prepared for the worst
her voice is young and light.
i have no time
for any of that she says.
he chuckles for what.
mushy nonsense she says.
he tips his head back, closes
his eyes (they frustrate him
so, they don’t work as they should)
arms on each rest
in his chair.
i sit here alone
for weeks and weeks (eyes
still closed) and i
am glad when someone walks through
the door he says.
his voice is old and quiet.
So, there down below (my first post, my lack-of-motivation-but-motivated-enough-to-sound-relatively-intelligent post) is an example of how last summer was going. It’s not a good example by any means. Last summer was absolute shit. I don’t really think the shit gets conveyed quite right. My summers aren’t really all that great, I’ve been on a solid four-year run of poop. Lemme break down the past couple:
Summer 2o1o: broke up with first-ever-really-real boyfriend. (not terrible, but, at the time, trauma-inducing.)
Summer 2o11: cousin dies. worst job of life (pseudo-best thing EVAR) (WORK ALL THE HOURS! {insert meme}). bout of depression. tv breaks. car dies. nana dies week before fall semester classes start.
i shall take this opportunity to expand a little on the above airing of grievances (i will also point out every Seinfeld reference to better you…airing of grievances is a Seinfeld reference. A Festivus for the rest of us!). About the tv: while this is not technically that catastrophic, proper television function is crucial to household happiness where i live. What would the day be without at least one episode of Gilmore Girls or Seinfeld? i’ll just answer that for you, it would be poop! Upon realizing our television was broken (it made this fantastic popping noise and a little bit of a static crackle and then it got all fuzzie and we got really scared) we found a replacement stat: Megatron. And no, that was not our awesome attempt at naming our little tv after a transformer, that was what it was really called. it said megatron. on the front. in letters. that was the awesome part. the not-so-awesome part was its teensie stature. it did what it could, but all in all it was basically the size of a very square bulky laptop and if i sat all the way across the room on the short couch (the short couch is awesome, it’s not like a short bus) (i make politically un-correct jokes a lot) i had to wear my glasses.
i know you’re just dying to hear how our television perils resolved, and so i will summarize with: we bought a flat-screen and i get megatron when i move out in a month. totes.
i’ve been in a white stripes/the raconteurs/weezer phase. dig it.
so i’m sitting here in the dark at my job picking around the lettuce in my salad to get to the apricot slices. they’ve steeped in the dressing so they’re squishy again. i’m pretending i’m eating little spleens. (i’ve never eaten a spleen and i don’t plan on eating a spleen, no worries.) it was a big salad (Seinfeld reference).
now would be a good time to tell you all about my lifetime dietary history, i mean what could be more interesting? i’m absolutely positive you have bunn loads of better things to do, but i don’t so here it is:
as a small child (read as: tubby girl of ten) i was basically allergic to everything on the planet. while that is obviously an exaggeration…here’s everything off the top of my head that i can remember caused me physical angst:
wheat, gluten, barley, oats, apple skin, watermelon, cherries, dairy, lactose (they’re different!), sugar, chocolate, artificial anything (preservatives, colours, flavours) cottonwood, cedar mulch, basically all nature (my spring allergies are still unwieldy), perfume, corn, fresh cut grass, dust, mold, cats, dogs, camels, certain poly-cotton blends, eggs, pretty much anything processed (frozen foods, packaged foods) and a hoard of other things but this was just off the top of my head.
this left me with seafood and quinoa. i kid you not. we ate salmon about every five days (i was on a five-day food rotation plan…every meal meticulously plotted and eradicated of interest after three cycles) and mom made quinoa bread. and contrary to apparently just my belief, it isn’t pronounced “quin-oh-ah” either, it’s “keen-wah” (wtf?). also i wasn’t really allergic to camels, i road one once when i visited my grandparents in florida, that was a test.
so of course a decade later everyone is being all vegan and vegetarian and basically a gluten allergy is the equivalent of getting your ears pierced when you’re nine, everybody has them, you really want them, no biggie (even though it’s a big deal when you’re nine), so you’re probably wondering if i’ve even seen the nature’s marketplace section of Wegmans (yes i have thanks). but let me tell you. ten years ago, NOTHING was gluten-free, or wheat-free, or vegan-friendly, or any of that poop. it was so damn hard! now even pizza places have gluten free crust! what the hell man. i lament because i have since had my allergies cured. so i can’t even be happy, i’ve been re-assimilated into our crappy food culture and love love love bread and yogurt and everything bad for me, so why would i even want vegan food now huh? i still have a lot of eating to catch up on.
don’t underestimate how awesome it is to be able to open up your refrigerator and just eat whatever you want. i couldn’t do that growing up. i had to bring weird lunches to school and got allergy shots every other day (i sound like a disaster, i know, i read books and was homeschooled too, mental picture yet? no worries, i didn’t do the whole socks with sandals/jean jumper/knee-length shorts/long teeshirt/fanny pack uniform that so many homeschoolers sport) and when my mom would leave me alone i used to sneak a piece of white bread and go hide in my closet while i ate it like an orgasm. seriously. white bread vs. quinoa bread? given the comparison, the above scenario is perfectly normal.
so you may be wondering, how did i rid myself of this pestilence ?
voodoo.
okay, not really voodoo, but close man. it works like this: a combination of chinese vibrational medicine and pressure points. it has to do with the energy flow in your body, the chakras, all that eastern medicine jazz. i was entirely skeptical that it would work. no needles? pft, can’t be legit. well guess what. even though it felt like she was tickling me, in a very inapropro way (the groinal chakras get me every time), this lady knew what she was doing. i can eat my white bread in the open, it’s lost the orgasm effect. she would do muscle-response testing too (you stick your arm out and she tries to push it down while you hold the suspected allergen. if the arm goes down it’s because the muscle is weakened by the allergen, if the arm can resist, then go crazy) and she would even ASK MY BODY QUESTIONS. it was creepy. that was the voodoo part. and she told me in my past life i was a blind european male, but that’s not pertinent.
I can’t stir myself to be productive today; it’s the start of my last two weeks of summer (and ultimately my only two weeks of summer) and here I lie, watching season 1 episode 20 of Bones. All I can say I really accomplished thus far, after almost six hours of consciousness, is completing my personal hygiene routine. Aka I’m still in my towel as I type this. I’m feeling pretty bummed out about my summer, I feel like I have to get lots done in such a short amount of time, and that’s when I really freak out, because then I need an agenda and schedule and my nemesis, a plan. I have a bucket list (and I love lists), but to complete the bucket list I must facilitate plans, and so, I think that perhaps the vast majority of bullets will not get stricken in successful triumph; nay, I will indeed end up lamenting this summer for years to come, disappointed in myself and my circumstances.
Now in theory, I could sieze this time to do what I want to do, cool stuff and passion-pursuit. In theory. Regardless of my awareness, I shall continue to sabotage myself and squander time.
