shoot me in the head

Can't sleep. I crashed last night just after 8 PM and woke up just after 10 PM and have been awake ever since. It is now 8 AM. Not cool. I was stressing out about stuff I have to write for school, but I've now done all but the profile of SUC (it's refusing to write itself) and a 500 word piece for my magazine writing class that requires me to do an interview tomorrow night. Or technically tonight now, since I guess it's officially Wednesday. I've even written all the questions for it already. And I read everything I'm supposed to have read for all of my classes up through the end of the week. And I still can't sleep. The back of my throat is all itchy and now I'm getting a little sniffly, too. Perhaps I am allergic to being awake all night. I'm giving in and taking a half-dose of generic NyQuil. I should have done my 30 minutes of cardio like I was supposed to, but the gym is oh so far away and it seems silly to go down there just for a half an hour's worth of activity.

La la la shoot me in the head please. Maybe if I print up my papers and pack my bag for school and pick out clothes for the day I will be able to fall asleep in time to wake up again. SHOOT ME IN THE HEAD.

The Shedd Aquarium is the Greatest Thing Ever

First draft of a piece written for my creative nonfiction class:

For me, the Shedd aquarium has a theme song: “Age of Aquarius” from “Hair,” but the word “Aquarius” is replaced with “Aquarium.” I go bounding up the stairs to the Shedd, singing to my self (and anyone I’ve dragged with me) “This is the dawning of the age of aquarium, age of aquarium, aquariuuuuuum!”

When I moved back to Chicago after an unfortunate five year stint in Ohio, I refused to pay for cable or a land-line phone, but quickly shelled out the $70 aquarium individual member fee. I like going when there is a line to get in. My membership card allows me to march past the stressed-out tourists with my smug sense of ownership and native superiority. I show my card at the desk and they hand me my round blue sticker with that all-important word: “Member.” When people point it out later that night I laugh with mock embarrassment, pretending that I just forgot to take it off. But really, I’m wearing it as a badge of honor.

The main hall of the Shedd is shaped like an octopus with the Caribbean reef is at its center. I like to find Nickel, the resident sea turtle with buoyancy problems. She was rescued with a nickel in her stomach after being mauled by a powerboat and now hangs out under the fake coral to avoid floating upward, tail first, at random intervals.

When I was little, the side halls had giant sea creatures hanging from the ceiling. I realize now that they were fake, but a mean-looking squid and a huge, angry red octopus with suction-cup arms probably started my fear of evil tentacled sea-things. Anemones don’t have mouths but can eat fish, so those freak me out, too. As do the eels, though the huge one in the Caribbean reef tank is pretty cool. The only reason it looks green is that it’s covered in yellow mucus and viewed through blue water.
Nothing covered in boogers can be that scary.

When I moved back to Chicago, the aquarium had an extra floor called the Wild Reef. Some people make the mistake of hurrying past most of these downstairs exhibits to get to the sharks, but they miss a lot. There’s a big tank that has a watery pathway overhead, thus requiring me to stand below it and say “Hey, look, I’m under water.” This is extremely clever every time I say it.

I point out the frog fish to everyone I can. Right before the shark tank and easily overlooked, they are the weirdest, most amazing creatures ever. They look remarkably like coral, with big lumpy bodies the color and texture of their surroundings. Most of the time they sit very still so finding them is a game, but if you are fortunate enough to watch them move, they use their flipper-like fins to push off surfaces in a motion that is simultaneously clumsy and graceful.

And then you reach the sharks. They are huge. Some look exactly how you’d expect sharks to look. Some look like half-shark, half-ray. There’s even a saw-nosed shark, but I have only seen her once. It was my third trip to the tank, and while I’d heard she was in there, she had a tendency to lurk towards the bottom and the back. But one day, there she was, swimming right across the front of the tank in full view. I stood in slack-jawed awe as those around me with better reflexes snapped pictures on their cell phones. I wish I’d gotten a picture to prove her existence, since I haven’t seen her since, but I tell everyone I can that she is in there and I have seen her.

As if in answer to the tank of the “under water” joke, the rays hang out in a tank under the floor with a glass top. Little kids and I run into each other as we try to follow the path of a specific ray.

Back up the elevator and then down the stairs to the back the odd sensation of sunlight welcomes you to the Oceanarium. I remember my first school field trip to the Oceanarium. It was a big deal when the Shedd created this massive addition, and they had a dolphin show, which is fascinating to any 8-year-old girl. It was way cooler than the one at the Brookfield zoo, and they had so many more animals. These days, I shrug off the dolphins to go laugh at penguins trying to jump around their rock formation and squawk at one another before gracefully diving into the water and zipping past in circles.

I never cared much about the belugas until I learned about the pregnancy early last year. Now, the aquarium has a second theme song - Rafi’s Baby Beluga - and I follow the calf’s progress like most people stalk celebrities. I watched it go from a lump in its mother’s belly to a small gray turd occasionally heading up for air to a molting gray turd nursing from its mother to a beluga whale in with all the others, only slightly smaller and darker. The Shedd just announced another pregnancy - same father, different mother. Move over, Britney and Kevin - I will continue to get my gossip under water.

Realizing it was already February and the visiting komodo dragon and lizard exhibit were scheduled to leave distressed me greatly. Sure, I loved the aquarium before the lizards, and I certainly would continue to love it once they were gone, but they were the sprinkles on my happiness sundae. I did a report on the green iguana in third grade and wanted one as a pet ever since. Then I met Faust. Faust is the komodo dragon hanging out at the Shedd. Most people have to pay extra to see him, but I get to waltz past with my member sticker. He is seven feet long with venomous spit, so even if he doesn’t swallow you whole (which he could) you probably won’t survive his bite. Yet he has been raised in captivity and will come rest his head on the laps of his favorite keepers. Move over pet iguana, I clearly need a komodo dragon. And great news! He and his lizard friends are staying at least until summer 2008.

My membership is about to expire, but while NPR and starving children throughout the world vie for my checkbook, my aquarium membership goes in the category of required expenses alongside rent and groceries. Because, really, is there anything more awesome than the aquarium? [sung:] Aquariuuuuuuum!

Freaky-deaky-dog

Things that freak out my dog:

1. People who aren't me
2. Dogs who aren't him
3. Noises that make him think that either of these will infiltrate his space
4. Life
5. The universe
6. Everything else

Those of you who know my dog know that I am not exaggerating. But I love him ever so much, so he is on my lap shaking while I try to finish writing things for class tonight. My fiction story lacks a story and sounds like the same mediocre drivel everyone writes. I'd set it on fire, but I'm better off turning it in.

Now how am I supposed to negotiate going to the bathroom with Clingdog stapled to my lap? Where's my staple remover?

la-dee-da, la-dee-da

Today was a narcoleptic day. Clearly about to be "that time of the month." I had 40 pages left to read in In Cold Blood, but I kept falling asleep reading so it took all day. I have a few other things I have to read for various classes this coming week, and a bunch of stuff I have to write: SUC's personality profile, the rest of the story I started last week in Fiction I, a response to some piece of reading from Fiction I, a front of the book article suitable for Time Out Chicago, and finish up this thing on the aquarium. The fiction stuff is due tomorrow, so that should get priority, but I tend to prioritize based on muses instead of due dates. Maybe not the best idea.

Friday NBF and I went to my parents' for dinner. Beef brisket and egg noodles and shabbat made for a very jewy evening, but considering NBF lived with Jews for awhile (Birdy's family), it was familiar for him, too. And our dogs came. Both of them. They passively accept one another, though we've had to be very careful and vigilant because his normally sweet and agreeable dog gets aggressive when provoked, and my dog is very good at growling when approached by other dogs, people, etc. But it worked and my brother absolutely adored NBF's dog (as was expected) and my dad went back and forth between playing with NBF's dog and taking to, feeding, and sitting with my dog. My dad is extremely cute. Over the years he's "mellowed out" while my mom has gotten more intense, and I've grown to appreciate a number of his traits I used to find difficult and annoying.

It's funny, but for my general pessimistic outlook on life, I'm a bit of an optimistic dreamer when it comes to Love. Mind you, I've got rationalizations for all of my optimisms, but it's one of those areas where I plan to be the exception to the rule. I will be the writer who makes it and the girl who is in a mutually beneficial and love-based relationship with a boy. NBF believes that women are more trouble than they are worth and the best one can hope to find is a relationship akin to a positive merger, love being besides the point. But I will keep jumping up and down and insisting that he is wrong and just bitter due to his still-raw divorce wounds and limited personal experience. People can both love and like one another and even if it isn't eternal it's a good thing while it lasts and totally worth it. Or so I would very much like to believe.

sunshine and soreness

My personal trainer kicked my ass today. I have the weakest arms ever. He's awesome, though. Good at the whole encouragement thing and such. Says I should expect to be "sore but not immobile" by Saturday. I'll just have to play a boulder in every scene for my improv class.

Last night I finally interviewed SUC for my extremely overdue personality profile for magazine article writing. He's an extremely easy interview and an all-around swell human being. I kind of hope that now that I don't work for his girlfriend (and don't work as much in general) we'll actually hang out more often. I've been all stressed out about the fact that the article isn't done and I'm behind in that class. Then I got there today and it turns out most of the class is behind and missed last week, too. Awesome. So I may be a craptacular student, but I'm in good company.

Except in my creative nonfiction class. Everyone in there is very bright and on the ball. It's by far my favorite class. We have actual insightful discussions and hearing other people's work doesn't make me fear the future of humanity. The lowest caliber in there is like the high end of my other two classes. Too bad they can't all be like that.

One of my former college housemates became a father yesterday. It's weird enough to have a peer with a kid, but the fact that it's this particular guy makes me feel preemptively sorry for his daughter. He doesn't understand girls and tends to think of them as second-class citizens. A lot of it is his upbringing. Hopefully having a girl will teach him that the entire gender isn't useless.

Off to tutoring. It should be called "writing therapy." I like it much.

Huzzah!

The dog meeting was a success! Not that they're going to be best friends or anything, but they passively accepted one another and the barking was extremely minimal. My dog mostly hung out under NBF's bed while he kept his dog on his lap. The next great test will be driving out to my parents' house on Friday. Keep your paws crossed.

Thing I really want to say to my mother but won't:
"You know, Grandma went crazy when she went through menopause, too."

Just Do(ing) It

I actually wrote fiction tonight in my fiction class. Like the real made-up storytelling kind that isn't a dream or just me being obnoxious. Though there's no real story there yet and I don't know where it's going and it may be total crap, I feel like I've crossed some sort of barrier.

One of the idiots in my class showed up completely baked out of his mind. What an asshole. You could watch the cloud of stoned-ness slowly lift over the course of the four hour class until by the end he could actually respond to what was going on around him. I hope to hell our teacher has words with him, but I know he won't.

Even though I missed last week's class, I made sure to get this week's assignment and turned it in and did my reading. Apparently a lot of people were sick, but I was the only one who even contacted the teacher. Of the 8ish people who were in class, two did the reading. So now we have to write reading responses every week to prove we're doing it. Pain in my ass, and I actually have been keeping up. You know you're truly at Clown College when I am the best student in class. And a goodly portion of my classmates can't construct a proper sentence. It's one thing to choose to use improper English, but entirely another when subject-verb agreement randomly falls apart throughout the story.

I was poking around the Lean Cuisine website and they have this free fitness and diet tracker thing, so I spent way too much time putting in my information and everything I ate in the past two days and my lovely 15 minutes of treadmill time tonight (thanks to a stop at my landlord's office to drop off rent checks, that was as long as I had before my class). We'll see how long I keep up with entering my info, but my doctors have been after me forever to track what I eat (migraines and weird allergy stuff) and the website makes it somewhat more amusing.

Everything half-melted today. The break from the cold was nice, but this city looks very ugly under a puddle of dirty, melting snow. Worth noting.

The Sads, The Happenings, The Dogs, and The Food

Depression is very strange. It's like having allergies, only triggers tend to be situational instead of tangible and cause persistent sadness instead of persistent rash. It might be funnier if the two ailments switched effects. Like if ragweed, cats, and peanuts made people tearful and removed while unrequited love and frustration with life caused swelling and congestion.

Also interesting to note: when I get like this, all I want to write about is being like this. You'd never know that I was still having a regular life outside of the sulking. Like tonight was the close of the show at my work and my boss's last night before she goes to her new better job. There was a party, with lots of fried food (including the best twice baked potato skin thingies I've ever had) and an open bar that I didn't have to work so I got to actually be a part of the party. One of the bar regulars who's on crew is a notorious flirt and, while I like him, I'm never sure how sincere he is about anything. But he also seemed to notice my fake smile and localized rain clouds and, while I pretended nothing was wrong, he made a concerted effort to cheer me up and provided numerous non-flirty (and therefore acceptable and reassuringly sincere) hugs. It was nice.

Tina quit yesterday. I wasn't surprised, since she's said for ages she only stayed on because of our boss. Still, really sad. She's fabulous. We (Tina, my now ex-boss and I) have tentative plans to go shopping in the next few weeks. But it's the end of an era. Yes, 5 months can be an era. That may be a big piece of The Funk.
Another big piece of The Funk is my frustration with my own terrible study skills. I'm reading all my class material, but I missed two classes last week for stupid reasons and the assignment that was due last Thursday still isn't done. I'm making excuses. I need to just fucking do it. There is no good reason it isn't done. And yet, it isn't done and I'm sitting here mad at myself for not doing it and continuing to not do it. Another assignment has been carried around in my bag for a week. It's not a big deal that it isn't in, and there is a fairly logical reason why, but its presence in my folder keeps hissing at me "You're a terrible student/person." And the pile of shit that is my apartment has grown overwhelming again. As for that, I think I'm just going to call the cleaning service and have them come on Tuesday whether or not I've done any cleaning myself first. Fuck embarrassment. It needs to happen. Perhaps I'll schedule weekly cleanings on my first call (as I was supposed to do when I was given the service as a present last May) until I find some sort of rhythm to the organizing and removal of garbage myself. Because that's something I haven't managed yet in the year and a half I've lived here.

Also in the works: the meeting of NBF and my dogs. NBF's dog is friendly and loves other dogs. My dog tends to freak out at other dogs. My dog will be muzzled. I've been working on getting him used to wearing the muzzle in comfortable situations (for an hour or two around the house, on a walk, etc.), and then perhaps they can meet in my car, where my dog tends to be happiest and least territorial. I would love for my dog to be able to have a doggie friend. I feel terrible that he doesn't. He has me. He sort-of has my parents. That's it. Everyone else he hates and/or is terrified of. It's a sad little doggie existence.

I can't tell if I'm hungry or not. I think I am. I went grocery shopping today and stocked up on Lean Cuisines (they were on sale, so my freezer is completely packed yet again). My favorite soup (Campbell's Chunky Turkey Pot Pie) was not on sale, so I only got a few, but I may eat one now because I feel like comfort food.

If you just read all that, you deserve a cookie. It probably should have gone in my paper journal instead of on the blog, and I'd delete it, but eh.

Gettin' Funky: A Choose Your Own Adventure

I'm still in my funk. But how does one best deal with funk? Here are the candidates:

A) Fight the funk
Course of action: Get out as much as possible. Keep busy. GoGoGo!
Pros: Productive and distracting, could be I just need jump-starting to get away from the funk altogether.
Cons: Problem? There's no problem! I am fine. LALALA don't you DARE tell me otherwise.

B) Live the funk
Course of action: Crawl into bed whenever possible, read and write and watch tv a lot, snuggle dog
Pros: I tend to get more writing done within the funk, and perhaps accepting while it's here is the key to eventually moving on instead of digging myself deeper with the whole feeling-guilty-for-feeling-bad thing.
Cons: Wallowing in self-pity is not generally recommended, could mean I just stay stagnant in the rut

C) Funky waffle
Course of action: Crawl into bed but feel guilty for not doing something else and get mad at myself thus paralyzing me further.
Pros: I'm already doing it, a good use for maple syrup
Cons: Makes me really miserable really fast and oh the guilt the guilt the guilt!

So, what to do? You tell me. Until then, I'll be in bed with a side of hash browns.

oh my GOD it's HIDDEOUS!

Today was not the sort of day I like to have. Yesterday was nice and involved lots of quality time with NBF, but then today was one for that dark nasty swamp-monster of self-hate and self-doubt. He was a very destructive monster, too, feeding off all the things I knew I should be doing while I sat in bed being useless. Weren't we going to avoid the whole depression thing this go-round of school? Apparently the swamp monster did not get the memo. Or maybe he can't read and is too embarrassed to tell anybody. Poor swamp monster. After all, he's born of a sad heart. That's why I can't get rid of him. All my tools are head tools. I am very good with the head tools. But heart tools, not so much. My heart is an autistic child, being beaten by a swamp monster, no less. Poor autistic child. I imagine my innards are going through the scene from Frankenstien where the monster drowns the little girl, not out of maliciousness, but out of misunderstanding.

Thank goodness for warm loving dogs and warm loving friends who even love me when I'm crying and talking about monsters.

!Que terrible!

Why am I such a terrible:

a) student?
b) person?

blergmuffin

Blah. Snowed in and writing things and reading things for school. I'm a terrible student. Yesterday NBF and I spent four hours doing an errand that would have taken an hour tops had I not gone the most roundabout way possible and then gotten us lost. I called my mom for help finding the address and a map online and she immediately started in on her "this is what you should have done and clearly you are a terrible excuse for a human being for not having done such things" shit. I was just glad to have NBF there so I didn't have to kill anyone. The weather has me in a bit of a daze but I'm restless and have so much to do because I haven't done it and I'm trying to do things well instead of just getting them done, which is both good and bad. There are many other things from the past several days I should write about, but instead I'm going to curl up and read for class and/or play monopoly on my cell phone for a few hours break and then re-attempt to write the things that I have to turn in tomorrow.

Brain too boogery to think up title

Sick sick sick. I'd almost defeated The Cold, but yesterday was The Gala at work and 13 hours of stress and smiling did me in. Now I'm dying again and I absolutely can NOT miss class tomorrow and have more I have to do tonight but I feel like total crap. I need to move into a bubble. Why am I such a pathetic sickly person? It makes it that much harder for me to be a good student.

My dog is trying to lick all the germs off of my face. He is very sweet and snuggly, though earlier today he made the worst noise ever when his paws froze up outside and I started to pick him up and he flopped down in an icy puddle. Now I need to walk him to empty him out for the night but he just wants to be a warm little ball of snuggles and is showing no interest in going anywhere.

One of my creative nonfiction classmates is trying to steal my phone sex story. She emailed me asking if she could interview me for a "day in the life" article for her feature writing class. I asked my teacher if I was out of line in saying no, that I was already working on the story myself, and he (my teacher) declared that what she (my classmate) was doing was total bullshit and he'd talk to her about it if I wanted him to. I said I could handle it, and I think I did, but it was good having validation that she was just ripping off my idea and I wasn't being a jerkface in refusing to give her an interview.

Sneeze sneeze snort hack cough sniffle snort.

I am an ass

I woke up randomly at 4 AM with this idea in my head. It's for my fiction class. I guess my motto is "If you can't join 'em, beat 'em." Either that or "If you can't beat 'em, beat yourself."

The Fiction Mine

The walls were thick with mealy-mouthed adjectives. We’d jumped into this dank dark pit together, though certainly not as one, our leader crying, “See the stars and count them! We’ll all go on three! Ready? One…two…three!” I plummeted in with the group, though I’d only counted one star - it was noon and the sun was blazing. It was bright and real and obvious, not to mention the center of my universe, so perhaps that was worth triple.

The pit itself was shallow, an easy downward fall, though too steep to climb back out. Before my eyes had time to adjust to the darkness, my comrades had already started grabbing slimy, scaly fistfuls of adjectives from the walls and stuffed them into their sacks. I felt for my sack. It was full of words I’d brought from home, but apparently the wrong kind. Everyone else seemed too busy with their own harvests to notice, but I tried to squish my personal stash into something that resembled what I thought the walls must look like. The adjectives hissed and gnarled and gnashed their teeth, and a few even sang out in song. I could hear them oozing through the fingers of the others, and their muffled cries as they were forced down indiscriminately into sacks.

I crawled on my hands and knees over to the wall. Maybe I just was being stubborn; maybe I didn’t want to get dirty. I reached out and plucked a single adjective. It was already dead and not going anywhere, so I rolled it around in my hand. It reminded me of the caterpillars that took over one summer at camp. The caterpillars were
non-indigenous parasites and I had a vegetarian biology-nut friend who took every opportunity to kill them with her shower shoes. They weren’t very colorful on the outside, but when you squished them they made a popping sound and oozed magenta and bright green like the aliens they were. Now, I squeezed my caterpillar adjective, and POP! There it went, swirling colors and all.

“Time’s up, everybody!” bubbled our leader, setting up a ladder for us to re-ascend. “Now take out your adjectives and sort through them.”

I looked down at my deformed words from home and the red-green stain on my hand, hung my head, and cried.

Chicago Brrrs

I am a bad person because I am glad the Bears lost the Super Bowl. Not that I have anything against the Bears or for the Colts, but Chicago had gone completely insane. Bars were hiring Lovie Smith look-alikes in the middle of the week as some sort of attraction. The downtown skyline was littered with orange and blue lights and entire buildings lit up to say things like "Bear down Bears." Even the alternative radio station was making Bears comments between songs. Sports apathy is hard enough to pull off in this city when all our teams suck. Any more Bear-mania and I would have had to start wearing pink. And I HATE pink.

I am typing with gloves on. It is not easy, as these are fuzzy gloves, but it is very cold in my apartment (even with the radiators going) and even colder outside. I can't think in this weather. I just want to sleep. Besides, I'm sick and freezingness does not help. I should be writing my stuff for class for both tomorrow and Wednesday, since Tuesday is the big gala event at work and I will be running my ass off all day and night. My nose gets very cold. I should knit myself some sort of nose-warming garment. Or just bury my face in my dog. Yay warm dog.

HealthWatch

In case you were wondering or worried, I am not getting sick. Nope. Absolutely not. Not allowed. And I figure adding vodka to my orange juice means the vitamin C will help my imune system while the alcohol will kill all the germs. Right? Of course right. Now where are my friggin' glasses so I can take out my contacts?

This sucks. Period.

I need to be back on the pill. I am in the process of losing today to my period. It is completely kicking my ass. I'm pukey-crampy and horizontal and I was up and ready to go to class this morning but was having too much trouble staying standing and not gagging. It's too early in the semester for me to have missed a class. Not ok. Not happy. Ouchy ouchy ouch ouch.