Love Can't Pay Rent... but it Might Pay Your Heating Bill

I've never been in love (other than with term papers and old men) but I don't really feel like I need to experience it anymore with gas prices the way they are. From what I understand about love (i.e. movies, tv shows, pop culture in general) all the same feelings are there:

1. I want to sing when I think about or see the gas prices as low as they are
2. I'm planning lots of extravagant trips and vacations that probably won't happen but still make me feel giddy in the middle of the night.
3. I'm vulnerable and scared because it might go away.
4. I have no tolerance for cynics who say it's crazy and won't last.
5. Even when I try to stop it, the topic still comes up in almost every conversation I have.

So Boyz II Men may have told me by whom to swear my love, and Richard Gere may have showed me that love has no price, but gas prices, you GAVE me love... and everything (good or bad) that comes with it.

Caveat: I think it befitting that writing a blog about something I really know nothing about was explained with an analogy about which I can't truly appreciate since I don't have a car.

Caveat deux: This is my last blog about fake love. I promise.

11 1/2 Page Paper: I Love You

I realized today, the reason that I will never and can never get married while I am in school.

Tonight, after many (not that many) laborious hours in the library, I finished my 10-12 page paper for my African history class. When I printed that piece of joy and stapled it together, I realized that I have never, and probably will never love a man as much as I love that paper.

I looked at it longingly, checking my bag every so often to see if it was still there. I read and re-read its words over and over like poetry. I stared at its clean 11-point serif font with attractive footnotes at the bottom of the page and realized I was in love. Where else am I going to find that kind of love? The kind of love you blog about? The last person I blogged about was Old Man Winter (actually, another good candidate of things I might love more than potential or future mates... there I said it).

So world, if you want me to leave BYU-Idaho betrothed, my qualifications are this: 8 1/2 X 11 inches/ gender: questionable/white/Chicago-style citations. That's all I ask.

Come Join Us, The Punch is Great

Well I went to check in on Old Man Winter this afternoon. (Note *Old Man Winter is the name I have given to the 99+ year-old man I have been taking care of since my freshman year of college. We get along quite well).

After he gives me the standard, "hello's" and "you look like you've gained weight," he tells me almost simultaneously and definitely with equal severity that 1. his heart has given out and his days are numbered, and 2. his clock is broken and he needs me to call the clock shop and take it to get it fixed.

I've heard both of these before, and I have to say, time after time I am more shocked with the broken clock than the failing organs. Buy a new clock already! I suffered five minutes on the phone with the (probably just as old) clock technition, feeding lines directly from Old Man Winter's mouth. "I need this clock fixed. It doesn't matter that you are two months behind. I depend on this to tell time. I am disabled." (It is important to note here that I have considered my loss of dignity and self-respect during this job, but it pays tuition... or as I like to call it, my "body complex scholarship," and thus, so far, is somehow worth it).

So a note to all you 90 pluses out there. I feel your pain (besides the failing hearts and collapsed lungs). I know it must be hard to let go of things when everything else around you has died or doesn't care about you anymore, but embrace the 21st century! When something even looks like it might be breaking soon... buy another one! It's just the American way now, and besides, someone needs to urge the clock-tech to find a real job anyway.

Paper Cutastrophe

I have, currently, what might be considered a world-record-breaking-deep paper cut.

It happened this afternoon when I unzipped my backpack. The fluid motion of my hand somehow perfectly sliced right over the stack of apparently very crisp papers too close to the mouth of my zipper (I should have known better). Of course, I immediately went into the five stages of grief:

Pushing the flaps of skin together in denial, hoping it hadn't happened; anger at myself, my backpack and my teacher who had just given me all those papers; bargaining with God; depression at the thought of countless paper cuts I have yet to suffer before the end of my life,
And finally, acceptance that I was just going to have to continue typing with a wad of toilet paper over my middle finger making all my e's and d's hybrid we's and ds's.

But there is a sixth, unpublished stage in which you just don't really get after death of a loved one, diagnosis of cancer. The sixth stage of grief associated with a paper cut is of course post-traumatic shock. Reaching into my backpack since has been like September 12 on Times Square. Not only that, but every time my cut hurts, I have Nam flashbacks of how it happened, and there is just something inhumane about the act of a paper cut... let alone reliving it over and over.

Next time God, how about I stick my hand in a knife drawer and get some kind of gnarly, jagged
gash on my finger instead. At least then I'd have a cool scar and I wouldn't be afraid of my backpack anymore.

And we're back to step three.

Maybe she's born with it... Maybe it's teen pregnancy

So I have a theory.

These beauties, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, and my friend Shauna are all adopted. Not only are they adopted, but they were all teen pregnancies. Now why are they so superiorly attractive? Let's look at the facts.

Fact: The only thing that matters in high school is looks and status
Fact: Personalities aren't exactly developed until at least college and so looks are really the only thing anyone is going after.
Fact: The only people having sex in high school are the good-looking ones seeking anyone who may make them appear better looking or more popular for being associated with said boyfriend/girlfriend.
*inconsequent* Fact: Most of these teen babies have great voices for singing country which is really just another commentary on home-grown country chitlin' without accessible contraceptives.

THEREFORE: The teen babies are the superior, better-looking breed. Hitler had it all WRONG... when he was trying to develop the superior race, he didn't need to bother with all that complicated genocide. He just needed to promote high school sex, right?

Caveat: Any hasty generalization I have made in this post is allowed because I have a gorgeous teen-baby nephew... and I have a black cousin.

Classertations

I thought I'd class up the header a bit for the holidays. Consider it my Christmas gift to the blogging world.

You're welcome.

St. Crispin's Day in the Kitchen

Today I was making dinner (making chicken salad sandwiches from the store) with my roommate Mary in the kitchen, lamenting-as always-about graduation. I told her how I was going to miss doing work for myself: writing my own papers, reviewing my work, working on projects that would have my name on it... you know... all the selfish qualms that come with being a 22-year-old student with no family.

So, to put things in perspective Mary gave me this gem of insight, a "Band of Brothers" speech if you will:

"No. You're actually going to be making money for the work you do. Instead of coming home and wondering whether to make yourself chicken salad or Ramen; you're going to take yourself out to dinner! You're not going to live with a roommate who sticks her shoes under the fridge, (another blog for another time) you're going to live with maybe one other girl. And you can have a man in your bed every night if you damn well please!"

Now if that doesn't motivate me to find a good career, I don't know what will.

Thanks Mary

Caveat: On account of my impeccable memory for detail and the fact that I wrote every word of this down right after she said it means that it's verbatim and completely unrehearsed. The best always are.