That last post wasn't an "Omg, guys, tell me I'm pretty, waaaah!" I was genuinely just amused. Thanks though, for feeding the ol' ego. You guys rule.

To disprove all of that, anyway, here is a picture from last night:



We got tatted up. (It says "Pimp Slap.")

Actual conversation that just occurred on AIM (screen names changed to protect identities):

[20:51] me: Why do I keep getting hit on by extremely young boys? My friends don't get hit on that much by the 16-22 crowd. Why the fuck me?
[20:53] guywithnotact: maybe because your friends are hotter. you're the one who seems attainable, and they might also dig your substance.
[20:53] me: Haha, thanks, dude.
[20:54] guywithnotact: you're welcome. i mean, you're not that hot to someone who doesn't know you at all, or who does and doesn't like you. you're definitely easier to respect than to like. but you are pretty bangin to someone who does know and like you.
[20:54] me: Wow, keep talking dude.


The funny thing is that he is probably patting himself on the back right now for being so kind and complimentary. Now he just offered to write me a sonnet about what a "hot slice" I am. My friends are all class.


If you sort your itunes by "most frequently played" what are your top ten songs?





m.

I just spent entirely too much time on the California DMV website checking out personalized plate availability.

I came up with:

"alurbas"
"aubrb2u"
"omgpwnu"
"iminurbs"
"iknorit"
"omg ftl"
"iminur"
"pegacrn"
"omgpny1"
"omgpwny" (FTW, I think.)


SarahPie says I am not nearly nerdy enough for most of those.

Nonetheless, I have a sneaking suspicion I will have a personalized plate before the night is over.

We lived. I love flipping through my photos to see the progression of dirt.

I made stupid faces a LOT in photos. I have to stop doing that. Except I convinced a lot of people to make stupid faces, too, so that is fun. More photos on the 'space, for those that know or care.

Apparently there is a twenty minute long video floating around of me on Sunday afternoon force-feeding whiskey to random people in the street. I can be a persuasive little minx, I guess.

I made a goal not to lose my earrings. Earrings lost three times. Earrings found three times.

My hair is clean, and my skin is clean, and my soul is clean, but I still miss the desert.

This was a very mellow burn, which was beautiful and perfect, I think. It is odd. I feel so at home in my heart lately that being out there wasn't as urgent as it often is.

Fun fact -- having a chest piece is amusing because when I look at pictures on the playback, I think "What the hell is that? Oh, right, chest piece."

Back in the lization that is civil, it was fun listening to my phone say "New message, new message, newnewnewmessnewmessage, chimes, openclose, newnewmessnewmessage." I thought the poor thing was going to explode.

Sorry this isn't more interesting.

I need a shut off valve on my mouth. I keep saying things that fuck up everything.


Two days 'til the burn. Maybe out in all that noise I can learn the art of silence.

So I've been copying and pasting all my journal entries from here into my LJ, in order to keep everything together. I discovered that while I do not post frequently, but when I do, the 25th day of the month seems to be the magic day that I grace my journal with entries. Huzzah, it is the 25, so here is an entry documenting the first line of every 25th that I have, between the two journals, for the last 9 years. (Jesus Christo, nine years is a long time. I am so old.)

September 25th, 2007: "It got mighty cold around these parts mighty fast."

July 25th, 2007: : "The first time I met the woman they called God, she allowed me to take
her picture."

July 25th, 2006: "Jump past the asterix for "interesting" musings. The rest of this is just bullshit."

August 25th, 2005: "Dear Sprint,
Since you only see fit to provide me with service 2/3 of the time, I've decided I'm only going to send you 2/3 of the money I owe every month."

April 25th, 2005: "The date is looming very close."


March 25th, 2005: "This is kinda fucked up. "

February 25th, 2005: "Does anyone else find it ironic that there is this huge court battle going on about whether they should remove Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, when the reason her system collapse occurred was because of a chemical imbalance brought on by an eating disorder?"

January 25th, 2005: "So it begins."

October 25th, 2003: "Tim is my Will. Yes. It was nice to see Tim smile for once. "

August 25th, 2003: "I'm going to Burning Man."

July 25th, 2003: "Kelly comes tonight; giddy is not an adequate descriptor."

March 25th, 2003: "I have a room. I'm moving to Sac."

October 25th, 2002: "Wellstone is dead."

December 25th, 2001: "So what did everyone get for Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanza/their under-represented holiday equivalent?"

"I am talking to C."

"Oh my god. C. has had a livejournal since 6-27-2001."


July 25th, 2001: "Holy shit"

May 25th, 2001: "Oh my god. . . I just saw footage of the Jerusalem wedding hall collapse."

"I want Taco Bell."

April 25th, 2001: ""He woke up in the middle of the night, terrified. "I was so scared. I dreamed you were dead. I was so scared. . .""

"I hate the fucking summer."

March 25th, 2001: "Last night I got to do karaoke for the first time. "

"I had a dream last night that Charlie cheated on me with AngelicDestiny."

"I dyed my hair."

"Bjork's swan dress is about the ugliest thing I have ever seen, but appropriately Bjork."

January 25th, 2001: ""There is sadness on my finger.""

December 25th, 2000: "Happy C(apital)istmas!"

November 25th, 2000: "Two Hours. . .
and then I can press tight against him, rest my face against his neck and hold on.
Two hours. . ."

"And a lot of the time I feel fucking ignored."

September 25th, 2000: "I got suckered into buying a magazine subscription from some kid. . . I am a damn sucker. "

"Charlie made me a PB&J sammich for dinner. Yum. "

"Time to go kick it with my Charlie."

August 25th, 2000: "Oh fuck. . . I have no deodorant."

"I bought a little girly Spice Girls shirt today."

July 25th, 2000: "

"I gave Charlie a black eye last night."

"I really don't like being a bitch. . . but some people in life deserve it. "

June 25th, 2000: "My body is sore. And I am hungry, but not up to cooking. I want fajitas."

May 25th, 2000: "I am really craving an egg and cheese crossant from Burger King right now. . . it is the only thing I like off their entire menu."




Wow, all that seemed way more interesting at the time. The whole concept of this post seemed more interesting until I actually sat down to collect it.

Whatever. The first line of my post for August 25th, 2008:

"So I've been copying and pasting all my journal entries from here into my LJ, in order to keep everything together. "

Things that interest no one but myself:

I got to go back into my classroom again. It did not look as I left it, but it still felt like my heart jumped out of my chest when I opened the door.

The IT guy was skulking about in my room when I got there. I'd asked for any kind of old printer to hook up to my student work station so my kids could print things... instead they gave me some swanky new printer that is all networked up. Score!

In my quest for something as simple as a rolling cart for my antique old overhead projector, the darling librarian gave me an actual projector and an ELMO 3D presenter -- neither of which she is supposed to check out for year long use, but she did it for me, just 'cuz. I'm all tekkied up! Last year I got the worst of the worst, and this year I am moving up the technological ladder. No more transparencies, I can utilize any color object that will fit on the board, and I can hook my lappy up for presentations. I can't even begin to wrap my head around the potential, but I am ecstatic. (I told you this was interesting to no one but me.)

I looked at my roster for my one 11th grade class, and I have around ten students from last years 10th grade classes, about three of whom were absolute favorite students, four were decent kids and students, and three who weren't absolute pills. I literally jumped for joy. Not figuratively. Literally.

I plugged my ipod into my speakers and danced around as I rearranged my classroom, tearing down pages and breaking down walls. I know I am there, I am in, I am not transient, it is MY space, it is MY future. I am full of strategy, and pedagogy, and positivity, and enthusiasm.

Instruction starts in four days.

I start my chest piece in seven.

I hit a perfect ten. I could write the ultimate book of love on the back of matchbooks -- small but inflammatory.

I'm getting chubby, but I don't care! There is a reason for the phrase "Fat and Happy."



Besides, the 7 to 11 schedule will whittle the weight away in no time.

If all goes as planned, I, and my chub, will traipse through the desert in about two weeks. Half-naked and half reborn. It is all like living life with virgin skin.

I am still kind of stuck in insomnia, but I don't care. Hours slept are hours wasted. I've been listening to "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning," almost nonstop. I cherish my dreams, but waking up constantly is more satisfying. Every three minutes I find myself awakening from dreams and nightmares, and confronting the most blinding dawns that promise exquisitely long and adventurous days.

Sometimes I cannot believe how beautiful things can be. I can't tell where happiness starts, and where happiness is created.

I am infinite.

Sorry. More hippie shit.

I bought a painting.



I think he needs a name.





More of my exuberant hippy ramblings below the cut.

Oh hey, I just noticed that this month is my five year anniversary as an SG member.

This journal has always swung between impersonally irreverent, and intimately morose. Alternately used as a place to snark and scoff, or cry and bleed.

I haven't sat down and reread this blog "cover to cover," if you will, as I did a few days ago with my paper bound journal that I started around the same time in my life. Perhaps I shall have to do that. Reading that journal, some of my thoughts and feelings from that era sounded incredibly similar to things I am thinking and feeling right now in my life.

Thursday night, I burst into tears . . . because I am so fucking happy. I was literally so happy I cried. I feel like I can't even contain all the frantic energy that is bubbling inside me, like everything in me is shining so hard that my skin might tear open from the pressure of being in love.

Someone told me that, "You sound like you're in love." I am! I have fallen in love with music, and writing, and reading, and friends, and every stranger I meet on the street. I have fallen in love with the feeling of summer sweat sticking to my skin; the cold air rushing through the window on long drives; the laughter that I can't contain; the smiles that constantly tear my face for no apparent reason; the blackness of night, and the golden glow of day; with riding bikes; with walking aimlessly; with crowds; with solitude; with the taste of coffee; with the burn of my cloves in my lungs; with daydreaming; with over-analyzing; with running into things; with the awkward grace of my own body; with the sense that I am electric; with those fleeting and infrequent melancholy moments; with the desire to get back in my classroom; with the knowledge I am going to evolve into an amazing teacher; with the drive to do just that; with the sense that I am boundless and free, and possess the infinite potential to love others, driven by this sense that I am really coming to understand what it means to love myself.

I am falling in love with myself.

I have fallen in love with life.

I've been feeling like this for weeks, maybe even months... I keep wanting to pinch myself to see if it is real. I'm not waiting for the other shoe to drop, though, because I know that all of this positivity lives in me as long as I continue to be positive.

Call me a hippy, call me cliched, but the difference between the girl who wrote similar thoughts five years ago and the girl who writes them today is that this girl is becoming complete.

I fucking love life! I just wish I were infectious.

Take that, my friends, it is a new page in this book.

And I guess it was somewhere around this time that she had to accept that she was ordinary. Really, really ordinary. The thought had been looming somewhere, in the back of her brain, for quite some time, a lumbering beast that barely evaded detection. Motherfuckin' sasquatch, so huge and hairy that you have to wonder how something that should be so obvious manages to escape detection for so long. Apparently there are a lot of trees in that forest, and I can't see the trees for all the little leaves I've used to construct some sort of fundamental identity and comfortable notion of supremacy. Somewhere in all that minutia, I've lost sight of the grass, moss, bark, and somehow, a big fucking monster called banality that looks a lot like that slightly skewed, sleepy-eyed face I see staring back in every vaguely reflective pane of glass.

Damn, did I slip perspective? You can only talk about yourself in the third person for so long before you realize that there is no third person, there is no point in the he/she pronoun, because we are ultimately really selfish bastards, and no one actually matters to us, any more than us (I). For as long as you can hold off on that understanding, that is how long the third person really matters to you. Second person is twice as useless. "You do this," hasn't been a relevant option in life since you/I/they stopped reading "Choose Your Own Adventure," books. "You do this..." Oh fuck you. I always tell myself I will stop even trying to identify.

The years of deconstructionist theory should have broken down any misguided notions of expression or understanding, and I can throw it out as casually as I flick a cigarette -- "Yeah, hey, it's cool, language is fallible and intangible and anything we say is ultimately lost in the translation between pre-established connotations that differ by individual and experience, regardless of if they are speaking the same "language," and it doesn't really matter anyway, because, you know, beyond that, language is just a string of identifiers that really just exist as an extension of the idea that 'what is'" (throw up the 'ironic' -- which by definition isn't really ironic, except for maybe in an Alanis sense of the word -- finger quotes), "is by default what it 'is not,' so it all becomes bogged down in how when I am saying this I am definitely not saying that, but I'm definitely not saying anything, really. So yeah, I just said a whole lot of nothing, and you just heard a whole lot of nothing I was actually trying to convey, which doesn't matter either, because I don't even know what I'm trying to convey, because it is all totally arbitrary. It's cool, baby, I don't know much, but what I do know is that we don't understand a goddammed thing about each other. Hand me another Pabst."

Suddenly it all becomes alright, because when you said, "I miss you," what you really said to me is, "I exist, and I want to think that other important things exist, because those so-called important things affirm to me that I exist," and what I really heard was, "You exist, and I want you to exist in my physical presence right now, but cannot," and really what I am thinking is, "I exist, and I want to think that other important things exist, and I want you to remember that I exist, because existing in the memories of these other so-called important things affirms to me that I exist."

Suddenly it becomes alright, because when it all comes down to it, we always wind up saying, "That is not it at all, that was not what I meant, at all." (Let the record stand I only half-consciously realized what I was typing as I was typing it. I'm only half-pretentious -- albeit totally obvious -- right now.) Every argument just winds down to both parties screaming, "You don't fucking get it!" I propose we just throw rocks at each other instead.

I also propose we omit all pronouns except for first person pronoun -- I promise to get increasingly cyclical before I am done here, I cannot promise I will tie it all up in some neat little package at the end -- this is, naturally, due to our inherent short-sightedness. "What we talk about when we talk about us." That is garbage, all we are ever talking about is us. Or ourselves. Or myself.

A friend just messaged me:
"Whats up"

I respond:
"Deciding that I will heretofore use no pronoun except for first person, and everything and everyone shall now be 'I,' 'me,' and 'my.'"

and follow up with,

"So what am I doing?"

His response:
"going tothe dentst" (No, really, he really types like that. Why are some of the most brilliant people I've ever met, damn near fucking illiterate?)

My response:
"Am I going to get a front on my grill? I'd look good with some platinum shields, maybe a little flash of diamonds that read, "Thug Life," or "Over Bite," or "Mundane."

His response:
"haha i love u"

My response:
"I love me, too."


See how easy that was? Completely upfront, no bullshit added, I am, as I have always been, talking about me, even when I was talking about... me. As an added benefit, I get to love me by the end of it.

Sasquatch says, "Man, fuck your solipsism."