That Day Again

It always creeps right up on me. Three hours have passed already. I don't know what that means.

It's interesting though. [Cue scoffs from the skeptics.] It is almost as if the events in my life were designed to make coping easier for me. For years and years I have been all about half birthdays. May 2nd is my little sister's half birthday...a date to celebrate. May 2nd was also Olive's D-Day...a date that would have been automatically emo if not for Yoster. The other date that I would feel inevitably tortured is June 29th. Olive's birthday. Also my mother's birthday...and thus clearly a day for elation.

I am not actually saying that I definitively believe that those dates are more than a coincidence. Perhaps its just luck. Either way, I appreciate it.

I miss her like crazy. But not so much that it drives me crazy.

You know it's midterms when...

Everyone suddenly wants to eat out for every meal.

Your housemates oscillate between dropping the ball on everything including flushing the toilet and between binge cleaning the entire house in order to procrastinate.

Normally reasonable people are suddenly enthralled with The Hills and all other forms of mindless entertainment.

Starbucks has a line longer than Ben and Jerry's on free cone day.

I am suddenly pleased with the lack of responsibility in my life.




Aaron [holding garlic press]: "What's this?..........Aha! A pasta maker."

Uh Oh

I am having a slight panic attack. Probably because I am a little sleep deprived and stressed about jetting down to Cali later this week on God knows what plane and staying God knows where. I damn well need to get my shit under control.

Normally I would probably be zen about this and do what I want to do without much worry or analysis. It's only been nine days after all. But it has also already been nine days.

I'm scared.

Hmph. But everything always works out for me and I will make sure that it does once again here. Plus I already told my mother that it would. So you know....that's that.

Zen achieved.

Mourning Morning

I am supposed to be living a life of leisure. And I have been looking fervently for activities to keep me busy. What I didn't realize was that some of these activities involve waking up early Saturday mornings. 

I am so fully in support of helping out friends and everything. But it sounded so much better a proposition when it wasn't two in the morning. Navy Seals and beer and Aladdin's was such a poor choice. Fuck those 15th Ave kids.

"Err on the side of explosion."

-Franco

From Little Girls in the Big City to Big Girls in the Little City

Mulan was pissed. But, like Josh would point out, anger is simply a reaction to the experience of other emotions. Really, Mulan was sad, hurt and confused. Her supposed Prince Charming had decided that they couldn't "last through the summer". He didn't want to break up just yet, though, so he set the relationship expiration date at the end of June. Mulan was fully in support of pragmatism, but this was a bit much. It was one thing to carry on a relationship while acknowledging an uncertain future in the distance, but it was quite another to mechanically "date" while marching toward the ETBU. She almost felt like a disposable booty call...only a PG-rated one. 

Aurora was also miffed. (An emotion she experienced on a regular basis.) Although she had been rather impressed with herself and her entourage of options recently, she had just about used all of those options up. Or rather, had realized upon closer examinations that some of those options were not options at all. And so with no immediate entertainment to distract her she fell back into the habit of thinking of Kyle, her second love. Luckily for her-or unluckily, depending on your viewpoint-he hadn't forgotten her either. However, the barriers between them were insurmountable for now. He might miss her and adore her and be the one of the few people able to talk her down when she's upset (an impressive feat), but any future together would be far too distant to do anything but daydream about...and Aurora did not dwell on dreams of any kind. 

Belle seemed to have absorbed all the happiness and good fortune that Aurora and Mulan were unable to. For the second time, things had worked out for her against all odds, causing Ella to shake her head in wonder. Belle was satisfied. For now. But also worried. Because worrying was just what she did. There was a certain skill that she felt she lacked. This skill was supposed to be instinctual, but she was under the impression that it eluded her, and whether or not that was true, the idea that it eluded her would act as a self-fulfilling prophecy. She also didn't want to jinx anything, which she was excessively skilled at. She liked head games, but she didn't like it when her own head started playing games with itself which was an often and disconcerting occurrence. So, she decided to turn her attention away from herself (for once) and towards Ella...and Ella's love life, of course. 

Ella was in a romantic sort of limbo. She had just had one of those cataclysmic moments with a crush that forces you to put them and that embarrassing moment out of your head once and for all. And that left her...bored. Yet, there was someone right in front of her. He just happened to be a friend so oppressively close that she refused to think of him as anything but just that. He gave her what she wanted for sure. And he appeared to have the same interests and tendencies. The two of them were probably even closer than she realized. However, Ella was nothing if not stubborn, and more than anything she hated being told what to do. Too many people had suggested too many times that she give this boy a chance (including the boy himself), and that simply hardened her resolve to not be drawn into any inevitably incestuous relations with him. However, if you took away the incest, forgave some of his forwardness and injected some competition into the mix there may exist a very very small chance that Ella would finally consider the boy as something more than a dependable brother...or not. 

Ariel was much harder to read than all the other princesses. She had an edginess that they could only pretend to attain on late nights aided by volumes of eye liner. In her (non-)contest with Ella she had completely withdrawn from the race in an act so selfless and sisterly that she had to have been born and bred on the West Coast. Ariel's action was even more impressive considering that she had much more of a chance than Ella did with regard to this particular guy. But, no matter. This boy was destined to be forgotten by the both of them. And while the picture was pretty empty for the most part, there was one boy. A silly, naughty boy who needed to be made to follow rules like a child. But a fun, dependable boy nevertheless. It was possible that she would give him a chance...after all, she was nothing if not generous. 

I Heart Pessimism

It makes me oh so happy in the end. Setting your expectations low ensures that more than half of the time you will be pleasantly surprised. 

A random guy walks up to your table in a bar. You expect skeezeball pick up lines....instead you receive a slice of orange. Aha! Fabulous!

You buy a hot dog from a stand in the middle of Belltown and expect it to be blah to normal and probably slightly cold. Instead it is the best hot dog you have ever eaten in your life. Applause!

You order a new drink and clench your teeth for the first sip because it will likely taste like straight alcohol. New drinks always do, right? NO! Instead it is like drinking an alcoholic sour patch kid. Yum!

These are all examples where normal expectations would have still yielded a pleasantly surprising outcome. But having low expectations makes the surprise so much more shocking and increases the pleasantness threefold. 

Drunk guy: "You have two girls with you...that's greedy, man!"

Drunk girl: "Yeah and you're gay, so you have TWO girls and you're not even going to use them!"

Chloe: "USE us??"

Drunk girl: "You know, take advantage of you."

What I Learned In NYC

1. No matter how hard you try there will always be someone who doesn't like you. And you just can't take it personally, even if that someone calls you a bitch.

2. Heels=male attention times ten.

3. Heels all over New York=sore feet and a cab ride home.

4. 80's music makes everything more fun. Ditto famous people.

5. I really don't like using the bathroom on vacation. So I kinda just don't. Eww?

6. Shopping is almost as effective as having a tantrum when it comes to coping with bad surprises.

7. Being naive and innocent-looking may suck most of the time, but it also means that you can pull off bordering-on-slutty clothes that would make any other girl look like an absolute ho.

8. I need to make sure I don't end up with someone who doesn't like watching movies as much as me. I want to watch movies everywhere. Even on vacation where you could be doing absolutely anything and the world is at your feet. I have never known anyone else like this (besides people that watch with me just to humor me).

9. The cold makes me want to shoot myself.

10. Friends are the bestest estestestest things ever.



"Phoebe, you realize that Emi can't actually put us in timeout, right?"
-Chloe