when i'm dreaming of you

i had the best weekend and now i don't feel well !! i'm not sure if it's allergies (since my eyes itch) or what, but my nose has been gushing, my head and neck hurt, and i've felt super super super exhausted since yesterday afternoon. i called out of work, but i still have to go to class tonight because i missed class wednesday. blehhh.

welll here's all the good stuff ! on friday, i picked up weirdo II from jeanne ! i had to drive in south philly, which is sort of a nightmare of narrow streets and jay walking guidos, and was not able to parallel park to go inside (her street is REALLY narrow !), but weirdo and i made it home and she is the cutest sweetest smallest best dude ever. seriously, i cannot convey how fucking small she is ! here is a picture of her being small with me:



mouse stopped by on friday night to visit her and loved her, of course (he is interested in kittens)- we also discovered that she's obsessed with food. the second he opened his burrito and she could smell it, she frantically climbed all over him, meowing and then ran down his leg and bit his burrito !!! it was the funniest weirdest, but during the course of the weekend she did that with:

- thai curry
- pickles
- bbq seitan
- twizzlers

basically any food sends her into a ridiculous frenzy and she screams and tries to bite your food. it's very cute now that she's tiny, but will possibly not be that cute when she's big !

on saturday, mouse, nate, anna, and i went to linvilla orchards and met up with kati, alan, james, rachael, ashley, and sarah (who i FINALLLLLLY got to meet !). that sounds like a billion people, and it was ! linvilla is my favorite orchard, and it was packed.



i had the best time with everyone- we mostly looked at animals and ate food. a real stupid goat ate some corn out of my hand !!!!! and i saw a cow pee for like a minute straight. a horse too ! and we looked at some super gross emus. i also had french fries with vinegar, an apple cider slushie, a cider donut, and a slice of frozen chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick. who knew such a thing existed? holy shit. i felt like cathy.



but because of all of that, i DIDN'T get a caramel apple, which is a bummer because caramel apples are my favorite food and i only get to have one a year (because i have terrible teeth !). i also didn't get to have deep fried oreos, which i get to have no times a year (only because i'm not often around them, not because of any kind of cathy-esque food rules). so many regrets ! i declined going apple picking (since i can never find any good apples on the trees) and instead bought some neat stuff at their store- i got:

- pumpkin butter
- orange blossom honey
- pickled baby beets
- sweet garlic dill pickles (!!!!!)



anyway, i had the best time and got the worst stomach ache ! after all that, we came home and parted ways- i had a ton of homework and was super tired, and ended up crashing out and not doing any homework.

on sunday, mouse and i went to laurel hill cemetery (a gigantic beautiful victorian cemetery here) for the spirits and spiritualists tour. it was great, and laurel hill is beautiful (especially on an overcast day, because i'm a goth teenager), but there wasn't really thaaaaat much about spiritualism on the tour. we did learn about margaret fox, who was basically the inventor of spiritualism, who was very famous for being able to communicate with the dead with rapping and crap, and her love affair with the famous explorer elisha kent kane. they were going to be married, but his family forbade it because they were stuck up assholes !!!!!! anyway, he wrote her a bunch of romantic letters about how she'd be buried in his family crypt with him when she died (why don't guys do stuff like that anymore?) and after he died she was like, "actually we secretly got married and i want his shit", and i believe she ended up getting some of his shit.



his tomb is in the side of a hill just outside the cemetery fence (i think cause they couldn't fence around it?), and margaret didn't end up in there. boo. other than that, there wasn't too much spiritualism on the tour, but he did show us all the famous graves (general meade, harry kalas, frank furness, charles thomson, etc.). i had a good time, and i tried to touch every tombstone to see if a ghost would haunt me, but it didn't happen.

after the cemetery, we went to whole foods, where i got $98329829832 worth of stuff from the salad bar/hot bar, and i came home to study and do homework. i didn't end up getting too much done because i was already starting to feel sick, but i got the main assignment i had due finished. today i have to do a little reading and maybe work on an essay, but i'm probably going to take mucinex and sleep.

class tonight- the syllabus instructs us to bring our laptops, which is awesome because it's rainy and gross outside and my laptop is too big to bring places, but i'll do it.

woke up too late

what's up dudes ! i have learned this morning that angel on angel is a vampire, not an angel, and completed my financial aid forms (to possibly get grants !) for going back to school. what a productive morning !

having my mom here is great, though she asks a thousand questions and nothing makes me cagier than people asking me a bunch of questions ! i've tried to keep my temper in check. having christina around is a great buffer because christina is endlessly patient and is like... the most socially intelligent. plus my mom has essentially kidnapped her and calls us 'her girls' and calls her 'my other daughter' now.


me, the old baby

we haven't really done a terrific amount of stuff. yesterday we went to bobby's burger palace, a restaurant on penn's campus owned by bobby flay. i wasn't hungry (annnnnd they don't have veggie burgers anyway, and i already had an upset stomach so i didn't want to eat grilled cheese), but i had a few of christina's sweet potato fries and they were pretty incredible



then we went to the last word (the huge used bookstore in my neighborhood), where i was overwhelmed as usual. i grabbed a nice old library copy of the figure in the shadows by john bellairs



and this YA novel by joyce carol oates called big mouth and ugly girl. i think joyce carol oates is an abysmal writer and i've absolutely hated every adult book i've written by her, but maybe she's... better at writing YA books? i thought i'd give it a shot.



i have tried reading mockingjay a little, but after catching fire, i don't really care anymore? like, the obvious outcome is that peeta will sacrifice himself for katniss, she'll get to live and be with gale, the rebels will win, and life will be hard but the fight will be worth it. disclaimer: please don't tell me i'm wrong if you've already read it cause i'm like 70 pages in. haha.

i alsooooo bought the graveyard book by neil gaiman- i feel sort of lucky that he released an extremely popular novel based on my favorite chapter in a short story book a respectable time before i read the short story book, because it was $3 on amazon !



to counteract all the YA fiction i'm consuming, i also got used copies of shelby foote's the civil war: a narrative because brooke hyped it up so much to me when she was here. my american history to 1865 class actually weirdly stopped short of the actual civil war? so i'm going to slake my thirst with 99239230923 pages about it.



anyway, what else? oh, we went to cvs and then we came home and my mom dyed my hair for me. as a person who has extremely tangly hair and was formerly a CHILD with extremely tangly hair (who lacked the adult shame and instinct to brush it), having my mom comb and mess with my hair was very triggering !!! i was going OW OW OW OW STOP OW OW GODDDDD OW STOP every five seconds. she did a really good job though. i dyed it this color:



but it is not quite purpley art teachery red in real life, because my hair comes out the same shade of auburn no matter what color i dye it.

tonight i'm going to go see dangerbird and red devil in my neighborhood (sans mom) and then come home and hang out with my mom. she's totally a night owl- she stays up until like 3-4am. so much for trying to fix my sleep schedule.

p.s. i took vacation days monday and tuesday to hang out with her so i MAY not update.

everybody wants some

i just spent like ten minutes reading jersey shore cast bios. i've never really watched the show or heard anything about it (though oddly MOUSE seems to know a little about it?) and i'd read the wikipedia description of each person and then do a google image search and like... apparently guidos all look the same to me. there was one photo of three guys from it and it just looks like the same guy photoshopped in four times?



also did you guys know that it's like the real world with guidos? i thought it was just like a random guido safari of a pack of guidos who were already buds.

okay, i haven't updated all week because it's finals week and i've been super busy, but the most important development is that BROOKE IS AT MY FUCKING HOUSE RIGHT NOW.


brooke at a different house but she is at my house now

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. we got her from the airport last night in a carshare car (getting slightly lost on the way home !) and we had the best time laughing. i seriously was in physical pain from laughing so hard ! i had to go to bed pretty early (well, 1:30) cause i had to work, though :(

my last summer class was yesterday night by the way- my last history class was tuesday, and it was fine, but for some reason i felt like crying at the end of german? i guess cause i've spent 4 days a week talking to those people for six weeks. i did my history final exam yesterday, and now all i have left is:

- german final exam
- german test (i know, right?)
- voice presentation (i have to record a spoken paragraph about myself)
- german voice interview at 3:30 today


i tried to find an octopus doing lots of work, but i found this punk octopus

i'm not entirely super confident about my german stuff. i still don't exactly understand the cases and my vocabulary as far as knowing the genders of nouns isn't great. hopefully i do okay? this class has been a ton of work so i hope homework is weighted heavily, but the syllabus is like 40 pages and i don't feel like looking !

anyway, i guess i should cut this short and go study. i have off of work monday and tuesday, so i probably won't update. sorryyyyyyy dogs.

big plans this weekend ! we're going to eat a bunch of food and go to museums and also see people from our dour feminist messageboard, and hang out with mouse and hang out with jeanne !

all the stars were shining bright

i have had the weirdest craving lately- fruit punch gatorade. i don't like gatorade OR fruit punch, but i can't stop thinking about it. i just got one and i'm choking it down right now despite its disgustingness.



i'm gonna try to do a quick weekend recap because i have a lot of work to do today- i didn't write my german essay or do the quiz online this weekend and i have to do it ASAP. i guess, despite what i said before, i still don't get the different cases. i also need to watch some history lectures and do some reading.



speaking of homework, on friday i stayed at home and did some homework. i tried to get as much as possible done, which ended up only being 2/5 of what i was writing. HOWEVER, i finished it around 2pm on saturday (instead of 5:30 like the last few weeks) and went to trader joe's and dropped my laundry off. i spent most of saturday night bro-ing down with christina (who i have barelyyyyy seen lately) and:

1) working on my craft swap project
2) catching up on DVR'd shark week stuff



my craft swap scarf is really coming along. unfortunately, the due date is like... this week? and there's no way i can finish it this week. i didn't think about how much school would affect my free crafting time before i signed up, but all my finals stuff is this week (for my german class it's like.. 4394093 things? and a history exam that should take HOURS), plus brooke is coming ! anyway, i'm on my final ball of yarn and one solid weekend should do it, so i petitioned for extra time.



the shark week stuff i watched was all pretty good, too- as a result, though, i have a new favorite hunky zoologist. you guys know i'm not shallow (not really anyway) and my other celebrity crushes are like... kevin james and snagglepuss, but dave salmoni is the handsomest charmingest and loooooves animals. he lived in the wild for 6 months with lions !!!! the best part about all this is that he didn't have any shark experience and was totally a terrified wimp the entire time.



he is also a dictionary defintion hunk with a ninja turtle bod if you want to check it out.

on sunday, mouse and i went to tyler state park ! we met up with mike, which took forever cause he got lost and his dog got diarrhea in the car. my intent was to take portraits of them butttttttttttttttt mouse wore a damn tie dyed shirt and mike took his shirt off immediately and tied it around his head like a roofer, soooooo. we walked around for a bit and settled at a picnic table near some corn fields and talked about guns? as i've mentioned, i don't know anything about guns, and i have very little interest in shooting, but i agreed to go shooting with them if i could shoot an ak-47. they both seem to be into the 1911, which is nice and everything, butttttt i don't know or care about guns !



those are mike's dogs, beale and berry (they were found on a highway in memphis, hence 'beale', the worst name for anything ever). they were cute and everything but were totally uninterested in petting so i'm basically uninterested in them !

after the park, mouse and i went up to his mom's house to hopefully see the baby butttttttttttttttttttttt he was asleep ! jenny let me gently squeeze his foot though. i did get to pet mouse's parents' dog, daisy, who is one of my favorite dogs and totally made up for mike's duds.



after that, we went to whole foods and i came home and knitted and worked on my german homework, before going to bed way too late and now i'm awake and very tired and cranky. and this entry still took me HOURS to write even though i didn't do anything or put any jokes in. oh well, at least you got a hunk.

p.s. blehhhh jeanne's on vacation and i miss her !
p.p.s. there was a show on the history channel about the war of 1812 and two people asked me my opinions about stuff independently of each other ! aw.

sawblade and speak and spell

my advice for you guys today? don't grow up poor. if you already did grow up poor, go back in time and have not done that. especially if the people in your family have bad teeth and you don't have dental insurance. because you will end up 28 years old and missing three molars and about to lose another ! and also, you will have had so many root canals that you actually lost count of them.



i know that's shitty advice, because poor people are the ones least likely to time travel (cost prohibitive, can't miss work, etc.) but it may be my only option at this point.

hey. i'm in a bad mood.

history and german last night. we're getting ready for our finals, and my history final is worrying me. it's a word document we download and write in and upload again- it's open book, and available for 24 hours, but it's 24 hours in the middle of the work week. like... it's available at 6pm on wednesday, then i have my german class from 7-8:45 on wednesday night, then i guess i have to do it before bed? cause i work 8-5 the next day. i'm sort of bummed- between this and my german professor scheduling interviews during the work day friday i'm getting anxious about how school will work with my work schedule. blehhhh.


helpful infographic

i was actually going to take a day off next week to work on my final, but since i have to deal with my tooth today i don't think i'll be able to do that. ugh. at least brooke gets here thursday- brooke is one of my favorite people on planet earth and i cannot believeeeeee she's actually going to be here ! everyone, we have to do a good job of selling philly to her so she moves here. everyone be great ! independence hall, be historic ! ben franklin museum, be charming but janky ! liberty bell, stay cracked ! christina, be weird ! mouse, don't wear short shorts ! we have to make this perfect so brooke (and also julz- julz doesn't know me yet but i'm putting her in my poké ball too) moves here.



what else? no real plans this weekend, which is okay with me. tonight i'm probably going to work on my homework so i don't waste a whole day doing it tomorrow, and then saturday i'm probably going to work on my craft swap project. on sunday mouse and i are going to go do a thing but we don't know what yet !

to-do list for the weekend
- german essay
- misc. german homework
- history essay (i'm actually DONE with the reading for the week already !)
- supplemental history reading
- work on craft swap thing
- read m is for magic
- catch up on sleep

i guess most of that sounds pretty boring, but i promise that next week will be cooler.

p.s. fuck teeth.

i want you to know what love is

blehhh ! i have so much school stuff to do ! blehhh !!!!

what's up guys? i haven't really done much the past couple of days besides go to class and do my homework. german is actually getting pretty hard because i cannot make my brain understand the difference between the cases. like, i know what to DO for each case, but i don't know how to tell if something is nominative/dative/accusative. i give up. history is okay, despite two weeks of group work where i got grouped with the same dude who is like... intent on denying the contribution of women to american history and talking about how our female professor is WRONG and the female writers are WRONG.


in the words of mary wollstonecraft, "fuck you, ballbag !"

i have german homework every night this week and next week, a big german essay to write, a german voice presentation (which is basically just reading the essay), a german interview with someone who isn't my professor, and a final exam. for history, i have to answer a discussion question TODAY, watch the lectures, do the reading, do one more timeline essay, do some more little online questions, and then do a final exam. i'm totally fucking swamped and i'm procrastinating like crazy !

last night while doing some reading, i actually got choked up because i hate andrew jackson so much, so today's (very brief, cause i have studying to do) lesson is about how andrew jackson is the fucking worst.



you may know him as the $20 bill guy, or maybe OLD HICKORY, but what you should really associate andrew jackson with is the indian removal act and the trail of tears (a genocidal relocation of native peoples so we could take their shit, in case you missed middle school history). during the war of 1812 he killed a shit ton of native americans, and during the first seminole war he went into spanish territory and killed a shit ton more of native americans (which is significant because it was totally illegal and fucked up). he then went on to basically be the forerunner of anti-intellectualism in the united states who fiercely defended the idea that his racist hunches were better and righter and more noble than fancy book learning. and um, here is a quote from his first state of the union address that is one of the grossest things i've ever read:

What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

blehh. i fucking hate him ! why is he on money ! why do ATMs only give $20 bills ! here's what i'm using instead of $20s now:



um, on a lighter note, that beautiful dress i got fit perfectly and looked great on me and is my favorite thing ever



and it comes in several other beautiful colors that would look great on me:



but i'm not sure what to do about my most recent ethical quandry about target. like, most of us have pretended that target is better than walmart because they are like 20% less soulsucking, community-destroying, and unethical, plus they have cuter stuff. it's cool, i'm not perfect, this is an inconsistency on my part and i probably should do more than half-heartedly acknowledge it. recently, though, the store donated $150,000 to a political candidate who is homophobic and aggressively supports homophobic legislation, as well being affiliated with a band who supports the violent extermination of gay people (and um, see above for my feelings about violent exterminations of people).



here's the rub, though: target is one of two clothing stores that sell clothes in my size. there are a handful more that sell plus size clothing, but most are $30-$100 a piece, whereas most clothing at target (and the other store, old navy) is below $30. they also have reasonably cute clothing, an extreme rarity for plus size women, who very rarely get the opportunity to feel comfortable and attractive and cute in clothing, with target's clothing being slightly more well-made (presumably because their child workforce is more disciplined? i hate life). but, that brings me to another point- why is it important for me to look or dress cute? why do i care about that? i know why i SHOULDN'T, so why do i?

anyway, i don't know what i'm getting at here. if i look at this like cute dresses vs. being an ally for my fellow human beings, the choice is easy. if i bring in a bunch of other complicated stuff about being fat/plus size clothing/socialization/consumption, it seems slightly more complicated. i guess my conclusion for now is that you should throw red paint on me if i end up buying those dresses, but i'm going to try not to.

let us go then, you and i

blehhhh stressed ! last night i had class, which was okay- the discussion in history was infuriating at times because one dude, who is like... some 20 year old undergrad, is convinced that the woman who wrote the chapter we had to read was totally wrong about what she wrote even though it's something he never researched (it was about political roles and actions of women post-constitution when they didn't have the right to vote or run for office). he was like, "no, women didn't do ANYTHING, the author is WRONG, women didn't do ANYTHING." and he harped on it for the whole class.


to be honest, this is exactly what i visualized when i searched for "wind bag"

then i had german, which was okay despite missing a class- i had to look at my notes a lot. and speaking of that, the covers fell off of both of my notebooks. despite being messy and apathetic about most stuff, i really hate when my school supplies get messed up. it's like the lamest control issue of all time- i don't like having pens that are low on ink, unsharpened pencils, crinkly papers, etc. i have three boxes of crayons that have never been used because i can't figure out how to use 96 colors evenly.



by the way, the crayon thing isn't part of my stupid peewee herman adult child thing, but part of my lifelong interest in having lots of little things in different colors.

normally i'd be able to relax a little bit right now, but i have a big project to finish for work today which i'm pretty sure i won't be able to get done, and after work i have a german interview. i'm pretty nervous- i'm having trouble with some of the articles. learning another language has taught me a lot about what i DON'T know about english- like, when he talks about using stuff in the dative/nominative/accusative/etc. i actually have no fucking clue what that means and just guess. i should probably look it up. whatever, i'm a product of the florida public school system !



after my german interview, i may go see mouse's band in fishtown, depending on whether or not he wants to give me a ride (it's easy to get to on the el, but taking the el at night alone makes me nervous because i've been followed/jerked off at). i should actually stay home and do homework but i like hanging out with mouse and i haven't seen the rest of the dangerbirds in awhile ! on saturday, mouse, nate, and i are possibly going to watch 'a midsummer night's dream' in clark park and eat food? and i'm not sure what i said i'd do on sunday, but i haveeeee to do my history reading.

oh yeah. my application for school won't be processed til they have my summer grades, and my semester doesn't end til 08/13. boooooooooooooooooooooo.

today's founding father is benjamin rush, notable philadelphian and doctor who is sort of like the andrea zuckerman of founding fathers. he was super smart and accomplished but his role in history is like, a lame background character who appears to move other character's development along.



he is best known for encouraging john adams and thomas jefferson to reconcile their bitter fued. totally more important than pioneering in mental health and the study of addiction, his bold commitment to abolition, founding dickinson college, representing pennsylvania at the continental congress, and inventing dr. rush's bilious pills (mostly mercury, but they were a wonder for the humors !)- jefferson and adams NEVER would've gotten back together if it wasn't for benjamin rush !

to-do list for the weekend
- german interview
- german blog essay
- german voice postings
- history essay
- history reading
- clean bedroom
- read m is for magic
- do the work i've been slacking off on from work

p.s. my humors are pretty bilious today
p.p.s. brooke is coming to visit NEXT MONTH !!!!

come with me if you want to live

okay i have to make this a quick one because i have both work work and school work to do today !

yesterday i skipped my german class ! this is the first time of the summer session i've skipped a class, and probably will be the only class i skip. i had a good excuse though- jess silk was here !!!!!!!!!!! she and christina are going on vacation together, so she came down so they could get a rental car. i was so happy to see her, she's the best/cutest/funniest. plus i like having a non-judgmental third party to observe how weird christina and i are. pizza was also excited and being super hammy



we mostly talked about feminism and painted our nails? i painted my fingernails a dark purple and my toenails a dark green, once again proving that i'm fixated on the incredible hulk.



after awhile i retired to my room to do my german homework. we had to watch a video for like... one of the stupidest songs i've ever heard? and answer questions about it (and record ourselves speaking them) and about the singer of the song, herbert groenemeyer. the song is like, "MEN ARE VERY STRONG, MEN CRY SECRETLY, MEN START WARS, POOR MEN" basically. it also doesn't seem to have a real melody or chorus or anything?



school seems to be going prettyyyyyy well. i actually finished my application for fall as of this morning, and i'm going to be really embarrassed and bummed if i don't get in, so if i suddenly stop talking about school in 3 weeks it's because i didn't get in and i'm miserable and embarrassed and don't want to talk about it everrrrrrr.

what else? i got this dress from target online (i heard about this immediately after. great ! i basically have two stores i can shop at and one is like 100% child slave labor and the other funnels money to intolerant racist and homophobic bigots !) and i'm hoping it works out- they have it in a few other colors and it looks like a perfect summer/fall dress and also it has pockets.


in a color i call "hulk shorts purple"

last night i made a commitment to learn a few facts about each of the founding fathers, so i'm going to share that with you now ! i started with the signers of the declaration of independence and i will share with you some facts about the dudes with the funniest names.



1) button gwinnett - this dude always stuck out to me cause he's the first name on the declaration of independence. he was a representative of georgia. his signature is the most valuable american signature (rated worldwide in value comparable to SHAKESPEARE). he was killed in a duel (which he initiated) by lachlan mcintosh in 1777. alas, poor button



2) william whipple - representative of new hampshire. he crossed the delaware with george washington, and his slave PRINCE WHIPPLE may appear in the famous "washington crossing the delaware" painting. he died while FAINTING FROM A HORSE !!!



3) caesar rodney - representative from delaware, appears on the delaware state quarter ! revolutionary war guy who dramatically rode his horse 80 miles in a thunderstorm to break a tie in the vote for independence.



4) robert treat paine - representative of massachusetts. it would be so fucking funny if he was a doctor but he was a lawyer. his family were the principal founders of... newark, new jersey. zzzz.



5) william williams - i'll never get over this type of name ! he was a representative of connecticut. only thing of note is that he showed up late and didn't get to vote on the declaration of independence, but he signed it anyway !



stay tuned next week for a list of the hunkiest founding fathers ! powder your wigs !

i gotta go do work now.

p.s. george washington is cool
p.p.s. i watched a show about terror birds with ken the other night where the terror birds kept smashing honeydew melons and now all i want on earth is honeydew melon, but i don't like it. and i feel guilty because i think dr. bunsen honeydew is made of it.