the rose of kiev

my grandparents are in town this weekend, which meant I got my usual hour-long verbal scouring of my life and the panicky attack of tiny stressed out screams after the interogation was over and they unbelted me from the metal chair under the dim lightbulb. I swear, all they haven't done is given me a labatomy and search my brain manually. my mom is getting married in January to a guy she's only been dating for 5 months; my best friend Tabby is engaged to her boyfriend after dating him for 6 weeks with plans to move in with him after the new year. it's been a crazy couple of weeks discovering these fascinating tidbits from everyone, and reflecting on myself and my boyfriend ...could I do the same thing at this very second ? He and I have been dating a little over 4 months, and I can't even conceive marrying him or anything of that nature within the next year. It just doesn't compute - flatly. So why do my mother, who's literally f%#@ed up every romantic relations...

So the day started out in quite an interesting fashion, to say the least. Last night, we were up in Mt. Vernon at my dad's girlfriend's place, carving pumpkins all night. SO COOL. I actually got along with CeAnne's kids really well, what with all the flying pumpkin guts and baked pumpkin seeds my sister spilled. I wish I was more technologically savvy; I have some kick-butt pictures on my phone of all our pumpkins we slaved over. My dad and I, the most meticulous of the lot, spend two hours plus on our pumpkins. Okay, I had a pirate skull and the teeny-tiny teeth took up the second hour, so sue me - it was totally worth it. We get back late to our house because the drive is an easy hour, and then I find to my delight, after an hour of fiddling, how to copy my cd's onto my newly-room-acquainted desktop computer. Sum total of everything, I was up way too late, and still wanted to get up early and find out what classes I was going to need to register for the next day. But ...

upon reflection - in other words, lying in bed before falling asleep with random thoughts - I came across an odd revelation: my boyfriend and my cat are alot alike. now Henry is one of two cats my mother has at her house - he is soft, furry, and desperate to be given LOADS of attention. he gets locked in the cruel cold basement all day while my mother is at work so he won't ingest our lovable hamster and comes upstairs desperate for love. the funny thing is, he expects it by now: my brother is 10, my sister is 12, and he is their favorite toy. he gets coddled, tickled, rumpled, played with, squashed, squished, and hugged to death by at least one of them, if not both. and patiently he bears it, with a long-suffering look on his furry face. one day I came home from school before that little sibs (haha suckers! you have school till 3!!) and let him out of the basement, wandering back to the couch to read. I didn't touch him, cuddle him, pet him, nothing. then suddenly, he is on my...

there are days when I look at my blog and groan, thinking about the time it would take to sit down and write an entry, because I wouldn't write and post anything I didn't like or put myself into. and when I need an incentive to put something else up...I read the comments tagged onto the end of another long entry of mine, and remember there are people out there reading it and checking to see if I added something else. and the rush from that gets my creative juices going once more, remembering funny stories and thinking of the day's events, wondering if I can make it enjoyable for one of you guys to read. So, I've been assigned the task of cleaning my room. In other words, I pulled out my handy jackhammer and put on my trusty hard hat, just to be safe. I don't think you could understand - my room is a Teenage Junk Landfill. I wouldn't be surprised if I find something living under my dresser, once I finally work up the guts to reach my arm under there and I hope it...

so I went to a football game tonight and remembered why a part of me doesn't like fall. oh sure, my visual sense explodes with pleasure every time I walk outside, but every time I soak in the colors, my nervous system takes a shot. especially tonight when dear Autumn decided to freeze my butt off. literally. my thinly clad buttocks were on a frozen strip of metal for nearly three hours in The Middle of Nowhere (I kid you not, there is a cornfield right next door, which amused me muchly), otherwise known as Centerburg. My dad's girlfriend, CeAnne, lives up there, and the high school was having their homecoming game. Great fun, except for the fact that I was checking to make sure my extremities weren't turning black and falling off. I'm whining and it's not even that cold yet. wait for the whining to be posted in January, when there's no more holidays and it's just cold for no festive reason. oh, the euphoria then... anyways, at the concession stand, I got a b...

so I was in science class this morning and we're learning about, but really more laughing at, the 'modern ideas' that the medieval age came up with. and we, as sophisticated college students, scoffed at them and chuckled to ourselves and shook our intelligent little heads. the professor covered all sorts of things, from the Elixer of Life to the study of Alchemy that these ancient Greeks fervently believed could be found. he asked what age we would want to stay at - a lot of people said 23. he said 50, that way he could wear white shoes and drive a golf cart in Florida after retiring for the rest of forever. (that's a direct quote, too, white shoes and all) one of our professor's favorite things to do is ask the class who read this morning's paper and the news on it. even in the middle of writing on the board, the chalk will sometimes squeak to a stop and he'll turn around to tell us something interesting that happened lately. So right in the middle of writi...

me: "HA! Paper beats rock!" Dave: "Um...rock beats your thigh." me: "I still win." Dave: "Whatever."

between the two homes of my split family, I have four pets: one dog, two cats, and a black bear...hamster, actually. Honey, the big furry mutt, lives at dad's alone, and spends her free time in the yard crapping peeing and puking on the grass. and when she's inside? well, she does the exact same thing. and the color of our carpet? well, it used to be off-white...but now it's calico in spots. eww, gross, I know. more than once, my dad had threatened to toss her back into the pound inbetween specific phrases about the dog I really shouldn't repeat. another thing to do with animals is this: my mother, my sister, and myself, cannot stand spiders. we have serious major ridiculous arachnaphobia...or whatever and however you spell the fancy word for 'fear of spiders'...anyways. I can hold snakes, I can get dirty, and I get my hair greasy without any freak-out involved. But if there's a big fat wolf spider lurking in a corner of our basement waiting to spring on my ...

so I've had two run-ins with Katrina victims. the first happened at the beginning of September, when I was on vacation in North Carolina at Holden Beach with another 200 college-age kids down there for a week of fun. I didn't feel like swimming in the ocean one morning, so instead I walked up and down the beach for a good hour, enjoying a little quiet time by the ocean. Don't get me wrong, rambuncious crazy college guys and girls for a week on a beach is the most fun you'll ever have, but it was nice to get some time away from it so I could enjoy it more when I got back to it. Surprisingly, our intimidating numbers did not squelch the odd other vacationer or beach regular. so, during my beach stroll, I crossed paths with this guy (God forgive me, but I can't remember his name) and his dog. somehow, we got to talking. he asked where I was from, so I said from Ohio with a zillion other college kids; I asked him the same, and he said from New Orleans. I guess he rented...