Just A Matter of Time

I had predicted that by the end of our house renovation project, either Danny or I would end up with some kind of serious injury. I SHOULD have predicted that I would end up with the injury, because I am clumsy and seem to fall into freak accident situations a lot. Usually, these accidents are entirely my fault, and inexplicable to the general public. For example:

When I was 5 or 6 years old I ran into a parking meter while walking down the street because I wasn't looking where I was going. I was short, so the parking meter hit me dead on and I fell over. I'm sure the camp counselors were only in high school, but I remember them looking at me without much sympathy and with a lot of astonished amusement. But then, I probably would look at a kid who ran into a stationary object much in the same way.

When I was in 4th grade we were playing a spelling game that involved sitting on the top of our desks. I leaned back a little too far, and tipped right off my desk, head first, feet sticking up in the air. Again, viewed with now familiar looks of astonished amusement.

In high school PE, I bent down right as my friend was serving the birdie in bad mitton (no, I don't know how to spell that). The edge of the racket hit my eye, and I ended up with a swollen optic nerve and partially detached retina. The benefit was that I got to miss the majority of the rest of PE because I was on strict bed rest so I didn't go blind.

This history should have been a clue that, at some point while working on our house, I would manage to do something to injure myself in a stupid way. Which leads to my explanation of the splint on my pinky. In the desert the dirt is extremely hard, almost rock-like. Danny tells me to dig 5 big holes in which we are going to put wooden pillars to hold up the patio roof. I am not fond of manual labor, I have a short attention span, and I get frustrated easily. So by the fifth hole I'm getting ever so slightly annoyed. Then I hit a layer of rock, and my annoyance turns into a determined rage. I take the claw side of the hammer and start swinging it violently against the rock with all my might, not noticing that the reverberations of the hammer are snapping back my pinky finger with every blow. When the dust settles and the hole is dug, I notice a slight twinge in my finger. The twinge continues every day, and soon my pinky finger is getting stuck in the bent position every time I make a fist. Like, I straighten the rest of my fingers, but the pinky doesn't get the memo. I call my distinguished doctor father whose stellar advice is: "It's probably a tendon. Keep an eye on it". This is the same man who, after I complained about stomach pain while he was driving me to school said "It might be appendicitis. Have a good day!" and dropped me off in the parking lot. So I don't always have the most faith in his diagnostic abilities. I resort to the best doctor of all: Dr. Internet, and find a description of my pinky problem. Apparently it's an injured ligament, and if not corrected can result in a permanent condition called "boutonniere's deformity".

The last thing I need is a deformed finger, so now it is being safely held straight by an aluminum splint I bought at Walgreen's. I call it my bionic finger, and want to make it a James Bond-esque attachment. I was thinking about having a tiny knife that could pop out of the end so I could shank someone, or maybe a deadly laser. It could release smoke so I could make a quick get-away. It could turn into a phone, or I could store a capsule of deadly poison in it. The possibilities are endless. I may keep the bionic finger after the pinky heals, because a pinky finger is kind of useless, but a BIONIC pinky finger would be the awesomest thing ever.

But this incident wouldn't be complete without, yes, the look. I was in my favorite coffee shop today, and noticed that the cashier also had a finger splint. I remarked on it, and he asked how I injured my finger. I relayed the story, slowly realizing how crazy it sounded. When I was done there was a slight pause. Then he says "were you...drunk?" "No....just, well, frustrated". And there it was. The widening of the eyes. The slight smirk. He tried to cover it up, but I knew. And I'm used to it.

Things I Have Learned While Watching Daytime TV

While my body attempted to expell all it's fluids and possibly organs today (sounds gross, right? It was grosser being there, trust me) I got to revel in the wonder that is bad television.
Some thoughts

1. Jennifer Garner in "Elektra" has not learned that if you are a hitman (hitperson?) you should perhaps try to blend in more with your prestine lakeside environment by not wearing a red leather jumpsuit and carrying a crossbow with enough attachments to also be a gun, sword, and cuisinart.

2. A good drinking game- take a shot every time you encounter pseudo-scientific language in a commercial. My favorites so far today have been:
-"Firms your skin at least one dermatological level!"
-"This revolutionary concept was cited in this scientific journal" Camera shows an article from "The Journal of Scientific Discoveries"

3. WWII veterans are not only NOT appalled by the Bret Michael's Rock of Love girls performing a strip tease/hula hoop show while reciting the preamble to the constitution AND pronouncing "posterity" as "prostrerity", they will actually vote them as the best performance and hobble rapidly off their chairs to be the first to catch the girls' camouflage tube tops.

4. Top models are about character, inner beauty, self confidence, and intelligence. But you're too fat, your muscles are too big, and you're too short.

5. If you are going to have Ellen Degeneres as a house guest, she will be expecting a home made body scrub, fresh flowers, ironed sheets, and a picture of you and her as a souvenir on her bed side.

Other than that, today has been really, really bad.

All's quiet on the western front

My biggest worry was how our spoiled only-puppy would feel about an invader. Thus far he has sniffed her, walked near her without freaking out, and FALLEN ASLEEP NEXT TO HER!

If that's not a sign of her being a member of the family, I don't know what is.

New Family Member

She's a 7 week old German Shepherd puppy. I told Danny we could get a big dog when we got a real house, and we've been keeping our eye out since we're going to be moving in soon. We don't know her very well yet, except that she grunts like a pig when we pick her up, and sleeps a lot. And she has enormous paws:

I was kind of hesitating until Danny took one look at the dog and said "you look familiar!" He had a childhood german shepherd that he adored and his parents gave away. I couldn't say no after seeing the look on his face.

Boring Dream Blog

One of my pet peeves are people who write about their dreams as if they are interesting, because dreams are rarely interesting to anyone other than the dreamer. So, I'm mainly writing this so I remember it later.

Jung said that periodically people have more meaningful, significant dreams than usual, and they are the subconscience having a revelation. This might be one of thos edreams, but I haven't figured out what it means yet.

I dreamt that I was tricked into going into a church by a guy I know at work who is very religious. The church was white with wood trim, peaked roof, very simple. I felt very drawn to the building, and walked into the church. A pastor wearing purple robes was preaching, and she was a thirty-something woman w/ well coifed hair who looked like a realtor. The pulpit was much higher than the pews. I could hear her when I first walked in, but then when I walked directly in front of her I could see her talking but I couldn't hear her. The man from work said that because of the way the alter and the pews were set up, you can't hear her when you're right in front of her. I kept thinking, I can believe in the building, I can't believe in the pastor. Then I started walking around the grounds. The surrounding space was very dark, and I felt like there was a ceiling far above me that I couldn't see, and the structures on the grounds of church were white and glowing. There were reflecting pools and white archways covered in white roses. I looked in one of the reflecting pools and there were little white minnows swimming around in the pool. They were picking up white pebbles from the bottom of the pool and eating them, then turning into the pebbles and floating to the bottom of the pool. The man from work said something about "that's the pool of vengence". Then they took me to a warehouse full of different kinds of stone that they were going to add to the church. One pallet had some regular looking granite on it, but then the next pallet had slabs of translucent glowing crystal. I accidentally knocked over the stack of crystals, and they all shattered. I started crying and thought "I finally found a church I could believe in, and now I've broken something so they won't let me join". Then I woke up.

Music to Die By

I am now 26. So far, it's no different from 25 except that I think I'm about 5 lbs heavier since Friday from all the EATING. But I'm glad. Because I've been working my butt off at work, on the house, and at school, and I deserved a weekend of eating girl scout cookies, hamburgers, popcorn and yes, AN ENTIRE BAG of cheese puffs.

I got to go to Sea World for the first time, since my childhood was not spent on traditional vacations to amusement parks, and instead was spent sleeping in frozen tents and peeing behind bushes, this was my first Sea World Experience. We skipped the various showes after watching a guy in a cowboy hat, short shorts and a guitar prance around the stage singing about dolphins. We did see Shamu, because you just can't miss Shamu despite the cheesy presentation. And I got to pet the bat rays which was awesome.

We also had some fun campfire times. They were primarily fun because Jenny was there, and Jenny makes every conversation entertaining, surreal, and x-rated. Some of the things we learned about Jenny over the weekend are:

1. She has 13 vaginas
2. They operate much in the way automatic sprinklers work
3. She can play approximately 1 1/2 chords on her guitar, but very enthusiastically and for prolonged periods of time.
4. The hearing of these chords by someone who knows how to play the guitar will cause the chords to be dubbed "music to die by".
5. She can fit 10 layers of clothing on her body but will not be able to hear you through ten hats/hoods
6. She is the only person for whom LA actually IMPROVED her driving.
7. When she buys a tent, she will buy a nylon antebellum mansion with a sleeping porch, dining room, and our tents will merely function as outlaying slave quarters.
8. When she farts, she farts $2 bills. She will forget this fact numerous times throughout the weekend, thus nullifying all of our brilliant jokes about money making schemes.
9. She does not like meat, because it bleeds. She eats fish. Because....it.....doesn't bleed?
10. She does not want children, but if she does she wants to adopt an older child that has already been fucked up, so she doesn't have as much work to do.

We were planning on leaving on Sunday, but I grew sadder and sadder as we drove through San Diego so when I saw a Motel 6 I sniffled convincingly and persuaded Danny to stay another day. On Monday I spent the morning standing on a beach in La Jolla feeling absolutely happy and at peace and like I could spend every day of the rest of my life right there. I'm usually kinda tired and ready to go home after a weekend but this time I was just depressed about having to go back to a dry, brown desert where I can't pick flowers and swim with fish and enjoy wonderful weather all the time. The traffic is terrible, the people are crazy, and it may fall into the ocean at any second, but jiminy cricket I'd love to live by an ocean.

I'm getting OLD

I should be working on yet another paper right now, but I'm not. I'm blogging. And I'm turning 26 on Saturday. I know, I know, that's NOT OLD as everyone who is older than 26 keeps angrily telling me. And I'm not saying it's old, I'm just saying that I think this is the birthday where, instead of saying to myself "Yay! I'm getting older!" I'll start saying "Oh my God, I'm getting older." Maybe it's the biological clock thing. Lately I've been thinking about all the things I want to do before I have kids, and I'm feeling like I'm running out of time. Because, you should probably have kids around 30, right? I mean, I don't want to get done travelling the world, getting my Ph.d, starting my career, and then wake up one day and realize that my ovaries have given up the ghost. Personally, I would like to adopt, but Danny wants a little biological Zamora running around. And I don't want to be 40 years old and not limber enough to play with my toddler, because my joints already hurt at night and I can't sit cross legged for more than 10 minutes before I lose the ability to walk.

Why don't men have to worry about this?! They can produce sperm on their deathbed. It's like God intended them to go around planting their seed in nubile twenty year olds. We need to implant seahorse DNA into men so they have to carry the baby around themselves if they decide to impregnate a twenty year old.

Okay, onto other news: My first internship for school is at the children/adolescent pysch hospital, and I'm so excited! And scared. The person I interviewed with said that she almost never agrees to take on someone doing their first internship because it's such a tough placement. I'm trying to quell the thoughts that I will find myself in over my head. To be honest, my main concern is that I'm going to get attacked by some large teenager. She assured me that I generally won't be responsible to do holds, but you never know, right? My 70+ year old 5 foot tall boss told me that what you need to do is establish a reputation on the floor as being someone who's a really tough restrainer, and then kids will leave you alone. Apparently that's how she avoided having to restrain people in the past. Then she told me a story about doing an assessment on a kid who tried to puncture his jugular with the pen she just handed him. She's not very good at reassuring people.