. i signed up, agreed to take on a story that no one else had taken on, and then they said there wasn't enough info in my story about the lt. watada protests and stuff. hello, i didn't go to the protest, i agreed to take this since no one else would. they said my story wasn't long enough. hello, no one told me what the length requirement was. they told me to revise it and try to get more info on it, but if it's not sufficient, they will bump the story. screw that. i have a life outside of spilling my creative genius onto the page for you to throw into the garbage.

well, everyone at the paper staff was nice, and this is the nature of that kind of thing i suppose, but now that i have two jobs - arguably three, if you count writing for the music magazine - i can't see myself agonizing over extracurric's anymore.

my class was supposed to give the sumerian presentations on wednesday. 6 groups, 5-7 minutes per group, simple mathematics gives us 30-42 minutes. each class is 50 minutes. well, we went over our time limit, as classes tend to do, so i brought in my laptop and slideshow (i'm doing music and art) again today. tell me how we went over again today and my partner and i still haven't gotten to go? holy shit. now i gotta lug the damn thing to school again on monday. another day to spend with the lady of warka and the guy with the kooky eyes. (aren't they cool though?)

this morning it began to rain while i was in class, which was not good because i had my computer (albeit, in a computer bag, but still) and no umbrella. i stepped outside after class, looking around and wondering how i was going to make the 15 minute walk home, when i looked up and saw boyfriend holding an umbrella. he walked to school in the rain for me. it was so sweet.

this weekend i have to read the whole of the canterbury tales. i'm jazzed, i have never read it before. i'm reading the prologue and i'm already pretty in love with the clerk. you know, the dude who goes starving and without decent clothes because he spends all his money on philosophy books.

keeping up with the joneses

when i was little, i had a best friend. she had been born during the same month as me, and she had a sister who was born in the same month as my sister, so it was perfect. our moms became friends and we had play dates. we went to the same christian elementary school and learned the same songs about jesus.

their last name is not jones, but i will refer to them as the j. sisters. my friend was j.j., and sister's friend was b.j.

they always chose j.j. to sing the solo parts during school plays. they never chose me. my mother was so angry, because naturally i could have been well on my way to child christian pop stardom had this small church with a school in the basement chosen to put me on stage. i would have liked to have been picked for a solo also, but it wasn't that big a deal to me. (now that i watch home movies of myself singing as a child, i see that they did everyone a favor.)

whenever sister and i would fight, mother would say, "look at j.j and b.j.! they get along so well! why can't you two be like that?"

i forget when we lost touch. maybe when my parents stopped going to church, when i was 10. all i know is that by the time i was in high school, j.j. was a distant memory from my childhood. this, coupled with the fact that i had become majorly fat and insecure and she was still thin and quite pretty turned her into something of a legend for me.

i hung out with her once during high school. i went to her house and hung out with her and b.j. they had such a close relationship, the likes of which sister and i have never seen. they did well in school and played instruments and had dinner around the table with their family after praying and asking for god's blessing over the food. their family seemed so normal compared to mine. almost freakish, like the cleavers.

during dinner, the subject of SATs came up. mr. and mrs. j. asked me what my score had been. i told them, and everyone thought it was so funny that j.j. and i had gotten practically the same score. except she got 20 more points than i did.

after that, i only saw b.j. and her parents. we went to the same church and b.j. and i were members of the same youth group. j.j. had gone away to college. b.j. told me how much she missed her, and all i could think about was how sister would never say a thing like that when i left for college.

now i see them on facebook. a college student and a college grad, both smart and beautiful, with handsome boyfriends and tons of friends. they call themselves liberal, which is a far cry from how we were raised, but i suspect they haven't lost their faith to the point that i have.

i'm not jealous of the j. sisters, but i have always wondered if that was what sister and i were supposed to aspire to. are they better than us? do they have perfect lives? is it something we're doing wrong, that we're not like them?

i don't know why at 22 i still think about them, and us, in those terms.

this morning my class was giving presentations on various aspects of sumerian culture. two girls in my class were telling us about love, sex and marriage. one of them began by talking about empathy, and how it's important not to judge when we look back into history. she said it's important to pretend we were a part of that society instead of looking down on it from our modern perspective.

fine, that's all p.c. and well and good.

but then they started saying things like, if a woman talked back to her husband, he had the right to knock all of her teeth out. if a woman was caught having an abortion, she would be impaled.

are you serious? are you telling me that it's wrong to cast judgment on something as misogynist and just plain horrific as this?

i haven't heard anyone saying, "well, you can't judge european imperialists for having had wiped out the native americans and taken africans as slaves, because that seemed right to them at the time. that was a part of their culture." get the fuck out of here.

i hate when cruelty to women is somehow "okay," especially when a woman says it. i wanted to raise my hand after that impaling bit and ask, "just a quick question: how do i have empathy for that type of behavior, exactly?" but my prof was already getting irked at the lack of preparedness of some, and i didn't want to be an ass.

i'm going to see jars of clay in october! sooo excited! i have only seen them live once, when i was 18, but even despite my religious turmoil, i have always adored them. boyfriend is going with me, although he does not share my enthusiasm. whatever dude :P

what else, what else... the ceo offered me the job. i am most likely taking it, although i have an interview for the music mag in an hour and a half. may want to do that freelance in addition to the other stuff. madonna i will have no free time!! but i'm happy :)

i know i wanted to write something else, but i can't remember it now... gosh, darn it.

oh yeah. over my morning coffee, i read an article about the religion study baylor university just did. their categories irked me. they felt the need to distinguish between "evangelical protestant," "black protestant" and "mainline protestant," yet lumped buddhist, hindu, muslim, etc. into "other." wtf? i could see something like christian science being "other," but islam is one of the world's monotheistic faiths. buddhism and hinduism are kind of important too. geez louise.

not much new to write about but i want to blog anyway. i miss being prolific for fun.

i am still in the midst of interviewing in the hopes of finding that perfect job. in the meantime, my saucy freelancing has already begun to pay off financially, which is good. i'm not spending any nights at the ritz on it, but it is a nice feeling to finish a piece of work and get paid for it. i feel like how much i make is up to me and my pace, which gives me a sense of control. anyway, whatever.

i have decided to keep a positive attitude regarding chemistry. i realized that repeating "i'm going to fail" over and over is not exactly a nice mantra. so i have at least decided to tell myself every day that i am going to do well. *shrugs shoulders* it can't hurt.

i'm writing a news story for the college paper on lt. watada, the first lieutenant who refused deployment to iraq because he feels the war is illegal and wrong. he is facing over 7 years in prison for missing movement, contempt of pres. bush, and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. this is the first time since 1965 that anyone has been prosecuted for free political speech as a violation of article 88 of the uniform code, regarding "contempt" of superior officers. (missing movement is at least a logical charge, but contempt? for saying the war is wrong? george is rolling over in his grave.) it's pretty interesting. the only thing that sucks is, i have to get student opinions. i don't know anyone yet, really, and i hate having to talk to strangers. not that i don't like people, but i'm a total introvert. it's weird to go up to someone you don't know and say, "so what do you think of lt. watada???"

whew, that was a close one.

it's a bad thing to have a wireless internet connection ... it really is.

you sit yourself down and tell yourself that you're going to do work, you really are, and you have your books and notebooks and index cards and highlighters and pens and pencils and calculators and syllabi all laid out next to you on the couch - as i do know - and what do you wind up doing? obsessively checking gmail to see if someone decided to hire you on a sunday afternoon and reading other people's blogs.

you're a loser, you know that, don't you?

okay, now that i have finished projecting my self-loathing onto everyone, i will go back to work.

maybe.

okay, i'm taking a break from my life of reading and writing to ... read and write.

austin is being very nice to me. i got a 96 on my first paper, i got a job and will hopefully get another one soon, i found two different groups of people who get together for the sole purpose of speaking italian (and the occasional gelato), it's sunny, and i live near a cookie shop.

i think i made a mistake by taking on too much at first, but hey, whatever. this weekend i have to study for chemistry, do reading for two lit classes, create a presentation, prepare for an interview, finish editing a manuscript, do some editing for this CEO who is considering hiring me but wants to see if i'm any good first, and write an article for the college paper. madonna! at least meditation class doesn't start for a few days.

i'm, like, deliriously happy here. sometimes i miss home, family, friends, of course, but it just feels like for the first time i have the space to pursue what really interests me, and this seems to be the perfect type of city i was looking for - creative, eclectic, intellectual. my home city is like that as well but you have to go searching for it. it is a city in every sense of the word, there's no community atmosphere, everyone does their own thing.

you are going to love this. oh yes, you are.

i am searching and interviewing for various jobs, mostly in the writing/editing category if i can help it.

i just got a job as a freelance copy editor of erotic novels.

this is nothing if not extremely amusing.

in the words of the legendary sir paul mccartney, "i don't care, i'm gonna broaden me outlook."

Sunday School Teacher Fired for Being... Female!

go watch the video... you have to scroll down a little to find it.

i arrived safely in austin. love the apartment boyfriend found... love love love it. if aunt flo wasn't stabbing me repeatedly in the uterus, i would be having a grand old time.

although i think living two seconds away from a cookie store (that delivers!) might wreck my no-sweets plans. *shrugs shoulders* i could have worse problems.

i'm currently reading the autobiography of malcolm x. it's really interesting, although sometimes it is hard for me to remember that people are human. like i want "heroes" to be perfect and "villains" to be evil, and don't allow space for humanity. i keep getting annoyed when malcolm says something slightly sexist, and i think, malcolm, how can i admire you if you felt that way? but i need to remember that i will never find a perfect individual in the world - it's not like i'm one anyway - so i need to admire people for the traits i admire and not let the rest of the crap get in the way.

another example: i had to roll my eyes at andrea dworkin when she wrote the line, "men are shits and take pride in it." but i really did enjoy her memoir and admire a lot about her. so, whatever. draw the line where you will, i suppose.

i love airports with wireless connections.

just killing time until we board. i wish i could spend more time with my family, but i think this is a good decision. i think it is difficult to have to leave after just getting back from europe, but maybe i will get over it once i am in texas.

the sweets ban didn't last, but it was ambitious of me, no? maybe when i'm down there, we just won't buy any for the apartment!!

last night i went out with sister and her boyfriend and his friends. normally not something i would do, but i wanted to spend my last night with my sister and she asked me to go. i think sister's boyfriend is very cool, and very funny, and i enjoy hanging out with the two of them... but his friends? madonna. one of them wants to be a priest, yet when my sister was showing them the shirt she was wearing - a tee that says, find me on myspace - he said, "ok, now go like this" and he touched his nipple. i wanted to smack him in his face hard. then, when sister and her boyfriend left the table for a few minutes, he started telling the others domestic abuse jokes about beating your wife, which they found hysterical. i was fuming. this yutz also ordered "freedom onion soup" when the waiter came. I AM DEAD SERIOUS, HE SAID THAT.

but spending time with sister was worth it. she's awesome. she wants to visit us in texas, which is amazing because she never wants to travel or broaden her horizons or do anything, but i hope she does. i am excited by the prospect. i think she feels empowered with her new job. i was like, "will you save up money for airfare?" and she was like, "oh sure, i make that in a week," with a proud smile on her face. cutie.

i noticed that a lot of people were visiting me from the reign of ellen, so i went to check it out. i didn't realize i was a queen in her court! yay!

(queen sojourness. think it looks like me?)

i am so conflicted. part of me is dying to leave tomorrow, to go back to school and the arms of my love and some sense of normalcy. the other part of me wants to stay and take care of my sisters, to take responsibility for all the craziness in our lives. if i do that, i will never graduate or move forward in my life. i will probably go crazy with depression and frustration. but how can i just abandon people to live my own life?

why do i have to make that choice anyway?

I have decided that I am giving up sweets for the next thirty days. Yes! I am! It's like my own version of Lent ... sort of?

Hold me to this, people.