parents, poseurs, and priuses– oh my!

some people just love san francisco and berkeley.

bay bridge-- connects bezerkley to sf... did i mention that i'm also kinda scared of bridges?

i do not count myself among them.

i tolerate sf.  (i mean i’ll venture there to catch a show at the warfield or at, my favorite, the fillmore.  the fillmore hands out these kick-ass art

some guy described these as "purple jellyfish." good description, guy.

posters of the band you just saw as you’re leaving and the interior is wallpapered with history.  it’s worth the hassle.)

and i’m even more tolerable if someone else is driving… unless it’s my dad driving and my mom in the passenger seat.  my whole life my parents have rarely fought, like a real fight with yelling and cursing, etc.  but put them inside a moving vehicle and wait 30 minutes and )))kaboom!(((  you will, without fail,  witness a fight ranging anywhere from mild to moderate, unless the subject of following directions or the “right” parking spot is involved, then it escalates to severe, as in multiple f-bombs (always from mom– it’s inherited) and palpable tension, while those dudes from npr’s “car talk” try to lighten the mood (unsuccessfully) as i squirm uncomfortably asking god and jesus to please, lord, just get us [insert destination here] before i go for the ol’ tuck-n-roll.  i do admit, though, that i admire their ability to move one once desired destination has been reached.  i mean they’re not saints, first they have to each plead his or her case to me while the other isn’t within earshot.  once they’ve vented to their daughter, all can return to normal… until it’s time to go home.  but, to their credit, trips home are less dramatic because our house is always on the same street and there is always parking right in front.  but i digress.

see?

my point is that while i am able to tolerate negotiating the city of san francisco if the proverbial pot at the end of the rainbow (not a gay joke) is awesome enough, downtown berkeley is tolerable only by car and completely intolerable on foot.  berkeley, the one you see in documentaries about the 60’s, is today teeming with with bums and hippies, and ex-hippies driving their priuses and then, during the school year, droves of kids with ridiculous dreadlocks or shaved heads armed with their white bread, mainstream socialist/marxist/anarchist ideologies, topped off with a che guevera t-shirt and an ipod loaded with bob marley.  the rest are asian.  at least the asian kids aren’t confused about

the boyfriend's berkeley-- the nice one

which “subversive” niche they want to endorse.  the asian kids mainly hang around smoking cigarettes that hang precariously from their lips as speak to each other in rapid-fire [insert language here].  now you may be thinking that since i, too, am in college that i shouldn’t be calling these cal students kids.  but, you see, these d-bags are mostly18-22.  now that i’m coming up on 25, i have (in my mind) earned the right to refer to these poseurs as kids, even toddlers or infants if i so choose.  i am aware that part of my distaste for those children stems from jealousy that a) they’re much richer and/or smarter than me and b) that they will already have graduated by the time they’re my age (at which time they will remove the nose rings, throw out the bumper stickers, break the bongs, and cut their hair for their new jobs at fortune 500 companies where they will inevitably rake in six-figure salaries (plus bonuses!) with nice benefit packages (with dental!) and a 401-k plan.) instead of trolling the internet looking for a job that will pay at least 18 bucks an hour.  then i will hate them for a whole new set of reasons.

i, on the other hand, live here, on the island where the mean folk are.  it’s a little crowded, but the weather’s nice.

5 signs that you’re watching too much daytime tv while unemployed

this could also be titled “5 reasons i love tivo” or “5 reasons why i’m a loser” or “5 reasons i need to get out more,” etc.

i've also been watching a lot of those court shows where bitter d-bags sue each other for, like, $100... ooo, and car chase shows. all time well spent.

1)    you find yourself watching the home shopping network (hsn)– and you keep watching.

2)    you find yourself amazed by a demonstration of [insert useless product here] and wondering how you’ve lived your entire life up until that moment without said product.

3)    you find yourself dialing the 1-800 number on the screen with one hand and clutching your visa card in the other.

4)    you find yourself ending the call and realizing, with horror, that you actually just ordered this off the home shopping network.

5)    you find yourself seriously considering enrolling at western career college to begin training for an exciting new career as a medical assistant!  and for the rest of the day you find yourself repeatedly singing that retarded jingle: “western career college– you can do it!”

two more signs and we might have an apocolypse on our hands.

of course, if there is, i won’t notice since i’ll be glued to hsn, draining my ever-shrinking checking account as i purchase jewelry from the tori spelling collection in between deciding whether to become a massage therapist at the national holistic institute or to call bryman to find out how to get started toward earning a degree in criminal justice…

oooo, maybe i need a personal injury lawyer, too…

the chronicles of caitlin

"these are my hands, these are my faults, these are my nasty little thoughts, i wrote them down for you to contemplate at a later date..." --stroke 9

i used to keep a journal.  i received my first real journal, like the first one i actually wrote in frequently, the one i wrote in until it was full, from my sister michelle when i was maybe 12.  i think mormons are into journaling for the same reason they’re into geneology– writing in a journal is considered keeping a personal history that your descendents can read and learn about you and your life, the times you lived in.  the problem is this: the crap i wrote about at that age (12-17) is useless.  honestly, it’s horribly embarrassing.  i’ve gone back to read old entries and i just want to reach back into time and punch my young self in the face.

i was so stupid… i didn’t have a clue about what’s important.  i would devote pages and pages to the d-bag boyfriend i thought i was so in love with from age 14 until the end of the journals.  i didn’t manage to get that a-hole out of my life until i was 20 years old.  god, that’s so embarrassing.  i wish i would have listened to my parents, to my mom specifically, and not wasted my youth being retarded over that guy.  in the end, he left me.  well, i left him, but wanted to get back together, but he met someone else and didn’t let me back.  that ate away at my soul for months– it was my main reason behind going to france for that study abroad program.  so, in a lot of ways he did me the biggest favor anybody could have, one i didn’t have in me to grant myself.

ugh.

i know the point of making mistakes is to learn from them, but i still find it painful to look back on all the time i spent toiling over him when i could have been with my friends or my family.  i would have taken the s.a.t.’s and applied to colleges if i hadn’t thought me and the d-bag were gonna live happily ever after together after i finished high school.  i could be a college graduate right now if it hadn’t been for him.  but those few months in paris changed my life in a lot of important ways and i wouldn’t have had the desire to go if i hadn’t been trying to run from something.  oh, well.  i know “time spent wishing is time wasted.”  i guess i wonder what my life would be like now if i had never met him or if had realized what he was sooner.  the mistakes i made with him and for him and over him brought me to where i am now, so would i change anything?

i’m happy with the boyfriend and i’m happy i went to paris.   but i do still wish i was done with college already.  i feel like i’m just adrift– nothing changes.  people who haven’t seen me in years will ask “where are you working?” “where do you live?” and i’m like, well, i still have the same job i had in high school and i still live at home with the ‘rents.  does that make me super lame or what?  should i feel like a huge underachiever?

so i guess this is my new journal.  i just hope that someday i can look back at these years of my life and feel pride or gladness or like it was time well spent.  i don’t want to wish i could go back in time just to slap my younger self silly.

do you have any regrets?

just a little reminiscing dans la 11

15 rue pasteur paris, france 75011

i lived here from april through june 2005.  located at 15 rue pasteur in the 11th arrodissement, residence hotel du monde hated me because i was loud and rowdy, but i loved that place with all my heart.

i used to live on the 7th floor.  i only took the rickety elevator when i first got there and needed to send my luggage up to my room, when my mother visited and didn’t want to walk up so many flights, and the day i left when i was running late and threw my suitcase in the lift while i raced down the stairs in an attempt to catch my stuff before someone else did.

everyday i ran down past that mirror and skipped the last couple steps on my way out into the city i loved so much.

i loved everything about the hotel du monde, but the landlord guy didn’t love me so much.  parties tended to end up in my apartment, people had a habit of throwing their cigarette butts from my high window, and y and his friends did once steal a dryer from the lobby.  but they brought it right back!  no harm, no foul.

i threw open my window to reveal this view-- eiffel tower and all.

when i first entered my room at the hotel du monde, i thought i had been kissed by the gods, or hit with lucky lightning, or had a guardian angel because this view was exactly what i had dreamed of.  at night i could sit for hours and stare at the light show on the eiffel tower.  so many of my fellow students had views of rue pasteur or were on too low a floor to see over the surrounding buildings and got to stare at clotheslines or boxes of geraniums instead.  i never felt luckier than when i took this picture.  it was quite a disappointment to return to san jose and see only my neighbor’s fence from my bedroom window.  it was like dreaming while being awake.

yes, i loved paris.  i still do.  i can’t wait for the day i get to go back and re-visit places like room 167 at 15 rue pasteur and try to re-capture those feelings once more.

au revoir, paris.

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!

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.