HOLY SHIT!

I forgot to tell you my fantastic news! About two weeks ago, while I was at work doing one of my first 12 hour shifts, Jessica called me a couple hours before I got off. I just happened to be in a situation where I could answer the phone, so I did, because as many of you know, I kind of enjoy me some Jessica-chatting-up.

Jess: "Hey, don't get mad at me, I got you a present."

Kel: "Oh, I always get so mad at you when you bring me presents."

J: "Well, I kind of made you a present. And It's kind of big."

K: (having fantasy where the "present" is that she's somehow swabbed out my horror of an excuse for a bedroom and made it livable and pleasant, then dismissing it) "Well, that's okay. I like big presents AND made presents"

J: "It was supposed to be just a little present but when I got started making it, I couldn't stop and now it's kind of...huge."

K: (Fantasy of clean, tidy room with 0% effort from me comes screaming back into my head with a sense of certainty, and instead of dismissing it I tell myself, 'Don't get your hopes up. There's no way anyone could do the whole thing in one day.') "Okay. Sounds good, I can't wait to get home."

J: "And you won't get mad?"

K: "Absolutely not. See you soon" (Doing a little dance as I turn off the phone.)

As I was driving home I kept repeating, "Don't get your hopes up. She probably started the picking-up for you and it's going to make it 100% easier to get started and you'll be done in no time and she's so awesome! Yayy!" I walk into the house repeating it. There is a palpable sense of excitement and suspense in the air as I walk over to the door of my room. Jessica looks like a pressure cooker right before it blows a hole in the wall behind the stove. I'm about to loose my mind trying to be cool. I open the door. My room is totally spotless. EVERYTHING has been picked up off the previously knee-deep floor and either put in it's place or assigned a temporary space. Jessica begins taking me around the room and showing me where she's put things that have never had a place before in this house. I notice that she's taken the six-inch-deep pile of mat boards, art paper and collage materials from under the bed and sorted and filed them under my desk. My arts and crafts supplies are no longer strewn around the room, they are neatly put away in one of three areas. All the clothing that was everywhere in the room is neatly in piles for laundry or putting away. Shoes are sorted. The closet closes. Every book I own is on a shelf, rather than in a box or on the floor. She's found all my cds and put them neatly together. The bed is made. You can find the bed easily, and neither pair of stairs is blocked. I start to cry. I notice Jess is crying. I call everyone I know and tell them about it, and they all cry. Rejoicing resounded througout the kingdom, and they all lived happily ever after.

Eeek!

Various horrible e-mail drama as Yahoo! fucks me around. Please click on the "write to me" link on the top of the sidebar and write to me at my gmail account (link now sends to me there) if you'd ever like to get an e-mail from me again, because the evil Y! people have deleted my account for the third and last time. Evil, terrible weirdness swirling. Here are more (mostly serious) things I'd like to become by pretending I already am:

-sober more often

-nicer in a more heartfelt way

-a person who says "yes" when she means "yes" and "no" when she means "no" and "I'll do that" only when she really wants to

-did I mention taller?

-stronger and more healthy, emotionally and physically

In other news, people just won't stop calling the house phone and hanging up on the machine. We have caller ID, people. In most cases I know exactly where you live. I know where you sleep. Just leave a fucking message, before I start pretending I'm already the kind of person who would stab you. Oh, wait, I already am.
Also, I just noticed that the dates were showing in Dutch, so I changed it back to English.

How to be happy

Who knew? Trying helps a lot. Back when I first posted about this, I was really hanging on by my thumbs, and really scared. I couldn't see a way out or a way to ever change what I was feeling, even though I knew I had felt that way before and it had gotten better eventually. I couldn't see how I could change anything; my lifestyle, my personality, my emotions, my behavior for the better. I didn't think I would ever stop feeling that sad. I was very afraid of what might happen to me.

Then I got really fucking tired of it. Tired of feeling bad all the time. Tired of my eyes aching because I couldn't stop crying and tired of missing my friends and wishing they could help and knowing that they were getting tired of it too, and tired of being angry and tired of being scared. Tired of other people being scared about me. And really, really fucking tired of how much it hurt.

Until I realized that virtually the only thing I had any power or control over at right that second, or any time until I could feel better, was my attitude. So now I'm becoming a happy person by pretending I'm already happy. Not in a fakey, assy way, but really trying to feel what it would feel like if I was really happy right now. And it's working. I definitely feel better and am reacting more like I would like to.

Not that it's a perfect system. The bottom fell out on me the other night, and everything went sideways and I felt as bad as I did right before I decided to change my attitude. It was all back, the crying and the feeling like a terrible person and the persecuted feeling and the anger and the fear and dissapointment. I felt like a stupid fucking failure, too, because I was right back where I had started and thought I had lost all that ground.

Then I realized I hadn't lost anything because I could change my attitude again and again until I got it right. This is going to work for me, I think. Then, when I have being happy worked out, I can become tall and willowy and Belgian by just pretending that I already am tall and willowy and Belgian. Then I'll pretend I have 8 billion dollars and a castle in France. And an 18 year old Italian boyfriend. And a tiara. And a pony...

photo musing

I need more pictures of myself. This is an odd state for me to be in, as I've, since about age 10, avoided having my picture taken or destroyed what pictures of me I could get my hands on. The cognitive dissonance between my picture-in-my-head of what I should look like and my retinal dismay at what I do look like is too much for my tiny little brain.

However. When I got my digital camera (which is a hunk of crap, but what the hell) I was suddenly able to sit, totally self absorbed, for entire hours, snapping self-portrait after self portrait until I captured something I actually wanted to see. This has caused unfortunate side-effects, because people are now getting used to seeing pictures of me. My mother, for instance, will not get off my back. "Why haven't you sent more pictures? Where are the pictures? Take more pictures!" I panicked and sent her every picture I have of myself that was taken in the last three years (I had been doling them out like a smart girl) and now she's even more crazy for more current pictures. Never mind that the pictures she now has of me taken in the last three years outnumber the pictures of me from the foregoing 10 years...

Which is only a problem because my camera is a hunk of crap that won't keep a charge. And because I'm tired of only self-portraits. I'd like to get some shots including more than one side of my face and part of my neck. I might even consent to let myself be photographed all the way down to the shoulders, if I could only get someone to agree to help...that won't be happening anytime soon, tho. I've asked everyone I could bear to ask and have been flatly refused...I'm trying to be cool about this development, but my brain wants me to be bitter and never take another photo. This time, however, my brain is not going to win.

Self-Portrait Tuesday

There's this cool thing on Flickr called "Self-Portrait Tuesday" where every Tuesday or thereabouts you take a new self-portrait or post an older one. I really like the idea, so I'm piling on. We'll see how long it lasts...I hope a long time. Ironically, I'm posting this from Photobucket because I can't use my Flickr account because it's tied to my old, now deleted by Yahoo! account. These pictures were taken last year sometime while I was living with my folks. I like to take a couple pictures in sequence with just a little change in between. I don't know why, but I thought it would be a fun thing to start with and since they're so tiny (when did I make them so small? what was I planning?) it seemed like putting them both up would be good.

Continuing near-normalcy

Still happy by main force. Getting easier every day. I mean, being happy is getting easier. I'm already as easy as I can get. And as Jasper says, I get what I can take. I had a moment this morning where I lost the center and hated everybody and everything and wanted to stab, stab, stab, stab, stab. Then I decided to not be like that anymore. For right then, anyway.

Went to lunch with Kathey and Rob today at Threadgill's. Yum. They brought Jessica a bed today, and they're MARRIED! I mean, I know, I know, I was at their wedding but I can't quite make it work in my head. I told my neighbor today, "My friend and her husband are coming over in a minute and they might use your parking space for two minutes." Then I got this dumbstruck look on my face and she said, "What?" And I was all, "They just got married and I've never said that word in reference to them before." And then of course I got to see the great look on her face when they came up and she noticed the 22-year age difference. I love that. In other K&R news, I'll be setting up their wedding Flickr site for them soon. Yayyyy!

Fasten your seatbelt and prepare to be astounded! And beaten with sticks!

It's my miracle new cure for depression: just be happy by pretending you're already happy! I'm holding my first workshop next weekend...only $500 per person per day (two day minimum). I've hammered out the notes for the class on smiling maniacally in any circumstance, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to teach "whole body fake-happiness" where you pretend you're happy even when alone or asleep. I wonder if it's okay to beat people with a stick? Is there some kind of release they have to sign saying you can stand over them for six hours and whip them every time they stop smiling?

Please disregard the last post

as it was written by an insane monster that lives in my head. The monster has had her internet priveledges rescinded and will be beaten bloody with bottles of beer and enormous spliffs the size of small dogs. But less hairy. So far my recovery strategies have included re-reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas daily, emotionally abusing everyone who loves me, the above-mentioned chemical treatments, and weeping uncontrollably at the slightest stimulus. I swear, if things don't get better soon, I may have to come up with something else to try.

I hate you

and everybody else.

My foreign policy

So, I've been re-reading Lies My Teacher Told Me, a book about all the things you never learned about in high-school American History. And I'm on the chapter about where our western society is going (now that we've begun to re-learn where it has come from) and what may lie ahead for humanity. Prior to re-reading this I've re-read An Underground Education and once I'm done I'll re-read Guns, Germs and Steel. I highly recommend each book, for diverse, and ultimately, consonant reasons.

Here's my question. Let's say I'm America. Just me. Little old me, tooling along. I'm the entire country of The United States. If I deal fairly and legally with my neighbors, treating them as I would like them to treat me; if I overlook little foibles of theirs and speak to them frankly about what I wish they would do or not do and let them know that I want them to speak frankly as well, if I talk to them about problems before I let them get to the point where I want authoritarian intervention, if I communicate with them about what is important to me and to the neighborhood; we will have a good relationship, neh?

And perhaps I see that a time of economic want may be creeping up on me? I would surely put something aside to see me through it, so I don't burden my roommates or my family with having to "spot" me so I don't wreck my home and end up homeless, living out of my car. Wouldn't I? I mean, I'm not absolutely and idiot, am I? Or at the very least I'll economize and reduce my spending so I can sort of coast through the bad time.

And perhaps I'm in conflict with someone in my given or chosen family, surely I'll bring it up, talk it out, work it through, and come out on the other side with a stronger and more open relationship. A relationship that will see us through whatever will come ahead.

Or maybe I'll act like the real America. Maybe I'll drink too much every night and scream at or call the cops on my neighbors if they so much as fart loud, and I'll stockpile my "real" necessities while I sponge everything else off of everyone else; maybe I'll wake up with a hangover every morning and hate everyone and be evil to the people who make my life possible and tolerable, and dominate every conversation and sell my future short with intransitive pleasures and maybe I'll burn every bridge I see. Maybe.

Happy Holidays!

No wonder he's such a right jolly old elf! It has the same effect on me!

Kathey got married!

And I got wasted. The wedding was incredibly sweet and wonderful. As far as I remember I was the only asshole there. Yayy! I'm so incredibly happy for Kathey and Robby that I'll be putting pictures up here as soon as they get back from their honeymoon and I find out where they are on the web. I forgot to ask the wonderful Christine who took the pictures as a wedding gift for them whether she was setting them up a Flickr site for it, but if she doesn't, I will. Yayy! Happy married people! Yayy!

A note to Travis at H.E.B.

Dear Travis,

Quit it. Quit being so yummy. I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job. Wear looser pants or something. Do me a favor and gain 60 pounds. At least quit being so sweet to me. I'm not stalking you, but I am acutely aware of you. In only a semi-friendly way. Who the hell has the right to look that good in black dress slacks and a red shirt!?! I think it's some kind of a violation of my civil rights to have to look at you for six hours while I'm trying to work. I'm calling the ACLU. The ACLU is going to sue you and sue H.E.B. and sue your ass for making my job have a sexually charged and uncomfortable environment. You're going down. Either that, or I'll end up fired and in jail for pushing you down on the floor in the produce cooler and humping you unmercifully. I would try to get you fired, but you're so damn good at your job. Which, I don't know if I mentioned it, but that makes me hot.

Your friend,

-kel

I'm so very cool

I really am. I'm having the best few days here. If only I could get motivated and do some of the things on my list instead of lying around, thinking about how cool I am, I might even get to feel this way for a while.
What I mean is, my pattern is to have a few really good days, slack off doing nothing but having fun and thinking about my coolness factor, and then reap the horrible consequenses durning the next few days while lying around thinking about what a failure I am and how I never, ever do anything fun or am cool. Yep, you figured it out. I'm nuts. And here's pretty much the whole list of what I wanted to do today:

1. Walk the dog. (partially done)
2. Clean my room. (been "in progress" for weeks)
3. Try to clean out the bathroom drains and get the rocks out of them. (accomplished!)
4. Blog. (we'll see how that turns out in a minute)

Yes, I know. How on Earth can you possibly "partially" walk a dog?!? I don't know. You kind of have to watch me do it. Also, why do I need to get rocks out of my drains? Or, more pertinently, why do I have rocks in my drains? Well, see, they're really spiritual rocks and...Oh, hell, it's really complicated and involves alcohol. They're out, okay?

Anyhoo, why don't you buggers start putting comments? I want you to. (They don't exist, Kel, they're all in your head.) Oh. I guess I'll just go clean my room, then.

Bad hair day

Supercuts Lady: What do you want to do with it today?
Me: What?
SL: Your hair? What do you want?
Me: Well, in three months I want a perfect, glossy swing bob. Today, I just want to not go home and hack it off at the scalp with a pair of kitchen shears.
SL: Oh. Okay.
Me: The last time I felt this way I took care of it myself.
SL: Oh. I can see that.
Me: Stop me before I do it again!
SL: Okay, okay! (snip, snip, snip) This should be better. (snip, snip, snip)
(as to a small, developmentally challenged child) You can flip it out or tuck it behind your ears, okay?
(As to a desperate woman standing on a bridge) And I'm not touching the front--you're almost there! Don't give up!
Me: You have to get rid of the proto-mullet!!! Please, you have to help me!
SL: I'm doing it! Right now. (SNIP, SNIP, SNIP)
(hands mirror, turns chair) How's that?
Me: (big sigh) Oh, I feel so much better all ready! Thank you! Thank you!

The following things are right out.

I spend most of several days a week, as I've previously mentioned, standing around a grocery store trying to influence the shoppers to experience and buy product. Precisely, I work in several grocery stores all around town, which gives me a good opportunity to see how people dress, at least just for the grocery store. Now, no one will ever accuse me of being a fashion plate, and I'm certainly only going to be deputized to the Fashion Police in the direst of emergencies...something along the lines of Fashion Martial Law. However. I've been noticing a few things that are really trendy right now, and with the students coming back into town the trends are getting bigger and more hamfisted than ever. Hence, I hereby declare the following things absolutely, without fail, mandatorily OUT, right out, and begone from my sight:

1. Gold and silver purses and shoes. Whoever decided that these items would be in this winter is obviously dangerously psychotic. Metallic purses and shoes are tacky, tacky, tacky. Also, they're kind of tacky. There are exactly two kinds of people who can get away with it, so if you're not a crack-whore or an aging, alcoholic drag queen all hopped up on goofballs, please take your trendy new purse and shoes over to Goodwill immediately. Especially you girls carrying the huge spangled shoulder bags that look like you could hide a baby in them. Wearers of metallic shoes with kitten heels (see below) and carrying one of these bags will be shot on sight.

2. There are earrings out there which are not appropriate to be worn with just any outfit. Before you ever leave the house, you must look into a good full-length mirror. Look closely. If the tiny, delicate crystals of your chandelier earrings brush the shoulders of your "Turkey Trot" t-shirt, you must take them off. If the color of said tiny, delicate crystals clashes with your wind shorts, you must remove all jewelry and go back to bed. If said color clashes in a different way with your Tau Delt insignia flip-flops you must beat yourself 'round the head and shoulders with the heaviest pan you can find. Just because you can wear discreet pearls, modest gold hoops, or un-presupposing diamond chips in your ears with any outfit and on any occasion does not mean that the same holds true for all earrings, and especially not for earrings which you bought because of how much they look like the ones so-and-so wore to the Oscars. Idiot.

3. Denim for anything but jeans was never really cool, and it never will be. Those really expensive skirts you're all wearing that are especially frayed and ragged around the horrible bell hemline already when you buy them? They're awful. The cut is awful, the denim color is awful, the pre-frayed him is awful. Stop wearing them. Especially stop wearing them with t-shirts and chandelier earrings and horrible giant spangled gold bags and kitten heels. I'm going to kill one of you eventually if you don't.

4. Kitten heels are stupid. I really love shoes and when I first started to see this style back in stores I was elated and immediately started shopping for the perfect pair. Then I remembered (after trying on approximately 48,000,009 pairs) that kitten heels are dumb looking. The only place they belong is on those silly boudoir shoes with the pink boa around the toe, and the only place those shoes belong is in romantic-comedy movies made before 1972.

Just in case you're reading this and thinking, "She's wrong. I know what she means, but I can carry it off," You're wrong. The only times it's in good taste to do something in such bad taste: if it's really cute; if it's ironic; if it's funny. None of these trends are even deep enough for funny.

Defining moment

I never really grokked "eurotrash" until today. Sure, I had a vague, use-it-in-a-sentence kind of idea. I'd heard it used in context enough times to know I could use it semi-properly, especially if I happened to be drunk, talking to drunks.
Then I saw her. The shoes, first. High-couture, gold brocade with thousands of beads. Pointy-toed like some Italian hallucination of the Arabian Nights. Some sort of trendy skirt and a thick, heavy silk-satin halter top, more beads all over it, the color of weird foreign change just before you over-tip. Her hair was unbelievable--brushed completely forward over her shoulders and curled into perfect ringlets the size of bratwurst. Bigger. Her makeup looked like she'd recently been "done" somewhere that the lipstick cost more than I make a week. I don't even make enough to start talking about her handbag.
And here she was, stalking through the grocery store, screaming at the top of her lungs. A chagrined and possibly frightened young man wearing jeans and a t-shirt followed her, pushing a grocery cart with his head down and his mouth shut. She was screaming at him. In Russian. About limes. It was the only English word that I heard come out of her mouth, and it issued forth in a climbing, growling shriek like the cry of a cornered panther. Then would start again the incomprehensible muttering, the aggrieved whining, the yelling, the screaming, then, "LlllliiiiiiIIIIMMMES!!!!" They were heading towards the produce department, but she would occasionally leave him at the end of an aisle as she stalked down it, still orating, to grab some item and hurl it in the cart. He flinched every time. Once, when she was out of sight (but not sound) I caught his eye and considered offering to call for help, but she scared me too much.
Why is my life so boring? I hardly ever scream at anyone, much less about limes. And never in Russian.

Oh, p.s.

My computer crashed about two days after I wrote
the triumphant "my computer is set up and we're
getting wireless!" post, so it's not ALL my fault.

Liar, liar...

Okay, okay, my pants are duly on fire. I've been promising to post and promising to post and breaking my promises every day. I'm sure no one is reading anymore, but in case you are, I absoloutely swear to stop promising to post. I'll just post whenever I get a bug up my ass and knock out the lying promises part.

So, my wonderful next raise at work is never going to happen (speaking of people who break promises) and the five days a week I was also (liar) promised fell through after about a month, so I'm working less now than I was before I got promised the fantastic raise and full time work. Yayy! (Which is what my boss always says when she's about to tell me that I'm "off for the weekend! Yayy!") So I'm looking for a new job. I haven't told her yet, but I'm going to. I'd like to keep working for her on the weekends only, but if I get a full-time, really really full-time job, she's going to be out of luck. So that's that.

Also, I've been spending lots and lots of time with my new friend Jasper (see previous posts). I've known him for years, on and off, since my roomate met him and his boyfriend...I have no idea how they met, actually. I suck at "Austin geaneology" and I could hardly tell you how I met Jessica, anymore. But I've known him a long time, and we never really hung out at all until I moved in here, right down the street from where he was living at the time. Where he promptly moved out of and ended up spending a lot of time at our house, until he found a new permament place to live. I don't really know how much of his life he wants to see splattered all over my blog, so maybe I should think about going back and changing his name in all the posts. Hmmmmmm.

Anyway, the roomate, who was really his real friend and I was just an acquaintance, ended up being busy most of the time and not being able to hang out with him, and we just started spending more and more time together until we basically started making everyone, including ourselves, sick with it. He's super-fun, and more than that, he helped me remember that I'm super-fun, too. Which is awesome, and he has a great new place, and we're both now able to utter up to ten minutes of conversation without mentioning each others' name even once; there's even whole days where we don't talk on the phone or see each other personally. His new downstairs neighbors (who I've never met, but who he talks to often) have even been persuaded that I'm really not his girlfriend. I may even eventually make a blog entry where I don't mention him.

Anyway, here's to new friends, and old friends, and new jobs, and being able to pay the bills. Yayy!

New Post

I'm not very imaginitive tonight. I've been drinking beer and talking to my roomate (Jessica) and my neighbor (Jasper) and messing with the dog (Bella) and basically doing the same thing I've been doing since I moved in here at the end of this last January. The only thing is that I've gotten a cost-of-living raise for moving to Austin and a couple of merit raises for doing my job right (practically the first time since I started working outside my family at 18) and am maybe going to get a raise if I start being a "team leader" next week. Plus, I'm working about 30 hours a week now. Yayy! Money rocks!
The down side is that my job is still basically the same, although I went from working in one store in my hometown to working in whatever store I could get hours in here in Austin, to working one tiny store in my old (bad vibe) neighborhood where it's hard to sell anything because everyone who comes in is either 1)Extremely old AND senile AND deaf or 2)A total hippie and only eats granola and yoghurt or 3)Just doesn't want a sample for some reason. This is trying to me because, as some of you may remember, my job consists of standing around a grocery store and handing out samples of things I hope the customers will want to buy, then giving them a (very) short sales pitch about why they should. It's really a fun job, unless some really senile and deaf old lady (or a drunk vagrant) needs you to run over the salient parts of the sales pitch about seven times. Or some hippie mom with three kids needs to berate you for the use of Red Coloring #7 in the product you nearly gave her kids, for 1/2 an hour. Then there are the people who just don't want a sample. I think I'm wearing them down, tho. They're very polite ("No, thank you, ma'am.") but they just don't want to try it. My first demo at my new store was taquitos and popsicles, and I just did queso dip, so it doesn't look good. I mean, who turns down a popsicle or some queso, free? But maybe they just need to get used to me. Since I'll be working 5 days a week in their grocery store, they will. There's already a couple of creepy old people (one with a truly scary wig, which I will talk more about in a later post) who are so used to me they talk to me for hours while I pretend they're invisible.
So anyway, everything is pretty ok. I love my house, I love Jess and Bella, I love talking to Jasper every day or so and seeing or talking to Kathey and Mary every day and doing my job well, so I'm happy. Yayyy! I'll see you tomorrow.

I'm baaaaaaaa-accckkk!

I finally got my computer set up and started making enough money that we could splurge and get high-speed...Yayy! So here I am, actually making a post. My friend Jasper predicted that now that I have a job and a semi-social life (mostly consisting of sitting on my porch with Jasper, smoking and being jaded) and am occasionally leaving the house for totally non-work-related reasons, that I would not regain interest in the blog or need to be interesting and funny for it, since I know actual humans now with which to converse. Which is ridiculous, because the blog always listens raptly and never interrups me. Or thinks I'm silly, or makes a face when I mention I have a blog. Jasper. No, he's really nice and funny and cool and interesting, none of that is true except the 'oh, I'm kindof embarrased for you' face he made upon hearing about the blog.

Anyway, I'm working more and still have no money for various reasons (most of them sold at Pronto), I'm guardedly optimistic about the future and totally done writing for right now, but I'll see you later.

I laughed so hard I crizzied...

Please, please, please go here if you'd like to also.