Long winded

I am, I am. 

When I blog, I tend to lose control of my thought processes. When I write with actual paper, I have to censor and edit as I go, but when I am typing my fingers can actually keep up with my brain so it all just comes out. This  is really helpful when I am writing papers and stuff, but here it just makes my posts really long. Why use one sentence when five will do, right? This is my pet peeve about my own writing. I can just hear Ms. Reynolds yelling "Less is more!" And the voice is getting louder...

Because I just wrote a whole post about how I write too much. Hopeless.

One of those serious ones. Does anybody actually read this stuff?

Once upon a time, I got in  a car with my good friend Trevor Blair. He plugged in his ipod and on came Yentl, featuring the vocal goddess we sometimes refer to as Barbara Streisand. He asked if that was okay with me, and when I responded in the affirmative, he said, "Cause I've been listening to this a lot. I'm really sucked in to this show, and it's one of those times when I really don't have an opinion about anything else, you know what I mean?"

I'd never really heard it it expressed that way, and that was a new thought for me. But I think I understand what he meant. We all know that I am an insane obsessive compulsive person, right? So I have this problem with what my therapist used to call "concentric thinking". Which basically means that I am a female and I think in circles only on an exponential level and I can't turn it off. So a lot of the time I feel like I am stuck on the spinning teacups.

Realistically, I know that I am basically able to produce an opinion about anything (because I am solid Robinson, and that is what we do), but I do feel like there are times when I get stuck on an issue or a question that I have, and I don't have an opinion about anything else for a while. And these past months, I have been stuck on a few things. And, like Trevor, most of this centers around a show. This has happened several times. I've been completely engrossed in Phantom, Les Mis, Miss Saigon, Doubt, UP, and of course Nickleby.  Only this time it's Aida, not Yentl. So this one song called Elaborate Lives has sparked some intense inner conversations with myself, and I have a lot of opinions, but not really any answers yet.

We all live such elaborate lives
Wild ambitions in our sights
How an affair of the heart survives
Days apart, and hurried nights
Seems quite unbelieveable to me
I don't want to live like that
Seems quite unbelievable to me
I don't want a love like that
I just want our time to be
Slower and gentler, wiser, free

We all live in extravagant times
playing games we can't all win
Unintended emotional crimes
take some out, take others in
too many choices tear us apart
I don't want to live like that
too many choices tear us apart
I don't want to love like that
I just want to keep your heart
May this confession be that start

I know you gave me courage to face what I must face
with all these complications in another time and place

we all lead such elaborate lives
we don't know whose words are true
 an affair of the heart survives
all the pain this world can do
strangers, lovers, husbands, wives,
hard to know who's loving who

Wow.  The whole thing just screams "divided loyalties" to me! Especially if you've seen the show. Quick rundown: Aida is a Nubian princess who is kidnapped and taken to Egypt by a captain named Radames who is engaged to the Pharoah's daughter, Amneris. Amneris loves Radames, who doesn't so much want to get married.  Aida is Amneris' servant, but she and Radames fall in love, surprise, surprise. So there's this intense love triangle going on. And their countries are also at war so there's all that crap that nobody has figured out.  And then things get really complicated when the Nubian King is kidnapped and brought to Egypt too. Long story short, Aida and Radames are tried for treason and buried alive, together.

Happy stuff, right? Amazing, and also maybe a little unnerving, how easily all these issues fit into our everyday lives. This is jam packed with some serious stuff. The parts especially about unintended emotional crimes, and the part where they say it's hard to know who's loving who, are things that I have thought a lot about. Strangers, lovers, husbands, wives. There are so many different kinds of love. So many, in fact, that a lot of the time it is kind of impossible to define a relationship. No two relationships are exactly the same. And all of us have hurt other people and been hurt by others. How do you deal with those unintended emotional crimes they are talking about? How do you deal with the emotional crimes that were not unintended especially? How do you decide where your loyalties are? How do you trust someone again after they've hurt you? Should you even try? If things don't turn out, was it worth it in the first place?

All I really know is that everybody has been damaged and let down sometime, and most of us have done some damage too. Relationships are valuable, even failed relationships. (A broken engagement is a successful engagement, right?) Life is complicated and elaborate and we have to do the best we can. In the meantime, I'll keep listening to Aida and thinking in circles.

what do you think? I think I think too much.

Sometimes, Seuss, I feel like you are a big fat liar face

We are at two weeks and one day of classes left before finals week. Hence, this is the most miserable slumpish, stuck in the waiting place, not going anywhere with that head full of brains and shoes full of feet even though Dr. Seuss promised me that there was no one brainier or footsier or me feeling in this hemisphere! (Maybe something worse exists in the southern hemisphere, I don't know.)

I am frustrated because I have a lot of boring crap to finish, but even more frustrated that I can't just dig in and get it all done! I already made the Final list (the list of everything I have to do ever again in every one of my classes). And it will still take me three weeks of stress to finish when I could actually get it all done in three days if they would just bag the schedule and let us do it! I could have finished all of biology today, but no, we have to drag out three more assignments, four more lectures, and a test as much as we possibly can.

I just want to be done. This dragging stuff out does not have my vote. I have this constant headache, a bunch of stuff to turn in that I can't because it's not due for two and a half weeks, and a twenty four pack of that blessed liquid called diet coke burning a hole in the floor under my bed.

That's okay. I can be a big kid. I can take painkillers, be patient, and resist the diet coke cans that are screaming "DRINK ME!".  I can resist, because all that diet coke has to last through the very end of finals week, and this slumped feeling is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. 

( you know, resisting the diet coke could be a factor in the nagging and everlasting headache. still, rehab will have to wait until finals are over, ya know, an eternity and a half from now...)

Living on the edge

aka, playing sudoku with a pen.

If I couldn't laugh at myself, the world would be a hideous place. Cause today I picked up the Statesman, dug through my backpack to find a pencil, and came up empty. Thought to myself,  "Crap!"

And then I realized that I had stumbled upon the mark of a truly boring individual.

So, dang it, I played sudoku with a pen! And this feeling came over me. I felt like I was driving a corvette six inches away from the north rim at 120! I was on that huge roller coaster Matthew talks about nonstop everyday! I was free! I was exciting! I was... wait.

A truly boring individual.

So here's me taking a moment to stand in horror at my small, safe, sheltered life.
I think I'll go lay in the middle of a busy road or something. 

Why I love Dostoeyevsky and suck at Mathematics

My whole life, I've been good at understanding things like music and theater and literature and social systems. And I always sucked at Chemistry and Physics and the like. And I never knew what it was about me that caused this canyon between sciences and humanities.

Today, I discovered the secret.

I am an existentialist. Ha.

Do you know about Existentialism? It's fabulous. A bunch of philosophers had this idea that human existence comes before human essence. Aka they stressed the importance of an individual's responsibility to create meaning in their own lives, and said the responsibility of philosophers was to deal with questions of human existence and human emotions.

I remember clearly the day I first heard this term. It was the first day of Drama 2 in my Junior year of high school. Schmid was always doing cool things at the beginning of the school year (yoga. believe it.) and having these deep psychological discussions focused on theater, and most of the time these attempts resulted in a whole lot of inside jokes. This particular day we were sitting in a circle talking about all the shows we were doing that year,and somebody brought up Moliere, and somewhere in the conversation about french theater Schmid looked at our own Trevor Blair and shouted," Oh, you existentialist!"

I had only a vague idea of what that was. And then Senior year rolled around and like a geek I got really into character analysis. And we had all these discussions on existentialist theory in AP lit while reading Crime and Punsihment. And I talked about all this with Schmid and he started bringing me piles of scripts to read. (Equus. " It's a great psychological study, but it should never be produced.". or UP. Not Kevin and Mr. Frederickson but the story of an inventor and his family and how commits suicide, only it's very subtle. "What? He killed himself?" "Yeah, that's the red wave across the stage at the end, Amy!" "Huh.") This is how I ended up sitting in Schmid's office talking really loud about the nature of human existence on a regular basis. Somewhere in this exploratory period of my life, I realized that I wasn't good at anything that was purely factual. (math. seriously.) I am only good at things than can be analysed and interpreted. I have to be able to find meaning in it, or I just can't make myself care. Like how I don't give a crap about parabolic functions. Maybe I would be good at it if I could just convince myself that it would ever matter in my life.

You know those moments when you read a phrase, or someone says something, and you feel like you got smacked in the face with the explanation of something you've known all along but didn't know how to explain? Last semester, my brilliant English professor was explaining why he never gives topics for the essays he assigns. He said, "All writing is an argument. Writing about something  that has no meaning for you is a waste of effort. The only things you should write about are the things that you feel like you have to stand up and scream about. I can't tell you what moves you. Figuring it out is your job. Once you do, write about it."

Obviously, this guy's preferred medium is writing. And I totally understand that. But when he says writing, I think it is safe to substitute anything that makes a statement of something that moves you. Acting, composing, writing, speaking, really anything that involves a creative process, is something you should want to stand up and shout about. So here I am. An existentialist amateur writer. Someday I'll write books about all those things I want to shout about.

In the meantime, I'll take lit and theatre analysis classes. And maybe someday some Theatre teacher will discuss my books with some kid in his office and yell, "Oh, you existentialist!" 

Addendum

to the non swearing alliance.

This week has been very good for me. Because I did not realize how deep into the swearing vortex I had sunk until I made a pact not to do it anymore. (by the way. annoying event. Shane told me today that I was "not part of this" and it was just him and katie. jerk! "remember how you said, wanna get in on the no swearing contest?" I almost killed him. aka I wanted to but didn't because he is bigger than me and I don't think I could even without my current weakened, maybe pneumoniated state. wow, this was a long tangent.)

ahem. so swearing. I would name all the times I wanted to swear in the past couple days and didn't. Except I can't remember them all. But there were a few today. Like when I had a meeting with my professor and found out that three of those attachments on the blackboard submissions failed, and I didn't know. How am I supposed to know you didn't get those assignments when you never post grades, you aggravating attractive grad student teacher man? "shi...oot!" did not swear.

The time I was running across the parking lot on my way into the doctor and slipped into the foot deep puddle of subzero water. And the following four hours of frozen feet and sopping wet clothing. Because it's April, and I live in Logan, and sometimes slush falls from the sky at innapropriate times. "da....ang!" did not swear.

The time I had Katie's car and couldn't find the snow scraper. Car covered in slush and wet crap + no scraper= very wet, numb hands. Which in turn equals a lot of difficulty doing basic things like signing reciepts and zipping up your wallet and you know, driving. "oh, my he..ck." did not swear.

So, here's to alternative, non expletive expressions. Because dad is right, and they are more ladylike. Also, I feel this enormous, perhaps irrational, sense of satisfaction every time I want to swear and don't, and I also realized that swearing is kind of opposite of being grateful and that is not really the goal. That was very molly mormon of me. Go ahead, Sarah. I know you are snickering at me. Snicker away.

Sending it out to the Cosmos

Sometimes I wrap myself up in a cocoon here in the huge bed in my room that is really two beds. And I think of lots of random things and sometimes cabbages and kings are involved, but mostly it is things like:
where do I look next for that elusive job that is out there somewhere?
Do I get up and do my homework or continue to enjoy myself here in dreamland?
If I just go tell the guys in the advising office, or the janitorial staff, or that bookstore, that I am desperate and emotionally drained, will they take pity and hire me?
Where the heck did I put that other package of cold medicine?
How should I know what the square root of  (x-2) + 4853 is?
How do all you people sound so dang confident when you say, "I'll just find a couple jobs."?
How do you sleep at night when no one wants to hire you even in the food industry?
What on earth am I doing here on earth in general?

So if anybody has answers to some of those questions, I'll be here sneezing and coughing and slugging through a pile of job applications. Feel free to offer any knowledge. Seriously.

The non swearing Alliance

Katie and Shane and I all have this problem called we swear sometimes. And swearing is  humorous and a very good stress reliever but also bad, because the prophet said so. Also because my dad told me that swearing is unladylike, and, along with smoking, is "the ultimate turn-off." So I'm only fifty percent a lady, I guess.

So. Katie and Shane struck this deal. The first one who swears has to buy the other one Cafe Rio food. And then I woke up from my nyquil induced stupor and they invited me to join. So we are not swearing. This includes blogging and texting. There is a whole list of words that count as swearwords. Not all of them are actual swearwords in my opinion but they are all words that I probably shouldn't say anyway.

wish me luck, internet. I will need it.

Because I'm sick, and also really good at avoiding algebra

and I choose to blog instead of doing that homework that I really ought to be doing.
So I have this cold. And when I say cold, I mean I have been hacking up a lung for a week. And I am exhausted and also grumpy about the world (and when I say world, I mean school) not stopping for me so I can keep up with all the crap I'm supposed to be doing instead of taking six hour naps and taking nyquil.

So today in my English class, the professor stopped in the middle of a lecture to ask my fellow classmates to produce a cough drop. (was he genuinely concerned, or just annoyed that nobody could hear him above my wheezing and dying noises? probably both, because he is a nice person but also human.) And then he said something about feeling sorry for me because he was sick last week and he knows how it feels to have a cold and be so drugged on top of it that you are unable to function. or something. And I sat there the whole time in my hazy, spinning, world, thinking " Why are you still talking? End this rant as soon as possible so people will stop looking. I'll do my best to hack quietly in the future. Also, why are you so attractive, you graduate student teacher, you?"

(Sidenote: Internet, have I told you about my professor crush? Thank goodness for my front-row habit. Cause I sat in the front row and then this guy showed up. Score. Also, I think there is just something about English professors. The guy who taught my lit analysis class last semester was also not too tough on the eyes. I think I chose the right major)

so then I came home and made muffins. and then watched a couple episodes of friends whilst laying in bed wishing that my room would stop spinning.  And then I woke up and it was seven. I'm pretty sure I dreamed about the English professor man.

I really should go do homework. Aka I have a math assignment due tomorrow and a Biology test to study for. Is any of that gonna happen tonight? mmm....

time to take more cold medicine. And maybe time to cave and go to the doctor like mom told me to last week. and really time to stop spouting my random thoughts to the internet.

(If I ever started drinking, someone would take away my computer so I couldn't blog inebriated, right? )

NCIS and Superman

So my dad is pretty cool. I call him superman on a regular basis. Which he thinks is weird, but deep down he likes it. I have some pretty good stories of dad, and I choose to share them with the world.

- Once upon a time Dad called us all asses. The faithful followers have read about this encounter in the post entitled 'Four letter words.' I was shocked at the time, but it is now a most cherished memory.

- Dad has this thing where he carries all the groceries inside in one trip even when mom has just gone on a spree during a caselot sale. That's hardcore.  But he does lots of cool stuff like that, like the time I was sick but I still had to mow all those lawns and he brought the mower all the way over there and mowed the thing for me while I worked the weed hacker.I think this may have been where the Superman nickname originated.

- Since I was teensy, daddy has called me Little Naomi. I have no idea why, and he won't tell me. When I was twelve, I made him promise he would tell me the story behind the name when I got married. He said yes, but it was a promise made under duress, so odds are he won't tell me and I'll just die curious.

- Dad has big hands, and I really liked holding them as a child. But my hands were not big, so dad would hold out his two fingers and I would just hold those. I remember walking across the Harmon's parking lot as a wee bairn thinking that nothing in the world could go wrong as long as I was holding dad's fingers. (Sometimes I still make him hold my hand, and sometimes I still just hold his fingers. I'm eighteen, that's weird, what?)

- TMI moment approaching. Disclaimer disclaimed. Check.
As a junior in High School, I got really sick. Super sick. And I had a doctor's appointment in the wee hours of the next morning scheduled, but I was still up all night puking my guts out. There was very little sleeping involved. So dad, ever faithful, camped out in my room watching NCIS on hulu with me all night while I got up and puked during advertisment breaks. Now. This is a big deal because we were watching tv on the internet and there were some definite buffering problems. Dad is not one to screw around with bad buffering or bad pictures, and my monitor wasn't really high end quality. More even than staying awake with a miserable daughter, the willingness to watch bad quality tv was a sign of love.

- When I totaled the van, dad told me to calm down and go do my homework. My sisters knew, but I didn't, that dad is merciful and loving when you crash his cars. This I did not expect. What, you aren't going to ground me for the forseeable future, lock me in a room and never let me see a road again let alone drive on one, and refuse to claim me as your flesh and blood when the insurance company tells you I caused eight thousand dollars worth of damage to an Emergency Essentials truck? nope. I was blown away with his niceness.

- Dad travels a lot. And he is a nice guy who brings back souvenirs that I actually love and adore. And some of it is random, but still he just chooses stuff I like. Like a new jersey bear, and a coaster tile from New Orleans that I have on my wall, and a keychain from the Thoreau Society that he bought at Walden Freaking pond in Concord Massachusets. (How cool is that? I didn't even know he knew I liked Thoreau!) The most recent insanely cool thing he brought me arrived yesterday from his recent travels in the land of Virginia. What does dad pull from his computer case but a baseball cap with NCIS on it! He actually remembered that I wanted one of those! Also, way to buy gifts with sentimental value. Sure, I have wanted an NCIS hat for a long time, but would it be as cool if it came from someone who didn't pull an all nighter watching that show with me while I puked? Heck, no!

Could he be a better dad? Heck, no!