Quick Thoughts

It's amazing how low expectations are for young people these days. When my grandmother was 22, she was a happily married homeowner with an infant. At 23, I shuttle people to and from a diner effectively and remember to unplug the toaster when it's not in use and thus to all parent-types I'm an incredibly responsible, put together, special person, a cut above the rest. What does that say? Our world must really be going to shit.

No real time to post. Although I have ideaRs. Totally exhausted from the hospital and moving mom to (spinal) rehab today. Cannot keep eyes open. I need to take a personal day from being a grown up.

I Talk To Cute Guys About My Word of the Day Calendar

So Lauren, Leah and I enjoy going to the local upscale bar/lounge in our town because the drinks are good. And the ambiance is lovely. Oh, and because the three of us, all spoken for by high-quality, gracious, loving men, have massive face-crushes* on the bartender and take pleasure in flirting shamelessly with him. He made quite an interesting comment last night: "People don't pay prostitutes for sex. They pay them to leave." Now, in my semi-drunken state, this was THE WORLD'S GREATEST EPIPHANY. My eyes lit up as the pieces clicked together. I demanded high-fives from him 7-10 too many times. I mean, think about it. Getting any insecure, somewhat slutty girl at a bar to have sex with a guy isn't that difficult. But getting her to leave- no strings attached, no snuggles, no tip-toeing around until you half-heartedly ask for her number, no "so where should we get brunch tomorrow morning?"- is a feat. A prostitute's cache is not that she is having sex with you. It's that she's leaving you alone afterward. I thought this was the most genius thing I've ever heard. And I still, now sober, think it's pretty interesting. Thoughts?

And now, in a completely different direction, the more I interact with fathers, the more jaded I get. There is no Danny Tanner character in real life, shuttling kids to carpool and knowing their food allergies and disciplining them and making sure they eat and wear seasonally appropriate clothing. There is just a population of men who have absolutely no idea what to do about their children. Like when Henry's dad comes home before his mom and he kind of gives me a pleading look like "Do you have to leave before she gets back? I mean..." and my heart sort of breaks slash turns to ice. Today I was rudely awakened from a still-drunken slumber at 9:30 to babysit, which involved picking the girl up at temple, taking her home for a couple hours, then driving her back to meet her parents later. (They have requested stranger things.) Anyway, I'll sum it up with this: a mother knows what making two trips back and forth to temple and entertaining an 8-year-old girl and her friend entails. A dad shoves $20 in your palm and confidently says "that'll do it, right?" and you just have to grin and bear it because you're too awkies to negotiate. My mom always says that with a good supply of sperm and turkey basters, actually having men on earth is pointless (note: she and my father have been happily married for 30 years). I'm starting to understand...so many things...

*What's a face-crush? Well, I'm happy you asked. We all know what a baby crush is- when you have a little eeeeety crush on a guy, often in a way that you just sort of want to snuggle and/or pet him. You could have a baby crush on an old grandpa teacher, even. A face-crush is where you want to bone someone based solely on their looks, without ever having to know their personality. This is also referred to as "Superficiality," or "The way life works."

Soooorry I can't be perrrrfeeeect

I think my biggest flaw is expecting every juncture of my life to be greeted with a medal ceremony. Example: today I was bored and had time to kill in the city- but not enough time to do anything like think of a museum to visit (hard without an Internet-enabled phone in these trying times) then visit said museum, or see a show, or find a homeless person and give him/her a dollar to rebalance the world after Cecily threw it out of orbit when a homeless man gave her a dollar last November- so I decided to take a bus instead of the subway and then walked the remaining 40 blocks to class. The whole time I'm thinking WAHOO LOOK AT ME I'M WALKING 40 BLOCKS GO ALLIE GO ALLIE! and kept thinking of ways I could bring it up to grad school friends (haha jk I have none)/my mom on the phone when I called her for no reason but to brag that I walked 40 blocks/random strangers because omg 40 blocks is a huge deal! Note to Allison: no one gives a shit. You don't get curtsies for having no life and thus hoofin' it. Go donate money to earthquake relief.

Well that would be my biggest flaw if I wasn't so lazy. I am in a pickle because there are 3 courses I could potentially take to fill up my schedule this semester, and one is clearly the topical standout (Health Promotion for Children/Adolescents) and relevant for my future desired work, but the amount of reading/paper assignments is just off-putting in a way that makes me want to vomit/strangle kittens. The second option is also relevant (patient-provider communication strategies), yet is taught by the same professor as my required Thursday night class, and she's dull and dry (although a fairly easy grader. Ahh! I gave away the punchline of ma flaw!) and I just don't think my entire classroom experience with only her this semester would keep me off a rooftop ledge (brandishing a strangled kitty? Sup with the drama?). And her class, although less work than option 1, is still intense and involves creating a brochure. Option 3 is health promotion for college students, which I find quite interesting, BUT it's only offered online. I'm already taking an online course on HIV Education, and I feel like I'm shortchanging myself taking two online courses when I live close enough to school and enjoy being on campus. However, the topics for option 3 are quite interesting, and the workload is much lighter than the other options. So we've hit the nail on the head here: What's my other flaw? I AM A LAZY BASTARDO (!!! Titanic smokestack falls on my head. Too soon?) WHO ALWAYS TAKES THE EASY WAY OUT (IN)! Although any guidance in Class Selection 101 would be appreciated.

Of Bayside and Geometry

Before I begin this entry, I must describe the events of this morning. I turned on the glorious 13-incher, hopped on the elliptical, and gasped. ON TBS THERE WAS AN EPISODE OF SAVED BY THE BELL THAT I HAD NEVER SEEN BEFORE. Honest. I take pride in having seen every godforsaken episode of SBTB- the ones from the beach club at least 5 times a pop- and had to swallow my pride as I comfortably worked at a no-incline level 2 and watched in a daze as Slater quit the wrestling team because he knew he couldn't make a career out of it and would eventually be over the hill, so he joined the cooking club, but Zack HAD to get Slater to wrestle and beat Niedec (from Valley obvi- there are only ever two teams in that conference) on Friday or he'd get his FACE RIDDEN THROUGH THE DIRT. This begs the question: What other episodes haven't I seen?!?! And why aren't there any other teams in the Los Angeles area? I may have to go to the official web site and read every episode synopsis to make sure I retain my bragging rights. Goodbye, productive Tuesday.

#1 on my to-do list yesterday was to call a woman whose last name is Quackenbush. I repeat. Quackenbush. Every time I go to dial her number, I have to stop. And laugh. And die a bit inside (of jealousy. Because that isn't my last name.) So at this point I'm physically incapable of taking this important step in my work. This is almost as bad as last Thursday, when Henry asked me to cut his toast into triangles and I basically stared at a plate of toast for 5 minutes, totally perplexed and stalling until I could wrap my head around how to get A SQUARE into TRIANGLES. I ended up cutting it simply in half, straight down into two smaller squares, and hoping for the best. Because he's 2 and not a heartless dictator, he either didn't notice or went easy on me. I don't know what I'll do next time...

Morbid Thought of the Day

So we all know I dread and dwell and think ahead while life passes me by, but here's a legit thought: Eventually, cemeteries are going to run out of room. WHAT HAPPENS THEN? I'm serious, there's only so much room, and you can't dig up graves to squeeze more in, or have people buried in all the open areas in like, Montana, because then no one will visit them. If cemeteries get their profits mostly from the one-time fee of burial (omg please don't tell me our families pay RENT on a cemetery plot once we've kicked the bucket. That's just too much to take in), and then they're out of space, does the whole system just go broke and they can't pay the caretakers and weeds grow around tombstones? AAHHHHH MIND TURNING INTO A BLACK HOLE OF CONCERRRRRRN.

This is why I want to be cremated. Seriously, if my lazy ass never gets around to writing a will, please refer to this here blog for my final wishes. I want to be cremated and I want my ashes used to plant a tree of life (or "accidentally" thrown on people I don't like, whatevs).

Thoughts from a coach bus

My cover letters always boast about how I'm a people person.
I am not a people person. I am a dazzling hand-shaker and introduction-er (Oh, you went to college there?! Oh my it's so beautiful! You've been married how long? Oh that's lovely!), and you may even get 2 solid minutes of eye contact out of me before I need to run to a private corner, curl into a ball and be by myself. So after a full day spent in Albany today, never getting a moment to myself, I got on the bus, popped in my iPod and BAM Pure Moods came on, and...instant ZONE. Sometimes a little synthesizer and tubular bells is all a girl needs to recover. I should add that into my future job negotiations. "Yeeeeap, I'll need a bag of edible things that crunch and Enya's "Sail Away" on repeat after every presentation, can that be arranged?" God I love Pure Moods. Eff the haters.

In other news, winter has made my skin so dry that it's the consistency of parchment, and when reaching in the carton to get a 100 calorie pack of chocolate flavored Chex mix (yum), my knuckles merely grazed the box and consequently both started to bleed. Is that even real? I looked at them for a good 20 seconds wondering if that really just happened. It did, I have the scabs to prove it and now it hurts to dig in my purse for Lifesavers. What a tough suburban white mom's life I have. That's what I get for eating when I'm not hungry.

And finally, I have a bone to pick with JC Chasez's producer. Long bus rides yield deep thoughts, and mine of the evening was this: JC was always the most talented of NSYNC, and I will debate ANYBODY ABOUT THAT AND WIN, but Justin had the successful solo career. Why? He teamed up with Timbaland, collaborated with 50-cent, and clearly had a great producer pulling the strings. JC, oh poor sweet JC, fell prey to a producer whose vision was bigger than his talent, and thus we were stuck with "Blowin' Me Up With Her Love," which is now associated only with Tara Reid and trashy green highlights and...I think feathers? Was she wearing feathers? So now JC is relegated to judging dance-offs and like, guest starring on Secret Life of the American Teenager while Justin is using his ridiculous success to "design jeans" and "cure AIDS" and stuff. Thoughts? Who wants to pull a Gaston in Beauty and The Beast, amass the brawny village men who've had too much to drink, pick up an abandoned tree trunk and BREAK DOWN JC CHASEZ'S PRODUCER'S HOUSE??

omgggaa blogspot you annoy me

I just finished up a post I started December 15. So if you wanted to read something new, you can find it there.

Gotta go now, working on the script for my new reality tv show, "True Life: I Binge Eat Clementines And Spit Them in the Sink"

Tru Confessionz

It's about time to get this off my chest:

I hate "That 70's Show"

Why? I can't really explain it. It's not the decade that gets me- I happily watched enough Brady Bunch as a child to write a dissertation on complicated family dynamics and the importance of multi-colored sleeping bags. It's just that the seasons are so interchangeable...if it comes on I can never tell what season it is, what the plot lines are, etc. (I mean come on, 7th Heaven characters changed their hair every season to help me keep track) and I get fwustwated. I don't do well with frustration. It usually involves settling on watching something like Inside Edition or camping out in the kitchen and getting handsy with the cereal. Oh, and also, the show isn't funny.

But I've always felt I had to keep this to myself because it's such a fan favorite. I've never met another hater of That 70's Waste of My Time. I'm scared if I admit it in a public forum (well, vocally, and heard by more than 3 people), I'll get attacked. Like if I said to a group of 17-year-old girls, "Sex and the City is lame." Or to a group of 12-year-old girls, "I hope Justin Bieber's floppy delightful hair gets accidentally caught in a ride-on mower during a freak accident straight out of Final Destination." Or to a group of sassy gay men, "There's just no humor or adorableness to be found in The Golden Girls."

But no longer will I suffer in silence! You suck, "That 70's Show," you suck right on into the early '80s, and maybe into the 90's in Canada since time arrives slower there.