Well, today was an adventure.
My mom is back!
And that’s pretty much the only thing that happened to either of us this afternoon.
She drove up from Tucson in a U-Haul, towing her car behind. She left the car at U-Haul while she unloaded her stuff from the actual U-Haul, and then both of us drove it back to the lot to “exchange” it for the car. As we got in to drive it home, she realized that the car had absolutely no brakes (luckily before we started moving).
After calling AAA and getting towed to Bruneel (by a very cool lady from Deary) just as they closed at 5, we’re now hanging out without a car and waiting to see if the brakes (which WERE brand new) are totally shot. At least we got to walk around town a bit. My mom missed that.
Uh…happy birthday, mom! Haha.
A post! ApostapostapostapostaPOST!
TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY.
FIRST: my mom got a job, my mom got a job!! Here at the U of I! Now she can leave the insanity of Tucson and come back to the place she calls home. SUPER HAPPY ABOUT THAT.
SECOND: I got a job, too! In addition to teaching in the second half of summer, I’ll be working as a data analyst for the College of Ag from May through July. Now I can finally get some real experience with real data (and lots of it!).
Better brush up on my SAS.
WOOHA!
Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving peoplez! My mom and I spent the morning driving all around, then I worked on Newton vs. Leibniz while helping her chef, then we had mashed potatoes and broccoli and it was awesome.
This year I am thankful for:
- My mom, of course. I’m really glad I got to spend a few days with her over break.
- The opportunity to further my education. I missed school SO. MUCH. Now that I’m back, I’m not sure if I’ll ever leave.
- My freaking awesome badass job. I love teaching statistics. It doesn’t feel like work AT ALL.
There are a lot of little things, too, but those are the main ones.
Enjoy today, y’all!
This week is INSANITY.
MY MOM IS HERE YAY.
Also, why don’t they make this stuff for adults? I can’t be the only one whose ostentatious style leaves room for such BADASS SHOES.
Crowin’ it
Happy birthday, mom! Sorry I kind of turned today into a Let’s All Get Depressed party tonight. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I’m good at sometimes.
However, this shall possibly cheer you up: my new favorite meme.
It’s like Lame Pun Coon, but even lamer. And punnier. And therefore it’s awesome. I’d pick a favorite but I giggle like an idiot through each page, so I don’t think I can.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Shoutout to my super awesome amazing mom! I love you so much!
On a related note: I don’t know how many of you out there watch the Colbert Report, but a few months ago Stephen did an interview with the (now late, RIP) Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are. I highly advise you watch part 1 and part 2 if you haven’t yet, ‘cause they’re hilarious.
Anyway, in the second part of the interview, Stephen read Mr. Sendak a children’s book he himself wrote entitled I Am A Pole (And So Can You!). He got a blurb from the children’s author (“The sad thing is, I like it!”) and promised that as soon as he got a publisher, the book would be out for purchase.
Well, Stephen Colbert being Stephen Colbert, he announced a week or so ago that IAAP(ASCY!) would be released on May 8th.*
My mom and I both thought Stephen’s book hilarious, so I decided to buy her a copy for Mother’s Day. It’s longer and has more illustrations than the version he read on the air, and the little extras on the jacket sleeves and the additional pages are pretty great as well. Plus, all proceeds from the sale of his book (and the audiobook version) go to USVETS, a non-profit organization dedicated to returning troops.
So if you’re looking for a cool little gift for someone or think Stephen Colbert is awesome, go get a copy of this book. It’s pretty rad.
*Coincidentally, this is the day that Mr. Sendak passed. Freaky, eh?
Attention Universe:
My mother is the greatest human being on this planet.
That is all.
30-Day Meme – Day 12: Explain how you got one of your scars.
Way back when the Eastside Mall had a pet store in it, my mom and I used to go check out the pretty animals after we’d go out for dinner on Thursdays. There was this white parrot in there that was pretty chill and friendly. He liked to grab fingers with his little talons.
One day, we were in the shop and my mom was in the back looking at the piranhas or something (yeah, they had piranhas, how cool?!) and I was hanging out with the white parrot. I wasn’t really paying attention to things and I think something in the shop startled him. He managed to latch his beak onto the base of my right index finger and WOULDN’T LET GO. Ask my mom, he had my finger viced for like five minutes and kept biting harder.
He finally let go and I bled for like twenty minutes. Fun times.
This is what happens when technology-addicted people lose power
So for no other reason than the fact that my life in Vancouver is cursed, I lost power to all the outlets in my living room.
Solution?
We (my mom and I) went out and bought a super-long extension cord, hooked it into the single working outlet in the main room, and from it constructed a fun tangle of extreme fire-hazard proportions.
And we bought a router, so now everything that is able to access the internet is ABLE to access the internet.
Fun times.
MOM’s the word!
It’s Mother’s Day! My mom is freaking fantastic, so today I present to the world my 10 Reasons Why I Wouldn’t Want Anyone Else as My Mother.
10. The inside jokes.
There are SO MANY. The fact that I can randomly shout, “watch these ammo boxes!!” and we can spend the next ten minutes quoting from Tremors shows how “on the same wavelength” we are.
9. We can be reduced to an hour long laughing fit over something that’s hardly funny at all.
When she came up to help me move into my new apartment up here, I remember we were on the stairs bringing a load of my stuff up from the car and in an instant we could hardly carry the stuff we had because we were laughing so hard. Lame little reason, I know, but laugh attacks reduce quite a bit of stress.
8. She has more confidence in me than I do.
And sometimes all it takes to bring you out of the hell of self-doubt is someone unconditionally contradicting you when you say “I suck at everything.”
7. We can be content getting in the car, cranking my music, and driving around for hours.
I’m fortunate in the sense that my mom and I can “hang out” without any awkwardness whatsoever. We feel really at ease with one another. I don’t think I could have gotten through the last few years without that close of a relationship with my mom.
6. She put up with (and still puts up with) all my crap.
I’m obnoxious, whiny, and selfish, and have been for approximately 23 years now. I don’t understand how she’s been able to put up with so much bull from me over the past years, but I truly do appreciate the fact that she has. I think a lot of parents would have completely lost their patience by now.
5. She put up with the camcorder phase.
For like three years of my childhood, I was ridiculously obsessed with taping anything and everything with the family camcorder. EVERYTHING. ALWAYS. That damn camcorder was never off. I don’t think I would have been able to put up with it if I were her, but somehow she didn’t go insane. That says a lot about how wonderful a parent she is.
4. I honestly think I could talk to her about anything.
I don’t think there’s a single topic or problem that would arise where I would feel like I couldn’t confide in her. I can’t see there being any situation in which she would become so upset with me that we would have a total relationship breakdown and we’d never talk again. I hope she feels the same way about me.
3. She is deserving of every ounce of respect I have for her.
My mom has had to put up with a lot of crap in her life and has somehow managed to stay a not only sane but phenomenal person. I don’t think there’s any way I could express the amount of respect I have for her.
2. She can forge my signature.
Yeah, weird reason, I know. I write the “M” of my last name a little strangely—I put a little bump at the beginning of the first stroke, something reminiscent from learning cursive in elementary school. Anyway, I remember a year or so ago when I needed my UI transcripts but was unable to obtain them from up here in Canada in the time that I needed them. My mom went and filled out the forms to pick them up in person so she could just mail them to me. These forms require the signature of the person to whom the transcript belongs. I distinctly remember her telling me over the phone, “I forged your signature for you. I even put that little bump you do before the start of the M.” The fact that she knows about and makes the effort to replicate such an unimportant little component of my signature made me realize just how much attention she pays to me as her daughter. And that’s awesome.
1. She’s…well, my mom.
Reading over this list, these all seem like really lame reasons compared to how happy I really am to have my mom as my mom. But that’s pretty much all I can really explain.
So anyway, mom, if you ever read this, I love you! You’re the best mom anyone could ever want.
Something else
Yaaaaay, my mom is here! Actually, she got here yesterday but it was late and she was tired but I had a minor mental breakdown and we ended up going to Denny’s at 11 PM and then drove around Stanley Park for another hour before we went home and crashed after M&Ms.
(Run on sentences make me look cool, yo.)
Today I unfortunately have a lot of school-related crap work to do today, but tomorrow we’re both taking the day off and screwing around. I’m taking her to Metropolis, a mall that could swallow about 30 Palouse Malls (not kidding) so we can take our minds off of our current situations, both of which suck.
I freaking love my mom, this is going to be awesome.
My parents rule.
Here is something that I think needs to be publically stated, because it’s so very true:
I have awesome parents. Why, you ask? Because:
My father is a very strange dude who just so happens to be very strange in a lot of the ways I am very strange. We have the same sense of humor about a lot of things and we’re both ridiculously anal about time. We’d both prefer arriving at a preset location a half an hour before we’re supposed to get there as opposed to even three minutes late. He pretty much just lets me do what I want, and by this I don’t mean to say he’s awesome because he lets me get away with stuff, he’s awesome because he trusts me. If I say “dad, a bunch of my weirdo friends are coming over and we want to have a party in the basement,” he’ll say “I’ll order pizza for you guys if you let me know what you want, then I’ll leave you alone.” True story. It might be parenting laziness, but I like to think a large part of it is that he trusts me not to burn the house down/get pregnant/be a general pain in the ass when I’m allowed to do what I want. And that’s rockin’.
My mom is awesome because she and I are best friends. She gets me like no one else does. She’s very open with me and I feel like I can talk to her about just about anything which, if you know me, is a pretty big thing for me to say. I know I’m not the perfect daughter in the world (FAR FROM IT), but I know I couldn’t ask for a better mother.
Haha, it feels weird to be unable to say more about my mom regarding how awesome she is. You’ve all met her; you know she’s badass. I guess it’s hard to quantify how great she is because I’ve lived with it for 22 years…it’s just kind of there.
Love you mom!
Love you dad!
You both rule.
Today’s song: Something Else by Diamond Rings
Calculus: taking it to the limit (yeah, the jokes won’t stop until the class is over)
Two things:
1) Happy birthday, mom!
2) Congrats to all who are graduating today, though I’m pretty sure no one who’s graduating this semester reads my blogs.
Haha, sorry, not much more to say today. Cleaned the apartment and did calculus practice problems for five hours.
Oh, and this. I miss this show.
Today’s song: Flippers by Art vs. Science
New apartment is greater than every other apartment ever (photographic proof within)
I freaking love this place. The only thing wrong that I can even think of is the fact that it’s so big it’s practically begging for at least two beings to live in it. I can’t wait to bring Annabelle up here in August.
Anyway.
Pictures!
I also noticed today that the name of our elevator manufacturer is “Schindler’s Elevator,” which made me glad I’m not in England, ‘cause then it would “Schindler’s Lift” and that would be wildly inappropriate.
Today’s song: You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away by The Beatles
Colons: Invading my blog titles for quite a few days now
My mom is here, yay! Moving has officially commenced.
And now: geekery!
IKEA is probably the single greatest place ever. We went there tonight ‘cause my mom’s never been in one and wanted to go. Let’s just say that if the whole world was run like an IKEA store, things would move a lot more smoothly. The whole building was like a grid of complete, organized happiness. I was flipping out about the sheer efficiency of the place, my mom was flipping out about the cool kitchen stuff they had. I also got a very awesome rug that you shall see once I get pictures up of my new snazzy apartment.
More fun:
http://mathfail.com/
http://spikedmath.com/226.html
http://spikedmath.com/229.html
http://extremepresentation.typepad.com/blog/files/choosing_a_good_chart.pdf (this made me SO HAPPY)
Sorry, I’m in a “Claudia gets a kick out of math” phase and you’re just going to have to deal with it.
And:
I have made two realizations as of late: I haven’t read anything that wasn’t from my classic books list (except for maybe five books) since 6th grade. I also realized when speaking to another friend about NaNoWriMo that I constructed my novel entirely around a “divide by zero” pun, which is about as bad as a pun addiction can get.
Today’s song: Beautiful, Dirty, Rich by Lady Gaga
My mother had infinite patience with me when I was a kid
I swear to god, I don’t know how she put up with me. From the time I was a very small kid (Kindergarten) I was absolutely fascinated by this camcorder she had, and I always had her tape me doing the most mundane things. Examples:
- I had a row of about 40 small rocks and made her tape me reading off their names, then giving them prizes for being rocks.
- Me reading out of the Troy phonebook.
- Me using a stencil to draw circles (FOR LIKE AN HOUR).
- Me writing in my journal.
- Me naming every freaking item in the house.
- Me counting to 100. Twice. I’m not kidding.
- And then she made the biggest mistake of her life and decided to let me have a shot at using the camera. I claimed it as mine and proceeded to make tons of ridiculous movies, including quite a long series involving a pair of gay grandpa sock puppets (no joke). I thought I was Steven Spielberg or something, I don’t know.
- Also, 24 + 7 = 20, apparently. I’ve obviously stayed at this math level my whole life.
Hooray for growing up in hick town Troy. I really don’t know why I didn’t go into directing or something after seeing all this.
I love you, mom!
Happy birthday!!
Also, can you make me good at math? ‘Cause I’ve got my Linear Algebra final in less than three hours.
A blog? Egads, why?!
Seriously. I’ve been having the strangest dreams lately, and all but the last one involved some sort of struggle and/or death. Let me illustrate:
Dream 1: in which my mom has a boyfriend and all he does is sleep
This dream involved some sort of strange scenario in which my mom was dating some guy who did nothing but sleep in this little cottage of his. I don’t remember much fro this dream (seeing as how it’s been awhile since this dream occurred) but I remember some sort of significant struggle in the rain. It was weird.
Dream 2: in which everyone I know comes into my dorm room and commits suicide
The strange thing was, I was completely calm about it. Over the course of a day I kept going in and out of my room in McConnell and found each time that one of my friends had been taken away by ambulance after attempting suicide. My mom, too. I just remember having these calm conversations regarding suicide with each person in this hallway with a lot of fountains before each person went about it. Strange.
Dream 3: in which I engage in a tremendous struggle with my alarm clock and bees
This was a few nights ago. I had this alarm clock and I couldn’t get the buzzer to turn off to save my life. I was hitting it with stuff, throwing it, stomping on it…I just couldn’t get it to turn off. Finally I dumped some water over it and it finally went off. Then, while my mom and I were standing there and these bees came up and started attacking us. I tried the water, but that didn’t subdue them. I woke up soon after that.
Dream 4: in which a hypothetical swimming pool is never found and my friends and I do weird things
Ah, now this one I can give you details on, had it last night. My mom and I are in the car, our destination being some big swimming pool/center that we had been wanting to go to for some time. We found the parking lot but it was full, so we drove down this dirt road to find a different parking lot that was not so much a parking lot but a gravel driveway under a plastic hood thing. We parked the car there and the woman running the tollbooth (for lack of a better word) told us that we could only park the car there for eight hours—any longer and there would be a $150 fine. I told my mom that we were just going swimming; we wouldn’t be parked there for more than two hours so we didn’t have to worry.
So somehow, after this, the dream transitions and I’m no longer with my mom but sitting in this kind of carnival place with Matt and a couple other people I don’t know. From what I recall, Matt was slightly pissed at everyone there because they were giving him crap about something. Then it shifted again and I was up in this huge block thing in the sky, like a giant form of one of those light bulb signs they have underneath the Best Western sign. It was this huge thing, and there were a bunch of people (including me) in it and we were apparently acting as the bulbs. I remember thinking that this was a major test of skill, and if you were to mess up you would be kicked out of the block and fall to the ground below.
Then it shifted again. I was out of the cube, and it was dark outside. Now I was in this car with Sean and a bunch of his friends. For some reason, Sean had his shirt off the whole time (ooh, racy!) and we were all at the Taco Bell drive-thru just kind of sitting in the car not doing anything. It was strange because I didn’t know any of his friends, but it was fun, too.
then finally, I end up back at the “parking lot” with my mom. It’s lighter out than it was when I was with Sean, but when I look at my watch it says 9:30, which meant that we were an hour and a half past our eight-hour limit of staying there for free. My mom was all upset about the fine, so I said without really meaning it that I would pay it. She said, “that would be nice.” I wasn’t expecting that reply.
Hmm. When I was thinking about typing this list, the prominent themes running through all of them were both water and struggle. Now I realize that each dream involved my mom. Freud would have something to say, indeed. Though I do think the water’s a prominent thing, though. It’s said that water in dreams represents strong emotions. The fact that locating said water in these dreams had become increasingly difficult must say something. Hidden or repressed emotions, perhaps?
Who knows. I should stop analyzing my own dreams.
Eigenblogger 