crap

there's a reason my aunt mary wasn't invited to my sister's wedding. she has the midas touch, only the kind that turns everything into crap instead of gold. of course, that doesn't stop her from driving down from seattle anyway.

the first thing my parents did this morning was go check to make sure she hadn't taken one of my little sisters and run off in the night. (she tried to take one of them when she was a baby, and some physical violence ensued when my mom tried to stop her.)

then we were going to go up to thousand oaks to go to church at our old ward and visit some old friends. surprisingly enough mary wanted to come. (she was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts, but decided to wear a dress on top of it. one that didn't fit and she was supposedly fixing. it was missing a sleeve and was cut all the way up the front, so it really just looked like some type of freakish white lace trenchcoat.) none of the family are allowed to drive with her, and we didn't all fit in one car, so my mom drove mary in her car.

halfway into the 90 minute trip, nicole called and told my mom that before they left for their honeymoon they were going to david's parents to open presents. my mom wanted to go, so after a lengthy side-of-the-road discussion, we decided to turn around. then after some scary stuff, swearing, and people going wrong directions, we realized that taking mary to hang with the new in-laws was definitely a major lapse in judgment, and instead turned back around again.

long story short (or less long) we finally made it to the church, just as the last car was leaving. after a 4 1/2 hour car trip (did i say 90 min? nothing is that simple with mary...) we turned back around. again.

we made it back in 90 min though (even though there was a close call with a state trooper, not about speeding) and went to dinner at my mom's best friend nancy's house (they were mission companions and roommates at byu). luckily mary did pretty well. she was kind of creepy and incessantly talked all kinds of nonsense, and insisted on showing everyone her ugly paintings and handing out business cards and talking about how she was going to be famous, but managed to do it without swearing or yelling and at least tried to appear sane, even though that's basically impossible.

we eventually all made it back to the hotel safely. and though the whole day was spent discussing survival tactics, and how to get rid of her without pissing her off and creating a family fiasco (there's a lot of complicated history there), we were given a brief respite when she decided to go to the hotel bar. of the hotel next door. and since my dad made sure she didn't have a key to the room (that's just asking for trouble) he's now waiting for her to come back. because even though he went to the desk and had the keys changed and gave them specific instructions regarding her, she's looking for an excuse to get a new room key made. she said she'd be back around midnight. it's almost 2am now. and i'm really not excited for when she does, cuz as far as i remember drunk crazy mary is even worse than regular crazy mary.

once upon a time

my sister's wedding was really beautiful. she was beautiful, and everything was just so nice.

and then our crazy aunt showed up and the family went into damage control/containment mode. which wasn't really too bad. there were lots of nice people who'd just listen to her, confusedly, and then someone would explain that she's bi-polar, mostly manic, and that whatever it was she was saying she didn't mean. steered her away from anything or anyone important, and things went rather smoothly. nothing too outlandish... kidnapping attempts and the like.

we have quite a bit of room in the hotel suite, so she stayed with us tonight. probably better for the general public safety; we can at least try to keep an eye on her. we were talking about relatively normal things, and then out comes crazy mary. seriously. these are things that my mom wants me to document for posterity...well, really just for future reference when she does something screwey.

so, my aunt mary wants me to take three weeks of my summer to go to europe with her. (which is, of course, out of the question. none of us kids are even allowed to be in a car with her.) this apparently is an integral part of her plot to fake her own death. and to unite all religions. apparently she is mary the mother of jesus, thus my cousin neal is actually jesus. not only that, but she doesn't have one child, she has fourteen. my sisters and i and all our cousins are actually her children whom she gave to my mom and their brother to raise. there are only eleven of us, so the other three she still has to find; actually just two, since my new brother-in-law david is apparently one of them, who found 'princess nicole' and came back to the family. and now she wants to take me, another princess, to go find my prince. apparently he happens to be the prince of denmark? (or she just watched that "prince & me" movie too many times.) or was it wales? anyway... oh, about the uniting all religions... apparently she is mormon after all (who knew?)...and she's also catholic, baptist, methodist, lutheran, buddist, and islamic. amazing. i don't know what religion steven segal is, but apparently they're getting married in 2011. i don't know how that's going to work if she's pretending to be dead, but i'm sure she'll figure it all out. but she'll have to figure out what year it is first. i'm not sure that she knows, judging from when she commented on something that happened in 2002...which apparently was seven years ago... time flies when you're psychotic.

time has ravaged on my soul
no plans to leave but still i go
...who cares why
...once upon a time in my life

oh, inverted world...the past and pending

loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love
we've turned every stone, and for all our inventions
in matters of love loss, we've no recourse at all.

so, i just spent a lot of time writing an absolutely stellar response on a message board, only to find that it never posted because the thread was deleted while i was writing it. somewhat upsetting. because now i have nothing to show for my wasted time.

but, nickie came home (to the hotel which is currently our pretend home), and is really excited about the fact that she is now wearing "g's". pretty cute. so, that's something positive i guess.

ooh...unless the kid read it, realized i was a flippin' genius, and that he was totally wrong and stupid, and decided to wordlessly concede defeat and avoid the public humiliation. nice...

VW

billboard on the freeway:

misery has enough company. dare to be happy.

(yellow volkswagon bug convertible)

not persuaded to buy the car, but liked the sentiment.

...yeah, well, next time maybe you will estimate me.

...OMG... dwight got a hooker!

sorry, i'm watching the office and that was really funny...

mood rings...

turns out i do need one.

but luckily i was right. i feel better today. well, not so much now, but a 9.5 hour shift would do that to anybody.

this morning was good though. as hard as it was to get up at 6 am, i felt rather chipper. malorie and i took smoothies to "ride your bike to work day" thing that UTA was doing, down at the provo courthouse. interesting. the mayor read this "proclamation" about why they were having it, about how bicycles are good for the environment, and relieve traffic congenstion, etc. thus improving quality of life for provo residents. there were free bike helmets, and food (jamba, bagels, fruit, water bottles, etc). it was basically a mini social event. malorie and i sat at our little table, with books. she was reading "the other side of heaven" and the mayor came over and talked to us for a minute, and told us about when he had dinner at the grobergs, and whether the movie was accurate.
i couldn't help thinking how incongruous this event was with the homeless people who i saw that morning around downtown provo. there was a bag lady with a prosthetic foot slowly scooting her way down the sidewalk in a wheelchair. and another older man sitting on a bench all morning. and here were all these public figures and supposed leaders eating bagels, drinking jamba, socializing, and congratulating themselves for their effort to improve the lives of provo residents by riding bicycles.
when they biked off, and we were getting ready to leave, malorie and i grabbed one of the many bags of uneaten bagels, and i told her we had to take some over to the homeless man on the bench. so, that was our little robin hood-ette moment. snatcing bagels from the rich to give to the poor. i just wonder if it even occurred to anyone else to share the free food with the people who actually NEED free food. geez!

so, even though the situation was a bit frustrating, we were able to do something good for a really sweet old man, and mal and i felt really great.

blah

do you ever wish there were a restart button for your life?

i seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time laying awake in bed during the course of my life. sometimes, i'm exhausted, and know that i have to be up and working in a couple hours, and yet there i lay, thinking...thinking...thin

king...

and of course at those times it's always the most awful "pity-party" style thoughts. thoughts about how to solve the ills of society turn into thoughts about how incapable i am of doing anything. if i can't even alleviate the problems of the people right around me, or the people i care about the most, then how can i ever do anything that will mean anything to anyone anywhere?

and thoughts about all the time i wasted that day. using excuses like colds and headaches and pains and personal frustrations, to wallow instead of work, and even wallow while i work.

and about all of the things i left unsaid. when i had perfect opportunites to finally say some of the things i so often lay awake thinking about. so that when i finally miss the chance, i lay awake some more thinking how stupid i am for caring anyway.

my head hurts, and so does my back, and my shoulder, and my throat; i'm sneezing and coughing, nose running...and then it's worse because i'm crying alone in my bed at 2 am and no amount of excedrin is going to fix it. but i'll take some in four hours when i get up for work anyway, just in case.

sometimes it feels like god is loving and directing the lives of everyone else, but that somehow my life is just entertainment. the ultimate cosmic joke. and if only there were a restart button i could hope that things turned out better the second time around. and even if they didn't, i could escape this mess that i really don't want to deal with anymore.

i'm living my life on the hopes of a better future. one which seems to be a neverending string of "one day"s and "someday"s; but tomorrow never comes, and someday seems infinitely farther away each time today turns out to be empty just like yesterday. all my hopes are in a far-off destination to which i don't have the directions, and so it remains just a hypothetical. and so i get used to today being what it is, and learn to stop hoping because even if thousands of days from now i wake up to find that suddenly the elusive tomorrow has come, i still have to live those thousands of days between, and living with that many more days of dissappointment is just too hard.

so, since i don't have a restart for my life, i'll just try to restart my attitude. talk to me tomorrow and i'll try to be a little cheerier than i was today (which shouldn't be hard, considering how un-cheery i was today). i've got a couple of really good books to read, and the bruises are starting to fade from my most recent klutzy incidences. i'll say some prayers and read some scriptures, and try not to care so much about the things i wish i could fix but can't. and then i'll put a smile on my face, and fake it until the nasty/angsty feeling starts to fade. somebody cover the mirrors in my apartment. that should definitely help.

i'm probably not a weirdo for feeling like this, just for telling everybody. maybe i should lay off all the painkillers and go get some anti-depressants.

oh well. at least if you're reading this then you care enough that maybe i have a few reasons to go on after all. thanx. because i'm tired of pretending to be strong, and then crying alone in the dark to no one.

dance, dance

i like dancing. not like, hello dolly dancing. that basically sucked. i can enjoy ballroom under certain circumstances, and i have a friend who taught swing in high school so i'm good enough at that for it to be fun too. the only good country dancing is just fake swing, and the music is...well, i won't say. and techno is only good for about two minutes at a time, and only with long breaks between.

what i really like is to get it on with some latin or hip-hop (or some latin hip-hop...reggeaton). give me some of this, and i'll show you some hot moves. most people (in provo) who see them say that i must be hispanic and/or black on the inside. or at least i'm good at pretending. so, when i go to a dance, i get it on.

problem is, i haven't been dancing in a really long time. so, tonight i did something silly. i needed something to do, so i went to a dance with my sister and some random friends, but without knowing any guys. the bring your own guy provision serves two purposes: to scare away creepy guys, and so that you'll have a guy to dance with just in case there aren't any interested non-creepy guys.

so, there was this guy who i thought was a random member of my friend group, since he was dancing with us. then i ran into him in the hall during a water break, which was also intended to skip some techno. we talked for a bit, and then went back in, but everyone seemed to have scattered, so i just hung out with him for a bit. and he turned out to be a pretty good dancer. not as good as he thinks he is, but at least he tries, which is usually the most important thing. also knows some good latin moves, even if he is somewhat lacking in the latin flair (like most white guys). so, i made the mistake of being flattered by the attention, and since dancing already incites more touchy-ness than usual social situations (and since i've been majorly lacking in touchy-ness generally and especially lately) i indulged a bit. just a teeny bit though. unfortunately, it didn't take long to realize that not only was he not acquainted with any of my friends, he was also total player, and a loser, and really creepy. and rather coercive. and in my assumption that he knew my friends i had probably seemed more encouraging of this behavior than i intended. i don't know what he was thinking, but i can tell you, it wasn't anything good. but i managed to revert to my ice-princess personality around the vicinity of his creepy car. i escaped rather suddenly without a word, successfully avoided him while gathering up the girls who rode with me, and made it out unscathed.

and these are the lives you'd love to lead
dance, this is the way they'd love
if they knew how misery loved me...
why don't you show me the little bit of spine
you've been saving...
i only want sympathy in the form of you...

lessons? (1) being ignored by guys maybe isn't so sucky after all. (2) i need to find some guy friends. who like dancing. (3) i still got the moves. ha!

wow! i feel really good right now...

pam said that at the beginning of her big speech on tonight's episode of the office. i didn't get to watch it though cuz i was working...
so, you know on batman how the joker puts poisons in a bunch of different products and that if you combine them in certain ways it will kill you? tonight i discovered that there is a similar combination, that might seem like it would kill you, but actually made me feel really great...

don't eat for at least 18 hrs. (i think it might help with absorption) and use the following items...
1. mysterious unknown brand of cold medicine (little yellow tablets)
2. two-liter of diet dark cherry vanilla coke (lots of caffeine, and kind of tastes like medicine)
3. roll of tropical life-savers
4. large bottle of aspirin
5. large tube of icy-hot

then, even if you are stuck with a store full of incompetent, slacker high-schoolers all night, you'll have a great buzz and forget that when you got there you were in serious pain in a variety of places in your body.

you might also be awake until after 4am. but hey, that's a side effect i'm willing to live with. better than the muscle spasms, massive headache, and sore throat.

get busy living or get busy dying
...breathing just passes the time
until we all just get old and die.
now talking's just a waste of breath
and living's just a waste of death

i'm not really a drug addict. i just don't have health insurance, so i have to OD on OTC Ds instead of going to the doc for a 'scrip.

when there's someone you hardly know...

...and wish you were closer to...

actually, i ought to rewrite that...

when there's someone you hardly know
and they wish they were closer to you...

so, i admit, the date was nice, even if it was blind. the best blind date of my life (but that really isn't saying much). but still i would be perfectly content to never see the guy again. not that he wasn't nice...but...ugh...i'm not in that place where i want to date someone just to be dating anyone; it should be someone i actually want to be with. i'm happy to give somebody a chance, or just go for fun: one date is fine, maybe two, but i don't see this going anywhere, and eventually i'm going to have to give this guy the shaft. maybe i'm more of a heartbreaker than i thought.
but of course when he tells me he'll call me and that he wants to see me again, i say okay. there is seriously something wrong with me. i'm really not a nice person! if i were, i'd be straight with the guy. sigh. i'm just chicken. i'm used to being heartbroken, not a heartbreaker. i should just be mean and get it over with, instead of dragging it on, spending time with somebody i don't want to, wasting my time and his. sigh. i wonder how often guys feel this way about me. in fact, now that i think about it, i'm pretty sure i can think of a few people who do. how depressing. [expletive]. blah. dating sucks.

my heart is on my sleeve
wear it like a bruise or a black eye...
loaded words and loaded friends
are loaded guns to our heads

and tomorrow i know...

...will be rainy at best
and the forecast i know
is that i'll be depressed
but i'll wait outside
hoping that i'll catch sight of the sun
because on and off
the clouds have fought
for control over the sky
and lately the weather
has been so bi-polar
and consequently so have i...

...i'm going on a blind date. dumb. i know. i agreed to it when i wasn't really awake. sort of remembered, but thought it might have been a dream...nightmare? (been having a lot of those just before you wake up dreams lately.) then forgot all about it for the rest of the week. turns out it was real. my sister says the guy's cool. so, best case scenario: he's good looking and intelligent. unfortunately, that means i'll never hear from him again... if good looking intelligent guys were interested in me, i wouldn't go on more blind dates than real ones... i'm skeptical about the whole thing of course, given my past experiences. but, if he can carry on a conversation then maybe it won't be an utter waste of time. maybe i'll even have fun... like i've got anything better to do, right?
...honestly, blind dates are the worst type of gambling... doesn't that make it against our religion? or at least the honor code?... i know my sister won her gamble, but i always lose. do i have to go be reminded of it in the most uncomfortable, embarassing way possible?...yep! cuz that's life... so i'll just be glad that i'm not sitting home alone on friday night...

...when i finally ironed out
all of my priorities
and asked God to remove the doubt
that makes me so unsure at ease
things i ask myself
i ask myself
do you know what you
are getting yourself into?...

...cuz it's sunny with a high of '75...
...and it's funny how you find
you enjoy your life
when you're happy to be alive...