What's going on with me?
Oh my god, I am dumb
My balloon room thing worked out fine. I had all these bright balloons with different-colored paint splatters on them, hung all over and spotlit to make weird shadows on the walls. There was a path you took through the room and then back out. I played “99 Luftballoons” in the background. I had to! Come on, it was totally called for.
But oh my god, I was at the studio until FOUR AM that night (Wednesday). Working on both the balloon room and another drawing, which was also due at NINE AM the next day. Oh, that was one of the most pointless “nights” of sleep I’ve ever had.
The only way I was able to stick it out that late was, honestly, because I was using a friend’s studio for the installation, and she was in there working on her own painting the entire time. If I’d had to be in there that late alone? I probably would have gone home much earlier and both the drawing and the installation would’ve been much crappier. I need a buddy for things like that. Same goes for exercise. If nobody is there to see me wimpily give up and stop jogging, I’ll just stop jogging.
So, just now I was at the studio attending a lecture. When it was over, I was walking around and suddenly I had this awful oh, shit feeling. I went to the bathroom and sure enough, I had gotten my period. (And I was wearing underwear I really liked, too, so that sucks.) Of course I was unprepared, so I drove all the way home to get a tampon. Once in the bathroom, I realized that the tampons were still in the shopping bag from the other day, which was still in the car, and so I hadn’t had to drive home after all.
D’OH! I am a dumbass. Happy weekend, everyone.
1.25.2006
Chapstick Diet would be a good name for a rock band
For the last few days I have had a cold sore on the corner of my mouth. When it first developed, I was surpised to see it – I’ve never had a cold sore before, and don’t they recur in certain people, in the same place, under times of stress? So I was surprised to have suddenly developed one at age 26, but I got over it and I stuck to my usual routine of applying Chapstick™ all day, only now I made a point to coat the sore too. I figured, hey, it’s waxy and mild – it’ll heal the thing.
Today I woke up and discovered that my little rogue cold sore was actually a zit just waiting for the right moment. A zit that had been living off a Chapstick™ diet for three days. Not pretty.
For a Color Drawing class I am taking, we have an “experimental techniques with water based-media” project due tomorrow. I am blowing up tons of colorful balloons and painting vivid abstract designs on them, and then I’m going to install them into a small empty room so that you enter and are forced to walk through the room through a path left in all the balloons hanging from the ceiling. (If there was ever a sentence crying out to be edited, it was that one, but I am too tired.) And I’ll have the lights out but some kind of weird spotlights going on, and each person will have to walk through one at a time, with a flashlight, so they can look at the details on the balloons. Maybe I’ll play a pleasant song to accompany the experience. So, that’s what I’ll be working on today.
I hope it works – I’ve pretty much cleaned Savannah out of balloons.
1.22.2006
I would give anything for this to be Saturday still, and not Sunday
OMG, I am really really behind on my respondings-to-tagging. This one is from the lovely Jennie. I don’t think I have to explain it to you. I mean, hopefully. You know, because it’s simple?
Okay, I’m just going to stop typing crap now.
Four jobs you have had in your life:
Retail Clerk/Bitch
Theatre Usher (and I mean a proper theatre, not a movie theatre)
Gallery Assistant
Research Assistant/Office Bitch
Four movies you could watch over and over:
Wonder Boys
Reality Bites
The Big Lebowski
The Shining
Four places you’ve lived:
Fredericksburg, VA
London, England
Washington, DC
Savannah, GA
Four TV shows you love to watch:
Law and Order
Law and Order SVU (especially the ones with Ice-T)
Project Runway
The Golden Girls
Four places you’ve been on vacation:
Paris
Budapest
Prague
Berlin
(Yes, all on the same backapacking trip. It just occurred to me that I’ve only been on one super-special vacation in my whole life. Weird.)
Four of your favorite foods:
Pad thai
Chicken tikka masala
(Look how exotic I am! Except not really:)
Papa John’s pizza with sliced tomatoes
Pimento cheese sandwiches
Four sites I visit daily:
Gmail
Tomato Nation
Television Without Pity
All 357 million porn sites in existence
(Oh, my god. I can’t remember how to spell existence. ta or te? Holy crap. I am never drinking again!)
Four Bloggers you are tagging:
Eh, whichever four of you are still coming here.
1.20.2006
I am up at 8am!
Grace tagged me with this meme like fourteen weeks ago and I am only just now getting around to it. Because I am lazy. Also I have been dealing with the fallout from losing one of my jobs (not the one in the famous restaurant, fellow Savannahians (sp?)! Do not fear!) and having a lovely cold. I will tell you about all that shiz next time.
For now – My Five Weird Habits! Dun dun dun.
1) (This is a ripoff of one of Grace’s, but she cracked me up with her rendition.) When I get dressed, I have to do left appendage, then right appendage. I think this started when I was very very small, because I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t pay attention to this. I even went through a phase when I was about 8-11 where I had to start on stairways with my left foot and end on my right foot (taking two at a time if I needed to make the count end up correctly), but then I read an article in the Washington Post Magazine about a kid with OCD, and all the therapy he was going through to help him as he spiralled off into craziness, and I pretty much trained myself not to care about the stepping thing anymore.
2) I am definitely one of those people who will order a big gross meal (say, at a fast food place or the country fair) and top it off with a diet coke. Some people (mainly men, I think) would say, “Um, you’re already taking in a zillion calories, so what’s the point of that?” And I would say, “Well, if I’m gonna sacrifice 500 calories for that funnel cake, I’d better reel it in on something I don’t really care about. And the taste of regular coke really doesn’t justify the 180 calories (or whatever it is) to me.”
3) I always blow my nose after I wash my face, whether in the shower or at the sink. I have to; the water just loosens things up I guess. Moving on.
4) I wash my whites and darks together. I have done so since college and there’s never been a problem. Obviously I am excluding any brand-new red items from this rule, but once they’ve been washed once alone, they can go in too. That whole seprating thing, I’m convinced, is a ploy by the detergent people to make you do more loads and buy more soap. And I am cheap/poor.
5) I’m very persnickety about salt intake. I mean, obviously from reading about my life you know that I’m not a dieter or calorie-counter (or even a formal exerciser). I pretty much waver between periods of eating whatever I want, when I want it, with periods of eating ridiculous amounts of fruits and vegetables (to lose the five or so pounds that I gain when I’m in the former period). But the one thing I do care about is not eating lots of salt. I never add salt to fries or to any actual recipe I make, unless it tastes awful without it, and even then I add a fraction of what it calls for. Once I bought fries from McDonald’s with my roommate M and without asking me she dumped them on a plate and put salt all the hell over them, and oh you should have seen me. I was so strong! I let her eat the entire plate. I was all, “No no no, I will not put those in my mouth. Carry on without me.” I like pepper on my fries.
Anyway, so those are my five. Anybody who wants to can continue this thing on - just email or comment and let me know. That was I can link you and we can ALL read about how interesting and unique (ie. strange and unusual) you really are.
1.13.2006
WWYD (What Would You Do)?
Today is Friday the 13th and I am a big superstitious scaredy-cat. Can I call in sick to work tonight and quote “fear of the outdoors” as an excuse? I mean, it’s a wine bar. A lot can go wrong. I’m talking glassware, liquor cabinets, wine racks…lots of glass/liquid combos involved. And me, clumsy to begin with, so who knows what might happen on a day forever residing in our minds next to Jason? Oh! the humanity.
Leave a comment! This is why:
Abigail asked about M. Well, actually I did sort of want to pose a question about that to you guys. I have this theory that has evolved over the years since high school that, since guys are raised and conditioned to be assertive and go after what/who they want, that if someone is interested in me interested, no matter how shy he is by nature, he will bite the bullet and ask me out. Therefore, I make it a practice not to approach guys in bars or be the one doing the out-asking. My theory is, if he truly liked me, he’d do it himself, because he’s been raised to.
When I was younger (high school), I was all about the asking. I was the only one of my friends who would even dream of approaching someone new in class or asking someone to Homecoming. What did that get me? Embarassment and regret. Inevitably, the guy who I had been so sure was giving me Interested Signals would end up hemming and hawing and having to delicately extricate himself from my presence, because it turned out that I had Misread Things and he didn’t, in fact, like me that way.
So I gradually honed my theory. In my experience, it never turns out well to make the first move or do the asking. It always falls apart - the guy wasn’t that into me, and I would have known that had I just sat back and realized that he was never going to make a move himself. I hate that it has to be this way. Theoretically, I want to be all “Why not? We’re equal, he’ll be flattered, I have nothing to be ashamed of!” In practice - misread signals. Shame, despondancy, disappointment. Sadness, doom, etc.
I tell you all this because a week ago, I had MADE UP MY MIND (after being insulted and browbeatened by both roommates for being from the 18th century) that next time we worked together, I was going to ask him out. I was going to say something like, “Hey, I have [insert horror title here] from Netflix, do you want to come over and watch it?” Because we both like scary movies.
So I was all set. Against my better instincts, I was gonna go for it. Then last Saturday, the work schedule for this week was posted and I had no shifts at all with him. This made me dejected, but also more - I took it as a sign. See, roommates? Even God doesn’t want me to ask this guy out.
And then, the very next day, I was in the grocery store and I saw him! I got so excited! Finally, we could have an actual leisurely conversation, and it would surely develop naturally into one or the other of us suggesting we hang out sometime. This is how the conversation went:
Me: Mike!
M:
(Because he didn’t hear me.)
Me: (Coming closer.) Mike? Hey!
M: Oh, hey! How are you?
Me: I’m good, how are you?
M: (Looking like someone just ran over his dog.) Yeah, I’m fine.
Me: Are you sure you’re alright?
M: Oh yeah, I’m fine. Listen (motions to basket), I’ve got a bunch of people waiting for me at my apartment, so I gotta get going.
Me: Okay, bye.
Ummmm…yeah. And then we both walked off and I was so disappointed I could have hid in the health food aisle and cried. Because really, when will I ever get another opportunity like that again? I only see him at work, when we’re both running around and surrounded by coworkers. I never run into him out, because he’s much more of a smoker than a drinker.
And his best friend J? The one who likes me and is basically my only connection to M? Let’s just say that, in order to describe this whole situation to my stepmom on the phone the other day, I had to teach her the word cockblock. Every time we all go out after work to get a drink together, if J and I are working but M wasn’t, he won’t call M and tell him about it. If J does a group thing involving M, he always conveniently forgets to tell me about it. Tricky, yes? He finagles it so that we never see each other at bars.
But when we’re at work together I get, you know, the vibe. I always catch him looking at me. We sort of look right into each other’s eyes when we speak to each other. I like the way he says my name; he’s got a really sexy voice. Okay, I need to go lie down for a minute.
This was a really long story, sorry. So what would you do? Do you agree with my theory that if he never asks me out himself, it means he’s not interested? I don’t want to have regrets years from now about something I could’ve done, but I also don’t want to ignore my instincts and come off as desperate and blind to reality.