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throughout the course of the day, i have realized that the red skirt i'm wearing is perfect. i very badly want to take it off and examine how to make it. it seems fairly simple, but i have the strong urge to inspect it now. unfortunately i think it might be frowned upon in my office.
had quite the visual weekend. here's just a sampling of the evanston farmer's market, the butterfly haven at the nature museum, & paddleboating at lincoln park zoo.
an excerpt from an email i received from a friend. i won't mention names, but cynthia, you know who you are. :)
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by the way, i'm not even pms-ing, and i have cried during several
commercials lately-- one being the sylvan learning center ad. when that
little boy gives his mother an improved report-card for her birthday-- man,
i just lose it! i'm so weird.
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cynthia is not so weird. or maybe all of us are. the father daughter commercials really get to me. they tend to be credit card commercials where the dad is fretting over paying for the daughter's wedding but then as she's walking down the aisle, you start to see that sad look in his eyes and then my tears start a-flowin'. which commercials get to you guys?
sorry, you don't have any mail
sorry, you don't have any mail
sorry, you don't have any mail
well, maybe if you didn't check your email so often meisa, you wouldn't have to see this message so much. get to work! stop checking your email! no one has written you in the past 8 seconds. make yourself useful, already!!!
okay, okay. i'll get to work. just let me check my email real quick.
i had bizarre dreams last nite involving family of two kinds, biological and blog. although i am a part of the lay-c.com family, i haven't spent much time with my blog sisters and mother. yet lacey, delara, and shokufeh were all around in my dreams last nite (mojan as well...not quite in the lay-c.com family, but more of a cousin to our blog fam). delara being the particularly strange appearance since i've only seen her a few times, and that was more than a year ago. but we all hung out and had a great time. maybe this means it's time for a reunion? what do you say blog fam? shokufeh and i will be rendevouz-ing in san francisco labor day weekend...why don't we all go?
also dreamt about my biological fam. my deceased grandfather was there, looking good. and the new orleans clan (shok's fam) was there. then naysan threw a fit, refused to do the dishes after dinner, and ditched us all for a girl.
i got new jeans last nite. 2 pairs! they will not go in the evil dryer. and i didn't buy the next size up as i feared i may have to do. congratulations to me.
i'm quite out of it today. i don't quite know what is happening. i straightened my hair, which is very un-meisa like. maybe it's only appropriate that my behaivior be un-meisa like. we could also blame the latte. it's so tasty, but i really think the effect the caffeine has on me is not so good. it almost makes me feel drunk. i will not be driving for awhile.
and to top off this entry of random thoughts and updates, i scaled up a reaction the other day and for some reason, no product formed. i don't understand it and i really don't think my latte-drunken self can handle the large mass of brown oily goop i made instead. let's just add it to the long list of failures piling up in my fume hood.
so it's not me after all.
for the past few months, i've convinced myself that i've gained weight because my pants were fitting tighter. yet when i weighed myself, nothing was really all that different. and it was most perplexing because pants that were quite loose before were just feeling too tight. but after a little investigative work last nite, now i know. i haven't gained weight (not that much anyhow); it's the dryer i've been using!
curse the dryer.
if you see anyone walking around today with about 43 oil stains on her favorite white shirt, that would be me.
shokufeh is not alone...
the taste lingers in the back of my throat, willing me to drink more.
"just one more sip, one more" calls my mouth.
i bring the paper cup with the 60% post-consumer recycled fiber insulating sleeve to my lips. i tip it back into my mouth and my throat is satiated. quickly, i run my tongue along the edge of the plastic lid, so as not to lose any of the precious beverage.
ahhh, the starbuck's vanilla latte, so satisfying.
suddenly, my throat calls out..."just one more sip, one more. please!"
and so it begins again.
a question was brought up in my office today and it has occupied much of my thought for the last few hours...
how many times has one particular water molecule passed through my body?
a package made with loving care by my mother.
contains: a short a-line pink skirt with white polka dots (size 8), a pair of pants, and shoes. i could not handle hearing the details on the pants and shoes. it was just too painful.
last seen: in my father's hands
current hypothesis: my father messed something up
if you see anyone wearing a skirt matching this description please interrogate them or rip off the skirt from their body.
i have become a recluse. no wait, i was always one.
it seems so easy for other people to be in a large group situation and talk without those awkward silences. but i can't do it. i look at a new person and have absolutely nothing at all to say. i rack my brain, trying to think of what i might say if it were, say, nick standing in front of me. or andrea, or cynthia. why do i have the ability to talk to these people, but have nothing to say to strangers? before i used to argue that it was a choice. that i didn't like to carry on useless conversations about nothingness just for the sake of being social, when i would walk away and barely remember the name of the person i'd just spoken to. but now i realize that it isn't a choice, i just can't do it.
yesterday morning i went to a brunch reception for newly admitted chicagoland students to william and mary so that they could ask questions of a recent grad. i hung around for about a half hour and shared some awkward silences with several different people. then decided i would rather eat hyena intestines than be there any longer, so i just snuck out. i didn't say anything to anyone, but just picked up my purse and left. i couldn't even bring myself to mutter an excuse to the host about how i had to go to work, or how i had to go meet a friend, or how i had to get out of that room because i would rather eat hyena intestines than remain socializing at her house.
the big question i keep asking myself now is how i made any friends to begin with? if i don't like to talk to new people, how do i continue to make friends? i ask you, my friends who read this blog, how did we become friends? i really have no idea.
before maman died she told me about how she was so happy i sewed because that was absolutely something that came from her.
i had come home from my first summer at william and mary with a quilt that i was working on to show off to her. i remember she was lying on the bed in our guest room because she was too weak to go up the stairs to her bedroom where she had slept for the previous five years. i think about it now and realize how lucky i was to have her living with us for so long.
it was definately an adjustment at first. to start off, we all had to get used to my grandfather and her husband no longer being around. and then there was the transition to speaking less english in the house and more pharsi since she spoke and understood very little english. i think probably one of the more difficult things for her was getting used to our dog. to her, dogs were dirty creatures that were frightening. but then, as the years passed, the two of them were the only ones in the house together during the day, and they came to be good friends. i still remember taking daisy into her room right before they took her to the hospice, so she could say goodbye.
maman was an amazing woman. i was just telling the story the other day about how she collected the cotton that came in tylenol bottles and made a pillow out of it because she didn't want to waste the cotton. or how she sewed an apron out of the bags that the rice came in. and her cooking! oh, she cooked such amazing persian food. my mouth starts to water thinking about her fesenjan. as a child, one of my favorite dishes of hers had little chunks of meat and cream and those shoestring potato things on top. she called it "be-fresto-gahn-o". it was years later before i realized that this was her own version of beef stroganoff. i still laugh thinking about it.
last nite, i was sitting in my apartment sewing something by hand, and as i always do, i snipped the thread, licked my finger, wound the thread around my finger and rolled it off, forming a knot. maman would be proud. she taught me to do that probably about 15 years ago.
put those nosesprays and allegra away and grab a book of matches!
i just had a honey smacks burp. not terribly pleasant, but much much better than a kabob burp. i hate those.
i used to take a sculpture class called "plaster and stone" and everyday when i returned home from class, people would ask me "did you get plastered and stoned?"
yes, we all have them. and last nite, i went to a musical all about them. hilarious. just to give you a sample...
menstruation (to the tune of tomorrow)
"menstruation, menstruation.
it's bloody, menstruation.
it's twenty eight days away..."
there was also "nocturnal emission" and "who farted?" all in good fun. it's playing till the 11th if any of you chicagolanders are interested.
i come from a family of philanthropists. we choose to support blockbuster corporation. approximately every week, or every other week, my parents rent movies from blockbuster and then return them a few days later, unwatched. now they've taken to just stopping by and giving a few dollars here and there, and not bothering taking the movies with them.
i have now joined in on this philanthropy on my own. i'm thinking of having them deduct directly from my paycheck so then i don't even have to stop by the store.
do you think this is tax deductable?