enjoyments - a list:

and not because it's around thanksgiving, but because it's so much easier for me to make a list of things that piss me off or annoy me.

1. driving at night. even though the pleasure in the drive is in direct proportion to how good the music is i'm listening to, i'm lucky to have an ipod full of tunes which i adore - at least a week's worth of great music. okay, okay. at least four days of great music, but over a week's worth of stuff i'll listen to.

2. getting out of the shower, combing my hair and being done with it. it's notoriously true about me that everytime i go back to wichita to visit, i come back with my hair different. sometimes it's bleached. sometimes it's cut really short. sometimes it's permed or sometimes i have bangs. this time, i permed my hair straight (yes, you absolutely can do that) and had my mom cut it in a bob. the beautiful thing about it being permed straight is that i don't even have to blow-dry it or use a flat iron on it in the mornings if i don't feel like it and/or don't have time. the latter being the most likely.

3. reading books with friends simultaneously. i've wanted to try this several times, but either the timing was off, or i felt silly asking. chris and i were driving somewhere at some point when i was home (i'm SO DEFINITIVE!) and he asked me if i'd ever thought about doing that. in my head, i did this stupid little wiggle-dance of joy, because i'd been wanting to ask him to try it, but felt imposing. we read several chapters of perelandra by cs lewis and it was a great way to spend the time.

4. smokin' a hookah! my [young, underage] cousin brought his hookah over for thanksgiving, at my request. i had never smoked one before and didn't feel like paying an obscene amount of money to smoke at a bar if i was going to hate it. in reality, it was something i would do again and, in my opinion, much less harsh than cigars or cloves. and, the hookah itself was green, which helped. : )

a snippet of interesting conversation which occurred when the smoking of previously mentioned hookah was going on:
darlene [my grandfather's vindictive bitch of a replacement wife]: what is that?
stewart [underage cousin]: it's a hookah pipe. they smoke them in the middle east as part of rituals and just for relaxation. it's an ancient technique that's been around for a very long time.
darlene: oh. are you middle eastern?
stewart: well, no.
darlene: *smug bitch smile*
*beat*
me: but i am! surprise!

she went back into the house after that. smug bitch. i want to smack her in her smug, cheating bitch face. it's strange how much more i came to loathe her after my grandma passed away. it was no big secret that my grandfather and darlene were cheating on their mutual spouses with each other long before either of them were available. and yes, i know my grandpa is just as culpable as darlene for their infidelity, but it's so much easier to forgive him than her.

probably because he's not a pretentious, hateful bitch.

i hate t-shirts:

last night i fell asleep praying. for the first time in...well, far too long. and it felt natural, not forced. which was nice all on its own.

yesterday was full of interesting thoughts. hoommrate and i left the apartment [!] to go walking around down by the nelson-atkins [something we did SO MUCH MORE when we lived over by westport], and these walks usually end in a pile of new facebook-worthy quotes as well as creative inspiration for us in our various endeavors. one thing which came up in conversation several times was what happens to be the favorite quote of both of us from jane austen's mansfield park.
fanny so eloquently states this as a reply to her family's urging her to marry henry crawford, whom she does not trust and does not love. "i think it ought not to be set down as certain, that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself." i recall megan reading this exerpt in her oral interpretation final our senior year in undergrad. it made me smile then and it always makes me smile now.
one of the things i love most about walking around down there is that it reminds me every time how much i love kansas city and how much i am going to miss aspects of it when i move back to wichita. kansas city is large, spread out across a wide area and encompassing many suburbs and different districts. but in this large, sprawling city i've made myself a small community consisting of the people i see at school, know from undergrad or run into at work and other places. as much as i complain about seeing people from work in my regular life, it makes me feel at home in a place that seemed so empty when i first moved here.
there's a man who comes into the bank almost daily and spends far more time than necessary chatting - he offered to help me move furniture into my apartment, should i ever need a truck. straight up and with no strings attached. i love that i know the names of almost everyone that i see daily. that i can predict, almost down to the minute, when a certain customer is going to walk in and what he or she will say.
this job...this job. it's lucrative, easy and arguably helpful to people. but it's just a job. it's not something that i wake up every morning passionate about. it's not something i could spend my life doing and feel as if i've made a difference - even a small one. in several months when i quit this job and move somewhere else, i will miss the people i see every day terribly. but i can't help but feel pulled towards something that means more. something that is worth more. anyone is capable of doing the job i do daily. i want to find a place that not just anyone can fill.

and then find a master's program for philosophy which i could do online. that would rock, too.

and then, since i'm dreaming, i'd like to get married and have children and create a sustainable living and then have tons of friends and family surrounding me all the time while i continue to change the world and raise small people who will continue to change the world after i am long dead. you know...since i'm dreaming. : )

this is not a song:

the world is asleep and i am...not.


it's too late for contemplation without alcohol.

things i want to learn to do:

a list. probably a short one.

1. spin. and not records, like a dj - but honest-to-goodness spinning my own yarn and thread and stuff.

2. write basic coding for websites. i used to be fairly good at some things, but without using it i totally forgot.

3. read hebrew. and latin.

4. be an accomplished cook. i can bake fairly well, and make other (simple) things that are tasty, but i've yet to try something truly challenging.


days like today i should just come home and go to bed. instead i randomly burst into tears while affecting the action to try to manipulate my roommate, then listen to dashboard confessional at a too-loud-for-this-late-at-night volume while making sugar cookies. my life is a constant surprise.

jamie - work on your christmas presents. read gorgias. come up with a research paper proposal for cultural anthropology. eat healthier. start exercising.

things i lost:

...not in the fire.

1. any motivation to do schoolwork that requires thought. or effort. or really anything other than random internet research.
2. the battery charger for my camera batteries. this is way more important than schoolwork.
3. my passwords for everything. sometimes i hate saved data.

i've been working on a bag for my cousin for christmas...i hate the color on the photos, because it doesn't look like the lining i picked matches the colors of the yarn at all, but it really does.

i'm also super stealthily working on something for myself! okay, probably not in a stealthy manner at all...

the weather today was amazing - rainy and cold all day long. hoomrate and i cleaned the entire apartment (twice in some places), found blanche the one-eyed wonder sleeping in the cabinets under my sink and now i just have to do four chapters of reading and a family decent diagram in the next...11 hours. oh, and sleeping.

oh. and we put up the christmas tree today! last year it was really only up while we were able to see it for about two weeks. yes, it's like a charlie brown tree, but i don't care. i love it. and i want to wrap the presents i already have, and i need something to put them under.


in reality, i'm still a very small child. because i also cut out paper snowflakes and taped them to the sliding glass door. if it wasn't for the fact that they're about five feet off the ground, people might think we had a kindergarten child living here. though, i guaran-damn-tee you that the first time it snows and i have to walk around in it, they'll be coming down. it doesn't take much to jade me.

obama victory:

i. am so pleased. that obama won. i didn't have any overwhelming surge of emotion - there were no tears (although i think megan and i screamed and had an impromptu dance party around our apartment). okay, so that counts as emotion surging. megan and i had gotten up so early to vote that i couldn't stay awake for obama's speech, or even the declaration of him as president elect. i went and laid in bed and told megan to text me and tell me who took california and who won. i got up and watched the news for awhile after everything was projected, then went to sleep listening to the fireworks (and possible gunshots) in my neighborhood.
let's face it, i kind of live in the ghetto.
wednesday morning i could hardly believe it. i woke up at 6:30 and sat on the futon watching the news to make sure that nothing had changed overnight - that america hadn't changed changed it's mind or anything.

i've been more proud of my country in the past 24 hours than in the past 24 years altogether.
yay america!


thoughts:
if i quit smoking, would my inflamed taste buds stop being so painful? or, do i just need to quit chewing on it?
is it ever really going to be winter?


can i please,please,please have the motivation to at least do some of my homework? i don't mind failing one class to keep myself from being so busy i want to die, but i really like the work and everything in cultural anthropology. and i don't want to fail there.

i need to go get tested for mono. blah.

so:

though i dislike mixing religion and politics, i feel entirely justified in begging, "dear god in heaven, please please please let us wake tomorrow to change."

it's my blogiversary!

so, the 17th of this month will be my blog anniversary! go me! er, go blogger? whatever. anyway.

can i bitch about how ridiculous it is that it's the third-of-freaking-november and i have on short pants and a short sleeved shirt? i can? good. because it's ridiculous. i had like, four days of weather that required a scarf and jacket. last year on the 21st of november it was snowing. snowing! do you think it's going to be snowing this 21st of november? no. i doubt it. stupid kansas. or missouri. or whatever. [sidenote: it's really difficult to get used to bitching about missouri weather when it's the same as kansas weather and one has grown up in kansas. i'm trying to teach myself to say "midwest weather"] .

i. am. living. for thanksgiving break. hopefully my father will be home from italy by then. either way, we had to move our "christmas tattoos" tradition to "thanksgiving tattoos," as i won't be home at christmastime. if all three of us are together, then we'll be getting the thompson family motto [in english: while i breathe, i have hope"]. however, if my dad can't get back *grumbleboeinggrumble* then i'll have to come up with an alternative plan.

i've progressed to the point of buying yarn to save for later. seriously? seriously. yesterday my hoommrate and i were at joann's [my second time in as many days] and i was perusing their yarn selection - much better than their button selection, if you want my opinion - and i happened upon the colonial colors holiday cotton yarn! i spent $30. on yarn. with which i have nothing planned. $30 i really couldn't afford.

apparently i am feeling like posting a blog today in the likeness of stream of consciousness writing. none of this fits together, it's just crap. life crap.

i'm making myself a cowl like the one i made [secretly] for megan, but i need buttons for it. joann's let me down. and michael's selection sucked...probably due to their not selling material there. *sigh* i'll have to seek out a hobby lobby, i suppose.



gavin wants to live in a shipping container home. it's silly, but i kinda dig the idea, too. cheap, eco friendly and just as sturdy as a regular house...although somewhat like a trailer. [joking, gavin. trailers, like trash cans, are not something i want to live in]. i could grow stuff! and make stuff! and ... damn. i try to pretend like i don't want to be a crazy farmer's housewife. but then i think about it and realize that i just might.

november.

insert a huge longsuffering sigh here.

gah. i don't even have time to properly update.