My ass hurts

Last night i worked out. i worked all day, rode my bike to the rec center, and then worked out. Like i said, i did a circuit workout which includes stretching, some movement-weight exercises, and some cardio, doled out in 5 minute increments. at the end i did weights on my problem areas; my thighs, ass, and stomach. Then i rode my bike home. The good news is the shower i took right after the workout almost made the whole thing worth it. I don't know why but it was honestly almost enough of a reward for it all. I forgot to do the sauna, next time i guess. Anyway, the today my ass and thighs hurt so bad i can hardly stand up and sit down. I couldn't ride my bike to school today, and i ride all the time. I was gonna swim today, but i'm not even sure i'll make it tomorrow. Maybe i need to start a little slower. Right now i'm watching my fair brady. I think adrian is kinda cool actually. Nice mouth on her though. I'm getting my hair done tomorrow by logan, i'm really excited. I'll be parading it for yall tomorrow at the Jolly and then the Hut. See yall then!!

I'm so full of ideas.

ast night i spent a good part of the evening researching gardening. At the end of a session i had a page of notes including a plan for a box (4x8), some vegetable selections, and a timeline of how i will begin. I want to begin composting as well. I only have two things standing in my way: I want to get started soon so i have time to work with the soil before i plant in spring, and i cant make up my mind about the composting. Maybe I'll look into outsorcing that aspect. The box should only cost me about 30.00 to build and there is always soil on the free page of craig's list. I'll be using a very popular but relatively new method called the square foot method. I won't go into details but it apparently has revolutionized home gardening. I've already got a lot of my seeds although i need to invest in some more herbs and a few other veggies. I'm excited. I also joined a "gym". It's called the rec center at psu. It is amazing what i can do there. For 90 bucks i have a locker and towels (and clothing) for the whole school year. This also allows me access to the pool, circuit and weight rooms, all the courts, and even the sauna. I looked up circuit training online and wrote a pretty good plan for a workout i wanna try tomorrow after i get off work. I am really determined to finish getting in shape. The bike thing is a good start, but i'm only gonna be young a bit longer, why not maximize it. Any thoughts would be nice.

I am the eggman

I am the walrus. koo koo ka choo. What the hell does that mean anyway. I have always ascribed my own meaning to the term walrus in this context. It is sort of a mental picture, not so much a definition. Is it a walrus and carpenter reference? I apologize if i have not properly studied my beatles (or even read the lyrics). I am ashamed. So does anyone remember in Chasing amy where Banky draws the picture of the hundred dollar bill on the street and surrounds it with the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, the sweet sexy lipstic lesbian, and the man hating dyke? Well he asks ben affleck to figure out which one will get to the money first, and the answer of course is the man hating dyke. Why? because the other three are a figment of your fucking imagination!!! I am currently plagued with a debate about the figments vs. reality that i would like you to ponder with me (and it's not the one you think Lynn! its the other one.) How many of the ideals of personal evolution that we chase are really attainable, and how many are the proverbial easter bunny? Are we wrong for chasing them even if they are fictional? Are we chasing them for the wrong reasons? And is attainability really necessary for a decent dream? I know which i would like to believe, hell i invested the last several years of my life in dreaming the impossible dream (in various ways) due to an almost obsessive need to be a good example. If it were up to me i would have settled years ago. I'd still be a waitress, I'd have short hair, i would have never tried running and i would definitely still be getting around by bus (rather than my bike) I would be married to Jason (whom some of you had the distinct pleasure of meeting on Saturday, sorry sarah), and I would definitely not be a Junior in college with an associate degree on my way to a bachelors and possibly a masters. I don't think that would have been soooo bad, but i felt obligated to strive for more. Mostly it's because I was unsatisfied with that life, but not for the reasons you think. I think I would have gone crazy had i never proven to myself that i could do all these things, that i could be different. My mom had my brother at age 18, and she had me at age 28. I just turned 29. Another year and she had my sister, another year and she was divorced. I think the path i was on would have led me straight down the one already paved by my mother, which doesn't scare me so much. I'm kinda sorry that i'm not married yet, that i am not ready to start my career, and that it will be quite a while before i can have kids. What really scares me is the long run of that path, where my mother is now. don't get me wrong, she's a great lady but she is also an unfulfilled, unsatisfied drunk who get's up early, goes to bed early, and fills her days with dive bars and discount stores. She could have been so, so much more. She's a smart lady, hell the apple don't fall far from the tree, right? She could still go back to school, what else has she got to do, right? I tell her that all the time. Somehow i don't think it gets through. i will not end up like that. Mostly my pursuit of a loft career of the personally gratifying type is my defense against ending up like that. When my kids are grown, my husband is dead, divorced, or at the very least not hot for me anymore, i wanna be able to provide my own amusement. Otherwise i'll die of scirosis. No, the path i was on wouldn't have been a bad one, and the one i'm on now is pretty good, I think i'll keep it. All i've done so far is prove to myself i could do it. I'm not sure how much happier i am. Which brings me back to why i wrote this blog in the first place: why do we dream? I know why we dream, we dream because we have to. And no, attainability is not a requirement, sometimes its a deterrent. We never know which ones are attainable, and of course we aren't wrong for chasing those that aren't. And there is no wrong reason for dreaming. Except for one area of life. I don't know if it's just me, if it's just me and my friends, if it's just women, or if it's all terminally single people. I do know that a while ago it became wrong to dream. I don't know how, I don't know what happened, but i turned into a cynic. So did a lot of people i know, actually. It's not really fair if you ask me. If you dream that the bad boy, the one you are actually attracted to, is really a diamond in the rough, then you are a doormat. If you dream that the problem you are having with your new boyfriend is just the growing pains of two people who really like each other then you are delusional. If you dream that you might get another chance with the one that got away then you are obsessed. Why? what purpose does it serve? I don't think it has stopped anyone from dreaming, i think it has just driven us all indoors. We have turned into a group of closet dreamers, of people who hold out hope but don't dare tell our friends for fear of looking foolish. I can't be the sunny optimist, however. I fear that there really is some foundation to the icy heart syndrome. I guess the secret is to balance the optimism with cautiousness and realism. Of course that's the secret. But for my part i'm coming out of the closet. I have a dream, and it is a ridiculous one. I still think it's gonna come true and i'm not ashamed to admit it. I think i'm gonna get another chance at the one that got away (sorry, no one you guys know) and i'm not gonna screw it up this time. Won't you join me in the light?

Hangover

I really need to clean my house. the baby shower is sunday and i haven't been shopping yet. I need to make some sort of deli platter, which i could easily put together myself but i don't know if i'll have time. I'm going to work tomorrow at 2 so i don't think i'll have time to do anything tomorrow. Also, i'm afraid to go out tonight because i want to stay sober enough to work tomorrow without being hung. I made a new friend last night. nice guy. i knew him already through mutual friends but i had never talked to him before. I saw dan last night, whom i have not seen in an awful long time. Cocksucker! does he think he's to good for us? also hung out with the Djam, although he left early. Of course Schwabe was there too. mabe go out tonight. don't know.

dream a little dream

so sometimes i have these dreams that are real, honest to goodness, complete movies in my head that i watch start to finish and have fully developed stories. I just woke from one such dream. (note: some details have been embellished because i don't watch the whole movie, some parts i just "know") It's 1976 and my name is Katrina (just wait, the oddity of that fact gets better). It's the year i was born only i'm not myself. I am looking at pictures on a mantle of my family and my youth and I am not happy. I am married to my highschool sweetheart, who owns a furniture store and i have a few children. I also look at pictures of me on some sort of tv show where i am all made up and elated at the attention and i smile. Flash to 1963. It's three years before i turn 21 and three years before i got married. It's 6 years before the summer of love and 6 years before i start having children. I am at the audition for a national version of the show i had been on and i am supposed to sing something. I'm sure i am here because i am supposed to do better at the audition and change my destiny to one of fame and stardom. (djambel, you are there and i have no idea why. i don't usually dream about you, although i did hang out with you last night). 2 people before my audition they say that they are absolutely finished seeing people and everyone else should go home. I am furious. I storm out in a very loud voice and say "I missed school for this" (it is the 60's after all and i assume that was a bigger deal). As i am leaving i am aware that because of the hurricane a week before they were unable to hold auditions as long as intended and are in a crunch (the hurricane was katrina that we just had last week. i told you it was bizarre). Flash forward to a little while later: not much. I am having dinner with my parents. My father is grilling me about what i will do with my life. I am aware that i am a smart young lady with unusual potential, even for the 60's. I am also ware that the real me, me writing this now has messed up what was a decent chance at going to medical school. I tell him i think i might like to try to go to medical school. He says it the same time as i do and is silent for a minute. He says he thinks thats a great idea. The me in this story had this conversation with her father the first time around but she ends up married shortly after graduation and becomes a housewife (i'm not knocking homemaking, people). Flash forward to several years later, right before college graduation and i am in my parents kitchen having a conversation with my future husband (played by Jerry O'connel. I told you it was a fucking movie. Don't laugh, in another dream i was a man and my girlfriend was Wynona Ryder. I shit u not!) "Don't get so upset!, shouldn't you go to bed, tomorrow is your Med school interview". I am unmoved by this statement. I am aware that in the course of the last few years i have told him all about my time jump and can prove that it's real by things that i know about him. He apparently is telling me that he is not going to stay around and marry me but is in fact going to canada to avoid the draft. I tell him he doesn't get drafted anyway, he gets a college deferrment and then opens the store. "so you're telling me that because i told you what you're going to do, you're not going to do it? that's not really fair to me." i say. "it's just something i have to do Katrina. (this is the first time i am aware my name is katrina) You got to change your life, i need to change mine." My mother comes in the room and tells me to go to bed (apparently a 21 year old still gets bossed around by her parents in the 60's). She then goes and tells my sister (my real sister) to go to bed who is watching tv. She also tells Jerry to leave alone his "cousin" which is me. That part is a little weird, i know. Flash forward a few more years, probably '71 and i am a doctor, wearing a white jacket and roaming the hospital. Jerry O'connell shows up at the end of the hallway wearing his army dress uniform and carrying a suitcase. He drops the suitcase and we hug. I assume we live happily ever after. If anyone knows what this means i would appreciate an explanation. meanwhile i'll be picking it apart in my head.

My favorite things

I love to shower. there is nothing like the elation and relief that freshly washed body and hair and clean clothes can bring. It's almost like a suit of armor. I tell you, as long as my hair is stilll wet, which is a long time since i always put it up, I feel clean. And when i feel clean i feel powerful. Isn't that bizarre. Last night i was sitting around waiting to shower (my sister was in there) and i was just about reaching the end of my patience with my dirtiness. I had bathed the day before but had not washed my hair, and had sweat rather profusely while sleeping off my hangover. I felt gross. I felt sticky and itchy and phantom noseeums were attacking me. The relief was palpable. I am so fucking bored it's unreal. I drew for a couple hours yesterday, which made me feel very good. I have a shitton of art supplies but i have been kind of ignoring them because i was waiting until i could put up a studio in my garage. I felt last night was a good time to revisit my hobbies. I forgot how blissful and content i feel when i am really into a piece of work. I am not particularly gifted; i have no vision, no voice, nothing to say with my art. I am, however, an excellent visual mimic. Give me something to stare at and i will eventually produce a pretty accurate picture of it. If my limited art history serves me that is called realism. I did a self portrait for school (we had to) which i sware looks just like me. I also did this pair of jeans which i framed and gave to my mother. It was from a magazine ad, with the rest of the body cut out, just the jeans, but i thought it was cooool. One of the upsides to being artistic is i get away with giving my pieces to the parents for gifts when i am particularly broke. I don't know if they are being dutiful parents, but they always display them. No, they're not that kind of people. They wouldn't put them up if they sucked. Oh, heres a good story about my art. My parents are not paying for my education (although they have hinted at paying for grad school), but my dad does throw down cash here and there when i am broke, but i still don't think this entitles him to any say in my academic career (especially considering how limited his was). When i was at pcc i took a couple art classes, a total of 4, i think. Well he had the nerve to ask me "what do you need art classes for?" all indignant like i was just some dumb hippie wasting his money. Amber has many faults but they are none of them academic. It was a painting class that he was specifically referring to. I did a couple of pieces and most of them sucked. There was, however, this painting of a womans face that i copied from a page torn out of a magazine because i liked the way it was cropped. It is about 10 by 12 and hanging in my bathroom, if any of you have ever been to my house. It turned out quite well, and i'm fairly proud of it. I stayed the night at my parents house and put the painting on the table to show them in the morning. While i was still asleep and they were having their coffee I overheard my mom telling my dad "are you going to apologize to Amber for giving her shit about taking an art class?" after they saw the painting. He did apologize and now he asks me for new stuff all the time, which i oblige whenever i have hours to spare. I figured out the meaning of an expression last night which will pose no great mystery to you, gentle reader, because you will see it spelled, but keep in mind i had to puzzle it out in my head. The expression: "kneewalking drunk". I was really hungry yesterday. Normally i barely have room for two meals but i ate three times yesterday and was still starving by the time i went to bed. With no physical activity to speak of. Maybe I'm pregnant. No not really. ha ha just kidding. thats not funny. God i hope not. I want kids someday but i need to finish school before i will even be able to consider that or marriage. On that happy note my next door neighbor and one of my best friends both had babies over the weekend. Their last names are both Yoshihara, too. Mui coincidence. Well bye for now. kiddies

I am stupid

everyone knows that some things seem like a good idea when drunk but turn out not to be in the light of sobriety. An example would be my decision to let people draw on me for drinks. I brought the sharpie to the bar in order to draw a mustache on myself should i decide to. I ended up with my arms, stomach and back FULL of ink. The interestingart was knowing what it must feel like to have sleeves. I hope someone got a picture. The men are fucking coming out of the woodwork. Every guy i've dated in the last ten years has popped in on me in the last two weeks. A guy that i had the hots for earlier this year was at the bar last night and i decided to tell him my thoughts. He had a girlfriend then so i never acted but he was f-i-n-e fine. He said he always thought i was cute too. I probably could have made out with him. A girl I know offered to have sex with me. I wonder if she was serious. She knows who she is and is probably going to read this. Another girl kissed me. It was hot lesbian action for me last night. Unfortunately i prefer sausage to taco. I went to sleep at about 4 and woke up at 3:30. I'm still hung over. Another guy who i sort of had a thing with has decided to parade his new girlfriend in front of me. It hasn't been that long since we were last together. It's over for sure now. I think. Oh well, i like someone else anyway. Not just anyone, mind you, he happens to be the perfect guy. Perfect. Hot, funny, and great in the sack. I hope it works out. anyway, i'm going to go sleep off my hangover.

hmmm.

what to say? some times i feel obligated to blog because everyone else posts so often. Love stinks, i can say that. I am really anxious for Lynn to get back. I didn't realize how much time i spent with her. I had to party for an entire weekend without her. It was hard but i got through it. I did feel kind of naked without her, though, more exposed maybe. I drank entirely too much last night and ended up calling in sick to work. My punishment was staying home tonight. Fat lot of good it did, here it is 5 am and i'm still up, and probably will be for a couple more hours. I need to go back to school if for no other reason than to get a normal schedule again. I love being a nightowl, i have been ever since i was little, but i hate all the days i miss out on. I haven't woken up before 3 pm all week. Bleh. Sometimes it's so hard to find something on tv that holds my interest longer than a couple minutes, but tonight there was a 3 and 1/2 hour documentary on about Kevin Smith. It was really just footage of his college lecture tour, which was more of a q & a than a lecture. three hours later i didn't want it to end and then scoured the house for my copy of Dogma. I couldn't find it. I might question whether someone with only a few movies under his belt warrants a three hour special, but it was good so who am i to question. If you have a chance to watch it i highly recommend. He has so many good stories, including a half hour or so about Prince that was hilarious. Jason Mewes was on part of it and he denied the heroin possession rumors. I'm not sure i believe him, but heres hoping. My sister and i are finally getting along, though i have no idea why. I don't really care so long as it sticks. Two of my best friends, who happen to be guys, acted really lame last night because there was a chick around. It really hurt my feelings, although they said later that they were just kidding. I'll tell you the story; I left the hut a little late last night as i dropped my bike light and had to piece it back together. I stopped at a the church because it held really strong memories of an ex who passed away last year, and then was on my way home. My friend's house happens to be directly on my way home so i rode by, not really expecting to see anyone. My friend was not there but another of our friends was. I stopped to talk to him and then attempted to ride and found my wheel completely stuck, where it had been fine moments before. He told me to wait a second because everyone else was on their way. He used to be a bike mechanic and he offered to look at it. We got inside, he looked at my bike and tried to fix it and then one of the boys started making fun of me saying i broke my bike on purpose so i could stop by and crash. First of all i have no problem barging, and if i had wanted to do so i would have no qualms about it. I would not have needed to make up an excuse. Second of all I would hardly break one of my favorite possessions, not to mention my PRIMARY FORM OF TRANSPORTATION to use as said excuse. He was not able to fix my bike because my rim was incredibly bent and fucked up. Whatever, i'll just get a new rim at citybikes or some other place. Third, they are supposed to be my fucking friends. Good friends. I need a shower.