...I call my multi-vitamin my Salma Hayek Vitamin because not only is she free of depression and bi-polar disorder, but she also has fantastic bosoms. I need all the help I can get.

All the other vitamins I take — the Neurontin, the Valium, and the Prozac — I call those Thank God Tom Cruise Is Not In Charge Otherwise I Would Be Dead Right Now Vitamins.

via Dooce

I found the latter part, about Tom Cruise, absolutely hilarious in light of my recent issues with my scientologist housemate. Or rather, his recent issues with my drug and substance consumption.

Apparently the new term for someone having grown up in the church (that still remains in the church) is "lifer". Yikes. Someone should really do away with Christianese.

I had to read Resident Aliens for class today. I was SO not impressed. However, I love days when papers are due. You get to see what all the perfect Christian girls look like when they've overslept and not had time to put on their make-up and do their hair. Something that NEVER happens under normal circumstances. Almost makes me miss living on campus and being able to roll out of bed five minutes before class and sprint over. Or not.

I think one of the things that I disliked so much about Resident Aliens is the fact that it was hyped as a very forward thinking, revelatory text about the issues within the church today. Uh, no. It may have been semi-forward thinking when it was originally published, FOURTEEN years ago, but it was all old news to me. Funny thing is, everyone else in class seems to love it. Some surprise, huh?

I'm sure I'll write more about this book later. While writing the paper that was due today, I was getting so frustrated that I began a post on the book and the church as a whole (because we know how much I love discussing and ranting about the evangelical church). It still needs some work, and I probably won't have time to get to it until next week, or after I'm back from the traveling I'm doing this month.

So anyway. I guess I should quit blogging and go pay attention to the discussion taking place on Resident Aliens.

Thinking...

Today I set up my desk. Two nightstands with an old door across them. So I went and grabbed a chair from the kitchen (to make do with until I have money for a desk chair) only to realize that I'm too short for my desk. I need a fucking booster seat or something.

**So now I have a new chair ($10 from a thrift store). I just can't get it right. I'm too short for the desk and my new chair is too tall for the desk. Ugh.

Living fucking hurts. But it's those moments when even the pain is beautiful that make it worth continuing.

I could really use one of those moments.

While I was in Florida a week or so ago, I spent an afternoon with my ten year old brother. While in the car on the way home, this conversation transpired:

"So, if the new Star Wars isn't on DVD yet for rent, but I happen to find a website that lets you download it and burn it, that's illegal, right?"

"Yes, that's illegal, but people do it anyway."

(Pause)

"How'd you find a site like that in the first place?"

"I googled Star Wars. Duh."

TEN YEARS OLD. And already fluent with computers and computer language. And downloading illegal versions of movies.

(yuck).

I'm sick. I'm exhausted and I have no brainpower or willpower left in my body. I've lost my voice, and that goes perfectly hand-in-hand with my total lack of social skills. But then, that's nothing new. I always perferred coffee and an honest conversation to shopping malls and floods of perfect look-alikes.

I am that shadow. That person that knows what is happening, sometimes even before it happens, but is unable to lift a goddamned finger to do anything about anything. Because in the end, things will run their course, and nobody ever really listens to the shadows anyway. People perfer to turn the lights on and chase them away, convincing themselves that nothing was ever there. It was just a shadow.

There are few things in life more painful than watching those you care about hurt themselves and those that are important and close to them.

I've been thinking and talking a lot about numerous things. Things that have been and I'm sure will continue to be consistent themes and struggles in my life. Acceptance and the way that and commitment relate to love and imperfection. There is so much beauty and honesty in true brokenness and imperfection.

Change and desparation. Those two words sum things up perfectly. Change is in the air; it's taking place. But it isn't a slow and gradual change. It's a desperate, jagged change that is leaving us on our knees in its wake, blinking in stunned drunken disbelief. Disbelief not necessarily at what's taken place, but that it actually happened. If that makes any round-about sense at all.

I can definitely say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that while I missed a few people in Florida, I did not miss Florida itself. I have re-entered the land of hot stickiness, where if you happen to walk outside at the wrong time of day you find yourself covered from head to toe with mosquito bites. LARGE mosquito bites. Thank you very much, but I perfer the California desert.

The week that Elizabeth and Jeremiah spent in California with me was pretty uneventful. They helped me organize my new place, and we rediscovered the fact that I'm a very shitty tour guide. Everytime we tried to go somewhere it felt like we spent more time in traffic than we did at said place. We did see some interesting things though. At one point, walking by the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd., we saw a huge swarm of bees in the middle of the street. Then while walking back that way to the car, a kiosk on the sidewalk was taped off. Apparently the bees decided to take up residence there, resulting in police being called and caution tape being put it. A little odd. We also saw an old guy with a long white beard on a motorcycle, with his large dog straddling the bike in front of him. Jeremiah took an awesome picture of it for me (I was driving).

Now I'm here in Florida. It's been raining since I got here. Gray and melancholy. Which also describes my mood and state of mind these days.

Two of my closest friends are in town. I woke up in the worst mood. Edgar is sick again. My apartment still isn't unpacked totally. I've been missing everyone in Dallas on an unusual level lately, and I've hardly slept at all.

It is continually annoying me that some people feel good enough to call you and ask you to do them favors that aren't exactly convenient (but that you don't mind doing at all), and then when you ask something very simple in return that requires no inconvenience on their part, they ignore your mere existence.

I'm going to go make coffee and hang out with my friends. Today IS going to get better.

One of the things that REALLY annoys me about the school edit bays is the lack of bathroom access. For some reason, I can't get through the doors to the bathroom today (you have to go outside and around the building). And it never fails. I always have to go when the doors are locked. Especially in the middle of the night. I can't even count how many times I've had to leave campus in the middle of an all-night editing session and drive ALL THE WAY HOME just to pee.

I woke up at 6am to make some final changes to Stoopid Heroes. The changes themselves only took about two hours. But naturally, the computer was not about to cooperate with me. So I've been sitting here trying to get it to burn the files and a DVD for HOURS. I need to be packing the rest of my stuff. I need to have dropped Edgar off at the new place, and already have left for Ikea so that I can come up with some closet contraption and unpack. Oh, and eat. All my food is packed. As are all my medications, bath stuff and clothes. I'm wearing the same pants that I've been wearing for three days now. I still have on the shirt I slept in, and naturally, it was cold today and all my sweaters are packed. So on top of the sleep shirt and dirty pants, I have on a huge green sweater that I stole from a person that will remain anonymous, and my now red hair is pinned/clipped up in an extremely haphazard way. I bet if I sat on a corner, people would assume I'm homeless and give me change.

I'll say this for sure. The last yearish of my life has destroyed my capacity to function amidst physical chaos. There is stuff ALL OVER the new place. I can hardly walk in my room, and I absolutely cannot function like that anymore. There aren't words to express how stressed I was when I woke up this morning. I think I layed on my air mattress, in the middle of my old living room floor, for at least twenty minutes just trying to convince myself that there really isn't much to be stressed about.

God, that sounds so pathetic.

I think I'm just having a really bad day.

)-;

Oh, and the school owes me $1,147 that they seem DETERMINED to not give me. They fucking lost the first check they cut for me! So now I have to wait for them to cut another, whenever they happen to feel like doing it. Fucking bastards.

I fucking need a hug.

by low resolution

Man: Oh, so she's genuinely deluded?
Woman: Yeah, she's not just in denial.

Chick on cell: So how come you never told me about this other girl you are dating? She's from work? You have to tell me these things! You can't just keep this shit from me...wait, so you just fucked her and now it's over? That's how it is? Why are you telling me this? You can't just tell me this!

Queer: I can't believe she said I was a liar. Sure I make random stuff up, but I'm not a liar.

So. This moving by yourself thing? Yeah. It really sucks. At this moment in time, I am more than a little disgusted with myself. In September of '04, I was perfectly capable of packing everything I owned on this earth into my little car and moving. Now? AT LEAST three trips in my car, not including my bed, because there is no way in hell that would ever fit, even in the most abstract and awkward way. And because I'm moving on a Wednesday, it's not like I can ask some friends to help and tell them I'll buy them pizza and beer, or some such thing. Joe is going to make a run to help me get my bed. But that's about it. By tomorrow night, my back will be hurting so much that I'm positive it will be numb {should I ever find someone else that can crack or work my back like someone I used to reside with, I will NEVER let them leave me. I would perform all kinds of crazed, deviant acts to preserve that back crackage and workage}. I miss being able to pack everything in my car. Moving in is definitely going to be a cleansing process. Anything I haven't worn or used in the last three weeks is going to get tossed or sold.

Amidst all this moving and remodeling craziness, I've found time to write. I think I've written more fiction in the last five (God, has it been that long already?) months than I've written in the last three years. I'll probably post some of it sometime after tomorrow. Maybe Thursday or Friday?