my gethsemane… partie deux

you may be shocked and amazed or just plain baffled that someone who just wrote a 1,500 word blog entry, like, 12 hours ago would have a single word left in her. then you’re still getting to know me because although i am often short on cash i am never short on words. anyway, i was still thinking about what i wrote and finally gave in to the unnatural desire to blog at 5am, plus, when your effing pug won’t stop snoring and your mind is racing, what else is a girl to do?

so, i was talking about my feelings for my former religion. my post lit a flame within me that had been blown out a long, long time ago and it just got me to thinking. how do i really feel about the church? am i capable of feeling the holy ghost anymore? and the kicker: will i ever return to the church and be an active member again? and if i were to, under what circumstances? at the moment, i feel like my personal politics interfere with the fundamental beliefs of the church and it’s very likely that this will not change in any significant way any time soon.

the problem is i’m starting to wish i could dress in white and be welcomed into the temple by cute little old men whose white hair match their snowy outfits so that i might participate in some of the sacred (and secret) ordinances that would bring me closer to my god. but usually i snap back to the reality of this wish: only a senile bishop who’d never met or heard of me before would ever issue me a temple recommend… and the senile bishop would only do so after i told him a series of elaborate lies in which i simply skip over the more sordid details from a few years of my life. only after that oscar-worthy performance could i be considered “worthy” to enter a temple.

**speaking of entering the temple, this story may give you some insight into

oakland temple: beautiful on the outside, but don't bother asking me what it looks like inside!

how seriously the church takes its worthiness policy** one of my oldest and dearest girl friends, shelby (i’ll tell you all about her in a future post), married her return-missionary husband in a ceremony in the oakland temple. i’m sure it was lovely, but i wouldn’t know because even though i was her maid-of-honor, i had to wait outside in the courtyard until it was over. usually when i tell people this they think it’s crazy and unfair that the mormon maid-of-honor stood waiting outside during the actual wedding ceremony. i don’t, though, because i understand the reasoning behind it. the temple is a true house of god that has been blessed and dedicated to, well, to god and only those who are deemed worthy in the eyes of the church may enter. it’s like a really exclusive clubhouse. plus maids-of-honor don’t participate in temple weddings the way they do in non-mormon ones. hey, i grew up with this, so, you know, i get it. i wasn’t offended. it did kind of suck to have to dress up and drive to oakland just to take pictures outside the temple, but those are the kinds of things you do for a friend’s big day. **vanity alert** plus i was like 30 pounds lighter at the time, so the photo i have of me and shelby is such a great picture of moi… i’ll have to scan it into my laptop somehow so i can post it here. seriously, i look so cute. oh, and shelby looks nice, too. hahaha. just kidding shelbs.

anyway, i digress… so, i visited the church’s official website out of curiosity and a deep seeded desire to hear something inspirational, something that might stir the still small voice that has become smaller and smaller over the years. i found a 10 minute little video (slightly reeked of propaganda, but what else can you expect from a church production?) that was hosted by steve young **hubba hubba** and some former miss usa, but it also showed clips from some of the adorable late president gordon b. hinckley (by far my favorite prophet– his death last year was one of the catalysts to this whole re-examination experiment). the video was dispelling common misconceptions and myths about the church’s history, its reputation for being isolated from mainstream america, claims that mormons are not christians, etc. like i mentioned, it was a bit brainwash-y, but not in a mean-spirited or negative way. if you get 10 free minutes it might be worth watching, especially if you’re not familiar with the church… plus you get to look at stevie for most of it! i may not attend church anymore, but my devotion to steve young will never die. he’s our boy. go niners!

so, i guess that’s that. i just wanted to get that last bit off my chest. i’ve never admitted to anyone my feelings because with the political climate as it is, it’s not exactly a popular church in the bay area at the moment. i don’t want to say, “oh, when the prop. 8 stuff settles down then it’ll be okay,” because it won’t be okay. i will still remember the disappointment i felt toward the general authority in utah after they issued statements for california mormons, urging them to give their time and money to ensure the passage of the gay marriage ban. i feel like this support of hate legislation (no matter how the church phrases it) just strips away any good feeling i may have been starting to feel again.

and then there’s the situation with my parents. my dad holds the melchezidek priesthood, he can lay his hands upon my head and bless me, he used to volunteer q week at the oakland temple, but when the church decided to get involved in prop. 8 he quietly resigned from his calling and turned in his temple recommend. my parents have stopped paying tithing. i can’t remember the last time someone came by to collect his fast offering (that’s a special tithe you pay the first sunday of each month that goes toward the many lds-run charities or to help poorer families pay for their son or daughter to serve a mission, stuff like that, the kind of stuff that reminds me how much good the church and its members offer to the world…). and each sunday they have taken to going on trips to the beach or to watsonville for fresh fruit or someplace fun like that instead of dressing up for church.

i must say here that my mother was always the best dressed woman in that chapel. while most of those relief society women look unkempt or dress haphazardly in frumpy laura ashley knock-offs with runs in their stockings and ugly shoes with little or no accessories to speak of (unless you count small children hanging on you as an accessory), my mother is a lone swan amid a sea of ugly ducklings. i used to sit on the toilet lid as a child and watch her get ready on sundays. she wears light make-up, has naturally perfectly arched eyebrows (which i pray i inherit someday), smooths on a natural hued lipstick, reddish-brown or nude-y, that complements her outfit *natch* and then, at least she did when i was little, sprinkles lavender talcum powder down her front so she smells clean, but with a hint of provence. then she puts on some very daring, very sophisticated ensemble over her immaculate stockings and silky slip (i used to feel so fancy when i wore slips under my sunday dresses as a child) usually topped off with some fabulous wrap or jacket that doesn’t resemble laura ashley in the slightest. finally she slips her small feet (where my size 8’s came from i may never know, damn genes) into a pair of very likely brand-new heels (my mother owns more shoes than the former first lady of the philppines… ok, i exaggerate but i bet if my mother had all the money in the world she could compete with imelda marcos, who owns like 3,000 pairs of shoes– she even opened a museum which just displayed her collection of footwear.)  lastly, my mother would choose a pair of beautiful earrings and some piece of unique jewelry, a chunky necklace or tiffany bracelet, to complete her outfit.  my mother’s oldest daughter has similar memories of our mother getting ready to go out, so i know that this has been her routine for over 30 years.  tradition can be nice.

so i guess that’s something i’d be losing, that she’d be losing, too, if our family leaves the fold for good.  of course, we’re all sealed together for time and all eternity, so, you know, we’ve still got the afterlife. ha.

fin.  i promise… for now.

my gethsemane… kinda

so, just real quick, i want to explain the name of my blog. originally i was calling it “paris on my mind” (like that song “georgia on my mind”), but i got the idea from the boyfriend that maybe he didn’t care for that name so much because it implied that paris is all i think about and all i plan to blog about. so, to keep the french motif but kind of give a shout-out to where i live, i re-named the blog “dans la 408.” literally this means “in the 408,” 408 being the area code here. anyway, just wanted to clear that up…

i’ve mentioned before that i grew up in the mormon religion. all through my childhood my family attended church q sunday– that’s devoting at least 3 hours to basically a group meeting, a meeting with just those of your age, and then the entire congregation meets together for sacrament meeting– that’s like mass for catholics. as a child you attend primary (that’s where all the kids meet in one large group for lessons and singing **i still remember primary songs i learned like 15-20 years ago** through age 12), then you move up to young women’s or young men’s **i can’t give details on young men’s since i never went *duh* and never really asked my male counterparts about it * i enjoyed church during my teens, besides the going to church on sunday part. i played basketball for the ward (neighborhoods are divided into wards and wards belong to larger, regional stakes–i attended cambrian park ward which was part of the san jose south stake) which i loved because i was on the school team from 7th thru 9th grades, but rode the bench pretty consistently. but at church i felt like a god. i am super competitive and took church athletics very seriously and had one arena where i was the best and could show off and score lots of points. i also played on the ward volleyball team which was fun, especially when my big sister ash and i played together because we were both better than the other girls and we both loved kicking ass. so in a lot of ways church was fun, and it kept me out of trouble, too. when some of my “gentile” friends started drinking and smoking pot in high school, i begged off.

but the absolute best part of being a girl in san jose south stake was camp ritchie. i loved going to camp ritchie. it was just a week-long summer camp for mormon girls and they had other camps all over the country, but from what i hear, none of them could hold a candle to camp ritchie. my camp is up in the sierras, on the side of a mountain with bear lake just a short hike away. we had cabins with wooden bunks and a few years i brought one of my best friends (non-mormon) with me. but otherwise it was me and shelby (aka bonkie… hahaha. i just remembered that stupid nickname, no idea where it came from). shelby and i had grown up in church together since we were like two or three and although her family switched wards after her mom re-married, we still got to go to school and camp together. camp had levels: 1st level for the girls going into 7th grade, 2nd level for the girls going into 8th grade, 3rd level for the girls going into 9th grade, 4th level for the girls going into 10th grade, 5th level for the girls going into 11th grade and finally 6th level for the oldest girls who would be going into the 12th grade. i missed my first year because they did it by age then and i’m young for my grade, so i couldn’t go with shelby and i was never going to go if they hadn’t changed the rules after that year because i would have always been a year behind my classmates. but they did change the rules and i got to go to camp as a 2nd level. 4th level was hard because you went on a 3-day hike through the mountains and missed most of camp, but it was still fun. we slept in sleeping bags and ate gross freeze dried food and i got a nasty sunburn on the tips of my ears, the only place i hadn’t covered with a bandana or sunblock. 5th level is fun because you are basically split into teams of two or three (it was me, shelby, and jennie) and assigned to a younger level to kind of mentor. we went with the 2nd levels which meant we did everything with them, including praying and reading scriptures q night with them in their cabin. shelby and i even got to pick the theme for when we were 6th levels: “the reason for the season.” our idea was that each level would represent a different religious holiday and each day during that week at camp we would celebrate that holiday– so 6th levels were christmas and we got to decorate the lodge with christmas decorations and sing christmas songs. it was silly, but fun, especially because shelby and i knew it had all been our idea. i bore my testimony for the last time at camp ritchie– it was the last time in my life that i would feel close to heavenly father or his son, jesus christ or the holy ghost.

those are the times i look back on as the only times i can remember feeling what the church calls the spirit, or the holy ghost. i could feel god and jesus and for those moments i knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they existed, that jesus had died for me, that he was my savior, my brother, and that heavenly father listened to my prayers. i never felt alone. i never let doubt or resignation fill my heart. i believed in everything– i believed in the book of mormon and i believed that joseph smith had been a prophet. i believed that the current prophet spoke with heavenly father and received revelations from him. i was a lamb.

i miss those feelings. the boyfriend sometimes asks why i still defend the church’s founding beliefs and it’s memories of that sureness, of that confidence, that makes me do it. i still feel the hole left in my heart where my faith used to be.

i stopped going to church during my senior year of high school. i had already lost grip on my faith and sitting through sacrament meeting didn’t help, in fact it made me feel worse. i couldn’t get that same glow at church that i got at girls’ camp, so i just said fuck it. and that’s basically where i am now. a recovering mormon.

but what prompted this whole diatribe is the fact that my parents have stopped attending church, too. ever since prop. 8 came on the scene my liberal democrat parents have begun to distance themselves from the church. i’m not sure about this, but i would argue that they haven’t stopped believing in the religion, it’s the organization they’re mad at. we don’t agree with mormon politics and when politics are brought into the chapel and members are encouraged to donate money to help pass laws like prop.8 to ban gay marriage, well, we’re not down with that. but the idea of my parents quitting the church that formed my childhood has left me reeling. it’s one thing for me to stop believing. it’s another thing when your ever-dependable parents stop, too. i’ve asked them if they plan on going back. they don’t know. they can’t sit through church knowing that they are the only ones who think the church is wrong to take a stance against gay marriage, to issue statements claiming that gay marriage would injure the sanctity of mormon marriages. i mean gay people aren’t lining up to get married in the temple for christ’s sweet sake– they just want the rights that come with being legally married. how in god’s name is that going to hurt my parents’ marriage? or my sisters’ marriages or my brothers’ or my friends’? how will allowing more people who love one another become a married couple affect straight couples? i wish someone could try to explain the reasoning behind that argument. seriously, i want to know why this is even a problem and why has the church, my church, turned against these children of god and told them they’re not good enough, that their feelings are wrong, are sinful. to me the sin lies with those who prevent others from being happy. the sinners are those casting judgements. they claim the bible forbids it? but the bible also forbids eating meat on friday. the bible says a lot of things that we aren’t supposed to interpret literally. the bible was meant to serve as a source of comfort, a source of guidance. however, you must also use your best judgment and the free will god gave us.

i may get some flack for this– i don’t give a shit. this is how i feel. this is what i believe in now. someday, when the mormon church wakes up and sees the hurt and heartache it’s caused the gay community, i may return to the fold. so now i wait. and so does my heart.

stinky pugs, “slumdog,” and straights against prop. 8!

exclamation points elude to excitement or something interesting, but i’m sorry to disappoint you all because this particular exclamation point is misleading. don’t stop reading, i’m just trying to be honest about the content of this posting.

my dad fed my dog something that is making him fart a lot and really stink-ily. they are of the “silent but deadly” variety. so basically every few minutes the odor of rotten eggs wafts up to my nose with no noise to announce its imminent attack. i literally do not want to bring him to bed with me. the farting in itself is normal; he’s a very gassy dog owing to his random diet of organic dog food + whatever people feed him off their plates (i am just as guilty of this as anyone, i just tend not to feed him things that i think will contribute to his fart-iness). he also snores, so the farting and the snoring make for one very unpleasant bedmate. well, it’s not his fault so i will not force him to sleep alone, even if it smells like he rolled in a vat of egg salad.

i’m just catching the beginning of the coverage of the academy awards. i didn’t actually watch the award show this year, but i’m thrilled to see that “slumdog millionaire” won best picture because i was lucky enough to see it in class this past tuesday (in my class there’s a girl whose parent are members of the academy and get early dvd screeners of all the nominated films, so she brought the movie to class) and it was amay-zing. it is brutally honest, violent, cruel, and horrific– but you never feel sad for the character because they aren’t sad about their lives. i am a complete cry baby, like my mother, but this film just didn’t make me cry. it’s an examination of the brutality of the slums in india and the shit and torture the orphans endure, but they overcome, they learn to live any way they can and even though that often involves stepping on others or selling themselves or killing those who stand in the way of their destiny, then so be it. i will never forget the scene where jamal, the main character, as a child is spared from being drugged and then blinded with acid and a hot spoon by men who use the orphans to beg for them (“the blind earn double, you know”) by his brother who saves him by throwing acid in a man’s face so they can escape together. it seems like life will never be kind to jamal. but he isn’t concerned with money or anything like that, he just cares about latika, the love of his life, and how he can be with her. it’s bittersweet, it’s horrific, it’s emotional, but never sappy or overdone. i urge anyone with $10 to go see “slumdog millionaire” because you will come away a different person with a different outlook on life. seriously. and kudos to sean penn who portrayed harvey milk and gave life to a man long dead, a man who was martyred just like mlk jr., jfk, rfk, or malcom x, but who never got the credit he deserved because he was gay. growing up mormon has caught up with me lately with all the prop. 8 talk because i’m being lumped with the conservative, close-minded, and confused mormons who think that homosexuality is something to be campaigned against, something to be shunned. all i know is that god made us in his image and god made us as we are and loves us just that way. god is infallible, so to say that being gay is wrong or a sin is to accuse god of making a mistake. he didn’t. gay people are just like anyone else, they just have one more obstacle in their lives. not to say that it’s a handicap, but it’s a struggle and it sets you apart from the crowd which is never easy. but it doesn’t make it wrong. i hope that someday the church will change its stance on homosexuality and its denouncement of gay marriage. i believe that if they don’t that it will be something they will regret in the future. hate. it’s so easy to feel and so hard to erase.

i guess i truly am my mother’s daughter.

p.s.  i watched the acceptance speech for the guy who adapted the screenplay for “milk” and was moved to tears.  he said he grew up mormon and had to learn to be okay with himself, he had to learn that god didn’t hate him for being gay, and that he was lucky enough to have a mother who loved him, even when it wasn’t popular or considered acceptable.  if you haven’t seen it you might want to look it up on you tube.  you don’t want to miss it.

at least i only have one!

i’m alone on the web

ok, i just spent a couple of hours pressing “next” up in the right hand corner of my screen looking for other blogs to read. uh, apparently i’ m like the only sane person out there. every blog was a either some jesus-loving, right-wing bible thumper or knitting-obsessed mommy blogging about runny noses or the entire blog was in malaysian. really, malaysian. don’t ask me why. and the button kept taking me to the same blogs over and over, like a blog about satellites or something. then there was the really creepy guy who took innocent “family circus” cartoons and drew over them to make them perverted or dirty or just plain scary. i did find a few normal sounding people, one was a sweet blog written by the daughter of a deceased cancer victim who wrote little memories she had of her mother every day to keep her memory alive. that seemed nice, but then i found some guy whose mother sounded like a crazy, red-neck hick and yet he didn’t seem to notice because he continued to post the strange things she said and did (like that her boyfriend is also her ex-husband and that he sold all his prescriptions to pay her rent, so they’re together this week). don’t people realize that those of us who are normal will sit at our computers scratching our heads over how the hell you write about that shit like it’s no big deal? i mean honestly. ugh, and there was some crazy bitch who seemed cool at first, until i kept reading and she started criticizing pres. obama and then wished sarah palin “happy birthday.” gross. sarah palin makes me want to gag. how could you listen to obama speak and then listen to palin and like her better? you’d have to be rush limbaugh, bill o’reilly, the evil ann coulter or this crazy bitch. i feel so… alone. i kept waiting for the button to take me to mom’s blog, but it never did.

ugh, i have to pee again! and charlie is being bad and not going to sleep so i banished him to the den for the night, but i’m starting to get cold and lonely and would like his little warm body next to mine, so i’ll probably go get him in a minute.

i should be writing a report for class tomorrow, but i’m feeling super lazy about school at the moment. i can only put it off until tomorrow afternoon. oh, and i got my fed refund so i paid off both my credit cards completely. feels weird not to owe money, except on my car. and a little bit to macy’s. otherwise, i’m doing pretty well. the debt is about to increase again, though, because i’m getting a new laptop **yea!!** that will work faster and connect to the internet at school. i need a new laptop desperately, but mainly to use for school. journalism majors are also expected to be really good with computers and design and all that, so i need a computer that’s up to snuff. and as attached to this little dell as i am, i’m afraid it’s got to go. like with an old car, i need to trade up.

here’s to trading up, spending hundreds of dollars, and that wonderful high you only get when you’re buying something! hurray!

j’adore les jeudis (i love thursdays)

jeudi– my favorite day of the week (besides sunday when i could literally sleep all day and not miss anything).  thursday is the last day of classes for the week, i only have to work six hours in the fluorescent tomb (aka the pharmacy), the boyfriend usually comes home from bezerkley (he’s smarter than me, so he goes to uc berk), it’s payday (well, not anymore–effing cee-vee-ess changing my payday to friday- hurumphh), and my precious tivo records all my favorite tv shows for me so i don’t have to miss a single second of  “the office,” “30 rock,” “kath & kim,” or “csi.”

some people get embarrassed or ashamed of watching too much tv, but that’s crazy talk!  you can never watch too much tv.  it’s not physically possible.  you can watch too many commercials, that’s why i would give my tivo chocolates on valentine’s day if i didn’t know my dad would end up eating them.  even my mom suffers without tivo when she sojourns to the homeland (that’s north texas) to visit my tootie who hasn’t converted to tivo worship.

oui, there is such a place.

hmm, now tootie may be someone who does watch too much tv.  she still gets a frickin tv guide, like the kind made out of paper and resembles a little book you may remember them from your childhood, or from a glass case in the smithsonian.  walking into tootie’s climate controlled house (i don’t think it ever gets above 65 degrees in there) is like walking into a time warp– there’s green shag carpeting as far as the eye can see, her toilet seats have cushions on them, she still has an ashtray next to her armchair even though she quit smoking over 25 years ago, and papa’s armchair hasn’t moved a millimeter since his death exactly six years ago today.  she may be single handedly responsible for global warming by keeping her air conditioner on full blast 24/7 from april to october.  my papa used to say it was like a morgue and would take breaks from the cold by standing outside in the texas summer heat to “warm up.”  now i don’t know how many of you have visited north texas in summertime, but it’s not just hot.  it’s fucking hot… and fucking humid.  it’s what i imagine purgatory to be like, if mormons believed in that sort of thing.  so for anyone to want to go out into that palpable, wet wall of heat that hums with cicadas and horseflies and mosquitoes (my sister ash and i once had a contest to see who had the most mosquito bites by the end of our visit to tootie and papa’s house–ash won with i think 27 bites…) blows my mind.  it’s the reason i used to want to visit in fall or winter… until papa died in february and i realized that there was no good time to live in texas.  my mom is so lucky she got out of there before a tornado took off with her house or she got struck by lightning.

isn’t funny how you can start out rambling on about something as mundane as thursday night “must see tv” and end up talking about the anniversary of your grandfather’s death?  his funeral was weird because for some godforsaken reason someone thought it might be fun to videotape this particular moment of my family’s life, so i have a vhs copy of my grandparent’s little baptist church’s chapel with my papa’s flower covered coffin displayed up front and rows of church pews filled with stetsons and big hairdos.  most of my family got to sit quietly passing around a box of tissues, but oh no, not caitlin.  no, caitlin had to get up and talk to that stupid video camera and read the private letter i had written to papa before he died.  since he died before my mom could give him the letter, i guess everybody decided it was public property and they read it.  by the time i arrived a couple days later, the letter had not only been read by half my family and dozens of texan baptists, but it had been printed onto the programs for the service.  yea.  i don’t remember who told me that i going to be reading that letter out loud in front of people (please note aforementioned fear of public speaking).  oh, and if i didn’t want to do it myself, the pastor would read it for me.  oh double yea.  i didn’t want that pepsi-drinking d-bag (we later found out that the man who had been at my papa’s deathbed was a liar and cheated on his wife and basically just was not the guy papa thought he was… plus he drank pepsi in my grandfather’s presence.  how rude.)  to read the heartfelt words i had meant only for papa to know.  even now, six years later, i’m getting all choked up about it.  because in the end i did read the letter out loud– caught on video.  so, to this day i have a copy of the one of the top 5 most horrible moments of my life on tape!  we’re not a tape-every-precious-moment type of family, so it trips me out to even know there’s a videotape of me.  but i have gotten really drunk and shown the video to some of my friends.  even though i hate that tape, i can’t bring myself to dispose of it.  it’s one of those things.  i told you i have a lot of things.

i talk too much.  is it blog too much?  i need to pace myself– this could have been, like, a week’s worth of entries.  oh well, c’est ma vie.

bon jeudi…

i should be running

i guess i should be out in the friggin cold sweating to my ipod, but that is becoming less and less of an option with each passing moment.  yep, just not in the cards today.  oh well.

i did spend the early morning hours (awoken early by that snoring, snorting, wrinkle-faced animal with whom i share my bed) trying to learn to use all the little functions on my new blog… that made me think of a new laptop… then that made me want to go online and customize my very own… then that made me desperate to have it.  like the mouse given a cookie, i couldn’t just stop there– i wanted more.  i wanted that pink dell laptop with a bunch of fancy computer stuff inside its pretty pink shell so badly that i almost almost applied for one of dell’s credit cards that allows you to buy a computer and then make payments.  but that nasty credit demon inside my head had to spoil my excitement by reminding me that i probably couldn’t get accepted for a credit card anymore than i could be qualified to fly an effing plane.  (i do think, though, that i could crash one into the hudson, but if i did it no one would have survived, that’s the god’s honest truth.  was that guy incredible or what?  i mean it renewed my fear of flying, but still what a stud.)

i’m rambling to avoid running.  soon i will eat a bowl of cereal and pet my pug to avoid running.  then it will be too late and i will have to get in the shower to get ready for my noon  class at SJSU.  tonight at 6pm i get to go to my favorite class: mcom 72, mass communications and society.  the class only meets tuesday nights so my arse is either numb or spasming by the end of the almost three hour lecture, but it’s worth it.  this class is great for someone like me.  i get credit for being how i already am: talkative and opinionated.  my teacher just loves that, but since it’s not exactly one-on-one time, i have to let other kids participate, too, even though they rarely have anything of substance to say.  those are the kids the professor has to point at and call on– it’s like pulling teeth.  i don’t like speaking in front of large crowds because even if i know i’m not nervous my face will inevitably start to get hot and red and my voice will quiver.  it’s not like that in mcom, though, because i just talk from my seat and it just doesn’t provoke that fear response inside me.

i just realized mount laundry has claimed more victims and i’m not sure i even have one clean thing to wear to class today.  frick.  too bad ash doesn’t live here anymore, she was always good for a sweater.

sur ma liste aujourd’hui

he may have been lost, but all i could think was: "i want your hat."

i’ve decided to make lists.  i love writing out lists of endless amounts of crap i need to do, but i rarely actually do anything from my lists.  but i enjoy them all the same.

i’ve never really explained why i love paris so much.  since i was maybe eight or nine i dreamed of seeing the eiffel tower in person.  i must have seen its daunting beauty on tv or in a newspaper or something, but whatever it was, it lit a fire under me and for the next 10 years my dream lived on.  i went in high school as a 16 year old french student and took the typical tourist trip.  we hit all the important eglise, cathedrals, museums, monuments, castles, and quaint country towns.  the south of france was nice, but paris remains my true love.  so, while attending de asia, i signed up for a study abroad program that would set me up in an apartment (avec a roommate) and i would attend classes at a little extension school.  since i couldn’t legally drink back home yet, i basically stayed at least half drunk for two months straight.  i also started smoking a pack a day of marlboro reds to help me assimilate.  it worked.  i met some amazing people that i still think about, wondering what’s going on in their lives now that nearly four years has passed since i walked the cobblestoned streets, licking nutella from my chin and trying to absorb as much culture as possible.  it was so wonderful, i didn’t have to work for the first time in six years, and i could devote my energy to school and blending into the french crowd of which i so wanted to be a part of.  but april turned into may and may became june and i had to board a plane back to california.  while i still have so many memories from my time there, i’m no longer in contact with any of the people from the memories.  i miss ross and vered who proved to be awesome friends, with whom i shared so many bouts of laughter and with whom i sobbed tearful goodbyes into their shoulders, and they into mine.  i tried to keep in touch, but the circumstances just wouldn’t allow it.  vered moved to hollywood to be an actress and ross left for san fran to live with his girlfriend.  and sometimes i allow my thoughts to drift to one more person who left such a great impact on my soul.  but, like i said, i left paris to return to my home in san jose (northern california is a fantastic place to live, too, so i have been exceedingly lucky) and he stayed behind in his home.  i used to hope he would show up on my doorstep announcing plans to stay and live here, but that childish desire flitted away like a delicate butterfly.  i came home and shawn (aka the boyfriend) presented himself and for the first time in my life i found myself able to accept kindness and affection from a boy.  the boy i left behind did this for me without ever knowing it; he made it possible for me to love again.

**sigh**

life happens when you’re busy doing something else, or however the saying goes.  well, that explanation may seem cryptic, but i assure you there will be more paris stories over time– i’ve got a million of ’em.

ok, now the list of shit i will never do of things to do this week:

1. scale mount laundry and actually fold the shirts and whatnot right after so i don’t have to iron (ehh i hate ironing!)
2. purchase textbooks for this semester
3. take charlie for a walk qd
4. learn to add music to this blog
5. write in blog qd
6. drink more water and eat less without picking up smoking again
7. cut back on various vices (the boyfriend knows)
8. make valentine’s reservations at loony boon or boony loon or whatever that winery is called (merci ash & j.c. for the generous gift certificate) for wine tasting and food pairing, very chi-chi.
9. wash face q night hs (hs=at bedtime in pharmacy speak)
10. send two month late payment to capital one, transfer $$ to visa so they stop calling me
11. re-order checks from wells fargo so i can pay aforementioned bills
12. remember to save $$ q week for tuition in august (goal: $3000)
13. schedule charlie for vet visit
14. go to audiobook store all ears in saratoga for new books. (just finished all 7 harry potters, all of david sedaris they had, memoirs of a geisha, and the giver) next i want the time traveler’s wife and maybe something by christopher moore.
15. be nicer, be more gentle, and be a better listener.

voila! no capital letters allowed

ok, so this is all pretty new to me. i mean, i used to be on myspace, but that seemed so self indulgent. this blog will be, too, because i’ll be mostly blogging about myself, but somehow i feel like blogs are less tacky and more intellectual than myspace where people mostly post pictures of themselves taking bong rips and leaving lame posts for each other about how much they love themselves.

i decided this would be the opposite of that. plus, my mom, my big sis, and my sis-in-law all blog nearly qd (qd is pharmacy speak for everyday) so i’m starting to feel it pulsing through my blood. i also figured the writing practice would be good for me, although you will never catch me

my snuggle pug

using capital letters. it’s just my thing. if you devote yourself to reading my blog qd, you will quickly find that i have a lot of things.

anyway, i’m typing away on my increasingly obsolete laptop balanced on one thigh while charlie the erstwhile pug snores away on the other. he’s a good boy, but no matter how many episodes of “the dog whisperer” or “it’s me or the dog” or how many of cesar milan’s books i read, this dog is still a total a**hole to anybody who comes to our house outside me, my mom, my dad, and my boyfriend. he hates children (my nephews and nieces call him the devil dog… that actually hurts my feelings a bit, but he has tried biting all of them so it’s understandable), he hates the guy who reads the meter, he hates the mailman, he hates knocks on the door, and he really hates our neighbor’s puggle. but he really loves me so it’s hard for me to give a rat’s arse if he hates anybody else. he’s my little snuggle pug and he could eat kittens for breakfast and i’d still defend what i call his “quirkiness.”

already filed my taxes because being a journalism student i’m all up and up on the news, so i heard that since my dear state’s congressmen and the governator can’t agree on a budget (lazy, stubborn s.o.b’s) that instead of issuing refunds citizens may receive i.o.u’s. but i.o.u’s don’t exactly pay the bills do they? no, they do not. so i figured the sooner i stake my claim on my share of my tax refund, the more likely i will be to actually receive money. we’ll see how that turns out in a couple weeks. if i’m not over $1500 richer, than the irs will get a nasty phone call from me, and they don’t want that. i spend a good chunk of my work days calling insurance companies and trying to convince them to pay for services they should be paying for anyway, so i’m used to yelling and acting all snippy on the phone with douchebags who are trying to save money.

douche and douchebag are two of my favorite words. i even caught my 68 year old father calling someone a douche. it’s just so insulting, yet incredibly descriptive. it’s almost as useful as the f-word. how would i live my life without that word?

also, if you ever want to curse somebody in french- see me. i did an entire project while i was still at de asia community college on verlan (derived from the french l’envers, the reverse) and swear words. Verlan is common french slang in which you take a word, like, for example, merci, switch it up and say it like cimer. it’s really hard to understand if you don’t already speak fluent french, which i don’t, but just knowing about it will get you in with les jeunes de paris. trust moi.

cimer for now, au revoir all.

mom’s advice

so, my sister m.k. married d.k. and when she did my parents inherited a new handyman. before a.c. married j.c., d.k. was the guy you called about computer malfunctions and whatnot. now he is simply called on whenever someone in my house breaks something. cait pulled the cord out of the attic fan? call d. dad thinks house needs new copper pipes? call d. somebody needs to go under the house for some godforsaken reason, but nobody will? call d.

today the dilemma was as i have dubbed it: “the mystery of the running toilet.” for several weeks now the hall toilet can be heard running about every 10 minutes non-stop. you really only notice it when it’s nighttime and the rest of the house is still, the only other sounds being the snores emanating from charlie the pug in my bed and the usual creaks of an older house. that running toilet reduced my mother to a regular plumbing mcguyver the other day when she couldn’t sleep and the sound was driving her nuts. i, too, was up one night, victim to insomnia, when i was tortured by the constant running. only i don’t possess any mcguyver-like qualities and thus popped some more diphenhydramine (benadryl to you) and forced my mind to sleep. but a string tied to the inside of the tank on one end and to the flusher/handle on the other will not a functional toilet make. so it was time to call in reinforcement: call d.

d. came promptly as per usual (he never says no and he never says tomorrow) and knocked on the door. charlie did not like this. charlie went into hysterics, a tantrum i chose to listen to from my bedroom rather than go attempt to stop him (it wouldn’t have worked anyway). d. entered and not only diagnosed the problem within a few minutes, but ran out to get the necessary part immediately and returned triumphantly soon after to put an end to “the mystery of the running toilet.” no nancy drew skills required, just a bmw mechanic.

this whole saga reminded me of something my mom said at thanksgiving dinner this year. she pointed out that my sister a. had married j.c. who is super helpful with anything technical from setting up the new wii to removing spyware from my laptop. like d., j.c. is a master. so, with a. being married to someone who can load my dad’s ipod and m.k. marrying d. who can fix absolutely anything, my mom told me that i should be careful to marry someone useful as well, like a lawyer or doctor or insurance salesman.

i need a husband who will come over as soon as my parents beckon him and perform tasks that my parents have become either too old, too lazy, or too important to do and pay someone else to do for them, like the bi-weekly house cleaners. my brothers each married smart women who aren’t expected to come replace pipes, but are expected to produce decent grandkids (s.e. has five while s.m. is working on first one). since i don’t want kids, it has become ever more apparent that i must marry someone useful. shawn is good looking and very smart, but he can’t fix a computer or tivo or repair a running toilet or burping garbage disposal. ah, but he can argue with reason and quote socrates… that’s useful right? who knows when my parents may need help with a logic problem or whatever? hmmm.

well, i still love him so maybe putting up with me for nearly four years is his special skill.  haha. pretty impressive.