laurenisms

Next weekend is big ol’ sibling reunion time in Madison, Wisconsin. We spend Xmas with my stepmom, as she is the only person in either of our families who cares about the yearly reunion actually being on Dec. 24-25, so we have to make sure to plan to see the other families throughout the year. So we scheduled Madison (G’s dad, stepmom, aunt & uncle, younger brother & sister-in-law & new baby, and grandfather) for February. Next time I might think that through a little more carefully; it’s quite cold there currently. Happily, though, my sister will be coming out to Madison from DC for the weekend, as well. I expect we will do a lot of sitting around and eating good food.

I really did have something more interesting to say but it’s all forgotten now. Oh well. In the future, perhaps.

(song: “Saw Her Standing There,” the Beatles. Oh, little screamy Paul.)

Oh good, it’s still here!
Several smallish stories piled up over the last … month.
***
Mentally composed on Monday, September 19: I am cranky because last night I organized my life: figured out hours at my new job (which is the same as my old job), blocked out homework time during every day so I can try to keep it out of my free weekend time, made sure to schedule gym time three days a week. I was excited and energetic about my goals and I was going to DO IT, dammit, and today I woke up sick. Now no gym until I can breathe again; no work until I can move without feeling like my head is going to fall off. I get sick so rarely; did it have to interfere with my beginning-of-the-term optimism about getting things done? Now I may never recover.
***
Mentally composed at some point within the last couple of weeks: Yes, it’s definitely fall now and this means it’s time to reread Jane Eyre* and Ahab’s Wife. For some reason — perhaps the fact that they are full of wind and water and darkness — they remind me of fall and fall reminds me of them.
***
Mentally composed at some point within the last several weeks: Seven thousand fifty-eight flying and driving miles, four states, and ten-ish months later, the fourth and final stage of the extensive project that is meeting all the various combinations of divorced and remarried parents is over. We learned that the interaction between my mother and me at Thanksgiving is not a good first introduction to my mother; that Hawai’i is too hot, even in December, that I have become a (or discovered my hidden inner) dog person, and that three days in different states is bizarrely traumatic; that Wisconsin weather is hard on poor Northwesterners, but that Madison would be lovely if it weren’t so sillily flat and if it would just cool down at night (although then there would be no thunderstorms); and that my Reno family is almost too large to be tolerated, but that drinks in Reno are very cheap. It was a fun and adventurous project, the meeting of the parents, but I am happy never have to do it again.
***
Composed today: I did recover from the cold, physically and in terms of optimism as well. I started going to the gym again last week, finally, and though I couldn’t make it last Friday, I went today, and it’s already getting easier. School is well underway and I am actually getting stuff done. I am almost done with my portfolio; pending a few changes, my advisor will pass it and it will be on the randomly-chosen secondary reader. I got to see my sister last weekend, and we drove to Astoria to take her to her orthodontist appointment. That meant we also got to go to the beach and Shannon’s favorite restaurant and a wonderful fishmonger. I saw Serenity again and everyone else should go see it, too, even though J.W. ruined all my hopes and dreams. Today I applied for a really exciting job that I’m actually qualified for, even though I’d have to be in school full-time and working full-time through December. It might be the perfect job, though, so I am willing to sacrifice those six weeks to misery. In about a year an honest woman will be made out of me. I plan to wear a red dress. So maybe not that honest.

(song: “Question,” Old 97s)
* I love Project Gutenberg. Everyone should use it all the time.

I have just turned in my last paper of the summer — well, my last real paper — almost twenty minutes early! Woo!
I have also: been in Shelby’s wedding (cried); got in more arguments with my mother, who is not so good at rationality sometimes (did not cry); cried about a puppy I fell in love with online but who got adopted by someone else (cried); finally tried dirty martinis (rejoiced) and wondered why I have not been drinking them for years (regretted lost time); gotten fancy shiny new flipflops (rejoiced); had job interviews for two (!) different grown-up jobs (fretted, then was optimistic).

Upcoming: wait to hear about jobs; find another puppy; drink more dirty martinis.

(song: “Portland, Oregon,” Loretta Lynn & Jack White)

i’m such a wimp.
last night we watched totoro and it was super cute. i supsect that for other people it’s about monsters or spirits or whatever the hell totoro is, but for me it’s about sisters. especially the part where the little one gets lost and the big one is so worried. it made me worried too.
but then the catbus comes and says “next stop, little sister!” and takes the big one to the little one and everyone is ok.
if i had a catbus i would visit my sister all the time.

(song: “flinty kind of woman,” dar williams. radio KoL is good to me - it introduces me to dar williams songs about a posse of pissed-off mamas chopping up some guy who touched their kids. yay!)

oh, now i remember why i was hesitant at first to live with my mom next year. it’s because after about three hours i wanted to walk in front of a bus. she whacked my leg, and i asked why she had done that, and she told me to rephrase the question because i was being defensive.
it’s entirely likely that i am defensive, but that is because i have to defend myself against her. otherwise the conversation will be all about how i’m obese, and i am wearing the wrong clothes and they don’t look good on me, and i shouldn’t be spending so much money (none of which, incidentally, is contributed by her), and i should be planning my future differently, and i’m generally a bad person. well, fine, these things may all be true, but i don’t really feel i have to just sit there and discuss it with her. i cover all those topics quite well all by myself, and i don’t need her help in beating myself up.
anyway, assuming i’m in portland next year, i won’t be living with her any longer than it takes to get a job and a place.

in other news, i have become a non-homework-doing, fiction-reading MACHINE! last week i checked out indian killer on thursday at about 3:30, and i had finished it, AND written about a third of a paper, by midnight. the book was good. intense, easy to read (clearly), and still stuck in my head, five days later. then this weekend i finished eva moves the furniture, whose LC cataloging-in-publication subject headings say it’s about scotland and imaginary friends. also good. sad, and kind of … rainy. i don’t really know what that means. i was down at folklife when i finished that and i had more time to kill, so i bought possession for $2. it is intense in a different way. i had a harder time than usual getting into the writing style, but now that i am used to it, and now that things are actually happening, i think i enjoy it.
now to return to your regularly scheduled taking out of the garbage and packing up of the desk drawers and shelves. boo for moving.

(song: “the past and pending,” the shins)

it has come to my attention that i have been lacking in my detailing my mother’s love life. i mentioned that she’ll be moving out in two years and that i’d like to move in. i didn’t explain why. so here is the answer:
she is getting married.
again.
background story: i don’t remember my parents ever being together; they divorced when i was about two. my first stepdad was nice and worked for hewlett-packard, but he died when i was four or five, i think. my second stepdad is my sister’s dad. i don’t really remember a whole lot about them being together except that he had a big scary red dog and no hair. my third stepdad potentially has OCD. he thinks mom was the controlling, scary, yelly one, and he blames her for that and for emotionally abusing him (and, peripherally, me and my sister, but he is much more interested in himself), but he doesn’t realize that it got about fifty times worse as soon as he moved in. pretty much the only positive memory i have of him is when he took me to get my ears pierced when i was thirteen. it was against mom’s rule of having to be sixteen, but i think it was a planned “rebelling” to get me to like him. they just got divorced about a year and a half ago.
so counting the one before my dad, right after high school, which lasted somewhere between six weeks and six months, and which i didn’t know about until i was about ten, that makes five marriages total. and now it will be six. she is not quite fifty years old. i feel that this has messed both her and me up in a not insignificant way.
the plan is for her to move in with the new guy in a different town a couple of hours away when my sister goes to college. i was worried that this meant that she would try to sell the portland house, which i want desperately, but she says she won’t. i told her if she wants to sell it, she has to wait until i can buy it from her. then when he retires (he’s a podiatrist!) in ten years, they will buy a farm somewhere in washington. with chickens.
i am really excited about the chickens. i am slightly apprehensive, but more approving than i was of the last guy, of the podiatrist. he has grandkids so i am totally off the hook now for reproducing, which pleases me. i think he essentially asked for my blessing the other day, and i clapped my hands and said yay. so i guess i think it’s all right.
plus it lets me fantasize about the house without the pesky problem of how i got ahold of it. a fantasy isn’t as much fun if your mom has to die in it to make it possible.

(song: “the district sleeps alone tonight,” the postal service.)