attempt #34 and #35 on being an adult

34. yesterday i used coupons i had cut from the sunday paper. i've never done this before because normally the coupon-worthy products are nothing i would ever buy. my rule is that i can only use a coupon for something that i already have in my house (or more accurately for something already in my house that is almost empty or used up). so i bought dishwasher soap and shampoo, both of which were already in my house and on the last squirts. i saved a total of 2.00 which seems dumb really, but it is 2.00.

35. this morning the stanley steamer (or is it steemer? do they spell it wrong?) are coming to clean the carpet at my house. this is major adult in my opinion. before i wouldn't have cared. but really this is the only place i've ever lived in that has carpet. everywhere else has been tile (cue the dorms at usc) and a couple rentals which had hardwoods. so they're coming to clean the carpet. i'm kind of excited. that's so majorly lame.


in completely unrelated other news, i determined yesterday that the gym is the funniest place EVER that i go. i apparently have enrolled at the senior citizen gym. i think i've told you all that before. yesterday was an upper body day for the weights (an aside on weight lifting: there are so many thousands of ways to go about lifting weights in a program sort of way. in school we were taught to do "push" groups and "pull" groups which works the whole body everyday pretty much if you do all the push stuff and all the pull stuff. then i devised my own system at some point of just upper and lower body on alternating days with back and abs everyday. then i met a friend who did muscle groups like chest and biceps, shoulders and triceps, legs, back and abs which seems to be the new trend but for me is crazy unless you are a body builder. it takes an entire week to hit your whole body. then there's the old people and women trend of circuit training.) so back to my story. i go to the gym and lift first. i start out on the bench and then go about a bunch of other stuff. when i'm about finished, this old couple comes over with their trainer and gets on the bench. my gym is very big on trainers but i don't want to pay for someone to count for me, you know? although i do wonder if they could make me stronger. so the old lady of the old couple gets on the bench and proceeds to lift 55 lbs which is what i lift. now granted, she stayed at 55 the whole time and i start at 50 and work up to 60 or 65, but still, a lady who was probably 65+ lifted the same amount that i do. i don't think i was the only one who was impressed b/c pretty much everyone was watching her. so then i go upstairs to do some cardio. during the summer heat in cola i have to run on the indoor track. i saw this old guy, probably 70 yrs old or so go up to the track. he wears a full track suit and pours sweat. i've been up there with him before and had lapped him 2 or 3 times during the run. so i let him come running by and i get on the track behind him. we run for a while and i finally catch up to him and think i'll be passing him soon. i get closer and closer and realize he has picked up his pace b/c i'm going to have to sprint to get by. so i run on his heels for about 5 or 6 laps (the track is way smaller than an outdoor). finally i get up the guts to go past him and think i'll just have to run this fast for a while and he'll back off. NOPE! he picked it up and was running right behind me. i could have elbowed him or stopped abruptly and he would have trampled me. so we run like this for 5 or 6 more laps and then finally i realize that either he or i would be having a heart attack soon so i slow up a little and let him get in front and then i proceed to trail him as he had just done me for that last 15 or so laps at which point i stop and go get on the elliptical for the rest of my cardio b/c it feels like my leg will be detaching at the knee from all the sprinting. so obviously he was pissed that a girl was passing him and i was pissed that an old man was passing me. i can only imagine what everyone else on the track was thinking as we went flying by them about 1000 times.
yesterday put things in major perspective.

i have some things to say

1. does anyone else fall victim to target? i go there and the money falls out of my pockets. i might as well just drive by and toss it in the door or around the parking lot. it's ridiculous. things don't cost that much but when you add them together, wow.

2. i had to get my dad to help me with a paper. this degree shmegree i'm working on has a cognate which i should have made like art history or something where i just memorize. instead it's this curriculum stuff which is of high importance to my job and my existence in public education but not interesting to me. at all. i like to read about how kids learn to read. that's not interesting to lots of people, right? remind me of that. so my dad had to help me with a paper. picture us on the phone and he's reading it out loud and we're fixing stuff as we go. we're reading and reading and he reads this sentence, For Giroux, in order for a person to be critical, she must have at some point acquired the language for what is achievable. I do not by any means think this is an exceptional sentence. at all. and he says, "is that a quote? that sounds like a quote. are you sure you didn't read that somewhere?" so this creates panic because do you ever wonder when you reread papers if you are the person who really wrote it? or is it just me? sometimes i write stuff and then forget i did it. it's like driving somewhere and not remembering how you got there. but again, i don't really think this sentence is that good and doesn't sound like i quoted it even. but instead i looked in all the books and articles just looking for the word achievable. that's not a hard word so i'm confused about why he thinks i might of plagiarized. but now i'm afraid that i did plagiarize and so i probably won't sleep good tonight.

3. will bought a 210 gallon fish tank. it's in my house. enough said.

college.

i went back to college today. i'm working on a paper and had to go do some "research at the library." i got to use my usc id from like 2002 to check out books and the same guy was sitting at the circulation desk. the SAME guy who was there in 2002. and those of you who've been to the library at usc, you know how you have to show the guy at the door the inside of your bag, even though you are walking through a thing that will beep if you happen to be stealing any books and how he has to look at every book in your stack to make sure you really did check them out? does anyone else think this is an unessecary position? and remember when they put a coffee shop IN the library and we were all like wow! a coffee shop in the library, but it wasn't ever very good. well, i don't think it's there anymore. i'll check again, but i have a feeling that was a flop. until they figure out a way to get the actual starbucks, it will not work out. i had fun, can you tell? now i just have to actually write the paper. ugh.

tonight at dinner, will said, "so you can check out as many books as you want, right?" apparently it's been a while since he's been to the library. i told him yes, and he said, "we should check out the whole library and if you're a professor you wouldn't ever have to return them." so i guess i should become a professor so that one day we can actually try to put this idea into action.

words words words

"the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice" MLK, Jr. I read that today and liked it. Not sure if that's an exact quote but close enough.

all i've done for the last few days is read...so many words.
i'm taking a course at the moment, curriculum development. it's basic but still so much reading that my highlighter is going to run dry soon. so in the off moments when i'm not reading the educational philosophy wordiness, i'm grabbing everything else. just finished newsweek with barack obama gracing the cover. i like him. that's where the quote came from. it's going to be an interesting Dem. primary. I think it will be more telling of America than the actual election. i also need to read his audacity of hope book. it's on the list. the list is too long.

in other reading i'm trying to become the pat conroy expert but have a ways to go and have to put that on hold because where's the time for that? i did find a cool new magazine today though. i have a secret obsession with magazines that i might of mentioned before. they're noncommittal and shiny. that is why i love them. i don't feel guilty putting them down like i do when i have to stop reading every word that someone writes like i'm doing with conroy. i could be reading conroy instead of writing this post couldn't i? ahh, details. so this magazine i found is called Good. i don't think it's brand spanking new or anything. i think i just realized it existed. it says it is a magazine "for people who give a damn." i want really badly to be a person who gives a damn. sometimes i fail at that because there's so much going on right in front of me and i seem to only give a damn about that, but this magazine is cool because it looks at all the hot topics of the time that we should be giving a damn about but are maybe not right in front of us or they are in front of us but we have our eyes closed to them. it's cool so you should check it out. it also has a weird picture of michael stipe in turquoise pants inside the front cover, which was shocking because that's an image i haven't seen before. it's an ad for something but i'm just stuck with stipe in green pants at the moment. i'll look again and figure that out.

what else what else?

my poor pup, lily, is losing her womanhood this week. friday is the big day. she has no idea and is bouncing around happily. i will have to break the news soon. normally Will would be around to assist in these matters but as he is a working man and i work in public ed and have the summer off it will be me doing the delivering of the puppy with woman parts and the picking up of the puppy without woman parts. this will be sad because i hate leaving the dogs anywhere because they are my pseudo children and so i will probably cry.

dreams are like movies...

not sure what i've been eating or drinking lately that has made the dreaming so vivid. i usually don't remember the details of dreams, but the last two nights have been extra real.

last night i dreamed that i was riding a tricycle (like the little kid kind) from my parents house to greenville. that would involve me pedaling on woodruff road. i only made it a little ways before my little tricycle fell apart. it was like that commercial where the guy is sitting in his car and hitting his dash because something's not working right, and then the whole car falls out from under him, except i just fell a few inches because tricycles sit pretty low to the ground. so i managed to get my wheels put back on and turned around to head back to woodruff where i would apparently make some repairs. i was supposed to be somewhere in greenville, a race maybe? there was a time limit, that's all i can figure because i was feeling extra panicked about my faulty tricycle. so i end up stopping at the eckerds in woodruff because i think i see my family there and there's this whole confusing part of the dream at this point involving band aids, my grandfather, not having enough money to pay for things, and some kids trying to steal my tricycle. so at some point i leave the drugstore and go down the street to find that my tricycle has been put in a yard sale. while rummaging around to dig it out of a pile of stuff, i have an eerie feeling that there's someone out there who doesn't want me to ride the tricycle or who wants me to be late to wherever i'm headed. once i find my tricycle and am about to elicit the help of the chorus teacher from my school because he is apparently really good at repairing tricycles, the custodian from my school, who's a really sweet lady, appears and has brought me lunch, in a cooler, all of these little containers of mashed potatoes and corn and beans. and she says she chose those foods because she saw me eating them once. but i wonder about that because i never eat like that at school. i eat sandwiches or salads, so i'm confused about the full course meal but i say thanks and am about to get back on my newly-repaired tricycle when it starts raining of course. but i'm determined to make it to greenville even if i do have to pedal in the rain and carry a cooler full of food. so i set out on my second journey down woodruff road, and then i promptly wake up. so all i want to know is where was i going? and why the tricycle? like most dreams, the retelling is dumb. sorry to put you through that if you stuck it out this far.

the dream from the night before was about Will wanting to buy my grandma's house in gaffney of all places. he had a plan that we would move there and fix it up and then sell it. but we would have to sell our current house and i couldn't convince him that i love our house and couldn't handle the idea of moving to gaffney where my grandma's house was surrounded by yellowed fields and one house in particular that looks like the location of a flea market. i can't remember much else of the dream, at some point i was trying to get to a cross country meet. not sure if i was running or coaching but i was late as usual in dreams and never made it. i woke up. why do you never make it to your destination in dreams?

one more note about the house that's by my grandma's house: at one point the people who live there were raising miniature ponies in the backyard. i say backYARD because the space behind their house isn't like a farm-sized field, it is simply a small plot of land. oh and they have a caboose from some train. it's red just like cabooses are supposed to be. now where do you think they got a caboose and why did they put it in the backyard? for a while i thought about the boxcar children, remember them? but i don't think these people know anything about those kids or their survival skills in the boxcar. i think they are just the type of people who collect trash in their yard and just mow the grass around it. it's sad and my grandma hates it.

ok enough for now.

seeing yellow

more on painting because it's all i've done for the last week and a half. yesterday i took the hallway/stairway from dull to BRIGHT. so bright you might need to pack sunglasses if you're coming for a visit. william picked the color, incorrectly titled PALE daffodil. it's not pale at all. it's bright yellow. i like yellow, usually in muted calm shades. the wall is so bright and yellow that whenever will climbs the stairs or walks out into its sunniness he immediately begins singing made up songs about yellow. like "yellow keeps falling on my head" or "it's a very yellow world." after working for an entire day on the yellowness, he tells me i can repaint it. seriously? no.
but if you're ever feeling blue, just come over to my house. i'll set you up in the hall and within minutes you'll be catapulted into the world of happiness and joy! i tried to snap a pic so that you could appreciate the yelllowness with me, but film just can't capture it. so here's a pic of lily looking cute. she doesn't even seem to notice the yellow, so i guess we're all good.

laaa dee dah!

summer time is here! spent last week at the beach among a couple friends for a couple days and then just with william for the rest of the week. there was plenty of doing nothing, though we did manage to make ourselves run a few times to work off the ridiculous amounts of food we ate. i also had plenty of time sitting on the beach, staring and staring at the ocean and reading dumb magazines and great books. you know how being from SC we all know that pat conroy is a great writer. most of us know this even if we haven't actually read any of his stuff. until this past week, i was one of those people. i've heard the guy speak a handful of times and i have read his cookbook, but i was a loser about reading his stuff. i don't know that i would have appreciated it before now anyway. so i read beach music and am quickly now about to devour everything else he has written. i love stuff that's set in the south and especially when someone can actually capture the part of the south that is beautiful and not dwell on the part that isn't so beautiful. he definitely can do this.

in other news there was major drama on the beach this year. in the past there has been the occassional situation of the beached jellies, the cannonball ones or something, the kind that won't hurt you. anybody else remember that a few years ago? you'd go to the beach and have to dodge the little guys because they were everywhere you tried to throw out your towel. well this year was the year of the ray. at first we thought sting ray, which meant that i wasn't getting anywhere near the rocky sea. but then after a little research discovered these were cow-nosed rays, not to be confused with caboose rays, which is something that is totally fabricated and made up by rob. so for days i watched little kids run around on the beach being completely misinformed, which often becomes little kids, yelling, "I saw 37 sting rays just now!" or "I just touched one of the sting rays." now obvoiously these aren't sting rays or one of those kids would have been regretting the whole touching of the sting ray. let us remember steve irwin. perhaps his daugter could enlighten us on the nature of the cow-nosed ray, who knows. even though these rays were as harmless as a caboose, i still was a bit wary. i know the sea is for the sea life, but i just don't like seeing the creatureyness of it all i guess. there was one little girl who captured my feelings. she was coming in from serious boogie boarding, stopped dead in her splashy tracks and let out a shriek like any 8 year old girl can do. a few dads, none of which were hers, went running for her thinking, "drowing child" or "shark attack" even though she was just standing in the ocean. this kid had just seen the rays go swimming by her little legs, so she stopped dead in her tracks and did what any fine girl would do, be completely still and scream at the top of her lungs, the high pitched scream i might add. even though she was a mess, i thought it was super cute. that'd of been me at age 8 too.