tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88854143404078123692024-03-14T03:57:00.205-04:00WhimsicALItyLight! Free! Happy!dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-82615415836531053622010-03-09T13:05:00.002-05:002010-03-09T13:14:58.092-05:00Haven't Been Here In AwhileI graduated in December. I moved back home. I got a job. Four days a week 24/7 I live in a boys' house in Detroit. A scholarship, residential program. Everything is very different from a year ago when I was updating this blog semi-regularly.<br /><br />However, the themes are the same, and my life, on the inside, is still the same. My grandpa is very sick. My dad doesn't have a job. My mom is so worried that she get headaches from the stress; she can't seem to function without thinking of her worries. It makes me sick. But I am lucky. The boys that I work with are here because of "environmental factors". Maybe one of their parents died, left, or doesn't have enough money to take care of them. Maybe their neighborhoods aren't the best. The program believes that to be successful, they should live in a program <span style="font-style:italic;"></span>I<span style="font-style:italic;"></span> help run. Haha. Me? I can't even help my own family! <br /><br />It is funny. I am not nearly as sensitive to the boys' criticism as I thought I would be. It hurts when you can hear teenagers whispering about you through closed doors. But I don't mind. My siblings and I fight all the time. Its not really that different.<br /><br />Nothing is that different. Still, I'm worried.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-7493254699889772922009-07-05T14:27:00.004-04:002009-07-05T14:58:28.274-04:00Unstructured Ragehttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/fashion/05summer.html<br /><br />All I can say:<br /><br />BULLSHIT.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-1427555658664812862009-04-08T20:04:00.003-04:002009-04-08T20:20:13.549-04:00LuckI'm thinking there needs to be a new class at the University of Michigan. This class will be called Luck 340: the way the world works. <br /><br />I'm very tired of learning about how society is structured to oppress people, or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, how we need to Get A Good Job so that we can Make Lots of $$ and Have A Good Life. I have an intense need right now to duct tape everyone's mouths, tie their hands behind their backs, throw 'em in my jimmy, and take 'em to my family. There, I'd show them the truth.<br /><br />Look, here's my grandparents. Society was not structured to oppress them. They are white. They are middle/working class. They are Americans. And yet, two sons dead. My grandma suffered a heart attack, breast/skin cancer, and a stroke, because of their deaths. My grandpa was just diagnosed with ALS. <br /><br />Then I'd tie these twerps back up and take 'em to my parents' house.<br /><br />Look, here's my dad. He was poor, but he Got A Good Job, Made Lots of $$, and Has A Good Life. His son has cystic fibrosis. Money can not cure cystic fibrosis. Nothing can cure cystic fibrosis.<br /><br />Luck.<br /><br />There would be a second course. It would be called Luck 490: livin' and likin' it. It wouldn't be that hard. I wouldn't tie people up and haul them places, we'd just laugh and drink some rum and coke. We'd garden with my grandparents and build furniture with my dad. We'd go on long walks with my mom and push ourselves farther than we needed to go. And we'd take a lot of advice from my boyfriend, and skip a lot of these classes to take a much-needed rest, or drive around town with the windows rolled down. <br /><br />And if we got a ticket, we'd just blame it on luck.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-64436689364298806542009-03-30T22:13:00.000-04:002009-03-30T22:15:00.237-04:00This, as usual, probably only applies to meThe quiet moment when light hits his face and you can turn into yourself, form yourself through that light and suddenly your laughing, in a room, at a party, and you understand the power in your head thrown back, laughing, not only because you look so childlike and sweet, but because you have spoken, and others are speaking with you. That is all there is to life. There has to be a connection between all these thoughts. I can’t just move on without a garden, a poem, or a well-intentioned smile. I don’t know what drives other people, but I had momentarily forgot this about myself.<br /><br />But you can drive anywhere and you can follow directions and end up in places you’ve never been before and there is a success to that. And that is beautiful. But there are so many ties to that one thing, and you can never be happy if you are proud simply to move through the road. You have to put bounds to your thoughts and you have to see the world through beams of light because that is what is beautiful and you want to acknowledge that. You want life to have power, to have meaning, and without that inspiration, you feel like you are driving yourself into a wall of nothing. Grandparents dying. Friends leaving. No promise of any future. But when you pass a cornfield on your drive, and suddenly the morning shifts and it is no longer damp blue, but the orange glow of new morning, you know that everything is settling into place...the dust in the ground beneath the corn, your face peering into the future of the longer road. It is important, I think.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-51421142357860942562009-03-04T20:35:00.003-05:002009-03-04T20:47:11.967-05:00Social CapitalAt the moment I am supposed to be reading about whether or not social historians should include social capital in their eternal analyzing of history or if they should just simply wait for the fad to pass. I haven't gotten to the answer yet, and all I can think about is the new cash register at work.<br /><br />Its very strange. I've dreamt about this cash register repeatedly. First, I dreamt that we were getting a new one, before I even knew that it was coming. Then, as I was gone for spring break, and they were installing the new cash register, I constantly had dreams that I messed up on it, that everything was amiss because the buttons were in the wrong place.<br /><br />And they are. They are also ON THE SCREEN! You have to "sign in" to the cash register by a finger scan. Its crazy. I doubt many people want to steal Mia Za's money, but for some reason the register will not let me operate it unless I give it the finger. Because, of course, every time I used my pointer finger it replied with "access denied". Apparently, my pointer fingerprint is unreadable. Though, I'm secretly glad I get to flip it off every time I sign in to work.<br /><br />But its bizarre. Social capital relates to the assets we have by joining social organizations, the types of advantages we get by being associated with different groups. Everyone was depressed today at work, when I tried to smile at them, the corners of their lips lifted in a droopy, halfhearted way. I was sad too. And it was sunny and warm out! It was beautiful, one of the most clear days we've had all winter. <br /><br />I think our time is up. As a group, we've run out of energy. Our jokes are turning into complaints; our suggestions for each other are wearing at our shoulders and grinding against our skulls. Its too much. There have been too many changes and the benefits we used to enjoy are dwindling fast.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-36140075083778701712009-03-01T17:35:00.003-05:002009-03-01T17:36:55.433-05:00Please Excuse My Last PostIt comes off as a tiny bit snobbish. What I mean to say, simply, is that I am finally closer to "getting it", the way my mom has been my entire life. I am glad.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-43583235384374622892009-02-28T21:02:00.001-05:002009-02-28T21:02:27.476-05:00Same Thoughts I'm Usually ThinkingIts very comforting, this silence. I don’t know what I am trying to prove. In becoming my mother, I have pretty much destroyed all shreds of intelligence I have left. And its not like she isn’t smart. Because of course! of course! I know she knows things--she can feel a person’s true intentions from a mile away--but it is the grammar behind the thing that has really got me.<br /><br />And the problem is that I always prided myself on my grammar and my four hundred dollar words and I can see the sparks of this literarymind fly off of my mom’s blond head and so I guess mine, though its brown and not nearly as joyous, is also sparking off big words and the correct grammar on days when the hatchet decides to strike. Not usually. Usually I can feel my cold feet sunk in the colder mud and I’m saying words I know don’t exist. But I like ‘em. I like the way they feel against my tongue and through my teeth chattering--because its cold, y’know? And I have to say something. Might as well say what’s easiest.<br /><br />Its strange, though. I can feel the division. Some people know me as this girl I guess we all used to be. (Me, my mother, my grandmother.) Correct spelling, the brain churning in all the right spots. My siblings always made fun of me for reading too much. Now the new people see me in a different light and it doesn’t match up, parts of me are shining through two different stained glass windows. I don’t know. <br /><br />I feel more honest now.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-6419265957627380022009-02-08T21:14:00.002-05:002009-02-08T21:21:17.164-05:00My AmbitionYou can have a warm garden with a light kitchen and three apples resting in the fruit bowl<br />if that is what you want<br />water dripping from the faucet <br />and so many people have this life<br />want this life<br />need this life<br />It seems almost mundane in its universality.<br />And yet,<br />I want to drink coffee in the golden afternoon and laugh and laugh and laugh.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-91805370823084828282009-01-30T15:59:00.001-05:002009-01-30T15:59:24.410-05:00StrangersI’ve been thinking a lot about strangers. About walking into a dark room, three strangers sprawled out on a couch. Your friend introduces you. You might never see them again. Here they are, these strangers, and that moment is perfection. You’re wearing a sweater. The girl on the right is wearing a similar sweater. You are similar. Her grey hair falls across her grainy cheek. You don’t know much else. The boy is sleepy. He yawns. <br />Strangers are so different than the rest of us. You can never enter their world. When you press ‘sandwich’ on the cash register, and the woman--Tina--on the other side of the counter smiles, all you know about her is that she looks like the type of woman that will find the exact change--$5.29--so you don’t bother with getting a penny, two quarters and two dimes out of the cash register. She leaves to fill her water cup. <br />I like dim lights and sweaters. I was warm once, inside the home of my first boyfriend’s grandma. It was December and her Christmas tree lights were the same as my great-grandma’s. I didn’t know his grandmother. I couldn’t talk about knitting and that was everything to her. She wasn’t very good at it and the scarves she made were ugly. Yet here we were--and she was still a stranger to me--and all I could feel was the same homesickness I felt at my great-grandmother’s. My great-grandmother lived on a lake and her house felt green and moldy and old. I was young and I thought, “We go here every year before Christmas” because that was what all the adults were saying but I didn’t remember much besides sliding across the lake in my new black shoes. My cousin had ice skates.<br />Are we born into a world of strangers? We can’t know but we can feel. I was born into a world of bright light and warmth. I was jaundice and they kept me under a bright light to take the yellow out of my skin. My favorite color is yellow. I lived with my grandparents and my mother and father. My father snuck beers within the shelving of his headboard. My mother cried because she I was jaundice and she laughed because I was her baby. My grandparents’ house still feels like home. They were never strangers. I grew through their home to the homesickness I feel today. <br />I like to create new strangers. I like to feel myself new to the world bright and blinding like sun on snow. I like old strangers. I like the familiarity of Tina as she enters Za’s to buy her sandwich and sit in the corner chewing methodically. She doesn’t know my name but she smiles at me when I ring her up. I like finding myself through the glimmer of strangers’ Christmas tree lights and warm sweaters. And I like that the dim light and warmth of others’ comforters reminds me of the perfection of my own dim light and warm comforter.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-22588151619246936992009-01-20T15:53:00.003-05:002009-01-20T16:07:55.904-05:00To be alive, TodayI'm so happy to be alive today. I was so tired this morning, rising, early, for class. My bed was so warm, my boyfriend was still asleep, snug, I did not want to shake myself, cold, from my covers and arrive tired into the dim, cold morning, alone. January 20, 2009. I had to get up today.<br /><br />It was still cold when I walked the bright, clean path between my morning class and work. I shivered when I stepped inside Za's. My glasses did not fog up with the warmth of the restaurant as they usually did, the restaurant was almost as cold as outside. My manager was worried today, not that many customers were showing up. He couldn't understand why. I knew why. Who would come to eat chicken alfredo and greek salad when they could be watching Obama's speech? When they could see our president stand in front of a flushed, earnest crowd, eagerly anticipating the words of a new era?<br /><br />And so with little food to cook, I had to clean. I thought "this is a historic day" as I scrubbed rotted banana bits off the floor behind the smoothie freezer. I thought "this is a historic day" as I wiped clean the pipes of the front sink. I thought "this is a historic day" as I swept the basement of months' worth of dirt and lint and grime. <br /><br />I just watched Obama's inaugural speech. Not live, by myself, cold, in my bed. I am so happy, to be alive, today, to have froze this morning on my way to class, to have warmed my stiff hands on a hot rag in the back of an Italian restaurant, to have gone through the mediocre motions of my mediocre life and known that the world was turning in an inspirational way, and that all around me, others were also happy.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-6419502148566546272008-12-21T20:19:00.003-05:002008-12-21T20:30:53.176-05:00CRAZYI haven't been this hormonal in a long time. Last night, it started.... <br /><br />My mom made my siblings and I popcorn for dinner. I love popcorn and, like the crazy girl I am, hid it so that I could control when my siblings ate some. They obliged. However, soon enough, my dad ambled into the kitchen, reached onto the counter and grabbed the largest bowl of popcorn. <br /><br />"You better not eat all of that," I warned him. I tried to be normal, to control the edge in my voice, but inside I was raging. My popcorn! MY POPCORN!<br /><br />He went into the TV room and proceeded to eat HALF THE BOWL. I could not control myself when I walked in ten minutes later, his greedy fingers scooping the delicious kernels into his mouth, his eyes trained to the television screen, not even visually enjoying the buttery goodness. "You can't take that popcorn!" I cried. "It's for our dinner!" <br /><br />My dad threw the bowl down and stalked off. I ran upstairs and cried until my parents left for their date. <br /><br />Eventually, I came back downstairs and my siblings and I took our full bowls of popcorn (my mom had made us some more) and watched some movies. First, we watched The Lion King. I could not understand how I ever handled The Lion King before. Its devastating! I couldn't stop crying. We put in Rudolph, instead. Also, devastating. He's a misfit! I couldn't handle it. I left after twenty minutes and went to read Chloe's book 21 Proms. I cried and cried. <br /><br />MY LIFE IS OVER. MY LIFE IS JUST LIKE THESE PROMS. ALL OF MY RELATIONSHIPS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME AS THESE. I tried to quiet myself down by contemplating how old and mature I am. Twenty. I'm twenty! I am mature! I am completely in control of myself!<br /><br />To say the least, today didn't go very well. <br /><br />And, unfortunately, my mom is about to make popcorn again...dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-64430974791106924422008-12-10T22:01:00.002-05:002008-12-10T22:22:56.731-05:00SleepyOur class went twenty minutes over today. I wandered down the ice-covered sidewalk afterward and my head was boiling. Through a little yellow window I saw the inside of a little yellow house--the molding, the family portraits, the bookshelves. I love yellow houses. <br /><br />Throughout my entire childhood I hated brick houses, even though my father would tell me that WE had a brick house so that if the grass burned our house wouldn't burn too. <br /><br />When my parents divorced, my mom and us kids moved to a little yellow house. It felt safe.<br /><br />When my mom remarried, we moved to a brick house. Life was exciting. I was living in Detroit. My family was expanding. I changed my mind. I would like brick houses! Maybe someday I would even live in a brick house!<br /><br />But now, eight years later, I can't do it. I don't like brick houses. I love my family, of course. (This isn't some sort of strange symbolism.) But I don't like brick houses, I like little yellow houses.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-54539097204765190602008-12-01T14:53:00.004-05:002008-12-01T14:59:49.367-05:00I miss my family; I want to be a teenager againIt started in the fall. Fall isn't very long. Spring lasts longer. I can take spring and it can tease me and whip me and leave me breathless but fall always catches me off guard. It punches me in the gut with vibrant colors and cold wind. Then, its winter and we are no longer standing by a river shivering into our sweaters but we are freezing in blankets and no one wants to leave the fire.<br /><br />The good thing about winter is that it is a long romance. Night intensifies all feeling and winter--snow against sky, eyes sparkling with champagne--is perpetual night. I can stand with the snow falling into my messy hair and my lips bitten and my cheeks flushed and you will kiss me. I can stand straight under a mistletoe with a Christmas sweater and polished fingernails and you will kiss me. I can run breathless up a snowbank and slip over a patch of ice--spilling red hat, red gloves into the snow--and you will, inevitably, kiss me.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-45231658841082234082008-11-13T17:37:00.004-05:002008-11-13T17:43:20.589-05:00But at least I will be working soonEarlier today I was in work. I was hungry. It was two pm and I hadn't eaten since ten o'clock the night before. I was straining pickles from a ginormous (that's a word?!) bucket into a smaller container. The bucket was full of pickle juice. Andy said to me, "Would you drink a cup of that pickle juice?"<br /><br />I said, "Of course."<br /><br />I kept straining the pickles and he laughed at me.<br /><br />My manager came in. I asked him what I should do with the leftover pickle juice.<br /><br />"Just drink it," he said. He was joking. I did not realize this.<br /><br />When he realized I didn't realize this, he filled a smoothie cup of pickle juice. "Here you go."<br /><br />I took a swig. Man! I was hungry! Man! Pickle juice is salty and delicious. I drank the whole cup in the next half hour. <br /><br />I went home and ate some leftover tortellini from work.<br /><br />NOW I AM DYING. Who would have thought pickle juice would make me so INCREDIBLY SICK?!?! YAY I GET TO GO BACK INTO WORK AND MOP AND THROW UP THE LOVELY PICKLE JUICE.<br /><br />I HATE PICKLES.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-10147477991991429702008-11-08T09:48:00.003-05:002008-11-08T09:51:38.532-05:00Quoting the same man, againAnd we all thought it was Emma obsessed with Milan Kundera.<br /><br />“O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you’ve brought breakfast in bed you’ll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.” -Milan Kundera<br /><br />This is particularly relevant to me because I am in my "dangerous first days" with Drew. I have to watch myself now. And I am. Almost neurotically. Also, I am reading a book for my Marriages and Familes class entitled <span style="font-style:italic;">False Love blahblahblah illusions about love are bad.</span> Now, you can sort of understand the status of my mind right now.<br /><br />INSANE.<br /><br />Why in the world would I combine dangerous first days with a book called <span style="font-style:italic;">False Love</span>? Who thinks this is a good idea? Not me. Not Milan. Not even Katz, probably.<br /><br />And yet, here I am, assuming that every story in that book applies to me, that every thing I say is Significant and Vital.<br /><br /><br />ALSO, the sort of "History in the Making" feeling that is evident throughout the streets of Ann Arbor, and probably the rest of the US, is not helping me go through life in a very normal way.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-79488063976011973502008-10-29T20:37:00.002-04:002008-10-29T20:47:50.336-04:00Getting my MRSSo we all know that I am taking a course entitled Marriages and Families. Little did I realize, though, that this class is actually trying to gear me toward life as a wife and mother. Who would have thought? I was pretty convinced I was getting a feminist education. I mean, I'm reading about the self-esteem of middle school girls. What could get more feminist than that?<br /><br />I guess Marriages and Families simply wants to balance out the feminist bias inherent in social science classes at the University of Michigan. A noble cause, I guess. For my homework assignment this week, I was asked to look over www.thenest.com. Now, I am pretty much obsessed with ridiculous websites, so I was happy, as I memorized the correct protocol in making my bedroom comfier, and how to get pregnant the first time. I even scrolled through the dining section, and read about Hosting Your First Holiday Dinner.<br /><br />Apparently, newlyweds are insane.<br /><br />6. Start a tradition.<br />After the meal it’s time to get everyone away from the table and to the family room or the backyard:<br /><br /> * If weather permits, get outside and play a game for all ages like Wiffle ball, soccer or Twister. Keep levels of sportsmanship high. So your niece cheats? She’s five.<br /> * Back indoors work on a family puzzle. Buy one with a fun image and lots of little piece so everyone can start on a different section or break into groups and play cards (Go Fish, War, Hearts).<br /> * Gear up for dessert with a custom-made hot cocoa assembly line (kind of like make your own sundae). Provide fun flavorings like cinnamon sticks, mini marshmallows, Hershey’s Kisses, mint candies, whipped cream and colored sugars.<br /> * Get artful and make thumbprint art of a snowman or reindeer. Buy white card stock and rubber-stamp ink pads so guests can put their finger on the project (ha!). Colored pencils or felt tipped pens can flesh out the designs. Silver or gold pens would be elegant for the holidays.<br /> * Dare we say it? Ok, we will: charades! Ask everyone to put an idea in the hat and start miming.<br /><br /><br />Do most families do this? When I am 26 and hosting my first holiday dinner, am I going to have to let my niece cheat? Make crafts with my relatives? Work on a PUZZLE?!<br /><br />I guess I'm glad this is all theoretical. I'll bring this up in class tomorrow, maybe they'll help me reason this out.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-16120257338628837082008-10-14T19:17:00.003-04:002008-10-14T19:21:20.519-04:00Early MorningYou are so tired in the early autumn morning, but you can not stop shaking. You have felt this before, in other autumns, with other boys, but it is so complete--that moment in which there is nothing but chills shaking your body and the warmth surrounding them. Eventually, as always, it stops and you fall back asleep. It is nothing, as always, but it always feels so significant at that moment, when you can not stop shivering and he warms you.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-33004634949147205562008-10-12T19:33:00.002-04:002008-10-12T19:40:55.695-04:00ProcrastinatingI have gotten so bad that I am resorting to updating this blog. I know, I know, it's crazy! I have a test--haha, let me rephrase that--an exam! tomorrow on the social development of children and a response paper--well, rather, response paragraphs--on both Weber and Durkheim (in their entirety, clearly), but alas! I am updating this blog. I suppose I also have to read some articles on Marriages and Families, but c'mon world, when do I read about Marriages and Families? I obviously know everything there is to know about that.<br /><br />I am at an interesting point in my life right now, where my old frame of mind is being beaten against a fence, and I am left with my original dirt-level thought processes and you'd think then at that point, where I have to resort to the fundamentals of my life, that I'd be much more studious, but, of course, this is not the case. I do not even think I'm resorting to the fundamentals of my life, however, I think I am taking my ground values given to me from my family and flying through them into the clouds, while the fence-beating part of me cries, stuck in the jagged wire. <br /><br />This is incredibly abstract and clouded. Let us just say, I am no longer in a very long relationship. I have completely moved on in an astonishingly short amount of time and now I can not get any work done. Good. Okay. My life is so much more easily summarized when I'm not crazy about it.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-76857412947988949712008-10-01T00:48:00.003-04:002008-10-01T00:52:56.848-04:00Me in a window<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_t-njIe28sZY/SOMCFrfomlI/AAAAAAAAACg/S1XVArmIkrE/s1600-h/n2255490_43441694_5550.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_t-njIe28sZY/SOMCFrfomlI/AAAAAAAAACg/S1XVArmIkrE/s320/n2255490_43441694_5550.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252043887042140754" /></a><br />My dear, dear mother told me to post a picture of myself. This is, of course, the cop out way in which I can make a new blog post so hooray! picture of myself time!<br /><br />I am stealing this picture from my friend/roommate Whitney's facebook, though my friend/roommate Emma took it. Yes! complications! Not really, though. Emma is also, amazingly!, in this picture, so be on the lookout for that.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-15726112510088302512008-09-19T18:34:00.004-04:002008-09-19T19:05:41.677-04:00DirtMy pores exude Italian food. In my classes, the other students sniff the air and ask aloud why it smells like food. They wonder who was cooking earlier. I don't say anything. When I come home at night, I look down at my arms. There are sticky dressing stains inching up my skin, and my fingernails are dirty from the papers I've held and the food that stuck the dirt there. I am so tired when I get home, I fear my words don't come out of my mouth in the right chunks; I fear they are soupy and unintelligible. But I like all of this. I feel content when I fall asleep at night.<br /><br />When I am not working, I sit in class and try not to fall asleep. I feel above most of what they are saying because I've held these thoughts before, I know distinctly the language others are just learning. I want to be eager, but I also want to be challenged. My mind takes these concepts and runs with them, so fast that sometimes my conscious can not keep up. Other times, I talk to community organizers on the phone. We are registering voters in Detroit on Sunday, we say. How can we get more volunteers? we ask. How can we understand the situation more objectively? we ask. Who knows, I think. And sometimes, when I am most tired, I think, who cares?<br /><br />I like the dirt under my fingernails. My head races with abstraction on most days and I need an outlet to quiet it. My manager looked at me, befuddled, when I told him I'd take another shift. "Are you sure, Ali? You're not going to get overwhelmed?" <br /><br />Little does he know, I'd be overwhelmed without it.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-2805430301860663802008-09-14T15:20:00.004-04:002008-09-14T15:33:50.286-04:00Parenting TechniquesMy classes are pretty much geared to my life as a wife and mother. This is actually hilarious, now that I think about it, because I am IN COLLEGE. I am supposed to be thinking about Keynesian economics or something--astrophysics, I don't know. Today in my social development of children class I read about the history of parenting techniques. As a firm behavior of continuums and the middle road, I'm not necessarily into parenting techniques, but one--in particular--struck me as amazing.<br /><br />"Pat your fetus and say, 'Pat. I am patting you.'<br />Stroke your fetus and say, 'Stroke. I am stroking you.'<br />Gently squeeze your fetus and say, 'Squeeze. I am squeezing you.'"<br /><br />I can not conceptualize a situation in which the fetus understands these words; however, I am intrigued by feti (sp?) listening to their mothers' voice. I also think it would be pretty awesome to sit in a coffeeshop near a pregnant woman gently squeezing her fetus.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-72770857981084775842008-08-18T18:50:00.003-04:002008-08-18T18:55:29.167-04:00JobEmma told me yesterday of a waitress with lines from the book of Job tattooed on her arm. The woman must have gone through a lot of shit to tattoo those lines on her arm, Amy and Jessie think. Emma didn't know. I wonder. Doesn't everyone go through a lot of shit? I feel the weight of my family sitting squarely on my shoulders and I want to cry. It is unfair how much has happened in such a short time, how there was never any space for healing to occur. Alex tells me that life is full of this sadness, and we have to move on. He is right to some extent, but a balance is necessary. You can not move on without first dealing with your problems. I do not know what this entails, I just feel a line of bitterness settling in my veins and it hurts me.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-54096663748021007752008-08-03T17:27:00.003-04:002008-08-03T17:34:23.197-04:00Tempus fugat......not only when you are having fun!<br /><br />Simply SEMPER. <br /><br />That is all. I would like to make a long teary blog post about this, but I do not have the patience.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-1987621091101290492008-07-28T17:13:00.002-04:002008-07-28T17:15:16.900-04:00FavorsI really need to have more well-connected friends. I also need to save these well-connected friends' lives. That would be good. So, friends, I need you to do the following two things:<br /><br />1. Meet people.<br /><br />2. Almost die, near me.dandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8885414340407812369.post-35782642676651288232008-07-21T21:27:00.001-04:002008-07-21T21:31:32.085-04:00Be JealousCooper:<br /><br />The Krankenhaus still exists. Be jealous. Be very jealous. You probably don't have PINKEYE or CHILLS or OTHER AILMENTS. Yep, the Krankenhaus still exists.<br /><br />But you did miss the art fair which was pretty cool. The only way I benefited was that Whitney stole me some fancy drink and I got to make up all of the hours I missed when I I had pinkeye. None of the parties have topped yours. We should fix that so that you'll be really jealous. <br /><br />Hope you're getting krank in Chile as well,<br />whatever the nickname is that I have in this hausdandelioniahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08586179762995811714noreply@blogger.com1